Letters

Tux in Public!

On a recent trip to western New York State, I sat down to use the public computer in the hotel lobby and was shocked to find it running Ubuntu with Unity. It was hooked up to a multi-function printer device like you normally find in hotel business centers, and while not a fan of Unity, I was able to get online easily and it worked fine. This is the first time I've seen Tux in a place so visible to the general public. How great is that?


Cranky Frankie

Shawn Powers replies: I had the same experience at a local library here in Michigan. There was an entire room of computers running some sort of Linux with KDE!

About Let's Encrypt

I've been a Linux Journal reader for more than five years, although the English is sometimes strange for me.

After reading Andrei Lukovenko's article “Let's Automate Let's Encrypt” in the June 2016 issue, I decided to write you to congratulate you for all of your great work and, even more, to thank Andrei. I was searching for a way to use SSL on my recently actualized Request Tracker server, and this article came as a ring on my finger! In less than five minutes, my server used a certified certificate, and there were no more warnings from the browser about untrusted sites. LJ is a great journal, with great articles!


Jerome Verleye

Proxmox Kernel Is Not Debian-Based

John S. Tonello's article “The Tiny Internet, Part II” in the July 2016 issue introduces Proxmox VE. However, its kernel is either RHEL or Ubuntu based on a Debian environment, not directly based on Debian. This is how we choose server-grade hardware for running Proxmox VE, according to the certified or compatibility lists from Red Hat or Canonical. FYI.


Cheng-Han Wu

John S. Tonello replies: Thanks for the clarification about Proxmox VE. To clarify, is it fair to say the kernel is pure Red Hat or Ubuntu, but the environment is something like Debian 6/7? I wanted to let readers know that the CLI interface is closer to a Debian experience than, say, Ubuntu, and avoid delving too deep into the kernel itself, which is a more advanced topic.

Thanks for writing. Proxmox VE is a great tool and one more people should know about!

Cheng-Han Wu replies:

Here's the wiki about Proxmox VE kernel: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_VE_Kernel. I think it's better to say “Red Hat or Ubuntu based”, because it's actually not “pure”. The team has done some customization themselves, for example, adding container support like OpenVZ.

The CLI part is indeed Debian (5/6/7/8 for Proxmox VE version 1/2/3/4), along with their own repo in APT system: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_repositories.

It's really a convenient tool for building up a PaaS virtualization host with Proxmox VE in minutes. It's good to see that LJ has so many pages to introduce it!

4232, a Short Animation Film Using Software Libre

My name is Ernesto Bazzano (Bazza), and I'm an Argentinian artist. I'm making a short animated film called 4232, using libre software with GNU/Linux—software made and supported by communities of programmers and developers worried about freedom.

Among other software, I use the following:

  • GIMP: to clean the scanned images, and for coloring and image processing.

  • Synfig Studio: to mount the animation frame by frame.

  • My own programs: the drawings of 4232 are hand-made. I develop programs that allow Synfig to incorporate real drawings.

In addition to making my short animated film, I generate programs that can help others artists in their work.

Animation is a very complex activity, thought to be created by a lot of people, in big studios and with big budgets. I'm making applications to speed up and make the whole animation process easier. This way, it's a little bit easier for artists with the desire but with a small budget to make their dream animations.

Here's a synopsis of 4232.

4232 is a story about a post-apocalyptic future. In a metropolis surrounded by a big dome, the aristocracy has converted poor people into robots, undressing them of all humanity. They are the robot-workers used for exploitation of the last resources on the Earth, which is turning into a big barren desert. Some people have escaped this metropolis and found shelter in small constructions outside the dome, surrounded by desert and pollution.

One day, the inhabitants of one of these shelters finds a robot in the desert—number 4232. Unlike the other robots, 4232 preserves his consciousness and relates to them how he escaped the metropolis. So the people of the desert start to wonder why 4232 is different and see him as hope for their own robot-ized friends and families to recover their consciousness.

Go to 4232.cf for more details.


Ernesto Bazzano

Shawn Powers replies: Ernesto, wow! It's great to see open-source software used so extensively. In my quick perusal of your site, I wasn't able to find a sample of the end product, but your process looks fascinating. Please consider pitching an article idea our way, I'm sure our readers would love to learn more about your methods.