Linux Blimp

When running Linux, snap is one of the most powerful features you can enjoy. It allows running the same app over multiple platforms without needing to change the code of the program the slightest bit. That’s why you can also call snap packages as universal apps for the Linux platform. Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distros for its simplicity and usability. Let’s check out on using snap packages on Ubuntu.

Snap packages are managed by the snap core, a powerful app manager with tons of powerful features. It allows running any snap package on any platform. There are tons of apps available as snap packages. Snap also makes the work of developers a lot easier. The devs only have to develop the snap packages and forget about making the app inter-compatible. Managing snap packages is also very easy. Just run a simple command to install/uninstall apps. No need to worry about updating the app as the “core” will always keep everything up-to-date.

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Bitnami AbanteCart Stack is a multiplatform and freely distributed software project that has been designed from the ground up to help users who know nothing about installing a database or web server, with the installation and hosting of the AbanteCart shopping cart web-based application on desktop computers and laptops.

What is AbanteCart?

AbanteCart is an open source e-commerce, shopping cart system that allows you to create a powerful website for selling products online in minutes, without too much effort. Key features include support for both tangible and digital products, SEO-friendly URLs, product ratings, product reviews, support for multiple currencies, support for multiple languages, flexible layouts, support for a wide range of payment gateways, as well as support for mobile phones and tablets.

Installing Bitnami AbanteCart Stack

Bitnami AbanteCart Stack is distributed mainly as native installers, which have been tested on both 32-bit and 64-bit (recommended) hardware platforms, designed with BitRock’s cross-platform installer tool.

To install AbanteCart on your personal computer, you will have to download the package that corresponds to your computer’s hardware architecture, run it and follow the instructions displayed on the screen.

Host AbanteCart in the cloud

In addition to install AbanteCart on your personal computer, you can also host it in the cloud, thanks to Bitnami’s pre-built cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure cloud hosting providers.

AbanteCart virtual appliance and Docker container

Besides the pre-build cloud images and native installers, Bitnami also offers a virtual appliance for the AbanteCart application, allowing the user to virtualize it on the VMware ESX, ESXi and Oracle VirtualBox virtualization software. A AbanteCart Docker container will also be available for download on the project’s homepage.

The Bitnami AbanteCart Module

Users who have the Bitnami LAMP, MAMP or WAMP stacks installed can skip this project and download the Bitnami AbanteCart Module software, which allows them to deploy the AbanteCart application on their PCs without having to install its runtime dependencies.

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A code editor is one of the most important tools a developer has to keep in hand all the time. There are tons of available code editors on the internet. Visual Studio Code is an open-source code editor from Microsoft with tons of advanced and powerful features. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight yet extremely powerful source code editor. It’s available on all the major platforms – Windows, macOS, and Linux. By default, the editor comes up with support for JavaScript, Noje.js, and TypeScript. There are a number of available extensions to enable support for other popular programming languages like C++, C#, Python, Java, PHP, Go etc. Are you thinking to start programming, or looking for an advanced code editor? Let’s get started with Visual Studio Code!

The app is very simple to install. For Ubuntu platform, it’s even easier to enjoy Visual Studio Code.

• DEB package

Get the latest DEB package of Visual Studio Code.

After the download is complete, run the following commands in a terminal –

sudo dpkg -i code_1.28.2-1539735992_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -f

• Snap package

Visual Studio Code is also available as a snap package. Check out Visual Studio Code on Snapcraft store.

Run the following command in a terminal –

sudo snap install vscode –classic

Using Visual Studio Code

Once the installation is complete, it’s time to code with Visual Studio Code!

Here’s a demo code from HTML5 Test Page on GitHub.

The interface is dark with charming code highlighting.

Do you need additional extensions? Go to File >> Preferences >> Extensions or press the shortcut “Ctrl + Shift + X”.

For example, here’s the C/C++ extension. Simply click the “Install” button.

Voila! The extension is installed!

Need to change the view? Don’t worry! Visual Studio Code comes up with a number of available color themes. Go to File >> Preferences >> Color Theme or use the shortcut “Ctrl + K + T”.

Enjoy your coding with Visual Studio Code!

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God is a Cube: Programming Robot Cubes [Steam] is a programming puzzle game currently in Early Access with Linux support, it’s actually quite good and we have a few copies to give away.

Inspired by the likes of SpaceChem, Lightbot, Human Resource Machine and the Redstone from Minecraft it’s made mostly by one developer, Marc Kruzik, who emailed in to let us know about the recent EA release.

About:

God is a Cube: Programming Robot Cubes is a programming puzzle game, where you control robot cubes with Artificial Intelligence made of simple symbols. You start with just one robot cube, then you learn how to manage conditions, then get access to tens of robots to build bridges and space pyramids.

Current Features:

• 100 levels with open ended solutions
• 10 chapters with their own difficulty curve – if you are stuck, just start another chapter and discover something new!
• Secret solutions for every level and a whole secret campaign
• 20 creative mini cutscenes and several big cutscenes to show you the world
• A complete level editor, with image cards to share your levels

You can find it right now on Steam I think it’s well worth a look with some really interesting puzzles already.

Also, we have five copies of the base game and the “Advanced Features” DLC pack. If you want to try your luck, here’s what you have to do:

• Draw your best picture of a scary Cube (Halloween theme)
• Post it in the comments after uploading to your favourite image host
• Wait until Friday 2nd November where the competition closes at 8PM UTC

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Bitnami Akeneo Stack is a freely distributed and multiplatform graphical installer that greatly simplifies the installation and hosting of the Akeneo web-based application on desktop computers and laptops. It is distributed as native installers for GNU/Linux and Mac OS X systems, as well as cloud images, a virtual appliance, and a Docker container.

What is Akeneo?

Akeneo is an open source web-based application that has been designed from the offset to perform as a Product Information Management (PIM) system, the perfect tool for retailers who are looking for profitable solutions to their multichannel needs.

Installing Bitnami Akeneo Stack

Users will be able to install the Akeneo software on their personal computers using the pre-built binary packages provided by Bitnami in the .run file format. Both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware architectures are supported at this time.

To install Akeneo on your GNU/Linux distribution, download the package that corresponds to your computer’s hardware arch, make the file executable, double click it and follow the instructions displayed on the screen.

Run Akeneo in the cloud

Thanks to Bitnami, users can run the Akeneo application in the cloud with their own hosting providers or by using the pre-built cloud images designed for either the Amazon EC2 or Windows Azure cloud hosting providers.

Virtualize Akeneo or run the Docker container

In addition to installing Akeneo on personal computers or run it in the cloud, users will be able to virtualize it, as Bitnami provides a virtual appliance based on the latest LTS release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution and designed for the VMware ESX, ESXi and Orracle VirtualBox virtualization software. An Akeneo Docker container will also be available for download on the project’s homepage.

The Bitnami Akeneo Module

Besides the Bitnami Akeneo Stack product reviewed here, Bitnami offers a simpler solution of deploying the Akeneo application on personal computers, on top of an existing LAMP or MAMP stack. Bitnami Akeneo Stack is available for download for free on Softpedia!

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Nitrux is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu suitable for laptops and desktop computers. Nitrux provides all the benefits of the Ubuntu operating system combined with a focus on portable, redistributable application formats like AppImages. Nitrux uses the LTS branch of Ubuntu as a basis using only the core system and then slowly building up to ensure a clean user experience. Nitrux is suitable for newcomers to Linux as well as *nix experienced users. Nitrux uses KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications; we also use our in-house software suite Nomad Desktop adding to the user experience. This sounds very similar to Elementary OS, but instead of Gnome and Gtk+-oriented, it’s built around Qt and KDE technologies. I like distributions that try to do something more interesting than being just another random Gnome or KDE distribution, and I especially like how the open source Linux community seems to be focusing more and more on polish, design, and simplicity lately. Very welcome additions to the Linux world.

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Bitnami Artifactory Stack a freely distributed and cross-platform software project that offers an easy-to-install and easy-to-use distribution of the Artifactory binary repository manager application, as well as of its runtime dependencies, on GNU/Linux operating systems.

What is Artifactory?

Artifactory is an open source, free, platform-independent and enterprise-ready binary repository manager for Ivy, Maven, Gradle modules, etc., supporting remote proxying and hosting of artifacts.

Installing Bitnami Artifactory Stack

Bitnami’s native installers were built using the BitRock InstallBuilder tool and are available for download on the GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, supporting 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms.

To install the Artifactory application and all of its runtime dependencies on your desktop computer or laptop, you will have to download the package that corresponds to your PC’s arch (32-bit or 64-bit), run it and follow the instructions displayed on the screen.

Host Artifactory in the cloud

Thanks to Bitnami, you’ll be able to host the Artifactory application in the cloud with your own hosting platform or by using a pre-built cloud image for the Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud hosting providers.

Virtualize Artifactory on VirtualBox and VMware

In addition to installing Artifactory on your personal computer or run it in the cloud, you can virtualize it, thanks to Bitnami virtual appliance based on the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release of Ubuntu Linux and designed to be deployed on the VMware ESX, ESXi or VirtualBox virtualization software.

The Bitnami Artifactory Module and Docker container

For those of you who have a Bitnami LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack, Bitnami MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack or Bitnami WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL or PHP) Stack, you can download the Bitnami Artifactory Module product from Softpedia, free of charge. Additionally, an Artifactory Docker container will also be available for download on the project’s website.

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Upribox 2.0 acts as a router and filters both trackers and ads, saving you the annoying task of manually hardening your web browser with countless add-ons.

Dangers lurk everywhere on the Internet. The technologies used by advertisers, criminals, and public authorities, not only to harass users but to spy on them, are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Protective mechanisms and countermeasures that make life difficult for data collectors and other curious users become all the more important.

Most users, though, do not have sufficient knowledge of the many dangers that lurk on the Internet and therefore take only partially effective countermeasures. Moreover, new technologies are increasingly complicating the configuration of web browsers, routers, and firewalls. In addition to in-depth knowledge, then, you also need a huge amount of time to secure an IT infrastructure.

Austrian security specialist Markus Donko-Huber already addressed this problem in 2014 at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences and developed upribox (usable privacy box) with a small team. Upribox is a Raspberry Pi with a specially adapted version of Raspbian. The purpose of upribox is to ensure privacy and increased security when using the Internet, without requiring a great deal of configuration effort from the user.

[…]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

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How to Easily Remove Packages Installed From Source in Linux

In one of our previous articles, we’d shown you how to install and uninstall software in Linux outside the regular package managers. In that, we also saw that well-constructed software comes with built-in uninstallers. This way, you can remove the packages as easily as you install them.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. There are plenty of packages out in the wild which don’t allow for clean removal. Sometimes you have no choice but to use a package like this because you need the functionality. However, there is a solution to the problem. In this article, we’ll show you how to use the software called “stow” to easily remove packages installed from in Linux.

Step 1: Install Stow

The “stow” package should be available in your regular package repositories. In this example, we are using CentOS so we need the extended EPEL libraries. You can install them using the command:

yum install epel-release

And after that, install stow like this:

yum install stow

Press yes to confirm the installation:

Now that stow is installed, we have to choose where to store our package files.

Step 2: Choose Where to Store Package Files

The normal “make install” command copies the package files into a variety of places. Stow works by keeping them all in one place in a single directory, and then creating symlinks to where they should have gone originally.

So we need to choose a directory for where stow keeps all the package files. By convention, this is usually:

/usr/local/stow/

And in this location, we have one single directory for each package. So if we want to install the “hello” program that we used as an example in the previous article, the files will be stored in:

/usr/local/stow/hello

But this location can be anything. Just to show, we’ll be storing the files in the following location:

/home/bhagwad/stow/

Step 3: Using “make install” with the “prefix” Option

We saw in the previous article that installing from source requires these commands:

./configure
make
make install

To install with stow, we just change the last step to:

make install prefix=/home/testuser/stow/hello

The “prefix” option tells us to place the packages in the given location. This location is nothing but the selected directory in Step 2 with the package name added on as a separate folder. This causes the files to be installed into the given location as shown here:

Now we have all the files required for the package in a folder in the stow directory. Time for the magic to happen!

Step 4: Completing the Installation with stow

To install the package, first “cd” into the stow directory like this:

cd /home/testuser/stow

Ensure that the folder with the files is just one directory below your current location. Now type:

stow hello

That’s it! The package is now installed on your system. Here’s a screenshot of the “hello” command working as intended:

But wait. The real benefit is yet to come. Uninstallation.

Step 5: Removing Packages

The coolest part about stow is how easy it is to remove packages from the system. No need to keep the source packages or anything. Just navigate to the stow directory as in Step 4 and type:

stow –delete hello

And it’s done! You can see below that the command no longer works after this step:

As far as the system is concerned, the package has been completely removed! It’s good to remember that the files haven’t actually vanished. They’re still in the “hello” directory. You could just as easily install the package again with the stow command. If you don’t require the files anymore, just delete the “hello” folder and your system is clean!

We recommend using stow every single time you install a package from source. It’s not worth the risk to have a badly written package spray your system with files everywhere, and which are a nuisance to remove afterward. Stow ensures that they’re all neatly contained in one location, then keeps track of the symlinks and deletes them afterward. It’s a fantastic solution!

Of course, if you are one of our Managed VPS hosting customers, you don’t have to remove packages installed from source, simply ask our admins, sit back and relax. Our admins will do this for you immediately.

PS. If you liked this post about how to easily remove packages installed from source in Linux, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons below or simply leave a comment in the comments section. Thanks.

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Intel launched Intel System Studio 2019, updating the Linux-friendly embedded toolsuite with improved performance and enhanced I/O analysis. Meanwhile, due to soaring demand for Intel’s Core and Xeon sales, it’s scaling back its lower-end IoT business.

Intel has a habit of launching and the discontinuing special projects outside its core processor business, but one experiment that has stuck around is Intel System Studio. A lot has changed since we last checked on the Intel System Studio (ISS) development toolsuite when it launched in 2013. For example, while initially targeting both mobile and embedded software development for Linux and Android running on Intel processors, with the dissolution of Intel’s mobile business, it is now focused on optimizing embedded IoT applications running on its Atom, Core, and Xeon processors.

Intel System Studio 2019 architecture

Here we give the new 2019 version a look-see on ISS 2019, which is available in both a commercial version and a free, community-backed release. Our ISS update is followed by a report on Intel’s plans to scale back its embedded business.

Inside Intel System Studio 2019

The ISS toolsuite is designed to simplify “bring-up and improve system and IoT device application performance on Intel platforms,” says the company. The software includes platform-tuned libraries and compilers help optimize software, as well as domain-specific routines and system-wide visual performance analysis that can “quickly identify issues and reduce optimization time.”

Other features include debugging, tracing, and analyzing tools. ISS is now cross-platform, with support for Linux, Windows and Mac host desktops, as well as Linux, Windows, Android, VxWorks, and FreeBSD targets.

Intel announced the beta version of ISS 2019 back in June. However, it left it to InfoWorld to announce the final release on Oct. 30.

ISS 2019 adds a new workflow and simplified setup to one of the suite’s key components: Intel Vtune Amplifier. Vtune offers insights into CPU and GPU performance, threading performance and scalability, bandwidth, and caching. It supplies tools such as hotspots, call counts, annotated source code, and activity graphs.

Intel Vtune Amplifier screen

The suite’s

Intel Advisor

software, which provides vectorization, threading, and optimization tools, features much improved performance and enhanced I/O analysis. It adds support for JIT profiling and “containers like Docker,” and makes various embedded platforms and accelerator improvements.

ISS 2019 provides an updated OpenCL framework that supports heterogeneous computing, says InfoWorld. The framework allows code to be offloaded to Intel processors and GPUs, making it easier to build, debug, and analyze OpenCL apps while also enabling customized kernel code with Intel computer vision and media software.

Finally, there’s a new Eclipse plug-in for Wind River Linux and its underlying Yocto Project code. The plug-in lets developers create or import application projects or platform projects for Yocto Project-compatible targets.

Interim Intel CEO Bob Swan

Intel to scale back embedded business

In other Intel news, the chipmaker solidly beat analyst expectations with its latest Q3 results. Due to shortages of its increasingly popular Intel Core and Xeon chips for the datacenter, Intel interim CEO and CFO Bob Swan told investors that Intel is prioritizing production for those product lines. According to a report in The Motley Fool, Swan went on to say that as a result of this prioritization, “by definition, the lower end of PC and the [Internet of Things] business is being constrained.”

Intel’s IoT Group (IoTG) comprised about 4.8 percent of Intel’s sales and grew 8 percent on a year-over-year basis last quarter. However, Intel projects that revenue will decline by 15 percent in the fourth quarter versus 3Q levels, with sales of around $781 million for a year-over-year decline of around 11 percent. That decline, however, also reflects Intel’s divestiture of Wind River, which had been part of IoTG.

If low-end Core and lower-end Gemini Lake chips fall into short supply, this would open an opportunity for AMD to grab market share in the IoT space. Yet, AMD also appears to be focusing on the high end with its popular Ryzen processors. AMD’s Ryzen Embedded V100 successor to the R-Series is off to a strong start in competing with high-end tom and lower-end, embedded focused Core chips, but the Intel rival has yet to release its much-delayed “Banded Kestrel” follow-on to the lower-end G-Series. This opens more opportunities for Arm vendors that can tolerate the narrower margins of the embedded chip business.

Former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich

Intel’s Swan took over as CEO a few months ago after former CEO Brian Krzanich resigned after admitting to violating company policy by having an affair with an Intel employee prior to becoming CEO. Swan was previously a CFO at eBay and then again at Intel, where he still holds the position.

Krzanich oversaw the strengthening of Intel’s datacenter chip sales, as well as its successful defense against Arm server chips. He also led Intel through the successful acquisition of FPGA maker Altera.

Yet, Krzanich also led the company’s failed mobile SoC experiment, as well as the discontinuation of the wearable Curie and embedded Joule modules. In addition, Intel has become more of a follower than a leader in the slow-motion march toward 10nm and 7nm chips. The resurgent AMD and a variety of Arm chip vendors are now leading the way.

Further information

Intel System Studio 2019 is available in a free community license backed by community forum support. You can renew the license every 90 days without limits. There are also a variety of paid license arrangements that give you greater access to Intel tech support. More information may be found on the Intel System Studio product page.

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