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Published Work
Linux User & Developer, Issue 110
095 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
This month’s Linux User magazine features my usual group test article – this time on CD ripping packages – along with the last part of my series on becoming a contributor to an open-source project and a review of penetration testing toolkit BackBox Linux 2.01.
The group test required a methodical approach, addressing the most common needs from an audio CD ripping package: the codecs supported; the ability to deal with scratched discs; downloading of CDDB information and cover art; and handling of discs encumbered with digital restrictions management (DRM) technology.
It also provided me with an excuse to listen to some of my favourite music, of course.
Interestingly, the group test result convinced me to switch from my usual CD ripping tool to an alternative thanks to its surprising performance. It’s not often that I’ll make a move from a tool I’m used to as the result of testing like this, but it’s always welcome when it does happen.
The final part of my three-part series looking at contributing to the LibreOffice project finishes off with an investigation of how a contributor can make the leap from mentoree to mentor – a key part of any open source community. It’s something which is all too often overlooked, but as soon as you start to take your first steps on the path you begin to know more than those who start after you. As a result, you have valuable knowledge to share with the community – even though you might consider yourself a mere neophyte.
Finally, there’s the review of BackBox Linux, a distribution aimed at security and penetration testing. As with BackTrack, it’s an Ubuntu derivative but it includes a surprisingly robust suite of utilities – including documentation tools and general-purpose packages like audio utilities and even a scanner driver – which makes it a serious contender despite the immaturity of the project.
Further details on this issue are available over on the Linux User & Developer website.
Micro Mart, Issue 1195
0100 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
My first piece for Dennis Publishing’s weekly IT mag Micro Mart, and it’s a cover feature. Not that I’m boasting or anything. Okay, perhaps I’m boasting a bit.
As you can probably see from the cover it’s a look at AMD’s disappointing launch of its consumer-grade Bulldozer-core processors, the AMD FX Series. Completed to the tightest possible schedule – I received an email requesting a 3,500-word feature on Thursday, with a deadline of the following Monday – it forms an overview of the history of Bulldozer, its launch in the server market, its consumer launch and the complaints that have been raised over its performance.
It also includes comment from an AMD engineer in the company’s Austin facility on what is being done to address the architecture’s problems – not an easy thing to get on such short notice, and massive thanks to AMD’s André Heidekrueger and Bite PR’s Sami Makinen for organising that so quickly.
It’s a nice piece, if I do say so myself, and hopefully won’t be the last to grace Micro Mart’s cover. Fingers crossed for longer deadlines next time, though…
Linux User & Developer, Raspberry Pi Preview
0101 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
While the magazine won’t be out for another couple of months, Imagine Publishing’s Linux User & Developer is running a teaser of my interview with Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton on its website.
Despite being merely a small extract of two points raised in the interview, it’s proving popular: the article has shot to the top of the ‘most read’ list and looks to be staying there for the duration. Another teaser is planned in the coming weeks, while the full interview will be found in the pages of Linux User & Developer Magazine Issue 111.
The teaser can be found over on the Linux User & Developer website.
Linux User & Developer, Issue 109
0116 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
This month’s Linux User & Developer magazine features another cover piece of mine – that’s three in a row, if anyone except me is counting – on Google’s Android 4.0 ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ release and what it means for developers.
It was a fun, if somewhat challenging, piece, involving getting comment and option from industry luminaries including Xamarin chief technical officer Miguel de Icaza, Black Duck Software’s Peter Vescuso, Logic PD’s Mark Benson, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman and others.
Taking up four pages at the heart of the magazine, the feature looks at what has changed in Android 4.0, the industry’s reaction to those changes, what the re-opening of the source code – closed for Android 3.x ‘Honeycomb’ – means, and how developers can look to capitalise on the software’s release to make some serious dough.
Issue 109 also sees the second part of my three-part series on becoming a bug-fixer for open source projects, focusing on the LibreOffice project (thanks largely to how wonderfully helpful its members have been.) Finally, it includes a group test covering popular email clients, a project that saw me asking friends on Twitter to email sample messages to a test account for flavour – and a chance to see themselves in print, too.
More information is available on the Linux User & Developer website.
Bit-Tech, Raspberry Pi Feature
0116 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
Following an interview with Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton last week, the first of two confirmed features: a look at the project, which has created a 700MHz ARM-based credit-card size computer costing just $35, from a modder’s perspective.
Will it take off? Where are the mounting holes? Is it possible to overclock the Broadcom system-on-chip at the heart of the system? What software does it run? Can it play games? Does it support 1080p video playback? Will I ever stop asking these stupid questions?
All this and more answered over on Dennis Publishing’s computing enthusiast site, Bit-Tech.
The second feature to come out of the interview, a more Linux-focused Q&A-style transcription, is scheduled to appear in Imagine Publishing’s Linux User & Developer Magazine, Issue 111.
Bit-Gamer, Games of the Year 2011
0136 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
As part of the Custom PC/Bit-Tech/Bit-Gamer annual round-up, I was asked to be on the judging panel for the Games of the Year 2011 awards. Written by Joe Martin, the annual article is a look at the top five games released throughout the year; while readers might not always agree (read: usually disagree) the piece always generates lots of interest.
Given five votes each, the judging panel put forward their contenders for the title. As usual, the voting covered a pleasing mix of independent games – with two of my votes going to Frozen Synapse and Bastion, two very fine titles to come out of independent game studios this year – and triple-A titles, with no real surprises as to the overall winner.
The full piece can be found over on the Bit-Tech website.
Linux User & Developer, Issue 108
0137 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
Continuing my work for Imagine Publishing, this month’s Linux User & Developer magazine has as its cover story a feature I wrote on the top ten Linux distributions of 2011.
Echoing a similar feature created for Issue 100, this latest run-down was a pleasure to write: as before, its creation involved the downloading, installation and configuration of ten Linux distributions within a virtual machine environment (VirtualBox, if you’re curious) so that screenshots of each can be taken.
Rather than using stock screenshots, each image is specific to the feature and includes the same applications – a media player, a calculator and the application menu – for easy comparison between different distributions’ visual styles.
Doing that takes a fair amount of effort, of course, but the result is worth it.
The feature also collects comments and opinions from distributions’ developers and community members, along with a rapid-fire ‘quick facts’ boxout for each.
Also in this latest issue is the first of a three-part series looking into becoming a bug fixer for an open source software project, using the real-world example of the LibreOffice productivity suite and including input from community members Michael Meeks, André Schnabel and Markus Mohrhard.
More information is available on the Linux User & Developer website.
Linux User & Developer, Issue 107
0178 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
This month’s Linux User & Developer Magazine is a bumper issue for me: as well as another cover story on ten ways to fix common Linux problems, the issue includes my group test of password managers and an in-depth interview with Canonical’s Gerry Carr ahead of the launch of Ubuntu 11.10.
First, the “10 Ways to Fix Linux” piece: this was something of a departure from the norm, but proved a fun challenge. For each problem, the issue needed to be reproduced on a test-bed system – specifically, a VirtualBox environment – in order for screenshots to be taken and each fix tested for viability.
While the piece is unlikely to contain anything to surprise the hardcore among the magazine’s readership, relative newcomers should hopefully find it a useful cut-out-and-keep reference for the most likely issues they’ll come across while using Linux as a personal operating system.
The group test, as is usual, took four popular packages – Seahorse,
KeepassX, PasswordMaker and LastPass – and pitted them against each other to see which emerged the victor. As with most software-based group tests, the packages were installed in a clean Ubuntu environment within VirtualBox to ensure no conflicts were present.
Finally, the interview: conducted over the telephone with Canonical’s Gerry Carr, the piece covered the new features of Ubuntu 11.10, upcoming changes for 12.04, the backlash following the switch from GNOME to Unity on the desktop, and more.
Interviews are always a bit of a pain due to the amount of time taken up with transcription afterwards, but it’s rare they don’t make an interesting read; I’d like to think this one is no exception to that rule.
More information is available on the Linux User & Developer website.
Linux User & Developer, Issue 106
0207 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
This month’s Linux User & Developer magazine includes two pieces of mine: a review of the latest version of the media streaming VortexBox distribution and a group test covering multi-language integrated development environments (IDEs.)
Aimed at the magazine’s developer readership rather than newcomers to Linux, the group test takes four of the most popular development environments – Komodo, Netbeans, Geany and Eclipse – and puts them head-to-head to see which emerges victorious.
While it’s easy to just look at a list of features, care was taken to ensure that the scoring metrics used were useful: how fast each is, the facilities on offer, the languages supported were all included, but perhaps the most important metric of all – and one not normally seen in a group test – was a look at the availability of commercial support.
The review looked at the latest release of VortexBox, a handy media streaming distribution which can turn unused hardware into a Universal Plug ‘n Play (UPnP) server. As with the majority of distribution tests – except where hardware support or 3D acceleration functionality is on trial – the software was installed into a virtual machine running under Oracle’s VirtualBox.
More information is available on the Linux User & Developer website.
Linux User & Developer, Issue 105
0235 days
by Gareth
in Published Work
This month’s Linux User & Developer includes three of my pieces: a review of the Parted Magic Live CD, a group test of command-line compression packages and a step-by-step guide to installing and configuring CMS Made Simple.
The review was fairly standard fare, with one exception: during writing, Parted Magic was going through a rapid development cycle as the maintainer found and fixed bugs. As a result, the review needed to be revised at three separate points during its creation to accommodate changes made in each release. It’s a pain when that happens, but it’s better to start again than publish a review based on outdated code.
The tutorial was a departure from the norm, but a fun challenge nevertheless. Unlike my usual testing process, in which an Ubuntu-based virtual machine is used as the software host, I installed the CMS Made Simple software on an actual live webserver as a true test that the tutorial could be used in a production environment.
As a result of its live, production nature, the latter part of the tutorial looked at securing the CMS Made Simple installation from attack; something which, sad to say, many beginner-oriented tutorials miss to their readers’ peril.
The group test was a technical one this month: taking the command-line compression tools bzip2, lbzip2, gzip and 7Zip, I had to devise a way of testing them to see which is the best option for real-world use.
Taking place on a testbed virtual machine, the test methodology included running compression routines on both synthetic data – sparse data collected from /dev/zero and dense data collected from /dev/urandom – and real-world data.
Using compression times and compression ratios as the scoring mechanism from the benchmark testing, the packages were also rated based on their functionality for use in shell scripts or to be called from other programmes; something in which the readership of Linux User & Developer is likely to be interested.
