Year of the Linux…?

2021 is the year everyone can blast off

Red Hat kills off CentOS eight years early

DISTRO DRAMA

Google changes sign-ins

Google account sign-ins from embedded browser frames will be blocked from 4 January 2021

What now for 32-bit Linux?

Companies, distros and manufacturers are moving to 64-bit only support, so where does that leave 32-bit systems?

PAY THE MAN!

Keith Edmunds is MD of Tiger Computing Ltd,

INSTANT BIFROST

Alyssa Rosenzweig Software engineer, Collabora Since our previous

RISC-V smashes records

Micro Magic’s RISC-V-based CPU generates record-breaking results

Boost to Vulkan

Advanced lighting rolling out to the Vulkan graphics API

New NTFS driver

NTFS 3 kernel driver gets better compression features

Distro watch

What’s down the side of the free software sofa?

OPEN-ISH SOURCE?

Matt Yonkovit is Percona’s chief experience officer and

Kernel Watch

Jon Masters summarises the latest happenings in the Linux kernel, so you don’t have to

LOOKING FORWARD

Jon Masters has been involved with Linux for

Answers

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

A QUICK REFERENCE TO… CRON

Computers are supposed to make life easier for

GET HELP NOW!

We’d love to try and answer any questions

Helpdex

shane_collinge@yahoo.com WRITE TO US Do you have a

Mailserver

Write to us at Linux Format, Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA or lxf.letters@futurenet.com

BACK ISSUES

HotPicks

THE BEST NEW OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ON THE PLANET

SongRec

SHAZAM CLIENT

Xsuspender

PERFORMANCE TUNE-UP

WinApps

WINDOWS INTEGRATION

Dog

DNS CLIENT

AFTL

FILE TRANSFER TOOL

YUView

VIDEO PLAYER & ANALYSER

Micro-racing

RACING GAME

Distribyted

TORRENT CLIENT

Topalias

ALIAS GENERATOR

On the disc

Ubuntu 20.04.1

START HERE

USING THE LXFDVD Using Linux for the first

Bodhi 5.1

DESKTOP SATORI MIN SPECS: 500MHZ CPU >> 512MB

AND MORE!

THE LXF LIBRARY

POWER-UP YOUR VMs

Orchestral (Virtual) Machines in the Docker is a terrible pun but here we are… we look at VM orchestration

AMD Rade on RX 6800

The RX 6800 not only delivers 1,440p performance, it demolishes the RTX 2080 Ti at 4K, too says Jacob Ridley

Guix System v1.2.0

Strap in for this wild tour of the distro designed for the uber-geeks with your knowledgeable guide Mayank Sharma

Edge on Linux (dev)

Microsoft’s shiny new browser touches down on Linux. Mayank Sharma fires it up for a test drive… or will it become a voyage of discovery?

Feren OS 2020.11

Mayank Sharma discovers that this distribution is one of the best options to introduce new users to Linux. It’s time to spread the word!

Amnesia: Rebirth

Management refuses to go into the server dungeon, and for good reason – Leana Hafer has returned a changed woman

Astronomy software

If you’re a novice stargazer but clueless about how to feed your passion, Shashank Sharma knows a few tools to help you get started…

Customisations

Kicking things up a notch with even more databases and catalogues

Features

What can you do with and learn from these applications?

Usability

Balancing ease of use with functionality

Unique selling points

What makes these programs special?

Platform and hardware support

Will they work on your Linux distribution and device?

Search options

Can you look up coordinates and space objects?

Support and documentation

Is that a new star you’ve found, or just a speck of dust?

Astronomy software

The Verdict

BLAST OFF

WITH LINUX!

Solid foundations

Start 2021 off on the right foot with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, codename Focal Fossa

Install Ubuntu

Get Focal Fossa running on your machine, set up an incremental back-up regimen and start installing the huge free software ecosystem

Setting up disks

Keep your SSD cells tidy with regular trimming, then set up a RAID array for your static files and enjoy the simple pleasure of filesystem labels

Solve problems

In Linux, the best-laid schemes, to decontextualise Robbie Burns, gang aft a-gley. Get yer scheme gang glorious with oor troubleshooting guide

RISE OF THE ROBOTS

Mats Tage Axelsson presents the basics of a robotics operating system and reveals what components can be used…

Next-gen terminals

Discover the next-gen terminal tools with David Rutland that will transform your command-line life

Elementary OS lands on the Raspberry Pi

The world is getting armed and dangerous, as another distro joins the Raspberry Pi army

Raspberry Pi OS updates

The final update of 2020 offers many improvements

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Andrew Gale produces a range of educational electronic

RetroPie 4.7.1

Les Pounder loves retrogaming and Raspberry Pi, so with RetroPie and the new Raspberry Pi 400 the question is: will he find his Nirvana?

Quickly install Manjaro on the Pi 4

MANJARO

Host Nextcloud 20 on a Raspberry Pi

NEXTCLOUD

Manipulate and work with PDF files

TERMINAL

Optimise your videos and free up HDD space

Nick Peers reveals how to convert your videos into H.264 and H.265 codec formats to help save drive space and maximise playback compatibility

Enhance your photos by stacking them

Combining multiple photos of the same scene using a stacking technique can result in some spectacular results, reveals Mike Bedford

Emulate classic Apple computers

Les Pounder goes back to his distant college days and reveals how to emulate the Apple desktop machines that he used for work and play

Getting to grips with Docker

People think of Docker as a server-room only tool, but as Michael Reed demonstrates, the platform has a lot to offer the general user, too

Get coding on the Raspberry Pi 64-bit

John Schwartzman demos using assembly language code for the 64-bit Raspberry Pi to call Linux kernel services and the C run-time library

Remaking Angry Birds in Python

PYTHON