Linux Blimp

Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 Installation on Oracle VirtualBox

This video tutorial shows

Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 (Enlightenment) installation

on

Oracle VirtualBox

step by step. This tutorial is also helpful to install Kali Linux 2017 E17 on physical computer or laptop hardware. We also install

Guest Additions

on Kali Linux 2017 for better performance and usability features such as Automatic Resizing Guest Display, Shared Folder, Seamless Mode and Shared Clipboard, Improved Performance and Drag and Drop.

Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 Desktop Installation Steps on VirtualBox:

1. Create Virtual Machine on Oracle VirtualBox
2. Start Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 Installation
3. Setup Kali Linux E17 Networking
4. Install Lightdm Display Manager
5. Install Guest Additions
6. Test Guest Additions Features: Automatic Resizing Guest Display and Shared Clipboard

Installing Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 on Oracle VirtualBox

 

Kali Linux 2017.1 New Features and Improvements

Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution which features several security and forensics tools. Kali Linux 2017.1 features drivers for RTL8812AU wireless chipsets, improved GPU support and there are now Azure and AWS images of Kali Linux for cloud instances. Kali Linux 2017.1 brings with it a bunch of exciting updates and features. As with all new releases, you have the common denominator of updated packages, an updated kernel that provides more and better hardware support, as well as a slew of updated tools.

Kali Linux Website:

https://www.kali.org/

What is Enlightenment (E17) Desktop Environment?

Enlightenment, also known simply as E, is a compositing and stacking window manager for the X Window System. Since version 20, Enlightenment is also a Wayland compositor. Enlightenment includes functions to provide a graphical shell, and it can be used in conjunction with programs written for GNOME or KDE. When used together with the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), Enlightenment can refer to an entire desktop environment.

The window manager is a lean, fast, modular and very extensible window manager for X11 and Linux. It is classed as a “desktop shell” providing the things you need to operate your desktop (or laptop), but is not a whole application suite. This covers launching applications, managing their windows and doing other system tasks like suspending, reboots, managing files etc. Enlightenment is built on top of EFL, using the libraries we wrote for it to do its UI as well as to run the entire compositor itself. This means that any improvements to EFL turn up in the compositor as well.

Enlightenment Website

https://www.enlightenment.org/

Hope you found this Kali Linux 2017.1 E17 installation on Oracle VirtualBox tutorial helpful and informative. Please consider sharing it. Your feedback and questions are welcome!

Source

20 Oct, 2018

There is a new package available for Sparkers: Kvantum.

What is Kvantum?

Kvantum is an SVG-based theme engine for Qt4/Qt5 and KDE, i.e. a program for styling Qt applications with SVG images, with an emphasis on elegance, usability and practicality.

Kvantum comes with a default dark theme, inspired by the default theme of Enlightenment. Creation of realistic themes like that for KDE was my first reason to make Kvantum but it allows themes with very different looks and feels, whether they be photorealistic or cartoonish, 3D or flat, embellished or minimalistic, or something in between.

Kvantum also has extra themes, that are installed as root with Qt5 installation and can be selected and activated by using Kvantum Manager.

The core idea of Kvantum, namely using of SVG images for drawing Qt widgets, is taken from QuantumStyle (not developed anymore but continued as QSvgStyle at https://github.com/DexterMagnific/QSvgStyle).

Installation:
apt update
apt install kvantum

The Kvantum package is available for Sparky 4 and Sparky 5 as well.

The project developer is Pedram Pourang, a.k.a. Tsu Jan.
The home page of Kvantum: github.com/tsujan/Kvantum
Source

There are a number of available media file types all over the internet, each of them having their own features and disadvantages. Thanks to the community that powers the Linux platform, there are a number of available apps that are able to play the majority of them for you.

WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) is an audio file format. WAV is an IBM and Microsoft standard file format for storing an audio bitstream on the PC platform. There are a lot of available unpopular file formats and WAV is one of them.

Using WAV files hold a few disadvantages. For example, WAV file format has a size limitation – up to 4GB. Some programs even lower the limit – up to 2GB. Uncompressed WAV files also tend to be larger, making them not suitable for sharing over the internet. However, for retaining the sound quality, WAV is very powerful. That’s why it’s only used when disk space isn’t a bottleneck.

However, there are a number of media players you can use to play a WAV file.

Playing WAV file

For playing a WAV file, there are a number of available players. Check out the best media players for Ubuntu. Almost all the media players are available for other Linux distros as well. WAV, despite not being used as widely as MP3 or others, all the players in the list supports the file format. You won’t have any trouble listening to WAV files.

In the following demo, I’ll be using Rhythmbox – one of the most popular music players for Linux distros. Start Rhythmbox –

Now, go to File >> Add Music. You can also use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + O”.

Search for the WAV music file you need to listen to.

The music is there! Select the music and click the “Play” button.

Voila! Enjoy your favorite music!

Source

Hardkernel unveiled the Odroid-H2, the first hacker board with an Intel Gemini Lake SoC. The Ubuntu 18.10 driven SBC ships with 2x SATA 3.0, 2x GbE, HDMI and DP, 4x USB, and an M.2 slot for NVMe.

When the Odroid-H2 goes on sale in November at a price that will be “higher than $100,” Hardkernel will join a small group of vendors that have launched a community backed x86-based SBC. This first open spec hacker board built around Intel’s new Gemini Lake SoC — and one of the first Gemini Lake SBCs of any kind — follows earlier Arm-based Odroid winners such as the Odroid-C2 Raspberry Pi pseudo clone and the octa-core Odroid-XU4.

Odroid-H2, front and back
(click images to enlarge)

 

The Odroid project had hoped to be launching its second or third-gen x86 board by now. In 2015, the project started working on an Odroid-H SBC based on the Intel Cherry Trail Atom x5-Z8500 — a close cousin to the Chery Trail x5-Z8350 found on Aaeon’s UP board and smaller

UP Core

hacker boards. However, it found that the “Z8500 had a very fine pitch of BGA which raised PCB cost and manufacturing cost twice more than expected.” In addition, “LPDDR3 RAM sourcing was another big hurdle,” says the Odroid-H2 announcement.

In 2016, the company built an Odroid-H1 based on an Intel Braswell Celeron N3160, which is found on the Udoo X86 board. The board was successfully used in a dedicated project, but Hardkernel decided not to release it publicly due to DDR3 shortages and concerns that Braswell was no longer competitive. The project considered an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, but it was too expensive.

Then Intel announced Gemini Lake, which seemed to be just right. “It was slower than Ryzen but much faster than Intel Apollo Lake, and the price was reasonable,” says the project.

Odroid-N1 prototype

Earlier this year, Hardkernel had another false start with an Odroid-N1 board featuring a Rockchip RK3399 SoC. We included it in our reader survey of 116 Linux/Android hacker boards, but by the time we announced the survey results in late June, the Odroid project had scrapped the N1, once again due to RAM sourcing issues. The Odroid-H2 announcement, however, notes that an Odroid-N2 is under development based on an undisclosed SoC with cutting edge Cortex-A73 cores.

With the Odroid-H2 launch set for only a few weeks away, we’re confident that the third time around the x86 merry-go-round will be the charm. Hardkernel may need to work on its supply chain management, but it tends to make high quality, well supported boards backed up by a thriving community.

Inside the Odroid-H2

At this point, the presumably soon to be open sourced Odroid-H2 has only a partial spec list, but the block diagram fills in most of the holes. The 110 x 110 x 43mm Odroid-H2 taps the second fastest Desktop version of the Gemini Lake SoC family with the Celeron J4105, a quad-core 14nm-fabricated SoC with an official clock rate of 1.5GHz/2.5GHz burst that the Odroid project pegs at 2.3GHz. By comparison, the new, Linux-friendly Cirrus7 Nimbini v2 Gemini Edition mini-PC uses the dual-core Celeron J4005 or top-of-the-line, quad-core, 1.5GHz Pentium Silver J5005.

Odroid-H2 (left) and backside loaded with 8GB RAM and an NVMe SSD
(click images to enlarge)

 

Gemini Lake, which is the follow-on to the Apollo Lake Atom family, is due to arrive soon in DFRobot’s delayed LattePanda Delta board. (The similar, Kaby Lake based

LattePanda Alpha

just shipped with Ubuntu or Windows 10.) In addition to fueling the new Nimbini mini-PC, Gemini Lake has shipped on a few computers such as the Windows-equipped

Alldocube KNote 5

2-in-1 tablet PC and

Beelink S2

mini-PC.

The Odroid-H2 will ship with the Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) release that just showed up yesterday. The Odroid project notes that you can “run Dolphin on Ubuntu and enable Vulkan GPU driver.” It also shows several benchmark results, as well as a demo of the SBC running a smooth Nintendo Wii emulation.

One argument for x86 hacker boards is that Linux drivers tend to work more reliably than on a typical Arm board. The downsides are high price and high power consumption. However, the Odroid project is claiming a reasonable 14W consumption under CPU stress and a 4W idle.

The Odroid-H2 stands out with its dual-channel memory, with support for up to 32GB DDR4. The photo shows a standard 8GB model with two 4GB modules. It also offers dual SATA 3.0 ports, bootable eMMC, and an M.2 slot that supports PCIe x4 and NVMe storage.

Dual [email protected] displays are provided via the HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.2 ports, and there’s an audio jack with S/PDIF support. You also get dual GbE ports, which is pretty standard on commercial x86 boards, but is still something special in the community hacker board world.

There’s no WiFi, so if you use the M.2 slot for storage, you’ll need to tap one of the four USB ports. The Odroid-H2 is equipped with a pair each of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, as well as a rather skimpy 20-pin GPIO connector. Clearly this less of an IoT tinkering board than it is a media and gaming platform.

There’s a wide-range 14-20V DC input, a power management IC, and a real-time clock. A large heatsink keeps the CPU running smoothly at 2.3GHz even at 70°C. Since the heatsink is so high anyway, the design can afford to stack the coastline ports in towers like a mini-PC. So you get has a compact footprint, but a high profile.

Odroid-H2 block diagram (left) and Type IV enclosure
(click images to enlarge)

 

The Odroid project devotes much of the announcement to showing off four different enclosure types. Some are rather elaborate, including a Type-IV chassis that supports dual 2.5-inch drives or a single 3.5-incher.

Preliminary specifications for the Odroid-H2 include:

• Processor — Intel Celeron J4105 — 4x 14nm Gemini Lake cores @ 2.3GHz; 10W TDP; Intel UHD Graphics 600 (Gen 9.5, GT1) @ 700MHz; SSE4.2 accelerator (SMM, FPU, NX, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES)
• Memory — Dual-channel DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) RAM up to 32GB via 2x slots
• Storage:
  • eMMC slot (bootable)
  • 2x SATA 3.0 slots
  • M.2 slot (PCIe x4) with NVMe support
• Networking — 2x GbE ports (Realtek RTLG111G)
• Media I/O:
  • HDMI 2.0 port at up to [email protected]
  • DisplayPort 1.2 port at up to [email protected]
  • Dual simultaneous display support
  • Audio jack (headphone, mic, SPDIF) with ALC662 5.1 ch. HDA codec)
• Other I/O:
  • 2x USB 3.0 host ports
  • 2x USB 2.0 host ports
  • 20-pin expansion port (3.3V) with 2x UART, 2x I2C, etc.
• Other features — Heatsink; RTC with battery; multiple enclosure types
• Power — 14-20V DC input; PMIC; power and reset buttons; 4W consumption at idle, 14W with CPU, 22W with CPU and GPU
• Operating temperature — undisclosed, but claimed to operate at 2.3GHz even at 70°C
• Weight — 320 g with heatsink, full RAM and NVMe SSD
• Dimensions — 110 x 110 x 43mm
• Operating system — Ubuntu 18.10 with Linux Kernel 4.18

Further information

The Odroid-H2 will launch in November for more than $100 (probably closer to $150). More information may be found on Hardkernel’s Odroid-H2 announcement.

Source

Source

After updating to Ubuntu 18.10 today I noticed that a lot of games were either crashing to the desktop, not detecting my Steam Controller at all or detecting it as a second player.

With the Linux Kernel version 4.18, a driver is now included for the Steam Controller named “hid_steam” which seems to currently be conflicting with how Steam and plenty of games handle the Steam Controller resulting in behaviour we don’t want.

For now, it seems you will need to blacklist that “hid_steam” module from loading if you want to continue using the Steam Controller as normal.

You can test it yourself, using this terminal command to see if it fixes it:

sudo modprobe -r hid_steam

That was only temporary though, a reboot quickly made it break once again (but it works for now). To have it permanently stay, you can do this:

sudo bash -c “echo ‘blacklist hid_steam’ > /etc/modprobe.d/sc.conf”

I did also run this command so the above was correctly detected:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Once you reboot, that will then make it stick.

Hopefully this situation will get sorted out, because that’s really not ideal right now. For newer users especially, it’s not a good look. I’ve opened a bug report with the Ubuntu team.

Update: As noted in our comments, there is a Kernel patch available if you wish to patch it manually yourself if you’re confident doing that sort of thing. Hopefully the Ubuntu maintainers can pull it in for everyone.

Source

As you may know, most of the Linux distributions are easy to install and you can do by just few clicks. But there are some Linux distributions that first needs to compile then install and Gentoo is one of them. Installing Gentoo on your system or in VirtualBox/VMware isn’t easy if you are new to Linux, it is time consuming because it has to compile and there whole lots of things that needs to take care of.

In this article, we will show you step by step how you can easily install Gentoo on your System HDD or in VirtualBox/VMware. The instructions will be easy to follow and you also don’t need deep knowledge of everything, if you are new then with time things will get much clear to you. If you haven’t tried Gentoo before then first experiment it in VirtualBox or VMware.

 

The instructions will be divided into three parts: first part of instructions will show how to install Gentoo command-line (CLI); in second part instructions to get KDE Plasma on Gentoo; and last part is for those who install Gentoo in VirtualBox or VMware and want to install vmware-tools or vitualbox-guest-additions. So Lets start!

Getting Started – Install CLI

First we are going to install Gentoo Command-line-interface (CLI):

Download Gentoo

minimal iso. If you are installing it on your system then write it on USB using unetbootin utility, if you are installing it in VirtualBox or VMware then mount iso in virtual cdrom.

You will be dropped at command line shell, once you boot the iso.

Next step is to configure the network.

Run this command to see the network adapter (Ethernet/Wireless)

To view processes by the your logged-in user:

ifconfig

Now with this command you can configure your connected internet connection.

To view processes by the your logged-in user:

net-setup your_network_adapter

Partitioning with FDisk

There are multiple ways to partition HDD, we chose FDisk because it is very simple to use and pretty much you can find it on most Linux distributions.

Warning:

Be careful! If you are doing partitions on your system HDD. You can lose your data, if you don’t know what you are going to do!!!

Run this command to see available disk in system:

fdisk -l

We assume output HDD as /dev/sda/ from previous command.

This command will open FDisk to partition /dev/sda/ HDD:

fdisk /dev/sda

Press m key to see options for using FDisk.

In the following picture, we created 200GB of primary partition for root. You can create more partitions by yourself using this example.

Format partition using EXT4 filesystem:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

For swap partition use this command: (PS: first create swap partition)

mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2

PS: You should create your home directory on separate partition! Also if you want you can create separate boot partition.

Installation

Create directory to mount root partition, where Gentoo will install:

mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/

Lets download the latest stage to start the installation:

cd /mnt/gentoo
links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

Download latest version of stage3 according to your system architecture:

Next step to extract the downloaded stage3 archive:

cd /mnt/gentoo
tar xf stage3-*.tar.xz

for tar.bz2 use this command:

tar xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2

Mount filesystem:

mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount –rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount –rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

Copy DNS info:

cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/

Chroot into installation partition:

chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
source /etc/profile
export PS1=”(chroot) $PS1″

Edit make.conf file to add some necessary flags:

nano -w /etc/portage/make.conf

Add following lines in opened file then press

CTRL+O

and

CTRL+X

to save and close: (Don’t remove anything from file)

USE=”bindist mmx sse”
INPUT_DEVICES=”evdev keyboard mouse synaptics”
MAKEOPTS=”-j3″
Configure portage:

emerge-webrsync
emerge –sync
emerge –oneshot portage

Set timezone:

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
echo “America/New_York” > /etc/timezone

Set-up the Locale:

nano -w /etc/locale.gen

Uncomment following lines in the file or according to your needs:

en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Now run these commands:

locale-gen
nano -p /etc/env.d/02locale

Add following lines in the file then press

CTRL+O

and

CTRL+X

to save and close:

LANG=”en_US.UTF-8″
LC_COLLATE=”C”

Now run this command:

env-update && source /etc/profile

Compile the kernel:

emerge gentoo-sources
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig

Choose options according to your system hardware. For x86/i386/i486/i686 architecture untick the 64-bit kernel option from menu.

Follow these steps to configure kernel options for VirtualBox and VMware:

Linux Kernel Configuration: VMware tools configuration

Loadable module support —> [*] Enable loadable module support —> [*] Module unloading

Linux Kernel Configuration: Intel PCI/ISA Bridge

Bus options (PCI etc.) —> [*] PCI Support [*] ISA Support [*] EISA support <*> Support for PCI Hotplug Support for PCI Hotplug —> <*> SHPC PCI Hotplug driver

Linux Kernel Configuration: IEEE 1394

Device Drivers —> IEEE 1394 (Firewire) support —> <*> Firewire driver stack <*> OHCI-1394 controllers <*> Storage devices (SBP-2 protocol)

Linux Kernel Configuration: Parallel port

Device Drivers —> <*> Parallel port support —> <*> PC-style hardware

Linux Kernel Configuration: Parallel ATA
Device Drivers —> <*> Serial ATA and Parallel ATA drivers <*> PCMCIA PATA support	—>

Linux Kernel Configuration: I2C

Device Drivers —> I2C Support —> I2C Hardware Bus support —> <*> Intel PIIX4 and compatible (ATI/Serverworks/Broadcom/SMSC)

Linux Kernel Configuration: Backplane

Device Drivers —> Sonics Silicon Backplane —> <*> Sonics Silicon Backplane support

Linux Kernel Configuration: LSI Logic SCSI adapter

Device Drivers —> [*] Fusion MPT device support —> <*> Fusion MPT ScsiHost drivers for SPI <*> Fusion MPT ScsiHost drivers for SAS SCSI device support —> <*> SCSI device support <*> SCSI disk support SCSI low-level drivers —> <*> SYM53C8XX Version 2 SCSI support <*> BusLogic SCSI Support [*] USB support —> <*> Support for Host-side USB <*> SL811HS HCD support

Linux Kernel Configuration: BusLogic

Device Drivers —> SCSI device support —> <*> SCSI device support <*> SCSI disk support SCSI low-level drivers —> <*> BusLogic SCSI support

Linux Kernel Configuration: HID support

Device Drivers —> [*] HID Devices —> <*> USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support [*] USB support —> <*> Support for Host-side USB <*> SL811HS HCD support

Linux Kernel Configuration: CDROM

Device Drivers —> <*> ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support —> <*> Include IDE/ATAPI CDROM support PCI IDE chipset support <*> Intel PIIXn chipsets support File systems —> CD-ROM/DVD Filesystems —> <*> ISO 9660 CDROM file system support [*] Microsoft Joliet CDROM extensions

Linux Kernel Configuration: Gameport

Device Drivers —> Input device support —> Hardware I/O ports —> <*> Gameport support

Linux Kernel Configuration: Device mapper support

Device Drivers —> [*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) —> <*> Device mapper support <*> Snapshot target

Linux Kernel Configuration: Network

Networking —> [*] Networking support Networking options —> <*> Packet socket <*> Unix domain sockets [*] TCP/IP networking <*> 802.1d Ethernet Bridging Device Drivers —> Network Device support —> [*] Network device support [*] Ethernet driver support —> [*] AMD devices <M> AMD PCnet32 PCI support [*] Intel devices <M> Intel(R) PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet support

Linux Kernel Configuration: Audio

Device Drivers —> Sound Card Support —> <*> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture —> <M> Sequencer support < > Sequencer dummy client <*> OSS Sequencer API [*] Enable OSS Simulation <M> OSS Mixer API <M> OSS PCM (digital audio) API [*] OSS PCM (digital audio) API [*] Dynamic device file minor numbers [*] Support old ALSA API [*] Verbose procfs contents [*] Generic sound devices —> [*] PCI sound devices —> <M> (Creative) Ensoniq AudioPCI 1371/1373 [*] USB sound devices —> [*] PCMCIA sound devices —>

Linux Kernel Configuration: Graphics

Device Drivers —> Graphics support —> <*> /dev/agpgart (AGP Support) —> <*> Intel 440LX/BX/GX, I8xx and E7x05 chipset support

Save and exit the kernel configuration menu.

Now run these commands to compile the kernel with options you have selected:

make -j2 && make modules_install
cp arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-kernel_version-gentoo

Configure initramfs:

emerge genkernel

If you get the similar output with above command:

Then run this command:

dispatch-conf

At genkernel screen press “u”

Now try to install it again:

genkernel -install initramfs

Set the hostname:

nano -w /etc/conf.d/hostname

Change hostname as you like.

Now create symbolic link for network adapter. Run this command to see the adapter:

ifconfig

Replace your network adapter name with “your_network_adapter” in the following command:

cd /etc/init.d/ && ln -s net.lo net.your_network_adapter

Install and setup DHCP client:

emerge -av dhcpcd
rc-update add dhcpcd default

Set password for root:

passwd root

Install syslog-ng: it is powerful, massively configurable monitoring and logging daemon:

emerge syslog-ng
rc-update add syslog-ng default

In this step, install grub bootloader:

emerge –ask sys-boot/grub
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Add an non-root user:

useradd -m -G wheel,audio,video,usb,cdrom -s /bin/bash username
passwd username

Install sudo and add user to sudo:

emerge -av sudo
nano -w /etc/sudoers

Add this line in the file then press

CTRL+O

and

CTRL+X

to save and close:

Update packages:

emerge -avuND world

Cleanup:

rm /usr/portage/distfiles/*

Finally, unmount everything and reboot to your minimal Gentoo CLI system:

exit && cd ~
umount -l /mnt/gentoo/
umount /mnt/gentoo
reboot

At this point you got Gentoo minimal CLI installed on your system. If you want to install KDE Plasma on Gentoo then proceed!

Install KDE Plasma Desktop in Gentoo

Boot into your system and login as root.

You need to add some flags for KDE Plasma desktop in make.conf file:

nano -w /etc/portage/make.conf

Add following lines in the file then press CTRL+O and CTRL+X to save and close:

USE=”bindist mmx sse sse2 mmxext dbus udev branding icu python X acpi display-manager sddm gtk handbook libkms wallpapers pulseaudio legacy-systray gtk2 gtk3″
INPUT_DEVICES=”evdev keyboard mouse synaptics”
Choose the profile:

eselect profile list
eselect profile set 19

Select KDE Plasma profile (with or without systemd)

Install any available update and dbus:

emerge -avuND world
emerge -av dbus
/etc/init.d/dbus start
rc-update add dbus default
rc-update add udev sysinit

Install Xorg Drivers:

emerge -av x11-base/xorg-drivers
emerge -av x11-base/xorg-x11

Allow users to video access:

gpasswd -a root video
gpasswd -a username video

Start installing KDE Plasma. The following command will install all required KDE Plasma packages:

emerge -av kde-plasma/plasma-meta

If you want to install basic KDE Plasma and want to install packages separately then use this command:

emerge -av kde-plasma/plasma-desktop

Install some necessary packages:

emerge -av kde-plasma/kdeplasma-addons kde-apps/kwalletmanager kde-apps/dolphin x11-misc/sddm kde-plasma/systemsettings kde-plasma/kscreen kde-plasma/console

If you want to get KDE full applications bundle then run this command:

emerge -av kde-apps/kde-apps-meta

Configure the display manager:

nano -w /etc/conf.d/xdm

Change displaymanager line to the following one:

Now run these commands:

rc-update add xdm default
usermod -a -G video sddm

Install VirtualBox Guest Additions in Gentoo

Use following commands to get installed virtualbox-guest-additions in Gentoo:

emerge -av app-emulation/virtualbox-guest-additions
gpasswd -a root vboxguest
gpasswd -a username vboxguest

Install VMware Tools in Gentoo

Use following commands to get installed VMware Tools (open-vm-tools) in Gentoo:

emerge -av app-emulation/open-vm-tools

If above command don’t install open-vm-tools then do following:

emerge –ask –autounmask-write app-emulation/open-vm-tools
dispatch-conf #(Press u at open-vm-tools menu)
emerge -av app-emulation/open-vm-tools

If above command don’t install open-vm-tools then do following:

rc-update add vmware-tools default
usermod -a -G vmware username
usermod -a -G vmware root

Cleanup and reboot:

rm /usr/portage/distfiles/*
reboot

That’s it. Hope you had fun installing Gentoo.

Source

Linux kernel has a new code of conduct (CoC). Linus Torvalds took a break from Linux kernel development just 30 minutes after signing this code of conduct. And since the writer of this code of conduct has had a controversial past, it has now become a point of heated discussion. With all the politics involved, not many people are happy with this new CoC.

If you do not know already, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has apologized for his past behavior and has taken a temporary break from Linux kernel development to improve his behavior.

The new code of conduct for Linux kernel development

Linux kernel developers have a code of conduct. It’s not like they didn’t have a code before, but the previous code of conflict is now replaced by this new code of conduct to “help make the kernel community a welcoming environment to participate in.”

“In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.”

You can read the entire code of conduct on this commit page.

Was Linus Torvalds forced to apologize and take a break?

The code of conduct was signed off by Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman (kind of second-in-command after Torvalds). Dan Williams of Intel and Chris Mason from Facebook were some of the other signees.

If I have read through the timeline correctly, half an hour after signing this code of conduct, Torvalds sent a mail apologizing for his past behavior. He also announced taking a temporary break to improve upon his behavior.

But at this point some people started reading between the lines, with a special attention to this line from his mail:

This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.

This particular line could be read as if he was coerced into apologizing and taking a break because of the new code of conduct. Though it could also be a precautionary measure to prevent Torvalds from violating the newly created code of conduct.

The controversy around Contributor Covenant creator Coraline Ada Ehmke

The Linux code of conduct is based on the Contributor Covenant, version 1.4. Contributor Covenant has been adopted by hundreds of open source projects. Eclipse, Angular, Ruby, Kubernetes are some of the many adopters of Contributor Covenant.

Contributor Covenant has been created by Coraline Ada Ehmke, a software developer, an open-source advocate, and an LGBT activist. She has been instrumental in promoting diversity in the open source world.

Coraline has also been vocal about her stance against meritocracy. The Latin word meritocracy originally refers to a “system under which advancement within the system turns on “merits”, like intelligence, credentials, and education.” But activists like Coraline believe that meritocracy is a negative system where the worth of an individual is measured not by their humanity, but solely by their intellectual output.

Image credit: Twitter user @nickmon1112

Remember that Linus Torvalds has repeatedly said that he cares about the code, not the person who writes it. Clearly, this goes against Coraline’s view on meritocracy.

Coraline has had a troubled incident in the past with a contributor of Opal project. There was a discussion taking place on Twitter where Elia, a core contributor to Opal project from Italy, said “(trans people) not accepting reality is the problem here”.

Coraline was neither in the discussion nor was she a contributor to the Opal project. But as an LGBT activist, she took it to herself and demanded that Elia be removed from the Opal Project for his ‘views against trans people’. A lengthy and heated discussion took place on Opal’s GitHub repository. Coraline and her supporters, who never contributed to Opal, tried to coerce the moderators into removing Elia, a core contributor of the project.

While Elia wasn’t removed from the project, Opal project maintainers agreed to put up a code of conduct in place. And this code of conduct was nothing else but Coraline’s famed Contributor Covenant that she had pitched to the maintainers herself.

But the story didn’t end here. The Contributor Covenant was then modified and a new clause added in order to get to Elia. The new clause widened the scope of conduct in public spaces. This malicious change was spotted by the maintainers and they edited the clause. Opal eventually got rid of the Contributor Covenant and put in place its own guideline.

This is a classic example of how a few offended people, who never contributed a single line of code to the project, tried to oust its core contributor.

People’s reaction on Linux Code of Conduct and Torvalds’ apology

As soon as Linux code of conduct and Torvalds’ apology went public, Social Media and forums were rife with rumors and speculations. While many people appreciated this new development, there were some who saw a conspiracy by SJW infiltrating Linux.

A sarcastic tweet by Caroline only fueled the fire.

I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs. Hahahah pic.twitter.com/eFeY6r4ENv

— Coraline Ada Ehmke (@CoralineAda) September 16, 2018

In the wake of the Linux CoC controversy, Coraline openly said that the Contributor Covenant code of conduct is a political document. This did not go down well with the people who want the political stuff out of the open source projects.

Some people are saying that the Contributor Covenant is a political document, and they’re right.

— Coraline Ada Ehmke (@CoralineAda) September 16, 2018

Nick Monroe, a freelance journalist, dig up the past of Coraline in order to validate his claim that there is more to Linux CoC than meets the eye. You can go by the entire thread if you want.

Alright. You’ve seen this a million times before. It’s a code of conduct blah blah blah

that has social justice baked right into it. blah blah blah.https://t.co/KuQqeriYeJ

But something is different about this. pic.twitter.com/8NUL2K1gu2

— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) September 17, 2018

Nick wasn’t the only one to disapprove of the new Linux CoC. The SJW involvement led to more skepticism.

I guess the big news in Linux today is that the Linux kernel is now governed by a Code of Conduct and a “post meritocracy” world view.

In principle these CoCs look great. In practice they are abused tools to hunt people SJWs don’t like. And they don’t like a lot of people.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) September 17, 2018

While there were many who appreciated Torvalds’ apology, there were a few who blamed Torvalds’ attitude:

Am I the only one who thinks Linus Torvalds attitude for decades was a prime contributors to how many of the condescending, rudes, jerks in Linux and open source “communities” behaved? I’ve never once felt welcomed into the Linux community as a new user.

— Jonathan Frappier (@jfrappier) September 17, 2018

And some were simply not amused with his apology:

Oh look, an abusive OSS maintainer finally admitted, after *decades* of abusive and toxic behavior, that his behavior *might* be an issue.

And a bunch of people I follow are tripping all over themselves to give him cookies for that. 🙄🙄🙄

— Kelly Ellis (@justkelly_ok) September 17, 2018

The entire Torvalds apology episode has raised a genuine concern 😉

Do we have to put “I don’t/do forgive Linus Torvalds” in our bio now?

— Verónica. (@maria_fibonacci) September 17, 2018

Jokes apart, the genuine concern was raised by Sharp, who had quit Linux Kernel development in 2015 due to the ‘toxic community’.

The real test here is whether the community that built Linus up and protected his right to be verbally abusive will change. Linus not only needs to change himself, but the Linux kernel community needs to change as well. https://t.co/EG5KO43416

— Sage Sharp (@_sagesharp_) September 17, 2018

What do you think of Linux Code of Conduct?

If you ask my opinion, I do think that a Code of Conduct is the need of the time. It guides people in behaving in a respectable way and helps create a positive environment for all kind of people irrespective of their race, ethnicity, religion, nationality and political views (both left and right).

What are your views on the entire episode? Do you think the CoC will help Linux kernel development? Or will it deteriorate with the involvement of anti-meritocracy SJWs?

About Abhishek Prakash

I am a professional software developer, and founder of It’s FOSS. I am an avid Linux lover and Open Source enthusiast. I use Ubuntu and believe in sharing knowledge. Apart from Linux, I love classic detective mysteries. I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie’s work.

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KiCad EDA is an open source, freely distributed and cross-platform graphical software that helps users to effortlessly create printed circuit board and electronic schematic diagrams artwork. It includes 3D visualization functionality and numerous attractive features, including a modern and easy-to-use graphical user interface.

Comprises of several components

The application is comprised of a project manager and four main programs, such as a schematic editor called Eeschema, the PCB layout program called Pcbnew, the footprint selector tool for the components used in the circuit design, called Cvpcb, and Gerbview, the Gerber viewer, also known as the document photoplotter.

Getting started with KiCad EDA

On GNU/Linux, you can install the latest version of the KiCad EDA software suite from the main software repositories of several distributions. It the application is not available as pre-built packages in your Linux kernel-based operating system, you can install it by compiling the source tarball distributed on Softpedia.

Supported operating systems and platforms

This is a cross-platform software that has been successfully tested with numerous distributions of Linux, as well as with the commercial Microsoft Windows operating system. It is fully compatible with both 64-bit and 32-bit instruction set architectures.

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We are seeing more and more companies moving their workloads to the cloud. According to IDC, the worldwide public cloud services spend will double to over $141 billion in 2019. So what is driving this shift to cloud infrastructures? The term we often hear quoted is ‘Business Agility’, and the need for cost savings and/or efficiencies. In today’s fast-paced digital economy, the ability to innovate and stay competitive is essential. Cloud computing has enabled companies of all sizes to channel their efforts into what is important, their business.

When defining a cloud strategy what is the right option for your business? Is it public cloud, private cloud or a hybrid cloud? There isn’t typically a ‘one size fits all’ answer. It often depends on the type of application, cost, in-house expertise, and other unique and specific business requirements.

Let’s first look at the public cloud. It’s this model that people often first think of when discussing cloud computing. The model is based around the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) leveraging the Internet to make infrastructure resources available, e.g. servers, storage etc., with a selection of payment plans, to make it easier for a business to consume resources on an as-needed basis.

These resources still require physical hardware, but instead of this being housed in an organisations own premises, it is owned and located at the CSP’s data centre. Often referred to as ‘Hyper-scalers’, Some of the largest CSPs in the market today, are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM’s Blue Cloud and Alibaba. With these large brands dominating commoditising the market-place, it makes it easy for businesses to move to the public cloud.

The public cloud model works by virtualising the physical hardware housed at the cloud service provider’s data centre. This provides efficiencies by allowing multiple customers to share the resources, enabling a ‘multi-tenant’ arrangement spreads the costs of running the infrastructure across several users. A number of small and medium sized businesses have realised a significant cost advantage by leveraging a pay-as-you-grow model using public cloud. A very common application (workload) in this category are public-facing web applications which can scale up or down depending on demand.

Enabling Business Agility

It seems everything is happening at a faster pace, and businesses need to be quicker and more dynamic to evolve and improve processes, tools and technologies. Business agility is about enabling the business to make faster decisions, prioritise and deliver customer satisfaction. The public cloud can, in several scenarios, provide simplified internal operations, faster rollouts of new applications and initiatives, to achieve a competitive advantage.

What about Private clouds? As with other cloud models, private cloud provides compute and often storage resource as a service within a virtualised environment. However, this time, the physical servers and storage etc. are used only by a single company and are typically housed within the organisations own data centre(s) or hosted by a third party. Private clouds provide many of the flexibilities of the public cloud, however the organisation has to bear the cost of hardware and resource to set-up and maintain these cloud services. As a private cloud is typically only accessible by a single organisation, this increases control and helps improve governance, privacy and compliance.

How can you get the best of both worlds?

We have established that cloud services provide efficiencies at varying degrees. Public cloud services are typically more cost efficient and scalable than a private cloud. Private clouds on the other hand provide more control and often make governance, privacy and compliance a little easier.

There is another option where you can have the best of both worlds, the hybrid cloud. Where you have the need is to maximise efficiencies for a given workload, a public cloud solution can be used. Typically, these consist of non-sensitive applications. However, for those workloads that require additional control for compliance and/or sensitivity reasons you can benefit from a private cloud. The trick with a hybrid approach is to ensure that both the public and private cloud workloads are seamlessly integrated.

Hybrid clouds are not just simply a mix of private and public clouds. It’s a solution that allows the flexibility to choose private and public clouds to achieve the optimal performance, efficiency, and economy for any given workload.

It’s desirable that hybrid clouds are managed through a common management solution. If done well, this approach will enable workloads to leverage different cloud solutions on an as needed basis. This solution can also offer the flexibility to shift one workload from one cloud to another or even to span multiple clouds.

Many organisations are adopting a hybrid cloud approach as the flexibility and business benefits are compelling. With the potential to immediately ‘burst’ and increase a workloads capacity during peak demand, then shrink when demand is light. This is just one of the many advantages why modern businesses are turning to the cloud. Future requirements may also include moving workloads dynamically between private and public clouds and with suitable management solutions in place, all of these options become a possibility.

You can find out more https://www.suse.com/solutions/cloud/

 

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