Linux Blimp

While System76 is officially announcing their Thelio systems next week on 1 November with plans to then begin shipping these “open hardware” systems in December, today the Linux-friendly PC vendor shared with us some more exclusive details on the forthcoming hardware being manufactured in Denver, Colorado. Here are those exciting details — much more than just some digital web saga.

 

 

First up they have provided us some pictures for Thelio Io and confirmation that it’s OSHWA certified open hardware (#US000145) and that their other open hardware components will be certified as well after the first. With this 4-port SATA backplane they are also using it as a chassis controller for managing thermal conditions with dynamic fan-speed adjustment. Previously they teased the FreeCAD diagram of this board.

 

 

New pictures being shared with Phoronix are of Thelio-Io-SAS, which is an unannounced board they have been working on. Thelio-Io-SAS supports four hot-swap SAS ports for 2.5-inch NVMe drives in their workstation performance desktop: Thelio Massive.

 

 

Besides System76 manufacturing these parts for use in their systems, they also mentioned they are working with a possible distributor for making pre-bundled parts SKUs available for anyone wishing to manufacturer their own boards.

 

 

System76 founder Carl Richell also mentioned to us that Thelio has been in development for almost three years.

 

One of the details they shared with us early shows their Apple-esque attention to detail. About the power button being promoted as a feature, “The power button LED, for instance, is programmed in the EC to display at 100% brightness when depressed, which visually confirms that the button has been activated. It’s set to 35% when on. It’s set to 2.35% when off so that it’s not too bright in a dark room but still easy to find. And it pulses between 2.35% and 25% while suspended.”

 

 

Another interesting level of detail is that there is built-in screw storage for being able to fill up every drive slot in the system — no more losing the screw bag! Thelio systems will also be pre-wired to fully leverage multiple graphics cards and other peripherals with the power cables being within easy reach while being nice and tidy.

 

One of the most surprising details was finally having some pricing information. These “high-end, high-performance systems” will start out at $1,100 USD. This is actually cheaper than I was anticipating with being manufactured in the USA using their new factory and investing so much into this open hardware effort… It will be very interesting to learn more next week at System76.com, Thanks to System76 for sharing these extra details with us ahead of the official launch on 1 November.

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Following the demise of Ubuntu Phone, Purism’s Librem 5 seems like the next big thing in the budding world of Linux smartphones. Purism has already partnered with big names like GNOME and KDE, and we can expect the device to start shipping in April 2019.

It seems like another hardware vendor is looking to develop its own Linux smartphone. As reported by It’s FOSS, Pine64 is working to create inexpensive Linux-based smartphones and tablets.

KDE Neon creator Jonathan Riddell revealed this at Open Source Summit, Europe Edition. Upon contacting Pine64 founder TL Lim, It’s FOSS found that the devices are called PinePhone and PineTab — so, no surprises there.

Starting November 1, Pine64 will start shipping the first PinePhone developer kits to the selected devs for free. The kit will include baseboard, SOPine module, 7″ Touch Screen Display, Camera, Wifi/BT, Playbox enclosure, Lithium-Ion battery case, and LTE cat 4 USB dongle.

As per the current schedule, Plasma Mobile-running PinePhone’s actual design won’t be finalized until 2019 Q2.

As Pine64 is known for its low-cost laptops, PinePhone won’t break your backbone when it comes to pricing. You can expect this open source Linux smartphone to cost $100+ for 2GB RAM and 16GB storage variant.

What are your views on this upcoming Linux smartphone? Share your thoughts on PinePhone in the comments section and keep reading Fossbytes.

Also Read: Linus Torvalds Discusses His Return To Linux Development

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Last updated August 22, 2018 By Ankush Das

It has been a few years of good progress for Bodhi Linux. It is always interesting to see what a lightweight Linux distribution has to offer.

In case you didn’t know about Bodhi Linux – it is an impressive Linux distribution on top of Ubuntu with minimal but essential features. It utilizes an unusual but interesting desktop – Moksha desktop – which is based on the Enlightenment desktop.

Now, they have come up with the next major release – Bodhi Linux 5.0.0 – with the latest Ubuntu core (18.04). In addition to the updated core, it also includes some visual overhaul giving it a modern look.

The devs have also mentioned in their latest blog update that even though it is a major release – not much as changed, except an up-to-date Ubuntu core with a better/modern look.

In their official blog, they have also informed about the upgrade process – for someone who might be already running a pre-release of Bodhi 5.0.0 or the previous version of it.

Here’s what they explained:

If you installed a pre-release of Bodhi 5.0.0 you will simply need to run your system updates to grab all the latest goodies that are in these ISO images. Keep in mind that system updates will not adjust the look of your desktop automatically though because this would require messing with custom configurations you might otherwise have already.

If you have a previous Bodhi release installed you will need to do a clean install to upgrade to Bodhi 5.0.0. We do not support in place upgrades between major Bodhi releases. Keep in mind that Bodhi 4.5.0 will have support until Ubuntu 16.04 runs out in April 2021 though, so there is no hurry to upgrade if you are happy with your existing system.

In other words, you cannot upgrade from an existing Bodhi Linux install to the new Bodhi Linux 5.0 release. So, if you want to download the latest ISO or check out the system requirements to try it out, you should head to the official download page of Bodhi Linux.

Bodhi Linux is perhaps not as popular as Ubuntu or Linux Mint but it’s a good little distribution for slightly older machines.

Have you ever used Bodhi Linux? How’s your experience with it? Would you recommend it to others?

About Ankush Das

A passionate technophile who also happens to be a Computer Science graduate. He has had bylines at a variety of publications that include Ubergizmo & Tech Cocktail. You will usually see cats dancing to the beautiful tunes sung by him.

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The next OpenStack Summit will be hosted in Berlin from November 13-15. With the event now only a few weeks away, I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking back over the history of OpenStack with a touch of nostalgia and a great deal of pride.

I’m reminded of the old proverb “mighty oaks from little acorns grow”.

That’s certainly true when it comes to OpenStack. What started way back in 2010 as a joint project between Rackspace and NASA has grown into a truly global community. It now boasts over 94,000 members from 676 supporting companies spread across 186 countries. It continues to be one of the fastest growing open source projects, largely because of its ability to adapt and remain at the forefront of all the relevant technology trends.

Given that so much has changed over the past 8 years, this is truly inspirational. OpenStack now goes way beyond its initial remit of simply delivering IaaS services for private and public clouds. It now embraces DevOps, CI/CD, IoT, Edge computing, HPC, Telecoms, NFV and many other use cases, technologies and initiatives.

From a personal perspective, I first heard about OpenStack when I worked at IBM. There were discussions about which open source cloud project the company was going to support. Once it was decided OpenStack was the way to go, the IBM Power Systems team that I was part of began working on and delivered a solution based on OpenStack – IBM PowerVC. It was a great introduction to OpenStack and that experience guided me to my next job at Rackspace, where I worked on their private cloud solution powered by OpenStack. This was at a time when organizations were starting to realize the genuine benefits it could deliver and it was also my first chance to attend an OpenStack Summit (Atlanta 2014). The excitement and open collaboration of the community was infectious.

These days, I lead the product, technical and solution marketing team at SUSE, which just so happens to have an OpenStack powered solution. SUSE is a founding member of the OpenStack Foundation and was the first to launch a commercially supported enterprise-grade OpenStack distribution back in 2012. Since then, SUSE OpenStack Cloud has become the ideal OpenStack platform for hosting bare metal, virtualized and containerized workloads, with all the agility and scalability needed to support business innovation.

In fact, the beta program for SUSE OpenStack Cloud 9 has just been announced. If you want to try out the latest version of the OpenStack platform of choice for enterprise business, you won’t be disappointed. Here’s the link for more information.

At the Berlin Summit, we’ll have live SUSE OpenStack Cloud demos running at our booth, great folks to talk with you about how we can help address your challenges and of course we’ll have some great give-aways. We’ll also be showcasing SUSE CaaS Platform on OpenStack to highlight the benefits of deploying and integrating Kubernetes, as well as SUSE Enterprise Storage to show how Ceph can play a key role in your cloud environment.

We’re also delivering a host of sessions with topics ranging from OpenStack training; monitoring and troubleshooting; security principles; Kubernetes integration; container performance and security; and OpenStack project updates.

 

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News briefs for October 26, 2018.

A painting created by an open-source neural network sold this week for $432K at a London auction house. Obvious is the group behind the
work that “used 19-year-old Robbie Barrat’s GAN package, available here on
Github, and sourced paintings from Wiki Commons” to create the painting. See the post on TNW for details on the “first portrait ever sold at auction that was made with the assistance of an AI“.

The SELKS5 beta, the live and installable network security management ISO based
on Debian, was released today. New features include the latest Suricata
intrusion-detection engine, major upgrade from Elasticsearch/Kibana/Logstash
(ELK) 5.x to the ELK 6 stack, Scirius 3.0 and more. See the release
announcement for download links, setup instructions and a visual tour.

Mirantis recently announced its new Mirantis Cloud Platform Edge (MCP Edge), a “Kubernetes-based effort to enable containers and virtual machines to run at the edge of the network”, eWeek reports. MCP Edge does not run OpenStack; it’s Kubernetes plus
Virtlet. eWeek quotes Mirantis co-founder Boris Renski, “You can still run VMs [virtual machines] using
Virtlet, with direct access to hardware acceleration like SRI-OV [Single-Root
Input/Output Virtualization], but Kubernetes is the only resource scheduler.”

A team of European researchers has created MixedEmotions, an open-source toolkit
that can automatically assess emotions in text, audio and video. According to PhysOrg, “There
is a growing demand for automatic analysis of emotions in different fields. The
possible applications are wide, including call centers, smart environments,
brand reputation analysis and assistive technology.”
Read more here
about emotion detection and the complexities involved in adapting these tools
to other languages.

Red Hat developers are improving the GFS2 filesystem. According
to Phoronix, “recent developments around the GFS2 shared-disk file-system
include performance optimizations around iomap writes, new resource group
header fields, expanded journal log header information, and other low-level
improvements.” Future plans include “a faster fsck for GFS2 that uses
AIO and larger reads, process-shared resource group locking, trusted xattrs,
and deprecating the “meta” GFS2 file-system fork”.

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What is LetsEncrypt?

Let’s Encrypt is a certificate Authority that launched in 2016 providing free TSL SSL certificates that renew every 90 days. There are several validation methods for LetsEncrypt to verify the domain you are generating the certificate for is one you actually control. In this guide we will be utilizing the webroot method.

This guide assumes you already have a Nginx Server. If you do not have one setup, please check out Compile Nginx From Source On CentOS. This method of setting up LetsEncrypt will work on CentOS 6 & CentOS 7.

Setup LetsEncrypt

Get the LetsEncrypt certbot script:

wget -o /usr/local/sbin/certbot-auto https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto

Make It Executable:

chmod a+x /usr/local/sbin/certbot-auto

After that you will want to generate the certificate for your domain by using the following command

/usr/local/sbin/certbot-auto certonly –webroot –webroot-path=/etc/nginx/html -d domain.com -d www.domain.com

Replacing /etc/nginx/html with the path to your document root and each domain you would like to include in the certificate with a -d

If this is the first time you are running certbot, it will prompt you to agree to the terms of service.

If the document root is correct along with the domains it will output a congratulations message and the certificate will be stored in

/etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com

Replacing domain.com with the first domain you added to the certificate.

How To Setup Nginx to Use The LetsEncrypt SSL

First make sure nginx is compiled with SSL support by typing

nginx -V

It should return the configuration options and it should contain

–with-http_ssl_module

If it does not, you will need to recompile Nginx with SSL support. After you have confirmed SSL support in nginx you can proceed with setting up the SSL configuration in Nginx

Edit your Nginx Configuration. You will want to duplicate the current domain configuration but set listen to 443, ssl on, and include the certificate files. Here is an example:

server {
listen 443;
ssl on;
server_name domain.com;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.com/privkey.pem;
root /etc/nginx/html;

}

Make sure to replace domain.com with the domain you configured with LetsEncrypt. Once you have finished that, you can go ahead an restart Nginx.

Configure LetsEncrypt To Auto-Renew

Now that you have fully configured the domain on SSL. You will want to setup a crontab to ensure the certificate renews every 90 days. To do this you will want to add the following crontab entry

00 3 * * * /usr/local/sbin/certbot-auto renew –quiet –renew-hook “/usr/sbin/service nginx restart”

That is it for configuring nginx to use LetsEncrypt for free SSL on your site.

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Posted On: Oct 25, 2018

This Quick Start builds an Autodesk Forge environment on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud for customizable building blocks in the form of web service application programming interfaces (APIs), tools, and services. The deployment takes about 15 minutes.

Autodesk Forge is a cloud developer platform for building custom software applications, workflows, and integrations across industries such as manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and construction. With Autodesk Forge, teams, third-party developers, and customers can design, build, and integrate workflows. For example, developers can use Forge to overlay Internet of Things (IoT) data on top of 3D information models, to later perform data analysis and create visual reports.

This Quick Start is for IT infrastructure architects, administrators, and DevOps professionals who want to implement or extend their Autodesk Forge workloads on the AWS Cloud.

To get started:

• View the architecture and details
• View the deployment guide for step-by-step instructions
• Download the AWS CloudFormation templates that automate the deployment

Quick Starts are automated reference deployments that use AWS CloudFormation templates to deploy key technologies on AWS, following AWS best practices. This Quick Start was built in collaboration with Autodesk, Inc.

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Many people who regularly use computers suffer from eye strain and fatigue. Looking at a monitor for a long time can strain your eyes or can make any other problems you are having with your eyes seem more apparent. There is also research to show that late-night exposure to bright lights can affect sleep quality. This can be mitigated by reducing blue-light exposure.

There are lots of simple steps you can take to reduce eye strain and fatigue. These include adjusting the brightness, contrast settings, and text size displayed, as well as minimizing glare, and ensuring your room has proper lighting. Taking regular breaks is also very important.

Some monitors go further offering various eye care technologies including flicker-free technology, and an ultra-low blue light filter with different filter settings. But even if your display offers eye care technology and it’s well designed e.g. offering hotkeys that let you easily adjust filter settings. there’s still a good case to use a software solution as well. This is because the software typically offers more flexibility, such as the ability to automatically adjust the backlight and screen temperature based on the ambient brightness in your surroundings, or on a time schedule.

If you need color accuracy occasionally, using a hardware solution can be tedious. Good eye care software lets users disable the filter for a specific period of time. That’s extremely handy if you need to only periodically work on tasks where color accuracy is important such as a lighttable and darkroom for photographers.

We recommend four free software solutions below. All but f.lux are released under an open source license. f.lux is freeware.

Eye Care Software
Clight	C daemon that turns your webcam into a light sensor
Redshift	Adjusts the color temperature of your display
f.lux	Adapts the color temperature according to the time of day
Desktop Dimmer	Darker-than-dark dimming for internal and external screens

Your desktop environment may also offer some basic functionality to reduce the amount of blue light emitted. The popular desktop environment GNOME includes a night light feature that makes the screen color warmer. Functionality is quite basic, but it may be sufficient depending on your requirements.

GNOME’s Night Light functionality

Return to our complete collection of Group Tests, identifying the finest free and open source Linux software.

 

• Essential System Tools: BleachBit – open source system cleaning software
• piu-piu – retro horizontal scroller ‘Shoot Them All’ game
• Eye Care: Best Free Linux Software to Look after your Eyes
• Essential System Tools: inxi – CLI system information tool
• Essential System Tools: Alacritty – hardware-accelerated terminal emulator

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Oct 25, 2018, 10:00 (Other stories by Linuxize)

The grep command which stands for ‘global regular expression print’ is one of the most powerful and commonly used commands in Linux. Grep searches one or more input files for lines that match a given pattern and writes each matching line to standard output. If no files are specified, grep reads from the standard input which is usually the output of another command. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the grep command through practical examples and detailed explanations of the most common GNU grep options.

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Is Glark a Better Grep?(Aug 10, 2011)
• Colorize grep output(Mar 16, 2009)
• Regular Expressions In grep(Feb 18, 2010)
• Grep command in Linux explained(Jun 29, 2010)
• Grep the Web(Sep 02, 1999)
• 5 grep like commands(Jun 09, 2011)
• grep Is A Beautiful Tool(Jul 15, 2008)
• Linux Newbie : Why grep almost never yields something productive(Feb 04, 2010)

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Last updated August 29, 2018 By Phillip Prado

It’s no secret that the Linux gaming library offers only a fraction of what the Windows library offers. In fact, many people wouldn’t even consider switching to Linux simply because most of the games they want to play aren’t available on the platform.

At the time of writing this article, Linux has just over 5,000 games available on Steam compared to the library’s almost 27,000 total games. Now, 5,000 games may be a lot, but it isn’t 27,000 games, that’s for sure.

And though almost every new indie game seems to launch with a Linux release, we are still left without a way to play many Triple-A titles. For me, though there are many titles I would love the opportunity to play, this has never been a make-or-break problem since almost all of my favorite titles are available on Linux since I primarily play indie and retro games anyway.

Meet Proton: a WINE Fork by Steam

Now, that problem is a thing of the past since this week Valve announced a new update to Steam Play that adds a forked version of Wine to the Linux Steam clients called Proton. Yes, the tool is open-source, and Valve has made the source code available on Github. The feature is still in beta though, so you must opt into the beta Steam client in order to take advantage of this functionality.

With proton, more Windows games are available for Linux on Steam

What does that actually mean for us Linux users? In short, it means that Linux computers can now play all 27,000 of those games without needing to configure something like PlayOnLinux or Lutris to do so! Which, let me tell you, can be quite the headache at times.

The more complicated answer to this is that it sounds too good to be true for a reason. Though, in theory, you can play literally every Windows game on Linux this way, there is only a short list of games that are officially supported at launch, including DOOM, Final Fantasy VI, Tekken 7, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and several more.

You can play all Windows games on Linux (in theory)

Though the list only has about 30 games thus far, you can force enable Steam to install and play any game through Proton by marking the “Enable Steam Play for all titles” checkbox. But don’t get your hopes too high. They do not guarantee the stability and performance you may be hoping for, so keep your expectations reasonable.

As per this report, there are over a thousand Windows games that are playable on Linux. Follow this tutorial to learn how to enable Steam Play beta right now.

Experiencing Proton: Not as bad as I expected

For example, I installed a few moderately taxing games to put Proton through its paces. One of which was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and in the two hours I played the game, it only crashed once, and it was almost immediately after an autosave point during the tutorial.

I have an Nvidia Gtx 1050 Ti, so I was able to play the game at 1080p with high settings, and I didn’t see a single problem outside of that one crash. The only negative feedback I really have is that the framerate was not nearly as high as it would have been if it was a native game. I got above 60 frames 90% of the time, but I admit it could have been better.

Every other game that I have installed and launched has also worked flawlessly, granted I haven’t played any of them for an extended amount of time yet. Some games I installed include The Forest, Dead Rising 4 and Assassin’s Creed II (can you tell I like horror games?).

Why is Steam (still) betting on Linux?

Now, this is all fine and dandy, but why did this happen? Why would Valve spend the time, money, and resources needed to implement something like this? I like to think they did so because they value the Linux community, but if I am honest, I don’t believe we had anything to do with it.

If I had to put money on it, I would say Valve has developed Proton because they haven’t given up on Steam machines yet. And since Steam OS is running on Linux, it is in their best interest financially to invest in something like this. The more games available on Steam OS, the more people might be willing to buy a Steam Machine.

Maybe I am wrong, but I bet this means we will see a new wave of Steam machines coming in the not-so-distant future. Maybe we will see them in one year, or perhaps we won’t see them for another five, who knows!

Either way, all I know is that I am beyond excited to finally play the games from my Steam library that I have slowly accumulated over the years from all of the Humble Bundles, promo codes, and random times I bought a game on sale just in case I wanted to try to get it running in Lutris.

Excited for more gaming on Linux?

What do you think? Are you excited about this, or are you afraid fewer developers will create native Linux games because there is almost no need to now? Does Valve love the Linux community, or do they love money? Let us know what you think in the comment section below, and check back in for more FOSS content like this.

About Phillip Prado

Phillip Prado is an avid follower of all things tech, culture, and art. Not only is he an all-around geek, he has a BA in Intercultural Studies and considers himself a serial hobbyist. He loves hiking, cycling, poetry, video games, and movies. But no matter what his passions are there is only one thing he loves more than Linux and FOSS: coffee. You can find him (nearly) everywhere on the web as @phillipprado.

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