MEET THE TEAM

We’re going retro mad this issue, so we asked our writing collective what’s their guilty-pleasure, nostalgic retrocomputing crush? No judgement here…

LINUX FORMAT

The #1 open source mag

To the rescue!

There’s a reason open source software is the

We salute Peter Eckersley, tech scientist and activist

THIS ISSUE: RIP Peter Eckersley Godot beta update Google bug bounty New Ubuntu app store New Framework laptop

Godot 4.0 hits beta

Open-source game engine reaches a major milestone.

Google bug bounty launched

The company is encouraging vulnerability reporting.

TIME TO MERGE

Donnie Berkholz is senior vice-president, product at Percona

WHAT A TO-DO!

Keith Edmunds is MD of Tiger Computer Ltd,

New app store for Ubuntu spotted

Canonical is ditching its Gnomebased store for Flutter.

Intel backs Krita

Intel becomes the first Gold Patron of the art program.

New Chromebook

Framework partners with Google to create $999 device.

Distro watch

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

VIDEO CODECS

Benjamin Gaignard is a senior software engineer at

NO MOORE

Jon Masters is a kernel hacker who’s been

Kernel Watch

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

Answers

Got a burning question about open source or

Mailserver

WRITE TO US Do you have a burning

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PERFECT PRIVACY

Batten down your browsers! With our whole lives online its time to plug your leaky browser, utilise privacy extensions and try out the new Tor v12.

Snapmaker 2.0 3-in-1

Who wants an expensive, jack-of-all-trades 3D printer, asks Denise Bertacchi?

RebornOS 10.2021

David Rutland’s mum ends every conversation with, “I use Arch BTW.” With RebornOS, she never even needed to open a terminal.

Openmamba 3.6.21

David Rutland was hoping for something of a snake theme with Openmamba. Instead, he got Red Hat with a KDE Plasma desktop.

MX Linux 21.2.1 KDE

David Rutland finds that ‘Wildflower,’ a Systemd-free, Plasma lovefest, seems to suffer from some recurring stability issues. It’s still good, though.

Salix 15.0

Salix OS is a willowy Slackware derivative that’s easy to use and comes with a well-themed Xfce desktop. Just what David Rutland’s looking for…

Two Point Campus

“You want job training?” laughs The Management at Fraser Brown, who knows deep down this is the closest he’ll get to a degree course…

Lightweight distros

EasyOS 4.3 Linux Lite 6.0 Lubuntu 22.04 Absolute Linux 15.0 4QOS 4.10 Gemini

Ease of installation

Did we have to jump through hoops to install and were there any extras?

Package management

Is it easy to add/remove software? How extensive are the repositories?

Rating the desktop environment

We review the front end to the system.

Memory and disk space

Low memory usage can help if a computer doesn’t have enough resources.

Live experience

In many scenarios, a working Linux set up on a flash drive can be a life-saver.

Ease of configuration

We want to see tools that are easy to use and intuitive while offering a good range of options.

Default applications

What’s the set of programs that the distro gives you from the get-go?

The Verdict

Lightweight distros

RETRO EMULATION

The Linux Format team all have their favourite retro memories, and Jonni Bidwell is here to regale y’all with them.

Relive past computers

A roundup of the computers that made us smile (and occasionally swear).

Retro gaming on the Pi

Set up RetroPie and set a course for nostalgic reverie.

Those magnificent machines of the 1980s

The eight-bit machines managed to do a huge amount with just a smidgeon of memory and CPUs that would faint looking at long division.

16-bit hits

For many, us included, the golden age of computing was characterised by the Amiga 500 or Atari ST.

CREATING MAYHEM IN 3D

Allie Katz runs Katz Creates, an online source

Tom’s Hardware Pi Cast turns 100!

Get your live dose of Les Pounder and co each week.

Waveshare PoE USB Hub

Les Pounder always enjoys riding on the top deck of a double-decker bus. And this PoE HAT for the Zero is a double-decker bus for ants.

Khadas VIM4

This SBC outperforms the Raspberry Pi, but lacks its ecosystem. However, Les Pounder is too busy playing games to care…

Using the GPIO with Go

Les Pounder is ready to go! By which we mean he’s keen to try out the Google-developed alternative programming language to Python

LINUX IN WINDOWS

Step into the exciting world of Windows Subsystem for Linux and open source PowerShell, with Matthew Holder.

Keeping tabs on your internet usage

Shashank Sharma isn’t too keen on tracking calories, but he’s always interested in learning where his gigabytes of internet data goes…

Track down files and folders instantly

‘Work smarter, not harder’ advocate Nick Peers reveals how to use a tool to transform the way you search for files and folders on your PC.

Connect OnlyOffice with e-learning tools

With OnlyOffice Docs connected to your online learning solution, document editing and collaborating becomes a piece of cake, says Kseniya Fedoruk

Amiga OS comes back from the dead

Michael Reed take AROS for a spin – an open source, somewhat modernised re-implementation of the Amiga operating system.

Achieve the perfect setup for 3D printing

Spending a little time perfecting your printer setup is almost as important as the model creation process itself. Ali Jennings is here to help.

Dive into full-disk encryption on Linux

Stuart Burns covers the seemingly complex world of Linux disk encryption and reveals how to use it to secure your data.

Run an ICL mainframe in your bedroom

Want to know what it was like to program an ICL mainframe? Mike Bedford spills the COBOL-based beans…

IT’S GREAT WHEN YOU’RE K8S

Still scarred from his experiences trying to install Kubernetes at home, Jonni Bidwell turns to cloud native Alex Jones for support…

Use eBPF to keep tabs on your CPU

The ever-knowledgeable Mihalis Tsoukalos explains how to use eBPF and the tools of the BCC project to monitor your system’s processor.

Website and RSS feed Python scraping

Matt Holder investigates how to use Python to scrape information from a webpage and RSS feed, and perform some basic analysis.

Add selecting and printing file dialogs

Karsten Günther reveals how to save file names and paths, select them with YAD and print with the printer dialog.