Blog

/blog/

  • 2018-12-13

    Installing Nextcloud 15 on UBOS versus other Linux distros

    Nextcloud 15 was released this week, and tutorials are appearing on the web how to install it on various operating systems. As a UBOS user, I can only marvel how complicated it is … compared to UBOS. Let’s compare:

    (Words counted by copy-pasting the “meat” of the instructions from Firefox “reader view” into BBEdit, and using their word count)

    In comparison, here are the instructions for UBOS. Enter the following commands, and answer the questions:

    % sudo ubos-admin update
% sudo ubos-admin createsite

    If you’d like the Redis cache, enter nextcloud-cache-redis in the question about accessories. And if you want a letsencrypt certificate for your site, append --tls --letsencrypt to the second (createsite) command. This would make the setup similar to the above tutorials.

    Either way, it takes, well, about 2 minutes, most of which is waiting for the computer to do its thing. Why should you have to bother with an operating system that makes installing Nextcloud more complicated?

    Upgrades are even simpler:

    % sudo ubos-admin update

    Strike a solid win for UBOS I would think. #ubosrocks

  • 2018-10-15

    Release channel update

    The first commercial products based on UBOS, UBOSbox Nextcloud, are shipping, and they ship on the all-new “green” release channel, which is now generally available.

    What does that mean?

    Well, as described in more detail in the documentation, UBOS is developed and released in several “release channels”:

    • The gory, technical operating-system level work is performed in the “dev” release channel. Nobody except for OS developers should ever have to use it.

    • Once “dev” works well enough for application developers, it gets promoted to the “red” release channel. That’s where much UBOS testing occurs, and that’s where apps are developed/packaged for UBOS.

    • Once that is good enough, OS and/or apps get promoted to the “yellow” release channel. That has been the default release channel for images downloaded from this website, and we are planning to keep it that way. Operating system and apps on the “yellow” release channel are intended to be good enough to run on an ongoing basis, although occasionally hiccups may occur.

    • The all-new “green” release channel is even more mature than the “yellow” one, and only contains a subset of the functionality: that subset that is commercially supported in products such as UBOSbox Nextcloud.

  • 2018-08-28

    Indie Computing announces UBOSbox Nextcloud and UBOS Live

    At the Nextcloud conference in Berlin, Germany, Indie Computing Corp., the company sponsoring UBOS Linux, announced new products and services that bring the benefits of UBOS to non-technical users.

    • UBOSBox Nextcloud is a hardware appliance which pre-installs UBOS, and auto-installs Nextcloud, the open-source file management and collaboration app. UBOSBox Nextcloud allows non-technical users to “bring their data home” from the file sharing services such as Dropbox, or on-line calendars like Google Calendar, to hardware the user has full control over in their home, without needing to deal with software installation or configuration. It is designed to be used without needing a monitor or keyboard.

      UBOSBox Nextcloud comes in three configurations: UBOSbox Nextcloud on NUC (model A) is based on the Intel NUC mini-PC with a low-power Celeron processor. UBOSbox Nextcloud on NUC (model B) packs about twice the punch with twice the memory and disk, and an i5 processor. UBOSbox Nextcloud on Raspberry Pi is a lower-price option that comes as a kit that requires hardware assembly by the user. Software is pre-installed on all configurations.

    • UBOS Live is a new management service for devices running UBOS. This enables users to outsource ongoing management and systems administration of the home servers running UBOS to Indie Computing. Indie Computing will upgrade and patch the installed operating systems and installed apps on an ongoing basis over the network, monitor hardware for potential failures, and, if needed, perform any necessary other maintenance tasks.

    UBOSBox Nextcloud is available for immediate order at indiecomputing.com, with delivery starting in September.

    Watch the announcement:

  • 2018-08-20

    UBOS Beta 15: status LEDs, Pagekite and Staff improvements

    Two important conferences are coming up:

    We’ll be at both, and just in time, we are proud to release UBOS beta 15!

    Here are some highlights:

    • Boot your Raspberry Pi from USB, not just an SDCard
    • The UBOS Staff has learned a very convenient new trick
    • UBOS now drives the LEDs on Intel NUCs and the Desktop Pi enclosure for the Raspberry Pi
    • Access your device from the public internet through Pagekite integration

    For more info, read the detailed release notes here.

  • 2018-04-28

    UBOS Beta 14: support for data disks and more

    Just in time for the Let’s Self-host Installathon at Linuxfest NorthWest in Bellingham, WA, UBOS beta 14 is out!

    As usual, we have a mix of new features that make users’ lives easier, new features that make developers’ lives easier, bug fixes and package upgrades. Here are the highlights:

    • It’s now easy to use a separate “big data disk” (like an external USB disk on a Raspberry Pi, or an extra big volume on Amazon EC2). This makes it much simpler for UBOS users that have a lot of data on their device.

    • Perform backup and system upgrade in a single step for even less work and worry when upgrading everything from OS to apps.

    • Create sites from templates files, and only fill in the information that wasn’t provided already in the template.

    • There’s a new command for concisely displaying the networking configuration.

    • Developers can now write installation scriptlets in any language; there is no more need to write Perl wrappers.

    • … plus the usual hundreds of package upgrades, feature improvements and bug fixes.

    To upgrade:

    • If you always wished to have an extra disk on which to store your data, don’t upgrade yet, but set that up first. Here is how to. You can also set this disk up after the upgrade, but it’s less work if you do it first.

    • To be safe, create a backup of all your data first, then update and reboot:

      % sudo ubos-admin backup --out ~/XXX.ubos-backup
% sudo ubos-admin update --noreboot
% sudo systemctl reboot</pre>

    For more info, read the detailed release notes here.

    Known problems

    • A few Nextcloud accessories initially were not rebuilt with the new paths. We have fixed this.

    • On the Raspberry Pi, the gpio executable is missing its required suid root bit. We have submitted a pull request to the Arch Linux ARM project. In the meantime, to fix, become root and execute chmod 4755 /usr/bin/gpio.

  • 2018-03-03

    UBOS Beta 13: new apps and lots of new features

    IMPORTANT: The upgrade is more complicated this time (and this time only – we hope!). Please follow the instructions in the release notes. The short version:

    % sudo pacman -Sy
% yes y | sudo pacman -S ubos-admin
% sudo ubos-admin update
% sudo ubos-admin setnetconfig <your-config-name>

    UBOS beta 13 is out, and what a release it is! There are lots of new things. Here are some of the highlights:

    • WiFi configuration has become really simple, by means of the UBOS Staff USB stick: save a file with your WiFi network name and credentials to your UBOS Staff, and next time you boot your Raspberry Pi or PC, UBOS will automatically and securely connect it to your WiFi network.

    • More apps!

      • Installing a full-fledged Mastodon server and running your own version of Twitter, with up to 500 characters, and federating with other decentralized microblogging services, just takes one command. Note: Mastodon requires TLS, so you need to specify --tls when creating your site.

      • phpBB lets you run your own discussion boards on a site you control. No more need for Google Groups or the like.

      • River5 is the latest river-of-news RSS reader from RSS godfather Dave Winer.

    • UBOS can now easily run Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero daemons. This is great for development of blockchain-related applications, and for those users who’d like to connect their cryptocurrency wallets to servers they control.

    • UBOS now supports UEFI-only PCs, such as the Intel Compute Stick (probably the cheapest way to run UBOS on PC hardware).

    • … plus the usual hundreds of package upgrades, feature improvements and bug fixes.

    For more info, read the detailed release notes here.

  • 2017-12-30

    End-to-end tutorials: how to set up an Indie Website with UBOS

    The Indieweb community has long spearheaded many of the same principles behind UBOS: users should be in control of their online lives, creators should own their content and data, not the big websites, and the like.

    Over the years, thousands of Indie Websites have sprung up all over the world support the IndieWeb standards and conventions, such as publishing your content on your own site and syndicating it everywhere else (POSSE).

    Unfortunately, so far setting up an Indie Website required substantial server administration skills, largely limiting the IndieWeb to geeky Generation 1 users.

    Enter UBOS. Because UBOS makes systems administration substantially simpler, it enables people with less-hardcore tech skills to run Indie Websites as well.

    So we published two new tutorials on the IndieWeb.org site:

    These are end-to-end tutorials covering all steps that are needed, with a screenshot for almost every step. Here’s the outline of the first tutorial:

    • Find and purchase a great domain name for your site
    • Sign up for an Amazon Web Services account
    • Set up a new Amazon cloud server, and log in (that’s the part that has UBOS in it)
    • Set up DNS so your new domain name points to your website
    • Install WordPress and the Indie Web plugins
    • Configure WordPress and the Indie Web plugins to your liking
    • Write your first WordPress post and syndicate it out

    So … join the Indie Web? It’s become a lot easier and better documented.

  • 2017-11-24

    UBOS has a new logo!

    UBOS clearly needed a prettier logo, and as of today, it has one!

    Simple, colorful, and distinctive. What do you think?

  • 2017-11-05

    Apps have been upgraded, and some new additions

    Following the now independent release of UBOS beta 12, here’s the first application upgrate. The following apps and accessories were upgraded to the indicated version:

    • Mattermost: 4.3.1

    • Mediawiki: 1.29.1

    • Nextcloud: 12.0.3

      • Calendar: 1.5.6
      • Contacts: 2.0.1
      • Mail: 0.7.4
      • News: 11.0.5
      • Notes: 2.3.1

    • Shaarli: 0.9.2

    • Wordpress:4.8.3

      • Bridgy: 1.3.1
      • Analytics for Wordpress: 6.2.4
      • Indieweb: 3.3.1
      • Indieweb Post Kinds: 2.6.6
      • Photo dropper: 2.3.4
      • Semantic linkbacks: 3.5.1
      • Social network auto-poster: 4.0.7
      • Syndication links: 3.2.2
      • Webmention: 3.4.1
      • Responsive theme: 3.6

    Some of these Wordpress plugins are new on the yellow release channel.

    There’s also:

    • docroot: A simple app for static file web hosting with secure, rsync/ssh-based upload (see documentation);

    • taligen and taliwodo, currently only in the “experimental” repositories. That’s because they are not ready for prime time. Except that we have been using them “for reals” already, to help with getting the most recent UBOS release out. Such a UBOS release takes many steps, including hundreds of steps of manual testing. It’s really hard to not lose track! taligen allows the generation of task lists from modular components, and taliwodo can render these lists in a web browser and track which ones were done successfully, which failed, and which weren’t done.

  • 2017-11-03

    UBOS Beta 12 released with better test coverage

    It’s really easy to underestimate how much time it takes to improve your build system. This is one of those cases, but eventually, we made it to the finish line.

    Welcome, UBOS beta 12!

    This release does not contain app updates; those will follow shortly. Detailed release notes are here.