Linux Blimp

With my CD collection spiraling out of control, I’m spending more time listening to music with a number of popular streaming services.

Linux offers a great range of excellent open source music players. But I’m always on the look out for fresh and innovative streaming players. Step forward MellowPlayer.

MellowPlayer offers a web view of various music streaming services with integration with your desktop. It was developed to provide a Qt alternative to Nuvola Player.

The software is written in C++ and QML.

Installation

MellowPlayer is released under an open source license, so you can download the source code and compile it. But there’s convenient packages available for Ubuntu, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora, and other popular Linux distributions.

The developer also provides an AppImage which makes it easy to run the software (but only some of the streaming services are supported). AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. All that’s required is to download the AppImage, and make the file executable by typing:

$ chmod u+x ./MellowPlayer-x86_64.AppImage

In operation

Here’s an image of MellowPlayer in action.

I’m not a fan of the presentation of the streaming services. Too spartan for my liking. There’s definitely room for improvement here.

Let’s have a look at the interface when you’re playing a streaming service. Here’s YouTube Music in action.

From left to right, there’s a button to select another streaming service, followed by back/forward buttons, reload page, go to home page, and a button to add the current song to your favorites. There’s a playback slider, skip/pause/forward buttons, the option to disable/enable notifications, and a button to open your listening history (if you’ve enabled this in Settings).

MellowPlayer supports the following web-based music streaming services in its latest version:

• Spotify – a hugely popular digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs.
• YouTube Music – music streaming service developed by YouTube.
• Google Play Music – music and podcast streaming service and online music locker operated by Google.
• Deezer – explore over 53 million tracks.
• Tidal – high fidelity music streaming service.
• TuneIn – free internet radio.
• 8tracks – an internet radio and social networking website streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks.
• Anghami – discover, play and download from a library of millions of Arabic and International songs.
• Bandcamp – a platform for independent musicians.
• HearThisAt – listen to DJ Sets, Mixes, Tracks and Sounds.
• HypeMachine – a music blog aggregator.
• Jamendo – discover free music downloads & streaming from thousands of independent artists.
• Player FM – a multi-platform podcast service.
• Radionomy – an online platform that provides tools for operating online radio stations.
• Mixcloud – listen to radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts.
• SoundCloud – online audio distribution platform and music sharing website.
• Netflix – subscription-based streaming of films and TV programs.
• Plex – media server streaming.
• Yandex Music – music streaming service with smart playlists.
• Pocket Casts – listen to podcasts.
• ympd – MPD GUI.
• YouTube – video-sharing website.
• Wynk – Indian and international tracks.

Some services don’t work with the AppImage.

Other Features

Besides the wide range of streaming services, what else does the player offer?

Let’s take a look at some of the other features of MellowPlayer.

There’s a good range of configuration options to customize the software.

These include:

• Rearrangement of the streaming service by dragging and dropping, as well as the ability to disable one or more of the services. However, the rearrangement didn’t save when switching streaming services.
• Customize the main toolbar content.
• Confirm application exit (on or off).
• Close MellowPlayer to the system tray.
• Turn on/off web page scrollbars.
• Automatic HiDPI scaling or apply your own scaling factor.
• Turn on/off the main tool bar.
• Native desktop notifications:
  • Enable notifications.
  • Display a notification when a new song starts.
  • Display a notification when playback is paused.
  • Display a notification when playback is resumed.
• Choice of themes.
• Keyboard shortcuts: Play/Pause, Next, Previous, Add to favorites, Restore window, Reload page, Select service, and Next service.
• Privacy – enable listening history (turned off by default).
  • Configurable listening history limit. Choose from: Last month, Last week, Last year, Never, Today, or Yesterday.
  • You can also define the user agent.
• Implements the DBUS MPRIS 2 interface.
• Network proxy support – this is accessed from Settings / Streaming Services.
• Extend functionality by writing your own JavaScript plugins.
• User Scripts let you customize the appearance and feel of streaming services.
• Internationalization support – there are translations for Catalan, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish.
• Cross-platform support – the software runs under Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows (although the latter doesn’t offer MPRIS2 support).

Let’s now have a look at memory usage. Given that the software uses components of an integrated web browser, I wasn’t expecting lightweight memory usage.

Here’s the memory usage of MellowPlayer after listening to a few of the services for an hour.

Woah! MellowPlayer is consuming more than 1.4GB of RAM. A real memory hog! Of course, closing some of the services (thereby reducing the number of QtWebEngineProcess processes) helps reclaim some of the memory. But even with after closing the streaming services, the software was still consuming about 800MB of RAM.

Summary

MellowPlayer offers all the web-based music streaming I currently use and a lot more besides. While there are other apps that offer a wider range, there’s more than enough here for me. The implementation is pretty good although not spectacular. Network proxy support is appreciated!

There’s some glaring bugs in the software, such as the listening history being continually populated by the same track, rearranging streaming services don’t stick, and switching services often doesn’t stop the playback of the previous stream.

Given the software simply embeds websites into the player, there’s lots of standard functionality you’d expect from a good music player that’s likely never to be added to MellowPlayer. Gapless playback is an obvious example.

I’m not keen on some of the defaults such as the application keeps running in the background when you close the application, which is annoying depending on what desktop environment you use.

Note that the AppImage doesn’t let you play all of the music streaming services (specifically Spotify, Mixcloud, SoundCloud, Anghami, Pocket Casts, and Wynk). This is because they require proprietary audio codecs which are not included with the AppImage. It’s best to use a package provided by your distribution, rather than the AppImage, so that you have access to all the services.

Website: colinduquesnoy.gitlab.io/MellowPlayer
Support: Documentation
Developer: Colin Duquesnoy and contributors
License: The project’s GitLab page says the GNU General Public License applies, whereas the software implies GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later.

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Learn a few techniques for avoiding the pipe and making your command-line commands more efficient.

Anyone who uses the command line would acknowledge how powerful the pipe is. Because of the pipe, you can take the output from one command and feed it to another command as input. What’s more, you can chain one command after another until you have exactly the output you want.

Pipes are powerful, but people also tend to overuse them. Although it’s not necessarily wrong to do so, and it may not even be less efficient, it does make your commands more complicated. More important though, it also wastes keystrokes! Here I highlight a few examples where pipes are commonly used but aren’t necessary.

Stop Putting Your Cat in Your Pipe

One of the most common overuses of the pipe is in conjunction with cat. The cat command concatenates multiple files from input into a single output, but it has become the overworked workhorse for piped commands. You often will find people using cat just to output the contents of a single file so they can feed it into a pipe. Here’s the most common example:

cat file | grep "foo"

Far too often, if people want to find out whether a file contains a particular pattern, they’ll cat the file piped into a grep command. This works, but grep can take a filename as an argument directly, so you can replace the above command with:

grep "foo" file

The next most common overuse of cat is when you want to sort the output from one or more files:

cat file1 file2 | sort | uniq

Like with grep, sort supports multiple files as arguments, so you can replace the above with:

sort file1 file2 | uniq

In general, every time you find yourself catting a file into a pipe, re-examine the piped command and see whether it can accept files directly as input first either as direct arguments or as STDIN redirection. For instance, both sort and grep can accept files as arguments as you saw earlier, but if they couldn’t, you could achieve the same thing with redirection:

sort < file1 file2 | uniq
grep "foo" < file

Remove Files without xargs

The xargs command is very powerful on the command line—in particular, when piped to from the findcommand. Often you’ll use the find command to pick out files that have a certain criteria. Once you have identified those files, you naturally want to pipe that output to some command to operate on them. What you’ll eventually discover is that commands often have upper limits on the number of arguments they can accept.

So for instance, if you wanted to perform the somewhat dangerous operation of finding and removing all of the files under a directory that match a certain pattern (say, all mp3s), you might be tempted to do something like this:

find ./ -name "*.mp3" -type f -print0 | rm -f

Of course, you should never directly pipe a find command to remove. First, you should always pipe to echo to ensure that the files you are about to delete are the ones you want to delete:

find ./ -name "*.mp3" -type f -print0 | echo

If you have a lot of files that match the pattern, you’ll probably get an error about the number of arguments on the command line, and this is where xargs normally comes in:

find ./ -name "*.mp3" -type f -print0 | xargs echo
find ./ -name "*.mp3" -type f -print0 | xargs rm -f

This is better, but if you want to delete files, you don’t need to use a pipe at all. Instead, first just use the find command without a piped command to see what files would be deleted:

find ./ -name '*.mp3" -type f

Then take advantage of find‘s -delete argument to delete them without piping to another command:

find ./ -name '*.mp3" -type f -delete

So next time you find your pinky finger stretching for the pipe key, pause for a second and think about whether you can combine two commands into one. Your efficiency and poor overworked pinky finger (whoever thought it made sense for the pinky to have the heaviest workload on a keyboard?) will thank you.

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Usually, it’s not advised to run a GUI (Graphical User Interface) on a server system. Operation on any server should be done on the CLI (Command Line Interface). The primary reason for this is that GUI exerts a lot of demand on hardware resources such as RAM and CPU. However, if you are a little curious and want to try out different light-weight Desktop managers on one of your servers, follow this guide.

In this tutorial, I am going to cover the installation of 7 desktop environments on Ubuntu.

• MATE core
• Lubuntu core
• Kubuntu core
• XFCE
• LXDE
• GNOME
• Budgie Desktop

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu server 18.04 with SSH access
• A non-root user with sudo privileges

Before getting started, ensure that you update & upgrade your system

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Next, install tasksel manager.

$sudo apt install tasksel

Now we can begin installing the various Desktop environments.

1) Mate Core Server Desktop

Installing the MATE desktop use the following command

$ sudo tasksel install ubuntu-mate-core

Once the GUI is up and running launch it using the following option

$ sudo service lightdm start

2) Lubuntu Core Server Desktop

This is considered to be the most lightweight and resource friendly GUI for Ubuntu 18.04 server
It is based on the LXDE desktop environment. To install Lubuntu execute

$ sudo tasksel install lubuntu-core

Once the Lubuntu-core GUI is successfully installed, launch the display manager by running the command below or simply by rebooting your system

$ sudo service lightdm start

Thereafter, Log out and click on the button as shown to select the GUI manager of your choice

In the drop-down list, click on Lubuntu

Log in and Lubuntu will be launched as shown

3) Kubuntu Core Server Desktop

Xubuntu is yet another light-weight desktop environment that borrows a lot from Xfce desktop environment.

To get started with the installation of Xubuntu run the command below

$ sudo tasksel install kubuntu-desktop

Once it is successfully installed, start the display manager by running the command below or simply restart your server

$ sudo service lightdm start

Once again, log out or restart your machine and from drop the drop-down list, select Kubuntu

4) XFCE

Xubuntu borrows a leaf from the Xfce4 environment. To install it use the following command

# sudo tasksel install xfce4-slim

After the GUI installation, use the command to activate it

# sudo service slim start

This will prompt you to select the default manager. Select slim and hit ENTER.

Log out or reboot and select ‘Xfce’ option from the drop-down list and login using your credentials.

Shortly, the Xfce display manager will come to life.

5) LXDE

This desktop is considered the most economical to system resources. Lubuntu is based on LXDE desktop environment. Use the following command

$ sudo apt-get install lxde

To start LXDE, log out or reboot and select ‘LXDE’ from the drop-down list of display managers on log on.

6) GNOME

Gnome will take typically 5 to 10 minutes to install depending on the hardware and software requirements your server has. Run the following command to install Gnome

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop

or

$sudo tasksel ubuntu-desktop

To activate Gnome, restart the server or use the following command

$ sudo service lightdm start

7) Budgie Desktop

Finally, let us install Budgie Desktop environment. To accomplish this, execute the following command

$ sudo apt install ubuntu-budgie-desktop

After successful installation, log out and select the Budgie desktop option. Log in with your username and password and enjoy the beauty of budgie!

Sometimes you need the GUI on your Ubuntu server to handle simple day-to-day tasks that need quick interaction without going deep into the server settings. Feel free to try out the various display managers and let us know your thoughts.

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HTTPie (pronounced aitch-tee-tee-pie) is a cURL-like, modern, user-friendly, and cross-platform command line HTTP client written in Python. It is designed to make CLI interaction with web services easy and as user-friendly as possible.

It has a simple http command that enables users to send arbitrary HTTP requests using a straightforward and natural syntax. It is used primarily for testing, trouble-free debugging, and mainly interacting with HTTP servers, web services and RESTful APIs.

• HTTPie comes with an intuitive UI and supports JSON.
• Expressive and intuitive command syntax.
• Syntax highlighting, formatted and colorized terminal output.
• HTTPS, proxies, and authentication support.
• Support for forms and file uploads.
• Support for arbitrary request data and headers.
• Wget-like downloads and extensions.
• Supports ython 2.7 and 3.x.

In this article, we will show how to install and use httpie with some basic examples in Linux.

How to Install and Use HTTPie in Linux

Most Linux distributions provide a HTTPie package that can be easily installed using the default system package manager, for example:

# apt-get install httpie  [On Debian/Ubuntu]
# dnf install httpie      [On Fedora]
# yum install httpie      [On CentOS/RHEL]
# pacman -S httpie        [On Arch Linux]

Once installed, the syntax for using httpie is:

$ http [options] [METHOD] URL [ITEM [ITEM]]

The most basic usage of httpie is to provide it a URL as an argument:

$ http example.com

Now let’s see some basic usage of httpie command with examples.

Send a HTTP Method

You can send a HTTP method in the request, for example, we will send the GET method which is used to request data from a specified resource. Note that the name of the HTTP method comes right before the URL argument.

$ http GET tecmint.lan

Upload a File

This example shows how to upload a file to transfer.sh using input redirection.

$ http https://transfer.sh < file.txt

Download a File

You can download a file as shown.

$ http https://transfer.sh/Vq3Kg/file.txt > file.txt		#using output redirection
OR
$ http --download https://transfer.sh/Vq3Kg/file.txt  	        #using wget format

Submit a Form

You can also submit data to a form as shown.

$ http --form POST tecmint.lan date='Hello World'

View Request Details

To see the request that is being sent, use -v option, for example.

$ http -v --form POST tecmint.lan date='Hello World'

Basic HTTP Auth

HTTPie also supports basic HTTP authentication from the CLI in the form:

$ http -a username:password http://tecmint.lan/admin/

Custom HTTP Headers

You can also define custom HTTP headers in using the Header:Value notation. We can test this using the following URL, which returns headers. Here, we have defined a custom User-Agent called ‘strong>TEST 1.0’:

$ http GET https://httpbin.org/headers User-Agent:'TEST 1.0'

See a complete list of usage options by running.

$ http --help
OR
$ man  ttp

You can find more usage examples from the HTTPie Github repository: https://github.com/jakubroztocil/httpie.

HTTPie is a cURL-like, modern, user-friendly command line HTTP client with simple and natural syntax, and displays colorized output. In this article, we have shown how to install and use httpie in Linux. If you have any questions, reach us via the comment form below.

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We’ve seen plenty of robots and we’ve seen a fair amount of fish, but have you seen a fish controlling a robot with a sword? Say hello to Feudal Alloy.

Note: Key provided by the developer.

In Feudal Alloy you play as Attu, a kind-hearted soul who looks after old robots. His village was attacked, oil supplies were pillaged and so he sets off to reclaim the stolen goods. As far as the story goes, it’s not exactly exciting or even remotely original. Frankly, I thought the intro story video was a bit boring and just a tad too long, nice art though.

Like a lot of exploration action-RPGs, it can be a little on the unforgiving side at times. I’ve had a few encounters that I simply wasn’t ready for. The first of which happened at only 30 minutes in, as I strolled into a room that started spewing out robot after robot to attack me. One too many spinning blades to the face later, I was reset back a couple of rooms—that’s going to need a bit more oil.

What makes it all that more difficult, is you have to manage your heat which acts like your stamina. Overheat during combat and you might find another spinning blade to the face or worse. Thankfully, you can stock up on plenty of cooling liquid to use to cool yourself down and freeze your heat gauge momentarily which is pretty cool.

One of the major negatives in Feudal Alloy is the sound work. The music is incredibly repetitive, as is the hissing noises you make when you’re moving around. Honestly, as much as I genuinely wanted to share my love about the game it became pretty irritating which is a shame. It’s a good job I enjoyed the exploration, which does make up for it. Exploration is a heavy part of the game, as of course you start off with nothing and only the very basic abilities and it’s up to you to explore and find what you need.

The art design is the absolute highlight here, the first shopkeeper took me by surprise with the hamster wheel I will admit:

Some incredible talent went into the design work, while there’s a few places that could have been better like the backdrops the overall design was fantastic. Even when games have issues, if you enjoy what you’re seeing it certainly helps you overlook them.

Bonus points for doing something truly different with the protagonist here. We’ve seen all sorts of people before but this really was unique.

The Linux version does work beautifully, Steam Controller was perfection and I had zero issues with it. Most importantly though, is it worth your hard earned money and your valuable time? I would say so, if you enjoy action-RPGs with a sprinkle of metroidvania.

Available to check out on Humble Store, GOG and Steam.

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With last week’s release of Linux 5.0-rc1, it’s confirmed that Linus Torvalds has finally decided to adopt the 5.x series.

The kernel enthusiasts and developers have been waiting for this change since the release of Linux 4.17. Back then, Linus Torvalds hinted at the possibility of the jump to place after 4.20 release.

“I suspect that around 4.20 – which is I run out of fingers and toes to keep track of minor releases, and thus start getting mightily confused – I’ll switch over,” he said.

In another past update, he said that version 5.0 would surely happen someday but it would be “meaningless.”

Coming back to the present day, Linus has said that the jump to 5.0 doesn’t mean anything and he simply “ran out of fingers and
toes to count on.”

“The numbering change is not indicative of anything special,” he said.

Moreover, he also mentioned that there aren’t any major features that prompted this numbering either. “So go wild. Make up your own reason for why it’s 5.0,” he further added.

Linus Torvalds

“Go test. Kick the tires. Be the first kid on your block running a 5.0 pre-release kernel.”

Now that we’re done with all the “secret” reasons behind this move to 5.x series, we can expect Linux 5.0 to arrive in early March.

There are many features being lined up for this release and I’d covering those in the release announcement post. Meanwhile, keep reading Fossbytes for latest tech updates.

Also Read: Best Lightweight Linux Distros For Old Computers

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Information Gathering

---

 

• ace-voip
• Amap
• APT2
• arp-scan
• Automater
• bing-ip2hosts
• braa
• CaseFile
• CDPSnarf
• cisco-torch
• copy-router-config
• DMitry
• dnmap
• dnsenum
• dnsmap
• DNSRecon
• dnstracer
• dnswalk
• DotDotPwn
• enum4linux
• enumIAX
• EyeWitness
• Faraday
• Fierce
• Firewalk
• fragroute
• fragrouter
• Ghost Phisher
• GoLismero
• goofile
• hping3
• ident-user-enum
• InSpy
• InTrace
• iSMTP
• lbd
• Maltego Teeth
• masscan
• Metagoofil
• Miranda
• nbtscan-unixwiz
• Nikto
• Nmap
• ntop
• OSRFramework
• p0f
• Parsero
• Recon-ng
• SET
• SMBMap
• smtp-user-enum
• snmp-check
• SPARTA
• sslcaudit
• SSLsplit
• sslstrip
• SSLyze
• Sublist3r
• THC-IPV6
• theHarvester
• TLSSLed
• twofi
• Unicornscan
• URLCrazy
• Wireshark
• WOL-E
• Xplico

Vulnerability Analysis

---

 

• BBQSQL
• BED
• cisco-auditing-tool
• cisco-global-exploiter
• cisco-ocs
• cisco-torch
• copy-router-config
• Doona
• DotDotPwn
• HexorBase
• jSQL Injection
• Lynis
• Nmap
• ohrwurm
• openvas
• Oscanner
• Powerfuzzer
• sfuzz
• SidGuesser
• SIPArmyKnife
• sqlmap
• Sqlninja
• sqlsus
• THC-IPV6
• tnscmd10g
• unix-privesc-check
• Yersinia

Exploitation Tools

---

 

• Armitage
• Backdoor Factory
• BeEF
• cisco-auditing-tool
• cisco-global-exploiter
• cisco-ocs
• cisco-torch
• Commix
• crackle
• exploitdb
• jboss-autopwn
• Linux Exploit Suggester
• Maltego Teeth
• Metasploit Framework
• MSFPC
• RouterSploit
• SET
• ShellNoob
• sqlmap
• THC-IPV6
• Yersinia

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Slack is a popular way for teams to collaborate in real time chat, with plenty of tools and organization to keep conversations on track and focused. Plenty of offices have adopted Slack, and it’s become and absolute necessity for distributed teams.

While you can use Slack through your web browser, its simpler and generally more efficient to install the official Slack client on your desktop. Slack supports Linux with Debian and RPM packages as well as an official Snap. As a result, it’s simple to get running with Slack on your distribution of choice.

Install Slack

While you won’t find Slack in many distribution repositories, you won’t have much trouble installing it. As an added bonus, the Debian and RPM packages provided by Slack also set up repositories on your system, so you’ll receive regular updates, whenever they become available.

Ubuntu/Debian

Open your browser, and go to Slack’s Linux download page. Click the button to download the “.DEB” package. Save it.

Once you have the package downloaded, open your terminal emulator, and change the directory into your download folder.

From there, use dpkg to install the package.

sudo dpkg -i slack-desktop-3.3.4-amd64.deb

If you run into missing dependencies, fix it with Apt.

sudo apt –fix-broken install

Fedora

Fedora is another officially supported distribution. Open your web browser and go to the Slack download page. Click the button for the “.RPM” package. When prompted, save the package.

After the download finishes, open your terminal, and change into your download directory.

Now, use the “rpm” command to install the package directly.

sudo rpm -i slack-3.3.4-0.1.fc21.x86_64.rpm

Arch Linux

Arch users can find the latest version of Slack in the AUR. If you haven’t set up an AUR helper on your system, go to Slack’s AUR page, and clone the Git repository there. Change into the directory, and build and install the package with makepkg.

cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/slack-desktop.git
cd slack-desktop
makepkg -si

If you do have an AUR helper, just install the Slack client.

sudo pikaur -S slack-desktop

Snap

For everyone else, the snap is always a good option. It’s an officially packaged and supported snap straight from Slack. Just install it on your system.

Using Slack

Slack is a graphical application. Most desktop environments put it under the “Internet” category. On GNOME you’ll find it listed alphabetically under “Slack.” Go ahead and launch it.

Slack will start right away by asking for the URL of the workspace you want to join. Enter it and click “Continue.”

Next, Slack will ask for the email address you have associated with that workspace. Enter that, too.

Finally, enter your password for the workspace. Once you do, Slack will sign you in.

After you’re signed in, you can get to work using Slack. You can click on the different channels to move between them. To the far left, you’ll see the icon associated with your workspace and a plus sign icon below it. Click the plus if you’d like to sign in to an additional workspace.

Note the Slack icon in your system tray. You will receive desktop notifications from Slack, and if one arrives when you were away, you’ll see the blue dot in the tray icon turn red.

You’re now ready to use Slack on Linux like a pro!

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