I know most of the people reading this article are developers on Linux or Linux enthusiasts and don’t need any introduction to the Git. But for the noobs out there, Git is one of the most popular and most widely used version control systems available for software development and other similar kind of work. Basically Git is tool which can be managed and used through command line and it is one of the most easy to use command line version control tools available for Linux developers and users.With most of the developers nowadays using graphical tools for programming and development, there is no surprise they are also seeking for GUI tools which could prove to be efficient alternatives to Git command line tool. There are many Git GUI clients available for Linux and its distros like Ubuntu which offer most of the features of Git command line tool with more efficiency and reliability.

So today we’re going to have a look at best 10 Git GUI clients which you can install on Ubuntu and use them as version control tool for software development.

1. SmartGit

SmartGit is a cross-platform graphical Git client with seamless support for SVN, GitHub and Bitbucket. Apart from Windows and macOS, SmartGit can easily be used on Linux and its distros like Ubuntu. Good thing about SmartGit is it includes everything you need in one single package which includes graphical merge, commit history, Git-Flow, SSH-Client, file compare and file merge.

During the testing I have tried it for the first time and I have to admit that it doesn’t take me long to get used to it thanks to its simple and easy to use user interface.

SmartGit is a highly customizable graphical Git client with options at your hand such as set preferences for merging and rebasing, layout control, built-in Conflict Solver tool, keyboard shortcuts, toolbars, syntax coloring and you can choose between pair of light and dark themes.

Software developers will find this Git client very useful because it focuses on the difficulties faced by developers and tries to make workflow as simple as possible for developers.

SmartGit

2. Git Cola

Written in Python, Git Cola is completely free but very powerful graphical Git client for Ubuntu and other Linux distros. It is the one of the best and fast version control tools available out there for software developers. It is simple but powerful client with features like clone, merge, push, pull and many other useful features.

Git Cola is also a cross-platform graphical client for Git which supports Windows, macOS, Linux and its popular distros such as Ubuntu and LinuxMint. It is an open-source GUI client for Git and it is highly customizable Git client out there. I have tried few tweaks during testing and it has responded as expected.

You can customize its window settings, language settings and many other features to enhance the work experience and make it hassle free.

$ sudo apt-get install git-cola

3. GitEye

GitEye from CollabNet is an easy-to-use Git GUI client which comes bundled with some useful tools which helps you improve development productivity. It offers push-button cloning for repositories of GitHub, CloudForge and TeamForge.

GitEye offers seamless integration with other popular tools such as Bugzilla, Jira, Hudson, Jenkins and many others. GitEye has clean and very powerful graphical user interface which is very easy-to-use with everything placed perfectly so that user finds whatever he needs easily.

It comes bundled with integrated issue tracker client that works both in online and offline mode, also it is equipped with Gerrit Code Review that provides notifications if there is any change or update in code. Overall it is any all-rounder package and many developers find this Git client very useful.

GitEye

4. GitKraken

GitKraken is another graphical Git client which is powerful and reliable, which supports both Git and GitHub to work with. GitKraken ships-in with very modern looking user interface which is eye-catching and easy to navigate. I’ll recommend GitKraken to the developers who daily engage in tedious development workflow because it offers some really useful features that make this task quite easier and hassle free.

Some of the notable features in GitKraken are built-in code editor, split view, syntax highlighting and file minimap. It also offers seamless integration with popular Git hosting services such as GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket. If you opt for GitKraken Pro then you can connect GitHub Enterprise, GitLab Self-Hosted, BitBucket Server and Azure DevOps.

As compared to other Git clients, GitKraken has really fast and reliable workflow. Well that is what I have noticed during all the Git clients listed here in this article.

GitKraken

5. GitForce

GitForce is another cross-platform visual front-end to Git command line tool and it works on Windows and Linux and its distros like Ubuntu. It is very simple and easy to use but very powerful and reliable version control tool available for Ubuntu.

Written in C# and .NET 3.5 framework, the main objective of GitForce is to provide simple and easy-to-use graphical front-end to perform most common operations and software development tasks. Despite limited features, you can still rely on GitForce to perform task than getting engaged in Git command line tool.

Some of the features its offers are such as drag and drop, support for multiple repositories, scans local repositories easily and many basic features.

GitForce

6. Gitg

Gitg is a GNOME front-end for Git command line and it is a default graphical Git client on GNOME desktop environment. It offers many features such as staging, commit, open repository, clone repository and many more. It also enables GNOME shell integration which opens the way for various in app integrations and features for GNOME desktop users.

GNOMEs simple design doesn’t restrict Gitg from offering full-fledged features as it is one for the best Git GUI clients listed here. At first I have found its user interface quite confusing but once I got used to it, it was very satisfying experience.

Gitg

7. Giggle

Developed in 2007 as a part of hackathon, Giggle is free and easy to use Git GUI client which works exclusively on Linux and its various popular distributions. It is simple front-end tool which allows developers to browse and view there repositories in graphical interface.

It offers all the basic features you can expect in Git clients such as stag, commit, browse and many more. User interface is simple and you will get used to it in a fly.

$ sudo apt-get install giggle

8. UnGit

UnGit is not an application or client but it runs as a website in any web browser installed on your computer. It offers simple but very useful graphical user interface to replace Git command line tool. It comes with integration support for various plugins which enhance its workflow and performance.

UnGit can also be installed as a plugin in popular text editors such as Atom and Sublime Text.

$ sudo npm install –g ungit

9. Magit

Magit is a graphical interface for version control tool Git command line. It doesn’t offer separate interface but it is implemented as GNU Emacs package instead. It is not up to the ranks of various graphical Git clients listed here but it allows software developers to perform almost all the version control tasks within Emacs window.

Despite being a plugin it offers features you can expect in a separate application such as visualization, smooth workflow, rebasing and many more. It is a platform independent plugin and can be integrated with Emacs installed on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Magit

10. Egit

Just like Magit, Egit is a graphical Git version control plugin for Eclipse. It is implemented on the top JGit Java Implementation of Git. It is simple but very useful and reliable Git tool which offers all the basic features to accomplish almost all software development version control tasks.

Egit

So these are the best 10 Git GUI clients which are tested on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and should work well on previous Ubuntu released too.

Source

ffsend is a command line Firefox Send client that’s currently in alpha, available for Linux, macOS and Windows (with only macOS and Linux binaries being available right now).

With ffsend you can easily and securely share files from the command line, by making use of a Send, a Firefox test pilot project.

Firefox Send is a file sharing experiment by Mozilla, which allows sending encrypted files to other users. ‘Send’ can be installed on your own server, or you can use the Mozilla-hosted send.firefox.com. The latter officially supports files up to 1 GB (but I could upload a 2GB file, as mentioned by the ffsend description), with each link expiring after a configurable download count (defaulting to 1 download) or 24 hours, while also deleting all the files from the Send server. Read more about the Send Firefox Test Pilot.

ffsend can both upload and download files, while the remote host can use either ffsend or a simple web browser (that doesn’t have to be Firefox) to download the file.

One could always use the send.firefox.com web interface to upload and download files, but ffsend is intended for usage in scripts, without interaction. You can also use it for a quick file upload or download that doesn’t require opening a web browser.

While ffsend uses client-side encryption, ensuring that all files are encrypted before they are uploaded to the remote host, anyone with the link can download the file, so make sure you don’t share it with unauthorized people. That’s because the encryption secret, which is used to decrypt the file when downloading it, is included in the share URL.

An extra level of protection is available – you can password protect the file by appending --password when uploading a file using ffsend, or by setting the password after a file was uploaded, by using ffsend password URL -p YOUR-PASSWORD.

ffsend features:

• Upload and download files and directories. For directories, ffsend will offer to archive the contents before uploading it.
• Can be used with send.firefox.com (this is the default) or with your own Send host
• Client side encryption
• Configurable download limits (allows the file to be downloaded between 1 and 20 times)
• Password protection
• Built-in archiving and extracting
• History tracking of files for easy management
• Inspect or delete shared files

Downloading and using ffsend

While ffsend supports Linux, macOS and Windows, there are only macOS and Linux binaries for download right now. For Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other DEB-based Linux distributions, all you have to do is download and install the ffsend DEB package.

On other Linux distributions, like Fedora, etc., you can download the generic binary. For 64bit (most users), download the ffsend binary ending in -linux-x64.tar.gz, extract it and install it somewhere in your $PATH, like /usr/local/bin. Let’s say you’ve extracted the .tar.gz in the current folder – in this case you can install the ffsend binary in /usr/local/bin using this command:

sudo install ffsend /usr/local/bin/

Now you can upload a file like this:

ffsend upload <file.ext>

Replace file.ext with the file you want to upload.

Want to download a file using ffsend? It’s just as easy:

ffsend download <URL>

ffsend defaults to allowing 1 download per shared file, after which the file is deleted from the servers. To change this, use --downloads NN (where NN is a number from 1 to 20) when uploading a file:

ffsend upload --downloads <NN> <file.ext>

You can also change the number of allowed downloads for already uploaded files. To be able to do this, you must know the URL of the file you want to modify. You can see all shared URLs using:

ffsend history

Here’s how the output looks like:

$ ffsend history
#  LINK                                                                  EXPIRY  
1  https://send.firefox.com/download/e84e67e23c/#DYyvhlM9h1x1TAC9lJNUbw  23h59m  
2  https://send.firefox.com/download/c7fa183352/#j90VHhSrcpx_2Xlb-LGeXg  5h20m  
3  https://send.firefox.com/download/65716755f4/#wQaXbCgC2HOXvLrJVFc-Lw  4h58m  
4  https://send.firefox.com/download/4fbd102676/#LocbOt6LEs-sQFG6CKPeLw  4h54m  
5  https://send.firefox.com/download/fbe2a90d5b/#fJJ8NKsoJq0RRTRMSD3cVQ  3h6m

As you can see, command only lists the URLs and their expiry times, but not the file names. You can use the info command for more detailed information on an URL, like this:

ffsend info <URL>

Here’s with output:

$ ffsend info https://send.firefox.com/download/4fbd102676/#LocbOt6LEs-sQFG6CKPeLw
ID:         4fbd102676  
Name:       Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-29-1.2.iso  
Size:       1.80 GiB (1931477008 B)  
MIME:       application/octet-stream  
Downloads:  0 of 1  
Expiry:     4h53m (17613s)

Once you know the URL, you can change the allowed number of downloads until the link expires, by using this command:

ffsend parameters --download-limit <NN> <URL>

NN being the number of allowed downloads before the link expires (between 1 and 20), and URL the Send URL.

Fore more on ffsend, see its README and check out ffsend --help.

Source

The Web browser of choice when you are using text mode console or the Linux Terminal

Source

I’m 24 hours into the elementary OS Challenge, and I already have heaps of notes containing questions, pleasant surprises, discoveries and a couple bugs. For today’s content though, I wanted to focus on a few app recommendations to help new users flesh our their software library.

One of the unique things about elementary OS is the AppCenter. Not only is it a “pay what you want” model, but hundreds of the apps within are curated, developed specifically for the Pantheon desktop and this Linux distribution. Since I’m someone obsessed with music and podcasting, that’s where I wanted to start.

THE ELEMENTARY OS CONTENT HUB

• Introducing The elementary OS Linux Community Challenge
• Filling In The Audio App Gap
• We Need To Talk About Minimizing Windows
• Rejecting The Dark Side
• How I Learned To Stop Tweaking And Love The Workflow

Melody music software, available in elementary OS AppCenterJASON EVANGELHO

Melody

So, elementary OS 5 ships with a perfectly serviceable Music app visually reminiscent of a stripped-down iTunes, but there are better alternatives inside the AppCenter.

Melody by Artem Anufrij ($3 or pay what you want) doesn’t do everything under the sun, but what it does do works fast and works well.

Melody feels modern without feeling bloated, and also offers a sorting option that I appreciate: the ability to view your music library by artist, and then chronologically by album. It also remembers the position of your currently playing track if you close and reopen the software.

Something I need to point out about Music, and hopefully your experience is better: it has a tendency to be rather buggy, locking up on me several times in just a few hours. Perhaps it’s due to the size of my music library? Playback can be controlled from the speaker icon on the top panel, but the playback status will sometimes stay locked on “play” or “pause” regardless of a song’s status. Other times I couldn’t get the app to launch for reasons I’m uncertain of.

But one of the main reasons I gravitated toward Melody is that it tends to display album art way more frequently than elementary’s own Music app (see example image below). It also boasts a Dark Mode which is a borderline requirement for me these days. It scanned my fairly large (65GB) music library in just a few minutes, while another available AppCenter app, MuseIC, crashed when trying to import that same library.

Melody vs MusicJASON EVANGELHO

It’s not the best music app I’ve ever used. That honor belongs to, believe it or not, Microsoft‘s discontinued Zune Software. Another option for Linux distros is Amarok, but part of my personalelementary OS Challenge is exploring the software ecosystem that’s been created specifically for this OS. And Melody gets the job done elegantly.

Vocal: A Fantastic Podcast Client

Vocal gives you a ton of options for managing and enjoying your podcast library, and it’s presented cleanlyJASON EVANGELHO

Gnome has Podcasts, but elementary OS has one of the most robust and visually pleasing podcast clients out there. Vocal, developed by Needle & Thread, does everything I want it to do. It allowed me to import my podcast subscriptions from an OPML file generated by PocketCasts, supports both streaming and downloading of video and audio podcasts, allows you to set custom intervals for skipping forward or backward, can be set to delete played content and even has a searchable iTunes podcast store built in.

Heck, you can even change a podcast’s album artwork if your heart so desires. Beyond that, it remembers the playback position of each episode, and has full system integration, from media keys to native notifications.

Vocal simply looks greatJASON EVANGELHO

Vocal is, in a word, awesome. Another word is robust. I find myself wishing this was available on Android so that I could seamlessly listen to my podcast subscriptions everywhere.

While it’s not available for smartphones, it is available as a Flatpak for all Linux distributions. Go get it!

Give Me Lyrics!

Give Me Lyrics alongside elementary’s Music app.JASON EVANGELHO

Give Me Lyrics, developed by Murilo Venturoso, does exactly what its name implies and nothing more. It pulls from databases like Lyrics Wikia and API Seeds to instantly display lyrics for the song you’re currently listening to on your elementary OS machine, along with an album art thumbnail.

I tried it with a variety of songs played from both Music and Melody, and it just works (unless you’re listening to something decidedly obscure). It would be cool if you could dock it to your music app of choice, but that’s just me being picky.

That’s it for today! I encourage everyone to really dig into the AppCenter and share the gems you find. I’ll be back tomorrow with more observations and analysis from my own elementary OS Challenge, including some of the “little things” I’ve noticed that I appreciate about the OS. How’s your challenge going? Reach out to me on Twitter and let me know!

THE ELEMENTARY OS CONTENT HUB

• Introducing The elementary OS Linux Community Challenge
• Day 1: Filling In The Audio App Gap
• Day 2: We Need To Talk About Minimizing Windows
• Day 3: Rejecting The Dark Side

MORE OF MY LINUX CONTENT AT FORBES:

Opinion

• Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks With Ubuntu On The Dell XPS 13
• Ditching Windows: Here’s How Ubuntu Updates Your PC And Why It’s Better
• 5 Reasons To Switch From Windows To Linux Right Now
• Linux Distro Spotlight: What I Love About Ubuntu Budgie

Guides

• Linux For Beginners: What’s A Desktop Environment?
• Linux For Beginners: Understanding The Many Versions Of Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Guide: How To Install Ubuntu 18.10
• Ubuntu Guide: Install Drivers And Play Windows Games On Linux
• How To Try Linux Without Making Any Changes To Your PC
• Choosing Linux: 2 Awesome Tools To Find Your Perfect Linux OS

Reviews

• A Linux Noob Reviews: The Pop!_OS Installer From System76
• A Linux Noob Reviews: The Deepin 15.8 Installer
• elementary OS First Impressions: A Simple, Beautiful Doorway To Linux
• The Best Linux Distribution For Your Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme
• Linux Gaming Benchmarks: Ubuntu 18.10 And Intel Hades Canyon

Features

• Dell Gets Honest About Its Linux Efforts And Project Sputnik
• Valve Changes Everything: Windows-Exclusive Games Now Run On Steam For Linux
• Steam For Linux Adds 1000 Perfectly Playable Games In Under A Week
• Open Source Challenge: Why One Band Chose Linux To Record Their New Album
• The Elementary OS Linux Community Challenge

Jason Evangelho

Contributor

Since joining Forbes in 2012, I’ve also contributed to gaming and technology features on PCWorld and Computer Shopper.

Source

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux lxd

sudo lxd init

lxc image list ubuntu: arch=amd64

lxc launch ubuntu:84a71299044b

exec su - user

lxc image list images: arch=amd64

lxc launch images:debian/9

lxc launch images:debian/9 wordpress-site

lxc list

lxc stop name_of_container

lxc stop name_of_container --force

lxc start name_of_container

lxc shell name_of_container

exit

lxc file push /path/to/local/file name_of_container/path/to/uploaded/file

lxc file push lxd-apt-install.png accurate-colt/var/www/website/upload.png

lxc file push /path/to/local/directory name_of_container/path/to/remote/directory --recursive --verbose

lxc file push /bin accurate-colt/tmp --recursive --verbose

To download a directory from your container to your main operating system:

lxc file pull name_of_container/path/to/remote/directory /path/to/local/directory --recursive --verbose

Example:

lxc file pull accurate-colt/tmp /tmp --recursive --verbose

Conclusion

This covers the basic usage of LXD containers. There are more advanced features such as snapshots and rollbacks, imposing limits on resources such as CPU and RAM, cloning containers, and so on.

Source

GameHub is an unified gaming library that allows you to view, install, run and remove games on GNU/Linux operating system. It supports both native and non-native games from various sources including Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, and Humble Trove etc. The non-native games are supported by Wine, Proton, DOSBox, ScummVM and RetroArch. It also allows you to add custom emulators and download bonus content and DLCs for GOG games. Simply put, Gamehub is a frontend for Steam/GoG/Humblebundle/Retroarch. It can use steam technologies like Proton to run windows gog games. GameHub is free, open source gaming platform written in Vala using GTK+3.  If you’re looking for a way to manage all games under one roof, GameHub might be a good choice.

Installing GameHub

The author of GameHub has designed it specifically for elementary OS. So, you can install it on Debian, Ubuntu, elementary OS and other Ubuntu-derivatives using GameHub PPA.

$ sudo apt install --no-install-recommends software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tkashkin/gamehub
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install com.github.tkashkin.gamehub

GameHub is available in AUR, so just install it on Arch Linux and its variants using any AUR helpers, for example YaY.

$ yay -S gamehub-git

It is also available as AppImage and Flatpak packages in releases page.

If you prefer AppImage package, do the following:

$ wget https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub/releases/download/0.12.1-91-dev/GameHub-bionic-0.12.1-91-dev-cd55bb5-x86_64.AppImage -O gamehub

Make it executable:

$ chmod +x gamehub

And, run GameHub using command:

$ ./gamehub

If you want to use Flatpak installer, run the following commands one by one.

$ git clone https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub.git
$ cd GameHub
$ scripts/build.sh build_flatpak

Put All Games Under One Roof

Launch GameHub from menu or application launcher. At first launch, you will see the following welcome screen.

GameHub welcome screen

As you can see in the above screenshot, you need to login to the given sources namely Steam, GoG or Humble Bundle. If you don’t have Steam client on your Linux system, you need to install it first to access your steam account. For GoG and Humble bundle sources, click on the icon to log in to the respective source.

Once you logged in to your account(s), all games from the all sources can be visible on GameHub dashboard.

GameHub Dashboard

You will see list of logged-in sources on the top left corner. To view the games from each source, just click on the respective icon.

You can also switch between list view or grid view, sort the games by applying the filters and search games from the list in GameHub dashboard.

Installing a game

Click on the game of your choice from the list and click Install button. If the game is non-native, GameHub will automatically choose the compatibility layer (E.g Wine) that suits to run the game and install the selected game. As you see in the below screenshot, Indiana Jones game is not available for Linux platform.

Install a game

If it is a native game (i.e supports Linux), simply press the Install button.

If you don’t want to install the game, just hit the Download button to save it in your games directory. It is also possible to add locally installed games to GameHub using the Import option.

GameHub Settings

GameHub Settings window

GameHub Settings window can be launched by clicking on the four straight lines on top right corner.

From Settings section, we can enable, disable and set various settings such as,

• Switch between light/dark themes.
• Use Symbolic icons instead of colored icons for games.
• Switch to compact list.
• Enable/disable merging games from different sources.
• Enable/disable compatibility layers.
• Set games collection directory. The default directory for storing the collection is $HOME/Games/_Collection.
• Set games directories for each source.
• Add/remove emulators,
• And many.

For more details, refer the project links given at the end of this guide.

Cheers!

Resources:

• GameHub website
• GameHub GitHub Repository

Source

Android-x86 is a port of the Android open source mobile operating system to the x86 (32-bit) architecture, allowing users to run Android applications and replace their existing operating system with the Android OS.

Features at a glance

Key features include a KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) enabled Linux kernel 3.10.x LTS, Wi-Fi support, battery status, V4l2 camera support, G-sensor, bluetooth, suspend, resume, audio though ALSA, and mouse wheel support.

In addition, it supports software mouse cursor, external monitors, debug mode through Busybox, external keyboards, netbook native resolution, better disk installer, as well as external storage automatic mount.

Distributed as a 32-bit Live CD

It is distributed as a single Live CD ISO image that supports only the 32-bit hardware platform. From the boot prompt you can start the live environment with default settings, with the VESA framebuffer, or using the debug mode. It is also possible to install the OS to a local disk drive.

Originally designed as a collection of patches for Android x86 support, the project matured enough in the last years to finally be seriously considered as a good alternative operating system for personal computers.

Supported computers

At the moment, Android-x86 was tested only with the ASUS Eee PC platforms, Viewsonic Viewpad 10 tablet, Dell Inspiron Mini Duo hybrid laptop, Samsung Q1U UMPC device, Viliv S5 handheld PC, as well as with the Lenovo ThinkPad x61 tablet.

At the moment, the project is in active development state. The final release of the project will integrate support for multiple targets, multi-touch touchpad, better power management and multimedia support, OpenGL ES hardware acceleration for Intel and ATI Radeon graphics cards, and OpenGL emulation layer.

Conclusions

In conclusion, if you ever wanted to run Android on a desktop computer or laptop, the Android-x86 does just that. It allows users to install the Android OS or just use it directly from a USB flash drive or optical media on their personal computers.

DOWNLOAD Android-x86 8.1-r1

Source

Due to the recent unfortunate demise of a couple of my computers I found myself in need of a new laptop on rather short notice. I found an Acer Aspire 5 on sale at about half price here in Switzerland, so I picked one up. I have been installing a number of Linux distributions on it, with mostly positive results.

First, some information about the laptop itself. It is an Acer Aspire 5 A515-52:

• Intel Core i5-8265U CPU (Quad-core), 1.6GHz (max 3.4GHz)
• 8GB DDR4 Memory
• 256GB SSD + 1TB HD
• 15.6″ 1920×1080 Display
• Intel HD Graphics 620
• Realtek RTL8411 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45)
• Intel 802.11ac WiFi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• 1xUSB3.1 Type C, 1xUSB3.0 Type A, 2xUSB2.0 Type A
• HDMI Port
• SD-Card Reader
• 36.34 cm x 24.75 cm x 1.8 cm, 1.9 kg

That’s a pretty impressive configuration, especially considering that the regular list price here in Switzerland is CHF 1,199 (~ £945 / €1,065), and it is currently on sale at one of the large electronic stores here for CHF 699 (~ £550, €620).

Acer Aspire 5.

I am particularly pleased and impressed with it having both SSD and HD disks. Also, the screen frame is very narrow, which affects the overall size of the laptop; it is surprisingly small for a 15.6″ unit, it’s actually not much larger than the 14″ ASUS laptop I have been using.

If there is anything negative about this laptop, it’s the all-plastic case, and the fact that the keyboard doesn’t feel terribly solid. I will be carrying it with me on my weekly commute between Switzerland and Amsterdam, so we’ll see how it holds up.

My first task was to load the usual array of Linux distributions on it, which required some adjustments to the firmware configuration (press F2 during boot):

• F12 Boot Menu Enabled
• Set Supervisor password
• Secure Boot Disabled
• Function Key Behavior Function Key (not Media Key)

A couple of quick comments about these: Enabling F12 on boot lets you select the USB stick or a Linux partition; setting the Supervisor Password is required before you will be able to disable Secure boot; disabling Secure Boot is not necessary for all Linux distributions, but it is for some, and as I am still convinced that for 99% of the people Secure Boot is a ridiculously over-complicated solution for a practically non-existent threat, I choose to make my life easier by disabling it. Note that I only disable Secure Boot, I do not select Legacy Boot. The Function Key Behavior is set to Media Key by default, which is guaranteed to drive me completely insane — the idea is that with this you get the Fn-key functions by default, and you have to press and hold the Fn-key to get normal Function Key operation. See why it drives me crazy?

Next, I wanted to be sure that this laptop was actually going to work properly with Linux before actually installing it. I still have a Linux Mint USB stick handy from my recent Mint 19.1 upgrades, so I plugged that stick into the Aspire 5, crossed my fingers, booted and pressed F12 (not easy to do with my fingers crossed!). The boot select menu came up, offering Windows 10 and… uh… Linpus Lite? That seems more than a bit odd. A bit of poking around convinced me that the “Linpus” option was actually the Mint Live USB stick, so I went ahead and selected that to boot.

To my great pleasure, it came right up, and everything looked good! The display resolution was right, keyboard and mouse worked, wired and wireless networking worked… as far as I could tell, it was all good.

So I was then ready to load my usual selection of Linux distributions. Here is a short summary of what I have done so far:

openSUSE Tumbleweed

Get the latest full snapshot from the downloads directory. Note that this is only an Installation DVD image, it is not a Live image, although those are also available in the same directory. I choose to use the installation image because it has a more complete set of software packages so, for example, I can choose the desktop I want during the installation. I copied the ISO to a USB stick, booted that (with F12 on boot), and the installer came up. The installation was absolutely routine, and took less than 15 minutes. In the disk partitioning stage I put the root filesystem on the SSD and home on the HD.

SEE: How to build a successful developer career (free PDF)

Like many systems using UEFI firmware today, the Aspire 5 doesn’t like to have the boot list modified by the operating system, so even though I checked this after installation was complete, and saw that openSUSE was at the top of the list, it “helps” you by putting Windows back at the top. Grrr. So I had to go back to the firmware configuration (F2 at startup), then in the Boot menu it shows the boot order. Interestingly, openSUSE is correctly identified in this list (it’s not called Linpus Lite). I moved that to the top of the list, saved and rebooted, and openSUSE came right up. Hooray!

Acer Aspire 5 running openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Image: J.A. Watson

Everything seems to be working perfectly. In addition to the major things I had already checked, at this point I went through all of the F-key functions, and they all worked as well: Audio Up/Down/Mute, Brightness Up/Down, Touchpad Disable/Enable, Wireless Disable/Enable, and Suspend/Resume. Good stuff!

Manjaro

The ISO images are in the Manjaro Downloads directory, with different Live images for Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon, and much more. Copy the ISO to a USB stick, and boot that to get the Manjaro Live desktop of your choice. After verifying that everything is working, you can run the installer from the desktop; once again, installation is very easy, I put the root filesystem on the SSD and home on the HD. The entire process took less than 15 minutes. On reboot it brought up openSUSE again, so there are a couple of options here. The obvious one is to press F12 on boot, and select Manjaro from the boot list. Alternatively, you could go back to the firmware setup, where you will find Manjaro somewhere lower in the Boot list, and move it to the top if you want to boot it by default; or let openSUSE come up, and create a new Grub configuration file with grub2-mkconfig, which will then include Manjaro in the list it offers on boot.

Acer Aspre 5 running Manjaro 18.0.2.

Image: J.A. Watson

As with openSUSE, everything seems to work perfectly. So far this is really a treat!

Debian GNU/Linux

There is a link to the latest 64-bit PC network installer on the Debian home page, or you can go to Getting Debian to choose from the full list of installation images. There you will find a variety of Live images, as well as other architectures and Cloud images.

The network installer image is very small (currently less than 300MB), and contains only what is necessary to boot your computer and get the installer running. You have to have an internet connection to perform the installation (duh); after going through the installation dialog it will then download only the packages needed for your selections. This means that the installation process will be longer than one getting everything from a USB stick, but it will only download what it needs (probably less than a complete ISO image), and the installation will get all of the latest packages, so you won’t have a lot of updating to do when it is finished.

On the Aspire 5 using a gigabit wired connection, the installation took less than 30 minutes. When it was done I rebooted, and used F12 to boot Debian.

Acer Aspire 5 running Debian GNU/Linux.

Image: J.A. Watson

This was where I ran into my first significant problem with Linux on this laptop. The touchpad didn’t work. That blasted thing! It’s actually not a touchpad, it is an accursed clickpad! GRRR! I’ve been biting my tongue until now, because at least the stupid thing worked OK (well, as OK as is possible) with the first two distributions I installed, but now surprise, surprise, it doesn’t work.

My intention was not to stay with the current Debian Stable release (stretch), but to go on to Debian Testing. So I decided to just use a USB mouse, and continue the installation in the hope that a later release would take care of this problem.

SEE: Special report: Riding the DevOps revolution (free PDF)

I then also noticed that the Wi-Fi adapter wasn’t recognized (no wireless networks were shown). Sigh. Well, that’s at least not too surprising, because the Aspire 5 has an Intel Wi-Fi adapter, and the drivers for those are not FOSS, so they aren’t included in the base Debian distribution. So I went to /etc/apt/sources.list, and added contrib and non-free to that, then went to the synaptic package manager, searched for iwlwifi and installed that package. After a reboot, the wireless networking was OK (yay).

The next step was to upgrade from Debian Stable to Debian Testing. Once again I edited /etc/apt/sources.list, this time changing every occurrence of stretch to testing. Then I ran a full distribution upgrade; I prefer to do this from the CLI:

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade && apt-get autoremove

This took another 20 minutes or so to run, after which I rebooted and was running Debian GNU/Linux Testing (buster/sid). Unfortunately, the stupid clickpad was still not working. Well, I’ve got better things to do at the moment than fight with that, so I decided to press on with the other installations.

Fedora

Next on my Linux distribution hit list is Fedora Workstation. The ISO image is available from the Workstation Download page, this gets you the 64-bit PC version with the Gnome 3 desktop. Other versions and different desktops are listed in the Fedora 29 Release Announcement.

The Fedora ISO is basically a Live image, although during boot it asks if you want to go to the Live desktop, or simply go directly to the installer. If you choose the Live desktop you can confirm that everything is working (including the idiotic clickpad), and then start the installer from the desktop.

The Fedora installer (anaconda) has been slightly modified with this release. Account setup has been removed from anaconda and given over to the Gnome first-boot sequence. This makes the installation a little bit simpler, I suppose. Anyway, installation once again took less than 15 minutes, and I rebooted (via F12) after it was complete.

Acer Aspire 5 running Fedora 29 Workstation.

Image: J.A. Watson

No surprises this time, everything works, and it looks wonderful (if you like the Gnome 3 desktop).

Linux Mint

The final candidate in this initial batch is Linux Mint. Although I don’t use Mint on a day-to-day basis, it is still the one that I recommend to anyone who asks me about getting started with Linux.

The Mint Downloads page offers Live ISO images for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, with Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce desktops. I already had the 64-bit Cinnamon version on a USB stick (which I had used for the initial tests of this laptop), so I just used that for the installation. As with Manjaro LInux, the USB stick boots directly to a Live desktop, with the installer on the desktop. The installation was once again easy, and very fast; in about 10 minutes I was rebooting to the installed Linux system.

Acer Aspire 5 running Linux Mint 19.1.

Image: J.A. Watson

Once again, everything works perfectly.

That’s enough for the first group — and honestly, it’s getting a bit boring to keep writing “Installation was smooth and easy, and everything worked perfectly”. So to summarize:

• Starting with a brand new, out of the box Acer Aspire 5 laptop
• I completely ignored the pre-installed Windows 10 operating system
• I modified the UEFI firmware configuration to enable Boot Select (F12), and disable UEFI Secure Boot
• I have successfully installed five different Linux distributions
• I only ran into two significant problems, both on the same distribution; one could be fixed with some small changes, while the other I have not yet found a solution or work-around for
• On the other four distributions, everything in the Aspire 5 works perfectly
• I am already using this laptop as my primary system

I will continue with a few other distributions over the next week, and will report success or problems in a few days.

PREVIOUS AND RELATED COVERAGE

Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa: Hands-on with an impressive new release

A new Linux Mint release is always good news. I have tried this one as a fresh installation, as an upgrade from 19.1 Beta and as an upgrade from both 19 and 18.3. Here are the results.

Hands-on with the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ and new Raspbian Linux release

Finally, the little brother to the Pi 3 Model B+ is available. I’ve got one, and I’ve been trying it out along with the latest release of the Raspbian Linux operating system.

Raspberry Pi PoE HAT is back on sale again

After a problem with the PoE HAT for the Raspberry Pi 3B+, an updated version is now available.

Raspberry Pi: Hands-on with Kali, openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu MATE Linux

There has been considerable progress made since the last time I tried a variety of Linux distributions other than Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, so I’ve given four of them another try.

Raspberry Pi: Hands-on with the updated Raspbian Linux

I have installed the new Raspbian 2018-10-09 release from scratch on some systems, and upgraded existing installations on others. Here are my experiences, observations and comments.

Raspbian Linux distribution updated, but with one unexpected omission

New distribution images for the Raspberry Pi operating system are available, including bug fixes, security updates and new features, and one notable disappearance.

Kali Linux for Vagrant: Hands-on

The developers at Kali Linux have released a Vagrant distribution of their latest version. Here is a look at that release – and at the Vagrant tool itself.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ review: A $25 computer with a lot of promise (TechRepublic)

Get the lowdown on how well the latest Raspberry Pi board performs with benchmarks and the full specs.

How to start your smart home: Home automation, explained (CNET)

Starting a smart home doesn’t have to be scary. Here are the basics.

Source

Red Hat’s competitive Docker container effort hits a major milestone with the release of Podman 1.0, which looks to provide improved performance and security for containers.

Related Stories:

• Red Hat Advances Container Technology With Podman 1.0(Jan 18, 2019)
• Red Hat Looks Beyond Docker for Container Technology(Jul 16, 2018)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Hits Beta With Improved System Performance(Nov 19, 2018)
• Podman and user namespaces: A marriage made in heaven(Dec 14, 2018)
• Podman: A more secure way to run containers(Nov 01, 2018)

Source

There seems to be a mad rush at the beginning of every year to find ways to be more productive. New Year’s resolutions, the itch to start the year off right, and of course, an “out with the old, in with the new” attitude all contribute to this. And the usual round of recommendations is heavily biased towards closed source and proprietary software. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s the third of my picks for 19 new (or new-to-you) open source tools to help you be more productive in 2019.

Sandstorm

Being productive isn’t just about to-do lists and keeping things organized. Often it requires a suite of tools linked to make a workflow go smoothly.

Sandstorm is an open source collection of packaged apps, all accessible from a single web interface and managed from a central console. You can host it yourself or use the Sandstorm Oasis service—for a per-user fee.

Sandstorm has a marketplace that makes it simple to install the apps that are available. It includes apps for productivity, finance, note taking, task tracking, chat, games, and a whole lot more. You can also package your own apps and upload them by following the application-packaging guidelines in the developer documentation.

Once installed, a user can create grains—basically containerized instances of app data. Grains are private by default and can be shared with other Sandstorm users. This means they are secure by default, and users can chose what to share with others.

Sandstorm can authenticate from several different external sources as well as use a “passwordless” email-based authentication. Using an external service means you don’t have to manage yet another set of credentials if you already use one of the supported services.

In the end, Sandstorm makes installing and using supported collaborative apps quick, easy, and secure.

Source