Issue #169 / Dec 2014

Highlights:

This month we offer a sneak peek at security features in the upcoming Android L release.

SERVICE: Welcome

Sometimes I'm amazed at how this column just slips out into the world and no one says much about it. One thing I do hear occasionally is that "It's refreshing that you aren't just summarizing the contents of the issue, which is what most welcome columns do." I do plead guilty to having a great many opinions, some of which I manage to share from time to time in this space. However, in this case, my opinion does point to an article you'll see in this month's issue.

SERVICE: This Month's DVD

Oracle Linux 7 and KaOS 2014.08

NEWS: News

Updates on Technologies, Trends, and Tools

COVER STORIES: New Android Security

A sneak peek at security features in the upcoming Android L release

Google says the upcoming Android L release will be far more secure than its predecessors.

COVER STORIES: ECMAScript 6

Web programming with ECMAScript 6

The new ECMAScript 6 language eliminates many historical problems associated with JavaScript.

COVER STORIES: Portia

Aggregating data with Portia

Are you interested in retrieving stock quotes in machine-readable form off the Internet? No problem: After a few mouse clicks, Portia weaves a command line and wraps the data in JSON format.

COVER STORIES: Flask

Exploring the Flask web framework in Python

The Flask micro framework emerged from an April Fool's prank, but this simple and easy web development aid is no joke.

FEATURES: Stat-like Tools for Admins

Stat-like command-line tools for admins

ASCII tools can be life savers when they provide the only access you have to a misbehaving server. However, once you're on the node what do you do? In this article, we look at stat-like tools: vmstat, dstat, and mpstat.

FEATURES: Ask Klaus!

Klaus Knopper answers your Linux questions

Answers to your Linux questions.

FEATURES: Virtualizing complex Linux systems

Migrating RAID – Erratum

A correction to the Migrating RAID article in issue 168 (November 2014).

FEATURES: QPxTool

Using QPxTool to check optical drives and media for errors

Optical disks vary greatly in terms of quality. To use them optimally and avoid data errors, you need only two things: Linux and QPxTool.

FEATURES: Charly's Column: Air Traffic Control

The sys admin's daily grind – Air traffic control

When he sees vapor trails in the skies above the Lower Rhine area, sys admin Charly Kühnast doesn't just dream of faraway places. With a Linux system and a DVB-T stick, he grabs the signals from jets flying overhead and tracks their courses on a map.

FEATURES: Discourse Forum Framework

Discourse – Bringing civilized discussion to the Internet

The open source Discourse framework modernizes bulletin boards and online forums with live updates as you read, providing never-ending scrolling, community moderation capabilities, heuristic spam blocking, special layouts for mobile devices, and more.

FEATURES: Perl: Network Monitoring

Automatically monitoring your home network

To discover possibly undesirable arrivals and departures on their networks, a Perl daemon periodically stores the data from Nmap scans and passes them on to Nagios via a built-in web interface.

FEATURES: Facy

Command-line client for Facebook

The Ruby-based Facy command-line client lets you display Facebook streams at the command line, as well as comment and post messages. However, getting there can be tricky.

LINUXUSER: Command Line: Calendar Tools

Calendaring from the command line

We take a spin through several personal calendar apps that you can manage from the command line.

LINUXUSER: Krita Project

Krita: Listening to the pros

Krita began as a hobby but became one of free software's success stories with the help of its users.

LINUXUSER: Strut Presentation Tool

Create and edit presentations with Strut

The open source Strut tool lets you create slideshows and other presentations quickly and easily – with no compatibility issues.

LINUXUSER: Workspace: ExifTool

Using ExifTool

Understanding the full power of ExifTool can be daunting. We show how to put it to practical use.

COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK: Doghouse: Product Testing

Don't rush the testing process

"maddog" recounts a tale illustrating the importance of thorough product testing.

COMMUNITY NOTEBOOK: Kernel News

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.