Episode 147 – Spring!
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Total Running Time: 1:45:03
Un-edited Live session – https://youtu.be/s3nEcfRn7Go
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Summary
Kernel News: Mat
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Distro Talk: Tony
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Mary Distro Review
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Tech News:
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Is it Alive? – Mary
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Listener Feedback
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Outtro Music
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Intro:
Tony Bemus, Mat Enders, and Mary Tomich
Sound bites by Mike Tanner
Kernel News: Mat
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https://www.kernel.org/
mainline: 4.0-rc4 2015-03-16 stable: 3.19.2 2015-03-18 longterm: 3.18.9 2015-03-06 longterm: 3.14.36 2015-03-18 longterm: 3.12.39 2015-03-19 longterm: 3.10.72 2015-03-18 longterm: 3.4.106 2015-02-02 longterm: 3.2.68 2015-03-06 longterm: 2.6.32.65 2014-12-13 linux-next: next-20150320 2015-03-20
Distro Talk: Tony
Time:
- 3-9 – MakuluLinux 8.0 “Cinnamon”
- 3-12 – Chakra GNU/Linux 2015.03
- 3-17 – Robolinux 7.8.3
- 3-17 – Oracle Linux 7.1
- 3-18 – pfSense 2.2.1
- 3-21 – Neptune 4.3
Distro of the Week: Tony
- Evolve – 1338
- Manjaro – 1369
- Debian – 1470
- Ubuntu – 1678
- Mint – 3606
Mary’s Distro Review – Korora
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This episode’s review is of a a remix of a major Linux distro. That major Linux distro is Fedora. The remix is Korora…
The Vitals:
Name: Korora 21 – Darla
Maintainer: Chris Smart (founder and lead developer)
Distro Latest Birthday: February 6, 2015
Derivative: Fedora
Kernel: 3.18.3
Review Desktop: Although Korora supports the four major desktops, I chose the default: Gnome 3.14
Getting Korora is as easy as answering a few simple questions on their web site: version, bit, and preferred desktop. System requirements are modest: 32-bit, 1GB RAM and 10GB of space. (64-bit ISOs are available, too.)
Live Environment:
Korora live DVD boots to a polished Gnome 3 desktop. Korora has its own theme which includes a very attractive icon set compared to the standard Gnome approach. The Gnome toolbar, notification panel, and activities are located in their standard positions: left, top, and right, respectively.
A welcome dashboard greets you with several options including documentation, support, and project. Of most interest to me were the New Features, listing the new features for the current release, Build Korora opened a browser to github where Korora’s packaging tool was located. Finally, “Install Korora” was available to begin the install process. Note: After install, the welcome screen no longer showed the install option.
I also am happy to report that I encountered no difficulty with the broadcom wireless chip or graphics. +1 for Korora.
- Graphics: ( i915)
- Wireless: (b43)
The Defaults
Browser: Firefox
Office Suite: LibreOffice 4.3.5
Mail Client: Evolution
File Manager: Files 3.14
Other options such as Thunderbird, Epiphany browser are available from the software repositories.
Now on to the install…
The Install Process:
Korora conveniently had an install icon on the left-side toolbar, as well as one on the welcome screen as I previously noted. The first few steps are the typical ones (keyboard and localization). Then we come to partitioning. Korora uses Fedora’s partitioning process. It still not as polished and intuitive as I think it should be—and that’s all I will say about it. The rest of the install was smooth. I selected a username/password, as well as a password for the root user. I appreciated not having to create a root user password after the install like I have to do with any Ubuntu-based install.
Installed Environment:
After the base install, I was cycled through some additional welcome/configuration screens including language, keyboard which I thought I already done during the install. Then I was prompted to connect my online accounts: Available options were Google, ownCloud, Windows Live, Facebook—no, thanks! The Getting Started dashboard let you launch applications, switch tasks, or respond to messages. List of common tasks was at the bottom of the window.
I discovered that the minimize and maximize buttons are OFF by default! What’s up with that? I had to go to the Tweak Tool utility, Windows category to change this configuration. My guess is that this was done to allow for the side panels to expand and not cover any screen real estate used by the open application.
I want to spend a little time discussing the “Documents” app. First of all, Documents in the Places menu is different from Documents in the toolbar. Documents in the toolbar simply opens and instance of Files, the Gnome default file manager formerly called Nautilus.
On the left toolbar, “Documents” (actually Gnome-documents) is a document manager that lets you display organize and print local documents (on your computer) or those created remotely using Google Docs, ownCloud or OneDrive. I decided to give it a spin and created two short documents locally in LibreOffice. After connecting my Google account and opening the local documents folder, I was able to see my Google drive content as well as my local content. However, I could not view locally created content in Documents because unoconv was not installed. This surprised me because unoconv, a command line utility to convert for export/import any document format that libreoffice can handle should have already been installed. After all, it’s required to use Gnome-Documents. But Gnome Documents prompted me to install it. Regardless of the password I used (either my user password or root’s) it refused to install from the graphical interface. I had to open a terminal window and run the install from there as root—yum install unoconv—before it worked I rebooted like a Windows monkey and I was ready to test real-time, on-the-fly, immediate rsync-type document updating.
For the test I opened a Google drive document that was also available locally in Documents. Any change I made on the local copy on the left side of the screen immediately appeared in the Google docs version on the right side, which I was viewing in Firefox. I was impressed with this capability. It’s been available since Gnome 3.8.
After connecting my Google+ account, whenever I booted to the desktop, notifications alerted me to items on my calendar.
Other interesting Programs:
Korora pre-configures several third party repositories, so users can install additional software, such as:
- Adobe Flash
- DropBox
- Google Chrome
- RPMFusion
- VirtualBox
Apparently these particular apps are not automatically available on Fedora but are ready to install out of the box on Korora. The base repository set includes:
- Fedora: 1760 packages
- RPMFusion: 51 packages
- Korora: 36 packages
- Adobe: 1 package
Let’s take a look at the other programs of interest that are included with the base install:
Fedora LiveUSB Creator – a libeusb creator from Live Fedora images. You have a choice of versions for workstations, servers, netinstalls, scientific, security, games robotics. For both 32- and 64-bit systems. Very impressive.
Handbrake – cross platform video transcoder software. It’s nice that this and its underlying dependencies are already in place.
Pharlap – Korora’s driver manager. Originally based on Ubuntu’s Jockey but when it was deprecated, the Korora project took the code and modified it for Korora. When you start Pharlap (named after a race horse), it scans your hardware in order to identify drivers/packages that match.
Gloobus Preview – Gloobus Preview is a Gnome application based on Apple’s “Quicklook”, enabling a full screen preview of any kind of file. Gloobus currently supports the following files:
Its is very easy to use, just select a file and press SPACE. The following formats are supported:
- Images: jpeg / png / icns / bmp / svg / gif / psd / xcf
- Documents: pdf / cbr / cbz / doc / xls / odf / ods / odp / ppt
- Source Code: c++ / c# / java / javascript / php / xml / log / sh / python
- Audio: mp3 / ogg / midi / 3gp / wav
- Vídeo: mpg /avi / ogg / 3gp / mkv / flv
- Other: folders / ttf / srt / plain text
Sounds good but when I tried to open it, nothing happened.
Graphic apps: inkscape, gimp, dark table,
Eekboard – on-screen keyboard to thwart that keylogger.
Openshot : non-linear video editor
Pomodoro: The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method which uses a timer to break down work into intervals traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as “pomodori”, the plural of the Italian word pomodoro for “tomato”. It should not be confused with the Tomich-odoro method which separates breaks into 25 minute lengths interspersed with short bursts of work.
Problem reporting – Collection of software tools for collection analyzing an reporting of software issues. I opened the app—it has a two-panel interface which, I suspect, operates similar to a hierarchy: on the left the main category and on the right, sub cats or details.. It also will designate whether it’s a system or user problem (although I did not see the word: PEBCAK anywhere). All I saw was the “No problems detected” notice.
SELinux Troubleshooter: It’s a graphical user interface to help diagnose SELinux policy problems.
Aside from the few minor annoyances (min/max buttons, partition (fedora’s issue), missing unoconv, I found Korora to be a capable distro for anyone wanting a Fedora experience with some of the work done for you.
Rating:3.1 cups of coffee…
Tech News:
Time:Linux’s worst-case scenario: Windows 10 makes Secure Boot mandatory, locks out other operating systems
Oracle adds secure-ish boot support to its Linux distro
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/15/oracle_adds_secure_boot_support_to_its_linux_disto/
And from the “Is that an oxymoron or are you just unhappy to see me” department, we have this: Senate Intelligence Committee Advances Terrible “̶C̶y̶b̶e̶r̶s̶e̶c̶u̶r̶i̶t̶y̶”̶ ̶B̶i̶l̶l̶ Surveillance Bill in Secret Session
KDE Korner
KDE President Lydia Pintscher on the Role of a Nonprofit in Open Source Development
Security corner
NO BROWSER IS SECURE: ALL MAJOR BROWSERS HACKED AT 2015 PWN2OWN CONTEST
https://hacked.com/no-browser-secure-major-browsers-hacked-2015-pwn2own-contest/
Mozilla Releases Firefox 36.0.3 to Patch the Security Vulnerabilities Disclosed at Pwn2Own UPDATED
http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/Mozilla-Releases-Firefox-36-0-3-to-Patch-the-Security-Vulnerabilities-Disclosed-at-Pwn2Own-476372.shtml
How To Encrypt Cloud Storage Files & Folders In Linux
http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/how-to-encrypt-cloud-storage-files-folders-in-linux
Is it Alive
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Listener Feedback:
show (at) smlr.us or 734-258-7009
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Outtro Music
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Springtime Athem by Midiatronic
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1069028/springtime-athem
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