Keeping it personal

What do you do when the developer of

Who pays for H.264?

Confusion over the H.264 patents causes distros to drop support.

Ad-blocking to get harder

Chrome’s shift to Manifest V3 extensions looms.

SERVER SECURITY

Keith Edmunds is MD of Tiger Computing, which

WESTON FRONT

Marius Vlad is a senior software engineer at

Say hello to Ubuntu Pro

Canonical spins a Pro version out of its Advantage support.

Ancient history slows AMD

Twenty-year-old sticking plaster proves a hindrance.

Blender to get Wayland added in 3.4

Native support to be added in 3.4.

Distro watch

What’s behind the free software sofa?

END OF THE LINE!

Donnie Berkholz is senior vice president, product, at

BYE, 486!

Jon Masters is a kernel hacker who’s been

Kernel Watch

Jon Masters keeps an eye out for 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

Automatically provision devices with Ansible

Embrace laziness with Matthew Holder and auto-configure your systems by installing packages and adding files with Ansible.

HotPicks

THE BEST NEW OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ON THE PLANET

ESCAPE WINDOWS

Don’t get trapped by security modules, hardware and memory demands, or privacy concerns – we have the escape route: Linux!

LINUX FORMAT

The #1 open source mag

Intel Arc A750

Intel’s affordable Arc GPU is pretty competitive, thinks Jacob Ridley.

Ubuntu 22.10

Michael Reed examines the latest Ubuntu release and finds that it’s a solid offering but unlikely to get your heart racing.

Crux 3.7

Michael Reed examines a Linux distro that caters for experts as well as intermediate users who want to improve their Linux skills.

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow

The Management loves digging up dirt, especially on Ian Evenden.

Raspberry Pi OS 09.22

Les Pounder explores the latest Raspberry Pi OS in a decade of releases that saw it become the gold standard for single-board computer OSes.

Pimoroni Tufty 2040

Make a full-colour badge or display live sensor data, using an RP2040 chip. Les Pounder mulls the possibilities.

Vector drawing apps

Whether for works of art, accurate diagrams or informative charts, Michael Reed finds that each of these five applications has its strengths.

Illustration creation

Features that are mostly relevant to artists and illustrators.

Charts and diagrams

Specialised tools for easily made professional-looking diagrams.

User interface and experience

Looking for efficiency and intuitiveness.

Documentation and online help

Top-notch features are little use if you can’t figure out how to use them.

Extensions and plugins

Sometimes they get you past a brick wall; sometimes they add finesse.

Text handling

A picture paints a thousand words, but words can enhance a drawing.

Other features

Does an application have a worthwhile extra that others lack?

The Verdict

Vector drawing applications

PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY

In a world where the concept of online privacy is an afterthought at best, David Rutland looks at the hazards of the digital landscape and what you can do to protect yourself.

The end of ad-blockers

Manifest V3 will cripple or kill ad-blockers for Chrome, Edge, Opera and more. Why would Google do that?

Firefox extensions

Let’s defend our browsing with some pointy plugins that’ll keep the wolves at bay.

Peeling open Tor 12

We might not be in a position to share state secrets with foreign governments, but if we were, we’d use the Tor Browser.

DeepMind partners with the Pi Foundation

Old McDonald had a Pi, AI, AI, oh. And with that Pi he did machine learning, AI, AI, oooooh…

Gender balance in IT

Encouraging more women to study computing.

Arduino to Pi GPIO comms using Python

Like a snake charmer, Les Pounder uses his skills to persuade an Arduino to talk to a Raspberry Pi via Python.

Make a model train scale-speed monitor

Sean Conway feels the need for scale-model speed! So, he prototypes a Raspberry Pi-based measuring device with a few basic sensors.

3D PRINT EVOLUTION

From dinosaurs to biotech, Alastair Jennings takes a look at where 3D printing has been and what the future holds.

Terminal screencasting

Desperate to show off his terminal prowess, Shashank Sharma puts on his best Darth Vader voice and screencasts to the world live!

Turbo charging your desktop search

Nick Peers discovers how to configure the Cerebro search tool so it meets its promise of being a “productivity booster with a brain”.

A floppy-drive sized assembly based OS

Stepping out of his comfort zone, Michael Reed explores MenuetOS and its fork KolibriOS, two highly unusual operating systems.

Data recovery and secure deletion

Mike Bedford investigates recovering files from damaged disks and how to make sure that what you delete is gone for good.

Quick and easy website creation with Publii

Nick Baird guides you through the creation and deployment of a static website without touching a single line of code.

Kinetic Kudu emerges from the bush

Nick Peers reveals how to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu, plus showcases its most notable new features.

Using eBPF to trace disk transfer actions

Never one to hold back on providing input, Mihalis Tsoukalos explains how to keep a track of disk I/O using eBPF

Recreate classic retro platform games

Recreating classic games is easy for Andrew Smith. He finds avoiding pixel-art bad guys somewhat more difficult!

Code a cataloguing application in Python

Strap in kids! Using Python and the Django framework, Matt Holder can help you create a web-based cataloguing application