LINUX FORMAT

The #1 open source mag Future Publishing Limited,

Rescue and repair

We often like to have a little giggle

LINUX FORMAT

MEET THE TEAM

Distros start to ban AI code

Generative AI continues to court controversy as Gentoo and NetBSD heavily restrict its implementation.

Qualcomm on upstreaming to Linux

Patchsets for the Snapdragon X Elite SoC aim at Linux compatibility.

A LIBRE SUMMER

Italo Vignoli is one of the founders of LibreOffice and the Document Foundation.

THE LONG HAUL

David Stokes is a technology evangelist at Percona.

Framework optimises screen

Invisible pixels promised.

KeePassXC kerfuffle

Upcoming Debian Trixie implementation of KeePassXC won’t offer optional features like browser integration.

Neofetch is dead

Creator of utility archives repo to take up farming.

What’s behind the free software sofa?

LINUX LITE 7.0 Linux Lite has a tweaked

FEEL THE G-FORCE

Daniel Morin is a senior software developer at

Kernel Watch

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

Answers

Neil Bothwick swallowed a Got a burning question

Mailserver

Quantum Leap Seeing as Linus Torvalds wrote programs

HotPicks

THE BEST NEW OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ON THE PLANET

Ryzen 7 5700X3D

Paul Alcorn is feeling more powerful than ever with AMD inside!

LibreELEC 12.0

Nate Drake is impressed with the freedom that the latest version of LibreELEC (code name Omega) offers to cosy up to Kodi.

AlmaLinux 9.4

Alma is the Spanish word for soul. Nate Drake certainly feels his has been uplifted through this spiritual successor to CentOS.

SparkyLinux 2024.05

Nate Drake blinks and almost misses this zippy Debian-based distro, so light on resources it runs perfectly on ancient hardware.

Garuda Linux 240428

Nate Drake seldom applies the words ‘luxurious’ or ‘sumptuous’ to an OS, but in Garuda’s case, he makes an exception.

Nvidia GeForce Now for Steam Deck

Management is wondering where Dave Meikleham and Alex Wawro are. Perhaps those noises from the server dungeon aren’t those of hard work…

ROUNDUP

Hyper Cool Retro Term Yakuake Terminator Terminology

REPAIR IT WITH LINUX

Don’t consign your old machines to the scrap heap just yet – Jonni Bidwell reckons they can still be put to work.

Time and tide

Linux can run on various machines that are plenty old, but first we really ought to manage your expectations.

Hardware refresh

Fifty British pounds (or local equivalent) and half an hour on an auction site might give your PC the shot in the arm it craves.

Introducing L MDE

We investigate the easy-to-use but powerful Linux Mint Debian Edition – like regular Mint, but with less Ubuntu, more Debian.

Vintage PC options

We look at some alternative web browsers, and summarise the ultra-lightweight distro scene for particularly old systems.

$40 million Raspberry Pi IPO set for June

London Stock Exchange to be hit by Pi.

Easier coding

With management tools

Get together!

Clubs are back, baby

TAKING A HAT FOR A DRIVE

The Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ has finally been

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Pi

Les Pounder has been using Ubuntu since 2005, which makes him feel incredibly old. Can Ubuntu 24.04 on the Pi 5 make him young again?

QIDI Tech Q1 Pro

Getting hot under the collar, Denise Bertacchi likes this heated model.

PYTHON

Build your own fortune teller

All of your Pis are under your control

No one would say Les Pounder has gone power mad, but he’s cackling like a Bond villain now he can control all the Pis.

Virtual this, that & the other

Matt Holder delves deeper into the kernel to discover virtualisation, containerisation and virtual filesystems.

Fancy file management

While CLI purists scoff at TUI tools, Shashank Sharma has no hesitation working with wonderfully crafted utilities that do their job well.

Installing and managing software

LINUX BASICS

Install and control Flatpak software

Get installing tools with the distro-agnostic packaging system that offers all sorts of advantages. Michael Reed has come packing his hex key set.

Create a Fyne journaling app

Dressed in his programming finery, Andrew Williams shows how you can quickly build a graphical app for your computer using Fyne and Go.

Reliving the birth of the terminal

It looked like a PC but, although it wasn’t user-programmable, the display terminal had a vital role in the days of minicomputers, says Mike Bedford.

Create old-school pixel art images

Still stuck with the ancient GIMP 2, Neil Mohr decides to go even more retro and explore how you can create classic pixel art with it.

Use some admin-fu to master snapshots

Most users don’t much care about the underlying disk management system LVM, but Stuart Burns reveals one of its most useful features.

Root & branch

Databases, observability, open core and trashed PCs get a mention as Linux Format talks to Percona founder Peter Zaitsev.

Create a play-by-mail user interface

David Bolton looks further into designing play-by-mail-type games, with insights about the user interface and core game features.

Screens of fractals and complex numbers

Blowing our minds and eyes with his psychedelic demos, it looks like Ferenc Deák has a rising medical bill to pay…