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​Solid is a new decentralized identity platform from WWW Creator Tim Berners-Lee which provides a mechanism for users to own and better control the usage of their data.

With several large companies trusted with large amounts of user data, and with several high profile data breaches and misuses of consumer data, Berners-Lee writes that:

The changes we’ve managed to bring have created a better and more connected world. But for all the good we’ve achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas. I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible — and necessary.

Berners-Lee and colleagues have been working on the open-source Solid project in an attempt to restore the power of individuals on the web.

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Android in its early days ran great on low spec phones and tablets. Raspberry Pi 3 devices today are much more powerful than these Android devices. So, you may be thinking of trying out Android on your Raspberry Pi 3 devices. Luckily, there are a few projects that ported Android on Raspberry Pi 3 devices. If you own Raspberry Pi 3 Model B or Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, then you can try out RTAndroid and Lineage OS on it. RTAndroid project is dead. But you can still find RTAndroid images online and use it on your Raspberry Pi 3. Lineage OS project is currently active. Lineage OS for Android 7 Nougat and Android 8 Oreo is available for Raspberry Pi 3. You can also install Google Play and other apps from Google (also known as GApps) on Lineage OS. I recommend you try out Lineage OS as the project is currently active.

In this article, I will show you how to install Android (Lineage OS) on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. Let’s get started.

To follow this article, you need,

• A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B or Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ single board computer.
• A microSD card of about 16GB or more for flashing Lineage OS image.
• Internet connectivity for downloading Lineage OS image.
• A micro USB power adapter (Standard Android charger) for powering up Raspberry Pi 3.
• A HDMI Cable and a Monitor.
• A computer for flashing the microSD card with Lineage OS image.
• A USB keyboard and a USB mouse.

Downloading Lineage OS:

To download Lineage OS for Raspberry Pi 3, go to the official website of Lineage OS at https://konstakang.com/devices/rpi3/ and click on one of the download links as marked in the screenshot below depending on the version of Android you want to install.

I am downloading Lineage OS 15.1 (Android 8.1.0). Once you click on one of the links, you should see the following page.

Now scroll down a little bit and click on the download link as marked in the screenshot below.

Now, you should be redirected to the following file hosting website. Click on the download link as marked in the screenshot below.

Now, click on one of the mirror as marked in the screenshot below.

Your download should start. It may take a while to complete.

Flashing Lineage OS to microSD Card:

You can flash Lineage OS to your microSD card very easily with Etcher. You can download Etcher for free from the official website of Etcher at https://www.balena.io/etcher

NOTE: It’s out of the scope of this article to show you how to install Etcher.

Once you download and install Etcher, insert your microSD card in your computer and open Etcher. Now, click on Select image as marked in the screenshot below.

A file picker should be opened. Now, select the Lineage OS image that you just downloaded for your Raspberry Pi 3 and click on Open as marked in the screenshot below.

Now, click on Select drive as marked in the screenshot below.

Now, select your microSD card from the list and click on Continue.

Finally, click on Flash!

As you can see, the microSD card is being flashed with Lineage OS image for Raspberry Pi 3.

Once the Lineage OS image is flashed on your microSD card, close Etcher and eject the microSD card from your computer.

Setting Up Raspberry Pi 3 and Booting into Lineage OS:

Before you power on your Raspberry Pi 3, make sure you

• Insert Lineage OS flashed microSD card into your Raspberry Pi 3.
• Connect the HDMI cable of your monitor to your Raspberry Pi 3.
• Connect USB mouse and keyboard on your Raspberry Pi 3.
• Connect the microUSB adapter on your Raspbery Pi 3.

Finally, power on your Raspberry Pi 3. Lineage OS should boot and you should see the following loading window.

After a while you should see the following window. As you’re running Lineage OS for the first time, you have to configure it. Just click on NEXT.

Now, select your language and click on NEXT.

Now, select your time zone, date and time and click on NEXT.

Now, configure Wi-Fi network and click on NEXT.

Now, select how you want the Location service of Android to work and click on NEXT.

Now, select the Lineage OS related features that you want to enable and click on NEXT.

Now, you can set up a PIN to protect your phone from other people. To do that, click on SET UP as marked in the screenshot below. If you don’t want to set up a PIN now, just click on SKIP.

Finally, click on START.

The home screen of Lineage OS should start.

As you can see, I am running Android 8.1.0 Oreo on Lineage OS 15.1.

My Thoughts on Android on Raspberry Pi 3:

Currently, you can only install Lineage OS on Raspberry Pi 3 if you want to run Android on Raspberry Pi 3. On Raspberry Pi 3, you can install Lineage OS 14.1 (Android 7.1.2) and Lineage OS 15.1 (Android 8.1.0) at the time of this writing. I showed you how to install Lineage OS 15.1 in this article. The procedures for Lineage OS 14.1 is similar. But if you ask me which one to use, I would say Lineage OS 14.1 as it performs better on Raspberry Pi 3 than Lineage OS 15.1. Lineage OS 15.1 lags a lot. I would not recommend it. It’s pretty unusable.

If you’re looking for commercial Android support on Raspberry Pi 3, then you can try emteria.OS. The Evaluation version of emteria.OS for Raspberry Pi 3 is free to download. The evaluation version does have limitations, but at least you will be able to figure out how good it performs before you buy it. To learn more about emteria.OS, visit the official website of emteria.OS.

So, that’s how you install Android on Raspberry Pi 3. Thanks for reading this article.

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iMusic

is a powerful piece of software that offers a huge range of flexibility in managing your music contents. iMusic specializes in managing your iTunes music collection as well. In fact, iMusic transforms the entire usability and flexibility of iTunes in an easier manner.

For example, you can directly sync your local and iTunes music collection directly with your iOS/Android device with just one click. You can also grab music from any other source like YouTube, Spotify, Dailymotion etc.

However, iMusic isn’t a complete alternative for iTunes. There are still tons of music on the iTunes store that you can’t listen anywhere else. There are also a number of conveniences from iTunes that you definitely don’t want to miss out. However, iMusic makes your life a lot easier with a number of various features and easier workflow.

The thing that really makes iMusic great is the ability to grab content from almost all the popular online content sites and syncing your music with any of your iOS/Android device(s).

Let’s figure out the usability and benefits along with the effort required for enjoying iMusic.

Interface

At first, let’s have a look at the app.

Every single available option in the interface is simple and self-explaining. There’s literally no learning curve in enjoying all the features of the tool.

When you open the app, you’ll land on the “Music Library”. This is the default screen where you can access all your music collection. For navigating, you have the top bar with total 4 different tabs, each of them offering different feature subsets.

Overall, the interface is very clean and free of cluttering.

Features

• Transfer music between Apple devices and iTunes

With the app, you don’t have to worry about the devices at all. You can directly transfer files from one Apple device directly to another.

Feel free to interchange your music from iTunes Library to your iPhone, iPod, and iPad without any duplication or overwriting the existing data. Just hit the copy button and you’re good to go!

 

• Transfer music between Apple and Android devices

iMusic successfully operates with both the major platforms without any type of issues. Got music in your iTunes Library? No need to worry about.

Sync and enjoy all your music directly to any of your Android devices. iMusic works perfectly with all the Android devices including the flagship ones like Samsung, Sony, ZTE, Lenovo and HUAWE etc.

 

• Backup/rebuild iTunes Library

When you somehow lost all your local music from your iTunes Library, you have to get them again. With the help of iMusic, you can successfully keep your music safe from the damage.

With the handy rebuilding feature, get back your iTunes Library and every other music right away, without needing to download them from the internet again.

• • Powerful toolbox

Tools are always useful and handy in a number of situations. The arsenal of iMusic contains a handful of tools that can offer you advantages at a number of situations. The list includes the following tools:

• • Remove DRM – Are you in need of enjoying a music that’s protected with DRM? Grab it right away with this powerful tool!
  • Car playlist – Ready to go on a tour? Grab all your music on a USB stick and enjoy them on the way!

Exploring the app

Let’s have a quick tour over the app

 

• Get Music

Let’s start with the “Get Music” section. Here, you can locate your favorite music online and grab any of them whenever you want.

In the “Discover” tab, you can visit any music you like on all the popular content sites.

“Download” tab allows you directly grabbing the specific content for you.

You may be listening to a music but not sure where to grab it? The handy “Record” tool allows you to start recording the music right away!

• Music Library

All the music you grab from the internet and sync from iTunes are displayed here.

You can also perform a number of tasks on the collected music.

• Device

Here, you can easily sync all your music directly to your Android/iOS device instantly. Just plug your device with your computer and let iMusic do the job.

• Toolbox

A collection of numerous handy tools to aid you in lots of situations.

Conclusion

iMusic provides a handful of features when it comes to managing your music. It can work as an ultimate tool for complementing your iTunes Library. You can also use iMusic as your sole music manager.

Out of all the features, the finest ones are the ability of grabbing any music out of internet and transferring all the music from one device to another. It offers grabbing the music on the most popular file formats for the maximum inter-device compatibility.

However, there’s a problem with listening to audio from other devices while running the app. It feels like the sound and video comes up 1-2 seconds late. That can be of some annoyance.

Overall, iMusic is a great app to grab right now. It’s a premium software offering a full-functional trial version for up to 10 tracks. You can

get the premium version right here

.

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One of our most recent success stories combines the efforts of SUSE, Lenovo and Intel at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (Leibniz Rechenzentrum, or LRZ). The new SuperMUC-NG installation provides LRZ with 26.7 petaflop computing capacity in a smaller data center footprint with drastically reduced energy usage and cost. What’s more interesting to me are the many projects across industries that will be using SuperMUC resources and enabling new discoveries that are shaping our world today.

But first, let’s look at a few facts about the LRZ implementation. The operating system of choice at LRZ has been and continues to be SUSE. And now with SUSE’s support for key popular HPC capabilities, such as Slurm for cluster management, LRZ embraces SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing on their new SuperMUC-NG (Next Generation) supercomputer. Lenovo’s HPC and AI solutions are built on the firm foundation of the Intel Xeon® Scalable family CPUs, with support in both HPC server and storage families for the latest Intel Omni-Path® Architecture solutions. These new high-performance computers provide more power to the scientists and enable researchers to tackle more complex scientific problems. SUSE, Lenovo and Intel combined to simplify High Performance Computing and demystify the complexities of AI – without sacrificing any compute power or efficiency.

Based on the Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 and Intel’s Xeon processor platform, SuperMUC-NG is optimized for HPC, virtualization and artificial intelligence and has a total of more than 300,000 processor cores. The new high-performance computers are coupled to a separate cloud component equipped with NVIDIA in order to better integrate with modern concepts for processing and visualization of huge amounts of data.

Thanks to its considerable performance characteristics, SuperMUC-NG is tasked to perform much of the heavy lifting in research projects being run at LRZ. These projects include applications in astrophysics, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics and life sciences. And since SuperMUC-NG supplies about seven times the peak performance of its predecessor it significantly speeds up current research, as well as open up new avenues of study.

For example, looking at the list of projects that leverage the supercomputing resources at LRZ, there are many that pique my interest and are indicative of the HPC migration to the commercial world:

• Renewable energy systems
• Population genetics
• Flight propulsion
• Banking and finance research
• Foreign trade
• Machine tool optimization
• Electrical power systems
• Cardiology research
• Genomics
• Psychology
• Neurological research
• And much more

It’s clear that LRZ has positioned itself extremely well in providing the HPC resources that companies around the world are looking for in helping to solve some of the most complex problems we face today, with solutions that will impact all of our lives tomorrow.

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Enterprises of all sizes are reporting dramatic and widening skills gaps in Linux and open source skills. Meanwhile, Linux tops the list as the most in-demand open source skill, according to the 2018 Open Source Jobs Report. In this article series, we are taking a closer look at one of the best new ways to gain open source and Linux fluency: the Introduction to Open Source Software Development, Git and Linux training course from The Linux Foundation.

This article is the final one in a four-part article series that highlights the major aspects of the training course, in chronological order. The initial article in the series covered the course’s general introduction to working with open source software, with a focus on such essentials as project collaboration, licensing, legal issues and getting help. With that groundwork laid, the course delves into working with Bash, the standard shell for most Linux distributions. The second article covered the course curriculum dedicated to working with Bash and Linux basics. The third article covered working with the command line as well as command-line tools. Here we will look at the course’s extensive content on working with Git and GitHub.

Working with Git, is, of course, essential for working with open source in today’s environment, especially if you will be collaborating with others. Git is a distributed version control system that makes collaborating on projects easy, while at the same time minimizing version-related errors and unwanted duplication of effort. Once you are working with Git you can also leverage a valuable repository called GitHub, where teams can house their projects, access and update code, and more.

The course covers Git as well as working with GitHub, and also notes that there are alternatives to GitHub that are worth knowing about, such as:

• GitLab (https://about.gitlab.com)
• GitKraken (https://www.gitkraken.com)
• Launchpad (https://launchpad.net)

Why are Git and GitHub essentials important?

Git began as an offshoot of the Linux kernel development community, initially created by Linus Torvalds himself. However, people quickly realized that it could be used for any project that had collaborative needs. The course comprehensively covers Git essentials as they apply to collaborating on projects. In focusing on GitHub, it notes that collaborators can designate hosted projects as public or private, and that public repositories are free of charge.

The course devotes 11 chapters to installing, using, and working with Git, covering the following topics:

• Git Installation
• Git and Revision Control Systems
• Using Git: An Example
• Git Concepts and Architecture
• Managing Files and the Index
• Commits
• Branches
• Diffs
• Merges
• Managing Local and Remote Repositories
• Using Patches

As is true throughout the Introduction to Open Source Software Development, Git and Linux training course, there are Labs modules that encourage students to get hands-on experience with Git and GitHub. An initial module guides students through creating a GitHub account that can go on to be used for working with open source projects over time.

In this part of the course, the focus is very much on applying Git and GitHub skills to collaborative project management and tasks. As students go through these lessons, they should keep in mind that the online course includes many summary slides, useful bullet lists, graphics, and more. It’s definitely worth setting up a desktop folder and regularly saving screenshots of especially useful topics to the folder.

Are you interested in advancing your open source skills? If so, this training course can help. Learn more about the Introduction to Open Source Development, Git, and Linux (LFD201) course and sign up now to start your open source journey.

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The Linux kernel is complex, large and feature-rich. Learning about it is not an easy task, not just because of its complexity and enormity but because it is constantly under development. This makes Linux a bit of a moving target.

Moreover, there’s one key difference between Linux and other operating system. Linux gets the definition of operating system wrong. Basic jobs that a kernel is actually responsible for involve stuff like scheduling, memory management, etc. Drivers and libraries actually just interface with the kernel thanks to the interface (ABI) that the kernel exposes. Which has led to the popular phrase, “Its not Linux, its GNU/Linux”. GNU being the rest of the stack, libraries etc and Linux being the kernel.

But misinformed folks will often wander into the internals of the Linux Kernel whereas their intention was something completely different starting out. With out of the way, here are some of the resources, that will help you learn about operating systems in the abstract along with the specificity of the Linux Kernels.

This books digs deep into the idea of what an Operating system ought to be, in the abstract. At the same time, it has a solid foothold into the practicalities of real world. The companion website offers a Linux VM that can be used to actually work through some of the challenges that the book offers. So even the abstract ideas will mostly be implemented in Linux by the reader.

Furthermore, it has elaborate sections where the case studies for popular operating systems are done and you get to see the distinction between Linux (which is just the kernel) and full-fledged operating systems like Windows 7.

Level: Intermediate

2. How Linux Works

Released by No Starch Press, this is one of the finest book to show you… well, how Linux works. Everything from Kernel’s management of filesystem and memory to the detailed description of I/O, networking and storage are discussed within this book.

The boundary where Linux ends and your Ubuntu, Arch, CentOS, etc begin will be made clear as well. If you run Linux you have all the prerequisites to go through this book.

Level: Beginner

3. The Linux Kernel Documentation

So far we have stuck to books. However, books get outdated quickly and can only help us so much. The Linux kernel documentation can guide you through your journey into the heart of the matter.

There is something for everyone. The documentation is neatly divided into sections for Users, Application developers and Kernel developers. You can get a practical gist of how bugs discovered and reported, and feature requests made. Of course, everything is centered around the Linux kernel, so chances are, you won’t be allowed to stray away from your aim, in this website.

This is an indispensable resource when it comes to the staying up-to-date as well. Since the documentation is where you will see the first sign of patches and new features.

Level: N/A

4. LFD 420 and LFD 440

Although quite expensive, these are some of the highest rated courses from the Linux foundation. My recommendation, here, is from anecdote rather than personal experience, but people have benefitted enormously from these courses.

The LFD 420 course is for intermediate level whereas the next course is for much more advanced users. The courses are provided by the Linux Foundation and delves deep into the topics of kernel architecture, workings, security and much more.

Honourable Mention: Design and Implementation of FreeBSD

There’s a lot that Linux actually gets wrong, and learning about the Kernel as if it is an entity of the natural world waiting to be studied is a wrong approach. It is not for nothing, that Linux users are accused of fanaticism. To avoid getting trapped into the echo chamber of Linux, this book would help you immensely.

The book doesn’t only talks about the operating system, FreeBSD but also about its kernel. I chose FreeBSD to contrast against Linux for a multitude of reasons. First, FreeBSD is used quite a lot in the real-world. It has enabled companies like iXsystems, Netflix, Delphix and WhatsApp to run their servers. About 25% of the entire US’ internet traffic flows through FreeBSD, thanks to the popularity of Netflix alone. So it can be used for some serious heavy-lifting.

Secondly, FreeBSD is proper UNIX. With clear distinction between userland and kernel and various other intelligent design choices, that seasoned Linux kernel developers can appreciate and adopt.

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Conclusion

When learning about anything as enormous as the Linux Kernel, you first need to define your goals. This maybe involve understanding how it works, how to debug it, how to write kernel modules, etc.

Once the goal is well-defined, you will find it hard to stray way into unnecessary topics and heated debates that Linux community is infamous for. Its okay if the goal changes as you understand more about the system. It is far better to nativagate by yourself than to get adrift by opinions and authority.

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The terminal is a very powerful tool, and it’s probably the most interesting part in Unix. Among the plethora of useful commands and scripts you can use, some seem less practical, if not completely useless. Here are some Bash commands that are fun, and some of them are useful as well.

Let’s check them out.

1. Cal

Few people know this, but any Unix system comes with a built-in calendar. To access it, you can simply type:

This will display the current month. However, you can select the precise year, and even the month, that you want as an argument. And to be fully useless, the option -j displays Julian days (the number of days from January 1). To sum up:

2. sl

This one stands for “Steam Locomotive” and is often typed in error (as it is the opposite of ls). Judging how boring visuals are on the terminal, it is cool to periodically see a locomotive on your terminal, especially when you did not mean for it.

First, install sl with this command typed in your terminal:

Then type the command:

3. yes

A very peculiar command with only one ability: repeating a string until its process is killed. This command displays a string for an infinity until the command is killed. Just type:

For example, yes I did it.

Don’t forget to press Ctrl + C to stop it, or it will run forever.

While it may seems useless, the yes command is very handy when you are running scripts that wait for prompts that you need to automate. For example:

will give a “y” when a prompt asks for a “y/n” answer.

4. rev

This command is for reversing any input (as its name suggests). When I say reverse, it means that if the input is “Linux,” the output will be “xuniL” It’s pretty strange, I know.

Enter an interactive mode and can quit by using the shortcut Ctrl + C. But rev can also work to reverse an entire file with:

5. aafire

Ever wondered what fire would look like on the black interface of the terminal? This can be achieved with the aafire command.

The first step is to install aafire with the following code on your terminal:

sudo apt install libaa-bin

Once it has been installed, on your terminal type:

6. espeak

If you are tired of hearing the everyday voices around you, this command could be your escape. You can listen to your computer talk by installing espeak using this command:

After, run espeak using the command:

espeak “Type what your computer says”

Note that whatever you type within the double quotation marks is what your computer will say.

7. figlet

Figlet is a command for those who love to write in ASCII art. It greatly simplifies this task as it automatically transforms any given string. It comes with a bunch of fonts by default at “/usr/share/figlet/fonts/,” and you can of course add your own.

figlet [-f path to the font] [string]

For example:

8. Banner

Similar to figlet, display the text in a big banner format. Install it with the command:

and use the syntax:

9. cowsay

This script basically displays a cow character using ascii symbols the arguments passed to it. First, install cowsay with this script:

Then type in the terminal:

Note: replace “yourtext” with whatever text you need to be displayed by the cow.

If you prefer a colorful pony to a cow, you can install the ponysay package and its respective command:

10. Cowthink

This command is similar to cowsay, with the only difference being the output is displayed as a thought. To use this command, just type:

cowthink <whatever you need to be thought>

For example:

cowthink Hmm, I didn’t know that

11. fortune

fortune displays a random sentence in the same spirit as fortune cookies. It is not always installed by default, so you may want to add it. In Ubuntu:

It comes with a very handy option: -s for short, which will limit it to fortunes composed of one sentence or less.

12. Oneko

This command adds some spice to your terminal by adding a cat to your screen which will chase after your (mouse) cursor. Install it by running this script:

Type oneko to display the cat.

13. Dog

There is a cat command, and “dog” is an alternative to “cat.” (See the humor?) It uses the same syntax to display a text stream into the console. You will probably have to install it, as it is not a command offered by default, but when you do, take a look at the manual page.

14. cmatrix

If you have seen the Hollywood movie Matrix, then you will relate easily to this command. Install cmatrix using the script:

Run it by typing cmatrix in your terminal.

15. time cat

This is actually two commands time and cat used together. You can use this as a built-in timer. It will run in the background until you stop it and will then report the time elapsed between the start and the end of its process. To launch it, just type:

16. factor

It’s time to do some Math. Let’s do an easy one with the command factor which can break down a given number into prime factors:

factor [number to decompose]

17. w

You can say whatever you want about “w,” but it is to my knowledge the shortest command you can find by default on your machine. Therefore, it deserves to be in our list just for that. “w” allows you to see information about current users, like their name, login time, etc.

Conclusion

We, of course, know how important commands are, especially in a Linux terminal, but once in a while it is nice to take a break and just amuse yourself with these fun commands.

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With Linus Torvalds having just released Linux 4.20-rc1, here is our original feature overview looking at the major changes merged over the past two weeks for this new kernel. The Linux kernel will be ending 2018 on a high note with this kernel bringing more than 350 thousand lines of new code!

This kernel began its life two weeks ago not knowing whether it would be called Linux 4.20 or Linux 5.0. As with the transition from Linux 3.20 being renamed to Linux 4.0, Linus Torvalds previously disclosed his preference after his fingers and toes are counted, to move onto the next big version bump. In today’s announcement, Linus Torvalds decided to stick to 4.20.

Linux 4.20 brings a lot of prominent changes from AMD Vega 20 support getting squared away, AMD Picasso APU support, continued Intel Icelake enablement, Intel 2.5G Ethernet support, the removal of Speck, peer-to-peer PCI memory support, Apple Trackpad 2 support, Logitech high-resolution scrolling, support for Hygon Dhyana CPUs, Snapdragon 835 support, and other new hardware support additions and software features.

DRM / Graphics Drivers

– AMD Picasso APU support as well as Raven 2 APU support.

– The AMD Vega 20 7nm workstation GPU support is now largely squared away for when this graphics card will be released in the months ahead.

– VCN JPEG acceleration for Raven Ridge APUs in conjunction with Mesa 18.3 user-space code.

– GPUVM performance improvements for the AMDGPU kernel driver.

– Continued work on the Intel Icelake “Gen 11” graphics support.

– The Intel DRM driver now has full PPGTT support for Haswell/Ivy/Valley View hardware.

– The open-source NVIDIA Nouveau driver has initial HDMI 2.0 support.

– The NVIDIA Xavier “Tegra194” SoC has initial display support.

– Qualcomm Adreno A6xx performance improvements with the Freedreno MSM DRM code.

– Virtual KMS (VKMS) has initial cursor and GEM support.

– Many other DRM changes.

– The Cedrus VPU driver has been mainlined along with a new media request API.

CPUs / Processors

– Support for the Hygon Dhyana CPUs that are the new Chinese data center processors based on AMD Zen.

– A new CPU architecture port is for C-SKY 32-bit CPUs as another Chinese CPU architecture.

– AMD/Intel x86 CPUs now have nested virtualization enabled by default for KVM.

– Early work on AMD Zen 2 CPU enablement while more is on the way for future kernel cycles.

– Scheduler improvements that should benefit asymmetric CPU systems like ARM big.LITTLE processors.

– Faster context switching on IBM POWER9.

– Minor work on the IBM s390 architecture.

– Better Intel IOMMU debugging with DebugFS support.

– Linux x86/x86_64 optimizations.

– Cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation with Intel STIBP.

– Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC support along with the HiSilicon Hi3670, many NVIDIA Tegra improvements, GTA04A5 phone support, and more. There is also now mainline ARM SBC support for the Orange Pi Zero Plus2, Orange Pi One Plus, Pine64 LTS, Banana Pi M2+ H5, 64-bit Banana Pi M2+ H3, ASUS Tinker Board S, RockPro64, Rock960, and ROC-RK-3399-PC.

File-Systems / Storage

– RAID10 improvements for MD RAID / Linux Software RAID.

– Several Btrfs performance improvements.

– XFS and EXT4 maintenance updates.

– New F2FS features, including a checkpoint mouint option for atomic updates of the entire file-system.

– Faster FUSE performance for file-systems in user-space.

Networking & Other Hardware

– Intel 2.5G Ethernet support was added via the new “IGC” driver. Hopefully in 2019 we find 2.5G Ethernet becoming standard for new Intel hardware.

– PCI peer-to-peer memory being merged for benefiting use-cases from device-to-device memory copies from NICs directly to SSD storage or for multi-GPU deployments.

– A lot of new sound cards supported including the Creative Sound Blaster ZxR and AE-5 high-end cards.

– Xbox One S controller rumble support along with Logitech high-resolution scrolling and the new Apple Trackpad 2 driver are among the input hardware improvements.

– Many USB driver updates.

– Better x86 32-bit hibernation support.

– LG Gram laptop support with various feature bits now being supported thanks to a new driver.

Security & Other

– The Linux kernel is now VLA-free for variable length arrays to improve code portability and better performance and security.

– The XArrays data structure was finally merged.

– More code cleaning that is another step towards building the mainline Linux kernel with the LLVM Clang compiler or even Intel ICC.

– Speck crypto code was removed due to this crypto algorithm being quite controversial with its roots inside the NSA.

– Continued fixings for the Year 2038 problem.

– The STACKLEAK plug-in has finally been merged to mainline.

– The staging area received updates around the VirtualBox KMS/DRM driver having atomic mode-setting, EROFS file-system updates, and continued work by Google on their GASKET driver framework.

Sadly not making it into Linux 4.20 is the highly anticipated WireGuard secure VPN tunnel that is held off until the next cycle. The FreeSync / Adaptive-Sync / HDMI VRR bits are also being held off for DRM until the next cycle as a highly sought after feature for the open-source AMD graphics driver stack. Stay tuned for my Linux 4.20 kernel benchmarks and more that will begin in the days ahead. If you appreciate my daily Linux testing, open-source news coverage, and more, show your support by going premium.

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When it comes to audits, many organizations face a dilemma: how to decrease the time and effort spent while improving results? In preparation for an annual PCI audit, Carter McHugh, Executive Director of Agile Architecture at CSG International, decided to partner with Chef Software to automate their audit processes. As a result, CSG reduced audit time by 80% while improving their compliance with PCI requirements.

Like all enterprises, CSG has many snowflake servers in their environments. These snowflakes had deviated and their state was unknown, but there was no way to stop the business and do the clean up of server builds. With the audit looming, Carter wanted to leverage Chef’s continuous compliance capabilities while:

• Giving CSG’s multi-disciplinary management the visuals to see their audits running in production
• Grouping results by different characteristics
• Taking stock on what CSG had in place today
• Building a maintainable database of information that anyone – technical or not – could easily access

The creation of ACT

Carter set out to build the Asset Compliance Tracker (“ACT”). While Chef Automate continuously measured nodes for compliance to CSG’s audit specifications, ACT could take the aggregated compliance data from the Chef Automate platform and combine it with their business logic for actionable reports, like:

• An executive score card
• PCI compliance over time
• Application specific spread
• PCI score per area director
• Top offenders

This tool now provides extra reporting for CSG management teams. ACT augments Chef Automate, tags information and allows the end user to filter by owner, group, server, etc., and provides end users the visibility and data filters needed to complete their audits. (Watch Carter’s ChefConf 2018 presentation: Bid Farewell to “Compliance Theater” and Welcome Continuous Compliance)

Improve quality, reduce overhead

If you want to improve your audit quality and reduce your audit overhead, use Chef Automate to detect noncompliance, identify and prioritize issues, then quickly apply remediation across your entire fleet.

And now that CSG is open sourcing their tool, you can also connect Chef Automate’s compliance data to your business logic using ACT. Which directors have the most violations? Who are the top offenders over the past 24 hours? How does Chef Automate’s compliance data relate to your asset classifications? Go to GitHub and download ACT to find out! You can find the CSG ACT Tool at: http://bit.ly/csg-act

Learn more about Chef Automate for compliance audits: https://www.chef.io/solutions/compliance-audits/

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Many of us love to watch movies, music, TV series, etc. to take short break from daily routine work. Apart from that multimedia such as video can be used for information sharing about business, product ads, and many other works where digital media is at the heart of business marketing.

Ever wondered what could be a best video player for Linux which can match all your requirements, from playing decade old videos effortlessly to playing latest high definition videos in best available resolution? Well, I have got you all covered today, as I am going to enlighten you guys about the best 10 video players you can use on Ubuntu and other Linux distros.

On some occasions we face difficulty in playing videos shot on some mobile phones or tablet, but the video players listed below are tested with videos shot on different devices and in various video file formats. So let’s begin the in-depth analysis of best video players for Ubuntu.

When it comes to watching TV series, movies or any online content there is only one name comes to my mind i.e. VLC Media Player. Because it is the best and most popular video player available across number of platforms such as Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and many other operating system platforms.

Reason behind so much popularity of VLC is that it supports variety of audio and video formats which is not the case with other video players. For Linux, VLC supports playing content from DVD media and also it supports video file formats such as HVC, HEVC, MPEG and many other files supported on Linux.

Notable features in VLC includes, it supports playing .iso files that means you can play files from disk image directly. Also VLC provides plugin and add-on for popular web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Pros

• Open Source
• Highly Customizable
• Built-in plugin to support subtitle download
• VLM (VideoLAN Manager)

Cons

• Not a music player (i.e. you can’t manage music libraries)

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/master-daily
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install vlc qtwayland5

2. MPV Player

MPV Player is a drag and drop multimedia player for Linux as there is no option to add files within the players interface, you just need to drag and drop audio or video files to play them. Although you can access options such as Open With by just right clicking on title bar or by clicking on MPV Logo on the top left corner of the player window.

One thing I liked about this video player is that it handles all the video files really well doesn’t matter what file format you through at it and also plays 4K videos better as compared to other video players available for Linux.

Video output in MPV Player is based on OpenGL which ensures video scaling with popular high-quality algorithms, color management, HDR, frame timing and many more.

Pros

• Open source
• On screen control (with mouse movement)
• Minimal user interface
• Video integration with Firefox
• YouTube integration

Cons

• Player configuration is not as user friendly as it should be.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install –y mpv

3. Kodi Media Center

Formerly known as Xbox Media Center (XBMC), Kodi is an open-source and cross-platform media player. It is one of the most popular and most used media players after VLC on Ubuntu and other Linux distros. Kodi was initially developed for first generation of Xbox gaming console and then slowly ported to personal computers running various operating system platforms such as Windows, Android and Linux.

Kodi is not only for playing video but you can also play music, podcasts and video games in both online and offline modes on it. During my usage, I tested Kodi with audio file formats such as MP3, MP2 and MIDI while video file formats such as HEVC, HVC, and MPEG and I have to admit all the files were played effortlessly.

Pros

• Open Source
• Flexible
• Slick User Interface
• Unlimited support for add-ons and extensions
• Live TV support

Cons

• Lags a bit on systems with minimal hardware resources.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install –y kodi

4. SM Player

SM Player is an open-source and cross-platform video player which is also available for Ubuntu and other Linux distros with full fledge support. Basically SM Player is a graphical front-end to MPlayer and its forks which come bundled with many Linux distros.

Just like VLC, it also supports playing YouTube videos directly from its player thanks to its dedicated codec for YouTube. Apart from this, SM player supports majority video file formats which includes AVI, MP4, MKV, MPEG, H.264 and other widely used video and audio formats. I have tried playing a 4K video, it was not as smooth as I would have liked.

This player also offers some advanced features such as video and audio features, video equalizer, audio adjustment and many more.

Pros

• Easy to use user interface
• Highly customizable
• Chromecast support (via web interface)
• Several skins and icon themes
• Support for subtitle download

Cons

• No 4K video support

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install smplayer smplayer-themes smplayer-skins

5. Banshee Media Player

Known as Sonance until 2005, Banshee is an open-source and cross-platform media player which is available for Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu and other Linux distros. Banshee supports almost all the modern world audio and video formats.

It is a feature rich media player with features on offers such as purchase music from Amazon, smart shuffle, podcasts, sync mobile phones, multimedia key support, audio equalizer, iPod manager and many others.

Pros

• Intuitive user interface
• Library management
• Support for add-ons and extensions
• fm support

Cons

• Stability issue
• Struggles handling large libraries

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install –y banshee

6. ExMPlayer

ExMPlayer is another fork and graphical front-end of MPlayer featuring in this article. This players is not only meant to playing video files but with its advanced features you can download videos, convert audio files, extract audio from video files and cut audio and video files without compromising there quality.

ExMPlayer is lightweight media player but offers handful of features such as 3D video playback, seekview for thumbnails, audio and video filters, video equalizer, volume booster, movie animator and many more. Apart from this it supports almost all the audio and video formats.

Pros

• Lightweight user interface
• Highly configurable
• Thumbnail seeking
• Subtitle search

Cons

• Stability issues

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:exmplayer-dev/exmplayer
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install exmplayer

7. Bomi Media Player

Based on MPV Player, Bomi is another highly configurable video player on my list. Bomi (Formerly known as CMPlayer) is an easy-to-use but powerful multimedia player. It comes with simple user interface and you can configure it using preferences menu.

Bomi can play audio and video files in majority of file formats available today and it offers various features such as unlimited playback history, automatic playlist generation, enhanced subtitle handling, hardware acceleration, and many other features to boost overall user experience.

If you’re running Linux on minimum hardware resources then Bomi is the perfect media player for you as it works smoothly on systems running on minimal hardware resources.

Pros

• Easy-to-use user interface
• Lightweight

Cons

• Lags a bit while playing some high quality videos.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:darklin20/bomi
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install bomi

8. GNOME MPlayer

MPlayer is a cross-platform media player from GNOME which available for various operating system platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, Ubuntu and other Linux distros. MPlayer ships-in as a default media player with various Linux distros and supports various audio and video file formats such as MPEG, H.263, MKV, MJPEG, MP3, etc.

MPlayer is a lightweight media player but offers some really decent features such as X video extension, support for DVD and MKV, framebuffer, VESA, DirectX, and many more.

Pros

• Easy-to-use user interface
• Keyboard shortcuts

Cons

• Not reliable

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gilir/lubuntu
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer

9. Deepin Movie

Deepin Movie is a lightweight and easy-to-use video player developed by Deepin Technology. It is available for Ubuntu and various Linux distros such as Arch Linux, LinuxMint, etc.

It is a simple video player with various features such as minimalist user interface with black and white themes, several playback modes with full customization support, channel switch, track selection, smart match, subtitle sync, burst screenshot and freeze frame.

Pros

• Easy-to-use user interface
• Lightweight

Cons

• Lack of support for some video file formats.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:noobslab/deepin-sc
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install deepin-media-player

10. Dragon Player

Dragon Player is a simple multimedia player from KDE, it focuses more on simplicity rather than features. So it could be great media player for user having minimal hardware resources and less storage space. It has a simple user interface which lets you play all your media effortlessly.

Still it offers some features such as video resume capability, automatic subtitle sync, and support for CDs and DVDs, various video and audio file format support, etc.

Pros

• User friendly
• Subtitle sync

Cons

• Struggles handling high quality video files.

$ sudo apt-get install dragonplayer

So these are the best 10 video players you should try on Ubuntu and other Linux distros. All the video players listed here are tested on Ubuntu 18.04 and they will work well on other Linux distros also. If you have anything to share or have some queries then feel free to reach us at @LinuxHint and @SwapTirthakar.

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