Good news, everybody! I’m pleased to announce that we have completed our search for a new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator, and she’ll be joining the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) team to work with Fedora as of today. Please give a warm welcome to Marie Nordin.
If you’ve been involved in Fedora, you may have already been working with Marie. She’s a member of the Fedora Design and Badges teams. Her latest contribution to the Design Team is the wallpaper for F31, a collaboration with Máirín Duffy. Marie has made considerable contributions to the Badges project. She has designed over 150 badge designs, created documentation and a style guide, and mentored new design contributors for years. Most recently she has been spear-heading a bunch of work related to bringing badges up to date on both the development and UI/UX of the web app.
Marie is new to Red Hat, joining us after 5 years of involvement with the Fedora community. She was first introduced to Fedora through an Outreachy internship in 2013 working on Fedora Badges. Marie’s most current full time position was in the distribution industry as a purchasing agent, bid coordinator, and manager. She also has a strong background in design outside of her efforts for Fedora, working as a freelance graphic designer for the past 8 years.
I believe that Marie’s varied background in business and administration, her experience with design, and her long term involvement with and passion for Fedora makes her an excellent fit for this position. I’m excited to work with her as both a colleague on her team at Red Hat and as a Fedora contributor.
Feel free to reach out with congratulations, but give her a bit to get fully engaged with Fedora duties.
After being a Fedora user for a while, you may have come to enjoy it. And in fact you might want to encourage others to try Fedora. You don’t need any special privileges or to become a Fedora Ambassador to do that. As it turns out, anyone can help others get started with Fedora just by sharing information about it.
Having the conversation
For example, if you go out to lunch with a group of colleagues periodically, you might find it natural to talk about Fedora with them. If someone shows interest, you can suggest to get together with them for a Fedora show and tell. There isn’t any need for formal presentations or prepared talks. This is just having lunch and sharing information with people you know.
When you’re with friends, relatives, colleagues, or neighbors, conversation often turns to things computer related, and you can bring up Fedora. There are usually opportunities to point out how Fedora would partially if not completely address their concerns or provide something they want.
These are people you know so talking with them is easy and natural. You probably know the kind of things they use PCs for, so you know the features of Fedora that will be attractive to them. Such conversations can start anytime you see someone you know. You don’t need to steer conversations toward Fedora — that might be impolite, depending on the situation. But if they bring up computer related issues, you might find an opportunity to talk about Fedora.
Taking action
If a friend or colleague has an unused laptop, you could offer to show them how easy it is to load Fedora. You can also point out that there’s no charge and that the licenses are friendly to users. Sharing a USB key or a DVD is almost always helpful.
When you have someone setup to use Fedora, make sure they have the URLs for discussions, questions, and other related websites. Also, from time to time, let them know if you’ve seen an application they might find useful. (Hint: You might want to point them at a certain online magazine, too!)
The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you. If they seem interested, give them some ideas on how Fedora could be helpful for them.
Open source may be big business nowadays, but it also remains a strong grassroots movement. You too can help grow open source through awareness and sharing!
These services are available with a free account from the Fedora Accounts System (FAS). This account is the passport to all things Fedora! This article covers how to get set up with an account and configure Fedora Workstation for browser single sign-on.
Signing up for a Fedora account
To create a FAS account, browse to the account creation page. Here, you will fill out your basic identity data:
Account creation page
Once you enter your data, the account system sends an email to the address you provided, with a temporary password. Pick a strong password and use it.
Password reset page
Next, the account details page appears. If you want to contribute to the Fedora Project, you should complete the Contributor Agreement now. Otherwise, you are done and you can use your account to log into the various Fedora services.
Account details page
Configuring Fedora Workstation for single sign-On
Now that you have your account, you can sign into any of the Fedora Project services. Most of these services support single sign-on (SSO), so you can sign in without re-entering your username and password.
Fedora Workstation provides an easy workflow to add your Fedora credentials. The GNOME Online Accounts tool helps you quickly set up your system to access many popular services. To access it, go to the Settings menu.
Click on the option labeled Fedora. A prompt opens for you to provide your username and password for your Fedora Account.
GNOME Online Accounts stores your password in GNOME Keyring and automatically acquires your single-sign-on credentials for you when you log in.
Single sign-on with a web browser
Today, Fedora Workstation supports three web browsers out of the box with support for single sign-on with the Fedora Project services. These are Mozilla Firefox, GNOME Web, and Google Chrome.
Due to a bug in Chromium, single sign-on doesn’t work currently if you have more than one set of Kerberos (SSO) credentials active on your session. As a result, Fedora doesn’t enable this function out of the box for Chromium in Fedora.
To sign on to a service, browse to it and select the login option for that service. For most Fedora services, this is all you need to do; the browser handles the rest. Some services such as the Fedora mailing lists and Bugzilla support multiple login types. For them, select the Fedora or Fedora Account System login type.
That’s it! You can now log into any of the Fedora Project services without re-entering your password.
Special consideration for Google Chrome
To enable single sign-on out of the box for Google Chrome, Fedora takes advantage of certain features in Chrome that are intended for use in “managed” environments. A managed environment is traditionally a corporate or other organization that sets certain security and/or monitoring requirements on the browser.
Recently, Google Chrome changed its behavior and it now reports Managed by your organization or possibly Managed by fedoraproject.org under the ⋮ menu in Google Chrome. That link leads to a page that says, “If your Chrome browser is managed, your administrator can set up or restrict certain features, install extensions, monitor activity, and control how you use Chrome.” However, Fedora will never monitor your browser activity or restrict your actions.
Enter chrome://policy in the address bar to see exactly what settings Fedora has enabled in the browser. The AuthNegotiateDelegateWhitelist and AuthServerWhitelist options will be set to *.fedoraproject.org. These are the only changes Fedora makes.
Linux clothes specialist HELLOTUX from Europe recently signed an agreement with Red Hat to make embroidered Fedora t-shirts, polo shirts and sweatshirts. They have been making Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and other Linux shirts for more than a decade and now the collection is extended to Fedora.
Embroidered Fedora polo shirt.
Instead of printing, they use programmable embroidery machines to make the Fedora embroidery. All of the design work is made exclusively with Linux; this is a matter of principle.
Some photos of the embroidering process for a Fedora sweatshirt:
Oh, “just one more thing,” as Columbo used to say: Now, HELLOTUX pays the shipping fee for the purchase of two or more items, worldwide, if you order within a week from now. Order on the HELLOTUX website.
Fedora and EPEL users who use fpaste to paste and share snippets of text might have noticed some changes recently. Recently, an update went out which sends pastes made by fpaste to the CentOS Pastebin instead of the Modern Paste instance that Fedora was running. Don’t fear — this was an intentional change, and is part of the effort to lower the workload within the Fedora Infrastructure and Community Platform Engineering teams. Keep reading to learn more about what’s happening with pastebin and your pastes.
About the service
A pastebin lets you save text on a website for a length of time. This helps you exchange data easily with other users. For example, you can post error messages for help with a bug or other issue.
The CentOS Pastebin is a community-maintained service that keeps pastes around for up to 24 hours. It also offers syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages.
$ fpaste --sysinfo Gathering system info .............Uploading (8.1KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/8d5bb827
What to expect from Pastebin
On December 1st, 2019, Fedora Infrastructure will turn off its Modern Paste servers. It will then redirect fpaste.org, www.fpaste.org, and paste.fedoraproject.org to paste.centos.org.
If you notice any issues with fpaste, first try updating your fpaste package. On Fedora use this command:
$ dnf update fpaste
Or, on machines that use the EPEL repository, use this command:
$ yum update fpaste
If you still run into issues, please file a bug on the fpaste issue tracker, and please be as detailed as possible. Happy pasting!
GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program) is free and open-source image manipulation software. With many capabilities ranging from simple image editing to complex filters, scripting and even animation, it is a good alternative to popular commercial options.
Read on to learn how to install and use GIMP on Fedora. This article covers basic daily image editing.
Installing GIMP
GIMP is available in the official Fedora repository. To install it run:
sudo dnf install gimp
Single window mode
Once you open the application, it shows you the dark theme window with toolbox and the main editing area. Note that it has two window modes that you can switch between by selecting Windows -> Single Window Mode. By checking this option all components of the UI are displayed in a single window. Otherwise, they will be separate.
Loading an image
To load an image, go to File -> Open and choose your file and choose your image file.
Resizing an image
To resize the image, you have the option to resize based on a couple of parameters, including pixel and percentage — the two parameters which are often handy in editing images.
Let’s say we need to scale down the Fedora 30 background image to 75% of its current size. To do that, select Image -> Scale and then on the scale dialog, select percentage in the unit drop down. Next, enter 75 as width or height and press the Tab key. By default, the other dimension will automatically resize in correspondence with the changed dimension to preserve aspect ratio. For now, leave other options unchanged and press Scale.
The image scales to 0.75 percent of its original size.
Rotating images
Rotating is a transform operation, so you find it under Image -> Transform from the main menu, where there are options to rotate the image by 90 or 180 degrees. There are also options for flipping the image vertically or horizontally under the mentioned option.
Let’s say we need to rotate the image 90 degrees. After applying a 90-degree clockwise rotation and horizontal flip, our image will look like this:
Transforming an image with GIMP
Adding text
Adding text is very easy. Just select the A icon from the toolbox, and click on a point on your image where you want to add the text. If the toolbox is not visible, open it from Windows->New Toolbox.
As you edit the text, you might notice that the text dialog has font customization options including font family, font size, etc.
Adding text to image in GIMP
Saving and exporting
You can save your edit as as a GIMP project with the xcf extension from File -> Save or by pressing Ctrl+S. Or you can export your image in formats such as PNG or JPEG. To export, go to File -> Export As or hit Ctrl+Shift+E and you will be presented with a dialog where you can select the output image and name.
Everything in a PC, laptop, or server is represented as binary digits (a.k.a. bits, where each bit can only be 1 or 0). There are no characters like we use for writing or numbers as we write them anywhere in a computer’s memory or secondary storage such as disk drives. For general purposes, the unit of measure for groups of binary bits is the byte — eight bits. Bytes are an agreed-upon measure that helped standardize computer memory, storage, and how computers handled data.
There are various terms in use to specify the capacity of a disk drive (either magnetic or electronic). The same measures are applied to a computers random access memory (RAM) and other memory devices that inhabit your computer. So now let’s see how the numbers are made up.
Suffixes are used with the number that specifies the capacity of the device. The suffixes designate a multiplier that is to be applied to the number that preceded the suffix. Commonly used suffixes are:
Kilo = 103 = 1,000 (one thousand)
Mega = 106 = 1,000,000 (one million)
Giga = 109 = 1000,000,000 (one billion)
Tera = 1012 = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion)
As an example 500 GB (gigabytes) is 500,000,000,000 bytes.
The units that memory and storage are specified in advertisements, on boxes in the store, and so on are in the decimal system as shown above. However since computers only use binary bits, the actual capacity of these devices is different than the advertised capacity.
You saw that the decimal numbers above were shown with their equivalent powers of ten. In the binary system numbers can be represented as powers of two. The table below shows how bits are used to represent powers of two in an 8 bit Byte. At the bottom of the table there is an example of how the decimal number 109 can be represented as a binary number that can be held in a single byte of 8 bits (01101101).
Eight bit binary number
Bit 7
Bit 6
Bit 5
Bit 4
Bit 3
Bit 2
Bit 1
Bit 0
Power of 2
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
Decimal Value
128
64
32
16
8
4
2
1
Example Number
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
1
The example bit values comprise the binary number 01101101. To get the equivalent decimal value just add the decimal values from the table where the bit is set to 1. That is 64 + 32 + 8 + 4 + 1 = 109.
By the time you get out to 230 you have decimal 1,073,741,824 with just 31 bits (don’t forget the 20) You’ve got a large enough number to start specifying memory and storage sizes.
Now comes what you have been waiting for. The table below lists common designations as they are used for labeling decimal and binary values.
Decimal
Binary
KB (Kilobyte)
1KB = 1,000 bytes
KiB (Kibibyte)
1KiB = 1,024 bytes
MB (Megabyte)
1MB = 1,000,000 bytes
MiB (Mebibyte)
1MiB = 1,048,576 bytes
GB (Gigabyte)
1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes
GiB (Gibibyte)
1 GiB (Gibibyte) = 1,073,741,824bytes
TB (Terabyte)
1TB = 1,000,000,000,000
TiB (Tebibyte)
1TiB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
Note that all of the quantities of bytes in the table above are expressed as decimal numbers. They are not shown as binary numbers because those numbers would be more than 30 characters long.
Most users and programmers need not be concerned with the small differences between the binary and decimal storage size numbers. If you’re developing software or hardware that deals with data at the binary level you may need the binary numbers.
As for what this means to your PC: Your PC will make use of the full capacity of your storage and memory devices. If you want to see the capacity of your disk drives, thumb drives, etc, the Disks utility in Fedora will show you the actual capacity of the storage device in number of bytes as a decimal number.
There are also command line tools that can provide you with more flexibility in seeing how your storage bytes are being used. Two such command line tools are du (for files and directories) and df (for file systems). You can read about these by typing man du or man df at the command line in a terminal window.
The Cockpit series continues to focus on some of the tools users and administrators can use to perform everyday tasks within the web user-interface. So far we’ve covered introducing the user-interface, storage and network management, and user accounts. Hence, this article will highlight how Cockpit handles software and services.
The menu options for Applications and Software Updates are available through Cockpit’s PackageKit feature. To install it from the command-line, run:
sudo dnf install cockpit-packagekit
For Fedora Silverblue, Fedora CoreOS, and other ostree-based operating systems, install the cockpit-ostree package and reboot the system:
On the main screen, Cockpit notifies the user whether the system is updated, or if any updates are available. Click the Updates Available link on the main screen, or Software Updates in the menu options, to open the updates page.
RPM-based updates
The top of the screen displays general information such as the number of updates and the number of security-only updates. It also shows when the system was last checked for updates, and a button to perform the check. Likewise, this button is equivalent to the command sudo dnf check-update.
Below is the Available Updates section, which lists the packages requiring updates. Furthermore, each package displays the name, version, and best of all, the severity of the update. Clicking a package in the list provides additional information such as the CVE, the Bugzilla ID, and a brief description of the update. For details about the CVE and related bugs, click their respective links.
Also, one of the best features about Software Updates is the option to only install security updates. Distinguishing which updates to perform makes it simple for those who may not need, or want, the latest and greatest software installed. Of course, one can always use Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS for machines requiring long-term support.
The example below demonstrates how Cockpit applies RPM-based updates.
OSTree is used by rpm-ostree, a hybrid package/image based system… It atomically replicates a base OS and allows the user to “layer” the traditional RPM on top of the base OS if needed.
Because of this setup, Cockpit uses a snapshot-like layout for these operating systems. As seen in the demo below, the top of the screen displays the repository (fedora), the base OS image, and a button to Check for Updates.
Clicking the repository name (fedora in the demo below) opens the Change Repository screen. From here one can Add New Repository, or click the pencil icon to edit an existing repository. Editing provides the option to delete the repository, or Add Another Key. To add a new repository, enter the name and URL. Also, select whether or not to Use trusted GPG key.
There are three categories that provide details of its respective image: Tree, Packages, and Signature. Tree displays basic information such as the operating system, version of the image, how long ago it was released, and the origin of the image. Packages displays a list of installed packages within that image. Signature verifies the integrity of the image such as the author, date, RSA key ID, and status.
The current, or running, image displays a green check-mark beside it. If something happens, or an update causes an issue, click the Roll Back and Reboot button. This restores the system to a previous image.
Applications
The Applications screen displays a list of add-ons available for Cockpit. This makes it easy to find and install the plugins required by the user. At the time of this article, some of the options include the 389 Directory Service, Fleet Commander, and Subscription Manager. The demo below shows a complete list of available Cockpit add-ons.
Also, each item displays the name, a brief description, and a button to install, or remove, the add-on. Furthermore, clicking the item displays more information (if available). To refresh the list, click the icon at the top-right corner.
Subscription Management
Subscription managers allow admins to attach subscriptions to the machine. Even more, subscriptions give admins control over user access to content and packages. One example of this is the famous Red Hat subscription model. This feature works in relation to the subscription-manager command
The Subscriptions add-on can be installed via Cockpit’s Applications menu option. It can also be installed from the command-line with:
sudo dnf install cockpit-subscriptions
To begin, click Subscriptions in the main menu. If the machine is currently unregistered, it opens the Register System screen. Next, select the URL. You can choose Default, which uses Red Hat’s subscription server, or enter a Custom URL. Enter the Login, Password, Activation Key, and Organization ID. Finally, to complete the process, click the Register button.
The main page for Subscriptions show if the machine is registered, the System Purpose, and a list of installed products.
Services
To start, click the Services menu option. Because Cockpit uses systemd, we get the options to view System Services, Targets, Sockets, Timers, and Paths. Cockpit also provides an intuitive interface to help users search and find the service they want to configure. Services can also be filtered by it’s state: All, Enabled, Disabled, or Static. Below this is the list of services. Each row displays the service name, description, state, and automatic startup behavior.
For example, let’s take bluetooth.service. Typing bluetooth in the search bar automatically displays the service. Now, select the service to view the details of that service. The page displays the status and path of the service file. It also displays information in the service file such as the requirements and conflicts. Finally, at the bottom of the page, are the logs pertaining to that service.
Also, users can quickly start and stop the service by toggling the switch beside the service name. The three-dots to the right of that switch expands those options to Enable, Disable, Mask/Unmask the service
To learn more about systemd, check out the series in the Fedora Magazine starting with What is an init system?
In the next article we’ll explore the security features available in Cockpit.
This article shows you how to set up some powerful tools in your command line interpreter (CLI) shell on Fedora. If you use bash (the default) or zsh, Fedora lets you easily setup these tools.
Requirements
Some installed packages are required. On Workstation, run the following command:
Note: On Silverblue you need to restart before proceeding.
Fonts
You can give your terminal a new look by installing new fonts. Why not fonts that display characters and icons together?
Nerd-Fonts
Open a new terminal and type the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts ~/.nerd-fonts
cd .nerd-fonts sudo ./install.sh
Awesome-Fonts
On Workstation, install using the following command:
sudo dnf install fontawesome-fonts
On Silverblue, type:
sudo rpm-ostree install fontawesome-fonts
Powerline
Powerline is a statusline plugin for vim, and provides statuslines and prompts for several other applications, including bash, zsh, tmus, i3, Awesome, IPython and Qtile. You can find more information about powerline on the official documentation site.
Installation
To install powerline utility on Fedora Workstation, open a new terminal and run:
Note: On Silverblue, before proceeding you need restart.
Activating powerline
To make the powerline active by default, place the code below at the end of your ~/.bashrc file
if [ -f `which powerline-daemon` ]; then powerline-daemon -q POWERLINE_BASH_CONTINUATION=1 POWERLINE_BASH_SELECT=1 . /usr/share/powerline/bash/powerline.sh
fi
Finally, close the terminal and open a new one. It will look like this:
Oh-My-Zsh
Oh-My-Zsh is a framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with helpful functions, plugins, and themes. To learn how set Zsh as your default shell this article.
Installation
Type this in the terminal:
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Alternatively, you can type this:
sh -c "$(wget https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"
At the end, you see the terminal like this:
Congratulations, Oh-my-zsh is installed.
Themes
Once installed, you can select your theme. I prefer to use the Powerlevel10k. One advantage is that it is 100 times faster than powerlevel9k theme. To install run this line:
Close the terminal. When you open the terminal again, the Powerlevel10k configuration wizard will ask you a few questions to configure your prompt properly.
After finish Powerline10k configuration wizard, your prompt will look like this:
If you don’t like it. You can run the powerline10k wizard any time with the command p10k configure.
Enable plug-ins
Plug-ins are stored in .oh-my-zsh/plugins folder. You can visit this site for more information. To activate a plug-in, you need edit your ~/.zshrc file. Install plug-ins means that you are going create a series of aliases or shortcuts that execute a specific function.
For example, to enable the firewalld and git plugins, first edit ~/.zshrc:
plugins=(firewalld git)
Note: use a blank space to separate the plug-ins names list.
Then reload the configuration
source ~/.zshrc
To see the created aliases, use the command:
alias | grep firewall
Additional configuration
I suggest the install syntax-highlighting and syntax-autosuggestions plug-ins.
Colorls is a Ruby gem that beautifies the terminal’s ls command, with colors and font-awesome icons. You can visit the official site for more information.
Because it’s a ruby gem, just follow this simple step:
sudo gem install colorls
To keep up to date, just do:
sudo gem update colorls
To prevent type colorls everytime you can make aliases in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.
alias ll='colorls -lA --sd --gs --group-directories-first'
alias ls='colorls --group-directories-first'
Also, you can enable tab completion for colorls flags, just entering following line at end of your shell configuration:
source $(dirname ($gem which colorls))/tab_complete.sh
If you ever attach to a WiFi system outside your home or office, you often see a portal page. This page may ask you to accept terms of service or some other agreement to get access. But what happens when you can’t connect through this kind of portal? This article shows you how to use NetworkManager on Fedora to deal with some failure cases so you can still access the internet.
How captive portals work
Captive portals are web pages offered when a new device is connected to a network. When the user first accesses the Internet, the portal captures all web page requests and redirects them to a single portal page.
The page then asks the user to take some action, typically agreeing to a usage policy. Once the user agrees, they may authenticate to a RADIUS or other type of authentication system. In simple terms, the captive portal registers and authorizes a device based on the device’s MAC address and end user acceptance of terms. (The MAC address is a hardware-based value attached to any network interface, like a WiFi chip or card.)
Sometimes a device doesn’t load the captive portal to authenticate and authorize the device to use the location’s WiFi access. Examples of this situation include mobile devices and gaming consoles (Switch, Playstation, etc.). They usually won’t launch a captive portal page when connecting to the Internet. You may see this situation when connecting to hotel or public WiFi access points.
You can use NetworkManager on Fedora to resolve these issues, though. Fedora will let you temporarily clone the connecting device’s MAC address and authenticate to the captive portal on the device’s behalf. You’ll need the MAC address of the device you want to connect. Typically this is printed somewhere on the device and labeled. It’s a six-byte hexadecimal value, so it might look like 4A:1A:4C:B0:38:1F. You can also usually find it through the device’s built-in menus.
Cloning with NetworkManager
First, open nm-connection-editor, or open the WiFI settings via the Settings applet. You can then use NetworkManager to clone as follows:
For Ethernet – Select the connected Ethernet connection. Then select the Ethernet tab. Note or copy the current MAC address. Enter the MAC address of the console or other device in the Cloned MAC address field.
For WiFi – Select the WiFi profile name. Then select the WiFi tab. Note or copy the current MAC address. Enter the MAC address of the console or other device in the Cloned MAC address field.
Bringing up the desired device
Once the Fedora system connects with the Ethernet or WiFi profile, the cloned MAC address is used to request an IP address, and the captive portal loads. Enter the credentials needed and/or select the user agreement. The MAC address will then get authorized.
Now, disconnect the WiFi or Ethernet profile, and change the Fedora system’s MAC address back to its original value. Then boot up the console or other device. The device should now be able to access the Internet, because its network interface has been authorized via your Fedora system.
