Linux Magazine USA 254 2022 01.pdf

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Miniature Photography
with a webcam and Rasp Pi
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ISSUE 254 – JANUARY 2022
Phone
Hacks
No more vendor
updates? Put a free OS
on your smartphone
and keep it calling
EasyNAS
Turn your old computer into
a network storage device
Lutris
Play your favorite games
on Linux with this unified
gaming platform
MergerFS
Join disks, volumes,
and arrays into a
single file system
W W W. L I N U X P R O M A G A Z I N E . C O M
10
MORE FABULOUS
FREE TOOLS!
EDITORIAL
Welcome
VALUATIONS AND VALUES
Dear Reader,
Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen stirred up a lot of
trouble for her former company with her recent appearance
on Capital Hill. A vivid picture of Facebook’s internal culture
came to light in her recent testimony. One of the more dis-
turbing revelations was that the angry emoji reportedly car-
ried five times more weight in the Facebook algorithm than
the like button [1]. Apparently, all the emojis had equal
weight, but it was the angry face that tended to serve as a
counterpoint to the Like button, which isn’t technically an
emoji. The result was that stuff that makes you angry was
five times (later cut to four times) more likely to end up in
your newsfeed than stuff you liked. Facebook was appar-
ently aware of this but didn’t take sufficient steps to fix it,
which was an optical disaster. After years of saying their
goal was to connect people, these revelations left the im-
pression that their real goal was to maximize clicks, even
if it led to division.
The situation was obviously really broken, but who or what
was to blame? The problem with assigning a single culprit
for such a fiasco is that you imply that the only issue is the
implementation: If it weren’t for a process snafu or a few
bad actors, everything would have been fine. In fact, the
system itself is the problem, and I’m not just talking about
the kooky and often irrational Internet advertising economy
(which certainly is a problem). The deeper problem is the
business of business, or, more specifically, the business of
how new companies get off the ground.
Facebook got off the ground sometime around 2003/2004 in
Mark Zuckerberg’s college dorm room, but for public inves-
tors, Facebook arrived on the scene with the Initial Public
Offering (IPO) on May 18, 2012. The IPO was one of the larg-
est in history for a technology company, with a total capital-
ization coming in at over $104 billion. At the time, com-
mentators were wondering how the company would ever
make enough money to justify the price. As
San Francisco
Chronicle
technology editor James Temple wrote just after
the IPO [2], “The problem is that the smart money on Wall
Street simply doesn’t think the company’s [Facebook’s]
prospects justify the $105 billion that the offering price im-
plied. And no wonder. That values the company at 108
times 2011 earnings, requiring almost ridiculous financial
growth to make sense. By way of comparison, Google
trades at less than 19 times earnings.”
Price to earnings (P/E) ratios are best discussed elsewhere,
but suffice it to say, average P/E ratios are much lower than
Facebook’s was at the time. Startups often have higher P/E
ratios, because the whole point is that people are investing
in potential, but you also need to figure in the basic uncer-
tainty about Facebook’s revenue model. As I write this col-
umn, the electric truck company Rivian just had a success-
ful IPO with
no
earnings so far, which give it a P/E ratio of
infinity, but everyone knows what a truck is and how to sell
a truck. At the time of the Facebook IPO, the world was just
beginning to see what a Facebook ad was, and no one had
any way to predict whether Facebook would ever sell
enough to justify a $104 billion valuation. Back-of-the-enve-
lope calculations showed that they would have to capture a
very large percentage of the global Internet ad sales market
to achieve the earnings necessary to justify what the stock-
holders paid for their shares.
When emojis arrived on the scene in 2017, Facebook was
still methodically working their way back from the oblivion
imposed by their shareholders’ obsession. Fast forward to
today, and the company actually succeeded. They really
did capture a very large percentage of the global Internet
ad sales market, and their P/E ratio is currently down to
around 32. In terms of execution, the company should be
commended for succeeding in clawing their way to stabil-
ity after the ridiculous early expectations, but the point is,
they didn’t get there by playing nice. From the date of the
initial public offering, it was clear that Facebook would
have to grow at an explosive, exponential rate in order to
justify their share price, and they weren’t in a position to
lead with benevolence.
To be fair, they are trying to fix it now – they say they
have already fixed it, but it is a little hard to tell, since
there is no real oversight. There are lots of reasons to be
angry with Facebook, but if you want
to get angry about the anger, just
remember that it was our stark
and soulless corporate finance
system that defined their culture.
Their shareholders gave them an
impossible task back in 2012, and
like any good gamers, they made
it the object of their single-
minded focus. Their rocket to
the stars ran on anger be-
cause that was the cheap-
est and most abundant
fuel, and they needed
a
whole
lot of lift.
Info
[1]
“Facebook Formula Gave Anger Five Times more Weight than
Likes, Documents Show”:
https://thehill.com/policy/
technology/578548-facebook-formula-gave-anger-five-times-
weight-of-likes-documents-show
[2]
“Facebook IPO Underscores Shutting Out the Masses”:
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Facebook-IPO-
underscores-shutting-out-the-masses-3575283.php
Joe Casad,
Editor in Chief
LINUX-MAGAZINE.COM | LINUXPROMAGAZINE.COM
ISSUE 254
JANUARY 2022
3
JANUARY 2022
ON THE COVER
28 EasyNAS
Don’t throw away that old personal computer.
Put it to work on your home network as a
Network-Attached Storage (NAS) device.
62 Miniature Photography
We’ll show you how to take tabletop photos at
high magnification with a Rasp Pi and a
Logitech Brio webcam.
38 MergerFS
Is your file server getting confusing, with too
many mounted disks and arrays? MergerFS
lets you merge them into a single file system.
72 Lutris
This open source gaming platform lets you
play games from GOG, Steam, Battle.net,
Origin, Uplay, and other popular sources.
NEWS
08
News
• System76 Developing a New Desktop Environment
• Hetzner Opens New Location in the USA
• KDE Plasma 5.24 Introduces Fingerprint Reader Support
• Ubuntu 21.10 Released and Finally Includes Gnome 40
• Hive Ransomware Hitting Linux and FreeBSD Systems
• SUSE Reaches Beyond the Edge with SUSE Linux
Enterprise Micro 5.1
IN-DEPTH
28
EasyNAS
EasyNAS lets you set up network-attached storage in next
to no time – even on old hardware.
32
Command Line – plocate
As the latest successor to locate, plocate produces some of
the quickest search results possible on any system.
34
Trinity Desktop
11
Kernel News
• Wonky Typecasting
Trinity Desktop Environment’s latest release may seem like
a trip back in time, but it does offer freedom of choice and
a functional desktop for modern computing.
COVER STORIES
14
PostmarketOS
This mobile Linux distribution supports around a dozen
user interfaces.
37
Charly’s Column – ASN
When digging into BGP routing information, Charly avoids
the highway through parameter hell thanks to the ASN
tool. In addition to a system’s AS number, ASN delivers
other information, such as its peering partners.
18
LineageOS
Breathe new life into your old smartphone: The TWRP
recovery image and the free Android offshoot LineageOS
let you install the latest security updates every week.
38
MergerFS
This simple tool lets you combine disks, volumes, and
arrays into a single file system.
40
Programming Snapshot – Go and Fyne
If you want to keep only the good photos from your digital
collection, you have to find and delete the fails. Mike
Schilli writes a graphical application to help you cull your
photo library.
REVIEW
24
Distro Walk – EndeavourOS
As an outgrowth of the now-defunct Antergos community,
EndeavorOS offers a customizable Arch Linux derivative that’s
easy to install with the added benefit of community support.
46
Temperature Testing a NAS
Use the stress, lm-sensors, and hddtemp utilities to sort out
temperature and reliability issues with a home-based NAS box.
4
JANUARY 2022
ISSUE 254
LINUX-MAGAZINE.COM | LINUXPROMAGAZINE.COM
Eventually phone manufactures
just give up on supporting old
hardware. If you’re not ready
to abandon that hardware
yourself, you might find a better
alternative with LineageOS —
a free Android-based system
that supports more than 300
phones, including many legacy
models that are no longer
supported by the vendor. We
also explore PostmarketOS,
a community-based Linux
distribution that runs on several
Android devices.
69
Welcome
This month in Linux Voice.
71
Doghouse – FreedomBox
FreedomBox offers a private, secure personal server
that is now available on more platforms.
72
Lutris
Gaming on Linux has traditionally involved a complex
installation and configuration procedure. Lutris lets
you enjoy games from different worlds quickly in a
unified interface.
76
FreeFileSync
Many users still fail to back up important data.
FreeFileSync automatically synchronizes specified
folders to multiple storage media on demand.
IN-DEPTH
50
QJournalctl
This convenient GUI tool will help you track down log data
in the systemd journal.
82
FOSSPicks
This month Graham reviews Bela, Quickemu, GPU-Viewer,
Maestral, Termux and AnLinux, Space Cadet, and more!
88
Tutorial – Shell Calendars
Command-line aficionados do not have to forgo
calendars and appointment reminders.
MakerSpace
54
Deluxe Web Radio
A self-designed housing and matching software transform
a simple Raspberry Pi web radio into an elegant living room
console.
62
Miniature Photography
A web camera, Raspberry Pi, and simple software facilitate
miniature tabletop photography.
TWO TERRIFIC DISTROS
DOUBLE-SIDED DVD!
SEE PAGE 6 FOR DETAILS
LINUX-MAGAZINE.COM | LINUXPROMAGAZINE.COM
ISSUE 254
JANUARY 2022
5

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