Size matters
Thank you very much for the offer to download old issues of LXF, but is something wrong with issue 175? The PDF is 172MB! Maybe you can fix this? Rene Rudolph, viaemail Neil says: The size of the PDF download has varied over time as bandwidth availability has changed, alongside technology too, so LXF175 is supposed to be 172MB. On feedback we reduced the size to a much lower level, but then people complained that the image quality was too poor, so the size was increased slightly again. I think we’ve found a good compromise with most issues now around 50MB.
Results
I’ve been reading your magazine since LXF165. Back then I didn’t know anything about open source, GNU/Linux, Raspberry Pi etc... Today I have a Pi that I am using as a file server, a nineyear-old laptop that I am still using daily as a media player with Ubuntu OS, and a laptop that I have used daily for my studies running Mint.
I have just finished my undergraduate degree at Middlesex University, Malta and for my thesis project I built a system based on the awesome Pi that can monitor natural habitat variables to monitor a protected bird colony in Malta. This was a project built in collaboration with Birdlife Malta.
The system monitors light pollution and cave activity, records video, can be remotely managed and uploads results. Long story short, I got a great mark for the project and I could have never done this without your magazines. So thanks! Stephen Cachia, Malta Neil says: Awesome. It’s amazing to see someone’s love of Linux and FLOSS culminate in such an amazing project.
Memory matters
I have a Dell Latitude E5520. It has embedded Intel Graphics on a 2nd-gen Core chip and WebGL is broken on Chrome because of it. Barely runs Firefox. Blender doesn’t recognize my video card. There is no Device option under Render. The latest Dell upgrade XPS13 for Linux uses the Intel HD Graphics 5500 with no options for video upgrades.
By default, ZAReason’s Chimera 2 offers options for Nvidia GTX or Quadro Graphics including Nvidia GTX 970M/ 980M/Quadro K3100/K4100 graphics. So, Dell’s best for Linux – its only choice for Linux – falls far short of ZAReason’s for about the same price.
Memory is only part of the equation. I have got 8GB of memory but it doesn’t matter. Not enough is being said about video memory. I have no idea how good an Intel HD5500 is. If it’s anything like my current card, I can expect that in a few years I’ll be blacklisted again.
I’d like to buy a laptop designed for graphic design, something that registers with a program like Blender. Blender’s open source, so should be right up your alley. What might you recommend?
MikeMoore,Washington
Neil says: I’m not going to defend Dell’s business decisions, but comparing the Dell XPS 13 to the white-box Clevo-esque build of the ZAReason Chimera 2 is like comparing a Porsche Cayman and a Hummer. The Chimera 2 is a beast, but it’s not slim and light like the XPS 13.
But really if you’re planning on doing 3D raytracing, neither is ideal, as you’re best with a desktop system. Blender uses OpenGL to render its interface and your Intel HD Graphics 3000 supports OpenGL 3.0, so does that fine. The thing is, Blender uses raytracing to create final rendered scenes. This uses the CPU, but can use GPGPU on graphics cards through its Cycles renderer utilising Nvidia’s CUDA and AMD’s OpenCL acceleration – again Intel’s OpenCL isn’t yet supported. So any of those Nvidia mobile options would work, but a desktop card would work better.
Broken PDFs?
I’ve been trying for the last two days to download one of your full issue PDFs. Prior to today, the download wouldn’t even start. What I’m receiving today is the graphic layer of the PDF document. The text is totally missing. I’ve previously had problems with the download when it is initially released, but they usually clear up overnight. Paul,Oklahoma Jonni says: Have you tried a different PDF reader? It would be extremely strange for the text data to be lost from the PDF files. As it turns out, this seems to be an issue with the Evince PDF reader.
Windows!?
Eight pages on Windows! I gave up Microsoft 15 years ago and have become tired of your obsession with it. I have become convinced that your magazine’s chief objective is to convert Windows users to Linux. The constant parading of various ‘distros’ seems to confirm this view – how many established users of Linux would wish to swap their carefully built up system for another with the frequency with which you introduce them?
There has been nothing about the new 4.2 kernel, other than to remark on how large it is; and very little – certainly nothing in depth – on systemd, which I would have thought to be of great significance to regular users of Linux.
I appreciate that the articles on the Raspberry Pi will be of interest to a younger generation that perhaps did not have the opportunities for programming that my generation and my son’s (yes, I’m a grumpy old man) did, but you are including rather a lot on the subject, and all the stuff it does could be done better on a PC. G.C.Young,viaemail Neil says: Is 8% ‘rather a lot’? Or does this mean the magazine is 92% non-Raspberry Pi-related? The Pi is the second biggest selling UK home computer of all time, it happens to run Linux, and it’s being used in the UK education system and it is also run as a charity. I don’t know, that sounds like the sort of thing we should be covering.
I’ll admit your point that we are trying to help people transition from Windows, but I wouldn’t say we’re Windows obsessed. The release of an update of Windows is the biggest news in technology when it happens, and we thought everyone using Linux or interested in it might enjoy finding out how the hugely-hyped new OS actually stacks up. The feature was meant to be fun and informative. Sorry it didn’t hit the spot for you. But I do concede that we probably should provide more coverage of kernel development.
The fact is, though, general point releases often don’t introduce any ground-breaking features. Even Linus said kernel 4.0 wasn’t for anything special other than stability. The other factor is that we imagine few will build their own kernel – most people are going to get a new kernel through an update of one of those distro things you find so annoying. This being so, we can’t help feeling that users do want to know what upgrade options and other distros are available to them. As for Systemd coverage you must have missed issues LXF199, LXF198, LXF191, LXF188 and LXF184 that all had tutorials and advice on Systemd, and we will have more in future issues.
SourceForge?
I found your article in LXF200 [Newsdesk, p6] about SourceForge ‘hijacking’ accounts to distribute adware interesting. I found it more interesting that three of your LXF Hot Picks listed SourceForge as the download site. GeorgeGamble,NewJersey Neil says: Well, it’s somewhat out of our control if projects are still hosted on SourceForge. We expect we’ll see people migrating away from it over time.
Scam calls
First of all, thanks for continuing to print the LinuxFormat magazine. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy reading your publication and getting tips, tricks and news out of the magazine. Also thank you for not going 100% digital – I just can’t read the PDFs on my tablet or even on the computer. So on to my comment about cold call scams. We hear about many of these scams from our clients and it’s really sad that they fall for this stuff, but I guess since Microsoft is so ‘trusted’, people think it’s really Microsoft calling to fix an issue. I think that instead of trying to waste their time we should engineer a reverse scam, where we take control of the scammers’ computer and frytheirnetwork! Would also be nice to find out where they were connecting from and launch a DDoS attack against these b*******s! Okay, I’ll remove my evil hat now! Ted,viaemail Neil says: We could never condone coordinating a DDoS attack against anyone – we’re sure that’s very illegal, and we wouldn’t be getting Jonni to sort that out right now… As for going totally digital, that’s never going to happen anytime soon – it turns out digital money doesn’t really exist. It’s all terribly disappointing and is largely Apple’s fault for making shiny toys that our old CEOs became obsessed with.
Mageia 7
I notice that although the verdict in your review of Mageia-5 ( LXF201, p50) included ‘Documentation 7/10’, there is no mention of documentation in the text of the review. Could someone be more specific about the 7/10, please – eg, what aspect(s) of the documentation caused the lower rating? MauriceBatey,viaemail Shashank says: A fair question. We rate the documentation as a matter of course but there’s room in the body of our reviews to talk about significant improvements (or failures) only. The 7/10 rating was because much of the documentation at the time of the release, while adequate to get a user acquainted with the distro, hadn’t yet been updated for the significant new release.
Don’t switch…
If you, or someone else, wants to switch from Windows to Linux – don’t! In my experience Linux gets blamed for lots of problems which are nothing to do with it, when it’s the shock of changing apps that’s the actual cause. Due to the association of switching OS, though, Linux gets the blame.
Therefore switching apps first, within Windows, makes for a vastly better transition, I have found. Switch one app at a time and only switch another when comfortable to move on. So switch IE to Firefox,MSOffice to LibreOffice, Outlook to Thunderbird. Then when the switch to Linux is eventually done the apps are configured the same, behave the same, are known and the shock is considerably less – practically none at all. The speed and reliability of Linux can then truly shine... Trevor,Peterborough Neil says: You make a good point, Trevor, and really part of the software freedom message should include using freed software even on proprietary platforms. It also helps that many FLOSS packages tend to be best in class, and not just big-name releases like Firefox but the obscure tools like 7zip, Notepad++,MediaPlayerClassic, CDex – the list goes on. So if you can’t convince people to switch to Linux, the next best thing to continue raising awareness is promote FLOSS programs.