thelinuxexperiment

Download the State of Enterprise Linux Security Management Report here: https://tuxcare.org/ponemon_report

Get your Linux desktop or laptop here: https://slimbook.es/en/

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to an exclusive weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

You can also protect your privacy by using this extension from Startpage, each install helps the channel with a small commission: https://add.startpage.com/en/protection/?campaign=4&source=aff

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Linux news in Youtube Shorts format: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZp0mK9IBrpS2-jNzMZmoA

Join us on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/xK7ukavWmQ

Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw

📷 GEAR I USE: Sony Alpha A6600 Mirrorless Camera: https://amzn.to/30zKyn7 Sigma 56mm Fixed Prime Lens: https://amzn.to/3aRvK5l Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse: https://amzn.to/3BVI0Od Bluetooth Space Grey Mac Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3jcJETZ Logitech Brio 4K Webcam: https://amzn.to/3jgeTh9 LG Curved Ultrawide Monitor: https://amzn.to/3pcTVDH Logitech White Speakers: https://amzn.to/3n6wSb0 Xbox Controller: https://amzn.to/3BWmIA3 Amazon Links are affiliate codes and generate small commissions to support the channel

00:00 Intro 00:46 Sponsor: Get some free insight on the Security of Linux 01:49 What is Waydroid, and how to install it? 06:22 How to install applications 08:50 Add Google Apps and Services 11:25 Why run Android apps on Linux? 13:55 Sponsor: Get a Linux laptop or desktop from Slimbook 14:30 Support the channel

💡 USEFUL LINKS FOR WAYDROID Install instructions: https://docs.waydro.id/usage/install-on-desktops F-Droid website: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ Aurora Store Website: https://auroraoss.com/ Script to flash Gapps: https://pythonawesome.com/script-to-add-gapps-and-other-stuff-to-waydroid/

Running Android apps on another system than Android requires a container, like what Waydroid implements. Waydroid is based on LineageOS, based on Android 10, and can access any needed hardware. It can run Android apps on x86 or ARM cpus, it's fully open source, it can add your Android apps to your menu, it can display apps in their own windows or fullscreen, it can display the Android Ui for navigation, and has near native performance.

Waydroid lets you install .APK applications, which you can download online relatively easily, but to begin with, you might want to get an app store, which will make this process a lot simpler. Let's go with F Droid, which has tons of open source applications for Android, that will also work on Waydroid.

waydroid app install and then the path to your APK file, and hit enter.

You'll then have to restart the system service for Waydroid, using

sudo sysctemctl start waydroid-container

Your app should now be added to your applications menu, and you can open it through there. From F-Droid, you can install any application you want, and they'll also get automatically added to your applications menu. Of course, at first install, you'll need to enable installing applications from an untrusted source, like on a "real" android device.

You can also add the Google Apps and the Play Services.

I left a link to the install instructions, it's not an easy, one click install by any means, and you'll have to run multiple command lines, install a few packages on your distro, register your "fake device" with Google, clear the Play Store cache, install magisk and more. Once that's done, though, you do get a fully functional Android system, complete with Google apps, and the Google Play Store. You can login with your Google account, and use Waydroid as a full Android system.

App apps that require the Google Play Services will also work, including youtube, Google Maps, Gmail, and a lot more. You'll also be able to download apps you might already have purchased in the Play Store on an Android device, if you so choose.

I couldn't find certain apps in the Play Store, though, like Netflix for example, which might be a country-related issue. Some apps would also crash at startup, like Amazon prime Video.

Xbox Game Pass worked, I could navigate the UI and launch a game with Xcloud, but after that, games would just not display anything, sticking to a black window, which I had to quit to resume using Waydroid. My banking app also failed with an error message telling me the service wasn't available.

Twitter worked perfectly, Duolingo also did, although in Portrait mode.

Wanna get your own Linux server? Visit https://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment for a 100$ credit !

Get your Linux desktop or laptop here: https://slimbook.es/en/

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to an exclusive weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw/join

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp?locale.x=fr_FR

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: I also do a Gaming Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbRPZ11S1quJ4ESoj42A3ug

Join us on our new Discord server: https://discord.gg/xK7ukavWmQ

Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

My Gaming on Linux Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaw_Lz7oifDb-PZCAcZ07kw

📷 GEAR I USE: Sony Alpha A6600 Mirrorless Camera: https://amzn.to/30zKyn7 Sigma 56mm Fixed Prime Lens: https://amzn.to/3aRvK5l Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse: https://amzn.to/3BVI0Od Bluetooth Space Grey Mac Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3jcJETZ Logitech Brio 4K Webcam: https://amzn.to/3jgeTh9 LG Curved Ultrawide Monitor: https://amzn.to/3pcTVDH Logitech White Speakers: https://amzn.to/3n6wSb0 Xbox Controller: https://amzn.to/3BWmIA3 Amazon Links are affiliate codes and generate small commissions to support the channel

00:00 Intro 00:29 Sponsor: get your own Linux server already 01:41 Desktop Environments 05:34 Linux Technology 08:48 Linux Hardware 13:29 THE Opportunity

2021 saw the regular 2 GNOME updates, GNOME 40 and 41.

First, a lot of people didn't like the horizontal workspaces, but also libadwaita.

Budgie are going to distance themselves from these technologies, and move to EFL, the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries. A real new desktop creation will be Cosmic, by System76, creators of PopOS.

All of this didn't stop GNOME from moving forwards with their intended technological path, namely libadwaita, a widget + theme library that apps can use to avoid reinventing the wheel everytime they need a button, control, list view, etc...

KDE had a less eventful year, although they did publish 3 new releases: Plasma 5.21, 22 and 23, which was also the 25th anniversary edition of Plasma. This desktop focused on polish, and fixing the settings.

2021 also saw the release of elementary OS 6 ODIN, after more than 1000 days had passed the previous release, and, 4 months later, its next point update, 6.1 Jolnir.

2021 also saw the introduction of Cutefish, a mac os inspired desktop environment that holds promise, even though it's far from ready for daily use.

Now in terms of technologies, the Linux desktop has also seen some impressive changes in 2021.

The Wayland transition is now basically complete for both GNOME and KDE. Wayland is THE most important change in the Linux desktop ever, and it's finally there. 2022 will definitely see most major distros use Wayland by default for all GPUs.

Another major technological advance is Flatpak and portals. These 2 technologies have rampaged through most distros and DEs in 2021, clearly setting themselves as the future of how applications are distributed and how they operate with each other.

2021 also saw Ubuntu move to Flutter as their default app development technology.

In terms of hardware, Linux saw a bunch of interesting developments in 2021.

We saw new versions of the Pinephone, with more RAM, and new distros preinstalled on it. They also announced the Pinephone PRO, a more heavy duty version, that shares the same chassis, but has way better cameras and specs. They also announced the PineNote, an e-ink tablet with stylus, and made the PineTIme available.

ARM computing also got a boost with the release of Asahi Linux and the Linux kernel 5.13, which bring initial support for Apple Silicon macs on Linux.

Still on the ARM side of things, we saw the first Linux tablet come out. The JingPad A1 might still run an Android kernel with halium, but they do use a fork of KDE Plasma for their desktop.

Probably THE biggest news in 2021 was the Steam Deck. Valve announced, without too much fuss, their handheld PC, first codenamed the Steampal.

This is a very crucial milestone for Linux and Linux gaming; this device is a premium piece of gaming hardware made by one of the biggest game focused companies in the world, and it runs Arch Linux.

SteamOS 3 will be an immutable OS based on Arch, that ships a dedicated steam interface, proton, and indicators for people to know which games work or not, powered by manual Valve reviews.

It also sparked plenty of new developments on proton, the library that lets us play most windows games on Linux. The biggest one is of course, the announcement of anti cheat support from EAC and BattleEye.

We also saw a lot of games seeing proton patches after their release to have day one support, and work on DLSS and AMD's supersampling technology, FidelityFX, also made sure that even low powered GPUs can play recent games at decent resolutions.

After we reviewed a few services that allow you to switch from Google's, it's time to move on to something a bit more complex, but more secure as well: hosting your own services ! To do so, there is something fantastic, that can replicate most of what Google offers: NextCloud. It's not only a file storage solution, but it can also handle email, photos, music, calendar, an online office suite, and a lot more, since it has a giant gallery of apps that you can add to your own instance !

Set up your own Linux server with LINODE : http://www.linode.com/linuxexperiment (USE OFFER CODE LINUXEXP19)

Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP

Commands:

Create a user: adduser "YOUR USERNAME"

Give it the sudo permissions: usermod -aG sudo "YOUR USERNAME"

Log out of the root user: logout

Install Nextcloud: sudo snap install nextcloud

Setting up the server There are plenty of ways you can go about doing that. You could use an older computer, a rasperry Pie, or any machine at your house, and turn it into a server by installing the server version of your distro of choice. If you don't want to mess with that or you don't want to configure too many things, you can also turn yourself to cloud-hosted server providers, which is exactly what I'll do. There are plenty around, some geared towards having more storage space, some providing powerful GPUs for distributed calculations, and some oriented towards CPU power. Here, I'll be createing an entry-level server with Linode. I bet you didn't see that one coming !

Most providers will allow you to pick between pre-selected distro to install, or will let you choose a custom one to put on the server. For servers, debian-based distros are often the most robust, as are everything based on Red Hat. But here, Ubuntu has a distinct advantage over most other available options: you can install nextcloud with just one command line, thanks to snap. I know some of you aren't fans of this technology, but it's honestly the easiest option here. I'll be going with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which should be stable and perform perfectly well.

Here, I'll pick a small Linode, called a Nanode, since I don't plan on using my server for file storage, but if you're planning on replacing Google Photos or Google Drive with Nextcloud, you should get something with a bigger hard drive. Most providers also allow you to add storage to your existing server afterwards, so no worries.

Creating a user Once your server is created, and your distro has booted, you can access its console to install whatever you need. That's where we'll be installing Nextcloud through snap. To begin, we'll need to create a user that is not the superuser, called Root, so we'll login as root to do that. Enter "root" as the login, and the root password you selected when you created your server. If you installed Ubuntu on your own server, you probably already created a user during the distro's installation, so skip that step !

We'll just type "adduser", followed by a space, and the name of the user we want to create. We'll have to answer a few questions such as the user's full name and its password. The rest is not important here. Our user does not have the rights to run super user commands, which we'll need to install anything, so we'll start by adding our new user to the sudoers group.

Let's type usermod -aG sudo. followed by a space then the name of the user.

And we're done ! Now, we just type logout, to quit being root, and login as our new user, just by typing its username and password.

Installing Nextcloud and logging in Using SNAP, it's only one command line: sudo snap install nextcloud

Once the command has completed its task, we'll need to access our nextcloud instance. Simply get the IP address of your server. To do so, either look in your server manager, if you're using a cloud provider, or type: ifconfig

Your server's IP address is the first series of numbers in the first line.

Copy and paste that in a browser's window to access your nextcloud instance. You'll be asked to create an admin account, so just the username and password you'll want to use to manage your nextcloud instance, and you're in !

Now, this method is pretty easy, but is has one drawback: it will install using its own HTTP and mysql server, so if you want to use the same machine for something else on top of nextcloud, you'll run two servers at the same time, which is not that efficient, but for our simple purposes here, it's not an issue.

And that's it ! Now you have a nextcloud instance up and running. You can explore its various settings, the apps you can install on it, all from the gear menu in the top right corner. I highly recommend you register a domain name and install an SSL certificate, so your server uses HTTPS instead of HTTP, it will be a lot more secure.