PDFArranger is an application for merging or splitting PDF files, as well as rotating, cropping and rearranging PDF document pages, using a simple graphical user interface.

The tool, which is a graphical front-end for PyPDF2, is a fork of PDF-Shuffler that aims to "make the project a bit more active". It runs on Linux, but there's also experimental Windows support.

We are happy to announce that Qt 3D Studio 2.2 has been released. Qt 3D Studio is a design tool for creating 3D user interfaces and adding 3D content into Qt based applications. With Qt 3D Studio you can easily define the 3D content look & feel, animations and user interface states. Please refer to earlier blog posts and documentation for more details on Qt 3D Studio.

Also: Qt 3D Studio 2.2 Released With New Material System, Stereoscopic Rendering Preview

• AMD Squeezes In Some Final AMDGPU Changes To DRM-Next For Linux 4.21

  Complementing all of the AMDGPU feature work already staged for the upcoming Linux 4.21 kernel, another (small) batch of material was sent out on Wednesday.

  This latest AMDGPU material for Linux 4.21 includes PowerPlay updates for newer Polaris parts, a cursor plane update fast path, enabling GPU reset by default for Sea Islands (GCN 1.1) graphics cards, and various fixes.

• AMD Adding STIBP "Always-On Preferred Mode" To Linux

  Initially during the Linux 4.20 kernel merge window with the STIBP addition for cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation it was turned on by default for all processes. But that turned out to have a sizable performance hit so the behavior was changed to only turn it on for processes under SECCOMP or when requested via the PRCTL interface. However, AMD is landing a patch that for select CPUs will have an always-on mode as evidently that's preferred for some AMD processors.

• Radeon Software for Linux 18.50 Released - Just One Listed Change

  The Radeon Software for Linux 18.50 driver release (a.k.a. "AMDGPU-PRO" 18.50) is now officially available

  We were expecting the 18.50 driver update following Thursday's Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition driver for Windows having debuted. The 18.50 driver release has since been made available via the AMD web-site.

• Radeon ROCm 1.9.1 vs. NVIDIA OpenCL Linux Plus RTX 2080 TensorFlow Benchmarks

  Following the GeForce RTX 2080 Linux gaming benchmarks last week with now having that non-Ti variant, I carried out some fresh GPU compute benchmarks of the higher-end NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards. Here's a look at the OpenCL performance between the competing vendors plus some fresh CUDA benchmarks as well as NVIDIA GPU Cloud TensorFlow Docker benchmarks.

• Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Rolls Out While Linux Users Should Have AMDGPU-PRO 18.50

  AMD today released their Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition geared for Windows gamers while Linux users should have AMDGPU-PRO 18.50 available shortly for those wanting to use this hybrid Vulkan/OpenGL driver component that does also feature the AMDGPU-Open components too in their stable but dated composition.

  The 2019 Adrenalin Edition for Windows brings performance improvements for select Windows titles, new advisors to help configure games and settings, improved fan control, WattMan improvements, game streaming improvements, and more.

• Thoughts on bootstrapping GHC

  I am returning from the reproducible builds summit 2018 in Paris. The latest hottest thing within the reproducible-builds project seems to be bootstrapping: How can we build a whole operating system from just and only source code, using very little, or even no, binary seeds or auto-generated files. This is actually concern that is somewhat orthogonal to reproducibility: Bootstrappable builds help me in trusting programs that I built, while reproducible builds help me in trusting programs that others built.

  And while they make good progress bootstrapping a full system from just a C compiler written in Scheme, and a Scheme interpreter written in C, that can build each other (Janneke’s mes project), and there are plans to build that on top of stage0, which starts with a 280 bytes of binary, the situation looks pretty bad when it comes to Haskell.

• No, You Don’t Need Antivirus on a Chromebook

• Security updates for Friday

• Inception Attackers Target Europe with Year-old Office Vulnerability

• Brute Force Attacks Conducted by Cyber Actors

• IBM protects your cloud container data running under Kubernetes with encryption

  Protecting your stored data on the cloud is a concern, but it's easy enough with encryption. Thanks to SSL, it's simple to protect data in motion on the network. But protecting your data when it's being used on the cloud is not so simple. Enter IBM, which, in partnership with Fortanix, is now providing data-in-use protection for your container workloads running on the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service with IBM Cloud Data Shield.

  Jason McGee, IBM Cloud Platform VP and CTO, explained the process at KubeCon in Seattle: Data Shield uses Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology to run code and data in CPU-hardened Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) or enclave. This is a trusted area of memory, where critical aspects of the application functionality are protected by encryption. This helps keep both your code and data private and shielded from would-be hackers.

• GNOME Security Internship - The Beginning

• GNOME Security Internship - Update 1

• Kubernetes Security Authentication Moving Forward With SIG-Auth

  The basic units of organization within the Kubernetes community are the Special Interest Groups that help define and implement new features and capabilities. For security, one of the primary SIGs within Kubernetes is SIG-Auth.

  Kubernetes is a widely used container orchestration platform that is supported on all the major public cloud providers and is also deployed on-premises. In a session at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2018 here, the leaders of SIG-Auth outlined how the group works and what the current and future priorities are for the Kubernetes project.

• How To Install Rust Programming Language In Linux

• 4 Ways to View the Partition Table in Linux

• How to install LEMP Stack on Ubuntu 18.04

• How to secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt Certificates on RHEL 8

• Bash check if string starts with character such as #

• How To Change The Default Display Manager (Switch To GDM, LightDM, SDDM, Or LXDM) In Debian, Ubuntu Or Linux Mint

• How To Install Lubuntu 18.10 LXQt Edition

• Getting started with ham radio repeaters

• How To Find Out Public IP Address From Command Line On Linux

And we're done. I am not sure what kind of message you're getting - or you think you're supposed to be getting from my articles. Overall, I am quite pleased with my Slimbook & Kubuntu experience. But if I had to choose, I wouldn't abandon my Windows. I simply cannot. The games, the office stuff, even simple image manipulation and text editing. All these are currently not the killer features of any which Linux desktop.

That said, Kubuntu purrs nicely. Runs fast and true, and there are no crashes or errors. The desktop is extremely flexible and extensible, it's pleasing to use, and I'm having fun discovering things, even if they sometimes turn out to be bugs or annoyances. In general, it's the application side that needs to be refined, and then, the system can just become a background for you to be productive and enjoy yourselves. Until the next report.

• Metropolisim aims to be the deepest city-building simulation experience ever, will have Linux support

  Metropolisim from developer Halfway Decent Games is releasing next year, with a pretty bold aim to be the deepest city-building simulation experience ever.

• Monster Prom, the dating sim that won me over is now available on GOG

  Visual novels and dating sims aren't something I'm usually into, however Monster Prom is actually funny and worth playing and it's now available on GOG.

  I know we have a number of GOG fans here, so hopefully this will be interesting for you. As always, we try to treat all stores equally with release info.

• Kingdom Two Crowns will be coming to Linux after all with the Quality of Life update

  Kingdom Two Crowns, the third in the Kingdom series released recently for Windows and Mac. It looked like we weren't getting it, but it's now confirmed to be coming.

  In their new roadmap post on Reddit and Steam, under the "QoL #01 Update" (Quality of Life Update) they noted that they will add "Add SteamOS (Linux) Support". This update is due out sometime early next year.

  This is really nice news, it's good to know they didn't give up on supporting Linux after all.

• Steam Link for the Raspberry Pi is now officially available

  After a rather short beta period, the Steam Link application for the Raspberry Pi is now officially out.

• Valve in it for the 'long haul' with Artifact, first update out and a progression system due soon

  Artifact, the big new card game from Valve isn't doing so well but Valve won't be giving up any time soon. The first major update is out, with a progression system due soon.

  At release, it had around sixty thousand people playing and that very quickly dropped down hard. Harder than I expected, a lot worse than Valve probably thought it would too.

• Bearded Giant Games open their own store with a 'Linux First Initiative'

  Bearded Giant Games, developer of Ebony Spire Heresy have announced their new online store along with a 'Linux First Initiative'.

  I know what you're thinking already "not another store", but fear not. For now, it's mainly going to be a place for them to sell their games directly. Speaking about it in a blog post, they mentioned how they hate having to check over multiple forums, channels, emails and so on to stay up to date and they wish "to spend more time giving love to my projects instead of updating 4 different distribution channels, translating pages, writing different press releases and making separate builds"—can't argue against that.

• The Forgotten Sanctum, the final DLC for Pillars of Eternity II is out along with a patch

  Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire expansions come to a close with the release of The Forgotten Sanctum along with a major update now out.

• Pre-order Meeple Station for instant beta access, what the developers say is like Rimworld in space

  Meeple Station, the space station building sim that the developers say is like Rimworld in space can now be pre-ordered with instant beta access. While we don't like the idea of pre-orders, getting access to the beta right away is a decent way to do it.

  Sadly, their Kickstarter campaign actually failed which I didn't notice. Making sure that wasn't the end of it, the developer Vox Games decided to go the Early Access route. They weren't left out in the cold of space though, as they also recently announced that Indie DB will be publishing their game. Under the label of Modularity, this will be the first title published by Indie DB.

• Heroes of Newerth drops support for Linux and Mac

  Heroes of Newerth, the MOBA originally from S2 Games which is now handled by Frostburn Studios has dropped Linux and Mac support.

  [...]

  I'll be honest here, I couldn't care less about it personally. The last time i tried it, it was the single most toxic experience I've ever had in an online game. I've played a lot of online games and even so it was still at a level I had not seen before. I tried to go back to it a few times, never with a happy ending. Still, sad for any remaining Linux (and Mac) fans of the game.

  Looking over some statistics, it's not popular with viewers either. Around 180 on Twitch compared with nearly 100K for League of Legends and over 50K for Dota 2.

• Unity 2018.3 With HDR Render Pipeline Preview, Updated PhysX & More

  Unity Tech is ending out the year with their Unity 2018.3 game engine update that brings a number of new features and improvements to its many supported platforms.

• Wine Announcement

  The Wine development release 4.0-rc2 is now available.

  What's new in this release (see below for details):
  - Bug fixes only, we are in code freeze.

• Just when you think you can stop drinking, Wine 4.0 has another release candidate available
  

  Just before the weekend hits you in the face like a bad hangover when you realise it's Monday already, there's another bottle of Wine ready for you.

  Of course, we're not talking about the tasty liquid! Put down the glass, it's the other kind of Wine. The one used to run your fancy Windows programs and games on Linux. Doing their usual thing, developer Alexandre Julliard announced that the Wine 4.0 Release Candidate 2 is officially out the door today.

  While this release is nothing spectacular it is an important one, the more bugs they're able to tick off the list the better the 4.0 release will be for more people to use it.

• The best Android e-readers of 2018

• 10 gifts for Android fans this Christmas

• This week’s best Android games to help you forget about Tumblr

• Android version of The Weather Channel is updated with new UI

• OnePlus 6T McLaren Is 2018's Shock Android Champ

• OnePlus 6 and 6T get MIUI 10 port based on Android 9 Pie

• Honor Play 8 with 6.08-inch, Android Pie onboard spotted online

• Honor 8A Reaches TENAA With 6.08-Inch HD+ Display, Android Pie

• BLU Vivo Go with 6-inch display and Android Pie Go Edition launched for $80

• Galaxy S9 and Note 9 Android 9 Pie - Samsung releases new update ahead of official release

• Galaxy S10's ultra-wide camera teased by latest Android Pie beta

• Sony's smaller 2018 flagship, the Xperia XZ2 Compact, is now just $450 ($200 off) at B&H

• Sony has started rolling out Android Oreo on 2017 & late 2016 TVs

• Sony XB501G EXTRA BASS Google Assistant Speaker review: A beat-dropping Google Home Max killer

• Google's Gboard for Android Gets New Light & Dark Gradient Themes

• Android Phones Easily Broken Into By Using 3D-Printed Face, But iPhone Remained Impenetrable

• Drops Android App Review: Learning Languages Gets Interesting Again

• Chrome Beta 72 releases for Android and is available on Google Play

With the end of the year quickly approaching, it's time for our annual look at how the Linux performance has evolved over the past year from graphics drivers to distributions. This year was a particularly volatile year for Linux performance due to Spectre and Meltdown mitigations, some of which have at least partially recovered thanks to continued optimizations landing in subsequent kernel releases. But on the plus side, new releases of Python, PHP, GCC 8, and other new software releases have helped out the performance. For kicking off our year-end benchmark comparisons, first up is a look at how Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution evolved this year.

For getting a look at the performance, on four different systems (two Xeon boxes, a Core i5, and Core i7 systems), the performance was compared from Clear Linux at the end of 2017 to the current rolling-release state as of this week.

Let’s face it, if you’re a Linux administrator, you’re going to work with the command line. To do that, you’ll be using a terminal emulator. Most likely, your distribution of choice came pre-installed with a default terminal emulator that gets the job done. But this is Linux, so you have a wealth of choices to pick from, and that ideology holds true for terminal emulators as well. In fact, if you open up your distribution’s GUI package manager (or search from the command line), you’ll find a trove of possible options. Of those, many are pretty straightforward tools; however, some are truly unique.

Gaming on your Linux desktop, trying alternative desktop environments, and tweaking little details such as your boot screen. Yes, it’s been a whole year again! What a great time to look back at the most popular articles on the Fedora Magazine written by our awesome contributors.

Let’s dive into the first article of the “best of 2018” series — this time focused on Fedora Workstation and how you like to use it on your Linux desktop.

• How To Add Swap Space on CentOS 7

• How to Disable Gutenberg and Use the Classic Editor in WordPress

• How to Install and Configure Basic OpnSense Firewall

• How to create QBSPs from Yocto builds

• How to install Crashplan Small Business on Ubuntu 18.04

• How to install Nightly GNOME Apps on Ubuntu 18.10

• Mesa 19.0 RADV Vulkan Driver Gets New Fixes To Help DXVK Gaming

  Samuel Pitoiset of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has landed some fresh patches in Mesa 19.0 (and also marked for back-porting to the stable branch) to help out the DXVK gaming experience for Windows games using Direct3D 11 that are re-mapped to run on top of the Vulkan graphics API.

• Mesa 18.2.7 Released With Several RADV Driver Fixes, Variety Of Other Updates

  For those not yet prepared to move over to the Mesa 18.3 series, Mesa 18.2.7 is out today with the latest batch of fixes.

Today we’re releasing Krita 4.1.7, another bug fix release in the Krita 4.1 series.

The most important fix is a weird one: it might help your wifi connection. The problem is that we started building a widget that would show you the news feed from krita.org. The widget isn’t active, and doesn’t make any kind of network connection… But Qt’s network manager class still checks your wifi settings all the time. See these bugs: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-46015 and https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-40332.

Apart from that, we’ve worked around a bug in Qt 5.12 that would cause an instant crash when using a tablet. Our own builds do not use that version of Qt, so the Windows builds, macOS build and the Linux appimage are fine, but users of rolling Linux releases like Arch would suffer from this issue.

• New Galaxy S10 Plus Camera Details Hiding Inside Android

• Mainstream media still doesn’t understand Android

• OnePlus 5 and 5T get official Android Pie-based beta

• Blu Vivo Go budget phone launches with Android 9 Pie (Go edition)

• 3 tips for choosing Chrome or Android devices for work

• Snapdragon 855 Will Power Android Phones in 2019 With Blazing 5G And AI

• The Galaxy S10’s biggest Android rival in 2019 won’t look nearly as cool

• Google Maps for Android and iPhone gets Lime integration

• Gboard gets new Light and Dark gradient themes on Android devices

Welcome to another day of the Linux command-line toys advent calendar. If this is your first visit to the series, you might be asking yourself what a command-line toy even is. We’re figuring that out as we go, but generally, it could be a game, or any simple diversion that helps you have fun at the terminal.

Some of you will have seen various selections from our calendar before, but we hope there’s at least one new thing for everyone.

• Fuchsia SDK and 'device' now included in Android Open Source Project

• How To Wirelessly Connect Your Android Phone To Ubuntu

• OnePlus 5, 5T now receiving Android 9.0 Pie based OxygenOS Open Beta update

• Blu announces its $80 Android 9 Pie Go phone for the US

• Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite’s Android Pie beta is now rolling out in China

• Hotfix update fixes issues with the latest Galaxy S9 Android Pie beta

• Cinemo to Showcase Next Generation Android Automotive Based Infotainment Systems at CES® 2019 in Las Vegas

• Google updates Family Link for Chromebooks w/ time limits, Android app restrictions

• Google Beefs Up Android Key Security for Mobile Apps

• Chrome for Android is getting a shortcut to close all tabs

• Get notifications for your patches

  We are trialing out a new feature that can send you a notification when the patches you send to the LKML are applied to linux-next or to the mainline git trees.

• A simple blank makes the difference

  OFX is the Open Financial eXchange protocol used by various financial institutions in a few countries. KMyMoney provides an OFX client implementation using the open source LibOFX library allowing users to import transactions directly from the bank’s server without using the detour through a web-browser and a downloaded file into the ledger of the application.

• Fractal December'18 Hackfest (part 1)

  The Tuesday 11th started the second Fractal Hackfest. I've organized this hackfest in Seville, the city where I studied computer science and here I've a lot of friends in the University so is a good place to do it here.

  The weather was important too for the hackfest selection, in December Seville is a good choice because the weather is not too cold, we're having sunny days.

  The first day was a good day, thinking about some relevant issues and planning what we want to do. We talked about the work needed for the interface split, about the E2EE support, new features and the need for a new release.

  We're having some problems with the internet connection, because the University has a restricted network policy and we ask for the guess internet connection the Monday, but we're still waiting.

• Unexpected fallout from /usr merge in Debian

  Back in 2011, Harald Hoyer and Kay Sievers came up with a proposal for Fedora to merge much of the operating system into /usr; former top-level directories, /bin, /lib, and /sbin, would then become symbolic links pointing into the corresponding subdirectories of /usr. Left out of the merge would be things like configuration files in /etc, data in /var, and user home directories. This change was aimed at features like atomic upgrades and easy snapshots. The switch to a merged /usr was successful for Fedora 17; many other distributions (Arch, OpenSUSE, Mageia, just to name a few) have followed suit. More recently, Debian has been working toward a merged /usr, but it ran into some surprising problems that are unique to the distribution.

  Debian and its derivatives are definitely late to the /usr merge party. Systems running Debian testing that were initially installed before June 2018 still have /bin, /sbin, and /lib as normal directories, not as symbolic links. The same applies to Ubuntu 18.10. But both Debian and Ubuntu want to make the switch to a merged /usr. Debian tried, but it hit something completely unexpected.

  The Debian /usr merge history started in 2016, when Marco d'Itri got the usrmerge package into Debian unstable. This package contains a Perl script that converts an existing system into the state with a merged /usr. Also, a change was made to the debootstrap program (which installs a Debian system into a chroot), so that it could create the needed symbolic links by itself before installing any packages. The end result is the same in both cases.

  [...]

  The Debian package sed also has /bin/sed, not /usr/bin/sed. In the bug report, the problem is treated like a one-off issue, to be solved by a rebuild. However, on the debian-devel mailing list, Ian Jackson quickly pointed out that the problem is, in fact, due to /usr merge on the build daemons. He suggested that the change should be reverted. Dirk Eddelbuettel seconded that suggestion, and noted that he expects "much more breakage to follow". Indeed, similar problems were triggered in sympow, pari, and monitoring-plugins. Other bugs of this nature can be found by searching the Debian bug tracking system for a special tag (but this search also finds other kinds of issues).

  [...]

  The discussion is still in progress, though; no consensus has been reached. A bug was filed against debootstrap by Jackson to revert the change to merge by default for the next release of Debian. Due to the disagreement of the debootstrap maintainer to the proposed change, Jackson reassigned the bug to the Debian Technical Committee, which is the ultimate authority for resolving otherwise unresolvable technical disputes within Debian. There is also a request from the Debian backports FTP master that the default should be the same in Debian stable backports and in Debian testing. Emilio Pozuelo Monfort, a member of the release team, also spoke in favor of reverting to non-merged /usr in new installations.

  It is impossible to predict now how the Technical Committee will rule. In the worst case for /usr-merge proponents, proper introduction of a merged /usr into Debian may be delayed by a few more years. But, if it votes for keeping the status quo, new end-user systems in the next stable release of Debian will have merged /usr, old but upgraded ones won't, and the build daemons will reliably build packages suitable for both cases, just like what's planned for Ubuntu 19.04. No flag day is needed in this scenario, so it would follow the best Debian traditions of not forcing transitions onto users.

• Compiz: Ubuntu Desktop's little known best friend

  The best part is that it takes no time at all to get up and running! I’ll show you how to transform Ubuntu into a desktop that is functionally similar to Mac.
   

• How to use TOAD The Open Source Android Deodexer

  Deodexing Android can be a time-consuming process which involves pulling /system files from your Android device, deodexing them using PC tools, and installing them back on your phone. Not to mention that whenever Google releases a new Android version, the process for deodexing ROMs alters – which means tools for deodexing need to play catchup. Many deodexing tools have become defunct due to lack of update from the developers.

  A new tool called TOAD (The Open Source Android Deodexer) has been released, which aims to not only be incredibly easy, its open-source nature allows the development community to keep it updated with the latest deodexing methods. TOAD utilizes batch files for processing odexed files, so new batch files can easily be added or modified by the development community.

• Linux group plans show and tell

  The Linux Users’ Group of Davis presents Open Source Computing “Show and Tell” event, an informal open night to talk about and demonstrate programs, computer projects or tricks and tips.

  Feel free to bring something to show or tell for 10 minutes, from a Raspberry Pi project to tools or utilities that you find handy. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun, whether you’re a hobbyist, coder, enthusiast or sysadmin.

• Windows 10 tip: Run Ubuntu Linux in an enhanced Hyper-V session [Ed: When Microsoft's Ad Bot (Ad Bought?) covers Ubuntu it's about putting it as a slave of Vista 10, complete with back doors]

• ​MS-Linux? Lindows? Could Microsoft release a desktop Linux? [Ed: It’s like CBS wants to just hire pro-Microsoft slants; propaganda and clickbait.]

• How Facebook Made a Universal Open Source Language for the Web

  THE CODE THAT runs the web is a melting pot of programming languages and technologies. JavaScript, the most popular language on the web, is the standard for writing code that runs in your browser. But the server side is much more diverse. Java (no relationship to JavaScript) remains popular, as do PHP, Python, and Ruby. Mobile app developers, meanwhile, have their own preferred languages, like Kotlin for writing Android apps or Apple's Swift for iOS.

• C Programming Tutorial Part 2 - Preprocessors

  In the first part of our ongoing C programming tutorial series, we briefly touched on the preprocessing stage. In this tutorial, we will discuss it in a little more detail so that you have a basic idea about it before learning other C programming aspects.

• Microsoft patches 'dangerous' zero-day already being exploited by [cracking] groups

  This vulnerability in kernel image ntoskrnl.exe was reported to Microsoft on 29 October by security vendor Kasperky Lab. Listed as CVE-2018-8611 and classified as 'important', it is a local privilege escalation bug. Kaspersky Lab researchers say it has already been exploited by [cracking] groups FruityArmor and SandCat.

• Security updates for Thursday

• Epic Games’ New Cross-Platform Services Will Be Given to Developers for Free

  Fortnite, one of the biggest battle royale games of this year, is known for its extended cross-platform capabilities. Developer Epic Games, who recently launched their own digital game store called Epic Games Store, has announced that they are working on cross-platform services that will launch for free in 2019.

• Game Engine Black Book: DOOM

  I had the pleasure of proof-reading an earlier version of the Doom book and it's a real treasure. It goes into great depth as to the designs, features and limitations of PC hardware of the era, from the 386 that Wolfenstein 3D targetted to the 486 for Doom, as well as the peripherals available such as sound cards. It covers NeXT computers in similar depth. These were very important because Id Software made the decision to move all their development onto NeXT machines instead of developing directly on PC. This decision had some profound implications on the design of Doom as well as the speed at which they were able to produce it. I knew very little about the NeXTs and I really enjoyed the story of their development.

  Detailed descriptions of those two types of personal computer set the scene at the start of the book, before Doom itself is described. The point of this book is to focus on the engine and it is explored sub-system by sub-system. It's fair to say that this is the most detailed description of Doom's engine that exists anywhere outside of its own source code. Despite being very familiar with Doom's engine, having worked on quite a few bits of it, I still learned plenty of new things. Fabien made special modifications to a private copy of Chocolate Doom in order to expose how various phases of the renderer worked. The whole book is full of full colour screenshots and illustrations.

• Some thoughts on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s Danger Zone, the new Battle Royale mode

  Now that the dust has settled and I’ve been able to put plenty of time into the new Danger Zone mode for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, I have some more thoughts.

  For those not clued up what the fuss is, it's a little like Fortnite, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) and a few others like that. You (or you and some friends) and everyone else drop into the map from the air, then it's a mad race to be the last person standing. Unlike Fortnite there's no building involved, the game itself is quite streamlined overall so it's closer to PUBG than anything else.

• 15 Best Linux Games on Steam

  Before Valve ported their popular Steam gaming platform to Linux, gaming on the operating system seemed like a hopeless pursuit. Most Linux gaming came in the form of a handful of open source games or messy Wine configurations to get Windows games to work, albeit at a huge performance hit. Now, the picture is much different, thanks in large part to Steam.

  These games mark the best the platform currently has to offer natively for Linux. Keep an eye out, though, because that's all changing again with Steam's new Steam Play feature that allows you to play Windows games on Linux the same as you would a native game, changing the picture drastically again.

• Grapple Force Rena Hits Linux and Windows PCs

  GalaxyTrail's pedigree has seen them craft a modern-day classic side-scrolling platformer in Freedom Planet, and now they're back with Grapple Force Rena. This blend of traditional platformer and Bionic Commando takes the usual "young hero saves the world" plot and mixes things up a bit. Rena's a little delusional and as such, tries to recruit all of her friends to help her save the world. She doesn't believe that she can do it all by herself, and is dismayed to find that they don't have powers as she does.

• Flash Point: Fire Rescue, the tough strategy game about saving people has new levels and a tutorial

  The Training Update for Flash Point: Fire Rescue just released, with an aim to help people learn the ropes while also add in more levels to play.

• Hand of Fate 2 - A Cold Hearth DLC now available with a new companion

  Hand of Fate 2, the excellent mix of action-RPG combat with a board game has another DLC available named A Cold Hearth.

• Humble Store are doing a little sale with some Linux titles plus LEGO The Hobbit is free

  Humble Store have a WB Games Sale live right now which has a few nice Linux games going cheap, plus you can grab LEGO The Hobbit which works with Steam Play (ProtonDB has a bunch of "Platinum" rating entries for it) free for 48 hours. I gave it a brief run myself and sure enough, it works well.

• The GOG winter sale is officially here, with plenty of Linux games and a giveaway

  GOG have officially unwrapped a present in the form of a winter sale which comes with a free copy of Full Throttle Remastered for a limited time.

• The WWI FPS game 'Verdun' just got a big free expansion, new UI in testing

  News coming in from the Western Front, Blackmill Games and M2H have released a big free expansion to their First World War shooter Verdun. It's quite a big one too, they haven't been focused solely on their other FPS game Tannenberg which is nice to see!