Fedora Classroom Sessions are here!

The Fedora Join SIG is proud to announce Classroom sessions. The Fedora Classroom is a project to teach interested users how to better use, understand and manage their Fedora system, and to show how the community works. The idea is to reach interested people and, if they desire, bring them closer to the Fedora community. Almost all classes will be held on IRC in the #fedora-classroom channel on Freenode (irc.freenode.net). If you’re not familiar with IRC, check out the Beginner’s guide to IRC. Also we’ll use BlueJeans, a video conferencing platform that works from browsers, mobile devices and a desktop application. If you have trouble connecting to Blue Jeans, please refer to the support page.

Fedora Media Writer – A Necessary Tool for the Fedora User

Suppose that you have decided that you want to give the new Fedora release a try. You download the ISO and then you have to pick a method of putting that ISO on a thumb drive. You could choose to use the dd command or you could pick from a series of applications. However, with Fedora, you have only one option: Fedora Media Writer.

openSUSE 42.3 Released, Here’s What’s New

After 8 months of continues development. The openSUSE team has just announced openSUSE 42.3. Which is considered to be the latest release of the stable openSUSE branch (called Leap).

openSUSE Leap 42.3 Linux-based operating system is here -- download it now

Variety is both a gift and curse for Linux on the desktop. On the one hand, it is nice that there are so many operating systems based on the kernel from which to choose. On the other, it can sometimes feel like the community is very fragmented. Not only is there tribalism between users of distributions, but desktop environments too. For instance, there is Ubuntu vs. Fedora and KDE vs. GNOME -- much like Coke vs. Pepsi and Chevy vs. Ford. This is just human nature, I suppose.

mtPaint – A Lightweight Paint Software for Digital Photos

mtPaint is an open source paint application for both Linux and Windows developed for the purpose of creating and manipulating pixel images. It was developed from scratch by Mark Tyler and maintained by Dmitry Groshev. If you hadn’t heard about it prior to reading this article it is probably because before its latest update in June 2016, its last update was in 2011! Update frequency not withstanding, mtPaint has a focus on being memory friendly and its latest update came with a handful of both new and improved features.

Suricata 4.0 released!

We are thrilled to announce Suricata 4.0. This is a major new release, improving detection capabilities, adding new output options and more protocols.

Suricata 4.0 released

Gabedit: the Portal to Chemistry

     Many chemistry software applications are available for doing scientific work on Linux. I've covered several here in previous issues of the magazine, and of them have their own peculiar specialties—areas where one may work better than another. So, depending on what your research entails, you may need to use multiple software packages to handle all of the work. This is where Gabedit will step in to help you out.

How Could You Use a Speech Interface?

Last month in San Francisco, my colleagues at Mozilla took to the streets to collect samples of spoken English from passers-by. It was the kickoff of our Common Voice Project, an effort to build an open database of audio files that developers can use to train new speech-to-text (STT) applications. What’s the big deal about speech recognition? Speech is fast becoming a preferred way to interact with personal electronics like phones, computers, tablets and televisions. Anyone who’s ever had to type in a movie title using their TV’s remote control can attest to the convenience of a speech interface. According to one study, it’s three times faster to talk to your phone or computer than to type a search query into a screen interface. Plus, the number of speech-enabled devices is increasing daily, as Google Home, Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod gain traction in the market. Speech is also finding its way into multi-modal interfaces, in-car assistants, smart watches, lightbulbs, bicycles and thermostats. So speech interfaces are handy — and fast becoming ubiquitous.

LibreOffice 5.4 Released with ‘Significant New Features’

LibreOffice 5.4 serves as the final major release in the LibreOffice 5.x series (meaning LibreOffice 6.x will be next). The update is said to add “significant new features in every module” and (as always) improved Microsoft Office file compatibility.

LibreOffice 5.4 released with new features for Writer, Calc and Impress

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.4, the last major release of the LibreOffice 5.x family, immediately available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and for the cloud. LibreOffice 5.4 adds significant new features in every module, including the usual large number of incremental improvements to Microsoft Office file compatibility.

GNU Binutils 2.29 Released

Binutils 2.29 is now available as well as a Binutils 2.28.1 point release. Binutils 2.29 brings a lot for MIPS and SPARC users. MIPS improvements for Binutils 2.29 include support for microMIPS eXtended Physical Addressing (PXA), microMIPS Release 5 ISA for assembly/disassembly, support for the Imagination interAptiv MR2 CPU, and support for the MIPS16e2 ASE assembly/disassembly.

AMD Ryzen 3 Rolls Out, Linux Benchmarks Coming

Nautilus Not Adding Tags, Might Add File Favoriting Instead

Tags are a super handy way to organize, sort and find files without needing to worry about where you actually put ’em. So, naturally, I was super excited when GNOME developer Alexandru Pandelea began to share word of work he’d done to bring native file tags to Nautilus.

After 12 Years, GNOME's Evince Document Viewer Supports Adobe Illustrator Files

GNOME developer Bastien Nocera reports today on some the improvements coming to the Evince document viewer app as part of the upcoming GNOME 3.26 desktop environment. The biggest change that'll be implemented in Evince 3.26 is the use of the libarchive library for decompressing various archive types, including the CBZ, CB7, and CBT formats that are usually used for comic books, and it also supports RAR files through the use of the unarr command-line utility.

GNOME Calendar is now capable of creating/editing recurring events

I’m glad to announce that GNOME Calendar now supports creation of recurring events. Now you can easily create recurring events with the help of the modified edit-dialog.

Enhancing photos with GNOME Photos

Photos can do more than edit. It also integrates with GNOME Online Accounts, and can be set up to share photos to various online photo services. Photos also lets you organize your photos into albums. It even detects screenshots and automatically sorts them into a Screenshots album for you!

Libratbag-Powered Piper Is Looking Good For Configuring Gaming Mice On Linux

It's not quite ready for primetime yet by Linux gamers, but Piper as the GTK-powered user-interface for controlling gaming mice on Linux is getting into shape. Piper is the GTK interface for configuring mice on Linux via libratbag/ratbagd, the library offering a generic way to access various mice features and abstract away hardware/kernel differences.