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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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oOo: Ascension from Kenny Creanor and Extra Mile Studios is one of the more unique indie games I’ve tested recently and it’s rather good. They provided me a copy to test and after putting some time into it, I’ve really quite enjoyed it.

After chatting to the developer, helping them figure out an issue in the Linux build it has arrived officially today. It’s also lovely to see a special mention—very cool and “Enjoy the rage, Linux users!”, you devil! It’s a strange game, it’s equal parts a puzzle as it is a racing game. Each level gives you a new maze, which you race through to find the finish as quickly as you can.

It’s a real test of your reflexes at times, with some sections being really quite tricky. Not just because you need to swing yourself around corners but some of them offer up unique challenges like moving walls to crush you. There’s 90 levels too, so it will keep you going for quite a while.

Initially, I thought “Hey! I can do this, no problem. Moving walls? Not an issue!” and then it quickly evolves into “Why are there spinning blades? Oh no the walls are closing in and something’s chasing me oh hell!” and panic quickly sets in. The challenge certainly does increase as you progress through it. Some of the sections made me really sit at the edge of my seat and give it my absolute focus. The level design is really quite slick and it does look awesome travelling across a sphere.

It has a local multiplayer mode to race with or against people, online leaderboards to see how much you suck and all this wrapped up in a pleasing neon visual style make it great overall. The leaderboards feature was a bit confusing, which the developer cleared up for me. You get to see a leaderboard when you finish each sector (a set of levels), instead of it having a leaderboard for each level which Steam apparently wouldn’t allow. If you want to view them outside the game, you can do so here.

For those who don’t have people to race against, when you go back to previous levels you get to race against your own ghost, so there’s quite a bit on offer. It works perfectly with the Steam Controller too, so another tick for it.

Find it on Steam.

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Last updated November 5, 2018 By John Paul Leave a Comment

 

Podcasts are a great way to be entertained and informed. In fact, I listen to about ten different podcasts covering technology, mysteries, history, and comedy. Of course, Linux podcasts are also on this list.

Today, we will take a look at a simple cross-platform application for handling your podcasts.

Recommended podcasts and podcast search

The Application

CPod is the creation of Zack Guard (z————-). It is an Election app, which gives it the ability to run on the largest operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac OS).

Trivia: CPod was originally named Cumulonimbus.

The majority of the application is taken up by two large panels to display content and options. A small bar along the left side of the screen gives you access to the different parts of the application. The different sections of CPod include Home, Queue, Subscriptions, Explore and Settings.

Settings

Features of CPod

Here is a list of features that CPod has to offer:

• Simple, clean design
• Available on the top computer platforms
• Available as a Snap
• Search iTunes’ podcast directory
• Download and play episodes without downloading
• View podcast information and episode
• Search for an individual episode of a podcast
• Dark mode
• Change playback speed
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Sync your podcast subscriptions with gpodder.net
• Import and export subscriptions
• Sort subscriptions based on length, date, download status, and play progress
• Auto-fetch new episodes on application startup
• Multiple language support

Searching for ZFS episode

Experiencing CPod on Linux

I ended up installing CPod on two systems: ArchLabs and Windows. There are two versions of CPod in the Arch User Repository. However, they are both out of date, one is version 1.14.0 and the other was 1.22.6. The most recent version of CPod is 1.27.0. Because of the version difference between ArchLabs and Windows, I had to different experiences. For this article, I will focus on 1.27.0, since that is the most current and has the most features.

Right out of the gate, I was able to find most of my favorite podcasts. I was able to add the ones that were not on the iTunes’ list by pasting in the URL for the RSS feed.

It was also very easy to find a particular episode of a podcast. for example, I was recently looking for an episode of Late Night Linux where they were talking about ZFS. I clicked on the podcast, typed “ZFS” in the search box and found it.

I quickly discovered that the easiest way to play a bunch of podcast episodes was to add them to the queue. Once they are in the queue, you can either stream them or download them. You can also reorder them by dragging and dropping. As each episode played, it displayed a visualization of the sound wave, along with the episode summary.

Installating CPod

On GitHub, you can download an AppImage or Deb file for Linux, a .exe file for Windows or a .dmg file for Mac OS.

You can also install CPod as a Snap. All you need to do is use the following command:

sudo snap install cpod

Like I said earlier, the Arch User Repository version of CPod is old. I already messaged one of the packagers. If you use Arch (or an Arch-based distro), I would recommend doing the same.

Playing one of my favorite podcasts

Final Thoughts

Overall, I liked CPod. It was nice looking and simple to use. In fact, I like the original name (Cumulonimbus) better, but it is a bit of a mouthful.

I just had two problems with the application. First, I wish that the ratings were available for each podcast. Second, the menus that allow you to sort episodes based on length, date, download status, and play progress don’t work when the dork mode is turned on.

Have you ever used CPod? If not, what is your favorite podcast app? What are some of your favorite podcasts? Let us know in the comments below.

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