archived October writings

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+After a slight, week-long delay to fix some last minute bugs, the Fedora project has released Fedora 23. The latest version of Fedora is a significant update thanks to upstream projects like GNOME, which is now at 3.18, as well as some significant new features from Fedora itself.
+
+Like it's predecessor, Fedora 23 comes in three base configurations -- Workstation, Server and Cloud. The former is the desktop release and the primary basis for my testing, though I also tested out the Server release this time around.
+
+The default Fedora 23 live CD will install the GNOME desktop though there are plenty spins available if you prefer something else. I opted for GNOME since a lot of what's new in GNOME, like much improved Wayland support is currently only really available through Fedora.
+
+I have been hard on Fedora's Anaconda installer in the past, but I am slowly coming around. The installation experience in Fedora 23 is hard to beat, particularly the way you don't need to visit sections if Fedora has guessed something right. For example, Anaconda correctly guest my timezone so I can just skip that panel without even needing to click okay. It's a small thing, but it helps set a certain tone of feature completeness right from the start. 
+
+I still think the button-based approach of Anaconda can sometimes make it hard to figure out what you've missed if it's your first time using the installer. But it's a little clearer in Fedora 23 because there's an additional orange bar across the bottom to tell you about whatever you missed. 
+
+What's perhaps most encouraging about Anaconda is that Fedora continues to refining it. Having just installed and tested Ubuntu and openSUSE, I wouldn't hesitate to say Anaconda is a better experience than either. It's certainly faster thanks to the amount of stuff you can simply ignore.
+
+Once you've got Fedora WorkStation installed the first thing you'll likely notice is GNOME 3.18. GNOME may be upstream from Fedora, but Fedora has long been where GNOME turns to showcase new features and Fedora 23 is no different.
+
+Among the changes in GNOME 3.18 are faster searching, first-class support for integrating Google Drive in Nautilus, support for light sensors (handy on laptops since you can lower the back light setting and extend battery life) and improved Wayland support. More on Wayland in a minute, but some other new features in GNOME 3.18 deserve mention.
+
+GNOME Software now has support for firmware updates via fwupd. The firmware support means means you won't need any proprietary tools nor will you have to resort to pulling out the bootable DVDs. The catch is that the vendor for your hardware needs to upload the firmware to the <a href="https://http://www.fwupd.org/">Linux Vendor Firmware Service</a>.
+
+Another big new GNOME project that arrives in at least limited form with this release is the <a href="https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/SandboxedApps">Xdg project</a>. Xdg is a system for building, distributing and running sandboxed desktop applications. Aside from the security gains of sandboxing, xdg-app also hopes to allow app developers to use a single package for multiple distros. The xdg support in Fedora 23 is still very experimental and none of the apps are actually packaged this way, but look for xdg support to continue expanding in Fedora and GNOME's futures.
+
+Fedora has been an early adopter of Wayland, the X.org replacement that will eventually be the default option (coming perhaps as early as Fedora 24). If you'd like to play around with Wayland this release offers considerably more support than any other distro to date. 
+
+In fact, provided you have supported hardware, Wayland actually works quite well and, with a little extra effort installing some experimental repos can get you really nice features like full GTK 3 support for OpenOffice 5 -- meaning support for HiDPI screens among other things -- and support for running monitors with DPI-independent resolution. That is, you can have hi-res and normal res monitors running off the same machine and it all just works. Reportedly anyway, I don't have the hardware setup to actually test this one.
+
+Not everything GNOME 3.18 is great though. The GNOME project continues its curious take on usability by once again removing something that was genuinely useful. In this case it's the file copy feedback message, which was previously a small window with a progress bar. The window is gone and now you'll have to get by with a tiny icon in the Nautilus window that shows progress via a pie chart looking icon. 
+
+I mention this not so much to poke fun at Nautilus's ever-declining usability, but because it is the only file copy feedback you'll get and unless you know it's there you'll probably keep dragging and dropping files, thinking they haven't copied, when in fact they have you just didn't notice. You silly user wanting feedback about an action you initiated. Sigh. By the time GNOME gets done with it Nautilus won't actually do anything anymore, it will just be a nice looking window you can use to view files.
+
+On the plus side the new Google Drive integration is quite nice. Once you enter your Google account details interacting with your Drive documents in indistinguishable from local documents (provided you have an internet connection that is, without one you'll be looking at a lot of documents you can't actually open).
+
+There are some big changes afoot in the Server release of Fedora 23 as well. Fedora's Cockpit, a web-based management console that aims to make everyone a reasonably compliant sysadmin, has been updated again. You'd be hard pressed to find a simpler visual way to monitor and manage your Fedora server deployments. You can do everything from here, including search for, install and deploy Docker containers with a single click. Cockpit's greatest contribution to the server world isn't its ease of use though, it's that that ease of use means more secure deployments. 
+
+This release continues to improve on security by adding support for SSH key authentication in Cockpit and support for configuring user accounts with authorized keys. Fedora 23 Server also gets a rolekit update with the addition of a new role for a cache server for web applications (powered by memcached). 
+
+All versions of Fedora 23 ship with Linux kernel 4.2, which is pretty close to the latest and greatest, adding new hardware support for Intel Skylake CPUs and AMD GPUs.
+
+Fedora's new DNF package manager gets some more new powers in this release, it's now in charge of system upgrade. That's right, now more fedup, which frankly, didn't make the update process very smooth in my experience. The DNF update process is very simple, just a couple of commands. DNF also uses systemd's support for offline system updates and allows you to roll them back if necessary.
+
+The new upgrade tools are a welcome change not just because upgrading is easier and safer (with the ability to roll back should things go awry), but because Fedora has no LTS style release. Fedora 23 will be supported for 12 months and then you'll need to move on to Fedora 24. That's a bit abrupt if you're coming from the Ubuntu (or especially Debian) world of LTS releases with two years of support. If you want that in the Red Hat ecosystem then you need to turn to RHEL or CentOS. However, now that Fedora is capable of transactional updates with rollbacks the missing LTS release feels, well, less missing since upgrading is less problematic.
+
+Screenshots: 
+
+fedora23-desktop.png The default GNOME 3.18 desktop in Fedora 23.
+fedora23-gdrive.png Setting up a Google Drive account in Fedora 23.
+fedora23-gdrive-nautilus.png Accessing Google Drive files in Nautilus.
+fedora23-wayland.png To access the improved Wayland support log out and select GNOME Wayland.
diff --git a/published/fedora23/fedora23-desktop.png b/published/fedora23/fedora23-desktop.png
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diff --git a/published/leap.txt b/published/leap.txt
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+The openSUSE project is getting ready to make a big "leap" into the future, with a brand new release dubbed, appropriately enough, openSUSE Leap.
+
+Linux distributions need to walk a fine line. On one hand users want rock solid foundations; this is why conservative distros like Debian have long ruled the server. But on the other hand you want the most up-to-date apps on your desktop, hence the popularity of Ubuntu (rather than Debian) for laptops and PCs. 
+
+This can actually be refined a bit more, because the ideal would be to take the underlying tools, the low level system elements from something really conservative and stable and the userland applications from a much more latest and greatest source. 
+
+If that sounds ideal to you then you might want to have a look at the new project from openSUSE: openSUSE Leap.
+
+The core of Leap is SUSE Enterprise Linux, but the userland applications are maintained by openSUSE.
+
+The project notes explain Leap as a way to secure "the future of openSUSE". 
+
+Maintaining a distribution is a lot of work," says the openSUSE Leap wiki, "by basing openSUSE on SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise), the core of openSUSE will be maintained by SUSE engineers... The openSUSE project can then replace and add the bits and pieces of software that contributors want and are willing to maintain."
+
+In other words Leap is the middle ground between the cutting edge Tumbleweed and very conservative SUSE Linux Enterprise. Tumbleweed will still be there for those who want bleeding edge updates, but for most Leap looks like the future of openSUSE. 
+
+Somewhat confusingly for new users, the first version of Leap is openSUSE Leap 42.1. The decision to start at 42 is something of a joke (those that have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will get it) and an acknowledgement that version numbers are essentially meaningless, but the .1 after it is not. The .1 is tied to SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1. The next release of Leap will be 42.2 and tied to SUSE Linux Enterprise SP2.
+
+I took the Leap beta release for a spin and found that for the most part Leap is what you would expect from openSUSE -- a well-themed KDE desktop, a full compliment of applications and some thoughtful extras. Leap has the familiar openSUSE attention to detail and the level of polish that's leaps and bounds beyond what most distros offer.
+
+The first thing you'll notice when installing Leap is that openSUSE's installer has been updated with a few new features. Out of the box the installer will now give you a root partition formatted in btrfs and home partition in XFS. You can also opt for any of the familiar drive formats, like ext4. The openSUSE installer also lets you know what encryption type it's using for your password, which is a nice touch.
+
+I opted to test Leap with KDE because I think openSUSE's KDE desktop is one of the slickest KDE implementations around. That said, Leap's current incarnation is a bit different than the openSUSE 13.2 version I've used in the past. Leap takes a leaner approach with fewer default widgets, a simplified main menu (use KDE's App Menu instead of the full Launcher) and less green theming overall. It was still a great KDE setup, but perhaps a little less polished than usual. Leap is of course still a beta release, which may explain some of the pared down feel.
+
+Some of that could also be that Leap's KDE is living up to the promise of the latest and greatest from userland with Plasma 5.4, Plasma Framework 5.13 and the new Breeze theme for KDE. The "flatter" Breeze theme may not lend itself to as much customization since it has a very distinctive look and feel. Tweaking even a small part of it would likely mean a lot of changes across apps. Fortunately Breeze has a clean, simple look that fits well with openSUSE's very professional feel.
+
+If KDE isn't to your liking Leap has plenty of other options in the repos, including a GNOME-based version, Xfce, LXDE (even LXQT if you want to live on the edge) MATE and Enlightenment.  
+
+The kernel in Leap is also a bit ahead of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Leap beta 1 is using the 4.1.x series kernel, which has some huge improvements for ARM-based systems as well as the usual updates for the latest hardware.
+
+A few things were not entirely current in the beta, like Firefox, which is still at version 40 (version 41 was the latest release when I tested). But by and large Leap does appear to be getting really close to that ideal of a stable base system with all the latest packages available as well.
+
+All the things that make openSUSE great are in Leap as well, including the powerful YaST management system. YaST makes tweaking your system a snap and has some great tools you won't find in most other systems. For example, every time you update packages in Leap (or openSUSE) behind the scenes the Snapper tool takes a Btrfs snapshot (assuming you stuck with the default Btrfs format for your root partition that is). That means you can quickly and easily roll back your system if you break something. YaST also has some of the best GUI tools for managing encrypted volumes, something that can be a huge pain in other distros.
+
+It's the combination of these things -- the powerful tools in YaST, the stability of SUSE Linux Enterprise, the latest packages from Tumbleweed -- that make Leap compelling. It will likely be especially compelling to enterprise deployments. The only thing that feel missing from openSUSE at this point is the widespread adoption from users. Which is to say that the community just doesn't feel as big as what you'll find in the Debian/Ubuntu or even Arch worlds. That may well change with Leap though. If you've ever been on the fence about openSUSE, I strongly suggest giving Leap a try.
+
+Another aspect of the Leap that's worth mentioning is performance. I tested Leap primarily in virtual machines, but I did install it on my old Asus EeePC and was impressed with how snappy it manages to be on what is, at this point, very out of date hardware (for the EeePC I tested the much lighter weight LXDE desktop, not KDE).
+
+One of the measures of a distro is how long it will stand behind its releases and on that score Leap is once again looking like a great release. The precise life cycle of Leap is still up in the air, but expect it to be a "long term support" style release, roughly mirroring SUSE Linux Enterprise. 
+
+At the very minimum, this Leap 42 release will be supported until Leap 43 arrives. Given that Leap 43 will be based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 13, which isn't due for at least two years, it's safe to say that Leap will last quite a while. That said, do keep in mind that this is a beta. This release makes a good preview, but for day to day use you'll want to wait for the final release -- due November 4 -- before diving in with both feet.
+
+Screenshots:
+
+leap-desktop.png The default wallpaper for the KDE flavor of openSUSE Leap
+leap-menu.png By default the KDE version of Leap takes a more stripped down approach, using the KDE App Menu instead of the full Launcher.
+leap-crypt.png Using YaST's built-in partitioning tools to create and mount encrypted volumes.
+leap-snapper.png Browsing Btrfs snapshots with Snapper.
diff --git a/published/password-managers.txt b/published/password-managers.txt
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+News that LogMeIn will purchase the LastPass password manager service was not well received by LastPass users. In fact that outrage was sufficient that LastPass quickly shutdown comments on its blog. Why the outrage and who is LogMeIn? 
+
+LogMeIn may be best known as the company that shut down its free remote desktop sharing service with a mere week's warning. Even in a web filled with capricious, disappearing services LogMeIn's mere week notice stands out as almost spiteful. Combine that with LastPass's less than stellar history of customer service and it's not hard to see why users were unhappy about the deal.
+
+For its part LastPass says its business model is not changing and that the service will remain essentially as-is under its new owners. 
+
+Unfortunately for LastPass fans, if you dig around the Internet Archive you can find similar statements from Delicious, Pownce, Bump and countless other small services that were purchased and later abandoned. LastPass may well be different, but since there's a chance you might only have a week to find something new, now is a good time to start looking for alternatives.
+
+The best alternative to LastPass depends somewhat on how you use LastPass and what, if anything, you'd like to be different. 
+
+There are two broad categories of password managers. The cloud-based solutions like LastPass offer automatic syncing between devices, while others like KeePass reside on your local machine and you're on your own for syncing (which can be done via Dropbox, OwnCloud, SpiderOak, Syncthing or any other you already use). The primary difference between the two approaches comes down to control of your data.
+
+Cloud-based sync services store your data on their servers. The best of these offer zero-knowledge storage, which is to say that your data is encrypted and decrypted only on your devices. That means that these services, the storage system they use behind the scenes and the people working for them have no access to your unencrypted data or your encryption keys. 
+
+If you're looking for a drop-in cloud based replacement for LastPass there are dozens available, but the big standout is <a href="https://www.dashlane.com/">Dashlane</a>. It has everything you're used to with LastPass -- browser plugins, autofill, password strength indicator, secure notes -- and throws in a few things LastPass doesn't offer like the ability to share a password and some digital wallet features.
+
+Dashlane offers a free tier if you just want to try it out, but the free version doesn't sync between devices so to really replace LastPass you'll need to sign up for the premium version, which will <a href="https://www.dashlane.com/premium">set you back $40/year</a>. Also note that there's no Linux client, but there are browser plugins that make it easy enough to use Dashlane on Linux. 
+
+Another noteworthy possibility in the cloud-based category is <a href="https://encryptr.org/">Encryptr</a>. Encryptr is free, open source (based on the <a href="https://crypton.io/">Crypton project</a>, itself an outgrowth of SpiderOak), and reasonably cross platform. It's currently available for Android, Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. An iOS version is in the works, but not yet available.
+
+The problem with Encryptr is that it currently lacks browser integration, which makes it a considerably less capable LastPass replacement. 
+
+Other services worth investigating include the more enterprise-oriented <a href="http://thycotic.com/products/secret-server/">Secret Server</a> and <a href="http://www.scorpionsoft.com/software">AuthAnvil</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.zoho.com/vault/">ZohoVault</a> (which is offering a year of its business version for <a href="https://www.zoho.com/vault/logmein-lastpass-acquisition.html">free to LastPass users</a>). There's also the biometric-based <a href="https://www.stickypassword.com/">Sticky Password</a>.
+
+The problem with replacing LastPass with another, similar, cloud-based service is two-fold. First you may well find yourself back here again in a few years when the new service is sold and, the only real advantage is the built-in syncing. But chances are you're already using some kind of sync service -- be it SpiderOak, Dropbox, Owncloud, SyncThing, etc -- why not sync your passwords yourself?
+
+If you handle the syncing yourself all you need to worry about is finding an application that can encrypt and decrypt your data on all your devices. Fortunately there are quite a few apps that can do that, most notably <a href="http://keepass.info/">KeePass</a>.
+
+KeePass may be slightly confusing for newcomers since there are two variants, KeePass and KeePass X. There's not much difference between them, though KeePass seems to have better plugin support if you'd like to add extra features like syncing to Amazon S3, a duplicate checker, or better Ubuntu integration.
+
+KeePass is a database that stores encrypted versions of all your passwords -- just like the hosted services above -- that you can secure with a master password, key file or both. You can then sync that database file using the syncing tool of your choice and access it on any device that has a KeePass client. There are clients available for Linux, Windows and OS X, as well as unofficial clients for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry and most web browsers.
+
+Depending on your platform, KeePass may not be quite a simple as LastPass, but it does place everything directly under your control, which means you won't have to worry about any web services shutting down or company being sold.
+
+The last possible LastPass replacement that I'll mention is the <a href="https://luxagraf.net/src/pass">password manager I opted for</a>: <a href="http://www.passwordstore.org/">pass</a>. Pass is primarily a command line tool (there are some GUIs available as well, but all are third-party tools), best thought of as a nice wrapper around GnuPG. Pass stores each site or note as a single file that's then encrypted and decrypted using a GPG key. The pass community has created clients for Firefox and Android, which are the other two places I need to access my passwords. It's not for everyone, but if you're comfortable with the command line and want to keep things simple, pass fits the bill.
+
+In a perfect world the LastPass acquisition wouldn't change anything -- the service would just continue as it always has. However, experience shows that it often doesn't work out that way. If you prefer not to wait around and find out, there are, fortunately, plenty of alternatives. The good news is that LastPass hasn't changed anything just yet so you have time to try out the rest and see which one you prefer. I suggest starting out with KeePass or, if you want to stick with something cloud-based and closer to LastPass itself, Dashlane.
+
+screenshots:
+dashlane-desktop.png - Dashlane's desktop password manager on OS X.
+dashlane-browser.png - Dashlane in the browser with the Firefox add-on.
+keepass.png- The KeePass 2 password manager in Ubuntu.
diff --git a/published/ubuntu1510final.txt b/published/ubuntu1510final.txt
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+Canonical has released Ubuntu 15.10, nicknamed Wily Werewolf. This release continues the recent Ubuntu tradition of delivering, well, nothing earth-shattering.
+
+Wily Werewolf brings some new scrollbars, borrowed from GNOME, a minor update for Unity, which is now at version 7.3.2, and an updated kernel with some new hardware support. 
+
+What you won't find in this release are any major changes. It used to be that the x.10 releases were the time when things got experimental, sometimes for the better, as in the case of the Unity shell, which became the only option in 11.10 (technically Unity first showed up in 11.04, but that version still offered a GNOME fallback) and sometimes for the worse, as in the case of Amazon search results which first showed up in 12.10. This release has nothing like that.
+
+Canonical reports that "the general theme for 15.10 on the desktop is one of bug fixes and incremental quality improvements."
+
+If you're a long time Ubuntu user that might be a good thing. No news is good news. This is doubly true if you've already been through the Windows 10 transition this year, made the leap the systemd earlier this year, and rode out the Unity transition in the years before that. Arguably no news really is good news if you just want to get some work done.
+
+Still, sometimes it's nice to have an update that turns everything upside down to see what happens. After all, if you don't like it you can always skip it.
+
+Whatever the case, there's no reason to skip 15.10. The updates are minor enough that unless I happened to stare at the scrollbars it was hard to tell it apart from 15.04, running the two side by side in virtual machines.
+
+Those scrollbars are pretty much the only visual clue that you've updated. If you've used a recent version of GNOME, you'll recognize Ubuntu's new scrollbars. Canonical's homegrown version has been removed in favor of the GNOME scrollbars in GTK 3 applications (which accounts for the majority of Ubuntu apps). Canonical has done a little theme work to make them fit with the rest of Unity, but otherwise they're stock GNOME scrollbars. That means the handles are gone and the scroll target is therefore even narrower.
+
+The change also means that all the places stock GNOME scrollbars don't work -- most notably Firefox -- Unity's new scrollbars don't work either. That's no different than before, but it does serve as a stark and regular reminder of how much easier it is to use scrollbars that are always present in a predicable spot and wider than the pinpoint tip of a mouse cursor. 
+
+On the brighter side, at least now you know that Unity 8 development isn't being slowed down because some poor Canonical developer has to spend all her time maintaining home grown scrollbar code.
+
+Other changes in 15.10 include a minor version number bump for Unity, which is now at 7.3.2. Unity has had many bugs fixed and gets a couple small, new features. The locally integrated menus -- menu bars in the window title -- which arrived in previous releases are also now available for unfocused windows. Canonical's release notes also say that there have been "a number of usability improvements to the dash". One welcome improvement along those lines is the ability to control the amount of delay before showing the Dash menu when you press the Alt key.
+
+To access the new setting you'll need to install the dconf-editor package, but once you do you'll see a new option under com > unity > show-menus-now-delay. By default it's set to 180 milliseconds, but if you frequently trigger this menu when you meant to alt-tab (but didn't get to tab quick enough), you can eliminate this problem by increasing the delay time.
+
+The usual suite of Ubuntu applications has been refreshed for this release, most notably LibreOffice, which is has been updated to the new LibreOffice 5.x line. You can find a quick rundown of all the new features in LibreOffice 5 over on the <a href="https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0">Document Foundation site</a>. Other updated default apps include Firefox, which clocks in at version 41, Empathy, and Chromium which has been updated to version 45.
+
+Ubuntu 15.10 also continues to update the various underlying GNOME bits to GNOME 3.16. Ubuntu 15.04 still used a surprising amount of GNOME 3.14 apps and libraries, but most of those have finally been updated to 3.16. The big exception to that is the Nautilus file browser, which Canonical heavily modifies in an effort to retain some functionality of a file browser. In 15.10 Nautilus is still at 3.14, though that looks positively modern next to Gedit, which is still dating from 3.10.
+
+Deeper under the hood, Ubuntu 15.10 features the Canonical variant of the Linux Kernel 4.2, which is pulled from the upstream 4.2.1 Linux Kernel (this is true for all flavors, not just Unity). The update is notable for bringing better support for recent Radeon GPUs, Intel's Broxton chips (which could end up in a future Ubuntu mobile device) and some other hardware support updates.
+
+While the Unity version of Ubuntu doesn't have a lot going on right now, there is plenty of change afoot in some of the other official flavors. The biggest news in the Ubuntu universe right now is is probably Kubuntu 15.10, which uses the hot-off-the-presses KDE Plasma 5.4 desktop. 
+
+Plasma 5.4 is huge update for KDE, bringing everything from preliminary Wayland support to smaller, but more noticeable changes like a nice new set of Plasma Widgets and improvements to KRunner, the revamped, extendible launcher in Plasma 5. The KDE team has also been finishing up work on the new "flat" look of Plasma 5. In my <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/28/kde_plasma_5_review/">initial review of KDE 5</a> I mentioned that it was a bit rough around the edges with missing icons, the search field in the Kickoff app launcher was hard to discover and other little problems. As of 5.4 all that stuff has been fixed. There are some 1400 new icons, call consistent with the brighter, flatter design aesthetic that characterizes Plasma 5. 
+
+There's also plenty of new things in Ubuntu GNOME, which has been updated to use GNOME 3.16, which offers a slightly lighter theme and of course scrollbars just like those in the latest version of Unity. It's worth noting for those fans of Ubuntu Mate, there is no way to upgrade from 15.04 to 15.10, you'll need to do a fresh install.
+
+The rest of the Ubuntu flavors see minor updates and come with the same updated kernel found in 15.10 Unity.
+
+The Ubuntu family may be a sedate bunch this autumn, but there's still enough in the way of minor updates, bug fixes, speed improvements and application updates to make Ubuntu 15.10 worth the upgrade. It may not be earth shattering, but it does continue to just work. In a world of Windows 10s, systemds and Waylands, and with the transition to Mir and Unity 8 right around the corner, Ubuntu users may soon look back on these days of small quiet updates with a sense of nostalgia and envy.
+
+Screenshots:
+ubuntu1510-desktop.png The Ubuntu Unity desktop.
+ubuntu1510-scroll.jpg The new GNOME scrollbars along side the old Canonical created scrollbars.
+ubuntu1510-firefox.png Among the many updated apps is Firefox, now at version 41.