Linux Blimp

Windows 7 is an excellent operating system. It is a no-nonsense computing experience that just works. There are no ugly live tiles or forced updates. Conversely, Windows 10 is largely trash. Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft’s latest operating system isn’t all bad, but it has many poor design choices, and the intrusive telemetry makes it feel like you are being spied on when using your own computer. Worst of all, it has proven to be very buggy — it has been deleting important user files! That is scary stuff…

Many Windows users passed on both Windows 8.x and Windows 10, opting to stay on Windows 7. You know what? I don’t blame them. Unfortunately, starting today, the Windows 7 death clock begins ticking away. You see, in exactly one year, Microsoft will end support for Windows 7. While the operating system will still function, it is foolish to use an unsupported OS. These folks will have to decide if they want to “upgrade” to Window 10 or opt for something entirely different. Today, Netrunner 19.01 “Blackbird” — a Linux-based operating system that is reminiscent of Windows 7 — is finally released. If you don’t want to run Windows 10 on your PC, you should definitely give Blackbird a try before the Windows 7 support ends.

ALSO READ: Canonical shares the Top 10 Linux Snaps of 2018 — Spotify, Slack, Plex, VLC, and more!

“The Firefox in this version comes with the Plasma-Integration addon preinstalled. It adds visual feedback for downloading items in the taskbar as well as media control from within Plasma. As with on Rolling, GTK Apps now use Kwin borders integrating nicely with the rest of the Plasma desktop environment. Krita is shipped as 4.x release, which got some nice overhauls and features compared to previous version,” says The Netrunner Team.

ALSO READ: Microsoft ends Windows 7 support one year from today

The team further says, “Blackbird ships with a new Look and Feel Theme called ‘Netrunner Black’ that is based on a dark, yet not too harsh contrasting visual. Using the Kvantum Theme engine plus the Alpha-Black Plasma Theme allowed us to create a more 3D-looking design. For those who prefer the classic look, going back to the well-known LNF is a three-button click and explained under ‘Tips’ in our current Readme Section. Moving the mouse into the lower right corner now visibly activates the ‘Minimize all Windows to show Desktop’ function by a light glow.”

The Netrunner devs share the following significant package updates.

• KDE Plasma 5.14.3
• KDE Frameworks 5.51
• KDE Applications 18.08
• Qt 5.11.3
• Linux Kernel 4.19.0~1
• Firefox Quantum 64.0
• Thunderbird 60.3

For those that are comfortable with the Windows 7 start menu, you will totally feel like home with this Linux-based operating system. Netrunner leverages the excellent KDE Plasma desktop environment which offers a very familiar experience. Overall, Netrunner is one of the most polished and user-friendly Linux-based operating system I’ve ever used. If you are unsure about Linux, you will be very pleasantly surprised.

Best of all, you do not have to commit to Netrunner as it offers a live installation disk. What does that mean? Well, you can run it from a flash drive before installing it to your computer’s hard drive or solid state drive. After all, Linux isn’t for everybody — you can simply take it for a test drive to see if it meets your needs.

If you are ready to try the free Debian-based Netrunner 19.01 “Blackbird,” you can download it here. To create installation media, simply follow the useful guide here.

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An easy-to-install distribution of the LAMP Stack software that can be launched in one click

Source

Zabbix is an open source monitoring tool. With Zabbix, you can monitor your servers, virtual machines, networks, cloud services and many more. It is a very useful tool for small, medium and large IT organizations. In this article, I will show you how to install Zabbix on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So, let’s get started.

Zabbix is not available in the official package repository of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. But, you can easily add the official pakage repository of Zabbix on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and install Zabbix from there.

First, navigate to the ~/Downloads directory with the following command:

Now, download the Zabbix package repository DEB file with the following command:

$ wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.0/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/
zabbix-release_4.0-2+bionic_all.deb

The DEB package file should be downloaded.

As you can see, a new DEB file is downloaded in the ~/Downloads directory.

Now, install the DEB package file with the following command:

$ sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release*.deb

The Zabbix official package repository should be added.

Updating APT Package Repository Cache:

Now, you have to update the APT package repository cache.

To do that, run the following command:

The APT package repository cache should be updated.

Installing and Configuring Zabbix:

Now, you can install Zabbix with the following command:

$ sudo apt install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-agent

Now, press y and then press <Enter>.

Zabbix is being installed.

Zabbix is installed at this point.

Now, you have to create a MySQL/MariaDB database for Zabbix.

To do that, start MySQL/MariaDB console as root with the following command:

If you have MySQL/MariaDB password set for the root user, then you can use the following command to login to the console as root:

And then enter the password and you should be logged in.

Once you’re logged into the MySQL/MariaDB console, it should look something like this.

Now, create a database zabbix with the following SQL command:

MariaDB [(none)]> create database zabbix character set utf8 collate utf8_bin;

The database zabbix should be created.

Now, grant all privileges to the user zabbix to the database zabbix you just created and also set a password for the user zabbix with the following SQL command:

MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost identified by
‘YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE’;

NOTE: Make sure to replace YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE with your desired password.

The required permissions should be granted and the password should be set. I set the password zabbix in this article for simplicity.

Now, exit out of the MySQL/MariaDB console with the following command:

Now, create the required tables with the following command:

$ zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql*/create.sql.gz | mysql -uzabbix -Dzabbix -pzabbix

NOTE: Make sure you replace the password zabbix with the password that you set.

Now, you have to edit the Zabbix configuration file /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf with the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Now, find the line DBUser=zabbix and add a new line below it as marked in the screenshot below. Once you’re done, press <Ctrl> + x followed by y and then press <Enter> to save the file.

NOTE: DBPassword=zabbix, sets the database password to zabbix. Replace zabbix with the password that you set.

Now, you have to set the correct time zone to the PHP engine. To do that, edit the configuration file /etc/zabbix/apache.conf with the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/zabbix/apache.conf

Now, scroll down a little bit and find the marked lines. Remove the hash (#) sign to uncomment them and change Europe/Riga to your desired time zone. You can find more information on what to put there at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones.

The final configuration file in my case looks as follows. Once you’re done, press <Ctrl> + x followed by y and then press <Enter> to save the file.

Now, restart zabbix-server, zabbix-agent and apache2 services with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

Now add zabbix-server, zabbix-agent and apache2 services to the system startup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

zabbix-server, zabbix-agent and apache2 services should be added to the system startup and they will start automatically when your computer boots from now on.

Now, run the following command to find the IP address of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine:

As you can see, in my case the IP address of my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine is 192.168.21.128. It should be different for you. So, make sure you replace it with yours from now on.

Now, visit http://192.168.21.128/zabbix from your favorite web browser and you should see the following page. As you’re running Zabbix frontend for the first time, you have to configure the Zabbix frontend. To do that, click on Next step.

Now, make sure all of the pre-requisites are OK. Then, click on Next step.

Now, type in the password for the MySQL/MariaDB database user zabbix (in my case it is zabbix) and click on Next step.

Now, click on Next step.

Make sure all the information is correct. Then, click on Next step.

Zabbix should be successfully configured. Now, click on Finish.

Now you should be able to login as the default user Admin with the default password zabbix.

Once you log in, you should see the Zabbix dashboard. Now, you can use Zabbix as much as you want.

That’s how you install Zabbix on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Thanks for reading this article.

Source

Source

This Open Source project provides a playlist parser library for the Totem video player

Source

Now that Steam has the ability officially to override a Linux game and run it through Steam Play instead, let’s take a quick look at some differences in performance.

Before I begin, let’s make something clear. I absolutely value the effort developers put into Linux games, I do think cross-platform development is incredibly important so we don’t end up with more lock-in. However, let’s be realistic for a moment. Technology moves on and it’s not financially worth it to keep updating old games, they just don’t sell as well as newer games (with exceptions of course). The intention with such comparisons is not to favour any developer or any method of gaming on Linux. It’s just to show what’s possible, what the differences are, what doesn’t work and so on. As the years go on, there will be more ways to run older games better and better, of that I’ve no doubt.

I’m not a zealot for any one particular method of gaming either and as a fan of all things gaming, software and technology, I thought it might be interesting and hopefully you do too.

Note: All tests done at 1080p on Ubuntu 18.10, with the NVIDIA 415.25 driver and my 980ti.

First up, let’s take a look at Tomb Raider (2013) which arrived on Linux back in 2016. Since Tomb Raider has a handy built-in benchmark tool, we will start off simply by showing the results:

Benchmarks also only tell one part of the story. In the case of Tomb Raider, through Steam Play it needed to run through entirely at least once or there was quite a lot of stuttering which wasn’t the case in the Linux version. However, the Linux version has parts of the game where performance dives a lot and the Steam Play version is better there. To Feral Interactive’s credit (who ported it to Linux), their later ports are miles ahead of this.

Sidenote: For the videos, the titles “Steam Play” and “Linux” show their corresponding videos to the side, in case that wasn’t clear.

In the case of Cities: Skylines which released on Linux back in 2015 at the same time as the Windows version, testing out the “Benchmark” map from the Steam Workshop resulted in something I didn’t expect. The performance was very close but the Linux version was noticeably smoother with a couple of extra FPS.

Either way, a big city doesn’t perform well no matter how you do it. I should note here too, that even though the Linux versions performs slightly better it does eat up quite a bit more RAM.

Next up, MXGP3 a rather new Linux port from November 2018. Given how it’s quite new, I honestly would have thought it would do reasonably well. As noted in my previous article, the performance of the Linux version isn’t very good and Steam Play blows it out of the water.

Not a pretty picture, with the official Linux version struggling at times to even hit 30FPS it makes it difficult to control. It’s also not a very good game but that’s a different thing altogether…

Dying Light is up next, a personal favourite of mine. Also no benchmark mode I could find for the Linux version, so a comparison video keeping it as close as I could:

As you can see, both versions work quite well. I’ve completed the game more than once and I was actually happy enough with the performance of the Linux version, it was good enough and playable. However, the Steam Play version with Vulkan is at times around double the performance of the Linux version which is quite striking.

Next up, I tried Total War: WARHAMMER II. A Linux port from Feral Interactive released only in November last year. This would have been quite an exciting comparison, since the Linux version uses Vulkan. First issue encountered when trying it in Steam Play, is that it gives you a completely blank white launcher, so you need to opt into their new launcher beta which does work in Steam Play.

So you hit play on the fancy new launcher, guess what happens next? You get a brief moment of life, a glorious flash of black…and then it just quits to the desktop. Happens across both Proton 3.7 and 3.16. So, Total War: WARHAMMER II in Steam Play is a dud whereas the actual Linux version does work rather nicely.

The curious one is Rise of the Tomb Raider, I’ve been told this should work in Steam Play to do a comparison. However, it faced the same issue for me as Total War: WARHAMMER II. A black screen for a moment and then it quits on me. I have sent a log to the creator of DXVK for that, maybe it will help somewhere. Again, the Linux version from Feral works nicely.

The testing in this article was going to be longer, I had some grand plans for doing a lot of comparisons. However, Steam Play is still in beta and it has an uphill battle ahead of it. Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War: WARHAMMER II, Civilization VI, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and BioShock Infinite didn’t work at all in Steam Play across both Proton 3.16 and 3.7 but the Linux versions do work. Sad about not being able to test more, but it’s an example of how a supported release is the better option for certain games (especially multiplayer games like Darwin Project) and not the answer to everything as some claim. Great as an option but not quite ready for prime time overall, it will be fun to watch it evolve over this next year.

As I’ve said before though, with Steam Play it’s not just a case of squeezing out extra performance. It’s also a question of support and features of the Linux version (gamepad support, fullscreen issues, missing graphics options and so on). From a performance standpoint though, it shows clearly Linux can be a gaming platform that performs well.

The biggest question in my mind is: do you really get any true support with games you purchase to play in Steam Play? What exactly are you paying for? I don’t really have an answer for that. For a purchased game, the developer (you would think) would be focused on it and fix issues as they come up. With Steam Play though, it covers such a massive list you could end up waiting a while for a fix (if it’s possible at all). Thankfully, Valve has made a good step towards stopping Steam Play updates breaking games, since the latest Steam client beta no longer overrides the Proton version for a game in the whitelist.

I may do more tests in future, if readers want me to you will need to let me know what games you want to see tested (they have to have a benchmark mode in the Linux version). We still don’t have a decent amount of Linux games that actually do have a benchmark mode, so it does make such a thing rather tricky to get a lot of value out of it and comparison videos eat a huge amount of time for even the most basic rough editing.

If you wish to support GamingOnLinux, we have many options available see here.

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One of the most commonly used and reliable ways of getting help under Unix-like systems is via man pages. Man pages are the standard documentation for every Unix-like system and they correspond to online manuals for programs, functions, libraries, system calls, formal standards and conventions, file formats and so on. However, man pages suffer from many failings one of which is they are too long and some people just don’t like to read too much text on the screen.

The TLDR (stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read“. ) pages are summarized practical usage examples of commands on different operating systems including Linux. They simplify man pages by offering practical examples.

Read Also: 5 Useful Tools to Remember Linux Commands Forever

TLDR is an Internet slang, meaning a post, article, comment or anything such as a manual page was too long, and whoever used the phrase didn’t read it for that reason. The content of TLDR pages is openly available under the permissive MIT License.

In this short article, we will show how to install and use TLDR pages in Linux.

Requirements

1. Install Latest Nodejs and NPM Version in Linux Systems

Before installing, you can try the live demo of TLDR.

How to Install TLDR Pages in Linux Systems

To conveniently access TLDR pages, you need to install one of the supported clients called Node.js, which is the original client for the tldr-pages project. We can install it from NPM by running.

$ sudo npm install -g tldr

TLDR also available as a Snap package, to install it, run.

$ sudo snap install tldr

After installing the TLDR client, you can view man pages of any command, for example tar command here (you can use any other command here):

$ tldr tar

View Tar Command Man Page

Here is another example of accessing the summarized man page for ls command.

$ tldr ls

View ls Command Man Page

To list all commands for the chosen platform in the cache, use the -l flag.

$ tldr -l 

List All Linux Commands

To list all supported commands in the cache, use the -a flag.

$ tldr -a

You can update or clear the local cache by running.

$ tldr -u	#update local cache 
OR
$ tldr -c 	#clear local cache 

To search pages using keywords, use the -s options, for example.

$ tldr -s  "list of all files, sorted by modification date"

Search Linux Commands Using Keyword

To change the color theme (simple, base16, ocean), use the -t flag.

$ tldr -t ocean

You can also show a random command, with the -r flag.

$ tldr -r   

View Man Page for Random Linux Command

You can see a complete list of supported options by running.

$ tldr -h

Note: You can find a list of all supported and dedicated client applications for different platforms, in the TLDR clients wiki page.

TLDR Project Homepage: https://tldr.sh/

That’s all for now! The TLDR pages are summarized practical examples of commands provided by the community. In this short article, we’ve showed how to install and use TLDR pages in Linux. Use the feedback form to share your thoughts about TLDR or share with us any similar programs out there.

Source

A powerful and cross-platform, yet commercial application for file and folder comparison and synchronization

Source

The Linux distribution Debian GNU/Linux [1] is made available as different CD/DVD ISO images. These images are prepared to fit to the needs of different interests and usage cases — desktop environment, server, or mobile devices. At present, the following image variants are offered from the website of the Debian project and the according mirror network:

• a full set of CD/DVD images that contains all the available packages[2]
• a single CD/DVD image with a selection of packages that are tailor-made for a specific desktop environment — GNOME [3], XFCE [4], and for the commandline, only.
• a smaller CD image for network-based installation [5]
• a tiny CD image for network-based installation [5]
• a live CD/DVD [6] in order to test Debian GNU/Linux before installing it
• a cloud image [7]

Downloading the right image file depends on your internet connection (bandwidth), which combination of packages fits your needs, and your level of experience in order to setup and maintain your installation. All the images are available from the mirror network behind the website of the Debian project [8].

What is Debian Netinstall?

As already briefly discussed above a Netinstall image is a smaller CD/DVD image with a size between 150Mb and 300Mb. The actual image size depends on the processor architecture used on your system. Solely, the image contains the setup routines (called Debian Installer) for both text-only and graphical installation as well as the software packages in order to setup a very basic but working Debian GNU/Linux installation. In contrast, the tiny image with a size of about 120Mb contains the Debian Installer, and the network configuration, only.

During the setup, the Debian Installer will ask you which Apt repository you would like to use. An Apt repository is a place that provides the Debian software packages. The tools for package management will retrieve the selected software packages from this location, and install them locally on your system. In this case as an Apt repository we do not use the CD/DVD but a so-called package mirror. This package mirror is a server that is connected to the internet, and that is why internet access is required during the setting up of your system. Furthermore, installing new software or updating existing software packages needs to meet the same technical requirements as above — the packages are retrieved from the same Apt repository too.

Choosing the desired package mirror in Debian GNU/Linux 9

Apt Repositories

The address of the chosen Apt repository is stored in the file /etc/apt/sources.list. In general, this is a text file and contains several entries. According to the previously chosen package mirror it looks as follows:

The first group of lines refers to regular software packages, the second group to the according security updates, and the third group to software updates for these packages. Each line refers to Debian packages (a line starting with deb), or Debian source packages (a line starting with deb-src). Source packages are of interest for you in case you would like to download the source code of the software you use.

The Debian GNU/Linux release is either specified by the alias name of the release — here it is Stretch from Toy Story [9] –, or its release state, for example stable, testing, or unstable. At the end of each line, main and contrib reflect the chosen package categories. The keyword main refers to free software, contrib refers to free software that depends on non-free software, and non-free indicates software packages that do not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)[10].

Finding the right package mirror

Up until now our setup is based on static entries, only, that are not intended to change. This works well for computers that are kept mostly at the same place during their entire usage.

As of a Debian network installation, the right package mirror plays an important role. When choosing a package mirror take the following criteria into account:

• your network connection
• your geographic location
• the desired availability of the package mirror
• reliability

Experiences from managing Linux systems for the last decade show, that chosing a primary package mirror in the same country as the system works best. Such a package mirror should be network-wise nearby, and provide software packages for all the architectures we need. Reliability refers to the person, institute, or company that is responsible for the package mirror we retrieve software from.

A rather dynamic setup can be helpful for mobile devices such as laptops and notebooks. The two commands netselect [11] and netselect-apt [12] come into play. netselect simply expects a list of package mirrors, and validates them regarding availability, ping time as well as the packet loss between the package mirror and your system. The example below demonstrates this for five different mirrors. The last line of the output contains the result — the recommended package mirror is ftp.debian.org.

In contrast, netselect-apt uses netselect to find the best package mirror for your location. netselect-apt asks for the country (-c), the number of package mirrors (-t), the architecture (-a), and the release state (-n). The example below discovers the top-five package mirrors in France that offer stable packages for the amd64 architecture:

The output is a file called sources.list that is stored in the directory you run the command from. Using the additional option “-o filename” you specify an output file with a name and path of your choice. Nevertheless, you can directly use the new file as a replacement for your original file /etc/apt/sources.list.

Software Strategy

Doing a setup from a smaller installation image gives you the opportunity to make decisions which software to use. We recommend to install what you need on your system, only. The less software packages are installed, the less updates have to be done. So far, this strategy works well for server, desktop systems, routers (specialized devices), and mobile devices.

Keeping your system up-to-date

Maintaining a system means taking care of your setup, and keeping it up-to-date. Install security patches and do software updates regularly, with the help of the package manager like apt.

Often the next step is forgotten — tidying up your system. This includes removing unused software packages, and cleaning the package cache that is located in /var/cache/apt/archives. In the first case the commands “apt autoremove”, “deborphan” [13] and “debfoster” [14] help — they detect unused packages, and let you specify which software shall be kept. Mostly, the removed packages belong to the categories library (lib and oldlib), or development (libdevel). The following example demonstrates this for the tool deborphan. The output columns represent the package size, the package category, the package name, and the package priority.

In order to remove the orphaned packages you can use the following command:

Still, it will ask you to confirm before removal of the software packages. Next, cleaning the package cache needs to be done. You may either remove the files by “rm /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb”), or use apt or apt-get as follows:

Dealing with Release Changes

In contrast to other Linux distributions, Debian GNU/Linux does not have a fixed release cycle. A new release is available about every two years. Version 10 is expected to be published in mid-2019.

Updating your existing setup is comparable easy. Take the following thoughts into account and follow these steps:

1. Read the documentation for the release change, the so-called Release Notes. They are available from the website of the Debian project, and also part of the image you have chosen before.
2. Have your credentials for administrative actions at hand.
3. Open a terminal, and run the next steps in a terminal multiplexer like screen [15] or tmux [16].
4. Backup the most important data of your system, and validate the backup for being complete.
5. Update your current package list using “apt-get update” or “apt update”.
6. Check your system for orphans and unused software packages using deborphan, or “apt-get autoremove”. Unused packages do not need to be updated.
7. Run the command “apt-get upgrade” to install the latest software updates.
8. Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list, and set the new distribution name, for example from Stretch to Buster.
9. Update the package list using “apt update” or “apt-get update”.
10. Start the release change by running “apt-get dist-upgrade”. All existing packages are updated.

The last step may take a while, but leads to a new Debian GNU/Linux system. It might be helpful to reboot the system once in order to start with a new Linux kernel.

Conclusion

Setting up a network-based installation, and keeping it alive is simple. Follow the recommendations we gave you in this article, and using your Linux system will be fun.

Links and References

* [1] Debian GNU/Linux, http://debian.org/
* [2] Debian on CDs/DVDs, https://www.debian.org/CD/index.en.html
* [3] GNOME, https://www.gnome.org/
* [4] XFCE, https://xfce.org/
* [5] Installing Debian via the Internet, https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst.en.html
* [6] Debian Live install images, https://www.debian.org/CD/live/index.en.html
* [7] Debian Official Cloud Images, https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/
* [8] Debian mirror network, https://cdimage.debian.org/
* [9] Stretch at the Pixar Wiki, http://pixar.wikia.com/wiki/Stretch
* [10] Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses
* [11] netselect Debian package, https://packages.debian.org/stretch/netselect
* [12] netselect-apt Debian package, https://packages.debian.org/stretch/netselect-apt
* [13] deborphan Debian package, https://packages.debian.org/stretch/deborphan
* [14] debfoster Debian package, https://packages.debian.org/stretch/debfoster
* [15] screen, https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
* [16] tmux, https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

Source

An easy-to-use and cross-platform Mercurial, Subversion and Git client software!

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