Open-source News

Microsoft Increasing Linux Security On Hyper-V With VTL/VSM Support  Phoronix

A few months back the generic xf86-video-modesetting X.Org driver added TearFree page-flipping support. The option eliminates screen tearing without the use of a compositor and was seen as a win by many for this generic DDX driver that works atop the modern DRM/KMS kernel drivers. But a rather annoying issue was discovered that could lead to audio/video synchronization problems was uncovered and is now fixed in the latest driver code...

Loongson engineers continue working to improve their MIPS64-derived, RISC-V-inspired LoongArch CPU architecture code. With the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel are yet more improvements, including now supporting Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) for better security...

LoongArch With Linux 6.3 Enhances Security With KASLR  Phoronix

The BFQ I/O scheduler has long been suited well for MMC/SD card storage devices with a single queue now finally with Linux 6.3 the Kconfig setup will suggest/imply that I/O scheduler to help ensure it gets built...

Linux 6.3 Now Suggests The BFQ I/O Scheduler When Building MMC/SD Support  Phoronix

Iron Tiger's SysUpdate Reappears, Adds Linux Targeting  Trend Micro

3 myths about open source CMS platforms pierina.wetto Wed, 03/01/2023 - 03:00

There are two choices when it comes to building a website. You can choose an open source platform like Drupal or WordPress, or a proprietary platform overseen by a company like Adobe or Microsoft. How do you know which is best for your website?

Things to consider:

• How much user support will I get?

• Which is better for security?

• Is the cost within budget?

For organizations with limited budgets, the choice is either an open source site or something less flexible like Wix or Squarespace – the cost attached to a proprietary platform might be out of reach. However, for a large enterprise organization, both approaches have pros and cons worth addressing.

Proprietary platforms can be attractive to many large organizations for several reasons. In addition to promising great platforms customized to the client's business needs, proprietary arrangements typically offer full hosting plans. The company behind the CMS handles all updates, upgrades, security issues, and bugs – often 24/7.

While proprietary software comes with a high price point, there's a sense of justification behind it: at least you get what you pay for.

It's worth noting, though, that many of the world's biggest corporate brands use Drupal as their CMS of choice, including General Electric, Tesla, IBM, Paramount Global, United Airlines, and the Royal Family. The Government of Australia operates on Drupal, as does the Government of Ontario, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), several US state governments, and countless other government agencies around the world.

So, why do organizations that have large budgets for web development opt for an open source platform, despite the supposed advantages touted by proprietary providers?

The answers are numerous, ranging from a need for financial accountability to the supportive nature of the Drupal community. These factors more than make up for any potential shortcomings of the open source model.

This article runs through some popular myths around proprietary and open source platforms that continue to influence decision making.

Myth #1: Proprietary platforms provide better user support

One of the main selling points of proprietary platforms is that its vendors promise 24/7 client support should anything go wrong with the site, or if you need anything customized. This 24/7 support comes at a cost. For institutions concerned about sudden emergencies, this is obviously an appealing offering that for many justifies the price tag.

What proprietary vendors won't tell you, however, is that open source platforms like Drupal provide much of the same service (typically in tandem with an agency and an infrastructure partner like Acquia or Pantheon). This is provided at no cost through their networks of volunteers and sponsored contributors.

Drupal, for example, is supported by a global community of hundreds of thousands of contributors who work collaboratively to address technical issues and improve the platform.

In the Drupal world, when you find a bug and create a report within the community, the response — while not necessarily instantaneous — is typically fast. While mission-critical sites like government platforms will need to pay somebody to be available for 24/7 support, this broader community support is of enormous benefit to all Drupal users.

Proprietary platforms do have counterparts to this type of community, but they're oftentimes much smaller. Sitecore, for example, advertises that it has a community of 20,000 developers. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the scope of the Drupal developer community.

Myth #2: Proprietary is more secure than open source

This is a stubborn myth — understandably. Open source code, by its nature, is publicly available to anyone, including individuals with malicious intent. In contrast, proprietary platforms keep their codebases under lock and key. The for-profit nature of proprietary vendors gives them a greater (financial) incentive to track down and neutralize bad actors.

The unpopular truth is that proprietary platforms are every bit as vulnerable to attacks as their open source counterparts — if not more so.

For one thing, most security breaches don't come from hackers scouring source code for weak spots, but from avoidable human lapses such as failures to follow security guidelines, improper software setup, use of easy passwords, lack of data validation processes, and absence of data encryption techniques. These lapses are no less likely to occur on a proprietary platform than they are on an open source one.

Paradoxically, the open source nature of platforms like Drupal is actually more of a help than a liability when it comes to cybersecurity. Open source code means that anyone with the know-how can search for and identify vulnerabilities. And with an army of over a million developers contributing behind the scenes, it's safe to say that Drupal takes its security very seriously. Proprietary vendors, by contrast, are limited in this capacity by their cybersecurity staffing numbers.

Myth #3: Proprietary costs more, so you get more value

It's widely believed that when you opt for a less expensive product —in this case, an open source website — you're either settling for a "less-good" quality product or setting yourself up for additional costs down the road in the form of upgrades and modifications. Proprietary websites may cost more at the outset, but at least you know you're getting something of real quality and the costs are predictable.

In truth, there is no difference in quality between open source and proprietary websites. It all depends on the quality of workmanship that goes into building the sites. And while any website project is vulnerable to budget overruns, proprietary platforms are actually more prone to them than open source ones.

When you opt for a proprietary platform, you automatically commit to paying for a license. This may be a one-time cost or a recurring subscription fee. In many cases, proprietary providers charge on a "per-seat" basis, meaning that the larger your team gets, the more expensive maintaining your website becomes. An open source site, by contrast, costs nothing beyond what you spend on design, and is in fact much more predictable from a cost standpoint.

This is of particular importance to governments, whose website development and renewal costs are publicly available and subject to intense media scrutiny. The Government of Canada faced negative press after it hired Adobe to restructure a vast swath of federal websites under the Canada.ca URL. A project originally valued at $1.54 million in 2015 had by the following year ballooned to $9.2 million. While details were scant, some of this budget overrun was attributed to costs due to additional staffing requirements. Cue impending doom music.

Websites built on open source platforms like Drupal aren't cheap to develop, but the costs are almost always more predictable. And when it's the taxpayers who are footing the bill, this is a major advantage.

Bonus: Open source = wider talent base

If you're a large government organization with complex web needs, chances are you'll be looking to hire in-house developers. From this standpoint, it makes much more sense to opt for an open source web platform in terms of available talent. The magnitude of the Drupal community relative to, say, Sitecore, means that your LinkedIn search is far more likely to turn up Drupal specialists in your area than Sitecore experts.

Similar disparities exist when it comes to providing your staff with training. Drupal training is widely available and affordable. Hint: they offer customized training. Becoming a licensed developer for something run by Adobe, by contrast, is a much more complex and expensive undertaking.

Why Drupal specifically?

I've touted Drupal extensively throughout this post, as Evolving Web is the home of many Drupal trainers, developers and experts However, it's far from the only open source CMS option out there. WordPress remains the world's most popular CMS platform, being used by some 43% of the world's websites.

Drupal does, however, stand out from the pack in a number of important ways. The Drupal platform simply has more features and is a lot more supportive of customization than most of its open source competitors. This is perhaps less of a big deal if you're a small business or organization with a narrow area of focus. But government websites are generally complex, high-traffic undertakings responsible for disseminating a wide range of content to a diverse array of audiences.

Other cool government sites are using It

Evolving Web recently redesigned the official website for the City of Hamilton. As the main online hub for Canada's ninth largest municipal area, serving some 800,000 people, the City of Hamilton website caters to a wide range of audiences, from residents and local business people to tourists and foreign investors. Its services run the gamut, enabling residents to plan public transit use, pay property taxes, find employment, apply for a marriage license, and get information on recreational activities, among many other options.

The City of Hamilton site exemplifies many of Drupal's strengths. Like many government websites, it encompasses vast swaths of data and resources and is subject to considerable surges in traffic, both of which Drupal is well equipped to handle. The site revamp also involved corralling various third-party services (including the recreation sign-up and council meeting scheduler) and a half-dozen websites that existed outside of Drupal. This required creative solutions of the sort that the Drupal community excels at developing.

More open source alternatives Open source project management tools Trello alternatives Linux video editors Open source alternatives to Photoshop List of open source alternatives Latest articles about open source alternatives Drupal upholds accessibility standards

A further advantage of Drupal for government websites is that its publishing platform, along with all of its other features and services, is designed to be fully accessible in accordance with WCAG standards. Drupal's default settings ensure accurate interpretation of text by screen readers, provide accessible color contrast, and intensity recommendations. They also generate pictures and forms that are accessible and incorporate skip navigation in its core themes.

You are in good company

All this attests to the strengths of the open source model — and of Drupal in particular — underpinned as it is by an army of over a million contributors. Thanks to this, the platform is in a constant state of improvement and innovation, of which every single Drupal user is a beneficiary.

Join the club

At Evolving Web, we specialize in helping organizations harness their online presence with open source platforms like Drupal and WordPress. Let's keep in touch!

Join our inner circle and sign up for our newsletter, where you'll get insider content and hear more about upcoming training programs, webinars and events.

Open source alternatives to proprietary platforms offer benefits for developers and users alike.

Image by:

Opensource.com

Drupal Alternatives What to read next This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

Use your Raspberry Pi as a streaming server Erbeck Wed, 03/01/2023 - 03:00

There are various reasons to stream live video transmissions from webcams. The Raspberry Pi platform is perfect for such applications. It requires little power for continuous applications such as live-streaming servers. Communication with a Raspicam camera module, USB cam, or other network video signals is possible. The system is an RTMP, HLS, and SRT server. This article shows how to set up the Raspberry Pi as a streaming server to use HLS streaming. You need a video source to use it as a streaming server.

Even without a Raspberry Pi, you can do the steps described here. In addition, there are further installation instructions for Windows, Linux, and macOS available.

Setup

The application is datarhei Restreamer, a graphical user interface for the datarhei Core. The datarhei Core runs the well-known media framework FFmpeg under the hood. The easiest way to start with datarhei Restreamer is to install the official Docker container. The download and installation of the program via Docker Hub are automatic with the pull command. Restreamer starts immediately after the installation. If you don't have a Raspberry Pi, use one of the other Docker containers on the datarhei Restreamer GitHub page (e.g., AMD64 or GPU Cuda support).

datarhei Restreamer and datarhei Core are both open source software under the Apache License 2.0.

Here's the command for an installation on a Raspberry Pi 3 and above with GPU support:

docker run -d --restart=always --name restreamer \ -v /opt/restreamer/config:/core/config -v /opt/restreamer/data:/core/data \ --privileged \ -p 8080:8080 -p 8181:8181 \ -p 1935:1935 -p 1936:1936 \ -p 6000:6000/udp \ datarhei/restreamer:rpi-latest

Regardless of which command you use, you only need the --privileged option to access local devices, like a USB camera.

After installation, connect the Raspberry Pi to the local network. Then open the web-based GUI in a browser by navigating to http://device-ip:8181/ui.

You should see the following screen:

Image by:

(Sven Erbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Assign the password, and the system is ready for the first login. A wizard is starting to configure the first video source.

Hint: The above Docker command permanently stores the configuration data with the login name and password in the /opt/restreamer/config folder.

Implementation

The application consists of three logical parts: Video input, system dashboard, and video output. The video input and output run independently of each other.

Video input

The wizard will help you to create a video source right from the start. This can be a USB video source, the Raspberry Pi camera, or a network source like an IP cam or an m3u8 file from a network. HLS, RTMP, and real-time SRT protocol are ready to use. The wizard helps to configure the video resolution and sound correctly. In the last step, you can assign different licenses from Creative Commons. It is worth taking a look at the video signal settings. You will find several options, like transcoding or rotating the video for vertical video platforms.

Dashboard

After successfully creating the video signal, you will land in the dashboard.

Image by:

(Sven Erbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0)

It is the central starting point for all other settings. To see the program's full functionality, you can switch to expert mode in system preferences.

The dashboard contains the following:

• Video signal settings.
• Active content URL for RTMP, SRT, HLS server, and snapshot.
• All active Publication Services for restreaming.
• Start the wizard to create additional video sources.
• The system menu.
• Live-Statistics for the video signal.
• Live-System monitoring.

Video output

There are different ways to play the video signal.

The publication website is the simplest, immediately-ready, and internally hosted landing page by Restreamer. The player page can also transmit to Chromecast and AirPlay. Basic settings like adjusting the background image and adding a logo in the player are possible directly in the Restreamer. Those who know HTML can customize the page for themselves. Advanced users can inject code to use the site with external modules like a chat. A statistics module under the video player shows the active viewers and all views. The Share button supports the distribution of the live stream. HTTPS certificates for the website are active with Let's Encrypt without much effort. With a simple port forwarding for HTTPS to the LAN IP of the Raspberry Pi, the website is publicly accessible.

Image by:

(Sven Erbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The publication services are a great way to restream content. There are numerous ready-made modules for popular websites like YouTube, Twitch, or PeerTube. Likewise, for other streaming software, to popular CDNs. Complete control over the video protocols allows streaming to all RTMP, HLS, and SRT-capable destination addresses. An HTML snippet code with the video player works on web pages.

Image by:

(Sven Erbeck, CC BY-SA 4.0)

More on Raspberry Pi What is Raspberry Pi? eBook: Guide to Raspberry Pi Getting started with Raspberry Pi cheat sheet eBook: Running Kubernetes on your Raspberry Pi Whitepaper: Data-intensive intelligent applications in a hybrid cloud blueprint Understanding edge computing Our latest on Raspberry Pi Save power while streaming with Raspberry Pi

This article shows how to turn the Raspberry Pi into a streaming server. The Raspberry Pi platform allows you to interact with various video signals in a power-saving way. The pre-settings make it easy to configure the server, and advanced users can make some adjustments to the system. You can use it for restreaming, hosting for live-streaming on a website, or integration into system landscapes with OBS. Using different video sources and transport protocols offer great flexibility as a basis for a project and make this system highly customizable. Furthermore, the datarhei Core with FFmpeg makes it easy for software developers to extend all application processes.

The program turns the Raspberry Pi into a dedicated streaming server. Depending on your internet upload, you can live stream to websites or multi-stream to different video networks independently and without an additional video provider.

Test a fully functional demo before installation on the project website with the login name admin and password demo.

Stream live video from webcams with a Raspberry Pi and restream videos to social networks.

Image by:

Opensource.com

Raspberry Pi What to read next This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

The post Getting Started with PowerShell in Linux [Beginner Guide] first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides .

After Microsoft fell in love with Linux (what has popularly come to be known as “Microsoft Loves Linux”), PowerShell which was originally a Windows-only component, was open-sourced and made cross-platform on 18 August 2016,

The post Getting Started with PowerShell in Linux [Beginner Guide] first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.

Linux 6.2, Linux 6.3 Developments, KDE Plasma 5.27 & More Made ...  Phoronix

While a short month there still were 243 original news articles on Phoronix written by your's truly about various open-source and Linux topics. There were also nine additional Linux hardware reviews looking at the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the long-awaited NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080/4090 Linux performance results, and more. Here is a look back at what excited open-source/Linux enthusiasts in February...

Patches to make WINE work on Wayland display server protocol are being merged  The Register

HP Dev One Linux laptop has been discontinued, but HP will offer ...  Liliputing

Incomplete Fedora 38 Changes Pushed Back, Including Dropping ...  Phoronix

With the Fedora Linux change completion deadline passed, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has been eyeing up their approved list to see what didn't make the cut for Fedora 38 that is due out in April...

How to Create an Email Server in Linux with Mail-In-A-Box  Make Tech Easier

NVIDIA 530.30.02 mainline Beta driver rolls out, plus a new Vulkan ...  GamingOnLinux

No, you still can't run Linux on an Apple M1 Mac - yet  TechRadar

After publishing their initial Quantum software development kit beta last year, Intel today released the Quantum SDK 1.0 version to help grow the developer ecosystem for quantum computing...