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Linux isn't known for having many professional-grade linear drawing and engineering design tools. Dassault's DraftSight is the only choice in that part, but paying a few hundred bucks is maybe not the best option for everybody out there. Thankfully, the rich world of free software isn't leaving us alone in this sector either, and one of the most popular solutions to help you get your designs ready is the amazing LibreCAD. It may not be as sophisticated as other well-known tools, and it may not boast the time-saving features of commercial solutions, but it will certainly do the job in most cases. Here is a guide on how to get started with it and how to design a round flange with drill holes.

For the last two years, we had only lightning talks and workshops at the ownCloud Contributor Conference. As chair of the paper committee at Akademy, I introduced a single morning track of lightning talks that turned out to be an exceptionally good model for creation-type events like ours. Your event might benefit from lightning talks too—here's why and how to plan them.

One of the many talks at All Things Open 2015 this year will cover how you can contribute to open source while making a difference and have a lasting impact. The talk will be give by Guy Martin, director of open source strategy at Autodesk, and Nithya Ruff, director of open source strategy at SanDisk. Both have a wide range of experience in open source, from development to marketing, advocacy, and community. I caught up with them and asked them a few questions ahead of their talk: Many ways to move the needle in open source. In this interview, Guy and Nithya share what their first contributions to open source were, some advice they have for people starting out in open source, and more.

KDE e.V. President Lydia Pintscher explains "I believe that in today’s world where more and more of our daily life depends on technology it is crucial that people have control over that technology. You should be empowered to know what your technology does and you should be empowered to influence it. This is at the core of Free Software. Unfortunately it is not at the core of most of the technology people interact with every day – quite the opposite – walled gardens and locks wherever you look with few exceptions. "KDE is working hard to provide you with technology that you control every single day so you are empowered and the one ultimately in charge of your technology, data and life – the basis for freedom for many today. This is written down in the first sentence of our manifesto: “We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.”

Even if you don't enjoy writing and have no intentions of becoming a professional tech writer, chances are you'll have to draft reports, mailing list updates, or technical articles at some point in your career. With a few practical tips in mind—along with solid writing advice from Stephen King—you can improve your writing before you start writing. And, with proper planning, you can easily repurpose your content for multiple audiences.

I don't read many management books, but I was very curious to read Jim Whitehurst's The Open Organization because there's a lot corporate America (and academia) can learn from free and open source projects. The fact that Red Hat, where Whitehurst serves as CEO, is a wildly successful business adds weight to his methodology (since presumably anyone can lose money with free software, but it's quite a trick to make money with it).

Enpass is an advanced password manager that works natively on Linux. Although its open source nature is limited in the use of a free software encryption engine called SQLCipher, the tool offers good integration with widely used online services and can serve as a central platform where a lot of different passwords, accounts, and other miscellaneous information can be added. That said, it can be useful to many Linux users out there so here's a quick guide on how to set it up.

To access to most accounts online and on computer systems, users authenticate their identity by logging in with a password. People are asked to do the Herculean task of coming up with unique long and complex passwords for each account, committing them all to memory, and then changing them frequently.

The Manajro Linux distribution is now at its 15.09 milestone, providing a new graphical installer called 'Calmares.' Beyond the typical suite of open-source tools in many Linux distributions, Majaro developers emphasize the broad support for multiple Linux kernels in the 15.09 release.

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on an Ubuntu 15.04 server with PHP support (through PHP-FPM) and MySQL. PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites. I use PHP-FPM in this tutorial instead of Lighttpd's spawn-fcgi.

Garvita Kapur has been busy making the most of Drupal in a leading higher education setting. For the past year she has been manager of web engineering at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, where her web communications staff builds sites for college departments in Drupal and Symfony.

The Imagination backed Prpl Foundation announced a free OpenWrt Summit to be held in Dublin on Oct. 8, and co-located with Embedded Linux Conference Europe. The Prpl Foundation, which Imagination Technologies founded last year to promote the development of MIPS-based Linux and Android software, is hosting a one-day conference devoted to the lightweight OpenWrt Linux distribution. The OpenWrt Summit will be held in Dublin, Ireland on Oct. 8, directly following the LinuxCon + CloudOpen + Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) conference, which is being held Oct. 5-7. The free OpenWrt Summit will be located at the same Conference Centre Dublin venue.

LAMP is a commonly used open source stack for running dynamic websites and web applications. Originally, the acronym stood for the Linux operating system, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL database, and the PHP programming language. Over time, LAMP has come to represent a more generic open source software stack for PHP apps. For example, the Apache web server can be replaced by nginx, and the MySQL database server has alternatives such as PostgreSQL.

Disney Research has demonstrated an LED-to-LED networking method whereby toys, wearables, mobile devices, and IoT gizmos could communicate with one another. Disney Research has demonstrated an LED-to-LED “Linux Light Bulb” networking technology that would let toys communicate with each other, thereby bringing us one step closer to the reality of Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story. Instead of lip-syncing to the voice of Tom Hanks, however, Woody would argue with Buzz Lightyear with a flash of his eyes.

Tor Browser is the official internet browser tool of the Tor Network project. This software is aimed at serving users who want to browse in full anonymity, preventing surveillance of any kind. This is achieved by bouncing your communications around a distributed network or relays, making eavesdropping very difficult, if not practically impossible.

Calao claims its “SMC-NTKECalao claims its “SMC-NTKE1? is the first SMARC COM with a Tegra K1 SoC. The rugged module offers Yocto Linux, crypto and TPM security, and up to 64GB eMMC. Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra K1 SoC, which features a 192-core Kepler GPU, has appeared on Linux-ready computer-on-modules including Seco’s SECOMExp-TK1 COM Express Type 6 Compact COM and the GE Intelligent Platforms mCOM10K1 COM Express Type 10 Mini module. Now, Calao Systems has launched what it claims is the first Tegra K1-based module to adopt the 82 x 50mm SMARC form-factor. Other Tegra-based SMARC modules include Kontron’s SMARC-sAT30, which used the earlier Tegra 3.

Use this roadmap to find IBM developerWorks tutorials that help you learn and review basic Linux tasks. And if you're also pursuing professional certification as a Linux system administrator, these tutorials can help you study for the Linux Professional Institute's LPIC-1: Linux Server Professional Certification exams 101 and exam 102. This roadmap is organized according to the 43 objectives in the 101 and 102 exams, which you are required to pass for LPIC-1 certification.

The dark web browser Tor has now become extra secure as the .onion url has now been assigned special-use status. The Engineering Task Force (IETF) along with Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, part of ICANN, has granted formal recognition to the .onion domain, adding it to the list of Special-Use Domain Names.

No one had a busier LinuxCon show than the folks at SUSE. Yet still they were gracious enough, and care enough about the community, to sit down for a talk with Linux Journal. We had the distinct pleasure of sitting down for a few minutes during LinuxCon with Michael Miller, SUSE’s VP of Global Alliances and Marketing, to talk about their announcements, their future and the future of Linux,

Gmail has enjoyed phenomenal success, and regardless of which study you choose to look at for exact numbers, there's no doubt that Gmail is towards the top of the pack when it comes to market share. For certain circles, Gmail has become synonymous with email, or at least with webmail. Many appreciate its clean interface and the simple ability to access their inbox from anywhere.