Sometimes it takes more than a few tweaks to turn an old-style desktop design into a fresh new Linux distribution. That is the case with the public release of Blue Collar Linux.

“The guidance and design were shaped by real people — blue collar people,” Blue Collar developer Steven A. Auringer told LinuxInsider. “Think useful and guided by Joe and Jane Whitebread in Suburbia.”

Blue Collar Linux has been under development for the last four years. Until its public release this week, it has circulated only through an invitation for private use by the developer’s family, friends and associates looking for an alternative to the Windows nightmare.

Another large part of his user base is the University of Wisconsin, where he engages with the math and computer science departments.

This new release is anything but a just-out-of-beta edition. It is very polished and is constantly updated and improved. A growing cadre of users submit bug reports and contribute feature suggestions based on real-world user requests.

Auringer does as not bother with versioning each release, however. Average people do not care about those things, he claims.

“You don’t hear them talking about Windows 10-1824-06b-build257. They use Windows 10,” he noted.

That view in part led Auringer to develop a Linux distro with a goal that responded to typical users who had no interest in learning computer technology. The distro’s goal is to be easy to use and be useful for Joe and Jane Whitebread.

“There are Millions of home systems. Most are not powerful state-of-the-art office systems. There are a lot of older systems sitting on closet shelves waiting to be brought back to life. Some are hand-me-downs. Is Joe or Jane going to spend money to use Windows 10?” asked Auringer.

From Shell Script to OS

Auringer is a retired U.S. Marine with a doctoral degree in applied mathematics and a master’s in computer science. He worked 10-plus years as a senior software engineer.

He started developing Blue Collar Linux as a shell script that would add/delete and configure software/fonts/colors/drivers, etc. He used the scripts and shared them for simplifying automated installation routines. That led to developing his own Linux alternative to the Microsoft Windows nightmare.

Auringer was determined to avoid the frustrations nontechnical users experienced with so many Linux distros — overwhelming software packages and the daunting maze of desktops choices. To remove those barriers, Auringer selected easy, yet powerful, Linux applications. He adopted a one-of-each approach.

“I have looked at over 75 Distros. Most — even the supposed easy ones — assume some level of Linux geekiness. I spent a lot of time listening to my beta users. They want to point, click and go,” he said. “They don’t want to search the Net comparing six programs, downloading and polluting their systems just to solve an easy problem.”

Auringer learned from his beta users that they did NOT want three music players, three video players, four text editors, two video editors, three photo editors, a large complex office suite and Visual Studio IDE to develop software.

Most average people are not going to burn an evening trying to get a program to work, he explained. They are not going to log into blogs, ask questions, try six different answers they don’t understand, and still have a broken system.

For example, they have no idea why removing program A broke program B, or why reinstalling program A does not fix program B. They do not know that it also may have broken program C, Auringer added.

Most average people do not know or care about Xfce, KDE, Gnome or Unity desktops. They do not know or care about what a window manager is, he said.

“They want to turn it on and use it to accomplish a goal without turning it into a hobby,” Auringer maintained.

That is precisely what Blue Collar Linux gives nontechnical users. It is difficult not to love Blue Collar Linux. It has all of the usability boxes checked. It does just what the developer designed it to do: make computing simplified!

Blue Collar Overview

Blue Collar Linux offers both home and small business users an ideal computing platform. They are the developer’s intended user base.

What makes Blue Collar ideal? Installation is uncomplicated. When the process is finished, no tools or setup are required.

The desktop has a simple uncluttered look. You have plenty of options to change the default settings. Personalizing the desktop is easy.

Blue Collar Linux’s modified Xfce desktop design has a panel bar with multiple menu buttons, system icons, and a collection of applets to display information on the bar.

Out of the box, everything works. Nothing is confusing. No time must be spent reading online how-to documents.

Blue Collar is Gnome 3.10/GTK-based and runs the Xfce 4.10-based desktop. However, the modifications Auringer built in specifically for his distro are responsible for the tremendous difference in how Xfce works and looks.

For example, the applications and controls/buttons look like they belong together. Unlike other desktop designs, each application’s appearance reinforces the design and gives users the feeling that it is part of a complete system.

Older Code Base vs. New

Blue Collar has one slight downside that might only be a concern for more tech-savvy users. This distro is based on Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS, the Trusty Tahr series released in August 2016. Its long-term support ends this April. That means the developer will be issuing an updated release on a newer code base eventually.

In fact, Auringer is working on using Ubuntu 16.04 as a replacement base for Blue Collar Linux. Ubuntu supports 16.04, dubbed “Xenial Xerus,” until April 2021.

Still, he is happy with the continued performance of 14.04.5 and is not rushing to swap it out. Trusty Tahr code works well today and is not going to drop dead on any certain date in the near future, according to the developer. He plans to support critical issues himself if any develop when the long-term support from Ubuntu runs out, rather than rushing to change the code base.

A major advantage of 14.04.5 is the solid support by third-party drivers. Manufacturers and developers of printers, scanners, wireless and other systems have well-developed and tested drivers. Maintaining existing stability counts more than change.

“That is more of a concern to my user base than bleeding edge. They generally don’t know and don’t care what the base version is. All they know is that it never crashes — or worse, locks their box and loses their work,” Auringer said.

He prefers the Xenial Xerus code base to the current 18.04 LTS, AKA Bionic Beaver, released last year and supported to April 2023. The 18.04 code base is “squirrelly, unfinished and generally not recommended, or recommended [only] to experienced users.”

Only experienced users will put up with Bionic Beaver, just to be bleeding edge, he said.

The code base was impressive when it was released. It included an updated kernel and X stack for new installations to support new hardware. Since it has been an integral part of Blue Collar from the start, stability and reliability are of no concern.

Why Xfce Instead of Other Desktops?

There are several answers to the “Why Xfce?” question, noted Auringer, but they all have to do with Xfce having better desktop functionality and adaptability. Since Blue Collar must run on a wide range of legacy computers, a lightweight but powerful desktop environment is essential.

For example, newer options such as LXDE and LXLE are light, but the menus are sparse. Plus, their configuration is limited. Auringer sees the Cinnamon desktop as bloated, slow, buggy, and difficult to configure.

The Mate desktop lacks comments in the menu for new/beginning users — something Xfce’s Whisker Menu provides. Plus, the Whisker menu in Blue Collar Linux lets you add, delete or rearrange your favorite applications in the main menu. You also can resize the main menu.

MenuLibre, a menu-editing tool included in Xfce, makes it easy for Blue Collar users to arrange menu content their way. Xfce is mature; it runs well on minimal hardware and is fast.

Plankless and Dockless

Another major user benefit with the Xfce desktop is the ability to add or remove application launchers on the panel or the desktop itself. An even nicer feature that you will not find in other Xfce systems is the ability to unlock the panel and move it to the top or side if you prefer.

Some Linux distros use both panel bars and a Cairo-style dock or plank-style application launcher. You will not find modifications in Blue Collar Linux built around docks or planks.

They do not work well in general, according to Auringer. Some distros tried Awn or Plank and then dropped it. The Cairo dock has lots of bells and whistles, but nothing to add in terms of functionality or ease of use.

“I have also found that depending on the version and settings, Cairo can be a little unpredictable,” he said.

One more great feature with Blue Collar’s modified Xfce desktop is the triple menu system. Finding and launching applications is fast, thanks to an application search field built into each menu.

The menus live at either end of the panel bar. On the far left is the Whisker menu. At the far right end of the panel is a GNOME-style full-screen display of application icons. With either menu, hover the mouse over an icon to see a brief explanation of what the application does.

Right-click anywhere on the desktop not covered by a window to launch a third style menu. The bottom label cascades a list of installed applications. the rest of the column lists various system actions such as creating folders, UL links and application launchers.

Massive Software Inventory

Auringer’s decision to bundle a single software title for each computing task is a win-win. It actually lets the developer bundle more diverse applications without creating bloat.

His goal is not to make Blue Collar Linux minimalist in terms of its software inventory. To the contrary, this distro comes with more preinstalled titles than I see in most distros, whether they are Xfce systems or not.

The included applications are solid choices. They do not require hours of learning how to use them.

For example, typical users do not need feature-heavy office suites with separate components like spreadsheets and database managers they will never use, argues Auringer. So he includes the Abiword word processor with plugins already enabled.

Preinstalled applications include Homebank for personal finance management; LibreCAD, a professional-strength drafting program; Diagram for creating and editing designs; and RedNoteBook — a tool for keeping notes and daily journal entries and calendar.

Specialty Tools Included

This distro also has Wine, an emulator that lets you run Microsoft Windows programs within the Linux environment. I have used Linux for so many years that I no longer rely on Wine.

However, having Wine preinstalled in Blue Collar Linux gives newcomers to the Linux OS an added comfort zone that lets them continue using familiar programs until they find better Linux alternatives.

It creates a pseudo C: Drive in the Blue Collar directory to show Wine-installed Windows programs. It comes with tools to install and uninstall windows programs as if you were running them on an actual Windows computer

Another great find in Blue Collar Linux is the Parental Controls feature. I test and review hundreds of Linux distros. This is my first time seeing a parental control application. What a great idea for helping children learn responsible computer behavior.

It is as simple to use as creating an alarm in a computer calendar. You can set the number of hours per day a user can access the computer. You can add a check for the approved days of usage in general, as well as allotted times and days to use the Web browser, email client and Instant Messaging applications.

Using It

One of the essential features that a well-designed operating system can provide is access to virtual workspaces. This functionality lets you view different applications or sets of open application windows on separate screens. Some distros make navigating among workspaces confusing and difficult.

Not Blue collar Linux. The standard Xfce desktop does a nice job of handling virtual workspaces. Blue Collar Linux goes well beyond the normal functionality.

This distro includes the Brightside Properties tool, which enhances navigation options for workspace switching.

The Brightside Properties Tool is very handy for adding new features to the Xfce desktop for controlling workspace navigation and hot corner actions.

For instance, rolling the wheel in the workspace switcher moves to other workspaces. So does this keyboard shortcut: CTRL-ALT and left/right or up/down arrow keys.

Other options let you change workstations by moving the mouse pointer off the left or right screen edges, or clicking the mouse wheel down or using the middle mouse button to display a switcher panel on the screen.

With the Brightside tool, you can set a different wallpaper for each workspace. The tool also lets you turn on hot corners, which usually is not a function available with the Xfce desktop.

You can select special actions from a dropdown list that activates when you push the mouse pointer into a chosen corner of the screen. You also can create your own action command using the custom option in the dropdown list.

One more need trick is rolling the mouse wheel on the sound icon in the system tray to raise or lower the volume.

Click the mouse wheel down or use the middle mouse button to display a switcher panel on the screen.

Bottom Line

Blue Collar Linux is a seasoned operating system that will not disappoint you. It runs well on older computers with less-than-modest resources. It runs superbly on more recent hardware.

Even if you are not a fan of the Xfce desktop environment, give this modified iteration a try. What you find in Blue Collar Linux is not the same old thing. This distro is feature-rich. It is easy to install and easier to use.

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What is a Debian release?

Debian GNU/Linux is a non-commercial Linux distribution that was started in 1993 by Ian Murdock. Currently, it consists of about 51,000 software packages that are available for a variety of architectures such as Intel (both 32 and 64 bit), ARM, PowerPC, and others [2]. Debian GNU/Linux is maintained freely by a large number of contributors from all over the world. This includes software developers and package maintainers – a single person or a group of people that takes care of a package as a whole [3].

A Debian release is a collection of stable software packages that follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) [4]. These packages are well-tested and fit together in such a way that all the dependencies between the packages are met and you can install und use the software without problems. This results in a reliable operating system needed for your every-day work. Originally targeted for server systems it has no more a specific target (“The Universal OS”) and is widely used on desktop systems as well as mobile devices, nowadays.

In contrast to other Linux distributions like Ubuntu or Linux Mint, the Debian GNU/Linux distribution does not have a release cycle with fixed dates. It rather follows the slogan “Release only when everything is ready” [1]. Nethertheless, a major release comes out about every two years [8]. For example, version 9 came out in 2017, and version 10 is expected to be available in mid-2019. Security updates for Debian stable releases are provided as soon as possible from a dedicated APT repository. Additionally, minor stable releases are published in between, and contain important non-security bug fixes as well as minor security updates. Both the general selection and the major version number of software packages do not change within a release.

In order to see which version of Debian GNU/Linux you are running on your system have a look at the file /etc/debian_version as follows:

This shows that the command was run on Debian GNU/Linux 9.6. Having installed the package “lsb-release” [14], you can get more detailed information by running the command “lsb_release -a”:

What about these funny release names?

This shows that the command was run on Debian GNU/Linux 9.6. Having installed the package “lsb-release” [14], you can get more detailed information by running the command “lsb_release -a”:

You may have noted that for every Debian GNU/Linux release there is a funny release name. This is called an alias name which is taken from a character of the film series Toy Story [5] released by Pixar [6]. When the first Debian 1.x release was due, the Debian Project Leader back then, Bruce Perens, worked for Pixar [9]. Up to now the following names have been used for releases:

• Debian 1.0 was never published officially, because a CD vendor shipped a development version accidentially labeled as “1.0” [10], so Debian and the CD vendor jointly announced that “this release was screwed” and Debian released version 1.1 about half a year later, instead.
• Debian 1.1 Buzz (17 June 1996) – named after Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut
• Debian 1.2 Rex (12 December 1996) – named after Rex the plastic dinosaur
• Debian 1.3 Bo (5 June 1997) – named after Bo Peep the shepherd
• Debian 2.0 Hamm (24 July 1998) – named after Hamm the piggy bank
• Debian 2.1 Slink (9 March 1999) – named after the dog Slinky Dog
• Debian 2.2 Potato (15 August 2000) – named after the puppet Mr Potato Head
• Debian 3.0 Woody (19 July 2002) – named after the cowboy Woody Pride who is the main character of the Toy Story film series
• Debian 3.1 Sarge (6 June 2005) – named after the Seargeant of the green plastic soldiers
• Debian 4.0 Etch (8 April 2007) – named after the writing board Etch-A-Sketch
• Debian 5.0 Lenny (14 February 2009) – named after the pull-out binocular
• Debian 6.0 Squeeze (6 February 2011) – named after the green three-eyed aliens
• Debian 7 Wheezy (4 May 2013) – named after Wheezy the penguin with the red bow tie
• Debian 8 Jessie (25 April 2015) – named after the cowgirl Jessica Jane “Jessie” Pride
• Debian 9 Stretch (17 June 2017) – named after the lila octopus
• Debian 10 Buster (no release date known so far) – named after the puppy dog from Toy Story 2

As of the beginning of 2019, the release names for two future releases are also already known [8]:

• Debian 11 Bullseye – named after Bullseye, the horse of Woody Pride
• Debian 12 Bookworm – named after Bookworm, the intelligent worm toy with a built-in flashlight from Toy Story 3.

Relation between alias name and development state

New or updated software packages are uploaded to the unstable branch, first. After some days a package migrates to the testing branch if it fulfills a number of criterias. This later becomes the basis for the next stable release. The release of a distribution contains stable packages, only, that are actually a snapshot of the current testing branch.

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The OpenMessaging project welcomes Yahoo Japan and EMQ X as new members.

We are excited to announce two new members to the OpenMessaging project: Yahoo Japan, one of the largest portal sites in Japan, and EMQ X, one of the most popular MQTT message middleware vendors. Yahoo Japan and EMQ X join Alibaba, JD.com, China Mobile Cloud, Qing Cloud, and other community members to form a standards community with 13 corporation members.

OpenMessaging is a standards project for messaging and streaming technology. Messaging and Streaming products have been widely used in modern architecture and data processing, for decoupling, queuing, buffering, ordering, replicating, etc. But when data transfers across different messaging and streaming platforms, compatibility problems arise, which always means much additional work. The OpenMessaging community looks to eliminate these challenges through creating a global, cloud-oriented, vendor-neutral industry standard for distributed messaging.

Yahoo Japan, operated by Yahoo Japan Corporation, is one of the largest portal site in Japan. Under the mission to be a “Problem-Solving Engine,” Yahoo Japan Corporation is committed in solving the problems of the people and society leveraging the power of information technologies. The company uses various messaging systems (e.g., Apache Pulsar, Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ) to create its services and is creating a centralized pub-sub messaging platform that deals with a vast number of service/application traffics.

“Yahoo Japan Corporation uses various messaging systems (e.g., Apache Pulsar, Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ) to create its services. However, differences in messaging interfaces make the whole system complicated and lead to extra costs in implementation and in studying each system. Thus, we need a standardized and unified interface that can be easily implemented and easily collaborated with other services.” said Nozomi Kurihara, the Manager of the Messaging Platform team in Yahoo Japan. “We think OpenMessaging is the key in achieving our “multi big data” system in which data can be cross-used among different services/applications we provide.”

Originated from a GitHub open source IoT project starting from 2012, EMQ X has become one of the most popular MQTT message middleware in community. EMQ X is based on the Erlang/OTP platform, which can support 10 million concurrent MQTT connections with high throughput and low latency. EMQ X now has 500k downloads, and 5000+ customer users in 50 countries and regions around the world, such as China, United States, Australia, British, and India.

“Our customers cover different industries, such as financial, IoV, telecom, smart home. We also partnered with Fortune 500 companies, such as HPE, Ericsson, VMware, to provide professional IoT solutions to customers around the world. OpenMessaging is vendor-neutral and language-independent, provides industry guidelines for areas of finance, e-commerce, IoT and Big Data, and aimed to develop messaging and streaming applications across heterogeneous systems and platforms.” said Feng Lee, Co-founder of EMQ X. “We’re glad to join OpenMessaging.”

As an effort to standardize distributed messaging and streaming systems, OpenMessaging is committed to embracing an open, collaborative, intelligent, and cloud-native era with all its community members.

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Let’s face it: writing one-liners and scripts using shell commands can be confusing. Many of the names of the tools at your disposal are far from obvious in terms of what they do (grep, tee and awk, anyone?) and, when you combine two or more, the resulting “sentence” looks like some kind of alien gobbledygook.

None of the above is helped by the fact that many of the symbols you use to build a chain of instructions can mean different things depending on their context.

Location, location, location

Take the humble dot (.) for example. Used with instructions that are expecting the name of a directory, it means “this directory” so this:

find . -name “*.jpg”

translates to “find in this directory (and all its subdirectories) files that have names that end in .jpg“.

Both ls . and cd . act as expected, so they list and “change” to the current directory, respectively, although including the dot in these two cases is not necessary.

Two dots, one after the other, in the same context (i.e., when your instruction is expecting a directory path) means “the directory immediately above the current one“. If you are in /home/your_directory and run

cd ..

you will be taken to /home. So, you may think this still kind of fits into the “dots represent nearby directories” narrative and is not complicated at all, right?

How about this, then? If you use a dot at the beginning of a directory or file, it means the directory or file will be hidden:

$ touch somedir/file01.txt somedir/file02.txt somedir/.secretfile.txt
$ ls -l somedir/
total 0
-rw-r–r– 1 paul paul 0 Jan 13 19:57 file01.txt
-rw-r–r– 1 paul paul 0 Jan 13 19:57 file02.txt
$ # Note how there is no .secretfile.txt in the listing above
$ ls -la somedir/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 paul paul 4096 Jan 13 19:57 .
drwx—— 48 paul paul 4096 Jan 13 19:57 ..
-rw-r–r– 1 paul paul 0 Jan 13 19:57 file01.txt
-rw-r–r– 1 paul paul 0 Jan 13 19:57 file02.txt
-rw-r–r– 1 paul paul 0 Jan 13 19:57 .secretfile.txt
$ # The -a option tells ls to show “all” files, including the hidden ones

And then there’s when you use . as a command. Yep! You heard me: . is a full-fledged command. It is a synonym of source and you use that to execute a file in the current shell, as opposed to running a script some other way (which usually mean Bash will spawn a new shell in which to run it).

Confused? Don’t worry — try this: Create a script called myscript that contains the line

myvar=”Hello”

and execute it the regular way, that is, with sh myscript (or by making the script executable with chmod a+x myscript and then running ./myscript). Now try and see the contents of myvar with echo $myvar (spoiler: You will get nothing). This is because, when your script plunks “Hello” into myvar, it does so in a separate bash shell instance. When the script ends, the spawned instance disappears and control returns to the original shell, where myvar never even existed.

However, if you run myscript like this:

. myscript

echo $myvar will print Hello to the command line.

You will often use the . (or source) command after making changes to your .bashrc file, like when you need to expand your PATH variable. You use . to make the changes available immediately in your current shell instance.

Double Trouble

Just like the seemingly insignificant single dot has more than one meaning, so has the double dot. Apart from pointing to the parent of the current directory, the double dot (..) is also used to build sequences.

Try this:

echo

It will print out the list of numbers from 1 to 10. In this context, .. means “starting with the value on my left, count up to the value on my right“.

Now try this:

echo

You’ll get 1 3 5 7 9. The ..2 part of the command tells Bash to print the sequence, but not one by one, but two by two. In other words, you’ll get all the odd numbers from 1 to 10.

It works backwards, too:

echo

You can also pad your numbers with 0s. Doing:

echo

will print out every even number from 0 to 121 like this:

000 002 004 006 … 050 052 054 … 116 118 120

But how is this sequence-generating construct useful? Well, suppose one of your New Year’s resolutions is to be more careful with your accounts. As part of that, you want to create directories in which to classify your digital invoices of the last 10 years:

mkdir _Invoices

Job done.

Or maybe you have a hundreds of numbered files, say, frames extracted from a video clip, and, for whatever reason, you want to remove only every third frame between the frames 43 and 61:

rm frame_

It is likely that, if you have more than 100 frames, they will be named with padded 0s and look like this:

frame_000 frame_001 frame_002 …

That’s why you will use 043 in your command instead of just 43.

Curly~Wurly

Truth be told, the magic of sequences lies not so much in the double dot as in the sorcery of the curly braces ({}). Look how it works for letters, too. Doing:

touch file_.txt

creates the files file_a.txt through file_z.txt.

You must be careful, however. Using a sequence like will run through a bunch of non-alphanumeric characters (glyphs that are neither numbers or letters) that live between the uppercase alphabet and the lowercase one. Some of these glyphs are unprintable or have a special meaning of their own. Using them to generate names of files could lead to a whole bevy of unexpected and potentially unpleasant effects.

One final thing worth pointing out about sequences encased between {…} is that they can also contain lists of strings:

touch _file.txt

Creates blahg_file.txt, splurg_file.txt and mmmf_file.txt.

Of course, in other contexts, the curly braces have different meanings (surprise!). But that is the stuff of another article.

Conclusion

Bash and the utilities you can run within it have been shaped over decades by system administrators looking for ways to solve very particular problems. To say that sysadmins and their ways are their own breed of special would be an understatement. Consequently, as opposed to other languages, Bash was not designed to be user-friendly, easy or even logical.

That doesn’t mean it is not powerful — quite the contrary. Bash’s grammar and shell tools may be inconsistent and sprawling, but they also provide a dizzying range of ways to do everything you can possibly imagine. It is like having a toolbox where you can find everything from a power drill to a spoon, as well as a rubber duck, a roll of duct tape, and some nail clippers.

Apart from fascinating, it is also fun to discover all you can achieve directly from within the shell, so next time we will delve ever deeper into how you can build bigger and better Bash command lines.

Until then, have fun!

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After spending years on Windows, adjusting to a different operating system can be quite hectic for some people. Those people who have been accustomed to using more than one operating system may not find it hard but for some, the change can be quite daunting and also take a considerable time to adjust. One of the biggest changes that I myself experienced was to install anything on Ubuntu. It took me a long while to find out where the graphical user interface exists for the simple click and install method.

In the meantime, I slowly got used to using the command line interface for my installing requirements and it is needless to say that it became a normal and fun thing shortly. This allowed me to get an idea of how Ubuntu operates and made me more interested in using the OS as well. If you came from somewhere like me, you probably believed Ubuntu isn’t the best solution for gaming. For some, it may turn out to be more than a great experience when it comes to gaming – which I soon learned.

One of my favourite game on Windows was War Thunder and as soon as I made the shift to Ubuntu, I already knew which game I was going to download first. After all, I did have to find some way to pass the time at university.

Without any further ado, let’s move on to getting War Thunder installed and being ready to play on our systems. Since this is a game that is supported on Steam, we will install it through Steam to make sure that everything is installed the way it was intended to be. Since War thunder is free to play the game, we could have potentially downloaded it from some other source other than steam. We would then have to manually install it and that can cause us to run into problems that may only be properly fixed by installing it through Steam.

If you’ve gamed with Windows, then you probably must be familiar with Steam already. If not, then you might be asking, what is Steam? Steam is probably the biggest digital game distributor out in the market these days. It’s equivalent to Amazon for all your gaming needs. It is the go-to place for buying games online and for playing with friends, Whatever gaming needs you may have, Steam will most definitely have you covered in every department. If you are new to the whole gaming on Steam thing, we will guide you in installing it.

The first way to installing it is through the Ubuntu software center. Simply type in Steam and you will able to find it. Install it from there and you will be able to start downloading games in a short while.

The other way is to download and install it through the command line interface (CLI). To download it through the CLI, type in the following command through the terminal window:

sudo apt install steam-installer

Updating Steam

When you start steam for the first time, it will first update itself to the current stable version that is out in the market and that could take a while.

After you’ve followed the above steps correctly, now all that remains is to finally download the game. Use the search bar to search for the game and after you’ve made sure the specs are met, wait no longer and start downloading.

Do make sure to comment your views on the game and also comparison if you played on Windows. Happy gaming!

The next thing that you will need to do from here is to log in to your Steam account or create a new one if you do not have one already. To log in, simply enter your username and password into the respective fields, press the ‘log in’ button or press enter on your keyboard. The client will then validate your credentials and transfer you the store’s front page. From there you can do many things, such as browse and buy games, manage friends, manage profile etc.

To download War Thunder, go to the store tab by clicking on ‘Store’ from the top toolbar. From there, you will find a search bar located on the right side of your screen. It will be a bit below the toolbar you clicked ‘Store’ on. Enter ‘War Thunder’ into it and the search should result in some familiar terms and the main game at the top of the list. Click on the list entry and proceed to the game’s main page. From there, you can see tons of information on the game such as reviews, system requirements and trailers etc.

If you plan to install other games, make sure that the games you install are supported on Linux. To do that, go to the system requirements section and see if there is a tab for Linux OS. A way to make sure that you only search for Linux based games is by typing ‘Linux’ into the search bar. That way, you will only be presented with Linux supported games.

Normally there is a price to pay for each game, but War Thunder is one of the few ones that are free to play. This means that it can be downloaded for no fee and be ready to play. When you click on Play Game, you will be presented with the option to choose the game to be searchable within the operating system and for it to have a desktop shortcut.

Sit back and relax while your system does everything for you

Once it starts downloading, you can continue to use Steam for whatever purpose and use your system along as well. The download will continue to progress in the background and any other games you choose to download while the previous one has not yet completed will be queued into the system. You will also have the option to move things to the front of the queue depending on your preference.

Once Steam has finished downloading its files, War Thunder will continue to download the remaining files through its own client. This does not happen for every game, but a few are processed through their own third-party clients which are not controlled by Steam. They will be accessed by creating accounts on them just like a Steam account.

Once that has been done, the remaining game files will automatically start downloading and after that, War Thunder will be playable on your system by accessing it from your library in the Steam client.

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3 Linux and open source cheat sheets

1. Python 3.7 Beginner’s Cheat Sheet
   The Python programming language is known for its large community and diverse extension menu. Get acquainted with Python’s built-in pieces.
2. i3 Linux Window Manager Cheat Sheet
   Learn shortcuts to become even more productive with i3.
3. Advanced SSH Cheat Sheet
   SSH is a tool for remote login, and it can be used in many other ways. Get common command-line options and their configuration file equivalents.

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In many cases, to manage your Linux servers, you can need to allow remote access and this can be done via the Secure Shell (SSH). Since many years ago, Linux systems can use the native terminal to use SSH but it was not the case for Windows systems which need some tools to be installed.

Windows systems have seen many improvements so that you don’t need to install a tool but you can use native tools which are available. In this tutorial, we will learn how to ssh a Linux machine from Windows with the native tools.

What to know about SSH

Secure Shell is a secure and encrypted connection protocol allowing remote and secure sign-ins over unsecured connections. The connection works in the client-server mode, so the connection is established by the SSH client connecting to the SSH server.

SSH offers several options for user authentication and the most common ones are passwords and public key authentication methods:

• password: it works like the usual process for a local computer which means that you need to have the username and password of an existing account on the server.
• public key: the principle is to have a cryptographic key pair public key and private key where the public key is configured on the server to authorize access and grant anyone who has a copy of the private key access to the server.

1) Install feature OpenSSH windows 10 client

Windows machines now allow you to use native tools to establish a SSH connection but you need first to make sure that the feature Openssh windows client is installed. Normally is not installed by default so you will need first to do it. Go to Windows -> Settings -> Apps -> Manage optional feature

Click Add a feature

Select OpenSSH Client and then install.

Now it’s installed

2) SSh connection with Windows Powershell and command prompt

Now you can decide to use the command prompt or Windows PowerShell to access your Linux server via ssh.

a) SSh with Windows Powershell

The Windows Powershell native tool allows you to remotely connect to a server via ssh. You just have to open it with Windows + r then hit the key A

Now enter the command the ssh command for the connection to your remote Linux server: ssh [email protected]

b) SSh with command prompt

To remotely access your server via the command, you just have to launch it with the key combination Windows + r and then enter cmd

Now in the command prompt, you can use the ssh command as with powershell

Now you know how you can connect to your remote Linux server with SSH with the native tools offered by Windows. You can choose to use putty tool as well but now it’s easiest and more comfortable to use the tools which are offered by default.

Read Also:

• Learn Uses of ssh Command in Linux With Examples
• How to Setup Passwordless Ssh Login in Linux Systems

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To me, it’s a miracle how every tiny article on OSNews.com, or any other tech-site, ends up in people shouting all sorts of nonsense at each other like “Linux is gonna bring back Elvis”, “Windows shot president Kennedy”, “Linux kept the cold war cold” or “Bill Gates wants to buy the moon and charge people for looking at it”. Do these people really know what they are saying, or are they just going with the Open-Source flow? Update: Rebuttal article here.Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
General Note: Please forgive any grammar mistakes as the author is not a native english speaker.

Intro

I tend to think the latter. Not because I am not a Linux fan (I happily set up my Computer with Mandrake about two years ago, they are still merrily in love), but because I have not heard anything new in the past two years. It is always “my god, not another security hole in Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/2000/XP/Server 2003”, “Microsoft aggressively bought company X”, “Microsoft launches another way to protect their software” and “Microsoft software is too exspensive”. And Linux, on the other hand, is all bliss.

Well, I think Linux is not all “bliss”. Linux would be all “bliss” if we forget the slow boot-up/shutdown times, if we forget the lousy hardware support for, let’s say, Ati products (Ati being the number two in graphics cards!), if we forget the “geek” image of Linux, if we forget the fact that some distributions suddenly have to be paid for, if we forget that some distributions suddenly get discontinued, if we forget the crappy way software is installed (with the exception of apt-get, or so I’ve heard).

You can go the same way when it comes to Windows. Windows would be all hell if we forget the ease with which it is installed, if we forget the great hardware support, if we forget the uniform look of all the programs, if we forget InstallShield and look-a-likes, if we forget the clear structure (Program Files, My Documents etc, and of course this only goes for the not-so-technical end-user), if we forget Windows Update (still beats the Distribution-specific update tools, in my opinion).

If you confront Linux addicts with the disadvantages I just named, you always get the same reaction: “When Linux becomes (more) mainstream, those problems will disappear.” Well, I think you should turn that around: Linux will become (more) mainstream, when those problems are solved, or at least addressed. Your OS can be great when it comes to its inner workings, but it are the looks of the OS that really matter to the masses. Would Marylin Monroe have become as famous if she was not so darn pretty? I do not think so. I mean, consumers do not want to wait forever for their PC to boot (you can read a Donna Tart in the meantime… twice), they do not want twelve different applications for one task, they do not want to choose between six different Window Managers, even though all of them are quite good. I mean, do you line up six tv’s in your living room just because they look a bit different from each other? Again, I do not think so (imagine the remote-control interference…).

What Should We Do?

So, what should happen to Linux in order to gain more marketshare at the cost of Windows? Well, a lot has been said when it comes to this particular issue.

I think the major Distributions should all “join hands” to create one version of Linux, with one desktop, a uniform look, with one update system and so on. They can still develop their own Distributions (for the fans, I do not think my Computer and Mandrake will ever divorce). By creating a standard, you will make it more accessible for the masses. Just look at the dvd recording standards now: the number of standards are really stopping people from buying a dvd recorder. They are heavily influenced by articles stating the risk of buying one: “Your standard may be unsupported in a few years”.

It will be no problem if Linux XP (couldn’t resist the temptation 😉 , sorry) will cost something, they can spend the earned money on research. The newly developed applications can first be put in the Distributions, and, when the community is satisfied, they can be integrated into the next Linux version, Linux Longhorn (okay, this is getting silly). This way you get the best of both worlds: the knowledge, experience and diversity of the Open-Source world, combined with the easiness and clarity of standardized software. A very good example is, in my eyes, LindowsOS 4.0. I have used it for a couple of weeks now and I must say I am impressed. Despite critizism from the Open-Source commmunity (“It’s too Windows”, “It’s not free” and “They don’t supply source-code (which is a plain lie, by the way)”), I believe LindowsOS is kind of what that new standardized Linux should look like.

Of course that kind of takes away the essence of the Open-Source concept. Open-Source is all about letting everybody not only use the software, bu also letting everybody improve the software. This has led to a diversity in the available software. This is a good thing, if you are an expert willing to put time and effort into your OS, but if you are not, than Linux just isn’t for you, at this moment.

But, as always, this is just my opinion. So please, do not send any suicide penguins my way…

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Transfer.sh – Easy File Sharing from Linux Commandline

Transfer.sh is a simple, easy and fast service for file sharing from the command-line. It allows you to upload up to 10GB of data and files are stored for 14 days, for free.

You can maximize amount of downloads and it also supports encryption for security. It supports the local file system (local); together with s3 (Amazon S3), and gdrive (Google Drive) cloud storage services.

Transfer.sh – Easy File Sharing in Linux Terminal

It is designed to be used with the Linux shell. In addition, you can preview your files in the browser. In this article, we will show how to use transfer.sh in Linux.

Upload a Single File

To upload a file, you can use the curl program with the --upload-file option as shown.

$ curl --upload-file ./tecmint.txt https://transfer.sh/tecmint.txt

Download a File

To download your file, a friend or colleague can run the following command.

$ curl https://transfer.sh/Vq3Kg/tecmint.txt -o tecmint.txt 

Upload Multiple Files

You can upload multiple files at once, for example:

$ curl -i -F filedata=@/path/to/tecmint.txt -F filedata=@/path/to/usernames.txt https://transfer.sh/ 

Encrypt Files Before Transfer

To encrypt your files before the transfer, use the following command (you must have the gpg tool installed on the system). You will be prompted to enter a password to encrypt the file.

$ cat usernames.txt | gpg -ac -o- | curl -X PUT --upload-file "-" https://transfer.sh/usernames.txt 

To download and decrypt the above file, use the following command:

$ curl https://transfer.sh/11Rnw5/usernames.txt | gpg -o- > ./usernames.txt

Use Wget Tool

Transfer.sh also supports the wget tool. To upload a file, run.

$ wget --method PUT –body-file=./tecmint.txt https://transfer.sh/tecmint.txt -O --nv 

Create Alias Command

To use the short transfer command, add an alias to your .bashrc or .zshrc startup file.

$ vim ~/.bashrc
OR
$ vim ~/.zshrc

Then add the lines below in it (you can only choose one tool, either curl or wget).

##using curl
transfer() {
    curl --progress-bar --upload-file "$1" https://transfer.sh/$(basename $1) | tee /dev/null;
}

alias transfer=transfer
##using wget
transfer() {
    wget -t 1 -qO - --method=PUT --body-file="$1" --header="Content-Type: $(file -b --mime-type $1)" https://transfer.sh/$(basename $1);
}

alias transfer=transfer

Save the changes and close the file. Then source it to apply the changes.

$ source ~/.bashrc
OR
$ source ~/.zshrc

From now on, you upload a file using the transfer command as shown.

$ transfer users.list.gz

To setup your own sharing server instance, download the program code from the Github repository.

You can find more information and sample use cases in the project homepage: https://transfer.sh/

Transfer.sh is a simple, easy and fast service for file sharing from the command-line.

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Today we feature a very interesting interview with Havoc Pennington. Havoc works for Red Hat, he is heading the desktop team, while he is well known also for his major contributions to GNOME, his GTK+ programming book, plus the freedesktop.org initiative which aims to standardize the X11 desktop environments. In the following interview we discuss about the changes inside Red Hat, Xouvert, freedesktop.org and Gnome’s future, and how Linux, in general, is doing in the desktop market.

1. Looking Red Hat’s recent press releases and web site lately, it reveals a new, stronger effort to shift focus further into the Enterprise and leaving Red Hat Linux to the hands of the community for the home/desktop market. This seems to leave a “hole” in the previous target of Red Hat at the “Corporate Desktop market”. The new Red Hat Linux might sound like “power to the people”, but to me sounds like an action that will have consequences (good & bad) in the quality, testing, development of what we got to know as your “corporate/desktop” product. Given the fact that Red Hat is the No1 Linux distribution on the planet, do you think that this new direction will slow down the Linux penetration to the desktop market?

Havoc Pennington: In my view it’s a mistake to create an “Enterprise vs. Desktop” contrast; these are largely separate dimensions. There are enterprise desktops, enterprise servers, consumer desktops, and consumer servers. Quite possibly small business desktops and servers are another category in between.

I don’t think we’ll see a slowdown in Linux penetration into the desktop market. In fact I hope to see it speed up. Today there are many large software companies making investments in the Linux desktop.

2. How have things changed internally after the [further] focus shift to Enterprise? Is your desktop team still fully working on Gnome/GTK+/X/etc or have developers been pulled into other projects that are more in line with this new focus at Red Hat?

Havoc Pennington: We’re still working on the desktop, more so than ever. (Including applications such as Mozilla, OpenOffice, and Evolution, not just the base environment.)

3. In the past (pre-SCO), Red Hat has admitted that was growing wary of patent issues that might arise in the future. Do you believe that desktop open source software written by many different individuals around the globe might be infringing on patents in some cases without the knowledge of these developers? At the end of the day, we have seen some patents that were issued so shortsightedly that many have said that writing software is almost impossible nowadays. What kind of solution for this issue might OSS software developers find, to ensure a future that is not striken by lawsuits left and right?

Havoc Pennington: As you know we’ve been more aggressive than other Linux vendors about removing potentially patented software from our distribution, specifically we took a lot of criticism for removing mp3 support.

One strategy for helping defend the open source community is to create defensive patents, as described here.

Another strategy is the one taken by Lawrence Rosen in the Academic Free License and Open Software License.

These licenses contain a “Termination for Patent Action” clause that’s an interesting approach.

Political lobbying and education can’t hurt either. These efforts become stronger as more people rely upon open source software.

4. What major new features are scheduled for GTK+ 2.4/2.6 and for the future in general? Once, you started a C++ wrapper for GTK+, but then the project got sterile. Do you believe that Gnome needs a C++ option, and if yes, do you believe that Gtkmm is a good one? Are there plans to sync GTK+ and Gtkmm more often and include it by default on Gnome releases?

Havoc Pennington: GTK+ 2.4 and 2.6 plans are pretty well described here.

One theme of these releases are to make GTK+ cover all the GUI functionality provided historically by libgnomeui. So there will be a single clear GUI API, rather than “plain GTK+” and “GNOME libs” – at that point being a “GNOME application” is really just a matter of whether you follow the GNOME user interface guidelines, rather than an issue of which libs you link to. This cuts down on bloat and developer confusion.

The main user-visible change in 2.4 is of course the new file selector.

The other user-visible effects of 2.4 and 2.6 will mostly be small tweaks and improved consistency between applications as they use the new standard widgets.

At some point we’ll support Cairo which should allow for some nice themes. Cairo also covers printing.

Regarding C++, honestly I’m not qualified to comment on the current state of gtkmm, because I haven’t evaluated it in some time. I do think a C++ option is important. There are two huge wins I’d consider even more important for your average one-off in-house simple GUI app though. 1) to use a language such as Python, Java, C#, Visual Basic, or whatever with automatic memory management, high-level library functions, and so forth; 2) use a user interface builder such as Glade. Both of those will save you more time than the difference between a C and a C++ UI toolkit.

5. What do you think of the XFree86 fork, Xouvert? Do you support the fork, and if yes, what exactly you want to see changed with Xouvert (feature-wise and architecture-wise for X)?

Havoc Pennington: The huge architectural effort I want to see in the X server is to move to saving all the window contents and using the 3D engine of the graphics cards, allowing transparency, faster redraws, nice visual effects, and thumbnailing/magnification, for example.

The trick is that there are *very* few people in the world with the qualifications to architect this change. I don’t know if the Xouvert guys have the necessary knowledge, but if they do that would be interesting. It may well be that no single person understands how to do this right; we may need a collaboration between toolkit people, X protocol people, and 3D hardware experts.

Aside from that, most of the changes to X I’d like to see aren’t really to the window system. Instead, I’d like us to think of the problem as building a base desktop platform. This platform would include a lot of things currently in the X tarball, a lot of things currently on freedesktop.org, and a lot of things that GNOME and KDE and GTK+ and Qt are doing independently. You can think of it as implementing the common backend or framework that GUI toolkits and applications are ported to when they’re ported to Linux.

This may be of interest. If we can negotiate the scary political waters, I’d like to see the various X projects, freedesktop.org, and the desktop environments and applications work together on a single base desktop platform project. With the new freedesktop.org server I’m trying to encourage such a thing.

6. How are things with freedesktop.org; what is its status? Do these standards get implemented in KDE and Gnome, or do they find resistance by hardcore devs on either projects? When do you think KDE and Gnome will reach a good level of interoperability as defined by freedesktop.org? What work has being done so far?

Havoc Pennington: freedesktop.org is going pretty well, I recently posted about the status of the hosting move. See here, I also had a lot of fun at the KDE conference in Nove Hrady and really enjoyed meeting a lot of quality developers I hadn’t met before.

I find that hardcore devs understand the importance of what we’re trying to do, though they also understand the difficulty of changing huge codebases such as Mozilla, OpenOffice, GNOME, or KDE so are understandably careful.

There are people who think of things in “GNOME vs. KDE” terms but in general the people who’ve invested the most time are interested in the bigger picture of open source vs. proprietary, Linux vs. Microsoft, and democratizing access to software.

Of course everyone has their favorite technologies – I think GNOME is great and have a lot of investment in it, and I also like Emacs and Amazon.com and Red Hat Linux. These preferences change over time. When it comes down to it the reason I’m here is larger than any particular technology.

As to when freedesktop.org will achieve interoperability, keep in mind that currently any app will run with any desktop. The issue is more sustaining that fact as the desktop platforms add new bells and whistles; and factoring new features down into the base desktop platform so that apps are properly integrated into any desktop. So it’s a process that I don’t think will ever end. There are always new features and those will tend to be tried out in several apps or desktops before they get spec’d out and documented on the freedesktop.org level.

7. Gnome 2.4 was released last week. Are you satisfied with the development progress of Gnome? What major features/changes do you want to see in Gnome in the next couple of years?

Havoc Pennington: I’m extremely satisfied with GNOME’s progress. Time based releases (see here
for the long definition) are the smartest thing a free software project can do.

This mail has some of my thoughts on what we need to add.

Honestly though the major missing bits of the Linux desktop are not on the GNOME/KDE level anymore. The desktop environments can be endlessly tweaked but they are pretty usable already.

We need to be looking at issues that span and integrate the large desktop projects – WINE, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution on top of the desktops, X below them. And integrate all of them with the operating system.

Some of the other major problems, as explained here, have “slipped through the cracks” in that they don’t clearly fall under the charter of any of the existing large projects.

And of course manageability, administration, security, and application features.

8. Your fellow Red Hat engineer Mike Harris said recently that “There will be a time and a place for Linux on the home desktop. When and where it will be, and wether it will be something that can turn a profit remains to be seen. When Red Hat believes it may be a viable market to enter, then I’m sure we will. Personally, in my own opinion, I don’t think it will be viable for at least 1.5 – 2 years minimum.” Do you agree with this time frame and if yes, what parts exactly need to be “fixed/changed” in the whole Linux universe (technical or not) before Linux becomes viable to the home/desktop market?

Havoc Pennington: I wouldn’t try to guess the timeframe exactly. My guess would be something like “0 to 7 years” 😉

On the technology side, we need some improvements to robustness, to hardware handling, to usability.

However the consumer barriers have a lot to do with consumer ISV and IHV support. And you aren’t going to get that until you can point to some desktop marketshare. That’s why you can’t bootstrap the Linux desktop by targeting consumers. You need to get some initial marketshare elsewhere.

There’s also the business issue that targeting consumers involves very expensive mass market advertising.

9. Have you had a look at the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther previews? Apple is introducing some new widgets, like the new Tabs that look like buttons instead of tabs, and there is of course, Expose, which by utilizing the GL-based QuartzExtreme, offers new usability enhancements, plus cool and modern eye-candy. Do you think that X with GTK+/Gnome will be able to have such innovations in a timely manner, or will it take some years before we see those to a common Linux desktop?

Havoc Pennington: I haven’t tried Panther, though I saw some screenshots and articles.

As I mentioned earlier, the big X server feature I think we need is to move to this kind of 3D-based architecture. If we got the right 2 or 3 people working on it today, we could have demoware in a few months and something usable in a couple of years. I’m just making up those numbers of course.

However, nobody can predict when the right 2 or 3 people will start to work on it. As always in free software, the answer to “when will this be done?” is “faster if you help.”

One stepping stone is to create a robust base desktop platform project where these people could do their work, and some of us are working hard on that task.

10. How do you see the Linux and Unix landscape today? Do you feel that Linux is replacing Unix slowly but steadily, or do they follow parallel and different directions in your opinion?

Havoc Pennington: I would say that the nails are firmly in the UNIX coffin, and it’s just a matter of time.

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