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Linux Format

The #1 open source mag Future Publishing Limited,

MEET THE TEAM

This issue, we’re looking at exciting new distributions, so what new distro have you tried recently that you would recommend readers try for themselves?

Cutting edges

Living in the open source world means if

Linux to save Windows 10 PCs from the apocalypse?

240 million PCs could be scrapped after October 2025, when free support ends for Windows 10. Or users could just switch to Linux.

Cosmic looking out of this world

Pop!_OS Cosmic DE is to be released as an alpha, with a new terminal and overhauled graphics support.

Chromium Wayland accelerated!

VA-API now works on Linux Ozone/Wayland platform.

NEW YEAR RELEASE!

Italo Vignoli is one of the founders of

DATABASE BASES

David Stokes is a technology evangelist at Percona.

Unity bans VLC plugin

Unity management making friends and influencing people.

OpenWrt router?

OpenWrt floats the idea of its own hardware router.

Man writes kernel in Rust

Maestro is a Unix-like kernel written from scratch in Rust.

Distro watch

What’s behind the free software sofa?

WILY WESTON

Marius Vlad is a senior software engineer at

REISER’S GUILT

Jon Masters is a kernel hacker who’s been

Kernel Watch

Jon Masters keeps up with all the latest happenings in the Linux kernel, so you don’t have to.

Answers

Got a burning question about open source or the kernel? Whatever your level, email it to answers@linuxformat.com

Mailserver

WRITE TO US Do you have a burning

HotPicks

Shotwell YouTube Downloader Plus Blue Recorder EncryptPad Buttercup Resources Rnote heXon EDuke32 Delta Chat Proton VPN

OLD-SCHOOL HACKING 101

CREDIT: Magictorch LXF313 will be on sale Tuesday

Intel Core i7 14700K

Jacob Ridley thinks this is a perfectly good stand-in for a Core i9.

Emmabuntüs 5

Nate Drake finds that despite being hard to pronounce, the name is the only complicated thing about this Debian-based distro.

Manjaro 23.1 Vulcan

Nate Drake boldly goes to take Vulcan for a test spin and finds an incredibly user-friendly and efficient operating system.

Password managers

RoboForm Keeper NordPass KeePass 2 Bitwarden

THE 5 BEST NEW DISTROS

Blast off into the future with Matt Holder as he explores the technology powering a new generation of Linux distributions.

Let them eat lots of Pi!

Hundreds of thousands of Raspberry Pis are hitting the market, with production ramped to the max!

ProPico

Better by design.

Cyberdeck

Survive anything!

PEERLESS PIN NUMBERS

Les Pounder works with groups such as the

Official Pi 5 Case

Can the new official Raspberry Pi 5 case keep the Pi 5 cool? Les Pounder is – brace yourselves readers – on the case…

Geniatech XPI 3566 Zero

All brains and no brawn applies equally to this SBC and to Les Pounder.

Start using MQTT for sensor logs

Les Pounder is a sensitive soul and his new office needs sensors to record data. He’d better break out the maker kit!

Orange Pi vs Raspberry Pi

Tam Hanna compares the highest-end single-board computer offerings from Shenzhen Xunlong and the Raspberry Pi Foundation to find out which one is best suited for you.

Monitor systems in style

Shashank Sharma doesn’t look dapper in his quickly fading imitation leather jacket, but his terminal is always a sight to behold.

Secure and private comms made easy

Nick Peers takes a fresh look at an old favourite – Jami, a tool that aims to cover all your communication and sharing needs.

Make a Mealie of it

David Rutland dons a tall hat to prepare you a portion of Mealie – a sophisticated recipe management server with a side of meal planning.

Rescue and back up your retro media

Christian Cawley has some old Commodore 64 5.25-inch disks, and wants to revisit some personal files from 40 years ago.

Create NPCs and their conversations

Nate Drake invites you to relive the glory days of point-and-click adventure games by creating your very own.

Emulate an analogue computer digitally

In our continuing journey into analogue computing, Mike Bedford looks at another emulation approach, and how to get a real analogue computer.

The wire to faster Ethernet

Searching for faster than Gigabit Ethernet, the ever frugal Neil Mohr does that compromise thing his ex told him about.

Do Docker like an adult!

Stuart Burns is as mad as hell and he’s not going to stand for your shoddy Docker deployments any longer!

Starlink

Wherever he may roam, Nate Drake can enjoy fast internet at a fair price.

Hatch

An easy-to-use builder that empowers Mirza Bahic’s creative expression.

PROTECT YOUR SYSTEMS

Davey Winder reveals the biggest threats that hit systems in 2023 and what’s likely to happen over 2024.

Write and run C64-style 6502 code

David Bolton shows how to get started writing 6502 code and provides a useful example that sorts numbers.

The LXF Shell in… the redirection redemption

Ferenc Deák continues writing shell-enhancing redirection features and hiding the odd film title for you to spot, the little scamp!