Linux Blimp

Fedora Xfce Live is an open source operating system that uses the lightweight Xfce desktop environment on top of the latest upstream Fedora release, providing users with a low on resources distribution of Linux that can be used on older computers.

Distributed as 32-bit and 64-bit Live CDs

You can download this custom Fedora distribution through Softpedia’s secure servers or from its official website (see link above) as two Live CD ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware platforms (64-bit and 32-bit). Please note that you must burn the ISO image onto CD discs or write them on USB flash drives of 1GB or higher capacity in order to boot them from the BIOS of a computer.

Boot options

The Live CDs use a standard boot menu that can also be found on many other official or unofficial Fedora spins. The main emphasis is on starting the live environment without too much fuss. For more advanced options, such as the ability to test the RAM, boot an existing operating system from the first disk drive or start the live session in safe graphics mode, you can access the Troubleshooting entry.

A lightweight and easy to use desktop environment powered by Xfce

As its name suggests, the default and only desktop environment of the Fedora Xfce Live CD distro is Xfce, a lightweight graphical desktop interface that comprises of a top panel (taskbar) and a bottom dock (application launcher).

Includes a lightweight set of open source applications

As expected from a lightweight distribution, the default applications are carefully selected to also be lightweight for the system. Among some of the most important ones, we can mention Claws Mail email client, Liferea news reader, Midori web browser, Pidgin IM client, Transmission torrent downloader, Parola media player, Pragha audio player, and AbiWord word processor.

Bottom line

Summing up, the Xfce edition of Fedora Linux is a very stable and fast operating system suitable for low-end machines and computers with old and semi-old hardware components.

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In the Linux operating system world, container technology has existed for quite some time, reaching back over a decade to the initial ideas around separate namespaces for file systems and processes. At some point in the more recent past, LXC was born and became the common way for users on Linux to access this powerful isolation technology hidden within the Linux kernel.

Even with LXC masking some of the complexity of assembling the various technology underpinnings of what we now commonly call a “container”, containers still seemed like a bit of wizardry, and other than niche uses for those versed in this art of containers, it was not broadly used by the masses.

Docker changed all this in 2014 with the arrival of new, developer-friendly packaging of this same Linux kernel technology that powered LXC—in fact, early versions of Docker used LXC behind the scenes – and containers truly came to the masses as developers were drawn to the simplicity and re-use of Docker’s container images and simple runtime commands.

Read more at InfoQ

Click Here!

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How to Install Seafile on Debian 9

9th November 2018

Seafile is an open source cloud storage system for storing files on the Seafile server and synchronize the files between multiple computers or mobile devices using the Seafile client. Using Seafile you can also create groups with file syncing and start discussions with your team to enable easy collaboration.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Seafile on a Debian 9 Linux virtual server with MySQL.

Install dependencies

Log in to your Debian 9 VPS via SSH as user root and make sure that all packages are up-to-date.

ssh root@Server_IP_Address -p Port_Number
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Install the following dependencies needed by Seafile:

apt-get install python2.7 libpython2.7 python-setuptools python-imaging python-ldap python-urllib3 ffmpeg python-pip python-mysqldb python-memcache python-requests
pip install pillow moviepy

Install MySQL server

We will use MySQL as a database back-end for Seafile. If you already don’t have MySQL installed on your Debian 9 server you can install it by running the following command:

apt-get install mysql-server

When the MySQL installation is complete, issue the following command to secure your MySQL installation:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install Seafile

At the moment of writing this article, the latest stable version of Seafile is version 6.3.4.

Download the Seafile archive from their official website using the following command:

mkdir /opt/seafile
cd /op/seafile
wget https://download.seadrive.org/seafile-server_6.3.4_x86-64.tar.gz

Once the download is complete run the following command to unpack the tar archive:

tar -xzf seafile-server_4.0.6_x86-64.tar.gz

Navigate to the seafile directory and run the setup script:

cd seafile-server-*
./setup-seafile-mysql.sh

The script will check your server and prompt you to press ENTER to continue

Checking python on this machine …
Checking python module: setuptools … Done.
Checking python module: python-imaging … Done.
Checking python module: python-mysqldb … Done.

—————————————————————–
This script will guide you to setup your seafile server using MySQL.
Make sure you have read seafile server manual at

https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki

Press ENTER to continue
—————————————————————–

Next, you will be prompted to enter several information needed to configure Seafile, such as server name, IP address, listening port and seafile data directory.

What is the name of the server? It will be displayed on the client.
3 – 15 letters or digits
[ server name ] my-server

What is the ip or domain of the server?
For example: www.mycompany.com, 192.168.1.101
[ This server’s ip or domain ] my-seafile.com

Where do you want to put your seafile data?
Please use a volume with enough free space
[ default “/opt/seafile-data” ]

Which port do you want to use for the seafile fileserver?
[ default “8082” ]

When asked to choose a way to initialize Seafile databases, select 1 .

——————————————————-
Please choose a way to initialize Seafile databases:
——————————————————-

[1] Create new ccnet/seafile/seahub databases
[2] Use existing ccnet/seafile/seahub databases

[ 1 or 2 ] 1

Enter your MySQL root password when prompted and the script will create the necessary databases.

What is the host of mysql server?
[ default “localhost” ]

What is the port of mysql server?
[ default “3306” ]

What is the password of the mysql root user?
[ root password ]

verifying password of user root …
verifying password of user root … done

Enter the name for mysql user of seafile. It would be created if not exists.
[ default “seafile” ]

Enter the password for mysql user “seafile”:
[ password for seafile ]

Enter the database name for ccnet-server:
[ default “ccnet-db” ]

Enter the database name for seafile-server:
[ default “seafile-db” ]

Enter the database name for seahub:
[ default “seahub-db” ]

———————————
This is your configuration
———————————

server name: seafile
server ip/domain: my-seafile.com

seafile data dir: /opt/seafile/seafile-data
fileserver port: 8082

database: create new
ccnet database: ccnet-db
seafile database: seafile-db
seahub database: seahub-db
database user: seafile

Once the installation is completed the script will show the following output:

Generating ccnet configuration …

done
Successly create configuration dir /opt/ccnet.
Generating seafile configuration …

Done.
done
Generating seahub configuration …

—————————————-
Now creating seahub database tables …

—————————————-

creating seafile-server-latest symbolic link … done

—————————————————————–
Your Seafile server configuration has been finished successfully.
—————————————————————–

run seafile server: ./seafile.sh { start | stop | restart }
run seahub server: ./seahub.sh { start | stop | restart }

—————————————————————–
If you are behind a firewall, remember to allow input/output of these tcp ports:
—————————————————————–

port of seafile fileserver: 8082
port of seahub: 8000

When problems occur, Refer to

https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki

for information.

You can now start SeaFile and SeaHub scripts and create your new SeaFile admin user:

./seafile.sh start

[10/20/18 14:48:18] ../common/session.c(132): using config file /opt/conf/ccnet.conf
Starting seafile server, please wait …
Seafile server started

Done.

./seahub.sh start

LANG is not set in ENV, set to en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL is not set in ENV, set to en_US.UTF-8
Starting seahub at port 8000 …

—————————————-
It’s the first time you start the Seafile server. Now let’s create the admin account
—————————————-

What is the email for the admin account?
[ admin email ] admin@rosehosting.com

What is the password for the admin account?
[ admin password ]

Enter the password again:
[ admin password again ]

—————————————-
Successfully created seafile admin
—————————————-

Seahub is started

Done.

Once the Seahub server is started, you can access Seafile at http://your_domain_or_ip.com:8000 and log in with your admin account.

Create systemd unit

We will create a systemd unit files to be able to start all Seafile services at system boot.

nano /etc/systemd/system/seafile.service

Paste the following lines:

[Unit]
Description=Seafile
# add mysql.service or postgresql.service depending on your database to the line below
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seafile.sh start
ExecStop=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seafile.sh stop
User=seafile
Group=seafile

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

nano /etc/systemd/system/seahub.service

[Unit]
Description=Seafile hub
After=network.target seafile.service

[Service]
Type=forking
# change start to start-fastcgi if you want to run fastcgi
ExecStart=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seahub.sh start
ExecStop=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seahub.sh stop
User=seafile
Group=seafile

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Once the unit files are created enable the services to start on system boot by running the following commands:

sudo systemctl enable seafile.service
sudo systemctl enable seahub.service

That is it, SeaFile has been successfully installed on your Debian 9 server.

You don’t need to Install Seafile on Debian 9 if you use one of our Seafile Hosting Services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to set up Seafile on your Debian 9 server for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, on How To Install Seafile on Debian 9, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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Bitmain announced a “Sophon BM1880 EDB” 96Boards CE SBC featuring its new Sophon BM1880 AI chip plus dual Cortex-A53 cores that run Linux. There’s also a RISC-V chip and optional Raspberry Pi and Arduino modules.

Beijing-based Bitmain, which is known primarily as a leading vendor of bitcoin mining chips and computers, also has a “Sophon” AI chip business built around its BM1680 and more recent BM1682 Tensor Computing Processor (TPU) AI chips. Bitmain recently announced a third-gen BM1880 TPU along with a Sophon BM1880 Edge Development Board (EDB) 96Boards CE SBC, referred to by 96Boards.org as the “Sophon Edge.”

Sophon BM1880 EDB

The open spec, Linux-driven Sophon BM1880 Edge SBC will be available at the end of the month for $129, but you can reserve an order now. The company also announced a BM1880-based USB stick and compute module, among other products (see farther below).

In conjunction with the Sophon BM1880 Edge announcement, Bitmain joined the steering committee of Linaro’s 96Boards community. The SBC is the latest of Linaro’s rather loosely defined 96Boards.ai family of AI-enabled 96Boards products. These include boards like the Sophon BM1880 EDB and HiSilicon Hikey970 that are equipped with neural network acceleration chips, as well as other boards without such accelerators such as the DragonBoard 920C and Rockchip Rock960, but which can also be used for edge AI applications.

The Sophon BM1880 EDB is called the first ASIC-based 96Boards.ai product, even though only the BM1880 TPU is an ASIC, not the dual 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 cores that accompany it. The BM1880 TPU and the EDB board are designed for deep learning techniques, like facial recognition, object detection and recognition, license plate recognition, and voiceprint recognition “in real-time on small devices without needing an Internet connection,” says Bitmain.

Sophon BM1880

Sophon BM1880 TPU

The BM1880 is available both in the dual -A53 version, which enables it to be used as the main processor, or as a deep learning co-processor without the -A53 cores. The BM1880 “can also receive video streams and image data from other hosts and then carry out inference and return the results back to the hosts,” says Bitmain.

The BM1880 TPU offers 1 TOP performance on 8-bit integer operations and up to 2 TOPS with Winograd convolution acceleration, claims Bitmain. The company touts the TPU for its scheduling engine, “which supplies extremely high bandwidth data flow effectively to all the tensor processor cores.” The chip integrates 2MB of memory.

The BM1880 TPU is accompanied by deep learning model compilers and an SDK. Deep learning frameworks like Caffe, ONNX, Pytorch, and Tensorflow “can be easily ported to the BM1880 platform,” says Bitmain. It also supports neural network models including CNN, RNN and DNN. The EDB board is said to offer further support for ResNet50, Yolo V2, GoogleNet V1, MobileNet v1/v2, SSD300, Alexnet, and VGG16.

Sophon BM1880 EDB

Aside from its processors, the Sophon BM1880 EDB (Sophon Edge) board is a pretty standard 96Boards CE SBC except that it’s a headless board without video ports and lacks the usual 60-pin high speed connector. The 96Boards compatible 40-pin connector is presumably where you’d add mezzanine boards for the announced Raspberry Pi and Arduino development modules. However, there were no details on the add-ons.

Sophon BM1880 EDB block diagram

This the first board we’ve seen with a RISC-V companion processor, which is unexplained except to say it’s a 750MHz chip. Presumably, this is an MCU-like RISC-V part for real-time processing, possibly designed by Bitmain. That’s a high clock rate for an MCU, so it might be an alternative Linux chip in addition to the dual -A53 block.

A 750MHz clock rate is too low for any of SiFive’s Linux-ready RISC-V chips like the Freedom U540 and upcoming, second-gen U74 and U74-MC. Since Bitmain is a Chinese company, however, it might be one of the new, Linux-ready RISC-V derived C-SKY chips from Hangzhou C-SKY Microsystems.

The Sophon BM1880 EDB is equipped with 1GB LPDDR4, 8GB eMMC, and a microSD slot. The board provides GbE, WiFi, and Bluetooth for networking, as well as 3x USB 3.0 host ports and micro-USB and JTAG debug interfaces. Specific Linux images are said to be coming soon.

Specifications listed for the Sophon BM1880 EDB (Sophon Edge) include:

• Processor — Bitmain BM1880 TPU combined with 2x -Cortex-A53 cores @ 1.5GHz and 750MHz RISC-V chip
• Memory/storage:
  • 1GB LPDDR4 (3200MHz)
  • 8GB eMMC
  • MicroSD slot
• Wireless — USB-based WiFi and Bluetooth with antenna
• Networking — Gigabit Ethernet port
• Other I/O:
  • 3x USB 3.0 host/OTG ports (not counting 1x reserved for wireless module)
  • Micro-USB UART debug port
  • JTAG for CPU; optional JTAG for RISC-V
• Expansion:
  • 40-pin 96Boards low-speed expansion connector
  • Optional Raspberry Pi and Arduino add-on modules
• Other features — boot switch; LEDs
• Power — 4-16V ([email protected] or [email protected]) DC jack
• Operating temperature — 0 to 40℃
• Weight — 36 g
• Dimensions — 85 x 54mm (96Boards CE)
• Operating system — Linux

Bitmain’s BM1880 based USB stick and module

Bitmain also announced a USB-connected Neural Network Stick (NNS) implementation of the BM1880, much like Intel’s Neural Compute Stick and Google’s Edge TPU Accelerator. There’s also a 38 x 38mm Neural Network Module (NNM) based on the BM1880. Neither appear to offer the dual -A53 cores for autonomous Linux operation. Both require connected X86_64 computers running Ubuntu (NNS) or Ubuntu or Windows (NNM).

Bitmain Neural Network Stick (left) and Neural Network Module

Bitmain also announced a 19-inch 2U

Sophon AI Server SA3

rackmount computer that incorporates three processing units, each with 6x of the earlier BM1682 processors, for 18 processors overall. The system includes an unnamed quad-core processor (probably an Intel Core) that supports Red Hat, CentOS, or Ubuntu distributions.

Bitmain Sophon AI Server SA3 (left)and Embedded Mini AI Machine SE3

A separate Embedded Mini AI Machine SE3 system equipped with the BM1682 targets the smart park market. The 210 x 115 x 45mm device supports 4x dynamic or 10x static facial recognition streams and offers single-precision peak performance of 3 TFLOPS with 60W consumption. Bitmain previously used the BM1682 for an SC3 deep learning accelerator card. No OS or additional processor was listed.

Finally, Bitmain said it would launch a next-generation Cloud chip BM1684 TPU chip by the end of the year, featuring “significantly increased performance.” The chip will drive a new SA5 server.

Further information

The Sophon BM1880 Edge Development Board (EDB) (Sophon Edge) is not yet available, but you can reserve a pre-order for $129 here for shipment due Nov. 30.

More information may be found on the 96Boards Sophon Edge page and Bitmain’s Sophon BM1880 EDB product page. The announcement of the Sophon BM1880 EDB, NNS stick, NNM module, and Bitmain’s other new products may be found here.

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News briefs for November 7, 2018.

Radxa is launching a Raspberry Pi clone called the Rock Pi that runs Linux or
Android on a hexa-core Rockchip RK3399 SoC. LinuxGizmos writes that the Rock Pi will closely match the RPi 3 layout and “may be the most affordable RK3399 based SBC yet, starting at $39 with 1GB RAM”.

Mender.io, the open-source update manager for IoT,
announces its collaboration with Google Cloud IoT Core “to create a reference integration enabling rapid detection and updates of issues in IoT devices”. Thomas Ryd, CEO of Northern.tech, the company behind the Mender.io project says, “Almost daily news stories circulate about bricked devices due to poor home-built update tools. We are inspired to address this common problem with an open-source project.” The collaboration has “resulted in a tutorial and reference integration to easily detect issues with Cloud IoT Core and the ability to correct those issues via updates to IoT devices with Mender. Users of Cloud IoT Core now have a secure and robust way to keep their Linux devices securely updated.” See the Google blog post for more details.

Parasoft announces a new initiative to support open-source projects and
communities. The company plans to offer free access to its tool suite “enabling developers to leverage test automation software, deep code analysis, and security capabilities for their open-source projects”. To be eligible, developers must “prove they are an active contributor and vital to an open-source project that is recognized within the global open-source community. The free user licenses will be valid for one year.” Send email to opensource@parasoft.com for more information.

The Linux Foundation is forming a new foundation to support the open-source
GraphQL specification. eWeek reports that “the move to create a new vendor-neutral independent
foundation under the Linux Foundation will help further advance the development of GraphQL”. The GraphQL started out as an internal project at Facebook for its newsfeed API and was open-sourced in 2015. Currently, the specification is used “beyond Facebook by web properties including GitHub, Shopify, Twitter and Airbnb, among others”.

Keeper Security announces its new BreachWatch dark web monitoring product.
BreachWatch searches the dark web for user accounts from compromised websites and notifies users when it finds their account information, alerting them to update their credentials. BreachWatch is available for iOS, Android and Linux. See the press release for more information.

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For those of you after some more casual and relaxing games, Equilinox will have you nurture your own ecosystem.

From developer ThinMatrix, Equilinox is a sandbox experience giving you control over what happens. You will nurture each plant and animal, all with their own life cycle. Make sure everything is happy and healthy, as it will give you more points as everything evolves and moves on.

To help with this, you will be given the ability to genetically modify species, which sounds rather interesting.

For those interested in more background details, the developer has been releasing regular videos on YouTube showing off how far it has come. Much like us, they’re also funded thanks to a Patreon campaign.

I think it looks really sweet! It’s releasing on November 23rd on Steam, hopefully one I will take a look at as it could be quite nice for kids too.

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When a new version of a product comes out — especially when that product is something I use every day — there are two things that go through my mind.

1) Yay! New toy!

2) What’s new?!?

Now, I’ll admit that the first one is a bit childish, but despite 20+ years working in IT, I still find myself a bit giddy at the thought of new software, new tools or a new operating system version. I want to know what it does that the previous version didn’t, or what has been made better that wasn’t my favorite feature last time I purchased it.

If it’s a new OS — something that I’ll be using every day in a variety of ways — I want to know what I’m doing. I need to know how it installs, what it’s primary functions are, and how to use it in the many diverse roles that an operating system plays in enterprise IT.

So, let me give you an example: SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 (SLE 15), our latest release. If you’re reading this blog post, you probably have some experience with SUSE Linux Enterprise, or SLE. Perhaps you’ve been using SUSE products since the ’90s and are just looking for the list of changes. Maybe you are new to SUSE Linux and want to learn the basics. But maybe it goes a bit deeper than that. Perhaps you want to talk with someone that has explored the product, read the documentation and is ready to lead a discussion into what makes the operating system different and useful.

Available Training for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15

That’s where SUSE Training comes in. We’ve been working alongside the development of SLE 15 to ensure you know what you’re doing with our latest release. If you want to discuss what’s new and how to move to SLE 15, you might be interested in our Transitioning to SLE 15 course. In this course, we walk through the new installer, the change in vision for SLE 15, and what makes multimodal IT something everyone in IT should understand. We also highlight the differences to the developer tools, the core OS changes, and how your infrastructure may change as a result of SLE 15. There are hands-on labs to ensure you understand those core changes, as well as how to install or upgrade to SLE 15.

But what if Linux is a foreign language to you? We have something to help with that, too. Our SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Administration course will get you going the right direction. We introduce Linux, it’s various SUSE flavors, and give you labs to practice what you learn. The command line (shell) is explained, making it less intimidating than it may seem.

SUSE Training for Other Products

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is more than just your traditional IT OS, however, and SUSE Training can help you understand why it’s different than it’s monolithic past. You can deploy a software define storage solution, an OpenStack cloud implementation, or your own container platform. We’ve built training for those products, too: SUSE Enterprise Storage Training SUSE OpenStack Cloud Training SUSE Containers as a Service Platform Training

Of course, there are more than those offerings available. We have a catalog of training content to help with most aspects of a SUSE Linux deployment.

We also train on using SLES for SAP, and we have a variety of certification paths to hone and validate your IT skills.

Whatever your interest is in SUSE, we’ve got a way to make you shine in IT. With courses from SUSE, you can get the training you need to make sure you know what you’re doing in SLE 15.

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On Tuesday, The Linux Foundation announced that Facebook’s GraphQL project has been moved to a newly-established GraphQL Foundation, which will be hosted by the non-profit Linux Foundation. This foundation will be dedicated to enable widespread adoption and help accelerate the development of GraphQL and the surrounding ecosystem.

GraphQL was developed by Facebook in 2012 and was later open-sourced in 2015. It has been adopted by many companies in production including Airbnb, Atlassian, Audi, CNBC, GitHub, Major League Soccer, Netflix, Shopify, The New York Times, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yelp.

Why GraphhQL Foundation has been created?

The foundation will provide a neutral home for the community to collaborate and encourage more participation and contribution. The community will be able to spread responsibilities and costs for infrastructure which will help in increasing the overall investment. This neutral governance will also ensure equal treatment in the community.

The co-creator of GraphQL, Lee Byron said:

“As one of GraphQL’s co-creators, I’ve been amazed and proud to see it grow in adoption since its open sourcing. Through the formation of the GraphQL Foundation, I hope to see GraphQL become industry standard by encouraging contributions from a broader group and creating a shared investment in vendor-neutral events, documentation, tools, and support.”

The foundation will also provide more resources for the GraphQL community which will benefit all contributors. It will help in organizing events and working groups, formalizing governance structures, providing marketing support to the project, and handling IP and other legal issues as they arise.

The Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin believes that this new foundation will ensure the long-term support for GraphQL:

“We are thrilled to welcome the GraphQL Foundation into the Linux Foundation. This advancement is important because it allows for long-term support and accelerated growth of this essential and groundbreaking technology that is changing the approach to API design for cloud-connected applications in any language.”

In the next few months, The Linux Foundation with Facebook and the GraphQL community will be finalizing the founding members of the GraphQL Foundation.

Read the full announcement on The Linux Foundation’s website and also check out the GraphQL Foundation’s website.

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Fedora KDE Live is an open source and free distribution of Linux, a special Live edition of the well known Fedora operating system, built around the KDE SC desktop environment. It is designed from the ground up to be used for previewing and installing the Fedora OS on high-end machines.

Availability, boot options, supported platforms

The distribution is available for download as two Live DVD ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware platforms (64-bit and 32-bit), which allow users to test the operating system without installing anything on their computers.

There are only two options on the boot prompt. While the first one will start the live environment with default options, the second one give users access to more advanced options, such as the ability to run a memory diagnostic test, boot an operating system that is installed on the first disk, or start the live session in safe graphics mode (only if your graphics card is not recognized by the default entry).

Pure KDE desktop environment with top-notch apps

As mentioned, the graphical session of this Fedora Live CD edition is powered by the well known KDE Plasma Workspace and Applications project, which has been untouched. It’s comprised of a single taskbar located on the bottom edge of the screen, as well as a desktop widget.

The main menu can be accessed from the taskbar, allowing users to open applications. In addition, the taskbar can be used for interacting with running programs or the system tray area. Various widgets can be added with a single mouse click.

Default applications include the Konqueror web browser, Akregator feed reader, KGet download manager, KTorrent torrent downloader, Okular document viewer, Gwenview image viewer, Amarok audio player, K3b CD/DVD/BD burning software, Dragon Player video player, and KMail email client.

Bottom line

In conclusion, no matter if you want to try the KDE SC desktop environment on the Fedora platform or you just want to install the latest Fedora distribution with KDE on your mid-range or high-end computer, you should download the Fedora KDE Live CD.

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I’ve been a writer for more than 20 years. I’ve written thousands of articles and how-tos on various technical topics and have penned more than 40 works of fiction. So, the written word is not only important to me, it’s familiar to the point of being second nature. And through those two decades (and counting) I’ve done nearly all my work on the Linux platform. I must confess, during those early years it wasn’t always easy. Formats didn’t always mesh with what an editor required and, in some cases, the open source platform simply didn’t have the necessary tools required to get the job done.

That was then, this is now.

A perfect storm of Linux evolution and web-based tools have made it such that any writer can get the job done (and done well) on Linux. But what tools will you need? You might be surprised to find out that, in some instances, the job cannot be efficiently done with 100% open source tools. Even with that caveat, the job can be done. Let’s take a look at the tools I’ve been using as both a tech writer and author of fiction. I’m going to outline this by way of my writing process for both nonfiction and fiction (as the process is different and requires specific tools).

A word of warning to seriously hard-core Linux users. A long time ago, I gave up on using tools like LaTeX and DocBook for my writing. Why? Because, for me, the focus must be on the content, not the process. When you’re facing deadlines, efficiency must take precedent.

Nonfiction

We’ll start with nonfiction, as that process is the simpler of the two. For writing technical how-tos, I collaborate with different editors and, in some cases, have to copy/paste content into a CMS. But like with my fiction, the process always starts with Google Drive. This is the point at which many open source purists will check out. Fear not, you can always opt to either keep all of your files locally, or use a more open-friendly cloud service (such as Zoho or nextCloud).

Why start on the cloud? Over the years, I’ve found I need to be able to access that content from anywhere at any time. The simplest solution was to migrate the cloud. I’ve also become paranoid about losing work. To that end, I make use of a tool like Insync to keep my Google Drive in sync with my desktop. With that desktop sync in place, I know there’s always a backup of my work, in case something should go awry with Google Drive.

For those clients with whom I must enter content into a Content Management System (CMS), the process ends there. I can copy/paste directly from a Google Doc into the CMS and be done with it. Of course, with technical content, there are always screenshots involved. For that, I use Gimp, which makes taking screenshots simple:

1. Open Gimp.
2. Click File > Create > Screenshot.
3. Select from a single window, the entire screen, or a region to grab.
4. Click Snap.

The majority of my clients tend to prefer I work with Google Docs, because I can share folders so that they have reliable access to the content. There are a few clients I have that do not work with Google Docs, and so I must download the files into a format that can be used. What I do for this is download in .odt format, open the document in LibreOffice , format as needed, save in a format required by the client, and send the document on.

And that, is the end of the line for nonfiction.

Fiction

This is where it gets a bit more complicated. The beginning steps are the same, as I always write every first draft of a novel in Google Docs. Once that is complete, I then download the file to my Linux desktop, open the file in LibreOffice, format as necessary, and then save as a file type supported by my editor (unfortunately, that means .docx).

The next step in the process gets a bit dicey. My editor prefers to use comments over track changes (as it makes it easier for both of us to read the document as we make changes). Because of this, a 60k word doc can include hundreds upon hundreds of comments, which slows LibreOffice to a useless crawl. Once upon a time, you could up the memory used for documents, but as of LibreOffice 6, that is no longer possible. This means any larger, novel-length, document with numerous comments will become unusable. Because of that, I’ve had to take drastic measures and use WPS Office (Figure 3). Although this isn’t an open source solution, WPS Office does a fine job with numerous comments in a document, so there’s no need to deal with the frustration that is LibreOffice (when working with these large files with hundreds of comments).

Once my editor and I finish up the edits for the book (and all comments have been removed), I can then open the file in LibreOffice for final formatting. When the formatting is complete, I save the file in .html format and then open the file in Calibre for exporting the file to .mobi and .epub formats.

Calibre is a must-have for anyone looking to publish on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, or other platforms. One thing Calibre does better than other, similar, solutions is enable you to directly edit the .epub files (Figure 4). For the likes of Smashword, this is an absolute necessity (as the export process will add elements not accepted on the Smashwords conversion tool).

After the writing process is over (or sometimes while waiting for an editor to complete a pass), I’ll start working on the cover for the book. That task is handled completely in Gimp (Figure 5).

And that finishes up the process of creating a work of fiction on the Linux platform. Because of the length of the documents, and how some editors work, it can get a bit more complicated than the process of creating nonfiction, but it’s far from challenging. In fact, creating fiction on Linux is just as simple (and more reliable) than other platforms.

HTH

I hope this helps aspiring writers to have the confidence to write on the Linux platform. There are plenty of other tools available to use, but the ones I have listed here have served me quite well over the years. And although I do make use of a couple of proprietary tools, as long as they keep working well on Linux, I’m okay with that.

Learn more about Linux in the Introduction to Open Source Development, Git, and Linux (LFD201) training course from The Linux Foundation, and sign up now to start your open source journey.

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