PRN OUR Se gale PLAY RETRO cay Pie ie>. will make you the E KING SIP2SIM° from Andrews & Arnold ollows you to treat your mobile handset os a SIP endpoint, freeing you from your desk and without the need of a smartphone opp. Insert the SIM into your phone, point it to your Asterisk, FreeSwitch or other SIP server (or a commercial SIP service) and experience the reliability and call quality you're used to on a mobile, but with the flexibility of a SIP handset. DSTO cE ok AUR 8 A eo csFlux and mutability The issue IX VOICE ofthe Meeq MID step sequencer, rath best thing about Linux end open source? For ‘ne, the mites posaibties. As soon as you fish J one project you caithelp but start thinking oF ways miejsergcanocargearisicomstos con (lial yeas configuring end fine tuning bul an infared beemer to Switch channels customised the advertising enol and ga Squeezed the PC into a ca pine salors chest hile beneath the ‘myself creeping towards the remote keyboard, wanting to make a few changes and tweak a few settings, Tobe completely honest, messing around with the configuration was more fun than watching whatever Id recorded. And i's the ‘same with Linux today. The only ifference is that Ive eamt to ‘embrace this as one of Linux's great strengths. It will always keep evolving and changing, so wellnever get bored. There will always bbe something new to lear, or something new to try. | wouldnt want it any other wey Graham Morrison Editor, Linux Voice z “icant believe cheap commodity “Mayank excellent que to “Google sometimes get abad rap, hardware allvsus tobuld and locking dow your Ancrid butits Summer of Code isa Program our own robots. But you devicesisatimely reminder that brillant example of something its ‘can, and we've done it’ p96 we sill have control’ p30 done right’ pa ‘wor linuxvoice.com 3@CONTENTS Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win... eeu Tn) B Gsweis Prey no © Distrohopper aon enor t ea Pe ru a eee Se acd ir ae your Co eer onnn Ses ro ea London, and DjangoCon Europe en ED Open data SOS) re Gy Stour test Rn tts Google Summe! ary) SETS 12 Peete Soe: oY eos ped hae eMusic: ee . : HaunaRa eae Gera een ete : cen cscor | i a? ee ENVIRONMENT (iaatrlisy sont pierre 5 EQBUILDADESKTOP = @FAQ: FIDO U2F Perea ty ‘Your smartphone Craft a custom Enerypt Ca leaks information like environment that communications (My Lin desitop asieve to any andall. _reflects your needs more securely than a Pec Sort it out and keep (and learn alittle double Irish Dutch Dil aE ea your privacy. about Linux). sandwich. 4 wwuilinuxvoice.comREVIEWS @ Meizu Mx4 Ubuntu Edition Ubuntu’s march to glory continues with newer, bigger, better phone aimed at the masses of the world @Atom 1.0 Text editing has never looked 0 good, with themable CSS to prettify your code. @ Yubikey Edge Cheap, easy two-factor authentication to make the intemet a safer place to be @NetBsD7 The operating system that runs (on just about anything gets a shiny new release. Binux Mint 17.2 The love-in between us and Linux Mint continues. t's great, and it's available right now. We're going futuristic (unfortunately DRM-crippled) e-reader. Bah, future! wwuilinuxvoice.comv_ANALYSIS NEWSANALYSIS The Linux Voice view on what's going on in the world of Free Software. opinion Think of the children! Again! The Snoopers’ Charter rises from the grave to stalk our internet. SA Sion Phipps isexpresident ofthe a ‘pen Sourelniative and board member ofthe Open Rights ‘Group and of Open Sours for Ameria jechnoauthoritarianism continues I ‘apace in the UK, with the steady progress ofa retorn Snoopers Charter threatening to make silent snooping Con every electronic exchange the norm for the security services, All the usual excuses are in play, including thinkofthe children ‘and the-terrorsts-wilwn, | wrote previously about the sort of magical thinking that demands internet fitering be imposed so that children carit ‘ead parn and extremists cant past teror videos. That magical thinking asserts the ‘objective is obviously good, soit must be possible to attain, The fact that its simply impossible to automatically block subjectively-defned content ~ even assuming blocking is possible ~is at best ‘lossed-over and at worst ignored. Magical thinking involves either technological ignorance, or a poor grasp of probability, o ‘an arrogant disregard forthe rights of the majority. Or maybe al three. “The same class of magical thinkingis very much in evidence when politicians call forbans on encryption. Except thatin this circumstance, its much more dangerous for everyone, British Prime Minister David Cameron said “In extremis, it has been possible to ead someones letter, to isten to someone's call tolisten in on mobile communications.The ‘question remains: are we going to allow a means of communications where it simply isnot possible to do that? My answer tothat (question is:no, we must nt” If you've done nothing wrong... Thats magio thinking and is lack magic toboot Here are the four horsemen of Cameron's digital apocalypse IBFist to achieve Cameron's dream means an end to genera purpose computing, Al the time youare fee oinstall an operating system of your own choosing, oo instal software that you alone contol youire also fre to install the ‘means to encrypt and decrypt securely That because song cyptography is purely algorithmic, so any Turing-complete system can be used to implement t Banning strong crypto would involve baning the sale and use of computers thatthe enduser fee to program. tm second it means implementing intetional weaknesses in any system that uses cryptogranhy. That includes key escrow arrangements, defecive securly agarthms and secret softwere. Inu, that means preventinginterational colaboration around software including open source, as otherwise the defects will get ied somewhere outside the UK iuisdction it alsomeans thatthe intentional weaknesses can be exploited by others. fey length slimited oc there are intentional back doors, or theres secure store ofkeys,ciminalshavea “To achieve Cameron's dream means an end to general-purpose computing.” ‘wor linuxvoice.com concrete target for theirhacking attempts that if reached, enables huge damage to bbe imposed on the country Since use of the exploits would be secret by design, these criminals could well go undetected fora significant length of time Thir it means controling the import and ‘export of computing systems and the software they use. Customs officers wil ‘need to impound any comouting equipment ~ including phones, garnes, USB keys, banking keypads and so.on ~ that isnot reliably certified as being broken by design so thatthe user cannot control if that doesn't happen crypto dongles of ll kinds can simply be added into otherwise "secure" systems, |B Fourth it means imposing controls on foreign service providers, orbanning the se oftheir services, That would mean introducing a Great British Firewall so thet those unwilling to have their services ‘compromised could be eliminated. It ‘would also mean tolerating similar interference by other governments inthe affairs of British businesses = you have nothing to hide Watching for and exposing magical thinking isimportant at the best of times as is one (of the mast carmman failures in modern discourse But this particular madness ‘needs facing down and challenging by every technically-2ware citizen, Allowing political expediency to sacrifice the foundations of privacy in exchange for an unreachable and false security would be a tragedy. Another revealing quote from David Cameron this year was the ching: *For 100 long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as lang as you ‘bey the law, ve wil leave you alone” Even if you obey the law, these measures will interfere massively with your fe. FollyEUS eI Ce cme aia CL i SS a OF LU) ea eerie a Software containers Linux Foundation gives DuckDuckGo reaches 10 get standardised cash to security efforts million daily queries Every man and his dog is Hoping to avoid another Privacyoentnc Search engine «gating on the container bandwagon, Heartbleed or Shelshock, The DuckDuckGo has now reached 10 ands more than usta fad Containers Linux Foundation has announced milion searches per day. fs stil along make it easy to ship software and $500,000 in funding for three projects way behind Google but caching up dependencies in anest encepsuisted to better suppor ortical security www duckduckgo.com form, that (dell) will workin exactly cements of today's global infornation thesame way onyourhomecomputer infrastructure’, More epeciicaly the corona massive coud provider Now cash wil go to prects performing Docker, Core0S Intel BM, Red Hat ‘automated testing reproducibie builds Microsof, VMware and other big (to conf that binary package names have come together to make a matches the source code fram which t single standard fer containers was compiled), and fuzng (seing how \wirw.opencontainers. org software handles random dat). DuckDuckGo CrossOver to get support Kemel 4.1 released Apple open sources Swift for DirectX 11 Version 4.1 of the Linuxckernel programming language Linux is turing into an arived at theend of June, and Whether the world needs yet ‘excellent gaming platform thanks to brought @ boatload of improvements another programming language is open ‘Steam but there ae still some triple ‘across the codebase. Users of lantops todebate but Apples pushing Swift titles that only run on Windows ‘ith intel chips can expect improved as the future fori0S and Mac OS x CodeWeavers has announced that an performance and batterylife, while ACPI development Is syntaxis “concise yet ‘Upcoming version of CrossOver, its has been added for bit ARM devices. expressive” and promises apps that are Wine-based software that lets many ‘One of the biggest new features is *ightning fast’ In any case, Apple has \Windows programs run on Linux and filesystern level enceyptions support for ‘announced that Swift 20 willbe open Mac OS X, wilhaave support for DirectX EXT4, as developed by Goook ssoutte, and the company has said that 11. This will expand the range of ‘Ando. This willnot only encrypt data itwil contribute a por to Linux, Version (especially newer) games that can run Conthedrive, butalso filenames forextra. 2.00 the language introduces new (on our favourite platform, security. Expect kemel 41 in the next terror handling and other features. wow.codeweavers.com round of distro releases, https://developer apple.com/swift New Ubuntu phone, the WAN Meizu MX4, goes on sale 2 inthe market fora new -martphone? Don't want the walled garden of Apple's 0 o the lousy permissions system of Ancoid it ‘might be worth considering the Meizu Md Ubuntu Editon, €299 device with an ooto-core CPU, 2GB RAM and 11GB of onboard storage Its equipped with a 1920x1152 53" soreen and a20 ‘megapitel rear facing camera. Oh, and itSonly 8 9m thick and weighs 147, Not bal going forthe price http tinyur.com/u9t7hp Google gets flak for “hotword” binary blob ifyourerunning Chromium, the open source version of Googles Chrome browser you might think that your privacy is well uarded, But one Debian developer found that Chromium 43 was donoasing a inary blob that enabled the ‘OK Google speech recognition fact ~ without notiying users This was clearly a concem formanyin the Linaxand FOSS commuaity and Googe responded saying that Chromium is nota Google predict but changes wil be made ‘wor linuxvoice.com TDISTROHOPPER DISTROHOPPER What's hot and happening in the world of Linux distros (and BSD!). Mageia 5 All glory to this Mandriva fork. 'e have fond memories of Manciiva (formerly Mancrake Linux) the newbieriendly listo that brought the Linux fold, Unfortunately the company financial troubles 1 but we still have any usersinto much of the distros technology and features, in the form of two forks: Mageia and ‘Open andriva. The former has now issued ‘anew major release, Mageia 6, after more than a year of development The biggest change here is UEF support Many PCs and laptops builtin the last few years are supplied with UEFI instead of a ‘traditional 10S to start up the computer ‘and now you can install Mageia on these boxes (albett without secure boot), “Theather great area of improvernent is ‘Mageia 5's configuration tools. This release brings a preview of ManaToo's, a collection of utities for managing the system ~ eg ting and stopping services, updating packages, setting up a firewall and so forth Devuan Alpha 2 Marching on for init freedom. 'e must admit, we were sceptc about Devuan at the beginning, his distro got off toa bumpy start crested as a reaction to Debiar’s ssitch to Systerndl. A bunch of vet admins" decided to make a ferk of the Debian that wouldn't mandate Systemd The left lotto be desired, the webs ‘was hastily thrown together, and there appeared to be no concrete plan in place. al months down the ine though ‘and things are looking alot more respectable, The website (www.devuan.org) been tidied up and includes an audio fle Uni Cerone Mageia 5 eschews the fancy new KDE Sin favour ofthe tied-and-tested 4.14 release. ‘ManaTols is designed tofitin with GTK Qt and Neurses interfaces, Orif youre SSHed into a Mageia box to do some admin work ‘oni, you can use the text-mode option. all explaining how to pronounce the distro. A ‘more sol long term plan has been put into place, and most importantly, you can he distro and try tout. As of the Alpha 2 release, this is a netboot 'S0: it ts uy launches the installer {also taken from Debian), and retrieves packages over the network Its stilleetly days anda lot needs to be done, Devua still forces you to install ‘Systemd but isnot active ~ its merely there because of its interdependency with udev. However, the Devuan team is working on an alternative called vdey, which should allow wwuilinuxvoice.com ‘goes wel we may see ManaToals as the default configuration suite inthe next release ofthe distro. In any case, Max well done to all involved DDeruan has come along way in the last couple ‘of months - you can even install it now! th enplete removal of Systernd. Whether evan wil become 2 fully-fledged Debian fork or ust fade into obscurity remains to be seen, but wel give credit tothe team for actualy making something usable rather than just flaming Lennart Poettering the cteator of Systemd) on IRCDISTI eddie News from the *BSD camps What's going on in the world of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. any of usin the Linux and*BSD ‘camps spentallat of time with the Amiga range of computers in the late 80s and early 9s, One ofthe most notable Amiga developers was Matt Dillon, who created the DiceC compiler among other software, More recently, Dilon has been working on DragonFly BSD (www dragonflybsd.org), a fork of Frees 48, whichhas been in development forthe last decade, Dillon decided to create his own BSD flavour after disagreements over the direction of FreeBSD, and especially the design decisions taken in FreeBSD 5. (One of DragonFly BSs most notable features sits 64-bit 8-tree-based Hammer fllesystem. This boasts snapshots, Dragon}FlyBSD DragonFly is a much smaller project than FreeBSD, but has plenty fits own innovations. configurable history retention and checksums tohandle data coruption.ttalso ‘supports data block deduplication ~ so chunks of data that are identical across multiple files are only stored once. port of Hammer to Linux i in the works, but ‘ourrentiy i's reac-only and the filesystem, hasnt been taken up by the other “BSD flavours yet Weve been keeping tabs on ReaetOS (wav seat DragonFly BSD 4.2 was released at the end of June 2018, and brings a bunch of ‘mejor changes, Most notably, GCC Sis now the standard system compiler, which improves C++ support and therefore enables ‘more packages to be bult on the OS. As with FreeBSD its possi to build Dragontly BSD using LLVM/Clang although there's no short-term plan to move to this compiler the open (other changes include improved support for Radeon and i916 graphics chips while ‘Sendimailhas been replaced by DMA, the DragonFly Mail Agent. Ths isn'ta complete ‘mail transfer agent, tis merely designed for deliveing mail locally ~ ike cron job reports to root, DragonFly 4,2is avaliable as ‘a compressed IS0 or USB key image, weighing in at just over 200MB, source Windows cone, for many ears now sila long way fom being ready for widespread production use, and there are questions bout how much Microsoft woud be wilingtotlerate tft became ‘major commercial success, bt the projec s making steady progres. I's capable of runing many Windows programs and haréware support is growing by the day But some big changes could be coming ~ and from Russa. The {government in Moscow i looking at alternatives to proprietary and preéominanty American sofware especialy a tension ise wih the West. It makes alot of sense, even if we al become good frends again oe ay; afterall who krows what backdoors arein Windows and Mac OSX? Goverments want to feel secu wth thee data, and while opensource is nota siver bullet it certain helps Consequently, ReactOS hae been selected by the T miner to receive further support. Wether his wil be direct nancial support or code submission rom govenment employed developers emains tobe sen but ifs great news forthe project nevertheless. ExenifReact0 wl neitably always lag behind recent versions ‘of Windows in terms of compatibility, thee are huge companies runing legecy applications tha could ave vat sums of mone by witching to React, rather than staying onthe Windows upgrade treadmill. Give the OS a go by Gownloaing the ive CD SO fromthe website and booting tin VituaBox or omy. React0S is still only at version 0.3.17, but ean run a bunch of older Windows programs. ‘ww Linuxvoice.com 2Michel Loubet-Jamberts our Games Eto. He hasnt had decent ight sleep since Steam came out on Lin. e-rder forthe much anticipated Steam Machines, ‘Steam Contes nd the Steam Link streaming devices began in une with ety customers having the ability o get these goo on 16 October, erly 2 whole month before the oficial elease date. Though therein infomation availble on just how many of these were pt up forsale, we do know that within four days over 3% of them had bee sold ‘ad ver 20% had been sold by the fend ofthe summer sale on 22 June ~ ust 18 days ater preorders were nounced The Steam Machines wee inited tojust the lienware and Syber ‘models, starting at $449 and S499 respectively (intematonal pricing is rot yet avaiable), whe the Steam Controle and Steam Lik were put on seat $49.99 (£49.99 nthe W, the farmer being priced in the same ranges next gen contlles. The rolease date othe Linge powered consoles hasbeen set for 10 November ~ algo the release date for Fallout 4. wich has shown no signs whatsoever of geting a Linux reeese ter than sharing this dat. The success ofthe preorders certainly seems tobe anindicator thatthe Lin powered Steam Machines are aleady ait ong esting PC games, which good news for Linde gaming all rou However, afew niggling questions do remain, such as how many people will buy the hreware and then goon to install Windows ont nd ow wilt fare among consol gamers? 10 ON LINUX Massive Chalice Avery promising XCOM-esque strategy game that unfortunately falls short. 1's incredibly frustrating when a game looks ‘50 great on paner but then fails to deliver certain elements. Massive Chaleeis a strategy and crisis management game inspired by the XCOM series, with many new and innovative mechanics thrown in; sounds absolutely fantastic, yet fais to deer the immersion other such games are famed for The combat and mechanics are well executed, witha satstyin and an excellent breeding syst positive traits of heroes from great hous be passed on to future generations. The flaws are instead found within the storyteling and rar game, The game gives ‘Noreal reason to care about the world and its inhabitants or distke the invaders since not very much is really said about any ofthe What is also apparent here is that crowaffunding games can be a double edged sword. does mean that such games get to be ‘made, but the need to reward its backers creates lutte in the form of needless artefacts which detract from the experience of other players. The ay of classes ive aspects of Moe ec ee ee rs ‘There's a good selection of clases with innovative ‘mechanics to hone their skill prime example here are the houses, of which there are hundreds designed by the games backers, rather than a handful of well crafted ‘ones with good backstories and detailed design which could provide more immersion. Massive Chalice is a cautious recommend, ‘and while the game is both fun and challenging, it ont leave you on the edge of your seat and biting your fingernais like other strategy games, h ao ‘Massive Chalice is a strategy and crisis management game inspired by the XCOM ‘wor linuxvoice.com series.The Perils of Man An aesthetically pleasing point-and-click game featuring time travel! ‘int and click adventure games are played for two reasons; an ‘overwhelming desire to craft ridiculous contraptions out of unrelated ‘objects and to experience a good character dven story without al the weetless distractions found in more modern game designs. Fortunately, The Penis of Man hits the mark with both. ‘The storyinthis game's very well «done, and while nelucing time travel in stories can often be messy leading to ‘deus ex machina ora jumbled plating, this, ne handles it well and moves forward smoothly Simlaty the puzzles are logical and well designed, pacing the piot well and arent just there to pad out completion time. While the game isnt quite on par wth other Linux adventure games lke Depe (or Book of Unwrit ts low pri charming visual presentation and ikeable fernale protagonist make this a worthy addition to the Ilbraries of point ‘and olck fans. Cee eon Tabletop Simulator Flip tables when you lose, but without all the broken furniture. he ‘Simulator’ suffix has become synonymous with the tonnes of games designed to gather the attention of online celeortes rather than provide good gameplay, but Tabletop Simulators far from that. The de wanaged to (of choice for gamers looking to play an assortment of cfferent tabletop games on the PC and online against other players. Games ranging from checkers and chess to poker and blackjack are featured and the sandbox nature af the ge ‘means that there are no limits in terms of rules or physical pieces. Ever wanted tobulld a tower of cards or domino show but wish you could rewind time ifit all joes horribly wrong? You can do that in Tabletop Simblator, along with much more “The ever-growing list of user made ns thatthe possibil tethe defacto game Thanks to mods, the game can now transport players back to the year 1999, almost endless, with users having made ‘expansions ranging from Warhammer to Risk, One user has even created a nice fe Tux figurine, so mayoe there's a battle Of the FOSS mascots game on the way? What is clears that we've seen only the ning ofthis highly versatle game. wwuilinuxvoice.com "v_MAIL TIA ee et Cer STOTT ROR) CaN ec RRM MIE PASE Or a great discovery? Email us: letters@linuxvoice.com LINUX VOICE STAR LETTER BUGFIXES tease could you explain the rationale behind Linux bugfixes? Lots of bug reports seem to bbe ignored by distribution developers. Some may be duplicates, some because they are “upstream” while other distros seem to have fixed them, For example, really started getting into Linux with Fedora and Ubuntu 8.04 (t around the same time) ~ Fedora would stop presenting its hostname on WiFi after a reboot but Ubuntu would keep itas expected. There currently ‘seems to be a problem with software RAID whereby arrays here a virtual disk has been removed to simulate hardivare failure hang during boot when ‘anew virtual disk is introduced. In testing with VirtualBox this seems to affect the latest versions of Debian, OpenSUSE, ‘and Ubuntu 14.04.2 TS, but not Fedora 22 or CentOS, although Fedora includes software RAID ‘management tools (mdadm) in its emergency console, whereas CentOS. as faras | can see, doesn't. Im not sure if this is @ kemel ora mdadm bug that the Fedora and CentOS developers hhave fied, or whether i’ just that the implementations in other distros are buggy. Please ccould you explain the best way to test and report problems like that? Is behaviour on. VirwalBow/KVM likely 0 be a {900d indicator of behaviour O8@ do Floppy, CO/OVO, Hard Disk VETO. Neste Ping | Uninc | ener BD sertion BS j Ubu @ Powered OFF Rone ees ‘Base Memory: 1230 MB UD sae oct Ore oily storage onto: DE De secondary Master: (CO/DVO} Empty Controter SATA SATA pro. bum TS. Nora, 13.37 6B) & sudo Host Orier Coreaco & Newwork Adapter: ntl PRO/2000 MT Deszop RAT) tobe expected with physical hardware and are such issues worth reporting unless tested on a real system? ‘Gareth Thomas Ben says: Every project has its onn procedure for dealing with bugs, so ‘there isn'ta single answer to your ‘question. With hardware issues it's further complicated by the fact that different distros use slightly diferent version ofthe Linux Kernel. The exact differences will vary from distro to distro and reflect what the distro ‘maintainers think i important Distributions should work on virtual machines, so even fan issue is only present ona virtual machine, i's still valid bug that shouldbe fixed, ‘especialy for server distributions that face out onto the inteet If the problem appears to be systemic, then you should report t ‘through the distro, Even fit transpires ‘thatthe problem is ultimately with an upstream package, it's stil a bug that the distro needs to know about. Ultimately, the best advice here is ‘to;ead the bug reporting docs forthe distro, and dont be afraid to submit bug reports, VirtualBox has improved enormously inrecent years, but if you're reporting bugs, they should rally be reproducible on real hardware 2 wwuilinuxvoice.comNOT FIT FOR PURPOSE | just purchased anew HP desktop but after removing the disk and, ‘Andrew says: Don't ascribe to malice ‘and put my Ubuntu DVD inthe rebooting my machine was a that which may be incompetence dive and rebooted looking to try paperweight. Thankfully had In other words, 'm sure there are Ubuntu live on my new machine. the foresight to createa set of people at Microsoft who are delighted I entered the BIOS (UEFI) and system restore disks and could ‘thatthe company has made it more put the CD driveat the top of the _restoreit to factory settings. | am dificult to install Linux, but i's more list for booting and disabled fast not sure whether to dual boot or likely thatthe people who made the boot but still it would not boot replace but | intend to back up my decisions just didn think about their ‘When I went back and looked at_ system and seek assistance. | fee! customers’ needs It could be an idea the boot order the CD drivewas (Correctly or incorrectly this is to talk to someone at HP and let them not even listed, although I did see another Windows effort to make it know how commercially dissatisfied Windows Boot Manager, which! so hard to use alternate systems. you ate with the decision to load amnotfamilarwith.|thenhad that people stick with Windows ig the windows _ Widows on their product. But before the dea to just get rid of Windows and fear Windows 10 willbe the fandangoby buying _that.check that you'e saving the 8.1 and replace it with Ubuntu Worst. Anyhelp surewould be with Linux pre-installed, updated settings in the BIOS, probably 15.04. With alittle messing around appreciated! froma vendor such as with F10 after you've changed the it seemed to install correctly Steve Cox PC Specialist boot order. a pcspecialist Sere [pe comoones yu rane rom cach op DEN: = ay Omri. wwuilinuxvoice.com 13v_MAIL SHORT AND SWEET Watch the computer error song ‘on YouTube. won youtube.com/watch?v= mKKLjJHwReckfeature=youtu be_gdata player ‘Steve Ber “Andrew says: ve been rereading Graham Greene lately and thought that this might have been an Jmportant message, hidden in an ‘nnocuous-looking YouTube video by ‘our man in Havana, Unfortunately its usta waste of time. Thanks for thinking of us though! TUX: TIME UP? Ive been using Linux since the days of text installers, and it's been great to see the whole open source software ecosystem mature and get better every yeat ‘One thing continues to frustrate me: Tux, | love the idea of having penguin as a mascot, but why does he have to be overweight and sitting on his burn? I don't wish to denigrate anyone's choice of lifestyle, but if we'e to offer Linux as a fast, efficient system, shouldn't we have a mascot that represents this? David ‘Andrew says: Tuxis a cuddly bundle ‘of open soutce love, but hes also a tte long in the tooth now. Perhaps itis time for something new. Well ‘open this up to the community. What do you thnk, dear readers, about our portly penguin? Tunis beloved by many, but he's also 2 product ofa different century “ PARTY ON! ‘As creators and guardians of the global immune system we all need for planet survival, please keep duiding our thinking about the ‘maker revolution and how it ean best influence say media, health and infrastructure for the next five decades. You in open source and the ‘musicians in viralty hold the keys: poetry is all. Jay in neat code, elation in symmetry and syntax, leverage from rhythm and syncopation. Feynman found as ‘much joy in bongo drumming as in quantum physics; The Cathedral and the Bazearriffs with the best economic thought precisely because we and the author had ‘tasted hubris from his code spreading Published or no, this is my humble appreciation of what you do. Please ust keep aiming high enough. May your tribes increas ‘Anon ‘Andrew says: Well, quite. One ofthe best things about Free Software FREEDOM I don't read magazines. Having never read them, |just don't go into newsagents, so don't know ‘much about them. It seems a litle cd, then, that fm waiting to a magazine's letters’ page. only found out about Linux Voice a couple of months ago ‘when | saw a link to an olderissue posted online. Since it was free, I ‘thought Id give it go. Ittums out ‘that realy like having a monthly dose ofall things Linux. To cut along story short, 'mnow a subscriber Keep up the good work! sale ‘Andrew says: Tous, it seems obvious that releasing older issues fr free (both asin speech and asin beet is ‘good thing, not just from a moral point ‘of view, but from a business point of view. By exposing more people to your Mews people is that they tend to have some intelectual hinterland that informs everything else they do, probably because the software isa means ‘toanend rather than an end itself. always feo bit odd talking to people who have only one obsession; Free Software, contrary to common perceptions, tends to produce (or attract petty rounded minds with as much interest n classical music, sculpture, history or anything ese in addition to computing, We're pretty ven when played by a great physicist such as Richard Feynman, the bongos are an abomination Apparently believing in your content is a revolutionary act. ‘content, you reach more potential ‘customers. We're not sure why so few media companies realise this, or why mainstream media companies put 0 many restrictions on customers ‘through DRM and the lke. Anyway, ‘thats a rant for another day, We'e ‘lad you like it and we will indeed beep it up!uxvoice.com to advertise here Email andrew@lineS LUGS ON TOUR DjangoCon 2015 Josette Garcia reports on what's new in Python or how to enjoy a bunch of friends. 16 tothe programmer discussed how to spot them and told a story ‘about ModelForms, The netis dark and full of terrors by James Bennett James told tales ofthe unexpected and described some alarming things thatthe Django team have leamed about security inthe process over the past 10 years, “The conference dinner took in the National Museum of Wales — ‘a great verue, and great food if you lamb (eich, sadly | do not ~ except iit ina kebab) Lamb is ‘the meat traditionally associated ith Welsh cooking owing tothe amount of sheep farming in the country Django weleomes you ‘What ked most about this ference was te cae that was vento the attendees. AS we all know the techie community islargey comprised of mile class, whiternen with very tle representation for pecple of colour women or people of/on ow income. DjangoCon made a ot of effort to redress this imbalance by: Opening egistation fr tickets and proposals to members of underrepresented groups a month before general registration opening ard Print Workshop dd fne work onthe design fon ~ far ‘Offering Financial ido people on better than Comic Sans in Mierosof Word alow income withthe help of the Django Software Foundaton’s grant comme mOfixing diversity supporter i “Around 400 people came from lSating up a daylong jango Giris workshop and ofenng them all over the world to listen to a ruimberof duced priced some fantastic talks.’ 3 forthe curation ofthe confer ‘wor linuxvoice.comeee Ui ‘Aneurin Bevan, Bonnie Tyler, Hannibal Lecter, soe Calzaghe and Brains beer are among Wales’ gifts tothe world ~ and now DjangoCon Europe. DjangoCon set the highest standards for 2 ensuring the Al venues were wheelchair ssible ith visual impaiment were looked after with assistive technology and guide dogs were weloome, PGDay UK 2015 1B Induction loops for hearing aid users were provided and simultaneous speech-tortext le. transcription was ava WA creche was provided Has DjangoCon set the standards for future conferences’ ‘cannot finish this article without ‘asking — did you know thatthe cxiginal national emblem of as the leek (cenhinen)? Over the years this was often confused with avery similar Welsh word cehhinen bed, meaning ‘datfodis’so the daffodil was adopt emblem of Wales yl fawram y trot *Byefornow! as the se Josette Garcia looks forward/back to some top speakers at the PostgreSQL user conference. 12 UK's only dedicated I PostgreSQL user event has announced an impressive line up of technology and database software experts to inform and educate delegetes PGDay ta 35 place on 7 July ‘at 30 Euston Square in London andi being organised by the UK. PostgreSQL User Group Her Majesty's government's chief technology officer, Liam Maxwrel tops the bl, and wil be speaking about how awareness of PostsreS0t is growing, predicting what the future wil hold. Database -chnologist David Kennaway will PostoreS0L is being Used at investment bank Goldman fs, while 2ndQuadrant’s CTO Simon Riggs willbe tackling PostareSQL Futur Other topics covered include a look the next version of PostgreSQL ), the Axle project (Advanced Analytics for Extremely Large European Databases), and backup and recovery about ho wwuilinuxvoice.com ording ta Simon Rig PGDay UKs the mustattend ‘event for PostayeSOL users, developers, fas or even if youre simply investigating the best open urce database forthe frst time Delegates willlean about features ‘added to version 9.4, projects under developmentand the future rection of the world’s most ‘advanced open source database” For more information about PGDay UK 2015 please see WwW. postaresqluseraroup.org.uk. @ 7WRITE FoR LINUX Voie Linux Voice wants your ideas for tutorials, guides, how-tos and insights from the hacker world. If you've found something you want to tell the world about, let us know What material is Linux Voice interested in? Most of the time we're more interested in what you can do with software X, rather than singing the praises of software X itself. Clever software is good but useful software is better. Proprietary software that works on Linux is acceptable, but what we're most interested in is Free Software. What don't you want? We sometime get submissions that go like “I've been using Linux for X years; can | write for you?”. This isn’t very helpful, to us, because what we want to see is that you: Have an idea Can explain it clearly If you can point us to examples of something you've written, please do = we're not looking for Shakespeare; we value clear communication and enthusiasm above all else. What do you want? Tutorials. We want tutorials, of around 3,300 words in length usually. We pay money! All tutorials should have a clearly stated aim, so readers know at first glance why they should follow it. “Get started with XX software" doesn’t tell you anything; “Build a weather tracker with Python” is much more active and informative. These are common reasons why we reject ideas: ® something which has been covered repeatedly on Linux Voice and/or elsewhere Material not obviously related to Free Software Incoherent writing Email ben@linuxvoice.com to write for Linux VoiceA PROGRAM IS FREE SOFTWARE IF THE PROGRAM'S USERS HAVE THE FOUR ESSENTIAL FREEDOMS: ANY PURPOSE. s 4 ine] g at Rese Pr : Bite Sind aie bs “4 on hae OBS A9 32a E: AEE Sew LOD TD SyUS SOS UEP EER ARCO DIS COLO et eee tN (010) Lh ae=RoRoME IC) sIsL0) 33 aoeFew hobbies offer such long- term enjoyment as Linux, and best of all, it’s totally free! ‘geekiest of Linux users do, but its actually a great way tocustomise your system and leam more about the core component of the OS. Then we look at interactive fiction, and how to make your own adventure game. Ths is alot easier than it sounds, thanks tothe Inform 7 language, which lets you create vitual worlds without lots of code, Following this well be making an IRC bot that uses speech synthesis to talk to you, and turing ‘a Raspberry Pi into.a very e0ol tro gaming machine. If youhaves Pisitting around doing nothing giveit a go! And lastly we delve into hacking your house alarm and ‘make use ofthe data thatt gathers up throughout the day, ‘Asa final note, sorne of the projects in this feature, ‘as wth many of the articles in the magazine, are based on suggestions from you, our readers. If there's anything youd lke us to cover in future issues, just drop usa line and we'lexplre tin depth, Or ifthere's something about which youre especially knowledgeable, and you" lke to expainit to other Linux Voice readers, send us a pitch and we may ask you to write it up forthe magazine!STS eRe Recompile your kernel OO O00 Customise your system by rebuilding its very heart. robably the geekiest thing you can do Precise tiene ‘These days, there's rarely any need to ‘unless youre hacking on the kemel code, but the process will help you leam a little more ‘about what’ going on atthe lowest level of your Linux system. Well be going through the process for Ubuntubased distros, but ‘much ofthe process is similar for other distros. The kemel build systems quite powerful and there are several fferent ‘ways of doing each task. ‘Thefirst thing you need to decide is which kere! to use, Theres the vanilla Linuxkerel, long-term support version, and most major git Cr the vanilla version from kemel.org with it clone git keel org/pubsemina keel sivtorralds init in git Alteratively, you can browse wwrw.kemel.org find other versions (Once youve got the code, you can ‘make any changes you want. The first thing to dois make sure you can easly identify the kemel youve built Inside the directory that the git command 1 you want to try out diferent ere, but dont want tog through the hassle ofcomplingt Yoursel you can ital tam a package. Most opular distros hae afew citerentpebuit bere avaliable. Fr example, there ate ‘versions ofthe vail Linus kere packaged for Ubuntu at tps:twik.ubunt.com Kernel ManlineBuils, You can also find detail of Fedora packages at htps:sfedoraproject.org! vikieroe Vania Repositories, yout hen play with diferent versions ofthe Linux Kernel, ach ia good dito to ue asthe Arch User Repository (AUR) contains several packages to automaticaly bul diferent versions ofthe kernel almost automatically, The Linux Kernel Archives Kemel orgs the keeper of the true kemel, and offers supported versions going back to 2.6.32 just eeatedl you should find the file debian. ‘master/changelog.n neve you can change the first line to add an identifier to the version number For example, we added ben io create the line ino (8.13.0-56.59-ben trusty: urgency=low “Recompiling your kernel will help you learn a little more about what's going on.” This version number wil appear on the kemel you build Kemel patches You dort haveto stick with the kernel youve downloaded some people maintain cota features that can be added. These are known as patch sets, and theyre changes to the source code that you can apply before ‘you compile the code. To apply patch set, Unzip itn the rot directory ofthe kemel sourveand run: teh -p1- Unless you have very specific requirements i unlely that youl nice ‘much difference inthe performance when Using aciferent patch set but itcan make an teresting experiment ‘wun linuxvoice.com (Once you've made your changes, you need to prepare the buld with: chmod ax debian srits* chmod at dbiansciptsmisc/* {akeroot debian/rules clean y default your kernel wil be built using the Configuration your distrohas selected, However f you want to change this (or just take alook at the available options), you can run the following akeootdebian/tueseitconfigs A this point everything is prepared, ‘so you can build your kernel. Be warmed ‘though this make take some time. Start the build with {akeroot debian/rules binary-headers binary generic This willcreate a series of Deb files in the directory above the build directory. In order torun your new kere, you need to install all of these with sudo dpkg Hina’ deb ‘When yourestart, you should then get the option ta boot into your newly created em, Depending on the version of Uountu youre using this may ether bein the ‘Grub soreen, or there may be a menu for ‘Advanced Options. You should be able to recagnise your build fram the text appended tothe kemel number If you have any problems, you can use this to switch back to a previous version, aDa ay Interactive Fiction 92 e000 Write the next great novel the geeky way. he summeris the perfect time to I retire to 2 quiet place and write a great story. Of course, a story doesnt have to be a linear and start atone point, continuing in the same line unt the. end. Itcan be mare interective, where the reader makes choices that alter the final ‘outcome. Thisis interactive fiction. It blurs the line between a story and a game, but we ya tgp of tak And Strongirss Mote shuld get wore SaRaeaee oer Some thn elie ane ees‘ BC nen 9 eaten 8 $2 aaaetce ‘New tothe joys of internet Relay Chat (IRC)? Visit www.rchelp.org for a getting started guide, then join usin #linuxvoice on chat freenode net! the ret two lines tel Python that we want touse the eSpeak and time modus, then weuse the synth rautine of eSpeak and provide some text We also tell Python to. pause (sleep) for three seconds, to deal with any latency issues (without this ne, we ‘could only hear the frst syllable on our test “Our speech synthesizer can read out all sorts of gibberish to us in a friendly computerised voice.” machine). ‘Weccan also change the pitch and speed (aka rate) settings by adding these lines. before the espeake synth ine speak set paramete(epeaPeamete Pitch, 0) -espeak.set_parameter(espeak.Parameter Rate, 120) ‘Net, we need to add some code to login to IRC and watch for messages, As root un pip install ire to al an IRC module to your Python instalation and then replace the contents oftestp with tis ftom espeak impor espak pot irclnt ‘npr aac loging ‘ef on conneet(comnecton, event): connection joi inuxoice”) ‘wun linuxvoice.com defen. message conection eve: ‘speak sythevent arguments) reactor ite tient Restor) = reactor sewer connect hat eende net’ 667, "SomeFandomnane12045) ad oa handler elcome’ on, comes) ‘ado hanler pubs, on sage) reactor process. freer) Here we connect othe chat. freenode.net IAC server on por 6667 a user SomeRandomName12345 {change that to something else thats unlikely tobe in use), When the IRC server responds with awelcome’ message we ‘un ou on-eonnect function which joins the Hiwxeice chance! And whenever theresa public message in that channel we run the on_message function, which uses eSpeak to read out the message (the fist element ofthe event. arguments ist) Sothere you haveit- speech synthesised IRG in just few ines of code Our speech synthesizer can ead out all sorts of jbberish to usin a fiendy computerised voice You can ad the set_parameter ines to tweak the voce sive andhit Cir#C to quit. You could even expand itto respond to other types of IRC event. Have fun! 23v IMER PROJECTS Raspberry Pi retro gaming centre 2O OO@ Play NES, SNES, Game Boy and Mega Drive games on your big-screen TV. he Raspberry Piis an acceptable I ‘general-purpose computer — especially with the power-boosted Pi 2 butit really shines when doing a spectic job. There are millons of Pis around the ‘orld sharing up files, running network proxies and operating robots, and theyre ideal for these tasks: there are no moving parts, so they/re hard to break and even if ‘something does go wrong, you can just pop ‘out the SD card and drop it into another Pi For all these reasons, the Pimakes for a ‘superb retro gaming centre as well ‘Sure, you can configure emulators on your desktop Linux machine (see p54 of iseue 16) butit can bea icky job, and entails the usual fidding asscciated with a desktop operating syste Similarly, you can ‘customise a standard Raspbian installation 10-set up emulators and front-end ~ but again this takes time and requires lots of manual work. Thereis a solution though: RettoPie.Thisis a special version of aspbian with a razor-sharp focus on retro ‘gaming, Everything unrelated to games has been cut out and the end results 2 flavour of Linux that boots up to an attractive launcher in which you choose your games vith the joypad and begin playing them on your TV. Simple as that! RetroPie emulates all the classic Bit ‘and 16tit consoles (NES, SNES Game Boy, ‘Game Gear, Master System, Mega Drive/ Emulation Station provides a gorgeous front-end for various console and computer emulators. Genesis) plus some home computers and lesserknown machines. To gett working, ‘youll need your Raspberry Pi(1 and 2 are supported), a spare SD card (minimum 468], a USB keyboard, a USB joypad (generic madels are available from Amazon for $/€5) anda HDMI cable. Your first job is ‘tograb the latest SD card image from http/7 blog petrockblock.com/retropie/retropie- downloads at the tme of writing this was version 3.0 Beta 4 but there may be a newer Beta (or indeed the final release of 3.0) by the time you read this, CONFIGURING GAMEPAD 1 OA BUTTON 0 OB BUTTON 1 = SELECT -NOT DE @ PAGE UP NOT DI OK (n first boot, you'll be asked to configure your USB joypad. 24 ‘wun linuxvoice.com So once you've grabbed it you should have a compressed fil called retropie ¥8.Obetad-pit.img.gz (or similar) n your Downloads directory Open terminal window and enter the folowing to extract: Downloads unzip retopew3 Obetatpi.ing gz Change the filename to a newer version necessary. Now we need to write ths image to the SD card: you can do this like any other RRaspbian image, by following the official Raspberry Pinstructions at httpystinyur. ccom/pisdeardlinux Here's a quick way to da itcinsert the SD card into your PC o laptop, and fits icon appears onthe desktop ght clickit and choose unmount. Go back tothe future Nowinthe terminal window, enter dmesg toseea ist of recent system messages. Look.at the last few lines, and you should see information about the SD cad that you plugged in, For instance, on our machine (with a 1668 card) we seetis ne [15703.335628] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 30881792 512-byte logical blocks: (15.8 GB/14.7 GiB) “The sdb bit here is important ~ it’s Linux's name forthe card. Hopeful your card vil be easy to spot, but ifnot ask on our frurns (http://forums.linuxvoice.com) and paste the last fee nes of your dmesg outpit into your message nce youre sue about te right name(s usually sdb or sde}, you'll need to write the image to the card as the root (admin) user.SUMMER PROJECTS _V In many distros this is ‘sudo dd bs=4M iftetropie-3.Obetat-pi.igof=/ evistb (this deesrit work change sudo to su -¢) Also change the fiename ofthe image and the sdb accordingly. This writes the image data directly to the SD card, soit may takea while ~ go and grab 2 cuppa ora lovely WeiGbier ‘Now you‘e playing with power RetroPi onits own sal nice and pretty. but it doesnt do much if you dort have ary {games to play onit (For mere on acquiring ‘games, see the Wihere do | get ROMS” box) So, aasuming you have some games ready, remove the SD card and then plugit backin to your PC olaptop to makeit ‘automaticaly mount again Youll see that there are two partons onthe SD cad now {BOOT andl retropie — go into te atterin yourfle manager Youll see that it's very much lke a regular Linux instalation with fete, sr and so forth. And indeed itis 2 Raspbian instalation ‘as mentioned, ust wih most ofthe usual Linux desktop components stripped out. Go into the home/pi/RetroPie/roms directory andyoulseeatbig st of folders with names lke amiga e64, gb and 0 fort, These are the places to copy your games over. Soi you have the Tetris.gb Game Boy ROM, for instance, copy tis int the gb folder. you have NES games, put them inside res and soforth ‘Once youre dane cooying your «games over unmount the SD card partions on your desktop or via your fle manager and remove the ‘SD card, Pop itrto your i attach the USB keyboard and joypad connectitto your TV with a HOM! cable, and power tn, Aftera few moments Emulation Station \wilapnear this the frontend launcher and configuration too forthe various 8 bit consoles), Onoe this configuration step consoleemulators. inthis frst boot itil is dane you canpress left and right onthe Pee eat Short answer: we wot ay. Longer answer: is avery messy topic in egal terms. Countess websites eer ROMS ~ that sles representing ‘game cartridges ~ for download. Ad occasionally, Nintendo ad the other majo players go after these sites and have them closed down. After al, these sites are distibuting copyrighted material, other's no ambiguity there. Its against the an Dut there also lat of confusion out “persona” ROMS, Some argue that prfcty acceptable o download ROMS fr games you already onn in physica format, youre not say it has recognised your USB joypad and you should press a button to configureit, Press the buttons to match the ones listed various console emulators. on screen, or press ard hold button it there's an emulated button you dont want touse (for example you wort need athe analogue stick inputsf youre emulating epriving the game makers of any money. Some say that it's copyright voation, and the only safe way s to buy a special piece of hardware, lug ‘your onginal games ito it, ard get the ROMS out that way (ike the Rete). thers claim that such anactisilegal too Inlate 2014 it became lepalin the UK to make personal backup copies of Cbs and DvDs~ but isnot clear whether that applies to video game ‘ards as well So ultimately, we wont giv ny legal acce o tll you where to get ROM. Just be careful out ther, andi doubt do nowt, ‘wun linuxvoice.com Here's Mega Drive Sonic the Hedgehog being played with a SNES joypad connected via @ USB adaptor to a Raspberry Pi running RetroPie. What a time tobe alive. Joypad to choose between the emulated ‘consoles and computers. So, choose a ‘machine for which youadded games earler, hit the & button on your joypad, and “Emulation Station is the front-end 2" bv2!Fowtoutota came ‘and return tothe Emulation Station launcher and configuration tool for mer. cress sist and Select on your joypad atthe same time. Because RetroPie ony uses a chunk of the SD card, youll want {to expand its installation to fil the card Otherwise youre irited to haw many ROMs you can add tothe SD card ~ around 92MB, if you've installed RetroPie onto an 8GB or 16GB card, that's 2 lot of wasted space! To fx this hit Fin Emulation Station to ‘switch to text screen, and F4 again to get a ‘command ine prompt. Enter: sudo raspi-contig Choose ‘Expand Fiesysten’tofilout the installation to the whole SD card and provide extra space. If you've found performance abit stuttery wth some of your games, especially with the more demanding emulators, you can also overclock your Pi inthis menu It best not to go overboard just knock it up a notch, teboot and see if it makes performance smoother, Above al enjoy and baskin the awesome retrostalgic ‘goodness of the 80s and 90s! 25Da ay Reactions game Take a first foray into the world of physical computing and check your reaction time. hysical computing’ the process of P creating eae way x your computerto interac wth the eal ‘word encompasses eveything rom home contolto abt ard much in between. an requiea whole new cet of skis for enyone whos only worked with normal computers before, but its fun branch of computing ands easier than ever before to get started “The frst thing youneedis some method of nputting and outputting from your computer. On a Raspberry Pi, you can use the GPO headers but as most computers dent come wth these, yout need an extra bit of hardvare. Were going to use an Arduino Uno (though most other Arduino boards would also work). These are microcontrols that contain very simple processor ard memory that you can program, end series of header that you Can program tobe inputs or outputs The Aruna project has ts orn development enironment that you should findin your dtr repostores. Its cute a simplelDE wth ust tex area and a fen buttons forthe important tasks lke comping (the tickicon), and uploading to the boord (he arow that points ight). For the upload to work, you'll need to connect your Arduino tothe computer via the USB port tdoesit ied ary addtcnal power. ur project nl be a simple eactions game that wiltunona ight ard then see how long it takes youto press a push burton sith to tun thea oft. Building circuits Buttons (also kvown as momentary switches) require a little circuitry to make sure they workproperiy. Thee ave two parts tots frstly they ned a resistor that ‘makes sue that there isnt too much curent “The Arduino project has a simple IDE with just a text area and a few buttons.” flowing when the button is pressed; then they needa resistor that connects the pin to the ground when the button isnt presses, Thisis shown above 26 ‘The exact values ofthe resistors don't matte, but the one connected to the positive voltage should be at least 3300, and the one connected tothe ground should be larger. We used 3300 and 6.2K, “The Uno does have a builtin LED on pin 13,5 we can use that for ouput by just setting pin 13 toigh (fon) or low for of Now the hardware sorted, we just need towrite the code to conta itall. There are threeimportant pats to an Arduino progam: declaring the varables;the setupand the loop. Variables are declared atthe start of the program. We only need one in which to store the score Declare tas an integer withthe ine: Intscore; “The setups a function thats run once wen the Arduino fist booted I's used to set up the hardware and software. We need totellthe Arduino which pins we want touse for input and output prepare the random rnurnber generator and connect back tothe computer's serial port to output the soores. Thisis done with te following code: void setup { pinode(3,oUTPUT}; Finke 12, NPUT; randomSeeanaoghes0); Sei egi(960); , The lopis the bit of code that keeps running for as long as the Arduino is powered on. Cur loop will do the folowing ‘@ Tum thelight on @Setthe score to1 ‘wun linuxvoice.com \Sncrement the score by one for every milisecond delay there is before the user presses the button ‘Print the score to the serial port jum the LED oft. {Wait a random amountof time before “Physical computing requires a whole new set of skills for anyone who's only worked with normal computers.” restarting the loop, This is done withthe code void 1p) ( igitarie(3, Hic); score 0; hile (iitalRead ‘delay; ) ‘Serial printin(score); gitar, Low; elay(andom(1000, 10000), ’ Bring allthis together into the Arduino IDE and click upload. f your hardware's set Lup properly, you should now be able to play the reactions game. However, you cart yet see your scares. Inthe Arduino IDE, press CC}+Shift#M to bring up the serial morvtor, ‘and you should now get the output from the board to let you know how good your reaction times are, HuotTake control of a little-used sensor system to turn your house into a palace of data. Over the last couple of years, weve often mentioned passive infrared sensor PIR sensors. These devices measure changes in infrared ight and are most commonly used to detect when something with a higher temperature moves ‘across a lower temperature background Usually that means detecting the movernents of animals and humans. Theyre also very easy to hook up to something like ‘a Raspberry Pas the detectors require very litle power and send a simple HIGH/LOW signal when the sensor is triggered, With justa couple of currents, ths signal can be connected directly tothe GPIO pins on @ Raspberry Pi ipulated using simple Python ‘commands. I's the perfect low-cost porta sction system he biggest problem is getting these sensors into somewhere physically meaningful. A one-off installation for fetecting badgers in your back yard is ea ‘enough butif you want to ty something nore ambitious ~ such as wiring up your entire house for lighting and heating hacks, that’s going to take some serious planning disruption. What youneedis a system 's already discretely connected to your house that yau can subvert and hak something more useful. And theres your house alarm The backbone of many domestic alarm systems isthe humble PIR sensor. Youvve seen them, hugging the comers of rooms and corridors, peshaps winking their red LEDs when activated sistors to safeguard This project is going to need more disclaimers than suai a hackin the true sense ofthe word. Its experimental and may not be safe for long tem ‘use Please don ty tis iyo rely on your alarm system of know nothing bout electronics ané ‘lect. fs kel youl need to opena closed Uunitthat could contain ive wies At worst there’ ‘avery rea isk of death if you happen to touch your lam systers electricity supply At best, you might beak local lwo lity your ome Every panels going to be diferent, butt should stil be obvious where the sensors enter and Which wires hold the alarm circuit. These systems are often thought of as black boxes, untouchable by us mortals, and ioan extent this tue. Foran alarm system io be beneficial itneeds to be regularly setviced and maintained by an engineer. Any on-authorised interference wil tig alarm and maybe alert a monitoring the station. insurance while wrecking a perecty serviceable home security system, Ths defintely a project forthose whoknow what theyre ding and know how to take the necessary precaution. Thisis important because ou soon is goin need Some adaption for your awn configuration, which is very ultly tobe the same as ours. Having said al that. there's nothing intnscaly difut or specialised about what wee attempting and we ‘ink the end ests are worth it wwuilinuxvoiee.com Interference with these systems can also affect your home insurance. tut equally, in Ou experience, many of us liveinhomes where a ner fitted 's exactly whe going to do here, Were going to interface 2 standard Raspberry Pi with a few wires and resistors toa home alarm system while ‘maintaining the alarms functionality. Like n alien parasite, ou Pi wil piggy back the signals being sent from the various sensors around the house and enable us to monitor their activity and create our own detection system, whether we use that to tum off the heating in the kitchen or initiate 2 Dalek voice when an intruder is detected aDa ay Step 2 Find the control box “The contro pane isthe brains of the alarm system and is usually secreted somewhere difficult to reach, We need to install our Raspberry Pi close to this location, so youll need to finda way to both power and ‘connect the Pito your local network. Luckily for us, the location of cur panel was close to ‘a power socket, which we used for both power and network connectivity, thanks toa powerline adaptor. “The panel will require power too, but this is ‘usually hidden or, oF in our case, wired rectly nto a fuse box. t's also highly ikely that the pane! itself, along with all the other ‘sensors is protected by a tamper circuit that vill t'gger your alarm ifthe circuit is broken, “Tampering wil include opening the panel ~ ournext step ~ so you must have access to.an engineers code, entered through the keypad to be able to disable or reset the system. If you dont have this, be prepared to call outa specialist because even if you cut the power, alarms are designed to continue thanks toa rechargeable battery hidden within the panels case Panel data With the panel located we now need to open itup to get access to the sensor ‘connections and weld highly ecommend disabling the power to the panel before ‘opening, This wil tigger a warning as the alarm wil think there's a power cut, 's0 youl need to be able to disable this. c=, = = You shouldbe abe to find the engineer's manual to which are the two wires forthe detection Circuit and we're ready for the next step. We had the engineer's manual, which helped, but the tamper wires were ‘Combined withthe those from the other Circuits and the power distribution was ‘obvious, so finding the two we needed was straightforward withoutit, Both four-and “We need to open up the panel sodas bacapowewilikeysilte i order to get access to the running, albeit ata ikely 12V from a ee battery youll need to cisablethe alam —S€NSor conections. after you remove the front Younow need to find where all the various wire from all your various sensors enter and are attached to the panel. You ‘need to count the number of wires coming from each sensor and then work out what each of those wires does and where they connect. The easiest solution isto find the engineer's manual for yourhardware. This vill obviously provide plenty of extra information on voltage and protocols, as ‘well asthe routines youll need ta go through ‘when resetting your alarm system after the tamper circuit has been triggered, But it should also show exactly what wires need 10 be connected and where you can find ther. (Our sensors use a sixwire system that's eminently hackable. Two wires for power, ‘wo wires forthe tamper circuit and two for the detection circuit, We need to determine 28 ‘seven wire configurations are also comman, and it should be reiatvely svaightforward tofind the alarm circuit, Another possible alternatives that rather than separate inputs for your sensors, the sensors are wired in series to the detection inputs on the panel. This chains a series of sensors intoa zone rather than an individual input, Wernow need to work out what the voltage is across the detection circuit when lone of the sensors is triggered. The value ofthis wil affect the way we protect our Raspberry Fi. The simplest method is t0 ‘connect a multimeter to the positive and, negative sides of the detection circuit You don't have to disconnect the cables, just ‘make sure the multimeter touches the metal contact where the crcuit ends on the panel ‘wun linuxvoice.com your house alarm with a quick search. Youmay alsoneed to connect the power tack o the panel sobe careful Watch the multimeter as you get somecne to tigger the sensor ~ assuring you krow whic is hich fot yout need ogo through each sensor and work tout. ‘As wth ouronn system, the majority of the sensors we've checked output SV on the alarm cicut nd this is ite too much forthe standard GPO hardware tohande.Theinput shouldbe no more than 334for example anda the pins combined have a S0mA current iit The simplest option ist augrrent your Raspery Pith a cheap expansion board that protects those pins wth afew diodes, Something lke Rashi Breakout Pro protects each input with a 3800 resistor and a 32V Zener dd. You then need o graft a connect between each ofthe postive sensor inputs onthe control pene and the GPIO inputs on your ‘We butchered a spare CATS network cable as these usvaly contain four twsted pars of wires that can be urraveled to prove fight connections ~ our alam has seven sensors and you need to attach a fa wre toa common ground terminal on the panel, This connects tothe GND on the Rasnbery i. OnthePhend we soldered simple header that could be easily connected to the Pi. whileon the alarm pane side we simply connected each wire tothe sare terminal as the poste sensor connectors.STS eRe Step 3 Code it up Now that allof the connections are out of the way you can safely close the alarm panel and re:nstate power (after you knaw the ‘connections are working). There are several DIY alarm applications you can have alock at ~ there's ane specfically for the Raspberry P, for example, called Private€ Pi. Unfortunately this requires the use of an external server without source cade, Instead, were going tocreate our own ‘system to show you how simpleit can be, all vith just 20 lines of Python code. ‘Allyou need isa recent version of Raspbian installed on your Raspberry Pi and thera local screen and keyboard or ‘working SSH connection. Fire up a text etitor and enter the folowing opening stanza, which imports a few modules well need later Most important is RPI.GPIO, 2 brillant module that removes all the pain from working with the Raspberry Pis inputs ‘and outputs! Import RP.GPIO 2s GPIO Import time Inport datetime ‘Wernext need to tel the the GPIO module how were going to address each of the pins ‘As yournightalteady know this can bea nightmare, because the pin numbers on the PCB and they way theyre acoessed from the (CPU have changed severaltimes since the Pilaunched. We're going o use the numbers assigned by the CPU (Broadcom, or BS), because these are labelled on our header 32:15.678851 32:16.938717 32:19.115665 connected to the panel, but this wil very ‘much depend on your Pi and where youve ‘connected the sensors: ‘GPlosetmode(seI0.80M) We're now getting to the logic of our code, We set up two lists/arrays for convenience, the firsthaving the locations for our sensors ‘and the second the GPIO of each inputin the ssame order as the names lis: NAMES = SENSOR: Landing" SENSOR: Lounge"SEUSOR- Dining’, “SENSOR: Hall] ‘oPIOPORTS = [1721,22,24] We need a singe function to handle what happens when one ofthe GPIO inputs is, triggered. Ittakes a single argument ~ ‘channel — which holds the pin numer that’s ‘triggered the alarm circuit. We look up the position ofthis pinin the GPIOPORTS list, ‘and use ths to find the name forthe sensor, which we then print after adding the date and time of the event, ‘ef alarm rggered(channe) deteted = GPIOPORTS indx(channel) now = datetime datetine.now() print now strftime( 3Y Amt SHAMS. “,NAMESIdetected) Each GPIO port needs to be intialised, which wed ina simple for loop that goes through the port numbers and configures ‘thernas GPIO.IN 2nd pull_up_down=GPIO. PUD_UP. The second argument activates a resistor on the Raspberry Pi that can be sed to detect a signal when there's no direct connection toa voltage, which is needed as Hatt Hott Hatt Hall Landing Hatt Hatt Halt Dining Hatt atl Landing Hatt Hatt Lounge Lounge Lounge Lounge SENSOR: ‘SENSOR: ‘SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: ‘SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: SENSOR: Here's our alarm system in action. t simply outputs the date and location ofa sensor when its ‘wiggered. ‘wun linuxvoice.com We've found that a CATS cable is perfect for (getting the detection cables from the panel to your Pi as they contain four paired wires ~ ‘enough for seven GPIO inputs and one for GND. theres no voltage on our alarm circuits unt the alarmis triggered, The final line here ses the GPIO module's threaded callback system to automatically call the alarm ‘triggered function when it detects an input, corarising edge, The bouncetimeis tomake sure switches dont trigger more than once: {or PORT in GPIOPORTS: ‘OPI. setp(PORTOPIO.N, pl. up down=GPI0. Pup.uP) ‘GP. add_evendetect/PORT, GPIORISING, calback-alarm.tiggere,bouncetime=500) Heres the final section, which will instantiate our code and wait for the small script tbe escaped with the CUrl¥C key ‘combination: cPidceanpd) ‘Al tha’snow eft to doisrun the above by typing sudo python script.py, replacing seriptpy wth your own flename Witha bitofluckyoul see the Read prompt and anotfcaton any time you trger one of thesensorsin your house, an you can co almost anything withthe data it produces. Let us kno you come up wth any of your conn net slutons, and watch out fora folovp tutorial ina couple of months with amore comprehensive seit for zones, nofeations and ales. @ 29aU i ait YD 30 PRIVACY ON ANDROID Step out of the Faraday cage and take off the tin hat as Mayank Sharma shows you tools to prevent your smartphone from spying on you. he smartphone in your pockets is a private I cttizeris worst privacy nightmare. It holds your ‘email addresses and phone numbers from your contacts, calendar appointments, photos, nd probably even personal nancial information. To top it all itcan continually track your location to build a detailed profile of your whereabouts asi rides your pockets from your office to your bedroom, of your Android smartphone missions system, When you install an app, it natfies you of what it would lke to gain acoess to, You can then install the app, or not. Unfortunately this system puts alot of responsibilty onthe users to now whether these access requests are appropriate BitDefender’ fee Clueful app helps you identify what ‘an apps doing, and what t should be deing, Once installed Cvetu ill ‘sean your apps and categorise them as High Risk, Moderate Risk, and Low Rsk You can browse each list and cclck on an app to find ‘out the featureit can access. You should uninstall any High Risk apps, as they might be pinching passwords or teading eras, ‘Then there's Malwarebytes’ Ant: Malware mobile ap, \hich also includes a privacy manage. It scans apps and divides them into categories based on the phone feature they have access to, such as Access Calendar ‘and Access Storage. The app comes in handy when, fore ou wish to view al the apps that c ‘rack your location or access text messages Shield yourself To keep your device malware free while traversing the intemet om your mabe device use the antimalware ‘app rom Diseonnectme. The app isnt availabe in “The smartphonephone in your °°*° pocket is a private citizen's worst privacy nightmare.” he Play Store (because blocks ads) and youl have ‘0 sideloadit ater downloading its APK from the projects website at https://aiseonnect.me/mal. The ‘app blocks mal \d malicious website and ads by creating a VPN connection between your device and its servers, Disconnect assures users that it doesnt route any browsing data over ths connection ‘and only usesit to parse the lst of known malware. Disconnect (the company) also develoos the iscornect Search app that you can use to search popular search engines without passing any of your personal information. Usually when you submit a ‘query to search engines lke Google, Bing or Yahoo, he query also sends along various bits of identifying information. Disconnect Search acts as a proxy and relays the query tothe search engine of your choice after stripping out any information. The ships with a widget that you can add to your device's home soreen instead of the Google search widget In addition to preventing the apps fror info, you should also minimise the personel data you put out there, even when sharing something as mnocuous as images. Sharing images taken from our smartphone reveal lot of inforriation about you thanks to the EXIF data attached to ther, you take an image with a GPS- ‘enabled cemera or a smartphone, it ccan reveal your location, the time it was taken as well as the unique IDof the device, To strip EXIF information from pictures, before sharing them you use the app. whi wwuilinuxvoice.com‘Securing Your Device “This wil tke few moments Military Grade Encryption ‘Self-Destruct Timer 3 ® © Anonymous Messaging Deletes All Meta-Data Data and Time Stamp Geo-locations Device Information ge x Use Wiakr to exchange end-to-end encrypted, sett destructing messages. No Unencrypted Messages Stored on the Server ‘supported free version, Using the app to strip EXIF information from the images is prety straightforward. After selecting the mages you wish to rinse, the app ives you the option to ether save a new EXIF free version ofthe image or replace the original A safer web Youre probably registered in mere websites than you ‘can remember unique passwords for. So youte ether repeating passwords on a couple of them, or worse stl, have trusted your phone to remember your credentials. The privacy conscious should instead ‘rust their authentication information to an encrypted password manager. KeePassx has been a mainstay ‘on the Linux desktop for a while now, and you can ‘extend the same benefits to your Android device with the KeePassDroid app. “The app willcreate a database fieon fst launch that you can enerypt with a password or wth a key file just lke the desttop version. infact you can even import the encrypted database password from the desktop client, just tap on the kdb file and itl be imported by KeePassDroid Using the app is also very intutive once youve imported or created records for all your online services and websites. When you tap (on a record, you get two new entries inthe natieation lst, one to copy the username and the other to copy the password ta the clipboard. You can then switch tothe app or website on which you want to use the credentials and tap on the notification icons to paste ‘over the usemiame and password rode beds you have a roted Android device there xe several pos thatl give you access to advanced privacy controls. You should \ Sideload the FDroid app store, which ists only free ‘and open source Android apps. 31Masia i Communicate securely Shut out the eavesdroppers. he key to securing your phone against any I sort of survellance is end-io-end encryption, and GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) is the defacto standard for implementing it. To extend the same benefits to your Android device, you need the Android Privacy Guard (APG) apo. Using the app you can sign and encrypt email messages on your mobile device, Youll also need the email app, which integrates seamlessly with APG, To use these apps, first launch 9 and configure ito connect to your email server. ‘Then launch APG and tap the menu button, which bongs up the option to manage private keys and public keys, You can export these keys from the desktop andimport them into APG. Once the keys are imported, K9 willdisalay the option to sign and encrypt messages when you write anew emai Conversely it ll lt you decrypt emails when you receive a new encrypted message If you need a secure email provider request an ‘account with the Riseup service (https: //riseup. net) It doesn't offer GBs of storage space and instead Head to tracemyshadow.org to see what traces you leave ‘online, and explore ways to mitigate them. (ChatSecure gives you the option to seta master password to prevent access to your contacts and ‘messages. Youcan then hook it upto your existing Google account. or any existing Jabber/XMPP server. If youhave the Bonjour/Zeroconf service running on. the network you can even add users on the same WiFinetwork and exchange messages with them without the intemnet. The app also helps you create anonymous one-time only disposable chat accounts “One of the most popular VoIP apps that uses the However Risew offers advises you to download your email using any of the popular email clients. sing Tor via the Orbat app. You can send invites to ‘your contacts to add them tothe service or you can also manually add accounts by scanning OR codes. ‘Another form of text-based communication that ZRTP protocol is RedPhone.” a several privacy strengthening features such as enc-toend encryption. The service ‘also doesnt include your IP address in the emails you ‘send. nor does it keep a log oft. Tinker tailor soldier spy To use end toend encryption for instant messaging Use the GhatSecwre app. The app uses the Off The Record (OTR) protocol to enable secure chat sessions cover XMPP accounts, Using the ap you can have secure chats with your fiends aver popular networks inoluding Google Talk on any OTF-compatile cent is on asteady decline but stil prefered by many ‘over internet-based communications is SMS. To ‘exchange encrypted SMS messages you should se the TextSecure app, which can even encrypt ‘messages stored locally on the phove, However, to send encrypted messages over the ar the recipient rust also have TextSeoure or theyllcontinue recehving unencrypted messages. Wen yourun the app frst time, it gives you the option to create encrypted versions of alllocal messages. Although it doesn't touch the original unencrypted SMS messages, its advisable to delete them after creating encrypted including Pidgin, Adium and Jits On frst launch Ces Steganogapty i the at of concealing a stream of data inside another semingly harmless message riage. The most common mechanism for ‘implementing tis by replacing unused data in regulr computer fies wih bts of information hat arent visible when viewing te rigal piece of data, Steganography is mostly used to complement encryption. f you idea message within another ‘enerypted message, then even this message is decrypted, the hidden message remains a secret ‘The fresyevaiabe Piero pp from the Guattian Project enables yout ide text messages inside mages. Using the app i three-step process. Begin by selecting an image ether rom the gallery byfickng one from within the app Then type your ‘message the textbox shown nthe second step and ‘es thepalock eon to et a paseword. Pleat wilthen anafyse the image and embed yourmessage inside When's done, youcan share the resulting ‘image from within Prenat ise. The image will ook ike anorinary image, nts opened withthe ielot ap, in which ease the app wl prompt you {forthe password beforeit extracts and displays the den image, PirelKnot uses the F5 steganography algorithm designed for hiding messages inside JPEG. versions, TertSecure interface seamlessly wth an ae aN V4 ee SK 32 ‘wor linuxvoice.comexisting text-message system a 'swho.use the app as well automatically Hide in plain sight he standard methodology for making voice and video cals ver the intemet is Voie over I re relayed over the open i developed the ZRTF protocolto ensure the privacy ofthe connected is responsible for negotiating connected peers and between ther which does the encryption. The GNU ZATP library implements most ofthe features. To prevent marvin the-middle attacks, ZRTF ism called Short ‘Authentication Sting or SAS. Atthe start of the secure cal the parties exchange simple verbal keys, then terminate the calif the software generates mismatched keys. ts good practice for one party to read the first two cheracters ofthe string ther ret and then repeat the process at reasonable intervais during thecal nmeran, the creator of parties. This the last One popular VolP apps that uses the zAr 'sRedPhane, Youll have to reg ster your mobile number with Ret ever hen you first nas been verified launch the app. Once your you can make secure calls to other contacts who use edPhane. The app wor't let you call someone who isn't using RedPhone, but does ask you for nemission {0invite them to use RedPhone by sending a SMS, here's also t ne app from Phil Zimmermarts Sent Cick munication, the ee ec data, Malicious apps may corrupt you ystemis configuration Cetera ates eet app: en eee) Use the App Permission Watcher app to detect apps with ‘suspicious permissions. BlackPhone handsets, which are engineered from the ‘grounchup with privacy in mind, The company has a subscription-based model with plans starting at $10. The major limitation of both these s hey require the person at the other end of bbe using the same app, Also, bth the apps frorn Ope Whisper Systems connect via the developers servers The Ostel project is working on solving this problem. thas created a standard known as Open Source Telephony Network (OSTN) that uses ZRTP and other ‘open source protocols to create end-to-end encrypted the popular Speak softly The best thing about this arranger pect with any user oF and motile) as long as supports SIP and ZRTP Theres the BlackBerry users and the cross platform vit app for Linux Windows and Mac users Before you can make calls via OSTN you need to egister with a SIP server Whit itll work wth vitual every SIP service, for best results you should re ‘naccount wth Oste.60. This Si service px formerly funded and supported by the Guarcien Project. which develops many ofthe prvacy-centre: ‘mentioned in this feature including Orbot and made via Os toend tis that you or signaling encryption based on the standard Rot he CSipSimple anp to make secure audio calls, The ‘pp laune Lets you add details ‘about your OsteLee account (or any athe SI provider). After t con you can call any of your conta der lke Ostel When connected, the a cts withthe service prov hat ae registered ‘pp will display a four-character lon wwuilinuxvoice.com Clueful wll assess any new app you install and notify you about ther privacy 33SNUG HUST LU he BUILD YOUR OWN , DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT What to do if KDE, Gnome and Xfce don't float your boat? Build your own desktop, of course! Mike Saunders explains all. CO F atthe best hing about Linux? Securiy, custom setupand haveleveleduponthejoumeyto WW etiierectminrniie Gnceigiemen — a creck ebinallof those eas but another feature we'd highlight is its modularity Asan What is a desktop environment? operating system deeply inivenced by Unix GNU! Fre up your regular desktop and ook arcu: there Lnuxis designed tobe easy to pull apart and al are probably panel. roiication ares, window being wel easy to put backtogetheragain Major _tlebars andother bs of uriture. These reall patsofthesystern are bul up rom smaller things thatthe desktop ewoneent (rom here cemponents that canbe omitted replaced, whichis onwards, DE proves, but ifwe lok deeper ve can oneofthereasons why wehave so mary diferent fndotherfunctionaliy aswell The DE alsohandes. Linux distributions. ‘keyboard shortcuts for switching between This oda adds complertyattimes.Butit_ applications and closing them along with desktop alsoadds refabiiy. as components are designed to wallpaper apples (such as CPU monitors) and fancy work independent, window effects. andifone crashes, wpa i i These features ae aoe ae It's a great learning experience to .)5.55) stunen wil(ceali)kees Greate a desktop environment from o* rosems.inxte chugging log, So f n——_feinstance runing Soewpeeacn Seratch, so that’s what we'll do. alee with another shel or Sanaaaaa ateminalshows al swtchtoanatematve SSL bran orevenreniace processes thatheve xe’ in ther name = and there's your entire int system — as welve seen with the quite lotof them, Most ofthe names are obvious, migration of mejor distros to Systema. so you can se thst feed panel provides the pares But what about desktop ervronments? Arent KDE, that it around the screen edges, while xfee4-power- ‘Gnome and Xfce giant monolithic projects? Not really, manager monitors your battery and handles power ‘They're built up of srnaller programs and libraries that events (such as closing the lid). are highly dependent on one another butitspossble _Itmight be tempting o create some kind of tostpcutcertan components orrepace them with insanely awesome hyérid desktop by using individu altematives. And taking this even further, its possible components from each desktop and mixing them ‘to create a desktop environment entirely from scratch, together, but the end result won't be very pretty. The bby cherry-picking a selection of programs, tying them —_ programs in each DE are designed to work together, together and making them run smulaneoushy soil you use @ panel from KOE, a power manager Ifsagretlearing experince tocreateadesktop for Meare a window manage: from Game, youl environment rom seratch so that’s what well do _endup with bares and other processes from each ‘over the next few pages. You'll be able to choose DE loaded, so it! be like running all three at the same ‘the components that fit your workflow, and the end time, chewing up your RAM banks. resultwibe consideraby lighter andfesterthanthe No thanks. What wel dois choose all and heavyweights of Come and KDE Plus youcanbrag _memary fend standalone components that dant toyour friend atte nest Linux User Group meeting rly on anything else, but work wel together. As usual that you dontt use some generic prepackaged in free software, there's a huge range to choose from, deskop enironmer.butyoucreated yourown _soltslookat some ofthe top contenders »Choosing a window manager eee ven though wellbe using individual and Eictee reser crac enc desktop environment there are come ‘standards in the X Window System (the base