Linux Candy: linuxwave – generate music from the entropy of Linux
Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.
A diverse range of programs are included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.
linuxwave is a small utility that’s designed to generate music from the entropy of Linux. What’s entropy? Think of entropy as the computer’s way of getting close to “randomness”.
Computers are incapable, by design, of generating truly random numbers, because no number produced by a mathematical operation is truly random. However, computers can get pretty close with entropy. A Linux machine collates “random numbers” by monitoring different events such as network activity, key-clicks etc. These are fed to the kernel entropy pool, which is used by /dev/random and /dev/urandom. Some programs need to use /dev/random or /dev/uradom as their source of entropy e.g. cryptography tools. linuxwave also uses entropy via /dev/urandom.