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Plex for Linux Now Available as a Snap (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash
on Thursday October 11, 2018 @03:05PM
from the small-steps dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report:
Today, a very popular app, Plex Media Server, gets the Snap treatment. In other words, you can install the media server program without any headaches — right from the Snap store. “In adopting the universal Linux app packaging format, Plex will make its multimedia platform available to an ever-growing community of Linux users, including those on KDE Neon, Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, OpenSUSE, Zorin and Ubuntu. Automatic updates and rollback capabilities are staples of Snap software, meaning Plex users will always have the best and latest version running,” says Canonical.

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
— Mike Adams

Working…
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The newly formed studio, Planetary Annihilation Inc, has pushed out their first upgrade for the strategy game Planetary Annihilation: TITANS.

For those not clued up, Planetary Annihilation: TITANS is now being run by a dedicated studio that are going to give it a new life with continued support and plenty of updates. The original Planetary Annihilation is no longer available to buy, with a permanent discount to upgrade to TITANS.

This new “PTE” (public test environment) build is available to opt-in on Steam with no password required. Their aim is to focus on “speed and stability” before upgrading the main tech behind the game. With that in mind they’ve fixed some server-side crash issues, adjusted some balance issues along with some interesting AI changes. The AI, for example, will look to engage in more fights it thinks it can win as well as being better at gathering and using intel.

There’s plenty more multi-threading for servers, improved crash reporting for all platforms, a number of adjustments to improve performance and so on. Overall, it might not sound like a big deal, but it’s a good step forward. You can see the full changes here.

I’ve given the beta version a test for a few hours and it does seem to work fine. Really happy to see the game continue to live on, as it really is quite good. I actually forgot just how much I enjoy this game, watching hundreds on units travel across a world destroying everything in their path.

You can pick up Planetary Annihilation: TITANS on Humble Store and Steam.

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Let’s delve into what a VPN is and who needs one before exploring if a VPN is really necessary for Linux users.

If you want a short answer telling you if a VPN, such as Surfshark, is a necessity for Linux users – the answer is maybe. This depends on the network you are connecting to, what you will be doing online, and how important privacy is to you. We are going to help you answer these questions for yourself to determine if a VPN is a necessity.

What is a VPN?

In the simplest terms, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a private connection to the internet. This privacy is established by routing your internet traffic through another computer with a secure connection. Anyone watching this traffic will simply know that your computer is communicating with one other computer on the network. This keeps them from intercepting information about the websites and services you are using online.

Your system connects to the VPN service which then connects to the other services you are using online. All your internet traffic is passed through the VPN service in order to protect your anonymity on the internet.

You can either buy a VPN service through a provider like Surfshark or you can self-host your own VPN on a cloud server.

Who needs a VPN?

Even if the connection is secure and the information being sent cannot be seen, the router you connect to can see what site you access, when, and for how long. If you are working with confidential information or trade secrets, that can be very valuable information. This metadata is worth protecting and only sharing with a trusted service.

Even if you are not doing anything that needs to be kept secret, most people prefer to have their online activity remain private. For this reason alone, it is a good idea to use a VPN.

Digital Nomads & Road Warriors

The life of a digital nomad, or a road warrior, involves accessing the internet to get work done from different networks every day. Sometimes you may be on multiple different networks in a single day. These are operated by unknown parties which may, or may not, be trustworthy. This is why many digital nomads and road warriors travel with a VPN.

Work From Home Professionals

Just because you work from home, does not mean you always work at home. With the popularity of coworking spaces around the world, and the people we all see working in coffee shops, working from home often does not mean you are working at home. Obviously, you may want a little privacy when you are using the public WiFi at your local coffee shop.

Public WiFi

Not all public internet hotspots are found in coffee shops. There are many businesses which provide free internet access today and some cities. Each of these offers an opportunity to hop online and get some work done. However, without a VPN, it is possible for these services to see where you are going online – and you may not want them to have that information.

Residential ISP

Do you want your internet service provider to know what you do online all day?

Many jobs that can be done online require access to trade secrets and confidential information. Rather than letting your home internet service provider know what you do online, you can route that traffic through a VPN. This way they can only see that you are communicating with your VPN service, but don’t see what you are accessing on the other end.

Isn’t Linux more secure than Windows?

The security we are talking about with a VPN has little to do with the operating system in use. Windows and Linux both send and receive packets of data on the internet in the same way. Part of this communication involves telling other systems where the packet needs to go.

Those devices at the endpoint for this communication, the router, in this case, can collect a lot of data about where you go online, when, and for how long. It does not matter if your device is using Windows, Linux, or Mac OS to navigate the web, the packets are the same.

Do Linux users really need a VPN?

As you can see, it all depends on the network you are connecting to, what you will be doing online, and how important privacy is to you.

If you are connecting to a trusted network then you can probably operate without a VPN. However, if you don’t trust the network or don’t have enough information to know if you can trust the network, then you will want to use a VPN. As an example, do you know who has access to the information collected by the open WiFi service at your local coffee shop? Would you want them to know where you go online, when, and how long you use that service? If not, then a VPN can help secure that information while you’re using their network.

The question of what you will be doing online is just as important as the trust you place in the network. For example, there are business and personal finance tasks which you would not want to be intercepted. However, most people would not be too concerned about someone having information that shows they checked the weather forecast. What you are doing on the network can determine if a VPN is a necessity for Linux users.

Today, there are some people who have given up on the entire concept of privacy. For them, no VPN may be the way to go. However, the rest of us who value privacy should consider using a VPN just to reduce the amount of information about online activities that are being shared. Using a VPN does not allow your internet provider to see what you are doing online and that privacy can be worth the cost of a VPN for everything.

About the Author

This article was submitted to us by a third-party writer. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views and opinions of ThisHosting.Rocks. If you want to write for ThisHosting.Rocks, go here.

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The best way to save money on software development is to get it right the first time. Pair programming, an agile technique, saves development costs by putting two coders to work on the same code. Visual Studio Code and tmate bring the promise of pair programming to remote workers.

As agile programming spreads into the IT space, development teams are increasingly relying on a concept known as pair programming [1]. Pair programming is an agile technique that involves two programmers working simultaneously on one computer. Both programmers use their own keyboard and mouse. Ideally, each also has a separate monitor.

In pair programming, one programmer acts as the driver (the person who actively programs), and the other is the navigator. Since both programmers have their own keyboards, the navigator can access the code directly at any time. This leads to those “wait a minute, I’ll show you how to do that” moments where the navigator demonstrates something to the driver or simply corrects an error.

Pair programming proponents believe this technique leads to far cleaner code containing fewer errors. However, pair programming does put a strain on both programmers. Experts recommend that companies use pair programming regularly, but not every day for the entire day. The right chemistry between the two programmers is also important.

[…]

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

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News briefs for October 15, 2018.

KDE e.V. announces it received a $300,000 USD donation from the Handshake
Foundation. According to the KDE
blog post, it plans to use $100,000 USD of the donation specifically toward development
of the Calligra office suite. Also, KDE celebrated its 22nd anniversary yesterday—Happy Birthday KDE!

UBports
announces Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 is out. This
over the air update of version 16.04 includes a more stable experience and new features, such as the
Morph QtWeb Engine browser, Qt automatic scaling, Kirigami 2 and community
art used for wallpapers, notification tones and ringtones.

Geoclue
2.5 is now available, and coder Zeeshan Ali is asking for help. Geoclue uses
the Mozilla Location Service (MLS), which was launched in 2013 in connection with its
Firefox OS project that has since been abandoned. The service is still
running, and users can contribute data, but it isn’t being maintained or
developed any longer. Zeeshan
Ali writes, “If your company relies on MLS
(directly or through Geoclue) and you’d want to secure the future of Open
Source geolocation, please do get in touch and we can discuss how we could
possibly achieve that.”

Red Hat developer Ivan Chavero yesterday submitted a new patch
for the Linux Code of Conduct. Phoronix
reports that the proposal “drops the
mention of ‘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.’ In place Ivan proposes, ‘our community an effective and
enriching experience to any sentient being in the Universe.'”

The Internet Freedom Festival—”5 Years Joining Forces to Fight
Censorship and Surveillance”—is being held in Valencia, Spain, April
1–5, 2019. The call for proposals is open until November 9, 2018. See
the IFF website for more
details, as well as news and updates from the community.

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In this article we’ll go over some best practices that help ensure good pull requests. Writing good pull requests and having an effective workflow will increase a team’s productivity and minimize frustration. Although a pull request is traditionally considered the final point in the developer workflow, these best practices span the entire development process. We’ll focus on the key points that affect the quality of a pull request.

We’ll cover the importance of good user stories, code testing, code readability, writing good revision control commits, and finally, writing good pull request descriptions.

The importance of good pull requests

Having a culture of writing good pull requests within a team can make a big difference in productivity. If pull requests are small, frequent, and easy to review and test, they will result in pull requests being opened and merged quickly.

Read more at ButterCMS

Click Here!

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As the default compiler for the Linux kernel source, GCC delivers trusted, stable performance and also builds system libraries and many of the applications in popular Linux distributions.

Software is useless if computers can’t run it. The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is the unsung hero of the software world, transforming high level source code into low level object code while shielding the developer from hardware dependencies. With over 30 years of continual use and development, GCC offers a robust and stable foundation for building complete systems – from the kernel upwards. It is not surprising that GCC is still considered by LLVM.org to be “the de facto-standard open source compiler today.”

Who uses GCC?

As the default compiler for the Linux kernel source, GCC delivers trusted, stable performance and also builds system libraries and many of the applications in popular Linux distributions. GCC is also one of the most widely adopted core compilers by developers of embedded systems, with many GCC-based prebuilt toolchains enabling the software for the growing world of IoT devices. Application developers writing code for a variety of new and legacy computing environments depend on GCC since it delivers trusted performance along with support for the broadest range of hardware and operating environments.

And why do these folks depend on GCC? With decades of development by thousands of people GCC is one of the most respected compilers in the world. It functions as a cross compiler, creating executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is running. GCC is also a core component of the tightly integrated GNU toolchain, produced by the GNU Project, that includes glibc, Binutils, and the GNU Debugger (GDB). GCC delivers improved diagnostics for compile time debugging, accurate and useful information for runtime debugging, and is a well supported platform with an active, committed community that supports the current and two previous releases.

Learn more

If you are building software and not using GCC, you are missing out on the best possible solution. Check out the article “GCC: Optimizing Linux, the Internet, and Everything” to get a more comprehensive look at this amazing software tool.

Margaret Lewis is a technology consultant who previously served as Director of Software Planning at AMD and an Associate Director at the Maui High Performance Computing Center.

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We are pleased to announce that a new updated Imunify360 Beta version 3.7.2 is now available. This latest version embodies further improvements of the product as well as bugfixes.

Tasks

• DEF-6162: AI-BOLIT vulnerabilities are now marked as suspicious.

Fixes

• DEF-6170: blacklisted IP is no longer put into Gray List by sensor alert;
• DEF-6205: do not fail if /etc/virtual/domainowners has wrong UTF-8 data;
• DEF-6221: fixed SEND_ADDITIONAL_DATA.enable label in settings in UI.

To install the new Imunify360 version 3.7.2 please follow the instructions in the documentation.

The upgrading is available since Imunify360 version 2.0-19.

To upgrade Imunify360 on CentOS/CloudLinux systems, run the command:

yum update imunify360-firewall –enablerepo=imunify360-testing

To upgrade Imunify360 on Ubuntu systems, rut the command:

apt-get update
apt-get install –only-upgrade imunify360-firewall

More information on Imunify360 can be found here.

157 people viewed this

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The Debian Linux version 7 (codenamed “Wheezy”) support ended on 31st May 2018. It was initial release on May 4, 2013. Each LTS ( initial release on May 4, 2013) support lasts for five years. It means Debian project will not provide any security updates for Debian 7. As Debian Linux 7 Long Term support ends, hence you must upgrade your system to keep it secure. This page list all essentials steps to update your system from Debian 7 to Debian 8.

Debian Linux 7 Long Term Support reached

From the announcement page

The LTS Team will prepare the transition to Debian 8 “Jessie”, which is the current oldstable release. The LTS team will take over support from the Security Team on June 17, 2018.

Debian 8 will also receive Long Term Support for five years after its initial release with support ending on June 30, 2020. The supported architectures include amd64, i386, armel and armhf.

How to upgrade from Debian 7 “Wheezy” to Debian 8 “Jessie”

The following are recommendations for upgrading from Debian 7 “Wheezy” LTS to Debian 8 “Jessie” LTS. First, you must keep backup of all critical data including configuration files, user data, and RDBMS data.

Step 1. Update your /etc/apt/sources.list

Use a text editor such as vim command or nano command:

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list Update it as follows:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie main
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security jessie/updates mainSave and close the file.

Step 2. Update your system

Type the following apt-get command:

$ sudo apt-get update

Step 3. Install apt from Jessie

Type the following apt-get command:

$ sudo apt-get install apt -t jessie

Step 4. Upgrade your system

Now you can use the apt command:

$ sudo apt upgrade

Step 5. Upgrade your system and remove obsolete packages

Run the following apt command:

$ sudo apt dist-upgrade You might see prompts and update for configuration files. Apply them as needed. Review all changes carefully.

Step 6. Reboot the Linux box

Run the following command to reboot the Linux server/desktop or laptop:

$ sudo reboot OR

$ sudo shutdown -r 0

Step 7. Verify it

Type the following command to see your Linux kernel version:

$ uname -mrs
$ uname -a See your Debian Linux distribution version and other info using cat command:

$ cat /etc/debian_version Sample outputs:

8.10

Check all your log files on Linux box for any errors using either tail command or grep command:

$ tail -f /var/log/dmesg
$ egrep ‘warn|error|critical’ /path/to/log/file Make sure all services are running and required ports are open too:

$ sudo netstat -tulpn
$ sudo ss -tulpn
$ ping cyberciti.biz
$ host cyberciti.biz
$ ps aux | more
$ ps aux | grep apache

Conclusion

The Debian Long Term Support (LTS) Team announced that Debian 7 “Wheezy” support had reached its end-of-life on May 31, 2018. You just learned how to upgrade your version to next Debian 8 LTS version. I strongly suggest that you visit this page for more info and this page for upgrading existing Debian 8 to Debian 9.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

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