Linux Blimp

By Jack M. Germain

Aug 2, 2018 10:27 AM PT

The latest release of the
ExTiX Linux distro is a major disappointment.

ExTiX 18.7 has several shortcomings that make it troublesome to use. The flaws easily might be fixed in a patched follow-up release. Still, to a new Linux user, the problems inherent in ExTiX 18.7 give the Linux OS in general a black eye.

New releases of any software platform never come with guarantees. Sometimes, an earlier release works almost flawlessly while its upgrade down the line fails to impress. That was my experience revisiting the ExTix distro.

Despite this down slide, the developers can bounce back. The ExTiX distro offers adopters some features not readily available in other Linux distros.

Last month’s release is built around the LXQt 0.12.0 desktop and is based on Debian 9 Stretch and Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver. This relatively new desktop environment is the product of merging the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects.

LXQt is an apt replacement of LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. The more modern Qt tools bring some freshness to LXDE while shifting the emphasis away from running well on more minimal (as in older) hardware.

Meshing traditional LXDE functionality with the added tweaks from Razor-QT is a big step in a better direction for this lightweight desktop environment. Even this latest ExTiX release, despite its troubles, teases the kind of modern lightweight, modular, fast and user-friendly desktop environment that the distro offers.

Development Trails

Developer Arne Exton created ExTiX and dubbed it “the ultimate Linux system.” It is an offshoot of
Exton Linux/Live Systems, a collection of 16 related Exton Linux distributions hosted by the Swedish Linux Society.

Earlier ExTiX releases offered a variety of desktops, including Budgie, Deepin, KDE and LXQt. So far, only one flavor is available in the 18.7 release.

Both the Exton and ExTiX OSes are linked to download ports on SourceForge.net. The Exton OS and ExTiX Linux distros all seem related to the common Debian and Ubuntu bases.

Both divisions use a combination of the Calamares installer and Refracta tools. The combination enables users to select their own unique assortment of software and desktop settings for burning to a USB stick or DVD live session.

The ExTiX distro uses the Calamares installer to provide simpler options with a more user-friendly interface.

Fatal Attraction

I last
reviewed ExTiX in 2015 after the developer yanked out GNOME and replaced it with the then-brand-new LXQt desktop. I liked the performance of the next generation of the popular LXDE desktop. It was a stable desktop environment usable on production desktop machines, unlike the latest version of ExTiX.

The release notes for ExTiX 18.7 caught my attention. The description of its features suggested an attractive developmental progress that drew me in.

One of the best features promised the ability to run this OS from a hybrid ISO installation to an encrypted USB stick. In addition, you then could get more speed by transferring the system to RAM.

Even better, you could run it from a USB installation in two ways. The built-in persistence would let you save all your system changes on the stick. Or you could run it as a glorified live session with no persistence.

Less Desirable Approach

The RAM installation option provides a lightning fast performance limited only by the amount of onboard memory. Other Linux distros — Puppy Linux for one — pioneered the concept of putting Linux on a stick. This lets you carry all of your applications and files to run on any computer without leaving a trace of your presence behind.

ExTix sort of reinvents that wheel. Unlike other “portable Linux” systems, you can install the ExTiX on the hard drive fully without using so-called frugal installation tricks. When it works, you get a fully functional Linux distro installation.

*When* is the key qualifier in this description. Keep reading to find out the sorted problems that got in my way evaluating this release.

With ExTiX you have more options for DVD and USB installations. You also get a simpler and more flexible user interface with more control over system settings.

ExTix provides two installation options. One is a simple method that transfers the DVD files to the USB stick. The USB connection is faster than the DVD bus. You do not get persistence with this method, however, so you cannot save system settings or new software installations.

For it to work, you either must install Grub or edit the existing Grub configuration file on the host computer into which you will insert the live USB stick. This eliminates the ability to have a pocket distro that you can plug into any computer.

Of course, you can burn a snapshot of your installation to a DVD or USB drive and run it that way on any computer, much like a live session, with or without persistence.

Two ExTix distro advantages are the improved LXQt desktop over LXDE, and the specialized tools for installing ExTiX to a DVD or USB to run a complete Linux system with or without persistence.

First Impressions

Unlike most live-session DVDs, ExTiX does not have an install launcher on the desktop screen. Instead, you must run Calamares from the System Tools menu. The developers replaced Ubuntu’s installer, Ubiquity.

If your plan is to create a USB or DVD installation, use one of the two Refracta tools, not Calamares, for the installation. You will find them further down the list in the System Tools menu.

Refracta Snapshot lets you create a live installable snapshot of your system. It creates a bootable image that you can burn to CD or DVD. It stores the image in /home/snapshot. The Refracta Installer is the tool for installing an already-created live CD/DVD to your system.

I like that the live session login is automatic. You do not have to supply a password. It is easy to run the live session in system RAM without having to type special commands in an edit window when the DVD initially loads. Just select boot alternative four (Load to RAM). Your system will need at least 2 GB of RAM for this to work.

You can remove the DVD or USB stick once the system loads. This makes it convenient to access your documents while running in Live session without creating persistence. I also like that the developer patched kernel 4.18.0-rc5-extix. This makes it work with Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver.

The background images are few and boring — that is, unless you like different views and colors of Porsches.

The login screen is weird. It asks for the username in the first window. Then a second window appears without any label. That is where you enter a password.

Failed User Experience

I was very disappointed with the sluggish, broken performance of the ExTiX 18.7 release. It was anything but an ultimate Linux experience. The OS could not get out of its own way sometimes.

I installed this release on four computers. I also installed it to a USB drive and virtual machines on two computers. I ran ExTiX 18.7 booted from live session DVD burned from its ISO made from two separate downloads.

The problems I encountered in one instance occurred in other instances as well. The best speed came from running ExTiX in RAM on a computer with 8 GB.

The difficulties I encountered should happen only in a new alpha or beta release. Among them were sluggish menus, applications that locked up, applications that failed to load, and difficulty connecting to the Internet.

Breakdown Rundown

The problems began with my initial installation efforts. Things cascaded from there. Here is a rundown of my installation woes.

The process took 15 minutes to reach 25 percent transfer to the hard drive. Then the process continued to drag on slowly. The installation ultimately failed, according to a screen report at the end of the installation process, due to an error in updating or reinstalling grub. That error repeated on every installation I attempted.

That left the system unable to boot. On several of the computers dealing with the installation, I had a working dual boot configuration. So ExTiX did not load, and the other partitions also were inaccessible.

A few minutes of tinkering with a Boot-Repair-Disk DVD found and fixed the problem. All seemed well when I once again rebooted the computer. I installed ExTIX on a different computer. This time the same problem occurred with the error message regarding a failed Grub installation.

Again, I used the Repair-Boot-Disk to fix that issue. However, that application did not solve the boot problem. No boot manager was installed. So I tried a second boot repair application to no avail.

Scenario Unfolds

Nothing I tried resolved the missing Grub Manager error until I installed another Linux distro to the ExTiX partition on the hard drive. I recently had completed a review of Peppermint Linux without incident, so I installed that distro to replace ExTiX on the second computer. That process supplied the boot manager, and all was well with accessing the second computer.

At that point, it was clear that a problem seemed to exist with the ExTiX ISO. Or maybe it was an error in the process of creating the ISO from the downloaded package. So I got a fresh download and burned a new ISO to DVD. Nothing changed.

I used the ISO file to create a virtual machine. That process worked as a live session. Then I took the next logical step. I installed ExTiX to a VM rather than run it as a live session from the ISO. That actually worked without major glitches.

Yet some of the other troubles detailed above replicated in the VM. Just as with the other installation attempts, the Network Manager was not connected. Some distros balk at making wireless connections if the hardware is not supported, but the network cable should be an automatic connection.

On a few of the computers, I was able to get the Network Manager to work by re-entering the existing settings. That did not work in other cases. Even when the network connection failed, on some of the computers the wireless connection functioned. Go figure!

One of the nagging problems with this ExTiX release is the troubled Network Manager, which either cannot connect to a hard-wired Internet connection or keep the connection stable.

Update Hell

Adding and removing software is handled through the Synaptic Package Manager in ExTiX. Guess what? That application refused to load in every installation except on VMs.

I assumed it had something to do with the error message about the initial installation. So I redid the installation. No dice.

The Synaptic application was in the main menu. The files were where they should have been in the correct system directory. The package manager refused to load except when ExTiX ran in a VM.

In this extreme case, I tried to work around the problem by jockeying .deb files for must-have installations such as Dropbox. That is when I discovered that the GDebi package installer is not included in ExTiX by default. I had to resort to terminal commands for manual installation.

Desktop View

The desktop looks neat and clean. It has the look and feel of the LXDE desktop. The real improvements with the LXQt environment are under its hood. These include better-organized menus, more settings options, and more flexibility with configurations. Out of the box, LXQt is ready to go.

The desktop is devoid of icons. You cannot place launchers there by right-clicking an application in the main menu. You can right-click on the desktop to pop up a context menu with limited options.

A panel bar stretches across the bottom of the screen. It is preconfigured with a workplace switcher applet and two virtual workspaces.

Bottom Line

The ExTiX 18.7 release was a disappointment. Given the maturity and variety of the previous Linux distros maintained by the Exton OS and ExTiX developer, I can only conclude that the problems I encountered were an anomaly. No doubt, a fix is in the works.

I hope so. ExTiX and the LXQt desktop have much to offer. This latest release comes with Firefox instead of Google Chrome as the Web Browser. This makes it possible to watch Netflix movies in Firefox while running Linux.

Among many other programs included are LibreOffice, Thunderbird, GParted, Brasero, SMPlayer, Gimp, Flash and win32 codecs. In addition, Java and all necessary additions are supplied to let you install programs from source.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you’d like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please
email your ideas to me, and I’ll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Reader Comments feature below to provide your input!

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open source technologies. He has written numerous reviews of Linux distros and other open source software.
Email Jack.

Source

How websites store data

When you create an account on a website, the website stores your registration details on it’s SQL databases. Very few people, even within the company/website have direct access to the databases.

In a naive world, the database would contain your plaintext passwords. However, since there are hackers doing SQL injection attacks to dump the database data, it’s helpful to

keep the password hashed/ encrypted

. This would mean that even

if someone has access to the table

, he would see your username, email address, and

hashed password, but not the plain-text password

.

Those who don’t know about hashing may wonder how does the website check if you are typing the correct password during login, if the site itself doesn’t know you password. Well, to understand that, you must understand what hashing is. You can read it up on wikipedia for a technical idea, but I’ll (grossly over-)simplify it for you.

Hashing is any operation which is easy in one direction, and difficult in reverse. For example, mixing two colors is easy, while finding out the constituent colors of a color mixture isn’t quite that easy. Multiplying two large (prime) numbers is easy, but given a huge prime number, it isn’t easy to find the two prime factors which multiplied result in that number.

 

Hashing example

Let’s say your password is “pass”, and there’s a hashing function f(x). Then,

f(“pass”) = d@A2qAawqq21109 (say).

Going the forward way is quite simple. On the other hand, figuring out the plain-text password from the hash (d@A2qAawqq21109) is almost impossible.

So, when you create an account and you type the password as “pass”, d@A2qAawqq21109 is stored in the database.When you login and type password as “pass”, the server hashes it, and it becomes “d@A2qAawqq21109”, which is matched with the SQL database. If you typed out some other password, say “ssap”, then the hash generated would be different, and you won’t be able to log in. Note that while the hashing function gives different outputs for most strings, every once in a while, there may be collisions (two strings may have the same hash). This is very very very rare, and shouldn’t be of any concern to us.

Forgot Your Password – Ever wondered why almost all websites give you a new password when you forget your old one, instead of just telling you your password. Well, now you know, it turns out that they themselves don’t know your password, and hence can’t tell you. When they offer you a chance to change your password, they just change the corresponding hash in their tables, and now your new password works.

How hashes are cracked – I wrote earlier that hash functions are easy to go one way, but almost impossible to go the other. The task of going the other way can be accomplished by bruteforce method. Basically, suppose someone had the password “pass”. Now, a hacker who only has access to the hashes can hash all the passwords in alphabetical order and then check which hash matches. (assume hacker knows password has length four and only alphabets).

He tries ‘aaaa’,’aaab’, ‘aaac’,……’aaba’, ‘aabb’ ,’aabc’,…..’aazz’ , ‘abaa’, ……………. ‘paaa’,’paab’,.. ,’pass’. When he tries ‘aaaa’, the hash is not d@A2qAawqq21109, it is something else. Till he reaches ‘pass’, he gets a hash which doesn’t match d@A2qAawqq21109. But for ‘pass’, the hash matches. So, the hacker now knows your password.

Website leaks

Due to the above reason, website leaks are bad, but not that bad. If the passwords are sufficiently complex, the hashing algorithm is secure, and salt (explained later) is used, then it’s quite unlikely that the hackers would be able to get many passwords from the database dump. So, even if Facebook DB is leaked, your passwords are most probably safe. Unfortunately, most probably is not something one can work with, especially when you have so much to loose in case the 0.1% chance of password being compromised is the one that materializes. So, after a DB leak, the website often asks all it’s users to change their passwords (eg. dropbox leak, linkedin leak, myspace leak etc.). Also, since you might be using the same password on different websites, it’s important that you change your password everywhere.

This isn’t even the worst part though. Some websites don’t hash your passwords, and store them in plain-text instead. If their database is leaked, the hacker has immediate access to millions of accounts on that website, plus possibly 10s of millions of accounts on other websites which use the same email/username – password combination.For example, 000webhost database had plain-text passwords, and it was leaked. I personally hosted a site there once, and my account was compromised as well.

But this still isn’t the worst part. The hackers often dump the databases publicly. The responsible ones let the website know that their security sucks, and asks them to inform their customers about the leak and get their passwords changed. After sufficient time is given to the website to act, the hacker would often dump the database publicly. To see the extent of this, take 000webhost’s example. The first search result for “000webhost leak” gives you the database, which you can download and see the passwords. The password I was using 3-4 years ago is there in the database. That very password is probably still there on some of the websites that I signed up for 3-4 years ago but haven’t you them since then (and hence didn’t update the password).

Problem 1 : Suppose there’s an hashing scheme X. Under that scheme, “pass” becomes d@A2qAawqq21109. Now this is a very secure scheme and every website uses it. Now, there’a guy who has a lot of computational power and he computes the hashes of all possible letter combinations under the scheme X. Now, given a hashed value, he can simply lookup/search his table and see what password does it correspond to. He makes this table of word to hash available online. Now, it’s quite easy to get the passwords from a database dump.

Problem 2 : Alternatively, even if the scheme isn’t common, what one can do is that he can take a common password, say “password”, then hash it, and then search all the users in the 100 million users password dump and see if any hash matches. If it does, then that means that the given user has the password “password”. By using 1 million common password, he’ll probably get 10% of the users password among the 100 million users.

Solution : Hashing Salt –

To prevent that, each user chooses a password, and is given a random string, the hashing salt. The hashing function operates on both the password and the salt. So, if two users have same password, but different salts, then they’ll have different hashes. This renders both the above techniques/problems useless. Now, to get the correct hash, the hacker has to input the correct password and the correct salt to the hashing function. This means that –

1. The first problem where someone else pre-computed the password-hash table is solved, since now that person has to make password-salt-hash table (for every password and every salt combination, what’s the hash), which is going to be too many possible combinations. If there are 10 million possible passwords, and 10 million possible salts, there would be 100 million million combinations (I don’t even know what million million even is). If there are 10 common salts which are used very often, then the person can make a table with all the 10 million passwords hashed for the 10 common salts. Alternatively, the person can hash the 10 most common password with 10 million possible hashes. Thus, it’s important to have both strong passwords and random salts.
2. The second problem is also kind of solved, since the person would have to solve the hash of common passwords with each salt in the table (note that he doesn’t have to do it for all 10 million combinations, only the ones present in the table). Again, not using easy generic password like “password”,”hello”, etc. would solve this issue.

Weak salts?

One of the flaws with hashing is that it could have weak salts. WPA/WPA-2 is quite robust, but since it used the SSID of the network as salt, the routers which use default SSID’s (“linksys”,”netgear”,etc.) are more vulnerable than others since

rainbow tables

exist which have hashes for most common passwords and most common SSIDs. That said, I’d like to re-iterate, WPA/WPA-2 is still quite damn secure, and I pointed this out only as a relevant example.

Are you compromised?

Out of all the leaks so far, I had accounts in 4 of the leaks. My account was there in the Myspace leak, the LinkedIn leak, the dropbox leak, and the 000webhost leak. I had to change my password on multiple sites on multiple occasions.

One way to find out if you’re compromised is to look for all the dumps and check manually if you’re in them. However, that’s practically impossible (not all dumps are public, and looking for your name/email in a huge file takes the computer more time than you’d guess). Fortunately, there’s a website which specifically exists for this purpose, known as

LeakedSource

. You can search using your email free of cost. They offer some extra functionality for pretty affordable rates ($4 paypal, $2 bitcoin).

 

I am compromised

If you find out that your account is indeed compromised, then I suggest you quickly change your password on all services that you use which have the same password. Better yet, change all your passwords. It’s good practice to keep changing your passwords regularly anyway. Also, if a website has the two step authentication feature, then it’s suggested that you use it.

Source

mod_wsgi is an Apache module that can be used for serving Python scripts over HTTP via Apache web server like Django, Web.py, Werkzug, Chery.py, TurboGears, and Flask. In this tutorial, we will learn how to install and set up of mod_wsgi with the Apache server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) server.

Complete Story   

Source

You may have heard and used multimedia converter application as audio/video files converter only. FF-Multi-Converter is an application that lets you convert audio/video files to various formats, documents to several formats and images to most used formats. isn’t it great? This application is around for a while and you may or may not used it. The most recent version ported to Python3 and now supports most of the Linux distributions.

 

FF-Multi-Converter uses FFmpeg for audio/video files conversion, unoconv for documents coversion and ImageMagick utility for image conversion. The main goal of this application is to offer most popular multimedia types in one application and provide different conversion options for them easily through a fairly easy to use graphical interface, you will find this application very handy and useful. It is written using Python3 and PyQt5, released under GNU General Public License (GPL V3).

Features:

• Conversions for several file formats.
• Very easy to use interface.
• Access to common conversion options.
• Audio/video ffmpeg-presets management.
• Options for saving and naming files.
• Multilingual – over 20 languages.

Supported formats:

• • Audio/Video formats:
    • aac, ac3, afc, aiff, amr, asf, au, avi, dvd, flac, flv, mka, mkv, mmf, mov, mp3, mp4, mpg, ogg, ogv, psp, rm, spx, vob, wav, webm, wma, wmv

And any other format supported by ffmpeg.

• Image formats:
  • bmp, cgm, dpx, emf, eps, fpx, gif, jbig, jng, jpeg, mrsid, p7, pdf, picon, png, ppm, psd, rad, tga, tif, webp, xpm
• Document file formats:
  • doc -> odt, pdf
  • html -> odt
  • odp -> pdf, ppt
  • ods -> pdf
  • odt -> doc, html, pdf, rtf, sxw, txt, xml
  • ppt -> odp
  • rtf -> odt
  • sdw -> odt
  • sxw -> odt
  • txt -> odt
  • xls -> ods
  • xml -> doc, odt, pdf

Available for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic/18.10/16.04 Xenial/14.04 Trusty/Linux Mint 19/18/17/other Ubuntu derivativesTo install FFMultiConverter in Ubuntu/Linux Mint open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal:
To install in any Linux distribution, download latest FF-Multi-Converter and extract it. You need to install these dependencies (python3, pyqt5, ffmpeg, imagemagick, unoconv). Then use following command to install it from extracted folder.

That’s it

Source

Last updated October 5, 2018 By John Paul

We review Cozy, an audiobook player for Linux. Read to find out if it’s worth to install Cozy on your Linux system or not.

Audiobooks are a great way to consume literature. Many people who don’t have time to read, choose to listen. Most people, myself included, just use a regular media player like VLC or MPV for listening to audiobooks on Linux.

Today, we will look at a Linux application built solely for listening to audiobooks.

Cozy Audiobook Player

Cozy Audiobook Player for Linux

The Cozy Audiobook Player is created by Julian Geywitz from Germany. It is built using both Python and GTK+ 3. According to the site, Julian wrote Cozy on Fedora and optimized it for elementary OS.

The player borrows its layout from iTunes. The player controls are placed along the top of the application The library takes up the rest. You can sort all of your audiobooks based on the title, author and reader, and search very quickly.

Initial setup

When you first launch Cozy, you are given the option to choose where you will store your audiobook files. Cozy will keep an eye on that folder and update your library as you add new audiobooks. You can also set it up to use an external or network drive.

Features of Cozy

Here is a full list of the features that Cozy has to offer.

• Import all your audiobooks into Cozy to browse them comfortably
• Sort your audiobooks by author, reader & title
• Remembers your playback position
• Sleep timer
• Playback speed control
• Search your audiobook library
• Add multiple storage locations
• Drag & Drop to import new audio books
• Support for DRM free mp3, m4a (aac, ALAC, …), flac, ogg, wav files
• Mpris integration (Media keys & playback info for the desktop environment)
• Developed on Fedora and tested under elementaryOS

Experiencing Cozy

Audiobook library

At first, I was excited to try our Cozy because I like to listen to audiobooks. However, I ran into a couple of issues. There is no way to edit the information of an audiobook. For example, I downloaded a couple audiobooks from LibriVox to test it. All three audiobooks were listed under “Unknown” for the reader. There was nothing to edit or change the audiobook info. I guess you could edit all of the files, but that would take quite a bit of time.

When I listen to an audiobook, I like to know what track is currently playing. Cozy only has a single progress bar for the whole audiobook. I know that Cozy is designed to remember where you left off in an audiobook, but if I was going to continue to listen to the audiobook on my phone, I would like to know what track I am on.

Settings

Installing Cozy on Linux

If you would like to install Cozy, you have several options for different distros.

Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora

Julian used the openSUSE Build Service to create custom repos for Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE and Fedora. Each one only takes a couple terminal commands to install.

Install Cozy using Flatpak on any Linux distribution (including Ubuntu)

If your distro supports Flatpak, you can install Cozy using the following commands:

flatpak remote-add –user –if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install –user flathub com.github.geigi.cozy

Install Cozy on elementary OS

If you have elementary OS installed, you can install Cozy from the built-in App Store.

Install Cozy on Arch Linux

Cozy is available in the Arch User Repository. All you have to do is search for cozy-audiobooks.

Where to find free Audiobooks?

In order to try out this application, you will need to find some audiobooks to listen to. My favorite site for audiobooks is LibriVox. Since LibriVox depends on volunteers to record audiobooks, the quality can vary. However, there are a number of very talented readers.

Here is a list of free audiobook sources:

• Open Culture
• Project Gutenberg
• Digitalbook.io
• FreeClassicAudioBooks.com
• MindWebs
• Scribl

Final Thoughts on Cozy

For now, I think I’ll stick with my preferred audiobook software (VLC) for now. Cozy just doesn’t add anything. I won’t call it a must-have application for Linux just yet. There is no compelling reason for me to switch. Maybe, I’ll revisit it again in the future, maybe when it hits 1.0.

Take Cozy for a spin. You might come to a different conclusion.

Have you ever used Cozy? If not, what is your favorite audiobook player? What is your favorite source for free audiobooks? Let us know in the comments below.

If you found this article interesting, please take a minute to share it on social media, Hacker News or Reddit.

About John Paul

My name is John Paul Wohlscheid. I’m an aspiring mystery writer who loves to play with technology, especially Linux. You can catch up with me at my personal website

Source

Node.js is an open source and completely free software that empowers web developers to build scalable and fast network programs. Being based on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime, the Node.js software is extremely efficient and lightweight, especially because it uses a non-blocking, event-driven I/O model.

The top platform for running server-side JavaScript code

Node.js is currently considered the top platform for running server-side JavaScript code, being used in production in big companies like Google, eBay, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Cloud9 and many more.

Mandatory example

The following code will create a simple web server that responds with “Hello World” for every request.

var http = require(‘http’);

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

res.writeHead(200, {‘Content-Type’: ‘text/plain’});

res.end(‘Hello Worldn’);

}).listen(1337, ‘127.0.0.1’);

console.log(‘Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/’);

In order to run the HTTP server, you will have to the code above into a file called “example.js” (without quotes) and execute it with the node command from a terminal emulator:

% node example.js

Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/

Supported operating systems

Node.js is a multi-platform application that has been successfully tested under numerous GNU/Linux distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, openSUSE, Mageia, Slackware, and others, as well as on the commercial Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Both 64-bit and 32-bit instruction set architectures are supported at this time.

Under the hood, requirements and availability

As mentioned, this is a multi-platform software. It can be downloaded as pre-built installers for the Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as a universal source archive that can be compiled and installed on virtually any operating system where Python is supported.

Build network app Non-blocking I/O model Real-time application Develop Non-blocking Build Network

Source

Posted by msmash

on Thursday September 20, 2018 @10:31AM

from the closer-look dept.

Linus Torvalds announced on Sunday that he was sorry for

how he treated the community over the years

. Torvalds, 48, said he planned to make some changes to how he conducted himself, and on that part, he said he would be taking some time off from Linux kernel development work.

The New Yorker has published a story on Torvalds today

in which it notes that it reached out to Torvalds days before he made the big announcement. From the story, which may be paywalled for some readers:

Torvalds’s decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers. In a response to The New Yorker, Torvalds said, “I am very proud of the Linux code that I invented and the impact it has had on the world. I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others — this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry.”

Torvalds’s response was conveyed by the Linux Foundation, which supports Linux and other open-source programming projects and paid Torvalds $1.6 million in annual compensation as of 2016. The foundation said that it supported his decision and has encouraged women to participate but that it has little control over how Torvalds runs the coding process. “We are able to have varying degrees of impact on these outcomes in newer projects,” the statement said. “Older more established efforts like the Linux kernel are much more challenging to influence.”

Linux’s elite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader’s aggressive self-confidence. There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women. “Everyone in tech knows about it, but Linus gets a pass,” Megan Squire, a computer-science professor at Elon University, told me, referring to Torvalds’s abusive behavior. “He’s built up this cult of personality, this cult of importance.”

 

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

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Developing an exit strategy can ensure continuity when it comes to FOSS projects.

In a conversation with a chief technical officer (CTO) of a web-hosting company the other day, he mentioned that a large piece of FOSS that his company depended on was being removed from the Linux kernel, because there was no one to develop and support it. While he did not really come out and make the accusation, I inferred from his remark that he felt parts of the Linux kernel were not receiving proper attention, given their importance to the FOSS world.

This does happen, and it has been noted in the past. Typically at the last minute, the FOSS community will belly up to the bar, and a few more developers will be found. Or some company will fund the primary developers, so they can spend full time supporting the software that they had been supporting and developing in their spare time.

Yes, the FOSS community has a coverage problem from time to time. Yes, sometimes software that we depend on goes stagnant, with the developers either leaving the project or sometimes (unfortunately) dying. This is why software projects need to spend as much time “building community” around their projects as they do writing code. The project leaders have to attract new talent, both building enthusiasm for the project, as well as building expertise in those who will become the new architects and leaders of tomorrow.

[…]

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Oct 16, 2018, 19:00 (0 Talkback[s])

(Other stories by Shawn Powers)

The old way of configuring Debian-based network interfaces was based on the ifupdown package. The new default is called Netplan, and although it’s not terribly difficult to use, it’s drastically different. Netplan is sort of the interface used to configure the back-end dæmons that actually configure the interfaces. Right now, the back ends supported are NetworkManager and networkd.

If you tell Netplan to use NetworkManager, all interface configuration control is handed off to the GUI interface on the desktop.

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The Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish will be released on October 18, 2018. If you can’t wait to see what Ubuntu 18.10 has to offer, then good news for you. Ubuntu 18.10 Beta version is now available to download. You can also upgrade your existing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver installation to Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish.

In this article, I will show you how to upgrade your existing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.10. Let’s get started.

In this section of the article, I will show you how to upgrade your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop to Ubuntu 18.10 (currently in Beta) Desktop operating system.

First, check the version of Ubuntu you’re using before you go through the upgrade process. That way, you will be able to verify whether the upgrade worked or not.

As you can see, from the About (Settings > Details > About) tab, I am using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS GNOME 3.28.1 desktop environment.

To get the same information from the command line interface, open up a Terminal and run the following command:

As you can see, I get the same information here.

Now, search for Software & Updates app from the Application Menu and click on the Software & Updates app as marked in the screenshot below.

Software & Updates app should open up. Now click on the Updates tab as marked in the screenshot below.

From the Updates tab, make sure the check boxes are marked as shown in the screenshot below.

Also, change Notify me of a new Ubuntu version to For any new version as marked in the screenshot below.

Now type in your password and click on Authenticate.

Now click on Close to exit out of Software & Updates app.

Now you have to make sure all the software packages are up to date on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS before you upgrade your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 18.10. This is very important because if all the softwares are not up to date, then you may face problems in the upgrade process.

On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, you can use the Software Updater app to update all the software packages very easily. Look for Software Updater from the Application Menu and then click on the Software Updater icon as marked in the screenshot below.

Software Updater should check for softwares updates for your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system.

If any software update is available, it should show up in the Software Updater app as you can see in the screenshot below. About 342 MB of internet data will be used to download the required packages for the software update. If your using limited internet plan (such as Mobile broadband), make sure you have enough internet data available. Once you’re done reviewing everything, click on Install Now to start the software update process.

Now type in your password and click on Authenticate.

Software Updater app should download and install all the required packages.

Once the software update is complete, you should see the following window. Now click on Restart Now.

Once your computer starts, your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS should be updated to the latest stable version (18.04.1 LTS at the time of this writing) as you can see in the screenshot below. The GNOME version is also upgraded from 3.28.1 to 3.28.2 (at the time of this writing).

The Software Updater app may not update some of the packages on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop. To make sure these are updated as well, open up a Terminal (press <Ctrl> + t) and run the following command:

Now press y and then press <Enter>.

If you see the following message, just keep the default and press <Enter>.

The packages are updated.

Now reboot your computer with the following command:

Your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop is now ready to be upgraded to Ubuntu 18.10.

Just open a Terminal from the Application Menu or by pressing <Ctrl> + t and run the following command:

$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

NOTE: As Ubuntu 18.10 is in Beta now, you have to run sudo do-release-upgrade -d in order to upgrade to Ubuntu 18.10 from Ubuntu 18.04. But once Ubuntu 18.10 is released, please run sudo do-release-upgrade without the -d flag.

Ubuntu 18.10 package repository is being added and APT package repository cache is being updated.

When you see the following prompt, press y and then press <Enter>.

Now press <Enter> to continue.

The release upgrade has started. It should take a while to complete.

Press y and then press <Enter> to continue.

Now press y and then press <Enter>. Your computer should be restarted.

Now you should be booted into the Ubuntu 18.10 login screen as you can see in the screenshot below.

Once you login, you should see the following window. This is the default look and feel of Ubuntu 18.10. Ubuntu 18.10 got a new theme and icon set. I love it.

As you can see, I am using Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish development branch or Beta version with GNOME 3.30.1

Congrats! You’ve successfully upgraded to Ubuntu 18.10 from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Upgrading to Ubuntu 18.10 from 18.04 from the Terminal:

You can also upgrade to Ubuntu 18.10 from 18.04 LTS from the command line.

First, open up a Terminal by pressing <Ctrl> + t.

Now open the /etc/apt/sources.list file with the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Make sure at least the marked package repositories are enabled.

Now update the APT package repository cache with the following command:

Now update all the packages with the following command:

Now update the kernel and some of the system packages with the following command:

Once these upgrades are complete, reboot your computer with the following command:

Now upgrade your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish with the following command:

$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

NOTE: Once Ubuntu 18.10 is released, remove the -d flag from the command. The reason is explained in the earlier section of this article above.

Once the release upgrade is complete, reboot your computer with the following command:

You should be booted into Ubuntu 18.10.

So that’s how you upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.10. Thanks for reading this article.

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