Showing posts with label Linx_user. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linx_user. Show all posts

Thursday, 15 September 2016

Ubuntu Complete Manual available today

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Fancy trying your hand at Ubuntu but feeling a little intimidated? Our pint-sized Complete Manual breaks it down into manageable chunks so you can ease yourself into the process.

New from the makers of Linux User & Developer, Ubuntu The Complete Manual contains all a beginner needs to gain a working knowledge of this innovative open-source operating system. From the default software to the best FOSS apps to download from the Software Centre, we’ll tour the top programs and applications and take you through step-by-step tutorials. Soon you’ll be flying with Ubuntu.

Pick up a copy in the Imagine Shop for £7.99 or download from GreatDigitalMags.com.



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Friday, 26 August 2016

Share what makes Linux amazing; win an actual penguin*

Poppy the Penguin

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Linux, Future Cert, the UK and Ireland’s representative for the LPI (Linux Professional Institute) is asking everyone to share what they think are the ‘most amazing uses for Linux’ to compile a public list.

Every entry will go into a prize draw with the winner receiving a year’s adoption of Poppy the Penguin at Bristol Zoo (your own Linux mascot, just like Tux!).

Bill Quinn, founder of Future Cert, said: “We wanted to do something fun to coincide with the 25th celebrations happening over the next few months and this is a really great way of celebrating the many uses for Linux. But we’ll be really interested to hear users views on great Linux uses around the world – there are so many.

“And of course some will remember the urban legend from 18 years ago about Tux the penguin breaking free from Bristol Zoo and waddling off to a computer store.”

It is true that when Linus Torvalds visited the Bristol Linux Users Group they adopted a Penguin for him at Bristol Zoo. Of course, the subsequent ‘news’ articles that went around after were not quite so true – but they were a lot of fun! You can read about the escape – and the Penguin stamping violently on a Windows 98 box here.

The ‘amazing uses’ could be anything from a particular supercomputer, to a small home gadget. See Future Cert’s list of ’25 amazing uses for Linux’ here.

You can enter via the Future Cert Twitter page @futurecert or Facebook page ‘futurecert’. Alternatively visit http://ift.tt/2bkkUGW

The closing date is September 30th 2016. The list will be compiled and revealed in October along with the winner.

*Poppy is an African Penguin at Bristol Zoo. The prize is adoption for one year, which includes an adoption pack in the post that will contain two tickets to the Zoo, a cuddly toy, an adoption certificate, your name displayed at the exhibit and a fact-file about Poppy the Penguin.

Image above, Poppy the Penguin with her two chicks, courtesy of Bristol Zoo.



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Monday, 1 August 2016

Haynes Raspberry Pi Manual competition winners announced

Haynes Raspberry Pi Manual competition winners announced

Back in issue 166 we offered you the chance to win one of five copies of Haynes’ Raspberry Pi 2 Owner’s Workshop Manual by Dr Gray Girling. The competition closed on 28th July and we’re delighted to announce the winners!

The five lucky winners are:

Andrew Wright

Benjamin Suk

Jay Bowles

Travis Naser

Andrew Walker

Congratulations to them and thank you all for entering!



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Packt security bundle winner announced!

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Congratulations to the winner of our security bundle ebook competition in association with Packt Publishing!

The competition closed at midnight UK time on 28th July and we’ve now chosen a winner. Thank you to all those who entered.

Warren Stearman is the lucky winner! Congratulations Warren; you’ll be receiving your prize soon!



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Thursday, 30 June 2016

Check out our new issue plus win an ebook bundle!

Check out our new issue plus win an ebook bundle!

Issue 167 of Linux User & Developer is on sale today. Learn how to lock down your system and test its security with the ultimate guide to keeping your PC, network and passwords safe. The free DVD is packed with tools to help you, including two live-booting distros and the best FOSS. Plus, learn how to use your Pi as a pen-testing tool to assess your security, take control of Bash scripts, learn how to compile new software on an old distro, build your own NAS and much more. Pick up your copy from all good newsagents and supermarkets today. Not in your local store yet? You can pick up a print edition from the Imagine Shop, or grab a digital copy from GreatDigitalMags, where you’ll also find all of our back issues.

But that’s not all! We’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to give you the chance to win this must-have security bundle of ebooks:

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Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Learning Python Penetration Testing
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner’s Guide
Learning Linux Shell Scripting
Learning Python for Forensics

Want a taster? Get a free chapter of the Linux Security Cookbook here.

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us an email to linuxuser@imagine-publishing.co.uk with the subject line “Secure my system” and tell us your name and email address. The closing date for entry is 28th July 2016. Plus, don’t forget to take Packt Publishing’s survey and help to reveal the best-paid skills in the tech business so you know what you need to do to take your career to the next level!

Terms and Conditions
Imagine Publishing has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), Packt Publishing, their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not wish to receive this, please state clearly on your entry.


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Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Free security download, plus win an ebook bundle!

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In this era where almost everything is online, online security is a major concern. These days, a lot of web servers, web-connected devices, and services use Linux as their platform. Most versions of Linux use the Unix bash shell, so the Shellshock vulnerability can affect a huge number of websites and web servers.

Shellshock was discovered on September 12, 2014, and it affects all the distributions of Linux using a Bash shell. The Shellshock vulnerability makes it possible to execute commands remotely using environment variables.

In this free downloadable chapter from Packt Publishing’s Linux Security Cookbook, discover more about the Shellshock vulnerability and how to patch and deal with Bash vulnerabilities for better Linux security.

Plus we’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to give you the chance to win this must-have security bundle of ebooks:

Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Learning Python Penetration Testing
Kali Linux Wireless Penetration Testing Beginner’s Guide
Learning Linux Shell Scripting
Learning Python for Forensics

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us an email to linuxuser@imagine-publishing.co.uk with the subject line “Secure my system” and tell us your name and email address. The closing date for entry is 28th July 2016.

Imagine Publishing has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), Packt Publishing, their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time, Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not wish to receive this, please state clearly on your entry.



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Saturday, 4 June 2016

Genuino 101 review

Genuino 101 review

Intel has been trying to break into the maker market for a few years now, having seen the success of the Arduino project and the Raspberry Pi. The Intel Galileo (reviewed in LU&D Issue 138, 4/5) proved unpopular thanks to poor IO performance from the Quark processor. Its successor, the Edison (reviewed in LU&D Issue 151, 4/5), added an Atom processor to address performance issues but its odd form factor and high-density connectors were off-putting.

The Genuino 101 is Intel’s third crack of the whip. Abandoning its previous approach of producing an Arduino-compatible microcontroller, the company has partnered with the Arduino project to create a fully official Arduino board – known as the Arduino 101 in the US and Genuino 101 elsewhere thanks to ongoing trademark issues. The result is a device which, at a casual glance, looks just like the classic microcontroller-based Arduino Uno. Yet, while it shares the Uno’s layout, the Genuino 101 is a different beast.

At its heart is the Curie module, an ultra-compact, low-power system-on-chip (SoC) designed primarily for wearable projects. Inside this chip is a pair of processors: a 32MHz Quark core acts as the central processor, while a 32MHz Argonaut RISC Core (ARC) is present as a co-processor – a tacit admission from Intel that the Quark’s ability to directly drive IO pins isn’t quite where it should be.

The presence of two processors splits the Curie module in an interesting manner. The Quark, which is a fully compatible x86 architecture processor based on the company’s old Pentium microarchitecture, runs a real-time operating system (RTOS); the ARC is used to execute whatever Arduino program you care to upload, and in a manner which is theoretically indistinguishable from any other Arduino.

In theory, this split architecture offers the best of both worlds: the flexibility and power of a microcomputer with the real-time operation and low power of a microcontroller. Sadly, at present, the RTOS is locked-down and closed-source. Intel has pledged to open-source the RTOS in March 2016, at which point the true potential of the Genuino 101 should become apparent – such as the ability to offload your own tasks to the Quark, or even to install and run a cut-down Linux directly on the device.

Want to find out more about what we thought of the Genuino 101? Check out the full review in issue 163 of LU&D!



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Friday, 3 June 2016

QuiteRSS 0.18.3 review

QuiteRSS 0.18.3 review

The little symbol indicating a feed of headlines from a site is perhaps not so ubiquitous as it was a few years ago, but for most important news sites there is a feed – even if it’s easier to find it through Google. Google’s own Reader service closed three years ago – a small boost to desktop feed readers – but many just jumped ship to other services like Feedly.

If you’d like to bring feed reading back to your desktop, to avoid relying on some web-based service that could disappear as easily as Google Reader, QuiteRSS is a neat little reader to try. Packages are available for Arch, Fedora, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Mandriva and OpenSUSE, as well as OS X and Windows – with the pre-Qt5 version from last year also available ported to IBM’s OS/2, for the seriously retro amongst you.

We did have a few issues with stability on OpenJDK 7 on Ubuntu Trusty, but we cannot blame QuiteRSS here, as this combination has given us trouble elsewhere. In daily use it was responsive enough, but most noteworthy for a simple and pleasant interface, which gave us the news we wanted, from RSS and Atom feeds, viewable in an embedded WebKit browser – with ad blocking.



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Thursday, 2 June 2016

Issue 166 of LU&D is out now!

Issue 166 of LU&D is out now!

The latest issue of Linux User & Developer is out now. If you’re among the lucky 1 million in the UK that got their hands on a free micro:bit (or you know someone who is) then this issue is a must-have! It includes everything you need to know, including a complete anatomy of the micro:bit, a guide to how it shapes up against the latest models of the Raspberry Pi, and five maker projects to get you started.

Also in this issue you’ll find the ultimate FOSS toolkit, packed with creative software to help you edit video, audio and graphics like a pro. Pick up the print edition and you get a free DVD with two live-booting distros packed with the FOSS from our feature. If you read the magazine digitally, don’t worry – our secure repo FileSilo.co.uk contains all the downloads you need.

Plus there’s a great range of tutorials in this issue to help you master filesystems, networks, passwords and much more. Issue 166 of Linux User & Developer is in all good newsagents now – if it hasn’t reached your part of the world yet, you can order a print copy or read it digitally right now!



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Pi project: Underwater drone

Pi project: Underwater drone

“When I was a kid I frequently built RC models; sailing boats and speedboats,” explains Niels Affourtit. “While I owned a fantastic RC glider and dreamed of having my own RC submarine someday, my neighbour at the time had an RC submarine and discouraged me from building one by saying this thing always had trouble with its electronics and leakage. Besides, almost all waters are murky in our area!

“Around the end of 2014, I saw a National Geographic episode about the salvage of the Costa Concordia and was very impressed with how they used a VideoRay to monitor the work done by their divers, and it helped revive my dream of having my own model submarine. That’s when I stumbled across the people who have built their own ROV.

“The ROV is controlled with a joystick connected to a laptop. The laptop runs Python scripts, and with PyGame I can read the signals from the joystick. The signals are then translated into servo commands and sent to the Raspberry Pi via a simple socket connection. The Raspberry Pi is the brain of the ROV; it communicates with the surface laptop via Ethernet. Thanks to the OpenROV project, I learnt to implement a Tenda home plug, which reduces the communication lines from four to two wires, increases the reach from about 50 metres with a submerged CAT5 to 300 metres, and makes the signal much less susceptible to noise.”

Want to find out more about Niels Affourtit’s amazing sub? Check out the full interview in issue 164 of LU&D!



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Wednesday, 1 June 2016

Korora review

Korora review

Since its inception back in 2005, Korora has undergone numerous updates, been abandoned, rescued from obscurity and has recently been revamped into something completely new. To say it has gone on a journey would be an understatement, but the finished product proves to be one of the better entry-level distros out there.

While it’s essentially a remix of Fedora, Korora fills in some of the gaps that Fedora often seems to miss. It ships with a number of both open-source and proprietary applications, so that the end-user doesn’t need to tweak the system or set up a third-party repository. The idea of an out-of-the-box distro has never been more apparent with the ease of use that Korora both promises and delivers.

What’s even better about Korora is that it offers great customisation options to its users by supporting a number of desktop environments. Users can effortlessly switch between MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE and Gnome environments, and then perform heavy, detailed customisations, depending on their tastes and expertise.

We should also point out the existence of the helpful Pharlap tool, used for installing third-party drivers – such as graphics cards – without the complicated process than many other distros have you follow. Korora is all about simplicity, and end users are the ones who will benefit from it.



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Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Build a Pi media centre

Build a Pi media centre

Get your monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse plugged in, then install OSMC – this is your main home theatre PC. Configure a Bluetooth remote control, or a remote control app on your smartphone or tablet. Connect a powered external hard drive to your Raspberry Pi, loaded up with all your favourite music, movies and TV shows. Set up your OSMC media centre by adding the content stored on your external hard drive, and add new files from USB flash drives as and when you plug them in. Set your Pi up as a media server for your mobile devices. Finally, browse through OSMC’s App Store for things like a torrent client and TV tuner.

You will need:

– Home theatre peripherals
– Bluetooth remote
– Powered external hard drive



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Monday, 30 May 2016

Mozilla turns Firefox OS into IoT hub

Mozilla turns Firefox OS into IoT hub

As an operating system, Firefox OS has undergone a massive transformation in the past 24 months – it’s far more than just a web browser nowadays. But now Mozilla is looking to take Firefox to the next level by using it as a hub for a plethora of Internet of Things projects.

Mozilla is currently working on four IoT projects behind the scenes: Project Smart Home, Project Link, Project Sensor Web and Vaani. Each of the projects will deal with IoT technology in different ways, but all are aimed at making the end consumer’s home and devices smarter. In a blog post, Mozilla’s SVP of Connected Devices, Ari Jaaksi, posted: “Everything is connected around us. This revolution has already started and it will be bigger than previous technology revolutions, including the mobile smartphone revolution. Internet of Things, as many call it today, will fundamentally affect all of us.”

Smart Home is pretty self-explanatory, and looks to give users the tools needed to automate some of their home’s basic functions, while still giving more discerning users some useful flexibility in how they adopt it into their home. With Link, users will have a new personal assistant that bridges the gap between themselves and their smart devices. Over prolonged time, Link will remember certain preferences, making it faster and eventually requiring minimal user interaction.

Vaani is the name given to Mozilla’s new voice interface that can be integrated into third-party apps and hardware. To start with, Vaani will recognise simple commands, with a view to catering to more complex statements down the line. Sensor Web is a little different, and relies on a network of sensors to collate crowd-sourced data that will be openly accessible to all. Mozilla will process the data and present it to users to view in their own time.

Many of Mozilla’s outlined projects are very much in their early phases and it’s not known when we’ll see any of these actively in our homes. With Mozilla’s continued development of the Firefox platform, it’ll be interesting to see where its new IoT focus leads it.



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Saturday, 28 May 2016

LeMaker Guitar review

 

LeMaker Guitar review

LeMaker first raised hackles in the hobbyist computing market back in 2014 when it launched the Banana Pi, a blatant attempt at duplicating the success of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. While the company was pilloried for its choice of name, later abandoned in favour of successor board the Banana Pro, the company’s first release was far from a slavish copy: boasting a more powerful processor, more memory, and SATA connectivity, the device proved a hit until the launch of the improved Raspberry Pi 2.

The Guitar, part of a new family of designs from LeMaker, may not carry the Banana branding but there’s no denying its influence. Rather than designing the device around the mainstream Raspberry Pi form factor, though, the company has this time opted to build a computer-on-module inspired by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

Anyone who has worked with the Compute Module will find the LeMaker Guitar immediately familiar. The system-on-chip processor, an Actions S500, sits alongside 1GB of memory, a combined audio and power management unit, and 8GB of NAND flash storage on an over-sized small-outline DIMM (SODIMM) form factor circuit board. This board then connects to a baseboard, supplied with the Guitar, which provides more accessible connectivity than the SODIMM’s 204 electrical contacts.

The baseboard isn’t a dumb breakout board, however: while the bulk of the active components are located on the Guitar itself, wired and wireless networking PHYs are installed on the baseboard. Those planning to integrate the Guitar module into a baseboard of their own design following prototyping will need to keep that in mind and add their own network connectivity accordingly.

Want to find out more about the LeMaker Guitar? Check out the full review in issue 162 of LU&D!



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Friday, 27 May 2016

SuperTux 0.4 review

SuperTux 0.4 review

You’ve probably played SuperTux in the past – it’s been around for a while. In your distro’s repository, you’ll have 0.1.3, the last stable release, dating from 2005. Development on the unstable 3.n branch has been going along mostly unremarked for more than a decade, and now a new stable release, 0.4, bursts onto the scene!

A classic 2D sidescroller in the spirit of Super Mario games, originally written by Bill Kendrick of Tux Paint and Circus Linux! fame (if you have young children, those two programs are a must), SuperTux has undergone an extensive rewrite of the game engine and, more visibly, gameplay, graphic effects, and features. The level editor is scriptable with the Squirrel scripting language (easy to get started on if you’ve never used it).

We installed on LMDE with Jessie backports – with packages scheduled for Ubuntu 16.04, you may not even have to add a new repository. It’s configurable for either keyboard or joystick use. Revisiting 2D side-scrollers is always fun, and time passes quickly – SuperTux’s levels and gameplay make it every bit as addictive a challenge as navigating an Italian plumber around strange 2D worlds.



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Thursday, 26 May 2016

Pi project: RasPiViv

Pi project: RasPiViv

“The Raspberry Pi is set up as a LAMP server,” explains RasPiViv creator Nate Bensing. “I started playing around with the DHT22 temperature-humidity sensor – originally I just wanted to monitor that, the temperature and the humidity, but then I got into using relays to control the lighting and it just progressed further and further. I was just making this for myself and I posted on a forum. Then a lot of people seemed really interested, so I said I’d clean things up and throw together a guide.

“So the temperature and humidity sensors are read every 60 seconds and logged into a database. Using WiringPi and Adafruit’s DHT22 sensor (and the driver for it, which is brilliant and works really well), lighting is controlled by regular relays or relay modules, and the fan is just a basic transistor switch. The main idea behind the fan is that if the atmosphere is too saturated with water then the frogs can’t thermoregulate. So the database is read every five minutes, and when it reaches 95% humidity it then kicks on the fan to blow in some fresh air.

“There’s a whole web interface where you can check out the current readings. Check out the Demo section on my website and the first thing that pops up is my blue poison dart frog vivarium. It gives you the current temperature and humidity, and then also the readings for the last hour.”

Want to know more about Nate Bensing’s RasPiViv project? Check out the complete interview in issue 153 of LU&D!



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Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Solus OS

Solus OS

For the seasoned users among you, chances are you may have previously heard about the development of the Solus operating system – for both good and bad reasons. For those less aware of the behind-the-scenes antics, you might want to check out our full interview with its founder, Ikey Doherty, back in LU&D 162.

Following on from a successful launch, the project looks to offer a stable, and alternative, take on the more common GNOME-based distributions. Without doubt, Solus’ most distinguishing feature is its unique graphical interface: Budgie. The Budgie desktop has been written from the ground up, enabling easy integration into other distros and is essentially an open source project in its own right.

At its core is its simplicity, which is something that Solus heavily relies on, and it pays dividends when moving around the interface. A large part of this is the Raven applet technology that provides an intuitive notification centre for desktop users, which is still fairly uncommon for most modern distros to contain. It’s also highly accessible out-of-the-box, not only due to the amount of key software readily available, but also the use of ‘high contrast’ theming to make it the distro of choice for those with visual impairments.

Solus OS has just launched its first point release (1.1 Shannon) and with that, it has optimised, refined and tweaked Budgie to be better than ever before. For those who are after a traditional desktop experience, but don’t want to compromise on how their interface looks, then you really need to download Solus as soon as possible. Official downloads can be found over at solus-project.com.



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Tuesday, 24 May 2016

We need your help!

We need your help!

Are you a regular reader of Linux User & Developer? Do you frequent our website? If so, we’d love you to share your opinions and help us make your magazine and site even better!

Complete our readers’ survey to tell us more about what you like, don’t like and what you want from the magazine and site. Thank you for your help!



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Build a Pi weather station

Build a Pi weather station

Stuck for something to do on a rainy Tuesday afternoon? How about turning your Pi into a weather station so you can predict precipitation?

While a waterproof case is also a good idea here, some of the sensors would benefit from being outside the case, like the temperature sensor –  there are waterproofed variants available for some of them. You could always use a mix of sensors, so you can take an average of the readings and also have some built-in redundancy.

The idea here is to connect up lots of sensors via the GPIOs in order to get a reading of the weather state in your area. With the Wi-Fi and portable power pack, you can have the weather station in your garden connected to your home router (or a Wi-Fi repeater!) for an internet connection, and you can post all of the data onto an easily-accessed WordPress site, hosted on the Pi.

You will need:

– DHT22 sensor
– BMP085 sensor
– TGS 2600
– UV1-01 sensor
– LDR (light dependent resistor)
– ADC (analogue-to-digital convertor)
– Wind vane
– Anemometer



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Monday, 23 May 2016

Smartwatches go open source

Smartwatches go open source

Until now, the open source community has largely been left behind when it comes to the world of smartwatch operating systems. With Google and Apple leading the charge in this field, there’s been little competition, and any independent launches have been heavily restricted in what they can do. However, we now finally have a choice with the launch of AsteroidOS.

Developed by Florent Revest, AsteroidOS is the first true open source distribution that’s been specifically made for smartwatches. In its current state, AsteroidOS contains only the bare minimum of functions. So things like a calculator, stopwatch and calendar are all ready to use, but many of the smartphone connection features we’ve become accustomed to are not.
Adoption rates are still in their infancy, and Revest has been quick to state that the project will move at a much faster speed once more developers are working on it. Currently, owners of the LG G Watch and LG G Watch Urbane have full access to the OS, but as long as your bootloader is unlocked, porting it over to other devices isn’t a difficult task. The kernel source is built around libhydris, which allows the re-use of Android drivers.

Initial tests on the AsteroidOS software have proved positive. On videos uploaded to AsteroidOS’ official Twitter account, videos have shown off many of its core apps working. Speeds are quick, crashes are infrequent and there’s plenty of on-board customisation on hand. Keen developers can go hands-on with the code that Revest and his team have uploaded to GitHub. There’s scope to build applications from scratch and directly implement them on your smartwatch, and even change the way that your hardware performs. Due to the open source nature of the operating system, users also have the tools to adopt the OS for use on various other wearables. So perhaps a VR version of AsteroidOS could be with us down the line.

Visit the official AsteroidOS website for a full overview of the project, where you’ll find a guide to installing the OS on to your device, and also GitHub where you can check out its source code for yourself.



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