Fancy trying your hand at Ubuntu but feeling a little intimidated? Our pint-sized Complete Manual breaks it down into manageable chunks so you can ease yourself into the process.

New from the makers of Linux User & Developer, Ubuntu The Complete Manual contains all a beginner needs to gain a working knowledge of this innovative open-source operating system. From the default software to the best FOSS apps to download from the Software Centre, we’ll tour the top programs and applications and take you through step-by-step tutorials. Soon you’ll be flying with Ubuntu.

Pick up a copy in the Imagine Shop for £7.99 or download from GreatDigitalMags.com.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Linux, Future Cert, the UK and Ireland’s representative for the LPI (Linux Professional Institute) is asking everyone to share what they think are the ‘most amazing uses for Linux’ to compile a public list.

Every entry will go into a prize draw with the winner receiving a year’s adoption of Poppy the Penguin at Bristol Zoo (your own Linux mascot, just like Tux!).

Bill Quinn, founder of Future Cert, said: “We wanted to do something fun to coincide with the 25th celebrations happening over the next few months and this is a really great way of celebrating the many uses for Linux. But we’ll be really interested to hear users views on great Linux uses around the world – there are so many.

“And of course some will remember the urban legend from 18 years ago about Tux the penguin breaking free from Bristol Zoo and waddling off to a computer store.”

It is true that when Linus Torvalds visited the Bristol Linux Users Group they adopted a Penguin for him at Bristol Zoo. Of course, the subsequent ‘news’ articles that went around after were not quite so true – but they were a lot of fun! You can read about the escape – and the Penguin stamping violently on a Windows 98 box here.

The ‘amazing uses’ could be anything from a particular supercomputer, to a small home gadget. See Future Cert’s list of ’25 amazing uses for Linux’ here.

You can enter via the Future Cert Twitter page @futurecert or Facebook page ‘futurecert’. Alternatively visit www.futurecert.com/adoptpolly

The closing date is September 30th 2016. The list will be compiled and revealed in October along with the winner.

*Poppy is an African Penguin at Bristol Zoo. The prize is adoption for one year, which includes an adoption pack in the post that will contain two tickets to the Zoo, a cuddly toy, an adoption certificate, your name displayed at the exhibit and a fact-file about Poppy the Penguin.

Image above, Poppy the Penguin with her two chicks, courtesy of Bristol Zoo.

Back in issue 166 we offered you the chance to win one of five copies of Haynes’ Raspberry Pi 2 Owner’s Workshop Manual by Dr Gray Girling. The competition closed on 28th July and we’re delighted to announce the winners!

The five lucky winners are:

Andrew Wright

Benjamin Suk

Jay Bowles

Travis Naser

Andrew Walker

Congratulations to them and thank you all for entering!

Congratulations to the winner of our security bundle ebook competition in association with Packt Publishing!

The competition closed at midnight UK time on 28th July and we’ve now chosen a winner. Thank you to all those who entered.

Warren Stearman is the lucky winner! Congratulations Warren; you’ll be receiving your prize soon!

Issue 167 of Linux User & Developer is on sale today. Learn how to lock down your system and test its security with the ultimate guide to keeping your PC, network and passwords safe. The free DVD is packed with tools to help you, including two live-booting distros and the best FOSS. Plus, learn how to use your Pi as a pen-testing tool to assess your security, take control of Bash scripts, learn how to compile new software on an old distro, build your own NAS and much more. Pick up your copy from all good newsagents and supermarkets today. Not in your local store yet? You can pick up a print edition from the Imagine Shop, or grab a digital copy from GreatDigitalMags, where you’ll also find all of our back issues.

But that’s not all! We’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to give you the chance to win this must-have security bundle of ebooks:

Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Learning Python Penetration Testing
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner’s Guide
Learning Linux Shell Scripting
Learning Python for Forensics

Want a taster? Get a free chapter of the Linux Security Cookbook here.

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us an email to linuxuser@imagine-publishing.co.uk with the subject line “Secure my system” and tell us your name and email address. The closing date for entry is 28th July 2016. Plus, don’t forget to take Packt Publishing’s survey and help to reveal the best-paid skills in the tech business so you know what you need to do to take your career to the next level!

Terms and Conditions

Imagine Publishing has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), Packt Publishing, their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not wish to receive this, please state clearly on your entry.

In this era where almost everything is online, online security is a major concern. These days, a lot of web servers, web-connected devices, and services use Linux as their platform. Most versions of Linux use the Unix bash shell, so the Shellshock vulnerability can affect a huge number of websites and web servers.

Shellshock was discovered on September 12, 2014, and it affects all the distributions of Linux using a Bash shell. The Shellshock vulnerability makes it possible to execute commands remotely using environment variables.

In this free downloadable chapter from Packt Publishing’s Linux Security Cookbook, discover more about the Shellshock vulnerability and how to patch and deal with Bash vulnerabilities for better Linux security.

Plus we’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to give you the chance to win this must-have security bundle of ebooks:

Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Learning Python Penetration Testing
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner’s Guide
Learning Linux Shell Scripting
Learning Python for Forensics

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us an email to linuxuser@imagine-publishing.co.uk with the subject line “Secure my system” and tell us your name and email address. The closing date for entry is 28th July 2016.

Imagine Publishing has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), Packt Publishing, their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not wish to receive this, please state clearly on your entry.

Intel has been trying to break into the maker market for a few years now, having seen the success of the Arduino project and the Raspberry Pi. The Intel Galileo (reviewed in LU&D Issue 138, 4/5) proved unpopular thanks to poor IO performance from the Quark processor. Its successor, the Edison (reviewed in LU&D Issue 151, 4/5), added an Atom processor to address performance issues but its odd form factor and high-density connectors were off-putting.

The Genuino 101 is Intel’s third crack of the whip. Abandoning its previous approach of producing an Arduino-compatible microcontroller, the company has partnered with the Arduino project to create a fully official Arduino board – known as the Arduino 101 in the US and Genuino 101 elsewhere thanks to ongoing trademark issues. The result is a device which, at a casual glance, looks just like the classic microcontroller-based Arduino Uno. Yet, while it shares the Uno’s layout, the Genuino 101 is a different beast.

At its heart is the Curie module, an ultra-compact, low-power system-on-chip (SoC) designed primarily for wearable projects. Inside this chip is a pair of processors: a 32MHz Quark core acts as the central processor, while a 32MHz Argonaut RISC Core (ARC) is present as a co-processor – a tacit admission from Intel that the Quark’s ability to directly drive IO pins isn’t quite where it should be.

The presence of two processors splits the Curie module in an interesting manner. The Quark, which is a fully compatible x86 architecture processor based on the company’s old Pentium microarchitecture, runs a real-time operating system (RTOS); the ARC is used to execute whatever Arduino program you care to upload, and in a manner which is theoretically indistinguishable from any other Arduino.

In theory, this split architecture offers the best of both worlds: the flexibility and power of a microcomputer with the real-time operation and low power of a microcontroller. Sadly, at present, the RTOS is locked-down and closed-source. Intel has pledged to open-source the RTOS in March 2016, at which point the true potential of the Genuino 101 should become apparent – such as the ability to offload your own tasks to the Quark, or even to install and run a cut-down Linux directly on the device.

Want to find out more about what we thought of the Genuino 101? Check out the full review in issue 163 of LU&D!

The little symbol indicating a feed of headlines from a site is perhaps not so ubiquitous as it was a few years ago, but for most important news sites there is a feed – even if it’s easier to find it through Google. Google’s own Reader service closed three years ago – a small boost to desktop feed readers – but many just jumped ship to other services like Feedly.

If you’d like to bring feed reading back to your desktop, to avoid relying on some web-based service that could disappear as easily as Google Reader, QuiteRSS is a neat little reader to try. Packages are available for Arch, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Mandriva and OpenSUSE, as well as OS X and Windows – with the pre-Qt5 version from last year also available ported to IBM’s OS/2, for the seriously retro amongst you.

We did have a few issues with stability on OpenJDK 7 on Ubuntu Trusty, but we cannot blame QuiteRSS here, as this combination has given us trouble elsewhere. In daily use it was responsive enough, but most noteworthy for a simple and pleasant interface, which gave us the news we wanted, from RSS and Atom feeds, viewable in an embedded WebKit browser – with ad blocking.

“When I was a kid I frequently built RC models; sailing boats and speedboats,” explains Niels Affourtit. “While I owned a fantastic RC glider and dreamed of having my own RC submarine someday, my neighbour at the time had an RC submarine and discouraged me from building one by saying this thing always had trouble with its electronics and leakage. Besides, almost all waters are murky in our area!

“Around the end of 2014, I saw a National Geographic episode about the salvage of the Costa Concordia and was very impressed with how they used a VideoRay to monitor the work done by their divers, and it helped revive my dream of having my own model submarine. That’s when I stumbled across the people who have built their own ROV.

“The ROV is controlled with a joystick connected to a laptop. The laptop runs Python scripts, and with PyGame I can read the signals from the joystick. The signals are then translated into servo commands and sent to the Raspberry Pi via a simple socket connection. The Raspberry Pi is the brain of the ROV; it communicates with the surface laptop via Ethernet. Thanks to the OpenROV project, I learnt to implement a Tenda home plug, which reduces the communication lines from four to two wires, increases the reach from about 50 metres with a submerged CAT5 to 300 metres, and makes the signal much less susceptible to noise.”

Want to find out more about Niels Affourtit’s amazing sub? Check out the full interview in issue 164 of LU&D!