WELCOME
MEET THE TEAM Smarter Pi Guy
The big news is that Linux gaming has
leapfrogged Mac OS on Steam for the
first time. Which classic game would
you love to play again on your Linux PC?
Matthew Holder
Ah, that wonderful smell of nostalgia. One
of the first games I got hooked on was
Pipe Mania on the Archimedes A5000. The
aim was to rotate pipes and make sure
liquid could flow around the board. An
honourable mention goes to the E-Type driving game, too.
Les Pounder
Blackpool in the ’80s was wall-to-wall
arcades and I loved it. My mother
worked at the Pleasure Beach, which
afforded me early access. The sit-down
Star Wars cabinet is where I cut my teeth
blasting vector spaceships and defeating the evil Empire.
Mayank Sharma
I got my start on 8-bit side scrollers and
shoot-’em-ups, before maturing to strategy
games in the ’90s. And that’s where I still
am. Thankfully, retro gaming is an open
source speciality and between the RPi and
my Linux box, I can easily escape to my happy place.
Nick Peers
Thanks to the brilliant Batocera.linux
(https://batocera.org) retro-gaming OS, I
have all my old favourite games from the
’80s and ’90s at my fingertips. You can run
it alongside your existing distro or boot
from a USB stick every time the retro-gaming urge bites.
Michael Reed
I’m happy to hear the Linux percentages on
Steam are up, no doubt thanks to the Steam
Deck. It’s reached the stage where I assume
that most games will work, but I do a quick
check on ProtonDB to be safe. Frostpunk,
Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky are among my current installs.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
We’re not fighting the tide of the
AI phenomenon – in fact, you
might say we’re embracing it,
though I can safely say the
clunky prose you’ll find littering
the magazine is entirely human-
generated. We’ve tried using
chatbots to write Linux copy
and it turned out even less
intelligible than usual…
For this issue, though, we’re
here to prove that you don’t
need a server farm of high-end
$10,000 Nvidia A100 Tensor kit to use machine learning.
We’ve got projects powered by nothing more than a humble
Raspberry Pi. From voice recognition to the classic chatty bots,
the Raspberry Pi is (just) powerful enough to run optimised
versions of large language models at home.
The ramifications are that anyone can get started with
machine-learning projects, experimenting with nothing more
than a low-cost Pi, open source software and an internet
connection. They can then deploy their solutions quickly and
easily on what is now a standard embedded industrial device.
The fact that the Raspberry Pi Foundation is helping advise
on education policy in the UK (and around the globe) should
hopefully put young coders in a strong position for the future.
In the meantime, we can have fun getting a Pi to recognise
who’s at the front door. What’s not to enjoy?
Neil Mohr Editor
neil.mohr@futurenet.com
Subscribe
& save!
On digital and print:
see page 16
October 2023 LXF307 3
 SUBSCRIBE NOW!
Page 16

A.I.-POWERED
REVIEWS

WD Black 8TB HDD 19

It turns out that Shane Downing would

RASPBERRY Pi
like more performance from his
performance products.

Tam Hanna has followed

the Raspberry Pi
since its first
revision, and
now puts the
AMD Radeon RX 7600 20
With so much RPi 4 to work
competition in the on amusing
market, Chris Szewczyk
tries to work out whether AI tasks.
the new Radon RX 7600 See page 34!
does enough to
beat the pack.

Window Maker Live 22

Nate Drake gets into the frame of things
with Window Maker – a desktop
experience reminiscent of a ’90s Mac.

OPNSense 23.7 23

CREDIT: Magictorch
Nate Drake has the good sense to try out
OPNSense, a top-notch firewall distro
based on FreeBSD.

ROUNDUP IN DEPTH

Rhino Linux 2023.1 24

Nate Drake takes a ride on the Rhino – the
Ubuntu-based developer build – exploring
CREDIT: Getty Images, Murena

the Unicorn desktop, as well as the

pleasures and perils of rolling releases.

Mask of the Rose 26 Personal cloud servers 28 Fre/e/ your phone 48

There’s an indescribable horror in the Michael Reed compares five open source Tired of being tracked and spied upon
basement. Management just employed it cloud servers to find out whether they’re by popular mobile OSes, Jonni Bidwell
to do the accounting, and Joshua Wolens really free, what it takes to install them and is ditching Android and taking back his
has to make it tea. if you should store your data on them! privacy with /e/OS.

4 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


Pi USER
Pi news
Introduced by Les Pounder, who’s looking
forward to enjoying the glut of Pis that’s
due to hit the shelves.
52Pi Rack Tower
Les Pounder owns multiple Raspberry Pis
but has yet to make a cluster. Perhaps this
will see him put all of his Pis on the shelf?
Elegoo Neptune 4
“Smoke me a Klipper, I’ll be back for
breakfast!” cries Denise Bertacchi,
feasting her eyes on this tasty 3D printer.
Control a Pi bot with a Wiimote
Les Pounder travels back to 2014, the
last time he held a Wiimote that wasn’t
embedded in an LCD TV.
CODING ACADEMY
Text adventures: now in full colour!
Nate Drake embraces ancient graphics
and dinky sound effects in the final part
of our text adventure coding series.
Blast apart Breakout gaming code
Matt Holder discovers that rewriting a
classic game isn’t as simple as he thought,
so has plenty of tips to ease the process.
CREDIT: Getty Images, wikimedia.org
Next-gen Wi-Fi
Another new wireless technology,
already? Darien Graham-Smith looks
ahead to the next-generation networking
standard, Wi-Fi 7.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
43
44
45
46
ADMINISTERIA
90 Administeria
Stuart Burns discusses the UK
government’s threat to encrypted
messages, plus offers tips for sysadmins.
94 Bitwarden
A powerful, feature-packed open source
password manager with a free option and
decent pricing, thinks Mike Jennings.
ExpressVPN
Looking behind the hype machine,
Mike Williams wonders whether this VPN
service is as good as it sounds.
REGULARS AT A GLANCE
News
Valve’s game-changing Proton turns five;
kernel 6.5 hits the streets; Vim creator
Bram Molenaar dies; happy birthday to
Debian; plus Distro Watch, and more stories
from the world of open source.
Kernel watch
Answers
Diving into the darkest recesses of his
enormous brain, Neil Bothwick drags
out solutions to readers’ problems with
backing storage, listing running GUI apps in
78 a terminal, upgrading Linux Mint, and more.
Mailserver
Readers share their experience of firewalls
and FORTRAN, while others ask for advice.
CONTENTS
TUTORIALS
TERMINAL: Bring images to life 52
Not known for his love of cameras,
Shashank Sharma still knows how to turn
images into presentable GIFs and video
clips into masterpieces.
KDE MARBLE: Mapping made easy 54
Nick Peers reveals how easy it is to
navigate the world using a variety of
maps without leaving the comfort of
your home PC.
DIGIKAM: Manage your photos 58
Mike Bedford explains how DigiKam
enables you to manage your photos,
finding what you’re looking for with the
most powerful of tools.
FORTRAN: The first high-level language 64
It might have been the world’s first
high-level language, but Mike Bedford
discovers that FORTRAN is still alive
and well today.
74
76 VIRTUALMIN: Manage a VPS 68
David Bolton demonstrates how to set
up Virtualmin on a free VPS and how to
configure it to add websites.
77 STEAM DECK: Better gaming tips 72
From external controllers to an external
display, Neil Mohr offers a fistful of handy
gaming tips for your Steam Deck.
6 Subscriptions 16
Get your monthly Linux dose, grab yourself
an Alexa Aquablaster and save money!
Back issues 62
Get hold of previous Linux Format editions.
10 Overseas subscriptions 63
Get Linux Format shipped around the globe.
11
HotPicks 83
Mayank Sharma would steer people away
from a future Star Wars/Star Trek crossover
movie and towards HotPicks, so they could
read about OnionShare, Bulky, Sweeper, Min,
KDiskMark, OnionMedia X, Pwall, Nostlan,
14 DevilutionX, Paper Clip and Menu Editor.
Next month 98
October 2023 LXF307 5
 THIS ISSUE: Valve’s game-changing Proton turns five Kernel
6.5 hits the streets Vim creator dies Happy birthday to Debian
GAMING
Proton turns five and
Linux overtakes Mac OS
Valve’s launch of Proton in August 2018 changed the face of Linux
gaming for ever. Linux numbers on Steam are also “through the roof”.
ind the clock back just five short years
W to early 2018. Valve’s gaming Steam
Machine had just been removed from
its online store after failing to sell in sufficient
numbers. There were various reasons for this,
but the biggest culprit was that Steam Machine
was using a Linux operating system, which
wasn’t compatible with most Windows games.
Valve did try to be more platform-agnostic by
offering Steam Play. One of the perks of this
was that if players bought, say, the Windows
version of a game, they could also access the
Linux version. Still, most developers declined to
go to the trouble of creating Linux versions of
Windows games, so it was little use to players.
Valve’s next move was a game changer
to end all game changers. Partnering with
CodeWeavers, the two companies jointly
developed a beefed-up fork of the Wine
compatibility layer to create Proton.
Initially, Proton was only compatible with a
small number of Valve-selected titles but over
time, it’s allowed many more Windows games to
run virtually flawlessly in Linux. The ProtonDB,
which tracks such things, reports over 11,000
titles for Windows and other platforms can run
in Linux thanks to the Proton compatibility layer.
What does this mean specifically for
Linux gaming? It’s clear that the power and
customisability of Proton was a major reason for
Valve to release its Steam Deck in 2021, which
runs on SteamOS, a variant of Arch Linux.
Shortly afterwards, Valve released its own
Deck Rating system to score how well the
6 LXF307 October 2023
Steam Deck running Proton
worked with Windows games.
As of June 2023, there were
over 10,000 titles rated as either
Verified or Playable, including
gaming greats such as The Last
of Us.
Of course, these numbers only
apply to games available for
purchase or download via the
Steam Store. Players can easily
install titles they’ve bought elsewhere on to ProtonDB reports that over 11,000
the Steam Deck via its Desktop Mode. That games are now compatible with
means it’s likely the hand-held console is Valve’s Steam Deck, which uses
actually compatible with a great many more the Proton compatibility layer.
titles. Retro gamers, in particular, have enjoyed
playing games for older consoles, such as the
SNES, via EmuDeck, although, naturally, this
doesn’t require Proton to run.
According to the Gaming on Linux website’s
Steam Tracker, players using both
Linux and a Steam Deck amount
to just 1.96% of users (that’s ‘just’
2.58 million) as of July 2023. Still,
that’s a 0.52% increase on the
previous month, meaning that,
for the first time ever, Linux has
overtaken Mac OS users, who
account for just 1.84%.
Even combined, these figures
pale into nothing compared with Without Proton, we almost certainly
Windows users, but Proton’s constantly updated wouldn’t have the Steam Deck, shown
changelog proves that it’s more than capable here running Armored Core VI with
of keeping up. minimal performance issues.
www.linuxformat.com
 NEWSDESK

KERNEL OPINION

Linux kernel 6.5 ready to ship GAME

The stable version of kernel 6.5 has a number of
exciting updates, especially for Intel and AMD users.
n 9th July, Linus Torvalds announced
O the general availability for public
testing of the first Release Candidate
(RC) development milestone of Linux kernel 6.5.
As of 27th August, the stable version has been
released and will be incorporated into operating
systems such as Ubuntu 23.10 later this year.
The kernel now defaults to AMD P-State
Active EPP for modern Ryzen systems, which
will improve power efficiency. (EDAC) Error
Detection And Correction subsystem updates
for the Ryzen 7000 series have also been
included, which will allow for reporting of
hardware errors via the kernel log.
Gamers will be delighted to discover an
improved controller driver for the Nvidia Shield,
as well as rumble support for Xbox controllers.
Kernel 6.5 also includes initial support for
USB 4 v2.0 thanks to Intel, which has also
contributed initial enablement of its new
Barlow Ridge discrete controller.
Updates to the networking subsystem
include preparations for Wi-Fi 7, with the lion’s
share of code contributed by Intel. This has
chiefly centred around code for its IWLWIFI
OBITUARY
OVER!
Joe Brockmeier
is head of community, Percona.
Sure, open source is
mainstream today and
in widespread usage, but it’s
Updates to version 6.5 of the kernel include better also under attack from just
support for the rumble feature in Xbox controllers. about every angle. This time
it’s through subversion and
driver and forthcoming 802.11be chipsets, but dilution rather than the
kernel 6.5 will also have better support for frontal assaults open source
Wi-Fi’s MLO (Multi-Link Operation) mode. This advocates and projects
allows devices to simultaneously send and endured in the early 2000s.
receive across multiple frequency bands, Consider the moves away
provided you have Wi-Fi 7-compatible hardware. from open source licences to
The sound subsystem now supports MIDI source available licences, like
2.0. The raw MIDI driver and sequencer API the Business Source License
have been extended to support the new UMP (BuSL), or others with use
protocol. The USB audio driver has also been restrictions. “We have to
extended with MIDI 2.0 interface support. compete!” and “Developers
Learn more at www.kernel.org. really don’t care about
licences,” they say. But their
bad business plan isn’t a
reason for the community to
accept bad licences.
And if developers don’t

Death of Bram Molenaar

care about licences? That’s
because we’ve failed to
educate people.
Users also need open
The creator of Vim and other projects dies, aged 62. source to protect their
options long-term. So do
n 1988, Dutch software engineer dubbing himself as its BDFL (Benevolent businesses. The right to
I Bram Molenaar released the first
version of Vim, which stood for Vi
Dictator for Life).
Moolenaar was a member of the Dutch Unix
fork, something that isn’t
preserved by the BuSL, is
Imitation. This reflected Bram’s efforts to user group, NLUUG, which presented him with important for organisations
create a workable text editor that didn’t rely an award during its 25th anniversary for his building applications and
on the code used in Vi, which required creation of Vim and his contributions infrastructure that will stand
a licence from developer AT&T. to open source software in general. for a decade or more.
Vim became one of the most He advocated for ICCF Holland, an We have got complacent.
popular text editors ever. Although NGO supporting AIDS victims in We believed open source
it’s chiefly associated with Linux, it’s Uganda, and used Vim’s popularity to had won and got tired of
available for a number of platforms, solicit donations. doing Open Source 101
including Windows and Mac OS. On 5th August, Bram’s family education and advocacy.
CREDIT: YouTube/CityTV.nl

Bram also authored the software
build tool A-A-P, which was written in
Python as well as the programming
language Zimbu, designed to make
coders more productive. However, he
still found the time to work on Vim
almost daily for over 30 years
announced his passing due to “a
medical condition that progressed
Bram delivered a talk at quickly over a few weeks”. His
T-DOSE 2014 on Zimbu, funeral was held in Lisse, the
which was shared by Netherlands, on 16th August. Vim
fans on social media will be continued by co-contributor
after his passing. Christian Brabandt.
But open source can no
more win than a person
can be fit, once and for all.
But it can lose through slow
erosion of values and apathy,
if we let it. It’s time for
us to push back.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 7

NEWSDESK
OPINION
NVK HAS
LANDED
Faith Ekstrand
is an engineering fellow
at Collabora.
NVK, the new, fully
open source Vulkan
driver for Nvidia GPUs, has
finally landed in the main
Mesa branch. Included as
an experimental driver in
the 23.3 release of Mesa,
it’s the culmination of over
a year of work by myself
as well as Karol Herbst
and Dave Airlie at Red
Hat, and about a dozen
community contributors.
Special thanks also goes
to Danilo Krummrich at
Red Hat, who has been
hard at work building
Nouveau kernel support
for the new memory
binding and execution
API required by NVK.
With this first release,
NVK brings support for
Turing (RTX 20XX and
GTX 16XX) and later
GPUs. We plan to
eventually support
hardware as far back as
Kepler (GeForce 600 and
700 series), but those are
currently poorly tested at
best and missing a few
essential features.
It runs on the same
Nouveau kernel driver as
the old OpenGL drivers
but it requires an entirely
new userspace API. This
API will be included in
Linux 6.6 and later kernels.
You may have to build
your own kernel and Mesa
if you want to give it a try,
but now that NVK is finally
out there, you are more
than welcome to play
with it!
8 LXF307 October 2023
DISTRO
Happy birthday!
Debian turns 30
And the Debian Project shows
no sign of slowing down.
n 16th August 1993, the late and great
O Ian Murdock announced the Debian
Linux Release as an alternative to SLS
(Softlanding Linux Systems).
The name itself was a portmanteau of
Ian’s (then) wife Debra’s name and his own.
Successive Debian distribution code names
are based on the names of characters from
the Toy Story films, such as the most recent
Debian 12 Bookworm.
Releases do not follow a fixed schedule but
come out roughly every two years. Unstable
DISTRO
SUSE goes
private
SUSE has plans to be
taken private once again
by owner EQT Partners.
USE, the company behind SUSE Linux
S Enterprise (SLE), has had a number of
owners over the years. The German
Linux distributor was originally founded in 1992
and was later acquired by American software
company Novell in 2003. Novell itself was
acquired by the Attachmate Group in 2011.
Attachmate and Micro Focus merged in 2014,
only to sell off SUSE to private equity firm EQT
Partners in 2018.
Despite an IPO on the Frankfurt Stock
Exchange in 2021, EQT is now taking SUSE
private once again. It expects SUSE to delist
in the last quarter of the year. Existing
shareholders can still retain private
investments in the company.
In a statement, SUSE said the move will allow
it to “focus fully on its operational priorities and
execution of its long-term strategy”. No doubt
this strategy will involve continuing its work
on SUSE’s own fork of RHEL, after Red Hat’s
decision to restrict the availability of its source
code to Linux distributors.
Debian remains one of the most popular Linux
distros, due to its stability and reliability.
releases are always code-named Sid, after the
character who regularly mutilated his toys.
Despite its great age, millions of users, and
the fact it’s the basis for other popular Linux
distros, such as Ubuntu, Debian isn’t the longest
actively maintained Linux project. That honour
belongs to Slackware, which turned 30 in July.
Debian birthday parties are taking place in
Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, the Czech Republic,
Germany, Portugal and Turkey. You’re invited to
join in the fun at https://wiki.debian.org/
DebianDay/2023.
SOFTWARE
LibreOffice 7.6
released
The Document Foundation
releases another version of
its powerful office suite.
he Document Foundation announced
T the release of LibreOffice 7.6
Community on its blog on 21st August.
This will be the last release numbered in this
way, as TDF intends to switch to a calendar-
based system moving forward.
We took the time to view the helpful
YouTube video summarising the main upgrades
(https://youtu.be/AB7TbrkCTSA). For instance,
the suite now supports touch zoom gestures
for touchpads in the main view, while the Linux
Format team was also delighted to discover
that Writer now incorporates one-step insertion
of page numbers.
You can find out more at https://wiki.
documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.6.
LibreOffice 7.6
comes with a video
showcasing its new
features, including
better support for
Open Document
templates.
www.linuxformat.com
 NEWSDESK

Distro watch
OPINION

QUALITY
What’s behind the free software sofa? CONTROL
MAGEIA 9
Mageia started life in September 2010 as a fork of Mandriva
Linux. Unlike its forebear, the OS is a community-based, not-
for-profit project, and is based in France.
Although Mandriva fell by the wayside in 2011, Mageia has
enjoyed nine stable releases since its inception. Italo Vignoli
The default desktop is KDE. Mageia’s online repositories is one of the LibreOffice and The
also support installation of every other major desktop Document Foundation founders.
environment, and prebuilt images are available for Gnome
and Xfce, as well as the Plasma desktop. Mageia was built from When LibreOffice was
Learn more at www.mageia.org. the ashes of the former born, the developers
distro Mandriva. changed the approach from
OpenOffice.org, launching a
source code clean-up activity
KALI LINUX 2023.3 that resulted in a significantly
A favourite of penetration testers everywhere, Kali is named better quality office suite. As
after the Hindu goddess who maintains the balance of good part of this, the developers
and evil. This reflects the fact that the OS contains a number also revised their approach to
of tools used for hacking but which are intended to help users quality assurance, setting up
improve their network security. an automated process based
Version 2023.3 includes the Kali Autopilot automated on state-of-the-art tech.
attack framework. It also incorporates nine new tools, The LibreOffice project
including Rekono, an automation platform combining different uses Gerrit as a patch review
hacking tools for pentesting. The latest version of Kali tool for its integration with
You can read more at www.kali.org. includes more tools for Git. The source code is
automating pentesting. regularly compiled by a
battery of Tinderboxes, and if
the compilation is successful,
SIDUCTION 2023.1.0 it undergoes a series of
Siduction is based on the unstable Debian Sid branch. It automated tests that verify
usually follows a rolling release model but version 2023.1.0 the software’s behaviour.
was released specially in honour of Debian’s 30th birthday This is complemented by
in August (see opposite). It’s based on a snapshot of Sid, the quality assurance team’s
combined with some extra packages and the ever- work, which uses tools such
indispensable Calamares installer. as Bugzilla to manage both
Live installation media are available offering the KDE bugs and regressions, and to
Plasma desktop, as well as LXQt, Xfce, Xorg and noX. report them to developers for
Find out more at https://siduction.org. The Siduction team created fixing the source code.
a special release to celebrate The quality of source code
Debian’s 30th birthday. has improved significantly
since developers started
using Coverity Scan services
SMARTOS 20230824 in 2012. LibreOffice now has
SmartOS is an open source Unix-like operating system one of the lowest rates of
based on Illumos, a community fork of (now discontinued) defects in its source code of
OpenSolaris. It’s designed to be particularly suitable for all software packages.
building clouds and generating appliances, so has no default The stats from Coverity
desktop environment. Scan are testament to the
Releases are issued every second Thursday and include the cleaning and refactoring of
ZFS filesystem/logical volume manager, as well as multiple LibreOffice source code
virtualisation solutions, including Zones, KVM and bhyve. done since 2010. They also
Interestingly the development team claims SmartOS SmartOS is clever enough to be confirm the extent of the
containers can run securely on bare metal. able to run containers securely technical debt inherited from
Learn more at www.tritondatacenter.com/smartos. on bare metal. OpenOffice.org, which was
completely resolved
within four years.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 9

NEWSDESK
OPINION
PLUMB
LINE
Jon Masters is a kernel hacker
who’s been involved with Linux
for over 22 years, and works on
energy-efficient ARM servers.
As I write this, it’s the
US Labor Day holiday
weekend, the unofficial end
of summer that signals one
last hurrah before it’s back
to school for the kids, and
time to hunker down for
the adults for the final push
ahead of the end-of-year
holidays. This summer has
felt more ‘normal’ than
the past few, and it has been
great to actually see a whole
bunch of folks face to face
at assorted events.
This year, I’m super-
excited about the Linux
Plumbers Conference. I’m
looking forward to having
hallway catchups with many
people I’ve not see over
the past few years, but also
participating in discussions
around a number of exciting
technologies coming along
at once. One of the biggest
to me is confidential
compute (or CoCo), in
which virtual machines
are ‘encrypted’ and their
contents can’t be examined,
even by the operator.
Finally, I want to say a few
words about the early death
of Kris Nova, who passed
away in a climbing accident.
She was in the prime of her
career and was particularly
well known in the
Kubernetes community.
She also founded and ran
the popular Hachyderm.io
Mastodon server from her
basement lab. I didn’t know
Kris, but from what I’ve seen
of her online, she had an
outsized impact and
will be missed.
10 LXF307 October 2023
Kernel Watch
Jon Masters keeps up with all the latest happenings
in the Linux kernel, so you don’t have to.
inus Torvalds announced the
L release of Linux 6.5, noting he had a
“nagging feeling that a lot of people
are on vacation and that things have been
quiet partly due to that”, but no giant issues
had been raised during the development
cycle. As a result of the 6.5 release, the
merge window (period of time during which
disruptive changes can be incorporated into
the kernel) is open for what will be 6.6.
Features merged into 6.6 so far include
the usual set of updates to work-in-progress
Rust language support, drivers and a number
of core kernel features. For example, it’s now
possible to build a kernel without support for
buffer heads, a legacy feature of the Linux
filesystem layer that had become a
bottleneck, as we detailed last month.
Linux 6.5
The latest released kernel was right on time
following a mostly uneventful development
cycle. It includes a number of internal
changes, such as support for mount-beneath
(a feature that allows lower layers of
containers to be updated at runtime without
exposing new mounts to programs within),
and a confidential compute (CoCo) feature
called unaccepted memory (confidential
compute VMs from, for example, AMD, Arm
or Intel must explicitly accept the memory
handed to them by the host; memory not yet
accepted can be tracked). Users of Intel
server platforms might be interested in
support for Topology Aware Register and
PM Capsule Interface (TPMI) intended to
ONGOING DEVELOPMENT
Modern CPUs implement a Return Address
Stack (RAS) that optimises the return of
function calls so the CPU can guess where
the next instruction will come from. This
is similar to a branch predictor, but for
function call returns. A vulnerability was
discovered in certain AMD Zen processors
in which an attacker could mistrain these
resources such that the CPU would later
speculatively hallucinate branches that
didn’t exist, theoretically allowing for data
leakage. Speculative Return Stack Overflow
improve power management on certain future
Xeon processors.
Downfall
This past month came the disclosure of another
round of speculative execution vulnerabilities.
Speculative execution is a feature of all modern
high performance CPUs in which they attempt
to mitigate the relative speed of memory (slow)
versus CPU (very fast) by having the CPU guess
ahead while it is waiting to load data from
memory. This is what was (ab)used by the
Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in 2018.
Downfall or GDS (Gather Data Sampling) is
similar to the earlier MDS (Microarchitectural
Data Sampling), which came after Spectre and
Meltdown. In both cases, CPU buffers intended
to help store values that are in the process of
being loaded from memory can leak stale data
loaded by another program running on the
same CPU. Downfall targets AVX (a vector
extension on Intel CPUs), and specifically a
buffer used for gathering operations that
combine multiple loads from different memory
locations. It is possible to write a malicious
program that abuses speculative execution to
extract data previously loaded by another
program into AVX vector registers.
This includes various cryptographic secrets
where vector processing is used to speed up
the generation of hashes and verify checksums.
Thus, the attack is potentially quite serious.
There is a workaround that can be enabled
through a microcode (CPU configuration data)
update that should be available in most major
Linux distributions (and from BIOS vendors).
(SRSO) is mitigated through microcode
updates, or through forcing function returns
via a common location (safe RET). Patches
for SRSO are in distro updates but still
being cleaned up in upstream discussion,
so further rounds of updates are likely.
A number of announcements continue
from the organisers of micro-conferences
at the upcoming Linux Plumbers
Conference (Virginia, US, November 2023),
such as testing and confidential compute.
Details are available at http://lpc.events.
www.linuxformat.com

Got a burning question about open source or the kernel?
Whatever your level, email it to answers@linuxformat.com
Q Sticky computer
I have a device that records data
to a USB stick. I cannot change this, it is
a ‘black box’. It works fine except that in
order to access the data, I have to stop
the devices, change sticks and start a new
session. Is there a way to connect a Linux
box to the USB ports on the device so that
it sees the Linux box as a USB storage
device and records the data to its hard
drive? I have not heard of such a thing,
but it would mean I could access the data
while it was running.
Alex Bennett
A There is a solution using the Linux
kernel gadget class, but it has a
couple of drawbacks. The first is that the
kernel module used for this, g_mass_
storage, is not normally enabled on
distribution kernels, so you most likely
need to install the distro’s kernel source
package, enable the CONFIG_USB_
MASS_STORAGE option, then recompile
it. The other drawback is that the
filesystem you use to receive the data
is mounted on the other device, so any
changes to it from your computer will
probably cause corruption. However, most
devices that record to USB storage expect
Hidden away in the rarely visited corners of the Linux kernel is a way to make your computer
appear as a USB storage device.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
a FAT filesystem and split the output into
files of 1GB or 2GB. Provided you only
read from these files, and do not touch the
one currently being written to, you should
be OK, but no promises.
Once you have compiled the kernel
and rebooted, you create somewhere for
the data to be written, called the backing
storage. This can be either a hard disk
partition or a file. A partition is easiest –
all you need to do is format the partition
with an appropriate filesystem and tell the
module to use it, for example:
$ sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb2
$ sudo modprobe g_mass_storage file=/
dev/sdb2
If you want to use a file as the backing
storage, create and format it with:
$ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1G count=16 of=/path/
to/file
$ mkfs.vfat /path/to/file
This creates a 16GB (bs x count) file –
give this as the file option for the module.
Now you can connect your USB cable,
and your black box device should see the
‘USB stick’ you have created. To avoid any
chance of data corruption, when you need
to access the backing storage, you should
mount it read-only, like this:
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /mount/point -o ro
Neil
Bothwick
has the Linux
kernel running
through his
wetware.
For a file-based store, use:
$ sudo mount /path/to/file /mount/point
-o loop,ro
Naturally, you are free to remount the
backing storage as read-write when not
connected to the host device.
Q Starting with X
I was wondering if there is a way,
in a terminal, to show what GUI programs
are running in Xorg. Something like
FVWM’s FvwmIconMan or the Workspace
List menu of Blackbox, except it would be
a command-line program that prints a list
of the running programs in the console. In
other words, like ps but only for GUI.
Leo Frost
A At first this seems like a simple
request, then on further thought, it
is more complex a problem. In fact, it turns
out to be so simple that there are several
ways to accomplish this. One such option
is pstree. As the name implies, this is like
ps but it outputs processes in a tree-like
format. Unlike ps, you can start the tree
with a particular process ID, showing only
children of that process:
$ pstree $(pgrep Xorg)
This uses pgrep to get the PID of Xorg
and then gives that as an argument to
pstree. Some desktops, particularly those
using Wayland, need a different parent
process. You may need to tweak pstree’s
arguments to get the style of output you
need, or even process it with sed or awk .
One thing to bear in mind is that if more
than one user is running an X session, this
fails. You can use the -o option with pgrep
to return only one PID, but there’s no
guarantee it’s for your session.
The output from pgrep is verbose, it
lists every process running under the X
(or Wayland) server. If you actually just
want a list of windows opened by these
programs, you have a couple of choices.
Use $ xlsclients for a brief list, though
we found it omitted some programs that
had windows open, including the editor
being used to type this and the terminal
from which it was launched. A more
complete list is given by $ wmctrl -l .
October 2023 LXF307 11
ANSWERS

A QUICK REFERENCE TO… RECOMPILING YOUR KERNEL

How often have you seen a
question answered with a glib
“recompile your kernel with
option X”. It may sound scary,
but it’s quite simple to modify
a kernel setup. First, make
sure you have the correct
kernel source package
installed; the one that
matches your existing kernel
is the place to start. You also
need the GCC compiler and
friends – many distros have a
package like build-essentials
that installs all you need for
compiling software. Open a
terminal and run:
$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ sudo make menuconfig
You’ll want to enlarge
your terminal window,
because this opens
the kernel configuration
program with gazillions of
options. The kernel source
package should include a
configuration file containing
the same options used to
build your current kernel, so
you only need to find what
to change. Press / to bring
up the search box and type
in the name of the item you
need. This shows you some
details and a key to jump to
it – press Space to select it.
Repeat for any other options
then follow the exit signs,
saving the config when
asked. Now compile and
install the kernel with:
$ sudo make all modules_
install install
This builds everything,
installs the kernel modules
then copies the kernel to
/boot. Run update-grub
to add your new kernel to
the boot menu and reboot.
In case of problems, boot
your old kernel and revisit
the options you changed.

You may have to install wmctrl from
your distro’s package manager. It can also
list open desktops and other information
about the desktop environment as well an
manipulate your open windows: moving,
closing or resizing them.
information about input events; the -event
option limits the display to button presses
so you avoid reams of output as you move
the mouse. Press each of the buttons you
want to disable and note its number. Let’s
say they are 6 and 7 – so, using the ID of
your mouse, run:
For a graphical approach, there is
Input Remapper, available from https://
github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper.
This is not in most distros’ repositories,
but installation files, including a DEB for
Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, are on the releases
page. Once installed, you need to enable

Q Button it
I need a utility to disable the third
and fourth mouse buttons on my Logitech
Marble Mouse. I use Advanced Mouse
Manager on Windows, but can’t find an
equivalent for Linux Mint.
Ryan Scott
A You can do this with the xinput
command, without installing any
extra software, or there is a graphical
program you can use. To use xinput , you
need to get your mouse’s ID by running:
$ xinput list
Then you need to find the number of
each button you want to remap, which
may be different from what you think
because scroll wheels are also seen as
buttons. Run $ xev -event button in a
terminal. It opens a window showing
$ xinput set-button-map [ID] 1 2 3 4 5 0 0 8 9
What xinput does is remap the mouse
buttons. The order of the arguments is the
original button numbers, the arguments
are the buttons to map them to, so this
command remaps the sixth and seventh
buttons to button 0, which disables them.
You can also use this to swap buttons
around. So, to swap buttons 1 and 3, the
left and right buttons, for those who prefer
a left-handed mouse, run:
$ xinput set-button-map [ID] 3 2 1 4 5 6 7 8 9
The xinput command runs for the
current session only, so if you mess
things up, simply log out or reboot and
everything will be back to normal. Once
you find the command that gives you
what you want, add it to ~/.xinitrc or set
your desktop environment to run this
command at startup.
and start the Input Remapper service:
$ sudo systemctl enable --now input-
remapper
Then you can run the graphical
program to modify the behaviour of
your mouse and other input devices.
Q Different kernels
I installed the HWE kernel on
my Linux Mint system a few years ago
when I got a new computer and the stock
kernel didn’t yet support the graphics.
Now it does, and I’m unsure what steps I
should follow to bring things back to the
standard configuration.
Kernels in Update Manager shows
5.19.0-50 as installed and active, and
the only other installed kernel is 5.19.0-
41. The 5.15 series is listed but none are
installed. Apt shows six HWE packages in
place: linux-generic-hwe, linux-headers-
generic-hwe, linux-hwe-5.19-headers,
linux-image-generic, systemd-hwe-hwdb.
Will it work to install and make active
the newest 5.15 kernel, boot it, and then
(when I’m sure it’s working) uninstall
the HWE packages with Apt? Will the
presence of the HWE packages interfere
with putting a 5.15 kernel in place? (In
other words, should I do the Apt removal
first?) Will I have to remove the 5.19
kernels myself?
Luke Thomson

A Provided there is sufficient space

in /boot, you can have as many
kernels installed as you want and they do
not interact with each other. So, you can
Input Remapper enables you to change the behaviour of mouse buttons and keyboard, as well as being a good install the newest 5.15 kernel using Apt
way to play practical jokes on friends who leave their computers unlocked. or a graphical software manager, then

12 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


choose it from the GRUB menu when you
reboot. Do not remove any other kernel
until you are sure the new one works, or
you could end up with an unbootable
computer. To be safe, we recommend
leaving the HWE kernel installed for a
while; the computer booting from the
new kernel is a good sign, but there is the
possibility that it could cause problems in
certain situations – however unlikely.
Because of the lower version numbers
on the standard kernels, they may appear
below the HWE kernels in the GRUB
menu, meaning the default is still to boot
from HWE. You can fix this by changing
the setting for GRUB_DEFAULT in /etc/
default/grub. Either set it to a different
number – the menu entries are counted
from zero – or set it as:
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true
Then GRUB remembers which kernel
you booted and uses it as the default for
next time. You need to run $ update-grub
after editing /etc/default/grub to apply
the changes to the menu configuration.
Q Fresh Mint
I am currently using Linux Mint
20.2 and want to install Linux Mint 21.2
Victoria. During the installation, where
it is asking to create a user, can I use the
same username ‘dave’ from Linux Mint
20? And if I use the same username, will
all my files and config files still be there in
/home/dave or will it erase everything?
Harvey Shepherd
A This is not a good idea. Installing
over the existing setup erases not
only the operating system but also your
personal files. That is, if you have gone
with the default Mint installation of having
everything on a single partition. If you
have /home on a separate filesystem from
/ you can install over the existing distro
without affecting your personal files.
However, you still erase any system-wide
configuration you have done. That
includes any software you have installed in
addition to the basic distro. Even if you do
this, Linux bases file permissions on the
numeric IDs of users – the names are a
convenience for us mere humans. If you
only have one user, then that user is likely
to be created with the same UID – users
normally start with UID 1000, IDs below
that are reserved for system services. But
if you have more than one user, you need
to ensure the IDs match.
The Mint developers have said in the
past that reinstalling is not the way to go,
as there is a way to upgrade to the new
version without reinstalling everything,
and then having to reconfigure it. First
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
There is no need to reinstall Linux Mint when a new version is released. Mint Updater provides a
smooth transition between releases.
you need to make sure you have the latest
version 20 installed. Open the Update
Manager as usual and under the Edit menu
you should find an option to upgrade to
the next version of the distro. As you are
currently on 20.2, this should be 20.3.
Once you are at the latest version of
Mint 20, open a terminal to install and run
the Mintupgrade tool – this handles major
version updates:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install mintupgrade
$ sudo mintupgrade
The first command updates the
package list. Then Mintupgrade opens a
graphical program to guide you through
the upgrade process. Doing it this way,
you keep all your existing software – but
upgraded to the latest available versions
– and files with no need to change to
configure anything. Make sure you hit the
Refresh button each time you start the
Update Manager, so that it downloads
the latest list of available software.
Q Backing up text
I have a text file containing a
number of lines each containing several
words. The number of words on each line
varies, but I need to remove the last word
from each line. I know I can use cut or
awk to identify the last word, and I could
then use sed to remove it, but this seems
complex and prone to error. Is there a
simple way to script this operation?
Lucy Doyle
A There is an easy way to remove the
first word from a line with cut :
$ cut -d ‘ ‘ -f 2- <file.txt
The -d option sets the field delimiter to
a space (the default is tab), then -f 2- tells
cut to print everything from the second
field onwards. That’s all well and good, but
ANSWERS
you want to remove the last word, not the
first, but don’t worry because we have
rev . This is part of the util-linux package
that’s installed by default on all distros.
It takes a series of lines from a file or on
standard input and reverses each one:
$ echo “Hello World” | rev
dlroW olleH
So, if we reverse the lines in your file,
remove the first word (which was the last),
then reverse it again, you get exactly what
you want:
$ rev file.txt | cut -d ‘ ‘ -f 2 | rev >newfile.txt
And there you have it: the utter
simplicity of the Unix approach of
combining several small and simple
programs in a pipeline to achieve
something more complex.
GET HELP NOW!
We’d love to try to answer any questions
you send to answers@linuxformat.com, Subscriptions: for magazine issues email help@mymagazine.co.uk
no matter what the level. We’ve all been
stuck before, so don’t be shy. However, we’re
only human (although many suspect Neil is
just ChatGPT), so it’s important that you
include as much information as you can. If
something works on o ne distro but not
another, then tell us. If you get an error
message, please tell us the exact message
and precisely what you did to invoke it.
If you have, or suspect, a hardware
problem, let us know about the hardware.
Consider installing hardinfo or lshw.
These programs list the hardware on your
machine, so send us their output. If you’re
unwilling, or unable, to install these, run the
following commands in a root terminal and
send us the system.txt file, too.
uname -a > system.txt
lspci >> system.txt
lspci -vv >> system.txt
October 2023 LXF307 13
Mailserver
MAILSERVER

WRITE TO US No sense!
While I agree that you can’t
Do you have a run pfSense on a Raspberry
burning Linux-
Pi, I take issue with the
related issue
assumption that pfSense
that you want to
discuss? Write doesn’t support the ARM
to us at Linux architecture (Build Your Own
Format, Future Hardware Firewall, LXF305). I
Publishing, own one of Netgate’s 1100
Quay House, appliances, which is based on
The Ambury, a dual-core ARM Cortex-A53
Bath, BA1 1UA or 1.2GHz processor. Likewise,
email letters@ the Negate 2100 is also based We wouldn’t complain if that were our upscaled video…
linuxformat.com.
on the same processor.
Admittedly, users have to purchase these ARM- and this product also has a separate console output
based products from Netgate to run pfSense on (RS-232 COM port), which connects to a laptop
ARM and cannot just install this code on their own USB port. Given that pfSense upgrades can take
generic ARM device. 10 to 20 minutes or so to download and install on
One feature I would advocate that wasn’t slower devices, it really helps to be able to view the
mentioned in your article is being able to monitor progress and resist the urge to reboot before the
the firewall via a console port, which is particularly upgrade is complete.
useful if you tend to install regular pfSense updates Chaz Curran
or tinker with the firewall. The remote Webgui
interface is the much preferred option when Neil says…
configuring the pfSense firewall – however, when To be fair, we were talking about publicly available
upgrading or rebooting the firewall, the console port builds of pfSense. While I’m sure it’s possible,
is extremely useful for monitoring progress and compiling ARM binaries on non-ARM systems (which
viewing any errors. a lot of readers would be doing) can be a pain and
The Netgate appliances have a console port as takes an age. But that’s great advice about the serial
standard, I also have a generic x86 fanless four- interface that is easily overlooked these days.
network port box configured as a backup firewall,
Upscale funk
As a long-time subscriber, it’s great to see the
magazine filled with such useful features. I’ve
enjoyed reading about new AI-based software to
upscale and improve images, but is there anything
like this to improve videos? I have a few videos
recorded in formats such 3GP and MPEG on mobile
phones, and I would love to be able to improve the
quality of both the picture and sound. Is anything like

CREDIT: www.netgate.com
this available?
Tom Morgan

A solid Neil says…

choice if
you fancy
This is a great suggestion. I’ve seen plenty of people
a hardware out there popping out SD upscales of video, so it’s
firewall. an interesting topic we should tackle. I don’t think
Helpdex

14 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


You don’t have to run Windows in a virtual machine, but it
does make us feel safer.
Mayank has covered anything in HotPicks, but I did
spot this, though not sure if it’s maintained: https://
github.com/k4yt3x/video2x. We’ll look into it!
Want to know more?
So, for work I had to use Debian in VirtualBox running
on Windows 10, and I ended up loving it. Over the
few months I was using Debian, I learned so much,
and now Windows as my default OS leaves me
feeling a bit let down. I still play some games, though,
so don’t want to entirely drop it.
Ideally, I’d switch, using Linux as the primary and
Windows in VirtualBox, preferably using the GPU.
What would I need to do, because I don’t want to
mess anything up? Are there any other options I
should consider?
Marty Combe
Neil says…
Our normal advice for people wanting to run both
Windows and Linux is to pick up a second hard drive
and dual boot. SSDs are pretty damn cheap now –
240GB will set you back around £15 for either a SATA
or last-gen PCIe v3 NVMe model. Install Windows
first and then your flavour of Linux. You can still run
Windows in a VM if you want, but unless you have a
pretty recent processor and graphics card, software
virtualisation of the GPU won’t be an option and
pass-through is a pain to configure.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
MAILSERVER
LETTER OF THE MONTH
A right card!
I always enjoy articles about how programming used to be done –
particularly in FORTRAN. This was the first computer language I was
employed to write, in 1979. There is one problem that never seems to
be mentioned – how do we store the source code for the program?
In the early years, source code was stored on cards inherited
from the textile industry. In a FORTRAN program, each line of code
was stored on one card. As there could be several thousand lines of
code, one program could easily have this number of cards.
The GOTO statement was a very useful device to minimise
the number of lines of code and hence the number of cards in
a program. I remember working on one program, which, after
reduction using GOTOs, was still over 1,200 lines long.
In order to understand the program and modify it, I needed to
CREDIT: Arnold Reinhold, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FortranCardPROJ039.agr.jpg
expand it, eliminating the GOTO diversions. I did this by printing it out
on a continuous sheet of paper, cutting it up with scissors, laying the
pieces of paper on my desk, and writing the reordered program
together with the GOTO target sections that had been duplicated.
After I had done this, there were more than 2,000 lines of code.
Editing – changing the program to do something different – was
not practical. A new set of cards would be needed anyway. It was
quicker and, in my opinion, safer to write the new program from
scratch. Spaghetti code resulted from a design method that had a
main aim of reducing the number of lines of code. As programmers
did not understand why program length reduction was useful, they
persisted in writing spaghetti code far longer than was needed.
JJ Reynolds
Neil says…
Many thanks for your insightful letter. It’s great when readers tell us
their own experiences with these systems decades on. It really helps
paint a better picture of what was entailed in dealing with them.
Honestly, coding kids today don’t know they’re born!
shane_collinge@yahoo.com
October 2023 LXF307 15
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www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 17

Make Python work for you with tutorials on coding with Django,
Flask, Pygame and even more useful third-party frameworks.
 REVIEWS
WD Black 8TB HDD
Shane Downing likes more performance in his performance products.
he WD Black is supposed to be the pinnacle of
SPECS
Capacity: 8TB
T consumer hard drives and resides above the
WD Blue in WD’s product stack, but things
Model: aren’t always what they seem. That can be particularly
WD8002FZWX true with storage products with differing types of
£ per TB: componentry but the same name. For instance, the
£35.63 8TB WD Black here comes with less DRAM cache and
Interface: a lower sustained transfer speed than another version
SATA 6Gb/s of the drive that has the exact same 8TB WD Black
Factor: 3.5-inch naming, sticker and branding — the model number is
Tech: CMR the only way to tell the difference between the two.
Speed: Our 8TB WD Black also has a smaller DRAM cache
7,200rpm and a lower sustained transfer speed than Seagate’s
Rate: Up to top-end FireCuda, so it’s not expected to go toe-to-toe
238MB/s with the competing flagship. However, it is still part of
Cache: 128MB WD’s Black line-up, which has a reputation as a high-
Power: 8.7W performance brand, and current pricing price puts it in
Noise: 34dBA the FireCuda’s crosshairs. That’s not to mention the
Workload: N/A “Gaming” branding in the Black’s product description,
MTBF: N/A which exposes it to competition from far faster SSDs.
Warranty: However, while the faster Seagate FireCuda only
Five years comes in 4TB and 8TB flavours, the WD Black does
offer a wider range of capacities, including 10TB, which
works in its favour. Still, WD also needs to distance this
from its own WD Blue HDD line, which is a tough drive
to beat in terms of bang for your buck.
At all costs
The 8TB WD Black hard drive costs £285, or about 35
pence a GB, which is almost £80 more than the 8TB
Seagate FireCuda at the time of review. Pricing for
consumer hard drives has been volatile, and the
FireCuda was much cheaper when we reviewed it, but
the closer price now makes this more of a competition.
The WD8002FZWX 8TB Black uses CMR
technology at 7,200rpm but with a smaller 128MB
cache and a sustained transfer rate of just 238MB/s
compared to the FireCuda’s 260MB/s. The Black does
have a WD8001FZBX version with a 256MB cache and
better performance at up to 263MB/s, but that model
is more difficult to find and generally more expensive.
The WD Black is available in various capacities, from
500GB to 10TB, making it more flexible than the 4TB/
8TB FireCuda. Both come with a five-year warranty but
Seagate includes a three-year data recovery service.
This particular Black has the same 128MB cache as
the WD Blue, but the Blue’s paltry two-year warranty is
a big drawback. Also worth consideration is the price
difference, as the Blue is currently £90 less at the 8TB
capacity point. It’s probably not worth the premium if
you’re just looking for extra space, and avoiding the
slower SMR tech of the BarraCuda is an easy decision.
The Black is intended to be the high-performance
line of consumer hard drives, while the Blue is more
entry-level. In this case, the primary difference is the
spindle rate — 5,400rpm for the 8TB Blue, against
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
We’d say this isn’t
living up to the usual
WD Black reputation.
7,200rpm for the Black. The Blue has higher latency
and a lower sustained transfer rate as a result, although
it also takes less power and makes less noise.
DiskBench brings disappointing results. The faster
version of this 8TB model, with its 256MB cache and a
higher transfer rate, would perform more closely to the
Seagate FireCuda in this test. However, this pared-back
128MB version of the 8TB WD Blue trails woefully in
this test — the FireCuda is 56% faster at writing files.
Official write specifications are only part of the
picture. Most HDDs implement a write cache, which
is a fast area of volatile memory, such as DRAM.
Sustained write speeds directly hit the platters and
tend to be consistent. Sustained write performance is
not bad, but it is below expectations for a higher-end
drive. The other 8TB model would perform at a higher
level, but in the current market, this model is the one
that’s available and facing Seagate competition. The
overall performance makes this particular Black more
of a compromise. Current pricing favours the FireCuda.
We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power
Module to gain a deeper understanding of power
characteristics and it turns out the drive is not very
efficient; the Blue is much better. If you need the extra
performance, the FireCuda makes more sense.
VERDICT
DEVELOPER: Western Digital
WEB: www.wd.com/black
PRICE: £285
FEATURES 7/10 EASE OF USE 7/10
PERFORMANCE 5/10 VALUE 4/10
Mediocre performance, and the pricing is hard to swallow. It
does have WD’s full warranty and would be OK for a budget
gaming or storage drive, but the WD Blue is the better buy.
Rating 5/10
October 2023 LXF307 19
REVIEWS Graphics card

AMD Radeon RX 7600

With so much competition in the market, Chris Szewczyk tries to work
out whether the new RX 7600 does enough to beat the pack.
ollowing the release of the Radeon RX 7900 XT,
SPECS
GPU: Navi 33
F AMD surprisingly followed up with the ‘budget’
second desktop RDNA 3 GPU, the Radeon RX
Arch: RDNA 3 7600. It’s easily the cheapest of the current generation
Process: of GPUs from either AMD or Nvidia, though it’s important
TSMC 6nm not to overlook Intel’s Arc cards, at least regarding value.
Clock: AMD promotes the RX 7600 as a card for mainstream
2.6GHz boost 1080p gamers. Its purpose is to bring competitive
Mem: 8GB performance plus the latest technology and features
GDDR6, 128-bit, down to an affordable price point. But don’t go expecting
288GB/s wonders from the RX 7600. It’s not a magical card that
Stream: 2,048 will compete with the top cards of the Radeon RX
Compute: 32 6000-series. It’s nowhere near. It’s best described as
RT cores: 32 an affordable upgrade for mid-tier GPUs of yesteryear.
AI cores: 64 Think cards like the RX 580 or GTX 1060 and you’d be
ROPs: 64 on the right track.
Cache: 32MB Then there’s the elephant in the room. AMD did miss
TGP: 165W a trick by sticking with 8GB of VRAM. It’s enough for
Die: 204mm² 1080p in almost every current game, but can we say that
Trans: 13.3B two years from now? What if the next Grand Theft Auto
turns out to be a VRAM-hogging monster? 192-bit and
12GB of VRAM would have given the card more appeal
and a longer life. We’re seeing popular cards like the GTX In the years
to come, 8GB
1060 and RTX 2060 6GB running into limits now, and will become
there’s no reason to expect the RX 7600 won’t hit similar a bottleneck.
limits in a couple of years’ time, if not sooner. It’s a question
There are things we love about the card. It’s got a good of how soon.
media engine that includes AV1 encode and decode
support up to 8K, DisplayPort 2.1 and support for up to
four simultaneous 4K displays at 144Hz each. That step behind the more advanced 5nm node of the RX
makes it a very capable HTPC or productivity GPU. 7900 cards. That’s surely for cost reasons.
There’s nothing else available (yet) at its £250 price point Even though the RX 7600 comes with faster memory
that ticks all of those boxes. and more bandwidth, it’s still not a major upgrade. We
The RX 7600 is the first card to be released with just can’t get used to 128-bit buses on mid-range cards.
The RX 7600 is the brand new Navi 33 GPU. Unlike the Navi 31 chiplet We had 512-bit buses going all the way back to the HD
something of a
media powerhouse, design found inside the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX, 2900 XT from 2007! There’s also the PCIe 4.0 x8
able to power four Navi 33 is a more traditional monolithic or single-chip interface. That shouldn’t impact performance in any way,
4K displays at 144Hz. design. It’s built on TSMC’s 6nm node, which is a small at least on a modern system, but sometimes it feels like
we’re getting graphics cards that have adequate specs,
rather than something that makes you sit up and say
“Wow!” That goes for all GPU vendors, not just AMD.
The RX 7600 includes 32MB of Infinity Cache. That’s
an L3 cache that AMD says reduces the need for ultra-
fast memory. AMD claims this gives the memory
subsystem an effective bandwidth of 476.9GB/s.
As AMD is positioning the RX 7600 as an RX 6600
replacement, it’d be remiss not to mention the power
consumption, which has increased to 165W, up from the
132W of the RX 6600. It’s not a dramatic increase but it
is around RX 6600 XT levels and higher than the RTX
4060 Ti, so it will be higher again over its upcoming
Nvidia competitor, the yet-to-be-released RTX 4060. At
least the RX 7600 doesn’t require a power adaptor; it
makes do with a single eight-pin PCIe power connector.
We can expect AMD to release FSR 3 this year. It’s set
to bring its own version of Frame Generation to the table,

20 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


The brand new Navi 33 GPU
makes its debut inside the RX 7600.
and is supposed to rival Nvidia’s DLSS 3. The RX 7600
is certain to support FSR 3. If you appreciate the extra
performance FSR 2 brings, FSR 3 promises to be better.
The RX 7600’s sweet spot is 1080p. At high settings,
with the exception of the ultra-punishing Cyberpunk
2077, the RX 7600 is capable of the all-important 60fps
or higher. Less demanding but popular games such as
DOTA 2 purr along at well over 100fps.
Notably, AMD has yet to catch up to Nvidia in terms of
ray tracing. It struggles to match the RTX 3060 when
there’s heavy ray tracing involved, but generally pulls
ahead of it in more traditional raster rendering, as we see
in Warhammer III. We’d argue that ray tracing isn’t all that
important on mid-range cards that lack grunt anyway.
We’ve spent a lot of time comparing or contrasting the
RX 7600 to Nvidia’s offerings, but don’t dismiss the Intel
Arc A750. Its performance is a bit hot and cold, but it has
definitely improved since its release, and it’s now far
cheaper than the RX 7600.
The RX 7600 tends to run out of horsepower at
1440p, at least at high settings in demanding games.
There’s nothing stopping you from dropping the image
quality a notch or enabling FSR to boost your 1440p
performance, though. If you want 60fps-plus for high
refresh monitors in all modern games, you’ll have to take
a step up to a better and hence more expensive card.
The RX 6700 XT remains a solid option.
The little RX 7600 ran hotter than we expected but a
peak temperature of 72°C is nothing to worry about.
You can expect the bigger partner cards to run a lot
cooler than that. It’s a quiet card, too. At no stage did
the fans ramp up to anywhere near a level we’d consider
In games at 1080p, you can expect 60fps or more from the RX 7600.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Graphics card REVIEWS
INSIDE RDNA 3
Think of RDNA 3 as a translation of what AMD’s achieved with
chiplets in the CPU world with its Ryzen chips – two chiplets
connected by a high-bandwidth interconnect. The thing is, when it
comes to the graphics world, you need an even bigger interconnect
and even more chips chock-full of transistors to get the job done.
Let’s start with the biggest chip, the GCD. This is the largest
component inside the Navi GPU. And within the GCD lie the
foundational computational cores that power the AMD RDNA 3
gaming experience, the compute units (CUs). Much like in RDNA 2,
these are divided up into dual compute units, which means they
share access cache and memory, although most of their constituent
parts are discrete to each CU.
Each CU contains 64 stream processors (SPs). These are the
driving force behind rasterised gaming performance on any AMD
GPU. AMD brags a 2.7x increase in shader FLOPs (floating point
operations per second) versus RDNA 2.
Ray tracing accelerators introduced with RDNA 2 are back,
including new hardware for specialised box sorting, aimed at pushing
efficiency up for ray-traced workloads. It’s all for a pretty serious
finessing of the entire RT pipeline in RDNA 3, and it’s clearly working
for AMD, with a focus on reducing bandwidth requirements, and the
pressure on ALUs to perform RT tasks has put it on a better footing
versus the competition in ray-traced games.
AMD is introducing Infinity Links with RDNA 3. These are a way
to transfer heaps of data at a rapid pace between chiplets on the
Navi GPU. The resulting performance is 3.5TB/s across the new
interconnect, and to be able to offer that for less than 5% GPU
power consumption.
uncomfortable. We’d expect the premium tier partner
cards to be effectively silent.
The card’s performance is best described as adequate,
though that’s mostly in respect to demanding titles.
There are millions of gamers playing games from a few
years ago or esport titles who are looking for a modern
card for a good price. The RX 7600 is just such a card.
The RX 7600 isn’t quite the budget hero gamers have
been waiting for. Unless you’re coming from a GTX or an
AMD Vega, the performance gains may not be worth it.
But its modern features, display capabilities and
compact size will appeal to more than just gamers.
Still, the card still leaves us wishing for more. It doesn’t
do enough to appeal to RX 6000 or RTX 30-series
owners, and its 8GB and 128-bit bus will begin to look
weak as we move into 2024 and 2025.
VERDICT
DEVELOPER: AMD
WEB: www.amd.com
PRICE: £250
FEATURES 8/10 EASE OF USE 9/10
PERFORMANCE 7/10 VALUE 8/10
Good value for money, but it doesn’t do enough to excite, and
it faces tough competition from all sides. We’re left wishing
the RX 7600 brought a little more to the fight.
Rating 7/10
October 2023 LXF307 21
REVIEWS Window manager

Window Maker Live

Nate Drake gets into the frame of things with Window Maker – a
desktop experience reminiscent of a ’90s Mac.
n describing Window
IN BRIEF
Window Maker’
I Maker, we can do no better
than quote the homepage:
is an X11 “Window Maker is an X11 window
Window manager originally designed to
manager that provide integration support for the
enables you to GNUstep desktop environment,
relive the glory although it can run standalone. In
days of OS X every way possible, it reproduces
with colourful the elegant look and feel of the
appicons and a NeXTSTEP user interface.”
clunky interface NeXTSTEP was an operating
to boot – system based on Unix-derived BSD.
provided you After its developer’s acquisition by
have the Apple in the mid-’90s, elements of
patience for the NeXTSTEP GUI were integrated
setup. into OS X. Our Window Maker desktop in Xubuntu. Double-click title bars to hide windows. Create
If you feel like a trip down shortcuts by dragging icons to the app dock.
memory lane, the good news is that
SPECS Window Maker is compatible with virtually every Unix- can also move and resize windows by clicking and
CPU: 1.0GHz+ based OS, including Linux, Solaris and BSD. dragging the title bar or dragging borders respectively.
Mem: 512MB If you’re used to installing via a graphical software The documentation states that the right-hand side
HDD: 5MB centre, the bad news is that this cross-platform of the desktop contains an application dock, which you
Builds: Any compatibility comes at a price, as the main page can use to launch familiar apps via a double-click.
advises compiling the program from source. Although this was notably absent in our tests on an
Ubuntu 23.04 VM, it appears you can add new apps via
Snaggy setup dragging and dropping their icon into the dock.
In theory, this isn’t a major issue, as the website The Window Maker website contains a number of
documentation section has an installation guide. Sadly, themes to overhaul its look and feel. The Themes page
this is where we ran into snags, though we were able explains that installing is a simple matter of unpacking
to compile and install wmaker on Ubuntu and the tarball to ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker.
Peppermint OS (which uses XFCE), subject to installing When we tried this in an Ubuntu Gnome 23.04 VM,
all the required dependencies, such as libjpeg-dev, the system crashed. Fortunately, the website has a
which helps to display different backgrounds. large collection of screenshots where better men than
But when we tried to choose Window Maker as the us have succeeded in configuring the UI to their needs.
window manager from the login screen, the desktop If you have your heart set on a nostalgic desktop
failed to load. We eventually managed to get a session experience and find default X sessions just aren’t doing
running in an Xubuntu VM by installing wmaker and it for you, you can relive the early days of OS X via
wmaker common from the Ubuntu repositories. Window Manager. We recommend compiling and
Assuming you succeed in launching Window Maker, executing the source code in a VM first, though.
you’ll discover a few minimalist icons floating around
the desktop. Right-click to configure system settings
and launch applications. This interface will be familiar
VERDICT
to anyone who’s used Xfce (or indeed NeXTSTEP), in DEVELOPER: Window Maker Developers
that disabled options are greyed out. Options marked WEB: www.windowmaker.org
with a triangle can be selected to open a submenu. LICENCE: GPL 2.0+
If you use the menus to launch an application, a
corresponding square appicon opens at the bottom of FEATURES 7/10 EASE OF USE 5/10
the screen. You can click the minimise button at the PERFORMANCE 6/10 DOCUMENTATION 8/10
top-left of any window to iconify it. If you select
individual windows, the title bar appears black. This is Window Maker enables you to relive the glory days of Mac
referred to as a focused window in the documentation, OS X, but setup and configuration could be easier.
which can do things such as accept keyboard inputs.
Windows can also be shaded by clicking on the title Rating 7/10
bar. This hides everything except the title bar itself. You

22 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 BSD distribution REVIEWS

OPNSense 23.7
Nate Drake has the good sense to try out OPNSense, a powerful
firewall distro based (in a roundabout fashion) on FreeBSD.
PNSense is one of the
IN BRIEF
What do you
O most popular specialist
operating systems
mean, “We only designed specifically for firewalls
cover Linux?” and routers. It boasts a proud
This open ancestry, given the OS is a fork of
source BSD- pfSense, which itself is a fork of the
based OS has it now (sadly) defunct m0n0wall, built
all: a slick setup, on the FreeBSD operating system.
clear UI and We’ve delved into OPNSense’s
advanced lineage as FreeBSD places a strong
features far emphasis on security, such as
beyond your ACLs (access control lists), MAC
basic firewall. (mandatory access control) and
support for OpenSSH. Like Use the UI to set firewall rules. OPNSense also supports other features, such as VPN, and it can
FreeBSD, OPNSense also has an be expanded further with extensions.
SPECS integrated mechanism to handle
CPU: 1GHz automatic updates. image of the OS, an integrated GeoIP database, as well
dual-core Unlike FreeBSD, which can be run on virtually any as a discount on business subscriptions.
Mem: 2GB chipset known to man, the only official build for Just spending a few minutes setting up OPNSense
HDD: 8GB OPNSense is for x86_64. This is balanced by an easy and creating some basic LAN rules is enough to see
Builds: x86_64 installer, available in the traditional ISO format, as well why it remains one of the most popular firewall distros.
as VGA, serial and nano images for USB sticks. Our The user interface is very intuitive and well laid out.
installer was just 413MB, expanding to a 1.6GB ISO. There are three main support tiers, from Critical to
Community. Community users are well served by the
Guess the password documentation section, though paid subscribers also
On first launch, you can choose to run in live mode as benefit from support from the OPNSense core team.
root or as installer. This is where we hit our first issue, If this weren’t enough, the team bundles an ebook,
as we were encouraged to use the default password, Practical OPNSense, free with business subscriptions.
without any mention of what it is. Luckily, OPNSense’s (Hard copies are available for more tactile firewall
extensive online documentation came to the rescue, users.) The manual gives a full rundown of OPNSense’s
revealing the password to be opnsense. more advanced features, such as intrusion prevention,
After this, it was a simple matter of choosing a app control, web filtering and malware detection.
keymap, install configuration and hard disk, before Having criticised OPNSense’s lack of availability for
setup was underway. Once complete, just navigate to non-X86 devices, said documentation has instructions
192.168.1.1 to interact with your shiny new firewall. on how to build the OS for your own chipset using
We say “firewall” but OPNSense is capable of much OPNSense Tools (https://github.com/opnsense/tools).
more than blocking traffic. Inline intrusion prevention is The forum has multiple accounts of users successfully
provided care of Suricata and Proofpoint’s Emerging running the OS on their Pi but if you want to use it in a
Threats open rules, which are built in to the OS. Its web serious way, we recommend sticking to bare metal.
proxy offers access control and support for external
blacklists to filter unwanted traffic. Other options
include firewall aliases and DNS blacklisting.
VERDICT
OPNSense also integrates support for OpenVPN, as DEVELOPER: Deciso
well as WireGuard. You can log in to user-created VPNs WEB: https://opnsense.org
via 2FA, as well as the user interface itself. LICENCE: Simplified BSD/FreeBSD
You can expand the OS’s capabilities even further
via plugins such as ZenArmor, which has a built-in FEATURES 9/10 EASE OF USE 9/10
threat intelligence system. There’s both a free and a PERFORMANCE 10/10 DOCUMENTATION 10/10
paid version.
OPNSense itself is released under a FreeBSD OPNSense is the last word in firewalls. Setup is simple and it
licence but developer Deciso also sells a Business can be easily managed from the intuitive UI.
Edition of the latest version of the OS (code-named
Restless Roadrunner). This includes extra features Rating 9.5/10
such as a commercial firmware repository, an OVA

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 23

REVIEWS Linux distribution

Rhino Linux 2023.1

Nate Drake takes a ride on the Rhino, exploring the rich Unicorn desktop,
as well as the pleasures and perils of rolling releases.
hey say that Rome wasn’t
IN BRIEF
Rhino Linux
T built in a day and the same
is true for Rhino Linux. The
is a worthy project went through five betas
successor to its before its official release in August.
predecessor, If the name sounds familiar, it
providing an may be because lead developer
amazing Xfce- AJ Strong worked on Rolling Rhino
based desktop Remix – a utility to convert Ubuntu
incorporating into a rolling release Linux distro by
the latest tracking the devel packages.
Ubuntu code. If While Rhino Remix reached end
you can handle of life last October, Rhino Linux has
potential picked up the cudgels and also
instability, take follows a rolling release model
the Rhino by using the Ubuntu devel repos. Use the search bar to track down files and programs. Launch via the U icon on the desktop’s left.
the horn. As it is a rolling distro, the team
also made the decision to use the Pacstall package launch bar on the left of the screen. This even helpfully
manager, which allows users to install packages from tucks itself away when you maximise a window.
SPECS the Arch User Repository (AUR). The developers claim Even if you’re a fan of Xfce, you should take the time
CPU: 1.5GHz this allows updates to be delivered faster. to open the Gnome-inspired app grid. You’ll find some
dual-core If an AUR-inspired package manager weren’t familiar default applications, including the Thunar file
Mem: 2GB enough, the OS also includes Rhino-pgk, a meta- manager, Mousepad and the Xterm terminal utility.
HDD: 20GB package manager written in Bash, which combines The team at Rhino has also created some custom
Builds: x86_64, Apt, Pacstall, Flatpak and Snap into a compact UI. It tools of its own. Try clicking the U to launch the search
aarch64 can be used to install, remove, search and upgrade bar. It has a similar function to KDE Plasma’s KRunner
all package managers at once by running commands but seems to integrate better with the desktop itself,
such as rhino-pkg update . similar to Mac OS’s Spotlight.
And if this weren’t bleeding-edge enough, Rhino Other exciting home-made features include
also comes with its own customised version of the RhinoDrop. This is touted as an open source alternative
Xfce 4.18 desktop, code-named Unicorn. to Apple’s AirDrop, to allow file sharing between
You can take Unicorn for a ride by testing Rhino in devices. Currently, the tool is accessible only via
live mode, just as for stock Ubuntu. (Indeed, the boot https://drop.rhinolinux.org but the Rhino Team has
screen still says ‘Xubuntu 23.04’, revealing its roots.) confirmed there are plans in the works for a GTK4 port.
The desktop is extremely colourful and slick. The If you press ahead with installation, you’ll find this is
developers claim to have been inspired by Gnome in no different from traditional Debian or Ubuntu setups,
creating Unicorn, which is obvious from the plank given it’s done through Calamares. This means Rhino

ROLLING RHINO REMIX

Rolling Rhino Remix was the
brainchild of Rhino Linux
developer AJ Strong, also
known as http.llamaz and
MrBeeBenson. It reached its
end of life in October 2022.
It existed as an unofficial
Ubuntu flavour to convert
the Ubuntu operating system
into a rolling release Linux
distribution by tracking
the Ubuntu devel series. In
theory, this saves Ubuntu
users the time and trouble of
having to upgrade their OS
every six months.
AJ modestly claims he
made Rolling Rhino Remix
with “little effort”. Still, it
became an incredibly popular
tool with the addition of
scripts and utilities that
made it progressively
more stable.
In a blog post, AJ also
referred to discussions he’d
had with Ken Vandine, an
engineering manager at
Canonical, who told him
about a potential new project
to have a rolling release
version of Ubuntu, which
would have an LTS base,
with the Linux kernel itself
being a Snap package.
Even if true, this wouldn’t
necessarily push distros
like Rhino Linux out of the
market. This is because
Rhino itself is based on the
latest Ubuntu development
branch, as well as the fact it
doesn’t make exclusive use
of Snap packages.
Rhino also sets itself apart
from traditional Ubuntu by
using the AUR Pacstall
package manager. Writing as
MrBeeBenson on Reddit in
August, AJ explained that the
OS will nevertheless continue
to be based on Ubuntu
instead of Arch Linux, given
all the support the original
Rhino project had from the
development community.

24 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


The integrated app drawer is a clear nod to Gnome. Use it to
explore the default applications.
supports the same features as stock Ubuntu, including
encrypting the hard drive via LUKS and offering
alternative filesystems to ext4, such as Btrfs.
This is where we ran into issues, as the first Rhino
Linux ISO we downloaded failed to boot at all, citing an
‘invalid DMI header’. The second ISO completed install,
but when booted, dropped to an initramfs console after
we entered the password for the LUKS partition.
We assume this is part and parcel of basing a distro
on the Ubuntu development repos, which keeps you on
the bleeding edge of system and app development
at the cost of system stability. It was only on our third
install attempt with the second ISO that we were able
to install Rhino successfully sans encryption.
Assuming your first install works, the OS launches
its Setup Wizard (another Rhino original), which first
asks you to choose a light or dark theme.
Next, it asks you to choose which package
managers to use, such as Flatpaks, Snaps and
AppImages. (By default only Flatpaks are enabled.)
The Extra Settings also enables Nala by default – a
very elegant Apt package manager front-end. From
here you can also enable GitHub CLI to interact with
the website via the terminal and the Apport crash
reporting system. Reboot to apply your changes.
This is also a good time to explore another of
Rhino’s home-grown apps, called Your System, created
by developer Axtloss. This handy utility gives you an
excellent rundown of vital system information, like your
board, CPU, available memory, disk space and so on.
It’s here that we learned that this latest version of
Rhino Linux is based on version 6.4.8 of the Linux
kernel. This is also a good opportunity to explore the
app drawer a little further to view the default apps
that don’t traditionally come bundled with Xfce, such
as the latest version of Firefox (116.0.x) and the
Like every good desktop environment, Unicorn can quickly switch
between workspaces. Don’t expect too much from the Rhino wiki, though.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Linux distribution REVIEWS
so-called Debian Sensible Browser. Email is provided
by the built-in Mail Reader.
As there’s no pre-installed office suite or dedicated
email program, we decided this was as good a time as
any to try out the Nala Apt package manager front-
end. It was a breeze to fire up Xterm and run sudo nala
install thunderbird . We then launched the app
immediately using Rhino’s integrated search bar.
Regular readers know how much stock we place
on good quality backgrounds, which is why we were
delighted to see that there are no fewer than 14 on
offer. Just as with the regular Xfce desktop, you can
also switch between backgrounds at fixed intervals.
We also took this opportunity to experiment with
the workspace switcher and found it extremely easy to
flick between different desktops.
Overall, Rhino Linux places you on the cutting edge
of Ubuntu development without the hassle of creating
your own custom distro. It gives you the latest system
updates and apps versus other distros forked from Here at Linux
Ubuntu, like Zorin OS, which base themselves on the Format, we’re
suckers for a
most recent LTS (long term support) release. vibrant background.
Naturally, the potential price you pay is similar to the Rhino offers you
admonitions given by the Debian team for using the 14, which you can
unstable version of the distro Sid. Installation and switch between
automatically.
updates can go wrong. Packages may be broken. If you
place your faith in an OS that is constantly updated, you
also need to ensure your backups are up to the minute.
But this is true of every distro of this kind, and is not
a specific criticism of Rhino Linux. If we were to nitpick,
the wiki doesn’t offer much beyond basic installation
instructions. No doubt this will be fleshed out as more
people start using the latest stable version of Rhino.
VERDICT
DEVELOPER: Rhino Linux Team
WEB: https://rhinolinux.org
LICENCE: GPL-3.0
FEATURES 9/10 EASE OF USE 7/10
PERFORMANCE 7/10 DOCUMENTATION 5/10
Rhino Linux keeps you on the bleeding edge of development
with an incredibly rich and easy-to-navigate user interface.
Rating 7/10
October 2023 LXF307 25
REVIEWS Adventure

Mask of the Rose

There’s an indescribable horror in the basement. Management just
employed it to do the accounting, and Joshua Wolens has to make it tea.
t’s hard to believe it’s
SPECS
Minimum
I taken Failbetter this long
to try its hand at a visual
OS: Ubuntu novel. The studio has always had
20.04+ 64-bit, the most engrossing, amusing
Arch Linux and evocative writing in the
CPU: 64-bit business, but it has an uncanny
Pentium class knack for hiding that writing
2GHz behind mechanics that wear on
Mem: 3GB our nerves. Between browser
GPU: OpenGL games and roguelikes, the studio’s
3.2+, Vulkan wit keeps ending up blunted by
HDD: 8GB repetitive gameplay loops. Only
Sunless Skies, so far, has
managed to strike a good balance.
So, it must feel like Failbetter
has finally found a perfect home Strike up interesting and unusual new friendships!
with the visual novel genre, right?
Well, kind of. While many of Mask of the Rose’s mark yourself as down for whatever on Victorian Tinder,
mechanics are interesting ideas, they often feel a touch the game regularly checks in about what kind of
underbaked, leaving us groping in the dark without a relationship you’re pursuing, if any, with each of the
full understanding of the decisions we’re making. characters, including the giant bat and the squid-man.
Up to now, every game set in fallen London has taken Your relationships, whether platonic, romantic,
place decades after the actual fall, but Mask of the Rose indifferent or hostile, with the game’s cast are the heart
sits squarely in 1862, kicking off 260 days after bats of Mask of the Rose, so it’s a good job they’re rewarding
blackened the sky and absconded with the capital of the to pursue. So soon after London’s fall, all sorts of
British Empire. This is where, and when, you find yourself. histories and identities are bumping up against each
Precisely who ‘you’ are in Mask of the Rose is open other in the city’s shifting streets. Men and women,
to elastic definition. Your background and gender are all high-born and low-born, Jewish, Hindu and Christian
pleasantly fluid. Plus, it might call itself a dating sim, but all rattle around trying to find stations for themselves
you can make it clear from the off just what kind of in a new world, even as otherworldly newcomers start
relationships you’re open to. You can keep everything making appearances.
platonic, or physical but not romantic, or swing the doors It’s richly textured and a pleasure to delve into, but
wide open to anything that comes your way. You can, if your ability to do so is constrained by how limited your
you like, only involve yourself in romance by playing time is in Mask of the Rose’s London. You’re constantly
matchmaker, or breaker, with the rest of the game’s cast. making choices – and every choice takes time – as the
Create your own It’s admirably open-ended, and should give anyone game progresses. Even the clothes you wear to an
story narratives. room to play without feeling uncomfortable. Even if you encounter can alter how people react to you and the
dialogue options you have during it, and
Failbetter clearly wants you to go through
them again and again to see the impacts
your choices can have.
You can get through a full run of the
game in three or four hours, but it means
you leave plot threads dangling and lots of
relationships at a halfway point when you
hit credits. Even going through with a new
character background and some different
choices, we ended up feeling like we were
repeating certain sections of the game to
get back to where we were previously.
Take, for example, what you can
probably describe as Mask of the Rose’s
main plot. Much like real life, the game is
part dating sim, part murder mystery, and a
significant part of the game’s midsection is

26 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


taken up by trying to prove your friend
has been falsely accused of murder (don’t
worry, the victim got better).
Our first time through, unaware of
how little time we had, we accidentally
left our friend to hang because we got
distracted pursuing various other
plotlines: fomenting revolution, taking
London’s census, trying to woo someone
attractive even though they’re definitely a
Tory. The second? We tried to balance
our responsibilities and left them all half-
finished. The third time through, we
focused and finally managed to assemble
one of many possible cases for why our
boy was innocent.
The third time through was the most
satisfying, narratively, even if we’re
execrable Phoenix Wrights, but it felt like
we had to laser in on the murder case at the expense of
everything else the game had to offer. We could have
ignored it, like we accidentally did the first time, but it
feels a tad strange to leave our amiable Scottish chum
to the gibbet’s whims because we’re too busy trying to
help a different friend with their writer’s block.
Narrative Lego
We assemble our case using Mask of the Rose’s
storycrafting system, the jewel in its mechanical crown.
It’s essentially a kind of Mad Libs that asks us to pick a
protagonist, a motive and an action from a list (we get
new ones by deepening our relationships with the
game’s different characters) to craft narrative solutions
for various puzzles.
So, for instance, the storycrafting section for the
murder case required us to pick a culprit, their motive
and how they did it, plus some other stuff, and if we
picked ones that made sense, we got a new theory in our
arsenal that we could go and harangue people about to
further our investigation.
In theory, it’s great, and lord knows it fits impeccably
well with the themes of Failbetter’s London and its entire
vibe as a studio, but more often than not we found
ourselves thwarted trying to use it. Either we’d input a
narrative that we thought made sense but that didn’t
give us a new story to go and talk to people about, or
we wouldn’t quite have the building blocks necessary to
construct the theory we had in our actual, real-life head.
Certainly, we could go and chat to the relevant people,
hoping the conversation gave us what we needed to
Reconnect with siblings over their poor taste in suitors!
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Adventure REVIEWS
construct our hypothesis, but sometimes a chat wouldn’t Achieve goals and
yield any new storycrafting material at all, even when we pay your rent.
felt like it should. Sometimes we would go to speak with
someone only for the conversation to digress down
some side channel that meant we never got a chance to
discuss what we wanted to talk about at all. With time so
precious and the game constantly autosaving, we never
wanted to waste time pursuing a lead unless we were
almost certain it would give us something we could use.
Amusingly, this meant we ended up pursuing
someone we were almost certain didn’t do the crime,
but who we nevertheless thought the jury would find
guilty and would give us lots of storycrafting material
to make a case with. Perhaps that’s a wry commentary
on something…
Failbetter’s London is a treat to engage with as ever,
but between the time pressure, the repetition and the
foibles of its storycrafting system, the game holding it up
in Mask of the Rose never really coheres properly. It feels
a little like a first draft, the prelude to an excellent sequel
that will come out in a few years with the kinks ironed out
and an easier-to-grasp set of mechanics. It feels like
Sunless Sea, basically.
We still enjoyed our time with it, mind you, just like
we did with Sunless Sea. For anyone who likes this
world as much as we do, Mask of the Rose is an easy
recommendation, while its brevity and placement so
early in the series’s timeline makes it a pretty good place
for newcomers to dip their toes in, too. As it is, though,
Mask of the Rose feels like a foundation for something
great, but not quite great itself.
VERDICT
DEVELOPER: Failbetter Games
WEB: www.failbettergames.com
PRICE: £16.75
GAMEPLAY 7/10 LONGEVITY 7/10
GRAPHICS 7/10 VALUE 8/10
Mask of the Rose’s writing and characters shine, but the
game underneath them never fully gels together.
Rating 7/10
October 2023 LXF307 27
ROUNDUP Personal
WE COMPARE TONScloud serversSO YOU DON’T HAVE TO!
OF STUFF

Michael Reed
sometimes has

Nextcloud Pydio Cells Filestash his head in the

clouds, but on
Seafile OwnCloud this occasion, we
needed that area
of his expertise.

Personal cloud servers

Michael Reed compares five open source personal cloud servers to find
out if they’re really free, what it takes to install them and what they can do.

HOW WE TESTED…

We installed each of the

systems on to a standard
Ubuntu setup within a
virtual machine. We could
have installed each of the
servers on to a single
machine, but the problem
with doing that is you lose
sight of what configuration
accommodations you had to
make. When problems crop
up, it’s sometimes difficult to
determine which components
caused them when dealing
with a crowded setup.
Most of the systems
supported a variety of
installation methods, and in
each case, we chose the one
that seemed the easiest to
work with and configure.
While installing the free
version of the system, we his month we’re comparing five self- systems, Nextcloud, started life (in 2016) as
tried to figure out exactly
what features were missing
T hosted cloud servers. These are
systems that run on top of a Linux
a fork of OwnCloud. Both of these systems
can do a heck of a lot and can also be
in cases where there were installation and provide file-sharing facilities customised quite a bit thanks to their
also paid options. to your local network and the outside world respective add-on ecosystems.
We copied a small media via the internet. Most also provide extra Filestash was created to do one thing
library to each system and facilities such as media libraries and remote well: work as a network file-sharing program
Image credit: Getty Images

then tested the file
synchronisation facilities
between it and a desktop
machine. We also tried to
connect to each cloud system
using its own mobile app.
document editing. The use case we’re
considering is setting up a web-enabled
cloud server that can be shared with family
members or colleagues rather than setting
up a business file server.
OwnCloud is one of the best-known
systems in this area, and one of the other
with a web interface. To this end, it’s fairly
easy to set up and use. Pydio Cells has a
similar purpose, but it also contains a lot of
group collaboration facilities. Seafile has a
business-like appearance but it contains
all the facilities you would want for file
management within your personal cloud.

28 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Personal cloud servers ROUNDUP

Obtaining and With Pydio

Cells, you can
download it, set

installing
up the MySQL
database and
then run the
executable

We want to see a variety of from the

command
installation types suitable for line, although
the free and
different scenarios. enterprise
versions
do differ.
e used the (still maintained) 10.x version of OwnCloud

W because we felt the rewrite, called Infinite Scale, hasn’t

caught up in terms of the ecosystem of compatible
apps yet. Because 10.x is tied to PHP 7, rather than PHP 8, it can
be a difficult manual install, so we installed the Docker version.
The website offers a full range of distribution-orientated
packages and VM images for most virtualisers as well as Docker
images, but there was no mention of a Raspberry Pi version on
the download page (however, it can be installed unofficially).
Nextcloud offers an installer script that can be used if you
already have a full LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server
installed and configured, and there is a ready-made VirtualBox
image and an official Docker image. We decided to install via
Snap, an easy option for Ubuntu users that works on the
Raspberry Pi, too. Although easy to set up, Snap has the slight
downside that you have to do a bit of searching around to find
the location of storage and configuration resources.
Pydio Cells ships as a self-contained binary with a built-in web
server. The installation options are well documented and include
appliances and virtual images such as Docker, VMWare and a
universal OVF image along with full Raspberry Pi documentation.
We chose to install manually. This did require a manual
installation of MariaDB database that was on about the same
level as a WordPress manual installation in difficulty. Overall,
most of the installation options were straightforward .
Seafile offers a Docker image, which is the option we chose.
This means installing Docker Compose into Ubuntu, downloading
a YAML script, making a few alterations, and then running a
command. Overall, it was a simple job. There were also options
for a partially automated manual install or instructions for a
completely manual installation, which would leave you with a
fairly traditional setup based around MariaDB and Nginx/Apache.
Filestash only provides instructions for a Docker installation,
which consists of downloading a YAML configuration file, making
changes to it, then running the Docker Compose command. It’s
one of the easier installations here but also the least flexible.
VERDICT
NEXTCLOUD 8/10 SEAFILE 7/10
PYDIO CELLS 7/10 OWNCLOUD 7/10
FILESTASH 5/10
OwnCloud is at an awkward development stage, while Pydio Cells offers a
good range of options and is easy to work with.

Installable apps
Some systems can do more than
just file share and can be expanded.
y default, Nextcloud has some apps already configured,
B such as a photo manager with basic editing and
slideshow capabilities. There are also email, calendar and
contacts apps, and a note-taking app that integrates with an app
for mobile devices. Beyond that, there is an excellent marketplace
with apps that cover pretty much every area of functionality you’d Nextcloud has some apps built in (but their installation can be skipped the first time
expect, along with some niche areas such as GPX viewers for you log in), and the marketplace is packed with both substantial and niche apps.
visualising outdoor activity data. Overall, it’s an excellent system.
With OwnCloud, some of its functionality is provided by apps architectures. As with most systems of this type, much of the GUI
behind the scenes, but it doesn’t ship with any extras configured. functionality is provided by plugins behind the scenes. In Pydio
Thankfully, it has a built-in, categorised marketplace with ratings. Cells, there are a few of these that are disabled by default, such
It doesn’t have as many apps as Nextcloud, particularly if we’re as an HTML editor and an audio/video capture one.
talking about the type that a home user is likely to want, but it’s
still a good selection. It’s also worth considering the fact that VERDICT
OwnCloud is undergoing a transition right now, introducing some
uncertainty to the apps ecosystem, at least for the moment. NEXTCLOUD 9/10 SEAFILE N/A
The Seafile developers have stated that they don’t want to PYDIO CELLS 5/10 OWNCLOUD 7/10
add a plugin or app architecture for security and performance FILESTASH 4/10
reasons, as well as not wanting to dedicate development Nextcloud is the winner here, with OwnCloud not far behind. The others were
resources to it. Pydio Cells and Filestash, however, do have plugin underwhelming, but keeping things simple has its own merit.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 29

ROUNDUP Personal cloud servers

The user interface

You’ll see it every day,
so it has to be good. Nextcloud 8/10 Pydio Cells 8/10
By default, Nextcloud has quite a lot of Pydio Cells emphasises file sharing and
e are mainly interested facilities configured and ready to go, and it group collaboration, yet the user interface

W in the file-management
facilities of these systems.
To a degree, we expect a user
interface that places a slightly
different emphasis on layout
from that of a file manager for
a desktop operating system.
Typically, one wouldn’t expect to
carry out the same sort of detailed
file management when working
with files in the cloud; however, we
do expect to be able to carry out the
standard operations such as copying,
moving and deleting without too
much difficulty.
The majority of file management
in the cloud tends to consist of file
browsing. To this end, we appreciate
views such as one showing the
recently added files. Large
thumbnails are also appreciated,
along with easy access to favourite
folders. Pop-up context menus are
always nice, as simple operations
shouldn’t be overly complicated
compared to carrying them out on a
desktop computer. Browsing should
be fast, with minimal delays and an
aesthetic that is pleasant to look at.
does a good job of presenting it all with a
clean and bright interface. Small icons run
along the top of the window and these
give access to apps, such as the calendar
and email, along with the user and admin
configuration editors. Within here, there
are some good light and dark themes.
File management is good, with a
multiple-select box as part of each icon
and a right-click menu. Oddly, there is a
file upload icon, but this can’t handle full
directories. This oversight is partially
compensated for because you can drag
and drop files and directories from the file
manager of your operating system.
There weren’t any speed problems
as such, but Nextcloud didn’t feel quite as
fast as systems such as Pydio Cells and
Filestash, particularly when moving from
one area of the system to another.
is rather pleasant to look at. When you
first log in, you are taken to a summary
page of recent files and directories, but
the starting point is configurable on a per
account basis. Users can also select
between a light and dark theme.
On the right is an icon bar with links to
the home directory and bookmarked
locations. Once you’re deeper into the
directory structure, things take on a more
business-like look, without being drab.
The user interface implements a right-
click menu, which is good to see. It’s
always a subjective take, but the user
interface feels fast compared to the
others, no doubt because this is a self-
contained system rather than a system
that runs inside a web server. Looks-wise,
it strikes a good compromise between
being functional but also colourful.

Mobile apps
You probably want to be able to access your files while on the move.
eafile has a simple app that’s available for Android and Pydio Cells also offers a basic file browser for Android and

S iOS. You can either enter the URL of your server (which
can be an IP address) along with your username and
iOS, but we were unable to test it because we couldn’t quite
produce the authentication certificate it required and the option
password, or enter the details of professional hosting if you to ignore the security issue didn’t work.
have paid for that. Once it’s running, you can browse your files, OwnCloud also has a mobile app, and as with the others, it
download them and launch media files. It worked fine with the allows browsing and launching of files. The sharing options were
image and video files that we tested it with. limited to a publicly available HTTP link, however, rather than to
The files are presented in list format with icon previews any other services, such as social media, available on the device.
alongside some file details. In many ways, the simplicity and Filestash doesn’t have a mobile app, but you can, of course,
functionality reminded us of Seafile itself, and it’s well suited to browse to the web interface on a mobile device.
mobile use. A corner hold-down button gives access to further
options, including the ability to share. The share options seemed VERDICT
to include all of the registered services on the device (such as
social media platforms) or a pasteable HTTP link. NEXTCLOUD 8/10 SEAFILE 7/10
The Nextcloud app works in much the same way, but it can PYDIO CELLS 5/10 OWNCLOUD 7/10
also switch to an icon palette mode as well as the default details FILESTASH N/A
list view. As is the case with Seafile, it supports dozens of The mobile apps weren’t massively different from each other, but Nextcloud
platforms when making files publicly available. had the most features.

30 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Personal cloud servers ROUNDUP

Filestash 6/10 Seafile 6/10 OwnCloud 6/10

Filestash is a system designed to do one
thing really well, and this is reflected in the
user interface. Files and directories are
represented by largish icons in the middle
of the screen. It’s a simple interface that
reduces the chance of making mistakes.
There’s a multiple-select icon visible on
hover, and we liked the little icon for
quickly creating an externally visible link.
If you do a lot of file management,
however, you might find that this bare-
bones interface is a bit awkward to deal
with. There isn’t a right-click menu at all,
and operations such as copying files
involve extra steps and can feel unwieldy if
you have to do a lot of it. You have to take
into account that the system itself doesn’t
have a lot of scope for expansion and
customisation. If you just want to point
and click on files to browse them, with
occasional file-management duties,
Filestash might be all that you need.
Seafile has an understated appearance
that looks like something geared toward
an office setting rather than a home one.
There’s nothing wrong with the way it
looks, though, and it is fully featured and
has the all-important right-click menu that
saves time when managing files. Along
the top there’s a set of icons for switching
between different file layout modes, and
in the top-right there is an icon for the
user and admin configuration pages.
There don’t seem to be any easy
theming features, which may be taking
the overall policy of the project to limit
customisation too far. Throughout, the
speed was good. There’s nothing wrong
with the way Seafile looks and it certainly
works as it should. Some users will like the
business-like minimalism of the interface,
but as we’re assessing the system from
the perspective of a typical home user, we
consider it a little drab-looking.
The OwnCloud UI keeps things simple
to the point of being a bit plain, but it’s
fully functional. We prefer to see a right-
click menu in interfaces like this, but the
OwnCloud Files module doesn’t have
one. From the three-dot menu you can
download, delete and publicly share
the file. This is also where you enable the
details view that has a larger thumbnail of
media files and a tab that enables you to
examine the history of the file.
The main bar along the top has the
search pop-up and the link to the admin
menu. There is an icon in the top-left
that gives access to installed plugins.
There is a quick-access sidebar that
covers the basics such as favourite files
and directories on the right-hand side.
Overall, it’s a user interface that covers
the basics but lacks panache or detailed
features compared to Nextcloud or even
the fairly minimalist Pydio Cells interface.

File synchronisation
Automatic duplication of a folder on your computer to your cloud.
he Nextcloud website provides a desktop client synchronised because the filename was not understood. Seafile

T application file synchronisation tool as an AppImage

package. This is implemented as a Qt app, and it lives as
also provides an optional command-line tool to manage
synchronisation, and this might suit some workflows and
a green tick icon in the status panel area of your desktop. Once scenarios better.
you’ve added a folder from your computer for synchronisation, The Pydio Cells synchronisation tool consists simply of a
any changes to files in that folder are sent to your Nextcloud single executable file that can download from the website and
server. The other clients all worked in a similar way. run from the home folder. Synchronisation involves creating a
For the OwnCloud file sync, we chose the AppImage rather task, which was a bit more complicated than the other clients.
than adding the official repository. Once running, it worked in As with its lack of mobile app, Filestash does not have its own
the expected way. For example, we added a folder containing desktop client or file sync tool.
around 320 PNG files that totalled 150MB and these were sent
over the network in about 15 seconds. We didn’t encounter any VERDICT
performance problems with any of the clients, for that matter.
The Seafile desktop client performs a similar function NEXTCLOUD 8/10 SEAFILE 8/10
to the others here, but it also implements rudimentary file PYDIO CELLS 8/10 OWNCLOUD 8/10
browsing. Drag and drop can be used to add folders, which is FILESTASH N/A
a plus. One problem we encountered when we dragged in a The desktop clients all worked in a similar way. Seafile’s additional command-
folder of odd PNG files is that some of the files could not be line client is handy.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 31

ROUNDUP Personal cloud servers

Storage back-ends
Flexibility in terms of where you
store your file data is a boon.
t’s worth noting that Linux symlinks and network

I mounts can enable remote storage in cases where the

cloud server can support local file storage but not a
desired storage option. However, if not officially supported,
performance may not be ideal.
Filestash supports a wide range of storage back-ends, and it’s Filestash supports a variety of back-ends that can be configured via a simple admin
easy to add new resources via the admin interface. STFP (part interface. Once added, these storage resources are the first thing you see on login.
of SSH) is the recommended back-end for local file storage, for
example. As you might imagine, if you want to access proprietary however, offer Open Cloud Mesh (OCM), a standard for sharing
services such as Google Drive and Dropbox, various measures storage between different cloud systems, and comes with
have to be taken to obtain a security key. The days of simply instructions to use this to share file data between other Seafile
employing a username and password for such things are sadly and Nextcloud servers.
gone. Once these have been added, they appear when you log in. Pydio Cells can create new storage areas on the local file
OwnCloud supports Google Drive, Samba SFTP and WebDAV system or an Amazon S3 server.
for storage in addition to local file storage and other OwnCloud
servers – a good, if basic, selection. VERDICT
Nextcloud has seven options that include SFTP, local storage
or even another Nextcloud server. There are some extra steps if NEXTCLOUD 7/10 SEAFILE 5/10
you want to add Samba support to the setup, and there is an PYDIO CELLS 5/10 OWNCLOUD 7/10
option to allow users to mount external storage. FILESTASH 9/10
Seafile only offers the full range of storage back-ends in its Filestash supported the greatest number of storage back-ends and it had a
Professional edition, which we are not looking at here. It does, simple interface for connecting to them.

Freemium vs free
Does the enterprise version offer
vital features not in the free one?
ithin moments of visiting the OwnCloud website you’re

W hit over the head with information about paid enterprise

solutions. Extra features include things like a branding
tool, LDAP, enhanced Microsoft Teams and Office Online Server
support, along with fine-grained enhancements. We couldn’t see
much that users outside the enterprise world would want.
The Nextcloud website doesn’t offer a simple feature
comparison or price list. As with OwnCloud, it is sometimes
difficult to be absolutely clear about what features are included
in the enterprise edition. For example, monitoring is mentioned,
but the free version also has real-time monitoring, which seems
to be the same as the screenshot on the enterprise page. In
fairness, most of the features with the paid version are things
like 24/7 tech support, early access to security patches, Outlook
integration and other features of interest to business users.
The free version of Pydio is called Cells Home, and there are
two paid tiers called Cells Connect and Cells Enterprise. In both,
the pricing puts them out of reach of typical home users and the
added features, such as branding options and LDAP and SSO
capability, would mainly appeal to business users. However, it’s
worth perusing the list (https://pydio.com/en/pricing) as there
might be something you were relying on that’s omitted, such as
the VMWare image or fine-grained role-based access control. As
soon as we logged into the settings dashboard, we noticed that
the usage graphs were greyed out, with a note that they are an
This is the first thing you see when you log into the settings dashboard of Pydio
Cells. The load monitor graphs are greyed out as this is an Enterprise feature.
Enterprise feature. The basic functionality is complete in the free
version but you can feel you’re a victim of feature trim.
Filestash offers two paid tiers. The Pro tier releases you from
the obligations of the open source licence, such as sharing code
modifications, and offers branding features and email support.
Enterprise offers phone support and distribution-specific
installation options. Our take was that the average home user
would get everything they need from the free version.
VERDICT
NEXTCLOUD 8/10 SEAFILE 7/10
PYDIO CELLS 7/10 OWNCLOUD 8/10
FILESTASH 7/10
None of the free versions of these systems were severely hampered,
particularly for typical home users.

32 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Personal cloud servers ROUNDUP

The verdict
Personal cloud servers
e’ve decided to make Nextcloud the winner of this

W Roundup. It’s open source software with a lot of

flexibility to it, starting from the full complement
of installation options and extending to the massive
selection of add-on applications. These apps cater for
practically every type of cloud sharing, including some
niche applications, and there is usually more than one
choice of app for a given task.
The user interface keeps things clear and simple while
packing in quite a lot of features. Speaking of features,
the free edition of Nextcloud isn’t that far behind the
enterprise version, and most of the extra features in the
paid versions are genuinely things that only corporate
users would be interested in. The mobile app does a good 1st Nextcloud 9/10
job of keeping you connected to your files while on the
move, and the desktop client is a GUI app that handles file Web: https://nextcloud.com Licence: GNU AGPLv3
synchronisation well. Version: 26.0.3snap1
OwnCloud is a big, powerful system with a lot of Easy to use and offers a lot of expansion potential through its apps.
options for expansion, but the project itself is in a period
of transition. The 10.x series is still a good system that is 2nd OwnCloud 7/10
worth considering, but its lifespan is limited because it
hasn’t been updated to support PHP 8. As it stands, it Web: https://owncloud.com Licence: GNU AGPLv3
still has a lot to offer, and it was second only to Nextcloud Version: 10.12.2 (stable)
when it came to expandability through adding apps. A powerful and expandable system, with a decent user interface.
Seafile is designed for file sharing and group
collaboration in the corporate environment. This meant 3rd Seafile 6/10
that we couldn’t touch upon some of its finer features on
this occasion, but it’s a fast, easy-to-set-up cloud file- Web: www.seafile.com/en/home Licence: GPL v2
sharing system. However, its looks are pragmatic and Version: 10.0.1 Community Edition
understated, and it doesn’t have much room for expansion. No-nonsense file sharing with a no-frills UI.
Filestash does one thing really well: it is a web front-end
to storage resources that is quick and easy to install. We 4th Filestash 6/10
were impressed with its large selection of storage back-
ends, meaning that you’d be hard pressed to find a storage Web: www.filestash.app Licence: AGPL v3
system that it couldn’t sit on top of. On the other hand, it Version: Docker latest image (2023-07-28)
doesn’t offer much in the way of expansion beyond its Does one thing very well – it’s a great cloud storage front-end.
basic design, and the stripped-down user interface might
work against it if your needs are more complex. 5th Pydio Cells 6/10
Pydio Cells has a fast, attractive-looking user interface.
However, it’s not particularly expandable, even though it Web: https://pydio.com Licence: AGPL v3
does have a plugin system. We noticed a few omissions Version: 4.2.5
from the free edition compared to the paid versions. Fast and pleasant to set up and use.

ALSO CONSIDER
Installing OwnCloud raises the question
of whether to install the classic 10.x
version or the new Infinite Scale edition.
Infinite Scale is a from-the-ground-up
reimplementation that was released
towards the end of last year. As it is an
executable coded in Go and contains
its own web server code, it has the
potential to offer superior performance
and simpler installation. We ran it and it
seems to be a fully working system, but
it doesn’t yet have all the features or the
app compatibility of the older version.
YunoHost (https://yunohost.org) is a
standalone Debian-based distro that
you install like any other distro. This is
potentially a simplified way to set up a
computer as a dedicated cloud server.
Sandstorm.io is a do-everything
solution in the same vein as Nextcloud
or OwnCloud that has a lot of apps in its
marketplace. You can go to the website
(https://sandstorm.io) to try out a live
demo to get a feel for what it offers.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 33

A.I. Pi projects
..
Tam Hanna has followed the Raspberry Pi since the first
revision, and puts the RPi 4 to work on amusing AI tasks.
rtificial intelligence payloads
A are commonly associated with
high-power systems that cost
a fortune. This, however, is a
misleading impression – a (relatively)
cheap Raspberry Pi and a few simple
peripheral devices are all you need to take
your first steps into the fascinating realm
of artificial intelligence.
The following pages demonstrate a
wide variety of possibilities – while some
tasks, such as the recognition of faces,
34 LXF307 October 2023
are common, you can also look forward
to some more advanced tasks that you
would usually expect to require larger
workstations. Finally, we will also move
our llama.cpp implementation to a 4GB
version of the Raspberry Pi 4.
Creating custom and home-built AI
systems using Python is not only lots of
fun, but it also gives you some basic
experience of workflow, which can often
also be applied to advanced, cloud-
sourced AI systems. Knowing how
artificial intelligence works in principle
often saves a lot of time when it comes to
deploying the Azure AI service du jour.
In addition, experimenting with
payloads and the provisioning of the
Raspberry Pi operating system enhances
your understanding of the system as
CREDIT: Magictorch
whole. We will, for example, take a look at
the swap memory system and the new-ish
libcamera2 API – knowledge that can
and will also be useful for other, more
mundane, everyday computing.
www.linuxformat.com

Smart hardware choices
With great ecosystem diversity comes a great amount of choice.
ong gone are the halcyon days when the
L Raspberry Pi platform consisted of just one or
two models. We are using the Raspberry Pi 4
due to the availability of the Neon ISA, but that is just
one of the necessary considerations.
Image processing is one of the lowest hanging fruit
known to AI developers, so obviously a camera module
is required – the problem with that is the availability of
multiple different candidates waiting to fill the gap.
We are using the Camera 2 module we purchased
some time ago – while it lacks autofocus and might not
be the most cutting-edge offering, the image quality (in
well-lit areas) is more than enough for our needs. Keep
in mind that AI algorithms can usually cope very well
with bad image quality.
A 3D-printed stand (shown right) will be used to
house the camera module – the STL files required
to print it can be found at www.thingiverse.com/
thing:262061. The actual 3D printing can be done with
the cheapest filaments and any random nail picked up
at the home improvement store of choice.
Recording audio is another interesting application
that often fails spectacularly due to the insufficient
quality of the microphones used by would-be
experimenters. We are long-term users of Lernout &
Hauspie’s Dragon software, which uses the C-Media
Electronics Anua Mic CM 900 USB microphone as the
preferred data input. It, or one of its many successors,
can easily be purchased for about £70 on Amazon. For
a stand, we tend to use a high-tech mug (shown below).
As for external storage, we can – in theory – make
do with a 128GB microSD card. Given that these are
kind of pricey, however, a different approach is taken in
the section looking at the LLAMA chatbot (page 40).
Bits and baubles
Eben Upton’s decision to use a stock mobile phone
charger as the power supply for the Raspberry Pi
family is one of the most double-edged decisions in
An old mug doubles as a DIY microphone stand.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
A.I. Pi projects
the history of process computing.
While it managed to greatly reduce
costs, it also introduced the
developership to the concept of
insufficient power supply.
Given that AI payloads are highly
demanding in terms of compute
power needed, a high-quality power
supply is crucial – we are using a
USB wall wart that came with the
purchase of a Planet Computers
Cosmo Communicator.
Internet connectivity is
accomplished via a LAN input,
which is connected to our gigabit internet service. He (or she) who
Finally, a memory card is required to provide the has a Raspberry
Pi camera should
operating system – in the interest of making most also have a
compute performance available, we are sticking to a Raspberry Pi
64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS. In particular, camera stand.
we are using the file 2023-05-03-raspios-bullseye-
arm64.img – deploy it to the memory card as you
would deploy any other operating system intended
for use on a Raspberry Pi.
As for compute access, we are mainly using
SSH. However, connecting an HDMI monitor to the
computer makes work easier and is required for the
camera payload’s efficient functioning and usability.
NEON INSTRUCTIONS ARE HELPFUL
Cryptocurrency mining was one of the first times when dedicated
instruction set architectures outshone their (more flexible) general-
purpose-compute peers. The proliferation of GPU-based mining
rendered CPU-based mining obsolete; ASIC and FPGA-based
mining then put GPUs out to pasture in the bitcoin production field.
In the case of AI tasks, a similar design pattern can be seen. Given
that our single-board computer is not the fastest, having access to
dedicated and advanced instruction sets optimised for AI workloads
can make the difference between a workable and a laggy solution.
In the case of AI tasks, ARM’s Neon instruction set is commonly
used. Because of that, you’re advised to get your hands on the most
recent version of the Raspberry Pi possible. The steps here use a
Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM; obviously, the (difficult to procure)
version with 8GB of RAM would lead to even better performance.
In theory, the Neon instruction set is also supported on the older
Raspberry Pi 3. In practice, the difference in compute performance
is significant, Linpack tests show the Pi 4 is up to 3.8x faster while
TensorFlow is anything between 50 and 100 percent faster.
If you’re interested in finding out more, you can do so via
the documentation provided by ARM. The document found at
https://developer.arm.com/Architectures/Neon provides a
theoretical overview of the ISA, while https://developer.arm.com/
documentation/102107/latest permits Python developers to take a
stab at Neon using a practical example.
October 2023 LXF307 35
A.I. Pi projects

Sounds like trouble

Recognising our northern accents will tax this poor Pi audio model.

e are using the project found at https://github. The deployment of the program might take a few

W com/petewarden/spchcat – it was quite a

sensation when it was released originally and
tends to work reliably. Voice recognition has since
evolved, of course, but that does not mean that the
product at hand is bad quality. The first thing we have
to do involves downloading support libraries via the
following commands:
$ sudo apt-get -qq install -y sox libsox-dev libpulse-dev
make gcc g++ wget curl libc6:armhf
$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
$ sudo apt-get -qq install -y pulseaudio
The product ships as a precompiled binary, which is
only provided as a 32-bit file at the time of writing, so
the invocation sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf is
required. This informs our 64-bit version of Raspberry
Pi OS that it also needs to consider 32-bit binaries.
The deployment file, which is about 1GB, must
Given that some of be downloaded from GitHub. Our Pi experienced
the LXF team have significant hiccups when trying to obtain the file using
strong accents,
the transcription
Curl. Instead, open your browser and go to the GitHub
results are repository URL. Look for the Latest .Deb Installer
pretty good. Package link and click it to start the download process.
seconds; using the precompiled binary version is
preferable to a manual compile, as the vendor bundles
it with various language models. For a manual compile,
the models need to be downloaded by hand.
Next, open a command-line window on the
Raspberry Pi and enter the following command to start
deployment via the package manager:
$ sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/spchcat_0.0-2_armhf.deb
DLL hell for Linux
Serious users of Windows-based operating systems
know the concept of DLL hell well – it refers to
technical trouble caused by the presence of mutually
incompatible dynamic link libraries on one workstation.
In the case of our Raspberry Pi installation, perform a
dry run via the following command:
$ spchcat
Should you have followed our advice, the program
execution fails with this error:
spchcat: error while loading shared libraries:
libpulse.so.0: cannot open shared object file:
No such file or directory
This can be remedied by entering the following:
$ sudo apt-get -qq install -y libpulse-dev:armhf
libpulse-dev
$ sudo apt-get -qq install -y libsox-dev:armhf libsox-dev
In the interest of maximum compatibility, packages
are loaded in both the normal and suffixed version. This
way, the Raspberry Pi OS installation takes in both the
32-bit and 64-bit versions.
At this point, a reboot is required. After that, the
program can be tested. When launched, it shows a

THE EAR OF OPEN SOURCE

Just as in the case of many other AI
applications, maintaining and/or
providing high-quality recognition
models tends to be one of the largest
problems in this field. In voice
recognition, the situation is especially
difficult – not only should models
accommodate the thousands of
languages known, but in addition to
that, people who speak a second
language with the accent of their first
also need to be recognised.
While companies such as Lernout
& Hauspie solve this by making the
user read a few known sample texts
and then using those samples for
parametrisation, the application used in
our guide takes a different approach.
The Mozilla team – best known for its only that, but the database found there
web browser – has, for some time, can also be used to train various other
invested significant amounts of custom speech recognition models for
engineering resources into voice- fun and posterity.
related tasks. One of the results of
this work can be found under the URL
https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/en –
the Common Voice project contains
voice samples that are uploaded by
volunteers using their browser and the
(hopefully high-quality) microphone
connected to their workstation.
Our mention of the project is
not pure filler – should you want to
help open source voice-recognition
technology, providing a voice sample
is a fantastic and low-effort way to
achieve this commendable goal. Not A wide range of samples are available via Mozilla.

36 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


screen displaying a status message. As actual text is
input by voice, a display similar to the one shown (on
the left-hand page) crops up.
Take it apart!
Students of the history of voice recognition will
remember the problems of tokenisation. Careful
observation of the behaviour of the program reveals
something similar. Particularly when fed input from a
USB microphone, quite a bit of time passes before the
output is stabilised. This is disadvantageous for all
application scenarios where the engine output is to be
recycled via another program.
A first attempt would involve a simple pipe, as per
the invocation spchcat | cat . In theory, this program
should work well; in practice, sadly, it does not. The
reason for this is that the utility often squirts out badly
formatted text – in many cases, the final result of the
previous translation becomes available only after
the user has finished speaking the next sentence.
As a first attempt to work around this, a Python
program such as the following might be appealing:
import io
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen([“spchcat”],
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in io.TextIOWrapper(proc.stdout,
encoding=”utf-8”): # or another encoding
print(line)
In theory, this code should solve the problem – it
invokes the utility and then parses its output. However,
it does not work as intended – just as before, this
version also exhibits significant lag.
Work-shy Pi
While a modification of the program structure of
Spchcat is possible, a more convenient approach is
available, such as the following:
$ spchcat audio/8455-210777-0068.wav > /tmp/
transcript.txt
This motivates the utility to take a WAV file and
parse it as a whole – this works without delays, as the
input field is fully limited. Given the availability of this
API, a different approach can be chosen. Why not
simply record when invoked, and then pass the WAV
file to the TTS engine to process?
This job requires a way for the Python engine to
access the Raspberry Pi’s sound hardware. This is
most easily accomplished via the PyAudio module,
which has detailed documentation under the URL
https://people.csail.mit.edu/hubert/pyaudio/ and can
be considered a quasi-standard part of Python.
The main challenge involves installation; because
PyAudio is tightly integrated into the operating system,
deploying it via the Pip embedded compile process is
likely to fail. A smart approach involves using the
package sources that belong to the distribution:
$ sudo apt install python3-pyaudio
With this out of the way, we can proceed to
developing the test harness. It is, by and large, a copy
of the example found on the PyAudio website:
import wave
import sys
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
A.I. Pi projects
import pyaudio
CHUNK = 1024
FORMAT = pyaudio.paInt16
CHANNELS = 1 if sys.platform == ‘darwin’ else 2
RATE = 44100
RECORD_SECONDS = 5
with wave.open(‘output.wav’, ‘wb’) as wf:
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()
wf.setnchannels(CHANNELS)
wf.setsampwidth(p.get_sample_size(FORMAT))
wf.setframerate(RATE)
stream = p.open(format=FORMAT,
channels=CHANNELS, rate=RATE, input=True)
print(‘Recording...’)
for _ in range(0, RATE // CHUNK * RECORD_
SECONDS):
wf.writeframes(stream.read(CHUNK))
print(‘Done’)
stream.close()
p.terminate()
Running this version of the program reveals status
information. Furthermore, the audio file is put in the
current working directory – it contains whatever
audio is picked up during the program execution. This
TALKING BACKWARDS
“In many cases, the final result of
the previous translation becomes
available only after the user has
finished speaking the next sentence.”
knowledge then permits us to modify the above-failing
automatic processor:
proc = subprocess.Popen([“spchcat”, “output.wav”],
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
for line in io.TextIOWrapper(proc.stdout,
encoding=”utf-8”): # or another encoding
print(line)
Popen is given an array consisting of two strings:
the first designates the binary to be executed; the
second passes in the parameters the binary needs. The
rest of the program is pretty much the same.
Further listening
Our binary package is based on a product that has
been eclipsed by the latest research results available
to the API field. A more modern library is found at
https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS – at the time of
writing, however, there is no handy wrapper available.
Another interesting improvement involves the use
of an external button. This way, the user could push
and hold the button to enable voice recording, which
promptly ceases when the button is released.
October 2023 LXF307 37
A.I. Pi projects
A face for AI…
We’re not the prettiest, but perhaps our Pi might not take offence.
ven though our face-detection routine uses
E higher-level libraries, the universal OpenCV
library is also required; it provides various
value-added services, such as methods that convert
images between various colour spaces.
Given that a manual installation of OpenCV is a high-
effort task (and requires hours of compile time, as
discussed at https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-
opencv/), the following steps take a different approach.
We’re using the precompiled packages described at
https://lindevs.com/install-precompiled-opencv-on-
raspberry-pi, which can be downloaded from https://
github.com/prepkg/opencv-raspberrypi. This provides
an OpenCV library that is in principle ready to run and
contains all elements except for the GUI support, which
the repository maintainer chose not to include.
Be that as it may, the actual installation of the
OpenCV library is accomplished by deploying a DEB
package, which is downloaded using Wget: :
$ wget https://github.com/prepkg/opencv-
raspberrypi/releases/latest/download/opencv_64.deb
SHOW YOUR FACE!
Facial recognition is
among the most
popular demonstration
applications of AI. When
done right, a process
computer can identify
its user by getting a few
camera-frame grabs of
his or her face.
While face-detection
systems are not without
their weaknesses (such
as their susceptibility
to unlocking via a
photograph), the sheer
impressiveness of most The sticker protects the camera during assembly.
systems is enough to
justify a punt.
In the steps on these pages, we are using a hotchpotch of various
components to get a decently-well-working face-detection stack
running with minimal effort. Since most of the parts used are well
documented, the system created here can also be used as a stepping
stone towards your own experiments in the field of machine vision
and facial detection.
Furthermore, the relatively new libcamera2 API of the Raspberry Pi
is also given a little workout; after all, nothing is more satisfying than
seeing a new programming interface in action.
In terms of hardware, this tutorial does not require much – the
algorithm is so stable that it doesn’t even mind issues such as the
camera being covered with its shipping cover (shown above).
38 LXF307 October 2023
...
$ sudo apt install -y ./opencv_64.deb
Machine Learning Libraries
Even though OpenCV integrates itself deeply into the
OS, it is but one of many requirements for a successful
ML pipeline. The next step involves downloading a
package created by Adam Geitgey – it provides a high-
level face detector API for Python developers:
~/cvspace $ pip3 install face-recognition
Don’t worry if the deployment process is stuck at:
Building wheel for dlib (PEP 517)
…
Pip needs to perform complex compiles before the
packages are deployed. A delay of up to 15 minutes is
normal; if your Pi’s power supply is low quality or the
SD card is low, an even longer wait is not unusual.
When the compile is over, you may see errors like
WARNING: The scripts face_detection and face_
recognition are installed in ‘/home/pi/.local/bin’ which
is not on PATH.
These are harmless – you’re more interested in
important information such as the following:
Successfully installed dlib-19.24.2 face-
recognition-1.3.0 face-recognition-models-0.3.0
The imutils package then needs to be deployed:
~/cvspace $ pip3 install imutils
On the shoulders of AI giants
One of the benefits of the Python community is the
wide availability of code samples. There is almost no
job for which a Pythonist can’t find an open source
implementation. In the case of face detection, we’ll use
the MIT-licensed source code developed by Caroline
Dunn – her code is unnecessarily complex in that she
used the OpenCV code also for GUI display and image
acquisition. Due to that, we need to modify the various
programs before running them.
Be that as it may, the first task involves downloading
the code from the repository:
~/cvspace $ git clone https://github.com/
carolinedunn/facial_recognition.git
~/cvspace $ cd facial_recognition/
The next step involves modifying train_model.py. As
provided by the repository, it is intended to obtain
training data from an array of JPEG files found in the
Pi’s filesystem. Given that our computer is connected to
the camera, we can harvest them live. For this, the first
modification is an include pointing to libcamera2:
from picamera2 import Picamera2
After that, an image acquisition configuration needs
to be created:
picam2 = Picamera2()
config = picam2.create_preview_
configuration(main={“size”: (640, 480), “format”:
“YUV420”})
www.linuxformat.com

picam2.configure(config)
picam2.start(show_preview=True)
Working with the API is somewhat complex, as it
works with the fully stream-driven paradigm. Therefore
our first task is the creation of an example configuration
– it is a struct containing various parameters specifying
how information from the camera sensor is to be
presented to the application.
In the case of our example, the attribute “format”:
“YUV420” is especially important – it specifies the bit-
field sequence that will be expected by the OpenCV
code. Furthermore, we invoke the method picam2.
start(show_preview=True) to start the actual image-
processing pipeline. By setting show_preview to true,
we furthermore spawn a preview window.
After that, the main work loop needs to be modified:
while True:
print(“-------”)
print(“are we done? n for another one, q to
terminate”)
inp = input();
if inp == “q”:
break;
print(“Capturing”)
yuv420 = picam2.capture_array()
rgb = cv2.cvtColor(yuv420, cv2.COLOR_
YUV420p2RGB)
We intend for each acquisition cycle to be triggered
by pushing n and Return – this is accomplished by the
code shown here. The method picam2.capture_array()
momentarily freezes the CCD data stream and returns
an array with colour information, which is then
transformed into the format expected by the machine-
learning payload.
After that, one of the predefined methods in the
face detection module can be used to determine
the face position:
boxes = face_recognition.face_
locations(rgb,model=”hog”)
encodings = face_recognition.face_encodings(rgb,
boxes)
for encoding in encodings:
knownEncodings.append(encoding)
knownNames.append(“Tam”)
The example at hand trains only one face. If you
want to train the model to use multiple faces instead,
the string passed to knownNames must be modified to
contain the name of the person currently occupying the
space in front of the sensor.
Finally, image information is to be persisted. The
code is a prime example of the persistence module – if
you have issues understanding it, please consult the
documentation at https://docs.python.org/3/library/
pickle.html to learn more about this generally useful
part of the Python standard library:
data = {“encodings”: knownEncodings, “names”:
knownNames}
f = open(“encodings.pickle”, “wb”)
f.write(pickle.dumps(data))
f.close()
Harvesting the models
Once the model files are persisted, the facial_req.py
script is intended to be used to perform the actual
image detection. It has to be modified – as mentioned
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
A.I. Pi projects
above, the precompiled OpenCV image was compiled The face
without the GUI stack. recognition is
ready for action.
Due to this, the first act involves modifying the
image-acquisition pipeline so that it uses libcamera2
instead of OpenCV:
...
data = pickle.loads(open(encodingsP, “rb”).read())
#vs = VideoStream(usePiCamera=True).start()
picam2 = Picamera2()
config = picam2.create_preview_
configuration(main={“size”: (640, 480), “format”:
“YUV420”})
picam2.configure(config)
picam2.start(show_preview=True)
After that, the main work loop must be modified to,
once again, process the image data provided:
while True:
yuv420 = picam2.capture_array()
rgb = cv2.cvtColor(yuv420, cv2.COLOR_
YUV420p2RGB)
frame = imutils.resize(rgb, width=500)
...
In principle, the program is ready to run – due to
the missing GUI support, errors will crop up pointing to
missing elements in the OpenCV framework. If this is
the case on your machine, simply comment out the
offending line.
When run successfully, a result similar to the one
in the screenshot (above) appears. Note that the
preview window runs independently of the rest of the
Python program, providing an overview of whatever
information is shown in front of the CCD sensor.
Going further
While a library-based face detection system is
convenient to use, it doesn’t go very deep into the
underlying neural network theory. Should you wish to
learn more about the underlying mathematics, the
tutorial at https://pyimagesearch.com/2018/09/24/
opencv-face-recognition/ might be useful – do,
however, keep in mind that it is quite difficult.
Finally, a disclaimer is required: this code must not
be used for any security-relevant applications. It can
easily be tricked – for example, with a static image of
the relevant person.
October 2023 LXF307 39
A.I. Pi projects
Our chatty AI man
Get your Pi to chat like a human, mostly.
ur first test involves running the LLaMA
O payload – discussed in LXF304, it creates a
ChatGPT-like bot that runs locally. Due to the
extremely large size of the model, which has to be
obtained via BitTorrent, this task cannot be completed
solely on the Raspberry Pi – instead, a workstation is
required to handle some of the more computationally
intensive preparation tasks.
Furthermore, be aware that the quantisation steps
have to be performed once again even if you’ve done
them in the past. The LLaMA framework receives
frequent upgrades – trying to use a recent version
with an ancient quantisation leads to errors.
Excursus: swap it
Since advanced operating systems became available
on all kinds of workstations, expanding the working
memory by using remanent memory in a process
called swapping has become popular.
The Raspberry Pi’s RAM can be expanded almost
unlimitedly by using swap – in practice, the main
limitation is usually the microSD card. Such cards
tend to not respond well to significant write loads.
In the following steps, we work around the problem
via the contraption pictured (below). It is a no-screw
housing filled with a 128GB SSD left over from a
workstation. When connected to one of the Pi 4’s
USB 3.0 ports, decent transfer rates can be achieved.
Once the device is connected, the partition must be
set up. For this, enter the command sudo pico /etc/
dphys-swapfile to load the swap file configuration file
in Pico. After that, the following three values must be
enabled and/or uncommented:
CONF_SWAPFILE=/media/pi/externalssd/swapspace/swap
CONF_SWAPSIZE=16000
CONF_MAXSWAP=22048
Give an old SSD a CONF_MAXSWAP is especially important – should
new lease of life. you happen to forget to enable it, the value of CONF_
40 LXF307 October 2023
Values in the MiB swap row relate to swap memory.
SWAPSIZE is restrained to about 2GB. While this
might be enough for an 8GB Raspberry Pi, the more
affordable 4GB version we’re using would run out of
memory in such a use case.
Saving the file is not enough to update the swap
infrastructure. Instead, first enter the following to
restart the swap memory management system:
$ sudo systemctl restart dphys-swapfile
After that, the command sudo dphys-swapfile setup
must be run – its perpetual task in life is updating the
physical files found in the filesystem. In our case, a
message similar to the following was output:
want /media/pi/externalssd/swapspace/swap=
16000MByte, checking existing: deleting wrong size file
(2147483648), generating swapfile ... of 16000MBytes
This indicates that the swap files in the filesystem
have been updated in accordance to the settings
made. Finally, rerun sudo systemctl restart dphys-
swapfile to bring the new files into action. The
successful execution can best be checked by using
the top command – it should show the swap file size in
a fashion similar to the one in the screenshot (above).
Prepare for quantisation!
Facebook’s LLaMA model is still only available for
reasearch purposes – this is availble via a torrent
script. Fortunately, it can easily be deployed by
using the shell script found at: https://
raw.githubusercontent.com/Elyah2035/llama-dl/
main/llama.sh.
Having downloaded it successfully, open the file and
edit the MODEL_SIZE variable as per the following to
limit the amount of model data downloaded only to the
smallest of the four models, known as 7B:
MODEL_SIZE=”7B” # edit this list with the model sizes
you wish to download
TARGET_FOLDER=”./” # where all files should
end up
After that, enter the following two commands to set
the executable bit and start the download process of
30GB of model data:
www.linuxformat.com

~/convforrpi$ chmod +x llama.sh
~/convforrpi$ ./llama.sh
In the next step, the usual llama.cpp environment
must be downloaded along with some requirements.
Finally, the make command is invoked in order to
compile the code:
~/convforrpi$ git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/
llama.cpp
Cloning into ‘llama.cpp’...
...
~/convforrpi$ cd llama.cpp/
~/convforrpi/llama.cpp$ python3 -m pip install torch
numpy sentencepiece
~/convforrpi/llama.cpp$ make
After that, the actual model conversion can be done
via the following commands. Be careful to duplicate
the model position as discussed:
~/convforrpi/llama.cpp$ python3 convert.py
models/7B/
...
Wrote models/7B/ggml-model-f16.bin
~/convforrpi/llama.cpp$ ./quantize ./models/7B/ggml-
model-f16.bin ./models/7B/ggml-model-q4_0.bin q4_0
Importantly, the folder downloaded via BitTorrent
must be placed in the models subfolder as per the
following code:
~/convforrpi/llama.cpp/models$ ls
7B ggml-vocab.bin tokenizer_checklist.chk tokenizer.
model
Back to the Pi…
At this point in time, the contraption shown in the
photograph can shine – disconnect it from the
powered-down Raspberry Pi and connect it to the
workstation. Then, move over the contents of the
models folder. After that, return to the Raspberry Pi
and run the following set of commands to provide it
with its own distribution of llama.cpp:
externalssd/llama $ sudo apt install git g++ build-
essential
externalssd/llama $ git clone https://github.com/
ggerganov/llama.cpp
externalssd/llama $ python3 -m pip install torch
numpy sentencepiece
Importantly, do not copy over the entire folder.
While this is most definitely tempting, it will lead
to a non-working program. Bear in mind that your
workstation most likely has an x86 (or x64) processor,
while the Raspberry Pi’s CPU is based on the ARM
instruction set. When the compilation has been
successfully accomplished, move the contents of the
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
A.I. Pi projects
LLAMAS ON A DIET!
Artificial intelligence jobs are known for the high demands placed on
compute power required. As our last experiment in this feature, we
are taking Eben Upton at his word and trying to use the Raspberry Pi
as a computer for running real (as in large computer level) AI tasks
on a shoestring.
Be aware that this is not an economically sensible approach –
when you have added the external SSD required to handle the large
amount of model data, purchasing used workstations gives more
bang for your buck, especially as such workstations can easily take
16GB of RAM, whereas the Raspberry Pi maxes out at an almost-
unavailable and incredibly expensive complement of 8GB.
Be that as it may, seeing the Raspberry Pi run large-scale compute
payloads remains a fascinating testament to the power of the
system-on-chip used. In addition to that, keep in mind that more
powerful alternative computers such as the OKDO or the Asus
TinkerBoard are available – in short, one can truly claim that this is
the age of the single-board computer.
models folder from the workstation into the local
distribution. After that, invoke the following command
to start the compile process:
externalssd/llama $ cd llama.cpp/
externalssd/llama/llama.cpp $ make
At this point in time, the following command can be
run to invoke the Chat assistant known from our
previous experiments on the workstation:
externalssd/llama/llama.cpp/examples $ ./chat.sh
Keep in mind that the performance of the Raspberry
Pi is significantly lower than that of the workstation.
Entering a question, for example, is relatively slow –
when connected via SSH, do not be surprised if the
program needs up to one minute before the entered
prompt is mirrored back to you.
Nevertheless, pushing Return – admittedly
eventually – yields a result not dissimilar from what
was seen on the workstation in the previous article.
Raspberry Pi 5?
Even though our local Raspberry Pi-based chatbot is
currently of little practical value, being able to run a
program as complex as LLaMA on a £50 process
computer is an impressive technical feat.
Furthermore, keep in mind that Moore’s Law is
unlikely to disappoint – it should just be a question of
time until more powerful Raspberry Pi alternatives
become available. In short, it truly is the age of artificial
intelligence on the single-board computer.
The model is
in place.
October 2023 LXF307 41

Rejoice! 271% more Pi
available than in 2022
Les Pounder wonders if 75% of all statistics are
made up, but at least he can buy a Pi 4 now.
s stocks of the many Raspberry Pi
A models steadily improve, we’re now
coming to the end of a difficult
period for the Pi community and the world
at large. So, how bad was it and how is it
improving? To find out, we contacted
RPiLocator, a service that sprang up to help
Raspberry Pi fans locate precious Pis. Thanks
to its data, we can see the highs and lows.
Using the number of restocks as a proxy
for product availability, we can see that
CREDIT: Pexels
RISC-V x86
Box64 emulation.
The latest version of Box64, a popular
x86_64 emulator for Linux running on
architectures such as ARM/AArch64 and
RISC-V, introduces significant performance
improvements, making gaming possible on
RISC-V-based platforms such as the Vision
Five 2 board. Added to the 0.2.4 release, it’s
a huge milestone for emulation support.
https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64
Now playing x86 games.
CREDIT: Starfive
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Pi USER
Raspberry Pis as a whole were 271% more
available in July 2023 than July 2022 (394
restocks versus 106). And, among particular
models of Pi, the Pi Zero 2 W grew the most,
going from one to 56 restocks year-on-year.
Since Upton announced that million-unit
months were ahead, we have seen a steady
increase in the number of restocks, and that
means more Pis are flooding into the sales
channels. The last 60-day period has seen
the Raspberry Pi 4 be the clear winner for
restocks, at 330. In second place is the Pi
Zero W, with 82, and in third place is the
Pi Zero 2 W, with 62. Things are looking much
better as resellers are getting more product.
As per Upton’s predictions, it seems that
2023 is looking much brighter for our
favourite single-board computer.
Raspberry Pi sales have been up and
down more than a roller coaster.
Lichee RISC-V
Small and delicious.
The new Lichee Pi 4A uses open source
RISC-V C910 architecture. This small
desktop SBC is manufactured by Sipeed and
comes in a variety of configurations. It comes
with Debian pre-installed, uses a RISC-V
C910, has 4GB to 16GB of memory, eMMC
storage, dual Ethernet and HDMI-out.
https://sipeed.com/licheepi4a
It’s not Li-cheap!
CREDIT: Sipeed
Les Pounder
works with groups
such as the
Raspberry Pi
Foundation to help
boost people’s
maker skills.
MORE Pi
FOR EVERYONE
The last few years have been
rough for us all. A (hopefully)
once-in-a-lifetime pandemic
affected every facet of our
lives. A big impact was felt in the
global supply chain, and while
the Raspberry Pi was relatively
untouched for a while, measures
had to be taken to protect the
supply. For single purchases –
ie the general public – we had
to make do with a trickle of
Raspberry Pis. Sometimes this
trickle flowed a little faster. I’ve
just spent a few days going
through global restock data for
Tom’s Hardware, https://bit.ly/
lxf307pi, and over the last 78
weeks, the Raspberry Pi 4 has
been in stock for 76. Remember,
that this is for all official resellers
across the globe, so there were
times when the Raspberry Pi 4
(and many others) went out of
stock for a few weeks in a certain
location. The restock data
doesn’t tell us how many Pis
were sent, just that a reseller
received new stock.
Now, 2023 is entering “million
unit months”, https://bit.ly/
lxf307upton, a prediction made
by Raspberry Pi CEO Eben
Upton. These next few months
should see Raspberry Pi
production enter one million
units per month, clearing away
the backlog and meaning that
we can soon get more Raspberry
Pis for our projects. In the UK,
resellers Pimoroni and The Pi
Hut are offering multiple
Raspberry Pi 4s per purchase, a
change from single-unit sales
enforcement, which kept
everything fair.
If you want a Raspberry Pi, you
now have a 271% better chance
of picking one up at the RRP.
October 2023 LXF307 43
 REVIEWS Enclosure

52Pi Rack Tower

Les Pounder owns multiple Raspberry Pis but has yet to make a cluster.
Perhaps this enclosure will see him put all of his Pis on the shelf?
aspberry Pi cases come in all shapes and sizes,
IN BRIEF
It looks cool,
R but the 52Pi ZP-0088 Rack Tower is far from a
case, more of a jet engine-styled enclosure. Our
but it’s not review model features four shelves, on which we can
necessarily store a mixture of Raspberry Pis and 2.5-inch SSDs. Any
there to model of Pi, from the B+ onwards, can be used with the
keep your shelves. This is thanks to Raspberry Pi standardising
overclocked the M2.5 mount points. The enclosure can also be used
Raspberry Pi to house an Nvidia Jetson, but our focus is on the Pi.
cool. This Included in the kit are four microSD card extenders that
enclosure is route the microSD card to be parallel with the Ethernet/
more to keep USB ports of a Raspberry Pi model B.
everything tidy Constructing the enclosure is fairly straightforward,
and it does that but there are a few gotchas. You need to pay close
really well, attention to the orientation of the shelves; get this wrong
thanks to a and you have to take it apart. The construction is made
series of from laser-cut acrylic and after removing the protective
shelves and plastic, you’re left with a powdery ‘film’ that requires
plenty of space. cleaning with isopropyl alcohol. Assembly can be an It certainly looks good on the desk and it does tidy up some of our
If cooling is exercise in patience. The laser-cut parts are held in place clutter, but the big RGB fan is more for show than cooling.
what you need, with tabs and slots, but until we secure them with the
look at 52Pi’s included screws, they shift. The thin assembly manual acrylic looks good and is stable. Typically with tab and
Ice Tower has a step to attach heatsinks to the Pi, but none are slot construction, the build can be slightly unbalanced,
coolers and included in the kit. At the front of the enclosure is a but the Rack Tower is pleasantly solid. Four aluminium
leave this 120mm RGB fan. This is powered from the 5V pins of the rods hold the structure together, and an acrylic carrying
jet engine Pi, potentially blocking access to the GPIO if you wish to handle provides some strength at the top of the case.
enclosure on use a HAT. The RGB element is also powered from the If you are building a network cluster, the four shelves
the shelf. Pi’s GPIO, but don’t get excited – the RGB LEDs are static provide plenty of space. If you can find multiple Pis in
and don’t bring much to the party. stock. The inclusion of microSD card extenders is a
Our review test was formed using a Raspberry Pi 4 welcome addition, but given the shelves also support
and a 2.5-inch SSD. Both were secured to their shelves 2.5-inch drives, USB 3 drives should be your priority. That
using a mixture of M2.5 screws and stand-offs. With the does drop the number of Pi shelves down to two, but you
shelves in place, it can be difficult to add a Raspberry Pi can purchase Rack Towers with more shelves. The fan is
The kit is or drive, but it can be done. We configured the Pi to boot good. It moves air over the Raspberry Pis and your SSDs,
expansive and from USB, and connected the 2.5-inch drive via USB 3. It but it’s questionable how useful that is. We didn’t run
provides every nut all worked well, but the enclosure merely provided a any temperature tests, mainly because of the open-air
and bolt to connect means to tidy up a mass of cables. nature of the enclosure. If you seriously want to keep
your Raspberry
Pi, Nvidia Jetson On the desk, the enclosure looks good. Not uber-chic; your Raspberry Pi cool, an enclosed case with heatsinks
and SSDs to the more DIY than anything. The 120mm fan is quiet, apart and active cooling is the way to go. The 52Pi Rack Tower
four shelves. from the garish static RGB LEDs. The smoked black is more for show than keeping your Pi super-cool.

VERDICT
DEVELOPER: 52Pi
WEB: https://52pi.com
PRICE: £40

FEATURES 7/10 EASE OF USE 7/10

PERFORMANCE 6/10 VALUE 6/10

It looks good, and holds everything neatly but its cooling ability
is questionable and is more for show than performance.

Rating 6/10

44 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 3D printer REVIEWS

Elegoo Neptune 4
“Smoke me a Klipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!” cries Denise Bertacchi.

legoo has entered the speed race with a much

SPECS
Vol: 225x225x
E faster version of its popular Neptune 3 Pro, the
Neptune 4. It is speedier thanks to a hidden
Klipper
shines on this
affordable
265mm install of Klipper firmware, plus everything that made
printer.
Type: PLA, the Neptune 3 Pro a favourite 3D printer for beginners.
PETG, TPU Current pricing makes this quite a bargain in the field
(up to 300°C) of fast printing. However, the way Elegoo chose to
Extruder: integrate Klipper is confounding. It’s hidden in the
Direct drive background, granting the user speed while making its
Nozzle size: other perks difficult to access. The hands-off approach
0.4mm might work fine for complete beginners, but if you want
high flow to poke under the hood, you’ll have to find a long enough
Platform: Ethernet cable to reach your router or take a leap of faith
PEI textured on finding a compatible Wi-Fi dongle.
spring steel There’s still a lot to love about the Neptune 4. It
sheet, heated arrives 90% pre-assembled, making it a quick build. It
Levelling: Auto, has dual Z axis, a grippy direct drive that handles TPU
inductive probe like a champ, a high-flow nozzle rated to 300°C, a giant
Sensors: cooling fan and an easy-to-navigate touchscreen. It even 250mm/s. There is no profile for higher speeds, so you’ll
Runout has an LED light on the gantry. have to experiment with that yourself.
Comms: Levelling has taken a step backwards, though. It’s Speed isn’t everything; it can wreak havoc on a glossy
USB, LAN still very good, but it’s adopted a more tedious manual- decorative finish, while many prints are not long enough
Control: Colour plus-auto levelling system. It’s not too surprising that to reach the claimed 500mm/s. Once you factor in
touchscreen, Elegoo didn’t include an accelerometer for tuning input acceleration and the need to slow down for corners, you
removable shaping, but there’s no visible way to hook one up either. do 250mm/s at best. But the Neptune 4 is fast, achieving
Footprint: 475x A beginner won’t see this as a failing, as the factory a very good 20-minute output on Speed Benchy.
445x515mm settings are really quite good. However, this is the kind The printer is more than capable of producing
Weight: 8.3kg of feature a more seasoned maker will sorely miss. smooth, quality prints when you slow it down a bit. Our
X-wing pen holder (see photo, above) was printed using
Klippered wings the default settings, which uses 250 for the inner parts
There’s a removable touchpad with a magnetic base, but and 130 for the outer walls and top/bottom layers. The
what’s more intriguing is what’s on it. We’ve seen many detail is crisp, without any ghosting, but the colour is a bit
printers running Klipper, and the best use KlipperScreen, washed out from the speed. Total print time was three
which gives you more features. It seems Elegoo decided hours and nine minutes, using three walls, 250mm/s
the best way to run Klipper is to not see it at all. inside parts and 75mm/s outer layers and walls.
The Neptune 4 comes with a copy of Elegoo Cura, The Neptune 4 is a confusing little 3D printer. Is it for
which has profiles for all its machines and several beginners? Maybe. Is it for fans of Klipper? Not really. It
materials. It also has the added ability to create a comes with an unrestricted copy of Klipper, a huge plus,
thumbnail of your model to display on the printer. but it’s difficult to access without Wi-Fi. You can certainly
Although Elegoo claims the Neptune 4 has a maximum run a cable to it, but how many people have their router
speed of 500mm/s, the default profile provided is on the same workbench as their 3D printer?

VERDICT
DEVELOPER: Elegoo
WEB: www.elegoo.com
PRICE: £258

FEATURES 8/10 EASE OF USE 7/10

PERFORMANCE 8/10 VALUE 7/10

Much the same as the Neptune 3 Pro but with added Klipper.
Fast and accurate, The lack of Wi-Fi or KlipperScreen negates most of the perks.
the Neptune 4

Rating 7/10
does a fine job
on our speed
benchmark.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 45

 TUTORIALS Wiimote bot control

CWIID
Credit: https://github.com/azzra

Control a Pi bot
with a Wiimote
Les Pounder travels back to 2014, the last time that he held a
Wiimote that wasn’t embedded in an LCD TV.

e are travelling back in time.

W Nine years, to be precise. That

was the last time we connected
a Nintendo Wiimote to a Raspberry Pi.
In this tutorial, we are learning how to
configure a Pi to communicate with a
OUR Wiimote over Bluetooth. We’ll put the
EXPERT connection to use by constructing a
Les Pounder very simple robot control script to spin
is associate motors connected to a Cytron Maker
editor at Tom’s Drive motor controller. Using this script
Hardware and a as a template, you can easily build a
freelance maker remote-controlled robot using the
for hire. He blogs Raspberry Pi 4, 3B+, Zero W or Zero 2 W.
about his
adventures and Wiring up the circuit
projects at The circuit has four main components: a Turn an old Nintendo Wiimote into a magic wand for your next robotics project.
http://bigl.es. Raspberry Pi, a Maker Drive motor
controller, motors and a power source for the motors. $ sudo apt install wminput autoconf gawk bison flex
The Pi connects to the motor controller using pins 14,
YOU NEED 15, 18 and 23. These control the direction in which the
libbluetooth-dev python3-dev git
Next, install the bluetooth package. This is different
Pi 4/4B+/ two motors spin. We also connect any GND pin on the from the Bluetooth settings menu found in Raspberry
Zero W/2 W Pi to the GND pin of the Maker Drive. Next we connect Pi OS, which does not work with Wiimotes, sadly.
Cytron an external 5-6V power source to the VB+ (red) and $ sudo apt install bluetooth
Maker Drive VB- (black, GND) terminals of the Maker Drive. The VB- The final installation is Uinput, a tool that enables
4x AA and Pi GND connection form a common ground from our Wiimote to emulate a user input device:
battery box which the circuit can base a voltage reference. The $ sudo apt install uinput
4x AA motors are connected to M1A, M1B and M2A, M2B. In the terminal, clone (download) this Cwiid GitHub
batteries These are controlled by the Pi GPIO pins, but the repository. This is not the official repository, but it
2x DC Maker Drive protects the delicate GPIO pins from the works well. There are multiple versions of Cwiid for
motors motors, as motors can pull a lot of current. Please refer Python 2 and 3, but this repository works.
5x female- to the circuit diagram in the project’s download. $ git clone https://github.com/azzra/python3-wiimote.git
to-male Change directory to the cloned repository:
jumper wires Setting up the Wiimote $ cd python3-wiimote
Code: Sadly, we can’t just connect a Wiimote using Raspberry Run the following commands to configure the
https:// Pi OS’s Bluetooth control panel. Instead we need to do repository ready for compilation:
github.com/ a little work, but thankfully the wonderful Raspberry Pi $ aclocal
lesp/ community has created its own Python packages to $ autoconf
LXF307- make it really easy. $ ./configure
Wiimote- First, ensure your Pi is running the latest software. Now compile Cwiid and install it to your system.
Robotics/ Open a terminal and run the following commands: $ make
archive/refs/ $ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y $ sudo make install
heads/main. In the terminal, install the following packages to Right now, only root can access the Wiimote – we
zip ensure that we can install Cwiid: need to make a new udev rule for Wiimotes. In the

46 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


terminal, run this command to create a new udev file:
$ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/wiimote.rules
Add this line and then press Ctrl+ X, Y and Enter to
save and exit:
KERNEL==”uinput”, MODE=”0666”
Restart the udev service to reload the rules,
including the new Wiimote rule:
$ sudo service udev restart
The final installation step is to load the Uinput
module on boot, so open a terminal and run the
following command:
$ sudo nano /etc/modules
Go to the bottom of the file and add the following
line. Then press Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to save and exit.
uinput
Reboot the Raspberry Pi and return to the desktop.
Using a Wiimote with Python
With Cwiid, we can write code to interact with the
Wiimote and use it to trigger events. Select Thonny
from the Programming menu. A new, blank document
opens. Our first three lines of Python are imports for
cwiid, time and the Robot class from GPIOZero.
import cwiid
from time import sleep
from gpiozero import Robot
GPIOZero’s Robot class creates two motors (left
and right) for which we pass the GPIO pin references.
The left motor is on GPIO14 and 15; the right one is on
18 and 23. Note that we’ve written it 23,18, so that the
motor spins in the opposite direction to the left. This
means that when the robot chassis is built, the robot
will move forwards and backwards.
robot = Robot(left=(14,15), right=(23,18))
Print an instruction to the user to press 1 + 2 on the
Wiimote to enter pairing mode. A three-second delay
means they have time to react.
print(“Press 1 + 2 to set the wiimote into pairing
mode”)
sleep(3)
Next, create an exception handler that will try to
connect to the Wiimote. If it fails, typically a NameError
then a runtimeError is raised and we can exit gracefully.
try:
wii=cwiid.Wiimote()
wii.rpt_mode = cwiid.RPT_BTN
except NameError and RuntimeError:
print(“I couldn’t see a Wiimote”)
exit()
If the Wiimote is connected, then the while True
portion of the code is activated. It creates an object,
buttons, which stores the current state of all the
Wiimote’s buttons.
while True:
buttons = wii.state[‘buttons’]
Now we look for a specific button press in buttons.
We are checking that the Up direction has been
pressed. If so, we want the robot to move forwards:
if buttons & cwiid.BTN_UP:
robot.forward()
What if we want to go backwards? A press of the
Down direction spins the motors in reverse:
GET YOUR Pi FILLING HERE Subscribe now at http://bit.ly/LinuxFormat
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Wiimote bot control TUTORIALS
elif buttons & cwiid.BTN_DOWN: The circuit for
this project is split
robot.backward()
into four areas:
The all-important Stop button is A, just under the the Raspberry
directional pad. Pressing this hard-stops the motors. Pi, the motor
elif buttons & cwiid.BTN_A: controller, motors
robot.stop() and power. Check
that there is a
The last two lines are outside of a conditional common ground.
test and merely print the current button press (as a
numerical value – more on that in the boxout below),
then pause for 0.1 seconds.
print(buttons)
sleep(0.1)
Save the code as wiimote-control.py. Click Run to
start the code. On the Wiimote, press 1 + 2 to enter
pairing mode. Once connected, you will see numbers
scroll up the screen; this is the numerical value of the
currently pushed button, 0 meaning no button. Press
Up or Down to spin the motors and press A to stop.
You’ve just built the basis of a Wiimote-controlled
robot. We could replace the Pi 4 with a Zero W, Zero 2
W or Pi 3B+ and get the same performance.
INPUT… INPUT…. INPUT!!!
Each button on the Wiimote returns a numerical value. In the tutorial,
we ignored that and just searched for a specific button press. But
what if you want to detect a specific combination of buttons? Well,
Cwiid has us covered, but we need to do some maths. The up
direction returns a value of 2,048, down is 1,024, and A is 8. So, if
we press down and A together, it returns 1,032. The tutorial script
returns the value of each button press, so all you need to do is a
little maths for your chosen key combination. We can then use an
additional conditional test to look for a specific numerical value in
the buttons object. The value, once detected, could trigger an event,
drift the robot around a track or world domination, your choice.
We’ve provided an additional file, wiimote-control-numerical.py,
which has an example of how to handle numerical input. The only
buttons we don’t advise pressing are the power button and the - and
+ buttons. These cause the code to hard exit, but it doesn’t tell you
that it has exited. The file is included in the download for this tutorial.
October 2023 LXF307 47
IN DEPTH Inside /e/OS
YOUR PHONE
Tired of being tracked and spied upon by popular mobile OSes,
Jonni Bidwell is ditching Android and taking back privacy with /e/OS.
ast issue we reviewed Murena’s
L Fairphone 4 (its latest and
greatest offering loaded with the
privacy-respecting /e/OS). We
noted a few rough edges, but on the whole
were very impressed. So much so that we
decided to dedicate four pages to /e/OS.
DeGoogled Android is nothing new, but until
now no one’s come up with a satisfactory
solution to replace those ever-so-convenient
Google services and Play Store apps.
With /e/OS, you get full Play Store access
(if you want it), your own privacy-respecting
cloud services, and a beautiful and unique
user interface. Thanks to MicroG, the
dreaded machination that is Google Play
Services has been expelled. And thanks to
48 LXF307 October 2023
the Murena cloud, you don’t have to miss out
on centralised storage, contact management
and notes. Your data is stored on wind-
powered, GDPR-compliant servers in Europe.
If you don’t like the idea of using someone
else’s services, you can even self-host almost
exactly the same Murena cloud offerings on
your own infrastructure.
One of /e/OS’s standout features is its
Advanced Privacy Settings. These enable
you to block trackers, hide your location or
even route all your traffic over Tor. And all
without any messy configuration. Honestly,
there’s never been a better time to ditch
Apple and Google, so read on and discover
how Murena and the e Foundation are putting
privacy before profit.
www.linuxformat.com
 Inside /e/OS IN DEPTH

ack in 2018, the EU levelled a fine against

B Alphabet Corp (Google’s parent company),

citing anti-competitive behaviour with respect
to the Android mobile OS. While the record-breaking
fine (surpassing a different antitrust fine against
Google the previous year), a cool €4.34 billion
(£3.8 billion), was unlikely to dent Alphabet’s profits
(although it did mount an appeal, unsuccessfully), it
also came with a stern demand from EU competition
commissioner Margrethe Vestager. The latter took
issue with Google’s mandating that manufacturers
installing Android with the Play Store, Maps and other
popular Google apps (pretty much anyone selling an
Android device) must also install big G’s Chrome
browser and search app alongside them. This was, of
course, highly reminiscent of the EU’s antitrust rulings
against Microsoft in the mid-2000s, which culminated
in the browser ballot screen and banishing of the (quite
dreadful) Windows Media Player for EU customers. In
the Android case (dubbed ‘the great unbundling’),
manufacturers could provide the core G-Apps without
having to also include Chrome and search.
Your data is your data
The open source /e/OS (then titled Eelo) was
announced against this backdrop of liberation, as
founder Gaël Duval explained in an interview with
The Register: “I’m not happy because Google has
become too big and is tracking us by catching a lot of
information about what we do. They want to know us
as much as possible to sell advertising,” he said the
same year. “I think that, in the long run, Apple, Google,
Facebook etc business models are harmful for our
economical and social environments.” Skip forward
five years and /e/OS has indisputably made good on,
nay surpassed, its goals. There’s a commercial arm,
Murena (https://murena.com), that partners with
manufacturers and now offers /e/OS on four devices.
Murena also provides a cloud service (https://murena.
io, powered by Nextcloud, no less) that provides
storage, document editing, email and calendar (like
the equivalent Google services, only less Google-ey).
There’s also the non-profit e Foundation (https://e.
foundation), which guides development of the OS. So
far, the community has ported /e/OS to over 200 There’s a
devices (although it would be misleading to omit that whole lot of
functionality in
only a handful of these have been marked stable). Murena cloud,
We’ve covered (and lamented) the state of Linux on all powered by
phones a number of times over the years. And in many open source.
ways, the picture hasn’t changed. If you want a Linux-
powered device that you can use as a phone, your
best bet is Ubuntu Touch (continued by the UBports
collective after Canonical abandoned it in 2017). If
that doesn’t float your boat (or run on your device), try
PostmarketOS. And if you have the iconic Nokia N900,
or dislike Systemd, you should run Maemo Leste
(based on Devuan). Most users seeking to escape
Google instead run a deGoogled version of Android,
that is one based on the Android Open Source Project,
but lacking all the proprietary Google bits. By far the
most common option here is LineageOS (formerly
Cyanogenmod), which supports over 400 devices.
A device running LineageOS can run Android apps
from the likes of the F-Droid store, or you can attempt
to shoehorn Play Store apps through the likes of the
Aurora store. All of the popular Play Store apps,
however, won’t work on pure LineageOS because they We couldn’t help
rely on a terrible library called Google Play Services. but notice that the
This opaque monstrosity is present in all official /e/OS monogram
bears a passing
Android phones, and runs a number of services in
resemblance to
the background (some with root privileges) to govern that of a certain
everything from payments to location, mapping and, of Borg-like outfit.

MURENA CLOUD
Ever since Google launched
its Gmail and Drive apps,
Android users have come to
expect their email and files
to be available on their
phone. The Murena cloud can
do all of this and more. And
all without spying on you. It’s
powered by some great
Image credit: Murena
documents. Oh, and there’s
no surreptitious scanning of
your files to train AI models,
serve ads or other nefarious
purposes. Once you’ve
signed up, it even offers to
automatically synchronise
your photos, although the
free package only offers 1GB
reasonable rates – for
example, 64GB is only €3.99
per month. For the privacy-
conscious, /e/OS includes
OpenKeyChain, which makes
easy work of setting up PGP
keys, which you can then use
with the built-in mail app. If
you want to use PGP with
setup-use-mailvelope-with-
murena.html .
If you are already running a
Nextcloud instance, that can
also integrate more or less
seamlessly. If you’ve always
wanted to run a Nextcloud
instance but never got round
to it, you might consider

FOSS tooling, including
Nextcloud and OnlyOffice.
And altogether it offers a
complete solution for email,
calendar, contacts and
of storage, which will fill up
fast if your device has, say, a
48-megapixel camera. You
can pay for more storage
(up to 2TB) at really quite
Murena cloud’s webmail,
you can find a great guide
to doing just that with
Mailvelope at https://doc.
e.foundation/support-topics/
self-hosting Murena cloud
instead. Check the project’s
GitLab at https://gitlab.e.
foundation/e/infra/ecloud-
selfhosting for details.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 49

IN DEPTH Inside /e/OS

yes, LineageOS does provide additional facility for

Yes, we are course, in-app advertising. Most of these services
currently located require you to be signed into a Google account (a big
somewhere exception is Google Maps). And so Play Services
around the Atlantic
Accelerator from provides Google with an awful lot of data, which it
the classic game can, of course, correlate with data it already holds
Syndicate. pertaining to a particular Google account (for example,
your entire desktop browsing history if you use its
Chrome web browser).
Faced with the choice of WhatsApp, TikTok and
Candy Crush Saga (think of the children! – Ed) not
working on LineageOS, many users opt to install the
latter with a Google Apps package. These, highly
locking down apps, but be in no doubt that Google Play
Services is watching you.
Enter MicroG, an open source implementation of
Google Play Services that allows most of the apps
on the Play Store to run without contacting Google
servers. It achieves this magic by replicating several
APIs associated with Play Services without any
tracking. A major point of contention here, and the
reason that MicroG is not included by default in
LineageOS, is that MicroG spoofs package signatures.
So, instead of using the certificate associated with an
app on the Play Store (which is then verified by the OS),
a fake certificate is used to pass any attestations.
MicroG even includes Fakestore, a dummy package
that mocks the existence of the official Play Store.
Lineage’s view is that this represents a security risk,
and it has led other OSes to take different approaches.
Most notably, GrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org)
runs the official Play Services library in a limited
sandbox. You can read a (slightly dated, but highly
detailed) case for signature spoofing from Free
Software Foundation Europe at https://blogs.fsfe.org/
larma/2016/microg-signature-spoofing-security/.
The reason why we spent three paragraphs talking
more about Google and its subsystems than /e/OS is
that the core of /e/OS is LineageOS and MicroG. Now,
Gaël and the team would be rightly
upset if we claimed that’s all there is to

PRONGS AGAINST WRONGS /e/OS, not least because several other

projects also have the same basis (for

“/e/OS’s Advanced Privacy example, ArrowOS, CalyxOS and

iodéOS). From the moment you boot

module is a three-pronged /e/OS, you can tell it’s something all its
own. On first boot, you’re invited to

defence against everything that’s create (or sign in with) a Murena cloud
account. This is entirely optional, and

wrong with mobile ecosystems.” unlike declining to sign in on a full-fat

unofficial, bundles provide Google Play Services, the
Play Store app itself and (optionally) a selection of the
The Magic Earth popular Google apps, and can only be installed at the
mapping tool time of flashing a new ROM. This type of LineageOS
is just as good install, while popular, in practice does very little to limit
as Google’s,
and it uses
Google’s insight into your mobile affairs. Yes, you get
OpenStreetMap, so a slimmer version of Android (and liberation from any
doesn’t track you. manufacturer-enforced bloat or dubious theming), and
Android device, doesn’t limit what you
can do in any way. You might even
want to self-host your own Murena
cloud – it’s easier than setting up Nextcloud and much
easier than setting up email from scratch.
Once that’s done, you’re greeted not with Lineage’s
Trebuchet launcher, or anything resembling other
Android launchers. No, instead it’s the warm hues of
/e/OS’s bespoke Bliss Launcher that greet you. Once
you have admired those roseate gradients, at least
if you’re more an Android person than an iOS person,
you might feel a little lost. Especially if (like us) you
prefer the old-school navigation triumvirate running
along the bottom of the screen (which has been
replaced by gesture navigation since Android 10)
or a button to open the applications view.
Bliss Launcher aims for a clear, uncluttered look and
part of that involves the banishing of notification icons
from the top bar. This is especially helpful on newer,
notch-bearing phones (such as the Fairphone 4 we
reviewed last issue), where there simply isn’t room for
half a dozen tiny top-left icons. Instead, notifications
are displayed there for a short while when they happen,
before gracefully vanishing. After that, they can be
found (together with some useful information) on the

50 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Inside /e/OS IN DEPTH

lock screen, from whence they and messages) before you begin.
can be summarily dismissed. Everything is wiped when you do
this. There’s a fine guide to doing
Advanced Privacy a complete (OK nearly complete)
As we noted last issue, one of backup of your device with Team
/e/OS’s most notable features Win Recovery Project (TWRP) at
is its Advanced Privacy module. https://doc.e.foundation/pages/
This is a three-pronged defence backup-and-restore-with-twrp.
against everything that’s wrong html. This might end up being
with mobile ecosystems. Firstly, quite large, so you need sufficient
it blocks in-app trackers. This is space on your SD card.
done at the DNS level by If you’ve dabbled with
referencing tracker lists alternative mobile OSes, you’ll be
maintained by Exodus and familiar with all the rigmarole of
AdAway. Some apps stop unlocking bootloaders, booting
working with their trackers into Fastboot and installing gauche
stymied, but they can be safe- recovery environments (TWRP, for
listed on a case-by-case basis. example). And, of course, the nail-
Next, there’s an option to not only biting moments before the new
disable Location Services, but OS starts booting. You’ll also
also to randomise it, or set it to understand why we won’t try to
anywhere in the world. This give complete instructions here.
overrides the usual GPS and The bootloader unlocking process
Wi-Fi mapping, rather than using differs from device to device, but
a VPN or the like. As a reader of there is a beta Easy Installer
this magazine, you’ll know we (https://doc.e.foundation/easy-
don’t like commercial VPNs installer) that currently supports
anyway, but if you do want to 21 phones. It’s a multi-platform
hide your IP address, Advanced desktop application (yes, there’s a
Privacy lets you route all traffic The official YouTube app may not work with Linux version) that reduces the
over Tor. Obviously, this is much /e/OS but NewPipe is a fine alternative. process to just a few clicks. If
slower, and unsuitable for your device isn’t supported by the
streaming video, but if you really want to be private, Tor Easy Installer, you can use the traditional installation
is much more suitable than some random VPN that method, which involves installing the Android Debug
you saw in a sponsored link somewhere. The Advanced Bridge (ADB) and Fastboot.
Privacy module may become available for the wider Current /e/OS builds are based on Android versions
Android soon, but for now it’s an /e/OS exclusive 10 (Q) to 12 (S), and by the time you read this, Android
13 (T) builds should be available. If you’d like to try your
Installing the /e/ ROM hand at porting /e/OS to a new device, do check the
If you have a supported device (check the list on the docs. And if you’d like to support /e/OS, you can
Murena website), it ought to be pleasantly easy to ditch donate, offer help on the forums, or tell your friends
Android proper and enjoy /e/OS. Of course, flashing a they should run it, too. These projects with punctuation
new ROM should never be taken lightly, so do back up in their titles are usually awkward to spell out, but this
everything you might possibly need (photos, contacts one can be voiced slash-e-slash, which we quite like.

CAVEATS AND GOTCHAS

We are in no doubt that
/e/OS provides one of the
smoothest deGoogled
Android experiences out
there. But it’s important to
note that some apps, even
when signed into a Google
account through MicroG, do
not work. Anything that relies
on in-app payments, for
example, doesn’t work. Or
at best, those payments fail,
because the Google Pay API
hasn’t and likely cannot be
implemented. For this reason,
you can’t use the Google
Pay app for NFC payments,
although some banks provide
their own payment apps.
And speaking of banking
apps, these (and streaming
services such as Netflix)
often demand the device
passes Google’s Safetynet
DRM. This is implemented
in MicroG, but passing
anything more than the Basic
attestation (there are levels
of scrutiny) is device-
dependent. Banking apps
may also fail if the bootloader
is unlocked (that is, if you
installed /e/OS manually). It is
possible to work around this,
and in some cases bypass
Safetynet, using the Magisk
app, but that’s a story for
another day (or today if you
visit www.xda-developers.
com/how-to-install-magisk).
The goal posts are always
moving and the community
is often quick to come up
with workarounds, so do
check the community forums
(in particular, the Using /e/OS
section) and MicroG GitHub
Issues page if you encounter
a failing app. There’s also a
Telegram chatroom you
can join at https://t.me/
+HYMdK0PkIUdlZWZk.
Finally, of course, don’t
forget to check the official
documentation (https://
doc.e.foundation).

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 51

TUTORIALS
EDITLY

Bring your images

Credit: https://github.com/mifi/editly

and videos to life

Not known for his love of cameras, Shashank Sharma still knows how to
turn images into presentable GIFs and video clips into masterpieces.

emember the good ol’ days of the internet case available in the software repositories, you also

R when the best you could do with your pics

and videos was share them with friends and
family? Close ones at that. This is in stark contrast to
the modern-day practice of turning everything into a
reel or insert-latest-jargon-here, and releasing it online.
OUR Editly is a CLI utility that relies on FFmpeg to help
EXPERT you create slideshows, GIFs or movie masterpieces,
Shashank complete with music score, text overlays, zooms and
Sharma other effects. Best of all, you don’t have to muck about
is a trial lawyer with the terminal pushing dozens of different settings,
in Delhi and an because Editly works with a JSON file instead to save
avid Arch user. you time and effort. Whether for private use or for
He’s been internet fame, Editly can help turn your images and
writing about videos into memorable pieces with very little effort.
open source Released under the MIT License, you won’t find
software for Editly in the software repositories of popular desktop
20 years and distros. As well as FFmpeg and FFprobe, which are
lawyering for 10. most likely already installed on your distro, and in any
Working with JSON files may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it doesn’t take long to get used to.
need the GL utility (https://github.com/stackgl/
headless-gl), which has its own set of requirements,
listed at the project’s GitHub page.
While you’re at it, you should also install the NPM
package manager. Use the sudo apt install npm
command if you’re on a Deb-based distro such as
Debian or Ubuntu, or run sudo dnf install npm for
RPM-based distros.
Unless you’re on a rolling release distro, such as
Arch, the version of FFmpeg available in the software
repositories of your distro is somewhat dated, and
therefore unfit for use with Editly. Refer to Installation
Is A Chore (opposite), for instructions on how to get a
compatible version of FFmpeg. With all that done,
you’re ready to install Editly. Run npm install -g editly .
Start writing
Writing is a curious word to use when working with a
tool designed to help transform images and
video files, but that’s precisely what Editly
expects you to do. You can use the project to
create appealing videos using solid colours
as you transition from one video to the next,
or use images overlaid with text between
different video clips. You can also add custom
background music to the finished video file or
generate a GIF from a series of images. The
tool additionally supports effects such as blur,
fade-in and so on, which you can use to define
how one image or video transitions to the
next in the final video.
All such operations that you wish to
perform, such as fading out of the first
image and zooming into the next, while music
plays in the background and different text is
written over each image, are written into a
JSON file, which Editly then uses to carry out
your instructions.
For instance, let’s use a couple of images
from a recent holiday and stitch them
together into a video file:

52 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Terminal TUTORIALS

{
width: 600, INSTALLATION IS A CHORE
height: 300,
outPath: ‘./images-to-video.mp4’, Unless you’re running a rolling release distribution, such as Arch
defaults: { Linux, you likely have an older, incompatible version of FFmpeg.
transition: null, This leaves you with two options.
duration: 1.2, First is to manually compile a recent release of FFmpeg, which can
}, be quite a cumbersome task, more so because we don’t have room
clips: [ enough to go over the steps in this tutorial. Thankfully, you can head
{ layers: [{ type: ‘image’, path: ‘./ over to FFmpeg’s homepage, where you’ll find detailed instructions
IMG_20190805_130342931.jpg’ }] }, on compiling it.
{ layers: [{ type: ‘image’, path: ‘./ The second option is to retain the version of FFmpeg you already
IMG_20190805_130358474.jpg’ }] }, have available, and grab the static release of FFmpeg from the
], project’s website. This is designed for users who don’t wish to
} go through the trouble of manually compiling FFmpeg. Head to
Here we’ve created an MP4 file using two images, https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/ and grab the version that best
and we’ve defined certain parameters at the top, such suits you. You can opt for the latest 6.0 release or the master branch.
as the width and height. Save this file as images-to- Extract the tarball with the tar xvf ffmpeg-release-amd64-static.tar.xz
video.json5 and then run the editly images-to-video. command. Now navigate into the extracted directory and place the
json5 command. You can now play the images-to- comprising FFmpeg and FFprobe binaries into a directory within
video.mp4 file in your favourite video player. your $PATH.
You can use a combination of image and video files, If you’ve decided to retain the current version of FFmpeg, make
add text overlays and custom music files, and even use sure to first run the which ffmpeg command, and place the
multiple music files for the same video clip. extracted binaries in a directory in $PATH, which will be scanned
To get a sense of some of the operations possible before the directory the contains the installed FFmpeg:
with Editly, open the terminal and clone the Editly $ which ffmpeg
directory from GitHub: /usr/bin/ffmpeg
$ git clone https://github.com/mifi/editly.git $ echo $PATH
$ cd editly/examples /home/linuxlala/.cargo/bin:/home/linuxlala/.local/bin:/usr/local/
You can now read through the different JSON5 files bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin:/usr/
in the examples directory to get a feel for how Editly local/go/bin:/home/linuxlala/go/bin
works. To see any of the effects in operation, run the $ sudo cp ffmpeg ffprobe /usr/local/bin
editly <filename.json5> command, which creates an
output file of the same name. You can then play the file
to see the effect. for example, uses two video files and a music file to Editly doesn’t
{ create a stitched video file. offer a man page,
but the ‘editly
// verbose: true, Should you run into any problems, you can use the
--help’ command
// enableFfmpegLog: true, Issues section on the project’s GitHub page. Your own provides a quick
outPath: ‘./video2.mp4’, creativity and willingness to experiment are the only introduction to the
defaults: { impediment to transforming your vanilla images and command options
transition: { video clips into stunning visual masterpieces. you can use.
name: ‘linearblur’,
},
layer: { fontPath: ‘./assets/Patua_
One/PatuaOne-Regular.ttf’ },
},
clips: [
{ layers: [{ type: ‘video’, path: ‘./
assets/changi.mp4’, cutFrom: 0, cutTo: 2 }, {
type: ‘title’, text: ‘Video 1’ }] },
{ layers: [{ type: ‘video’, path: ‘./
assets/IMG_1884.MOV’, cutFrom: 0, cutTo: 2
}] },
],
}
This example uses the linearblur transition
and two different video clips to create the
final file. If you only have a couple of video or
image files to stitch together, you can even
work with Editly without bothering with a
JSON file – editly title:’Masterpiece’ vid1.mp4
vid2.mp4 --audio-file-path ./filename.mp3 ,

ENHANCE YOUR TERMINAL-FU Subscribe now at http://bit.ly/LinuxFormat

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 53

TUTORIALS Mapping

KDE MARBLE
Credit: https://marble.kde.org

Mapping made easy

Nick Peers reveals how to navigate the world using a variety of maps
without leaving the comfort of your home PC.

hink maps, and the obvious solution is to flip

T out your phone or web browser and head to

Google Maps. But that doesn’t sit well with
our open source ethos, which is why we’re fans of
OpenStreetMap (see feature LXF276). And what better
way to interact with OpenStreetMap – and a host of
OUR other maps – than through your desktop with KDE
EXPERT Marble (https://marble.kde.org)?
Nick Peers Marble offers far more than just a simple way to
prides himself view maps. Think of it more as a desktop globe with
on his sense of built-in extras, including optional encyclopaedia and
direction but is weather reports, all powered by friendly engines from
not to be trusted OpenStreetMap to Wikipedia. In fact, Marble can go Marble’s default atlas view is rather sparse on detail, but does provide
when he beyond the confines of Earth to cover other planets a good topographical overview of terrain.
announces and even dip into your imagination. It’s even capable of
he’s found a plotting routes from A to B (even Olympus Mons? – (visit https://flathub.org/apps/org.kde.marble), but
shortcut. Expect Ed), although this is perhaps its weakest part. there’s very little difference between them, and in our
to double your experience only the Flatpak version worked correctly.
journey time. Finding your way to Marble For the purposes of this tutorial, though, we’re focusing
You’ll find Marble in all major distro package managers on version 2.2.20, which ships with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
– sudo apt update && sudo apt install marble installs When you launch Marble, you’ll see the default map
the version bundled with your Linux distro with the offers a variety of views of the planet, with a classic
minimum of fuss. You can get the latest version topographical view – Atlas – selected by default. You
through Snap ( sudo snap install marble ) or Flatpak can use the controls on the right of the map to zoom in

GET MORE INSIGHTS

Marble’s map can display all
kinds of useful information –
by default you see a compass
in one corner, a thumbnail of
the world in the other and a
scale at the bottom. These
are known as Info Boxes, and
you can toggle them on and
off, plus add more via View >
Info Boxes. One of the most
useful is Elevation Profile,
which works with Marble’s
routing tools and will be of
particular interest to cyclists.
Select View > Online
Services and you unlock
10 more widgets. Roll your
mouse over each one for a
description. Two standouts
are OSM Mapper Notes,
which displays comments
from users that are displayed
as large red droppers, and
Wikipedia, which downloads
location-based Wiki articles
and places them on the map
for easy retrieval.
Another two worth
considering are Post Codes,
which displays postcodes
as an overlay as you move
around the map, and Weather,
which displays current
weather conditions from
selected weather stations (so
expect to have to zoom out of Add all kinds of additional info to your map – and pick and choose
the map to see them). Click exactly what you want to see displayed.
on the weather icon and
choose the station’s name for Globe > Plugins and you can look out for a configuration
a more detailed summary. remove both Info Boxes and button next to individual
Choose Settings > Online Services from their plugins, which allows you
Configure Marble Virtual respective menus, but also to customise them further.

54 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


and out, plus move around the map, but it’s quicker to
use your mouse: zoom using the wheel, then click and
drag to move around. As you zoom into the Atlas, you’ll
see it’s rather basic, and you can’t zoom in that far.
You’ll also see a thumbnail of the map in the top-left
– double-click anywhere inside here to jump to that
place on the map. This thumbnail can also be clicked
and dragged to a new location and is an example of
one of many Info Boxes that can be placed on the map
(check out the box, opposite page, to learn more).
The basic topographical map provides relatively few
landmarks. Click on one to reveal a pop-up providing
info, including a description (such as National Capital)
and stats: geospatial coordinates, and a factsheet
offering population, country, state and time zone.
Beneath the map is a wealth of more information. To
see this, position the crosshairs in the middle of the
screen over an area of interest, then right-click and
choose Address Details to be given its address at
street level, including postal or zip code.
This underlying information can also be used to
jump to a specific point on the map using Marble’s
search tool. Simply type the place name you’re looking
for into the Global Search box and hit Enter. Depending
on how much information you’ve provided, you may be
given several options to choose from – double-click
one to centre the map on that position.
You can search at all levels right down to a specific
street – note, only the first six results are displayed by
default, so be prepared to narrow your search. In most
cases, Street Name, Town should be sufficient to get a
hit. Alternatively, change your position so the place
you’re looking for is within the visible map, then click
the binoculars icon and select Area Search instead.
Switch map
The topographical map is rather basic, but Marble
comes with plenty of alternatives. Start by switching to
OpenStreetMap, a global roadmap. Select this, zoom in
and you’ll see a more familiar-looking map with obvious
advantages over the topographical map, not least of
which is a greater level of magnification and detail akin
to what you see on OS maps. This means street-level
detail, roads and a far more useful overview. There’s
also a vector-based variant – Vector OSM – at the end
of the list, which is mainly suited for HiDPi displays.
When you move around the OpenStreetMap or
Vector OSM, it’s less responsive than the topographical
map, particularly when you zoom into a location. That’s
because the maps are all pulled from online sources to
Build up a library of favourite (or notable) places with the help of
Marble’s bookmarking feature. You’ll never get lost again.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Mapping TUTORIALS
NAVIGATING KDE MARBLE
1 3 5
2 4
6
Search panel Crosshairs
1 Use this to quickly locate places across 4 Click and drag the map into position
the entire planet – including street addresses. so your target location appears beneath
the crosshairs.
Map view
2 Choose which type of map you want Bookmarks
to view from this list – simply click on it to 5 Once created, click a bookmark or
instantly switch. landmark to bring up a pop-up dialog with
information about it.
Overview
3 Double-click anywhere on this Navigation controls
Overview Map Info Box to jump to another 6 If you don’t have a mouse wheel, use
part of the world. this slider to zoom into and out of your map.
ensure the latest versions are supplied (and to prevent
filling your hard drive with tens of gigabytes of data). As
you zoom in, therefore, new levels require downloading.
One advantage of the Atlas view is that its lack of detail
means it’s fast and responsive, but be patient with
OpenStreetMap and the blurry map eventually resolves
itself into detail.
If you’re on a slow internet connection, it’s possible
to download maps and regions to your hard drive – the
latter option enables you to store portions of the
current map for a more responsive experience. The
simplest way to use it is to position the map to show
the area you wish to download, then choose File > By default,
Download Region and leave Visible Region selected. Marble displays
You’ll also see a Tile Level Range option, which refers its maps as
to the different levels of detail you want to download. a spinnable
The first figure is the current magnification level, so globe, but you
increase it and you’re given an estimate of how many can change
‘tiles’ require downloading and how much space they’ll this by clicking
consume. As you nudge each magnification level up, the Projection
drop-down
the number of tiles (and download size) more than
menu, where
doubles each time. Once you’re happy, click OK.
you’ll see seven
alternative
Plot routes views are
One of the principal uses of the roadmap is to plot available.
directions from A to B, and in theory, Marble should Experiment to
handle this with aplomb. Sadly, it appears the API used see which one
to provide this feature – OSRM (Open Source Routing suits you best
Machine) – is broken. Whenever you plot a car or – for traditional
pedestrian journey using this engine, your route is top-down maps,
Mercator is
plotted and shown on the map (along with distance and
probably best.
estimated journey time), but after searching for a short
October 2023 LXF307 55
TUTORIALS Mapping

time, you’re told ‘No route found’, which means no
step-by-step directions are provided.
Switch to the The only exception is when plotting relatively local
Legend tab bike journeys in the UK – when you select Bicycle as
next to Map your preferred means of transport, a different API
View and you’ll called CS (CycleStreets) is used. This does work as
find options for advertised – the step-by-step guide (below) reveals
customising how to use Marble to plot routes. Ultimately, though,
the look of the
it’s not going to replace your phone’s route planner.
currently
Beneath the Get Directions button are several more
selected map
as well as buttons. To the left of the Preview button is Save, for
viewing a legend storing the route on your hard drive in KML format,
explaining which can be restored later using Open to its left.
the various Click the green + button and you can add one or
elements shown more stopping points to your route. There’s a Reverse
on the map Route button to generate directions for the journey
itself, such as back and a handy Clear Route button to allow you to
roads, and types start again. Finally, a Settings button enables you to
of buildings and
configure the currently selected mode of transport by
businesses.
selecting which online and offline services supported
by Marble are used for that specific mode – however,
see the tip (opposite page) for a word of warning.
Set up bookmarks
Having to manually select favourite locations each time
you want to use them is laborious, which is where
Marble’s bookmarks come into play. These work as
you’d expect, enabling you to store places for easy
retrieval later – whether when selecting points of travel
or just to mark them so they’re easy to find.
Let’s start with your home: once located on the map,
position the map so the crosshairs are over your house
or the street where you live, then choose Bookmarks >
Set Home Location. You can return here by clicking the
Home button above the magnification slider.
The Home bookmark is simply a convenient means
of jumping to your home location with a single click.
Other bookmarks go further, so why not create
a second bookmark pointing to your home location
now? Right-click on it and choose Add Bookmark. The

PLOT A ROUTE IN MARBLE

Set starting point Set destination and search

1 Make sure OpenStreetMap is the selected map, then
switch to the Routing tab, where you’ll see A and B boxes, which
need to be filled with your starting point and destination. You can
enter an exact address or a partial address as a search term, or
click the down arrow to select an existing bookmark or the
current location on the map.
2 Repeat the process using the B box to choose your
destination. Next, choose your method of travel: car (fastest or
shortest), bicycle or pedestrian, remembering that only UK bike
journeys provide step-by-step instructions. Once done, click Get
Directions. You are quickly shown the route on the main map but
must wait a few moments while directions are calculated.

Preview car journeys Conduct a bike journey

3 If ‘No route found’ shows up, you need to manually inspect
the route yourself – you are give a summary of the distance and
estimated time, but must zoom into the map to follow the blue
line from start to destination. You can also click on the map to add
new waypoints, or click and hold Ctrl as you drag to alter the start
or end point.
4 If you selected Bicycle, then a route should be
generated. You’ll see a play button, which basically enables
you to preview the route. Clicking this sees you move along
the map automatically, enabling you to confirm the route is a
good one. Alternatively, click on each direction to jump to the
relevant point on the map.

56 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Mapping TUTORIALS

CHANGE YOUR VIEW

You’ve seen how Marble
supports more than one type
of map when examining the
options under the Map View
tab. We cover the basic
topographical map and both
roadmaps in the main copy,
but others range from the
interesting to the whimsical,
including a couple of satellite
views, historic maps and even
maps recording rainfall and
temperatures. Each map
supports different levels of
magnification, so be prepared
to zoom further out.
You can add additional
maps via File > Download
Maps – over 40, in fact,
including maps of various
planets and moons, as well
as some more genuinely
useful maps, such as the
Public Transport and Hike and
Bike maps. Simply click Install
next to any that take your
fancy, followed by Open once
they’ve downloaded. Note
that maps are organised by
location (such as Earth or
Moon), so use the drop-down
menu beneath Map View to
switch between them.
If you want to use other
map views, you either need to
‘create’ your own as outlined Over 40 additional map types spanning different topics can be added
in the main copy through the to Marble by selecting File > Download Maps.
File > Create a New Map
dialog, which creates format via File > Open. You’ll format, then extract the
permanent map themes find some examples at contents; but be warned –
using online sources, or use https://download.geofabrik. some, like Europe and North
offline maps in the OSM de (choose the .osm.bz2 America, are incredibly big).

bookmark’s name is the street address by default, but
you can edit this, plus add a description, and file the
bookmark into your choice of folder to create another
layer of organisation. Once created, a star appears with
the bookmark title on the map – click it to display the
Place Information pop-up, which includes geospatial
coordinates and the description you entered. To jump
to a bookmark, select it from the Bookmarks menu,
where you’ll also find a Manage Bookmarks option that
enables you to tweak (and remove) bookmarks.
Add more details
You can also overlay additional information over your
maps thanks to Marble’s support for files created in the
GIS ShapeFile format. Start your search for free files at
https://mapcruzin.com – click Maps on the navigation
banner to see what’s available. We recommend
browsing Free World Shapefiles By Country, where you
can find such overlays as buildings, natural features,
railways, roads and points of interest. Download these
Choose Settings > Configure Marble Virtual Globe > View to switch
from kilometres to miles and to tweak other options.
as ZIP files, then extract them before choosing File >
Open to open them in turn.
Railways and roads offer nothing you won’t find Sadly, it appears
from the roadmaps, but other options – particularly only two of
points of interest – do add items of new interest to Marble’s route-
your map. The British example, for instance, is planning back-
staggering in the sheer volume of local landmarks that ends currently
work – partially
have been added, but sadly not all have been labelled.
or fully. We
You can install multiple files at once – they sit on top
tested the
of each other until you close Marble, at which point other services
they’re removed, and you need to reload them again. – including
registering for
Create your own map and providing a
If you’re not happy with any of the maps on show, MapQuest API
why not create your own? Choose File > Create A New key – but none
Map to be shown a choice of three options: Web Map had any effect.
Service (WMS) is the simplest option to follow. First It’s a testament
to Marble’s
you’ll need a suitable WMS URL – for example, go to
ageing status
www.gebco.net and navigate to Data & Products >
and apparent
GEBCO Web Services > Web Map Service to obtain the lack of support.
URL. Input this into the URL box and click Next.
You’re shown a list of available maps – select one
and click Next. Provide a suitable map title, name and
description, as well as a preview image if it’s not been
provided, then click Next again to set up the Legend
tab, which allows you to choose what elements users
can show – there’s no need to provide a different
Legend image. Finally, click Next to preview your map
and – if you’re happy with it – click Finish. Once created,
the map is accessible via the Map View tab.
A good source of WMS URLs can be found by
visiting https://directory.spatineo.com – not all work,
but many do (including those offered by the British
Geological Society). You can browse by location or
search for specific keywords, then copy and paste the
URL to see if it’s accepted. Happy map hunting!

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TUTORIALS Manage your photos

DIGIKAM
Credit: http://digikam.org

Manage your photo

collection with finesse
Mike Bedford explains how DigiKam enables you to manage your photos,
finding what you’re looking for with the most powerful of tools…

hen you have a collection

W of photos running into the

thousands, finding what you’re
looking for can be like seeking the
proverbial needle in a haystack. Certainly,
storing your photos in a sensible folder
OUR structure helps, but not always. For
EXPERT example, it could take some time to track
Mike Bedford down all your photos that include a sheep.
wishes he’d And it gets worse. With digital photos
got serious costing nothing to take, even when you
about photo find the scene you had in mind, you could
management discover you have half a dozen alternatives,
some time ago, differing slightly in exposure, focusing or
as tagging years’ framing. You probably appraised them
worth of photos when you first took them, but picking the Adding keywords, which can be arranged hierarchically, is just one of many ways
is going to be best several years later involves carefully you can tag your photos to simplify searching.
no easy job. But viewing them all again. Solving these
he’s confident common problems, and many others, is made easy way through your existing collection of photos. We
that it’ll be with a photo-management package, and here we show recommend starting with the most recent and working
worth the effort. you how. We’re looking at DigiKam (www.digikam.org), your way back from there. Whether you’re tagging a
which is one of the most respected free open source handful of photos you took the day before, or starting
photo-management tools, but others also have an the Herculean task of doing so on the last 10 or 20
enthusiastic following, and the principles are similar. years of photos, the principles are the same.
Having done that, you can gain the most benefit
Our instructions
Workflow and installation from using DigiKam, so we’re also looking at using
involve There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and this certainly the tools provided for managing your photos. That
configuring applies to using photo-management software – you includes viewing and searching, but that’s only a start.
DigiKam to only get the benefit from using this sort of software if We’re also delving into the other benefits of photo
employ a simple you put in some effort up front. Let’s return to our management on offer, including photo editing, with the
hierarchy that previous example of looking for photos containing option of batch manipulation, photo sharing and more.
has folders and sheep, but we want to restrict our search to shots that As a final comment before addressing the first of
subfolders in a are well composed, focused and framed. Even with our two main themes, we should mention installation.
single album. DigiKam, you’re only going to find these if you’ve You’ll probably be able to install DigiKam from your
However, it’s
previously tagged those photos that show a sheep distro’s repository, but if our experience with Ubuntu
also possible to
have multiple
with the word ‘sheep’, and have given your photos 22.04 LTS is typical, the installed version will be
albums and, some sort of quality score. seriously out of date. To make sure you get the most
going yet Our first bit of advice, therefore, is to add this sort of recent version, which was 8.1.0 as this was written, we
further up the information to your photos as soon as possible after suggest you use the instructions provided at https://
tree, you can you’ve taken them. It’s easier this way, because you fostips.com/install-digikam-ubuntu-linux-mint.
have multiple don’t have to rack your brain to remember exactly However, beware of using the Flatpak option, as we
collections, where a photo was taken, for example, and it also did at first, because that causes DigiKam to fail to
each of which means you aren’t creating an ever-growing backlog. recognise most of your folders – apparently a known
can contain However, if you’re starting from scratch with photo issue, and one that we’re told also manifests itself if
several albums.
management, you have to bite the bullet and work your you use the Snap approach. Instead, use the AppImage

58 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Manage your photos TUTORIALS

method, although we suspect the Ubuntu PPA method

should work properly, too.

Setup and tagging

When you run DigiKam for the first time, you’re taken
to the setup wizard. In most cases, we suggest you
accept the default settings; if you change your mind,
you can easily tweak your settings later. About the only
step that requires you to provide information that is
specific to you is identifying where you store photos.
In all probability, you’ll specify a top-level folder that
contains several levels of subfolders – for example,
first for year, and then for trips or assignments during
that year. When you’ve gone through all the setup
steps, DigiKam starts and you’re eventually taken to an
opening screen. This has a navigation pane to the left,
which shows the folders in your photo collection, and a
viewing pane on the right, showing images in the
selected folder using the thumbnail layout.
At this stage, you can navigate and view your
photos, but to make the most of DigiKam, you need you can remember, or guess correctly, some of the If your camera
to tag your photos in various ways. This is laborious, words or phrases you used. or phone didn’t
record geolocation
especially if you have a lot of photos, and you’ll almost With images displayed – and you could use the data with a photo,
certainly need to do this in batches. However, here are Preview or Table tabs as an alternative to Thumbnails – you can add it by
some of the main ways to attach various types of click on an image you want to tag to select it. Now, in clicking on a map.
additional information to your photos. In general, we the column of tabs on the right, choose Captions. This
won’t pass comment on the relative usefulness of the name is a bit misleading, because it allows you to add
different types of information, although you should more than a caption both in the initial Description tab
note that some, such as keywords or star ratings, can of the Captions dialog and in its other tabs. The
easily be used in searches. On the other hand, freeform Description tab enables you to add a Title and/or a We introduced
tags, such as captions or comments, are only useful if Caption, both of which are freeform text, although DigiKam
as a photo
we’re not sure why you’d want both.
management
Further down, you can assign a
package, so it’s
Rating, from zero (unassigned) to not surprising
five stars, this being a subjective that the whole
view of the quality of the photo, and of this article
two initially odd-looking tags called assumes that
Pick Label and Colour Label. Pick you’re working
Label can be set to Rejected, with your
Pending or Accepted, and is collection of still
probably mainly of interest to photographs.
However, if you
commercial photographers. The
also do video
Colour Label can be used however
photography,
you want, so you could, for example, you’ll be
set some of the nine available interested
colours to various projects you’re to know that
working on. The Information tab DigiKam can
Vast amounts of information is available for each photo – here DigiKam is displaying enables you to add details, including also handle
a luminance histogram. a list of people in shot, photo credit, movies.

FACE RECOGNITION
We can’t help but think that
DigiKam’s face recognition
feature is the first step in
more general image analysis.
If that’s the case, it might no
longer be necessary to add
keywords to photos, which
would be a huge benefit.
However, face recognition is
already a part of DigiKam, so
here’s the low-down.
Once you’ve set up facial
recognition in DigiKam, you
can search for named people
in just the same way as any
other keyword, as described
in the main part of this
tutorial. First, click on the
People tab at the left of the
screen and then click on
Scan Collection For Faces.
This will probably take quite
some time but, eventually,
DigiKam tells you that it’s
completed its search. Now
click on People at the top
of the left-hand area and a
zoomed-in portion of all
images containing faces
appears on the right. Move
the pointer over a face and
when it asks ‘Who is this?’,
provide the person’s name.
To cut a long story short –
and you should really read
up about this further in the
DigiKam manual – you might
have to identify a person in a
number of photos before they
are recognised automatically.
However, with sufficient
training, DigiKam should be
able to select photos using
people’s names as keywords.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 59

TUTORIALS Manage your photos
copyright notice, a textual geographical location (we’ll
see later how to select geolocation data), and more.
DigiKam doesn’t Finally we come to the Tags tab, where you can add
move photos keywords to help you find the photo at a later date. You
around, so can enter as many tags as you want here, and they’re
you’ll be able added to the list of available tags for possible use in
to continue other photos, and selected as one that applies to your
backing up or selected photo. However, if you don’t want to apply it to
archiving your the current photo, click on the tick to remove it. Note
photos from also that tags are hierarchical so, having created a tag,
their familiar
if you want it to appear under another tag, just drag it
folders, just
to that tab and, when asked, select Move Here. For
as you’ve
always done. example, this could allow you to create a tag called
However, all Beach under which you have the tags Sandy and
the information Rocky. When you’ve finished adding information
you provided to your photo, click on Apply. Each time you see
while tagging that photo from now on, you also see some of the
your photos in information you added, the extent of which depends on
various ways is whether you’re using the Thumbnails, Review or Table
stored in four tabs, the latter providing the most information.
database files,
If a photo was taken on a smartphone, it probably
which you also
has geolocation information embedded in it, and the
need to back
up. These are same is true of some cameras. In that case, DigiKam
stored in the recognises the data. However, if that’s not the case,
top-most folder you can add the data manually. With one or more
in your album. photos selected, choose Edit Geolocation from the
Item menu. The Geolocation Editor appears, showing a
map at the top, your selected photos at the bottom
and, so long as the Geolocation Editor’s Details tab is
selected, the latitude and longitude (initially blank) at
the right. Navigate to the position of your photo on
the map, right-click on the spot, and select Copy
Coordinates. Now right-click on the thumbnail of
the image you want to geolocate and select Paste
Coordinates. The latitude and longitude are filled in
under Coordinates, and a thumbnail of the image
appears at its designated location on the map.
Continue this way until you’ve added coordinates to
You can narrow each of the images visible in the Geolocation Editor,
down your and click on Apply before exiting the editor.
selection of photos
by specifying Viewing for pleasure
labels. Here we’ve
told it to show only
As we turn to DigiKam’s opportunities for viewing and
three, four or five- searching photos, we’ll start with the viewing options
star images. as this functionality is available for all your photos –
60 LXF307 October 2023
If geolocation data is available, you select photos by browsing a map,
zoomed in to your area of interest.
tagged or not. When DigiKam was first set up, you
were presented with a screen showing your photos in
the default format, this is called the Album View and
specifically the Thumbnail tab, which is where we start.
The Thumbnails tab of the Album View shows a
navigation pane on the left, and this can be used to
select any folder in your album. To the right, thumbnails
of the photos in the selected folder are displayed,
alongside their filename, much as they would be in
most file managers, but also visible is the time and
date, plus any star rating, title, keywords and perhaps
other tags. Note that the size of the thumbnails is
adjustable using the slider at the bottom – we were
able to display between six and 35 on screen. By
default, much the same information is presented in
the Table tab, although you can configure it by adding
columns with additional information. The Preview tab
doesn’t provide as much information, but the display
comprises a strip of thumbnails at the top and a
resizable preview of the selected image at the bottom.
Whichever of the tabs you use, lots of additional
information is available from the tabs at the right of the
screen. Between them, the Properties and Metadata
tabs present a vast amount of information, gleaned
from the file and image data itself, and the EXIF data
that was written to the file when the photo was taken.
Included here, for example, are file sizes, owners and
permissions, image pixel sizes, aspect
ratio and colour mode, plus camera
information and settings, such as the
model, aperture, shutter speed, focal
length, ISO speed and exposure
compensation. Turning to information
that’s commonly only visible in image
editors, by selecting the Colours tab,
you can see various histograms that
show the range of tonal values in a
photo. Having seen how to add
geolocation data to photos, you won’t
be surprised to learn that you can view
geolocated photos on a map, available
on the Map tab at the right – also take
a look at the Map tab at the left of the
screen. And finally on our whistle-stop
tour of viewing your photos, take a
look at the Timeline tab on the left. In
addition to the usual thumbnails, this
www.linuxformat.com
 Manage your photos TUTORIALS

DOWNLOADING & EDITING

DigiKam provides facilities for
importing photos from your
camera, and while it claims
some benefits over the
standard approach, and some
people might like the idea of
DigiKam being a one-stop-
shop, we think many of you
will continue to use your time-
honoured method. After all,
each time you start DigiKam,
it scans your album, so any
photos added externally are
still recognised. However, do
read up on DigiKam’s import
tool – we wouldn’t want you
to miss out on something you
may find useful.
Some of the issues
regarding DigiKam’s photo-
editing facilities are similar,
although there’s a couple of
reasons you might consider
using DigiKam for editing.
The built-in photo editor is
pretty good, but it doesn’t
offer as much functionality as
some dedicated editors, such
as GIMP. However, if you don’t
currently use a photo editor,
having the functionality at
hand in DigiKam might just
provide the opportunity to
experiment. Alternatively,
perhaps you already use a
simple image-editing tool
but it doesn’t offer batch
processing. Again, DigiKam’s
editor could be beneficial by
providing that missing
functionality. If you’ve never
used a batch editor before, it
enables you to perform an
operation, such as down-
sampling or rotating, on a
whole group of photos. Do
remember, though, that unlike
some photo management or
editing packages, any
changes that DigiKam makes
to your photos are actually
made to the original files.

provides a histogram showing how many photos were
taken on each day, week, month or year. Conceivably,
this might just come in useful on occasion.
Finding your photos
Our penultimate topic is to look at finding specific
photos when you’ve got a collection of hundreds or
thousands of shots. We’ve already touched on the Map
tab at the left of the screen, and this does, indeed,
provide a means of searching for photos by their
location. However, we’ve not yet seen how to make use
of the star rating, keyword, title and other data that you
add to your photos over time. One of the easiest
searches is by star rating. You can apply this filter – and
also Pick and Colour Labels – in the Labels tab at the
left of the screen. Note that you can search for more
than one rating, so if you want to find all photos that
are rated four or five stars, just select those two
options. Similarly, the Tags tab at the left of the screen
permits you to view any photos containing one or more
tags. However, for more complicated searches, you
need to head over to the Advanced Search tool that
you can find in the Tools menu. It provides the option of
specifying multiple criteria, all of which, or any of which,
have to be met. So, for example, you could search for
photos with a particular word in their titles, are tagged
with specified keywords, and have a specified
minimum star rating. Finally, on the subject
of searching, you probably noticed that, even before
you started adding keywords, there was already one
called Faces. This is concerned with using DigiKam’s
facial recognition feature and, while named faces are
selected in just the same way as other keywords, it first
needs to be set up (see box on page 59).
whichever photos are selected. So, an easy way to
select the photos you want to export is to first carry
out a search using your relevant criteria. Needless to
say, this is much quicker than selecting them by hand
outside of DigiKam. Export is available in the menu of
that name and the options are extensive, running to 16
platforms, including Dropbox, Flickr, Google Drive and
Twitter. And as a parting shot on exporting – this time
in the very broadest sense of the word – and bearing in
mind that it works with your selected photos following
a search, you might be interested in the Print Creator,
which can be found in the Tools menu.
This completes our overview of DigiKam, but we
have to admit there’s so much more that we haven’t
been able to cover, but which you might find useful. Our
recommendation, therefore, is that you first try out
what we’ve covered in this tutorial, but then move
on to trying out other things that sound interesting.
However, because a few of DigiKam’s tools can actually
alter your photos permanently, before you start using
these advanced facilities for real, we suggest that you
create an album containing copies of just a few of your
photos that you can experiment with in safety, knowing
that your original photos are all stored separately and
out of harm’s way.

Take it online
Our final main topic concerns exporting photos to
various online destinations, including social media and
file-sharing sites. You might just wonder why you’d
want to do that from within DigiKam rather than by
your existing tried-and-tested method. And while for
some there’s an appeal to managing everything photo-
related from a single package, there’s a more tangible Although more fully-featured photo editors are available, DigiKam’s editing facility will be
benefit, too. The export functionality exports sufficient for many users.

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ageing hardware. Also in this issue,
we explore the programming
language leaderboard, look at
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feature a Roundup of lightweight
desktops and spoil you with
tutorials on everything from image
processing and music streaming
to programming a 3D chess game
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TUTORIALS Classic language

FORTRAN
Credit: https://fortran-lang.org

FORTRAN – the first

high-level language
It might have been the world’s first high-level language, but
Mike Bedford discovers that FORTRAN is still alive and well today.

hen FORTRAN was first

W conceived, there were barely

any high-level languages, and
certainly none that became widely
known. With such languages now
virtually universal, we need to remember
OUR that high-level languages were designed
EXPERT to ease the job of a programmer.
Mike Bedford Previously, code was written in a
discovered that computer’s native instructions,
even though it’s which were defined by the computer’s
very different hardware. Using a high-level language, It’s largely forgotten today, but the IBM 704
from modern it became possible to use instructions scientific computer played an important
languages, it’s that were closer to how humans would role in kick-starting the FORTRAN project.
easy to get up to define the solution to a problem.
speed with the Productivity gains, it was argued, would
original FORTRAN follow. Programs could also be transportable removed from later versions that were intended to be
as it has just 32 between different computers, although this wasn’t a hardware independent.
instructions. consideration when designing FORTRAN, because the If you want to try your hand at coding in FORTRAN
language was initially designed specifically for the IBM 1957-style, you’re not going to find an IBM 704
704 computer. FORTRAN compiler. However, with the exception
The original FORTRAN was introduced in 1957 and of removing some of the original FORTRAN’s
had just 32 instructions, a far cry from most of today’s 704-specific instructions, each version of FORTRAN
If you catch languages. What’s more, several of these instructions retained most, but not all, of the instructions of its
the FORTRAN
were tied up to the IBM 704’s hardware, so they were predecessors for backwards compatibility. So, you can
bug, you might
be interested
to learn about
the open FORTRAN AND EXASCALE COMPUTING
source LFortran
project. Put The Top500 list, published twice that of top-end gaming PCs – Lawrence Livermore National
simply, it’s an each year, identifies the world’s choosing an appropriate language Laboratory, has a design speed
interactive fastest 500 supercomputers, and is important in making the most of twice that of Frontier, while
version of currently shows the 8,699,904- it. So, it’s interesting to note that Aurora, at the Argonne National
FORTRAN core Frontier, at the DOE/SC/Oak pretty much everything you read Laboratory, is expected to exceed
that enables
Ridge National Laboratory in the about Frontier’s software refers to that 2EFLOPS figure. And, while
you to try out
ideas, getting
USA, in the top spot. It’s the only just three languages: C, C++ and not much has yet been said about
immediate computer ever to have exceeded FORTRAN. And this isn’t a one- El Capitan’s supported languages
results, without 1EFLOPS, that’s one quintillion off. Since the first ever stored (but we can guess), like Frontier,
having to (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) program computer, we’ve waited Aurora will be programmed in C/
compile any floating point instructions per 74 years for the first exascale C++ and FORTRAN. Surely there
code. In this second, as measured using the computer, but others are close can be no better testimony to this
respect, it’s LINPACK benchmark. on its heels. For example, the language of the ’50s than it
CREDIT: IBM

been likened to With so much performance at forthcoming El Capitan powering the world’s most
Python, MATLAB your disposal – 100,000 times supercomputer, housed at demanding applications in 2023?
and Julia.

64 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Classic language TUTORIALS

use a more modern compiler, but only use the original example, the FORMAT
instructions, and avoid using any that have been associated with the
deleted more recently. Perhaps the most well- READ statement tells it
respected FOSS compiler is GFortran (GNU Fortran), to expect an inter value
available in the main repositories. Instead, if you want of, at most, two digits and
an immediate way of trying out some FORTRAN code, the FORMAT associated
perhaps before moving to a locally-installed solution, with the last PRINT
use the online Try It Online resource (https://tio.run), statement tells it to print
which enables you to see the output from your code it as a six-figure integer.
immediately, and actually uses the GFortran compiler. The IF statement is an
As a first example, we suggest you try, and perhaps arithmetic IF statement,
then modify, the following code, which is written in the compared to the logical
original version of FORTRAN. Note that we deliberately IF statement that we
kept an error in this code, as you’ll discover if you input mostly use in other
a value of 10 or more, so you might like to correct that. languages, and which
It displays the factorial of a number – a number’s didn’t appear until a later
factorial being the result of multiplying together all version of FORTRAN.
positive numbers up to and including that number. By An arithmetic IF
definition, the factorial of zero is 1, and there’s no such branches to one of the
thing as the factorial of a negative number. three lines, depending on
READ 30, N whether the result of the
30 FORMAT (I2) expression in brackets is
IF (N) 40, 60, 70 negative, zero or positive,
40 PRINT 50 respectively. A DO loop is
50 FORMAT (17HCAN’T BE NEGATIVE) terminated by a
GOTO 110 CONTINUE statement, the line number of which is The team at
IBM that was
60 NFAC = 1 specified in the DO statement. Only capital letters responsible
GOTO 90 could be used originally, although most compilers for developing
70 NFAC = 1 now accept lower-case letters. The code is fixed FORTRAN was led
DO 80 I = 1, N format. A C in the first column indicates that the line by John Backus, a
name you might
NFAC = NFAC * I is a comment, an optional line number can appear in
recognise from
80 CONTINUE columns 1-5, any character in column 6 indicates that the Backus Naur
CREDIT: Wikimedia.org/Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology, Milan, CC BY-SA 4.0. IBM

90 PRINT 100, NFAC the line is a continuation of the previous line, and the Form notation.
100 FORMAT (I6) actual statement appears in columns 7-72.
110 STOP To learn more about the original FORTRAN, take a
END look at the IBM Programmer’s Reference Manual, at
A few comments here will help you understand https://bit.ly/lxf307manual.
the code. In 1957, computers generally didn’t have
terminals like VDUs or teletypes, so the READ The ongoing journey
statement would have read from a punched card. If Because the original FORTRAN had just 32
you’re using Try It Online, enter the value to be read – instructions, several of which were tied up with the IBM
which is the number for which the factorial is to be 704’s unique hardware, it’s not particularly surprising The original
calculated, and which would have been read from a that FORTRAN was expanded over the years. The first version of
BASIC, which
punched card – in the Input area. By default, all variable extension went by the name of FORTRAN II, it was still
differed
names starting with I, J, K, L, M or N are considered intended exclusively for use on the 704, and it added
significantly
integers; variables beginning with any of the other support for subroutines and user-defined functions, from many
letters are real. READ and PRINT statements refer to a surely major drop-offs for the original FORTRAN, plus of the more
FORMAT statement by its line number, which dictates complex numbers. There was also a FORTRAN III, but it modern
how the data should be interpreted or displayed. For was never publicly released. versions and
The first really important upgrade was FORTRAN IV. which was
It was supported on a much wider range of computers, introduced
and it became the de facto language for scientific, in 1964,
engineering and mathematical applications for several was heavily
influenced by
years. It appeared in 1962 and – if we skip FORTRAN
FORTRAN II.
66, which was essentially the same as FORTRAN IV,
In fact, it had
but named in recognition of it being adopted as an even fewer
ANSI standard in 1966 – it remained unchallenged until statements, but
FORTRAN 77. The main way in which FORTRAN IV many of the
added to FORTRAN II was its introduction of the logical drop-offs were
IF statement, an example of which is IF (N .EQ. 10) I = I those FORTRAN
+ 1 . Note that, unlike most more recent languages, the statements
relational operators were not symbols such as =, >, < that were
and so on, but two-letter codes surrounded by periods. closely related
to the IBM 704
Perhaps the best way to illustrate FORTRAN’s maturity is to point out So, for example, the relational operator in our previous
hardware.
that the IBM 704 on which it was first run used valves, aka tubes. example was ‘less than or equal’ and others, the

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 65

TUTORIALS Classic language

meanings of which are obvious, are .NE., .

GT., .GE., .LT. and .LE.. These could be
You can add combined with the logical operators .OR., .
spaces pretty AND. and .NOT.. However, there was no
much at will in
concept of an IF … THEN … ELSE structure,
FORTRAN code,
despite blocks having already appeared in
to increase its
readability. A ALGOL. The only statement in FORTRAN IV
consequence that involved the execution of a block of
of this was the code was DO … CONTINUE. The other main
addition of new feature provided by FORTRAN IV was
periods before the replacement of the original FORTRAN’s
and after two- support for the IBM 704’s mass storage
letter relational devices, with more general support for mass
operator storage devices. If you get bored with the
codes to avoid
original FORTRAN, but still want some Further evidence that the world was very different when FORTRAN was conceived:
ambiguity. programmers had to carry around huge stacks of punch cards containing their code.
experience with a classic FORTRAN, by
For example,
without periods which we mean a version that’s more than
or spaces, half a century old, FORTRAN IV is your obvious choice. 100 FORMAT (I2, XXXX, I6, XX, F11.9, X, A1)
a logical IF The IBM System/360 FORTRAN IV Language manual 200 CONTINUE
statement is at https://bit.ly/lxf307f1966. And here’s some code 210 STOP
starting IF you could use as a first example: END
(A.EQ.B) GR = (1 + SQRT (5.0)) / 2 Before delving into the code, we need to explain
could be NMARK = 78 what it does. First it calculates and prints the Nth
misinterpreted PRINT 10 Fibonacci number, for values of N from 1 to 30. The
as an arithmetic
10 FORMAT (39H N FIBONACCI GOLDEN RATIO first two Fibonacci numbers are defined as 1 and 1, and
IF statement
WITHIN 0.001%) all subsequent numbers are the sum of the previous
starting IF
(AEQB) .
NFIB1 = 1 two. So, the first few Fibonacci numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,
NFIB2 = 1 8, 13 and 21. Next, for each N, we also calculate and
DO 200 N = 1, 30 print an approximation to the Golden Ratio, and
IF (N .GT. 2) GOTO 50 indicate, with an N or Y, whether it’s within 0.001% of
NFIB = 1 the actual value. The Golden Ratio – if you’re unfamiliar
GOTO 60 with it, we encourage you to read up about it; it’s quite
50 NFIB = NFIB1 + NFIB2 interesting. To return to our Fibonacci numbers, the
NFIB1 = NFIB2 ratios of pairs of successive Fibonacci numbers are
NFIB2 = NFIB ever closer approximations to the actual value of the
60 GRAPP = REAL (NFIB) / REAL (NFIB1) Golden Ratio.
ERR = ABS (GR - GRAPP) / GR * 100 A few comments about the code are now
IF (ERR .LT. 0.001) NMARK = 89 appropriate. The main difference between this code
PRINT 100, N, NFIB, GRAPP, NMARK and a program written in the original FORTRAN is
the use of the logical IF statement. The first line
calculates the actual value of the Golden Ratio.
THE FIRST HOME COMPUTERS Although FORTRAN IV doesn’t support character
string variables, an integer variable can hold an ASCII
Today you can run FORTRAN, or just about any language for that value and, if this is then printed using an A designation
matter, on your Linux PC. However, if we shift our terminology from in the FORMAT statement, the associated character is
“PC” to “home computer”, those with a long memory will think of the printed. That variable is NMARK, and the ASCII values
home computing boom of the early ’80s. And pretty much all of for N and Y are 78 and 89 respectively. We use several
those computers offered a single built-in programming language: functions, including SQRT and ABS, but of particular
Basic. Interestingly, though, FORTRAN also got a look in on some of note is REAL in line 60. This is necessary because
CREDIT: Wikimedia.org/Arnold Reinhold, CC BY-SA 3.0

the earliest microprocessor-based computers.
Personal computers, in the broadest sense of the word, first
appeared in the early ’70s, many based on the 1974 8-bit Intel 8080
processor, and its close relatives the Intel 8085 and the Zilog Z80.
They were expensive, so were commonly used for early business
applications, but also attracted well-heeled hobbyists. Even in those
early days, while there was a lot of diversity, standardisation also
came to the fore in the form of the CP/M operating system. From
1977 to the late ’80s, CP/M appeared on a whole range of machines,
albeit sometimes only if a co-processor was added. While most of
those computers were from largely forgotten names, other
companies, including Acorn, Amstrad, Atari, Commodore and Tandy,
also sold CP/M-based machines. It mostly didn’t come as standard,
but when other home computer users were programming in Basic,
FORTRAN allowed CP/M users to embrace a superior language.
we’re dividing two integers and, had we not used the
REAL function, it would have given an integer result.
We’re not going to discuss all the successors to
FORTRAN IV/66 in the same detail – after all, there
have been quite a few – but we will summarise the
main features of the more important versions.
FORTRAN 77 added the ELSE option to the IF
statement, and also introduced the concept of blocks,
but only for the IF statement. A character data type
was added for the first time. Further block structured
support was added, over time, to include the DO
WHILE and CASE constructs. With the introduction of
Fortran 90 – and, no, that’s not a typo; with the onset of
the 1990s, FORTRAN became Fortran – the
requirement to put line numbers and statements in
specific columns was relaxed. It also allowed a mix of

66 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Classic language TUTORIALS

upper-case and lower-case characters, the former

requirement to use capitals only being a throwback to
the punch card era. Fortran 90 also allowed recursion
and it permitted arrays to be operated on as a whole,
instead of operating on single elements in a loop or
nested loops. Object-orientated processing came with
Fortran 2003, and with the onset of Fortran 2008,
support was provided for parallel processing. In
passing, we should also mention Fortran 95 and
Fortran 2018, but we’ll pass the comment – perhaps
anathema to FORTRAN diehards – that the new
features added were relatively minor.

FORTRAN today
If we wanted to be critical, we could describe
FORTRAN as an outdated language. Certainly, it’s
continued to be updated, but it could be argued that
the new versions represented belated efforts to
introduce programming paradigms that had been
commonplace in other languages for decades. For
example, block-orientation only started to appear, in a
limited way, with FORTRAN 77, almost 20 years after
ALGOL introduced the concept. And to take the
example of object-orientation, this wasn’t provided
until Fortran 2003, which appeared on the scene no
fewer than 31 years after the Simula language first
introduced the world to this paradigm. If all this is a
valid criticism, though, it would be somewhat surprising
to learn that, according to the latest TIOBE index of the
popularity of programming languages, FORTRAN
currently stands at a quite respectable 14th place.
To learn more about FORTRAN’s continued appeal,
we spoke to Rafik Zurob, IBM Open XL Fortran
compiler development manager. To start, we wanted to
know what types of organisation use FORTRAN and in
what typical applications. Rafik’s response suggested
that it’s used in the upper echelons of computing for
CREDIT: Wikimedia.org/Bill Bertram, CC BY-SA 2.5. Wikimedia.org/OLCF at LANL, CC BY-SA 2.0
(many concurrent threads in the same program), off- In the world of
loading to accelerators like GPUs, and distribution – high-performance
computing,
that is communication between different programs, FORTRAN remains
possibly on different computers. This has allowed a hugely important
FORTRAN to take advantage of large supercomputers workhorse.
that have many CPUs and GPUs.”
So, what are the benefits of FORTRAN that have
contributed to its use today, and how does it compare,
in this respect, to more modern languages? According
to Rafik, “FORTRAN is a high-level language that gives
the compiler more opportunities to optimise. An
example of this is in the design of pointers. FORTRAN
lets the user specify targets a pointer can address.
This allows the compiler to construct a more precise
aliasing analysis than other languages like C, in which

leading-edge research. “FORTRAN is typically used for pointers can address anything.” It remains to be seen
high-performance computing and other compute- whether the likes of Python and Java are still attracting
intensive applications. Examples are scientific such favourable comment in another half century.
modelling and simulations in the fields of weather
prediction, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine,
astronomy and AI. Some of the big users are the large
research labs in the US and Europe,” he told us.
But is it only used to maintain legacy applications, or
are new projects being written in FORTRAN today?
Apparently, both are true, as Rafik went on to say.
“While legacy FORTRAN libraries still account for a
significant part of FORTRAN’s user base, many users
also take advantage of the new features in later
FORTRAN standards. The use of FORTRAN has also
shifted; instead of being used to write the whole
application, it is now commonly used to write the
computation kernels for the application. Other
languages like C/C++ or Python are then used to
write the user interface or other code that calls the
computational kernel. As a result, many users don’t
realise they’re using FORTRAN libraries. For example,
if you’ve used Python’s SciPy or NumPy modules,
you’ve likely used a BLAS library written in FORTRAN.
FORTRAN programs nowadays often also use either While other home computers of the ’80s were Basic-only, the Amstrad CPC 464 offered
the OpenMP or MPI specifications to add parallelism CP/M as an option, and hence FORTRAN.

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www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 67

TUTORIALS Manage a VPS

VIRTUALMIN
Credit: www.virtualmin.com

Easily manage a free

VPS with Virtualmin
David Bolton demonstrates how to set up Virtualmin on a
free VPS and how to configure it to add websites.

irtualmin has been helping people administer usually lets you choose between different Linux server

V their Linux boxes for almost 20 years and it

runs on most distros, particularly CentOS,
distros, such as CentOS or Ubuntu. Free VPSes usually
have a more limited choice; this was done using
Debian, RHEL and Ubuntu. Available as both free Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
(GPL) or commercial versions, it enables you to create After it’s installed, after the Post Wizard, an install
virtual servers with fully independent users. This checker runs to ensure that the installation is good.
OUR includes mailboxes, web application development Virtualmin found that the Virtualmin log folder in
EXPERT environments, websites, web apps, quotas, account /var/logs was missing. After manually creating it and
David Bolton rules and instances of web server, database server and rerunning the checker, everything was OK.
has been using other software. If you need to install an SSL certificate
Virtualmin for on your box, it can generate a CSR and install the Using Virtualmin
several years certificate. It’s all done through the admin website. Virtualmin is an administrative website, where you are
now, so is the It’s handy when you need to look after an internet either on the Virtualmin tab or the Webmin tab. The
perfect person box, such as a VPS or dedicated server, but lack the two menu tabs are where you control everything. The
to explain how it skills to set everything up – safely or otherwise. Do Virtualmin tab is used for accessing domain account
can work with a not underestimate securing your server. The internet management functionality, such as creating new
free VPS to set is an ongoing and permanent war zone; any internet- domain accounts or new databases associated with
up websites and facing computer can expect to come under a low-level those accounts, installing applications and more.
other activities. automated attack on most days. The author’s own Meanwhile, the Webmin tab is for general-purpose
WordPress website has had over 13,000 attacks since systems management features, user and group
2019, according to the Jetpack plugin. management, listing processes, managing installed
Many VPSes come with cPanel or Plesk but those packages, network settings, firewall settings and more.
are not free – typically, you pay between £12 and £16 It’s a bit confusing to start with because there’s a lot
per month just for those, on top of the hosting fees. For to learn and you will get lost. You might find it helpful to
cheap or free VPS hosting, Virtualmin is ideal. The VPS read the official tutorials, which cover getting started,
email, web, FTP, database and account
management in 30 single-page tutorials. They’re
more like definitions than tutorials but better
You can rerun than nothing. Also, the System menu on the
the system Webmin tab includes a System Documentation
checker at any
search page. This enables you to search on the
time from the
system for any relevant files and optionally
System Settings
menu. Just searches Google for relevant links.
click Re-Check You’ll also notice references to Virtualmin
Configuration. Professional, which isn’t free, and Cloudmin,
Do this after which provides a web interface for management
you’ve made of multiple systems, typically virtual systems
any system running under some virtualisation technology,
changes using such as Xen or OpenVZ.
Virtualmin. If you are a reseller, you’d find the
Professional version of Virtualmin handy
for automated installation of dozens of web
applications, including blogs, wikis, content
management systems, ad servers, ecommerce
Here’s the Virtualmin checker results page, with no errors showing. systems and more – but you won’t use those on

68 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


The Virtualmin and Webmin tab menus shown side by side.
a free VPS. So, let’s look at what you can do with your
brand-new server.
Lower your expectations!
The answer is not a lot because the lack of RAM is a
big drawback. The main uses are installing websites,
setting up SSL certificates and what we really want
practising administration for when you move to a paid
VPS. It gives a very good feel for what’s needed on a
live server, and if you mess up, you can always restart
and reinstall everything.
Virtualmin provides a terminal so you can also
practise Linux commands on that as well. So, instead of
using Virtualmin, you can level up your Linux fu doing
tasks such as adding users and
groups, and changing ownership by
hand if you wish. The web server
enables you to practise your PHP on a
live website as well.
If you want your website to access
a database, the Webmin Servers menu
lets you access MariaDB (on the
MySQL Database Server page) and
restart it if it’s not running. You can
then add databases, tables and so on.
Lazy updates
Anyone can do sudo apt update -y &&
sudo apt upgrade -y from a remote
terminal but Virtualmin also has you
covered. When there are updates
available, the main dashboard shows
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Manage a VPS TUTORIALS
FREE VPS
Finding a completely free VPS
isn’t easy, but there are a few
around, such as https://vpswala.
org. Typically, you get one CPU
core, 25GB of SSD storage, 1GB
of RAM and 1TB bandwidth. Will
Virtualmin work on this? The
minimum requirement is 256MB
but it grabs more RAM if you let
it. With only 1GB of RAM, the
Linux distribution needs to start
with few packages installed.
Here’s how to configure The Virtualmin login prompt (with
Virtualmin on a low-memory IP address hidden).
system; it boils down to switching things off.
To install Virtualmin, run Wget with this script:
$ wget https://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/virtualmin-
install.sh
Now run it with this command:
$ sudo sh virtualmin-install.sh
Ignore any error that mention fd0 – that’s the absent floppy drive!
After Virtualmin has installed, log in to the VPS IP on port 10000
and you should see the above login screen.
After logging in, you can configure things with a Post-Installation
Wizard to use less memory. Set it so that it doesn’t preload
Virtualmin libraries, doesn’t run an email domain lookup server, and
disable email virus scanning with ClamAV. If you don’t want MariaDB
or PostgreSQL database servers, they can be disabled here as well.
If you don’t see a module – for example, PostgreSQL – look at the
Unused Modules list under the Webmin menu. Look for PostgreSQL
Database Server – there’s an Install Now button on its page.
you a count and link to a page where you can update
one or more. Just click a button or two, and the update
happens. If a reboot is needed, you’re also provided
with a Reboot Now button.
Virtualmin includes a decent file manager, too.
There’s no need to remote in to upload or edit files.
The File menu enables you to create new folders or
files, and upload files from your computer. The Tools The Software
Package Update
menu lets you change ownership, permissions and screen, showing all
attributes. Right-click on a selected file or files and you updates that are
can download, copy, cut or rename them. The image to be performed.
October 2023 LXF307 69
TUTORIALS Manage a VPS
When using
email regarding
a domain,
such as when
registering it or
putting it in the
SSL Certificate
Signing Request
(CSR), always
use an email
address that
is not related
to the domain.
If you use
an address
for a domain
and there’s a
problem with
that domain, The File Manager screen with its pop-up right-click menu in the centre.
you might
not be able to
access any of
(above) shows the web file index.html after it was
those emails. renamed to index.php.
Setting up a website
With limited disk space and RAM, you aren’t going to
host many websites unless they are static HTML-only,
but you can probably get away with two or three PHP
websites. Virtualmin/Webmin gives you the default site
when you put in the IP or domain. Any more and you
have to add virtual sites.
Let’s look at the default site first. This is physically
located under /home using the login username/public_
html; for this server it’s /home/vpsserver/public_html.
There’s just one file here: index.html. Using the File
Manager, it was renamed to index.php, then edited.
Everything was selected and deleted then replaced
with this line:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
After saving the file, when you visit the server
default website, you get the whole PHP Information
page. The current version of Virtualmin runs PHP 8.1
and comes with 68 PHP modules installed by default. If
SSL CERTIFICATES
Although there are a few people resisting getting an SSL (TLS)
certificate for their website, it’s generally accepted that you need
one. Without it, browsers warn visitors away and Google lowers the
ranking in its search engine, making it harder to find.
Technically, the SSL certificate is now called TLS; this is the
upgraded and more secure and reliable version of SSL, but people
still call it SSL. It encrypts the traffic between your browser and the
website, and the more expensive certificates are only issued after
the certificate authority has established that the website is
legitimate. We’re only interested in the free or cheap certificates.
You can get a free certificate from Let’s Encrypt, and Virtualmin
automates fetching and installing such certificates. They need
replacing every three months, or you can buy a certificate lasting
four years for £20 instead. But there’s a slight gotcha: you have to
renew it every 398 days. It’s free – you just upload the CSR and get a
new certificate. Note, however, that it’s likely this will be reduced to
90 days in the future, as Google is pushing for this.
70 LXF307 October 2023
the modules you require aren’t present, you’ll find PHP
Configuration under Tools on the Webmin menu, with
links to three php.ini files. It lets you edit any of them,
but only do this if you know what you’re doing; it’s all
too easy to introduce errors and kill PHP. Switch to the
File Manager and make backup copies first.
Don’t leave the index.php file with phpinfo() around
for too long; it provides a lot of useful information and
makes the job easier for anyone wanting to hack your
server. If you want to see the PHP information again,
just click the PHP Options on the Virtualmin Server
Configuration menu and click the tiny PHP just to the
right of the PHP version.
Manage certificates
Click the Server Configuration link on the Virtualmin
tab. You’ll see an SSL Certificate menu option. Click
it and you see details of your certificate once it’s
installed. There are six tabs across the top. The second
one is Create Signing Request. This is a form you have
to fill in about the website. Make sure you use the two-
letter code for the Country Code field, such as GB (not
UK). When that’s done, click Generate CSR Now.
This generates a CSR, which looks like this (a few
lines were removed for security and replaced with …):
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
MIIDJDCCAgwCAQAwgZ4xCzAJBgNVBAYTAkdCMRU
wEwYDVQQIDAxMaW5jb2xuc2hp
cmUxEDAOBgNVBAcMB0xpbmNvbG4xHDAaBgNVB
AoME0hvc3QgZGVmYXVsdCBkb21h
aW4xFjAUBgNVBAsMDVdlYnNpdGUgQWRtaW4xEz
ARBgNVBAMMCnd3dy40ZG8udWsx
…
Ebf01WkYjto8Mi5c0icbaLaovC3qjoMT/y5oqMSf6BW
UxVKBlF6Og2BnDK3eH3t7
QFijfyFaQJdVckghRJpDmkH8L89ycoXyaeo0PjGm/by
KkXBcVaWkEYxd/gcHWmTd
B+IyVTegHsPfNHQw+xETDGNfpa8coJR4Ho8aZPOdkl
TvT2R8vTNQxg==
-----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----
You also see a private key, which looks like the CSR:
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEvQIBADANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAASCBKcwggSj
AgEAAoIBAQC0Dmd9t99QB2Hd
…
m/v23Cx/yGc/EkP8QwSvIxY=
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
There are 24 lines missing from the private key
shown above for safety. They are rarely seen in public
and you must always keep your private key secure.
Now you have to send the CSR off to a certificate
authority and buy a certificate. They also expect you to
prove that you administer the server. This can be done
in a variety of ways, such as putting a file they send into
a hidden folder or adding a line to the DNS zone record
for your domain. You need to log in to your domain
registrar for that. Once that’s done and they’ve verified
it, they email you your certificate. You paste it in on the
Apply Signed Certificate tab, click install and the job’s
done. Virtualmin also fetches all the chain certificates
needed for a certificate authority’s certificate to work.
Make sure you keep a copy of the private key, CSR
and certificate files. There’s a copy of the first two in
your user’s home folder and save your email for the
certificate. If anything happens to the server or you
www.linuxformat.com
 Manage a VPS TUTORIALS

xx.xx.xx.xx
vpsserver.local
vpsserver Before
xx.xx.xx.xx example123. you install
com Virtualmin, if
That provided access you plan to host
to both websites from the a website, you
should set up
home browser.
your domain
Virtualmin treats the
to point to the
virtual server’s websites VPS. Use the
slightly differently from domain name as
the main server website. the hostname
With virtual servers, you when you install
get more control, and it Virtualmin.
has the visitor tracking
software AWStats.
The System Information page provides handy details about your system’s current state. Each of the servers
has an extensive user
decide to move to another server, you can take all interface but you can edit the config files instead. If
three with you and install the private key and certificate you’re feeling adventurous, the Webmin Servers menu
on the new server. Also, you need the CSR when it lets you view or edit any of the various Apache config
comes time to renew the certificate after the 398 or files, including those for the virtual servers. This is
possibly 90-day period. That is free; you only pay for a where you can make changes – redirections, for
new certificate after four years. example. Before you do, spend time on the Webmin
Backup Configuration Files menu and make copies.
Creating virtual sites Something to bear in mind when you add
Web servers such as Apache can manage multiple Virtualmin to a Linux box: not only does it have
websites on the same IP address. This is done by the main user davidxyzer but it adds a user for the
setting up virtual servers in Virtualmin. A virtual server main site vpsserver and any virtual servers, such as
is an account in Virtualmin that includes a website, example123. On the Virtualmin tab, the first line below
email and FTP access all associated with a domain Virtualmin is a pull-down control showing the current
name. You can also create subservers. These are site and it lets you switch between them. You won’t see
secondary domain names set up within a virtual the pull-down until you have at least one virtual server.
server, with their own domain name and set of email Don’t get them mixed up! Even if you don’t
addresses and FTP accounts. Virtualmin is an amazing piece of software and it own a particular
So, if you have the domain fred.com, you set it up as simplifies administering a Linux server safely, but there domain, you can
a virtual server. Now, if you want primary.fred.com, you is quite a learning curve and the documentation is add it to your
set it up as a subserver of fred.com’s virtual server. adequate at best. Everything is there in the web hosts file with
When you set up a virtual server, you can have interface; you just have to find it. sudo nano /
Virtualmin set up DNS zones and an Apache website, Virtualmin includes extensive support for email, etc/hosts and
accept mail for the domain, complete with spam setting up accounts, anti-spam, Postfix mail server and your browser
will believe that
filtering, have its own Webmin login and even AWStats so on, but on a free VPS with limited disk space and
it is yours.
reporting for web traffic. These happen by default but RAM, managing email might not be its best use.
you can disable any or all.
When Virtualmin creates the
virtual server, it does a lot of things
in the background: it adds a virtual
site to Apache, configures DNS
zones, creates email and tries to
get a Let’s Encrypt certificate for
the new virtual domain. The domain
example123.com was added as a
virtual server but Virtualmin wasn’t
successful in getting a certificate
from Let’s Encrypt due to not
owning that domain and so not
pointing the DNS to the VPS.
The IP was added to our home
computer hosts file and the domain
example123.com. Here is /etc/
hosts with IP addresses masked
to protect the innocent: Provide the relevant details and Virtualmin can generate a CSR and install an SSL certificate for you.

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www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 71

TUTORIALS Steam Deck

STEAM DECK
Credit: https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck/

Get more out of

your Steam Deck
From external controllers to an external display, Neil Mohr
offers a fistful of handy gaming tips for your Steam Deck.

e’ve been sporadically looking at

W Valve’s Steam Deck over the last

year or so. In LXF299 we covered SD
card expansion and hacks to use Epic games,
GoG and general sweet plugins. Last issue
we covered replacing the internal NVMe
OUR drive, while back in LXF289 Jonni explored its
EXPERT underlying Linux software. We’ll dive into
Neil Mohr Steam Deck retro emulation down the line,
has no time for too, as it’s a pretty cool platform for that.
gaming but is As we mentioned in LXF299, the Steam
pleased his Deck has a fully functioning USB-C
children can connector, so you can buy all manner of You can play Steam Deck with your Steam Controller while running it over Steam Link!
make the USB-C docks, not just the overpriced official
most of his one from Valve. This enables you to not only charge
19-year-old the Steam Deck but also attach an external display,
Steam account. keyboard, mouse and, interestingly, game controllers –
though Bluetooth is always an option, too.
Using a game controller is the best option if you’ve
docked your Deck to an external display for some big-
screen fun. So, let’s take a look at the options.
Starting with the most common wired Xbox 360
controller option, if you’ve got one lying around it’s a
great choice. This can be attached directly to the Deck
via a USB-A-to-USB-C adaptor or via a dock.
Connect power from the Steam Deck to a USB-C
dual-monitor docking station. Plug in the USB-A end of
the Xbox 360 controller to an available USB-A female
port on the dock. Plug in the USB-C cable from the
dock into the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck auto-
detects the controller. Once paired, you can use the
Xbox controller as you would the Steam Deck’s built-in
controls, with the Xbox button acting as the Steam
button on the Steam Deck.
Bluetooth controllers include Xbox Series X/S, Xbox
One, PS5 DualSense, DualShock 4, Nintendo Switch
Pro and the defunct Valve Steam controller. Pairing a
controller is a case of going to Settings > Bluetooth on
the Deck and turning it on. You need to initiate pairing
on the controller: on the Valve Steam Controller, hold
Y+Steam button (if this doesn’t work you might need to the terminal with:
update its firmware); Switch Pro and Xbox have pairing
buttons; the PlayStation pad uses the PS button.
The Deck interface is smart enough to recognise
the type of controller that’s connected and auto-
remaps buttons to the physical controller in hand. Bear
in mind that the default on-screen display is an Xbox
one and often games aren’t as smart and can request
the wrong A or B buttons if reversed on your controller.
Issues we found are that an older DualShock 3 is
only practical over USB-A, and you can pair the Switch
Joycons but they only work as separate pairs – there’s
a third-party Arch daemon that can combine them at
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/joycond-git.
Game optimisation
We’ve talked about the Performance Overlay in
previous issues and this does offer basic optimisation
of gaming frames per second, but we can do better.
There’s a hack called CryoUtilities that can tweak a
number of low-level settings to boost frame rates. Take
Grand Theft Auto 5 – the average frame rate goes
from 64fps to 92fps at low quality and from 60fps to
70fps at high quality.
The developer has been tweaking the utility and
blogging about his experiences, so it’s pretty rock solid.
To install CryoUtilities, you need to launch the Steam
Deck in Desktop Mode. Open Firefox and go to https://
github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities#install.
Download the .desktop file to the desktop and double-
click the Install CryoUtilities icon. Or you can do it from
$ curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/
CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities/main/install.sh | sh
To run the CryoUtilities installer, open the
application menu, select Utilities, and then run the

72 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Steam Deck TUTORIALS

USE A TABLET AS A SCREEN

Download Steam Link Get connected Adjust your settings

1 The Steam Link app is what remains
of the failed 2015 Steam Link streaming
box. The software was open sourced and
the viewer app remains available on the
Apple and Google app stores. Click on
the app store application on your tablet.
Search for “Steam Link” and once you’ve
found the app, download it.
2 With your Steam Deck turned on,
open the Steam Link app on your tablet. It
may take a few seconds for the devices to
establish a wireless connection. It runs a
speed test to check whether streaming
is viable – you’re after a consistent fast
connection. Once the tablet and Steam
Deck are connected, tap Start Playing.
3 You can bring up the Steam
Link settings on your tablet at any time
simply by tapping anywhere on the
tablet’s screen. From there, you can
configure the touch controls or even
disable them completely, adjust the
tablet’s volume or select to use a
separate controller, if you wish.

CryoUtilities app. Enter your password when prompted.
Don’t have a password? In Desktop Mode, open the
application menu and select System > Konsole. Type
passwd and select something simple as the characters
are hidden. Press Enter and retype to confirm.
Generally, you can just stick to the Recommended
Settings and you’ll bank the speed improvements. For
specific games, you might want to tweak some of the
settings but it’s unlikely you’ll improve performance
beyond the supplied tweaks. So, what’s it doing?
Firstly, it pares back the Deck’s swap file use and
optimises its memory policies to avoid stutters. It also
advises you to tweak VRAM, which we look at below.
To kick off, it massively reduces the tendency of the
Deck’s kernel to use the swap file, until it absolutely
needs to, and also reduces wear on the SSD. So, rather
than constantly copying memory to disk, it only does
so when it’s actually running low on physical memory. It
also greatly increases the size of the swap file as the
default one is rather small.
An optimisation to the virtual memory system
enables Transparent Huge Pages and also enables
wider use of them by memory subsystems. This is less
intensive than using the standard 4K page chunk in the
MMU. Alongside this, the kernel as standard tries to
defragment memory during system down time, which
is great on desktops and servers, but there’s never a
‘good time’ while gaming, so this function is disabled.
running game. Generally, it’s been shown that 4GB of
VRAM is optimal, leaving a decent 12GB for the OS
and game. To adjust this value, power down the
Steam Deck. Hold the Volume Up button and press
the Power. Once the UEFI has loaded, select Setup
Utility > Advanced > UMA Frame Buffer Size > 4GB.
Select Save and Exit.
Finally, one last quick tweak you can apply is to
lock the frame rate to 40fps. “But surely 60fps is
best!” you protest. Au contraire – due to the reduced
hardware of the Deck, it’s often impractical to ever get
near that 60fps figure and an erratic frame rate can
cause input lag and pointless strain on the battery life.
While 40fps may seem closer to 30fps, that’s
actually not the case. A 60fps game refreshes every
16.7ms, while a 30fps game refreshes every 33.3ms,
and a 40fps game refreshes every 25ms. The 40fps
level is precisely in the middle of 30fps and 60fps.
This results in lower input lag, smoother visuals and
Giving games
smoother screen updates. more VRAM helps
To set the Framerate Limit in gaming mode, press … them run faster.
> Performance > Refresh Rate > 40 and profit! Whatever next?

More VRAM
The Steam Deck has a unified memory architecture,
which means the CPU and GPU use the same physical
memory. At boot, the UEFI allocates a reserved block
for just the GPU to use, though it can access more if
requested – however, the CPU also takes precedence.
By default, that’s 1GB of VRAM, which isn’t a lot
for modern games and leaves 15GB for the OS and

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www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 73

ADMINISTERIA
Stuart Burns
is a Linux
administrator for
a Fortune 500
company
specialising
in Linux.
ENCRYPTION
GENIE PROBLEM
You can’t argue with maths –
unless you’re the British
government. Rishi and his chums
at MI5 want to break good
encryption to be able to spy on
citizens. Private communications
should be just that: private.
The government is proposing
that it should have a legal
intercept capability to read
everyone’s encrypted messages
and traffic. That means, as per
the hacker film Sneakers, “No
more secrets.” All your
confidential messages, love
affairs, gripes and downloaded
naughty films laid bare to the
government apparatus.
This push by the government
is disingenuous because the way
the police mostly work is by
intelligence-driven policing via
informants and disaffected
insiders. They already have many
tools in their armoury…
Often criminals are caught not
because of the content of their
messages but because they
do stupid things or are not IT
forensically aware. Carrying a
smartphone as you carry out a
killing leaves lots of metadata.
The police already have the
right to compel the disclosure
of passwords via the RIPA Act
under threat of a two-year prison
sentence for non-compliance.
Like nuclear weapons, you
can’t uninvent encryption or
make sure only the good guys
have it. You also can’t have half-
on/half-off encryption. It either
works or it doesn’t. You can
guarantee that if implemented,
the bad guys will find a weakness
to exploit, and it really could be
game over. Find out more
courtesy of the EFF:
https://bit.ly/47bq0iO.
74 LXF307 October 2023
Using Bash aliases
for an easier life
Keep things simple by creating and using aliases to
run your most frequently executed commands.
any people consistently type ls To remove an alias, use the command
M -larth every time they need a
directory listing. Only marginally
unalias ll . The deftness of this is in keeping
with the Linux philosophy of simplicity and
better is ll . Newcomers to Linux could be efficiency. Using the alias command
forgiven for thinking ll is just shorthand appropriately is definitely a time saver.
for ‘list long’, but it’s actually an alias. Some To make these permanent, open the
guides get bogged down in the intricacies of .bashrc file, add the aliases in the same
it but here we’re giving you the quick take. All format, and save the file. Using source ./
the aliases for a specific users are in ./bashrc bashrc re-reads the files to reflect changes.
in their home folder.
As the name implies, aliases
are a way in which you can create
shorthand pseudonyms to run
commands exactly as you desire.
In Bash, typing the command
alias displays all the alias names Using
and the full command that will run if customised
aliases can
executed. To overwrite the existing add up to
alias (or create new a new one if it be a useful
doesn’t exist), just use: time saver.
alias ll=’ls -larth’
SSH like a pro
A selection of quick tips that are handy to
have up your sysadmin sleeve.
Any sysadmin with more than a week of work
under their belt knows SSH, but there are
many tips and tricks that often get missed.
An example is troubleshooting SSH. When
trying to SSH from a Linux box to a server
using the SSH command, adding the
parameter -vvv provides lots of verbose
output and is ideal for troubleshooting why
the SSH session won’t connect. SSH session debugging becomes much easier when using
the -v parameter to increase output verbosity.
Another odd thing we see is people
taking all sorts of steps to be able to copy capabilities and so on) but for copying files
files to another system. The scp command between systems, it can be a real time saver.
is really useful here because it enables the Lastly, there’s the ability to run commands
administrator to copy files between servers remotely. Sometimes you just want to run a
without additional software or even ports quick command – for example, to install a
being opened. After all, scp is essentially package. Using ssh -t admin@myredhatbox
‘copy via SSH’. Depending on the data in “sudo yum install tmux” would install Tmux
question, it may not be the best tool (Rsync without having to log in to the server, then
is good at large data copies with resume run the command and then disconnect.
www.linuxformat.com

Purge Docker debris
Docker is great at a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t
require a dose of preventative maintenance periodically.
ver time, Docker deployments can consume a
O lot of space. Not only do they take up room,
but they also create clutter and orphaned
containers – computer cruft.
Performing a docker ls command may well reveal
lots of dated containers that have been downloaded
and often forgotten about or perhaps intermediate
build images. Speaking from personal experience, in a
large production environment, the reclaimed space can
be in the tens of gigabytes. The thing is, it’s not just
containers that consume resources but images, too.
In this short guide, we cover the necessary steps
you should take to reclaim space and tidy up a Docker
environment. Firstly, to see what kind of space is
consumed, use:
$ docker images ls -a
The -a is important because by default the output
hides intermediate images and potentially gives a false
perspective. Removing Docker images one by one is
easy enough using the image ID:
$ docker rmi <imageid>
Doing more than a few of these can get very
repetitive and boring, but a quick Bash one-liner can
be used to remove all the images (then you can pull
down new images as needed):
$ docker rmi -f $(docker images -a -q)
Using this command deletes all the images that
aren’t connected to a running container. Removing
containers can be achieved with:
$ docker rm <CONTAINER ID>
In a large development environment, that’s not
practical, but there is a more powerful Docker
parameter: prune. The command docker prune -a
tries to perform an automated clean-up. It removes old
images, containers, dangling images and intermediate
build images. Be aware that it also erases any non-
running container, so use with caution.
Most Docker commands obey the filter parameter.
Filters are expressed as pairs. We can use a filter with
the prune parameter to say ‘Don’t delete containers
that have stopped within the last 24 hours’:
$ docker container prune --filter “until=24h”
Using this switch purges all the containers that are
older than the time given. More details on the prune
Global pruning of
unused items is
straightforward
but exercise
caution over
what’s deleted.
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
ADMINISTERIA
filters can be found at https://bit.ly/3OkXvGP. While
that may sound a little risky, don’t forget what
containers are all about: ephemeral services that are
used and then discarded. A user should never be
tweaking items inside a container because it will be
lost when the container is replaced. Use parameters
and docker-compose files to pass in needed
commands and set up, or better yet check out how to
build your own Docker images.
Managing volumes is perhaps the most worrisome
part of Docker management because this is where all
the stateful data is stored.
Logs can also be a bit of an issue. Logs are good
but left unpruned they can consume an awful of space
very quickly. The good news is that there is a really
easy way to limit log size by tweaking the daemon.json
configuration file. An example is shown below to be
included, not removed (borrowed from https://bit.
ly/3YgVgZv):
{
“log-driver”: “json-file”,
“log-opts”: {
“max-size”: “10m”,
“max-file”: “3”
}
Often, the overlay filesystem is being used. What
this does is that each additional write creates a new
layered filesystem.
Finally, if you just want to clean up the environment
and damn the consequences, you can use docker
prune -a . This is considered the nuclear option. It
removes any non-running containers and unused
images, as well as networks that are not used by at
least one container. Note that last part: it also deletes
unused networks.
For safety’s sake, it does not remove the volumes.
To remove unused volumes, use docker purge
--volumes -a . This does all that the standard command
does but also removes unused volumes – risky. Ensure
there is a good backup before doing this.
In summary, keeping a clean Docker installation
isn’t just good practice but it can save money by
helping to prevent the growth sprawl that necessitates
purchasing additional disk space.
October 2023 LXF307 75
REVIEWS Password manager

Bitwarden
A powerful, feature-packed open source password manager
with a free option and decent pricing, thinks Mike Jennings.
itwarden takes a different
IN BRIEF
There’s lots
B approach from most
password manager tools
to like about because it’s released under the open
Bitwarden. It source licence. But there’s more to
has rock-solid like about this app beyond it being
security options open source. Bitwarden promises
bolstered by easy, powerful security within
the app’s open minutes, unlimited password and
source status. device support, and secure,
It works with encrypted sharing.
virtually every Subscriptions begin for free, and
device and for many this is more than sufficient,
browser you because it supports an unlimited
could think number of passwords and device
of – so it’s syncing. Typically, rival companies’ With a full range of browser, platform and mobile support, all the boxes are ticked.
impressively free plans limit users to just one
versatile, too. active device, so this is a real selling point for Bitwarden. Bitwarden includes plenty of features to make
Sharing passwords is also included in the free plan, as is life easier. It automatically fills forms, quickly syncs
a password generator and support for email aliases. passwords and data across devices, and tests passwords
Upgrading to the $10 per year Premium plan adds for strength levels. Like many other apps, it monitors
emergency access, advanced 2FA, an authentication your password vault and lets you know if your
module and security reporting alongside priority information has been exposed in a security breach.
customer support. Paying customers can also send Bitwarden has announced that passkey support is
encrypted files, which is good for sharing sensitive coming in the summer of 2023, so it should be just
information like bank statements and bills. There is also around the corner. It works both ways, which means
a family option at $40 per year, and Team packages users will soon be able to set up a passkey for their
from $3 per member per month, with API access and Bitwarden account to skip the master password stage.
unlimited sharing. An Enterprise package bumps this to Most importantly, third-party sites that support passkeys
$5 per member per month but adds single sign on and can be added to the extension or app.
full admin controls. All of these can be self hosted, too. This is an active open source project, so there’s plenty
of support in the form of an online community, tutorials, a
Platform games knowledge base and forums. Every common feature has
Setup is a breeze and it happily imports LastPass, a well-written tutorial, and the user forums, while basic,
1Password, Firefox, Chrome, Edge and more config files. are active and helpful. You can even email the Bitwarden
It has superb platform support, too. There are Windows, developers for support via an online support portal, with
Mac OS and Linux desktop clients, and extensions for Premium subscribers getting priority. The only thing
every major browser, such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox and missing is phone support – that would have been a
Edge, alongside more obscure options, such as Vivaldi, welcome addition, especially for business customers.
Brave, Tor and Opera. For mobile users, the iOS app is
accompanied by a Watch OS app for Apple Watches, and
Android users are also catered for. Bitwarden supports
VERDICT
command-line use and can be accessed on the web. DEVELOPER: Bitwarden
Bitwarden has a sleek, straightforward interface that WEB: www.bitwarden.com
enables you to easily search and access your passwords PRICE: Free or $10 per year
and secure data. It’s not as slick-looking as some other
tools, but the app’s functionality is more important. FEATURES 9/10 EASE OF USE 9/10
While there are desktop clients for viewing or editing PERFORMANCE 9/10 VALUE 9/10
credentials, and checking other account information,
most people rarely use them in favour of the extensions One of the top password managers around, Bitwarden is
CREDIT: Bitwarden

that serve the password manager’s primary function: to secure, feature-packed and open source, and has support
automatically fill out login details and capture new ones. for mobile devices.
Adding a new item is as easy as filling in a simple form,
and you can attach notes and custom fields to each Rating 9/10
entry for total personalisation.

76 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


ExpressVPN
Looking behind the hype machine, Mike Williams wonders
whether this is as good as it sounds?
xpressVPN has ramped up its investment in
IN BRIEF
This is a top-
E third-party audits over the past year, and the
results are spectacular. While other providers
quality VPN that expect you to be impressed by a single app audit from
exceeds our years ago, ExpressVPN released the results of 11 audits
expectations in 2022 alone.
in everything Another recent highlight is Keys, ExpressVPN’s highly
from platform configurable secure password manager that comes free
coverage and with your subscription. Significant new features include
privacy, to support for saving credit card details and secure notes,
ease of use, and even importing credentials to Chrome. This is
unblocking excellent news, but Keys is being rolled out gradually, and
abilities and you may not have access to it yet on your device.
excellent Elsewhere, ExpressVPN has released Aircove, a
customer powerful Cure53-audited Wi-Fi 6 router with the
support. More company’s router app built-in. Set this up at home and
expensive than all your devices can use ExpressVPN, without having to
most, but you install apps or worrying about device connection limits.
can see why. The company offers a vast network of more than
3,000 servers across 160 cities in 94 countries. Europe
and the US have the best coverage, but ExpressVPN also
has many locations in Asia and several countries that
rarely appear elsewhere. There are 26 Asia-Pacific
countries alone; by comparison, Mozilla VPN only has
around 30 countries in its entire network.
Shields up!
ExpressVPN’s privacy protection begins with its choice
of highly secure protocols (OpenVPN and its own open
source Lightway), with industrial-strength encryption to
shield your data from even the best-equipped attacker.
ExpressVPN also runs its own private, zero-
knowledge, 256-bit encrypted DNS on every server. This
prevents data about your online activities leaking out of
the VPN tunnel, keeping you safe from every angle. We
put the mobile and desktop apps through the wringer,
using multiple leak-testing websites, and couldn’t find
any trace of DNS or traffic leaks.
Check out the typical VPN website and you usually
find ‘no logging’ claims prominently displayed, but often
behind that there is a privacy policy that either gives you
very little detail on specifics or reveals that the company
does log some of your information after all.
ExpressVPN does things differently. Out goes the
usual fact-free ‘zero logs’ boasting, in comes a clearly
written Policy Towards Logs document, which explains
precisely what ExpressVPN collects, what it doesn’t, why
the service works this way, and what it means for you.
Speed is an important factor when choosing a VPN,
and we run intensive tests to see what a service is
capable of. While ExpressVPN offers some fantastic
speeds, it’s by no means the fastest VPN. Its peak
OpenVPN speeds were reasonable at 280Mb/s. That
outperforms VyprVPN (100Mb/s), Surfshark (130Mb/s),
IPVanish (225Mb/s) and NordVPN (240Mb/s), although
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
VPN REVIEWS
No matter your requirements, ExpressVPN delivers secure connections.
some did better. Private Internet Access, Proton VPN
and Windscribe all beat 300Mb/s, and Mullvad soared to
an exceptional 500Mb/s.
The real star is ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol,
though, which accelerated its average download speeds
to between 720Mb/s and 750Mb/s – a significant jump
from our previous tests, which clocked in at 560Mb/s.
Unlike most of the competition, ExpressVPN doesn’t
just make vague claims about its unblocking abilities.
The company publicly specifies which platforms are
supported: Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Disney
Plus, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and others. It’s good to
see a provider being upfront about what it claims to do.
Support is wide and full, covering Linux, Windows,
Mac OS, Android, iOS, routers, Chromebook and Kindle,
with Chrome and Firefox extensions that provide direct
control from your browser.
ExpressVPN’s support site gets off to a good start
with its list of troubleshooting guides. Most articles are
well written and deliver in all the key areas. The setup
articles are even more impressive. And this isn’t just
about Windows – it covers Linux, iOS, Android, Mac,
Chromebooks, Smart TVs, routers and anything else you
can think of. The chat support was well above average,
too, with agents spending a long time patiently walking
us through some well-chosen diagnostic steps.
VERDICT
DEVELOPER: ExpressVPN
WEB: www.expressvpn.com
PRICE: From £5.53 per month
FEATURES 9/10 EASE OF USE 9/10
PERFORMANCE 9/10 VALUE 8/10
A huge network, plus it’s fast, secure, unblocks Netflix and
just about everything else, supports torrents, has no serious
logging, offers apps for everything, and is easy to use.
Rating 9/10
October 2023 LXF307 77
IN DEPTH Wi-Fi 7
Next-gen Wi-Fi
Another new wireless technology, already? Darien Graham-Smith
looks ahead to the seventh generation of the IEEE networking standard.
f you’re not ready for Wi-Fi 7, that’s
I understandable. Most of us haven’t caught
up with Wi-Fi 6E yet, which only hit the
mainstream around 2020 while we were
distracted by other issues. Strictly speaking, though,
Wi-Fi 6E wasn’t a new standard. While it introduced
support for wireless networking in the 6GHz frequency
range, it’s otherwise based on the same 802.11ax spec
as Wi-Fi 6. It could have been called Wi-Fi 6.1.
So it’s getting on for four years since the last major
Wi-Fi update – which is about par for the course. From
the original 802.11b release in 1999 onwards, each
generation has reigned for between four and six years,
before being replaced by something smarter and
faster. Wi-Fi 6 was adopted in 2019, and Wi-Fi 7 is due
to be finalised in 2024 – so it fits the pattern perfectly.
That doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have to wait
until next year to move up to Wi-Fi 7. The core features
TIMELINE: The when and where of Wi-Fi
1999: 802.11b
The first mainstream Wi-Fi standard, 802.11b operated
exclusively on the 2.4GHz band. It offered connection speeds
of up to 11Mbits/sec, and could work on any of 13 user-
selectable 20MHz channels to avoid interference. The
companion 802.11a standard used the faster 5GHz frequency
range and better encoding, but licensing delays and higher
manufacturing costs meant it never caught on.
78 LXF307 October 2023
and technologies are already firmly defined, allowing
manufacturers to build and release Wi-Fi 7 hardware
well ahead of the final sign-off. Indeed, as we’ll discuss,
you can already buy a handful of Wi-Fi 7 devices.
That’s how it goes in the world of Wi-Fi: 802.11n and
CREDIT: Rawpixel Ltd/iStock/Getty Images Plus
802.11ac routers were widely available long before the
standards had been finalised. Indeed, while Wi-Fi 6 was
released in 2019, the standard wasn’t fully signed off
until February 2021 – 16 months after we’d tried our
first Wi-Fi 6 router, the Asus RT-AX88U.
QAM jam
Wi-Fi 7 uses the same OFDMA technology as Wi-Fi 6,
which divides up the airwaves according to demand
(and the router’s QoS rules), so that multiple devices
can smoothly share the available bandwidth.
However, each ‘slot’ in a Wi-Fi 7 connection carries
more data than before, thanks to the use of higher-
2003: 802.11g
The first major Wi-Fi upgrade used the same 13
channels as 802.11b, while raising the maximum data
rate to 54Mbits/sec. As would become the norm, the
specification was designed for backwards compatibility
with older devices – but if a single 802.11b client
was connected to an 802.11g network, it slowed the
connection down for everyone.
www.linuxformat.com
 Wi-Fi 7 IN DEPTH

QAM! BAM! THANK YOU MA’AM!

Moving from binary modulation to quad modulation, then adding amplitude modulation takes us from encoding a single binary digit to four binary digits and a total of 16-QAM.

Wireless networks use radio
waves to transmit digital
data. How quickly the waves
oscillate – 2.4GHz, 5GHz or
6GHz – underlines the overall
speed. You add channels,
which are blocks of
wavelengths within those
frequency ranges. But
how does digital data get
encoded on to radio waves?
It takes the form of a type
of modulation – a system
where the waveform is
altered in a way so the
data can be retrieved at the
receiving end. The industry
uses Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM) – yay, we
know some of those words!
You can see a traditionally
drawn sine wave with some
numbered dots on it (above
left). Alongside this is a polar
coordinate chart (a circular
plot) representation of the
same sine wave. This plots a
full cycle of the wavelength
around the 360 degrees of a
circle, and you can see where
the path tracks through.
Let’s send some data: if
you receive a waveform of
0 to 180 degrees, that’s a 0,
but if it’s shifted to 180 to
360 degrees, it’s a 1. What
we’ve just invented is Binary
Phase Shift Keying (BPSK):
shift the phase 180 degrees
and you change the value. On
a polar chart, you’ll see this
gives a huge margin of error,
making it very robust, and it’s
the base modulation scheme
for 802.11a/g/n/ac.
The next step is to say
why not encode a number for
every 90 degrees of a phase
shift? This is Quadrature
Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)
and it lets you encode two
bits and twice the amount of
data in the same amount of
wavelength, but halves the
margin of error.
This is where QAM steps
in, which modulates not
just the phase but also the
amplitude (size) of the wave.
In the 16-QAM polar diagram
(above), we have two bits
per quadrant, enabling us to
encode four bits (16 decimal)
per wavelength frame, but
with the margin of error now
a quarter of the size. This is
called 16-QAM, and if you
think this is impressive,
802.11a supported 64-QAM
back in 1999, and 802.11ac
supports 256-QAM. QAM is a
sliding system; as noise in
the signal increases, the
router will fall back from
256-QAM to 64-QAM, then
16-QAM, 4-QAM (QPSK) and
eventually BPSK, reducing
the data rate but increasing
reliability. Wi-Fi 7 will boost
this to 4,096-QAM!

order QAM – quadrature amplitude modulation. This is
a technique used to encode data in a radio signal by
adjusting the amplitude and phase of a pair of carrier
waves. Different combinations create different wave
patterns, used to represent different binary values.
Since the radio waves themselves are analogue, the
number of values that can be represented is effectively
infinite – the only limitation is how precisely the radio
transceiver can modulate and decode the waves. Wi-Fi
5 used a 256-QAM system, where each wave pattern
encoded eight bits of data, while Wi-Fi 6 increased this
to 1,024-QAM, supporting 10 bits of data. The latest
Wi-Fi 7 standard further boosts this to 4K-QAM,
meaning that the same radio patterns that used to
convey eight or 10 bits of data can now carry 12.
Wi-Fi 7 also brings upgraded MIMO capabilities,
enabling devices to communicate using up to 16
antennae at once – twice as many as Wi-Fi 6. In
practice, we doubt you’ll see a 16x16 MIMO connection.
Multiplexing pushes up the cost and complexity of the
design considerably, which is why consumer Wi-Fi 6
and 6E devices rarely go beyond 2x2 MIMO.
Double lanes
Wi-Fi 6 and 6E benefit from fat 160MHz channels,
twice as wide as those specified in the previous Wi-Fi 5

2008: Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) 2014: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)

The 802.11n standard was the first to use QAM and to bring
5GHz networking into the mainstream – although dual-band
support was optional. Other innovations included 40MHz
channels and MIMO for downlink connections; in theory, these
enabled 802.11n to hit download speeds of 600Mbits/sec,
although most consumer routers topped out at 300Mbits/sec.
In 2018, 802.11n was officially rebranded as Wi-Fi 4.
The adoption of 5GHz networking was slow in the 802.11n era,
so the next version of the standard made support mandatory
for all clients and gateways. It also defined a new 80MHz
channel width, and 256-QAM encoding – a big step up from
the 64-QAM used in the previous generation. This enabled
connection speeds of up to 867Mbits/sec per stream, or as
much as 2.6Gbits/sec for a single client using 3x3 MIMO.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 79

IN DEPTH Wi-Fi 7

Jumping to
6GHz (actually
7GHz in the USA)
increases the
available channels,
and reduces
interference for
a total available
bandwidth of
33Gb/s – but not
to a single device.

standard. Wi-Fi 7 doubles this again, with the maximum
supported channel size going up to 320MHz. That
increases the nominal data rate from 1.2Gbits/sec to
2.4Gbits/sec per stream.
This benefit doesn’t apply on every radio band.
There simply isn’t enough contiguous spectrum
available within the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency ranges
to accommodate such an enormous data channel.
However, the 6GHz band (as licensed in Europe)
offers a broad frequency range, stretching from
5.955GHz to 6.415GHz. Wi-Fi 6E can only use a single
160MHz chunk of that spectrum, but with Wi-Fi 7,
there’s enough space for a full-width 320MHz channel
– plus a second, non-overlapping 160MHz channel
alongside it, should you want to run a second network.
In the United States, the available frequencies go all
the way up to 7.115GHz, allowing three 320MHz
This is how
Netgear envisages
channels to coexist without interference, and Ofcom
us all using its is currently considering whether to permit a similar
Nighthawk RS700. expansion in the UK. An announcement is expected
at the forthcoming World Radiocommunications
Conference in November.
To get the best performance from these ultra-wide
channels, Wi-Fi 7 uses preamble puncturing, which
allows the router to selectively avoid transmitting on
specific frequencies within the 320MHz channel where
interference is detected. This was optional in Wi-Fi 6,
but on next-gen networks it’ll be de rigueur.
Multi-band madness
We’ve mentioned that Wi-Fi 7 devices can use MIMO
to communicate across 16 antennae at once. However,
that only works on a single radio band. Wi-Fi 7 also
introduces a new feature called Multi-Link Operation,
or MLO. This means devices can establish multiple
simultaneous connections to the router across
combinations of the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz ranges.
It’s a revolutionary enhancement. Multiple radio
bands have been supported since 802.11n, but until
now, each device has had to connect to the router on a
single nominated band. The ability to aggregate two or
three links together enables bandwidth to be multiplied
up at a stroke.
In addition to increasing throughput, Multi-Link
Operation can provide more reliable wireless
connections; using traffic analysis and QoS rules, the
router can spot interference, calculate priorities, and
decide which frequencies to use for communicating
with different clients.

Gigabit slow
Most people’s wireless networks can already go faster
than their internet connection. There’s nothing wrong
with that – if it were the other way round, you’d be
paying your ISP for bandwidth you couldn’t use. But

TIMELINE: The when and where of Wi-Fi (continued)

2016: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) Wave 2
A few years after the initial rollout of Wi-Fi 5, the Wi-Fi Alliance
unveiled Wave 2, for Wi-Fi 5 devices that supported a range of
enhanced technologies. These included a 160MHz channel
width, and an increase in the maximum MIMO configuration
from 3x3 to 4x4. Download speeds up to 6.8Gbits/sec were
theoretically attainable, and Wave 2 also introduced MU-MIMO,
allowing multiple devices to enjoy MIMO connections at once.
2019: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
As our homes became increasingly connected and networks
grew increasingly congested, Wi-Fi 6 brought a new airtime-
sharing system called OFDMA, which allowed multiple devices
to interoperate simultaneously with minimal interference. QAM
capabilities were upped to 1,024-QAM, and MIMO support was
expanded to 8x8, for maximum connection speeds of 9.6Gbits/
sec. Wi-Fi 6 also brought uplink MIMO, enabling faster uploads.

80 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Wi-Fi 7 IN DEPTH

I WANT MY WI-FI 7!
As with all Wi-Fi standards,
Wi-Fi 7 devices can connect
to older networks, but if you
want the best performance,
you need a matching router –
and the first Wi-Fi 7 models
on the market are going to
be pretty pricey.
One example is Netgear’s
Nighthawk RS700, due to
launch late September 2023.
This distinctive upright router
promises a total throughput
of up to 19Gbits/sec, with
4x4 MIMO across the
2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz
radio bands. It also includes
10Gbits/sec Ethernet ports
for both WAN and LAN ports,
to support next-generation
internet connections and
high-speed wired clients. The
US RRP is $699.99, which
will probably translate to a
similar number of UK pounds
in the UK.
If that doesn’t appeal,
TP-Link has announced no
fewer than four Wi-Fi 7
routers, alongside three
mesh systems. The lead
product is the Archer BE900,
an imposing device that
matches the Netgear’s
$699.99 price tag but boasts
a cool touchscreen and a
faster all-bands speed rating
of 24Gbits/sec – achieved by
adding a second 5GHz radio,
which means previous-
generation devices won’t
interfere with full-bandwidth
MLO connections. There are
also cheaper tri-band BE800
and BE550 variants, plus
a gamer-focused Archer
GE800, but pricing for these
hasn’t yet been revealed.
On the mesh front, the star
of the show is the TP-Link
Deco BE95, which offers
a massive total bandwidth
of 33Gbits/sec, including
twin 6GHz radios rated at
11.5Gbits/sec each. Without
a doubt, it’ll be far faster than
any mesh we’ve previously
tested – the current
titleholder is the Wi-Fi 6E-
powered Netgear Orbi
RBK963E, which offers an
aggregate connection speed
of 10.8Gbits/sec across its
four radios. It’s also one of
the most expensive systems
we’ve seen, launching at
$1,199 for two units. As
with the Archer, there are
cheaper alternatives – the
BE65 and BE85 are rated at
11Gbits/sec and 22Gbits/sec
respectively, with pricing
and release dates yet to
be confirmed.
Finally, Asus has also
thrown its hat into the ring,
with two initial Wi-Fi 7
offerings. The RT-BE96U
matches the Netgear’s
19Gbits/sec speed rating and
its twin 10GbE ports, while
the gaming-oriented ROG
Rapture GT-BE98 adds a
second 5GHz radio, similar to
the TP-Link Archer BE900.
Currently there’s no release
date or pricing for these
routers, but watch this space.

you might well be wondering, therefore, what the point
is in introducing even faster wireless.
One answer is that internet connections keep on
getting faster. In the labs, we’ve found that the latest
Wi-Fi 6E routers transfer data at between 500 and
800Mbits/sec at short range, falling to 250Mbits/sec
in other rooms. In the next few years, as gigabit and
multi-gigabit broadband lines become cheaper and
more widely available, a growing number of households
will find that a Wi-Fi 6 router holds them back.
Remember, too, that not all networking involves
the internet. Our homes contain a growing number of
smart appliances, which are continually talking to hubs
and to one another. And while we’re storing more and
more data in the cloud, domestic NAS systems remain
CREDIT: TP-link, Qualcomm, Netgear
depends enormously on the specific environment.
What we can say is that a typical latency of around
10ms has been suggested for Wi-Fi 7, potentially
falling as low as 1ms with the right hardware and a
strong signal. To put that into context, Nvidia’s cloud-
based GeForce NOW gaming service recommends a
latency of 40ms or less for an optimal experience –
suggesting that any lag from your Wi-Fi 7 router should
be unnoticeable. Though the latency of your internet
connection might be another story, of course…
The TP-Link
Wi-Fi 7 is already in the building Archer BE900
If you’re eager to get your mitts on a device with a offers 10Gb/s
Ethernet linked
shiny Wi-Fi 7 logo, you don’t need to wait until next
to 24Gb/s Wi-Fi 7
year. Broadcom has been shipping fully featured Wi-Fi for maximum

popular for convenient shared storage and bulk
archival. The huge bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7 can keep
all this data flowing swiftly.
There’s another factor to consider, too. Wi-Fi 7
doesn’t aim only for faster transfers, but also for lower
latency. That means it’s ready for the incoming age of
game streaming and extended reality – applications
that demand a near-instant response to user input.
It’s hard to put a figure on the benefit compared to
earlier Wi-Fi standards, because real-world latency
2020: Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)
More a variant than a true standard, Wi-Fi 6E is a version of
Wi-Fi 6 that adds support for connections in the 6GHz radio
band. Otherwise the encoding and transmission systems are
identical to those in Wi-Fi 6 – but reduced interference in the
higher frequency range means that 6E devices often achieve
better real-world performance than a standard Wi-Fi 6
connection on the 5GHz band.
7 chipsets to device manufacturers since April 2022, throughput.
and both Qualcomm and MediaTek are now offering
their own Wi-Fi 7 solutions.
In fact, two fast-moving Chinese manufacturers
are already offering Wi-Fi 7-enabled smartphones,
namely the OnePlus 11 5G and the Xiaomi 13 Pro.
Other flagship Android phones such as the Samsung
Galaxy and Google Pixel series will likely follow suit in
their next generations. iPhone fans may need to wait
a little longer, as Apple tends to lag behind the curve
when it comes to Wi-Fi – the iPhone 15
is expected to ship with Wi-Fi 6E.
It’s a similar situation with
computers. 802.11be expansion cards
will probably appear in the second half
of 2023, which means custom-built
PCs with Wi-Fi 7 are likely only a
matter of months away – and existing
systems with an accessible PCIe or
M.2 2230 slot should be easily
upgradable. Intel says the new Keep an eye out
networking tech will be standard for the new Wi-Fi
on Core-powered PCs in 2024. 7 certification.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 81

GET ALL THE ESSENTIAL BREAKING
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THE BEST NEW OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE ON THE PLANET

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OnionShare Bulky Sweeper KDiskMark Min they make a Star Wars/Star
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something meaningful, like
read HotPicks.

FILE SHARING

OnionShare
Version: 2.6
Web: https://onionshare.org

here’s a growing list of secure file transfer

T services that help you ferry large files

across the internet without placing trust in
centralised services such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
But then again, these security-centric services usually
require you to create an account or employ other
means to ensure your transfers aren’t anonymous.
OnionShare, which transfers files over the Tor
network, can help you maintain both.
There are various ways to install OnionShare for In addition to sharing files, you can also use OnionShare to chat anonymously, and even create
Linux, but the recommended way is to use either the censorship-proof websites on the Tor network.
Flatpak or the Snap package. You can grab the app
from FlatHub with flatpak install flathub org.
onionshare.OnionShare . LET’S EXPLORE ONIONSHARE...
The first order of business after firing up the app
is to smash the Connect To Tor button. You can also
toggle the auto-connect option to save yourself a 1
click. After you’ve latched on to the Tor network, the
app shows you the four buttons available for its four
different functions. 2 3
To share files, select the Share Files option and just
add the files or folders you wish to share. The app
then generates a .onion URL that you have to pass on
to the recipient, along with the private key. You can
optionally make the share public, which makes the
files available to anyone with the .onion URL.
The person at the other end doesn’t need the 4
OnionShare app. Instead they have to use the Tor
Browser to open the URL, along with the private key
to download the files. You can also ask the app to
show a QR code for the URL as well as the public key.
You can also run OnionShare in Receive mode, Tabs Track shares
which enables people to upload files into your 1 You can use OnionShare to run multiple 3 OnionShare keeps track of the files you
computer. Think of it as a sort of a personal dropbox. shares or functions concurrently, each of which have shared, whether they are downloaded
You can also use the application to publish a static runs in its own tab. separately or as a bundle.
website on the Tor network with the Host A Website
Shared files Share details
option. It asks you for the HTML and other files that 2 Displays both the name and size of 4 These are the .onion URL and the private
make up your website, and then spits out the .onion all the files that are being shared, along with key any recipient needs in order to download
URL for your site. their totals. the shared files.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 83

HOTPICKS
FILE RENAMER
Bulky
Version: 2.10 Web: https://github.
com/linuxmint/bulky
ven though Linux does a decent job of
E renaming multiple files at once, certain
operations require the finesse of a more
specialised tool.
Bulky is a simple tool for renaming multiple files
and folders in Linux. It’s developed by the Linux Mint
distro, but it works on other Deb-based distributions
as well, and supports multiple desktop environments,
from Mint’s home-grown Cinnamon and Mate, to
mainstream ones such as Gnome.
To install the utility, download the latest release from
its GitHub page. Extract the contents with tar xvf
packages.tar.gz . Now head to the extracted packages
directory, right-click the DEB file and choose the Open
With Another Application option. Select Software
Install from the program list, and click the Install button
to install the app and any required dependencies.
The app has a straightforward interface. Begin by
using the + button to point Bulky to the files that you
want to rename. Now enter the name you wish to
replace in the Find field, followed by the new name in
TEMP FILE CLEANER
Sweeper
Version: 23.04.3
Web: https://apps.kde.org/sweeper
here’s no dearth of system cleaners on Linux.
T What sets Sweeper apart is its focus on
removing crud that puts your privacy at risk.
Installing it is pretty simple because it’s available as
a Snap package. If you’ve added support for installing
Snap packages in your distro, you can install the app
itself with sudo snap install sweeper .
There are two main elements that the app is
designed to scrub, which are organised in two self-
explanatory sections: General and Web Browsing.
In the General section, you get options to help clear
the list of recently used apps currently advertised
in the KDE menu for everyone to see. Similarly, there’s
also the option to wipe the entire history of commands
you’ve executed through the Run Command tool.
Finally there’s the option to zap all cached thumbnails.
The Web Browsing section offers a lot more
options. For starters, you can select the options to
clear the web history, pairing it with the ability to
empty the temporary cache, as well as the form
completion entries.
84 LXF307 October 2023
Instead of working
with characters,
advanced users
can use Bulky to
find and replace
names with regular
expressions.
the Replace field. To help you, the application
automatically displays the original and the replaced
name as per the details you have entered in the
preview window on top. When you are satisfied,
hit the Rename button.
By default, the app renames files by finding the
specified characters and replacing them with the new
ones. However, you can ask Bulky to remove or insert
characters from the filename, and even change the
case of certain ones. In all cases, the app gives a lot
of dexterity to change the characters.
Similarly, by default the app acts on the name of the
file. But you can use the drop-down to make it act on
the extension – for instance, change all .png to .jpg – or
even the entire filename.
Sweeper can help
increase your
privacy without
much effort,
especially on
systems that are
shared between
multiple users.
For additional privacy, you can also select the option
to clear all the accumulated cookies preserved by the
websites you’ve visited. While you’re at it, you might
also choose to clear out the cache favicons from
visited websites, along with the option to even get rid
of the cookie policies from the visited websites.
Remember that although you can technically
install the app on non-KDE desktops, it only works its
magic on top of a KDE desktop. Secondly, just like the
previous utility, the one thing that makes Sweeper a
breeze to use – its simplicity – can also be seen as a
hindrance. Its lack of dexterity, while appealing to first-
time users, wouldn’t impress experienced campaigners
who’d prefer something more thorough in its approach,
such as rmLint (see LXF304, p.87).
www.linuxformat.com

DISK BENCHMARK
KDiskMark
Version: 1.4 Web: https://github.com/
JonMagon/KDiskMark
here are various reasons for benchmarking
T hardware. You might do it simply to compare
your hardware with someone else’s, or to
verify that the new hardware is actually performing as
advertised, or just to ensure your old hardware hasn’t
lost its sheen.
There are tools that can benchmark all kinds of
hardware, and then there are specialists designed
to probe a specific piece of kit. KDiskMark is the
latter and is meant to measure the performance of
storage drives. It can determine read and write speed
estimates with good accuracy for both hard drives
and solid state drives. It can also run benchmarks on
external drives connected to your Linux system.
Despite being a KDE utility, you can use it on any
desktop on any Linux distro, because it’s available as
an AppImage. Just grab the latest release from its
GitHub page, make it an executable with chmod +x
and double-click on the file to launch it.
You can then press the All button to initiate the
benchmark. By default, it runs the test with a block size
WEB BROWSER
Min
Version: 1.28.1
Web: https://minbrowser.org
here certainly isn’t a lack of web browsers,
T and they are constantly trying to outdo the
competition by rolling out new features. Min
takes a different approach. As its name suggests,
Min is a minimalist browser designed to let you browse
without distractions. And while it doesn’t have the bells
and whistles you get with mainstream alternatives, Min
isn’t really a pauper either, and bundles quite a lot of the
most useful browser functionalities.
The project offers pre-compiled binaries for both
DEB and RPM-based distros. Just grab the ones for
your distribution and install them with the default
package manager.
The browser does appear pretty bare-bones, but it’ll
grow on you. It has tabs, but unlike with mainstream
browsers, tabs that you’ve haven’t looked at in a while
fade out in Min. If you have too many of them, you can
split them into groups for better organisation.
Min uses DuckDuckGo by default, but you can swap
it out with any other search engine. Talking of searches,
Min allows you to search through the full text of every
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
HOTPICKS
If you’re using the
AppImage version,
fire it up from the
CLI with superuser
privileges to get
more accurate
results.
of 1GB, and the read and write tests are performed
five times, with a default time interval of five seconds
between each test. You can adjust these settings using
the buttons adjacent to the All button.
Once it’s done, you get the results in two columns,
namely Read and Write. The four rows are the various
testing methods that are used for determining the
speeds, with different CPU thread and cache usage.
You can compare these figures against the advertised
speed of your disk.
Head to Settings > Queries & Threads to fiddle with
the settings if you know what you’re doing. Better still,
head to Profiles to pick a predetermined profile that
automatically sets the test parameters for you.
page you’ve visited, which is pretty handy when you With browser
don’t remember the title of the page. actions, you
can control Min
Also, Min has a built-in ad blocker. By default it
from the search
blocks third-party ads, but can also be configured bar. Type ! to
to block first-party ads. Furthermore, Min also blocks get a whole list
trackers for added privacy. And it’s got a password of actions.
manager, plus a bookmarks manager.
Another feature you get with Min is a reading mode
called Reading List. When enabled, it removes most of
the cruft from a page, enabling you to focus on the text.
Talking of focus, Min also has a Focus Mode that hides
all tabs except the one you’re currently viewing. It also
prevents you from opening other tabs to make sure you
don’t wander off.
October 2023 LXF307 85
HOTPICKS
MEDIA DOWNLOADER & CONVERTOR
OnionMedia X
Version: 2.0.0.1 Web: https://github.
com/onionware-github/OnionMedia-X
he Linuxsphere has some of the best media
T tools and libraries out there. OnionMedia X
combines two of these, namely yt-dlp and
FFmpeg, to enable you to download videos from
several popular streaming platforms and then convert
them into virtually any format.
The app is available as a Flatpak and can be installed
from FlatHub with flatpak install flathub io.github.
onionware_github.onionmedia .
By default, OnionMedia X launches in the Media
Converter mode. You can use the Add button to point
it to a single or multiple video files on your disk. The
app analyses them and displays all the relevant
information, such as resolution, aspect ratio and more,
which you can then modify as per your liking. The app
also offers presets to assist you in the conversion
process. You also have several presets to extract just
the audio from the video files.
While you’re at it, you can also append (or edit)
tags, such as the title, description, artist details and
more, to your converted media files. OnionMedia X also
PHOTO MANAGER
Pwall
Version: 2.1-4 Web: https://github.
com/ltiber/pwall
f you’re as trigger-happy as us (and who isn’t
I these days?), we don’t need to explain the
benefits of an efficient image-management
tool. Luckily, Linux isn’t short of image viewers and
your distro probably ships with one as well.
However, while these tools, and even modern
file managers, do a good job of handling a reasonably
small collection, you really need a purpose-built photo
manager, such as Pwall, to help sort through your
growing library of images.
Pwall supports most image formats, and has all the
necessary photo management and organisation tools
you might need. It’s available as a Flatpak and can be
installed from FlatHub with flatpak install flathub
io.github.ltiber.Pwall .
When you launch it for the first time, you’re asked to
point the app to your photo library. You can obviously
change this location later from within the app. Pwall
then scans your library and creates thumbnails of
all the images in there, which can take some time,
depending on the size of your library.
86 LXF307 October 2023
supports hardware-accelerated encoding to speed up OnionMedia X ships
the conversions. with adequate
defaults, but
To download video, switch to the Media Downloader you can use the
tab, where you get a search bar that you can use to Settings section to
hunt for videos you want to download from YouTube. tweak any of them
You can also paste a direct URL for the video you wish as per your needs.
to grab. While the search function looks for videos on
YouTube, you can paste the URL from other streaming
services as well, such as Vimeo and SoundCloud.
You can add multiple videos to the queue and
download them at the same time. For each one, you
can select a resolution to download the video, or
choose to only download the audio of the file. You also
get a slider that helps you clip and download only a
specific segment of the file.
Once done, Pwall shows the folders of your library’s Pwall can also
main directory in the left pane and a photowall in the share selected
right. You can use the photowall to scroll through your images to your
default mail app,
images. Double-click on an image to view it full-screen. Facebook or
The right-click context menu provides you with WhatsApp Web
different options depending on which pane you’re in. with a single click.
With the left pane, you get options to rename the
folder, or to move it to another location. You can also
create new folders and even delete existing ones.
There’s also the option to search for photos.
On the photowall, the context menu enables you
to copy or move the selected images to a different
location. You can also view their properties, and ask
the app to open them in Google Maps based on their
location EXIF data.
www.linuxformat.com

RETRO GAME LAUNCHER
Nostlan
Version: 2.2 Web: https://quinton-
ashley.github.io/nostlan-web/
inux has become a hot new thing when it
L comes to mainstream gaming, but it’s also the
go-to platform for retro gaming enthusiasts.
As a Linux user you have access to a plethora of
emulators that can recreate all the popular gaming
machines of yore.
With Nostlan, you can save yourself a lot of time
and effort by playing games across different emulators
all from under one roof. The launcher supports a whole
load of emulators to give you access to gaming
platforms including the Nintendo DS, 3DS, PS2, PS3,
Wii, Xbox 360 and more.
On Linux, the cross-platform game launcher is
available as a distro-agnostic AppImage. Grab the
latest release from its website, and give it executable
permissions either using the file manager or with the
chmod +x command.
On first launch, Nostlan runs through a small setup
wizard to help you pick the default language and
choose its working directory. The app suggests
~/Documents/emu. Make sure you copy your gaming
RPG
DevilutionX
Version: 1.5.0 Web: https://github.com/
diasurgical/devilutionX
evilutionX is a port of Diablo and its Hellfire
D extension pack for modern machines. It also
expands new features to its gaming engine
and gameplay, while ironing out bugs.
The game is available as a Flatpak and can be
installed from FlatHub with flatpak install flathub org.
diasurgical.DevilutionX . To play, you need the MPQ
files from the original game.
To get you hooked, DevilutionX includes a
shareware version of the game, but for the full gaming
experience, you need to purchase the original from
GOG, extract several MPQ files (using the Innoextract
utility), and place them in ~/.var/app/org.diasurgical.
DevilutionX/data/diasurgical/devilution:
$ innoextract -I DIABDAT.MPQ -I hellfire.mpq -I
hfmonk.mpq -I hfmusic.mpq -I hfvoice.mpq ‘setup_
diablo_1.09_hellfire_v2_(30038).exe’
$ mv hellfire/h*.mpq ~/.var/app/org.diasurgical.
DevilutionX/data/diasurgical/devilution
Some of the improvements with DevilutionX include
the ability to select the difficulty level in single-player
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Games HOTPICKS
ROMs inside the respective gaming directory under Nostlan’s 10-foot
~/Document/emu and the launcher can pick them. UI is one of the
distinctive features
Although you can navigate Nostlan using a mouse
of the app that
and keyboard, it’s designed to be used with a game helps set it apart
controller. Best of all, most controllers work with from other
Nostlan automatically, with no need for prior setup. launchers, and
When you select the system, the app looks good across
laptops, big TVs,
automatically detects the game ROM and downloads and projectors.
the appropriate artwork. When you click Play, it
invokes the emulator required to play the ROM.
One handy feature of Nostlan is that if it can’t find
an emulator to play a ROM, it offers to fetch and
install the relevant one for you. Although you can use
the app for free, joining its Patreon gets you access
to additional features, such as the ability to back up
your game save data to local storage or to the cloud.
mode, and within the game, you can press and hold DevilutionX
has several UI
the mouse to continue to attack and lock on target.
improvements over
Other helpful gameplay improvements include the original, such
the ability to shift-click on items for quick actions. as the ability to
For instance, shift-click consumables to move them view other players
between the belt and the inventory or your stash, or on the map.
shift-click equipment to equip from or unequip to
the inventory or your stash.
One of the best engine improvements are the
three modes for setting up multiplayer games. You
can play over the Zerotier network that provides the
easiest way to play with others over the internet.
Besides this, the DevilutionX port supports high
FPS, and can upscale to desktop resolutions and
expand to the aspect ratio of modern monitors.
October 2023 LXF307 87
HOTPICKS
PDF METADATA EDITOR
Paper Clip
Version: 3.2 Web: https://github.com/
Diego-Ivan/Paper-Clip
nlike images and videos, metadata in PDF files
U doesn’t pose a threat to your privacy. However,
PDF metadata is pretty handy if you are a
writer, a student, or anyone who manages hoards of
digital documents.
Appending the right kind of metadata helps you
sort through your documents a lot more efficiently.
And if you’re sharing the document online, having the
correct metadata also endears it to search engines,
making it easier to find. Paper Clip is a nice little utility
that you can use to view and edit all the essential
metadata embedded in a PDF file.
The app is distributed as a Flatpak via FlatHub and
can be installed with flatpak install flathub io.github.
diegoivan.pdf_metadata_editor .
In Paper Clip’s straightforward interface, start by
pointing it to a PDF file. Unlike a PDF viewer, Paper
Clip doesn’t display the contents of the PDF file, but
instead shows its metadata.
You can edit or add basic details such as the title of
the file, along with its subject and author’s name. You
MENU EDITOR
Menu Editor
Version: 1.0
Web: https://codeberg.org/libre-
menu-editor/libre-menu-editor
s its name implies, Menu Editor enables you to
A make changes to your desktop’s application
menu. It works with different desktops, such
as Gnome, KDE, Xfce, and can create new launchers,
as well as modify existing ones.
On top of that, you can use it on any distro because
it’s available as a distro-agnostic Flatpak, which you
can install with flatpak install flathub page.codeberg.
libre_menu_editor.LibreMenuEditor .
When you fire up Menu Editor, it displays a long list
of all the apps installed on your system in the left pane.
You can then click on any of them to reveal options to
tweak their existing values in the right pane.
For starters, you can change their name and icon.
The app has a toggle at the top of every app launcher
that you can turn off to prevent the app from showing
up in the Applications Menu. Head to the hamburger
menu and select Delete Launcher to remove an app
launcher for good. If you’ve messed up, the hamburger
menu has an option to reset launchers to their defaults.
88 LXF307 October 2023
Paper Clip
doesn’t have
any configurable
parameters, but
you can ask it
to open the PDF
in an external
PDF viewer.
can also edit or delete the name of the software
used to create and convert it into a PDF, along with
the date of creation and last modification.
All of these metadata attributes are optional and
you can choose to delete the existing data – say, for
instance, if you don’t want people to find out what
software you used to create the PDF.
In addition to viewing and editing these essential
metadata attributes, you can add as many keywords
as you want, which helps improve the file’s
discoverability. When done, head to the hamburger
menu and hit Save to burn them into the PDF.
Depending on your
distro, changes
made by Main
Menu might not
show up until you
log out and log
back in.
The app gives you the option to filter the list of
launchers by showing hidden and disabled launchers
in the sidebar. You can also find launchers by using
the search bar. In addition to editing existing ones,
you can also use the app to create custom launchers.
One of Menu Editor’s many interesting options is
its ability to create, edit and remove launcher actions.
These are custom entries that show up when you
right-click on the app launcher, such as the option to
open a new private window in Firefox.
Experienced users can also ask Menu Editor to
open the launcher configuration files in their text
editor, in case you ever need to add comments to
explain a change.
www.linuxformat.com
CODING ACADEMY
CODING ACADEMY Text adventure

LXF ADVENTURE Part four!

Catch up by
ordering back
Credit: https://github.com/azuregate
issues on

Text adventures:
page 62!

now in full colour!

Nate Drake embraces ancient graphics and dinky sound effects
in the final part of our text adventure coding series.

hat dungeon would be

W complete without a splash of

paint? While text adventures
traditionally are just so, that doesn’t
mean you need to make your player
OUR suffer through endless screens of
black and white. Plenty of simple
EXPERT text games incorporate elements of
Nate Drake colour, sound effects and even simple
wants to graphics, which are the focus of the
dedicate this final part of this series of tutorials.
series to his If you’ve been following the
dad, who once previous articles in this series, by
told him that no now your text adventure should be
one was ever starting to take shape. Your character You can use the coloroma module to change the text colour and style.
going to pay him can move freely between rooms, Here the room name is shown in a more striking font.
to sit around interacting with items. Some are
and play helpful and some hinder them. Through introducing Next, let’s try to update the listinventory procedure
video games. HP (hit points), players now have a vested interest in to show separate values, such as the player name,
keeping their character alive. using different colours:
The combat mechanic, while basic, also enables def listinventory():
them to take turns hitting whatever creatures you # Print player information in a separate colored
spawn, then (hopefully) rifle their cold, dead corpses section
You can find a for loot. print(Fore.YELLOW + “+-------------------------+”)
full list of ANSI If you’re a particularly gifted graphic designer, you print(“|”, f” {player.name}’s Inventory “, “|”)
escape codes could spend weeks crafting cunning polygonal images print(“| HP:”, player.hp, “ “ * (20 - len(str(player.hp))),
for both the and create your fully graphical game from scratch. “|”)
foreground and Even if you’re less artistically inclined, though, there’s print(“+-------------------------+”)
background no reason why your text adventure can’t be a little print(Style.RESET_ALL)
colours at
easier on the eye. # Print the inventory items in a separate colored
https://t.ly/
Since Python games can be run from the terminal, section
fvUmx. Take
some time to you can harness its potential to show different text if player.inventory:
experiment with fonts and colours. print(Fore.CYAN + “You are carrying:”)
different effects The easiest way to do this is through the colorama for item in player.inventory:
but remember module, which supports various text effects. If you print(f”- {item.name}”)
that some don’t already have this installed, open your terminal print(Style.RESET_ALL)
codes affect and run: else:
other aspects $ sudo apt install python3-colorama print(Fore.CYAN + “Your inventory is empty.”)
of the terminal, You can now get started by adding the following at print(Style.RESET_ALL)
such as the
the start of your Python script: As you can see, by adding Fore.COLOUR to the
cursor position.
from colorama import Fore, Style print command, the terminal outputs all text in that

90 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com

 Text adventure CODING ACADEMY

colour until it receives another command. This is why

the first two lines (both player name and the number of
HP) are in yellow. You can make use of the RESET_ALL
command to return text settings to default.
You can also use the Style attribute to good effect
when you want to make certain text stand out. For
example, you could use bright to make the title of a
room stand out:
print(Fore.CYAN + Style.BRIGHT + player.
currentroom.name + Style.RESET_ALL)
print(Fore.WHITE + player.currentroom.description)
Here the RESET_ALL command is invoked to set
the style back to normal for the room description.
You can download a sample script with these
colour effects from: https://github.com/azuregate/
lxfpythontextadventure/blob/main/
testroomcolorscript1.py enemy = room_enemy The time module
can be used
break
to change the
Green and read all over if enemy and enemy.alive: speed at which
Using the coloroma module to display text has a print(f”\033[31mA battle begins with the {enemy. text is displayed,
number of advantages, chief among which is that it’s name}!\033[0m”) adding a little
very easy to read and tweak instructions using actual while enemy.alive and player.hp > 0: more anticipation
to combat.
names of colours such as YELLOW and CYAN. player_damage = player.weapon.damage
If you prefer, though, you can display coloured text enemy.hp -= player_damage
using the corresponding ANSI escape codes instead. print(f”\033[32mYou hit the {enemy.name} with your
This can make the code more difficult to read because, {player.weapon.name}. It causes {player_damage}
for instance, you need to remember that a value such damage.\033[0m”) The sounds of
as \033 corresponds to red. if enemy.hp <= 0: the battlefield
On the plus side, you don’t need to use any external enemy.alive = False in this tutorial
libraries, making your code much leaner. We don’t print(f”\033[31mThe {enemy.name} has been have been
insist on one particular approach, so feel free to try out defeated!\033[0m”) provided by the
both colorama and raw ANSI codes to see which suits lootbody(enemy) good people
of https://
you better. break
freesound.
You can use this to make combat a little easier to enemy_damage = enemy.weapon.damage
org. Be sure to
follow by making your attacks appear in green and your player.hp -= enemy_damage check you have
enemy’s attacks red: print(f”\033[31mThe {enemy.name} hits you with its the permission
def fight(enemy_name): {enemy.weapon.name}. It causes {enemy_damage} of the creator
current_room = player.currentroom damage.\033[0m”) before using
enemy = None checkhp() any sounds in-
if player.weapon is None: if player.hp <= 0: game. Pygame
print(“You can’t fight without a weapon!”) print(“\033[31mYou have been defeated! Game supports
return Over.\033[0m”) playback of
WAV, MP3 and
for room_enemy in current_room.enemies: exit(0)
OGG files.
if room_enemy.name.lower() == enemy_name.lower(): else:

INTRODUCING IMAGES
The text adventure genre is such that
the illusion is rather ruined by images.
They can be a welcome distraction but
if you don’t have them for every area,
players may complain they feel cheated.
Unlike text, images also don’t always
appear in the same way when run on
different systems.
This is why we haven’t used images in
this series of tutorials but, as Bob Ross
would say, this is “your world”, so if you
want pictures, you should have them.
To get started, you need to install the
powerful Pillow image-processing library
via the terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install python3-pil
Add these lines to the top of the
Python script in which you want images:
from PIL import Image
import os
You can now create a procedure to
load images:
def display_image(file_path):
try:
img = Image.open(file_path)
img.show()
except Exception as e:
print(“Error:”, e)
image_path = “/home/yourusername/
image.jpg”
if os.path.exists(image_path):
display_image(image_path)
else:
print(“Image file not found.”)
Make sure to update image_path to
the actual path for your image. If you
plan to do this on a room by room basis,
you may want to add a new image_path
attribute to the Room class, similar
to how we streamlined the sound
procedure (see box, page 92).
Note that these commands will
display images only in your player’s
default image viewer. If you actually
want to display them in-terminal, you
probably need a specialised emulator.

www.techradar.com/pro/linux October 2023 LXF307 91

CODING ACADEMY Text adventure

print(“There is no such enemy here.”)

Take a moment to run this in your terminal.
You can
download an Building anticipation
example script Now that you’re comfortable altering the style and
containing colour of text, you can start to incorporate this
all the code elsewhere into your code.
used in this In the sample script, there’s a good example of this
and previous using alternating red and green text to make combat
tutorials
a little clearer, but it doesn’t do much to heighten
from https://
excitement when it’s happening. This is because
github.com/
azuregate/ the results of combat are processed by the terminal Use the progressbar2 module to show your player’s HP in a graphical
lxfpythontext almost instantly. bar. Wrapping this into a procedure means you can call it at any time –
adventure/ You can fix this and build a little anticipation using for example, during combat.
blob/main/ the Python time module. This enables you to control
adventure4. how and when events happen. Get started by This is fine as far as it goes but isn’t particularly easy
py. Remember initialising the module at the top of your Python script: on the eye. Luckily, Python modules come in to their
you need to import time own once again here, namely progressbar2, which can
run this in a Next, let’s create a procedure for when you want to display your player’s HP with a nifty graphic.
terminal utility
write your text slowly: To get started, install the necessary module by
to experience all
def typewriter_effect(text, delay=0.1): opening the terminal and running:
the colour and
sound effects. for char in text: $ sudo apt install python3-progressbar2
print(char, end=’’, flush=True) Add the following line to the start of your script:
time.sleep(delay) import progressbar2 as progressbar
print() You can now add a specific procedure to display
The beauty of creating a set procedure for this is your new power bar:
that from now on, you can just swap out the plain old def showhpbar():
print command for typewriter_effect , for instance: progress = player.hp / 10.0 * 100
if enemy and enemy.alive: bar_length = 20
typewriter_effect(f”\033[31mA battle begins with the filled_length = int(bar_length * progress // 100)
{enemy.name}!\033[0m”) bar = ‘’ * filled_length + ‘-’ * (bar_length - filled_
Modify your code accordingly or run the example length)
script to see how this works in practice. Don’t be afraid print(Fore.GREEN + f”HP: [{bar}] {player.hp}/10 HP”)
to tinker with the delay value (currently 0.1) to change return
the speed at which text is shown. Finally, scroll down to the listinventory procedure
and replace:
Pilgrim’s lack of progress print(Fore.GREEN + “HP:”, player.hp)
In the previous tutorial in this series, we introduced with:
player HP, or hit points. Your character starts out with showhpbar()
10 and can check their current HP by running the Having a dedicated procedure to show a graphic of
INVENTORY command at any time during gameplay. your remaining HP makes it easy to display the power

STREAMLINING SOUND
In this tutorial we cover how to create procedures to insert the
sounds of weapons during combat. While this might make for
a more immersive experience, it’s not very efficient because
it requires you to create a specific procedure for every single
weapon. If you want to streamline your sound process, add a
new sound_path attribute to the Weapon class:
class Weapon(Item):
def __init__(self, name, itemdesc, updroomdesc, portable,
revealsitem, usedin, usedesc, removesroomitem,
addsroomitem, useroomdesc, disposable, damage, sound_path):
super().__init__(name, itemdesc, updroomdesc, portable,
revealsitem, usedin, usedesc, removesroomitem,
addsroomitem, useroomdesc, disposable)
self.damage = damage
self.sound_path = sound_path
You can now add the path to the sound file for each weapon:
sword = Weapon(“Sword”, “A sharp and sturdy sword.”, None,
True, None, 0, “You swing the sword around with great skill.”,
None, None, None, False, 2, “/home/nate/mu_code/sword.wav”)
You can now replace individual sound procedures, such as
play_sword_clang, with a more generic one:
def play_player_weapon_sound():
sound_file_path = player.weapon.sound_path
playerweapon_sound = pygame.mixer.Sound(sound_file_
path)
playerweapon_sound.play()
return
Finally, you need to modify the fight procedure to play the
correct sound for the weapon the player is currently wielding
each time they use it:
while enemy.alive and player.hp > 0:
player_damage = player.weapon.damage
enemy.hp -= player_damage
play_player_weapon_sound()
For convenience, you can download an example of this
more efficient code from:
https://github.com/azuregate/lxfpythontextadventure/blob/
main/nextroomsoundscript2.py

92 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


The Pygame library supports sound playback. Here the sword and
mace sounds can be called via separate procedures. You can find a
more efficient implementation of sound in the box, below-left.
bar at other times as well, such as during the
fight procedure.
enemy_damage = enemy.weapon.damage
player.hp -= enemy_damage
typewriter_effect(f”\033[31mThe {enemy.name} hits
you with its {enemy.weapon.name}. It causes {enemy_
damage} damage.\033[0m”)
showhpbar()
As things stand, the HP bar is always displayed in
green. If you want to colour-code it depending on how
many hit points you have remaining, add the following:
if player.hp >4D
Finally, change the last print command in the
showhpbar procedure to:
print(hp_color + f”HP: [{bar}] {player.hp}/10 HP”)
You can download an example of this script that
shows the HP power bar in the player’s inventory and
during combat from: https://github.com/azuregate/
lxfpythontextadventure/blob/main/
testroomprogressbar1.py
Sounds and sorcery
CREDIT: Stephen Roy (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nynyny/2545392976/in/photolist)
Although text adventures aren’t especially rich in
media, some, like Sherlock Holmes: The Riddle of the
Crown Jewels, put sound effects to good use, such as
by playing a cacophony of discordant notes if Doctor
Watson tries to play Holmes’s Stradivarius violin.
Sound is one of the many supported features in
Pygame – a collection of modules that, believe it or
not, are specifically designed to help Python game
creators. To get started, make sure you have Pygame
installed by opening the terminal and running:
$ sudo apt install python3-pygame
Next, open your script and add the following line at
the start:
import pygame
Initialise Pygame by adding:
pygame.init()
If you take the time to download the example
script from https://github.com/azuregate/lxfpython
textadventure/blob/main/nextroomsoundscript1.py,
you’ll see that there is a dedicated procedure for
playing the sound of a sword each time the player
uses it in combat:
def play_sword_clang():
sound_file_path = “/home/nate/mu_code/sword.wav”
sword_sound = pygame.mixer.Sound(sound_file_path)
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Text adventure CODING ACADEMY
sword_sound.play()
return
As you can see here, the path to the sound file
sword.wav (which you can also retrieve from Nate’s
GitHub repo) needs to be modified to make it work
with your game. Make sure the media file is in the same
folder as your Python script.
You can now modify the fight procedure to play
the sound:
while enemy.alive and player.hp > 0:
player_damage = player.weapon.damage
enemy.hp -= player_damage
play_player_weapon_sound()
typewriter_effect(f”\033[32mYou hit the {enemy.
name} with your {player.weapon.name}. It causes
{player_damage} damage.\033[0m”)
The example script also supports playback of a file
mace.wav for whenever the enemy hits your player
during combat.
These effects work well for the example script but
aren’t the most efficient way to code, given you have to
create and invoke a new procedure to play each sound
effect. See the Streamlining Sound box (opposite page)
for a more efficient implementation of this.
Further reading
By now, you’ll be well on your way to a visually stunning
text adventure. In this tutorial, we’ve only made a few
small tweaks to sample scripts in order to encourage
you to be creative.
For instance, sound effects only currently play
during combat, but you may want them to do so when
players use stat items, which increase or decrease
their health. Consider also colour-coding the various
exits in the game to assign shades to each direction,
because this may make it easier to navigate.
You also may want to experiment more with text
effects, changing sizes and the way in which they’re
displayed. Although text adventures usually shy away Although we’re
from full-blown images (see Introducing Images box, against images in
page 91), you could consider using some ASCII art. text adventures in
general, there’s no
Once you’ve finished your game creation, please
reason you can’t
don’t hesitate to contact us at Linux Format to show include a helpful
off your sprawling Python adventure. in-game map.
October 2023 LXF307 93
CODING ACADEMY Breakout

PYGAME Part two!

Don’t miss
Credit: www.pygame.org next issue,
subscribe on

Blast apart classic

page 16!

Breakout gaming code

Matt Holder discovers that rewriting a classic game isn’t as simple
as he first thought, so he has plenty of tips to ease the process.

e’re continuing our recreation of the classic

W game of Breakout. In this game, the player

controls a paddle, which is moved across the
screen, left and right, so that a ball can be bounced
between the paddle and a number of bricks that are
OUR rendered on the screen. The collisions between the
ball and the bricks causes damage, and bricks can
EXPERT then be destroyed. The game contains a number of
Matt Holder power options, such as speeding up the ball, creating
has worked in extra balls, creating an extra paddle, and a laser, which
IT support for fires laser pulses at the bricks, which then causes them
over a decade, to disintegrate.
and always tries Part one of the article, LXF306, described the basic
to utilise Linux mechanics and explained the majority of the classes
alongside the that are being used to describe the various objects.
other installed In this part of the article, we are creating the in-game
systems. logic, which is used to detect keypresses and move the
paddle. The source code of the game is available on
GitHub, and as well as following along with the article,
this commented code is required to get the game to
function as intended. The following code sample shows The recreated game is called Paddle Smash and can be seen here.
an extract from the Bricks.py file:
from BaseSprite import BaseSprite self.collisionsRemaining -= collisionPower
class Brick(BaseSprite): self.alpha -= self.alpha / self._numCollisions
def __init__(self, width, height, positionX, positionY, self.setAlpha()
colour, powerValue=None, numCollisions=1): if self.collisionsRemaining == 0:
super().__init__(width, height, positionX, positionY, self.kill()
image=None, spriteType=”rectangle”, colour=colour, def setAlpha(self):
powerValue=powerValue) self.image.set_alpha(self.alpha)
self._powerInstigated = False In this code sample, we import any necessary
self._numCollisions = numCollisions libraries before defining a new class, which inherits
self._collisionsRemaining = numCollisions from the BaseSprite class. This time, extra variables
self._alpha = 255 required are related to the number of collisions
... necessary to destroy the brick, how many collisions
@property are remaining, and when the power value has been
def powerInstigated(self): used. Next in the sample, we have a number of getters
The code for the return self._powerInstigated and setters to return and set variables from outside of
recreated game ... the initialisation function. We then have a function that
can be found at def registerCollision(self, collisionPower=1): we call when a brick is collided with. This allows for the
https://github. if self.collisionsRemaining != -1: brick to be destroyed when the required number of
com/matt if collisionPower == -1: collisions has been met. Finally, we have a function that
mole/LXF
collisionPower = self.numCollisions is used to set the alpha of our bricks, so that for each
PaddleSmash
if self.collisionsRemaining > 0: collision it becomes more and more translucent.

94 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


The other piece of code that was written for the
game is a config parser class. This will not be printed
here due to size constraints, but a small sample of the
code can be seen in the screenshot (over the page).
Now we have finished defining the objects, let’s
have a look at the main code, which is used to define a
lot of variables, determine what happens each time the
main program loop runs, and capture keypresses:
import pygame
import Constants
from Ball import Ball
...
pygame.init()
fullScreen = False
screenRes = (pygame.display.Info().current_w, pygame.
display.Info().current_h)
screenWidth = pygame.display.Info().current_w / 2
screenHeight = pygame.display.Info().current_h - 100
if fullScreen == True:
screenWidth, screenHeight = pygame.display.Info().
current_w,pygame.display.Info().current_h
frameRate = 60
size = (screenWidth, screenHeight)
if fullScreen == True:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size, pygame.
FULLSCREEN)
else:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)
gameTitle = “Paddle Smash”
window = pygame.display
window.set_caption(gameTitle)
ballRadius = (screenWidth * screenHeight) / 30000
paddleWidth = screenWidth * screenHeight / 5000
...
levelConfigDir = “levels//”
collisionPoints = 10
font = pygame.font.SysFont(None, int(screenHeight /
20))
The first thing we do in this sample is import the
necessary libraries, we then initialise the Pygame
library and define some variables for the size of the
window we need to generate. Note how functionality
has been included to create a full-screen game
window. Next we create the window and set the title.
Then we define some variables to store things such
as the radius of the Ball objects, width of the Paddle
objects, and locations of the level config files. Finally,
we create a variable to score how many points each
brick collision is worth before defining a font to use for
the high score and countdown line.
paddle = Paddle(paddleWidth, paddleHeight, 0,
screenHeight - 100, paddleSpeed)
paddle2 = Paddle(paddleWidth, paddleHeight,
screenWidth - 400, screenHeight - 100, paddleSpeed)
ball = Ball(ballRadius, ballRadius, paddle.positionX +
ballRadius / 2, paddle.positionY - ballRadius, ballSpeed)
ballGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
ballGroup.add(ball)
secondaryBallGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
paddleGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
paddleGroup.add(paddle)
brickGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
secondaryBrickGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
laserBulletGroup = pygame.sprite.Group()
createLaserBullets = False
www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Breakout CODING ACADEMY
The configuration
definition used
for levels can
be seen here.
This level plays
background music,
displays a specific
background image,
defines some level
descriptions and
has six rows of
bricks. Note how
each row can be of
a different length.
laserTimeCounter = 0
frameCount = 0
gameScore = 0
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
Next we create two Paddle objects and one Ball
object. We then create a sprite group to hold instances
of Ball objects and one for Paddle objects. Note the
secondary ball group, which is used to hold Ball objects
that are created after the beginning of the game. And
note how we don’t put the second Paddle object into
the paddle group as this is only to be used when a ball
collides with a brick that has a certain power value. We
then create groups to store the Brick objects. The
secondaryBrickGroup is used to store bricks that can
be destroyed – bricks can be indestructible. Finally, we Learn more
create a group to store any created laser bullets and about
we have some variables to store whether laser bullets decorators in
should be created. We then initialise a frameCount Python at this
variable, which we can use to determine regular time link: https://
intervals. Finally, we initialise a variable for the realpython.
gameScore and add a clock to the game. com/primer-
on-python-
In the code, we define some variables to store
decorators
information about the configuration that we will
EXTEND THE GAME
While designing the data structures and classes within the game,
care was taken to make it as extensible as possible. As can be seen
from Constants.py, there is already the following extra functionality:
more balls can be added, an additional paddle can be shown on the
screen, and the ball can obtain fireball power, enabling it to travel
through bricks. It is also possible to grow and shrink the paddle(s),
speed up or slow down the ball, and attach laser bullets to the
paddle, allowing it to also destroy the bricks. These power values are
defined in the level config and any number can be added at one time.
It is clearly documented in the code where the power values are
actioned, both to initiate them as soon as the brick has been collided
with and when to destroy the extra functionality, when the power
countdown has reached zero. Once the initiation and removal code
has been added, all that remains is to add the necessary constants
to the Constants.py file.
While testing following the implementation of the last power
values, an issue was discovered: if two power values for the same
object are defined, the countdown is cancelled for the first and is
added for the second power value only. For example, if an extra ball
is added, closely followed by fireball power, the fireball power will
timeout after the countdown period, but the extra ball will not. This is
left as an exercise for you to remedy if this functionality is unwanted.
October 2023 LXF307 95
CODING ACADEMY Breakout

A small sample of usage of the q and Escape keys to quit the level, then
the level import
define what happens when the left or right arrow keys
parser can be
seen here. are pressed.
carryOn = True
while carryOn:
...
keys_pressed = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys_pressed[pygame.K_LEFT]:
if len(paddleGroup) == 1:
paddle.updatePosition(Constants.Left,
screenWidth)
else:
for paddleCounter in range(0,
len(paddleGroup)):
import. We then import information from all config files paddleObject = paddleGroup.sprites()
in the levels directory. This is then used by the menu [paddleCounter]
More can be system, to enable us to select the level we wish to play. if paddleCounter == 0:
learned about The next part of the code sample is the main loop for direction = Constants.Right
Pygame here: each level that is played. We describe this later in the else:
https://www. article, because it flows better if we switch the order. direction = Constants.Left
pygame.org/ Let’s define our menu system that we wish to paddleObject.updatePosition(direction,
news display on the screen: screenWidth)
def setLevel(name, positionInList, filePath, numbers): In this code sample, when the left arrow key is
global levelConfig pressed, we move a single paddle to the left. If there
levelConfig = levelConfigFileDict[filePath] are two paddles in the paddleGroup, we move one
menu = pygame_menu.Menu(‘Welcome’, to the left and the other to the right. Printed here is
screenWidth - 100, screenHeight - 100, the equivalent code for when the right arrow is
theme=pygame_menu.themes.THEME_BLUE) pressed, but this simply reverses the logic.
menu.add.text_input(‘Name: ‘, default=’John Doe’) carryOn = True
menu.add.selector(‘Difficulty: ‘, levelConfigMenuList, while carryOn:
onchange=setLevel) ...
menu.add.button(‘Play’, startLevel) for ballObject in ballGroup.sprites():
menu.add.button(‘Quit’, pygame_menu.events.EXIT) ballObject.updatePosition(screenWidth)
menu.mainloop(screen) if (ballObject.directionY == 1 and ballObject.
pygame.quit() positionY >= paddle.positionY):
In this code sample, we define a function that if ballObject.type == “secondary”:
is called when the menu selector object is used. ballObject.kill()
When the arrow keys are used to select the level, this elif ballObject.type == “primary”:
function is called, which updates a variable with the ballObject.positionX = paddle.positionX +
necessary configuration needed to play the level. Next, ballRadius / 2
we create a menu object, select the text to display, size ballObject.positionY = paddle.positionY -
of the menu and the colour theme to use. On the next ballRadius
lines, we define the menu objects to display and which numLives -= 1
functions to call when the menu objects are interacted print(“Lives:”, numLives)
with. Finally, we call the mainloop on our screen object # Secondary balls should
and call the quit method when the mainloop exits. be removed after the relevant countdown
When the Play option in the menu is selected, the if type(ballObject.
startLevel function is called. This contains a huge countdown) == type(int()):
amount of logic. Firstly, the configuration options are ballObject.clock.tick()
used to provide paths to the background image and ballObject.testClock()
music. These files are then loaded in and initialised as # Detect if any balls collide with the bricks
required. Next, the Row information is loaded from the brickCollidedWith = ballObject.
configuration object and the Brick objects are created. detectCollision(brickGroup)
This contains the number of collisions, power values if brickCollidedWith != None:
and position they need to be drawn. These objects are if ballObject.powerValue != Constants.Fireball:
added to the relevant Brick groups as well. Next, the ballObject.directionY *= -1
code runs within a while loop, while a number of brickCollidedWith.registerCollision()
conditions are met. Should the countdown timer run # Add to the score whenever a collisions
out, lives drop to zero, or all destructible bricks be occurs
destroyed, the loop exits and the game is over. For gameScore += collisionPoints
each iteration of the loop, the screen is updated at 60 # Deal with the power ups / power downs.
frames per second. First, we paint the screen black Depending what the power value is, do different things
and, if a file is available, draw the background image. if brickCollidedWith.powerValue != 0 and
Next we use the event handling functionality to take brickCollidedWith.powerInstigated == False:
action when certain keypresses occur. We catch the # Extra ball

96 LXF307 October 2023 www.linuxformat.com


if brickCollidedWith.powerValue ==
Constants.ExtraBall:
extraBall = Ball(ballRadius, ballRadius,
paddle.positionX + ballRadius/2, paddle.positionY -
ballRadius, ballSpeed, type=”secondary”,
countdown=powerTime,
powerValue=brickCollidedWith.powerValue)
ballGroup.add(extraBall)
secondaryBallGroup.add(extraBall)
brickCollidedWith.powerInstigated = True
screen.blit(ballObject.image,
(ballObject.positionX, ballObject.positionY))
Within the while loop, we first iterate through each
Ball in the ballGroup and call its updatePosition
function, which uses the speed, angle and other
variables to determine where the ball should move on
the screen. Next, we need to determine what happens
if a ball moves below the top of the paddle. In this
situation, the original ball should be moved back to
the position of the paddle and the numLives variable
decremented by one. If the ball is generated by a
power value, it should be destroyed by calling its kill
function. Next we use the testClock function, which
determines whether the ball has been on the screen
for the correct period of time, before it is destroyed.
It is now important to call the detectCollision
function with an argument that contains the group of
bricks. Returned by this function is the brick object
that the ball has collided with. Once we know which
brick has been collided with, we reverse the direction
of the ball (if the fireball power has not been instigated).
We then call the registerCollision function, where the
brick has its alpha value changed or is destroyed. Next
the gameScore is incremented by the relevant points.
The next stanza of code is used to handle the power
values assigned to bricks. In this sample, we can see
what happens when the power value adds an extra ball
to the screen. An extra Ball object is created, set to
start in the middle of the primary paddle, with the
type set to secondary, countdown variable set and
powerValue set to Constants.ExtraBall. The new ball
is then added to the relevant groups. This causes an
extra ball to be added to the screen with a countdown
assigned to it. Finally, when a brick has been collided
with, we mark a variable as such so that the power
can only be used once. Finally, the ball is drawn on the
screen, in the updated position with the blit function.
For the rest of the article, follow the code on GitHub.
Within the while loop we now have a similar for loop to
iterate over the Paddles. This lets us determine if a ball
collides with it. When the ball collides, we reverse the
Y direction, so it travels back up the screen again. We
also use the familiar testClock function to determine
if secondary paddles should remain on the screen or
be destroyed. Finally, for each Paddle, we update its
position on the screen with the blit function.
Next we iterate over each Brick in the group of
bricks and draw them on the screen. Then we generate
a font object and a string of text, which we display on
screen. This text is updated each time the loop runs
and is kept updated. The string contains the current
score, countdown time and number of remaining lives.
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www.techradar.com/pro/linux
Breakout CODING ACADEMY
CREATE A COLLABORATIVE GAME
If you have had your interest piqued by this two-part series, please
do take the code, copy it and make changes or improvements. We
would be really pleased if improvements were made and pull
requests sent that can be used to improve the game as it stands
at time of publication. GitHub contains a wiki with the basics of
information about the configuration file format and what each of the
power values are used for. Some possible improvements would be
to enable each object to have multiple power values attributed to it,
each with its own countdown timer. Another improvement would be
to use the menu system and a high score system to save the top
score each time a game is played. This would allow a leader board
between friends who play on the same machine.
Thinking of bigger-picture additions, an online leader board would
be an excellent addition for multiple people to compete against each
other. Other interesting features to add would be extra power values,
such as slowing down and speeding up the paddles, and reducing
the level countdown time, which adds another level of difficulty.
There are two pieces of functionality left. The first
is that of Laser Bullets. If this functionality is enabled
by a brick, a variable is set to determine that the Laser
Bullets should be created. The bullets are then created
and their position updates once every half second.
Laser Bullets are created from the middle of the
Paddle objects. After the countdown period is over, the
bullets are destroyed and no more are created. Finally,
the main game’s clock method has the tick function
called and the carryOn variable is set to False when
certain conditions are met. When this happens, the
loop exits and we are returned to the menu system.
We trust you’ve enjoyed learning about Pygame,
inheritance and other Python features. It can be
disheartening to begin programming with dry exercises
that cover things like taking user input and performing
if statements to test logic and loops to do things like
summing numbers together. But these basic building
blocks of coding are all used in writing this game, with
Pygame abstracting away the really difficult parts, such
as drawing shapes or images on the screen. It is also
worth thinking about the programmers who wrote
these games years ago, when such helper libraries
were not available, and coding was done in such a
controlled way that every single CPU cycle was used
efficiently, due to the lower resource available.
In this code
sample, the
contents of
Constants.py can
be seen, which
provides a way to
easily reference
constants with
familiar names.
October 2023 LXF307 97
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