THE COMPLETE GUIDE

ESSENTIAL FEATURES CODING ACADEMY

008 Escape Windows
How to set up and use the
extremely user-friendly
Windows alternative,
Elementary OS
016 Free our software!
How the free software
movement got started
020 Retro emulation
Relive your favourite retro
gaming memories
028 Open-source RAW
photography
Explore Linux’s pro-level
tools for better photos
032 Free your phone!
Discover the benefits
of running Linux on
your phone
060 Code a cataloguing
application in Python
Using Python and the Django
framework, learn how to
create a web-based
cataloguing app
064 Code an admin back-
end in Django
Continuing with our
cataloguing app, find out how
to create admin controls and
basic view functions
068 Finish your cataloguing app 080
Finish up our cataloguing
database app by adding
search and export
functionality
072 Write your own classic
Pong game
Take a trip down memory
lane and create your own
Pong-style game for all your
retro gaming needs
076 Website and RSS feed
Python scraping
How to use Python to scrape
information from a webpage
and RSS feed, and perform
basic analysis
Build a club on the
next-gen web
Assemble your first Web 3.0
app using Solidity and
Javascript

042 Get into coding

068
Join Jonni Bidwell as he
attempts to teach himself
to code again

050 Protect your privacy

Uncover the hazards of the
digital landscape and how
096
you can protect yourself

4
FREE YOUR
LINUX PROJECTS

086 Hot Pi Projects

From building a smart home

PHONE!
to creating a WiFi router
096 Deck the hardware
Trick out the Valve
Steam Deck
Discover the benefits of
100 Get started photo-editing
running Linux on your phone
Edit photos like a pro
using GIMP
104 More fun with layers
and masks
How GIMP manages layers
108 Using enhanced

032
layer features
Look beyond GIMP’s
standard layers
112 Universal layer text effects
Attract attention with layer
text effects in GIMP

050 116 Track down files and

folders instantly
How to use a tool to search
for files and folders on
your PC
118 How to become a
080 screencasting pro
Learn to make a screencast
122 Nifty note-taking
with Obsidian
Discover the almighty
Markdown-based
020 note-taking app
124 Back up and copy
hard drives
Learn to tame Clonezilla
128 Using WordPress
with OnlyOffice
086 Insert documents into
online posts

5
6
050

032

020

042

016

008

7
Features features
Essential

WINDOWS ica l alte rnative to

r a prac t
Looking fo e als h o w to set up
v
ows ? Nick Peers re e r-friendly
Wind em ely u s
e extr
and use th y OS.
Elementar

ave you finally had enough the Ubuntu LTS distro and its many for both testing and as a rescue

H of Windows? Perhaps your

computer didn’t make the
cut when Microsoft arbitrarily
prevented certain PCs from working
with Windows 11? Maybe you’re just
looking to broaden your horizons and
recapture that love of computing you’ve
lost after years or decades trying to fit
into Microsoft’s vision for how you
should operate a PC instead?
There are many good reasons to
derivatives (or flavours, as they’re better
known) – enjoy established long periods
of support with more predictable
upgrades than Windows. LTS versions,
which come out every two years, enjoy
up to 10 years of extended support. Last,
but not least, Linux is increasingly easy
to install and use with every release.
Don’t believe us? Then this feature
will let you see for yourself. We’ll open by
revealing how to try a particularly user-
environment) or install it in a virtual
machine, our recommended method
for giving Linux a proper go.
Once you’ve had a taste, we’ll then
show you how to install Linux alongside
Windows on a separate hard drive, so
you can continue to use the latter as you
start your transition to the former. We’ll
take you on a complete tour of the
Elementary OS desktop environment,
plus reveal how to find and install new
CREDIT: Magictorch

switch. First, Linux runs beautifully
even on older hardware, so you can
avoid the need for an expensive and
unnecessary upgrade. Second, many
Linux distributions – and in particular
friendly flavour of Linux – Elementary
OS, recently updated to version 7.0 –
without touching your main PC. You can
run it directly from a Live disk (a Linux
install media that provides a full desktop
software to replace the tools you use in
Windows. You’ll also get an insight into
how to take the next steps into your
Linux adventure. Ready to finally escape
Windows? Good, let’s get cracking.

8
 Escape Windows

It’s virtually Linux

Before going any further, give your chosen flavour of Linux a
thorough test run with the help of free virtualisation software.
hy commit to one Linux installation when you If you want to

W can try as many (or as few) as you like without

touching your main Windows installation?
Linux distributions are packaged as downloadable
ISO files, which are designed to create bootable media.
Unlike Windows installation media, many can function
as “live media”, enabling you to run the OS in a
temporary environment to get a feel for how it works.
If this approach appeals, you need to convert the
downloaded ISO file to a bootable DVD or USB flash
media. To create a DVD, select the ISO file in File
Explorer, then click the … button on the task bar and
choose Burn To Disc. The simplest way to create
bootable USB media is by using a tool such as Ventoy
(https://ventoy.net). This enables you to simply copy
one or more ISO files (as many as your flash drive can
accommodate) to the USB drive, then switch between
them as you see fit by choosing which one to load
when you start your PC.
Take an extended tour
While the live option enables you to get a quick and
dirty feel for a Linux distro, any changes you make are
(usually) lost after you reboot to try another option. If
you’re ready to take your testing to the next level with
a shortlist of promising distros, we recommend
employing a virtual machine, such as those offered by
quickly evaluate
different versions
of Linux, you
need a flash drive
(16GB or larger)
and Ventoy.
the open source VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org). Once
created, you simply mount your ISO file as a virtual
DVD drive, then install your chosen flavour of Linux on
to the virtual machine, enabling you to test it over an
extended period as if it were a full-blown installation.
The obvious starting point is our chosen distro for
this feature: go to https://elementary.io – you’ll see a
button inviting you to purchase Elementary OS, but
this isn’t compulsory. Instead, click Custom, type 0
and the button changes to Download Elementary OS.
Click this to download the latest version, which should
be 7.0 by the time you read this. Download the ISO file
somewhere safe, then follow the step-by-step guide
below to install Elementary into a virtual machine.

INSTALL LINUX IN VIRTUALBOX

Set up virtual machine Finish configuration Install Elementary OS

1 Open VirtualBox and choose
Machine > New. Name the machine
elementary , then click the ISO Image
drop-down and choose Other to select
the Elementary OS ISO you downloaded.
The Unattended Installation feature
doesn’t work, so next click Hardware
to select how much RAM (2,048MB or
more) and CPUs (two or mo possible).
Finally, expand Hard Disk to create a
virtual hard drive of around 64GB in size.
2 Click Finish, then select your new
machine from the list and click Settings
to make further necessary tweaks.
Switch to Display, increase Video
Memory to 128MB and change the
Graphics Controller to VBoxSVGA –
ignore the ‘Invalid settings detected’
message. Switch to Network and set
Attached To: to Bridged Adapter to allow
you to share files between the virtual
machine and your main PC. Click OK.
3 Now click the Start button. The
virtual machine opens a new window.
Wait until the installer appears (ignore
the prompt to log in, which quickly
vanishes). The screen appears too
small, so click and drag the VirtualBox
window to expand it. Follow the wizard all
the way through to install Elementary OS
– choose the Erase Disk And Install
method when prompted and click Ignore
when warned about compatibility.

9
Essential features

Install Elementary OS
alongside Windows
You’ve made your choice – it’s time to install Linux alongside Windows.
ou’ve road-tested several flavours of Linux

Y and settled on the one you want to switch

to. You might feel ready to ditch Windows
completely, but in most cases, you’ll probably want (or
need) to keep it running for a specific app or game.
The key is not to rush anything. Start by disabling
hibernation, which can interfere with dual-booting:
right-click the Start button and choose Command
Prompt (Admin) or Terminal (Admin) – whichever
appears. Now type powercfg -h off and hit Enter. Next,
take a fail-safe backup of your Windows system drive
as it currently stands. This requires a drive-imaging
tool, and our favourite Windows tool by far is Macrium
Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx).
Once downloaded and installed, open Macrium
Reflect and click Create An Image Of The Partition(s)
Required To Backup And Restore Windows, then follow
the prompts to save a full backup of your hard drive to
a suitable backup device. Once done, choose Other
Tasks > Create Rescue Media… to burn a bootable DVD
or USB flash drive, or create an ISO file (perfect if you
took our advice and set up a Ventoy boot disk earlier).
With your fail-safe backup done, you’re ready to
proceed. If you were simply wiping Windows clean (are
you sure; are your personal files stored on a separate
drive?), just boot from the Linux installation media you
created on the previous page, then choose the option
to erase the disk and install your distro in its place.
In the vast majority of cases, you won’t want to
lose Windows, in which case there are two ways
to keep it separate from Linux: you can, if you’re
feeling brave, partition your current Windows drive
and install Elementary OS alongside it. However, this
is a tricky process that isn’t for the faint of heart. Our
recommendation is to purchase a separate drive to
You need to
partition your
fit internally (desktop PC) or house in a USB caddy
new hard drive (laptop) to give exclusively to Linux. You can pick up a
into three. nippy 480GB SATA SSD drive for less than £30 online
Take a fail-safe backup of your entire Windows disk before you begin.
(try Integral’s 480GB V Series v2 from www.ebuyer.
com/876491).
Before ordering, open your PC case and verify
there’s physical space, plus a spare SATA port on the
motherboard and a spare SATA power plug on your
PSU. You also need a SATA data cable (£2 from eBay).
If your PSU has no spare SATA power plugs, you can
pick up Molex-to-SATA adapters on eBay (just £2).
If there’s no space inside your PC or you want to run
Elementary OS from a laptop, buy an external SSD
drive – if a super-fast Samsung T5 500GB drive
(around £75 online) is too expensive, purchase a low-
cost 2.5-inch USB enclosure for about £5.49 (www.
ebuyer.com/858165) alongside your SATA SSD drive.
Install Elementary OS
Most Ubuntu-based flavours follow the same basic
install process. Elementary OS has its own installer, but
the process is similar if you opt for a different distro.
First, you need to boot from the Linux installation
media you created on the previous page. You should
see a boot menu appear – leave Try Or Install
Elementary OS selected and hit Enter. After a pause,
the Elementary logo should flash into view before you
eventually find yourself at the same wizard you saw
when installing Elementary as a virtual machine.
Start by confirming your language, region and
keyboard. At the Try Or Install screen, select Custom
Install (Advanced) before clicking Custom Install. Wait
while Elementary detects your current configuration
before it displays your current disk layout.

Set up new drive

Unlike other Ubuntu-flavoured distros, Elementary OS
requires a bit more from you when it comes to setting

10

You need to make your new Elementary OS hard drive the primary
boot device in your BIOS/UEFI.
up partitions. Start by clicking Modify Partitions
to open GParted, Linux’s brilliant non-destructive
partitioning tool. Make sure you’ve selected the correct
drive: /dev/sda is your Windows drive, while /dev/sdb
should be your newly installed drive. You can verify this
by the fact the new drive should be set as Unallocated.
Choose Device > Create Partition Table. Assuming
your PC is using a modern UEFI (as opposed to an
older BIOS), the partition table type needs to be set to
Gpt from the drop-down menu before clicking Apply.
Choose Partition > New. We’ll start with the boot
partition – set New Size (MiB) to 512 and leave the
filesystem as ext4 before clicking Add. Now create a
second partition – this time, set its size to 2048 (2GB)
and type to Linux-swap then click Add. Now create one
final partition that takes up the rest of the disk, leaving
ext4 selected before clicking Add. Once you’re happy
with the partition layout, click the green tick followed
CHOOSE A DIFFERENT FLAVOUR
Unconvinced by Elementary OS?
The good news is that you have a
mind-boggling array of choices when
it comes to Linux, and the major
difference between them is the desktop
environment they supply. Elementary
OS uses its own Pantheon desktop,
which is based on perhaps the best-
known Linux desktop of all, Gnome.
The main Ubuntu distro uses Gnome,
but there are other familiar-looking
desktops available via other variants.
The Cinnamon desktop is popular
with Windows switchers because it
offers a familiar-looking Start menu and
task bar running along the bottom of
the screen. This is the default desktop
offered by Linux Mint (https://linuxmint.
com), which we covered in depth back in
LXF294. Another popular choice is Pop!_
OS (https://pop.system76.com), which
offers its own Cosmic desktop, another
variant of Gnome.
The great thing about any flavour of
Linux is that you can switch desktops
without changing distro, enabling you
to try Cinnamon or one of the other
popular desktops, such as MATE or KDE
Escape Windows
by Apply. Once done, click Close and close the GParted
window. The installer refreshes your configuration and
you should see two tiny (green for EFI, red for swap)
and one large (green for Linux) partitions are in place.
Click the smallest green partition first and flick the
Use Partition switch to On and set Use As: to Boot
(/Boot/Efi). It’s set to delete the partition and set up a
new FAT32 system in its place, with a green tick. Now
click each of the other two partitions in turn and flick
the switch to on – you should find they’re allocated to
Swap and Root/ respectively. Once done, you should
find the Erase And Install button is no longer greyed
out – click this to carry on with the install process.
Finish installation
Wait while Elementary OS performs the installation –
the progress bar lets you know how far it’s got. When
it’s finished, you’re prompted to shut down or restart.
Choose Shut Down and then unplug your flash drive
(or eject the disc) when prompted before hitting Enter.
Your PC switches off. Power it back on and look out for
any messages to enter your BIOS/UEFI. Press the key –
typically Del or F2 – and identify the Boot section,
where you need to set your new hard drive (whether
internal or external) as the first boot device, with
Windows now the fallback. Save your changes and exit
the BIOS/UEFI, and you should find yourself presented
with a GRUB menu that includes both options for
Elementary and Windows (Windows Boot Manager).
Leave Elementary OS 7 Horus selected and click
Enter to resume the setup process. Then turn the page
to finish setting up and start exploring your new OS.
Kubuntu uses the KDE Plasma desktop, known for its unique customisability and desktop widgets.
Plasma, without having to reinstall Linux flavours. Derivatives featured at https://
from scratch. ubuntu.com/desktop/flavours include
That said, it’s worth noting that most Kubuntu (KDE/Plasma), Budgie (Budgie)
distros offer multiple versions, each and Ubuntu Unity (sporting Ubuntu’s
offering a different desktop as its own-built desktop Unity).
default. Mint offers MATE and Xfce (a We frequently feature different
lightweight desktop aimed at less- distros in LXF – dig out your copy of
powerful machines) as separate LXF287 for a recent roundup of five such
editions, while Ubuntu terms its variants variants, including Mint and Pop! OS.
11
Essential features
Take the desktop tour
The big selling point of Elementary OS is its
desktop – here’s what you need to know.
nce you’ve installed Elementary OS, you’re
O whisked through a setup wizard. It repeats
the questions about language and keyboard
layout, then asks you to set up your user account. Enter
your name, and a suggested username is given, which
can be changed as you see fit. You also need to provide
a password to protect your account – Elementary OS
guides you towards one it deems suitably strong. The
Device Name – your virtual machine’s name as it would
appear on your home network – can also be changed at
this point. Once done, click Finish Setup.
You’re now prompted to log into Elementary – if
you’re running it in VirtualBox, you’ll have seen the
INSTALL VIRTUALBOX GUEST ADDITIONS
To fix the display issue in VirtualBox, choose Devices > Insert Guest
Additions CD Image from the main VirtualBox menus. Now switch
to Elementary OS, click Applications in the top-left corner and open
Terminal from the second page of results. Once done, type the
following command:
$ sudo mkdir /media/cdrom
You’re prompted for your user password. Once entered, the
/media/cdrom directory is created. The following command maps
your virtual CD drive to the /media/cdrom directory:
$ sudo mount /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom
Ignore the write-protected warning. Now just issue the following
two commands:
$ cd /media/cdrom
$ sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
You’ll see the Guest Additions installer run. When it completes,
click the power button in the top-right and choose Shut Down then
Restart. Once back in Elementary, click the System Settings icon in
the Dock, navigate to Displays under Hardware and click the settings
button in the top-right to pick your chosen screen resolution. Once
done, if the VirtualBox window doesn’t automatically resize to fit,
choose View > Adjust Window Size to fix it.
Install the VirtualBox Additions to allow you to increase the screen resolution.
12
compatibility warning during installation, so click the
power button in the top-right corner and choose Shut
Down. Once done, click Settings, select Display and
switch the Graphics Controller back to VMSVGA. While
you’re here, tick Enable 3D Acceleration, then click
Start to reboot Elementary. You’ll see the screen has
shrunk to just 800x600 and can’t be resized – fixing
this requires you to install the VirtualBox Guest
Additions, which is covered in the boxout (below-left).
When you find yourself at the desktop proper, you
are whisked through a desktop setup wizard – start by
customising your desktop theme (Sunset To Sunrise
dynamically switches between light and dark themes
according to the time of day) and colour (the automatic
setting on the right matches your colour scheme to
whatever background wallpaper you choose). There’s
a Night Light setting for soothing tired eyes late in the
evening, plus a Housekeeping option whereby you can
choose to delete specific files (trash and temporary
files by default; downloads are an additional option)
after 30 days.
You are also prompted to connect supported online
accounts – CalDAV for calendars and tasks, IMAP for
email – and then invited to access the AppCenter,
where you can find and install third-party apps. From
here, there’s a switch enabling you to keep all your apps
automatically updated if you wish (otherwise the App
Store dock icon displays a number indicating what
updates are available) and finally you’re shown an
optional shortcut to System Settings, then left to your
own devices.
Take the desktop tour
You now find yourself in an environment both familiar –
particularly if you have any experience using Mac OS –
and yet different. Use the annotation (above-right) to
familiarise yourself with the key desktop elements, then
start exploring the shortcuts currently placed on the
Dock. In addition to the Multitasking View and Files
shortcuts on the Dock, you can find access to Web,
Elementary’s web browser based on Firefox. If you’re
an existing Firefox user, you can sign into your Firefox
account to synchronise bookmarks and other data, but
Web doesn’t support any plugins – for that you would
need to install Firefox (or Chrome). You can find out how
over the page.
In addition, the Dock houses apps for Mail, Calendar,
Tasks, Video and Photos, plus shortcuts to System
Settings and the AppCenter. Again, we’ll focus on
AppCenter shortly when we examine the various
options available in Elementary OS for adding new
tools to your system.
System Settings works in a similar way to Windows’
own Settings tool, although again it more closely
resembles Mac OS’s Preferences in presentation: a
 Escape Windows

Get acquainted with the Elementary OS desktop

1 2 3

5 6

Applications Menu bar buttons Multitasking view

1 Click this to access Elementary OS’s
launcher – by default, applications are
displayed as icons, but a list view with
categories is also available.
Calendar
2 Click this to access a monthly calendar
and – if you’ve linked Elementary OS to an
online CalDAV account – a list of any events
recorded for the selected day.
3 Volume and playback controls, network
settings, notifications and power options are all
accessed from here.
Files
4 Elementary OS’s Files tool should be
familiar if you’re used to the Windows File
Explorer. Key folders and drives are listed on
the left, while there’s also support for multiple
tabs, too.
5 Click this button and you can switch
between applications and desktops quickly
using a feature that’s very similar to Windows’
Task Switcher.
Dock
6 You can find shortcuts to key apps and
settings here – add other apps by right-clicking
their shortcut under Applications and choosing
Add To Dock.

series of clearly labelled buttons divided into categories list of pinned apps grows, you may wish to prune or
such as Personal, Hardware and Administration. rearrange it. Removing apps from here is done by right-
Areas that are worth exploring include Security clicking and unticking Keep In Dock – the app can still
& Privacy, where you can find options for cleaning be accessed via Applications – while you can rearrange
your online history, locking your PC after a period of apps simply by clicking and dragging them.
inactivity and enabling the built-in firewall (disabled Ultimately, Elementary OS’s Pantheon desktop is Elementary OS’s
by default). Look out for a prompt to unlock certain simple to navigate and won’t leave you head-scratching. Settings panel
includes a range of
settings using administrator rights – this basically With the fundamentals now in place, it’s time to turn handy tools as well
means entering your personal user password to the page and start exploring your new operating system as configuration
gain the required access. Also take the time to visit in more depth. options.
Applications to set default apps, manage startup and
set permissions on an app-by-app basis.
Ultimately, though, take the time to browse all
settings or use the Search Settings search tool in the
top-right corner to try to track down a specific setting
quickly – for example, type dock to find settings
relating to the Dock, which you’ll subsequently discover
are found under Desktop > Dock & Panel.

Launch applications
The Applications menu in the top-left corner is where
you can browse all pre-installed apps – as with Settings,
there’s a handy search tool to help work through this
list, although you’ll see Elementary OS ships with only
the most basic apps. Double-click an app icon to launch
it, or right-click for more options, such as uninstalling
the app, viewing its entry in AppStore (to find out more
about it), and pinning it to the Dock for one-click access
direct from the desktop. Speaking of the Dock, as your

13
Essential features
Installing new apps
Finding and installing apps in Elementary OS is easy, but
you’ll need more than the default app store provided.
ow you’ve familiarised yourself with the
N Elementary OS desktop, it’s time to start
putting your new operating system to
good use. This, of course, involves installing new
applications. The obvious source for these is the
AppCenter via its Dock shortcut. This opens an app
store, with a search tool at the top, some featured
apps beneath and – if you scroll down – a series of
categories for you to explore.
Whisper it quietly, but Elementary OS’s app store is
rather short of well-known apps. That’s because it’s
aimed at developers who release free and paid-for
software that’s optimised for use with Elementary OS’s
Elementary has built-in support for Flatpak apps as well as its own AppCenter software store.
ESSENTIAL ELEMENTARY OS APPS
Let’s cut to the chase – you’re looking for apps to replace those you
use in Windows. Which ones come recommended? You probably
already know LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Office,
while GIMP replaces Photoshop if you need more features than
those offered by the basic built-in Photos app. If Videos refuses to
play your media, try VLC Media Player instead.
Many of your favourite Windows apps have also been ported to
Linux, too – visit the program’s own website to confirm this, or try
the https://alternativeto.net website to find alternatives.
Finally, last but not least, open a terminal window and type the
following commands, one line after the other:
$ sudo apt install software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip.scott/pantheon-tweaks
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install pantheon-tweaks
This installs a handy tool called Tweaks, which is placed in the
Personal section of System Settings. This gives you greater control
over the Elementary OS desktop – for example, to add a much-
needed Minimise button to application windows, navigate to Tweaks
> Appearance, then scroll down and change Layout under Window
Controls to Add Minimize Left.
14
Pantheon desktop. Don’t worry, though, because open
source programs usually exist in multiple different
places. The first alternative source reveals itself when
a search returns no results, because AppCenter then
points you to Flathub.
To find and install apps through Flathub, open Web,
browse to https://flathub.org/home and click Browse
The Apps. You can peruse or search for apps, then
click the Install button. This downloads a small file to
your Downloads folder with a flatpakref file extension.
Simply double-click this file and a dialog inviting you
to install this ‘untrusted app’ pops up. It provides a
summary of its download size, a warning that updates
aren’t reviewed before being offered, and that other
apps from the same developer may subsequently
appear in AppCenter. Tick I Understand and then click
Install Anyway.
The advantage of installing apps in this way is
that they subsequently appear in AppCenter and
updates are offered alongside other apps. On the
downside, apps installed through Flathub tend to be
much larger than other sources; that’s because the
apps are packaged to run in a sandbox, isolating them
from the rest of your system. This is great for security,
but means the apps must be bundled with all the files
they need to run, regardless of whether they’re already
on your system.
Other install sources
Many apps are also hosted on what are known as
repositories, or repos. Elementary OS supports all
standard Ubuntu repos, and this is often the quickest
way to install software. While you can install these
packages through the terminal using the apt install
command, you need to know their exact name. A
simpler option is to install a separate package manager
that sits alongside AppCenter. To do this, open the
terminal and issue the following two commands:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install synaptic
After installation, you can launch the Synaptic
package manager via the Applications launcher to
browse and search for software. You can even pin it to
the Dock if you use it frequently.
Some programs can be downloaded directly
from the app’s own website – look for DEB files
(packages that are similar to Windows installer files)
and AppImages (portable versions). To make installing
DEB packages easier to manage, we recommend
installing GDebi through Synaptic.
Before attempting to run any AppImage, you
need to right-click it in Files and choose Properties >
Permissions before clicking Execute under Owner
to change the permissions to 764. Click Close, then
double-click the file and the app should open.
 Escape Windows

Take a deeper dive

Your new operating system is up and running, and your journey
into Linux has begun. Here’s where to focus your efforts next.
ou’ve added Elementary OS alongside Don’t forget to

Y Windows, you’ve installed the apps you need

for everyday life, what next? The walkthrough
(below) touches on some of the fundamental aspects
of Linux you need to tackle at some point: keeping your
system updated, file and folder permissions, and the
terminal. But before that, what else needs to be done
to get you set up?
Let’s start with accessing your Windows drive. It’s
likely you have personal files and folders stashed in
your personal user folder, and the good news is that
Elementary OS can read and write data to and from
NTFS-formatted drives out of the box. Open Files and
you should see your Windows drive under Storage.
Double-click this and navigate to the Users folder to
find your user folders all nested under your username.
You should find all your existing hardware just
works, too, thanks to the plethora of drivers built into
the underlying Linux kernel. However, if you want
access to more powerful proprietary drivers, such as
those supplied by Nvidia for its graphics chips, open
the terminal and install additional driver packages
written for Ubuntu-based distros like Elementary OS:
$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
Next, open the Synaptic package manager to install
some backup tools. For backing up your Home folder
(where personal files sit), search for Déjà Dup. When
you mark it for installation, you’re prompted to install
install that all-
important backup
software to protect
both Elementary
OS and your data.
additional packages (dependencies), so do so. If you
want to take system snapshots similar to those taken
by Windows’ System Restore, search for TimeShift.
As things stand, both utilities save backups to your
Elementary OS system partition – that’s not ideal, so
also install GParted to carve out a suitably sized ext4
partition from the free space on your backup drive to
serve as a secure backup location.
You’re now ready to embrace Linux in all its glory.
Why not take this opportunity to subscribe to this very
magazine? Not only will you be covered going forward,
but it also opens access to our extensive online PDF
archives (www.linuxformat.com/archives), where you’ll
find all the tips and advice you need to guide you on
the next steps of your journey into this exciting
alternative to Windows.

GO FURTHER IN ELEMENTARY

Stay up to date Explore the terminal File and folder permissions

1 The obvious place to go to keep
your new OS and applications up to date
is AppCenter (and Synaptic if you’ve
installed it). Look out for AppCenter
notifications informing you of available
updates. Install these by clicking the
orange update button followed by Update
All. An alternative method – one more
thorough – is to open the terminal and
type two commands: sudo apt update
followed by sudo apt upgrade .
2 The command line is often the
quickest way to get things done, and it
won’t take you long to understand how it
works. Take out a subscription to Linux
Format and you also gain full access to
the magazine’s archives in PDF format,
where you can find a series of beginner’s
guides that opens with a Get Started
tutorial from LXF209. Follow these to get
a thorough grounding in how to use this
powerful tool.
3 Linux is hot on file permissions
and ownership. Every file and folder is
allocated read (r), write (w) and execute (x)
permissions based on who’s accessing
the file according to their class. There are
three classes: the file’s owner, a specific
group assigned to the file, and everyone
else. Right-click a file in Files and choose
Properties > Permissions to explore
how they are expressed in numerical or
symbolic form – this is Linux after all!

15
Features features
Essential

Free our
SOFTWARE!
Taking anything for granted is
dangerous, so Jonni Bidwell and
Mike Saunders revisit how the free
software movement got started to
help free us from proprietary tyranny!

TIMELINE
Prehistory – Linux Answers
In late 1999, Future plc published a
one-off magazine. This was borne off
the back of the success of the now-
closed PC Answers and PC Plus [the
flashbacks! – ed]. All we’ll say is that
this was successful enough to launch
a monthly magazine…
May 2000 – Linux Format #1
Renaming the title in line with Future’s
most successful print magazines,
Amiga Format and PC Format, Linux
Format was released with editor Nick
Veitch of Amiga Format fame and
writing talent from PC Plus mag. It
came with a CD and was an instant hit.

16
 The free software movement IN DEPTH

ithout Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS),

W there would be no GNU, and without

GNU, there would be no Linux distributions
as we know them, and without Linux, there
would be no Linux Format. So here we are, 300 issues
on, celebrating the very thing that enables us to exist:
the free software movement.
RMS started the GNU’s Not Unix Project in 1983
to create a totally free operating system, and later he
established the General Public License to guarantee
its software freedom. By 1991, much of GNU was
finished, but it lacked a kernel – which is where
Linus Torvalds and his Linux kernel came in. Combining
the collaborative nature of online open source
development, the benefits of the GPL licence and the
pulling-as-one community that builds around projects,
GNU/Linux took off beyond anything that could have
been expected. But despite this success – indeed,
perhaps because of it – the issues of software freedom
persist and are perhaps more pressing than ever.
Bill Gates’s 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists, (https://
bit.ly/lxf300gates), besides making people feel bad for partly as a means of
pirating BASIC, engendered the idea that all software disambiguation, but also to
should be paid for, and its source code kept from distance the OSI from the
prying eyes. The burgeoning microcomputer industry Free Software movement.
shared Gates’s sentiment and proprietary software The prevailing feeling among
quickly became the norm. Meanwhile, communications the OSI was that the
giant AT&T, which had hitherto provided the Unix OS to maverick image associated
governments and universities for free, was forced by with the Free Software camp
deregulation proceedings to commercialise it. would deter businesses from
Richard Stallman claims his musings on software adopting or contributing to
freedom began at the AI Lab at MIT. For years, hackers open source software. The original OSI definition Richard Stallman
there had fought with a rogue Xerox printer that had a of open source was based around the Debian Free the founder of
GNU, the GPL
propensity for paper jams. Having access to the Unix Software Guidelines (DFSG) and as such contained and the FSF.
printer driver source enabled them to get the printer to provisions other than availability of source code.
email everyone in the print queue whenever it jammed, In fact, at face value, the OSI and Free Software
so whoever was closest could fix it. This printer was movements’ definitions have much in common, but
later replaced, but a new one, like its predecessor, soon they originated from different philosophies. The latter
became prone to malfunctions. Unfortunately, no driver is couched in more pragmatic language, for instance.
source was bundled with it, and Stallman’s attempts to The OSI wanted businesses to be more amenable to
obtain a copy were met with refusal. This went against
the cooperative hacker culture he held sacrosanct, so
he was spurred into action.
Stallman announced the GNU (GNU’s Not Unix)
Project in September 1983. Its ambitious goal was
to produce, through a mass-collaboration effort, an
operating system called GNU that was entirely free.
Stallman introduced four basic freedoms (laid out in
the 1985 GNU Manifesto – http://bit.ly/GNUManifesto)
to which all users ought to be entitled. The bastion
The term ‘open source’ was inaugurated with the of software
formation of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998, freedom, the FSF.

April 2001 – May 2001 – LXF014 May 2002 – LXF027

LXF013
The beginning of a new
century called for new media,
so the DVD age finally hit
Linux Format! On the first
LXFDVD you could find SuSE
Linux 7.1 and Red Hat 7.0.
First a DVD and next an all-new This issue saw the long-
look for LXF! The first redesign of awaited results of the
the magazine cemented favourites reader-voted Linux
such as HotPicks, Roundup and Format Awards 2001.
Answers. The International Space Mozilla won and Apache,
Station was in the Linux news and too, while Mandrake picked
AMD64 was on the cards. up best distribution.

17
Essential features

strategies like that of Netscape, which published the

code for its Communicator suite in 1998.
Stallman began work on one of the key components
of GNU, a version of the Emacs text editor, in 1984.
Other tools followed swiftly after: the GNU compiler
collection (GCC) and GNU debugger (GDB), as well as
rewrites of the myriad Unix command-line tools (ls and
friends) taken for granted nowadays by Linux users.
Concerned that his employer might try to claim
copyright of GNU assets, Stallman resigned from the
AI Lab. MIT apparently took no offence and continued
to allow him access to its computing facilities. The
GNU OS, Stallman decided, had to be compatible with
Unix. This meant GNU would inherit Unix’s portability,
and some free Unix software (such as the TeX
typesetting system, and later the X Windows System)
could easily be incorporated. It also meant that once
the project had grown to involve developers in multiple
locations, they didn’t need to be so concerned about
compatibility; if their contribution was compatible with
Unix, it would be compatible with GNU OS.
Through the GNU Project, Stallman hoped to effect
a social movement through technical means. But this
In 2011, boy genius Mike
Saunders met Stallman at
the Institute of Engineering
and Technology in London,
where he put to him some of
the questions you’d asked…
RMS: First, I want to tell you about free
software because I want that to be the
interview. Many users of the GNU/Linux
system will not have heard the ideas of
free software. The idea of free software
is that users of computing deserve
freedom. They deserve in particular to have control
over their computing. And proprietary software does
not allow users to have control of their computing.
Proprietary software keeps users divided and
helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to
redistribute it to others, and helpless because the

Image credit: Laemeur, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://laemeur.com/post/56923025136

radical departure would have to take place in such a
way as to respect copyright law, which is based around
protection and limitation rather than the liberation and
promiscuity trumpeted by the GNU camp.
The document that permitted this change would
eventually come to be known as the GNU General
Public License (GPL), but in its infancy it was just the
Emacs General Public License. The critical hit in this
document was the stipulation that while modifications
and derivative works were permitted, they would have
to be released under the same Emacs licence.
Proprietary offshoots were verboten. The arrangement
became known as copyleft – which used traditional
copyright law to serve something like the inverse of its
intended purpose, and grant users permission to copy,
modify and distribute software but deny them the right
to add any restrictions. Stallman formed the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) as a non-profit organisation
in 1985 to support the GNU movement.
Today, it remains the principal organisational
sponsor of GNU, but it’s largely funded through
donations and memberships. The FSF also has some
merchandise for sale (https:// shop.fsf.org, including
the Emacs manual, which is now in its 17th edition and
running to 651 pages. You can also download it for free
at the same site. The quest to finish GNU is technically
ongoing – you are probably aware that development of
the Hurd (see p.60) did not proceed at the same pace
as the userspace – and the rest is history…
users can’t change it since they don’t have the source
code. The owner of the program has unjust power over
the users, and the program is simply an instrument
of that power. This is an injustice, and the idea of free
software is to escape from that injustice and put an
end to it. Free software respects the user’s freedom.
A program is free if it gives the user the four
essential freedoms. Freedom zero is the freedom
to run the program as you wish. Freedom one is the
freedom to study the source code and change it so the
program does your computing as you wish. Freedom
two is the freedom to help others – the freedom to
redistribute exact copies when you wish. Freedom
three is the freedom to contribute to your community,
which is the freedom to distribute your modified
copies. These four freedoms mean the social system of
using and distributing the program is an ethical system.
With these four freedoms, the users control the
program. Without these four freedoms, the program
controls the users. This is not a technical issue – it’s an
ethical issue. It’s an ethical issue that arises from the
use of certain technology. But because it’s an ethical
issue and not a technical one, it’s important – it’s more
important than any mere technical issue.
LXF: Most of our readers are passionate about
free software…
RMS: But do they think of it as free software?

TIMELINE
February 2003 –
LXF037
We asked, possibly
for the first time, is this the year
of Linux on the desktop? We
said: “I expect 2003 to be a real
breakout year.” We reviewed
LindowsOS 3.0 and Unreal 2003.
January 2005 – LXF061
LXF ran its Best Distro feature and
Mandrake easily won, with poor
Ubuntu coming joint ninth. Some
chap called Graham Morrison
started as staff writer and we ran
Ubuntu on the LXFDVD for the first
time, alongside Fedora Core 3.
October 2006
– LXF084
The last major
redesign of LXF landed there
was another in LXF236, with
the odd section change. The
LXFDVD was also moved
inside the mag.
June 2008 –
LXF106
Boy genius
Paul Hudson was promoted
to editor/high commander
and we put the Asus Eee
PC centre stage. Jonni’s is
still running Arch Linux…

18
 The free software movement IN DEPTH

LXF: Many use the term ‘free software’, some use ‘open source’.
RMS: That’s different. Open source refers to different ideas
– a different philosophy. And the difference is fundamental,
because it’s at the level of values. It’s not a disagreement over
some detail; it’s a disagreement over the most basic thing. We
are aiming for a free society, where users have freedom. Open
source organisations say they’re aiming for better-quality code.
These are as far apart as you can get, because we’re saying it’s
for freedom and social solidarity; they’re saying it’s for quality.
LXF: But if you can ease a company that makes proprietary
software into the idea of open source, by talking about the
benefits of quality, perhaps you can expand to free software…
RMS: In fact, when the open source philosophy spreads a lot –
which it has – it tends to close people’s minds to the ideas of
free software. It even tends to cover up our existence. Most
of the articles that talk about the GNU system don’t call it the
GNU system and don’t call it free software. They describe it as
open source, and give the impression that we – its developers
– agree with the open source ideas that readers have heard of,
and you’d never guess at what we really stand for.
LXF: When some people hear ‘free software’, they think of
rubbish spyware on Windows machines.
RMS: It took me time to recognise that this distinction was vital.
In 1983, when I announced [GNU], I hadn’t separated these
concepts. It took a few years. So again, in the GNU Manifesto,
posted in 1985, there’s still some confusion between the two
meanings of ‘free’. After that I became aware of the need to
emphasise that it’s free as in freedom, not free as in price.
I notice there’s a statement here in your magazine [LXF143]
about LibreOffice, which is an important illustration. Sun
acquired StarOffice and released it as free software under the
name OpenOffice.org. But the people at Sun who did this were
not supporters, politically, of the ideas of free software. They
were open source supporters. So their goal was to make their
program good quality and a success – not to give the users
freedom. That wasn’t their goal, although since their source
code was free software, it did respect the user’s freedom, but
they weren’t thinking about it in those terms. So they made a
list of extensions, and in it they put proprietary extensions.
This shows that people who don’t think about or value
freedom can do things for other reasons that help freedom.
But you can’t count on it. Sometimes it suits people’s motives
better to do things that work against our freedom.
LXF: What is the biggest threat to free software in 2011?
RMS: There are several. There are legal prohibitions, such as
software patents in some countries that have foolish policies.
And there are laws that censor free software explicitly, such as
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US, which censors
free software that you can break digital handcuffs with. The
European Union has similar laws. Both the US and the EU try
to push nasty laws like that on to other countries, through
treaties that they ask them to sign. So these are malicious
governments. Then there are the obstacles created by
manufacturers, working together often with Microsoft.
LXF: One of our readers wanted to ask: is a world of only free
software still feasible? Should that still be the ultimate goal?
RMS: Yes, it’s the goal, I think. That’s my goal. Now, it may be
impossible to totally eradicate the last little bits of non-free
software. After all, in almost 200 years of abolitionism, we
haven’t eliminated slavery.
LXF: A lot more people are using smartphones and tablets as
their primary computing platforms, with their app stores…
RMS: That doesn’t change anything, really. A smartphone is a
computer. So, everything we say about computers, that the
software you run should be free – you should insist on that –
applies to smartphones just the same. And likewise to tablets.
What should we say about those app stores? First of all, the
Apple App Store forbids free software. It only allows non-free
software. This shows how evil it is. But remember, it’s on the
basis of a non-free operating system. If you want to live in
freedom, you need to not just insist on apps that are free, but
to insist on an operating system that’s free, too.
The source code of Android is free as Google releases it,
but it uses a non-copyleft licence, except for the case of Linux
– which is under GPL v2. The result is that the licence doesn’t
protect the users from lockdown, or Tivoization – which is the
practice of making a free program’s executable non-free, by
stopping the user from installing and using his own version.
LXF: There’s still a battle going on here to win the minds of a lot
of people – they don’t even know what source code is.
RMS: Absolutely.
LXF: It’s a case of trying to find the right approach…
RMS: I use the analogy of recipes. Cooks cook recipes freely,
they study and change them when they wish, they redistribute
copies, and if they make a modified version, they might
distribute copies of their version. So imagine if businesses
and the state decided to impose proprietary recipes. Suppose
the state said: starting tomorrow, if you copy or change your
recipe, we will put you in prison and call you a pirate. Imagine
how angry all cooks would be. A lot of people who don’t know
anything about programming will understand this. The state
hasn’t tried to do it with recipes – but that’s exactly what it’s
tried to do with software.

August 2010 – April 2012 – January 2014 – LXF179…

LXF134
What was this
Android thing and how could it
possibly have a chance of taking
on the iPhone? We explained
why, plus Mint 9 and Fedora 13
were on the LXFDVD.
LXF156
We reported
on this little device called
the Raspberry Pi back in
LXF147, but the world could
now finally buy the tiny PC
marvel – and the world loved it.
A new editorial team landed
at Linux Format Towers as
the old team departed for pastures new.
LXF179 was the top-selling issue of the
year amazingly we’re still going with
your support, so thank you for helping
us keep LXF the UK’s best seller!

19
Essential features
The Linux Format team all have their favourite retro memories,
and Jonni Bidwell is here to regale y’all with them.
e’re not saying our readership
W is old, but we’re pretty sure
everyone reading this has at
least one fond memory of
computing in some past era. Maybe
it was playing the classic platformer
Crash Bandicoot on the original
PlayStation, maybe it was discovering
the SAY() and TRANSLATE$() functions
in Amiga Basic. Perhaps it was even
reverse engineering a printer driver for a
PDP-11 microcomputer. Whatever your
rose-tinted memories of bygone
computing eras are, it’s often fun to
indulge them.
20
There are thousands
of open source emulators and
other tools that can help us on this journey
into nostalgic reverie. Of course, retro
gaming has been popular ever since the
first games were able to be classed as
retro. The first version of MAME (Multiple
Arcade Machine Emulator) appeared in
1996, and enabled PC users to relive those
hours in front of the arcade cabinets. More
than a quarter of a century later, MAME is
better than ever and can now play over
7,000 titles. For the ultimate experience,
we’ll show you how to build your own mini
arcade cabinet with Pimoroni’s Picade.
Emulators abound for the machines
which defined home computing too: Clive
Sinclair’s various ZX Spectrums
(spectra?), the BBC Micro and the
Commodore 64. Moving on to the 16-bit
generation we find the Amiga (our
favourite) and its rival the Atari ST
(complete with its ugly mouse and, okay,
maybe better sound).
These machines had their great games,
which of course we’ll show you how to play
(on the aforementioned arcade cabinet if
you like). But they also had great operating
systems and applications too, so we’ll
relive some of those histories, too.
 Retro emulation

Relive past computers

A roundup of the computers that made us smile (and occasionally swear).
etro gaming has long been a popular activity The Internet

R on the Pi. Soon after its 2012 release coders

worked hard to get the popular MAME
running there, and other emulators soon followed
suit. The Fuse emulator for the ZX Spectrum series
was another early arrival, and Fuse development is
alive and well today.
Anyone who went to school in the UK in the 1980s
will remember the BBC Micro. Anyone willing to recreate
the BBC experience need look no further than BeebEm
(http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com). It’s one of the
oldest emulators we’ll feature here, having been around
since 1994. It will have you reliving your galactic trading
days in Elite in no time. You can even run it from a web
browser at https://beeb.webassembly.link.
C64 on a Pi
One of the greatest selling home computers of all time
was the mighty Commodore 64. It sold somewhere
between 10 and 17 million units between its launch in
1982 and discontinuation in 1994. Official numbers for
the Pi family state that over 45 million units had been
sold by March 2022, usurping the C64 and becoming
the best-selling UK computer family in history. And if
you want to emulate the C64 on a Pi (or a PC), then look
no further than VICE (Versatile Commodore Emulator).
And after the C64 came the mighty Amiga. Not
long ago, LXF292 in fact, Amiberry developer Dimitris
Panokostas told us that Amiga emulation on the Pi
began in earnest in 2015, when UAE4ARM was ported
to it. Dimitris started work on Amiberry a year later, and
Archive’s Arcade
Collection enables
you to play classics
such as Q*bert
from the comfort
of your browser.
today it’s probably the best way to have your Pi pretend
to be an Amiga. Amiberry uses much of the same
emulation code as the venerable WinUAE, and in turn
FS-UAE (a Linux port), but with optimisations for lower-
powered boards. These all have their roots in the original
UAE, which originally stood for Unusable Amiga Emulator
because in 1995 it couldn’t do much besides display the
disk logo. Back then though, most people didn’t think
Amiga emulation would be remotely possible, so this
was a big step.
If we mention the Amiga, there’s a set of people
that will be most upset if we don’t mention the Atari ST.
And yes, you can emulate that on a Pi too. Unlike
Amiga emulation, where you can’t do a whole lot
without copyright-encumbered ROMS, the emulation
community at https://emutos.sourceforge.io has
engineered its own. Combine this with the Hatari
emulator and those 520ST memories will come
flooding back.

RETRO GAMING ON PCS

If you’re struggling to source a Pi, or
for some reason don’t want to do retro
gaming on one, then you’ll be pleased to
hear that all of the emulators and
platforms we mention here are available
for your PC, too. Emulating newer
platforms, such as high-end Amigas
and PlayStation, will be much more
performant there too.
If you have an old PC lying around,
then you might want to skip the
emulation part and run some DOS
classics natively. You don’t even need a
dubiously obtained copy of MS-DOS:
the open source FreeDOS project
(https://freedos.org) saw a new release
in February 2022. That might seem a
while ago, but it’s been feature complete
for many years and doesn’t have the
security (or breakage) concerns of
modern software. Alternatively, you can ago, but more eye-candy is available
run them on modern Linux via DosBox. through ports such as Doomsday Engine,
You’ll find a list of open source games at PrBoom+-RT and RTXQuake (the last two
https://hellricer.github.io/2020/11/01/ feature glorious ray tracing). As we write
opensource-msdos-games.html. this, erstwhile political hopeful Jeremy
A number of classic games (or their Corbyn was snapped playing Thatcher’s
engines) have been reworked to run on Techbase, a Doom 2 add-on, fighting for
modern platforms, too. This is a feature his (political) life with a rocket launcher.
in itself, but you really should check out
Widelands (a port of the classic The
Settlers), OpenMW (Morrowind), ET:
Legacy (Wolfenstein), OpenRA (Red Alert,
C&C et al), OpenLara (Tomb Raider) and
of course ScummVM (classic Lucasfilm
games including the Monkey Island
series). These days it supports a huge
number of non-SCUMM games too – see
https://scummvm.org). The id Software Find out more about Jeremy
classics Doom and Quake (and its Corbyn’s favourite Doom 2 mod at
sequels) were open sourced some time https://thatchers-techbase.github.io.

21
Essential features

Retro gaming on the Pi

Set up RetroPie and set a course for nostalgic reverie.
here’s been a resurgence in retro gaming lately. vengeance and furious anger if it catches you

T The C64 and NES (originally launched in 1982

and 1983, respectively) both saw mini editions
launched back in 2018 and both enjoyed plentiful sales.
A SNES edition appeared last year too, priced rather
steeply at £239 (more than the original’s RRP, not
considering inflation). This was followed by the Amiga
A500 Mini at the start of 2022 (RRP £120).
Graphics in 1981 All of the above are just open source emulators
weren’t really up running on commodity hardware in a designer shell, so
to much, but later you might think the prices are a little overboard. What
we’ll see how
shaders can
you’re paying for though, mostly, is the licence to run
make Super Tank these retro ROMs and disk images legally. Nintendo in
more beautiful. particular will strike down upon thee with great
distributing any of its intellectual property. Just ask
RomUniverse or LoveRetro.co. They might sue us for
saying that, so we won’t mention their name again.
Be that as it may, there are a huge number of titles
spanning the past five decades that you can run for free
on cheap, modern hardware. If you have access to old
tapes and disks there are open source solutions (of
varying complexity) for extracting data from these,
too. Running the emulators as is will give you the best
gaming experience and maximum customisability. And
as you may have guessed from the title, the Raspberry
Pi is a great platform on which to do this.
There are plenty of OSes dedicated to retro gaming
on the Pi, such as Batocera, Lakka and Recalbox. We’re
going to focus on the excellent RetroPie. You don’t need
much beyond a Pi, SD card, keyboard and monitor to
get started, but for an authentic feel we’d recommend
some sort of controller. You can even get one styled
after your favourite console from any respectable Pi
peripheral peddler.

No 10 pences required
If you want to go all out though, get yourself a Picade
mini arcade cabinet from Pimoroni. The good pirate-
monkey-robot-ninjas at the Sheffield-based Pi
emporium were good enough to send us one, and we
can honestly say it’s a marvel of engineering. It’ll take a
couple of hours to build, but there are thorough
instructions (see https://learn.pimoroni.com/article/
assembling-your-picade). Once you’ve built it, you can
play games on its eight- or 10-inch screen with a quality

SETTING UP RETROPIE

Download Pi Imager Download RetroPie Boot the SD card

1 We usually recommend Balena
Etcher for these tasks (and it’s a
reasonable choice here too), but this time
we’ll use the official Raspberry Pi Imager.
You’ll find it in the Ubuntu Software Centre
(or repos under rpi-imager ), Flathub, or
straight from the Pi Foundation website at
www.raspberrypi.com/software.
2 Open the Imager program and
select Choose OS. You’ll find RetroPie in
the Emulation and game OS category. If
you’re using a different imaging program
you can download the image directly from
https://retropie.org.uk/download. You
may need to gunzip it, depending on said
imaging program.
3 Wait patiently for the image to be
written and close whatever you used to
write the media. The newly minted SD card
will probably show up in your file manager.
If so, it’s safest to click the eject button
there (even if it results in an error
message) before removing the card. Pop it
in your Pi and you’re ready to go!

22

CREDIT: Pimoroni
Pimoroni’s Picade is the best way to enjoy
Pi-based gaming, and partly why this feature
was submitted perilously late.
joystick and six brightly coloured buttons for bashing.
The act of putting in coins is replaced by pushing
another button. There’s a power button too, which can
initiate a graceful shutdown if things go weird.
Whatever your setup, the first task is to write a
RetroPie to an SD card (see steps, below left). Note that
there are different versions for different Pi models (as
well as Odroid boards). You don’t need a keyboard
plugged in if you have a controller, but you do need a
screen of some sort. If you’re planning on using a funky
kind of screen (such as a Hyperpixel HAT) you’ll need to
set that up with a regular display and keyboard first. If
you’re using the Picade you’ll need a USB keyboard to
set up the controls (press F4 to access the terminal and
download the magick script).
To download setup scripts you’ll need to either plug
in an Ethernet cable or set up Wi-Fi, too. To set up the
latter, skip to the terminal and run sudo raspi-config .
Then skip to 1 System Options>Wireless LAN . You’ll
need to set the wireless regulatory domain (regdom) to
your country before networks are detected. If you’re in
the UK, note that the regdom code here is GB .
On first boot the filesystem is resized to occupy the
whole SD card, necessitating a reboot. On second boot
you should see the RetroPie splash screen and soon
after you’ll be invited to configure controllers. Hold
down any button on the controller (like it tells you) to
start. Controls are based on a SNES-like controller,
but if you have more (or less) buttons it’s not the end
of the world. The Picade controls are detected as a
keyboard, so don’t be alarmed (the inputs are converted
by the Picade HAT into emulated keystrokes).
The final button, described as Hotkey Enable is
important because (in the absence of a keyboard) it,
in combination with other buttons, will enable you to
configure RetroArch. The “home” type buttons (such as
the X on an Xbox style controller) are useful here. If
you’re all out of buttons the docs (see https://retropie.
org.uk/docs/First-Installation) recommend using the
Select button here.
If you mess up the controller configuration (and save
it), you might find yourself unable to navigate the
Retro emulation
menus. You can plug in a keyboard and
use that to reconfigure the controller.
Push Esc to display the main menu, then
go to Configure Input and press Enter.
Legal ROMs
RetroPie doesn’t include any ROMs
out of the box, so initially you’re only
presented with configuration options.
RetroPie does helpfully set up Samba
though, so you can copy content over
without removing the SD card. The roms
share should appear in your File manager
on another PC connected to the LAN.
Inside you’ll see folders for the many
platforms supported by RetroPie.
To test things out we’ll grab a ROM
(legally!) from the MAME site. Go to https://
mamedev.org/roms and find Super Tank (in
the Other Games section at the bottom). Or
choose something else, everything on this
page should work well. Check the box
(assuming you agree to not use the title
commercially) and download the supertnk.zip file. Don’t
unzip it, but place it in the arcade/ directory in the roms
share. Restart EmulationStation by pressing Start to
bring up the main menu, then selecting Quit, then
choose the first option. You should now see a new
Arcade option, which is for ROMs that run under MAME
or FBNeo (FinalBurn, suitable for older arcade titles).
The default RetroPie install includes multiple versions of
both of these, and when you select the Arcade category
and choose Super Tank you’ll be asked to choose one to
RECREATE THE ARCADE VIBE
“If you want to go all out though,
get yourself a Picade mini arcade
cabinet from Pimoroni.”
use as the default. A reasonable choice here is
lr-mame2003 , which should provide good overall
compatibility for any arcade games you come across.
All going well you should see the glorious, square-
screened Super Tank introduction. Hit Select several
times to furnish yourself with credits, then push Start to
begin. The goals are simple: collect the yellow Xs, avoid
the red ones, eliminate the red tanks and try not to get
shot. A two-player mode is available, if you have a friend
(or enemy, or if you enjoy shooting defenceless targets).
Other MAME versions (besides the three listed) are
available in RetroPie. Some of these need to be installed
separately. For example the 2010, 2015 and 2016
editions are more suited to ‘modern’ games, but may
struggle on anything less than a Pi 4, whereas Mame4all
should work even on a first-edition Pi (although it’s
considered outdated).
These and other emulators can be added from
the RetroPie configuration menu (in RetroPie
Setup> Manage Packages>opt). You can read
more on the multitudes of MAME editions by visiting
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME.
23
Essential features

Those magnificent
machines of the 1980s
The eight-bit machines managed to do a huge amount with just a
smidgeon of memory and CPUs that would faint looking at long division.
he Pi A and Pi B monograms are a tribute to the *exec !boot

T BBC Micro, which likewise came in a modest A

form (with 16KB of RAM) and a beefier model B
(with a mighty 32KB). That seems reason enough to
devote some time to emulating those bastions of British
engineering here.
BeebEm, mentioned previously, isn’t included in
RetroPie, and nor is it available through its experimental
package repos. There have been a few attempts to write
custom installers to get it to work. The easiest one is
detailed at https://bit.ly/lxf295-beebem. You only need
to install the MAME standalone and LR-Mess (non-
arcade) emulators to get a virtual BBC B working. You’ll
also need to put source some ROM files to make this
work. These go in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame.
And no, we don’t know where to get them. You can find
disk and tape images at www.bbcmicro.co.uk/index.
php, however. You’ll need to boot these manually, and
seeing as modern keyboards don’t have a break key an
old-school command line is required:
To further confuse things, the asterisk is generated
(on a UK keyboard) with Shift and ’.
There is a standalone BBC emulator, BeebEm, and is
available for many platforms. But this doesn’t build, or at
least we couldn’t get it to, on modern Linux. You can,
however, emulate the BBC on another platform. One of
the first alternative operating systems to appear on the
Pi was a port of RISC OS, originally written for the first
ARM processor on the Acorn Archimedes. You can find
out all about it at www.riscosopen.org. We don’t have
space to cover it here, other than to say it can run the
Beebit emulator without too much fuss.
Spectrum
Spectrum emulation is more straightforward. The Fuse
emulator is included in RetroPie and you can find some
games to download (legally!) at www.infinitefrontiers.
org.uk/zx-spectrum-downloads. Put the .z80 files in
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum and you should
be able to start them from the menu. Spectrum games
require keyboard control (although you can map joystick
buttons to keyboard from the RetroGUI (the in-game
menu summoned with hotkey-X).

Commodore 64
People are still creating demos and games for the
If you can get the legendary Commodore 64. Often these use imaginative
BBC emulator techniques to produce impressive effects that, according
working through to conventional thinking, wouldn’t be possible on such
Mess, then you modest hardware. Even in its heyday many of the demos
may find yourself
with the Repton
exploited undocumented features (okay bugs) in the
soundtrack stuck 6502 CPU or VIC-II chip to do weird and wonderful
in your head. things. Even if used within operational parameters, the

ANATOMY OF RETROPIE
RetroPie is itself just a bundle
comprising Pi builds of Emulation Station
(ES – the GUI frontend), RetroArch (a
frontend which some of the emulators
plug into, the one with the funky green
retro menu in-game) and the emulators
themselves. The emulators that integrate
with RetroArch (or rather its libretro
library) are known as “libretro cores”.
The glue that binds everything
together, in a sense, is the RetroPie
Setup Script. This is what handles all the
package management, including adding
custom emulators as you might have
done for the BBC Micro above, and as
you might do for the Amiga and Atari ST
over the page. It can also be used to
augment a standard Raspberry Pi OS
installation with RetroPie. That’s what
the first option (“Basic install”) is for.
Another important script is
Runcommand, which tells RetroPie which
emulator and options with which to run a
particular ROM. You can configure this
by pushing any button when launching a
game. Options can be set for a particular
system, or in a ROM-specific way.

24

VIC-II enabled inexpensive shifting of sprites, pixels,
characters, bitmaps and other regions. A vast
improvement on previous systems where these things
would, for the most part, have to be redrawn by hand.
If you see SID, tell him
The SID (Sound Interface Device) chip was ground-
breaking at the time. Previous audio hardware weren’t
much use for anything besides blips or beeps. SID
introduced fine frequency control, which enabled 16-bit
resolution and much more sonorous background music.
Besides this perfect(ish) pitch, it had previously unseen
synthesis abilities. The chip was capable of making four
waveforms (square, sawtooth, triangular and white
noise) across three channels. Each channel could be
modulated, multiplexed or otherwise transformed, with
the effect that there were seemed to be many more
than three channels.
Each channel has its own envelope, determined by
Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release (ADSR) settings. This
makes it possible to simulate, say, organ key presses.
There’s a musical genre dedicated to including SID
output in conventional music. The Swedish band
Machinae Supremacy (www.machinaesupremacy.com)
describes itself as “SID-metal”. If you’re interested in
making your own SID tunes, check out GoatTracker
(https://sourceforge.net/projects/goattracker2 or see
https://retro64.altervista.org/blog/making-commodore-
64-music-the-sid-and-goattracker for a guide.
The VICE emulator isn’t included in the standard
RetroPie installation. But it’s easy to install. Go to the
The C64s predecessors didn’t have graphics, they had the PetSCII
character set. Try your hand at PetSCII art at https://petscii.krissz.hu.
MODERNISING GRAPHICS
Some of the machines we’ve emulated
here did an awful lot with not an awful lot
of pixels. There’s a certain charm to
playing games at their original resolution,
but on a powerful system it’s possible to
do high-quality image resampling and
upscaling on the fly. If you summon the
in-game RetroPie menu and scroll down
you’ll find a submenu entitled Shaders.
Select Load and you’ll see a list of all
kinds of graphical customisations
(implemented as OpenGL Shaders) that
can be applied. Try selecting the
2xScaleHQ preset. Now return to the
quick menu (no need to restart the
Retro emulation
Jeff Minter has
released all his
titles, including
City Bomb for
the Spectrum,
as freeware.
RetroPie configuration, select RetroPie Setup and select
“Manage packages”. Select “opt” and scroll down to find
Vice near the bottom of the list of emulators. Select it
and then choose to install a pre-compiled binary.
Installing from source is possible too, which may get you
a newer version, but may also take a long time. This is
also true for any of the emulators listed.
It can emulate not just the legendary C64, but the
PET series (first launched in 1977), the VIC-20 (1980) as
well as the post C64 models (the C64DTV, C128, the
Commodore Plus/4) and more.
It’s easy to get started with VICE. You can find some
impressive demos at https://c64.ch. Pick one and pop
the zip file in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/c64. Multi-disk
affairs will need to be unzipped. You can configure VICE
from its menu by pressing F12: swap disks, increase
emulation speeds or quit the emulator. You might also
want to try the VICE libretro core, which you can find
from the “Manage packages” menu. This one can be
configured from Retroarch’s menu. Both of these
emulators have some useful options, for example “Warp
mode” will load things much quicker, at the cost of some
emulation accuracy. Modern, disk-based, demos in
particular take a long time to load (as did disk titles on
the original C64), so do be patient. There’s an “auto warp
on load” option too if warp speed affects the program
later. You may need to configure a keyboard controller
for some titles, and if your luck is anything like ours this
may be a little haphazard. You can summon an
on-screen keyboard by pressing right shift or Select.
game) and select Resume. You should working after changing shader settings,
see that those jagged edges are a lot less but returning to the controls menu (or
jagged, and the fonts are much nicer too. restarting the game) seemed to fix it. If
There are all kinds of filters available, it’s any consolation, much worse things
and they’re not all about improving happened on the original hardware.
the look. Some of them are quite
demanding, especially on early model
Pis. Some of them, however, have been
designed to be sparing on resources. In
particular the crt-rpi* and crt-blurPi
shaders were written in order to make
authentic-looking cathode ray tube
effects that even an original Raspberry
Pi can manage. We noticed that our It’s worth messing around with Retroarch shaders to
emulated Spectrum keyboard stopped improve the look of your games
25
Essential features
16-bit hits
For many, us included, the golden age of computing
was characterised by the Amiga 500 or Atari ST.
ur favourite home computer was the
O Commodore Amiga. In particular the A500,
which launched in 1987. The machine, being
the successor to the immensely popular C64, had big
shoes to fill. And fill them it did. Up until questionable
management effectively killed it off.
That being said, Hyperion Entertainment produced
a version of AmigaOS (see www.amigaos.net) for
PowerPC-based machines. A-EON technology, in
collaboration with Hyperion, led to the AmigaOne
X5000, the latest in a series of machines capable of
running AmigaOS. These can emulate the Motorola
68000 at the heart of the first Amigas without batting
an eyelid, though at €2,400, you might say the X5000 is
eye-wateringly expensive.
EMULATING AMIGA TECH
“A-EON technology, in collaboration
with Hyperion, produced the AmigaOne
X5000, the latest in a series of
machines capable of running AmigaOS.”
RetroPie 4.8 (the latest version at the time of
writing) was released in March 2022, so some of its
components, in particular some auxiliary pre-built
binaries, are a little out of date. This can be worked
around by building those components from source
instead, which is what we’re going to do to get Amiberry
working. Go to RetroPie Setup>Manage Packages>
Manage optional packages and select Amiberry>Install
Amiga Format’s 1993 Christmas Special (issue 54) featured the glorious Cannon Soccer mashup.
26
from source. It
doesn’t take
very long
to build
at all. On
a Pi 4 it
takes less
than the time to make
a standard cup of tea. Once it’s
done you’ll want to reboot (gracefully, using
Restart System from the Emulation Station menu).
Above board ROMs
You should now see an Amiga option in the main ES
menu. The Amiga Kickstart ROMs are still copyrighted
but can be legally purchased from Cloanto’s “Amiga
Forever”. You need these files to do almost anything with
an Amiga emulator (although some demos can run with
the free AROS ROM included with Amiberry). As well as
that you’ll need some disk images (most commonly in
the form of ADF images). Some websites have been
given permission by the original developers to distribute
their games. For example Team 17 titles are available
from http://dream17.abime.net and Gremlin games are
available at http://gremlinworld.emuunlim.com/amiga.
htm. And of course Amiga Format/Power (Who?–Ed)
coverdiscs from back in the day are easy to find.
Place your Kickstart ROM(s) in /home/pi/RetroPie/
BIOS and ADF/IPS disk images in /home/pi/RetroPie/
roms/amiga (these paths are the bios/ and roms/
amiga/ Samba shares if you’re copying over the LAN).
These paths were also set incorrectly on first boot when
we tried, so you may need to plug in a keyboard and hit
F12 to set them correctly and then hit the Rescan Paths
button to pick up the changes.
Navigating the Amiberry configuration is a little tricky
with just a game controller, and even using a keyboard
it’s not ideal, so you probably want to plug in a mouse
too. If you’re going to be playing Cannon Fodder,
Populous or other such classics you’ll need one anyway.
One of the most exciting developments over the
Amiga’s history was that of Blitz BASIC. An edition
appeared mounted to the cover of Amiga Format issue
52, along with a rather fun zombie apocalypse game
programmed in the language. Blitz BASIC soon
unseated AMOS as the premier way to program games,
thanks to its simple(ish) BASIC-like syntax combined
with its advanced graphical capabilities.
The superior Atari ST
The Atari 520ST (and in particular the STFM variant)
was a fine machine indeed. It just wasn’t quite as cool
as the Amiga. Be that as it may, it had some neat
features, such as the built-in MIDI interface, and the
STFM’s 720K disk format being almost compatible with

MS-DOS. It was popular enough to
warrant a magazine with a title ending in
“Format”, too (all the best mag do – Ed).
You can install the Hatari (Swahili for
“danger” and the title of a John Wayne
movie, incidentally) emulator in the
same way as you did for Amiberry on the
previous page. Again it’s worth installing
from source to get the latest version,
but the binary package worked fine in
our limited experiments.
Disk images go in RetroPie’s roms/
atarist/ folder. As with other systems,
you’ll need a BIOS ROM too. The Atari’s
OS was called TOS (The Operating
System, or Tramiel Operating System)
and is still a copyrighted work.
However a legal and open source
equivalent (based in part on sources
made available by Digital Research)
named EmuTOS is available, which you
can find at https://emutos.sourceforge.io. There are
different ZIP archives for different models, and we’d
recommend the emutos-512k-1.2.1.zip version to get
started. Inside you’ll find country-specific images.
For example, the UK edition is named etos512uk.img.
Extract this file (or whatever locale best suits you),
rename it tos.img and put it in the bios/ share.
Atari TOS was superceded by MINT (“Mint is Not TOS”, later “Mint is now
TOS”). Those are still copyrighted works though, so here’s EmuTOS.
RETRO-FITTING RETRO HARDWARE WITH RASPBERRY PI
Thanks to cheap hardware and people’s
unabashed inventiveness some really
amazing peripherals are now available,
if you still have any working (or almost
working) hardware laying around.
First of all there’s PiStorm. This
fantastic (and open hardware, yay!)
board, the work of Claude Schwarz, sits
in between the 68000 slot on the Amiga
mainboard and a Raspberry Pi. So
instead of chugging along at 7MHz your
Amiga will be running an emulated
68EC030 running at around 70-80MHz.
Furthermore, the Pi can share up to
128MB of its memory, which the Amiga
Retro emulation
The Bitmap
To get the controls working in game, press F12 to Brothers classic
bring up Hatari’s main menu. In the Joysticks section Xenon 2: Megablast
select either the “keyboard” or “real joystick” featured a licenced
In addition to the ST series, Hatari can emulate it soundtrack by
Bomb the Bass, as
more advanced, 32-bit successors – the TT (Thirty-Two,
well as this rather
Atari had the best acronyms) and the Falcon. The TT pushy sales alien.
was intended to be a Unix machine, but it took some
time for the Unix port to arrive, so that didn’t work out
so well. It wound up being used as a developer machine
for the (likewise ill-fated) Atari Jaguar.
The Falcon, by comparison, was a beast of a
machine, which included a high-end digital signal
processor (DSP) capable of wrangling signals above
CD-quality sample rates. Not only that, but it featured a
true-colour video chip, the VIDEL. Later versions
included a 500MB hard drive, too.
And that ends this journey into computing history.
Who knows, maybe in 30 years we’ll be emulating
Supertuxkart and wondering why Wayland and PipeWire
were ever a thing. Do let us know about your retro tech
memories, and what steps you've taken to recreate
them on modern hardware.
sees as “Fast RAM”, as opposed to the
Slow RAM expansions we all had to save
up £49.99 for in the 1990s. You can track
down PiStorms (sans Pi) on eBay for
around £50.
Another fantastic device is the Pi1541.
CREDIT: MyRetroStore
C64 fans might recognise those four
digits from Commodore’s 1541 external
disk drive, which is exactly what it
emulates. Unlike the original, it’s neither
noisy, slow nor cumbersome. It enables
you to load 170kb disk images from an
SD card, ideal if your 1541 has chugged There are a few different Pi1541 designs on the
its last. Read more about the Pi1541 at market. This one, which is available at https://
https://cbm-pi1541.firebaseapp.com. myretrostore.co.uk, has a fetching OLED display.
27
Essential features

Plasticity, radiant
highlights and
precise control of
lighting effects in
this way are really
only possible with
RAW photography.

Open source
RAW photography
Linux offers all the pro-level tools you could possibly need for
better photos. Karsten Günther is your top-tips guide.
rofessional photographers only use RAW
• HDR images can be created from one RAW photo,

For large image

collections,
P photos when they’re working on high-
quality images. But why and what for?
How much extra effort do RAW photos
which often leads to results really worth seeing.
We’re going to take you through a RAW workflow,
looking at the tools available for each stage, from
DigiKam’s filter entail, and is it worth it for hobbyist photographers? reviewing to converting and editing.
functions are Let’s answer those questions here…
extremely The good news is that Linux users are in an enviable Reviewing
useful. In the situation: some of the best programs for managing and Before converting the RAW images, they should be
left sidebar,
processing RAW photos are developed under Linux reviewed. Two programs are particularly suitable for
you can search
and only occasionally ported to other platforms. this. Geeqie (www.geeqie.org) is excellent for quickly
for times,
keywords, On the other hand, RAW photography itself is viewing images and sorting out blurred or otherwise
geolocations considered time-consuming and labour-intensive. unsatisfactory photos. Such photos can be deleted
and similarities; Nevertheless, three weighty reasons speak in favour with Geeqie or moved to an appropriate folder. Geeqie

•
search provides of dealing with the subject and taking RAW photos: only shows the preview images embedded in RAW
access to all For landscape photography, good illumination must images, not the RAW data.
EXIF tags. In the be achieved across all tonal values, especially in Alternatively and complementary, DigiKam (www.
right sidebar, difficult lighting conditions; both the sky should have digikam.org) is the program for managing images

•
Filter offers structure, as well as the shadows in the foreground. under Linux. It reads virtually all RAW formats,
additional
With portraits, the overly smooth automatic mode evaluates the EXIF tags stored in the images and uses
options.
is deactivated, resulting in more realistic, vivid images. them for automatic management. In addition,

28

keywords can be assigned to photos, directory
hierarchies can be created, pictures can be renamed,
and much more. (A simple RAW converter and image
editor are also part of DigiKam, but they are not
comparable with the other programs presented here.)
Geeqie
There are many good RAW viewers on Linux – Geeqie
stands out because it is particularly intuitive and easy
to use. The mouse wheel can be used to quickly scroll
through images, Ctrl+mouse wheel scales the display,
and Geeqie directly displays the preview images
embedded in RAW files. The preview images can
be displayed in the sidebar, new directories can be
created, and images can be moved or deleted with
the context menu. There are also functions to open
displayed RAW files directly in a RAW converter.
Geeqie has many additional functions, too, that we
don’t discuss further here. Alternatives to Geeqie are
gThumb, XnViewMP or Okular.
DigiKam
This program is large, works with external databases,
manages over 100,000 images, and is rather
ponderous – at least, at the start. What makes DigiKam
unique are its excellent functions for managing photos.
Anyone who uses more than a few thousand
images knows how important it is to have good ways
of finding photographs again – as quickly as possible –
after saving them. This requires a really powerful
management tool. The EXIF tags of images – RAW files
are no exception – contain information about the time
the picture was taken and sometimes also about the
geographical location, but there is usually nothing
more immediately useful there.
DigiKam is able to edit the EXIF tags as well as
write additional information into the image files. If this
is not possible or desired – RAW files should not be
changed – DigiKam creates additional ‘sidecar files’
for this information. Actually, editing EXIF tags is not
common either, but sometimes – for example if the
camera’s internal clock was set incorrectly – it can
be immensely useful. The ability to tag pictures with
keywords is one of DigiKam’s most important features,
allowing quick retrieval later. DigiKam can also quickly
and easily take the position of the camera from tracks
created with an external navi.
DigiKam’s built-in RAW converter and image-editing
tools are mostly of modest quality, so it is better to
use the specialised tools for this. However, DigiKam’s
Image credit: Karsten Günther, Geeqie
good batch processing of images deserves a special
mention. It enables you to quickly apply simple
functions to lots of images at once. For example, it is
possible to use Lensfun to perform lens correction on
a few thousand bitmap images in the background and
then save the results under a new name in a new
directory in a different format. DigiKam can also add
simple frames or watermarks, but an alignment of the
horizon or the brightness distribution in an image can
not be achieved this way.
Besides keywords, DigiKam supports many other
methods to mark selected images. There are the
classic (star) ratings, colour marks and also flags. Image
RAW photography
Geeqie is powerful
quality can be determined automatically, and people and intuitive when
can be found and assigned to images. However, some displaying RAW
of these functions are not yet fully developed. files, although
DigiKam is irreplaceable when it comes to searching the program was
actually developed
for images in large collections. In addition to the for displaying
complete evaluation of filesystem data (file sizes, bitmap images.
permissions and timestamps), all EXIF tags can be
accessed (for example, searching for “pictures taken
with ISO values greater than 1200”), geolocations (all
pictures from the area) can be searched, if available,
the assigned keywords can be searched, and even
similarities to sketches can be used as criteria. With
Rawtherapee
and ART, it
Converting is advisable
The main task of RAW converters is to convert the
to first set
raw camera data stored in the RAW files into bitmap the exposure
images. However, the RAW converters available today with the two
are not limited to this but also offer a variety of gradation
additional functions. For example, all of the RAW curves and
converters presented here are capable of batch then make the
processing many images and also offer sophisticated corrections –
management functions. The three RAW converters colours, spots
we’re discussing also allow processing of bitmap and so on.
TAKING RAW PHOTOS
Getting started with RAW photography is not difficult at all. It’s not
even necessary to take RAW photos exclusively; all modern cameras
support a mixed mode where a RAW file is saved at the same time
as the JPEG image that is normally produced. This gives beginners
the opportunity to directly compare their image developed from the
RAW file with the taken JPEG image.
In principle, care should be taken in digital photography to avoid
overexposure. It is much more difficult to fix burnt-out highlights
than to remove noise from too dark shadows, if that is necessary at
all. Some noise often doesn’t even bother in the shadows. RAW
photos utilise the full brightness resolution of the camera sensor,
typically 12 bits, which provides greater latitude for denoising.
No thought needs to be wasted on white balance and effects
(landscape, portrait, sharpen) when taking the photo. All this is taken
into account later, in the RAW converter or image processing.
RAW development requires practice, so it is good to work with one
RAW converter at first, to get to know it well and not be discouraged
by the first, often imperfect results. After all, the non-destructive
process is one of the great advantages of RAW development.
29
Essential features
Complex, quite images in some selected formats, mostly JPEG and
intuitive and TIFF, sometimes also PNG. Processing with RAW
extremely
converters is always non-destructive – the original
useful: the image
management images remain unchanged.
system DigiKam. The processing in the RAW converter is defined in
the form of recipes, in which the individual processing
steps are described in detail. These recipes can be
quickly exchanged between several images. This
makes it possible to first process one image of a series
and then use the same recipe to develop the next
images. If the conditions change during shooting,
the recipe can easily be adjusted and is then available
for the next images. Of the many RAW converters
available under Linux, three deserve special attention:
Lightzone, Rawtherapee and Darktable.
All RAW converters presented here have two basic
modes: light table, in which the images can be viewed,
RAW CONVERTERS
Historically, DCraw by Dave Coffin (www.dechifro.org/dcraw/) was
the first free RAW converter under Linux. The program is available as
a pure command line program and initiated a development that led
to LibRaw (www.libraw.org). This library is used by modern RAW
converters to read in and decode RAW files.
UFraw was an early RAW converter developed mainly for GIMP,
which is now replaced by Nufraw. It offers a simple GUI, but hardly
any advanced features.
Lightzone (https://archive.org/details/lightzone4.2.0) is a
Java project that is free today. Although it only supports simple
processing, its usability and tools are very sophisticated.
Rawtherapee (www.rawtherapee.com) and variant ART (https://
bitbucket.org/agriggio/art/wiki/Home) are classic RAW converters
with a whole range of important features. Performance and usability
are very good, and the programs are used intensively in production.
Darktable (http://darktable.org) is an extremely powerful RAW
converter whose features often overwhelm beginners. The original
developer, Johannes Hanika, has since withdrawn from the project.
R-Darktable (https://github.com/Aurelien-Pierre/R-Darktable, built
by one of the Darktable main developers) is a slimmed-down version
of Darktable that is limited to essential functions. Unfortunately, it is
not included in the repositories of most distros. This also applies to
VKDT (https://github.com/hanatos/vkdt), a new development by
Hanika, which relies entirely on GPU editing and is characterised by
incredible speed. This project is still at an early stage.
30
evaluated, marked and sometimes also provided with
keywords; and dark table, for processing a selected
image. In the light table mode, the recipes once
created can be quickly transferred or adapted to other,
similar images. This procedure is directly supported by
the programs and speeds up processing immensely.
Lightzone
Lightzone is a formerly commercial (Java) program. It
offers relatively few functions, so is very easy to use
and it produces good results. A set of tutorials on
YouTube shows a number of features that are not
immediately obvious. Development is slow, so the
program can be considered stable and largely finished.
One of the very special advantages of Lightzone
compared to other RAW converters is the very easy
creation and editing of selections, here called regions.
They can be created quickly with the mouse, given a
soft edge and refined at any time. This is not so easy
with other programs.
Lightzone always saves all parameters relevant to
editing in the metadata of the images created. This
makes it possible to use one of these output images
for further processing at a later time and to generate a
new version of the image from the original image.
A practical example of the use of Lightzone is
shown in the image below. Only three tools were
needed to generate the finished image from the
original photo. The RAW Adjustment and RAW Tone
Curve tools are always active and were used here with
the default settings. Then the exposure was adjusted
as well as possible with the standard Relight tool. A
second ZoneMapper darkened the background. To do
this, a region is created around the motif that is given a
soft edge. This region does not have to be exact; it is
sufficient if it does not contain the unwanted areas at
the edges. The region is inverted by the Invert Mask
button in the Relight tool, and then it lowers the
brightness. As a result, the motif is already cut out. The
final touch is given by the SoftWow! tool to increase
the contrast and moderately enhance the luminosity.
With Lightzone, the order of the tools used plays a
decisive role. If it is changed, the results change. This is
not the case with Rawtherapee and Darktable.
Lightzone saves the order of all the tools used with
their settings in the bitmap images created from them.
Rawtherapee and ART
Rawtherapee was also once commercial software, but
has been maintained as open source for years. Here,
Image credit: DigiKam, Lightzone
Lightzone is powerful and easy to use. In only five steps, it created
the finished image on the right from the original photo.

too, development is rather leisurely, which is not
necessarily a disadvantage. New features come rarely,
but are then already very mature and fit in well with the
existing functions. The developers’ motto is “quality
before usability”, which requires relatively extensive
training. In return, the results are usually very good.
Although Rawtherapee is not overly complex and
does not provide a cloning tool, for example, there are
already forks of the program. First and foremost, there
is ART. This program slims down Rawtherapee and at
the same time adds some useful features – such as
that missing clone tool. It is largely compatible with
Rawtherapee and can use some of its recipes, which is
also possible with restrictions. However, ART lacks
some of the Rawtherapee sharpening filters, which
is why many users prefer to work directly with
Rawtherapee rather than with ART.
The example in the image on the right uses ART to
develop an image taken with a somewhat blotchy lens.
For this, the Spot Removal clone tool is used, with
which these corrections can be made quickly and
easily. In addition, the contours can be strengthened
with Texture Boost and the brightness optimised
using Tone Curves. Rawtherapee and ART offer two
overlapping tone curves: the first is preset in ART by
Auto Matched Tone Curve, based on the embedded
preview image, the second is used by the user for
optimisation. Both are also possible with Rawtherapee.
ART uses the Texture Boost tool to improve the
local contrast – or Clarity – and the sharpness. Its
effect is mainly controlled via the Strength parameter
and rather than using Iterations.
Darktable
The situation is different with Darktable; the program
was initially started as a private project by a researcher
in image processing. He soon opened it up as an open
source project, which many other tech-savvy
developers quickly joined. As a result, Darktable is
now the most complex, powerful and certainly not
the easiest-to-use RAW converter. When other RAW
converters fail to deliver usable results, Darktable can
often still get something out of the RAW files. More
than 50 filters, called modules, are available to process
even rather rare or special tasks, such as corrections of
scanned colour negatives.
Of course, this performance comes at a price. A
good understanding of the program is indispensable
Image credit: Rawtherapee, ART, Darktable
to be able to harness its power. The now excellent
documentation helps immensely. Many modules are
Rawtherapee is quality-conscious, powerful but not overloaded. It is
only updated relatively rarely and receives new tools even more rarely.
RAW photography
ART is a simplified as well as an extended variant of Rawtherapee,
which among other things provides an extremely useful cloning tool.
extremely innovative and reflect the current state of
development. Some also have surprising interactive
features. For example, in the histogram, the black With Darktable,
point and the maximum brightness can be adjusted less is more.
by dragging the mouse, which becomes visible in the Often, the result
preview window. Until now, it was relatively easy to is better if
use Darktable’s many features to make pictures worse only the really
rather than produce really good results. However, this necessary
has largely changed in recent times with the corrections are
made. Darktable
introduction of new, simpler modules.
supports masks
Less experienced users sometimes experience less
to limit the tool
than ideal results with Darktable at first, because many range in almost
filters are easily overridden. Instead of sharpening, all modules.
they then over-sharpen, which leads to obvious
artefacts. This is true of many of the Darktable
modules. However, if you understand how the
modules work and interact, you have really wide-
ranging possibilities that no other program offers.
Nevertheless, some – much simplified – variants of
Darktable have been developed in parallel. R-Darktable
is one of them and VKDT comes from the original main
developer of Darktable. Neither of these programs are
in the repositories of most distributions and must
therefore be installed manually from source.
Photo finish
There is no doubt that the processing of RAW photos
is – sometimes significantly – more time-consuming.
In most cases, however, the visibly better results
more than make up for this effort. And it is incredibly
satisfying to develop the stories contained in RAW
photos with the tools that are available today...
Extremely powerful, extremely complex and relatively time-consuming
to learn: Darktable, currently the most comprehensive RAW converter.
31
Essential features
YOUR PHONE!
Lesser-spotted Jonni Bidwell climbs
to the top of a 5G mast to extol the
benefits of running Linux on your phone.
he mobile device world has
T become duopolised by two
big tech outfits, one fruity
and the other Borg-ish.
Google’s Android runs on an array of
mobile hardware, has a Linux kernel, and
the core Android Open Source Project
(AOSP) is freely licensed. Devices can
generally be unlocked and custom apps
can be sideloaded. Compare it with
Apple’s walled-garden, locked-down
hardware approach in iOS, and you can
see why free software advocates might
prefer to side with the Android camp. But
32
this argument is specious, because much
of Android proper is proprietary.
The Google apps and most of the
popular Android apps are all proprietary,
and many rely on the fiendish Google
Play Services library to do their work (or
display ads). Those apps all collect data
and tie it to your Google account. Despite
new privacy controls, permissions and
supposedly easier-to-understand license
agreements, it’s difficult to comprehend
what is being shared and how it’s used.
This has led to an orthogonal argument,
that Apple (a fashion brand that makes
hardware) cares more about protecting
privacy than Google (an ad company).
We’re not here to settle arguments,
though. We’re here to show you another
way. How to take back your privacy.
How to keep old hardware no longer
supported by Android ticking along.
To that end, we’ll look at installing
LineageOS, the most popular AOSP
CREDIT: Magictorch
derivative. Next, we’ll explore running
‘pure’ Linux in the form of UBports and
PostmarketOS. If you’d rather not install
a whole new OS, there are plenty of less
risky measures you can take. Read on….
 Linux on your phone

The issue with Android

Android is a hodge-podge of free and proprietary components.
ur perennial Escape Google features are

O always fun, but escaping the Borg on mobile

deserves a treatment all of its own. From the
moment you put your Google Account credentials into
the setup screen, your phone/tablet/TV stick starts
feeding data to Google’s silos. Search history, GPS
location history, call logs, contacts and much more
are by default shared with the company. Its PR outlets
boldly claim that it doesn’t sell this data, but it does use
it to sell highly targeted ads. As you’ll have noticed.
Pause for a second to consider the resolution of
the profile that all this data provides. Then pause for
another second to consider the second-level data
obtained by cross-referencing it with billions of other
users. By now you might be feeling ill at ease. But fear
not, because we’re here to help you free your phone
and restore your peace of mind.
Replacing the OS on your primary phone is not
something that should be done lightly – unlocking the
bootloader voids your warranty, and installing the
wrong build may brick your device – so we recommend
going through the process on a different device first.
Even if you don’t want to go so far as to replace your
device’s OS, you can still reclaim some freedom by
avoiding the proprietary Google apps (collectively
known as G-Apps, such as Maps, Gmail, the
characterless OK Google voice assistant) and in
particular the Play Store. You might want to avoid
other proprietary apps and services, too, and the
F-Droid store can help you do just that.
Android 13 certification requires 2GB of RAM (and
that’s for the cut-down Android Go edition). Technically,
this shouldn’t stop anyone using a AOSP13-based
ROM on a 1GB phone, but the experience may not
be pleasant. Devices with 8GB of storage have long
struggled to cope with more than a couple of apps Ditch the
installed, though this can be alleviated by moving those proprietary
Android apps and
apps to an SD card. Older, low-end hardware (such as run the entirely
our decade-old Moto G) tends not to be officially free LineageOS.
supported by LineageOS, but it’s difficult to find Here’s Organic
a device for which some enthusiast on the XDA Maps, showing
Future Towers and
developer forums isn’t maintaining a custom ROM.
surrounds.
The current trend is for OEMs to support flagship
devices for about four years, with other devices often
receiving much less attention. For example, Sony’s
XZ1 launched in 2017 with Android 8 and received
an OTA (Over The Air) upgrade to Android 9 in early
2019. When Sony chose not to update that hardware
to Android 10, some users were so aggrieved that they
launched a petition, which didn’t really accomplish
anything (I’m shocked!–ED). Thanks to projects that
build off AOSP – LineageOS, Replicant – users of such
neglected devices are able to enjoy new Android
features, enhancements and importantly security fixes.

MOBILE LANDFILL AND HOW TO STOP IT

To ship a phone running
Android, the manufacturer
must submit it (together
with its drivers and Android
customisations) to a
certification process by
Google. Certified devices
receive regular security
updates from Google, as
well as updates from
manufacturers, if they
deign to provide them.
Carrier-locked phones
additionally require the
phone company’s support to
receive an Android upgrade,
and that upgrade may also
be blocked pending
contributions from the
manufacturers of the
device’s components.
Since manufacturers often
don’t bother porting new
versions of Android to their
older hardware (and when
they do, users don’t install
them), there is considerable
fragmentation in the Android
ecosystem. Some very
capable hardware is stuck
running old software. Not
only does this contribute to
the Android landfill problem,
but it’s a very real security
concern. Android 8.1 Oreo
launched in 2017 and
received its last security
update in October 2021, yet
according to Statcounter
figures (for January 2023),
over 7% of Android devices
run Oreo, and about 5% run
something even older.
But things are much better
than they used to be. In 2017,
Google’s Project Treble
sought to standardise a
“vendor interface” in
Android 8.0. This decoupled
hardware-specific code from
the rest of the OS, enabling
updates to be carried out
independently of the vendor.
Two years later, Android 10
was announced, which
included Project Mainline, an
effort that allowed core parts
of the OS to be updated via
the Play Store, rather than
waiting for a full OS upgrade.

33
Essential features

Jump to LineageOS
Enjoy fully featured Android without all the proprietary bits.
AOSP, so custom ROM developers
must find another way.
LineageOS is the most popular
AOSP fork, having emerged from
the ashes of the almost-as-popular
CyanogenMod in 2016. LineageOS is
much easier to port to other devices
as the team has developed shims
and layers so that vendor blobs
can be used natively there. As such,
its official builds offer across-the-
board hardware support. So, newer
hardware can enjoy the latest
Android features without having to
wait for manufacturers’ updates.
And older hardware neglected by
manufacturers can stay secure.
In order to access the Play Store
and the plethora of proprietary
Xiaomi’s unlock tool makes you jump through all sorts of hoops. We used a burner SIM and throwaway email to register. programs there, users can add a
G-Apps package at install time. We
he Android Open Source Project is where strongly recommend trying life without G-Apps, but

T manufacturers start when they want to port

Android to a new device. Manufacturers add
in the drivers (and other hardware-specific code), as
well as perhaps custom UI overlays. If this all passes
Google’s muster (see box on previous page), the device dedicated a box to them (see page 41).
can be shipped with Android pre-installed. Those
wanting to compile custom ROMs for that device may
find that the manufacturer has open sourced the code
they added in (namely device trees, hardware libraries
and things that end up in the vendor partitions), but
this is rarely the case. Even if they provide something,
drivers for the GPU, cameras, GPS and the baseband
modem itself will more than likely only exist as
proprietary blobs. Those are no use for compiling
they must be flashed alongside the ROM they’re being
used with. If you decide post-installation that you do
need them, you need to start over. There’s a number
of third-party G-Apps offerings available, and we’ve
Before you go rushing to install LineageOS, do be
careful doing this on a device you’re currently relying
on. Be sure to back up any photos, contacts, messages
and the like. They may already be stored in the cloud
(hopefully not on a proprietary service), but do check
as they won’t be on your device once you unlock its
bootloader. Also make sure said device is officially
supported by LineageOS. You can check this at https://
wiki.lineageos.org/devices/. Be sure to check the

THE PERILS OF BOOTLOADER UNLOCKING

Unlocking your bootloader, in
theory, opens you up to lots of
attacks that compromise the
device at boot and so circumvent
any higher-level protections. This
shouldn’t be much of a concern
as long as you’re not sideloading
Russian downloaded APKs. But
malware has been found in the
Play Store before, so take care.
LineageOS does provide signed
builds (which include verified
boot) and ought to play nice with
locked bootloaders, but it’s all
very experimental still. Samsung
devices with Snapdragon
processors mostly ship in the US
with perma-locked bootloaders.
And many carrier-locked devices
don’t allow you to unlock the
bootloader either.
Unlocking the bootloader
wipes your device, and you might
notice a serious drop in picture
quality with the standard
LineageOS camera app. If you try
to sideload the device’s native
camera app, it doesn’t work,
thanks to DRM keys (used by
the app’s secret-sauce post-
processing magic) being erased.
This can be worked around if you
can find a port of the Google
Camera app for your device. Read
more at www.xda-developers.
com/google-camera-port-hub/.
Finally, there have been reports
that banking apps, HD Netflix
playback and certain games (such
as Pokémon Go) do not work with
unlocked bootloaders (or rooted
devices). Note that DRM keys are
not restored during a factory
reset, although the bootloader
lock is re-instated.

34

LineageOS should be your first port of call when seeking a
replacement phone operating system.
exact edition of your hardware, as flashing an incorrect
image will result in tears. In theory, you should always
be able to boot to your phone’s recovery image to
remedy this, but you shouldn’t count on it. You need to
check your phone’s bootloader can be unlocked, too.
We’ve gone a bit quiet on the subject of Apple since
the intro (but the Google digs have been hard ’n’ fast –
Ed). That’s partly because it’s quite hard to unlock its
bootloaders (without resorting to exploits). However,
Project Sandcastle allows the iPhone 7 and a couple of
others to run Android (or pure Linux) from a sandbox,
without touching the bootloader. There’s no LineageOS
for iThings, either, so we won’t mention them again.
Bring your phone into Lineage
We got our hands on a Xiaomi POCO X3 Pro (hey,
give that back, it’s mine – Ed), so let’s have a crack at
unlocking its bootloader, disposing of MIUI and getting
into Lineage. A quick gander at the LineageOS devices
page brings us to https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
vayu/, which provides an outline of the whole process,
as well us telling us the device’s code name is Vayu.
First we need to enable Developer Mode (in order to
enable bootloader unlock). On most devices, this
involves going to Settings > About Phone and
repeatedly tapping on Android Version. It’s similar for
the X3, except here we hammer on MIUI Version.
Now we come to the bootloader unlocking. If you
don’t have a Xiaomi device, you’re spared the joys of
signing up to MIUI (tying your phone to said account),
downloading its Windows-only app and waiting a week
for an unlock code. We had to undergo that misfortune,
but it was worth it. Some manufacturers force you
through different hoops to obtain an unlock code, and
some (older Samsungs, via the open source Heimdall)
let you proceed without one. The process differs wildly
between phones, so check the docs for your device
rather than blindly following our instructions.
For many devices, the bootloader unlockery involves
obtaining an unlock code from the manufacturer’s
website. To do this, we need to send (usually by a web
form) a token particular to the device. Sometimes
the form just asks for the IMEI number, other times it’s
obtained using Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and/or
Fastboot. On Ubuntu (and friends), we can install the
required ADB and Fastboot tool with:
$ sudo apt install adb fastboot
With the phone in Developer Mode (see above), we
then go to Settings > Developer Options and activate
both OEM Unlocking and USB Debugging. Now
Linux on your phone
connect the device to your Linux machine, approve the
debugging prompt and run:
$ fastboot get_identifier_token
You may need to reboot your phone into Bootloader
(or Fastboot) Mode for that to work. In that case, run:
$ adb reboot bootloader
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to obtain an
unlock key using that token. Now reboot the device
and unlock the bootloader with:
$ fastboot oem unlock <key from manufacturer>
If you don’t need such a token (on Google devices,
for example), the command is:
$ fastboot flashing unlock
Now the LineageOS install process becomes more
uniform. The first step is to install a custom recovery
environment. We show you how to install TWRP (Team
Win Recovery Project), but do follow the LineageOS
guidance – the Lineage Recovery tool is recommended
for some devices. Download the appropriate TWRP
build for your device from https://twrp.me/Devices/.
While you’re at it, you may as well grab the LineageOS
ROM by following the link on the LineageOS wiki page
for your device (and optionally a G-Apps package).
With your device still connected to your PC, switch to
Bootloader Mode and flash TWRP with:
$ fastboot flash recovery twrp.x.y.z-codename.img
Some devices let you then boot that directly, with:
$ fastboot boot twrp.x.y.z-codename.img
Others require you to manually enter the recovery
environment with a combination of Power and Volume
buttons. Once you’ve got to the TWRP menu, format
the data partition by choosing Wipe > Format Data and
typing yes . Your data is all gone, but there’s more to
delete. From the Wipe Menu, choose Advanced Wipe,
select the Cache and System partitions, and swipe to
confirm. Now we can install LineageOS. On the main
menu, go to Advanced > ADB Sideload and swipe right.
Send over the LineageOS ROM you downloaded:
$ adb sideload lineage.x.y-...-codename.zip
Do the same if you want to install a G-Apps package
(see page 41), remembering this needs to be done
before booting LineageOS. When done, choose Reboot
from the main menu and enjoy LineageOS. Turn the
page to find out more about your newly freed device. If
Lineage is not to your liking, page 38 explains how you
can run pure Linux on mobile devices instead.
Activating Developer Mode evokes memories of a sweaty Steve Ballmer chanting
“Developers! Developers! Developers!”
35
Essential features

Get to know LineageOS

We take a quick tour of the latest OS to power your mobile device.
ithout doubt, LineageOS is the premier way sensible. Back in the day, Cyanogenmod major release

W to experience open source Android on the

widest range of consumer hardware. There’s a
huge community of super-talented developers (most
active on https://forum.xda-developers.com)
constantly updating and building LineageOS releases
new and old for specific models of devices. So, even if
there’s not an official release for your device, a quick
DuckDuckGo will likely return someone on XDA
proffering a build – with varying degrees of device
support; do you really need the camera? – for your
obscure Chinese-made mobile device. Let’s take
some time to look through the latest release details of
LineageOS 20, but also some of the other features and
advantages the project offers.
As we mentioned, LineageOS rose from the
regrettable disintegration of the Cyanogenmod
project in late 2016. This also explains the odd version
numbering LineageOS has inherited, where Android 13
is LineageOS 20, not LineageOS 13 – that would be too
versions matched the early Android 1.x point releases;
so Cyanogenmod 3/4/5/6 matched Android 1.5/1.6/
2.x/2.2.x. Once Android 5.x arrived, Cyanogenmod 12.x
kept pace with point and major releases.
LineageOS 20 matches Android 13, because part of
this latest LineageOS release is to tweak the versioning
it uses to match the new quarterly release schedule for
Android. From the blog: “As Android has moved on to
the quarterly maintenance release model, this release
will be LineageOS 20, not 20.0 or 20.1 – though worry
not, we are based on the latest and greatest Android 13
version, QPR1.”
A key point of using LineageOS for your mobile
device is to secure it, as manufacturers generally do a
bad job of rolling out any sort of updates for devices
that have gone off sale. Even though Google makes
its security updates openly available, you may not get
them until six months after release, if at all. LineageOS
releases always bundle the latest security patches –

LineageOS desktop

1
5

Quick access settings
1 Entirely configurable, this pull-down
menu offers fast access to your most-used
system settings. Toggle networks, data settings,
your torch and much more in just two actions.
App drawer
2 The aptly named Trebuchet launcher
gives you swipe-up access to all your installed
apps. With people suffering app overload these
days, there’s a handy search right at the top so
you can filter through to the one you need.
Audio controls
3 As devices have become ever
more proficient at handling media, so the
requirement for finer control over that media
has grown. The slide-out audio control is one
step towards that, with better system, alarm
and notification settings.
Control your home
4 No, not that home – your mobile device’s
home desktop. If you long-press on a blank
area, you are able to configure how the home
looks, select your choice of wallpaper and add
active widgets such as the classic clock and
media controls.
Notifications
5 Modern app notifications can be a real
annoyance. While well-behaved programs offer
genuinely useful notifications – as seen here,
taking you directly to the relevant image for
editing – many are simply annoying. Long-press
to gain access to settings that can mute or limit
app notifications.

36
 Linux on your phone

from the release notes: “April 2022

to December 2022 have been
merged to LineageOS 17.1
through 20.”
There are many behind-the-
scenes changes to LineageOS; one
of the bigger deals is GKI support.
This is a Google initiative and it
stands for the Generic Kernel
Image project. Long story short, the
Android version of the Linux kernel
is a bit of a ’mare – effectively,
every device has its own version.
This makes security patches tricky,
LTS merges hard, upgrades harder
and it’s difficult to support
upstream Linux. This is why
Android can be stuck using kernels
as old as 3.18 that require lots of
out-of-tree code and backports. This is how Android TV can look, but probably won’t on your Raspberry Pi.
The GKI (see the official site
https://bit.ly/lxf299gki) attempts to simplify the sync to tie into Nextcloud, Google Calendar, Exchange
situation by spinning out vendor SoC code to separate and so on. It offers the usual month, week or day views.
vendor modules with a stable Kernel Module Interface, Another welcome addition to LineageOS is a phone
so these modules can be independently updated. backup solution called SeedVault (https://bit.ly/
LineageOS 20 supports GKI 2.0 with Kernel 5.10, and lxf299seed). Most Android users are accustomed
it’s already reporting that moves like this are freeing up to the background cloud backup Google uses with
developer time to focus on actual features. Android, and SeedVault is an alternative way to achieve
Talking of features, one of those is a new dedicated the same result. It enables Android users to store their
camera app called Aperture, which is making its debut phone data without relying on Google’s proprietary
in LineageOS 20. The previous camera app, Snap, was cloud storage. You can decide where your phone’s
a fork of a Qualcomm developer app that was ungainly backup is stored, with options ranging from a USB
to support, so it reverted to the very basic Camera2 flash drive to a remote self-hosted cloud storage
AOSP default. The LineageOS team wanted something alternative such as Nextcloud. SeedVault also offers an
that was a little more featureful, so a project called Auto-Restore feature – if an app is removed and later
CameraX reached the point where it could be polished reinstalled, SeedVault restores its settings alongside.
and included as the new Aperture camera app. Android TV support without the integrated Google
Apparently, this is still very much a work in progress, so ads is also on the way for supported devices. If you
you can expect more features to drop over time, but look at the Raspberry Pi boxout (below), there is a
even so, it offers video controls, full electronic and specific Pi build of Android TV, though just how useful
optical stabilisation control, and a leveller. this is we’re not sure, as the DRM Widevine version is
The integrated calendar is supplied by the Etar the minimum level, so only SD streaming is permitted
project (https://github.com/Etar-Group/Etar- by any services requiring it, if it works at all. However,
Calendar). It provides an open source calendar that can as a 10-foot interface option for big screens with
work fully offline but can also use Android calendar remote navigation baked in, it’s worth keeping in mind.

RASPBERRY PI
No one makes builds of
LineageOS for x86 PCs; they’ll
point you in the direction of the
Android-x86 project – and rightly
so. If you snoop around the
LineageOS FAQ (https://wiki.
lineageos.org/emulator), you’ll
find detailed instructions on how
to compile your own emulator
that can run LineageOS rather
slowly on a PC, but it’s aimed at
CREDIT: Humax
The simplest way of trying out
LineageOS – if you don’t have a
suitable spare phone – is to crack
out your Raspberry Pi. Now,
there’s good news and bad news.
So, the bad news is that if you
want to try LineageOS 18.1 or
newer, you need a Pi 4 with 2GB
of memory – Google bumped
the minimum specification just
recently to 2GB of memory. The
from the end of 2020, so remains
relatively recent.
A developer called Konsta
keeps a repository of non-
commercial LineageOS builds for
the Pi. You can find a list and what
they target at https://konsta
kang.com/tag/LineageOS/.
Download the ZIP, extract the
archive, check the md5 if you
like, and use dd or, for a GUI, use

developers and requires 32GB of good news is that for 1GB Pi 3 www.balena.io/etcher. Write the
memory and 300GB of space for and Pi 4 models, you can try image to a spare SD card and
the latest 18.1+ releases. builds of LineageOS 17.1 – this is boot your Pi with it. Simples!

37
Essential features
Install GNU/Linux
Touch base with Ubuntu Touch or branch out into PostmarketOS.
arly Nokia smartphones (notably the classic
E N900 from 2009, see over there on the right)
shipped with a Linux-based OS called Maemo.
Maemo was largely based on open source projects, but
included some proprietary code. The community was
key to developing it, under Nokia’s stewardship, and it
fuelled the vision that one day our phones could run
free software without compromise. That may not have
fructified yet, but there is hope. Today, long after
Nokia largely abandoned Maemo (being forced by
Microsoft to sell Windows Phones in 2011), there is still
a community dedicated to Maemo. Namely Maemo
Leste, which runs an upstream kernel and is based on
Devuan (the distro that most has it in for Systemd).
You may not be interested in running Linux on
hardware quite as old as the N900, but our FOSS-on-
phones story doesn’t end there. That utopian vision
was rekindled with the Ubuntu Touch project, which
promised to bring Ubuntu to mobile devices, smart TVs
and pretty much anything MC Hammer could touch.
This was serious news in 2011, and Canonical even
attempted a massive crowdfund for the Ubuntu Edge
phone in 2013. But, alas, it all came to naught. In 2017,
Ubuntu Touch was shelved (alongside Ubuntu’s
characteristic Unity desktop) as interest dwindled and
the company sought to make itself more appealing to
investors (and fans of the Gnome desktop).
All was not lost, though. Such was the interest
in Ubuntu Touch that the project was forked into a
community effort under the aegis of UBports (see
HALIUM, LIBHYBRIS AND FRIENDS
Several OSes, including non-legacy UBports images, are based on a
remarkable bit of software called Halium. Halium provides a unified
hardware abstraction layer (HAL, geddit?) on top of the vendor-
provided Android kernel. Coupled with some Systemd gymnastics
and Libhybris, which communicates directly with binary blob bits of
Android, this allows developers to build new flavours of mobile Linux
from a common base. Halium thus aims to reduce the oft-decried
fragmentation in the mobile Linux ecosystem. It works its magic via
an LXC container running a minimal version of Android. Libhybris
then marshals communication with the Android libraries (built with
Google’s Bionic) and Glibc libraries on the underlying Linux system.
There has been great progress developing all the gubbins peculiar
to a mobile OS. The oFono telephony stack originated as a joint
effort by Nokia and Intel in 2009. It’s been used in Ubuntu Touch
since the start and is also used by Lomiri, the continuation of Unity 8.
Most of the UIs you can install on PMOS use ModemManager to deal
with calls, text and data traffic. As for the user-facing aspects, we’ve
got Chatty for texts, the Matchbox on-screen keyboard and plenty of
other apps (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Applications_
by_category). If you want to run a tiling window manager on your
phone, there’s SXMO (Simple X Mobile, see https://sxmo.org).
38
Ubuntu Touch
has a novel
interface. A
long swipe left
brings up this
handy overview.
https://ubports.com). Since taking the reigns in 2017,
the project has expanded support to nearly 100 devices
(OK, some are more supported than others) and issued
24 OTA upgrades. To see whether your device is
supported, visit https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/. If it
is, and you want to give Ubuntu Touch a whirl, continue
reading. You need to unlock your bootloader for this,
so please read all the warnings on the previous pages
about what that entails.
There’s a friendly installer for UBports that works
for most devices. Some legacy hardware, such as our
BQ Aquaris 4.5 (one of the first Ubuntu Touch devices),
requires a different approach, so do study that device
wiki carefully. Hardware that requires legacy installation
(such as our BQ here) does, if it’s running Android, need
to be flashed back to the legacy version of Ubuntu
Touch OS, and this requires the use of the (even more)
legacy SP Flash Tool. From there, the UBports installer
can be used as below (except that you need to specify
the device manually).
If you’re running Ubuntu, the easiest way to get the
installer is as a Snap, otherwise it’s available as a DEB
and an AppImage. Follow the links in the device’s wiki,
then launch the app. It asks you whether you want to
install some Udev rules. We found these weren’t
necessary and our device was detected right away,
but your mileage may vary. They can be added in later
from the Tools menu if you need. Under the hood, this
communication happens over adb, which we met on
the previous pages. It’s important that your phone is
running the version of Android that matches the Halium

(if indeed you’re using a Halium build – see box) version
of the build you’re trying to flash. You can check this on
the device wiki. Check the documentation (https://
docs.ubports.com) once you are up and running.
First past the PostmarketOS
If you want to run full-blown Linux on your phone, that is
with all the programs and UIs you’re (presumably)
running on your desktop PC (and ideally running an
upstream kernel), look no further then PostmarketOS
(PmOS). As the name suggests, the project’s primary
goal is to grant end-of-life devices a new lease of life.
Unless you have a PinePhone or Librem 5, there’s no
official hardware support, though there are dozens of
community-supported models (including the venerable
N900 and older Samsung Galaxies). Alternatively, you
can run it in a virtual machine (VM). Start by installing
PmOS’s bootstrapping utility, which isn’t yet in the
Ubuntu repos (but is there on Arch, Debian and Fedora).
Then we prepare our workspace for building the image:
$ git clone https://git.sr.ht/~postmarketos/
pmbootstrap
$ cd pmbootstrap
$ ./pmbootstrap.py init
You’re asked for a working directory and then a
release channel. The defaults should be fine, so hit
Return to accept them. Next you’re asked for a target
device vendor, code name and kernel – happily, the
defaults build the required QEMU image. Then you’re
asked for a username and desktop environment. We’re
going with the rather slick plasma-mobile ; try sxso-
sway for the lightweight SXSO interface running on the
Sway Wayland compositor, or anything that takes your
fancy. Next you’re asked to confirm build options. Be
aware that building requires lots of free space in the
working directory, and that artefacts are all cached
(for faster rebuilding). So, you may want to tame some
settings here. The last questions we’re sure you can
figure out for yourself.
The next command prepares the chroots where
the system will build (so as not to interfere with
host packages). We’ll add in NetworkManager, but
networking can also be set up manually (in the VM itself
with PmOS’s setup-interfaces command) if you want a
lighter system:
Linux on your phone
The classic Nokia
N900 – not
enough to save
the company.
$ pmbootstrap install --add=networkmanager
You’re asked for a password – note that this doubles
as a PIN for some interfaces (such as Plasma Mobile),
so it’s best if it only contains numbers at this stage.
Don’t worry – you can change this inside the system
later. So, let’s fire up our VM with:
$ pmbootstrap qemu
By default, the image is minimally sized, leaving only
a little space for extra programs. Use the -image-size
parameter to change this. Our Plasma Mobile target
builds a 4GB image, so we don’t need this. Note there’s
no sound in the VM; in theory, it should work if you add
--audio=pa , for example, to the previous command, but
this did not work for us. Never mind, you should be
presented with an odd-shaped window and a login
screen. Enter your PIN, then swipe (drag) left to open
the Applications menu. Here you’ll find the Angelfish
browser, Elisa music player and a few things that don’t
work (such as Dialer and Megapixels, a camera utility).
Do keep an eye on the size of the working directory
by running:
$ sudo du -sh ~/.local/var/pmbootstrap
After getting to this stage, ours was already nearly
14GB. It’s safe to delete everything in here when you’re
The SP Flash Tool
done playing with virtual phones. But so that the effuses a sort of
chroots are all unmounted first, you need to run: espirit de ’95, but
$ ./pmbootstrap.py shutdown for ancient phones.
39
Essential features

Open source apps

Get into the F-Droid store and find fun and functional
tools (that don’t send all your data Borg-wards).
f you’re now proudly

I running a Google-free
phone OS, you’ll
probably be wanting to get some
free (as in Mel Gibson shouting
“Freedom!”) apps. Even if you’re
still running Android and using
Play Store apps, the F-Droid
store is well worth checking out.
It’s easy to install – just visit
https://f-droid.org on a PC and
scan the QR code with a laptop.
This downloads the APK (the
Android package format), and
when you try to install it, you’ll A smorgasbord of glorious free software awaits you at the F-Droid store.
see a warning saying the browser
is not authorised to install unknown apps. This is A clearly labels such characteristics as Anti-Features,
Good Thing. Ordinarily, we’d never tell you to download though in a lot of cases they’re probably benign, it’s
and install APKs this way, but this an exception. You just there’s no way of knowing. So, if you place a
can check the PGP signatures if you are concerned. premium on privacy, avoid the Anti-Features.
You don’t need a Once you’re happy, you can grant your browser (called For a Google Maps replacement, look no further
Google Account to Browser on LineageOS, and Chrome on Android) than Organic Maps Offline. It uses data from
run Android; ignore
this warning. Think
permission on the next screen and install. OpenStreetMap to draw pretty maps and give sound
of all the tracking Before we look at F-Droid, let’s be sensible and directions. Don’t worry, you can use it online, too
you’ll subvert. revoke the browser’s permission to install software. Go (you’re prompted to download a local map to save
to Settings > Privacy Protection > bandwidth). In many cases, particularly cycling and
Special Permissions > Install walking paths, Organic Maps does better than Borg
Unknown Apps, then scroll down Maps. If you like to keep track of your runs, bike rides
to your browser and deactivate it. and joyrides, then a combination of OpenTracks and
Now we can explore and enjoy OSM Dashboard will provide at least the rudiments of
F-Droid. On first glance, it may your proprietary geotrackers. OpenTracks captures
not appear as exciting as the Play GPS data as you move around and OSM Dashboard
Store, or maybe that’s just because plots that data on a map for you.
it lacks brightly coloured ads and Amazingly, we’ve got this far without mention of any
apps screaming for your cash. The kind of mobile command-line interface. Let’s remedy
first thing you should do is refresh this by introducing Termux. This lets you incant Bash,
F-Droid’s cache, otherwise you’ll telecommunicate over SSH or even compile code, as
see an error when you try to install you would from your desktop terminal emulator.
your first app. Scroll down from the Termux even modifies the on-screen keyboard to
top and you’ll see an ‘Updating provide the extra keys so vital to hackers (cursors,
repositories’ banner. Ctrl). It includes a package manager, so getting started
Everything on F-Droid is with SSH (for example) is as simple as:
compiled from open source code $ pkg install openssh
by the F-Droid team, but it still may The pkg command is, in fact, a wrapper around
contain features that impinge on Debian’s Apt, with some tailoring to account for
your privacy. Free apps may still running on an Android base. This brings some
access proprietary services, where limitations. You can’t, for example, use Apt to install
you may potentially be tracked. Debian or Ubuntu packages. Find out more at https://
Fennec (the mobile edition of wiki.termux.com/wiki.
Firefox), for example, sends some If you use Nextcloud, you’ll certainly want to install
telemetry data back to Mozilla. Its the mobile app, too. There are also companion apps for
normal build process also involves its add-ons, such as Talk, Notes, News and Photos. Like
some blobs, which are removed many we mention on these pages, Nextcloud is also
from the F-Droid version. F-Droid available on the Play Store, but that doesn’t give you

40

the warm and fuzzies like a build
from F-Droid. Incidentally, you’ll also
find builds of Telegram, Signal,
DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia and all
kinds of other open source services
you’re already familiar with.
We’ve not explicitly stated, but
it’s always been possible to cut the
Google cord by factory resetting
your Android device. Obviously, this
deletes all your data, and you won’t
be able to play on the Play Store,
pay with Android Pay or access
your contacts and so on (unless
you sign back in and resync).
Pre-installed apps such as Maps,
YouTube and even Google Lens still
work, albeit no longer tied to your
account. Just decline the option to
sign into a Google Account in the
initial setup. This approach is mainly for those who
don’t want to nix their bootloaders. Conversely, if you
really need (or want) to install Google Apps, take a look
at the box below.
Speaking of proprietary apps, check out the
Exodus tracker and permissions detector. If you run
it on a standard proprietary-laden Android, you’ll see
how much everyone loves Google’s Firebase Analytics.
Check out the project website at https://exodus-
privacy.eu.org for more information. If you use Google
Authenticator as a second factor for logging into any
services, consider switching to a FOSS solution. Our
favourite is Aegis, which works anywhere the Google
app would, including with Google services. Of course,
switching your services away from the Google app
(especially your Google Account itself) may be a
painstaking process.
Notification wars
For some time, efforts have been underway to find
an alternative to Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging
(FCM) for push notifications. The only workaround has
been for apps to maintain direct connections with their
servers, which is bad for batteries (as those apps then
can’t be suspended). Now, thanks to the UnifiedPush
(UP) protocol (see https://unifiedpush.org), there’s a
way out of this mess. Matrix and Mastodon already
support UP in their apps, as does the free
FindMyDevice app. UP decentralises matters by
allowing individuals their own notification distribution
The Exodus project has an app that scans all your apps for egregious
permissions and dastardly trackers.
Linux on your phone
Besides Organic
services that interoperate with others. One such Maps, you might
provider is Ntfy (pronounced notify, see https://ntfy.sh) also want to
and you can start freeing your notifications with its check out the
eponymous app. rather elegant, but
awkwardly named,
And that’s more or less all we’ve got space and
OsmAnd (https://
time for. Of course, there’s a lot we haven’t mentioned. osmand.net).
Perhaps most glaringly, we haven’t discussed Debian’s
mobile efforts, dubbed Mobian. Read all about them at
https://blog.mobian.org/. There’s loads of LineageOS
forks to try as well, such as the security-focused
CopperheadOS (https://copperhead.co). We spoke
of Maemo earlier, but we didn’t mention that it gave
rise to another mobile project, MeeGo. That one also
didn’t work out, but it did lead to Samsung’s Tizen and
Project Mer (used in Jolla’s Sailfish OS, see https://
sailfishos.org). Anyway, as ever, let us know how your
mobile Linux efforts proceed. And happy hacking!
DISTINCTLY CLOSED GOOGLE APPS
Some people (no matter how much we shout at the sky) want to run
Google apps on LineageOS. These can’t be distributed by LineageOS
and have to be sideloaded at install time. New versions of Lineage
recommend the MindTheGapps package. You’ll find download links
at https://wiki.lineageos.org/gapps. Grab the correct package for
your architecture (probably arm64) and Lineage version. Sideload it
from TWRP immediately after sideloading the main OS. A number of
other G-Apps packages are available, some larger than others.
Alternatively, use the Aurora Store (on F-Droid) to access Play
Store apps without a Google Account. Aurora makes it clear which
apps use Google Services Framework (GSF) and whether or not they
include ads. If you want to access any paid-for apps, you can sign in
and do so. This might be a bit of a footgun, though – using Aurora is a
violation of Google’s Ts and Cs, so it might get your account banned.
The MicroG project aims to freely re-implement the services
provided by Google Play Services (and more). This allows apps
that depend on them to be run outside of the Google ecosystem.
However, for MicroG to function properly, it requires the underlying
OS to support signature spoofing, which LineageOS does not. See
https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Signature-Spoofing for a
list of OSes that do. Signature spoofing allows MicroG to mimic
Google services, so its use is contentious.
41
Essential features
Code monkey Jonni Bidwell’s firmware has glitched out, so he must teach
himself to code again. He hopes you’ll join him for the adventure…
he kids may all be headed
T back to school and the not-yet
adults may be off to learn the
ways of the world in tertiary
education camps. But whatever your age,
it’s never too late to learn to code…
It’s a trite old phrase, and one that’s
been jumped on by a million YouTube
videos, expensive courseware and even
our very own “Bookazine” department.
Maybe you’ve already sat through classes
where everything is introduced from first
principles. If not, let us tell you with
certainty that listening to someone explain
42
functions, variables, loops, data structures,
recursion, pointers and memory allocation
for an extended period of time is in most
cases frightfully dull. Or maybe you’ve had
an apposite experience, where ‘Learn to
code’ turned out to be code for ‘here’s
some ugly Javascript that pops an alert
with your name on it’.
Anyway, coding might not be for
everybody, and just learning a little isn’t
going to make you instantly rich. But we
think everyone should have a go. Because
it’s actually quite enjoyable sometimes.
Especially if you have an already-working
project you can beam down to your home
PC and meddle with.
Well, it turns out that we have not one
but two such projects for you to get your
teeth into. We’ll first use Python to
introduce some coding fundamentals
through Turtle Graphics, which is a sort
of Etch-a-Sketch on steroids. Then we’ll
show you how to make your very own
Space Invaders clone in fewer than 500
lines of code. And in between these two
projects, we’ll show you how to use Git to
easily get hold of more projects and better
manage your own.

Initial conditions
There are any number of best places to start coding,
which in practice is no help at all.
e’re going to cover a couple of techniques
W in this adventure, hopefully making it
possible for everyone to get at least some
sort of a grasp on some of the rudiments of
programming. Of course, many weighty tomes on
this subject have already been written and cover
much more than we can hope to do in a handful of
pages. So we won’t be recreating Donald Knuth’s
seminal The Art of Computer Programming (TaoCP)
or Randal L Schwartz’s era-defining Programming
Perl here. But hopefully we’ll inspire some who
haven’t heard of those texts to check them (and
other coding lore) out.
It’s always rather daunting choosing a ‘first’
programming language. There’s plenty of
contradictory articles online imploring you to learn
Python, Ruby, JavaScript or PHP. And there’s as many
telling you that those languages all have their
problems and your time would be better spent
learning Rust, Go or Java (or its descendent Kotlin
used in Android).
In our opinion, it doesn’t matter where you start.
After all, most of us here learned some BASIC during
our school years. Contrary to computer scientist
Edsger Dijkstra’s oft-quoted criticism, we think we
turned out okay: “It is practically impossible to teach
good programming to students that have had a prior
exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they
are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”
First programming steps
Dijkstra (who also has an algorithm named after him)
was talking about Dartmouth BASIC there (a little
different from the BBC BASIC or QBasic that LXF
writers occasionally still dream of), but his point – that
learning the wrong thing first actually does more harm
than help – makes the ‘first programming language’
decision even more of a conundrum. Don’t worry too
much about any of that indecision. To be brutally
honest, you have no influence over the subject matter.
In some UK schools, computing is being taught to
children as young as five. “Computing” here might be
a little generous, as the syllabus here covers things like
flowcharts and deductive reasoning, but frankly
anything’s better than the IT courses of yore that they
replace. Across the pond, influential humans at tech
companies, educational institutions and non-profits
have just penned an open letter calling for Computer
Science (CS) to be similarly taught in K-12 schools in
the US. This effort is being led by Hadi Partovi of
https://code.org. This website offers free coding
courses and tutorials, as well as connecting students
with teachers. You can read the full “CEOs for CS”
letter at www.ceosforcs.com.
Get into coding!
The Scratch
language is
unique in that
it uses blocks
that fit together
instead of
traditional code.
CODING FOR KIDS AND Pi PEDAGOGY
One aspect of Raspberry Pi that for us is a never-ending source of the
warm and fuzzies is that it introduced a whole lot of youngsters to
programming. The Scratch language in particular introduces decision-
making logic (if this, then that) with a friendly, visual approach, where
coloured blocks (representing variables, functions and relations) are
dragged and stuck together. This obviously is much more accessible
than trying to understand complex syntax when you’re young.
Much of music theory can be couched in the language of
mathematics, though this is unlikely to help any aspiring musician
understand it. The aptly named Sonic Pi goes one better, and enables
users (armed with the obligatory credit-card size computer) to create
music with code. Its creator, Dr Sam Aaron and his live coded musical
jams, have proven to be quite the hit with audiences across the globe.
Sonic Pi is based on Ruby and the Supercollider (another Sam Aaron
project) musical synthesis engine.
If you’re more about voxels than musical notes then you probably
know where we’re going next. Minecraft: Pi Edition includes a rich
Python API that makes it easy to make programs to influence the
blocky world in which Minecraft’s Steve is imprisoned. If you already
understand Cartesian co-ordinates (x-, y- and z-axes), then you’ll
figure it out in no time. If not, intuitively named functions like
getBlock() and setBlock() will help you find your way, and you’ll soon
get your head around thinking in three dimensional block space.
Minecraft on
the Pi makes
coding fun, or
at least makes
it possible to
cause a TNT-
related mess.
43
Essential features
The body syntonic
Get started with Python and a famous part of the
venerable Logo language – Turtle Graphics.
oday’s top developers learned to code
T through a number of very different pathways.
We mentioned BBC BASIC earlier, but we
didn’t mention FORTRAN, COBOL or any of the
Algol family, which were de rigeuer for scientists,
mainframe operators and academics respectively
back in the day.
FORTRAN (originally FORmula TRANslator) was
developed by IBM in the 1950s and quickly became
the gold standard for scientific computation and
engineering. It’s still in use today, particularly on
supercomputers working on numerically difficult
problems such as weather prediction, fluid simulations
and crystallography. BASIC was largely based on
FORTRAN II. And Fortran (the dated portmanteau and
shouty capitals have since been left behind) continues
to be updated to accommodate modern coding
practices, such as objects, parallelism and concurrency.
C was developed by Dennis Richie in 1972 and by the
80s had become incredibly popular. It was fast, but
more importantly it was portable. Its design very much
mirrored what was happening on the CPU, so virtually
every CPU architecture at one stage had a C compiler
written for it. It’s still very much around today (most of
the Linux Kernel is written in C), but the traditional ‘hard’
languages (C, C++, Fortran and Java) are all facing
something of a reckoning. Unlike the old, new languages
– namely Rust, Go and Swift – don’t trust the
programmer to manage memory (de)allocation. These
‘memory-safe’ languages obviate the buffer overflows
(and associated vulnerabilities and exploits) that plague
One triangle modern computing.
may not be all Another storied language we haven’t yet mentioned
that pretty, but is Logo. Logo was designed to teach Lisp (a functional
72 randomly programming language), but it’s best known for its use
coloured triangles
arranged in of Turtle Graphics. This dialect is a drawing (more
a circle are accurately ‘plotting’) language where commands are
undeniably so. issued to a virtual turtle who can then draw, turn and
44
change colour in any way you can express. Turtle
Graphics are as good a teaching aid as they ever were,
introducing so-called “body-syntonic” reasoning (where
one starts to think about direction and orientation from
the turtle’s perspective).
One of the easiest ways to try it is through Python’s
built-in module. If you have Python installed you can get
started by opening a terminal and entering:
$ python
>>> import turtle
>>> turtle.forward(100)
>>> turtle.right(120)
>>> turtle.forward(100)
>>> turtle.right(120)
>>> turtle.forward(100)
We’ll break there because a few things have
happened, namely a window opening and a roughly
equilateral triangle being rendered by an arrow that we’ll
call a turtle. Having imported the Turtle module, the
second line of code tells our turtle to go forward 100
pixels, leaving a trail behind it. Then it turns right 120
degrees and draws another edge. And then it does that
again, completing the figure. The (internal) angles of an
equilateral triangle are all 60 degrees, but if you put
yourself in the mind of the turtle (turning clockwise) a
little geometry (or ‘body syntonic’ reasoning) will show
you that the required angle is 120 degrees.
Choose your text editing environment
We could tidy up that code a little by putting it in a loop,
but we haven’t yet said what that is. We’ll do that in just
a moment. First we’ll start to be a little more grown-up
about our program entry. Rather than continue typing
code straight into the Python interpreter, which is
slightly awkward and error prone, let’s introduce an
Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
For a simple project like this (which can be housed in
a single file) all we need is a semi-decent text editor. You
might one day go on to work on larger projects and
want something a little more fully featured. In which
case check out PyCharm, VSCode or something of that
ilk. We’re going to use Geany which isn’t quite an IDE,
but it will highlight our syntax and understand our
indentation and hopefully make the rest of the feature
easy to follow. Install Geany from your distro’s software
application. Users of Debian-based distros might prefer
to do it from the command line, like so:
$ sudo apt install geany
You should now be able to find it in the applications
menu. Fire it up and enter the following code, which is
our triangle code neatly implemented in a loop, and
then wrapped in a function.
So let’s use Python’s range function to illustrate:
import turtle
 Get into coding!

Flower of Life
and other ‘sacred
geometry’ figures
are easy to create,
and vaguely
hypnotic to
watch, too.

that tells the kernel what to do with this file if invoked as

def triangle():
for side in range(3):
turtle.forward(100)
turtle.right(120)
The line beginning def defines our function and the
next sets up our loop. Here we iterate over a variable
called side which, by way of the range() function, takes
on the values 0, 1 and 2 ( range() on its own returns a
list). Note the two levels of indentation. Python is very
fussy about this, since it’s used to demarcate blocks
(instead of using a keyword or parentheses to do so). It
doesn’t matter how many spaces you use (we suggest
four for readability), so long as you’re consistent. Geany
will try and help you by automatically maintaining
indentation levels. It’s also set up to translate tabs to four
spaces, so you can indent faster.
Now save your file as pyturtle.py . Geany will deduce
that we’re writing Python code and highlight it
appropriately. If you want to be proper about it the first
line of this file should be:
#! /usr/bin/env python
a script. Don’t worry about what that means at this
stage, but do preface all of your Python code with the
‘shebang’ above. You can also run the code from with
within Geany, either by pressing F5 or using the cog-like
icon on the toolbar. That won’t do anything at this stage
because all we’ve done is define a (rather simple)
function. So let’s add some code which does something.
We can combine loops with a little bit of colour
coordination to make, well, a thing. Add the following
stanza to the end of pyturtle.py:
if __name__ == “__main__”:
import random
colours = ["red”, “orange”, “yellow”, “green”, “blue"]
for j in range(72):
turtle.color(random.choice(colours))
triangle()
turtle.left(5)
The ugly first line (and consequent indentation) isn’t
really needed here, but it’s necessary for larger projects
which only want program files to launch into action
when called explicitly.

IT’S (RECURSIVE) TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN

The rudiments of programming include is something computers are good at, and turtle.penup()
lots of things which in principle are humans are not so good at. for j in range(4):
simple. We’ve already seen loops (well, Rather than trying to explain it further turtle.left(90)
a loop) and functions. Then there are we’ll present a recursive Turtle function for turtle.forward(r)
variables and data types (which we don’t you to play with. Add it near the top of turtle.left(90)
really need to worry about in Python). pyturtle.py and change the __main__ turtle.forward(r)
And then there’s recursion. This is the block of boilerplate to call it instead: turtle.left(90)
where a function calls itself (often many, def rec_turtle(r): rec_turtle(r / 2)
many times), and, by a careful flourish of if r >= 10: We’ll explain a little about what’s going
programming, doesn’t result in an turtle.pendown() on here later on, but for now sit back and
infinite descent into madness. Recursion turtle.circle(r) enjoy the visuals.

45
Essential features
The great and the git
Using version control will help you manage your code and keep it
archived for posterity or just let you duplicate existing projects…
orking with your files locally is all well and
W good, but as soon as you start collaborating
with other contributors doing the same it
becomes difficult. In the early days of the Linux
Kernel, patches were sent over Usenet and email,
reviewed by Linus Torvalds, merged with the current
kernel and all uploaded to an FTP site. Maintaining
a consistent codebase this way is cumbersome,
especially as contributions went meteoric in the
mid-90s. The solution was to use a proprietary
version control system (VCS) called BitKeeper. Code
was now stored centrally and enabled developers
to fork and branch the code with impunity, queue
up their patchsets and generally not have to worry
about singing from different source hymnsheets.
For a time that worked well, but all good things must
come to an end. The parable of Linux and BitKeeper’s
divorce is an interesting one (it’s got mischievous
reverse engineering, corporate bluster and supposed
licence violations – read all about it at www.linuxjournal.
com/content/git-origin-story). You’ll be pleased to hear
it had a happy ending, with Linus creating a new, open
source VCS which he called Git, a pejorative English-ism
which he felt described himself nicely. Linus designed
Git much differently from other VCSes of the era,
drawing heavily from ideas about filesystems, which he
knew a thing or two about.
MAKING YOUR OWN REPOSITORIES
You can convert any local directory into a Git repository with a simple
git init , but to upload it to GitHub or GitLab you’ll need an account.
We mentioned that GitLab is open source so if you have a VPS or a
home server you may want to set up your own instance there, but
it also has a free tier for individuals (and hopefully print media
publications). Signing up for GitHub or GitLab is straightforward,
but to get the remote repo to trust you will take some work.
First, you’ll need to upload an SSH key to authenticate with the
remote repo. You may have one of these generated already, it will be
contained in the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. If not you can generate one with
ssh-keygen and then copy and paste it into the appropriate section of
GitHub or GitLab. Since the key is a very long string, it’s easier to open it
in a GUI text editor to copy and paste it, or use the xclip package if you
love the command line.
On GitLab the ‘main’ branch is protected by default, which prevents
you uploading to it. Since we haven’t covered setting up other branches
(and it’s not at all necessary for an introductory lesson), you may want
to unprotected this branch from the web control panel. Once that’s done
we can tell our local Git repo about our host with:
$ git remote add origin git@gitlab.com:myuser/myrepo.git
$ git branch -m main # Git itself still uses ‘master’
$ git push -uf origin main
46
Here’s one of the examples from our repo. It shows that our turtle is
capable of filling things in, too.
Kernel development moved over to Git in 2005 and it
soon became one of the most popular VCSes out there.
Though the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) remains
the only way to actually submit patches. Even if you’re
not managing a project with thousands of contributors,
it makes sense to use some sort of version control on
your code. It makes it much easier to keep track of your
changes, especially if your project spans multiple files.
It also greatly reduces errors resulting from manual
attempts at version control, such as putting 2s and 3s
at the end of filenames. That way lies the road to ruin.
You can install Git in Ubuntu with a simple
$ sudo apt install git
At this stage it’s important to stress the difference
between Git and GitHub. The former is an open source
VCS, the latter is a proprietary website (owned by
Microsoft) where projects can host their code and
accept contributions via Git. It is frustrating that these
two are often conflated, but understandable what with
GitHub being the most popular home for open source
projects. There are alternatives, most notably the open
source GitLab (where the Gnome project has its home),
as well as the venerable SourceForge.
Getting started
There’s no need for us at this stage to get into setting
up your own repository on GitHub or the like. We’ve
taken the liberty of setting one up on GitLab with some
turtle code for you to play with. Clone it inside your
home directory (or wherever you like) with
$ git clone https://gitlab.com/LXFjb/pyturtle.git
which will helpfully put everything in a directory called
pyturtle/. This contains everything you did on the
previous pages, which might not be immediately helpful.
But also the examples/ directory has lots of interesting
species of pythonic turtles that we’ve shamelessly lifted
from various websites. You can run them either from
Geany, as we have been doing before, or directly from
the command line, for example:
 Get into coding!

$ cd ~/pyturtle/examples
$ python spiral.py
Feel free to make changes and experiment with all
the code there. If you like you can even use Git to keep
track of your files. Suppose, for example, you made a
small change to pyturtle.py, maybe adding a function to
randomise the colours of the circles, or perhaps
changing the lengths and angles in lines 17-21.
Then, once you’ve checked it works, you can
commit that change to your local copy of our pyturtle
repository. First though, we need to set up usernames
and emails, so that Git know who is commiting code-
icide. This is easy:
$ git config –global user.email “you@example.com”
$ git config –global user.name “Your Name”
Don’t worry, we won’t be pushing code to any public
repositories (especially not Linux Format’s) so these might be woefully inefficient. The correct way to do this GitLab enables you
details won’t leave your machine. Now we’re ready to would be to run: to show commits
(in this case a
make our commit, but Git isn’t ready to receive it. Check $ git fetch origin
white-space fix)
this by running: This syncs the local index with that of the remote side by side as
$ git status source (usually called origin), but doesn’t change the well as annotate
You’ll see a message telling you that the pyturtle.py commit log or anything. Now we should switch to the your code.
file you modified hasn’t been staged for commit yet. We main (some projects still use ‘master’ here, but GitLab’s
need to tell Git which changed files we want to include in default is ‘main’) branch with:
our commit, which is straightforward: $ git checkout main
$ git add pyturtle.py You’ll see a message saying that you’re already on
If you run git status again you’ll see that the file is now the main branch and are a couple of commits ahead
“ready to be committed”. Great. Now we can make our
commit, as well as a short message describing the
changes made: MOVING ON FROM BITKEEPER
“Linus designed Git much differently
$ git commit -m “Messing around with turtle angles”
For larger changes involving multiple files, it’s easier

from other VCSes of the era, drawing

to tell Git to add all the changed files under a single
commit, as follows:

heavily from ideas about filesystems,

$ git commit -a -m “I changed a lot of files and didn’t
want to add them individually”

which he knew a thing or two about.”

The disadvantage of doing this is that you may end
up adding files that you didn’t want, but that’s easy to
fix. Just delete those files and do another commit.
(if you did a local change and then reverted it, like we
Making a commitment told you to above). So that command didn’t really do
A commit acts as a sort of saved game for your anything, but in another timeline we might have had
codebase. With just a single command we can time to get into Git branches and such, or the remote
transform the codebase to how it was at the time of a source might have new commits for us. We could also
given commit. You can see the history of the project, check out a particular commit id, but that would put
from the last commit to the initial upload, by running our local repo into so-called “detached HEAD” state
$ git whatchanged and we’d have to explain what that meant. Thanks to GitLab’s
Changes are given in ‘unified diff’ notation, so lines Instead we’ll just do a brutal: import feature,
you can inherit the
beginning with a plus sign show those added and vice $ git reset –hard
whole history of a
versa. To undo your previous commit you can use Git’s which for some reason is the most looked up Git project, even if it’s
revert option, which will introduce a new commit that command on StackExchange! from GitHub.
undoes the effects of the previous. To use this we need to
know the commit id, which is the hugely long hex string
listed in the previous command.
Fortunately you can get away with just using the first
few digits, for example git revert b3ed87 (your commit
id will be different from ours so don’t expect this to work).
Since this gives rise to a new commit, you need to give
it a message too, so your default editor will open with a
default “this commit reverses …” note.
If you made several commits, or some unstaged
changes but they all turned out bad, you might just
want to reset the repository to how it was when you
downloaded it, or how that remote source is now. You
could, of course, just git clone the thing again, but that

47
Essential features
Invaders, possibly
from space
We’ve resurrected a classic shoot-em-up project from a long
lost Linux magazine. All you need to do is save the world.
nce upon a time, there was a magazine called
O Linux User & Developer (LUD). It was a
reasonable title, but not in the same high-
calibre league as Linux Format. Noting it could never
be LXF, LUD did the honourable thing and ordered its
parent company to pledge fealty and hand over all
assets to Future Towers. So for a while LUD was part
of the Future family, and then a spreadsheet in
London cried out in panic and suddenly LUD was no
more. (I’m pretty sure none of that really happened –
Ed). Anyway in issue 136 of LUD, a young Russell
Barnes introduced a great project called Pivaders, a
Space Invaders clone written in about 300 lines of
code. Then in the next issue he added some bells and
whistles, in particular animations and sound.
It was a great project and thanks to Future Towers’
infinite content funnel we can reproduce it here with
impunity. The only problem is LUD136 is from February
2014 and in that era writing code in Python 3 was seen
as a little postmodern. In this era, most distros have
done away with Python 2 and attempts to install it often
lead to problems later. Especially on Raspberry Pi OS if
our reader letters are anything to go by. Anyway, we
digress. So with as light a touch as possible, we set
about updating Russell’s dusty old code. After not too
much hassle, we got it into a workable shape and now
you can download it from our GitLab:
$ git clone https://gitlab.com/LXFjb/pivaders.git
The verdant
Here we used GitLab’s import feature, which enables
intro for our
action-packed us to keep the commit history and everything from the
space shooter. original GitHub site (https://github.com/russb78/
48
pivaders). If you look at the commit entitled “Update to
Python 3”, you can see all the changes we had to make
in order to get it working. But don’t worry about that for
now, because it would be more fun to see this project in
action. Pivaders uses the Pygame module, so you’ll need
to install that first:
$ sudo apt install python3-pygame
Everyone knows how Space Invaders work, but for
nostalgia value we’ll quote Lrrr in the 50th episode of
Futurama, “Raiders of the Lost Arcade”, who describes
the invaders’ strategy: “Increase speed, drop down, and
reverse direction!”
Ready, player one?
We can verify Lrrr’s laconic description by starting
Pivaders, which has been hidden one subdirectory
deeper than it needs to be:
$ cd pivaders/pivaders
$ python pivaders.py
You should see an enticing splash screen. Hit Space
and you’ll be thrust into the action. Use the cursor keys
and space bar to save the world! Then, when you’re
done playing, open up the pivaders.py file in Geany (or
the editor of your choosing) and we can start seeing
how this works. The Pygame module takes a great deal
of the headache away from games programming. It
provides classes for sprites, controllers, sound effects
and so many other things that would otherwise make
coding a game from scratch much less fun.
Turning to the code itself you’ll see near the
beginning of the file that a lot of things are defined in
block capitals. This is to distinguish them as global
variables, as opposed to the local variables within
functions which can’t be accessed from without. Global
variables are ones that are used regularly and that it
would be inefficient and ugly to have to manually pass
around functions. If you want, try changing some of the
bullet, block or barrier sizes.
Central to our game is that aliens, barriers and our
own ship are destroyed by bullets. Thanks to Pygame’s
sprite detection, wiring this logic into the code is simple.
We use Pygame’s Group class (see lines 116-120) to
group the different kinds of sprites together so that they
can all be checked for collisions without having to do
any awkward geometry.
You’ll note the class keyword appears many times
throughout the code. The aliens, barriers, bullets, player
and even the game itself all have their own classes. This is
a hallmark of so-called object oriented programming,

where we define a bunch of classes and then by,
instantiating them, make objects. A class can have its own
methods (for example the __init__() method is called
whenever that class is brought to life). It’s easy to see why
classes might be useful for blocks and bullets, because
we’re going to need lots. But it turns out they’re equally
useful for things that are only going to exist once.
For objects that move in our game, the associated
classes all have an update() method. For example, the
Ammo class is updated (lines 82-85) by increasing its
y co-ordinate according to its speed. If the bullet goes
off the top or bottom of the screen, the object is
destroyed. Speaking of the Ammo class, it’s worth
noting that this is used for both alien missiles and the
player’s bullets. Classes can inherit methods from other,
parent classes. Indeed, the Ammo class itself extends
Pygame’s own Sprite class, which is where all the
collision-detecting magic takes place.
Blits and pieces
Pygame makes it easy to use our own assets. The
graphics, fonts and sounds used in Pivaders are all open
source, but feel free to experiment with alternatives.
Graphics are dumped on the screen (technically a
surface) using the blit() method. Blit (block transfer,
sometimes called bit-blit) is the traditional method for
copying bitmaps (or parts of bitmaps) from one surface
to another. In order for coin-op, bullet hell arcade
classics to be so hellish, it was common for them to
have their own blitter chip. Robotron:2084 from 1982
included two Blitter chips, allowing for a (then) mind-
bending 80 objects moving on the screen at once.
It might sound like a dated method, but as long as
we only care about two dimensions then blitting is the
simplest way to move things around. Behind the scenes
Pygame will use your GPU (or fast software techniques
if it can’t) to speed up the blits. Consideration is still
required though. Every time anything in our game
moves, part of the background will be covered up and
another part of it revealed. In order that the movement
appears smooth we blit the background after each
Get into coding!
On this occasion,
our attempts
to save the
world were not
successful…
display update (the pygame.display.flip() call that’s on
line 266).
We do hope you’ve enjoyed Pivaders, and we do hope
you’ve enjoyed this brief foray into the world of Python
coding. Of course, Python is not the only fruit, and one
may equally well have coded something similar in C (or
C++) or x86 assembly. That might make for a faster
game, but there would be more code and we’d struggle
to explain most of it. PHP, JavaScript and Perl all have
reputations as ‘web languages’, but they’re all capable of
manifesting a Space Invaders clone. In our Raspberry Pi
temperature monitoring tutorial (see page 50), we’ll look
at combining Python with Bash scripting, so that we can
use features of the shell (for example. Sed, Grep and
Awk) to automate, analyse and hopefully ameliorate.
NAVIGATING THE LOOPS
Having everything defined in functions and classes and what have you
is undoubtedly ‘the right way’ to write code. But it does mean that the
code that actually springs the game into life is right at the end. First
we create a new Game object, which sets up the game area, fonts
and theme music. Then we instigate the main_loop() method. Most
applications have a main loop that typically runs for the whole lifetime
of that application, polling for input or updates and acting on them
accordingly. Our main loop in Pivaders is executed 20 times a second,
so the code is working pretty hard while you blast aliens. The only way
to escape our main loop (line 401) is for the Gamestate.end_game
flag to be set, which happens when the window is closed (line 163) or
when Escape is pressed while on the start screen (lines 166-167).
Assuming we’re not quitting, our main loop goes on to check if our
spaceship needs moving, creates an alien missile (subject to the one
in 20 chance, see line 303) , checks for collisions and refreshes the
screen. Then each object from the player, bullet, alien and missile
groups is updated in a handy for loop (lines 411-414).
In order to check if the game is over there are is_dead() and
defenses_breached() checks (commencing lines 333 and 346. If the
game isn’t over, but the aliens are all dead, Lrrr’s “increase speed”
edict from earlier is enacted in a new level.
49
Essential features

In a world where the concept of online privacy

is an afterthought at best, David Rutland
looks at the hazards of the digital landscape
and what you can do to protect yourself.
ew people like being tracked online. Sure,

F there are some legitimate reasons for it:

you may be a threat to national security –
busily searching up combustible materials,
bidding for the infamous and stylish Casio F-81W on
eBay, or meeting up with your fellow government-
toppling anarchists on Facebook (although no one is
better at overthrowing HMG than HMG). We’re sure
there are warehouses full of counter-
terrorist officers sitting behind ancient
CRT monitors, watching the humdrum
daily activities of suspected terrorists
as they scroll through 60-second
TikToks, work on mind-numbing
romance novels, and call their
grandmas on WhatsApp to make
sure they’ve remembered to take
their meds and have enough milk.
A James Bond lifestyle it ain’t.
In reality most tracking takes place
with little or no human interaction, and

50
www.linuxformat.com
 Protect your privacy

is for commercial purposes. Your data is sold, rented or

other otherwise surrendered for cash. If you have a
Google account and use Chrome, for instance,
everything you do online is synced across Google. If
you use a Google handset, that data is tied to your real-
world activity, the locations you visit and the contacts
you call or text.
In addition to the well-known perils of cookies and
beacons, which track you across internet, there are the
browser fingerprinters that use nefarious methods to
pinpoint your device with alarming specificity.
Ditching Google and the Android mobile operating
system should be the first step you take to preserve
your online privacy. At the very least, you should be
using a privacy-respecting browser such as Brave or a
hardened Firefox, with ad-blockers and anti-tracking
plugins. Even better, Tor 12 alpha is out, making it
easier for you to bounce your traffic around the world.
Fear not, because we’re here to bulk up your
defences and make it much more difficult for snoopers
and creeps to know what you’re up to online.
Browser fingerprinting
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 30
years, you’ll be aware of the role cookies play in helping
tracking companies to, erm, keep track of you.
These tiny files contain a unique identifier and can
be inspected by the website that placed them – or
occasionally by other websites and services.
By itself, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Websites
that provide a login or shopping cart need to know that
you’re logged in and have recently added six kilos of
fertiliser and a couple of car batteries to your basket.
But when cookies that can identify you across sites
are used, privacy becomes an issue; tracking networks
that control the cookies can tell precisely which sites
you’ve visited and what you did while you were there.
Our morning has involved scanning the headlines at
various news outlets, checking emails, comparing dog
worming brands and perusing possible November
getaways on caravan sites in north-west England.
We have no idea whether those sites have cookies
that can track across the web, but Firefox’s default
setting is to block third-party cookies, and the
searches were conducted in a private window, so this
writer’s anniversary plans are safe. Or are they?
Taken together, the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive class
cookies as personal information because they can Consenting allows
help identify individuals, and companies only have a trackers to strip-
mine your browser
right to process this data if you grant consent or if the
for data, in addition
company has a legitimate interest. to polluting your
It’s because of this that you see irritating cookie device with
consent pop-ups almost everywhere you go on the cookies. Don’t do it!
web. A lot of websites have these, but some don’t.
You may click Accept because you don’t care or
because you think that as you’re browsing in a private
window, cookies will be automatically wiped when
you close that window. You’re correct, but visit the
homepage of any ‘free’ online version of a major UK
newspaper, and have a quick read through of the GDPR
consent pop-up. You’ll notice that it’s not just cookies
you’re agreeing to.
On the Daily Star’s website (currently showing a wet
lettuce), you’ll notice the consent notice is provided by
a company called Reach, which also owns various
Mirror Group titles. The second paragraph reads, “We
and our partners may use precise geolocation data and
identification through device scanning.”
This device scanning – also known as fingerprinting
– takes a number of metrics to assign you a unique
identifier. These include IP address, system fonts
installed, OS, screen resolution, battery information,
time zone, canvas draw time and language settings.
None of these attributes are unique on their own, but
taken together, they identify exactly who you are, and
depending on the text of the consent form, you may be
allowing them to infer connections across devices, as
well. You don’t stay private and anonymous online by
sitting there doing nothing – you have to be proactive.

HOW IDENTIFIABLE ARE YOU?

Browser fingerprinting works because
very few computers are set up to be
identical. Sure, in Linux Format Towers,
we sit in rows behind identical grey
boxes running the exact same OS,
software, language packs and IP
address, but once we’re home, the
situation is very different.
The first giveaway is your IP address.
Even if you live and work in a factory
dorm, that IP address isn’t going to
have more than a couple of hundred
machines using it. You’re further
identified by the fact that you
(presumably) use Linux, making you
part of the elite 1% globally. If you’re
using one of the more esoteric distros
or DEs, you’re even more identifiable.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
developed Cover Your Tracks to help
you to discover exactly how unique you
are, and how that can help ad corps to
track you without needing to use
cookies. Click a button and let the test
run for 30 seconds. We discovered that
our personal laptop was completely
unique, making it incredibly easy.
One in 189 browsers has the same
WebGL Vendor and Renderer, one in 16
has the same audio fingerprint, one in
four has the same number of CPU cores
and one in nine runs on Linux x86_64.
Those characteristics are shared by
one in every 30,000 browsers, but it
gets worse. Try it for yourself at:
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org.

51
Essential features

The end of ad-blockers

Manifest V3 will cripple or kill ad-blockers for Chrome,
Edge, Opera and more. Why would Google do that?
d-blockers have been

A around for decades. They

create a much better
reading experience (shhh,
TechRadar is listening!–Ed) as
you’re not constantly bombarded
by visual junk, autoplaying videos
and mysterious sounds emanating
from one of your 72 open tabs.
Although it may appear
otherwise, adverts are not actually
on the site you visit in your browser.
The website provides a basic
HTML document that contains
instructions for formatting,
locations from which to retrieve UBlock Origin will struggle on with uBlock Origin Lite, which somehow still manages
images, and how to fetch and display to block ads while obeying the Google diktat. But for how long?
other resources. Adverts are one such
resource and are pulled from a remote location on
the server of an advertising company.
The URLs of these ad servers are generally well
known and have been compiled into dozens of lists
that can be downloaded by you or your PC.
When an ad-blocking extension is installed in a
browser such as Google Chrome, resource requests
are passed through the extension, which then retrieves
the resource, which can be an image, advert or another
page. If the URL is known to belong to an advertising or “publishers and developers to keep online content
tracking company, the advert isn’t fetched. Simples.
Except it’s not. Browser extensions are a risky
proposition at the best of times, and ones that have
access to all your web traffic have the potential to be
very dangerous indeed. Even if your go-to ad-blocker
is ethically developed and open source, there’s no
guarantee the maintainers won’t slip in some kind of
UBLOCK ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE
If you’re a Chromium addict and can’t get enough of Google
products (unlikely, we think), it will still be possible to block ads on
Chrome once Manifest V2 is deprecated but it’ll be fiddly and limited.
UBlock Origin Lite has been specifically developed with Manifest
V3 in mind and is fully compliant with Google’s new rules.
According to the devs, “UBOL does not require broad read/modify
data permission at install time, hence its limited capabilities out of
the box compared to uBlock Origin or other content blockers
requiring broad read/modify data permissions at install time,” and
you need to explicitly grant extended permissions on specific sites.
UBlock Origin Lite is still a work in progress, and seems to be
effective so far, but it’s a sticking-plaster measure at best.
malware in future, or the project won’t be taken over by
an evil villain. We’re not scaremongering, it happens –
perhaps most notably to the uBlock Origin fork Nano
Defender, which, after it was sold, incorporated a
forked connect.js file, which submitted user data and
activity to remote servers. Extensions have also been
used as trojans, viruses, keyloggers and other nasties.
Google’s big idea, first mooted in 2020, is part of its
so-called Privacy Sandbox model, which it says enables
free”, while enabling people to “enjoy their browsing
and app experience without worrying about what
personal information is collected, and by whom”. All
very noble, we’re sure. Put simply, Google aims to
keep all user data within its own platform and offer
advertisers access to user metadata.
Currently, extensions for both Chrome and Firefox-
based browsers are built around Google’s Manifest V2,
which offers developers the option of using an
ephemeral background-based or a persistent
background page. Manifest V3 restricts what
extensions can do in Chrome by making them use
service workers – ephemeral, event-based JavaScripts
that run in the background and don’t have access to
the standard website API. They can’t execute code
and they can only run for a limited time.
While extensions built on Manifest V2 can read
and modify your traffic (which is necessary for an
ad-blocker to function) using the chrome.webrequest
permission, Manifest V3 does away with this capability,
replacing it with chrome.declarativeNetRequest. This
permission can still modify your web traffic, but does it
blind – without ever seeing what that data is, and must
declare, ahead of time, based on a very limited set of

52

Google makes it easy for developers to switch to Manifest V3,
but it’s unclear how many will want to.
Google-defined rules. It stops extensions analysing
individual requests, making most ad-blockers useless.
Extensions won’t be able to load remote code either
– and all code must be approved by Google before the
extension is made available to users.
This means you’re not going to fall victim to a dodgy
extension stealing your bank details or executing
arbitrary code to spoil your day, so, yes, it’s fair to say
that, in one way at least, Google is acting to protect
your security and privacy.
But if we’re being real for a second here, Google is a
surveillance advertising business – a phrase you have
doubtless read in these pages before and will again.
This means the more the company knows about
you, the more money it can make by targeting adverts
specifically to you. Its other businesses – Search, Maps,
Android, Gmail and Google Docs – are ancillary to this.
With that in mind, it’s excruciatingly difficult to believe
that Big G’s primary aim is to protect your privacy.
Why Google, why?!
We imagine that Google and its advertising businesses
would have been quite happy doing business the way
they’ve always done it: matching people to their
interests and adverts accordingly.
Privacy organisations, including the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and NOYB.EU, have been
increasingly making angry noises at the way web
users are stalked through the internet jungle, like
hapless sightseers by a particularly hungry anaconda.
The GDPR is one result of this and has resulted in
massive fines for dozens of corporations, including
Google, for failing to respect user privacy and data.
But campaigners in Europe would like to see more
safeguards in place – ideally, they would like no
tracking at all.
Ad-blockers have also become more competent
and ubiquitous in recent years. You don’t need to be
particularly technical to use one, and once it’s installed,
you can completely forget about it.
Google’s Privacy Sandbox is the company’s second
attempt to decouple individual users from the data it
collects while still maximising ad revenue. The first
effort, known as Federated Learning of Cohorts,
assigned individuals to a cohort that shared common
attributes and interests. Adverts would be served to
the cohort as a whole without the advertisers ever
Protect your privacy
being able to zoom in on an individual. This idea was
eventually scrapped, and in January 2022, Google
introduced the Topics API, which would see
Chromium-based browsers identify five of your
interests and serve advertising based on those.
By eliminating personal information from the
equation, Google can justify removing ad-blocking
functionality. Advertising companies aren’t tracking
you any more, so it’s safe to allow adverts through. It
works as a rationale, but it’s sure to annoy internet
users everywhere.
Just ditch Chrome
Most browsers are based on Google’s Chromium
engine, including Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera and
Chromium itself – and all will be affected in some way
when Google completely disables Manifest V2 APIs in
January 2023.
One Chromium-based exception is Brave, which
doesn’t rely on extension APIs to block tracking and
ads, so ad-blocking should continue as normal. No
GOOGLE’S MOTIVATION
“It’s excruciatingly difficult to
believe that Big G’s primary
aim is to protect your privacy.”
guarantees, though – if Brave gains enough ground to
thwart Google’s plans, Google may change the rules in
a way that harms Brave specifically.
A better option would be to use Mozilla’s Firefox
instead, which has committed to supporting Manifest
V2 indefinitely. This means that existing ad-blocking
extensions will still work and should continue to work
for ever.
Firefox is currently the fourth most popular web
browser, boasting a 3.5% market share and coming in
after Chrome (65%), Safari (18%) and Microsoft Edge,
of all things (4%). Whether extension developers
consider it worth investing their blood, sweat and
tears into such a small segment remains to be seen.
You wouldn’t believe how many hoops we had to jump through to get a pic of an ad on a website..
53
Essential features
Firefox extensions
Let’s defend our browsing with some pointy
plugins that’ll keep the wolves at bay.
he world isn’t going to end when Google pulls
T the plug on Manifest V2 for Chrome, so let’s
investigate the very best anti-tracking and
ad-blocking extensions for Firefox. With Chrome
and the long-term viability of extensions on other
Chromium-based browsers in doubt, it’s increasingly
clear that Firefox is the way forward.
We’d love to recommend Linux-specific browsers
such as Falkon, but the built-in adblock extension does
not have a stellar reputation for being user-friendly, and
Falkon’s overall performance is not quite up there with
the best Mozilla has to offer. Perhaps the inevitable
exodus from the Googlesphere will prompt increased
investment in competent independent browser
development, but then again, maybe not.
Firefox has another major advantage in the
upcoming browser wars: it’s truly multi-platform, with
builds available for Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS.
Linux-specific browsers have a tiny market share of
what is already a tiny market share, and worthy as they
may be, can’t attract the kind of massive investment
needed – at least, not before January 2023.
As we said, Firefox will remain Manifest V2
compatible until the sun explodes, and all the
extensions that currently help you to stay safe and
anonymous online will remain until the heat death of
the universe. Here’s what you should be looking at…
While it’s
•We’ve
reassuring to
know that we uBlock Origin
have “strong been using uBlock Origin on our personal
protection against machines since it came to our attention in May 2016 as
web tracking”, it’s Mozilla’s Extension of the Month. It’s the first and often
less comforting
only add-on we install when we initialise a new machine.
to see our
unique browser Once the extension is installed and activated,
fingerprint. you rarely even notice it’s there. It doesn’t leave ad
54
Privacy Possum breaks embedded YouTube videos and blocks
downloads from certain sites. That doesn’t seem like a downside…
placeholders, so you don’t even register that
advertisements are missing.
UBlock Origin can be turned on and off on a per-site
basis – if, for some reason, you like viewing ads and
being tracked – and individual elements can be
removed from a page with the click of a button.
•UBlock
Privacy Badger
Origin is a great anti-tracking extension, but its
primary purpose is as an ad-blocker. Privacy Badger,
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a little
different, and as with the remaining items on this list, its
sole raison d’être is to stop companies and individuals
tracking you as you go about your daily routine.
We say “routine” because Privacy Badger actually
does learn your routine. It learns your browsing habits
and blocks tracking scripts and cookies in the
background. If an advertiser seems to be tracking
you across multiple domains, Privacy Badger blocks
that advertiser from loading any more content in your
web browser.
This demonstrates an obvious difference in
philosophy between Privacy Badger and ad-blocker-
based anti-tracking extensions in that Privacy Badger
recognises that the internet as we know it today needs
advertisements to function. It allows the ‘good adverts’
to be displayed – earning revenue for hard-working,
ethical websites – while fooling unethical ad and
tracking networks into thinking that you have
disappeared entirely.
It has no built-in blacklists and, by default, Privacy
Badger does not block first-party trackers, such as the
ones used by a site for analytics purposes. It’s only
once trackers start stalking you to a different site that
Privacy Badger takes action.
A side effect of starting with a blank slate and
blocking trackers based on behaviour is that ads will
slowly start to wink out of existence as their tracking

EXPLORE MY Pi-HOLE
In all of this panic about browser-based ad-blockers
and Google’s extension shenanigans, we neglected
to mention our own preferred solution.
Pi-hole was built to run on a Raspberry Pi. It can
run happily on a Pi Zero and sit behind your couch,
drawing less wattage than a solar-powered torch.
Sitting between your browser and the wider
internet, it intercepts all requests and checks URLs
against lists of known ad servers. If a URL is on the
list, the resource (usually an advert) isn’t loaded.
Although Pi-hole was designed with the Pi in
mind, it runs happily on most hardware built since
becomes obvious. And as for what badgers have to do
with anything, we don’t know.
•Privacy
Privacy Possum
Possum is based on the excellent Privacy
Badger and was created by one of the engineers who
worked on the project. It takes a completely different
approach to preventing companies from following you.
Put simply, it doesn’t.
Privacy Possum allows trackers to stalk you all they
want – but they’ll never ever be able to get an accurate
idea of who it is they’re following.
It blocks cookies that let trackers uniquely identify
you across websites. It blocks refer headers that reveal
your browsing location. It blocks etag tracking, which
leverages browser caching to uniquely identify you.
And it blocks browser fingerprinting, which tracks the
inherent uniqueness of your browser.
Without these unique identifiers, it doesn’t matter
who is tracking you, they will never be able to link any of
the information, and better yet – it actually costs them
money without giving anything in return.
Browser fingerprinting – using the attributes of your
browser such as installed fonts, screen resolution and
language packs – is also spoofed, rather than hidden.
To use an analogy, if the tracking companies or
government agents on your tail are looking for a
short, blonde woman with tattoos, Privacy Possum
transforms you into a 6’ 5” skinhead bloke with a flat
cap and a natty moustache. Then it turns you into
something else instead.
Why possums? Possibly because they pretend to be
dead. The extension creator hasn’t said.
•Sounds
Ghostery
spooky, eh? We love that it conjures up
images of us coasting across the internet unseen and
undetected, like some child of an exotic phantasm –
especially as this feature was written in the run-up
to Halloween.
Ghostery advertises itself as enabling “cleaner,
faster, safer browsing”, and as its mascot, it has a
friendly little spook.
In reality, Ghostery isn’t that much different from
the other blockers and offers you control on a tracker-
by-tracker basis from a handy and visually pleasing
dashboard, which lists all of the trackers on the page
you’re viewing or interacting with. From there, you can
Protect your privacy
the millennium. If the only spare machine you have
is a Windows box, you can install it using WSL.
Installation is simple and, once set up, you can
access Pi-hole’s admin functions through a web
interface, where you can update the blocklists, block
new URLs on a one-off basis and, if you’re especially
sneaky, monitor what your kids are doing online.
One huge advantage Pi-hole has over traditional
extensions is that you can set it up so your entire
network is covered – this is a big deal if everyone
in your house has at least one PC, a phone and a
streaming device. You can save hours. Days even.
block each tracker either just on the current page or
across the entire web. Ghostery doesn’t use blacklists
and leaves decisions in your hands.
Ghostery is also very focused on performance
and improving user experience – by default, it
blocks trackers that slow down the web and unblocks
trackers if blocking them breaks the web page you’re
attempting to access.
To our mind, however, this isn’t ideal, because it
could lead to a situation in which tracking companies
deliberately create trackers that break websites if they
are not allowed.
The bottom line
Each of these anti-tracking extensions focuses on a
different area. UBlock Origin is for people who hate
adverts and hate tracking; Privacy Badger is all about
heuristic learning and making sure that trackers behave
themselves; Privacy Possum would prefer that tracking
companies go bust; while Ghostery is about a fast, clean
user experience.
Which extension you go for is up to you, depending
on which model best suits your needs. We like them all.
Earlier, we mentioned in passing that extensions
occasionally change ownership or are deliberately
Aww, look:
compromised by their developers in order to make a Ghostery has
quick buck from users. We seriously doubt that the tiny Pac-Man-
creators of uBlock Origin, Privacy Possum, Privacy style ghosts
Badger or Ghostery are going to sell out, but we to illustrate its
spooky credentials.
can’t guarantee it. Make sure you check the GitHub And there’s even
repositories regularly for any reported problems or an emoticon of a
changes in contributors. frightened cat!
55
Essential features
Peeling open Tor 12
We might not be in a position to share state secrets with
foreign governments, but if we were, we’d use the Tor Browser.
sers who want to keep their private business
U private when online often turn to VPN
(virtual private network) providers. It’s a
sensible precaution, and when you search for terms
related to online privacy, it’s SEO-optimised, VPN-
promoting articles that occupy the first few pages of
results, because VPN companies pay out up to 60%
for sales through affiliate links. Want your online tech
publication to flourish? VPNs are where the cash is.
VPNs can hide your location and your activities, but
you need to pay for the privilege and create an account
– and you can never be truly certain that the company
that takes your money isn’t straight up selling your
details to data brokers, handing it over to the police or,
HOW TOR OPERATES
“Onion routing works by bouncing
your connection between different
routers so that they’re hard to track.”
worse, to Disney copyright lawyers. Everybody loves
getting paid twice, right?
Commercial VPNs are designed with a very specific
threat model in mind, and for most people looking for
a level of anonymity which would allow them to sneak
subversive messages past government censors, for
instance, the Tor Network is where it’s at.
Tor was born in the 1990s as The Onion Routing
Connecting to the project, from the minds of engineers at the US Naval
Tor network can be Research Lab, who wanted a way of connecting
as easy as pressing
a button. It may
computers on the internet without revealing the
take you a few parties involved – even if someone is monitoring
attempts, though. the network. It’s been instrumental in keeping
56
communications secure during popular uprisings such
as the Arab Spring, dissident movements in Iran,
Turkey and Russia, as well as helping NSA leaker
Edward Snowden exfiltrate state secrets from his
workplace. It’s also good for those engaged in normal,
everyday activities, but don’t want to be watched.
Many layers
Onion routing works by bouncing your connection
between different routers so that they’re hard to track.
Let’s say that you’re sitting at home and want to
read an article on http://9to5mac.com. Such is your
shame that you can’t bear the thought of anyone even
knowing that you’ve connected to the 9to5Mac server.
If you just type the URL into your browser, your ISP
knows you’ve visited the site, 9to5Mac’s ISP knows
you’ve visited the site, as do the admins of 9to5Mac
itself. Along the way, you will also have queried DNS
servers and there may even be snoopers on your own
network who are interested in what you do online.
Potentially, there are dozens of individuals who are
now aware that you secretly long for an overpriced,
underperforming slab of shiny metal on your desktop.
If you use Tor, all information, including your IP
address, is wrapped in multi-layered encryption and
sent through a network of randomly selected relay
servers. Each of these relays only knows a small
section of the route and not the entire journey. The
final stop on this journey is known as the exit node
and it’s the exit node that makes the final connection
to http://9to5mac.com.
All nodes are provided by organisations and
individuals who volunteer their bandwidth and
resources to the cause of internet anonymity.
Routing messages through Tor can be done in a
variety of ways, including email plugins, but the most
common method is by using the Tor Browser, which is
built on Firefox – the most recent release is the alpha
version of Tor 12.
Set up Tor on your Linux desktop
The Tor Project offers official repositories for Ubuntu
and Debian, which is handy if you want updates taken
care of automatically.
First install the apt transport:
$ sudo apt install apt-transport-tor
...then add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:
$ deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-
keyring.gpg] tor://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5b
tws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyj azpqd.onion/torproject.org
<DISTRIBUTION> main
…for the stable version, or:

$ deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-
keyring.gpg] tor://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5b
tws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyjazpqd.onion/torproject.org
tor-nightly-main -<DISTRIBUTION> main
...for the unstable version. Remember to replace
<DISTRIBUTION> with the output of
lsb_release -c
Now:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring
Alternatively, you can visit www.torproject.org/
download/ and grab the Linux version (it’s the one with
the penguin).
Honestly, that code is not something you want to
copy character by character from a magazine, so we
recommend just downloading it from the website.
When you start Tor for the first time, you have the
option of connecting instantly by pressing the big
purple button. This is probably fine for most people
and gives you a more than acceptable level of
anonymity with the default settings. If you’re in a
country where Tor is blocked, you need to click on
Configure Connection instead, then add a new bridge.
Bridges are similar to ordinary Tor relays, but are not
listed publicly, meaning it’s difficult for authorities to
shut them down or compromise them. There are few
of them and your connection speed suffers, but if it’s
your only option, it’s your best option.
Because bridge addresses are not public, you need
to request them. Selecting Choose A Built-in Bridge
gives you the option of choosing Obfs4, which makes
your traffic look random, Snowflake, which routes your
connection through Snowflake proxies, or Meek-azure,
which makes it look like you’re using a Microsoft site.
You can also request a bridge from http://torproject.
org, but be aware that you need to complete a Captcha
first. Once set up, you can hit Connect and be on your
anonymous way.
Browsing with Tor
Connecting to the Tor network may take a few
attempts and transfers may be slow, especially in these
troubled times, when in certain parts of the world there
are a lot of displaced people and resurgent dystopian
states are cracking down extra hard on dissidents,
resistance and any mention of the word “war”.
Without using a bridge, it took us three tries to join
the network, and several seconds to get to the spartan
Linux Format homepage. Getting to the Gmail login
The Linux Format website looks as glorious when viewed through the
Tor Browser as it looks through any other browser.
Protect your privacy
Captchas are used
to prevent bots
from plaguing the
Tor network with
spurious requests
for bridges. Get
used to them -
you’ll be seeing
a lot more.
page took even longer. Once there, Tor worked how
you’d expect any browser to work.
Streaming media and torrents are big no-nos on the
Tor network. The project homepage explicitly requests
that you don’t do it. You’re using volunteer resources
and bandwidth, which could be put to better use than
checking out the new Arctic Monkeys album, and
besides, performance is terrible. Torrenting is frowned
upon – unless you’re using those torrents to distribute
secret government documents, evidence of war
crimes or footage of drone attacks by the CIA.
If you’re looking for a smooth internet experience,
Tor isn’t the tool you’re looking for. In addition to the
guidelines on streaming and torrenting, and the janky
connection, you’ll run into more Captchas than usual as
your traffic doesn’t look exactly how web pages expect
it to. Your exit node can be anywhere in the world, so
you could also be served localised versions of web
pages, in Finnish, Armenian or Spanish.
If on the other hand, you’re trapped
under an authoritarian boot in a totalitarian
state, Tor is just what you need.
NOTHING IS TOR-FECT
True security and anonymity is impossible on the internet. Any
encryption can be broken and any connection traced. All it takes is
vast quantities of money and resources. Tor is about as safe as can
be – even if a nation state actor is taking a particularly close interest
in what you’re up to online.
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect – the Tor devs are continually
patching vulnerabilities, while law enforcement continues to try to
exploit them. In the early 2010s, police had notable successes in
tracking down and prosecuting Tor users who traffic in child abuse.
Threat actors can also compromise Tor connections by taking
control of huge numbers of Tor nodes, carrying out autonomous
eavesdropping attacks and analysing timings to expose who is
connected at one end of the network.
These attacks are not trivial and are difficult to carry out, but they
are real, and Tor users need to be aware of them.
Any easier way for authorities to compromise would-be Tor users
is to inject malware into it. Earlier this year, security researchers
found that searches for Tor in China led users to download a version
of it that saves browsing history and form data, and even downloads
malicious components to computers with Chinese IP addresses.
Only download Tor from the official site or repository. If you can’t
access these, get a copy from someone you know and trust.
57
 060 Code a cataloguing application in Python
Using Python and the Django framework, learn how
to create a web-based cataloguing app
064 Code an admin back-end in Django
How to create admin controls and basic view
functions in your cataloguing app
068 Finish your cataloguing app
Add search and export functionality to your
cataloguing app
072 Write your own classic Pong game
Take a trip down memory lane and create your own
Pong-style game for all your retro gaming needs
076 Website and RSS feed Python scraping
How to use Python to scrape information from a
webpage and RSS feed, and perform basic analysis
080 Build a club on the next-gen web
Assemble your first Web 3.0 app
using Solidity and Javascript

58
060 064

068

080

076

072

59
Coding Academy

DJANGO
Credit: www.djangoproject.com

Code a cataloguing
application in Python
Strap in kids! Using Python and the Django framework, Matt Holder
can help you create a web-based cataloguing application.

e’re going to start the process of creating an

W application that can be used to catalogue and

search magazine articles, with the idea that
once filled in, you won’t need to rifle through that
massive pile of old issues to find a particular article.
OUR Consideration will be made to the fact that a publisher
can have multiple magazines assigned, articles can
EXPERT appear in multiple magazines and that a magazine can
Matt Holder have multiple issues.
has been a fan The technology we are using to accomplish
of the open this is called Django. This is a library for the Python
source programming language, which allows web applications
methodology to be created. Similar to Python itself, Django comes
for over two with ‘batteries included’ and has some of the features
decades and we require built-in with its provided admin interface.
uses Linux and Django operates using the Model-View-Controller
other tools (MVC) paradigm, which means that the program is
where possible. split into these three areas. Model refers to the data
and how it is stored in a database. Django supports a
wide range of databases, but for our purposes, a simple
SQlite database suffices. Database access is via a
database ORM (object-relational mapping), which
means that Django provides Python objects to By the end of this project, we will have reproduced this functionality.
interact with the database and doesn’t require SQL
statements to be used directly. The second part of create a relationship to a different database table, so a
MVC is View. This means how the application displays link can be created between them. Using this example,
the information stored in the database and how it is the database has one table to describe publishers and
interacted with. Finally, Controller refers to the logic one to describe publications. The second database
that ties together how the database stores the data concept to introduce is that of relationship types. The
(Model) and how it is displayed (View). first to discuss is one-to-one, which means that, using
The ORM used by Django provides methods that the example above, a publisher can have one magazine
can be used to follow the relationships defined by our assigned to it and one magazine can be assigned to a
model. For example, we could use a method to display publisher. The second relationship type is that of one-
all articles where a certain tag is defined or display all to-many. Thinking about this in terms of publishers and
More feature- magazines registered to a publisher. magazines, this means that a publisher can have
packed source multiple magazines assigned to it and conversely a
code for this Concepts, concepts, concepts magazine can be assigned to one publisher. Finally, we
project can be Before moving on to create our project, we need to need to introduce the many-to-many relationship. This
downloaded discuss some database concepts. When creating a means that a publisher can have multiple magazines
from https:// database structure, we wish to minimise how many assigned, but also that a magazine could be assigned
github.com/ times we store the same information – this is referred to multiple publishers.
mattmole/LXF- to as normalisation. For example, instead of storing the With the example above, it makes sense that this
Django-Project
name of the publisher for every magazine, we should relationship is one-to-many because a magazine will

60

not be registered to multiple publishers. Along with the
first two tables discussed, there will also be a table for
editions, which represents each monthly magazine or
publication. This will have a one-to-many relationship
because one publication can have many editions.
Another table will store articles and will use a many-to-
many relationship, because, for example, an article
could be added to two different publications or a
magazine and a website. Within the article table, there
will be free text fields to store notes, the article title as
well as a many-to-many relationship with a tags table,
so that tags can be used to categorise articles and
searching can be carried out via these tags. There will
also be an author table in the database with a many-to-
many relationship with the article table, so that an
article can have multiple authors and an author can
be linked to multiple articles.
Before defining our models, we first need to create
a new project and application. These are Django terms
and a project can contain multiple applications. Our
project is going to contain a single application, but an
example of multiple applications within a single project
would be if this application was being used by a group
of publishers, then the author model could be a
separate application and this information could be
used in a number of different ways, such as providing
an area to store authors’ invoices and purchase orders
for their payment. (I see where this is going…–ED)
Due to the amount of code in this series of articles
and the amount of space it would take up, only select
portions are printed here, while the rest can be
downloaded from GitHub (see Quick Tip, bottom-left).
The first step is to install Django. The second is to
create a project and app:
$ sudo dnf install python3-django #(For Fedora)
$ sudo apt install python3-django #(For Debian-based
system)
$ cd <PATH_TO_FOLDER>
$ mkdir Django
$ cd Django
$ django-admin startproject PublicationCatalogue
$ cd PublicationCatalogue
$ python manage.py startapp Catalogue #(python3
may be needed, depending on distro)
Once the project and app have been created,
files and folders are added to the Django folder. This
structure can be seen in the diagram (above-right) and
the important files are described below.
The project’s database file is stored in the top-level
folder of the project. The manage.py file also sits in this
directory and is used to call functions, such as flush
database, perform database migrations and creation
of a superuser account for the admin interface. Within
the project folder is another folder with the same
name. Within here are the project-level configuration
files, such as settings.py, where apps can be added to
the settings.py file, database settings can be applied
and the region and time zone can be set. The urls.py
file is used to add links between URLs and functions
within the controller code, which is defined in the
views.py files, within each app folder. Within the final
folder in the project, which is named after the app
being created, there is a Migrations folder. This stores
a number of files that allow changes to the model to be
written to the database. Each model change has a file
Cataloguing app
The project is
structured into a
number of files
and directories.
Further
information
about queries
can be
found here:
https://docs.
djangoproject.
com/en/4.1/
topics/db/
queries/
representing the change and this is stored in the folder.
Using these files, the database can be rolled forwards
and backwards between model changes. Also within
the app folders are files allowing the models to be
written (models.py), configuration of the admin
interface is defined within the admin.py file, and
views.py contains the logic required to interact with
the database, manipulate the data and output to a view
for the data to be displayed. Finally, tests.py is used to
write unit tests to ensure the app operates correctly
and apps.py contains settings for the app.
Before creating the models, we now need to
configure the project for basic operation. We will be
using the admin interface later in the article, so let’s
configure this now.
Open the settings.py file in your favourite editor
and under the INSTALLED_APPS section, add another
MOVING TO PRODUCTION
Like most things in the programming world, Django isn’t the only
Python web framework. Other examples include flask, web2py,
turbogears and Masonite, while fastAPI gets an honourable mention
as a library that can be used to create APIs. Django makes testing
our projects incredibly simple because it contains a built-in web
server that can be used for this purpose. It should never be used in
production, however. When moving to production, there are lots of
security considerations that need to be made, which are outside
the scope of this article. Moving from SQLite to MySQL, MariaDB
or PostSQL would be a very wise move, and would give a much
higher throughput and better concurrency, should the program be
accessed by multiple users. Apache is a good choice of web server
for running a Django app and it uses the mod_wsgi plugin. Finally,
depending on the size of the application and its user base, it may be
wise to consider the usage of a content delivery network (CDN) or a
web server that is best at dealing with static content, such as Nginx,
for hosting any CSS, JavaScript and static images.
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Coding Academy

option for Catalogue.apps.CatalogueConfig . Now open

the models.py file from the Catalogue folder and then def __str__ (self):
The MVC enter the following: return self.publicationName + “: “ + self.
concept can be from django.db import models publicationType
learnt about In the first section of code above, we are importing
here: https:// class Publisher(models.Model): the required classes and methods to create our own
developer. publisherName = models.CharField(“Publisher’s models. Secondly, there can be seen the data model
mozilla.org/ Name”, max_length=200) used for publishers and publications. We first define a
en-US/docs/ class to store the publisher information, which inherits
Glossary/MVC
def __str__(self): from a class, which is defined in the Django source
return self.publisherName code. The class then has a variable definition for each
field in the database and the type of data expected is
class Publication(models.Model): defined in the type of variable created.
typeChoices = [(‘NEWSPAPER’, The second section of code defines the publication
‘Newspaper’),(‘MAGAZINE’, ‘Magazine’)] table and the relationship that links back to the
publisher = models.ForeignKey(Publisher, on_ publisher table. In each class we define a __str__
delete=models.CASCADE, blank=True) function, which returns a human-readable identifier for
publicationName = models.CharField(“Publication’s each record that will be created. Without doing this,
Name”, max_length=200) the model would return something like publisher1,
A visualisation publicationNotes = models.CharField(“Notes”, max_ publisher2 and so on. This last piece of code will be
of the database
structure. Notice
length=200, blank=True) further used when exploring the admin interface.
the relationships publicationType = models.CharField(“Publication Finally, in the Publication class, we defined a list called
between tables. Type”, max_length=200, choices = typeChoices) typeChoices , which is used in the publicationType
field, and when using the admin interface, these
options will be available to choose between.
Once the model has been created, the database
can now be initialised. Django has a method to update
a database should any changes be made to the
database schema. This can be completed by using
the following commands:
$ cd Catalogue
$ python ../manage.py makemigrations
$ python ../manage.py migrate
$ python ../manage.py createsuperuser
Looking at the database diagram (on the left), it
can be seen that each table has a field written in bold.
This is what’s known as the primary key and it has to
be unique for each record. By default, this is the only
thing that needs to be unique and every other field
of each record could be the same. This would allow
for multiple publishers that have the same name, or
multiple authors that have the same name. This could
be incredibly confusing, so some custom validation
can be added, using the Meta class within the model’s
definition. For an example of this, you will need to read
the final article in the series.
When the database migration has run, the ORM
adds the relevant database tables and indices. Indices
are used to speed up the data extraction from the
database. See the screenshot (bottom-right) that
details the tables and indices – note how these names
relate to the names of the database models that we
have created.
Now the database has been created and initialised,
we can investigate some of the built-in features.
The shell allows access to Django methods and the
database model that has been created. To access
the shell, enter python ../manage.py shell
An interactive shell now opens. You need to enter
the following commands to import the models that
we have just created, create a publisher and then
create a publication:
from Catalogue.models import Publisher,Publication
publisher = Publisher(publisherName = “Future
Publishing”)

62
 Cataloguing app

WHAT’S THE ORM IN IT?!

Interacting directly with a database
requires queries to be written in a
language known as Structured Query
Language (SQL). These incantations can
become quite complex and can require
specialist knowledge to write them
correctly. Also, when interacting with a
database, one needs to sanitise any
queries so that untoward things are not
carried out by a malicious user (https://
xkcd.com/327/). ORMs (object-relational
mapping) can have their own issues,
such as making application code more
complicated and causing bottlenecks
when returning data from the database.
These two items won’t be a concern
with a project of this size. An ORM
simplifies the way we return information
to a program, especially when
considering relationships between
multiple tables.
The listing below details how to
extract the same information using
first SQL statements and secondly
using an ORM.
SELECT * FROM table_name;
SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE
field_name = ‘value’;
SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE
field_name =’value’ ORDER BY field_
name;
table_name.objects.all()
table_name.objects.filter(field_
name=’value’)
table_name.objects.filter(field_
name=’value’).order_by(field_name)
When accessed using an ORM, the
returned data is structured as a Python
object, which makes it easier to interact
with than if you’re using SQL directly and
working with lists of CSV data.
Examples of database ORMs that
you might come across include Django
ORM, SqlAlchemy, SQLObject, Storm
and PeeWee.

publisher.save()
publication = Publication(publicationName = “Linux
Format”, publicationType=”MAGAZINE”)
publication.publisher = publisher
publication.save()
Note how we are using the publisher object to
create the link between the publication and the
publisher. Repeat these steps a few times so that you
have multiple publications and multiple publishers.
Next, we will investigate how to further use the ORM to
return all publications and their linked publisher.
from Catalogue.models import Publisher,Publication
publications = Publication.objects.all()
for publication in publications:
print (publication.publicationName, publication.
publisher.publisherName)
In the first line, we are importing the Publisher
and Publication model from the app, and then in
the second line we are returning all objects from the
database. Line three is beginning a for loop, to iterate
through each publication object that was returned
from the database. Finally, line four prints the name
of the publication and the name of the publisher.
The ORM can also be used to filter objects and can
also navigate through relationships. The first line of
the code below returns any publications that have a
publicationType set as NEWSPAPER . To test this,
ensure that you have a publication added with the
publicationType argument set as NEWSPAPER .
In the second line of code, we are looking for
publications registered with a publisher that has the
name Future Publishing.
Publication.objects.filter(publicationType =
“NEWSPAPER”)
Publication.objects.filter(publisher__publisherName =
“Future Publishing”)
In this tutorial, we have looked at the basics of
what Django can do, created the model (database)
structure for our application and investigated the
usage of the shell to create objects, which can be
written to the database. In the next article, we will 
be investigating the admin interface, which removes
a lot of the hard work required to make a
user interface, create some URLs that can be used
to access the application and write some basic views
and controller code.

Database tables and indices, automatically created using the Django ORM. (More tables and indices exist than are in this image.)

63
Coding Academy

DJANGO
Credit: www.djangoproject.com

Code an admin
back-end in Django
Continuing with our magazine cataloguing application, Matt Holder
explains how to create admin controls and basic view functions.

n the last feature we began a project to

I catalogue magazine articles, which makes it a

lot easier to search for interesting topics,
rather than hunting through a pile of magazines. During
the tutorial, we introduced Django, which is a Python
OUR web framework, and designed our first models, which
are how the data is stored in the database, including
EXPERT relationships between different database tables.
Matt Holder Django uses an object-relational mapper (ORM) to
has been a interact with the underlying SQL database, allowing
fan of the for data to be interacted with as Pythonic objects,
open source and this was also introduced. We also introduced
methodology Model-View-Controller (MVC) concepts, which are
for over two used to provide clear separation between the storage
decades and of data, processing of this data and how it is displayed
uses Linux and or interacted with by the user. Finally, we introduced The admin interface can be used to enable changes to be made to data
other tools the shell, which is a way to interact with information stored in the database, in any of the defined models.
where possible. stored in the database, without needing to add the test
code into the project structure. class PublicationAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
Before beginning, copy the models from models.py list_display = (‘publicationName’, ‘publisher’,
from GitHub (see Quick Tip bottom-left) and then run ‘publicationType’)
python ../manage.py makemigrations and python
manage.py migrate . class TagAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
In this article, we’ll first cover the admin component, list_display = (‘tagName’, ‘tagDescriptor’)
which is a built-in way to interact with the database and
allows us to add and delete entries. We will investigate class EditionAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
simple functions to create the logic behind how the list_display = (‘editionName’, ‘publicationDate’,
program works, views to display some data, and how to ‘publication’)
use URLs to provide the glue to make the three areas
of the MVC paradigm all work together. class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
When configuring the project in the first article, we list_display = (‘articleName’, ‘keywords’,
switched on the admin interface. When creating the ‘notes’,’summary’)
database, the relevant tables were added for this
functionality. Before we can use the interface, however, admin.site.register(Publisher)
More feature- another step needs to be taken. Within the project admin.site.register(Publication,PublicationAdmin)
packed source directory structure, you will see a file named admin.py. admin.site.register(Edition,EditionAdmin)
code for this Open this in your favourite editor and add the following: admin.site.register(Article,ArticleAdmin)
project can be from django.contrib import admin admin.site.register(Author)
downloaded from .models import Publisher,Publication,Edition,Arti admin.site.register(Tag,TagAdmin)
from https:// cle,Author,Tag In the above code, the admin.site.register()
github.com/ functions are used to link a model from our models.py
mattmole/LXF-
# ModelAdmin is used to modify the admin interface. file and render a version of this in the admin interface.
Django-Project.
The examples show multiple fields in the table view Where the functions contain two arguments, the

64

second one references an object, which is known as a
ModelAdmin class. These objects are used to amend
the default rendering of a model in the admin interface.
For example, when viewing articles in the admin
interface, instead of a list showing something like,
article1, article2 and so on, we wish to view a table
of entries with headings that show information about
each article. There are a large number of items that can
be added or tweaked using ModelAdmin objects and
the details can be found on the Django website.
The code sample above assumes that you have
added all models from the code available on GitHub.
When adding the models, make sure to run the
following two commands to update the database:
python manage.py makemigrations and python
../manage.py migrate If you have not done so, then you
can simply add the Publication and Publisher sections
to the admin.py file to investigate the admin interface
in a more limited capacity.
Now this has been added, run the built-in web
server with python ../manage.py runserver and then,
in a browser, navigate to http://localhost:8000/admin.
Log in with the details created when first setting up
the project and then investigate the interface. What
you will find is a web page for each class created in
models.py, which allows entries to be added for
each database table. You will also find that where
relationships have been defined, these have been
replicated in the interface. For example, when in the
Publication page, you will be able to add a Publisher.
Similarly, when investigating the Articles page, you
will be able to add or select an Author. During the first
article, we created a couple of objects using the shell
and these will be visible in the interface. To get used
to the functionality, create a couple of records by using
the various pages.
What we will create now is a web page that can
be used to view all tags that have been registered in
the application; each tag will be a link, which then
opens a page displaying the articles that have that tag
registered against it. We will then be able to click on a
link to open the article and view all of the details about
it (this is further functionality and can be added using
the code on GitHub). New skills we need to learn are:
using URLs, to link a URL to the logic to generate the
functionality; writing the Python code to interact with
the database and return the tags and relevant articles;
templating to write the HTML and allow it to iterate
through the data provided by the controller; and how
to pass data between the view and the controller, so
that when a link to a particular tag is clicked on, this
then instructs the controller code to return the
relevant items.
Django uses a system called Jinja templating to be
able to access the data being passed from the view
code and then render this within the HTML output
file. Tags are used within the HTML to access various
coding concepts. For example, for loops can be used
to build lists or table rows, and if statements can be
used to test logic and determine whether certain
information should be displayed.
Make sure, from the admin interface, you have
created entries for all of the models and that articles
are linked to Edition(s), Tag(s) and Author(s). When
creating an Edition, this needs to be registered to a
Cataloguing app
Publication, which in turn will need
to be registered to a Publisher.
Firstly, let’s set up the URLs for
our application. To begin open the
urls.py file and add a line to include
the catalogue.urls file. Strictly
speaking, this step is unnecessary,
but is good practice as it separates
all URLs for the Catalogue app into
a file within the app’s directory
structure. Within this new file we
will define URLs for an index page,
tags index page, article index page
and a page to detail articles listed
to a particular tag. Each URL
definition refers to a class within the views.py By the end of this
file, which contains the application’s logic. project, we will
have reproduced
Some of these URLs will be used for index
this functionality.
purposes, such as /tags, and some will expect a second
/ and argument, such as the page, which will be used
to show details about a particular article.
First of all, open the urls.py file from within the
PublicationCatalogue directory and ensure the
contents are as below:
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
urlpatterns = [
path(‘admin/’, admin.site.urls),
path(‘catalogue/’, include(‘Catalogue.urls’))
]
Secondly, open the Catalogue directory and create
a new file called urls.py. Add the following contents to
this file:
from django.urls import path
from . import views
You can find out
urlpatterns = [ about Django
path(‘tags/’, views.returnTags,name=’tagList’), templating here:
path(‘tags/<int:tag_id>/’, views.returnTagById, https://docs.
name=’tag’), djangoproject.
com/en/4.1/
]
ref/templates/
The code above enables us to call views (Python language/
functions) when URLs are entered in a browser. When
THE OTHER AJAX
Currently, the application we have written behaves like a website
written in the 1990s. This is because all the data needed by a single
page is sent to the browser in one go and rendered accordingly. This
works fine for a project of this size, but imagine we were working
with hundreds of thousands of data items – rendering this client-
side could cause real problems on slow internet connections or low-
spec devices. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a method
developed to provide communication between the server and client
and for pages to be updated when required. For example, the page
could be loaded with 100 rows of data and then extra loaded when
the page is either scrolled down or the Next Page button is selected.
Django has full support for AJAX and these concepts can be used
to write a much more responsive application than has so far been
written. These concepts are out of this writer’s skill set and this
article, unfortunately, so expanding the functionality is left as an
exercise for you. An excellent description of these concepts can be
found at https://djangocentral.com/django-ajax-with-jquery.
65
Coding Academy

considering the two urls.py files, entering http://

localhost:8000/catalogue/tags would call the </body>
You can learn returnTags view / function and when written, the </html>
more about relevant page would be displayed. Before entering the In this code, we first add the usual boilerplate to
the admin URL into the browser, make sure you enter python define the document is of type HTML and define the
interface here: django.py runserver into the terminal and the built-in body section where the content will go. Next we test if
https://docs. web browser will be invoked. the tagList object contains data. If it does, we can use
djangoproject. Now in the views.py file within the Catalogue the Jinja templating for loop and print a list item for
com/en/4.1/ directory, add the following code: each tag. Note how we construct a URL, which can be
ref/contrib/
from django.http import HttpResponse used to create a page that shows details of each tag.
admin/.
from django.shortcuts import render Next we create the mentioned page, which contains
from django.template import loader details of each tag as well as any articles or authors
from .models import Tag, Article, Author, Publisher, that use the aforementioned tag. Below are two code
Publication, Edition samples, one for the view and one for the HTML page.
Add the function below to the views.py file:
def returnTags(request): def returnTagById(request,tag_id):
tagList = Tag.objects.order_by(‘-tagName’) tag = {}
template = loader.get_template(‘Catalogue/ try:
returnTags.html’) tag = Tag.objects.get(id=tag_id)
context = { except:
‘tagList’: tagList, pass
}
return HttpResponse(template.render(context, articlesRegisteredWithTag = {}
request)) try:
This function returns all tags in the database as an articlesRegisteredWithTag = Article.objects.
object and passes them into a built-in function, which filter(tag__id = tag_id)
allows a template file to be used to build the returned except:
HTML. Note that an empty dictionary is returned if pass
nothing can be extracted from the database.
To create the HTML page, we write a template. authorsRegisteredWithTag = {}
Create a new directory in the Catalogue one called try:
templates. In here, add another called Catalogue. authorsRegisteredWithTag = Author.objects.
Within this, create the HTML file and call it returnTags. filter(tag__id = tag_id)
html. Open the file and add the contents below to it: except:
<!DOCTYPE html> pass
<html lang=””>
<head> template = loader.get_template(‘Catalogue/
<meta charset=”utf-8”> returnTagById.html’)
<title>List of Tags</title> context = {
</head> ‘tag’: tag,
<body> ‘articlesRegisteredWithTag’:
<h1>List of Tags</h1> articlesRegisteredWithTag,
{% if tagList %} ‘authorsRegisteredWithTag’:
<ul> authorsRegisteredWithTag,
{% for tag in tagList %}
<li><a href=”{% url ‘tag’ tag.id %}”>{{ tag.tagName }
}}</a></li> return HttpResponse(template.render(context,
{% endfor %} request))
The admin </ul> This sample of code is similar to the previous view
interface is being
used to create
{% else %} we looked at, but notice how we are requesting all
a new tag in <p>No tags are available.</p> articles that are linked to the tag passed into the
the database. {% endif %} function using the tag_id variable. This links against
the tag_id argument in the urls.py file. As well as
looking at articles registered with the given tag, we
also return authors with the tag registered against
them as well. We then pass both search results into the
context object, as well as details of the tag itself. This
data is then passed to the template HTML file, where
it is rendered using the code below. Add the content
below into a new file, within the templates/Catalogue
folder, called returnTagById.html:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang=””>

<head>

66
 Cataloguing app

<meta charset=”utf-8”>
<title>Tag Details</title> STYLING THE APPLICATION
</head>
The aim of these articles is to introduce the concepts required to
<body> create applications that can be interacted with from a web browser,
<h1>Tag Details: </h1> are backed by a database and have some program logic to provide
{% if tag %} the necessary functionality. These aims are being met, but the
<h2>Tag Name: {{tag.tagName}}</h2> display of the information looks like it was created when the web
<p>Tag Descriptor: {{ tag.tagDescriptor }}</p> began. This is because we have not included any CSS to style the
output. There are plenty of libraries that can be used, but a good
<h2>Articles Registered With Tag</h2> one to get a headstart in styling output is bootstrap. This library was
{% if articlesRegisteredWithTag %} created by Twitter and has been released for free. There are plenty
<table border=”1”> of tutorials across the web on how to get started, the official one
<tr> being at https://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.3/getting-started/
<th>Article Name</th> Some other examples of incredibly useful JavaScript and styling
<th>Keywords</th> libraries are JQuery and DataTables. JQuery is used by a huge
<th>Notes</th> number of other libraries and allows for incredibly advanced
<th>Summary</th> tasks to be accomplished. One example of this is DataTables. This
<th>Edition</th> library can be used to make HTML tables searchable, sortable and
<th>Publication(s)</th> automatically paginated, which makes tables instantly more usable.
<th>Author(s)</th>
</tr>
{% for article in articlesRegisteredWithTag %} </tr>
<tr> {% endfor %}
<td>{{ article.articleName }}</td> </table>
<td>{{ article.keywords }}</td> {% else %}
<td>{{ article.notes }}</td> <p>No authors registered with this tag.</p>
<td>{{ article.summary }}</td> {% endif %}
<td>
{% for edition in article.edition.all %}
{{ edition.editionName }}<br /> {% else %}
{%endfor %} <p>This tag is not available.</p>
</td> {% endif %}
<td> </body>
{% for edition in article.edition.all %} </html>
{{ edition.publication.publicationName }}<br /> In this sample of HTML, we are generating a page
{%endfor %} that details the tag itself and then displays a table
</td> detailing every article that uses the tag. It then shows
<td> a second table, where authors using the tag can be
{% for author in article.author.all %} viewed.. We could add construct hyperlinks to open a
{{ author.authorName }}<br /> relevant article and author’s page. This extra
{% endfor %} functionality is available on GitHub in a copy of the
</td> project and has more code than can be printed here.
</tr> Django has many other modules that can be used
{% endfor %} to build a successful web app, such as forms. Forms
Here is the page
</table> can be used to build web pages, which can be used to that we have
{% else %} populate data into the app. We’ll look at this in the next just created to
<p>No articles registered with this tag.</p> article as well as how to generate files for download. view tags.
{% endif %}

</table>
<h2>Authors Registered With Tag</h2>
{% if authorsRegisteredWithTag %}
<table border=”1”>
<tr>
<th>Author’s Name</th>
<th>Notes</th>
</tr>
{% for author in authorsRegisteredWithTag %}
<tr>
<td>{{ author.authorName }}</td>
<td>{{ author.notes }}</td>

67
Coding Academy

PYTHON/DJANGO
Credit: www.djangoproject.com

Finish your
cataloguing app
With a tear in his eye, Matt Holder finishes up our cataloguing
database app by adding search and export functionality.

n this series of articles, we’ve been working on

I a cataloguing application, where magazines,

newspapers and corresponding articles can
be added, stored and eventually searched. In parts
one and two, we introduced Django, described some
OUR basic database theory, created our database models,
explored the built-in shell, added some URLs and
EXPERT created some views and HTML pages to view output
Matt Holder from the software. We also explored the admin
has been a interface, which allows data to be added and deleted.
fan of the In this final article, we’re exploring the forms
open source functionality, which allows for HTML forms to be added
methodology to our web pages to provide data entry, and then we’re
for over two creating a page to enable us to search the database
decades and and return articles, authors and publications.
uses Linux and A completed project can be downloaded from
other tools GitHub (see the QuickTip, below-left) and contains the
where possible. functionality discussed in the three articles and more.
In his spare First, let’s create a search page. This will consist of a
time, Matt URL to link against the Python view, a Python view to
enjoys listening provide the functionality to search the database, and
to music an HTML page to display results. This will also use the By the end of this project, we will have reproduced this functionality.
and reading. forms functionality to provide the text and other fields
before taking the input and using it in search queries, HTML template there is a template item called {{form}}
and then the data will be output and displayed in the which is included and this ensures that the fields within
browser, along with links to open the original record. the ModelForm object are drawn on the page. Opening
Before entering the URL into the browser, make and closing the <form> tags are done within the HTML
sure you enter python ../manage.py runserver into the template as well as including the URL to post data to as
terminal, then the built-in web server is invoked. well as adding the Submit button.
When using forms in Django, there are some key First we need to add a URL to the urls.py document.
terms we need to know about. A form can be bound or The code below needs to the urlpatterns list:
unbound. An unbound form doesn’t contain any data, urlpatterns = [
while a bound one does contain data, which can be …
processed by a view. The flow of using a form is as path(‘search/’, views.search, name=’search’),
More feature- follows: firstly a ModelForm object is created in forms. ]
packed source py, which contains any fields that we want to gather Next, we need to create forms.py and add some
code for this data on. In this case, there are entries for the search code, which enables us to create our search form:
project can be term, a choice field to determine which database table from django import forms
downloaded or model to search, and a button that allows for a fuzzy class SearchForm(forms.Form):
from https:// search. Next, an instance of this ModelForm needs to typeChoices = [(‘TAGS’,’Tags’),
github.com/ be created in our search view, which is in views.py. The (‘ARTICLES’,’Articles’), (‘AUTHORS’,’Authors’),
mattmole/LXF-
ModelForm object is then passed into our context (‘PUBLICATIONS’, ‘Publications’),
Django-Project.
object when loading the HTML template. Within the (‘PUBLISHERS’,’Publishers’), (‘ALL’,’All’)]

68
 Cataloguing app

searchTerm = forms.CharField(label=’Search Term’,

max_length=100,required=False)
searchModel = forms.ChoiceField(label=’Area to
Search’, choices=typeChoices)
fuzzySearch = forms.BooleanField(label=’Fuzzy
Search’,required=False)
The format is very similar to that of a model. This is
because models and form objects can work hand in
hand and deal with similar sorts of information. First of
all, we import the necessary libraries and then define a
class, which inherits from the forms.Form library. We
then create a list of tuples to be used for a multiple-
choice field. In each tuple, we have a human-readable
value and a value that is used in the POST data that
gets passed to the model. Next we define an object for
each form item, which will be shown on the screen. searchResults = None A search page used
Each object is then linked to a HTML form object. if fuzzySearch == True: to provide criteria
for database
In the next code, we can see the HTML included in if searchModel == ‘TAGS’: searching.
the search.html file, which needs to be added to the if searchTerm == “” or searchTerm == “*”:
Catalogue/templates/Catalogue directory. tagResults = Tag.objects.all()
<!DOCTYPE html> else:
<html lang=””> tagResults = Tag.objects.filter(tagName__
<head> contains = searchTerm)
<meta charset=”utf-8”> searchResults = tagResults
Custom
<title>List of Tags</title> elif searchModel == ‘ALL’: validations can
</head> if searchTerm == “” or searchTerm == “*”: be included
<body> searchResults = chain(Tag.objects.all(), when writing
<h1>Search the Database</h1> Article.objects.all(), models:
<p>All results will be shown for a given model or Author.objects.all(), https://docs.
all models by using the fuzzy search option and leaving Publication.objects.all(), djangoproject.
the searchTerm blank or using the * character</p> Publisher.objects.all() com/en/4.0/
<form action=”{% url ‘search’ %}” method=”post”> ) releases/4.0
/#functional-
{% csrf_token %} else:
unique-
{{ form.as_p }} searchResults = chain(Tag.objects.
constraints.
<input type=”submit” value=”Submit”> filter(tagName__contains = searchTerm),
</form>
</body>
</html> CUSTOM VALIDATIONS
What’s happening here is that the Jinja-templated
HTML is being used to build a page containing the When creating the model for tags, as explained in article one of the
usual <head> information and then in the <body> we series, the only field that is required to be unique is that of the id
add a <form> tag, add a CSRF token to invoke the built- value. Interestingly, when defining the mode, the id field does not
in Cross Site Request Forgery support, render the form need to be defined, because this is automatically included by the
from the view code (see below) and then add a Submit database ORM. This means that multiple tags of the same name
button, before we close all the necessary tags. can be added to the database, which isn’t optimal. When creating
The next stage is that we need to write the Python the models, fields can have the unique=True option set. While this
code to link the URL to the program logic, which is is a step closer to what we want, it would not stop two tags being
used to both render the empty search form and then registered with the same name, but different casing of the letters.
take the submitted data and perform a database This is where custom validations become useful. See the Quick Tip
search. Add the function below to the views.py file. (above) for further information, but to ensure that only one tag,
from .forms import SearchForm representing Linux, can be added to the database, a constraint like
from itertools import chain the one below needs to be added to the model.
def search(request): class Tag(models.Model):
# if this is a POST request we need to process the tagName = models.CharField(“Tag”, max_length = 20)
form data tagDescriptor = models.CharField(“Description”, max_length = 200,
if request.method == ‘POST’: blank=True)
# create a form instance and populate it with data
from the request: class Meta:
form = SearchForm(request.POST) constraints = [
# check whether it’s valid: UniqueConstraint(
if form.is_valid(): Lower(‘tagName’),
searchTerm = form.cleaned_data[‘searchTerm’] name=’tagNameUnique’,
searchModel = form.cleaned_ ),
data[‘searchModel’] ]
fuzzySearch = form.cleaned_data[‘fuzzySearch’]

69
Coding Academy

Article.objects.filter(articleName__ so on. In this part of the function’s logic, we also

contains = searchTerm), determine whether the fuzzy search option has been
The reportlab Author.objects.filter(authorName__ selected. The difference here is that instead of using
library can contains = searchTerm), Tag.objects.filter(tagName = searchTerm) to return
be used to Publication.objects. objects that match exactly, we use Tag.objects.
generate PDFs filter(publicationName__contains = searchTerm), filter(tagName__contains = searchTerm) to return
for output: Publisher.objects.filter(publisherName__ objects that contain the search term. Also, when using
https://docs. contains = searchTerm) the model type of ALL, we need to be able to search all
djangoproject. ) models for relevant objects. To accomplish this, we test
com/en/4.1/
else: for a modelType of ALL and then perform a database
howto/
if searchModel == ‘TAGS’: search in all models and use the chain function to join
outputting-
pdf/. tagResults = Tag.objects.filter(tagName = them all together, so that all results are stored in one
searchTerm) object, which can be passed to the search results page.
searchResults = tagResults Finally, when returning the search results, we
elif searchModel == ‘ALL’: construct a context dictionary, which contains the
searchResults = chain(Tag.objects. search results, and then use the HttpResponse
filter(tagName = searchTerm), function to render the searchResults.html template,
Article.objects.filter(articleName = while also giving it access to the search results data.
searchTerm), Should the function be called from a GET method, we
Author.objects.filter(authorName = simply render the search.html template because there
searchTerm), has been no data provided to the function and we are
Publication.objects.filter(publicationName = rendering the form, ready for the user to fill in.
searchTerm), Now that the logic has been described to allow
Publisher.objects.filter(publisherName = the database to be searched, we need to create the
searchTerm) template that will render the database results. You
) need to create a file called searchResults.html in the
template = loader.get_template(‘Catalogue/ Catalogue/templates/Catalogue directory and add
searchResults.html’) the following contents:
context = { <!DOCTYPE html>
‘searchResults’: searchResults <html lang=””>
} <head>
return HttpResponse(template.render(context, <meta charset=”utf-8”>
request)) <title>List of Search Results</title>
# if a GET (or any other method) we’ll create a blank </head>
form <body>
else: <h1>List of Search Results</h1>
form = SearchForm() {% if searchResults %}
return render(request, ‘Catalogue/search.html’, <table>
{‘form’: form}) <thead>
The first thing that we have to do, within this <tr>
function, is to determine whether it is being called <th>Result Type</th>
using the POST or GET method. We test this then add <th>Result Name</th>
the necessary function logic to search the database </tr>
based on the conditions shown in the data passed </thead>
into the function. This data is being described in the {% for result in searchResults %}
searchTerm, searchModel and fuzzySearch variables. <tr>
Next we use the searchModel variable to determine <td>{{result.modelType}}</td>
which database queries to run. Printed here is a cut- {% if result.modelType == “Tag” %}
down function, due to space constraints. When <td><a href=”{% url ‘tag’ result.id %}” >{{ result.
Searching the
database for all
selecting the Tags option in the search form, a tagName }}</a></th>
tags provides a database query runs to return Tag objects, when {% elif result.modelType == “Publication” %}
table of results. Articles is selected, Article objects are returned, and <td>{{ result.publicationName }}</th>
{% elif result.modelType == “Publisher” %}
<td>{{ result.publisherName }}</th>
{% elif result.modelType == “Article” %}
<td>{{ result.articleName }}</th>
{% elif result.modelType == “Author” %}
<td>{{ result.authorName }}</th>
{% endif %}
</tr>
{% endfor %}
</table>
{% else %}
<p>No results are available.</p>
{% endif %}

70

Data can be exported from the database in many different
formats, with this example showing CSV.
</body>
</html>
As in previous template files, we first of all add the
usual boilerplate HTML to define the language type
and <head> information. Within the <body> tags, we
first of all test if data is available. If it isn’t, a message is
rendered. If search results are available, we add them
to a table within a new row. As the search results can
be from a range of different database objects, the
required URL to view information about the result
needs to be known. This is handled using the result.
modelType variable from within the template. This
data is provided by adding a function to each model
in the models.py file, where the function returns the
name of the model/class. This simple function, when
added to each model, accesses internal information
about the class, so that the result type can be returned.
def modelType(self):
return self.__class__.__name__
When the search button has been selected, a page,
like the one in shown (below-left), is displayed. Test
this by opening a web browser and visiting http://
localhost:8000/catalogue/search.
In this final part of the article, we are creating the
logic required to be able to export data from the
database into a CSV file. Even though there are
hundreds of file formats that can be used to export
data, all the way from XML to JSON, a CSV file can still
be incredibly useful and can be used in many different
applications. The first thing that needs to be done is for
another item to be added to the urlpatterns list within
the urls.py file, within the Catalogue directory.
urlpatterns = [
… is a second method that allows data to be exported as
path(‘exportTags/’, views.exportTagsToCsv,
name=’exportTagsToCsv’)
] downloaded. This second method is functional, but
You can see an example of the CSV export from
the database (above). While the code detailed below is
specifically for tags, it could easily be generalised to
allow a choice of model to export from and then the
export routine processes accordingly.
Within the views.py file, add the exportTagsToCsv
function, save the file and this then provides a link
between the URL we registered and this logic.
Cataloguing app
TESTING FOR RELIABILITY
While not the most exciting thing in the world, testing is crucial to
ensure that our programming projects work as they are intended.
While the example we have been working on for the last few months
is relatively simple, getting into the habit of testing is a really good
thing. So, do as your author says and not as he does! This is where
unit tests are really important. Unit tests are a way of creating
automated tests to ensure that a given input to a function returns
the correct result. A good example of this would be to ensure that
it is not possible to create two tags with the same name. The first
attempt to create the new tag should be successful and the second
time should return a failure. Another example of a unit test is that
when adding a publication with a type that is not in our list of
choices, it should return a failure. You can learn more about unit
tests at the following two web pages: https://docs.djangoproject.
com/en/4.1/topics/testing/overview/ and https://docs.
djangoproject.com/en/4.1/intro/tutorial05/.
To invoke this code, in the browser, visit
http://localhost:8000/catalogue/exportTags.
import csv Adding CSS
def exportTagsToCsv(request): to style the
tagList = Tag.objects.order_by(‘-tagName’) site is easy:
response = HttpResponse( https://docs.
djangoproject.
content_type=’text/csv’,
com/en/4.1/
headers={‘Content-Disposition’: ‘attachment;
intro/
filename=”exportTags.csv”’}, tutorial06/.
)
writer = csv.writer(response)
writer.writerow([‘Tag Name’,’Tag Descriptor’])
for tag in tagList:
writer.writerow([tag.tagName, tag.tagDescriptor])
return response
In this code entry, we are first of all exporting all Tag
objects from the database and sorting it in reverse
alphabetical order. We then create a response object,
where we set the content_type and headers, so that
the browser knows to expect a CSV file, rather than
HTML content. Next we create a csv.writer object,
which is linked to the response object, which we return
at the end of the function. The next step is to write a
row to the writer object, which contains the column
headings. Next, we use a for loop to output the tag’s
name and tag’s description for each item in the
database. Finally, we return the response object. When
the above URL is visited, a CSV file is downloaded.
Available on GitHub (see Quick Tips, page 68), there
CSV. This uses JavaScript to read the values of the
results table and generates a CSV file, which can be
could run into issues, should the table be so large that
the JavaScript uses a large amount of memory.
The aim with this series of articles has been to
introduce some useful concepts, such as database
theory, ORMs and the link between our models, views
and controllers. We hope that you have enjoyed the
series and can now envisage how to use the concepts
learned in your own projects.
71
Coding Academy

PONG
Write your own
classic Pong game
Matt Holder takes a trip down memory lane and creates
a Pong-style game, for all your retro gaming needs.

e can’t imagine there are

W many folk who need

introducing to Pong.
However, for those who do, it is a
two-player game in which table
OUR tennis (or ping pong) is simulated.
Pong was an early computer
EXPERT game, first released in 1972.
Matt Holder Upright arcade cabinet machines
was told he existed that ran the game as well
wasted far too as home consoles that became
much of his available from 1975 onwards. Pong
youth playing was first released by Atari and
Pong – but it there have been many versions
turns out it was created over the years, both ones
all in the name that use hardware and versions
of research. using various programming
languages that run on top of Your author first experienced Pong on the Videomaster Superscore console (see www.
your operating system. computinghistory.org.uk/det/5394/Videomaster-Superscore).
In this article, we are creating a basic
Pong game and the full code is available on GitHub position of their paddle on the screen, which is used to
Download the (see Quick Tip, left). We cover a number of concepts make sure that when the ball is travelling towards the
code from the including the event loop, how to use keyboard control paddle, it collides and then bounces off. The ball starts
following link: and how to use variables to store each player’s score. from near the centre of the screen with a random
CREDIT: Viper666, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://bit.ly/lxf300videomaster

https://github. Before we begin coding, let’s quickly discuss the angle, to ensure that the game is different each time.
com/mattmole/
gameplay. A paddle is drawn on the left- and right-hand While describing the gameplay, we’ve introduced a
LXF300.
sides of the screen. Each player controls the vertical few of the elements for which we need to create code:

BREAKOUT
Another game that would be an
interesting project is one called
Breakout. This game contains very
similar concepts to Pong, because a
paddle is used at the bottom of the
screen, controlled horizontally this time,
to make the ball bounce between the
paddle and a series of blocks that are
drawn towards the top of the screen.
The level is completed when the ball has
bounced off all the blocks, which causes
the blocks to disappear. Levels are made
more difficult by blocks having different
capabilities. Some blocks disappear
after being hit once and some require
multiple hits. Other ways of increasing
the difficulty include speeding up the
ball and decreasing the paddle size.
Breakout was first released as an
arcade cabinet in 1976, then a software
version was released for the Atari 2600
in 1978. We have fond memories of
playing Fireball 2 on the Acorn A5000 in
the mid-’90s. In this similar game, blocks
released power-ups that could do things
such as increase the paddle size, add a
second paddle or attach a blaster to the
paddle, which could cause the blocks to
break and disappear. Breakout could
also be reproduced in Pygame, using
very similar techniques to that of our
Pong game, or the alternative game
libraries discussed over the page.

72

we need to calculate how to generate a random angle
and calculate the ball’s trajectory, and how to change
the direction of the ball when it bounces off a player’s
paddle or off the top or bottom of the screen.
Due to space constraints, the code we discuss in
this tutorial is only for a single player, but the concepts
are the same for the second player, so these can be
added easily (or just download the code from GitHub
for a more complete version – https://github.com/
mattmole/LXF300).
Before writing any code, we need to install our
prerequisites. Python 3 is likely to be installed already,
so open a terminal and enter the following command:
$ sudo apt install python3-pip
$ pip3 install pygame
Bip… boop… bip…
Now, open your favourite text editor or IDE (VS Code
is a good choice) and save your new file as tutorial.py.
Once the lines from this listing have all been added, the
game will function for one player. The game can be run
from the IDE or terminal by invoking python3 tutorial.
py . Adapt what has already been written to add the
second paddle/player or use the pong.py listing on
GitHub to investigate the more fully featured game.
import pygame
import random
import math
pygame.init()
# Define some colors
black = ( 0, 0, 0)
white = ( 255, 255, 255)
green = ( 0, 255, 0)
# Define sizes
screenWidth = 1280
screenHeight = 720
paddleHeight = screenHeight / 5
paddleWidth = screenWidth / 40
startingPaddleX = 10
startingPaddleY = (screenHeight / 2) - paddleHeight / 2
ballHeight = screenWidth / 50
ballWidth = screenWidth / 50
paddleVelocity = 20
ballVelocity = 2
ballAngle = random.randint(30,60) / (180 / math.pi)
ballDirection = random.choice([-1,1])
ballDirectionX = ballDirection
ballDirectionY = ballDirection
leftPaddleHeight = startingPaddleY
ballPositionX = screenWidth / 2
ballPositionY = random.randint(0,screenHeight -
int(ballHeight)+1)
# Open a new window
size = (screenWidth, screenHeight)
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(size)
pygame.display.set_caption(“Pong”)
class Sprite(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
def __init__(self, width, height, colour=white):
super(Sprite, self).__init__()
Pong
self.paddleWidth = width
self.paddleHeight = height
self.colour = colour Documentation
self.image = pygame.Surface((self.paddleWidth, for the Pygame
self.paddleHeight)) project can be
self.image.fill(self.colour) found at www.
pygame.org/
self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
docs.
# Controls screen updates
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
# Create the paddle and ball
leftPaddle = Sprite(paddleWidth,paddleHeight)
ball = Sprite(ballWidth,ballHeight,green)
In the first five lines of the listing, we are importing
any libraries that are needed and initialising the
Pygame library. The math library is used to calculate
the trajectory of the ball given an initial angle that is
generated and the random library is used to generate
an initial angle when the game begins and when the
ball leaves the screen on the left- or right-hand side. In
the next four lines of the code, we define tuples that
represent RGB colours.
We then declare variables to define the size of
the window that is drawn on the screen. This is set
to 1,280x720, but can be tweaked as necessary.
Variables are then set to determine the initial height
and width of the paddles. These sizes are determined
as a proportion of the height and width of the screen.
Next, we define variables to determine the starting
position of the paddle, which is 10 pixels from the left-
hand side and halfway between the bottom and top of
the window. Variables are then defined to set the size
of the ball, which, once again, is a proportion of the
window size.
The next two variables define the initial velocity of
the ball and the paddle, which determines how far they
move for each step. Next in this bank of variables, we
calculate some initial values for the ball angle and ball
direction. The angle is a random number in the range
of 30 to 60. We then convert this angle to radians,
which is required in the sine and cosine calculations
later in the tutorial. The ball direction is either -1 or
+1, and this represents moving up or down in the
window, and left or right in the window. Finally, we
Our initial simple
define a variable to hold the height position of the prototype Pong
paddle, which changes as the paddle is moved, and two game can be
variables to store the initial ball position, which is in the seen here.
73
Coding Academy

In this code
sample, we handle
what happens
if the ball reaches
the top or bottom
of the screen,
hits the paddle or
leaves the left
or right side of
the screen.

middle of the window on the X axis and at a random ballPositionY += ballDirectionY*ballVelocity*math.

location in the Y axis. sin(ballAngle)
Read more Next we create our screen (window) object and set # Flip the direction
about Pong the caption of the window as Pong. We now create a if ballPositionY <= 0 or ballPositionY >= screenHeight
and other early new object called Sprite, which inherits functionality - ballHeight:
games here: from the pygame.sprite.Sprite library. This enables us ballDirectionY *= -1
https://bit.ly/
to create objects to represent our paddles and ball, # left paddle hit
lxf300pong.
including the image representation and the size. In if ballDirectionX == -1 and ballPositionX <=
the next line, we initiate the clock object, which paddleWidth+startingPaddleX and ballPositionY >=
enables us to control the frame rate of our game. In leftPaddleHeight and ballPositionY <= leftPaddleHeight
the final two lines, we create objects to represent the + paddleHeight:
left paddle and the ball, with the size set using our ballDirectionX *= -1
earlier defined variables. # ball leaves screen
The rest of the code is carried out within a while if ballPositionX <= 0 or ballPositionX >= screenWidth:
loop, and for each iteration of the loop, we act on ballPositionX = screenWidth / 2
keypresses to move the paddle and calculate the ballPositionY = random.randint(0,screenHeight -
new position for the ball. We also act on interactions int(ballHeight)+1)
between the ball and the paddle. ballAngle = random.randint(30,60) / (180 / math.pi)
carryOn = True ballDirection *= -1
# -- Main Loop -- ballDirectionX = ballDirection
while carryOn: ballDirectionY = ballDirection
screen.fill(black)
# - Event loop screen.blit(leftPaddle.image,(startingPaddleX,
for event in pygame.event.get(): leftPaddleHeight))
if event.type == pygame.QUIT: screen.blit(ball.image, (ballPositionX,ballPositionY))
carryOn = False # Exit the loop pygame.display.update()
if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN: # - 60 FPS
if event.key == pygame.K_a: clock.tick(60)
#Move the left paddle up
leftPaddleHeight = leftPaddleHeight - # Stop the game
paddleVelocity pygame.quit()
if leftPaddleHeight < 0: In this code sample, the first thing we do is to set a
leftPaddleHeight = 0 variable called carryOn, which is set to True. We then
if event.key == pygame.K_z: start our while loop, so that it runs while this variable
#Move the left paddle down is set to True. We then set the window to black each
leftPaddleHeight = leftPaddleHeight + time the loop runs, which stops ghosting when objects
paddleVelocity move. Next we start a for loop, which iterates over any
if leftPaddleHeight > screenHeight - events that exist. When the Close button is pressed, a
paddleHeight: pygame.QUIT event is added to the list of events, and
leftPaddleHeight = screenHeight - we catch this and set the carryOn variable to False,
paddleHeight which exits the while loop.
# Make the ball move Next we look for pygame.KEYDOWN events and act
ballPositionX += ballDirectionX*ballVelocity*math. upon whichever button is pressed. If the a key is
cos(ballAngle) pressed, we subtract the paddleVelocity value from the

74

The oscilloscope-based Tennis for Two was a precursor to Pong.
leftPaddleHeight variable, which changes the height in
the variable to a value closer to the top of the screen.
We also have to ensure that the paddle cannot move
off the screen, so we ensure that the variable can
never contain a negative value. We then handle the z
key in a similar way, where we add the paddleVelocity
value to the leftPaddleHeight variable. This time,
however, we need to account for the maximum
leftPaddleHeight value, which is windowHeight –
paddleHeight.
Next we calculate the ball position each time the
while loop runs, with one variable that contains the
X coordinate and another variable that contains the Y
coordinate. At this point, we have exited the for loop
that is dealing with events. We use sine and cosine to
take the angle, velocity and direction to determine the
new value.
Now we deal with the situation of the ball reaching
the top or bottom of the screen, where we need to
change the Y direction, which we do by multiplying
ballDirectionY by -1.
Next in the while loop we calculate what happens if
the ball hits the left paddle. When constructing the if
statement, we test if the direction is -1, which means
the ball is travelling right to left, and if the position
of the ball in the X direction is less than or equal to
the right extremity of the paddle. We also need to
check whether the Y position of the ball is between
the bottom and top of the paddle. When these
CREDIT: Brookhaven National Laboratory, public domain
conditions are all met, we flip the direction of the ball
by multiplying the ballDirectionX variable by -1.
We now test to see if the ball has left the screen
on the left- or right-hand side. If this occurs, we move
the ball back to the centre of the screen, set a random
height and angle, and reverse the direction the ball
was travelling when it left the screen.
We’re nearly done now and need to update the
screen with the new position of the paddle and ball,
before we update the screen itself. Finally, in the
while loop, we set the clock to run at 60 frames per
second. When breaking out of the while loop, we call
the pygame.quit() function to quit the game.
Pong
ALTERNATIVE GAME LIBRARIES
The library being used in this project is called Pygame and it is used
to add gaming functionality to the Python language. Pygame is well
established, open source and now 20 years old. It is possible to use
the library on Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
Another option would be the incredibly popular Unity game
engine, which is closed source and has a free tier available as
well as various paid-for options. Games created using Unity can be
sold royalty-free and can be packaged for 25 platforms including
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and popular consoles as well.
Games can be developed on Linux, Mac OS or Windows.
Godot is another excellent option, which can be used for 2D or 3D
games, and contains all of the features you would expect to see.
Godot is open source and games can be exported for desktop
operating systems as well as Android and iOS, HTML5 for online
gaming and popular consoles, too.
GameMaker is a popular engine that can be used to create 2D
games. Like Unity, GameMaker is proprietary with free and paid-for
tiers. Games can be exported for the main platforms and can be
developed on Windows and Mac.
The final game engine to discuss is the Unreal engine. This is
another proprietary option, which is royalty-free until a certain
number of sales have been reached. 3D games can be developed in
Linux, Windows and Mac, and can be exported to the platforms that
we have already discussed in this boxout.
To make a game that keeps getting more difficult
the longer it is played, there are a few things that can
be added. The first would be that the size of the paddle
could be decreased the longer the game goes on.
Another way to make the game more difficult would
be to increase the speed of travel of the ball. Code for
these additions are included on GitHub.
Enjoy exploring the excellent Pygame library. To add
an extra nostalgic feel, perhaps you could add some
8-bit audio as an annoying, yet somehow satisfying
soundtrack. While we should have a sense of pride
about what we’ve achieved with these lines of Python The completed
code, it’s worth thinking about the pioneers who Pong game for
two players with
created the original game. Just imagine having a device scores and other
that’s less powerful than a calculator and being able settings displayed
to make the hardware behave in this manner! on the screen.
75
Coding Academy

PYTHON

Website and RSS

feed Python scraping
Matt Holder investigates how to use Python to scrape information
from a webpage and RSS feed, and perform some basic analysis.

efore we begin, a word of warning. Web

B scraping can be viewed as a negative

endeavour – even a type of hacking – if what
you’re trying to do is take somebody else’s intellectual
property. When taking the ideas in the article further,
OUR ensure to take into consideration any legal implications.
EXPERT The web scraping that we’ll carry out in this article is
Matt Holder using purely fictional data, so this won’t be a problem.
has worked in IT That said, web scraping is a way to take information
support for over a from a rendered web page, store it into variables, lists
decade, and is and other data types, and then use it for carrying out
keen to utilise another purpose.
Linux alongside Okay, let’s get on to the article proper. In this tutorial
other installed we’ll be using Python and the lxml and beautiful soup
systems. modules to scrape information from a website. As A Python generated output sample of our web-scrapping activities
previously stated, the data used is purely fictional, but with name and colour choice distributions.
once the concepts have been learned it can be used for
many different purposes. Once we’ve scraped data from terminology can be confusing because nodes can
the web page, we’ll use it to calculate some statistics. contain other nodes, or be entirely standalone.
If we wanted to determine the title of the webpage,
X marks the spot we could use the following XPath: /html/head/title .
The first concept to introduce is that of XPath. This is a This will navigate through the html and find the <title>
method that can be used to work our way through XML node (technically this will return all <title> nodes, but
data to return certain objects. HTML is the language there should only be one). This is known as a
used to write web pages and is hierarchical in exactly sourcePath and describes how to navigate through the
the same way as XML, with opening and closing tags data to return what we want. If we wanted to return all
and tags nested within other tags. paragraph nodes from within the body we would use
Looking at the example below, we’ll first see some /html/body/p , which returns every <p> node from
examples of XPath in use: within the body node.
<html> To carry out this demonstration first of all download
<head> demo1.py from the linked-to Github page and save it to
<title>LXF Hello World</title> a folder. Next, open a terminal and ensure that the
</head> necessary libraries are installed by entering the
All the Python <body> following commands.
scripts that <h1>LXF Hello World</h1> cd /path/to/python/file
we’ve discussed <p>Lots of random text for our website</p> pip3 install lxml bs4 feedparser matplotlib
in this tutorial <p>Another paragraph of text</p> python demo1.py
are all available </body> The code within demo1.py is printed below for
at https://
</html> completeness:
github.com/
mattmole/
Everything within triangular bracket enclosures can from lxml import etree
LXF295. be considered a node. So, <html> and everything within import requests
it is a node, and <h1> and text within is also a node. This

76
 Data-scraping

pageLink = “https://www.mattmole.co.uk/LXF295/
demo1.html”

#Load the HTML from the link

page = requests.get(pageLink)
root = etree.HTML(page.content)

#Print the title in the terminal

print('Title: ‘+root.xpath('/html/head/title')[0].text)

#Perform a second XPath operation to return each

paragraph of text and print it to the screen
for para in root.xpath('/html/body/p'):
print('Para Text: ‘+para.text)
What we do within this code is to import the lxml and
requests libraries, grab a copy of demo1.html and then
read the data into what the lxml library refers to as an
“etree” object. This then gives us the capability to
perform queries on the HTML using XPath.
Next, we run a simple XPath query to return the title
of the page. Note that this function returns an array with
one element inside. XPath will return as many items as
it can find, hence why an array is returned. In this case
it’s safe to assume there’ll only ever be one title because
there should only be one title tag within the HTML.
On the next line we return every paragraph tag in the
page and then print the text. As well as using the .text
data item within the para object, we could also return
.tag (which will be p for paragraph in this case) and also
.attrib, to return attributes, such as href=’’ should we
be returning links from a webpage.
Walk on the wild side
The next item to talk about is wildcards. For example, if
we wanted to return all table rows from every table, we
could use //tr and this would search the entire HTML
page for all rows. If we wanted to return all nodes from
within tables within the body section, we would use
/html/body/table/* . It’s also possible to use the pipe
‘|’ symbol to use two sourcePaths together, to have a
more accurate match. For example, to return all headers
and all rows, we can use /html/body/table/th|/html/
body/table/tr .
The next item to introduce is that of the predicate, or
the condition. In the previous example we returned all
header and row nodes from within all tables in the page.
Let’s say that we wanted to only return data from a
table with the id value of table1. This can be
A small sample of
a table containing
1,000 entries of
people’s forename
and their
favourite colours.
accomplished using a command such as /html/body/
table[id='table1']/tr . The wildcard can also be used in
conjunction with a predicate, so we could return all The table
values from table cells (within headers and rows), <td> containing
names and
nodes, from the table with the id of table1. This would be
favourite
accomplished with the following: /html/body/
colours can be
table[id='table1']/*/td . found at https://
Some of this theory is abstracted away by our choice mattmole.
of library, but it’s important to know in case more co.uk/LXF295.
advanced filtering needs to be accomplished, which our
library can’t do so using its own methods.
Back in the real world…
The second demo is to take some data that’s more
representative of something that could be
accomplished in the real world. The table shown at
www.mattmole.co.uk/LXF295 contains a table with
1,000 rows.
This was generated using a small list of colours and a
larger list of names. Each row in the table represents the
forename of a person and their favourite colour in the

PYTHON AND DATA ANALYSIS

There are many libraries available for
Python that enable data analysis.
Examples of these libraries include
numpy, which allows for numerical
analysis to be carried out with access to
mathematical constants, nth dimensional
arrays and many other features.
Matplotlib is a powerful library that
makes it possible to visualise data, with
most sort of plots being able to be
generated. These include scatter plots,
pie charts, and box and whisker
diagrams. Pandas is another library, built
on top of Python, which provides access
to many statistical tools.
In this tutorial, we’ve discussed lists
(can also be called arrays) as well as
dictionaries. In Python, lists can contain
objects of any type – they don’t have to
contain only strings or numbers. When
iterating through a list of objects, the
usual .NAME operators and .NAME()
functions can be carried out on the
individual members of the list.
Dictionaries are the other data types
that have been used and these enable
values to be stored against a dictionary
key. For example, looking at the example
from demo3, the dictionary may contain
the following counts: colours =
{‘red’:5,’blue’:6,’green’:10} . The value can
be returned – for example colours[‘red’ ]
would return 5 .

77
Coding Academy
Basic iteration
helps cycle second column. We will use the skills previously learned
through our data in this article to grab all 1,000 rows, count the number
to collate our of times each colour is present and also the amount of
distribution values. times each name is present.
This data was generated using the random function,
so there isn’t a large variation between each colour, but
when using real-world data it would be possible to
determine if there were any link between the two
columns in the data, by carrying out regression and
other statistical analysis.
As with demo1, this demo is available from the same
GitHub repository as file demo3.py. Demo2 also exists
as another example for your interest. Download demo3.
py to the same folder as demo1.py.
from lxml import etree
import requests
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
W3Schools pageLink = “https://www.mattmole.co.uk/LXF295/
offers an index.html”
excellent
resource to #Load the HTML from the link
learn more page = requests.get(pageLink)
about XPath. root = etree.HTML(page.content)
See www.
w3schools.com/ #Return a list of colours from the table using XPath.
xml/xpath_
Note that we request data from a table with a given id
intro.asp.
in the <table id=""> tag and a given column @id.
PREVALENCE OF XML
XML and similar structured text is used everywhere to represent what
we need to see. RSS feeds that are used for either news aggregation
or podcasts use XML to store information about the story or episode,
and make it available to RSS readers or podcast tools.
Another example is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which
is used to write the front end of every website on the web. HTML
was first released in 1993 and was an extension of the SGML
(Standardised General Markup Language). While the specification has
been built on over the years, the basic elements, such as <title>, <p>
for paragraph, <br> for break line and <table> for tables are still used.
Where things have changed is the delineation of responsibility. CSS is
used now for styling of the pages and JavaScript for both interactivity
and adding functionality.
As a brief trip down memory lane, hands up if you remember the
<marquee> tag, which could be used to make text scroll across the
screen as well as the <blink> tag , to make text flash on and off. Not
everything was better in the good old days!
78
colours = root.xpath('/html/body/table[@id =
“namesAndColours"]//td[@id = “colour"]')
#Iterate through each colour in the returned results
and add to the dictionary if missing.
#If it is not missing, then increment it
colourCount = {}
for colour in colours:
if colour.text not in colourCount:
colourCount[colour.text] = 1
else:
colourCount[colour.text] += 1
#Return a list of names from the table using XPath.
Note that we request data from a table with a given id
in the <table id=""> tag and a given column @id.
names = root.xpath('/html/body/table[@id =
“namesAndColours"]//td[@id = “name"]')
#Iterate through each name in the returned results
and add to the dictionary if missing.
#If it is not missing, then increment it
nameCount = {}
for name in names:
if name.text not in nameCount:
nameCount[name.text] = 1
else:
nameCount[name.text] += 1
#Print both dictionaries
print(colourCount)
print(nameCount)
#Generate a pie chart of the colours
#Labels contains the name of each colour and uses a
list, when returning the keys from the dictionary
labels = colourCount.keys()
#The values from the dictionary represents the count
of each colour
sizes = colourCount.values()
#Create the pie chart and add the values and labels
fig1, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.pie(sizes, labels=labels, autopct='%1.1f%%’,
colors=labels)
ax1.axis('equal') # Equal aspect ratio ensures that pie is
drawn as a circle.
#Save and display the plot on the screen
plt.savefig('pieChart.png')
plt.show()
When you run this code. it’ll load the HTML from the
webpage into an etree object and then the processing
is carried out in two, nearly identical, stages. In stage 1,
XPath is run to return all <td> elements (columns) with
the id value set to colour. This will therefore grab a list
of 1,000 colours.
Once the list is available, it’s iterated through and a
dictionary is built, which contains each colour set as the
key. Then whenever a colour is discovered that’s in the
dictionary, the value is incremented by one. If a colour is
not yet in the dictionary, it’s added with a value of 1.
Stage 2 is the same as stage 1, but instead of looking
for @id = “colours” we look for @id=”names” and
create a dictionary of names instead. In the final part of
the code we generate a pie chart using the dictionary
 Data-scraping

keys (this returns a list of colours) as the labels of the

pie chart and the values (this returns a list of colour ADVANCED XPATH
counts) as the values of the pie chart.
In the final part of the article, we will use the Some pretty advanced work can take place using XPath. XPath
feedparser and beautiful soup libraries to parse an RSS operates on nodesets, which can be considered to be similar to
feed for a podcast. In a recent episode of Late Night arrays in programming. It’s possible to construct sourcePaths
Linux the presenters responded to a listener about how that compare two nodesets. Using this approach, it would be possible
a list of their Linux-based discoveries would be good for to return data that either differs between two tables or that contain
the community. The suggested solution was to parse the same data.
the RSS feed for the relevant tags. The solution below is The second concept is that of axes. This provides a way to
the beginnings of a tool that can do this. reference nodes at the same or different levels. For example, the
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup sibling axis enables all nodes at the same level to be returned.
import os Using the simple example above, as well as the <body> node,
import feedparser the <head> node would be returned.
It’s also possible to return ancestors of a selected node. In this way,
feedLink = “https://latenightlinux.com/feed/mp3” when selecting the <table> node the <body> and <html> node would
also be returned. Axes can also be used to return a distinct set of
feed = feedparser.parse(feedLink) nodes. For example, if we were returning a node for each of the
heading types being used, this would involve an axis.
#Iterate through each episode
count = 0
for episode in feed.entries: section of the episode’s data. We then iterate through
episodeName = episode.title the HTML to enable us to find the upper and lower
episodeLink = episode.link bounds we need to look through to find the link and text
associated with each discovery. The text associated
page_soup = BeautifulSoup(episode.content[0].value, with each discovery as well as the link is then printed to
“html.parser") the screen.
Available from the same GitHub page as the other
#Find the rows in the encoded content that demo.py files, you can be found the previous code called
referencies discoveries and feedback rssScrape.py as well as rssScrapeMD.py, which is used
lowCount = -1 to scrape the RSS data for a list of discoveries and then
highCount = -1 write the information into a series of markdown files,
counter = 0 one for each episode.
for row in page_soup: As can be seen, we’ve merely scratched (should that
if row.text == ‘Discoveries': be scraped? – Ed) the surface of what can be
lowCount = counter accomplished and Python contains some amazing
if row.text =='Feedback’ or row.text == “KDE Korner": libraries and tools to enable us to grab data and
highCount = counter process it in many different ways.
counter += 1

#Now print discoveries, using the values from the

previous loop
counter = 0
for row in page_soup:
if counter < highCount and counter > lowCount
and lowCount > -1:
if row.text.strip() != ‘':
discoveryLink = ‘No link available’
try:
discoveryLink = row.find('a')['href']
except:
pass
discoveryText = row.text
print(discoveryText, discoveryLink)
counter += 1
First of all we import the required libraries and use
the feedparser library to grab a copy of the XML in the
RSS feed. We then use the .entries method to iterate A pie chart, as
through the data associated with each episode. We grab generated from
an HTML table,
the title and link before using beautiful soup to decode
hosted online.
the HTML which is embedded within the .content

79
Coding Academy

WEB 3.0

Build a club on
the next-gen web
Follow along with Mats Tage Axelsson as you assemble your
first Web 3.0 application using Solidity and JavaScript!

n the current web there are a few, enormous

O companies that dominate your activities and

collect your data. For many of us this is a
worrying development that we need to do something
about. One technical solution is to develop a new
OUR version of the web. How that will look is still a mystery.
To get a grip on the efforts to reinvent the web, you
EXPERT should start by looking at distributed solutions. File
Mats Tage systems such as IPFS can give you autonomy over your
Axelsson data. In most efforts, blockchain technology is also
is digging involved. In this article you’ll learn more about the
through the web Ethereum blockchain (see the feature in LXF292) since
to find what may it’s the biggest and most popular option. However, it’s
surface. It may be not the only game in town.
new, but always Other efforts aim to cut costs, and improve speed
with an angle and scalability. There are also many efforts to use
to help you what’s called Layers to avoid using many transactions
better navigate on the chain. These aim to stay off the chain while
your digital life retaining many features of the technology.
using Linux.
Build it and they will come…
The code here will be a base for further development. As
a first step, we’ll make it possible to add club members
and manage memberships. This uses the OpenZeppelin
code for access and governance. To make this happen
you can use many other components but these are well-
tested and are sure to work as expected.
When using Emacs, you can run the server called ganach and a web
server in a terminal buffer, which makes debugging much easier.
You’ll deploy your contract using one user and there
must be another user to test if it can block access to
other users. In the beginning you do this directly with
the contract. Later you can have several users or wallet
addresses to access this contract.
To edit your code, you need to choose an editor and a
development environment. The environment needs to
support both code linting and a compiler. It also needs
to be a running chain and web environment that can
make it look as if you’re on the web when you’re running
your tests.
A wallet for your browser will also be useful for final
testing. Metamask is the most common wallet, although
many browsers now have their own wallets.

What’s needed?
You can choose your own IDE, although in this article
you’ll only learn about the code itself. If you want a
specialised solution then the Remix IDE (https://github.
com/ethereum/remix-desktop/releases) is the most
You can obtain popular. For the major editors, vim and Emacs, you have
the latest code linting and other tools to help you.
for this project In Web 3.0 development, you need libraries much like
from Mat’s Git at in any other development. These comes as contracts
https://github. from many sources, we’ll cover them in-depth at the
com/matstage/
You can see a practice code running on the Ganach local blockchain. end. The libraries you need are from OpenZeppelin,
Solidity-Club.
This project is available at https://trufflesuite.com/tutorial. which handle access for your code. The contract is

80

called AccessControlEnumerable – it calls several other
libraries to give you a way to assign roles to users.
The blockchain has no graphical user interface.
For this we need to use other existing technologies.
JavaScript is the most popular since all major browsers
support it. For interfacing with the Ethereum Virtual
Machine you have Web3.js. You’ll see this one
mentioned everywhere when you search for guidance.
The most interesting is a big package named ethers.
js, which can call your contract and interact with the
functions inside JavaScript code. For a professional tool
to develop and test your code, you need to install
Hardhat (https://hardhat.org).
The Solidity code
Making sure you use the right compiler. In the top of
every Solidity source listing, you must add a pragma to
help the compiler sort out what to do. The pragma can
be used for other things, but the compiler version is the
main use. This code tells the compiler that it must be in
the version range between 0.8.7 and 0.9.0. Note that
when you deploy, it’s better to change these values to
the exact compiler you used!
pragma solidity >=0.8.7 <0.9.0;
While the pragma is compulsory, a licence note is
not. Many compilers require it, though. Make sure the
top line of your code contains a licence note.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-v3.0
See https://spdx.org/licenses to find out more about
the standard.
Those lines are formalities that must be there, while
other parts are below. The first and crucial part is that
you’ll usually import libraries. In this example, you use
the OpenZeppelin (see box bottom right) framework.
The code in this framework has been well tested and is
secure. Use this or similar collections. You can get much
more done using others’ hard work!
import “@openzeppelin/contracts/access/
AccessControlEnumerable.sol”;
In this imported code, you get functions for handling
users and their access. When you start using it, combine
reading the documentation and the source code. You
can benefit from reading other people’s code.
The code you’re importing needs to be on your
computer. If you use Remix, it takes care of it for you.
You can see which libraries it’s installed under the .deps
directory in the file explorer. When using your favourite
editor, you need to import them yourself using npm.
Once you have all the inherited code ready, you need
to write the base code. Code in solidity are contracts, so
your code starts with contract . You put values,
variables and functions inside this contract. One
exception is a value that needs to be available to other
contracts. You only need to know those details when
you start making, rather than using libraries.
On the https://buildspace.so web page you can follow tutorials to
deploy to Ethereum testnets in a crowd fashion.
Writing for Web 3.0
In the Remix
contract mclub is AccessControlEnumerable{
IDE, you can
/// The rest of your code! interact directly
} with contracts,
You can see how the mclub contract inherits making it easier to
AccessControl , which means all functions are available separate Solidity
development from
for this contract. When you write production code, this JavaScript work.
list will be longer. At the top of your contract, put
constants you’ll need throughout. In this code, we need
to set values that match our different user roles.
bytes32 public constant USER_ROLE =
keccak256("USER");
// Define an accepted Member
bytes32 public constant MEMBER_ROLE =
keccak256("MEMBER");
// Define a preliminary Member
bytes32 public constant P_MEMBER_ROLE =
Look out for
keccak256("P_MEMBER");
libraries. You’ll
The values are of type bytes32 , which means it’s not hear a lot about
the string you see. Instead, we convert the string to a OpenZeppelin
byte value to make it easier for the finished contract to which have
run. It’s also what the underlying code requires. many available.
As in many other programming languages, we have a Other providers
way to set the contract up using a constructor. You set exist, and
certain values here for the duration of the contract. The getting to know
constructor only runs once. The most common use of the major ones
will be the first
this in Solidity is to set the owner of the contract. Or in
lesson to learn.
our case, we set the administrator.
ONE LIBRARY TO RULE THEM ALL…
As always with open source, you build everything upon other people’s
efforts. OpenZeppelin has libraries for tokens, Governance and
access. You are using the access part in this tutorial. Tokens is a
means of creating a new type of coin. This is why there are so many
coins available. It is easy to create new coins.
You use Governance if you want to have a voting system – useful for
decentralised autonomous organisations (DAO). You use the token
contract (ERC721) libraries. You see that the contracts you use are
abstract, which makes them useless on their own. Only when you use
them in another contract can you compile it to a useful state.
When you want to use these libraries, you need to read the
documentation. It is possible, though, to get hold of some of the code
using the wizard on OpenZeppelin (https://wizard.openzeppelin.com).
This wizard creates a number of lines of code that you can use to
get started. Continuing from these boilerplate lines will make your
task easier.
Another similar framework is the truffle suite: https://trufflesuite.
com. In here you can find both contracts and JavaScript tools to make
your system run on a regular web page. Check through the packages
they have – you may be able to get a React application running faster
than you imagine.
81
Coding Academy

Compiling uint256 latestHopeful;

code using the address newMember;
command line
latestHopeful = getRoleMemberCount(P_
is as frustrating
as in other MEMBER_ROLE);
programming newMember = getRoleMember(P_MEMBER_
languages. ROLE, latestHopeful);
Notice how the
_grantRole(MEMBER_ROLE, newMember);
compiler checks
the version. }
Note in this case that you must define the
onlyAdmin as it is in the code below. Using the
modifier patterns makes it easy to control when a
function can run. This is the only use of modifiers; they
// When the contract deploys, the deploying user never have return values.
becomes ADMIN modifier onlyAdmin() {
constructor () { require(isAdmin(msg.sender), “Restricted to
_setupRole(DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE, msg.sender); admins.“);
_setRoleAdmin(USER_ROLE, DEFAULT_ADMIN_ _;
ROLE); }
}
Looking carefully at the code, you can see that the function isAdmin(address account)
DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE isn’t defined. It’s defined in public virtual view returns (bool)
To quickly the inherited contract named AccessControl. Whenever {
learn how your you start using inheritance this way, always become return hasRole(DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE,
contract works,
familiar with what the underlying contracts define. account);
you need an
Those are the source of your power and can be your }
interface to
work with it. downfall if misused. Admittedly, it’s a duplication of sorts, but the
Unless you’re In this example, you want to start a club where modifier will either execute or not so it must be boolean.
a JavaScript members gain special privileges. For these members to Looking in the modifier, you can see _; . This means
whizz, the become members, you want them to register interest. continue executing, so you’ll set it as part of the function
Remix interface You don’t want anyone to have all privileges. The first definition and know it won’t execute if it’s false.
will come in piece of code gives users a way to register interest. Supporting your users, you must do the same with
handy for this // Random user requests to be member. users, as in the next snippet of code.
particular task. function MemberRequest() payable public { modifier onlyUser() {
_grantRole(P_MEMBER_ROLE, msg.sender); require(isUser(msg.sender), “Restricted to users.“);
} _;
In the _grantRole function you grant access to msg. }
sender . This is whoever accesses the function.
Hopefully, this is a regular user. function isUser(address account)
One important issue that you’ll see later is all the public virtual view returns (bool)
values between the function name and the curly {
brackets marking the function itself. As you become return hasRole(USER_ROLE, account);
more used to programming in Solidity, you need a }
better understanding for the values. In the earlier Once this code is inside the contract, you can create
function you should see that it’s ‘public’, meaning that functions that allow onlyUser to run the function. This
any contract can use it. Only the administrator can makes it possible to run your club for your members
For those who are approve a new user in the next code snippet. You can only. With a bit more code, you can work together to
used to your editor, see that from the onlyAdmin statement after public . decide what the club needs to improve.
you can install
tools like hardhat
/// Administrator approves the user. Using Remix, you can now compile your code and
to run your local function ApproveLatestHopeful() public onlyAdmin then deploy it. The two are different steps and have their
chain for testing. { own pane for presenting what’s happening. You can see
the symbols on the right-hand side of the window. You’ll
work from the top down. Files is first, next is search,
next is the compile section. After choosing compile,
all you need to do is click the button.
After the compile finishes, you’ll see more options.
The most important are the small ones below the
buttons. One says ABI: when you want to deploy this
contract outside of your test environment, you may
need this to set up deployment. For your testing,
continue to the next section, named Deploy and Run
Transactions. Make sure you choose your own contract
from the drop-down list.
All contracts that are imported are in the list. It’s easy
to deploy the wrong one by mistake. You must also pay
attention to the Account that you deploy with. That

82

Using hardhat as a local chain, you can see the transactions as they go
through or fail, as the case may be.
account will own the contract. If all went well, you have a
contract at the bottom with all the functions you
designed and the ones from the inherited ones.
Choose another account up high on the list and find
the button named MemberRequest. Your console will
roll by and you can see that the transaction worked
because you see a green symbol with a tick inside.
Now try the ApproveLatestHopeful with the same
user. It should fail. Then change to the user you
deployed the contract with and try again. It should now
work. You have just run your first contract.
The JavaScript code
You’ll use JavaScript to interact with the blockchain. At
the beginning you used the Remix interface to interact
with the code. Next, you want to interact with it using
JavaScript, the fastest way to the web. If you’ve used
Remix, move your contract to a new directory and set
your directory up for Java development.
Assuming that you have node and npm installed,
create a directory and move into the root. In the root,
run npx hardhat , and choose an empty hardhat.config.
js. Next install the toolbox form hardhat:
$ npm install --save-dev @nomicfoundation/hardhat-
toolbox
You’ll have an empty hardhat.config.js, so add the
following lines in the file.
require("@nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox");
/** @type import('hardhat/config').HardhatUserConfig
*/
module.exports = {
solidity: “0.8.9”,
};
Now create a new file called Mclub.js and put the
following code into it:
const { expect } = require("chai");
describe("Mclub contract”, function () {
it("Deployment should assign administration rights to
the owner”, async function () {
const [owner] = await ethers.getSigners();
const mclub = await ethers.
getContractFactory("mclub");
const hardhatMclub= await mclub.deploy();
Writing for Web 3.0
HARDHAT – RUNNING LOCAL CHAINS
The blockchain is public. If you put anything out there, it stays there!
This means you need to test carefully before you deploy to the public
blockchain. There are several ways of doing this. You can publish to a
testnet and you can create a local chain. Using a testnet requires you
to use a faucet to receive any funds. This is a hassle to say the least.
You must do this at some point, but you should have reached a high
level of confidence in your code before you take this route. Before you
publish to a testnet, it is much better to have a local chain.
One solution for this is Hardhat, but it’s much more than that. It
includes many tools and you can add your own plugins. The hardhat-
ganach plugs into the running environment. Ganach is just one way to
manage a local blockchain. It starts a new chain with several accounts
that have funds in them. This way you can easily start spending in
your application, a task which is vital since all your users will have to
pay gas fees. Getting the code efficient in this regard is essential for
the user experience. You can also test security and speed using this
framework. Professional developers often add plugins.
const memberRequest = await hardhatMclub.
MemberRequest(owner.address);
Remember
const memberApproval = await hardhatMclub. that gas will
ApproveLatestHopeful(); always be a
}); major concern
}); since every user
pays gas for
This code will test your contract, You can use the
transactions.
constructs to build a user interface for your code.
Serious
businesses can
Going further in the Web 3.0 use the gas
Developing for Web 3.0 is a complex but rewarding station network
exercise. Pursuing a career in this is a big and rewarding (https://
endeavour, but you can also enjoy it even if you only opengsn.
want to understand the basics. A contract using ready org/) to ease
libraries can make a real impact on other people and is adoption.
an exciting way to learn more about programming.
Given that you’ll most likely use a JavaScript
framework for this project, it’ll be useful for you. That’s
true even if you just want to build your own web page.
Look out for libraries – you’ll hear a lot about
OpenZeppelin which have many available. Other
providers exist, and getting to know the major
ones will be the first lesson to learn.
The biggest strength of the Remix IDE is that you can look for plugins, including libraries.
83
 086 Hot Pi Projects
From building a smart home to
creating a WiFi router
096 Deck the hardware
Trick out the Valve Steam Deck
100 Get started photo-editing
Edit photos like a pro using GIMP
104 More fun with layers and masks
How GIMP manages layers
108 Using enhanced layer features
Beyond GIMP’s standard layers
112 Universal layer text effects
Attract attention with layer texts
84
116 Track down files and folders
How to use a tool to search for
files and folders on your PC
118 Become a screencasting pro
How to make a screencast
122 Nifty note-taking with Obsidian
Discover the almighty
Markdown-based note-taking app
124 Back up and copy hard drives
Learn to tame Clonezilla
128 Using WordPress with OnlyOffice
Insert documents into
online posts
086

096

104

122

118

095

85
Pi projects
Linux projects

Dig in to our smorgasbord of

hot Pi projects, from Pico
devices running MicroPython
to full-Pi setups, with expert
guidance from Les Pounder
and Matt Holder.

he problem with owning a mostly. We’ve selected self-contained ask Les Pounder about trying to get his

T Raspberry Pi is knowing what

to do with the flipping thing.
That’s if you’ve been able to
get hold of one over the last year. But
that is where the Pi Pico comes into its
own, costing a fraction of the latest Pi 4
models and actually being available.
No matter what Pi you have to hand or
what your ability is, we’ve got projects to
keep you busy and out of trouble. Well,
capsule projects and have supplied the
relevant code, while any kit you need
shouldn’t be too outlandish, from basic
NeoPixels to simple radio receivers.
That’s half the fun of Raspberry Pi
projects: one moment you’re flashing
LEDs in different colours, the next you’re
reliving retro gaming moments, and then
you could be up to your elbows in Python
code. That last one is definitely fun – just
robot to go in a straight line…
The Pi’s launch was revolutionary – it
put a generous amount of computing
power into the hands of enthusiasts for
a ridiculously low price, all powered by
open source. And it’s still revolutionary,
thanks to its investment in education,
software, hardware improvements and,
most recently, manufacturing its own
silicon with the Pi Pico. So get making!

86
 Pi projects

I like to make it, make it

Welcome to the maker revolution – but first, get your Pi up to speed.
A Raspberry Pi 4
o become a maker, you need the right kit, and

T
with Pimoroni’s
without a microSD card, the main Raspberry Fan Shim providing
Pi models won’t even boot. So, to kick things active cooling.
off as quickly as possible, we’ve had our friends at
Tom’s Hardware do a bit of testing and come up with
the fastest microSD cards to power your Pi.
Now is an amazing time to buy a fresh microSD card
as prices have tumbled and speeds have increased
dramatically. Previously, we would have recommended
32GB cards, but it’s getting hard to find a 64GB card
that costs much more than £7, while 128GB cards are
regularly under £15. Much of this is powered by even
larger capacity cards entering the market.
Theoretical speeds can top 140MB/s, with many
advertising a healthy 100MB/s, as the old Speed Class
measure tops out at Class 10 (10MB/s) there are now SanDisk Extreme Pro showed a clear lead on the rest
three new speed markings you now should look for: at 38MB/s, the SanDisk Extreme came second with
UHS: Denoted with a U symbol and a number 1, 2 or 3 32MB/s ,and the Kingston Canvas React at 27MB/s.
denoting 10MB/s, 20MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. The Samsung Pro Endurance posted 21MB/s and the
Video Class: Marked with a V and a number that Silicon Power 3D Nand was just shy of 19MB/s.
denotes the MB/s, starting at V30, V60 and then V90. Now you can boot your Pi as quickly as possible,
App Class: The newest measure, which switches to turn the page to find a range of hot projects. We also
IOPS (input/output operations per second), is denoted recommend installing your Pi in a case – we’ve listed
by A1, A2 and A3, although people have found Pi the best to consider at the end of the feature.
performance is less affected by IOPS.
Best for booting: All the big-name brands boot a Pi
Raspberry Pi Config.txt
within 2.5 seconds of each other. The Kingston Canvas
React came out first at 24 seconds, while the Samsung arm_freq=1100
Evo Plus and SanDisk Extreme snuck in under 25 Pi Zero (W) core_freq=450
seconds, with the Samsung Pro Endurance and over_voltage=6
SanDisk Extreme Pro at just over 25 seconds. arm_freq=1500
3A+/B+/CM3+
Best for apps: All the main cards on test launched over_voltage=4
GIMP within 0.8 seconds of each other. The lesser-
arm_freq=1300
known Silicon Power 3D NAND being the fastest at Pi 3/CM3 &
core_freq=500
6.5 seconds, the Samsung Evo Plus, SanDisk Extreme Pi 2 v1.2
over_voltage=4
Pro and Samsung Pro Endurance are just under 7
seconds, and the SanDisk Extreme at 7 seconds. arm_freq=1000
Pi 2 v1.1 core_freq=500
Fastest writes: Depending on your use case fast writes
over_voltage=2
could be more useful than general performance. The

OVERCLOCK YOUR Pi
It’s easy to overclock your Pi to gain
a modest speed increase. If you’re
serious, first attach a suitable Pi cooling
fan, such as the Pimoroni Fan Shim.
It’s worth a sudo apt update && sudo
apt upgrade -y then open config.txt for
editing (in the /boot directory):
$ sudo nano /boot/config.txt
At the bottom of the file for a Pi 4,
400 or CM4, add these new lines – see
the table (above-right) for other models:
arm_freq=2200
gpu_freq=750
over_voltage=6
force_turbo=1
If you choose to use the same SD
card in a different model of Raspberry
Pi later, you should change or remove
these lines. Save the file by pressing
Ctrl+X, Y then Enter.
Reboot the Raspberry Pi. If it fails
to boot, power off the Raspberry Pi,
remove the microSD card, edit config.
txt and check your settings. If they’re
correct, reduce the clock by 100MHz,
check your cooling and try again.
With the Pi booted to the desktop,
open a new terminal. To see its current
CPU speed updated every second, use:
$ watch -n 1 vcgencmd measure_clock
arm
When idle, the CPU runs at around
600MHz. If we were to open a web
browser or another heavy application,
the CPU speed would increase to
match the demand.

87
Linux projects

Play retro games

Defend the universe, save the princess, win the
race and all without spending a 10-pence piece!
n the ’80s, the only
YOU NEED
Raspberry
I way to experience
arcade-quality gaming
Pi 3, 4 or was by going to an arcade.
Zero 2W Over the passing decades,
8GB or arcades have become mere
larger memories and gaming is now
microSD a home pastime. For the more
card ‘mature’ gamer, the appeal of
Controller retro gaming is nostalgia, and
(USB or the Raspberry Pi has been a
Bluetooth) capable retro gaming platform
for most of its life. In this
tutorial, we’re converting a
Raspberry Pi into a retro
gaming console using RetroPie.
Before we get too far, a word The RetroPie user interface is made for controllers. Games are broken down into their respective
on legality. Retro games are still console or computer for easy reference.
under their respective owners’
copyright. In some countries this isn’t an issue, in FAT32-formatted USB drive. Create a folder, RetroPie,
others it is. Please consult your local regulations. on the USB drive and insert it into the Raspberry Pi
RetroPie is a great way to play classic retro games running RetroPie. Leave the drive for five minutes for
via a Pi. We should know, as we have a Picade cabinet RetroPie to create a folder structure for the ROMs.
on our bookshelf that runs a customised version of Remove the USB drive, place it into another computer
RetroPie. Installation is simple – download and install and copy your ROMs into the correct folder under
Raspberry Pi Imager from www.raspberrypi.com/ /retropie/roms/. Note that the number of ROMs should
software/ and open the app. In the Operating System not exceed the capacity of the RetroPie microSD card.
RetroPie can menu, select Emulation and Game OS, then select Remove the USB drive and place it back into the Pi.
be heavily
RetroPie for your model of Pi. Insert an 8GB or larger The ROMs auto-copy to their respective folders on the
customised,
microSD card and select it from the Storage menu. Pi. If you’re copying gigabytes of ROMs, this takes a
under the
RetroPie menu Click Write to download and write the image to the long time; if it’s only a few hundred MBs, it should be
– look for ES card. Remove the card and boot your Pi from it. done within a few minutes. When done, remove the
Themes and On the first boot, we need to set up a controller. This USB stick and reboot RetroPie (Start > Quit > Restart).
Splash Screens. needs to be a controller physically connected to the Pi Some systems, such as Arcade, MAME and
The former can via USB. Bluetooth doesn’t work at this time. Follow the PlayStation, require BIOS images.
change the UI, instructions and map all the relevant controls. Once
the latter can done, we see the RetroPie interface, EmulationStation. Controllers
change the boot Games are collected by systems, and without any To use a Bluetooth controller, go to the RetroPie menu.
splash for a
games, no systems show in the menu. Your legally Scroll down and select Bluetooth. Select Pair And
bespoke cabinet.
owned ROMs can be transferred to RetroPie using a Connect Bluetooth Device. The name and MAC
address of the controller should appear (it is normally
Sega’s MegaDrive printed on the controller) – make sure they match. To
(Genesis in the
US) is a classic validate the connection, try the first security mode; if
16-bit console, that fails, try the next. Once done, your controller can
and something be used from the comfort of your sofa.
that all models On the Raspberry Pi 4, the best level of emulation
of Raspberry Pi
we can achieve is Nintendo 64. Even then, some
can emulate.
games, such as the seminal Goldeneye 007, may run a
little choppy. PlayStation 1 and some 2D PS2 games
should run rather well.
We’ve only just got you started with RetroPie. For
more information, head over to https://retropie.org.uk
and learn how to get even more retro gaming fun from
your Raspberry Pi.
CREDIT: Sega

88
 Pi projects

Make a media centre

Settle down with your own open source media centre and watch
the latest blockbusters with a side of Pi and popcorn.
hen the Raspberry Pi first arrived in 2012,
YOU NEED
Raspberry
W one of the first projects we saw was a media
centre. Even the humble Raspberry Pi 1, with
Pi 3, 4 or just a single 700MHz CPU and 512MB RAM, was
Zero 2W capable of decent 1080p video playback. Fast-forward
8GB or to today and the Raspberry Pi 4 is many times more
larger powerful and able to perform much better with our
microSD growing library of media. In this tutorial, we explain how
card to install a media centre OS to your Raspberry Pi, and
then show you how to play media from USB and live
streams, all from the comfort of your sofa.
OSMC is a great introduction to turning your
Raspberry Pi into a media player. This lightweight Linux This simple interface is made for the big screen and from it we can
OS is designed just for serving media, be it local or devour our media libraries and watch streaming media.
streaming video, or music. Installation is simple: just
download and install Raspberry Pi Imager from https:// behaves in the exact same manner, except that it can
www.raspberrypi.com/software/ and open the app. In play audio files in many different formats.
the Operating System menu, select Media Player OS Streaming media such as YouTube can be easily
and then select OSMC for your model of Pi. Insert an accessed via OSMC. Go to Settings > Add-On Browser
8GB or larger microSD card, then select the card from and select Install From Repository. As we have already
the Storage menu. Click Write to download and write connected the Pi to the internet, a list of add-on
the image to the microSD card. Remove the card and categories appears. Select Video Add-Ons and press
boot your Raspberry Pi from it. Enter. A new list of compatible add-ons is presented.
On the first boot, we need to set the language We chose NASA’s live streams. Scroll down to NASA
and our location. Once done, we are presented with a and install. This triggers the add-on to request the
simple UI that is made for media consumption. Media is installation of YouTube, as this is how NASA serves
categorised into sections (Videos, Music, Pictures) and its videos. With installation complete, go back to the
clicking on these headings opens additional menus. main OSMC menu. Select Videos, then Video Add-Ons.
Before that, we need to go into Settings > My OSMC NASA is now a selectable menu with the latest
and from there select the top icon: Network. In the streams. Using the same process, we can also install
Network menu, use the arrow keys (or mouse) to select music and game add-ons, such as a MAME arcade
Wireless and then enable the adapter. Select your machine emulator – but instead of doing that, you can
Wi-Fi SSID and connect. When done, press Esc or check out the retro gaming tutorial (opposite page).
Backspace until you reach the main OSMC menu. For more information about OSMC, head over to
To play local media, such as video files on a USB https://osmc.tv and discover how to get the very best
stick, insert the USB drive in the Raspberry Pi and go to from this great media operating system.
Videos, press Enter and you
will see that the drive is auto-
mounted. Select the drive
and navigate to the video file.
Note that video files need to
be in a format compatible
with the Raspberry Pi –
usually MP4 or MKV. If not
Infrared remote
in this format, use the free
controls can be Handbrake tool to transcode
used with the them on a more powerful
Raspberry Pi – PC. Press Enter to play your
just search for video. The on-screen UI can
FLIRC. Wireless be toggled on and off by
keyboards pressing the right mouse
with trackpads button. To exit, press Esc,
make excellent which returns you to the
controllers.
main menu. The Audio menu Adding extra features, such as streaming services, is made possible via the add-on repository.

89
Linux projects

Build a Wi-Fi router

Create a Raspberry Pi-based Wi-Fi router as a
secure option for use around the home.
ith the release of the Raspberry Pi 4, the
YOU NEED
Raspberry
W networking stack was greatly improved
thanks to changes to the hardware, which
Pi 4 Model B meant that USB bus was no longer used to make it
(2GB is available to the operating system. In this project, we
ample) are creating our own Wi-Fi router using Raspberry Pi
16GB OS and RaspAP. Once the initial setup has been
or 32GB completed, the wireless router can be configured via a
microSD web interface – much like the products available from
card popular router manufacturers.
Suitable What’s the benefit of making this yourself? Well,
PSU the first reason is that cheaper routers aren’t kept
updated for very long, possibly leaving security holes.
Basing the router on Debian means that the base
operating system is incredibly well tested and security
updates are released on a regular basis. The web GUI
also enables traffic usage graphs to be viewed,
connections made to OpenVPN and WireGuard
tunnels, the use of ad-blocking DNS services and much
more. But enough introduction – let’s begin! Use Raspberry Pi Imager to write the image to a microSD card.
The project is completed in three stages. Stage one
is to prepare the microSD card with the Raspberry Pi $ sudo apt update
OS image and enable SSH access from first boot. $ sudo apt full-upgrade
Stage two is to install the RaspAP software, while $ sudo raspi-config
the final stage is to configure the router and connect $ curl -sL https://install.raspap.com | bash
devices to it. $ sudo reboot
To prepare the image, first of all follow the Once you have rebooted the Raspberry Pi, the
instructions at the following web address to install initial details need to be used to connect a device
the Raspberry Pi Imager tool: www.raspberrypi.com/ to the router. These details can then be changed from
software/. Once installed, open it from the launcher the web GUI.
and select Raspberry Pi OS (Other) > Raspberry Pi OS IP address: 10.3.141.1
Lite (64bit) from the Operating System menu. Next, Username: admin
from the Storage menu, select the relevant microSD Password: secret
card (if multiple options appear in the list, make sure DHCP range: 10.3.141.50 — 10.3.141.255
you don’t pick the wrong one because you’ll lose SSID: raspi-webgui
whatever is stored on it). Click on the settings cog Password: ChangeMe
and select the options to enable SSH with password Once connected, open a web browser and navigate
authentication, set the username and password, and to 10.3.141.1. Log in with the details above, then
set the locale to the correct time zone and keyboard navigate to Authentication to change the login
layout. Click on OK to confirm the options and then password and go to Hotspot > Security to change
click on the Write button. Wait while the image is being the details of the SSID being connected to. When we
downloaded and written to the microSD card. first connected to the new AP, a DHCP address was
When the image has been written to the microSD granted, but it was not possible to browse the web.
card, remove it from your device and plug into the To cure the issue, first of all edit the /etc/sysctl.conf
Raspberry Pi, and connect the Pi to the power supply file as administrator and uncomment the line that
and wired network. The lights then flicker as the device reads net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 . Save the file and then
boots up. Once booted, you can SSH to the Raspberry run the following commands before rebooting the
Pi from the terminal using ssh <USERNAME@IP_ Raspberry Pi:
ADDRESS> . Refer to the DHCP leases on your router $ sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j
if the IP address is proving tricky to find. Enter the MASQUERADE
following commands to make sure the system is fully $ sudo iptables-save | sudo tee /etc/iptables/rules.v4
updated and that the correct region is set for the Wi-Fi In this article, we have only had space to cover the
configuration – navigate through the raspi-config tool very basics of how to get this tool up and running, so
to find the correct settings: take your time and discover more about the software.

90
 Pi projects

Track and scan planes

Use your Raspberry Pi to track aircraft or detect local
devices to keep an eye on all kinds of data.
ver the last few years,
YOU NEED
Raspberry
O there has been much talk
of software-defined radio
Pi 4 Model B (SDR – see LXF273). This is a way
(2GB) for a generic piece of receiver
16GB hardware to be repurposed to scan
or 32GB different frequencies or be used
microSD for a whole variety of purposes.
card One example of this is the Realtek
5V PSU RTL2832U+R820T2-based
ADS-B USB stick (around £35), which was
receiver originally intended to be used as a
Realtek TV receiver. For this project, we will
RTL2832U + briefly introduce how this receiver
R820T2 can be used to receive ADS-B
USB signals from passing aircraft and
extension how this information can be fed Live aircraft tracking data from our Raspberry Pi. Elon, is that you?
cable into a web service that aggregates
signals from many users, from across the globe. The should be changed using the Change Password option
second thing we will discuss is how to use the same from the web GUI. Once this has been changed, access
receiver to scan for any local devices that send data via SSH and for the web GUI uses your new password.
at 433MHz or 868MHz. The local interface can display graphs of detected
aircraft and a map display. Viewing from the following
Plane tracking address displays aggregated data: https://globe.
ADS-B Exchange is a service that aggregates data adsbexchange.com.
from a huge number of receivers, which are situated
across the globe. The project styles itself as the world’s Scanning at home
largest source of unfiltered flight data. Some other When preparing this tutorial, we were able to detect
services only display certain types of flights – for and interpret the data from an Oregon weather station.
example, they exclude military aircraft. To install the This data could then be used to feed online services or
project’s image, utilise the Raspberry Pi Imager to sent, via MQTT, to a local home automation system.
install a custom image, which can be downloaded from To set up the relevant software, first of all prepare
the following link: www.adsbexchange.com/how-to- a new installation of Raspberry Pi OS using the
feed/adsbx-custom-pi-image. instructions on the build your own Wi-Fi router project
Once written, the card can be put into your (see opposite page). Once this has been completed,
Raspberry Pi, the receiver can be connected via USB connect the receiver to a free USB port and install the
and it can then be connected to the power. After necessary software:
booting, connect to the ADSBx-config Wi-Fi SSID and, $ sudo apt install rtl-433
from a browser, visit http://adsbexchange.local. Click Once installed, the following two commands can be
on Wi-Fi Setup and add the details for your home used to scan at either 433MHz or 868MHz:
network. Get reconnected to your home network, visit $ sudo rtl_433 -C si
the same address again and select Configure Receiver/ $ sudo rtl_433 -f 868M -s 1024k
Location. From here, add your longitude and latitude, Running these commands for a few minutes each
and select the Save And Reboot option. determines what devices are transmitting on these
A reboot later, connect to the same address again frequencies and what useful information can be
and explore the interface, which shows any detected utilised from them. While running the commands,
planes or helicopters. If you wish, you can enable the look for any old remote-controlled sockets, remotes
Use Custom LED Indications setting, which repurposes and devices of that nature that could be utilised. Data
the Pi’s LEDs to give you an idea of what is currently returned can be reformatted into JSON and piped to
being detected. To determine whether your own an MQTT server, for further usage:
instance is reporting data back to ADSB-Exchange, you $ rtl_433 -F json -M utc | mosquitto_pub -t
can visit http://adsbexchange.com/myip – this queries home/rtl_433 -l
the database, using your internet-facing IP address. Further information about this useful tool can be
The initial password for the Pi user is adsb123 and this found at https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433.

91
Linux projects

Master the Pi Pico GPIO

Get to grips with the Raspberry Pi Pico’s GPIO to
open the gateway to a range of simple projects.
he Pi Pico comes pre-installed
YOU NEED
Raspberry
T with MicroPython, a version of
Python 3 for microcontrollers.
Pi Pico or It is regularly updated and new versions
Pico W can be found at https://bit.ly/lxf298
A push upython. It is prudent to update
button MicroPython before trying this tutorial.
An LED Our circuit for this project is a simple
330 Ohm LED toggle switch – a detailed circuit
resistor diagram is included in the download
(orange- link. A push button is used to turn the
orange- LED on and off. The Pico reads the
brown-gold GPIO pins and reacts to the change.
A Download and install Thonny for your
breadboard OS and connect your Pico to the
Code: computer. Open Thonny, go to Tools >
https:// Options and click on the Interpreter tab. Your first electronics project on the Raspberry Pi Pico is intentionally easy. It builds our
github.com/ Set the interpreter to be MicroPython knowledge and confidence to tackle the next project.
lesp/LXF-Pi- (Raspberry Pi Pico), then set the serial/
Special/ COM port to auto-detect the Pico. Thonny should now led = Pin(15, Pin.OUT)
archive/refs/ detect the Pico and the Python shell confirms this. button = Pin(16, Pin.IN, Pin.PULL_UP)
heads/main. We start the project code in a blank document. The Turn the LED pin off. This is basic housekeeping –
zip first step is to import two modules of prewritten code the pin should already be off.
SD card that will enable us to interact with the GPIO pins, and led.low()
control pauses or delays in the code: Create a while True loop that will indefinitely run the
from machine import Pin project code:
import time while True:
Next we create two objects. The first, led, sets up The code is now indented inside the loop; this
our LED on GPIO15 as an output – we want current to means that it works within the loop. The first task is
flow to it in order for it to illuminate. The second object, to create a conditional test that checks whether the
button, is a push button on GPIO16. This is an input button has been pressed. If it has been pressed,
and we pull the pin high so it has current flowing. When the GPIO pin changes state from high to low (0).
the button is pressed, it connects GPIO16 to GND, if button.value() == 0:
causing the pin to pull low and toggle the LED on/off: When the button is pressed, the LED is toggled on
or off, depending on its current state. A short message
is printed to the Python shell for debug purposes. A
THE RASPBERRY Pi PICO delay of 0.2 seconds is added in order to reduce
accidental double pushes, called debounce:
The Raspberry Pi Pico arrived in early 2021 and saw the first Pi led.toggle()
silicon device hit the market, the RP2040. The RP2040 system on print(“Toggle”)
chip (SoC) is an Arm Cortex M0+ dual-core at 133MHz (which can time.sleep(0.2)
be easily overclocked), with 264KB of SRAM and 2MB of onboard The final two lines are part of the conditional test
flash storage. This may not sound like a lot, but in the world of and relate to when the button is not pressed. In this
microcontrollers, it is plenty. The Pico has a 40-pin GPIO, just like the circumstance, pass is used to allow the loop to repeat:
larger Raspberry Pi, but these pins are located around the perimeter else:
of the board and make for easy insertion into a breadboard. The pass
pins do not come presoldered and feature castellated edges. This Click on File > Save and save the code as button_
means we can either solder male header pins to the board, or use blink.py to the Raspberry Pi Pico. Click on the run
the castellations to surface-mount solder the Pico to a circuit of our button (green play button) to start the code. Now
own design. The GPIO is easy to use via MicroPython, CircuitPython, press the button to toggle the LED on and off.
JavaScript, C, Arduino and many other languages. The Pico also has This introduction is just a fraction of what the
the power to easily emulate ’80s-era home computers, such as the Raspberry Pi Pico can do. For more projects, head
ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Not bad for a £4 device. to Tom’s Hardware, where there is a full section of
projects to try out: https://bit.ly/lxf298toms.

92
 Pi projects

Convert currency
Work with remote data using an API and the
Pi Pico W to make a live currency converter.
n this project, we’re creating a simple app
YOU NEED
Raspberry
I to get the latest exchange rates for the euro
and US dollar against the UK pound. The
Pi Pico W Raspberry Pi Pico W comes with MicroPython, a
Code: version of Python 3 for microcontrollers. It is regularly
https:// updated and new versions can be found at https://bit.
github.com/ ly/lxf298upython. It’s a good idea to update
lesp/LXF-Pi- MicroPython and ensure you get the version for the
Special/ Pico W, as it has extra modules for Wi-Fi connectivity.
archive/refs/ Download and install Thonny for your OS and
heads/main. connect your Pico to the computer. Open Thonny, go
zip to Tools > Options and click on the Interpreter tab. Set
the interpreter to be MicroPython (Raspberry Pi Pico) The only outward difference between the Pico and Pico W is the large
and then set the serial/COM port to auto-detect the silver square in which the Wi-Fi chip resides.
Pico W. Thonny should now detect the Pico W and the
Python shell should confirm this. variables (dollar and euro) are appended to the end of
JSON Start the project code in a blank document. The first the sentences. The comma is used to add a space:
(JavaScript task is to import libraries of prewritten code – modules, print(“The current value of the UK Pound to one US
Object Notation) in Python parlance. These modules enable our Pico W Dollar is £”,dollar)
is convenient to connect to a network and make requests to remote print(“The current value of the UK Pound to one Euro
and easy to use,
machines over the network: is £”,euro)
but large objects
import network Click File > Save and save the code as Pico_API.py
can become
jumbles of noise. import urequests to the Pi Pico W. Click on the run button (green play
Use an online Next create an object, wlan. This object represents button) to start the code. In the Python shell we see
viewer (http:// a connection between the code and the Pico W’s Wi-Fi either True or False appear. True means we are
jsonviewer. chip. You need to set the connection to active to connected to Wi-Fi. The next two lines we see are
stack.hu) to enable the Wi-Fi chip: the current exchange rates for the dollar and euro. We
explore the data wlan = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF) could mix the code from the Raspberry Pi Pico GPIO
and find the wlan.active(True) tutorial (opposite) into this project to create a tool that
correct keys. Connect the Pico W to your Wi-Fi access point. fetches the latest data at a button press. That is the
Change YOUR SSID and YOUR PASSWORD to match beauty and power of MicroPython and the Pi Pico W.
those of your router and keep the quotation marks.
Print the connection status to the Python shell. True
means we are connected, False we are not: PICO PRODUCTS
wlan.connect(“YOUR SSID”, “YOUR PASSWORD”)
print(wlan.isconnected()) The Raspberry Pi Pico W has spawned a wave of
The exchange rate data is stored in an online products that embed the board as the centre
resource that uses JSON, an open standard file format. of a project. Pimoroni, for instance, has created
By creating an object, gbp, we can make a network Pico W Aboard. This new range sees the Pico W
request for the data in JSON format by getting the data surface-mount soldered, via its castellated pins,
from the URL: to a range of products, such as weather stations
gbp = urequests.get(“https://api.exchangerate-api.com/ (Enviro Weather), RGB LEDs (Plasma Stick 2040
v4/latest/GBP”).json() W) and the ludicrously named Galactic Unicorn,
Data is stored inside the JSON object as a series which has no bearing on intergalactic equines.
of keys and values. By giving the name of a key, JSON There are also sensor kits – Enviro Urban,
gives us the value. So, using USD as a key, we return Indoor and Grow – that can monitor air quality,
the value of the pound to the US dollar and store it in temperature, air pressure and our plants. These
a variable, dollar. The same applies to the value of the kits come with an onboarding process, hosted via
pound to the euro. a micro web server on the Raspberry Pi Pico W –
dollar = gbp[“rates”][“USD”] yes, you can run a tiny web server from the £6
euro = gbp[“rates”][“EUR”] Pico W! We made one in LXF294. Details about
Print the exchange rate data and mix it into a Pimoroni’s Pico W Aboard products can be found
sentence so it has context. Here we explain the current at https://shop.pimoroni.com.
value of the pound to the US dollar and the euro. The

93
Linux projects
Build a smart home
Use ESPHome to feed a wide range of useful data to a
smart home hub via a Raspberry Pi Pico W.
SPHome was originally
YOU NEED
Pi Pico W
E written to allow the
ESP8266 and ESP32
DS18B20 devices to easily interact with Home
temp sensor Assistant. Using YAML syntax, the
4.7kOhm required options and configuration
resistor can be written, then parsed and
Dupont used to create source code, which The dashboard created by adding the integration can be seen here. Temperature information
jumper is cross-compiled and uploaded to can now be used in automations and Home Assistant dashboards.
cables the devices. With the release of the
MicroUSB 2022.11 version, developmental support has been
power added for Raspberry Pi Pico W boards.
adaptor In this project we’re creating a program that enables
An us to read the temperature from a DS18B20 sensor,
instance report it to Home Assistant and flash the internal LED
of Home on the board via a switch in Home Assistant’s web GUI.
Assistant To begin, we need to set up Home Assistant and
(see LXF287) enable the ESPHome add-on. The easiest way to run
the software is to install it on a microSD card, which
is then inserted into a Raspberry Pi. If using this option,
download the image from www.home-assistant.io/
installation, follow the instructions in the build your
own Wi-Fi router article (page 90), and select the
custom image that has been downloaded. Alternatively,
use the generic x86-64 image and install it as a VM on
your laptop or PC. Once installed and running, follow
the onboarding instructions to finish the installation:
https://bit.ly/lxf298onboard. Once done, use the My
Add-On link (https://bit.ly/lxf298addon), which makes
installation of the add-on a lot easier. Once you are
logged into Home Assistant, select the option to install
the add-on, start it at boot and enable the watchdog.
Start the add-on and select the Open Web UI link.
Before creating your device, select the Secrets link
and add these options, then save and close the file:
wifi_ssid: ADD_SSID
wifi_password: ADD_PASSWORD
We will now create a new device and add some
code to it. Click on New Device, then Continue and
Use this circuit enter a name, which will be shown in the ESPHome
diagram to
connect the dashboard. When asked to select the board type, click
temperature on Raspberry Pi Pico W and then select Next. Once
sensor. created, select Skip and then click the Edit button on
94
the new device. At the bottom of the file, add the
following lines:
dallas:
- pin: GPIO1
sensor:
# - platform: dallas
# address: ADD_HEXADDRESS
# unit_of_measurement: “°C”
# name: “Temperature”
output:
- platform: gpio
pin: 32
id: ‘output_component1’
light:
- platform: binary
name: “State LED”
output: output_component1
Now save the file and click on the Install button.
When asked, select manual download. Once the
compilation has completed, download the file and
connect the Raspberry Pi Pico W to your PC or
laptop with the Bootsel button pressed down. Copy
the downloaded UF2 file to the new drive that has
appeared on your device. When the file has copied
and the device has rebooted, it connects to the
Wi-Fi and then ESPHome. The device then shows
as online and is available to be added to the Home
Assistant dashboard. A notification is displayed on
the sidebar and by selecting this and using the API
password from the file we edited earlier, it is added.
Note the commented lines in the file – these need to
be uncommented and the address replaced once the
Logs option has been selected from ESPHome and
the address found from this page. When the sensor’s
address has been changed, the lines uncommented
and the file saved again, click on Install and this time
the Wirelessly option can be used.
Finally, from Home Assistant, navigate to the
Settings > Devices & Services page and under the
ESPHome option, select the name of your newly
created device and then 1 Device. From this page,
you can see the measured temperature, and by
toggling the switch, the on-board LED switches on
and off.
 Pi projects

Control NeoPixel LEDs

Create animated lighting effects with the brightest LEDs
connected to your Raspberry Pi Pico.
e’re using MicroPython
YOU NEED
Any Pi Pico
W here to control a small
set of LEDs. Known as
Micro USB NeoPixels, they are a string of
cable LEDs that are generally multi-
Thonny coloured and can be addressed
Editor individually. NeoPixel is the name
MicroPython given to this style of LED by
firmware Adafruit, but the same driver is
WS2812B used for a large number of them
LEDs (with (WS2811/WS2812), no matter
suitable who the manufacturer or supplier. Here you can see the LEDs running the program we have written.
power) These models are available with
separate RGB channels, so that any colour can be brightness before fading back down again to nothing,
made by mixing the values (think of HTML colours). before this cycle repeats.
First, download and install MicroPython from import machine
https://bit.ly/lxfupdate. Then hold down the Bootsel import neopixel
button on the Pico board and connect to your PC or import time
laptop. Copy the downloaded file to the newly mounted #Pulse all LEDs
disk, then the Pico W reboots and loads MicroPython. numPixels = 8
Download and install the Thonny IDE from https:// np = neopixel.NeoPixel(machine.Pin(1), numPixels)
thonny.org. Open the IDE and, from the bottom-right, pulseTime = 2
select MicroPython (Raspberry Pi Pico). This connects numLoops = 100
the terminal in the bottom of the window to the Pi while True:
Pico’s REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) – this allows code for a in range(1,numLoops):
to be entered line by line. This is useful for basic tests, for i in range(0,numPixels):
but not very useful when trying to write a program. np[i] = (int(a*254/numLoops),0,0)
Programs can be entered into the main section of the np.write()
window, then saved to the board. When saving, you can time.sleep(pulseTime/(2*numLoops))
choose between the local computer and the Pi Pico. for a in range(numLoops,1,-1):
When saving to the Pico, use the filename Boot.py for i in range(0,numPixels):
and the code executes as soon as the board boots. np[i] = (int(a*254/numLoops),0,0)
Step three is to connect the Raspberry Pi Pico or np.write()
Pico W to the LEDs and the PC for programming (see time.sleep(pulseTime/(2*numLoops))
the circuit diagram below). In this code, we first import the necessary libraries,
The following code smoothly pulses the LEDs. They then store the number of pixels in a variable, create an
start with a dim red colour and gradually build to full object to reference and set values on the LEDs, then
Follow the circuit two more variables. The larger the value of numLoops,
diagram to
connect NeoPixels the smoother the effect. Next we define a while loop
to the Raspberry that will run forever, before setting a for loop that runs
Pi Pico or Pico W. for the number of times defined in the numLoops
variable. For each iteration of this loop, we set each
LED of the string (using the inner loop) to a brightness,
as defined by the value in the outer loop. After we have
set the value of each LED, we write the values that
cause the LEDs to change state, wait for a short period
before iterating again and getting brighter each time.
Once this outer loop has completed, the second stage,
decreases the brightness until the LEDs are practically
switched off. The colour can be altered by changing
the numbers in the brackets when setting np[i] . The
values in the tuple represent red, green and blue.
You can find two other examples of effects at
https://github.com/mattmole/LXF298.

95
Linux projects
Deck the hardware
We revisit and trick out the Valve Steam Deck a year on from release.
he year 2022 will go down as the year
T of the Linux Deck-top. A typo in Linux
Format, you cheer, but for once, ’tis
deliberate. Valve released its Linux-
powered Steam Deck, driven by an abundance of
cutting-edge open source technology that at least
in part was backed and developed by Valve itself.
Back at the start of 2022, we covered the pre-
release build-up and launch of the Steam Deck –
see our preview and review in LXF287 and LXF288,
and our getting started guide in LXF289. While
some reviewers had misgivings about a Linux-
powered handheld gaming device, the world didn’t.
A year on, the Steam Deck is a smash hit. Valve
can’t make them fast enough and it’s the biggest
96
grossing product on Steam – with new games
costing £60, that’s a bigger deal than you might at
first think.
So, here we are, a year on, a few Hardware of the
Year awards under the Steam Deck’s belt, along
with plenty of software updates and we’re taking
time to look at the Steam Deck once again to see
what the latest developments are, what you can do
with it and how its performance can be tweaked.
One of the important improvements over its launch
is that you can actually buy the Steam Deck now.
Originally, Valve was having issues fulfilling pre-
orders – due to the post-pandemic chip shortage –
but it seems orders are now being sent out within
two weeks.
 Steam Deck

f you’re considering buying

I a Steam Deck, bear in

mind that storage is really
easily expanded with its SD slot.
This makes the less-attractive
64GB base model very appealing,
as you can trick it out with a
reasonably fast 256GB microSD
card for as little as £18 or 128GB
for just £11, and this can be big-
name cards such as Samsung. The
sudden drop (at the start of 2023)
is due to the introduction of 1TB
microSD cards pushing down prices
of what you might have previously
considered large capacity models.
The Steam Deck currently has a
2TB maximum microSD card
capacity, but that shouldn’t be an
issue right now. Running from an SD card is slower than
internal options, but our testing of the NMVe model put
loading Valve’s Help Desk after a cold reboot at 19
seconds from SD card and 12 seconds from the NMVe.
During testing, Valve changed how the Deck
handles new SD cards – the single biggest change was
moving to a quick format – but it still says it’s “safest”
to power down the Deck before adding or removing an
SD card. They are hot-swappable, but just to make sure
it’s not in use, it’s best to shut the Deck down.
We’ll look at more ways of upgrading the storage
below, but the speed of these larger capacity microSD
cards is fast enough that you won’t be inconvenienced
waiting for them to load or invalidate any warranty you
have left. There is a third way to expand the storage via
the USB-C port, but it’s the most inconvenient option.
If you’re eyeing up a microSD card bargain, ensure
you pick one that’s still as fast as possible. Advertised
speeds can top 140MB/s and are usually a healthy
100MB/s. The old write Speed Class (shown with a
large C) topped out at Class 10 or 10MB/s. As this is
regularly exceeded and, in fact, different use cases are
better served by different abilities (read speed, write
speed, random access), there are now three new speed The Steam Deck
has become
markings you should look for.
renowned as an
UHS: This is confusing as it’s actually used to denote awesome retro
two standards – the bus type and the minimum speed gaming platform.
supported. The Steam Deck has a UHS-I bus, so there’s
no point spending more on a UHS-II microSD card. The
theoretical maximum transfer speeds for UHS-I is
104MB/s; for UHS-II this is 312MB/s. The second part
of the rating is denoted with a U symbol and a number
1, 2 or 3 inside, respectively marking a minimum
10MB/s, 20MB/s and 30MB/s write speed.
Video Class: Marked with a V and a number that
denotes the MB/s, starting at V30, V60, then V90, this
Samsung
relates to 30MB/s to 90MB/s minimum write speeds.
SD cards are
App Class: The latest measure switches to IOPS currently coming
(input/output operations per second) and is denoted on and off offer; a
by A1 and A2. It is supposed to guarantee a minimum 512GB high-speed
1,500r/500w IOPS for A1 and 4,000r/2,000w IOPS card like this can
go for £50.
for A2. Some tests show that A1/2 seems to be least
useful in gauging an SD card’s performance, while for
loading games it’s less useful than straight read speed.
We can report good results from the Samsung Evo
Select 256GB microSDXC and generally recommend

UPGRADE YOUR SSD

Another user-friendly point
Valve has pushed about the
Deck is that the company
hasn’t done anything to
prevent it being opened,
repaired or upgraded. Now,
that’s not to say you should
go around opening, repairing
or upgrading it yourself, but
Image credit: Samsung
battery and charge port are
tricky to replace.
However, this means that
for someone capable of
upgrading the built-in SSD –
especially for the cheaper
and smallest 64GB model – it
can be done relatively easily
and provide copious more
models use an unusual
NVMe M.2 2230 Gen 3 x4.
Sabrent has a 256GB NVMe
M.2 2230 for around £50
as an example, but bear in
mind that the same money
would buy a 512GB microSD.
We’re not going to go into
replacing an existing Deck
almost every component on
the Steam Deck.
SteamOS recovery to the
new SSD is pretty standard
stuff. Valve has a recovery
guide at https://bit.ly/
lxf299image and it isn’t
much more complicated
than downloading the latest

the lovely types at iFixIt.com
rank the Deck with a 7/10 for
repairability. Plus points are
its modularity, single screw
size use and its ease of
opening, while the main
negatives are that the
high-speed internal storage.
It would be tempting to buy
the biggest and fastest SSD,
but do not do this; the 64GB
Steam Deck uses a single-
sided M.2 2230 Gen 2 x1,
while the larger capacity
SSD here – that’s an entire
tutorial in itself and we
wouldn’t do it while you have
a valid warranty, either. As it
is, iFixIt maintains a detailed
SSD replacement guide,
alongside instructions for
recovery image, writing it to
an 8GB (minimum) USB drive
or microSD and booting that
via the Boot Manager that’s
accessed by powering on
while holding down the
Volume Up button.

97
Linux projects

suggested, is using one via a dock. In this case, the Big

A USB-C
dock of any
description
can
transform
the Steam
Deck into
a desktop
Linux system.
looking for a UHS-I U3 V30 microSDXC card. Due to
the hardware limits on the Steam Deck, don’t pay extra
for cards with read speeds higher than 100MB/s or
write speeds higher than 60MB/s.
It’s just a PC!
Before its release, Valve was vocal (and still is) about
the fact the Steam Deck is “just a PC”. From its point
of view, that means you can install any software on the
Deck you like, but it also means it’s using commodity
hardware and standard protocols, too, so you can
expand or upgrade the Deck if the components allow.
Towards the end of 2022, Valve released the official
Steam Deck Dock (try saying that three times quickly).
This plugs into the USB-C connector and provides a
host of ports: USB 3.0, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4,
power and Ethernet networking. This effectively
transforms the Deck into low-end Linux desktop. While
the idea is you’re able to more easily game on a large
display via wireless gamepads, you can add a keyboard,
mouse and even storage over the faster USB-C bus.
At £79 a pop, the official Valve Deck Dock is pricey
for what is basically a USB-C dock. If you peruse bay-
like sites or rainforest-inspired etailers, you’ll find near-
identical docks for less than half the price – do check
the reviews before buying and ensure it supports 4K @
60Hz; the cheapest options likely only do 4K @ 30Hz.
If you want, you could plug a USB-C capable display
directly into the USB-C port. More sensibly, as we’ve
Screen SteamOS display appears on your external
monitor. On a TV, you may need to tweak the Display
Scaling using the Steam Button > Display Menu. There
are resolution settings and scaling controls.
To use the Steam Deck as a Linux desktop, select
Steam > Power > Desktop (this doesn’t appear if you’re
in Family Mode). The default setup is for dual-display,
with the external monitor active as the secondary
display. It’s likely you’ll want to reverse this, so right-
click a blank desktop area and select Configure Display
Settings. Select the external display, then Primary >
Apply. You may want to clear Enable on the internal
display to disable that too.
If you do fancy using your Deck more as a PC, and
so want to make it boot directly to the desktop, open
the terminal and type:
$ steamos-session-select plasma-wayland-persistent
Previous versions of SteamOS left out the Wayland
part, but the latest updates require it. Do keep in mind
that SteamOS isn’t designed or maintained to be a
desktop-first operating system – this isn’t the year of
the Linux desktop – so we found some oddities during
use with the touch controls and the onscreen keyboard
not responding. However, the whole point of this
exercise is to be using a keyboard and mouse…
If you find you’re not getting on with the Desktop
Mode, you can easily switch the login back to the
SteamOS Mode with the following command and a
quick reboot:
$ steamos-session-select gamescope
Hands on Deck
Valve has created a sensational gaming experience out
of the box – it’s brought a console-like experience to
the PC using that Linux thing we all like to complain
about! That’s not to say it’s perfect, though. Valve has
been rolling out updates throughout 2022 and is
continuing to do so, with non-trivial HDR support, for
example, being lined up in 2023.
Away from official Valve-created updates, the
simplest way to tweak and extend SteamOS is to use a
plugin system. We’ve run through Decky Loader in the
boxout (see below) but there is also Crankshaft, which
seems just as slick but is apparently less popular. Let’s

GET DECKYED OUT

Let’s face it, we’re not using
Linux because we want an
easy life, but because we
like to tinker, play and
extend things. As SteamOS is
basically Arch Linux running
on an immutable filesystem,
you can tinker to the degree
that Flatpak and SteamOS
enable it. One system you
find it at https://github.com/
SteamDeckHomebrew/
decky-loader.
Be aware that Decky
Loader is incompatible with
Crankshaft, so you have to
remove that first. It’s another
excellent plugin system that
uses ports 1337 and 8080,
so anything using these
scroll down to Settings >
System > System Settings >
Enable Developer Mode.
Scroll down to Developer >
Miscellaneous > Enable CEF
Remote Debugging. It’s
worth rebooting at this stage.
Press the Steam Button >
Power > Switch To Desktop
and wait for the desktop to
it. If you don’t have a
password set, it uses Decky!
as a temporary one.
There’s a terminal install
option using this command
for the pre-release version:
$ curl -L https://github.com/
SteamDeckHomebrew/decky-
loader/raw/main/dist/install_
prerelease.sh | sh
Image credit: Valve

absolutely must try is Decky
Loader. This is a widely
supported plugin system for
SteamOS that offers a host
of cool and handy plugins –
needs to be removed or
changed, such as Syncthing.
Before doing anything,
let’s enable Developer Mode.
Press the Steam button and
load. At this point, you can
open a web browser,
navigate to the GitHub above
and use the Download button
to grab the installer and run
Return to Gaming Mode,
open the Quick Menu, locate
the new Plugin icon and then
use the Shop icon to install
Decky plugins.

98

take a quick look at the essential plugins you should
be running.
SteamGridDB
A huge issue with the otherwise slick SteamOS
interface is the default gaming artwork – the game
covers and ‘hero’ banner images that appear in the
background when you click on a title. They’re fixed and
can’t be changed, while non-Steam titles just appear as
blank rectangles. Enter SteamGridDB. Get it installed
and when you select a game, click the Settings cog
on the far-right and Change Artwork (on the main
SteamOS list, select a game and use the menu button,
too). This opens a wide selection of artwork options.
Autoflatpaks
We’re all about laziness here at Linux Format Towers
and this plugin cuts the need to manage any Flatpak
applications you might install for use with the Linux
desktop. Once installed, you can select an update
interval of days or hours, plus there are options to
check at startup and install updates unattended.
ProtonDB
Wine and, more recently, ProtonDB offers ratings
on how well Windows games run, typically with a
Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze badge, but there are
user comments, too. This plugin sucks in these ratings
and displays them on the game page with a link to the
dedicated ProtonDB page for complete details.
Steam is vapourware
The Steam Deck has access to hundreds of games
through Valve’s own storefront, but there are even
more ways to get titles on to the portable powerhouse.
It’s remarkably easy to add game libraries from GOG
(Good Old Games) and the Epic Games Store through
an application called the Heroic Games Launcher.
Both stores are present on Heroic, but this same
process works with more launchers, too, including the
likes of Battle.net and Ubisoft Connect – although your
mileage varies based on how well optimised the games
you play are for the Steam Deck (if at all). Bear in mind
that just as with Steam’s catalogue, not all games will
run – Fortnite, for instance, is a big name that’s missing.
Heroic is a wrapper that enables the Epic Games
Store and GOG store to run on Steam Deck, and it can
open titles from both, where compatibility allows. It has
You can get more than just Steam games on the Steam Deck…
Steam Deck
Get all-new
fancy artwork for
existing Steam and
non-Steam titles.
its limitations – the actual storefront of each is
essentially a browser window, for one – but it offers the
same compatibility options through Proton as Steam.
Switch to the desktop – press the Steam Button >
Power > Desktop. Click the shopping bag icon in the
bottom-left. This opens the Discover store, where you
can search for Heroic Games Launcher in the search
bar. Click Install, wait for it to finish, then enter the
store page. Click Launch in the top-right corner.
Now you need to add the Heroic Games Launcher
to Steam. While you can open the launcher in Desktop
EXPANSIVE TASTE
“Before its release, Valve was vocal
about the fact the Steam Deck is ‘just
a PC’. That means you can expand or
upgrade it if the components allow.”
Mode, we recommend making it easily accessible on
the main Steam interface first. To do this, open Steam
(within Desktop Mode) and click Add A Game in the
bottom-left corner, then click Add A Non-Steam Game.
Now select Heroic Games Launcher, then close Steam
and double-click the Return To Gaming Mode icon on
the desktop.
Now that you’re back in the Steam interface, head
into your Library and move to the Non-Steam tab. Here,
you’ll find Heroic Games Launcher, which you can now
open – don’t forget to change the artwork if you’ve
installed SteamGridDB, mentioned above.
You’re asked to add login information
for both GOG and EGS here, so be sure to
have your passwords handy. Your library
should auto-populate, and if you regularly
take advantage of the free games
included on both stores, you may be
surprised by how much you have.
From here, it’s simply a case of
installing the titles you want to play,
before clicking the green Play button.
If you do have compatibility issues
with any game, clicking the yellow cog
underneath the library icon enables you
to pick different versions of Proton, which
may help fix audio or visual issues. From
this menu, you can also enable Esync and
Fsync, too.
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GIMP
Credit: www.gimp.org

Get started photo

editing with GIMP
In the first part of a new series, we’re going to get you editing like a pro
but using the all-powerful GIMP and less-powerful Neil Mohr.

e don’t talk about GIMP much. That’s probably

W a mistake – it was used to create Tux and is

one of the most powerful open source image
manipulation tools around. But in recent years, while
Photoshopped remains the bastardised transitive verb
people use to talk about photo manipulation, Krita (that
OUR image has been Kritted?), with its user-first approach
EXPERT to fundraising, community-building and feature-
Neil Mohr prioritising, has taken the spotlight in FOSS circles.
for his sins, The great news is that GIMP is moving towards a
grew up with version 3.0 release, and the developers seem to have
Photoshop 2, but realised that listening to users makes them more likely
back then GIMP to give you money for development. Long-awaited
didn’t exist. Now features such as a usable interface (HiDPI-aware) and
it does and he CMYK support are all being delivered, largely driven by The Colours menu delivers a huge range of manipulation tools, Curves
uses it a lot. refactored code, Wayland support, moving to GTK3 and Levels are two such classic controls.
and heck of a lot more besides. So, we’re getting you
lot up to speed with this startling photo-editing tool clicking on the tool’s icon. Once selected, your mouse
via a new series. In this first part, we’ll get used to the cursor changes to reflect it.
interface, navigation tools and core editing features. GIMP starts in one-window mode; this is good –
don’t change it. The original methodology was
You tool! floating windows but you spend as long managing tool
GIMP’s toolbox is its most important element. It gives windows as working on your image. Big displays and
you quick and easy access to some of the most widely high resolutions mean that mode is as good as dead. It
used – and powerful – tools available in GIMP, without can be toggled via Windows > Single-Window Mode.
having to navigate through tiresome drop-down menus Do note the thin three-dot resize gadgets that exist
to find them. By default, it appears on the left-hand alongside the Tools/Tool Option strip on the left and
side of your screen, and that’s generally how we’ll refer the Layers/Brush bar on the right, and between the
to it in this guide; however, you can drag it around with Brushes/Layers sections on the right. These are easy
your mouse and place it wherever you want – which to miss and can be handy when you need more space.
means the tools are never far from where you need Also easy to miss, the sidebars have tabs and
them. Selecting a tool from the toolbox is as simple as menus that hide many extra options. The menus are

CROP IMAGES
Keyboard
shortcuts Cropping and straightening an ignore the procedure altogether. rotation can get them looking
turbocharge image is one of the first tasks you The thing is, cropping and right again. As far as cropping is
your workflow; should learn to tackle when it straightening are easy things to concerned, it’s a great way of
learn how to
comes to editing in GIMP. Why achieve, so you can quickly do focusing on a particular part of an
move the image
exactly? Because all images must them with great results. Although image for effect, or it might just
around (Space),
zoom in and out have a sound base on which to you might think your images look be necessary in order to remove
(- and +), and proceed to the more advanced straight, chances are they’re ever certain objects that are getting in
lots more. steps, yet many people tend to so slightly on a slant, so a quick the way of the shot.

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the tiny left-arrow icons that live top-right in each dock,
and they provide control over how dock tabs are
displayed – you can choose just icons, text or both, plus
add and remove extra docks. If the current dock has
additional options, an extra entry appears at the top of
the menu when it’s selected and the menu opened.
The tabs themselves aren’t very distinct from one
another. You can enhance their visibility with options to
add text and icon alongside. Panel that just uses icons
are hard to see on HiDPI displays, the tabs below the
Layers dock are Brushes, Textures and Fonts. Under
the main Tool box is the Tools Options panel – you’ll
mostly just want the primary Tools Options tab here. If
you find you mess up the settings or rearrange things,
use the Tools Options menu’s Reset Tool option. This
menu also offers a Save Preset option, if you want to
reuse specific tool settings.
GIMP selections
Now we’ve taken a look at how the interface works,
let’s get to grips with manipulation and movement
basics. We’ll look at creating selections and using
layers, as they’re required for any serious photo
manipulation. We’ll also use them later in the series,
so it’s good to get up to speed on the basics now.
Adding effects and getting the most out of photo
editing often requires carefully selecting objects in
your images and laboriously cutting them out with the
Path tool. In an ideal world, we’d all have the time and
patience to do just that, but most of us don’t. Enter
GIMP’s intelligent selection tools: Foreground Select
and Intelligent Scissors. These build upon the long-
standing Fuzzy Select tool, otherwise known as the
Magic Wand in some photo-based shopping circles.
We’ll briefly look at Fuzzy Select, but what’s great
about its modern replacements is that they enable the
same speed of selection, but with greater refinements
in how the selection is made in the first place and
greater control after it has been made. All of this adds
up to a better final selection, which means your cut-
outs and final compositions look better.
Click the Fuzzy Selection tool or press U. The
Threshold is the important setting: 15-32 is about right.
Clicking an area selects a continuous area of similar
colour. Hold Shift and click to add to the selection or
Ctrl to remove from it. Drag the mouse and GIMP
highlights the area it will select. This won’t work well.
A less crude alternative can be found in Tools >
Select > Foreground Select. This is a two-step tool,
which starts off with you drawing a rough area to
The default selection tool provides adjustable control points so you can
refine the selection before it’s finalised.
GIMP
GETTING AROUND GIMP
1
5
4
3
6
2
Tools Name bar
1 These icons represent the various tools 4 Click the name bar with your mouse
you can use in GIMP to edit your photos. to drag the toolbox to any part of the screen
Hover to see the keyboard shortcut and that you like.
right-click for more options.
File tabs
Tool options 5 When in single-window mode, all
2 Tweak the current tool’s settings for your open files are present along here via a
more control; certainly worth a good explore . thumbnail tab.
Save presets Sidebar tabs
3 Once you have finished customising 6 The tabs displayed can be fully
the tools in GIMP, click this save icon to customised, added, removed and moved
save the preset, so you can quickly restore around. You can access settings through the
useful settings. top-right arrow icon.
select. The next stage works on it being an area of
similar colour, but the important aspect here is that the
selection is a working area that can be easily adjusted. Hover your
The general idea is that the unselected area is now mouse over
blue; you just need to ‘draw’ through areas of similar each icon in
colour and the selection is made. You can keep adding the left-hand
toolbox to find
areas by holding Shift, and once you’re happy, press
out which tool
Enter, or hit Escape to cancel the selection.
it represents.
We find tweaking the Color Sensitivity settings
helps. These can be adjusted per selection, but a
higher 256 across the board is useful. Once the
selection is made, you can use the Rectangle, Ellipse
and Free Select tools to edit the selection further,
trimming off unwanted bits or adding new ones.
Scissor selections
The Scissors tool is about as close to Paths as any
semi-automated tool gets. Available in the Toolbox
or by pressing the I key, this enables you to quickly
create selections that bind to edges, can be staggered,
previewed and adjusted afterwards. It’s worth
practising with this for a while to learn its finer points.
Start by clicking on the boundary where you want
the path to begin. This creates the first control point,
which you need to click to close the path when you’ve
finished. Click and drag (or just click) to add more
points. When you drag, you’re shown a preview; if the
line goes off-kilter, move the mouse back and try again.
While making a Scissors selection, you can tweak
the existing points or drop additional ones between
existing points to fine-tune the selection. As soon as
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USING SELECTION AND LAYERS
Setting up
1 Open your image and press Ctrl+D to duplicate it, so we
don’t destroy the original. First, duplicate the layer – right-click on
it and select Duplicate. Now let’s use the two-stage Foreground
Selection tool. This is hiding under the Free Select tool in the
Toolbox, so click on that.
Mask it
3 Feel free to tweak or remake the selection – we’re going
to transform this into a layer mask and that can be adjusted
anyway. Right-click the upper layer, select Add Layer Mask,
choose Selection in the dialog, then click OK. A new thumbnail
appears in the layer but nothing seems to have changed…
Mask editing
5 Hold Space to move around the image, use - and + to zoom
in and out, while the scroll wheel moves you up and down the
image. You can hide and reveal the lower layer for cues on areas
to unmask. Right-click the layer and choose Show Layer Mask to
reveal the actual masked area.
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Foreground selection
2 This is a two-step process. First, click roughly around the
part of the image you’d like to cut out – you can freehand draw,
but clicking enables you to move control points. Once you’re
happy, press Return. Next, draw over the area you’d like to select
and press Return to finish.
Reveal it
4 On the lower layer, click the eye icon to hide it and you’ll
see the mask magic in action. Click on the mask’s thumbnail, we
suggest selecting Paintbrush; choose a fuzzy-edged brush type.
White removes and black applies the masked area. Use x to
toggle between white/black foreground/background colours.
Final steps
6 Select the lower layer, then from the Colours menu go to
Desaturate > Mono Mixer. Boom – instant(ish) colour pop effect!
We suggest saving off a native Gimp XCF file to preserve your
layers and masks, and then use the File > Export menu to create a
final JPEG or PNG file.

you left-click and drag anywhere, the path picks up
again from where you left off. Once you reach the
starting point, click this to connect the entire path.
Even when your path is complete, you’re entirely
free to adjust it. Drag control points to fine-tune your
selection, adding more control points where needed.
Once you’re happy, click inside the selection and it’s
done. The only downside is there’s no way to save the
path, so be careful, otherwise you’ll lose all that work.
Using layers
Hopefully, you’re aware of the concept of layers. If not,
it’s exactly as it sounds: independent layers of images
that lie on top of each other. Technically, each layer
has an alpha channel that provides the transparency
to the one below. For cut-out objects, if you right-click
their layer in the Layer dock, you can choose Alpha
To Selection to get a selection for the object. This is
useful if you want to clean up or remove areas on other
layer levels. Background layers have no alpha (some
imported images may not either), so right-click the
layer in the Layer pane and choose Add Alpha Channel.
The transparency level of the selected layer is
adjusted by the Opacity slider. It’s useful for controlling
any overall layer effect or if you just want to see the
layers below more easily – when tracing, for example.
Each layer in the Layer pane has a visibility toggle
icon next to it to hide or show that layer. Next to this is
the Link to help combine movement and transpose
functions across Layers, but this doesn’t apply to all
paint tools and the currently selected layer can
override this, which can be frustrating.
Be aware that you can protect individual layers
using the Lock icons just below the Opacity slider. For
each layer, you can lock pixel painting, movement and
the alpha channel. If you find you can’t access a layer,
it’s worth seeing if one of those is active, but also
check there’s no active selection blocking your action.
Layer management is done with the tools along the
bottom of the Layer pane. The icons from left to right
enable: layer creation, group folder creation – very
handy for storing layers in a collapsible folder – moving
layers up and down, duplicating layers, merging layers
(see the tooltip for extra functions), adding a layer
mask and deleting the current layer.
Layer Group is fantastic when working on a complex
project with lots of layers, as you can group and hide a
selection. Use the Merge tool carefully because usually
it’s not required and is destructive once the file is
saved, but note you can mass-merge groups (hold
Shift) and All Visible with the Ctrl key.
That’s the basics of layer management, but there’s
more to them. Each layer can have an effect applied
to it from the Mode pull-down menu at the top of the
pane – this is useful for texturing, shadowing, colouring
and other image manipulation, but we won’t go into
these here as it’s a huge subject.
If you right-click on a layer, the Layer menu opens –
this repeats many of the functions we’ve already seen,
but one section offers Layer Boundary Size, Layer To
Image Size and Scale Layer. Layers exist independent
of the main visible canvas size, which is useful but
GIMP
EDIT COLOURS
Even though the introduction of the digital camera has enabled us to
take better photos with instant feedback (and quickly discard any
duff ones), most photos still need some post-production work. This
is where GIMP’s Color Balance tool comes in. It enables you to
modify the highlights, midtones and shadows in a photograph or
layer. Any changes you make using simple Colour Level sliders can
be subtle, and the Color Balance tool is generally used to correct
predominant colours in images – deepening blues or dialling down
powerful reds. You can also use the tool to create more extreme,
love-it-or-hate-it visual effects, such as colourising a photo with a
dominant green. Usefully, there is an option to save any settings you
like as presets for later use; if you like an effect, you can keep it.
With a photo ready to edit, select the Color Balance tool from the
Colors menu. Its core is the ability to adjust shadows, midtones and
highlights with three simple sliders. These feature the CMY (cyan,
magenta, yellow) colours on the left and RGB (red, green, blue) ones
on the right. Their centre is the values of the unedited image.
Getting good results from the Color Balance tool is usually a
case of trial and error, so we recommend that you save preferred
settings as a preset. Presets can be useful if you regularly perform
the same edits. For example, if indoor lighting gives your photos a
strong yellow tint, you can create a preset designed to quickly fix it.
can throw up issues. Layer To Image Size defaults
the current layer to the main canvas size, which is
important for keeping certain transformations equal GIMP has stuck
when applied across layers. to the Export
The Layer Mask section applies and controls an menu as being
additional alpha channel for non-destructive editing. It the way to
enables you to block off – or mask – areas of a layer. save files in
Masks can be applied from the current selection and different file
formats. Even
current masks can become selections, so can be easily
Photoshop does
copied to another layer. When added, you see a mask
it now, so stop
thumbnail alongside the usual layer thumbnail; select complaining.
one or other to directly edit it. Masks are greyscale and
can be directly drawn on and erased. Use the Disable
and Delete Mask menu options to do exactly that.
Ensure you check the preferences to adjust the memory usage to maximise your
system’s ability and choose a more colourful icon set.
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GIMP
Credit: http://gimp.org

More fun with

layers and masks
Karsten Günther reveals how GIMP manages layers, what the
different types are and how to use masks for subtle effects.

esides selections, layers are one of the most

B important elements when creating complex

images. GIMP is no different. Being familiar
with layers also helps if there seems to be an error –
often a different layer is active from the intended one.
Normally, we can think of layers as transparencies,
OUR slides or printouts stacked on top of each other. The
EXPERT viewer looks at the stack from above and sees what is
Karsten Günther still visible after covering it. In fact, layers are much
is not only a more complex objects, as will become apparent.
master of using The Layer Dock represents this stack of layers in a
layers and list. All layers present in an image appear there with
masks to edit their name – for transparent layers it is displayed in Lots of layers in one image are not rare but the rule. The Layer dock
photos, but he normal font, for opaque ones it’s in bold – in the current shows the connections and enables you to adjust multiple aspects.
also finds them order. All text layers, for example, are transparent, but
useful to keep other layers can be given this property by adding an created on a separate layer. It is still common practice
warm and alpha channel. If the eraser or cutting or deleting to duplicate layers before editing, such as blurring – as
incognito. removes image material from such a layer, these areas a backup – in order to be able to access the original
become transparent. With non-transparent layers, the image data at a later time. Then an area of the image
current background colour appears. Transparent layers is processed, possibly in different variants, which are
do not necessarily need to have transparent areas. temporarily stored on different layers.
GIMP uses layers for various purposes. Special Layers are therefore mainly used to edit parts of an
parts of an image, such as text, are automatically image. This is true even if an entire layer is duplicated

LAYER MODES
Layer modes are essentially an offsetting or
rendering rule of the RGB values of the pixels in two
neighbouring visible layers. The layer mode of the
upper layer determines how the pixel values are
offset against the layer below. GIMP then displays
the result of this calculation. The outcome often
looks rather strange, but it can be extremely useful.
For example, the positions of layers can be checked
to make sure they are pixel perfect with the Grain
Extract mode, where any deviations clearly stand
out. The subject is covered in detail in the GIMP
manual at https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en_GB/gimp-
concepts-layer-modes.html, including the formulas
used for offsetting.
In practice, it is often helpful to place your mouse
cursor over the Mode button and then use the
mouse wheel to try out all the different modes in
turn. However, a lot of modes have very strong
effects, so they tend to only be used on layers that
have reduced opacity.
A typical application of layer modes is to darken
or lighten highlights and shadows. To lighten dark
images, for example, the Screen mode is a good
choice. It has the effect that dark areas are lightened
much more than light areas, which corresponds to
how the human eye perceives things. You can see
GIMP’s Screen layer mode in action in the
screenshot (above-right). In some situations, the
Addition and Dodge modes can also be helpful.
Several copies of a layer can be superimposed to
intensify the effect.
For images that are too bright, the Overlay and
Multiplication layer modes, along with the different
Light modes (Soft, Hard, Vivid), should be tried.

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and offset against the copy via a layer mode. Layer
modes have no counterpart in the physical world; they
are part of the magic of image editing.
When using a lot of layers, GIMP gives you a hand
with several helpful features. For instance, layer groups
are containers that can contain any number of layers.
They can be displayed together in the Layer Dock,
which increases your overview immensely. The layers
in the group can still be edited individually and their
visibility can also be controlled on an individual basis. In
a group, all layers become invisible if the visibility of the
layer group is deactivated.
The colour markers for layers are still a relatively
new feature (v2.10). Applied via Layer Attributes they
can help with orientation and be set however you like.
Layers can be moved freely in an image, even if they
are as large as the current canvas or larger. The canvas
size automatically increases accordingly. For moving
layers, GIMP offers two tools in the toolbox: the move
tool – accessed via the m key as a shortcut – and
alignment, for automatically aligning lots of layers. The
move tool works well with magnetic guides (Snap To
Guide) or with a magnetic grid (Snap To Grid), both in
the View menu. This way, several layers are positioned In Screen layer
mode, GIMP
exactly and do not appear to be shifted by a few pixels.
lightens dark areas
The position of layers is usually of great importance. of identical layers
If they are shifted by only a few pixels, it can have a more than light
very visible effect. GIMP therefore allows you to fix the ones. On the left is
position of a layer – just click on the moving symbol in the original layer;
on the right Screen
the Layer Dock for the active layer in the Lock line. layer mode is used.
Sometimes it is not the absolute position of layers
that is important but their relative position to each
other. For example, text should often be placed directly
above or next to an inserted object. In this case, several
layers can be linked together. In the Layer Dock, this is
Wikipedia
done via the chain symbol next to the visibility eye. On
explains the
linked layers, GIMP applies the same tools with the historical
same settings one after the other. development,
The visibility of layers must not be confused with background and
their opacity and other aspects. The eye on the left ideas behind
side of the Layer Dock shows whether each separate the alpha
layer is currently visible. This is independent of whether channels quite
a layer is currently active – ie can be edited. In GIMP, well (https://
only one layer is ever active. GIMP shows which layer en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/alpha_
is active in the Layer Dock with a colour bar. Basically,
compositing).
all actions carried out with GIMP always refer to this

ADD DRAMA WITH A SOFT LAYER MASK

Starting point Use a gradient Make corrections

1 The sky of the upper layer is given
a mask so it only covers the parts of the
sky that appear too uniform on the image
below. If the layer mask is initially filled with
black, the layer above is initially invisible,
which is advantageous in this example.
2 Click the layer mask icon to activate
it for further editing (although it remains
invisible). The gradient tool creates a
colour gradient from black (invisible) to
white (fully visible) on the mask in any
direction. The preview shows the effect.
3 The tool still allows you to move the
end points and even to create a base point
within the gradient. Now, using a soft
brush, small corrections can improve the
mask further. Holes in the mask can be
closed and the edges can be edited.

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Linux projects

active layer. If it is not visible at the moment, GIMP

warns you. However, that only helps to a limited extent;
Text layers are if another layer covers the active one, the effects of the
special objects actions are often still not visible.
in GIMP. In the The other attributes a layer can have are shown in
dock, they are the now very extensive dialog for creating a new layer.
marked by the All attributes can be changed later, should this become
letter T. Their necessary. The corresponding functions can be found
content can
in the context menu of the layer in the Layer Dock.
be changed
GIMP is quite efficient with layers: they are always
until a graphic
operation rectangular and many tools create layers with a
converts minimum size, so that they are at least partially filled
the layers with pixels at the edges. However, layers can be
into normal adjusted to the current image size or any other
transparent dimension at any time.
image layers. All functions for editing layers can be found in
several places: in the normal menu under Layers and –
often more quickly accessible – in the context menu of
the Layer Dock, as well as being coupled to the buttons
that are available under the layer list.
One long-standing special peculiarity of GIMP is When creating new layers, a number of special settings can be made.
the so-called floating selection. It always occurs when The online help explains the details, including composite and blend
features: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en_GB/gimp-layer-new.html.
material saved from the clipboard is inserted into an
image. Many people find floating selections to be
particularly annoying, because they refer all actions to combination Ctrl+v inserts a floating selection, it must
themselves as long as they exist. So, if the key be converted into a normal layer – for example, by the
New Layer button under the layer list in the dock – if
another layer is to be activated for editing. However,
THE LAYER DOCK there is another way: layers inserted in this way are
often used as patches. Therefore, a floating selection
The linchpin for all layer operations is the Layer Dock. There, layers can be moved directly with the mouse, and at the
can be created, rearranged, deleted, named, marked, joined and correct position a mouse click near this layer anchors
more. With GIMP 2.10 the Layer Dock has become quite complex. it to the layer below.
Images can contain many layers, which are then grouped together
and often only partially visible. Transparent layers (layer name in Layer masks
normal font) and opaque layers (layer name in bold) can be mixed Masks, while analogous to alpha channels in many
and, if necessary, converted into each other with the alpha channel. ways – making parts of layers visible or invisible –
In the Lock section, GIMP allows individual aspects of layers to be are completely independent of them. Like an alpha
specifically locked. In this way, layers can be protected from being channel, a mask is a black-and-white representation,
painted over, moved or, in the case of transparent layers, having where the brightness represents the visibility of the
changes made to the alpha channel. masked pixels. Pixels that have a white background in
The most important general functions in the Layer Dock are linked the mask appear with maximum visibility, while pixels
to the buttons below the layer list. Functions for a selected layer can masked in black are invisible, and greyscale is
be found in the context menu. The Layereffects plugin also adds its interpreted by GIMP as attenuated visibility.
submenus for the individual effects at the end of the context menu These properties make layer masks particularly
in the Layer Dock. useful for three applications:

Layer dock
• Cropping or cutting out subjects, as described in the
GIMP tutorial in LXF297.
Layer mode
Coverage type
• Colourkey renderings, which are in some ways a
special variant of this.
Lock layer settings
Visibility
• Creating smooth transitions between two layers
with a gradient from black to white.
Colour label In the Layer Dock, GIMP shows layer masks as
Visible layer group an additional icon to the right of the layer icon. In an
Group with three active layer, either the layer itself or its mask is always
non-transparent selected for editing. GIMP indicates this by a white
visible layers frame around the corresponding icon. (This is often
not easy to see with masks.) A mouse click on one of
Image frame the icons then activates either the layer or the mask.
Masks can be edited manually if necessary. As
Background layer
long as the layer mask is active, it can be edited like
Dock buttons
a normal black-and-white layer. Normally this is done
The use of several layers in the layer dock is nowadays facilitated by colour with a soft brush, but other tools and filters can also be
marks, layer groups and so on. used. Often the Show Layer Mask function (procedure
name: layer-mask-show in the settings) can be helpful

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 GIMP

here. It can be useful to bind it directly to

a shortcut in order to be able to switch it
at any time. Important: the layer mask
must be activated in the dock in order
to edit it.
Using masks in combination with a
gradient is often a good choice because it
requires little post-processing. However,
you can also try to create a mask that is
as exact as possible. As an example, this
can be done as follows: the foreground
layer used as a mask is edited with the
Curves and/or Threshold tool so that
necessary parts appear black and
unnecessary parts appear white.

Separate colours
In some situations, it is important to be
able to process the colour components
in an image separately. This may be Two layers made this, the upper one desaturated and with a mask. The colour shines through from the bottom one.
the case when preparing an image for
printing or, for example, to avoid artefacts when
sharpening by processing only the brightness
component of the image. The separation of colours
into their components is often called colour separation
– in GIMP, the term decompose is used. In the colour
menu, under Compose, there is a corresponding tool
for this task.
The application is simple and works on the current
layer: after the call, GIMP shows a simple dialog. Here,
it is only a question of which components are to be
created. The components are created by direct
conversion of the RGB pixel values and are output in
the form of three to four layers in a new image. The
colour model set in the dialog determines which
components GIMP creates and how. Each of the
generated colour components is a greyscale image of
the original layer; all together, they generate it again.
Colour models are complex mathematical systems
that are described in detail in Wikipedia. The example There are some
above uses LAB (or actually L*A*B*), an established interesting
colour model that stores brightnesses in the L functions, such
component. The new image created with the dialog as inverting
now contains the three layers L, A and B, provided the layer stack,
the option Decompose To Layers was active. All the minimising
layers and so
layers are pure greyscale images. They can be edited
on, which are
separately. Compose puts them together again only listed in the
afterwards. GIMP also automatically updates the Layer menu.
original layer.

USE A HARD LAYER MASK

Threshold mask Insert the mask Correcting artefacts

1 You can also create a mask that is
as exact as possible, which hides the areas
that are to be replaced (in the background).
In this case, the lower layer contains the
sky and has no mask. The upper layer
contains the foreground and is masked
black where the sky should appear from
the background. Here, the Threshold
tool can create a mask from a copy of the
foreground layer. The mask generated in
this way only needs to be slightly adjusted.
2 If the layer mask is active, any
layers can be copied into the mask. This
is how it works: the desired layer for the
mask is first copied to the clipboard with
Ctrl+c, then a mouse click activates the
layer mask selected as the target. Ctrl+v
creates a floating selection in the dock,
which is displayed above the selected
layer. A mouse click on the anchor symbol
appearing in the button bar anchors the
floating selection as a mask.
3 The requirements for a hard mask
are high – for instance, it may be necessary
to rework the edges a little if artefacts
appear in the layer. The Erode and Dilate
filters from the Generic submenu
sometimes help here, but never forget you
can directly draw and manipulate the mask
channel as any normal image. The Warp
tool can be very useful here as you can
“nudge” parts of the mask edges into
position more easily than drawing them.

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Linux projects

GIMP
Credit: http://gimp.org

Using enhanced layer

features with G’MIC
Karsten Günther takes a look beyond GIMP’s standard layer functions.
Besides special GIMP operations, tasks provided by G’MIC loom into view.

oth GIMP and the plugin

B G’MIC have a number of

layer functions that – in
contrast to those in the article from
LXF298 – are neither simple nor
obvious. We’ll examine them in
OUR more detail here. With G’MIC, it
EXPERT usually looks like this: a number
Karsten Günther of functions available with GIMP
has written can be found with extended
entire books possibilities and usually there are a
about using range of additional functions that
GIMP, so four offer something similar. Some of
pages is just these functions are rather
a morning’s theoretical, but many are quite
work to him. practical. The layer-specific
functions are mainly found in the Tone values in difficult exposures can be specifically influenced with Tones To Layers. Due to the
Layers, Sequences or Colour division into layers, far-reaching possibilities – including layer modes – are available.
sections ,and scattered in the
Testing section. Channels To Layer filter, which enables you to separate
channels in layers instead of RGB, CMY and (limited)
Separate colours HSV. However, these functions work somewhat
GIMP supports the idea of separating colours in layers differently from GIMP’s own. For example, the RGB
with the Decompose functions described in the tutorial layers have to be combined with the Lighten or Screen
in LXF298. G’MIC extends these possibilities with the mode to get a colour-correct image again. For CMY

G’MIC ON THE COMMAND LINE

G’MIC is currently being developed in
two variants in parallel: as a plugin for
GIMP ( gimp-plugin-gmic ) and as a
command-line program ( gmic and
gmic_qt ). Both variants differ only in
details, adapted to the way they are
used. For example, the command-line
program has a demo mode that would
make no sense with the plugin; gmic
demos starts this special mode.
Without specifying an option or
function, gmic works as a universal
display program; gmic tst.png displays
the image. Normally, however, the
command is called with both an input
file and a function. The option -h
outputs extensive help. To write the
output to a file, the option output
TST.jpg is available.
On the command line, G’MIC can
convert the RGB data of images into
very different colour models. For
example, gmic IMAGE.jpg rgb2cmyk
split c calculates the CMYK conversion
and displays the result. If -output /tmp/
tst.png is added to the line, G’MIC writes
LAB, LCH, HSL, HSV and a number of
Interactive and special G’MIC functions are
other, less well-known colour models.
provided by G’MIC demos. As the name
Note that GIMP and G’MIC use different suggests, they are mainly used to demonstrate
formulas for the conversions in detail. G’MIC capabilities.

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 GIMP

layers, the Difference mode is preset. With HSV

splitting, G’MIC creates only two layers: one greyscale
layer with the lightenings and one with the colours.
As a result of this colour splitting, there are ways to
finely influence the individual layers with the gradation
curves (GIMP’s Curves tool). Both colour casts and
brightness can be edited after. To merge layers created
with this G’MIC filter back into one after editing, you
must edit the layer stack from below – first the lowest
two, then the layer above – with Merge Down.
Colors To Layers is a special G’MIC variant of the
filters for separating colours. In this case, G’MIC
directly uses the RGB values without conversion to
distinguish the colours. All three parameters have a
direct influence on the result. If the preview in this filter
shows only two layers, the value for Minimal Area (%) is
often set too high. If the maximum permissible number
of layers is not reached, this can be changed via Colour selected input layers and outputs the result. In the case The G’MIC filter
Tolerance. Whether Autocrop Output Layers is useful of layers with completely different contents – that is, Blend [Standard]
provides extended
depends on the use of the filter. By default, it creates ones that were not created as copies of one layer – the layer modes.
layers in the image size. As this allows up to 256 result looks like the multiple exposures of a film. The They extend the
output layers, quite fine colours can be distinguished. three colour models provided in the filter display quite modes available
Tones To Layers is another variant. At first glance, different results, which shows their necessity. The in GIMP by, among
other things, the
this filter seems bulky and not very useful. However, blending is done in a soft way that blurs edges and
possibility to use
its usefulness is apparent in practice. The separation contours. With more or less identical layers, the filter own formulas for
takes place in a residual layer and up to 10 tone layers. hardly shows any effect. the calculation.
The Mid-Tones control adjusts how the split is done; A variant of this filter with a different, but similar
the transitions are controlled by Smoothness. Higher algorithm for calculating the pixels is Blend [Median].
Smoothness values increase the areas that end up on Here, too, the parameter Colorspace controls the
a tone level. Together with the residual layer, the tone colour model used and thus influences the effect.
layers make up the entire image. By default, the layers The filter Blend [Edges] has a similar function, but
are combined with the Normal mode. has different parameters. This filter often shows
For individual tone layers, different layer modes relatively pronounced edges and contours in the
can be set, so the overall effect can be specifically multiple exposures and is thus clearly different from
adjusted. The tone layers can also be individually the filters described above.
doubled or their opacity can be reduced to manipulate GIMP’s Layer Modes simulates Blend [Standard],
details in shadows and highlights, for example. but adds a whole new set of interesting modes, such as
Negation and XOR. How the calculation for the preset
Blending modes is done is shown on the given web page (see
Many of G’MIC’s layer filters provide quite different Quick Tip, below-right). Most of the parameters of
blending functions. The effects of the blending filters the filter are immediately understandable, but there is
range from extended layer modes to complex copy no selection of the colour space used. Therefore, all
processes. With these, several input layers must be operations are done in the SRGB colour space. Process
selected to achieve an effect. Usually, the All or All As defines the way G’MIC processes several layers.
Visible options for Input Layers are a good choice. With two layers, the order of processing is trivial, but
Blend [Average All] is basically a filter based on becomes more demanding with three layers. Here
the GIMP functions that averages the pixels of the there are several possibilities, each of which produces
different results. Preview All
Outputs helps to understand the
effect of the Process As settings.
A really special feature of
this filter is the Custom Formula The blending or
mode. It offers the possibility to levels modes
are relatively
define your own formula for the
simple
calculation. In this formula, the
formulas. The
variable a stands for the pixels of ones used by
the base layer (lower layer) and b G’MIC can be
for the layer above (blend layer). found here:
The values are normalised to the https://bit.ly/
range [0..1]. lxf299formula,
The Blend [Fade] and Blend while GIMP
[Seamless] filters have a completely summarises
different effect from the Blend them here:
https://bit.ly/
Blend [Fade] creates overlays that act like templates. A custom formula, which can be defined by filters discussed previously. Blend
lxf299layers.
the user, takes up the mask and enables a variety of patterns. [Fade] places templates that act

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Linux projects
Transition effects such as those used in presentations are created by Spatial Transition. The filter
is customisable within a wide range by means of a custom formula.
as masks over layers and thus creates partially
transparent layers. In the holes, the underlying
layers shine through. This makes some interesting
patterns possible. The three parameters in the lower
part of the dialog window control the display. A
If the custom formula is also available for this filter. Within it,
animations the variables x (first parameter) to z (third parameter)
are to be able can be used.
to run in an In addition to this filter, Spatial Transition from the
endless loop,
Sequences section should be mentioned here. This
the first and
filter also creates a transition between two layers and
last entrance
layer should takes into account the alpha channels of the input
be identical to layers. The type and manner of the transition are
prevent a hard determined by the parameters in the upper part of
transition. the dialog window. Transition Shape defines the type
of transition, Shading and A-Value control the details.
Even the default transition Plasma usually creates very
interesting effects – it uses GIMP’s plasma filter and
GIMP AND ANIMATIONS
Animation tools are limited but GIMP is able to directly play
animations created with the program or with G’MIC. Also, GIMP can
only save animations in two formats: the now completely outdated
GIF and the little-known but supported MNG. This format essentially
consists of a series of PNG images that can be extracted losslessly.
Ironically, GIMP is not able to read this format.
However, MNG files can be converted to other formats on the
command line with the ImageMagick command convert convert tst.
MNG tst.mp4 converts the animation into the popular video format.
Conversely, convert -verbose tst.mng png:/tmp/x splits an MNG
animation into frames. Specifying png: does this as PNGs.
If you want to have a greater influence on the result, you can take
a detour via the animation tool Imagination (http://imagination.
sourceforge.net). This enables you to generate MP4 animations
from individual images that are manually controlled. This really
has a far-reaching influence on the representations. The same is,
of course, also possible with Kdenlive and probably other video-
editing programs, but there the effort is considerably greater.
One more warning about the animations: with multiple input layers
and many intermediate layers, GIMP really takes up a lot of RAM
space to edit them, with 16GB RAM and swap being quickly used
up. It helps to reduce the colour depth set by GIMP when reading
images, in the Image menu under Precision.
110
random patterns – but the other variants are at least
as interesting.
Two special features of this filter are worth
mentioning. A custom formula can be defined as a
transition shape. Its definition should initially be based
on the default setting, for example: sin(x*y*0.1*pi/
w*(1+100*A)) or sin(y*x/w/h*pi/(1+100*A)) . In the
lower part of the dialog window, the preview can be
set more precisely. The Preview Type Transition Map,
for example, shows the mask used for the transitions.
Timed Image shows the state of the animation
depending on the Preview Time parameter.
You can read about the Blend [Seamless] filter at
http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10204.
G’MIC seamlessly blends the upper layer into the layer
below. The Inner Fading and Outer Fading parameters
control how the fading should be done at the edges.
Mixed Mode changes the visibility of the inserted layer
considerably, so should be used with caution. With the
Output As Separate Layers option, the output is done
as an additional layer, which makes post-processing
easy. Only in this form is it possible to change the
opacity of the inserted layer or manually adjust parts of
the layer. G’MIC also shows exactly where and which
changes the filter makes to the inserted layer.
Layers inserted into an image with Ctrl+v do
not have to be converted into normal image layers for
this filter. It is sufficient to activate Active and Below
or All Visible as Input Layers. For the output, New
Image is often a good choice; it allows unsuccessful
experiments to be simply discarded without affecting
the output data – that is, the current image.
The URLs given in the dialog window are still current
today and show quite excellently what the filter is
capable of. However, the application needs much more
practice than the examples shown there suggest. It is
often not clear why inserted layers fit very well or why
they do not fit well. The filter is therefore one of the
important tools that one should know (and be able to
use), but it requires some experience.
Align and inform
One group of G’MIC filters is not used directly but only
indirectly for image composition. These are filters that
serve for preliminaries or are useful in organising many
layers in an image.
Align Layers is a filter that only works correctly
with image layers; with text layers the results are often
incorrect. It tries to shift the position of the layers using
salient points, so the contents overlap as closely as
possible. The Rigid Alignment-Type tries to keep the
overlap as high as possible, taking into account the
Smoothness parameter. Scales allows multiple sizes
of objects when aligning.
Note: with this filter, the preview does not show the
result directly but an overlay of all aligned layers, as it is
created by Blend [Median] or Blend [Average].
This filter is reminiscent of the shell command
align-image-stack from the Hugin package, which
is used to align several individual images when
constructing panoramas.
The Layers To Tiles filter is also extremely simple,
but useful – it collects all of the entrance layers and
represents them sorted. Two other filters have similar
properties: Pack takes all the input layers and tries to
 GIMP

the Filter Morph [Interactive] in the

Deformations section is better
for this task.) Unfortunately,
Some of the animation filters in the current
the Sequences pane incrementally G’MIC version
create specific representations that no longer has
filters from other areas create the ability to
automatically
directly. The basis for these filters
name layers
is always a known filter, whose
with the
parameters G’MIC automatically functions and
changes step by step. The dialog parameters
box and the preview show the start used. In order
and end points of the editing. not to lose this
B&W Pencil [Animated] is one information,
of G’MIC’s easy-to-use animation this should
filters. The function is based on the always be done
B&W Pencil painting filter, which manually first
Align Layers tries to align layers automatically. Sometimes it takes a few tries to find the optimal
after creating
parameters for this. The preview shows an overlay of the layers. generates a black and white
new layers.
drawing from a colour image. It
arrange them so that they are packed as thickly as creates an animation in which the image develops from
possible. The order can be controlled within certain fine to coarse. Sometimes, the opposite makes more
limits with the Ordered By parameter. This makes the sense. In this case, the layer stack can be reversed
filter useful to obtain an overview of the layers used in before the animation is saved or played.
an image, or to arrange space-saving objects on layers. Soft Glow [Animated] and Rodilius [Animated]
Quite a lot of information about levels can be found are both based on the non-animated filters of the
within Layer Info (in the Testing section). In addition to same names and have only simplified settings.
the level name, the opacity and position – both in the Nonetheless, these filters are extremely easy to use –
picture and in the layer stack – there is a lot more however, the achieved effects are not particularly
information available. This filter is so easy to use and impressive. Unfortunately, this also applies to the
relatively easy to expand that it is well suited as a basis Edges On Fire filter. This first uses a simple edge filter
for your own experiments. to find the relevant areas in an image, where animated
flames are then created. This can work well, but it is no
Animations longer updated.
GIMP creates animations as images with a large Worth examining is the 3D Extrusion [Animated].
number of layers. Each single image of the animation It is based on the 3D Extrusion filter from the
is available as a separate layer – and can be reworked Rendering section. This filter calculates three-
individually. GIMP or G’MIC can create animations with dimensional structures from or in images and displays
special filters that automatically calculate these them as a map. It is complex and often – with natural
individual images. GIMP has a few simple filters in the images – not easy to apply. For such images, the
Filter menu under Animation. G’MIC significantly relevant parameters should first be determined in the
expands the list of these filters. The Layers section non-animated version. However, it is easy with text
contains two relatively simple animation filters. In the layers and clearly defined structures. The animated
Sequences section, there are again almost 20 filter creates the view of a rotating object from the
animation filters that are more complex. input planes.
First two simple filters: Fade Layers blends layers
into each other. To do this, the filter gradually reduces
or increases the opacity of the individual layers. It is
applicable for any number of input layers, which then
appear one after the other. A special feature of the
filter is the fact that it works with layers that have
(and receive) an alpha channel.
The Morph Layers filter goes one step further
than Fade Layers. With this filter, G’MIC tries to
automatically adjust the forms contained in the layers
when creating the fluid layers. An example of three text
layers (1, 2, 3) shows how far this goes when using this
filter. With pictures with more natural content, the
results are often even better. However, the filter
removes alpha channels automatically from layers, so
you should check which background colour is preset
before you decide to use the filter. (However, if you are Pack grabs the input levels as compactly as possible and at the same time gives an overview of
looking for really good control options for morphing, the existing and selected layers.

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Linux projects

GIMP
Credit: http://gimp.org

Universal layer text

effects with GIMP
Posters use them, films and presentations are hard to imagine without
them: text effects. Attract attention with Karsten Günther and GIMP.

common requirement is to

A apply effects to try to lift

plain text and make it look
more appealing. Originally, logos
(GIMP’s jargon for scripts that
create text with special effects)
OUR were the preferred way to make
EXPERT text eye-catching. However, these
Karsten Günther scripts are limited and can only
loves to extend be adapted slightly. They usually
his GIMP implement just one effect, which is
installations then applied to freely selectable
with additional text. Almost all effects try to
components. generate three-dimensional The Logo Toolbox enables you to create a variety of logos. The dialog consists of several parts:
New scripts and structures from fonts and often text input and font selection, surface design, text distortion and background.
plug-ins often combine this with the simulation of
bring surprising special surfaces, such as metal, stone, wood or rust. available. The current version can be found at: https://
possibilities github.com/GNOME/gimp-data-extras. However,
and effects, Logo Toolbox many of the logos developed many years ago are now
such as the For a long time, logo scripts were developed in rows considered old-fashioned in terms of design, which is
use of fonts... without any restrictions. Only one effect was ever why they’re no longer necessarily available in the GIMP
created and the scripts didn’t offer a preview. Logos packages of distros and have to be installed separately.
can be found in GIMP under File > Create. Another An attempt to extend the small range of variation
disadvantage of logo scripts is that new GIMP versions of logo scripts led to the Logo Toolbox. This script is
often have (small) changes in the ScriptFu API, which a reasonably universal logo generator that provides
leads to errors in the logo scripts. It usually takes a few many more settings than ordinary logo scripts. This
months until adapted versions of the logos are made has two immediate consequences: firstly, the dialog
seems more complicated; secondly, the script itself
runs far more quickly and the dialog keeps the last
settings used – which parameter has which effect.
As a result, the Toolbox Script always generates a
new image with relatively lots of layers. This makes it
possible to quickly make further changes. For example,
the background can be exchanged or removed at any
time, and the drop shadow, surface and depth of the
logo can be manipulated afterwards. However, some
of the disadvantages of classic logos remain with the
Toolbox. For example, the Logo Toolbox allows multi-
line input text, but the text editor of GIMP cannot be
used. Formatting and font changes are not possible in
the input text, unless Alpha On Logo is used…

Alpha On Logo
GIMP’s standard logos are worth seeing – often over the top and not very flexible. With some In many respects, text layers are also just normal image
distros, they are provided via the GIMP Extras package and no longer installed automatically. layers for GIMP. This is also largely true for logos, only

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 GIMP

the transparent edge decides on the positioning of the

effect. Therefore, it makes sense to design logos in
such a way that they also work with any transparent
layers. This is not possible for all logos because
functions such as Text To Path ( gimp-vectors-new-
from-text-layer ) or Text Along Path are called. But for
most logos – including those created with the Logo
Toolbox – this is provided for. The scripts can be found
in the Filter menu under Alpha On Logo. If the Logo
Toolbox is installed, there is also a corresponding entry.
Normally, the Alpha On Logo scripts are called after
activating an image layer with transparency. Due to
their construction, the classic scripts destroy this layer
during editing. Therefore, it makes sense to always
create a new image with the image layer first by placing
this layer on the toolbox. The result can then be copied
back into the original image. This way, there is no
danger of accidentally destroying important image
material. The Logo Toolbox variant of the Alpha On
Logo script also receives the input layer here.
Without special measures, the Alpha On Logo
scripts simply create highlighted areas. For fonts,
this is sometimes sufficient. Much more far-reaching
manipulations are possible manually, however, if the
contents of the text layer are first converted into paths
(Text To Path in the context menu of the layer dock).
They can then be edited (see top-right) with the usual
transformation tools, for which a corresponding button
is available under Transform. The distorted paths are
then converted into selections and filled with colour.
If this is done on a transparent layer, the result is
available for the Alpha On Logo filters.
Layer effects
Layer effects are quite impressive and are not limited
to text layers. In addition, they provide basic functions
that can be combined to create very different effects.
There are a total of 10 dialogs for Layer Effects. The
Layers menu can be found in two places in GIMP: in
the Layers menu and in the context menu in the layer
dock. The dialogs are sorted alphabetically, which
means that very different complex functions are next
With manual pre-
to each other. Functions that open a dialog window are processing, GIMP
marked in the menu by the ellipses. converts letters
As with logo scripts, Layer Effects use the border into paths, which
between pixels and transparent areas as the active line can be edited with
the transformation
where the effect takes effect. However, Layer Effects
tools before the
do not necessarily require text, but can work with any Alpha On Logo
material on the input layer. There are some other scripts are called.
differences: logos are less flexible in editing the input
layers and can even destroy them. With Layer Effects,
you have the choice of whether the effects are to be
Layer Effects
created on new, additional layers or directly in the input offer 10 dialogs.
layer. The Layer Effects allow better control of the They control very
effects as they offer a preview. However, the latter only different functions,
applies to the Python variant of Layer Effects. only a few of
which are also
Even functions that seem simple, such as Stroke available in other
and Drop Shadow, have unexpected features in Layer plug-ins, often in
Effects. Other effects have even more extensions. At a different form.
the top of the Layer Effects menu is the most complex
dialog: Bevel And Emboss, described in more detail
below. First, we’ll deal with the simpler functions. But
even these have many surprisingly useful features.
Only the Colour Overlay, Pattern Overlay and perhaps
Gradient Overlay functions are really simple.
Simpler ones
Three Overlay filters belong to Layer Effects and are
the simplest filters there. Color Overlay covers the
existing pixels with a selectable colour, whereby the

PLUG-IN INSTALLATION
There are currently three plug-in
variants for using the layer effects in
GIMP. They differ in their requirements
and details of the features. Furthermore,
this diversity reflects the importance of
the effects for users.
Script: The simplest variant is a
ScriptFu script that is executed via
the built-in interpreter. It does not
require any special prerequisites
and runs on every GIMP installation.
(However, the script must be adapted
for the respective major GIMP version –
2.6, 2.8 or 2.10). The script provides
the essential features of the Python
variant, but it does not offer a
preview. However, in many cases this
is incredibly useful if many experiments
are to be avoided.
Python script: These can be installed
as an alternative to, but not with, the
ScriptFu variant. It requires the Python2
support of GIMP, often provided via
several packages. For Arch Linux, they
are Python2 and gimp-python, for other
distros they’re likely similar. The Python
script is installed under ~/.config/
GIMP/2.10/plug-ins (or system-wide
under /usr/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins). The x
permission flag should be set by chmod
a+x .../layerfx.py .
GEGL variant: The first GEGL-based
variant of these filters is still very new –
the project only started in May 2022 and
is initially limited to some parts of the
Bevel And Emboss filter, as well as an
implementation of some other effects.
At the moment, the use of this filter is
still quite different from the classic
implementations…
The installation is quite simple and
is described in detail at https://github.
com/LinuxBeaver. There are also ready-
made binaries available, which are
copied into the /home/<USERNAME>/.
local/share/gegl-0.4/plug-ins directory.
Sometimes it is necessary to delete
existing settings to be able to use the
new version: rm -r ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/
filters/GimpGegl-gegl-effects-config.
settings does this.

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Linux projects
The fonts outlined by Stroke
are easily readable due to
clear boundaries, even if
their colours almost match
those in the background.
The result is stored in a new
layer group by default.
Blend Mode decisively influences the result. Gradient
Overlay replaces the colour with one of the existing
colour gradients. Satin has a similar effect and covers
the object with a light satin sheen.
Also very simple are the Inner and Outer Glow
filters. They create soft halos around the edge pixels
in the input layer. Soft radius, opacity and blend mode
can be adjusted. With Outer Glow, the preview only
shows a realistic image if there is a visible layer
underneath, with Inner Glow, this is normally the case
anyway. Sometimes such glow effects are called
Orthon Effect if they create a fairy-tale impression.
More exciting are the two shadow filters. Drop
Shadow is one of the most widely known and used
GIMP and GMIC filters. Nevertheless, Layer Effects
THE BEAVER TOOLS
The GEGL modules provided by LinuxBeaver cover a range of use
cases. Many modules have been developed explicitly for text editing,
such as Jelly, Custom-Bevel, Grains_of_Sand and many others. But
the other modules also deserve some attention – for example,
GEGL_Polygons, which simulates an overlay by polygonal features.
Be aware that the provided modules are plugins for GEGL.
Therefore they are not installed under ~/.config/GIMP/2.10/plug-ins
but in the ~/.local/share/gegl-0.4/plug-ins directory.
The installation is simple in principle, as described above, but
under Arch Linux a problem typical for rolling releases becomes
apparent: the modules provided by LinuxBeaver cannot be loaded,
which causes GIMP to display the error message GEGL-Message:
23:43:51.475: Module ‘~/.local/share/gegl-0.4/plug-ins/sketch.so’ load
error: ~/.local/share/gegl-0.4/plug-ins/sketch.so: invalid ELF header .
Then the only way left is to recompile on the local system.
But even here there are pitfalls. For example, meson in the
meson setup --buildtype=release build && ninja -C build command
requires the installation of gegl 0.4.* and babl 0.1.* – the Git versions
of these, which are useful in another context, must not be installed.
If you would like to develop your own modules, you do not have to
program directly in C, but can do so with the GEGL graph, which is
based on easy XML files. Instructions can be found here: https://
github.com/4Evergreen4/pixelsort/issues/8 under ‘Do you plan on
making more custom GEGL filters?’
114
also offer something new here. Contour allows you to
select the shape, taking into account other parameters,
of course. The effect of Spread becomes apparent in
practice. This is also the case with Inner Shadow. The
shadow always falls inwards. The effects of Choke and
Noise only become apparent with larger Size values.
One of the relatively frequently used effects –
Stroke – should be described in more detail here:
the idea of outlining pixels on a transparent layer is
simple and easy to implement. By means of Alpha To
Selection, a selection is created, which is then traced.
This effect is often necessary when fonts have to
appear over irregular backgrounds where they would
otherwise be unreadable.
The Stroke dialog of Layer Effects goes a few
steps further. By default, the effect is created on a new
layer. This can be blended with any of the legacy blend
modes with the pixels of the input layer (under Blend
Mode). The first two parameters, Size and Position,
are self-explanatory, which also applies to Opacity.
The Fill Type section is interesting. While normal stroke
tools only support fixed, single-colour borders – here
labelled Color – this dialog goes much further. Gradient
enables you to select any colour gradient, while Pattern
does the same with an existing pattern.
The other options then depend on the Fill Type
used. With Gradient, they correspond approximately to
those in the tool settings. The Pattern type offers the
necessary settings for a fill pattern that can also be
varied in size.
If Stroke is applied without the Merge With Layer
option, the current version of Layer Effects creates a
layer group for the layers involved in the effect. In the
case of Stroke, this is the effect layer in addition to the
input layer. With other Layer Effects tools, this can also
be several additional layers.
Bevel And Emboss
By far the most comprehensive and powerful filter of
Layer Effects is Bevel And Emboss. It is therefore also
the most often used. Strictly speaking, this dialog
combines four basically similar filters that appear in
one dialog. The Style parameter switches between the
variants. The complexity of the filter is shown not only
 GIMP

by the high number of parameters, but also by the Bevel And Emboss
relatively long time needed to activate the preview. Of is powerful
and complex.
course, this is only available in the Python2 variant of The effect of
the filter. Therefore the preview is not active by default. the numerous
In a first step, a Style is always selected with this parameters is
filter. Then – with the preview activated – the other shown in the
Preview mode.
parameters can be set. This should be done step by
Parameters should
step, because it always takes a moment until the be chosen wisely.
preview is updated. Among other things, the Surface
Contour parameter has a great influence on the result,
as it can be used to create very interesting effects at
the edges of fonts.
For many tasks, it is quite sufficient to make a few
adjustments in the upper section of the filter dialog
(Structure) and to disregard the parameters at Shading
and Texture.
However, the Gloss Contour parameter needs a
little attention. Some of its settings lead to additional
effects, which can be partially compensated for with
the Color parameter.
As a result, this fourfold filter always creates a layer A great
group, in which, in addition to the original layer, there is advantage of
one layer for highlights and one for shadows. Logo Toolbox is
There are some minor problems with this filter in that the input
some situations. They do not always occur and can layer is not
destroyed. This
usually be quickly fixed. For example, the filter is
enables you to
typically used without the Merge With Layer option,
place the input
because otherwise the results do not match the layer - with a
preview. In particular, text layers can cover the shadow directly, and can have layer modes and some other suitable layer
and highlight layers in such a way that their effect is features that GIMP currently offers and that are mode - on top of
lost. In these cases, it helps to manually move the text displayed in the lower part of the dialogs. the generated
layer further down in the layer stack. Sometimes it is Due to the early stage of development, the use logo and offset
useful to manually replace the Screen and Multiply of this module still takes some getting used to and it afterwards.
layer modes automatically assigned by the filter and/or is inconsistent: on the one hand, one of three Sometimes
to increase the opacity. In very rare cases, additional components is selected under Part Of Filter To Be this improves
the result
layers created by these filters can also be doubled to Displayed, which may reshape the entire dialog. The
considerably.
enhance the effects. individual functions are partly activated via a slider
(--ENABLE XYZ) or via a checkbox (Enable XYZ).
The GEGL variant However, this does not detract from the function.
Since mid-2022 there has been a new version of Layer As of early 2023, there are about 20 other modules
Effects, which is quite contemporary and based on the with additional functions besides the GEGL effects.
GEGL framework (Generic Graphics Library, see These can then be integrated seamlessly – better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL) of GIMP. For than the case so far with the GIMP plug-ins and scripts
several years now, all existing GIMP filters have been – and additionally also applied on the command line
in the process of being ported to this new graphical with the gegl command.
engine, and the task is largely completed now. Ideally,
Currently the best
new plug-ins should also only be developed for this GIMP provides for
interface, so they’re ready for future GIMP versions. designing three-
In addition to the normal GEGL functions that can dimensional texts:
be found everywhere in GIMP, there’s also a number Bevel And Emboss
from Layer Effects.
of functions not bound to keys. There is a universal
Most of the design
GEGL front-end for these functions in the toolbox. It details of the
is activated in the preferences under Toolbox in the rendering can be
Interface section, and appears at the last position in adjusted precisely,
the toolbox. and the transitions
are exceptionally
A number of additional modules can be found at smooth.
https://github.com/LinuxBeaver, which, among other
things, are intended to replace Layer Effects at some
point. The development is characterised by a strong
dynamic, so it’s worthwhile looking for new modules
from time to time. Functions implemented in GEGL are
characterised by high efficiency. They are fast, preview

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Linux projects

FSEARCH
Credit: http://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch

Track down files

and folders instantly
‘Work smarter, not harder’ advocate Nick Peers reveals how to use
a tool to transform the way you search for files and folders on your PC.

he ability to search your hard drive for files and

T folders is a critical part of any OS. Ubuntu’s file

search exists within the Files tool itself, but it’s
very basic. You type all or part of a keyword and the
currently selected folder or drive is searched, with any
matching results displayed – after a short pause.
OUR Eliminating that pause and widening the search to
EXPERT cover more of your storage requires choosing a different
Nick Peers search tool – one that’s able to build an index of your
has thousands files and folders that updates as changes are made, and
of files scattered which provides the search tool with the ability to return
across multiple results instantaneously. But that’s not all a good search FSearch delivers results instantaneously, whether performing basic
hard drives. tool should offer. What happens if you only remember keywords searches or using complex search patterns.
FSearch may part of a name, or aren’t sure what certain parts of the
just make filename are? flatpak; Ubuntu users simply need to add the program’s
some of them One such tool is FSearch (https://cboxdoerfer.github. own repository prior to installation:
accessible again. io/fsearch). It delivers results in the blink of an eye, and $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:christian-boxdoerfer/
supports a wide range of search tools, from support for fsearch-stable
wildcards and RegEx expressions that don’t require $ sudo add update
precise search terms, to filters and sort tools to help $ sudo apt install fsearch
narrow results further when required. Once installed, FSearch is accessible via the launcher.
FSearch’s website reveals how to install the By default, it’ll index everything in your home folder –
standalone tool across a wide range of distros and start typing a few letters and you’ll see it immediately

BUILD YOUR OWN FILTERS

Add and edit filters Set your query More options

1 Open FSearch and choose Edit>
Preferences>Search. To change an existing
filter, click Edit; to add a new one, click the +
button. The Name appears in the Filter
dropdown; the Macro is the command you
use to invoke the filter from the Search bar.
2 Type keywords to filter your search,
ticking ‘Match case’ to make them case-
sensitive, or ‘Enable regular expressions’ to
build a more sophisticated filter involving
RegEx. Use an online tool like https://
regexr.com to help build your queries.
3 The ‘ext:’ line as found in preset
filters like Documents reveals how to set up
file-type based filters. Finally, to create a
filter that restricts your search to a specific
folder, tick the ‘Search in path’ box and type
the full path into the Query box.

116
 Smart search

starts returning results, with your search terms By default FSearch

highlighted within the file and folder names listed.
Double-click a file to open it, or right-click it for more
options, such as opening it in a specific application.
You can also select multiple results. Choose Edit>
Select All, or manually click and select. There’s also an
option to invert your selection via the same Edit menu.
To the right of the search box you’ll see an ‘All’
dropdown. Click this and you’ll see options for filtering
your search to show only one of the following types:
Folders, Files, Applications, Archives, Audio, Documents,
Pictures and Videos. They’re all self-explanatory, but you
can see what file types each one covers by selecting
Edit>Preferences>Search tab.
Here you can edit what file types are supported for
each type, along with a macro name. The macro enables
you to search using that filter directly from the Search
box. Type the filter’s macro followed by a colon and your
search terms, such as doc: LXF to perform a search for
documents with names containing LXF. You can edit
these categories and add your own filters from scratch
– see the step-by-step guide (below left) for details.
The Art of the Search
In addition to FSearch’s support for boolean operators
( AND , OR and NOT ), there’s support for using
wildcards to find files and folders with similar, but not
identical, names – or to compensate for your faulty
memory. These follow the usual rules: * can substitute
multiple characters, so wh* would return what and
why , while w*t would return both what and wet . For
single characters, use ? so w?v would only match
three-letter words beginning with w and ending in v –
wav but not wave . You can mix and match, so w?v*
for example would match both wav and wave .
Another handy wildcard is the square bracket. This
enables you to narrow the focus of your search, so
c[ae]ll matches call and cell , but not cull . You can
also specify a word range using a hyphen: c[e-u]ll
would find cell , cull and everything in-between.
Use the exclamation mark to exclude characters:
so c[!a]ll matches cell , cull but not call .
FSearch also supports regular expressions (see box,
below) while the Quick Tip reveals how to master other
supported search syntax.
indexes your
Home folder only,
but you can add
additional folders
and drives via Edit>
Preferences.
We’ve barely
scratched
the surface
of FSearch’s
powerful syntax
– visit https://
Now you’ve mastered the basics of how FSearch github.com/
works, and seen how it can help you find those deeply cboxdoerfer/
buried files that much quicker, it’s time to fine-tune the fsearch/wiki/
program to deliver even better results. Search-syntax
First up – if you’re someone who doesn’t consolidate for a rundown
all their files in their Home folder (or even on the same of how it works,
drive), then you’ll need to add those extra locations to including guides
to modifiers
FSearch’s database so it knows to index them. This is an
and functions.
intensive process, and the more files you need to index
coupled with the relative speed of your hard drive will
determine how long the initial indexing process will take.
To add these locations to the database, choose File>
Interface and switch to the Database tab. Click + to add
each folder or drive you wish to index. As soon as you
click OK, the selection will be indexed, and the index’s
progress will be displayed in FSearch’s status bar.
When configuring your folders, you’ll notice an
Exclude option on the left. You can use this to exclude
specific folders and file types from the index, and
automatically exclude hidden files and folders. Simply
click + to select your unwanted folders, or enter the file
names or types to exclude in the ‘Exclude files:’ box,
separating each one with a comma.
FSearch is configured to only update its index when
you launch the program. If you plan to leave it open for
hours at a time, you might want to configure it to update
periodically: tick ‘Update every’ and set the hours and/
or minutes between each scan. Remember, however,
that indexing puts pressure on your filesystem and
could slow down your system while it’s running.

EXPRESS YOUR SEARCHES

FSearch also supports Regular
Expressions (RegEx) for advanced search
terms. RegEx is disabled by default –
press Ctrl+R to enable/disable it as
required, and you’ll see REGEX is listed in
the status bar when it’s switched on.
Why use RegEx? One reason is if
existing boolean operators and wildcards
don’t meet your exact needs. RegEx
supports these terms – albeit in a
different way (use | in place of OR, for
example) that enables you to build more
sophisticated searches.
Take ? and * for example. With RegEx,
? is used to indicate zero or one
occurrences of the preceding character – \W for a symbol. Finally, to emulate the
so armou?r would match both UK asterisk ( * ) wildcard in RegEx, use .*
( armour ) and US ( armor ) spellings. instead (so r.*d to match rod , red ,
Similarly, * works to indicate zero or reed , read and so on).
more occurrences of the preceding
character, while + matches one or more
occurrences – so fee*d would match
both fed and feed , but fee+d would
only match feed .
If you’re wondering, the full stop ( . )
character replaces the question mark
( ? ) as a single-character wildcard. If you
want to restrict the wildcard to a specific
type use \d for a single number, \w for Regular expressions help you to build searches using
an alphanumeric (A-Z, 0-9) character, or both precise keywords and similar ones.

117
Linux projects

OBS STUDIO
Credit: https://obsproject.com

How to become a
screencasting pro
Screencasts are excellent for creating application tutorials. Michael Reed
shows you how to make one with end-to-end open source software.

creencasts are videos with a voice narration, docks that we’re going to need minimised. We’re going

S often used as a tutorial that explains how to do

something within an application. They can also
to need the Scenes, Sources, Audio Mixer and Controls
docks, so re-enable them all, if necessary, by selecting
be used to create videos that provide commentary on a them in the Docks menu.
subject such as a photo collection.
OUR We’ll start by making a recording with OBS Studio Use Scenes to save time
EXPERT (https://obsproject.com), an application that can record Scenes are settings profiles that are tailored for a
Michael Reed the video and audio output of the computer to a file. specific job. It’s a good idea to use this feature, and
was caught Then we’ll import the audio into Audacity (www. starting a new scene resets the current settings back to
talking to himself audacityteam.org) for a quick tidy up. Following this, defaults. Do this by clicking the plus icon at the bottom
while using we’ll take the audio and video into video editor Kdenlive of the Scenes dock. Once you’ve started a fresh new
the computer, (https://kdenlive.org) for the final edit. By the end of the scene, the first setting to look at is in the Sources dock.
making him the process, we should have a crisp-looking video with a This is where you add video and audio sources.
ideal person to clearly intelligible voice track. Add music to taste. For example, for a typical screencast, the sources
tell you about We’ll assume that you have OBS Studio installed and might be the screen along with the input from a
screencasting. running. Some versions of OBS Studio start with the microphone. We’ll start by adding the screen itself as a
source. Click the + icon underneath the Sources dock.
EXPLORE THE OBS STUDIO INTERFACE This should present you with a list of about 20 possible
sources on your system. Select Screen Capture (XSHM)
6 and click OK. You should now see a real-time, miniature
copy of your screen in the main viewing panel of the
OBS Studio screen, and this shows that video capture
is working.
1
How are you recording audio?
Now it’s time to add audio sources. If you’re working
with a microphone, make sure that you have it plugged
in and ready. Click the + icon under the Sources dock
again, and select Audio Input Capture (PulseAudio). In
the next dialog that pops up, select your microphone
device from the drop-down. For some types of video,
you might want to record the output of the programs
that are running on your computer as part of the video.
If so, add a third source by adding Audio Output Capture
2 3 4 5 (PulseAudio). Don’t bother adding this unless you’re
sure you need it, though, because it increases CPU
usage a little bit, and any programs or browser tabs
Main view dock Audio Mixer dock
1 Previews what you’re going to record. 4 Enables you to balance the levels of
that make an unexpected notification sound will end
various audio sources. up on the recording.
Scenes dock Test the microphone levels by observing how much
2 Use this to save your settings for a Controls dock the level meters in the Audio Mixer tab move when you
particular job. 5The start and stop recording controls and speak into it. You want a level that gets up to around a
access to the settings dialog.
Sources dock.
third of the full height. If you go below that, you’ll spoil
3 Makes it possible for you to add multiple Menu bar the quality because when you adjust the volume after
video and audio inputs to be recorded. 6 Access various program settings. the recording to compensate, you’ll introduce extra

118
 Produce a screencast

background noise. If you go too far into the red, you’ll

introduce awful sounding clipping that’s impossible to
remove from a recording. We’d advise against using your
computer to add any background music at this point.
For one thing, if you get the levels wrong then there will
be no way to correct them afterwards, and for another,
you won’t be able to do any editing after you’ve made
the recording. Add any music you feel the screencast
needs afterwards, during the editing phase.

Audio and video

It’s worth configuring video and audio settings at this
point (Settings on the Controls dock or File>Settings).
In the settings dialog, start with the Output tab. Ignore
the Streaming settings because they’re for live
streaming rather than recording. Start by setting the
recording path. We’re going to be making some pretty
big files, so choose a folder on a partition with plenty
of space on it.
That brings us nicely to the Recording Quality
setting. We made a screencast tutorial for using
FreeCAD, as an example, and we found that setting this
to ‘Indistinguishable Quality, Large File Sizes’ produced
files of around 150MB per half an hour of footage, which
isn’t bad at all. In a case like that, there isn’t much
movement on screen from one second to the next, and
it’s worth a bit of extra storage space to have the extra
crispness. If you were recording something with a lot of
movement, the file sizes will increase, but you tend to be
less concerned about a small loss of detail in those
cases, so ‘High Quality, Medium File Sizes’ might be the
better option.
For the Encoder option, make sure that one of the
hardware encoder options (such as NVENC for Nvidia
graphics cards) is selected. This will significantly reduce
the amount of CPU time consumed by the real-time
encoding, and increase the quality of the video, too.
Staying in the Settings dialog for a moment, click the
Video tab. Typically, you’ll want to make sure that the
screen resolution is the same as your native resolution.
However, you might consider playing around with the
frame rate setting (‘Common FPS Values’). 60fps
capture ensures extremely smooth video, but it tends
to demand quite a lot of your system and produces
large files. 30fps looks nearly as good and reduces
resource usage. If you’re illustrating the use of an
This is the OBS Studio settings screen. You can get away with surprisingly high-quality settings
when making a tutorial, thanks to the lack of movement.
application, it’s even worth considering 15fps unless
you’re sure that you require extra smoothness. The
viewer probably won’t even notice in most cases. Once If you add
you’ve made your choices, click OK to go back to the music to your
main OBS Studio screen. screencast,
don’t risk
Planning and testing overwhelming
If you need to stop and look something up while the voice track.
recording, it doesn’t matter because you can either It’s worth
listening to the
pause or stop OBS Studio or keep recording and edit
finished mix on
out the pauses later on. We’ll get further into this
headphones and
when we’re editing, but because of the nature of on speakers,
screencasting you’ve got an enormous amount of because
freedom to edit the video afterwards. Furthermore, if the relative
you spot a mistake later on, there’s nothing to stop you volumes of
from re-recording that section and inserting it during different tracks
editing. In the worst case, someone might notice the and overall
pointer jump around a bit, but that’s well worth it if it clarity can
leads to a better screencast. sound different.
We’d recommend making a quick test recording at
this point. In fact, you might like to go through the entire
tutorial in rough form. It might take a bit longer, but
doing this will lead to a much better end product.
To begin the recording, press Start Recording in the
Controls dock. You should notice an increase in CPU
and GPU activity as soon as you do this. However, even
on a modest system the recording should only consume
less than 10 per cent of total resources. Record some
test video, and press Stop Recording when you’ve

SETTING UP THE MICROPHONE

If you’re going to record your voice then
you’ll need a microphone, and there are a
number of options in this area. It’s up to
you to decide what the minimum quality
is you’re willing to accept.
If you’re using a laptop to run Linux,
you might have a microphone built into
your computer. Most computers have an
analogue mic input of a three-conductor
1/8-inch type. This is designed to run
dictation-type microphones or many
tie-clip microphones.
Moving up the quality ladder, there are
many USB-connected microphones that
range from about £20 all the way up to connected, launch the ALSA Mixer from
ones that cost hundreds of pounds. the command line (using alsamixer ) and
Another approach is to purchase a USB then make sure that your microphone
audio interface with a microphone input is turned up.
preamp built into it, for attaching a high-
quality microphone.
Once you have a microphone, it’s time
to consider accessories. A stand of some
sort is pretty much essential to put the
microphone in front of your face while
you’re speaking. A pop filter is also a
good idea – this reduces the effect of
‘plosive’ sounds when speaking into the
microphone. After the microphone is Running ALSA Mixer at the terminal.

119
Linux projects

finished. Remember, you can stop and start the

recording as often as you need to, because we’re going
Most to stitch the different video files together at the editing
microphones stage. Once you have a rough recording, watch the
work best at footage back (in full-screen mode) in a video player
a distance such as VLC (www.videolan.org), and decide if you’re
of about six satisfied with your video and audio settings.
inches. Closer Once you’re happy with your settings, it’s time to
than that, and record the footage for real. You might want to leave a
your voice will period of at least a few seconds of silence at the start of
sound boomy
the recording to get a good sample of the background
and distorted.
Too far away
noise. We’ll use this later on.
and you’ll have
to increase the Clean up the audio
volume (and, It’s worth doing a quick editing pass to fully optimise
therefore, the audio to make it as clear as possible. Fortunately,
background Audacity makes this very simple. Start by dragging the
noise) to video file on to the Audacity main window. Audacity will
compensate. strip out the audio from the file, and it’s a fast process.
Experiment, See the step-by-step section (facing page) for
would be
removing unwanted noise from the audio and getting it
our advice.
up to full volume. If you hit upon a good setting, save it
as a preset (Manage>Save Preset... within the plugin
interface) for reuse, but bear in mind that some
settings will still need adjusting because different
audio files can vary in content.
Because some of the effects take a long time
to process, it’s a good idea to highlight a smaller,
representative area of the audio to work on. This means
you can try an effect and if you like it, undo it (Ctrl+Z),
We’ve added the snap tool to the Kdenlive timeline edit bar and increased the toolbar icon size.
When editing a video, don’t cut in the middle of words. If you zoom in
enough then you can see the gaps between words.
then select all (Ctrl+A) and redo the effect (Ctrl+R). It’s
a much faster way of working.
When you’ve finished, export the audio in WAV
format (Export>Export as WAV), but don’t rename the
files, because it’s helpful if the audio and video files
retain a similar filename to keep them together.
Edit the video
This is the final stage of the process, where we combine
all of the material that we’ve created so far. Load up
Kdenlive, and drag all of the audio and video files to the
project bin panel. If Kdenlive prompts you to change the
project settings to match the settings of the clip, click
OK to allow it.
Proxy clips are lower-quality clips that are replaced
with the originals when you render the final version of
the video, and we’d recommend working with them. Use
(Project>Project Settings...>Proxy (tab)>‘Enable proxy
clips’ and ‘Generate for videos larger than’) to enable
them. Performance of your machine will be somewhat
compromised until the proxy clips have been generated.
After you’ve added your source video and audio files,
add other material that you want to include, such as still
photos or music.
Save at this point (Ctrl+S). Try to get into the habit of
saving as frequently as possible, because Kdenlive (like
most video editors, we’ve found) seems to crash from
time to time. Drag the video files and audio files on to
the Kdenlive timeline editor.
Recent versions of Kdenlive now split the video into
separate audio and video tracks. A good layout would be
all of the video files that you have, laid out end to end on
video track one (V1). This will automatically put the

ADD TITLE CARDS IN KDENLIVE

Kdenlive supports what it calls ‘title clips’
– text cards that cover the entire screen
and have a transparent background. You
can add them every now and then to
introduce a new topic such as “Install the
software” or “Configure settings”. Create
one by selecting (Project>Add Title
Clip...) from the Kdenlive main menu.
In the editor that pops up, you can
immediately begin editing the text of the
title card by clicking. It’s often distracting
if the text on such a title card is too small,
so think big: 90 point text isn’t
unreasonable if your text can fit. Once video. You can reuse a title clip by clicking
you click OK, the title clip is added to the ‘Save and add to project’, which adds a
Project Bin window, and these can be copy into the Project Bin window.
added to a free video lane above the lane
containing the main video.
Double-click the title clip once it’s in
place on the timeline to continue editing
it. If you click Show Background, you can
see through the background to the video
below it, enabling you to check that the
text doesn’t clash with the video
background and to precisely position the
text to highlight details on the underlying Create and edit informative title cards in Kdenlive.

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 Produce a screencast

empty area within the timeline to move the play cursor

to the problem section. Next, click the video track and
press Ctrl+R to split the track at that point. As well as The applications
cutting the clips you can drag the start and end of a clip we needed were
to further refine the position of the clip. out of date in
Once you’ve made a cut, drag the clips back together the Ubuntu
using either the Selection Tool or the Spacer Tool (this and OpenSUSE
repositories, so
drags all clips behind the first one) on the editing toolbar.
we used Snap
and Flatpak to
Rendering your work install the latest
Once you have everything how you want it, it’s time to stable versions
render the finished project. Select (Project>Render...) to of OBS Studio,
open the Rendering dialog, and Select MP4-H264/AAC Audacity and
as the output format. Click More Options to extend this Kdenlive. For
dialog. From here, select Custom Quality and move the OpenSUSE,
Kdenlive’s audio mixer is hidden under a tab in the right-hand panel. slider fully over to the right. This is because screencast- we had to add
Don’t overwhelm the voice track with any music that you later add. type material compresses extremely well, but it spoils proprietary
video codecs
the look of it if it’s affected by artefacts.
(see OpenSUSE
audio part of those videos on to audio track one (A1). Hopefully, you now have a screencast in the form of
documents).
If you processed the audio separately, using Audacity, an MP4 video file that can be uploaded to a video site
you won’t be needing the audio that’s embedded into such as YouTube. Happy screencasting!
the video files, so click the mute icon at the start of
the audio tracks.
Now add the audio files that you processed in
Audacity. Drag them on to audio track two, directly
underneath their corresponding video files. Snapping is
enabled by default in Kdenlive, so the audio files should
readily snap to the start of the video files. We need to
make sure that the video files stay perfectly lined up
with their respective audio files and vice versa, so
group them. To do this, click a video file and click its
corresponding audio file, and then group them in the
right-click menu (or Ctrl+G). Do this for every matching
pair of audio and video clips.
Press Play underneath the project monitor to view
the video sequence that you’ve assembled. If you spot You can edit multiple files at once in Audacity to save time when processing. Use Files>Export>
mistakes that you’d like to edit out, do so by clicking an Export Multiple... to save them once you’re happy with your work.

OPTIMISE THE VOICE TRACK WITH AUDACITY

Remove peaks Maximise overall volume Remove background noise

1 Peaks that look out of place are
typically unwanted sounds such as coughs
or brushes against the microphone.
Unfortunately, Audacity’s built-in feature for
removing clicks from a recording tends to
introduce distortion. So, highlight unwanted
peaks manually and then remove them with
the Silence function (Edit>Remove
Special>Silence Audio or Ctrl+L). Use this
instead of Delete, because you mustn’t alter
the overall length of the audio.
2 Rather than using an automatic
feature such as compression to increase
volume, we prefer to simply increase
the overall volume manually. Use
(Effect>Amplify...) and check the Allow
Clipping option. Use some trial and error to
find the right Amplification (db) setting. Try
to keep the waveform within the upper and
lower bounds of the track, but occasionally
exceeding maximum volume won’t matter
for a vocal track.
3 Find an area without speech and
then highlight it. Bring up the noise
reduction dialog (Effect>Noise
Reduction...), and click Get Noise Profile.
Select all of the audio (Ctrl+A), and then
bring up the same dialog again. This time
click OK to remove the problem
frequencies. We suggest using a low setting
of around 5db because higher settings
make spoken audio sound artificial – unless
that’s your intention!

121
Linux projects

OBSIDIAN
Credit: https://obsidian.md

Nifty note-taking
with Obsidian
Nate Drake walks you through adopting the almighty Markdown-based
note-taking app Obsidian to see whether it lives up to its legend.

bsidian’s website describes the app as “a

O second brain for you, forever”. In plain English,

that means a tool that can help you take and
organise a colossal number of notes in a simple way,
from basic study notes to a full-blown wiki.
The program makes use of the Markdown markup
OUR language to format text, making it easy to import and
EXPERT export files. This simplifies tasks such as using links
Nate Drake to jump between notes and organising large amounts
is a tech of information.
journalist Obsidian is not FOSS but the free tier fully supports
specialising in Linux, doesn’t require registration and has some very Expand Obsidian’s features by installing free community plugins, such
cybersecurity powerful features. The program itself was developed as Advanced Tables, which supports inserting Excel-like sheets.
and retro tech. by Shida Li and Erica Xu, who were unhappy with the
Using Obsidian existing note-taking software on offer. your admin password. Once installed, Obsidian appears
to plan out his There’s also a thriving Obsidian community (https:// in Applications.
project for obsidian.md/community) and a host of devs creating The Obsidian website, however, uses a large purple
lighthouses plugins to improve its rather minimalist interface. button to push the AppImage option, which has the
has helped him advantage of working with virtually every flavour of
discover that Pick your package Linux. The AppImage can also run directly from the
they’re actually Obsidian is extremely Linux-friendly, being available folder where it’s downloaded.
very heavy. via Snap, Flatpak and an AppImage. Head over to If you want to install this way, first make sure you
https://obsidian.md/download to get started. have both fuse and libfuse2 by running sudo apt-get
Ubuntu users will find it easiest just to click Linux install fuse libfuse2 from the terminal. Next, right-click
(Snap) to download the file. Open the terminal and use the file in your Downloads folder. Choose Properties
cd to navigate to your Downloads folder. You can then and toggle Executable As Program. (Hardcore Linux
use snap on the relevant file to install it – for example: users may prefer to use chmod +x to do this.) Next
$ snap install –dangerous –classic obsidian_1.0.3_ double-click to run Obsidian.
amd64.snap The installers weigh in well under 100MB, making
Note that because this is a third-party Snap file, you Obsidian extremely lightweight.
must use the –dangerous flag. You also need to enter
One from the vaults
If you haven’t On your first launch, Obsidian offers three main
used Markdown
options. Resist the urge to do a Quick Start and click
before, check
Create to open a new so-called vault.
out Matt Cone’s
awesome You first need to set a name for the vault, which
guide at www. will contain all the Markdown files for this particular
markdown project. Next, click Browse to choose where to save it.
guide.org. Both Obsidian automatically creates a folder with the project
the Basic Syntax name – Lighthouse Project, for example – but we took
and Cheat Sheet the opportunity to create a parent folder for this and
pages have all future vaults, imaginatively named vaults. Click Open,
the information then Create to confirm your choices.
you need to
Obsidian uses Markdown to easily link between different notes and When the Obsidian dashboard itself launches, you’ll
get started.
images. The program suggests media in your vault as you type. see the interface is very spartan. This is deliberate and

122

in keeping with the Markdown philosophy of having a
simple, stripped-down text interface. On the plus side,
it’s easy to navigate.
Start your first Obsidian Markdown note by
clicking Create New File. We decided to begin with a
Statement of Intent for our project. Change Untitled
to give this note a name.
From here, you can enter text in Markdown format.
If this is your first time using Markdown, we should
explain that it’s extremely easy to pick up. Obsidian has
already created a main heading for you. You can also
create subheadings by placing ## before a new line of
text. Use one or two * before and after text to make it
italic or bold respectively.
You can also place web links in Markdown
documents – for example:
My favourite magazine is [Linux Format](https://
linuxformat.com/).
There are several ways to write lists. The simplest
is to number them with a bracket – for example, 1) ,
2) , 3) and so on – because Obsidian automatically
recognises these and formats your text accordingly.
Place a ___ to draw a neat line.
One particularly impressive aspect of Obsidian is
that you can also paste in formatted text and it does
its best to preserve the formatting. In our tests, we
pasted in a paragraph from Wikipedia and all the
special characters and web links were preserved. This
may be a relief if you have existing documents that you
want to use with Obsidian.
It’s clear that Obsidian’s developers have tried to
make the editor as WYSIWYG as possible, although
you can click the icon at the top-right to switch
between reading and editing mode. Markdown purists
may prefer to click the ... options icon to switch to
Source Mode to see the raw text.
Click the New Note icon at the top-left each time
you want to create a separate file. Alternatively, click +
to open a new tab and create or open a note from
there to switch between them easily. All notes are
saved automatically in Markdown format to your vault.
Pics and links
Markdown was built to allow easy cross-linking and
sharing of info, and Obsidian has turned this into an art
form. The easiest way to place an image inside a note
is firstly to download it to the same folder as your vault.
Then, when inside a note, just type ![[ to open a
small menu and select your image. Click to embed the
image in your note.
There may be times where you want to link to
another note or picture without embedding the whole
thing in the file. For instance, our Statement of Intent
has links to other notes containing more information
about the lighthouses we plan to restore. If you want
just to include a link, simply type [[ without the ! .
If you’re managing a large project, navigating all
these links and pictures may not be easy. To make life
simpler, consider clicking the New Folder icon at the
top-left to drag and drop pictures or notes into logical
categories, such as images. Obsidian automatically
updates any existing links.
For a full top-down oversight of your project, click
Open Graph View in the left-hand pane. This is where
Obsidian really comes into its own, because you can
Make notes
see the various links between notes and even group The graph view
is an excellent
them in more advanced ways.
feature for seeing
One good way to better organise your notes is by all your notes in
using tags. Tagging a note is just a matter of writing one place and
# anywhere followed by your tag – for example, how they relate
#historynotes . Click Open Graph Settings on the to each other.
right while in Graph view to toggle displaying tags.
Observations
There’s much to love about Obsidian. Setup is fairly
easy and writing notes is a dream, even if you’re not
very familiar with Markdown. This article has focused
on the free version of the app, which doesn’t include
the billable Sync and Publish services.
Sync enables you to save your notes in encrypted
format across all your devices, though for only slightly
more trouble, you can install a plugin to encrypt your
notes (see boxout, below) and save them to a cloud
folder. Obsidian supports exporting notes to PDF
format and Markdown plays well with most word
processors, but Publish is probably the best way to go
if you want to transform your notes into a website.
If, however, you’re happy putting time into learning
Markdown and with taking notes on one device,
Obsidian is very powerful and easy to navigate.
OBSIDIAN AUGMENTATION
Obsidian is designed to be a stripped-down note-taking app, ideal
for importing existing projects or starting new ones. You can hugely
expand its functionality, though, by using plugins.
To get started, you need to manually enable community plugins.
Click the Gear icon on the bottom-left and choose Community
Plugins > Turn On Community Plugins to leave Restricted Mode.
Next, click Browse to see what’s available. Search or scroll to find
a  plugin you like and click Open In Obsidian. Firefox asks you to
confirm by clicking Open Link. Now click Install. Once installed, you
may need to click Enable to get it working.
We especially like the Day And Night theme, which lets Obsidian
automatically toggle between modes, and Advanced Tables, which
makes drawing tables much easier than typing them in Markdown.
The Calendar plugin allows Obsidian to display a simple calendar in
the right-hand pane. (You need to click the Expand icon at the top-
right to see this.) Click on a day to view your existing to-do list for
that date or to create one.
Make sure you back up all your work first before installing plugins.
You may need to restart Obsidian for them to take effect.
123
Linux projects
CLONEZILLA
Credit: https://clonezilla.org
Back up and copy
entire hard drives
Michael Reed shows you how to tame Clonezilla, a powerful piece
of software that can help copy and restore hard disk partitions.
lonezilla is a piece of software that can copy
C and restore (and destroy, if you’re not careful)
partitions and entire hard drives. Most backup
programs copy files, but Clonezilla works by copying the
actual disk blocks, making a perfect copy of the entire
state of the system. The advantage of this approach is
OUR that, because the entire disk is copied, there’s no need
EXPERT to reinstall the operating system when restoring from a
Michael Reed backup. In fact, you can even backup a complicated
wishes he could setup such as one with multiple partitions with multiple
use Clonezilla to operating systems (Linux, Windows etc) if you choose
clone himself to back up the whole disk at once.
when he’s got Clonezilla is itself a small Linux distribution that you
multiple deadlines boot into to use. Overall, we rate Clonezilla as a fairly
to meet. easy-to-use tool (for Jonni – Ed), if you can make some
notes to keep track of which drive is which, and are
prepared to ride the cursor keys in a text mode
interface. Clonezilla is efficient, and it runs close to the
maximum speed of the hard drive while its working. It
only copies the blocks that have data on them, and it
compresses the resultant images in real time. If you
were going to use it in a system backup role, you could
possibly have a stricken system up and running again
within, say, half an hour.
You can restore on to a system that’s dissimilar to
the one that the image was created from. For example,
This is Clonezilla
in remote mode.
you could use Clonezilla if you wanted to upgrade to a
We’ve selected larger hard drive without having to reinstall your system.
the drive, and To do this, you could create an image of the system
now Clonezilla is (stored on an external hard drive), swap in the new hard
waiting for the drive and then restore the image. You can even restore
other machine on
the network an image on to a different computer. You can also store
to connect. the images on a network resource such as a NAS
124
GParted uses a drop-down menu to choose between hard drives.
Be extremely sure that you’re operating on the right drive!
(Network Attached Storage) drive or even another
computer if it can be accessed through standards
such as SSH, NFS or Samba.
Clonezilla also has a role to play when setting up new
systems. You could install a new system, clone it and
then use that image to install on to various computers.
When we refer to Clonezilla, we’re actually talking
about Clonezilla Live, one of three versions of Clonezilla.
Clonezilla SE is a dedicated server for deploying
Clonezilla images over a network. The SE version
can even support multiple computers booting over a
network for mass deployment of images. Clonezilla
Lite Server can also be used for less-elaborate mass
deployment, and it’s built into Clonezilla Live.
Let’s look at a typical usage scenario, and see how
you’d tackle it using Clonezilla Live.
The basic setup
Copying an entire disk to an image is a common job
for Clonezilla, and it’s the simplest example of what
Clonezilla can do. Here, we’ll assume that you have
a blank USB flash drive on to which you can install
Clonezilla and an external hard drive on which you can
store backup images. We’ll also look at what it takes to
restore the image to a physical hard disk afterwards.
If you wanted to, using the method we’re going to
outline, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use a single
USB storage device as both the Clonezilla boot medium
and to store the hard disk backup images. If so, skip the
partitioning advice in this next section, but carry out the
file copying. When considering how much space you’ll
need to store the image of the drive, reckon on needing
around 50 to 100 per cent of the used space on the
source drive, because the data will be compressed.
We backed up a fairly recently installed Ubuntu
installation to test Clonezilla. Like most modern Linux
 Duplicate hard-drives

installations, this one consisted of more than one

partition, the largest of which occupied 11GB of space
on the disk. The resultant image files are stored in a
directory and consisted of a collection of 28 files that
took up 6GB of space – a 45 per cent reduction.

Prepare to flash
The first stage in this example is to prepare a USB flash
drive to boot Clonezilla from. Obtain the latest Clonezilla
build by downloading it from the official site (https://
clonezilla.org). Next, you need a medium such as a USB
flash drive to copy the files to. Because Clonezilla is
pretty small at less than 1GB in size, any old flash drive
you’ve got lying around should do the job.
To prepare it, remove the existing data and partitions
and create a FAT32 formatted partition. In this example,
we’ll use Gparted (https://gparted.org), a GUI partition
editing tool that’s in the repositories of most Linux
distributions. Start by installing it using your package
manager front end. On most distributions, you’ll need
to supply your root password before carrying out
operations using a partition editor. Click OK followed by clicking the tick icon to carry Clonezilla’s startup
We can’t emphasise enough the importance of being out the operation. Click the newly created partition and screen. Apart
from the first
absolutely sure that you’re operating on the correct select (Partition>Manage Flags). In this menu, check
option, there are
partitions. Measure twice, cut once. If you make a the Boot flag and click OK to make the partition some other useful
mistake, it’s easy to destroy your entire system with a bootable. The easiest way of mounting the newly utilities that are
few clicks of the mouse! You have been warned. Make created partition from this point is to quit GParted handy to have on a
some notes on a piece of paper if you need to. and remove and reinsert the flash drive. keyring flash drive.
There’s a drop-down menu in the top-right hand side Use a file manager to open the archive that you’ve
of Gparted. Use this to select the flash drive. Typically, downloaded from the Clonezilla website and expand the
the flash drive will be the last drive on the list because it files on to the flash drive. This is everything you have to
should be the most recently installed drive. Beyond that, do to prepare the Clonezilla distribution.
you should be able to identify it by the size of the drive.
For example, if you’re using a 16GB drive, the total size External drives
of the drive should be around the 16,000MB mark. Once the flash drive is prepared and ready, it’s worth
Typically, you’ll have to unmount a partition (select readying your external drive that you’ll use to store
Because
partition and then select Partition>Unmount in the Clonezilla images. The drive that you use doesn’t have
Clonezilla is
main GParted menu) before you can begin changing to be blank, and you should be able to use any drive open source it
the partition setup on the drive. that’s readable using a normal Linux distribution. For will, hopefully,
Once you’re sure that you’ve selected the right drive, convenience, you should create a directory for image continue to be
click each existing partition, and then click the delete storage on the external drive (remember to avoid having maintained and
icon in the toolbar. This should leave you with a spaces in the filename). older versions
completely blank drive. Click the Create Partition icon, Later on, you might appreciate it if you take the time will always be
and create a single partition that fills the entire drive. to make some notes at this stage about the sizes of available so that
Select FAT32 as the format. Give the partition a name, each drive that you’re going to be working with. This you’ll be able
such as Clonezilla by editing the Label: (not Partition to access your
helps to identify which drive is which when you’re
older backups.
name:) field. using Clonezilla.

THAT USER INTERFACE

Clonezilla uses a user interface provided by a
library called curses (the later, ncurses, in
this case), and the overall look of the
interface should be a familiar sight to
veterans of an older generation of Linux
tools. The implementation here is a fairly
typical one. Use the cursor keys to move
between options. When you have selected
the intended option, press Return.
There’s another way of enacting a selected
feature that sometimes has to be used.
Select an option using up and down cursor
keys, as before, and then press Tab to move
the selection cursor on to the bottom part of
the interface. You can then use the left and
right cursors to move between the two
buttons, usually Done or Cancel.
Do note that what Cancel does can vary
according to the operation being carried out,
sometimes skipping a stage, sometimes
moving back a stage. It would be better if it Sometimes, you have to press Tab to get
behaved consistently or a Back button was the cursor into the bottom of the screen
before pressing Return.
always present. As it stands, unless a restore
or copy operation is in progress, you can
always power down and reset the computer
to get back to the beginning again.

125
Linux projects
On some occasions, you might need to transfer a
system from a larger drive to a smaller drive. For
Clonezilla example, you might want to go from a mechanical drive
has some on to an SSD drive with less capacity. Clonezilla can’t
advantages automate every part of this procedure, but you can
over file- do it by freeing up an appropriate amount of space on
based backup the original hard drive and then using GParted to reduce
programs, but the size of the partitions so that they’ll fit on to the
it’s not right for smaller drive.
every situation.
For example, it’s
not currently
Boot into Clonezilla
Now we need to boot into Clonezilla. Reset the
capable of
incremental computer with the flash drive inserted into it. How you
backups. select a temporary boot device varies from machine to
machine, but the instructions should be presented
during startup on the boot screen. Finally, this is your
chance to press the mystical Pause button (located
above the better-known Page Up) to have time to
read those instructions! It’s usually something like
pressing F10 or F12 and then selecting the boot
device using a menu.
Hopefully, this places us on the startup menu screen
of Clonezilla. Apart from starting Clonezilla, there are
also some useful tools that are worth looking at, such
as being able to boot into a command line and run
memtest. In a pinch, you could use Clonezilla as a
recovery boot disk to carry out simple maintenance and
repair tasks from the command line. In most cases, the
first option, to launch Clonezilla with 800x600 screen
resolution, is the right one. So, press Return to select it.
See the box (page 125) for some tips on how to
operate the text mode user interface of Clonezilla.
The next section is a series of text menus to select the
keyboard type, and it’s usually worth getting this right
so that all of the symbol keys are the correct ones.
For a typical UK keyboard layout, select Change
Keyboard Layout when prompted, and then accept
the default options for everything in this section other
than the keyboard language (select English (UK). It’s
a shame that this has to be done every time, and
perhaps a future version of Clonezilla could somehow
deduce the keyboard language or store the setting
somewhere? Finally, select the Start Clonezilla option
when prompted.
Select Clonezilla Mode
Now we’ve arrived at the meat of what Clonezilla can
achieve. There are six different modes of Clonezilla
operation that can be selected from the following menu.
Selecting the
correct keyboard
type is usually
worth it as the
position of certain
symbol keys
is different on
the default US
keyboard.
126
Selecting the Clonezilla mode. There are six options to determine
whether you’re copying from partition to image or vice versa, and
whether you’re using either local or remote storage.
Notice that most of the Clonezilla menu options have a
short name followed by a longer description of what
that option does. Our stated purpose is to clone a hard
disk to an image file and so we’ll select the first option:
Device-image.
Some of the other options here are worth examining.
It’s possible to have the source and destination on
different machines that are connected by a network.
This works by booting a copy of Clonezilla on both
machines. On one machine, you select the Remote-
source option and on the other machine you select
Remote-destination. In both cases, you have to answer
some questions about the network. Apart from that
initial setup difference, most of the remaining process
is the same as the one that we’re describing here.
However, we’ll assume that you’re working with
images and partitions on a single computer for the
rest of this example.
On the next page, select the option Local_dev. Again,
the other options on this page relate to using non-local,
network resources. For example, the image directory
could be on an SSH or NFS accessible resource on the
network such as another computer or a NAS (Network
Attached Storage) drive. This holds true if you’re either
intending to copy a disk to an image or to go the other
way around by restoring an image to a disk.
Now you have to press Return. This puts Clonezilla
into a mode where it waits for you to insert any devices
that you want to use for image storage. There’s a text
display at the bottom of the screen showing you what
valid storage devices have been detected. When you’ve
verified that your external storage is present and
correct, press Ctrl+C to progress to the next stage.
Select the storage partition
Next, select the partition that you’d like to use to store
Clonezilla images. This is possibly an area of Clonezilla
that could be improved because it could display the
label of the partition to make identification simpler.
Refer back to your notes about the exact size of your
external storage if you have any doubts. If you inserted
the external drive most recently, it should be the last
drive in the list. However, it’s not a disaster if you were
to make a mistake at this stage because you’re simply
storing files on the target drive.
You can run a check on the filesystem using the fsck
tool, but it’s not usually necessary. On the screen
following this, you can select the directory to store the
images. If you didn’t create a directory when preparing
the external storage, you can select Done to accept the
default choice of the root (/) of the drive.
 Duplicate hard-drives

CLONEZILLA ON A VIRTUAL MACHINE

For typical management operations, you’re
usually well-advised to use the virtualiser’s
own tools to manipulate storage volumes.
However, there are areas where you can bring
Clonezilla into play. For example, you could
create a complete, customised installation
within a VM and then use Clonezilla to deploy
that image.
This way, you could create an installation
within a VM such as VirtualBox, image that
installation, and then restore it on to a real-
life machine. This is a particularly handy
approach if you’re in a situation where you’d
like to work on the setup when you have lots
of time, but you need to work quickly once
you’ve got access to the eventual target
machine. You could even go the other way
around and take a running system, such as a
server, and turn it into a VM.
It’s usually difficult to cause a virtualiser to
boot from a USB medium or an arbitrary Setting virtualiser VirtualBox to boot from
directory. The easiest way to boot Clonezilla the Clonezilla ISO image.
on a virtual machine is to use the ISO image,
which is available on the Clonezilla site. The
image files can be transferred from the VM,
or a network resource can be specified.

You’ll then be prompted to choose between different
levels of expertise. Beginner is fine in this case. The next
screen is interesting because you can choose between
copying the entire disk or individual partitions. If you
copy an entire disk, all partitions and the boot record
are copied. This is the simplest option. There are some
instances where you might want to copy individual
partitions, but beware that the restoration process is
slightly more complicated. In this case, we’ll copy the
entire disk. So, select the Savedisk option.
Moving on, you can name the image file. The default
choice is automatically generated from the current date,
and is sufficient in most cases. Next, select the drive
that shall be imaged. As ever, use the size of the drive
to identify the right one.
The next sequence of screens should be fairly self-
explanatory, and you can accept most of the defaults for
things like the compression method, using fsck on the
source drive, encryption options and finally, what to do
when the process is complete.
Go time!
Finally, we begin the copying procedure. While the
imaging is taking place, Clonezilla gives a graphical
representation of the current progress along with details
about the speed of data transfer and an estimate of the
remaining time. Note that this display will stop and start
again for each partition that’s going to be copied, and
the time estimate is just for the current partition.
The image file that Clonezilla creates is actually a
collection of files stored inside a directory. These files
can be freely copied like any others, as long as they’re
kept together in a directory. Linux installations tend to
be highly mobile. So, if you had to deal with a machine
that wouldn’t even power up, you could restore the
backup image files to a different machine to quickly get
the setup back in action.
Restoring an image
For this example, we’ll restore the image we created in
the previous scenario. The process is similar to creating
the image. Start by booting into Clonezilla as before.
Again, select device-image and local_dev when
prompted as the Clonezilla modes of operating. As
before, insert the external storage when prompted.
Also, when prompted, select the directory that you
created for the image. On legacy, non-
This is where things begin to change from before. UEFI systems,
Rather than selecting the savedisk as we did last time, there’s a script
select restoredisk. The next screen enables you to that must be
select the image that we created before. After this, you run to make
can select the target disk. As always, be extra careful the flash drive
that you’re selecting the right one. Unlike before, you bootable
could cause damage if you make a mistake. However, (sudo <mount
point>/
Clonezilla won’t offer the disk that you’re copying from
utils/linux/
as a potential target. If you accept the default option,
makeboot.
you can choose to verify the image before restoring it, sh <name of
which is probably a good idea in most cases because it partition>).
can narrow down problems if they crop up.
Select what you’d like Clonezilla to do when the
operation is finished, and when you press Return, the
restore operation will begin. This will erase all content
on the target hard drive. This is fairly fast, but note that
in the next stage you’ll be asked to verify the restoration
of each of the partitions individually. It’s worth knowing
this in advance in case you were planning on leaving the
machine unattended. Hopefully, this will restore a fully
bootable system in the same state as when the cloning
operating system was carried out.
Test out the system by booting the computer up in a
normal way. And with that, hopefully, we’ve given you an
overview of how to use Clonezilla Live. Happy cloning.
Copying in
progress. This
screen will restart
for each individual
partition that is
being copied. We
found the time
estimates to be
fairly accurate.

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127
Linux projects

ONLYOFFICE
Credit: www.onlyoffice.com

Using WordPress
with OnlyOffice
With OnlyOffice Docs connected to WordPress, authors are able to insert
documents into online posts. Kseniya Fedoruk explains how it works.

any Linux Format readers will either have heard

M about WordPress or are already using it. It’s an

open-source content management system
that’s widely used for hosting blogs and websites. One
of the advantages of this publishing service is the ability
to extend its functionality and usability with numerous
OUR themes and plugins.
EXPERT One such plugin is OnlyOffice, that’s used for
Kseniya Fedoruk connecting instances of OnlyOffice Docs and WordPress.
is a document It enables WordPress administrators to edit and
expert at co-author office documents from the admin dashboard,
OnlyOffice and and also add OnlyOffice blocks to posts to enable site OnlyOffice Files page in WordPress enables you access your shared
spends her visitors to view the inserted file without downloading it. documents directly.
waking days and OnlyOffice Docs is an open-source office suite that’s
even many nights made up of online viewers and collaborative editors for in LXF248 or LXF237 for dedicated tutorials). To do so,
dreaming about text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, fillable download and unzip the WordPress package from
documents! forms and PDF files. The core format that’s used is . https://wordpress.org/download. Next, create a
ooxml, so the editors are highly compatible with .docx, database on your web server, as well as a MySQL/
.xlsx and .pptx files. MariaDB user with Access and Modify privileges.
You can use the suite within multiple cloud services: Upload the WordPress files to a suitable location on
CMS frameworks (WordPress, Strapi); e-learning your web server. Once ready, run the WordPress
solutions (Moodle, Chamilo, HumHub); collaboration installation script by accessing the URL in a web
platforms (OnlyOffice Workspace, Nextcloud, Seafile, browser: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php.
Confluence, Alfresco); issue trackers (Jira, Redmine), and
many others. You’re also able to embed the editors into Install OnlyOffice Docs
your own service and deliver it to your end users. As with WordPress, you can easily obtain the office suite
via hosting providers, the number of which is constantly
Installing WordPress growing. However, if you can’t find an appropriate
According to the WordPress team, the easiest way to hosting option then you can install the suite using
launch your own instance is to get it through a hosting Docker, which is officially recommended by the
provider. You can also use WordPress through a web developers. If you don’t have Docker installed, get it
OnlyOffice is browser, or download and install it yourself (see tutorials using the command sudo apt-get install docker-ce .
compatible Once you have the latest version of Docker, install
with WordPress OnlyOffice Docs with all the dependencies with:
v.5.9 or higher.
$ sudo docker run -i -t -d -p 80:80 --restart=always
The integration
onlyoffice/documentserver .
plugin is also
available in If you want to change the port, use the -p command.
the official Here’s an example for switching to port 8080:
WordPress $ sudo docker run -i -t -d -p 8080:80 --restart=always
Plugins onlyoffice/documentserver
Directory All the data, including logs, certificates, file cache
at https:// and database, is stored in the specially designated
wordpress. directories called data volumes. It’s a good idea to
org/plugins/ mount those you need to your hosting machine. Use the
onlyoffice.
Activating the OnlyOffice plugin within the WordPress settings. -v option in the docker run command:

128

$ sudo docker run -i -t -d -p 80:80 --restart=always \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/logs:/var/log/
onlyoffice \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/data:/var/www/
onlyoffice/Data \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/lib:/var/lib/
onlyoffice \
-v /app/onlyoffice/DocumentServer/db:/var/lib/
postgresql onlyoffice/documentserver
If you delete the container or something goes wrong
during the update, you won’t lose your data. You’ll also
be able to update your certificates without messing
with the container. Then you can switch OnlyOffice
Docs to HTTPS — automatically get Let’s Encrypt SSL
Certificates using certbot.
Install certbot:
$ sudo snap install --classic certbot
$ sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
Run the OnlyOffice Docs Docker container. Specify
ports 80 and 443 and set your domain name and email:
$ sudo docker run -i -t -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
-e LETS_ENCRYPT_DOMAIN=yourdomain.com -e
LETS_ENCRYPT_MAIL=email@example.com
onlyoffice/documentserver
Once done, OnlyOffice Docs will be available under
https://yourdomain.com.
Integration plugin
OnlyOffice’s integration plugin for WordPress is free and
distributed under the GNU GPL v2.0 licence. To install it,
clone the plugin master branch:
$ cd wp-content/plugins
$ git clone https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/
onlyoffice-wordpress
Once ready, navigate to the Plugins section in your
WordPress administrative dashboard and activate the
OnlyOffice plugin. When you have the plugin installed,
configure OnlyOffice via the WordPress interface. Go
to the administrative dashboard and switch to the
OnlyOffice Settings page. You need to specify the
Document Editing Service address – this is the URL
of the installed OnlyOffice Document Server.
Enhancing data security
To protect your documents from unauthorised access,
enter the Document server JWT secret key. The JSON
Web Token (JWT for short) helps to verify users who
enter the editing sessions in the editors and attempt to
perform certain actions within documents. You need to
specify the same secret key in the OnlyOffice Document
Here you can see an OnlyOffice block being added to a
normal WordPress post.
OnlyOffice plugins
Server configuration file to enable the validation. You can see the
Remember to save your settings after entering the inserted OnlyOffice
file in the final
required credentials.
published post.
Once you’ve completed the installation and
configuration process, go ahead and start your work.
All uploaded files from the Media section appear on the
OnlyOffice Files page within your admin dashboard.
Users with administrator rights are able to edit and
collaborate on .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files using real-time
and paragraph-locking co-editing modes, Track
Changes, comments and the built-in chat facility.
The corresponding OnlyOffice editor opens in the
same tab when you click the file name. All the changes
are saved in the same file after each editing session
(when all co-authors leave the document).
When creating a post, you can add the OnlyOffice
block and then upload a new file or select one from the
Media Library. OnlyOffice supports a range of document
file formats, including the standard .doc, .docx, .odt, .pdf
and many more.
The new file is displayed as the OnlyOffice logo with
the file name in the currently edited post. After the post
is published, WordPress site visitors have access to this
file for viewing in the embedded mode. This enables
them to view the inserted file without downloading it.
That’s it! As you can see, connecting OnlyOffice Docs
and WordPress is a straightforward process thanks to
the OnlyOffice integration plugin, which acts like a
bridge between two services. Such integration makes
it possible for you to work with office documents right
in your WordPress session without having to switch
between several applications.
CHOOSE YOUR CLOUD PLATFORM
WordPress is just one of the many services that you can connect
OnlyOffice with. You are also able to use OnlyOffice Docs with other
popular cloud platforms such as Strapi, Jira, Moodle, Nextcloud,
Alfresco, ownCloud, Seafile, Plone, Confluence, Liferay and HumHub.
You can either install the free version of OnlyOffice Docs or choose the
scalable enterprise build, and then just connect the editors with the
required service using ready-to-use integration tools. If you need
professional editing features for a family-size team, opt for Home
Server, a special tariff plan that’s designed especially for non-
commercial home use. You can find detailed information about
OnlyOffice Docs on the official website – see www.onlyoffice.com.
129
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