Tag: fedora workstation

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What’s new in Fedora Workstation 37

Fedora Workstation 37 is the latest version of the Fedora Project’s desktop operating system, made by a worldwide community dedicated to pushing forward innovation in open source. This article describes some of the new user-facing features in Fedora Workstation 37. Upgrade today from GNOME Software, or by using dnf system-upgrade in your favourite terminal emulator!

GNOME 43

Fedora Workstation 37 features the latest version of the GNOME desktop environment which sees more core applications ported to GTK 4, user interface tweaks, and performance tune-ups. Check out the GNOME 43 release notes for more information!

Redesigned Quick Settings menu

No need to open Settings just to change to and from Dark Mode

The new Quick Settings menu offers more control and convenience. You can now easily switch your Wi-Fi network in the menu instead of being taken to a full-screen dialogue box, change between default and dark modes, and enable Night Light without opening the Settings app. A convenient button for taking screenshots and screencasts is also now present.

Core applications

The GNOME core applications included in Fedora Workstation 37 have seen a round of tweaks and improvements.

  • Files has been ported to GTK 4, and the user interface has seen many improvements. Here are just some of them:
    • It is now adaptive – meaning it automatically adjusts to a narrower size, making better use of the available space.
    • The list view has been re-architected to make rubber-band selections easier.
    • The “Properties” and “Open With…” dialogues have been redesigned.
Rubber-band selection in Files 43
  • Calendar features a new sidebar that shows your upcoming events at a glance. It, along with Contacts, now feature adaptive user interfaces.
  • Characters now shows you different skin tone, hair colour, and gender options for emoji.
  • The package source selector in Software has been redesigned and moved to a more visible location.
  • Maps has been ported to GTK 4.
  • Settings includes a new Device Security panel, allowing you to easily see the hardware security features your devices offers – or lacks!
Uh oh!

New supplemental default wallpapers

Fedora Workstation 37 ships with a new set of supplemental wallpapers. See how they were made here!

The six new wallpapers come in both light and dark variants

Under-the-hood changes throughout Fedora Linux 37

Fedora Linux 37 features many under-the-hood changes. Here are some notable ones:

  • The Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer is now officially supported, including 3D acceleration!
  • New installs on BIOS systems will use the GPT disk layout instead of the legacy MBR layout. The installer images will also now use GRUB instead of syslinux to boot on BIOS systems.
  • If you disable and then re-enable SELinux, or run the fixfiles onboot command, the file system relabelling processes will now be done in parallel, allowing for a significant speed boost.
  • The default fonts for Persian has been changed from DejaVu and Noto Sans Arabic to Vazirmatn, providing a more consistent experience for those who use Fedora Linux in Persian.

Also check out…

Cool happenings throughout the Fedora Project!

  • Fedora CoreOS and Fedora Cloud Base have been promoted to Edition status!
  • Preview installer images with a new GUI for Anaconda, the Fedora Linux system installer, will become available in about a week. An article will be published with more details, so watch this space!
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Fedora Linux editions part 1: Official Editions

Fedora Linux provides several variants to meet your needs. You can find an overview of all the Fedora Linux variants in my previous article Introduce the different Fedora Linux editions. This article will go into a little more detail about the Fedora Linux official editions. There are five editions — Fedora Workstation, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, and Fedora Silverblue. The Fedora Linux download page currently shows that three of these are official editions and the remaining two are emerging editions. This article will cover all five editions.

Fedora Workstation

If you are a laptop or desktop computer user, then Fedora Workstation is the right operating system for you. Fedora workstation is very easy to use. You can use this for daily needs such as work, education, hobbies, and more. For example, you can use it to create documents, make presentations, surf the internet, manipulate images, edit videos, and many other things.

This Fedora Linux edition comes with the GNOME Desktop Environment by default. You can work and do activities comfortably using this appearance concept. You can also customize the appearance of this Fedora Workstation according to your preferences, so you will be more comfortable using it. If you are a new Fedora Workstation user, you can read my previous article Things to do after installing Fedora 34 Workstation. Through the article, you will find it easier to start with Fedora Workstation.

More information is available at this link: https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/

Fedora Server

Many companies require their own servers to support their infrastructure. The Fedora Server edition operating system comes with a powerful web-based management interface called Cockpit that has a modern look. Cockpit enables you to easily view and monitor system performance and status.

Fedora Server includes some of the latest technology in the open source world and it is backed by an active community. It is very stable and reliable. However, there is no guarantee that anyone from the Fedora community will be available or able to help if you encounter problems. If you are running mission critical applications and you might require technical support, you might want to consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux instead.

More information is available at this link: https://getfedora.org/en/server/

Fedora IoT

Operating systems designed specifically for IoT devices have become popular. Fedora IoT is an operating system created in response to this. Fedora IoT is an immutable operating system that uses OSTree Technology with atomic updates. This operating system focuses on security which is very important for IoT devices. Fedora IoT has support for multiple architectures. It also comes with a web-based configuration console so that it can be configured remotely without requiring that a keyboard, mouse or monitor be physically connected to the device.

More information is available at this link: https://getfedora.org/en/iot/

Fedora CoreOS

Fedora CoreOS is a container-focused operating system. This operating system is used to run applications safely and reliably in any environment. It is designed for clusters but can also be run as a standalone system. This operating system has high compatibility with Linux Container configurations.

More information is available at this link: https://getfedora.org/en/coreos/

Fedora Silverblue

This edition is a variant of Fedora Workstation with an interface that is not much different. However, the difference is that Fedora Silverblue is an immutable operating system with a container-centric workflow. This means that each installation is exactly the same as another installation of the same version. The goal is to make it more stable, less prone to bugs, and easier to test and develop.

More information is available at this link: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/

Conclusion

Each edition of Fedora Linux has a different purpose. The availability of several editions can help you to get an operating system that suits your needs. The Fedora Linux editions discussed in this article are the operating systems available on the main download page for Fedora Linux. You can find download links and more complete documentation at https://getfedora.org/.

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Recover your files from Btrfs snapshots

As you have seen in a previous article, Btrfs snapshots are a convenient and fast way to make backups. Please note that these articles do not suggest that you avoid backup software or well-tested backup plans. Their goals are to show a great feature of this file system, snapshots, and to inspire curiosity and invite you to explore, experiment and deepen the subject. Read on for more about how to recover your files from Btrfs snapshots.

A subvolume for your project

Let’s assume that you want to save the documents related to a project inside the directory $HOME/Documents/myproject.

As you have seen, a Btrfs subvolume, as well as a snapshot, looks like a normal directory. Why not use a Btrfs subvolume for your project, in order to take advantage of snapshots? To create the subvolume, use this command:

btrfs subvolume create $HOME/Documents/myproject

You can create an hidden directory where to arrange your snapshots:

mkdir $HOME/.snapshots

As you can see, in this case there’s no need to use sudo. However, sudo is still needed to list the subvolumes, and to use the send and receive commands.

Now you can start writing your documents. Each day (or each hour, or even minute) you can take a snapshot just before you start to work:

btrfs subvolume snapshot -r $HOME/Documents/myproject $HOME/.snapshots/myproject-day1

For better security and consistency, and if you need to send the snapshot to an external drive as shown in the previous article, remember that the snapshot must be read only, using the -r flag.

Note that in this case, a snapshot of the /home subvolume will not snapshot the $HOME/Documents/myproject subvolume.

How to recover a file or a directory

In this example let’s assume a classic error: you deleted a file by mistake. You can recover it from the most recent snapshot, or recover an older version of the file from an older snapshot. Do you remember that a snapshot appears like a regular directory? You can simply use the cp command to restore the deleted file:

cp $HOME/.snapshots/myproject-day1/filename.odt $HOME/Documents/myproject

Or restore an entire directory:

cp -r $HOME/.snapshots/myproject-day1/directory $HOME/Documents/myproject

What if you delete the entire $HOME/Documents/myproject directory (actually, the subvolume)? You can recreate the subvolume as seen before, and again, you can simply use the cp command to restore the entire content from the snapshot:

btrfs subvolume create $HOME/Documents/myproject
cp -rT $HOME/.snapshots/myproject-day1 $HOME/Documents/myproject

Or you could restore the subvolume by using the btrfs snapshot command (yes, a snapshot of a snapshot):

btrfs subvolume snapshot $HOME/.snapshots/myproject-day1 $HOME/Documents/myproject

How to recover btrfs snapshots from an external drive

You can use the cp command even if the snapshot resides on an external drive. For instance:

cp /run/media/user/mydisk/bk/myproject-day1/filename.odt $HOME/Documents/myproject

You can restore an entire snapshot as well. In this case, since you will use the send and receive commands, you must use sudo. In addition, consider that the restored subvolume will be created as read only. Therefore you need to also set the read only property to false:

sudo btrfs send /run/media/user/mydisk/bk/myproject-day1 | sudo btrfs receive $HOME/Documents/
mv Documents/myproject-day1 Documents/myproject
btrfs property set Documents/myproject ro false

Here’s an extra explanation. The command btrfs subvolume snapshot will create an exact copy of a subvolume in the same device. The destination has to reside in the same btrfs device. You can’t use another device as the destination of the snapshot. In that case you need to take a snapshot and use the send and receive commands.

For more information, refer to some of the online documentation:

man btrfs-subvolume
man btrfs-send
man btrfs-receive
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Now available: Fedora on Lenovo laptops!

We’ve been teasing this for a while, but today it’s finally true—Fedora Workstation is now available preinstalled on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8, ThinkPad P53, and ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 laptops. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is available today for direct consumer purchase from Lenovo’s online store. The Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 and ThinkPad P53 will be available next week via the “Contact Us” icon on Lenovo.com. What’s more, the successor models are in the works for pre-load and online ordering as well!

Lenovo has been a great partner in bringing this to market. Like the Fedora community, they are operating on an “upstream first” model. That’s part of why the only thing you’ll see on the laptop that doesn’t come from an official Fedora repository is a set of PDFs providing documentation and legal notices. Lenovo engineers have been contributing to the Linux kernel, including a patch to enable the “lap mode” sensor, which is already accepted. They have also worked with their vendors to improve Linux support in devices like the fingerprint scanner.

Of course, you already know that open source is about more than just the technology; the community is what makes it great. Lenovo is a member of Fedora and other communities. In addition to participating in the usual Fedora places (like the devel mailing list), they also were a gold-level sponsor of our Nest With Fedora conference. And they have a dedicated Fedora section on their community forum. Mark Pearson, Senior Linux Developer said “doing open source the right way is important to us” at his Nest With Fedora Q&A session.

This will be a global program, but it will take some time to roll out country-by-country. If it doesn’t appear on the website in your country, call the local sales number for your country to place a phone order. I’m excited to have Lenovo offer Fedora Workstation as a supported choice on their laptops. This is a great opportunity to grow our community.

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Using Fedora to quickly implement REST API with JavaScript

Fedora Workstation uses GNOME Shell by default and this one was mainly written in JavaScript. JavaScript is famous as a language of front-end development but this time we’ll show its usage for back-end.

We’ll implement a new API using the following technologies: JavaScript, Express and Fedora Workstation. A web browser is being used to call the service (eg. Firefox from the default Fedora WS distro).

Installing of necessary packages

Check: What’s already installed?

$ npm -v
$ node -v

You may already have both the necessary packages installed and can skip the next step. If not, install nodejs:

$ sudo dnf install nodejs

A new simple service (low-code style)

Let‘s navigate to our working directory (work) and create a new directory for our new sample back-end app.

$ cd work
$ mkdir newApp
$ cd newApp
$ npx express-generator

The above command generates an application skeleton for us.

$ npm i

The above command installs dependencies. Please mind the security warnings – never use this one for production.

Crack open the routes/users.js

Modify line #6 to: 

res.send(data);

Insert this code block below var router:

let data = { '1':'Ann', '2': 'Bruno', '3': 'Celine' }

Save
the modified file.

We modified a route and added a new variable data. This one could be declared as a const as we didn‘t modify it anywhere. The result:

Running the service on your local Fedora workstation machine

$ npm start

Note: The application entry point is bin/www. You may want to change the port number there.

Calling our new service

Let‘s launch our Firefox browser and type-in:

http://localhost:3000/users

Output

It‘s also possible to leverage the Developer tools. Hit F12 and in the Network tab, select the related GET request and look at the side bar response tab to check the data.

Conclusion

Now we have got a service and and an unnecessary index accessible through localhost:3000. To get quickly rid of this:

  1. Remove the views directory
  2. Remove the public directory
  3. Remove the routes/index.js file
  4. Inside the app.js file, modify the line 37 to:
    res.status(err.status || 500).end();
  5. Remove the next line res.render(‘error’)

Then restart the service:

$ npm start