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Simplify the installation of Drupal modules with Project Browser Nadiia Nykolaichuk Wed, 12/14/2022 - 03:00

Drupal's modular structure lets you extend your website with an endless array of features. Then again, discovering the right module and installing it on your website can be a challenging task for beginners or non-developers.

That's where the Project Browser initiative comes into play!

Project Browser is one of the most exciting initiatives for Drupal. It is intended to make the platform genuinely easy for everyone. Read on to discover what the project goals are, why we're excited about it, how Project Browser works, and when you might see it in Drupal core.

Why Project Browser?

The initiative is aimed at providing an easy process for discovering and installing contributed modules directly from the Drupal admin dashboard with the click of a button. This means you don't have to go to Drupal.org or elsewhere. It is one of the key Drupal strategic initiatives that determine the priorities for the platform's development.

The easy discovery and installation of modules should empower people who are new to Drupal, as well as "ambitious site builders" — a category of Drupal users, often mentioned by Drupal's creator Dries Buytaert, as a strategically important user persona.

Project Browser should eliminate complicated steps and provide more consistency in the process of extending Drupal websites. Leslie Glynn, the co-lead of the Project Browser strategic initiative, said the following as part of the Driesnote at 2022's DrupalCon Portland:

I've been working with Drupal beginners for more than 10 years doing trainings and mentoring at contribution days. I saw firsthand the struggles that folks face once they install Drupal and want to then add functionality. Taking folks to the terminal is hard, the current drupal.org extend page is overwhelming, it's complex, and there's not a lot of consistency across the project pages. I was super excited to learn about this strategic initiative to make browsing for projects easier.

A good comparison, made by Leslie at DrupalCon Prague was the example of a visit to a grocery store where a shopper is faced with "hundreds and hundreds" of different types of cereal.

How does the individual know which box of cereal or which module to choose if there are something like 60,000 cereal boxes (contributed modules) on offer? Folks need to have some direction with a path to enable them to narrow down their search. Finally, they need a "checkout" — clear and easy steps to install the chosen module on their website and have no worries about version compatibility.

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Making it easier for users to browse for great modules also helps the community highlight and recommend these great modules and, in doing so, attract more people to Drupal. At his DrupalCon Portland keynote, Dries Buytaert said:

People don't really know about these things unless they go to an event or hear somebody else talk about it. And we are even losing people because once they install Drupal core they don't know where to go next. We have an opportunity to make this a lot easier and actually to promote some of these great innovations, we can stand behind them. And the solution obviously is the Project Browser.

How Project Browser works

Project Browser provides a user interface (UI) for browsing contributed Drupal modules with a set of useful features to optimize the process. At the OPEN WEB COMMUNITY - Project Browser Initiative: Where We're At session of DrupalCon Prague, the initiative's co-lead, Chris Wells, shared the minimum viable product (MVP) for Project Browser. It includes the following:

• Enables users to browse for modules compatible with their website's Drupal version

• Filters modules by category

• Adds advanced filtering

• Provides instructions for downloading and installing modules via Composer*

*Composer is the software package manager that ensures all the right software libraries are installed to run Drupal core and other modules.

However, according to Chris, they are very close to making it possible to download modules automatically for users, with Composer running behind the scenes. For this purpose, they have a separate experimental branch. This means that the work is being done on the functionality that will allow Project Browser users to do without Composer in module installation.

The latest demo of Project Browser at DrupalCon Prague by Srishti Bankar, a Project Browser contributor, showed the module in action. The new Browse tab stands out on the Extend page of the Drupal admin dashboard.

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Project Browser's UI gives you suggestions for contributed modules based on filtering and sorting features. The default sorting is by usage, which means that the most popular modules show up first.

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

You can filter modules by categories or search by keyword or module name. Project Browser also provides some recommended default filters that are as follows:

• Modules that are compatible with the version of the site you are running Drupal on (you no longer need to worry about versions)

• Modules that have security coverage

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Once you have chosen the module you would like to install, click the Download button to view the instructions for downloading and installing it via Composer.

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

However, as mentioned above, in a separate experimental branch for Project Browser, it's already possible to click the Download or Download and Enable buttons and get the desired module downloaded and installed via the admin UI. The only thing left to do is to configure the newly installed module according to your website's needs.

Image by:

(Leslie Glynn, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Try Project Browser

Project Browser is currently a contributed module with an ambitious goal to become part of the Drupal core. Working on it in the form of a contributed module gives the creators more freedom to play with exciting functionality until everything is fully ready. It is currently available for testing and you can install it from Drupal websites via Composer. Alternatively, you can click the Try it now button on the project's page and give it a test drive by spinning up a demo on Gitpod.

The module is also available for contributions so anyone can get involved. The creators actively encourage getting involved. There are contribution opportunities for all levels of expertise, including non-code contributions. For example, every module needs a short non-technical summary and a logo to be displayed in Project Browser. Absolutely anyone can get involved with or without coding skills.

So when might we see Project Browser in the Drupal core? The best way to learn the latest news about the readiness of any planned core functionality is to listen to the latest Driesnote from DrupalCon Prague 2022. Dries mentioned a lot of great progress made on the initiative. He said Project Browser would not be done in time for Drupal 10, but that was never really the plan. However, hopes are that the feature will be included in the Drupal core shortly after Drupal 10 is released — perhaps in 10.2. The exact date is yet to be determined.

Extending Drupal with the most powerful features with a click of a button is an exciting prospect. Drupal deservedly gets plenty of compliments and Project Browser is another benefit to bolster the title of "the most user-friendly CMS". I look forward to see how this rolls out moving forward in the wider community.

The Project Browser initiative is aimed at providing an easy process for discovering and installing contributed modules directly from the Drupal admin dashboard with the click of a button.

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Experience Linux desktop nostalgia with Rox Seth Kenlon Wed, 12/14/2022 - 03:00

Rox-Filer is an open source file manager for Linux, once intended for the defunct Rox desktop but now a streamlined application for any window manager or desktop. There hasn't been much activity on the Rox project since 2014, and even then it is mostly in maintenance mode. And that's part of Rox-Filer's charm. In a way, Rox-Filer is a snapshot of an old desktop style that was progressive for its time but has given way to a more or less standardized, or at least conventional, interface.

Install Rox-Filer

On Linux, your distribution's software repository may have Rox available for install. For instance, Debian packages it:

$ sudo apt install rox-filer

If your Linux distribution doesn't package Rox-Filer but you want to try it out, you can compile from source by downloading the source code, installing its build dependencies, and then compiling:

$ sudo dnf install gtk2-devel libSM-devel \
  shared-mime-info glade-libs xterm
$ wget https://codeload.github.com/rox-desktop/rox-filer/zip/refs/heads/master
$ unzip rox*zip
$ cd rox-filer-master
$ ./ROX-Filer/AppRunConfiguring Rox

The Rox file manager is based on the look and feel of RISC OS, an operating system developed by Acorn in Cambridge England (the same group responsible for the popular Arm microprocessor). Today, there's an open source RISC OS you can install on a Raspberry Pi, but for now, Rox is close enough.

Rox has a simple layout. It has no menu bar, but there's a toolbar across the top, and the file panel is at the bottom.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

As with the KDE Plasma Desktop, the default action of a single click in Rox is to open an item, whether it's a folder or a file. Unfortunately, no version of Rox, either packaged or compiled directly from the source, seems to be completely integrated with the mimetype definitions of the modern Linux desktop. For instance, Rox on CentOS renders an error when I click on even a basic text file, while the packaged version of Rox on Debian opens a plain text file but not a JPEG or archive file. You can fix this by setting a Run Action in the right-click context menu.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Setting a run action can have broad definitions, so you don't have to set a separate run action for JPEG, PNG, WEBP, and all other image types, instead set the same run command for all mimetypes starting with image.

Once you set that, you're ready to manage files with Rox.

Navigation

You can navigate through your file system using the arrow icon in the top toolbar. The Up arrow takes you to the parent directory of your current location (in other words, the folder your current folder is in). To descend into a folder, click on it.

Refreshing the view

Rox may not redraw the screen for every action, so sometimes you may need to prompt it to refresh. Click the Circle arrow in the Rox toolbar to refresh your current location's contents.

Copy or move a file

There are two ways to copy or move a file in Rox. First, you can launch a second Rox window and drag and drop files from one window to the other. When you do, you're prompted to copy, move, or link the item you've dropped.

Alternatively, you can right-click an item and open the File submenu from the context menu. In the File submenu, choose Copy and then enter the destination path for the item you want to move or copy. After you've confirmed that the file has successfully been copied to the target location, you can optionally select the item again, choosing Delete from the File menu.

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You can customize some aspects of Rox by selecting Options from the right-click menu. This brings up a Rox configuration screen that's admittedly only partially relevant to Rox. The Rox options assume you're running a window manager, like Windowmaker which provides a traditional dock (or "pinboard" in Rox terminology). I wasn't able to get the pinboard options to work on Fluxbox, my preferred window manager, or Windowmaker. In both cases, the window manager handled iconified windows, and I wasn't able to configure Rox to override the control. It's possible that I wasn't drastic enough in some of my configurations, but considering that Linux window managers are very capable of managing iconified windows, the pinboard mechanism of Rox isn't a vital feature (and probably not as flexible as the window manager's options).

The other options, however, still work as expected. For instance, Rox by default resizes its window size to fit the contents of a folder. When you change from a directory containing twelve items to a directory containing just three, Rox shrinks its footprint. I find this jarring, so I chose the Never automatically resize option, forcing Rox to stay whatever size I set.

Window commands

Some of my favorite features are four menu items hidden away at the bottom of the Window submenu in the right-click context menu. They are:

• Enter path: Enter an arbitrary path and change directory to it.

• Shell command: Enter an arbitrary shell command and execute it.

• Terminal here: Open a terminal at your current location.

• Switch to terminal: Open a terminal at your current location, and close the Rox.

I love options that allow for quick navigation or quick commands, so it's nice to have these close at hand.

Oldies

Rox is a "blast from the past," whether or not you've ever used RISC OS or something like it. Rox represents a style of digital file management and even desktop configuration that just doesn't quite exist anymore. I've run Fluxbox, on and off again, at work and at home for the past decade, and I love manually configuring menus and configuration files. However, most of the Linux desktop has moved on from the conventions Rox relies upon. It's not impossible to make Rox fully functional, but it would take a lot of work, and most of what you'd be configuring are already provided by modern window managers and desktops. Even so, Rox is fun to use and experience. It's a great demonstration of how flexible a traditional Linux desktop setup was (and still can be, if you use only a window manager), and much of its charm is in its simplicity. I can't imagine a file manager today not having a dedicated move function, but Rox dares to force you to copy and delete instead. It's a different kind of file manager, and it might not be the one you use all day every day, but it's something you have to try if you miss, or literally missed, the "old days" of the Linux (or RISC OS) desktop.

Rox-Filer is a snapshot of an old desktop style. It was originally intended for the defunct Rox desktop but is now available for any Linux desktop.

Image by:

kris krüg

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Use Django to send emails with SMTP Sofiia Tarhonska Tue, 12/13/2022 - 03:00

Numerous professions utilize simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) to deliver emails to their end users. SMTP also retrieves messages, though that has not been its primary use case. Open source frameworks like Django, a Python-based web framework, allows more control for sending emails using functions and expressions.

This article shows how to configure an SMTP server and send emails in Django using SMTP.

Project setup and overview

Before proceeding, this tutorial requires a code editor (such as VS Code or Codium) on your preferred device. 

Start by creating a new directory using the command in the terminal:

mkdir exampledirectory

Then change into the directory using the command:

cd exampledirectory

Within the newly created directory, create a virtual environment using the built-in venv module in the command terminal:

python -m venv

This command creates a virtual environment within the folder created earlier. To activate it, use the following command in the terminal:

On Linux and Mac:

source .virtenv/bin/activate

On Windows:

\Scripts\activateCreating a Django project

After activating the virtual environment, proceed to install the Django package from pip:

pip install django

Create a new Django project:

python -m django startproject NewEmailProject

This command creates a project with the name NewEmailProject. To run the project, head to the project directory (NewEmailProject) and run the server:

python manage.py runserver

Open the link for the developmental server in a browser. You see the Django homepage with release notes.

More great content Free online course: RHEL technical overview Learn advanced Linux commands Download cheat sheets Find an open source alternative Explore open source resources Configuration for sending emails

Next, open the settings.py file (in the NewEmailProject folder) to customize configurations for sending emails using Django.

Scroll to the end of the code and update the file with the following code:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.yourserver.com'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
EMAIL_PORT = 465
EMAIL_USE_SSL = True
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'your@djangoapp.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'your password'

Change the value of the EMAIL_HOST depending on your email client. Here are the acceptable values for common email clients:

• Gmail: smtp.gmail.com

• Outlook: smtp-mail.outlook.com

• Yahoo: smtp.mail.yahoo.com

You can change the EMAIL_PORT or leave 465 as the default.

You can use the secure socket layer (SSL) and transport socket layer (TSL) interchangeably as they specify connection security.

To figure out other custom configurations for your email server, check out the full Django Project documentation.

SMTP email backend

The EMAIL_BACKEND expression helps determine the most suitable backend when sending emails through the Django SMTP server. This variable points to smtp.EmailBackend, which receives all the parameters needed for sending emails. It tells Django to send the email to the recipient email using SMTP and not to the console.

Sending emails with SMTP

When the environment is set up and settings.py is updated, you can send emails in Django. You can use an HTML form that sends a post request of the necessary information needed for sending an email.

Create a Django application for sending emails:

python manage.py startapp mail

Next, open the settings.py file and add the Django application (mail) to the INSTALLED_APPS list:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
"django.contrib.admin",
"django.contrib.auth",
"django.contrib.contenttypes",
"django.contrib.sessions",
"django.contrib.messages",
"django.contrib.staticfiles",
"mail"]Send mail function

In the mail application's views.py file, start by importing the EmailMessage and get_connection from django.core.mail:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage, get_connection

The EmailMessage class is responsible for creating the email message itself. The get_connection() function returns an instance of the email backend specified in EMAIL_BACKEND.

Now create a function that accepts a POST request, which contains form data submitted from the client side. Followed by the get_connection() functions parameters containing the email configurations created in the project settings.py file.

Next, import the settings:

from django.conf import settings

This import allows access to the email configurations created in the settings.py. Next, create the variables:

subject, recipient_list,

Then you can message, and store the corresponding attributes used in the HTML form. The email_from variable contains the sender email, which is obtained from EMAIL_HOST_USER in the settings.py file.

After the variables are processed, the EmailMessage class sends an email using the sends() method, and then closes the connection. The send_email() function renders the home.html file containing the email form.

You can create a templates folder within your mail application and store the HTML files within that folder:

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage, get_connection
from django.conf import settings

def send_email(request):  
   if request.method == "POST":
       with get_connection(  
           host=settings.EMAIL_HOST,
     port=settings.EMAIL_PORT,  
     username=settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER,
     password=settings.EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD,
     use_tls=settings.EMAIL_USE_TLS  
       ) as connection:  
           subject = request.POST.get("subject")  
           email_from = settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER  
           recipient_list = [request.POST.get("email"), ]  
           message = request.POST.get("message")  
           EmailMessage(subject, message, email_from, recipient_list, connection=connection).send()  
 
   return render(request, 'home.html')

This is a bootstrap form for generating a message:

<form method="post" action=".">
 {% csrf_token %}
 <div class="mb-3">
     <label for="exampleFormControlInput1" class="form-label">Receipt email address</label>
     <input type="text" class="form-control" name="email" id="exampleFormControlInput1" placeholder="Receipt email address">
   </div>
   <div class="mb-3">
     <label for="exampleInputSubject" class="form-label">Subject</label>
     <input type="text" class="form-control" name="subject" id="exampleInputSubject">
   </div>
   <div class="mb-3">
     <label for="exampleFormControlTextarea1" class="form-label">Message</label>
     <textarea class="form-control" id="exampleFormControlTextarea1" name="message" rows="3"></textarea>
   </div>
   <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Send</button>
 </form>

This form sends a post request to the send_email() function. This processes the form data and sends the email to the recipients.

Now open the urls.py file in the NewEmailProject folder to create the homepage URL. Update the urlpattern list by adding the code path("", send_email) .

Sending email to multiple recipients

To specify multiple recipients when sending the same email, create a new function called send_emails within the views.py file and modify the send function code:

                                     
def send_emails(request):  
    if request.method == "POST":
        with get_connection(  
              host=settings.EMAIL_HOST,
        port=settings.EMAIL_PORT,  
       username=settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER,  
       password=settings.EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD,  
        use_tls=settings.EMAIL_USE_TLS
        ) as connection:  
            recipient_list = request.POST.get("email").split()  
            subject = request.POST.get("subject")  
            email_from = settings.EMAIL_HOST_USER  
            message = request.POST.get("message")  
            print(type(recipient_list))
            EmailMessage(subject, message, email_from, recipient_list, connection=connection).send()  
 
    return render(request, 'send_emails.html')

For the recipient_list variable, I'm using the Python split() method to convert the recipients email string to list so that I can email all of them.

Next, create another HTML file called send_emails.html in the templates folder and use the same form code for the home.html file within it.

To specify multiple email recipients, use a space between each email address:

first@gmail.com second@gmail.com third@gmail.com

You should also update the urlpattern list by adding the code:

path("send-emails/", send_email)Sending HTML emails

You can also send HTML emails with Django using a slightly modified version of the send_email function:

html_message = '''<h1>this is an automated message</h1>'''
msg = EmailMessage(subject, html_message, email_from,recipient_list, connection=connection)
msg.content_subtype = "html"
msg.send()Sending emails with attachment

To include attachment to mails, create a variable and put it in the file path in a string like this:

attachment = "mail/templates/example.png"

Then, move the EmailMessage function to a variable and call the attach_file method followed by the send method:

msg = EmailMessage(subject, message, email_from, recipient_list, connection=connection)
msg.attach_file(attachment)
msg.send()Django email libraries

This guide on sending emails in Django would not be complete if I didn't mention the email libraries that are available to users. Here are some noteworthy email libraries.

• Django mailer is a Django app for queuing as it saves emails in a database and sends the mail out at a designated time.
• Django templated email aims to send templated emails. It offers features like configurable template naming and location, template inheritance, and adding recipients to the CC and BCC lists.
• Anymail allows the use of an email service provider (ESP). By using django.core.mail, it provides a sustained API that avoids tying your code to a single ESP.

Emailing with Django

Sending emails in Django can sound daunting, but it's as simple as creating a virtual environment. You can add Django to the environment and create an email backend. Finally, you can set up an HTML template. Give it a try.

Django is a Python-based web framework that allows more control for sending emails using functions and expressions.

Image by:

Ribkahn via Pixabay, CCO

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Drupal 10 is worth a fresh look Martin Anderso… Tue, 12/13/2022 - 03:00

The popular Drupal open source content management system (CMS) reaches a significant milestone when version 10 is released on December 14. Personally, I think Drupal X sounds way cooler, but so far, my calls to name it that haven't gotten much traction. I enlisted the help of my friend Aaron Judd of Northern Commerce to give us a sense of how cool Drupal X could look:

Image by:

Aaron Judd of Northern Commerce

What's a Drupal, anyway?

Drupal is an open source CMS and development framework. While other CMS options focus on simple long-form content (think blogs) or entirely free-form content (like in Wix or Squarespace), Drupal has made a name for itself in handling more complex content architectures, in multiple languages, with robust content governance. Drupal sites (like this site, Opensource.com!) benefit from a strong role-based access control (RBAC) system, unlimited custom roles and workflows, and a powerful and extensible media library.

Here's a rundown for anyone who hasn't kept tabs on what's coming in the newest major version.

A fresh face

Most Drupal sites use custom themes to give them a unique look and feel. Still, the initial experience you have when installing a CMS matters. In Drupal, themes define the look and feel of a site, and you can use different themes for public and administrative experiences. Until recently, the Bartik and Seven themes had been the default face of Drupal for more than a decade. To put that in context, when Bartik was released, the most popular browser in the world was Internet Explorer 8. A lot has changed since then, particularly around best practices for building websites.

In fact, a significant change in Drupal 10 will be the removal of support for Internet Explorer (IE), which is itself no longer supported by Microsoft and hasn't seen major updates since 2013. That may not sound like an improvement, but continued support for IE kept the community from adopting modern markup and styling. For example, thanks to being unencumbered by support for legacy browsers, Drupal 10 includes a new responsive grid layout that's so innovative it got a writeup in CSS Tricks.

Image by:

(Martin Anderson-Clutz, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The new faces of Drupal are two brand new themes: Olivero for visitors and Claro for admins. In addition to being fresh and modern designs, both were developed with accessibility as a top priority.

Improvements under the hood

More than a decade ago, the Drupal community decided to "Get Off the Drupal Island." That meant adopting solutions shared across popular projects and frameworks instead of ones developed and maintained exclusively by the Drupal community. Today Drupal leverages a variety of projects and libraries whose names will be familiar to open source developers who have never touched Drupal: Symfony, Composer, CKEditor, Twig, Nightwatch, and more.

That has brought a variety of powerful capabilities to Drupal and allowed it to contribute back to those solutions, benefitting a broader set of developers. It has also become a determining factor for the cadence of Drupal's major version releases.

To illustrate, consider that Drupal 7 was released in early 2011. Drupal 8 was released almost five years later, towards the end of 2015. Drupal 9 was released in June of 2020, with a key motivator being the move to supported versions of underlying dependencies and removing deprecated code. And now, roughly two and half years later, we're already planning to release Drupal 10. This new major version will leverage updated versions of PHP, Symfony, and Composer, among others.

An all-new editor

An upgrade of particular note is the move to CKEditor 5. Although notionally an incremental update, under the hood CKEditor 5 was completely rewritten, much the same as the transition from Drupal 7 to 8. In addition to a sleeker interface, CKEditor 5 has the potential for exciting new capabilities, such as real-time collaboration. Drupal's CKEditor integration for version 5 has already been augmented with a number of UI enhancements. For example, media placed within content can be configured using an overlaid toolbar ribbon instead of needing to launch a modal dialog to access these settings. Also, the styles dropdown now includes a preview of each type available.

Image by:

(Martin Anderson-Clutz, CC BY-SA 4.0)

More great content Free online course: RHEL technical overview Learn advanced Linux commands Download cheat sheets Find an open source alternative Explore open source resources A look ahead

Earlier in 2022, Drupal creator and project lead Dries Buytaert announced a focus on "ambitious site builders." This means that while the community will continue to work on making the developer experience better in general, moving forward there is a particular focus on making it easier to create engaging experiences in Drupal without having to write code or use command-line tools. Three strategic initiatives embody this new focus: Automatic Updates, the Project Browser, and Recipes.

Automatic Updates will reduce the total cost of ownership for Drupal sites and help them be more secure by ensuring they always have the latest core security patches. This will be a major benefit for site owners and Drupal development teams everywhere. However, judging by personal experience, Wednesday night pizza sales may take a hit (traditionally, the Drupal security team releases updates on the third Wednesday of the month). There is now a stable release of Automatic Updates as a contrib module. Work has begun to move this into Drupal core, so all Drupal sites will eventually be able to leverage this capability.

The Project Browser makes Drupal sites easier to build, maintain, and evolve by allowing site builders to search and browse through a subset of Drupal's vast catalog of available modules, prefiltered to the site's Drupal version, for security, stability, and more. A site builder can select, download, and install a module without leaving the site's web interface. In fact, there's an "app store" like interface meant to promote the most popular modules available that are compatible with the current site's version of Drupal. While other CMS options have had similar offerings, this advancement means you don't need to sacrifice ease-of-use to take advantage of the power of Drupal. Also, all of the thousands of modules listed are 100% free. 

For many years Drupal has had a concept of distributions. These are opinionated versions of Drupal designed to meet specific use cases such as media publishing, fundraising, intranet portals, and more. While distributions have proven an excellent way to accelerate initial development, in practice, they have been known to require significant work to maintain and create extra work for site owners during maintenance. The Recipes initiative aims to make more granular, composable functionality available when building a site. Want to add a staff directory, events calendar, or locations map to your site? In the future, this will be as easy as installing a recipe and then customizing it to meet your site's specific needs.

It's an exciting time to try Drupal

Drupal 10 is the culmination of work contributed by thousands of dedicated and talented community members worldwide. If you're not already using Drupal, we hope you'll try it out for your next project. There's a common saying among Drupalists: "Come for the code, stay for the community."

Drupal 10 is chockful of useful features, a fresh look, and a brand-new editor.

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Opensource.com

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Try this Linux web browser as your file manager Seth Kenlon Tue, 12/13/2022 - 03:00

Konqueror is a file manager and web browser for the KDE Plasma Desktop. In many ways, Konqueror defined "network transparency," as it applied to a personal desktop. With Konqueror, you can browse remote network files (including the Internet itself, which really is just a collection of remote files viewed through a fancy lens) just as easily as browsing your local files. Sometimes there was some configuration and setup required, depending on what kind of file share you needed to access. But ultimately, the goal of having instant access to all the data you had permission to view was a reality with Konqueror in ways no other file manager had achieved. And at its peak, the open source web engine it developed (KHTML) was adopted by both Apple and Google, and lives on today as the core library of modern web browsing and, technically, Electron app development.

Today, the KDE Plasma Desktop lists Konqueror as a web browser. Officially, file management has shifted over to Dolphin, but Konqueror is still capable of doing the job. For the full and classic Konqueror experience, you should try the Plasma Desktop 3.x fork TDE, but in this article I use Konqueror in KDE Plasma Desktop version 5.

Install Konqueror

If you're running KDE Plasma Desktop already, you may already have Konqueror installed. If not, you can install it from your distribution's software repository. On Fedora, CentOS, Mageia, OpenMandriva, and similar:

$ sudo dnf install -y konqueror konqueror-plugins

On Debian, Linux Mint, Elementary, and similar:

$ sudo apt install -y konqueror konqueror-plugins Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Configure Konqueror as a file manager

The most convenient feature of Konqueror is that it's a web browser in addition to being a file manager. Or at least, that's theoretically its most convenient feature. If you're not using Konqueror as a web browser, then you may not want the URL field or the search engine field at the top of every file manager window.

As with most KDE applications, Konqueror is highly configurable. You can reposition and add and remove toolbars, add or remove buttons, and so on.

To adjust what toolbars are displayed, launch Konqueror and go to the Settings menu and select Toolbars Shown. The Main toolbar is probably all you really need for file management. It's the toolbar with navigation buttons on it. However, you may not even need that, as long as you're happy to navigate with keyboard shortcuts or using the Go menu.

Keyboard navigation in Konqueror is the same as in Dolphin:

• Alt+Left arrow: Back one step

• Alt+Up arrow: Move to parent directory

• Alt+Home: Go to home directory

Side panel

To get a side panel with a listing of common folders, press F9 or select Show Sidebar from the Settings menu. This adds a button bar along the left side of the Konqueror window. Click the Home icon to display a file tree of your home directory.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

As the button bar suggests, this side panel can serve many purposes. Instead of your home directory, you can display bookmarked locations, a history of recent locations you've visited, remote filesystems, and more.

Applications

Some people are used to an application menu. It's efficient and quick, and always in the same place. Other people prefer to launch applications from the terminal.

There's yet another way to view application launchers, though. Konqueror's Go menu allows you go to a meta location called Applications, which lists application launchers, by category, as files in a file manager.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

You can see this in Dolphin, too, by manually typing applications: in the location field, but of the two it's Konqueror that provides a menu option to go there directly.

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Similarly, Konqueror also provides a menu selection to go to network folders. The greatest network folder of them all is the Internet, but Network Folders is the meta location for network protocols other than HTTP. Most remote locations require some setup because they usually require authentication to access. Most of them can be configured through System Settings, including file systems accessible over Bluetooth, SMB or CIFS, MTP devices, Fish (file system over SSH), and even Google Drive.

Split view

You can split the Konqueror window into panes, allowing you to see two folders at once without opening two windows. There are two split options: a vertical split with one pane on the left and the other on the right, or a horizontal split with one pane above the other.

To split the Konqueror window, go to the Window menu and select either Split View Left/Right or Spit View Top/Bottom. Each pane is independent of the other, so you can navigate around in one pane, and then drag and drop files from one to the other.

Conquering your file system

Konqueror isn't just a file manager, and I don't think the developers of the Plasma Desktop expect you to use it as your primary file manager. There's even an option in the File menu to open a location in Dolphin, which indicates that Konqueror is a web browser with a file manager component. But that file manager component is a nice feature to have when you need it. And if you're not a fan of all the features Dolphin offers, Konqueror could be a suitable alternative.

The KDE Plasma Desktop lists Konqueror as a web browser, but it is also a functional Linux file manager.

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A sysadmin's guide to Carbonio Arman Khosravi Mon, 12/12/2022 - 03:00

Carbonio Community Edition (Carbonio CE) is an open source no-cost email and collaboration platform by Zextras. It provides privacy for organizations seeking digital sovereignty by using on-premises self-hosted servers. Using self-hosted servers offers a deeper level of control over infrastructure and data. However, it requires more attention to server configurations and infrastructure management to guarantee data sovereignty. Tasks done by system administrators play an important role in this matter. This makes administrative tasks a crucial part of achieving digital sovereignty, therefore, an administrative console dedicated to such tasks becomes extremely valuable to facilitate sysadmins' everyday jobs.

This is why Zextras launched the first release of its own admin panel for Carbonio CE on October 2022. For Carbonio CE system administrators, it is the first step toward the creation of an all-inclusive admin console.

In this article, I go into detail about the Carbonio CE Admin Panel and take a deeper look into what it can accomplish.

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

What is the Carbonio CE Admin Panel?

The Carbonio CE Admin Panel is designed to assist the Carbonio CE system administrators with the most repetitive and frequent tasks such as user management and domain configuration. It is a browser-based application that runs on a particular port and is available for system administrators to use in production environments as soon as Carbonio CE is installed.

More for sysadmins Enable Sysadmin blog The Automated Enterprise: A guide to managing IT with automation eBook: Ansible automation for Sysadmins Tales from the field: A system administrator's guide to IT automation eBook: A guide to Kubernetes for SREs and sysadmins Latest sysadmin articles Why do you need the admin panel?

Everything done in Carbonio CE Admin Panel can be done through the command-line interface as well. This raises the question: why might system administrators prefer using the admin panel rather than the command-line interface?

Using the admin panel has its own obvious advantages such as:

• Making repetitive activities much easier to perform

• Saving system administrators' time monitoring servers

• Providing a much easier learning process for junior system administrators

Even though using the admin panel makes administrative tasks easier to perform, there is more to using this native user interface for Carboino CE. In essence, the Carbonio CE Admin Panel gives you the ability to monitor and manage your organization server from a single centralized location. Even when you're far away, you may still access your admin panel to check the status of servers and carry out various administrative activities.

Creating and managing user accounts

Managing users has always been one of the most, if not the most, performed action by sysadmins. Therefore it should be an essential part of every administrative GUI available for system administrators. Suppose you, as the system administrator of the company have received some request by users to edit some information on their account. For instance, giving them access to some features, or your company has hired new employees, or some employees have left the company. All these scenarios require a sysadmin to manage user accounts frequently.

Using the Carbonio CE Admin Panel you can simply go to Domains > select a domain > Accounts and select any account to modify, or press the + button to add a new account.

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Creating and managing mailing lists

Besides creating user accounts, a system administrator is often required to create different mailing lists that reflect the organizational structure of the company. Using mailing lists, users can simply send emails to a group of users by inserting the list address instead of every user address one by one.

Creating mailing lists in Carbonio CE is extremely easy using the admin panel. You need to go to Domains > select a domain > Mailing List > press the + button. You can now use the wizard that opens up to create a mailing list.
 

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The essential steps to follow are:

• Insert the name

• Insert the mailing list address

• Press NEXT

• Insert the members

• Press CREATE.

You can follow the same path to edit mail lists created before.

Creating and managing domains

Managing domains is another task frequently done by system administrators. Similar to accounts, creating a domain is very easy in the Carbonio Admin Panel. You only need to go to Domains > select a domain > under the details and find different entries to monitor the status of the domain. To create a new domain simply click on the CREATE button on the top bar and select Create New Domain and insert the necessary information such as:

• Domain name

• Maximum number of accounts and maximum email quota

• Mail server where the domain is hosted

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Creating and managing mailstore servers

The Carbonio CE Admin Panel allows system administrators to manage different servers present in the infrastructure and provide them with different tools to configure them. To monitor a new mailstore server you can go to Mailstores > Servers List and find all the available mailstore servers in your infrastructure in a list (when just one server is installed, only one server is shown in this area).

Under Server Details, you can select any of the available servers in the list and select Data Volumes to show more details of the storage volumes attached to it. While multiple volumes can be mounted simultaneously, only one primary volume, one secondary volume, and one index volume can be designated as active. You can add new volumes using the NEW VOLUME + button in the same section. You can also change the volume properties simply by clicking on them to open their detail window.

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Creating and managing classes of service

Another scenario that can be facilitated with the help of the admin panel is creating classes of service (COS). After the installation, a system administrator might need to create different classes (groups) and assign different properties to them. This way, later in the process each user or a group of users can be easily nominated to a class of service in order to have access to the features and properties assigned to that specific COS.

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

To create a COS simply click on the CREATE button and select Create New COS or alternatively go to COS on the left panel and click on CREATE NEW COS +. You can then insert the name of the COS and define the different services available to this specific class.

To edit a COS, go to COS on the left panel and select a COS from the dropdown menu at top of the list.

You can define settings like quotas, the mail servers that can host accounts from this COS, or enable features for this COS. You can also define features for general features like Mail, Calendar, and Contacts. Additional customizable options include Tagging, Out of Office Reply, Distribution List Folders, and so on.
 

Image by:

(Arman Khosravi, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Conclusion

In this article, you saw a few scenarios in which the Carbonio CE Admin Panel saves you time and effort. The admin panel is an evolution of classical administrative tools in a new and centralized interface that gives the possibility of accessing different functionalities and monitoring tools from the same location.

Carbonio Community Edition is an open source collaboration tool. Here's how to use its admin panel.

Image by:

opensource.com

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A Linux file manager for Vim fans Seth Kenlon Mon, 12/12/2022 - 03:00

Ranger is a terminal-based file manager that uses Vim-like keyboard commands. If you're working in a terminal all day, running Sed and Awk commands and using Vim, then you might want a way to manage files without leaving the comforting glow of your amber-on-black screen. There are, of course, the ls and cd commands, but sometimes you want to "walk through" your system, or maybe you want to mimic a graphical experience without the graphics.

Install Ranger

On Linux, you may find Ranger in your Linux distribution's software repository. On Fedora, CentOS, Mageia, and similar:

$ sudo dnf install ranger

For instance, on Debian, Elementary, Linux Mint, and similar:

$ sudo apt install ranger

On macOS, use Homebrew or MacPort.

Using Ranger

If you use Vim, then Ranger is the terminal-based file manager for you. Sure, there's the NERDTree plugin for use while in Vim, but Ranger has all the conveniences of a file manager plus the interface conventions of Vim. If you don't know Vim (yet), then Ranger can serve as a nice introduction to the way Vim is operated.

Launch Ranger from a terminal:

$ ranger

Your terminal is now the Ranger interface, and by default, it lists the contents of your current directory.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

By default, Ranger uses a three-column layout. From left to right:

• List of home directories on your system.

• List of directories.

• Contents of the selected directory.

The basic interactions with Ranger can be performed with either your arrow keys or with the classic Vim navigation controls of the hjkl keys.

• Up or K: Move to the previous item in a list, making it the active selection.

• Down or J: Move to the next item in a list, making it the active selection.

• Right or L: Move into a directory or open a file.

• Left or H: Move to the parent directory.

If all you need to do is search for a file and open it, then you now know as much about Ranger as you need to know.

Of course, managing files is more than just navigating and opening files. The most common file management tasks have single-key shortcuts assigned to them, and you can view a complete list by pressing ? and then K for key bindings.

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You can select (or "mark," in Ranger terminology) a file or directory three different ways.

First, whatever happens to be highlighted in the Ranger window is considered the active selection. By default, any action you take is performed on your active selection. When you first launch Ranger, the active selection is probably the Desktop folder, which is usually at the very top of the list in your home directory. If you press the Left arrow, then you move into the Desktop folder and whatever item is at the top of that list becomes the active selection. This is the keyboard version of clicking on a file or folder in a graphical file manager.

The other way is to mark several files at once. To mark your current selection, press Spacebar. The item you've marked is indented one space and changes color, and your cursor is moved to the next item in the list. You can press Space again to select that item or move to a different item and press Space on it to add to your marked selection. This is the keyboard version of drawing a selection box around several items in a graphical file manager.

The third way is to select all items in a folder. To select everything, press v on your keyboard. To unselect everything, press v again.

Copy a file

To copy (or "yank," in Ranger terminology) your current selection (whether it's a single file or several files), press y y on your keyboard (that's the letter y twice in a row.)

To paste a file that you've copied, navigate to your target directory and press the p key twice in a row.

Move a file

To move a file from one location to another, press d twice in a row. Then move to your target location and press p twice.

Commands

In Ranger as in Vim, you can drop out of the normal mode of interaction to enter a command by pressing the : key.

For instance, say you've descended deep into a series of directories and subdirectories, and now you want to get to your Zombie_Apocalypse folder quickly. Press : and then type cd ~/Zombie_Apocalypse and press Return. You're instantly taken to the ~/Zombie_Apocalypse folder.

There are lots of commands to choose from, and you can see them all by pressing ? and then c for commands.

Tab

Ranger is a tabbed interface, just like your web browser. To open a new tab, press Ctrl+N. A tab number appears in the top right of the Ranger interface. To move between tabs, press Alt along with the number of the tab you want to switch to.

Split window

While the default view of Ranger is hierarchical columns, you can use an alternate view that splits the Ranger interface into two (or more) panels. This is useful for moving files from one directory to another quickly, or for comparing the contents of directories.

To split Ranger's interface, you change the view mode to multipane. This is done with the command set. To run a command in Ranger, you press : and then type your command:

:set viewmode multipane

When you split the Ranger interface, you're actually expanding tabs into one view. Instead of columns, you're now looking at two or more distinct single columns.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Instead of moving between these columns with Right and Left arrows (or h and l), you switch between tabs with Alt and a number. For instance, if you have three tabs open as split panes, the left column is Alt+1, the middle is Alt+2, and the right column is Alt+3.

A file manager for Vim users

Ranger is an obvious choice for you if you're a longtime Vim user, or if you just want to immerse yourself in the Vim style of working. The transition from Vim to Ranger and back again is nearly seamless, so fire up your favorite multiplexer and launch Ranger and Vim for easy access.

Use the Ranger file manager without leaving the comfort of your Linux terminal.

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Simplify your Linux PC with the PCManFM file manager Seth Kenlon Sun, 12/11/2022 - 03:00

The PCMan File Manager, or PCManFM for short, is a fast and lightweight file manager that's full of features. It was developed for the LXDE desktop environment, but is a stand-alone application and can be used with the desktop or window manager of your choice.

Install PCManFM

On Linux, you can probably find PCManFM in your software repository. For instance, on Fedora, Mageia, and similar:

$ sudo dnf install pcmanfm

On Debian, Elementary, and similar:

$ sudo apt install pcmanfm Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

PCManFM doesn't have to replace your desktop's file manager, but some distributions assume that when you install a "third party" file manager, you want it to take precedence over the default. Depending on the desktop you're using, there are different ways of setting your default file manager. Usually, it's in System Settings under Default Applications.

If your desktop environment or window manager has no interface to select your default applications, you can set your preference in the ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list file. To designate a file manager as default, place it at the top of the [Default Applications] section, first specifying the file type and then the name of the application file (as it appears in /usr/share/applications) you want to use to open it:

inode/directory=myfilemanager.desktop;PCManFM

If you're a fan of GNOME 2 or the Mate project's Caja file manager, then PCManFM is a great alternative to consider. PCManFM is a lot like Caja in design, but it's not bound to the desktop in the way Caja is, so it's available even on the latest GNOME desktop.

The default layout of PCManFM has a helpful toolbar near the top of the window, a side panel providing quick access to common directories and drives, and a status bar with details about your current selection. You can hide or show any of these elements using the View menu.

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PCManFM also uses tabs. If you've never used a tabbed file manager before, then think of a web browser and how it uses tabs to let you open multiple web pages in just one window. PCManFM can similarly open several directories in the same window.

To transfer a file or folder from one tab to another, just drag the file's icon to the tab and hover. After a nominal delay, PCManFM brings the target tab to the front so you can continue your drag-and-drop operation. It takes some getting used to if you're not used to interacting with tabs in a file manager, but it doesn't take long, and it's a very powerful feature for decluttering your workspace.

Another nice feature of the PCManFM interface is its ability to split a window into two panels. Each panel is effectively a tab, but each one only takes up half of the window.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

This makes dragging from one to the other just as easy and natural as dragging a file into a folder. I find it useful for comparing the contents of folders, too.

File management with PCMan

PCManFM is a great little file manager with all the basic features you need on an everyday basis. It's a natural replacement for a file manager you might find too complicated, as well as a great option on old computers that might struggle with a file manager that's constantly drawing thumbnails and refreshing and generating animations. PCMan focuses on the core task of a file manager: managing files. Try it out on your Linux PC.

PCMan File Manager is a great option for making old computers feel more efficient.

Image by:

LSE Library. Modified by Opensource.com. CC BY-SA 4.0

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How to use the Linux file manager for GNOME 2 Seth Kenlon Sat, 12/10/2022 - 03:00

Before GNOME 3 there was (unsurprisingly) GNOME 2, which had gained an ardent fanbase during its reign as one of the common default Linux desktops. The Mate project (named after the yerba mate plant) began as an effort to continue the GNOME 2 desktop, at first using GTK 2 (the toolkit GNOME 2 was based upon) and later incorporating GTK 3. Today, Mate delivers a familiar desktop environment that looks and feels exactly like GNOME 2 did, using the GTK 3 toolkit. Part of that desktop is the Caja file manager, a simple but robust application that helps you sort and organize your data.

Install Caja

Caja isn't exactly a stand-alone application. It's tightly coupled to the Mate desktop, so to try it you must install Mate.

You may find Mate included in your Linux distribution's software repository, or you can download and install a distribution that ships Mate as its default desktop. Before you do, though, be aware that it's meant to provide a full desktop experience, so many Mate apps are installed along with the desktop. If you're running a different desktop, you may find yourself with redundant applications (two PDF readers, two media players, two file managers, and so on). To evaluate Caja without making major changes to your computer, install a Mate-based distribution in a virtual machine using GNOME Boxes.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Clear layout

The thing that you're likely to notice first about Caja is its clear and direct layout. There's a toolbar across the top of the Caja window with buttons for common tasks. I love this kind of design. Function isn't hidden away in a right-click menu, nor discoverable only after an action, nor buried in a menu. The "obvious" actions for the window are listed right across the top.

Under the main toolbar is the location bar. This displays your current path, either as a series of buttons or as editable text. Use the Edit button to the left of the path to toggle whether it's editable or not.

Configurable

For longtime users of GNOME 2 or Caja, the main toolbar can be redundant, especially once you know the keyboard shortcuts to invoke common actions. That's why the Caja interface is configurable. You can disable major components of the Caja window from the View menu, including:

• Main toolbar

• Location bar

• Side panel

• Extra panel

• Status bar

In short, you can make Caja as minimal as you want it to be.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles Tag your folders

Some people are "visual" people. They like to organize files and folders according to how they perceive their data, rather than how the computer interprets it. For instance, if the two most significant folders for you are Music and Work, it can be hard to convince a computer that there's any relationship between those two. Alphabetically, there's a lot that should get started between the two, and the contents of each may be completely different (media files in one, spreadsheets in another).

Caja offers some assistance.

With Caja, you can place directories manually within a window, and Caja remembers that placement. What's more, Caja has a variety of emblems available for you to use as visual labels. You can find them in the Edit menu, in Backgrounds and Emblems. Drag and drop them onto files and folders to help them stand apart.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Caja

As file managers go, Caja is one of the most inviting. It's configurable enough to appeal to many different use cases, and in those configuration options, you're likely to find a workflow that works for you. If you're a fan of GNOME 2, then you're sure to find Caja familiar, and if you've never used GNOME 2 then you might just find your new favorite desktop in Mate.

If you're a fan of GNOME 2, then you're sure to find Caja familiar, and if you've never used GNOME 2 then you might just find your new favorite desktop in Mate.

Image by:

Gunnar Wortmann via Pixabay. Modified by Opensource.com. CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Install open source solar power at home Joshua Pearce Fri, 12/09/2022 - 03:00

You might have already given some thought to powering your home with solar. Solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, have fallen so far down in cost that it makes economic sense everywhere. That is why large companies have put in a lot of solar, and even the electric utilities have started installing massive solar farms—it simply costs less than antiquated fossil fuels. Like most homeowners, you would like to save money and eviscerate your electric bill, but you are probably cringing a bit at the upfront cost. To get a rough idea of the cost, a 5kW system that would power an average home installed at $3/W would cost about $15,000, while a larger home might need 10kW to offset all of their electricity purchases and cost $30,000. If you want batteries, double the cost (you don’t need batteries as most solar arrays connect to the grid, but if the grid goes down, so does your solar array until it is turned back on.) Paying for all your electricity for the next several decades is an investment, even if you save a lot of money.

There is some good financial news. First, both the US and Canada have enacted a 30% tax credit for solar. This credit drops the price down to about $2/W. Second, Opensource.com previously discussed how you could get a free book, To Catch the Sun, that walks you through how to design your own system (you will still need a certified electrician and inspections to attach it to the grid). If you are a little handy, you can cut the remaining cost by about 50%. These costs are primarily for materials, including solar panels, wiring, electronics, and racking. Amazingly, solar panel costs have dropped so low for small solar systems (like the ones for your house) the racking (mechanical structures that hold the solar panels up) can cost more than the panels!

Open source to the rescue again

Applying the open source development paradigm to software results in faster innovation, better products, and lower costs. The same is true of open source hardware—and even in the relatively obscure area of photovoltaic racking. Nearly all commercial photovoltaic racking is made from proprietary odd aluminum extrusions. They cost a lot of money. If you have a bit of unshaded backyard, you have a few open source racking solutions to choose from.

Open source solar rack designs

The first DIY solar rack design meets the following criteria: (1) made from locally-accessible renewable materials, (2) 25-year lifetime to match solar warranties, (3) able to be fabricated by average consumers, (4) able to meet Canadian structural building codes (if you live where there is no snow this is a bit overkill, but, hey, you might have other weather extremes like hurricanes to deal with), (5) low cost and (6) that it is shared using an open source license. The open source wood-based fixed-tilt ground-mounted bifacial photovoltaic rack design works throughout North America. The racking system saves from 49% to 77% compared to commercial proprietary racking. The racking design, however, is highly dependent on the cost of lumber, which varies worldwide.

Check your local cost of wood before you dive into this open source design.

Image by:

(Joshua Pearce, CC BY-SA 4.0)

If you are even more adventurous, you might consider this second design that allows you to change the tilt angle. The results of the second study show the racking systems with an optimal variable seasonal tilt angle have the best lifetime energy production, with 5.2% more energy generated compared to the fixed-tilt system (or 4.8% more energy, if limited to a maximum tilt angle of 60°). Both fixed and variable wooden racking systems show similar electricity costs, which are only 29% of that of proprietary commercial metal racking. The variable tilt rack provides the lowest cost option even when modest labor costs are included and also may provide specific advantages for applications such as agrivoltaics (i.e., you can garden underneath the panels and amazingly get increases in yields for shade-tolerant crops like lettuce). This design has been certified by OSHWA with CERN-OHL-S-2.0 licenses.

IMAGE

Image by:

(Joshua Pearce, CC BY-SA 4.0)

There is about 1kW for each of the 2 PV module racks shown. So a house would need about five of them. Both papers provide full calculations and step-by-step build instructions.

As anyone with a solar system will tell you, getting a negative electricity bill is pretty rewarding. This happens if you size your system to meet all of your load and live in a net-metered part of the country. Please note that the electric utilities don’t pay you; the credit carries over until you use it in the winter.

Have fun with a little open source solar!

Check out these two open source designs for solar power wood racks you can build for your home.

Image by:

Photo by Jason Hibbets

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A Linux file manager for Emacs fans Seth Kenlon Fri, 12/09/2022 - 03:00

In 2009, I was working hard at a startup in Pittsburgh, and in the late evenings of coding, I developed a GNU Emacs habit. The thing about Emacs is that it's just too versatile to close. Whether you're writing code, writing articles about open source, jotting down a task list, or even playing music, you can do it all from within Emacs. And every time you think you've found a task outside of Emacs, you discover an Emacs mode to prove you wrong. One of my favorite reasons to not close Emacs is its file manager, called directory editor or just Dired.

Install GNU Emacs

Dired is included with Emacs, so there's no install process aside from installing Emacs itself.

On Linux, you can find GNU Emacs in your distribution's software repository. On Fedora, CentOS, Mageia, and similar:

$ sudo dnf install emacs

On Debian, Linux Mint, Elementary, and similar:

$ sudo apt install emacs

On macOS, use Homebrew or MacPort.

For Windows, use Chocolatey.

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

File management with Dired

Dired mode is a text-based file management system. It can run in the graphical version of Emacs or in the terminal version of Emacs, making it a flexible, lightweight, and approved for use during a zombie apocalypse.

To launch it, press Ctrl+X and then d. You're prompted in the mini buffer (the field at the bottom of the Emacs window) for the directory you want to open. It defaults to your home directory (~).

/home/tux:
total used in directory 40 available 88.1 GiB
drwx------. 17 tux  tux  4096 Sep 20 15:15 .
drwxr-xr-x.  5 root root   42 Sep 14 05:29 ..
-rw-------.  1 tux  tux   938 Sep 20 15:28 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--.  1 tux  tux    18 Nov  6  2021 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--.  1 tux  tux   141 Nov  6  2021 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--.  1 tux  tux   492 Nov  6  2021 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x. 16 tux  tux  4096 Sep 20 14:23 .cache
drwx------. 16 tux  tux  4096 Sep 20 14:51 .config
drwxr-xr-x.  2 tux  tux    59 Sep 20 15:01 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x.  2 tux  tux     6 Sep 15 15:54 Documents
drwxr-xr-x.  3 tux  tux   166 Sep 20 15:12 Downloads
-rw-r--r--.  1 tux  tux   334 Oct  5  2021 .emacs
drwx------.  2 tux  tux     6 Sep 20 14:25 .emacs.d
-rw-------.  1 tux  tux    33 Sep 20 15:15 .lesshst
drwx------.  4 tux  tux    32 Sep 15 15:54 .local
drwxr-xr-x.  6 tux  tux    81 Sep 15 16:03 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x.  2 tux  tux     6 Sep 15 15:54 Music
drwxr-xr-x.  2 tux  tux    59 Sep 20 14:52 Pictures
[...]

The file listing provided looks familiar to anyone accustomed to ls -l in a terminal. From left to right:

• Identifies the entry as a directory, if applicable, and then lists the file permissions

• The number of hard links to the entry (for example, the Desktop entry has 1 hard link representing itself, and 1 file in it)

• User

• Group

• Disk space used, in bytes

• Time last modified

• File name

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles Navigation

To navigate Dired, you can use either the arrow keys or standard Emacs key bindings. For this article, I use Emacs notation: C- for Ctrl and M- for Alt or Meta.

• C-p or Up arrow: Previous entry in list

• C-n or Down arrow: Next entry in list

• Enter or v: Descend into the selected directory

• ^: Move "up" the directory tree to the current directory's parent

Refreshing the view

Dired doesn't redraw the screen for every action, so sometimes you may need to prompt it to refresh. Press g to redraw a Dired listing.

Open a file

One of the reasons you use a file manager is to find a file and then open it. Emacs can't open every file type, but you might be surprised at just how much it can handle. Then again, not everything it can handle is necessarily useful to you. For instance, it's nice that Emacs can open a JPEG but I rarely view a JPEG in Emacs, and I certainly don't use it to edit a JPEG.

Assuming you're considering the types of files you find Emacs useful for, you can open them directly from Dired. That includes text files (Asciidoc, Markdown, HTML, CSS, Lua, Python, and so on) as well as compressed TAR archives.

To close a file that you've opened, use the C-x C-k Emacs binding to invoke the kill-buffer function.

Copy a file

To copy a file from one directory to another, press C (that's the capital letter C, not the Ctrl key). You're prompted to provide a destination directory and file name in the mini buffer at the bottom of the Emacs window.

Move a file

Moving a file is, confusingly, renaming a file (the exact opposite terminology used in Linux, where renaming a file is actually moving a file.) I've used Dired for years and I still fail to remember this linguistic quirk.

To rename a file, whether you're renaming it back into its current directory or renaming it to some other directory, press R (capital R.) You're prompted to provide a destination directory and a new file name in the mini buffer at the bottom of the Emacs window.

Selecting files

There are a few ways to mark selections in Dired. The first is to have your cursor on the same line as a file or directory entry. If your cursor is on the same line as an entry, then that entry is considered the implicit selection. Any action you take in Dired that targets a file targets that one. This includes, incidentally, "marking" a file as selected.

To mark a file as selected, press m while your cursor is on its line. You can mark as many files as you want, and each one is considered selected. To deselect (unmark) a file, press the u key.

Yet another way to select multiple lines at once is to use a specialized selection function. Dired has several, including dired-mark-directories to mark all directories in a list, dired-mark-executables to select all binary executables in a list, dired-mark-files-regexp to mark files containing a regex pattern, and more. If you're not a regular Emacs user, this is a considered advanced because it requires you to invoke Emacs functions, but here's how to do it and what to look for.

Suppose you want to select all directories in a list:

1. Press M-x to activate the mini buffer prompt.

2. Type dired-mark-directories and press Return on your keyboard.

3. Look at the mini buffer. It tells you how many directories have been marked, and then it tells you that you can invoke this function again in the future with * / key combination.

Any function in GNU Emacs that has a key binding associated with it reveals the keys to you after you've invoked it in its long form.

Creating an archive

To create an archive of a file or a selection of files, press c (that's a lower-case c, not Ctrl). If you have nothing selected (or "marked" in Emacs terminology), then the current line is compressed. If you have files marked, then they're compressed into a single archive. In the mini buffer at the bottom of the Emacs window, you're prompted for a file name and path. Luckily, Emacs is a smart application and derives the target file type from the name you provide. If you name your archive example.tar.xz, then Emacs creates a TAR archive with lzma compression, but if you name it example.zip then it creates a ZIP file.

Cancel an action

Should you accidentally invoke a function you don't want to finish, press C-g (that's Emacs notation for Ctrl+G.) Depending on where you are in the course of the function, you may have to press C-g in the mini buffer specifically to stop it from prompting you to continue. This is true for Emacs as a whole, so learn this valuable trick for Dired and carry it over to every mode you use.

Emacs is always open

To quit Dired, you press C-x C-k to kill the Dired buffer, just as you kill any Emacs buffer.

To quit Emacs altogether, press C-x C-c.

Dired is a very capable file manager, and I've only covered the basics here. For a full list of what Dired can do, press they h key.

I think Dired is probably most useful to those using or intending to use Emacs. I probably wouldn't choose it as a general-purpose file manager on a graphical system, because there are so many great alternatives already configured to work with the rest of the system when opening files. Of course, Emacs is infinitely configurable, so if you really enjoy Dired you can set it to do whatever you want it to do.

For a headless system, though, I find that Dired makes a great file manager. Emacs is such a robust operating environment as it is, and Dired only adds to its versatility. With Emacs open, you have a built-in file manager, shell, multiplexer, text editor, and file previewer. You could very nearly use Emacs essentially as your login shell.

Dired is a good text-based file manager, and well worth a look.

Dired is included with Emacs and is a useful text-based file manager on Linux.

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7 pro tips for using the GDB step command Alexandra Thu, 12/08/2022 - 03:00

A debugger is software that runs your code and examines any problems it finds. GNU Debugger (GBD) is one of the most popular debuggers, and in this article, I examine GDB's step command and related commands for several common use cases. Step is a widely used command but there are a few lesser known things about it which might be confusing. Also, there are ways to step into a function without actually using the step command itself such as using the less known advance command.

No debugging symbols

Consider a simple example program:

#include
int num() {
return 2;
}
void bar(int i)
{
printf("i = %d\n", i);
}
int main()
{
bar(num());
return 0;
}

If you compile without the debugging symbols first, set a breakpoint on bar and then try to step within it. The GDB gives an error message about no line number information:

gcc exmp.c -o exmp
gdb ./exmp
(gdb) b bar
Breakpoint 1 at 0x401135
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, 0x0000000000401135 in bar ()
(gdb) step
Single stepping until exit from function bar,
which has no line number information.
i = 2
0x0000000000401168 in main ()Stepi

It is still possible to step inside the function that has no line number information but the stepi command should be used instead. Stepi executes just one instruction at a time. When using GDB's stepi command, it's often useful to first do display/i $pc. This causes the program counter value and corresponding machine instruction to be displayed after each step:

(gdb) b bar
Breakpoint 1 at 0x401135
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, 0x0000000000401135 in bar ()
(gdb) display/i $pc
1: x/i $pc
=> 0x401135 <bar+4>: sub $0x10,%rsp

In the above display command, the i stands for machine instructions and $pc is the program counter register.

It can be useful to use info registers and print some register contents:

(gdb) info registers
rax 0x2 2
rbx 0x7fffffffdbc8 140737488346056
rcx 0x403e18 4210200
(gdb) print $rax
$1 = 2
(gdb) stepi
0x0000000000401139 in bar ()
1: x/i $pc
=> 0x401139 <bar+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles Complicated function call

After recompiling the example program with debugging symbols you can set the breakpoint on the bar call in main using its line number and then try to step into bar again:

gcc -g exmp.c -o exmp
gdb ./exmp
(gdb) b exmp.c:14
Breakpoint 1 at 0x401157: file exmp.c, line 14.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());

Now, let's step into bar():

(gdb) step
num () at exmp.c:4
4 return 2;

The arguments for a function call need to be processed before the actual function call, so num() is expected to execute before bar() is called. But how do you step into the bar as was desired? You need to use the finish command and step again:

(gdb) finish
Run till exit from #0 num () at exmp.c:4
0x0000000000401161 in main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());
Value returned is $1 = 2
(gdb) step
bar (i=2) at exmp.c:9
9 printf("i = %d\n", i);Tbreak

The tbreak command sets a temporary breakpoint. It's useful for situations where you don't want to set a permanent breakpoint. For example, if you want to step into a complicated function call like f(g(h()), i(j()), ...) , in such a case you need a long sequence of step/finish/step to step into f . Setting a temporary breakpoint and then using continue can help to avoid using such sequences. To demonstrate this, you need to set the breakpoint to the bar call in main as before. Then set the temporary breakpoint on bar.  As a temporary breakpoint it is automatically removed after being hit:

(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());
(gdb) tbreak bar
Temporary breakpoint 2 at 0x40113c: file exmp.c, line 9.

After hitting the breakpoint on the call to bar and setting a temporary breakpoint on bar, you just need to continue to end up in  bar.

(gdb) continue
Continuing.
Temporary breakpoint 2, bar (i=2) at exmp.c:9
9 printf("i = %d\n", i);Disable command

Alternatively, you could set a normal breakpoint on bar , continue, and then disable this second breakpoint when it's no longer needed. This way you can achieve the same results as with the tbreak with one extra command:

(gdb) b exmp.c:14
Breakpoint 1 at 0x401157: file exmp.c, line 14.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());
(gdb) b bar
Breakpoint 2 at 0x40113c: file exmp.c, line 9.
(gdb) c
Continuing.
Breakpoint 2, bar (i=2) at exmp.c:9
9 printf("i = %d\n", i);
(gdb) disable 2

As you can see, the info breakpoints  command displays n under Enbwhich means it’s disabled but you can enable it later if it’s needed again.

(gdb) info breakpoints
Num Type Disp Enb Address What
1 breakpoint keep y 0x0000000000401157 in main at exmp.c:14
breakpoint already hit 1 time
2 breakpoint keep n 0x000000000040113c in bar at exmp.c:9
breakpoint already hit 1 time
(gdb) enable 2
(gdb) info breakpoints
Num Type Disp Enb Address What
1 breakpoint keep y 0x000000000040116a in main at exmp.c:19
breakpoint already hit 1 time
2 breakpoint keep y 0x0000000000401158 in bar at exmp.c:14
breakpoint already hit 1 timeAdvance location

Another option you can use is an advance command. Instead of tbreak bar ; continue , you can simply do advance bar . This command continues running the program up to the given location.

The other cool thing about advance is that if the location that you try to advance to is not reached, GDB will stop after the current frame's function finishes. Thus, execution of the program is constrained:

Breakpoint 1 at 0x401157: file exmp.c, line 14.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());
(gdb) advance bar
bar (i=2) at exmp.c:9
9 printf("i = %d\n", i);Skipping a function

Yet another way to step into the bar, avoiding num, is using the skip command:

(gdb) b exmp.c:14
Breakpoint 1 at 0x401157: file exmp.c, line 14.
(gdb) skip num
Function num will be skipped when stepping.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/ahajkova/exmp
Breakpoint 1, main () at exmp.c:14
14 bar(num());
(gdb) step
bar (i=2) at exmp.c:9
9 printf("i = %d\n", i);

To know which functions are currently skipped,  info skip is used.  The num function is marked as enabled to be skipped by y:

(gdb) info skip
Num Enb Glob File RE Function
1 y n <none> n num

If skip is not needed any more it can be disabled (and re-enabled later) or deleted altogether. You can add another skip and disable the first one and then delete them all. To disable a certain skip, its number has to be specified, if not specified, each skipis disabled. It works the same for enabling or deleting a skip:

(gdb) skip bar
(gdb) skip disable 1
(gdb) info skip
Num Enb Glob File RE Function
1 n n <none> n num
2 y n <none> n bar
(gdb) skip delete
(gdb) info skip
Not skipping any files or functions.GDB step command

Using GDB's step command is a useful tool for debugging your application. There are several ways to step into even complicated functions, so give these GDB techniques a try next time you're troubleshooting your code.

There are several ways to step into even complicated functions, so give these GDB techniques a try next time you're troubleshooting your code.

Image by:

Pixabay, testbytes, CC0

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Our favorite markup languages for documentation Opensource.com Thu, 12/08/2022 - 03:00

Documentation is important for so many reasons. Readable documentation is even more so. In the world of open source software, documentation is how to use or contribute to an application. It's like the rulebook for a game. 

There are many different types of documentation:

• Tutorials

• How-to guides

• Reference guides

• Software architecture

• Product manuals

We asked some of the Opensource.com contributors about their technical documentation workflow, which markup language they preferred, and why they might use one over the other. Here's what they had to say.

AsciiDoc

For the past several years, Markdown has been my standard language. But recently I decided to give AsciiDoc a try. The syntax is not difficult and Gedit on my Linux desktop supports it. I plan to stick with it for a while.

—Alan Formy-Duval

In terms of low-syntax markup, I prefer AsciiDoc. I like it because its conversion process is consistent and predictable, with no surprise "flavor" variations to confuse things. I also love that it outputs to Docbook, which is a markup-heavy syntax that I trust for longevity and flexibility.

But the "right" choice tends to be what a project is already using. I wouldn't write in AsciiDoc if a project uses Strawberry-flavored Markdown. Well, to be fair, I might write in AsciiDoc and then convert it to Strawberry-flavored Markdown with Pandoc.

I do think there is a time and place for Markdown. I do find it more readable than AsciiDoc. Links in AsciiDoc:

http://example.com[Example website]

 Links in Markdown:

[Example.com](http://example.com)

The Markdown syntax is intuitive, delivering the information in the same way that I think most of us parse the same data when reading HTML ("Example website…oh, that's blue text, I'll roll over it to see where it goes…it goes to example.com").

In other words, when my audience is a human reader, I do often choose Markdown because its syntax is subtle but it's got enough of a syntax to make conversion possible, so it's still an OK storage format.

AsciiDoc, as minimal as it is, just looks scarier.

If my audience is a computer that's going to parse a file, I choose AsciiDoc.

—Seth Kenlon

More great content Free online course: RHEL technical overview Learn advanced Linux commands Download cheat sheets Find an open source alternative Explore open source resources reStructuredText

I'm a big fan of docs as code and how it brings developer tools into the content workflows. It makes it easier to have efficient reviews and collaboration, especially if engineers are contributors. 

I'm also a bit of a markup connoisseur, having written whole books in AsciiDoc for O'Reilly, a lot of Markdown for various platforms, including a thousand posts on my blog. Currently, I'm a reStructuredText convert and maintain some of the tooling in that space. 

—Lorna Mitchell

Obligatory mention of reStructuredText. That's my go-to these days as I do a lot of Python programming. It's also been Python's standard for documentation source and code comments for ages.

I like that it doesn't suffer quite so much from the proliferation of nonstandards that Markdown does. That said, I do use a lot of Sphinx features and extensions when working on more complex documentation.

—Jeremy Stanley

HTML

I rarely use markup languages if I don't have to.

I find HTML easier to use than other markup languages though.

—Rikard Grossman-Nielsen

For me, there are various ways to make documentation. It depends on where the documentation is going to be whether on a website, as part of the software package, or something downloadable.

For Scribus, the internal documentation is in HTML, since an internal browser is used to access it. On a website, you might need to use a Wiki language. For something downloadable you might create a PDF or an EPUB.

I tend to write the documentation in a plain text editor. I might use XHTML, so that I can then import these files into an EPUB maker like Sigil. And, of course, Scribus is my go-to app for making a PDF, though I would probably be importing a text file created with a text editor. Scribus has the advantage of including and precisely controlling placement of graphics.

Markdown has never caught on with me, and I've never tried AsciiDoc.

—Greg Pittman

I'm writing a lot of documentation in HTML right now, so I'll put in a plug for HTML. You can use HTML to create websites, or to create documentation. Note that the two are not really the same — when you're creating websites, most designers are concerned about presentation. But when you're writing documentation, tech writers should focus on content.

When I write documentation in HTML, I stick to the tags and elements defined by HTML, and I don't worry about how it will look. In other words, I write documentation in "unstyled" HTML. I can always add a stylesheet later. So if I need to make some part of the text stronger (such as a warning) or add emphasis to a word or phrase, I might use the and tags, like this:

<p><strong>Warning: Lasers!</strong> Do <em>not</em> look into laser with remaining eye.</p>

Or to provide a short code sample within the body of a paragraph, I might write:

<p>The <code>puts</code> function prints some text to the user.</p>

To format a block of code in a document, I use .. like this:

void
print_array(int *array, int size)
  {
  for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
  printf("array[%d] = %d\n", i, array[i]);
  }
}

The great thing about HTML is you can immediately view the results with any web browser. And any documentation you write in unstyled HTML can be made prettier later by adding a stylesheet.

—Jim Hall

Unexpected: LibreOffice

Back in the 80s and 90s when I worked in System V Unix, SunOS, and eventually Solaris, I used the mm macros with nroff, troff and finally groff. Read about MM using groff_mm (provided you have them installed.)

MM isn't really a markup language, but it feels like one. It is a very semantic set of troff and groff macros. It has most things markup language users would expect—headings, numbered lists, and so on.

My first Unix machine also had Writers' Workbench available on it, which was a boon for many in our organization who had to write technical reports but didn't particularly write in an "engaging manner". A few of its tools have made it to either BSD or Linux—style, diction, and look.

I also recall a standard generalized markup language (SGML) tool that came with, or perhaps we bought for, Solaris in the very early 90s. I used this for awhile, which may explain why I don't mind typing in my own HTML.

I've used Markdown a fair bit, but having said that, I should also be saying "which Markdown", because there are endless flavors and levels of features. I'm not a huge fan of Markdown because of that. I guess if I had a lot of Markdown to do I would probably try to gravitate toward some implementation of CommonMark because it actually has a formal definition. For example, Pandoc supports CommonMark (as well as several others).

I started using AsciiDoc, which I much prefer to Markdown as it avoids the "which version are you using" conversation and provides many useful things. What has slowed me down in the past with respect to AsciiDoc is that for some time it seemed to require installing Asciidoctor—a Ruby toolchain which I was not anxious to install. But these days there are more implementations at least in my Linux distro. Curiously, Pandoc emits AsciiDoc but does not read it.

Those of you laughing at me for not wanting a Ruby toolchain for AsciiDoc but being satisfied with a Haskell toolchain for Pandoc… I hear you.

I blush to admit that I mostly use LibreOffice these days.

—Chris Hermansen

Document now!

Documentation can be achieved through many different avenues, as the writers here have demonstrated. It's important to document how to use your code, especially in open source. This ensures that other people can use and contribute to your code properly. It's also wise to tell future users what your code is providing. 

Documentation is critical to open source software projects. We asked our contributors what their favorite markup language is for documentation.

Image by:

Internet Archive Book Images. Modified by Opensource.com. CC BY-SA 4.0

Documentation Opensource.com community What to read next Cheat sheet: Markdown This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. 4576 points United States

Alan has 20 years of IT experience, mostly in the Government and Financial sectors. He started as a Value Added Reseller before moving into Systems Engineering. Alan's background is in high-availability clustered apps. He wrote the 'Users and Groups' and 'Apache and the Web Stack' chapters in the Oracle Press/McGraw Hill 'Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration' book. He earned his Master of Science in Information Systems from George Mason University. Alan is a long-time proponent of Open Source Software.

| Follow AlanFormy_Duval User Attributes Correspondent Open Source Sensei People's Choice Award Gamer Linux SysAdmin Geek Java Apache DevOps Author Comment Gardener Correspondent Contributor Club 28371 points New Zealand (South Island)

Seth Kenlon is a UNIX geek, free culture advocate, independent multimedia artist, and D&D nerd. He has worked in the film and computing industry, often at the same time. He is one of the maintainers of the Slackware-based multimedia production project Slackermedia.

User Attributes Team Open Source Super Star Moderator's Choice Award 2011 100+ Contributions Club Best Interview Award 2017 Author Columnist Contributor Club 77 points UK

Lorna is based in Yorkshire, UK; she is a polyglot programmer as well as a published author and experienced conference speaker. She brings her technical expertise on a range of topics to audiences all over the world with her writing and speaking engagements, always delivered with a very practical slant. Lorna works in Developer Relations at Aiven and in her spare time she blogs at lornajane.net.

| Follow lornajane Open Enthusiast Author 217 points Kill Devil Hills, NC, USA

A long-time computer hobbyist and technology generalist, Jeremy Stanley has worked as a Unix and GNU/Linux sysadmin for nearly three decades focusing on information security, Internet services, and data center automation. He’s a root administrator for the OpenDev Collaboratory, a maintainer of the Zuul project, and serves on the OpenStack vulnerability management team. Living on a small island in the Atlantic, in his spare time he writes free software, hacks on open hardware projects and embedded platforms, restores old video game systems, and enjoys articles on math theory and cosmology.

Open Minded People's Choice Award Author 6961 points Vancouver, Canada

Seldom without a computer of some sort since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1978, I have been a full-time Linux user since 2005, a full-time Solaris and SunOS user from 1986 through 2005, and UNIX System V user before that.

On the technical side of things, I have spent a great deal of my career as a consultant, doing data analysis and visualization; especially spatial data analysis. I have a substantial amount of related programming experience, using C, awk, Java, Python, PostgreSQL, PostGIS and lately Groovy. I'm looking at Julia with great interest. I have also built a few desktop and web-based applications, primarily in Java and lately in Grails with lots of JavaScript on the front end and PostgreSQL as my database of choice.

Aside from that, I spend a considerable amount of time writing proposals, technical reports and - of course - stuff on https://www.opensource.com.

User Attributes Correspondent Open Sourcerer People's Choice Award 100+ Contributions Club Emerging Contributor Award 2016 Author Comment Gardener Correspondent Columnist Contributor Club 152 points Sweden

Hello my name is Richard and I’m an intermediate Linux user diagnosed with ADHD and
Asperger's.

On a daily basis I use Linux for java programming, productivity and gaming.
I’m also a trained teacher, male, 39yrs of age, living in Sweden. I first started using Linux in late 90s. One of the first distros I installed was Redhat due to it's ease of use.
Today I mostly use Ubuntu and Manjaro.

I'm among other things interested in how Linux and open source software can be made more accessible to people with conditions like ADHD, Asperger's and Dyslexia.
mind.

I use accessibility software due to being diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD.
I mostly use speech synthesis to find spelling errors and calendar software with accommodations.

I can be reached at:
rikardgn@gmail.com

Open Minded Author Contributor Club 4538 points Louisville, KY

Greg is a retired neurologist in Louisville, Kentucky, with a long-standing interest in computers and programming, beginning with Fortran IV in the 1960s. When Linux and open source software came along, it kindled a commitment to learning more, and eventually contributing. He is a member of the Scribus Team.

Open Source Sensei Emerging Contributor Award 2017 Awesome Article Award 2019 Python Author Contributor Club 5069 points Minnesota

Jim Hall is an open source software advocate and developer, best known for usability testing in GNOME and as the founder + project coordinator of FreeDOS. At work, Jim is CEO of Hallmentum, an IT executive consulting company that provides hands-on IT Leadership training, workshops, and coaching.

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