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Links 3/6/2020: Devuan Beowulf 3.0.0 and Tails 4.7 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • The Linux market share still appears to be rising

      Looking at multiple places, it appears like the Linux desktop has been on something of a roll lately with the market share starting to trend upwards. As always with any kind of statistics gathering, you need a pinch of salt.

      On the NetMarketShare website, the Linux share as we reported last month suddenly had an upwards surge from 1.36% to 2.87%. You could easily write it off once but here we are again and the Linux share has risen up to 3.17%. Even on their stats, it rising twice in a row is quite rare and never usually this much either. Looking into their stats further, it appears Ubuntu is the clear winner and what's pushing it going from 0.27% in March up to 2.11% in May.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Lenovo To Certify Their Full ThinkPad/ThinkStation Line For Linux
        Back in April was the announcement that Lenovo would begin shipping some devices with Fedora Linux while now the story gets much juicier today.

        Lenovo announced today that they are planning to certify their full workstation portfolio for "top Linux distributions from Ubuntu and Red Hat - every model, every configuration."

        Lenovo plans to certify their complete ThinkPad and ThinkStation workstation portfolio for Linux moving forward. The ThinkPad P series in particular is what they plan to certify and the complete ThinkStation line-up.

      • Lenovo Announces Plan to Sell Ubuntu on Even More ThinkPads
        Lenovo is already well represented within the Linux hardware community having ‘certified’ a swathe of its devices for various different distros over the years.

        And the company recently revealed plans to sell laptops preloaded with Fedora and make more firmware updates available through the vendor-neutral Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS).

        But now it’s going even further with the Linux love.

      • Lenovo Adding Linux Option to ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series
        If you purchase a non-Apple desktop PC or laptop, chances are it's going to be running Windows 10 with very few exceptions. Lenovo is expanding on the available alternatives, though, by introducing support and certification for Linux on some of its Think-branded hardware this summer.

        Lenovo has committed to offering the complete line-up of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series models with the option of Linux coming pre-installed. More specifically, a choice of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) will be offered. Alongside that, Lenovo is promising "full end-to-end support," which means these models will continue to receive security patches and software updates, firmware and BIOS updates, and drivers. In fact, Lenovo intends to produce drivers which can then be integrated into the Linux kernel.

      • Lenovo adding Ubuntu & Red Hat on their entire ThinkStation and ThinkPad P lines

        Today, hardware vendor Lenovo announced something quite huge for the Linux community with the addition of more Linux devices becoming easily available.

        Back in April, it was announced that Lenovo and Fedora were teaming up to bring Fedora Linux to a few different ThinkPad models. That by itself was quite big. Now they're going a massive step further by announcing both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS will be certified and available across their entire ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations.

      • Lenovo now offers Linux on all of its workstation PCs (desktop and laptop)

        To be clear, there was nothing stopping customers from purchasing a system with Windows and then replacing the operating system with their GNU/Linux distribution of choice. But now that Lenovo is offering certified support for Ubuntu and Red Hat, you can be pretty sure you won’t have to jump through hoops to make sure you have all the proper drivers for your hardware.

        The company says it’ll also be offering upstream device drivers for inclusion in the Linux kernel, which should help with long-term support (and which should also help if you opt for a different Linux-based operating system).

      • Lenovo Duet: Chrome OS Shines on Innovative 2-in-1

        The Duet, released last month, is Lenovo’s attempt to fill that niche with a new Chromebook form factor that runs Android and Linux apps within Chrome OS. It is a 2-in-1 device that also is compatible with an MSI stylus for drawing and handwriting. However, it does not come with one.

        Lenovo debuted the Duet at CES in January. As of this writing, Lenovo wasn’t openly selling the Duet. However, it went from not listing the Duet at all to displaying it on its website as a “Coming Soon” attraction. Best Buy offered a limited quantity of Duets for preorder in May. When mine arrived, I made it my temporary main computing platform so I could check out how well it could help me get stuff done.

        So far, using it steadily has been mostly successful. However, a few glitches have forced me to set the Duet aside and turn instead to my Linux desktop or laptops to complete specialized production tasks.

        Those issues aside, the Duet poses serious competition to the likes of higher-end rivals such as the Samsung Chromebook 3 and the HP Chromebook x360. The Duet has a few innovations that rekindled my interest in using an actual Chrome OS-powered tablet as a viable alternative computing platform.

    • Server

      • NVIDIA K8s Device Plugin for Wind River Linux

        The advent of containers has changed the way computational workloads are managed and orchestrated in modern computing environments. Given the paradigm shift towards the microservices, container orchestration has become of critical importance in today’s distributed and cloud systems [1].

        Managing edge devices on the scale of hundreds and thousands is an onerous task. Fortunately, orchestrators such as Kubernetes take the complexity out of updates, roll-backs, and more in a platform-agnostic environment. [2]. Orchestrators provide the means to manage heterogeneous edge clusters. It is necessary to not only orchestrate containers but to discover the hardware specialized devices that the containers and orchestrator can leverage. Failing to manage these resources can lead to inefficiency, time drain, concurrency issues, and more.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • This Week in Linux 105: 8GB RAM Raspberry Pi, Ardour 6.0, Audacity, Kali Linux, DirectX on Linux?

        On this episode of This Week in Linux, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announces a new 8GB RAM version of the Raspberry Pi and there’s a new release of Kali Linux. We’ve also got some big updates for two audio editors in Ardour 6.0 and Audacity 2.4.1. We’ve got a new version of the Enlightenment window manager with 0.24 and a new tool for making Bootable USBs called Ventoy. We’ve got an update on the GNOME “Patent Troll” Case, it’s been resolved. EA is releasing Source Code for 2 Command & Conquer Games. Microsoft is back in the news with 2 new items this week . . . one shows they may be really changing announcing DirectX for Linux . . . yea not really, of course there is a catch, it’s Microsoft. Also Microsoft figured that pretending they are doing something good for Linux wasn’t enough so they created a name collision with the Maui Project. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

      • LHS Episode #349: Docker Deep Dive

        Hello and welcome to Episode 349 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, we take an in-depth look at the Docker containerization platform. We discuss all aspects of the project from how to install it to how to use it to where to get support when something goes awry. You can use docker to easily install and deploy applications, microservices, application stacks, scalable and resilient webapps and much more. We hope you enjoy our hopefully no-too-rambling look at the ease and power of Docker.

      • Extending The Life Of Python 2 Projects With Tauthon

        The divide between Python 2 and 3 lasted a long time, and in recent years all of the new features were added to version 3. To help bridge the gap and extend the viability of version 2 Naftali Harris created Tauthon, a fork of Python 2 that backports features from Python 3. In this episode he explains his motivation for creating it, the process of maintaining it and backporting features, and the ways that it is being used by developers who are unable to make the leap. This was an interesting look at how things might have been if the elusive Python 2.8 had been created as a more gentle transition.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux Kernel 5.7 Released

        According to the usual Sunday night schedule, Linus Torvalds released Linux kernel 5.7 on May 31. His note on the Linux kernel mailing list was typically terse, saying “it all looks fine.”

        Torvalds also noted that the almost 14,000 non-merge commits from nearly 2,000 developers seemed normal. “We’ve got a lot of changes in 5.7 as usual – all the stats look normal – but “normal” for us obviously pretty big,” he said.

      • Linux 5.8 Sees Many Power Management Updates, Including Another Intel P-State Change

        Linux power management / ACPI maintainer Rafael Wysocki of Intel has sent in the usual big batch of PM/ACPI changes for the next version of the kernel, Linux 5.8.

        Changes on the power management front for the Linux 5.8 kernel include:

        - The Intel P-State driver will now start in passive mode by default for systems without Hardware P-States (HWP). This has been expected and follows other recent P-State work, including the use of the schedutil governor by default.

    • Applications

      • Wouter Verhelst: SReview 0.6

        I had planned to release a new version of SReview, my online video review and transcoding system that I wrote originally for FOSDEM but is being used for DebConf, too, after it was set up and running properly for FOSDEM 2020. However, things got a bit busy (both in my personal life and in the world at large), so it fell a bit by the wayside.

        I've now also been working on things a bit more, in preparation for an improved administrator's interface, and have started implementing a REST API to deal with talks etc through HTTP calls. This seems to be coming along nicely, thanks to OpenAPI and the Mojolicious plugin for parsing that. I can now design the API nicely, and autogenerate client side libraries to call them.

        While at it, because libmojolicious-plugin-openapi-perl isn't available in Debian 10 "buster", I moved the docker containers over from stable to testing. This revealed that both bs1770gain and inkscape changed their command line incompatibly, resulting in me having to work around those incompatibilities. The good news is that I managed to do so in a way that keeps running SReview on Debian 10 viable, provided one installs Mojolicious::Plugin::OpenAPI from CPAN rather than from a Debian package. Or installs a backport of that package, of course. Or, heck, uses the Docker containers in a kubernetes environment or some such -- I'd love to see someone use that in production.

      • Nageru 2.0.0 released

        I've released version 2.0.0 of Nageru, my live video mixer. Obviously, version 2 of anything is a major milestone; in this case, it wasn't so much this specific release being so big, but the combined work that has gone on through the 1.x versions. (Also, if you go from 1.9.0 to 1.10.0, you can be pretty sure 2.0 is never coming!) There were several major features where I could probably have justified a 2.0 bump alone (e.g., the multichannel audio processing support, HTML5 graphics, slow motion through Futatabi, or the large reworking of the themes in 1.9.0), and now, it was time. Interestingly enough, despite growing by 40,000 lines or so since the 1.0.0 release four and a half years ago, the basic design has proved fairly robust; there are always things I would like to do different, but I'm fairly happy about how flexible and reliable things have turned out to be, even though my own use cases have shifted from simple conference video to complex sports productions.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Total War Saga: TROY is now a 12 month Epic Games Store exclusive

        Total War Saga: TROY, a game that was confirmed to be coming to Linux, is now going to start life as an Epic Games Store exclusive for the first year.

        For the Linux version, this would mean a total delay because Epic have no plans to support Linux on their store officially. Creative Assembly announced it will release on EGS in August and be free for 24 hours, with Steam to follow a year later.

        We were due to get it "shortly after Windows" originally but now it's entirely unclear. Feral Interactive, the company who work with Creative Assembly to port various titles to Linux and macOS were the company doing Total War Saga: TROY. I spoke to them today but they simply mentioned they have "nothing we can share regarding A Total War Saga: TROY on macOS or Linux".

      • Boneloaf to self-publish Gang Beasts going forwards, updates coming

        Game developer Boneloaf has announced plans to self-publish Gang Beasts, as they split off from Double Fine Presents since it's winding down. This is as a result of Double Fine becoming part of Microsoft back in 2019, it didn't really make sense for Double Fine to continue to publish other games.

        In an official post amusingly titled 'Boneloaf take Double Fine to a fancy restaurant so they won't make a big scene', they make it clear that it's a positive situation as Double Fine have given them great support but going forwards they will be taking on all control of Gang Beasts publishing.

      • Good 3D Python Game Engines

        Finding a framework for 3D game engines made for and with Python can prove very difficult. The reason for this is that Python quickly runs into performance issues when complexity increases. Fast graphics rendering is not what Python does best. However, since Python is very good for creating the logic and is quite popular, you have many options to run frameworks written in C++.

        To make this work for 3D game engines, you cannot do everything as you might usually do in Python. Most frameworks create a wrapper for their C++ libraries. You will need to figure out how to compile so that Python can recall this wrapper. They cover in the documentation how to compile for with the Python wrapper.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Cantor during GSoC 2020

          Hello everyone! I'm participating in Google Summer of Code 2020, I am working on KDE Cantor project. The GSoC project is mentored by Alexander Semke - one of the core developers of LabPlot and Cantor.

        • The coding period starts! - GSoC 2020 with KDE and EteSync [Part 2]

          Hey everyone! The month-long Community Bonding period of GSoC ‘20 has ended, and with it begins the exciting phase of beginning work on our projects. My project, EteSync sync backend for Akonadi, will add support for syncing users’ contacts, calendars and tasks to Kontact. Here are the insights I’ve gained about the project, as well as my plans for the upcoming phase.

        • Google Summer of Code 2020 – Community bonding a bit about text annotation

          Community bonding period has ended and officially the coding period begins now. This is my second (and late) post and I will talk about one of my main objectives in this project, text annotation, but first a little introduction:

          In a supervised learning stage, data annotation is indispensable to machine learning models, so it can learn to recognize predetermined patterns and the algorithm can treat new, non-annotated data and successfully do its task. marK is a machine learning dataset annotation tool that aims to facilitate the important process of annotating data.

        • Week 0 – GSoC Project Report

          This week corresponds to week 2 of the planned timeline. I had planned to write tests and get started with the MVC classes for the storyboard docker this week. Also the comment menu from previous week was to be implemented.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Finally Landed on Planet GNOME

          Should I start with a deep introduction? Not sure! Okay, let me start from my first time with Linux. I installed my first Linux when I was around 17, It was OpenSUSE. I just burned iso and booted, HAHAHA It was a magnetic disk era. After some years I was getting deep into Linux. I consider Linux as an Icecream. Lots of flavors to eat. Eat whatever you like. Or make your own flavor. 4-5 years ago I was jumping over multiple distros. I tried multiple linux distros. But now I'm settled on a custom build Debian distro. My first encounter with GNOME was on Fedora. I still love Fedora. But Debian is ultra-fast with only selected packages and easy to make its flavor. This is my short Linux story.

        • Sound Recorder to modern HIG I



          I'm back, reporting here what's done so far. I decided to post about every change in sound recorder I'm working on but most of the work was behind a scene. I mean no UI change.

          But now new changes noticeable to end-users.

          I'm also writing this development blog cause, I don't wanna give chance to other people to spread some false information about development around (Social Media, YouTube).

          If you are reading this and you are working on any GNOME project, Please take 5-6 min and write about it frequently.

          As I told I'm working on GNOME Sound Recorder, recently I changed many things in the application.

    • Distributions

      • Top Linux Distributions To Look Forward To In 2020

        Following the most recent distribution update on Distrowatch – for the past 12 months, the statistics have barely changed and continues to be mostly in the favor of the better known operating system that has been around for a very long time.

        Surprisingly, over 170 distributions are still on the waiting list; and quite a handful of these are even dating back to as far as five years ago, interestingly enough, some of these distros have actually gained reasonable traction. This proves that a distro is not necessarily bad or unworthy if it doesn’t get or hasn’t gotten the approval of Distrowatch.

      • Reviews

        • Let’s Discover Xubuntu 20.04 With Xfce 4.14; A Review

          One of the most gorgeous flavors of Ubuntu is Xubuntu, which is shipped by default with the Xfce desktop. Xfce is a very practical desktop environment that not only “just works”, but is also beautiful in its own characteristic way.

          Xubuntu 20.04 is the first LTS release to ship with Xfce 4.14, making it also the first LTS to fully experience the power of GTK 3 after it was imported from GTK 2 taking around 4 years of continuous work. The amounts of updates between Xubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 is huge.

          We’ll take you today in a tour in Xubuntu 20.04, what are its features and what bugs or issues you may face if you consider switching to it.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • A time of reflection and standing together

          Like many of you, I have found the events occurring across the United States in response to the unconscionable killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst many others, to be profoundly tragic and painful. Personally, they have shaken me to my core and have left me in deep reflection. While I will never understand the struggle of millions of people around the world that have been subject to systemic oppression, I stand united against hate and discrimination. As these events continue to unfold across the United States, they have rightly grabbed the world’s attention, and as leader of a global company, SUSE cannot remain silent – we will not remain silent. We will not accept racism, discrimination, or harassment in any form at any time. We stand against the innocent lives lost.

        • Staying Out of Trouble with SUSE Enterprise Storage 7

          Do you ever wake up in the morning and think, “I wish there was somewhere that stored common troubleshooting problems for SUSE Enterprise Storage 7?”

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • SELinux Sees Nice Optimizations With Linux 5.8

          Security Enhanced Linux is seeing some nice optimizations with the in-development Linux 5.8 kernel.

          One of the optimizations in Linux 5.8 for SELinux is changing around some of their internal data structures for improving performance. One notable area is using a hash table for SELinux role transitions. For storing role transitions within a hash table, on Fedora where there are around 428 role transitions, the run-time was cut by about 50% when testing with Stress-NG benchmarks.

        • [Red Hat] Edge investments, data navigators, and more industry trends

          As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

        • Open Data Hub 0.6.1: Bug fix release to smooth out redesign regressions

          It is just a few short weeks since we released Open Data Hub (ODH) 0.6.0, bringing many changes to the underlying architecture and some new features. We found a few issues in this new version with the Kubeflow Operator and a few regressions that came in with the new JupyterHub updates. To make sure your experience with ODH 0.6 does not suffer because we wanted to release early, we offer a new (mostly) bugfix release: Open Data Hub 0.6.1.

        • Open Sourcing Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

          Recently, at Red Hat Summit Virtual Event, we announced Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, a new management solution designed to help organizations further extend and scale Red Hat OpenShift, the leading enterprise Kubernetes platform.

          This new product is based on technology that originated with IBM, and that technology was not fully open source. In accordance with Red Hat policy, we are in the process of opening the source code for this new product. This same open source technology will then also be used by IBM for its CloudPak for Multicloud Management. At Red Hat, we believe using an open development model helps create more secure, stable and innovative technologies. And the commitment to that open source model is what we have based our business model on. Even after joining forces with IBM, this commitment remains unchanged. We have worked more than 25 years to invest in open projects and technologies.

        • Role of APIs in an increasingly digital world

          COVID-19 has had a major impact on the world. It has affected the way we do business, where we work, how we provide services and how we communicate. We must find new ways to accomplish these pursuits, and application programming interfaces (APIs) can help.

          In a digital-driven world, applications have become fundamental to our economy and even our society – and these applications commonly need to communicate and integrate with a range of other applications and systems in order to perform their essential functions. APIs are one way to unlock the change.

        • RHEL 7.8 and the final update to container tools

          Before we get started with the updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.8, we recommend taking a serious look at moving to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. RHEL 7 is now in Maintenance Support and will no longer receive newer versions of container tools. Users who need access to the latest versions of Podman, Buildah and Skopeo, should move to RHEL 8 where the container-tools module is updated once a quarter. For those of you required to use containers on RHEL 7, this post will provide you a strategic and technical update.

          Red Hat understands that many customers cannot upgrade immediately. So, similar to our update of container tools in RHEL 7.7, we have released one final update to the container tools provided in RHEL 7.8.

        • Advancing open source in telecom demands interoperability: How do we get there?

          More and more, open source technologies are gaining traction in the telecommunications industry as service providers reinvent their networks and push the boundaries with cloud-native networking functions and principles. But challenges remain, in particular around integration and interoperability of the many components that make up their infrastructures.

          This was a central theme at the Open Networking Summit Europe in Antwerp, Belgium, an event focused on the future of open source networking and aimed at enabling collaborative development and innovation across enterprises, service providers, and cloud providers.

          As digital service providers begin realizing value from open source platforms like OpenStack – including faster time to market, reduced costs, and improved reliability, scalability, and agility – they are in a better position to deliver the services their customers want: mobile 5G streaming video, audio, and more.

        • Exploring and modeling COVID data

          “If your prediction proves to be very good, then it’s probably too good to be true,” says IBM developer advocate and data scientist Damiaan Zwietering.

          Damiaan loves his profession, which he has been practicing for almost 25 years, and by now he has come across most of the pitfalls. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with others, from developers to people in the business, and therefore, has a prominent role during the June 12, 2020, Code @ Think digital event. To register for this event, click here.

          In two sessions, he’ll introduce anyone who wants to know more about data science into the world of COVID-19 data and where the opportunities and pitfalls lie.

      • Devuan Family

        • Devuan Beowulf 3.0.0 released
          Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers,
          
          

          Devuan Developers are delighted to announce the release of Devuan Beowulf 3.0.0 as the project's new stable release. This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community.

          What's new in Beowulf 3.0.0?

          * Based on Debian Buster (10.4) with Linux kernel 4.19. * Support for ppc64el in addition to the existing i386, amd64, armel, armhf and arm64 architectures. * runit optional alternative /sbin/init. * openrc optional alternative to sysv-rc service and runlevel control. * Standalone daemons (eudev, elogind) to replace aspects of monolithic systemd. * New boot, display manager and desktop themimg.

          Installation and Documentation

          Whether you are upgrading an existing Devuan install, migrating from Debian or installing from scratch, instructions and guidance can be found at https://devuan.org/os/install and https://devuan.org/get-devuan.

          Packages[1], netboot images[2] and installation media[3] are available through a resilient network of http package mirrors, http, https, ftp and rsync iso mirrors, torrent and magnet.

          Please take time to read the Release Notes[4]. They include important configuration information and tips to help your install or upgrade go as smoothly as possible.

          Or, for the impatient, you can go straight to the package and sources.list information: https://devuan.org/os/packages or the installation media downloads: http://files.devuan.org/devuan_beowulf/

          ARM Support

          Bootable ARM images are provided by the Devuan ARM community.

          You will find these resources useful for ARM-related discussion and development: * https://dev1galaxy.org/viewforum.php?id=24 * https://arm-files.devuan.org/ * #devuan-arm (Freenode)

          Resources and Support

          * Mailing list: https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng * IRC: #devuan #devuan-dev #devuan-arm (Freenode) * Forum: https://dev1galaxy.org * Press contact: freedom@devuan.org * Source code: https://git.devuan.org * Bug tracker: https://bugs.devuan.org * Package information: https://pkginfo.devuan.org * Popularity contest: https://popcon.devuan.org

          After Beowulf

          The next Devuan release, 4.0.0, is codenamed Chimaera. Repositories are already available for the adventurous to test.

          Appreciation

          We wish to thank all of you for the incredible support given to Devuan. Without your help and feedback, Devuan could not be the reliable and versatile distribution that it is.

          To support the Devuan project you can donate at: https://devuan.org/donate (includes financial reports) or take up one of the tasks listed at: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1380#p1380

          Live long and prosper!

          The Devuan Development Team

          References

          1. https://devuan.org/os/packages 2. https://devuan.org/get-devuan#installation-media-for-amd6... 3. https://devuan.org/get-devuan#iso-guide-for-i386-and-amd64 4. http://files.devuan.org/devuan_beowulf/Release_notes.txt
        • Devuan 3.0 Released For Debian 10 Without Systemd

          Two years after the release of Devuan 2.0 and just a few months since the Beowulf beta, Devuan 3.0 "Beowulf" is now officially available as this Linux distribution providing a Debian package set not dependent upon systemd.

          Six years after Devuan was announced as a fork of Debian GNU/Linux without systemd, the distribution is still proceeding in its quest. The release this week of Devuan 3.0 now re-bases itself against Debian 10 "Buster" and currently on Debian 10.4 with the Linux 4.19 kernel.

      • Debian Family

        • Tails 4.7 is out

          This release fixes many security vulnerabilities. You should upgrade as soon as possible.

        • Olivier Berger: Mixing NRELab’s Antidote and Eclipse Che on the same k8s cluster

          You may have heard of my search for Cloud solutions to run labs in an academic context, with a focus on free an open source solutions . You may read previous installments of this blog, or for a shorter, check the presentation I’ve recorded last week.

          I’ve become quite interested, in the latest month, in 2 projects: NRELab’s Antidote and Eclipse Che.

          Antidote is the software that powers NRELabs, a labs platform for learning network automation, which runs on top of Kubernetes (k8s). The interesting thing is that for each learner, there can be a dedicated k8s namespace with multiple virtual nodes running on a separate network. This can be used in the context of virtual classes/labs where our students will perform network labs in parallel on the same cluster.

        • Olivier Berger: Experimenting on distant labs and labs on the Cloud

          I mention tools like Guacamole, MeshCentral, NRELab’s Antidote, Eclipse Che and Labtainers, as well as k8s and Docker, as interesting tools that may allow us to continue teaching in labs while allowing more flexibility, distant learning, and hopefully improved quality.

        • Sylvain Beucler: Debian LTS and ELTS - May 2020

          Here is my transparent report for my work on the Debian Long Term Support (LTS) and Debian Extended Long Term Support (ELTS), which extend the security support for past Debian releases, as a paid contributor.

          In May, the monthly sponsored hours were split evenly among contributors depending on their max availability - I was assigned 17.25h for LTS (out of 30 max; all done) and 9.25h for ELTS (out of 20 max; all done).

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • PeaZip 7.3.1

        PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager. It's freeware and free of charge for any use. PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 77 Released with Minor Changes (So Don’t Get Excited)
            Case in point: today’s Firefox 77 release. There’s nothing “wrong” with the update per se, but it iss somewhat light on the ‘notable changes’ front — hence the headline advising you not to get too excited.

            Now, if you really love Firefox’s integration with read-it-later service Pocket (which Mozilla bought a few years back) and you happen to browse the web from the UK you can, finally, at long last “enjoy” the ‘best stories on the web’ each and every time you open a new tab.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice Tuesday T&T: Impress Presenter Screen

          LibreOffice Impress is a valuable presentation software, with plenty of advanced features. One of the most liked by skilled presenters is the so called Presentation Screen, which shows the current and the next slide on screen, and the notes. It helps the presenter to maintain the rythm of the presentation, and to remember the details of the talk.

          According to LibreOffice default configuration, the Presenter Screen shows only if the PC is connected to two displays. For some people this is a feature, for some others this is a bug.

      • Programming/Development

        • Debian rebuild with clang 10 + some patches

          Instead of patching clang itself, I used a different approach this time: patching Debian tools or implementing some workaround to mitigate an issue.

        • The Rise and Fall of Commercial Smalltalk

          Smalltalk actually had a surge of commercial popularity in the first half of the 1990s but that interest evaporated almost instantaneously in 1996. Most of the Gilad’s article consists of his speculations on why that happened. I agree with many of Gilad’s takes on this subject, but his involvement and perspective with Smalltalk started relatively late in the commercial Smalltalk lifecycle. I was there pretty much at the beginning so it seems appropriate to add some additional history and my own personal perspective. I’ll be directly responding to some of Gilad’s points, so you should probably read his post before continuing.

        • Perl/Raku

          • BLOG: The Weekly Challenge #063

            After the most difficult week (Week #062), it was very satisfying. I found both the tasks this week (Week #063) fun and challenging. The best part was that I could do both tasks in an hour, which is rare. I liked the “Rotate String” task very much. Thanks to Ryan, we already had test cases handy for the “Last Word” task. I will talk about each in detail down below.

          • Perl Weekly Challenge 63: Last Word and Rotate String

            These are some answers to the Week 63 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

        • Python

          • Weekly Check-in #1
          • GSoC 2020 First Blog
          • Report of May 26th Cubicweb Meeting

            Migrating CubicWeb to Heptapod and modifications in dependencies resulted in broken tests as it was presented last week. Work has been done on Friday afternoon thanks to Simon and Laurent, but it's not fixed yet. Tox is now happy but we still have a bug on a test that succeeds locally but not when run by the CI job. We do have a lead which may concern firefox usage in headless mode. Jobs logs are available here.

          • Overcoming Incuriosity -- Sailing Over The Horizon

            I'm in regular contact with a few folks who seem remarkably incurious.

            Seem.

            Perhaps they're curious about something other than software. I don't know.

            But I do know they're remarkably incurious about software. And are trying to write Python applications.

            I know some people don't sail out of sight of their home port. I've sailed over a few horizons. It's not courage. It's curiosity. And patience. And preparation.

            I find this frustrating. I refuse to write their code for them.

          • Parallel Iteration With Python's zip() Function

            Python’s zip() function creates an iterator that will aggregate elements from two or more iterables. You can use the resulting iterator to quickly and consistently solve common programming problems, like creating dictionaries. In this course, you’ll discover the logic behind the Python zip() function and how you can use it to solve real-world problems.

          • PyCoder’s Weekly: Issue #423 (June 2, 2020)
        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Join consecutive lines if condition applies

            I recently looked at a TSV that had hundreds (!) of embedded newlines. Fortunately each of the "real" lines began with a serial number, and the breaks between lines were "clean" — no characters or spaces were lost or added. Below is a simplified file of this kind, "fruits".

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • How CHAOSS Measures Open Source Community Health

                To learn more about the project, we spoke with Dawn Foster, Director of Open Source Community Strategy at VMware and member of the CHAOSS governing board.

                FOSSlife: Please give our readers a bit of background on the CHAOSS project. How did it originate and what are its goals?

                Dawn Foster: The community was formed as a result of a Birds of a Feather at the Linux Foundation Open Source Leadership Summit in 2017 out of a shared desire to collaborate on ways to measure open source project health. It was officially announced as a Linux Foundation project a few months later at the LF Open Source Summit North America. The idea was to bring together several different analytics tools, like GrimoireLab and cregit, into a coordinated effort while also developing metrics definitions that could be used by any implementation.

                [...]

                Dawn Foster: Anyone can participate in the CHAOSS project! I think sometimes people think that CHAOSS is all about software development on the tools we use to gather the metrics, and while that's an important part of what we do, it isn't everything. Most of the time, the working groups are discussing and defining metrics, which is something anyone can do.

                We collaboratively work together in documents to define metrics to better understand what questions they answer and why they are important in addition to talking about what data you might need to collect. In some cases, like with many of the diversity and inclusion metrics, qualitative measurements are an important element of the metrics definitions. We need people from all backgrounds with different skills to help us define metrics in a way that is useful for a variety of people and organizations.

                In addition to the metrics, CHAOSS is a fun community of smart and welcoming people, so it's a place where you can enjoy contributing!

    • Finance

      • France approves five billion euro emergency loan for Renault

        The French government said Tuesday that it had signed off on a state-backed loan of five billion euros ($5.6 billion) for carmaker Renault, where the coronavirus crisis has compounded months of management turbulence and prompted the company to lay off nearly 15,000 people worldwide.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Invention without the Inventor [Ed: The chronic liars from the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, who support criminals like Battistelli, want computer-generated patents for more lawsuits]

          The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) is the professional organization of UK Patent attorneys. The organization has released a new discussion paper on invention without the inventor.

          Although the current debate is captioned around artificial intelligence (AI) systems, a real underlying focal point is a mechanism to allow for immediate and automatic corporate ownership....

        • Unified Patents files 200th Challenge

          On Friday, May 29, Unified Patents filed its 200th administrative action, marking roughly seven years since the company formed. Unified was created at a time of increasing patent litigation, largely initiated by non-practicing entities. At one point almost 95% of all high-tech litigation was initiated by NPEs, many of which were using litigation costs to extract settlements. The company’s creation came with two basic beliefs —never to pay NPEs and to challenge bad patents owned by NPEs.

          Since its founding, Unified Patents has become the 3rd largest patent challenger at the USPTO (including post-grant reviews, ex parte reexams, reissue protests, third party submissions, and inter partes reviews). From a humble living room in Los Altos, Unified has grown from two to over twenty professionals worldwide. It has grown from one Zone (technology area) and six members to nine Zones and over 3,000 members. Members include some of the largest corporations in the world to startups which join for free, all benefitting from deterring the investment and assertion of bad patents.

        • no-challenge clauses

          Patent settlement agreements often include a no-challenge clauses — where the accused infringer promises to never (again) challenge the validity of the asserted patents. Courts have done a slow about face on the notion of licensees challenging the validity of a licensed patent. In 1905, Licensee Estoppel was the general rule. That rule was slowly eroded until finally eliminated in Lear, Inc. v. Adkins, 395 U.S. 653, 670 (1969). Later, in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118 (2007), the Supreme Court opened the door to provide a licensee in good standing easier access to the courts. Still, question remained whether explicit no challenge clauses would be enforceable; especially when done in the context of settling litigation. (Some licenses also included termination clauses if validity was challenged). Effectively what happened is that pre-1982 the various circuit courts extended Lear, but the Federal Circuit altered course. See Flex-Foot, Inc. v. CRP, Inc., 238 F.3d 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2001); compare Rates Tech. Inc. v. Speakeasy, Inc., 685 F.3d 163 (2d Cir. 2012) (no-challenge term in settlement agreement was void for public policy reasons).



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day