Linux

Linux distros are usually more secure than their Windows and Mac counterparts. Linux Operating Systems being open-source leaves very less scope of unauthorized access to its core. However, with the advancement of technologies, incidents of attacks are not rare.

Are you in a fix with the coming reports of Linux systems targeted malware attacks? Worried about your online presence? Then maybe it’s time to go for a secure, privacy-focused Linux distro. This article presents a guide to 3 privacy-oriented Linux distributions that respect your privacy online.

Why You Need a Privacy-focused Linux Distro

But before jumping into that, let’s have a brief overview regarding the importance of a secure Linux Operating System. You may know that the Operating System is the core software of your computer. It helps maintain communication across all the hardware, software, memory, and processor of the system. It also manages the hardware parts.

If your computer isn’t secure enough to use, then hackers can get easy access to the OS and can exploit it to view your files and track your presence on the internet. Privacy-focused Linux distributions offer a lot of good choices packed with the most reliable features to select from.

5 Privacy-focused Linux Distributions

Now let’s take a look at the most privacy-focused Linux distros that allow staying secure.

Septor Linux

Septor Linux is an OS created by the project called Serbian Linux. Serbian Linux also produces Serbian language-based general general-purpose Linux distribution. Septor implements the KDE Plasma desktop environment and is a newcomer among all other distros.

The Septor operating system offers a stable and reliable user experience. It’s suitable for a vast range of computers because it is built upon Debian GNU/Linux. So, a solid privacy level is what you can expect. The distro routes all of the internet traffic through Tor network to earn privacy credentials. The distro used to use a launcher script to pick up the latest Tor, however, now Tor comes in bundles with it by default.

Are you in search of open-source ticketing tools for Linux? Well, this article brings a guide to 5 fair selections of open source ticketing software to provide uninterrupted customer support.

Why You Need Ticketing Tools

A customer trouble ticketing (help desk) is an assistance resource to solve a customer query. Companies often provide customer support using email, website, and/or telephone. The importance of ticketing software is a crucial part for any business to be successful.

Your business can’t run properly without a satisfied client base. Increased customer retention is what businesses need. Right ticketing tools help ensure the best customer service for any business. 

Linux makes sure enterprises get the best possible customer service software for their businesses to have sustainable growth. Because a powerful set of ticketing software provides undivided support that the businesses deserve.

5 Best Ticketing Tools for Linux

This section takes you through 5 different ticketing software to be downloaded on Linux and why you should use them. So let’s begin!

osTicket

For all the newly started businesses, osTicket would be a viable open source ticketing tool. It’s a lightweight and efficient support ticket software used by a good number of companies. If you run an enterprise or a non-profit and are not ready for paid ticketing tools just yet, osTicket is a must-try.

osTicket provides a simple and intuitive web interface to integrate customer queries via phone, email, and web forms. Worried of spam emails? osTicket helps reduce spam enabling captcha filling and auto-refreshing techniques.

You can work on a priority basis through this ticketing tool and get the issues solved in the lowest possible time.

PHD Help Desk

PHD Help Desk is a PHP+Javascript+MySQL-based open source ticketing tool and is used in the registry. PHD helps follow-up incidents in an organization. PHD has a user base all across the world. The latest version of the PHD Help Desk is 2.12.

This ticketing tool works in various ways. Using PHD, incidents can be classified and registered into multiple levels, such as the state of incident, type, sub-type, priority, description of Incident, historical factors, to name a few. 

The database is consulted in a particular format depending on the user requirements. The data is then processed on a tallying sheet. Some of the advanced features of PHD Help Desk are the ability to export tickets into excel format, a PHPMailer Library to configure emails, and new password creation.

Are you in search of Linux laptops? This article takes you through 6 different places that offer the best Linux laptops. So get prepared to choose your Linux laptop in 2021.

Dell

When it comes to laptops, the first name that comes to my mind is Dell. For over 20 years Dell has been selling high-end Linux laptops. In a Dell store, you can get Ubuntu and Redhat Enterprise Linux laptops. These laptops are built to meet the needs of developers, businesses, and sysadmins.

For developers, who travel a lot, XPS 13 Developer Edition would be the confirmed best choice. Dell XPS comes at an expensive cost of around $1,000. So, if you’re in search of something less expensive, you can check Dell Inspiron laptops. Dell’s Precision workstations with RHEL or Ubuntu are designed for small business owners or CG professionals.

Side Note: Dell doesn’t have a separate section for Linux laptops. Type Ubuntu in the search to get a view of all its laptops with Linux preinstalled.

Slimbook

Slimbook is well known for its thin, rigid, and light durable laptops starting at a reasonable price of €930 (approx $1,075). These come with a nice screen, solid battery life, powerful CPU, and very good speakers.

This brand is from Spain. Slimbook came ahead of its competitors launching the first KDE laptops.

Slimbook brings laptops with a good variety of popular Linux distros, such as KDE Neon, Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Linux Mint, Kubuntu. Additionally, their laptops have two Spanish Linux distros – Max and Lliurex. You can choose Windows OS as well with their laptops, but for that, additional costs are there.

Slimbook offers desktop systems too. So, if you ever need desktops, check it here. 

System76 

System76’s Linux laptops are very well built, powerful, and extremely portable. If you are a software developer, you travel a lot, and you’re in search of a laptop with 32G RAM and 1T SSD, then go for System76.

System76 laptops used to be Ubuntu-powered, initially. Later on, in 2017, this US-based company released their own Linux distro, called the Pop! OS. Pop OS is designed using Ubuntu. After that, Pop became the default OS with Ubuntu being still available.

As per NASA, “A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out”. Something similar exists in the Linux universe as well - it discards anything written to it and when read, just returns an EOF (end-of-file). It’s a special file which is also referred to as null device - /dev/null

So, it’s just a file?

Yes and most of the things in Linux is a file but /dev/null is not a regular file – lets dig deeper.

c in crw-rw-rw- tells us that it's a character special file, which means it processes data character by character. This can be checked using test -c as well:

What are the contents of the file?

Let’s check that using the cat command:

As stated earlier, it just returns an EOF (end-of-file) when read. So, it's empty!

What more can we know about the file?

Let’s find out using the stat command:

This tells us that its size is 0. Also, it’s good to note that the file’s read and write permission is enabled for everyone but it doesn't require execute permission. 

What happens to the file’s size when we write data to it?

Let’s try that:

The cat command returned nothing and as per the stat command, its size did not change.

As stated earlier, it discards anything written to it. You may write any amount of data to it, which will be immediately discarded, so its size will always remain 0 – Singularity?

In other words, you cannot change /dev/null

Not only the Linux distros are open-source but the apps for Linux are also free. Though some business apps come with a cost, most of the apps created for individuals don’t have any charges.

Want to know about some of the cool apps to download on your Linux machine?

This article walks you through 7 apps to download on Linux to make your life easier. Head over to the next section!  

Ulauncher

Before downloading any other application on Linux, we recommend getting Ulauncher. That’s because you can launch any application via Ulauncher just by using the keyboard.

Try adding Ulaucher extensions to get the most of this app inspired by Alfred for Mac. You can extend capabilities with the extensions, such as looking up dictionary definitions, launching web searches, finding and copying emojis to a clipboard, and lots more.

Ulaucher runs smoothly and allows searching files and apps using hotkeys. Ulaucher features include built-in themes, customizable shortcuts, Fuzzy search, a wide variety of plugins, searching on Google, Stack Overflow, and Wikipedia.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird by Mozilla is an open-source email client. Some Linux distros offer Thunderbird installed. If it’s not, hop onto your App Center or Software Center and get it installed. You can download the app from their website as well.

The setup wizard guides you through the process of creating your own email address. Thunderbird provides email settings for most of the common email application providers. So, an existing email account can be added too. Attach multiple email accounts as per your needs.

Want to make Thunderbird look cool? Add-ons, such as themes, Lightning extension, sorting out Mail folders, are some of the features to try out.

Steam

Looking for gaming clients on Linux? Use Steam from Valve. Steam is, admittedly, the best games distribution store for top OSs like Linux.

From Shadow of the Tomb Raider to DiRT 4, and from DOTA 2 to Warhammer – Steam boasts many thousands of indie hits, retro-flavored, and AAA titled games for Linux. 

Prerequisites

This article is a follow-up from the Crowdsec multi-server setup. It applies to a configuration with at least two servers (referred to as server-1 and one of server-2 or server-3).

Goals

To address security issues posed by clear http communication in our previous crowdsec multi-server installation, we propose solutions to achieve communication between Crowdsec agents over encrypted channels. On top of that, the third solution allows server-2 or server-3 to trust server-1 identity, and avoid man-in -the -middle attacks.

Using self-signed certificates

Create the certificate

First we have to create a certificate. This can be achieved with the following one-liner.

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout encrypted-key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365 -addext "subjectAltName = IP:172.31.100.242"

For now crowdsec is not able to ask for the passphrase of the private key when starting.  Thus we have the choice to decipher by hand the private key each time we start or reload crowdsec or store the key unencrypted. In any way to strip the passphrase one can do:

openssl rsa -in encrypted-key.pem -out key.pem

Then, the unencrypted key file can be safely deleted after Crowdsec is started.

Configure crowdsec for using a self-signed certificate

On server-1 we have to tell crowdsec to use the generated certificate. Hence, the  tls.cert_file and tls.key_file option in the api.server section of the following /etc/crowdec/config.yaml excerpt set to the generated certificate file.

api:

  server:

    log_level: info

    listen_uri: 10.0.0.1:8080

    profiles_path: /etc/crowdsec/profiles.yaml

    online_client: # Crowdsec API credentials (to push signals and receive bad 

    tls:

      cert_file: /etc/crowdsec/ssl/cert.pem

      key_file: /etc/crowdsec/ssl/key.pem

On the client side configuration changes happen in two files. First we have to modify /etc/crowdec/config.yaml to accept self-signed certificates by setting the insecure_skip_verify to true.

We have to change http for https in the  /etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml file too in order to reflect the changes. This small change has to be done on all three servers (server-1, server-2 and server-3).

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes it is easier to implement prototypes in user space using high-level languages, such as Python or Java. In this document we attempt to describe our implementation effort related to Host Identity Protocol version 2. In the first part, we describe various security solutions, then we discuss some implementation details of the HIP protocol, and finally, in the last part of this work we discuss the performance of the HIP and IPSec protocols implemented using Python language.

BACKGROUND

In this section we will describe the basic background. First, we will discuss the problem of mobile Internet and introduce the Host Identity Protocol. We then move to the discussion of various security protocols. We will conclude the section with the discussion of Elliptic Curves and a variant of DiffieHellman algorithm, which uses EC cryptography (ECC).

Dual role of IP

Internet was designed initially so that the Internet Protocol (IP) address is playing dual role: it is the locator, so that the routers can find the recipient of a message, and it is an identifier, so that the upper layer protocols (such as TCP and UDP) can make bindings (for example, transport layer sockets use IP addresses and ports to make a connections). This becomes a problem when a networked device roams from one network to another, and so the IP address changes, leading to failures in upper layer connections. The other problem is establishment of the authenticated channel between the communicating parties. In practice, when making connections, long term identities of the parties are not verified. Of course, there are solutions such as SSL which can readily solve the problem at hand. However, SSL is suitable only for TCP connections and most of the time practical use cases include only secure web surfing and establishment of VPN tunnels. Host Identity Protocol on the other hand is more flexible: it allows peers to create authenticated secure channels on the network layer, and so all upper layer protocols can benefit from such channels.

HIP¹³ relies on the 4-way handshake to establish an authenticated session. During the handshake, the peers authenticate each other using long-term public keys and derive session keys using Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic Curve (EC) Diffie-Hellman algorithms. To combat the denial-of-service attacks, HIP also introduces computational puzzles.

It’s possible to deep dive into the virtual reality gaming world on your Linux system. Want to explore VR games on Linux? This article takes you through the top 3 VR games available on Linux.

Ready to get amazed? Let’s start.

What are VR Games?

VR games are the new-gen computer games enabled with virtual reality, in short, VR technology. It gives players a first-person perspective of all the gaming actions. As a participant, you can enjoy the gaming environment through your VR gaming devices, such as hand controllers, VR headsets, sensor-equipped gloves, and others.

VR games are played on gaming consoles, standalone systems, powerful laptops, and PCs compatible with VR headsets including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, HP Reverb G2, Valve Index, and others.

Now, a little brief about VR technology. By now, you know that VR is an abbreviation of Virtual Reality. This is, basically, a computer-generated simulation where the player controls its generated objects through the limb and facial movements in a three-dimensional environment. This environment is interacted with through special equipment, like clothing having touch simulating pressure nodes and enclosed glasses with screens in front, instead of lenses.

A lot of VR objects are usable as they are in reality and the gaming developers are making the VR universe more and more immersive with each passing day.

How to Get VR Games on Linux

The Steam store seems to be the best way to get VR games on your system. Good news: you don’t need to worry about installing all the modules and software to run the game smoothly. Steam client is ready to take all the worries. So, get a Steam account by downloading the client from Steam’s site.

Back in 2019, it was reported that VR Linux desktops are around the corner. What about now? Xrdesktop is here for you. Xrdesktop is free to use. It lets you work with the common desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE.

The SimulaVR is a similar open-source project to check out.

Top 3 VR Games Available on Linux

Now the fun part: In this section, we’ll share the best 5 VR games to play on Linux in your gaming time.