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Links 26/11/2020: AV Linux 2020.11.23 and Blender 2.91 Release



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Lubuntu 20.10 overview | Welcome to the Next Universe. - YouTube

        In this video, I am going to show an overview of Lubuntu 20.10 and some of the applications pre-installed.

      • Preselections Unlock BSPWMs True Tiling Potential - YouTube

        A little while ago I looked at bspwm receptacles which provided one way to do manual tiling and today we're looking at another option in the form of bspwm preselections which let you turn bspwm into a manual tiler if you you really want to.

      • 201: Interview with Tutanota Plus $6 Billion IPO for SUSE? - Destination Linux

        Thank you to everyone who joined us LIVE to celebrate 200 Episodes of Destination Linux! We had an absolute blast during Game Fest and can’t wait to do another event in the near future! Thank you to everyone for helping us get to 200 episodes of the best darn Linux show on the planet. This week we have an interview with a representative from Tutanota, an open-source end-to-end encrypted email software and service. Then of course we have our popular tips/tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux.

      • Unfettered Freedom Ep. 12 - Linus on M1 Mac, Snaps 2020, Funtoo, Sabayon, Fedora Pipewire, Systemd

        Unfettered Freedom is a video podcast that focuses on news and topics about GNU/Linux, free software and open source software.

      • Smoked Laptops | Coder Radio 389

        Mike buys a laptop live on air while Chris worries about the turkey.

      • The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 882

        thanksgiving, ardor, odin, ready player two

      • FLOSS Weekly 606: The Future of Stuff - Digital Ownership and Rights

        In our conversation about The Future of Stuff with its author Vinay Gupta, we discuss the founding role of Free Software in the digital world. We'll also talk about the need to list and protect human rights that were barely imaginable in the old physical world—and the radical ways we might make that happen. Vinay is the founder of Mattereum, a London-based fintech company using legally-enforceable smart contracts to enable the sale, lease, and transfer of physical property and other legal rights. He is a technologist and policy analyst interested in how specific technologies can close or create new avenues for decision-makers. This interest has taken him through cryptography, energy policy, defense, security, resilience, and disaster management arenas. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Hexayurt Project, a public domain disaster relief shelter designed to be built from commonly-available materials, and Ethereum, a distributed network designed to handle smart contracts.

    • Kernel Space

      • Tuxera First to Bring Network Bandwidth-Saving SMB Compression Feature to Linux Environments [Ed: Windows assimilation]
      • Tuxera First to Bring Network Bandwidth-Saving SMB Compression Feature to Linux Environments

        Tuxera, a world-leader in quality-assured storage management and networking software, announced that the company's SMB server implementation, Fusion File Share by Tuxera, now offers transparent compression to platforms outside of Microsoft Windows. Compression is being rapidly and widely adopted in the storage industry as a feature in memory hardware, file system implementations, and also networking protocols such as Microsoft's server messaging block technology (SMB). The ability to compress files inline during transfer can significantly reduce bandwidth and transfer time. Microsoft released the transparent compression feature to their SMB protocol specification in early 2019. However, Tuxera is the first to implement SMB compression outside of Microsoft Windows, bringing this highly in-demand feature to Linux environments in enterprises around the world.

      • Wake-on-LAN

        With Wake-on-LAN (WoL) it can be slightly easier to manage machines in-house. You can fire up the workstation and start the day’s compile jobs (to catch up with overnight work by the KDE community, say) while drinking an espresso downstairs and doomscrolling.

        [...]

        If all the administrative bits are in place, then the simple way to wake up a machine is wake <hostname>. This requires root, since it sends specially-crafted (broadcast) Ethernet packets, which isn’t something that regular users can do.

      • AMD+SUSE Tackling Frequency Invariance For AMD EPYC 7002 CPUs - Phoronix

        Thanks to work by AMD and SUSE engineers, the Linux kernel could soon be seeing frequency invariance support for EPYC 7002 "Rome" processors for yielding greater performance and power efficiency.

        Over the past year we have seen a lot of Linux kernel work for dealing with frequency invariance but to now that on the x86 side has been focused on Intel Xeon processors. Now through the cooperation of AMD with patches led by SUSE, frequency invariance is being worked on for the EPYC 7002 "Rome" processors.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Intel Begins Landing Their Open-Source Vulkan Driver Ray-Tracing Support

          This week marked the release of Vulkan 1.2.162 with the ray-tracing extensions now finalized. As such Intel's stellar open-source team has begun landing their work around Vulkan ray-tracing ahead of the Xe HPG hardware availability that will support this functionality.

          Back in October I wrote about Intel preparing their open-source driver support for Vulkan ray-tracing ahead of Xe HPG and now with the updated Vulkan spec out there they are able to push more of their work.

    • Benchmarks

      • The Performance Impact To POWER9's Eager L1d Cache Flushing Fix

        Last week a new vulnerability was made public for IBM POWER9 processors resulting in a mitigation of the processor's L1 data cache needing to be flushed between privilege boundaries. Due to the possibility of local users being able to obtain data from the L1 cache improperly when this CVE is paired with other side channels, the Linux kernel for POWER9 hardware is flushing the L1d on entering the kernel and on user accesses. Here are some preliminary benchmarks looking at how this security change impacts the overall system performance.

        All the latest Linux kernel stable series are now patched with the new POWER9 behavior for the L1 data cache flushing when crossing privilege boundaries. As outlined already, that L1d flushing behavior is the default but can be disabled with new "no_entry_flush" and "no_uaccess_flush" kernel options to maintain the prior behavior of not flushing.

    • Applications

      • qBittorrent 4.3.1 Released, How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

        The first update for qBittorrent 4.3 series was released today with some new features, bug-fixes, and web UI changes.

      • Blender 2.91 Released

        The fourth major release in 2020 is here to further improve the user experience, adding powerful new booleans, better cloth sculpting with support for collisions, volume objects modifiers, outline, improved animation tools and so much more.

      • Blender 2.91 Released With A Multitude Of Improvements - Phoronix

        Blender 2.91 is the project's fourth and last major release of 2021 with a focus on enhancing the user experience and usability of this cross-platform, open-source 3D modeling software. There are also improvements to new tooling around cloth sculpting, animation enhancements, continued fine-tuning to the grease pencil, and much more.

      • Blender 2.91 Released with Better Cloth Sculpting, Faster Video Encoding and Decoding

        Highlights of Blender 2.91 include better cloth sculpting with collision support for the Sculpt Cloth brush and filter, a new Sculpt Trim tool for cutting and adding geometry using box or lasso gestures, new Simulation Target property for simulating cloth effects, and new Boundary brush for controlling the shape of mesh boundaries.

        To improve modeling, a new Exact solver is included in this release to handle complex geometry, along with better Intersect Knife and Intersect Boolean, the ability to use a collection as boolean, new options for the Subdivision Surface modifier, better loop select tools in UV Editor, as well as Split Viewport and Render Resolution in Ocean Modifier.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to get Linux kernel 5.8 and 5.9 in Debian 10

        Debian 10 sits at Linux kernel 4.19. While this kernel version isn’t exactly the oldest release ever, it’s undoubtedly out of date. However, it is possible to install more modern versions of the kernel.

      • How to install Reaper on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Reaper on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

        Reaper is a very powerful tool for audio editing, but it is difficult to learn, so please use their startup guide. You can also use it as a voice-changer, for discord, etc.

      • How to install Lyrebird on Linux Mint 20 - a Voice Changer for Discord - YouTube

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Lyrebird on Linux Mint 20, which is a voice changer for Discord.

      • Oracle VirtualBox – how to clone virtual machine terminal bash command line – how to tidy up snapshots and consolidate free disk space
      • How to Install and Use Thonny Python IDE on Linux

        Thonny is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Python beginners. It is created with Python and released under MIT License. It is cross-platform and can run in Linux, macOS, Windows.

      • How to easily install git on Linux | 2021 - LinuxH2O

        This article is a quick guide on how to install git on different Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc.

        Git is an open-source, cross-platform version control system. It is used to track and maintain changes for a set of files. The tool is mainly popular with programmers for their projects. However, the tool can also be used for any sort of scenario that requires changes to files from time to time.

        Git was developed by Linus Torvalds in 2005 to manage the Linux kernel development.

      • How To Install Redis on Linux Mint 20 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Redis on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Redis is an open-source in-memory key-value data store. It can be used as a database, cache and, message broker, and supports various data structures such as Strings, Hashes, Lists, Sets, and more. Redis provides high availability via Redis Sentinel and automatic partitioning across multiple Redis nodes with Redis Cluster.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of Redis on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

      • How to Download YouTube Videos in Linux | FOSS Linux

        YouTube is one of the websites with the most videos on the internet (as of writing this post, it is number one on the list). For some reason, you might need to download some videos to watch later while offline. Situations like following a tutorial playlist about a project or listening to your favorite songs while offline requires you to download some of these videos.

        Whatever your reason might be, we will show you how you can download YouTube Videos on a Linux system. We will guide you through both the graphical (GUI) and the command-line way. Let’s dive in!

      • How to play Minecraft Bedrock Edition on Linux [Ed: There are Free software clones that are not Microsoft's]

        Minecraft Bedrock Edition works on Linux with the help of the Minecraft Bedrock Launcher for Linux. It is an unofficial app that makes the game work on Linux with the Minecraft Android APK.

      • [Older] How to install Redis on Ubuntu Linux

        Redis is open source software used as a database and cache that sits in memory, allowing for exceptional performance. When you're ready to give this lightning fast program a try, the developers recommend installing Redis on a Linux system, and what better candidate than Ubuntu Linux?

        In this tutorial, we'll guide you through the step by step instructions of installing Redis (both server and client) on Ubuntu. Then, we'll verify that it's connectable and configure the UFW firewall to allow incoming connections.

      • How to install the NVIDIA drivers on Fedora 33 with Hybrid Switchable Graphics

        This is guide, how to install NVIDIA proprietary drivers on Fedora 33 with Hybrid Switchable Graphics [Intel + Nvidia GeForce]

    • Games

      • Steam Autumn Sale and the 2020 Steam Award Nominations are now live | GamingOnLinux

        Get your wallets ready and your votes as two big events are happening and live now on Steam with both the Steam Autumn Sale and the 2020 Steam Award Nominations.

        Firstly, let's talk about the Steam Awards. This is the fifth annual event, where users all across Steam can vote for their favourite games across different categories. The final voting will take place in December, with nominations running until December 1 at 5PM UTC.

      • Metro Exodus is still planned to release for Linux and macOS | GamingOnLinux

        4A Games have confirmed in an official 10th anniversary update post today that Metro Exodus is still going to release for Linux and macOS as well.

        They gave a small overview in the post about what's been going on like celebrating the first release of Metro 2033 which arrived back in March 2010. Not only that, they recently got acquired by Embracer Group who also control Koch Media, Saber Interactive, THQ Nordic and others. Specifically, 4A Games are now an independently run subsidiary of Saber Interactive.

      • 4A Games Still Working On Linux Port Of Metro Exodus - Phoronix

        While Metro Exodus can run on Linux right now via Steam Play, 4A Games is still working on a port of this popular game to Linux and Mac systems.

        Following the reliable ports of Metro 2033 and Metro Redux to Linux, we've been looking forward to the native Linux port of Metro Exodus since at least the earlier versions have been benchmark-friendly for our needs following the Linux port (complete with CLI switches, unlike the Windows version at least at the time).

      • Godot Game Engine Has Been Backing "Betsy" As A GPU-Based Texture Compressor - Phoronix

        The Godot Game Engine has been funding work on a GPU-based texture compressor to deal with the issue that importing textures to this leading open-source game engine can often be painfully slow.

        Betsy is the open-source project being worked on for the Godot Engine. Betsy implements BC6, ETC1, ETC2, and EAC algorithms among others using GLSL compute shaders. This compressor is implemented as GLSL compute shaders so the work can be offloaded to the graphics processor either via OpenGL or Vulkan usage as well.

      • Godot Engine - Introducing the Betsy GPU texture compressor

        My name is Matias N. Goldberg, I normally maintain the 2.x branch of Ogre aka ogre-next and I wrote Betsy, a GPU texture compressor that runs on GPUs.

        This work was commissioned by Godot Engine through the Software Freedom Conservancy to solve a major complaint: importing textures is excruciantly slow and takes many minutes.

        Certain compression algorithms such as BC1-5 are quite simple and there are already fast high quality compression algorithms.

        However algorithms such as BC6, ETC1, ETC2 and EAC are currently taking the majority of time and thus considerably attention were given to these.

        Nonetheless Betsy implemented compute-shader versions for BC1,3,4,5,6, ETC1,2 and EAC algorithms.

        Betsy works as a standard Command Line tool which means it can be used like any other exe tool outside of Godot.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • GNOME 3.38.2 Desktop Environment Is Out with Even More Improvements and Bug Fixes

          Coming two months after the first point release, GNOME 3.38.2 is here with better support for the GNOME OS project that lets developers and user test drive upcoming features of the popular desktop environment.

          This support was implemented in the GNOME Boxes software, which now comes with up-to-date download URLs for GNOME OS, the ability to install GNOME OS under the osinfo custom database, as well as updated recommended downloads for the latest Linux distro releases and improved handling of file extensions.

        • Friends of GNOME Update – November 2020 – Getting to know GNOME

          The Seattle GNU/Linux Conference took place online this year and we were there. Executive Director Neil McGovern gave a presentation titled “Patently Obvious” about our legal case with a patent assertion entity and how the settlement impacts all of FOSS.

          Strategic Initiatives Manager M. de Blanc gave a surprise talk that had nothing to do with GNOME, but discussed the Foundation nonetheless.

          We also had talks at Linux Application Summit and GNOME.Asia, which you can read more about below.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • OSMC's November update is here with Kodi v18.9

          Last month, we released Debian Buster with Kodi v18.8. While this version had the majority of fixes backported from Kodi v18.9 which was still in progress, we've decided to issue a final release of the Kodi Leia series in the form of an 18.9 point release.

          Our focus will now be on enabling OSMC support for Kodi v19 (codename Matrix) which is now in beta release. This new version of Kodi will bring a significant number of improvements. However -- it should be noted that this new Kodi release will also introduce some caveats, and this is why we've chosen to polish the Kodi v18.x series of OSMC as much as possible, particularly as some users may need to stay on this version if there device is no longer supported or their add-ons do not work with the new version.

          Kodi Matrix upgrades its Python implementation from Python 2.x to Python 3.x. While the majority of add-ons have already been updated to support this new version, you may find that some add-ons do not work. Furthermore, Raspberry Pi 0, 1 and Vero 2 will no longer be supported, meaning that this release will be the final supported version for these devices.

        • Multimedia-Oriented AV Linux Distro Rebased on MX Linux, Adds New and Updated Audio Tools

          Based on the latest MX Linux 19.3 “Patito Feo” release, AV Linux MX Edition is here about six months after the last update to the project with many new and updated tools for audio production and musicians. The distro is still based on Debian GNU/Linux, but not derived from it anymore, but instead from MX Linux.

          This means that AV Linux now inherits many of MX Linux’s goodies, including the fact that it doesn’t ship with the systemd init system by default. Of course, it also includes the many great tools and utilities of MX Linux.

        • AV Linux 2020.11.23 Released, Based On MX Linux 19.3 ‘Patito Feo’

          After more than six months of development, the creator and maintainer of AV Linux Glen MacArthur released a new version 2020.11.23.

          [...]

          Being a first build based on MX Linux, AVL-MXE comes in two separate editions for the x86_64 platform with Xfce desktop, Linux Kernel 5.9.1-rt20, and i386 platform with (Xfce plus) Openbox window manager, Kernel 5.9.1-rt19.

          Unlike the MX approach to provide trusted third-party repositories for software packages, AVL-MXE provides carefully selected repositories that are specifically created for users of Debian GNU/Linux.

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Presenting Cockpit Wicked | YaST

          If you are into systems management, you most likely have heard about Cockpit at some point. In a nutshell, it offers a good looking web-based interface to perform system tasks like inspecting the logs, applying system updates, configuring the network, managing services, and so on. If you want to give it a try, you can install Cockpit in openSUSE Tumbleweed just by typing zypper in cockpit.

          [...]

          Cockpit already features a nice module to configure the network so you might be wondering why not extending the original instead of creating a new one. The module shipped with Cockpit is specific to NetworkManager and adapting it to a different backend can be hard.

          In our case, we are trying to build something that could be adapted in the future to support more backends, but we are not sure how realistic this idea is.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Got something to say? How to get started writing

          Well, I suppose after all this talk of how to find your story and then write your story, I should make a post about how to do just that. I've broken it down into three sections: how to find your story, how to write your story, and how to share it and get it published.

          During the All Things Open virtual event this year, I was invited to share my tips, and now you can watch that. It's about 20 minutes with some questions and commentary at the end.

          [...]

          First, decide whether you want to self-publish, on your own blog or a place like Medium, or if you want to get your article published on a publication like Opensource.com or Linux Today.

          If you're reaching out to a publication, try to find information about how they would like you to submit your article. Some have webforms, some want you to simply send them an email. Some, like us, have both. Let them know who you are, what you wrote about, and perhaps why you wrote about it.

          For example: My name is Jen Wike Huger. I'm a community manager and editor for Opensource.com, so my expertise is writing and working with authors. My article is about how to find your story, writing, and getting published.

        • Crunchy Data PostgreSQL on Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage

          Deploying critical PostgreSQL applications in the cloud requires both consistent performance and resilience to protect essential data for business continuity. Together, technologies from Crunchy Data and Red Hat can help enable organizations to deliver data resilience for critical PostgreSQL applications.

          Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage plays an increasingly important role, letting organizations deploy reliable, scalable, and highly available persistent storage for their most important PostgreSQL applications. This single software-defined storage solution can be launched on premise, in the public cloud, or in hybrid cloud deployments—increasing agility and resilience even as it simplifies operations.

        • Red Hat Satellite 6.8.1 has been released

          We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.8.1 is generally available as of November 23, 2020.

          Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical Allies With Docker Inc. on Secure Containers

          Docker Inc. CEO Scott Johnston says this alliance with Canonical extends a verified publisher initiative that already spans 200 organizations. There are now 160 Docker Official Images available via Docker Hub, which is accessed by more than 11 million active developers, according to the company. On average, Johnston notes there are more than 13+ billion pulls per month from 7.9 million application repositories that reside within the Docker Hub container registry.

          Docker Hub container registry is at the core of the ongoing effort to recast Docker Inc. as a provider of tools that optimize workflows for developers building container applications. Currently it is the largest public container registry employed; however, there are now several alternatives to Docker Hub that cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) are positioning as platforms that have no rate limitations. Those alternatives, however, will only make it more complicated for developers to employ container images across multiple platforms, notes Johnston.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Technology as it Should Be

        In Imagine a world without apps Shira Ovide asks “a wild question: What if we played games, shopped, watched Netflix and read news on our smartphones — without using apps? Our smartphones, like our computers, would instead mostly be gateways to go online through a web browser.”

        This question can be extrapolated into a larger question: “What do we want from our technology?”

        The power of control by Big-Tech in the app store is but a small example of exploitation of our digital lives. If you don’t control the software, the companies who wrote that software control you. You become a digital prisoner.

        [...]

        The ability to encrypt your personal data with your own keys on your own device ensures that you fully control your digital life. With this as the starting point, you can then choose (aka opt-in) to share what you want with the people you want. This right is rooted in personal property rights, and is one of the most egregious abuses by Big Tech and those that have influence over them. If manufacturers, operating system developers, and software developers took a Hippocratic-like oath, one area society would agree on is the right that your personal data is your personal property and something you must retain control over and consent to share before it leaves your possession.

        Without regulatory assistance to protect personal data, society is left to fend for itself against the pressure from a multi-trillion dollar industry to exploit that personal data. There is no way to resist that pressure without the market creating convenient alternatives that honor that right while completely avoiding Big Tech. Purism creates products that are increasing in convenience daily, that fully protect you, and these products are the market answer to the worst abuses of Big Tech companies.

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • The Talospace Project: Firefox 83 on POWER

            LTO-PGO is still working great in Firefox 83, which expands in-browser PDF support, adds additional features to Picture-in-Picture (which is still one of my favourite tools in Firefox) and some miscellany developer changes. The exact same process, configs and patches to build a fully link-time and profile-guided optimized build work that was used in Firefox 82.

      • CMS

        • The Best 21 Open-source Headless CMS for 2020

          A headless CMS (content management system) is a backend system which works the content available through API (RESTful API or GraphQL). It's built to give the developers the possibilities to create what they want.

          The API-driven headless approach is trending right now especially for enterprise users and developers.

          Headless CMS programs can be used as a backend for mobile apps, static generated websites with frameworks like Next, Nuxt, Gridsome and Hugo which also supports server-side rendering. They can be also used to manage IoT (Internet of Things) applications.

        • 17 Best Open-source Self-hosted Commenting Systems

          Unlike the majority of content management systems (CMSs) which have built-in embedded comments functionalities (like WordPress), many systems don't have comments by default, especially the newly trending static generators.

          As example this blog is powered by Ghost which is an open-source blogging system that comes with many functions and options except comments, also it does not have a plugin system to extend it with comments plugin. So, we are forced like many other users to find external options which was Disqus.

      • FSFE

        • Software Freedom in Europe 2020

          2020 is a year to remember. While many may remember the pandemic, there have nevertheless been many positive changes in terms of Free Software in recent months. In fact, a lot has changed. You can now read in one document how busy our movement was in our annual report Software Freedom in Europe 2020.

          The EU and the WHO followed our arguments that publicly funded Corona-related contact tracing apps should be published only under a Free Software license. Several cities, including Munich, promised to rely more on Free Software in the future. We convinced publicly funded hackathons to publish their results as Free Software, and the largest conservative party in Europe, the German CDU, resolved to join the FSFE in demanding that software developed with public money should be publicly available as Free Software.

      • FSF

        • Help in the fight against DMCA anti-circumvention rules by December 7th

          The United States Copyright Office is now accepting comments in support of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) anti-circumvention provisions, and we need your help by December 7th to ensure that every new exemption is granted.

          The DMCA has been making headlines recently for all the wrong reasons. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently was able to temporarily have youtube-dl removed from GitHub, via a poorly thought out take down notice. GitHub has now restored youtube-dl, but not before forcing some changes to the project. While the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA can have some use, it's clearly an abuse for the RIAA to interfere with such a project -- particularly given that part of their notice was a claim about some sort of violation of YouTube's rights, not the RIAA's, and was related to a different section of the DMCA, the section 1201 anti-circumvention provisions. Those provisions create legal penalties for avoiding Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), and even harsher penalties for sharing the tools to do so.

          This last point -- the separate penalties for sharing tools used to remove restrictions -- is especially important. Recently, Google demanded GitHub take down tools used to work around its Widevine DRM. This just underscores that users will be unable to take advantage of even approved exemptions, unless they are able to write their own tools from scratch to get the DRM out of their way. It's like saying everyone is free to cook what they want in their own kitchen, but buying and selling stoves is illegal.

        • Support UserFreedom by purchasing gifts from the GNU Press Shop

          To celebrate this year's thirty-fifth anniversary of the FSF, we designed and issued an extremely cool undersea-themed 35th Anniversary T-shirt. The initial run sold out faster than a weekend scuba diving trip, but we've reprinted them in a new color scheme worthy of Neptune himself -- lots of these are in stock and ready to send to you.

          But that's not all! So excited are we on the occasion of FSF's coral anniversary that we also made new socks. Warm your toes with the brand new FSF thirty-fifth anniversary socks -- crew-length socks whose coral, black, and blue color scheme will match your FSF 35th Anniversary Poster. Orders for these limited edition socks will be accepted on a "pre-order" basis until December 9th -- we'll collect customer orders, then print the socks, which I'll then ship to you. Be sure to order socks within the above time frame if you want them, because we won't have a lot of surplus after the orders are filled.

          [...]

          Finally, a note about shipping. The current pandemic places a lot of obstacles to buying and selling merchandise at FSF, so your order may be shipped less punctually than before -- but it absolutely will be shipped. This time of year, many customers place orders hoping to have them in hand by December 25. If this is you, and you are in the United States, please place your order before December 4, in order to provide us with the necessary lead time to make sure that your gifts are shipped on time. In any circumstance, it's advisable to place any order as soon as you can; I will endeavor to ship it as promptly as circumstances permit. As always, don't hesitate to email sales@fsf.org with any questions or concerns about shipping, inventory, payment, suggestions for future items for sale, or anything else -- this email address is the first thing I check every work day, especially at this time of year.

      • Programming/Development

        • Qt 6.0 RC1 Takes Flight - Qt 6.0 Should Be Here By Mid-December - Phoronix

          The Qt Company has just announced Qt 6.0 Release Candidate 1 as what should be the second to the last test build ahead of the big Qt 6.0 toolkit release next month.

          Qt 6.0 Release Candidate 1 has the latest batch of bug/regression fixes to the Qt6 code-base. The very basic Qt 6.0 RC1 release announcement can be read on the Qt development list.

        • Porting from Qt 5 to Qt 6 using Qt5Compat library

          Porting from Qt 5 to Qt 6 has been intentionally kept easy. There has been a conscious effort throughout the development of Qt 6 to maintain as much source compatibility with Qt 5 as possible. Still, some effort is involved in porting. This short post summarizes some of the steps required when porting to Qt 6.

          In Qt 5 some of the classes already had existing replacements, and some classes got successors during the Qt 6 development phase. Therefore it might make sense to be able to compile your code with both the old and new Qt version. This can ensure that the amount of work where your code does not compile with either version is minimized, allowing your application or library to continue to work with Qt 5 and Qt 6. Another advantage could be that existing unit tests continue to work for most of the duration of porting, and regressions resulting from porting your code are easily distinguished from bugs introduced in Qt 6.

        • PHP 8.0 Ready To Ship With Many New Features, Even Better Performance - Phoronix

          PHP 8.0 is scheduled for release tomorrow on the US Thanksgiving day. PHP 8.0 brings with it many new language features on top of the opt-in JIT compiler support. Here is a look at some of the PHP 8.0 changes along with a quick look at the near final performance of PHP 8.0 on an AMD EPYC Linux server.

          PHP 8.0 is a very worthy successor to last year's PHP 7.4. Besides the JIT compiler there is a ton of work incorporated into this big version bump. Among the PHP 8.0 highlights are:

          - PHP8 introduces the much anticipated Just In Time (JIT) compiler for further enhancing the speed of PHP scripts. More details on PHP's JIT compiler via this Wiki page.

        • Going from Android LinearLayout to CSS flexbox

          Are you an Android developer looking to learn web development? I find it easier to learn a new technology stack by comparing it to a stack I’m already familiar with. Android developers can layout views using the simple yet flexible LinearLayout class. The web platform has similar tools to layout elements using CSS, and some concepts are shared. Here’s some tips to learn web development using your Android knowledge.

        • Software Diagrams Aren’t Always Correct and That’s OK

          Concretely, software is just bits in electronic storage that control and/or are manipulated by processors. Abstractions are the building blocks that enable humans to design and build complex software systems out of bits. Abstractions are products of out minds—they allow us to assign meaning to clusters (some large, some small) of bits. They allow us to build software systems without thinking about billions of bits or how processors work.

          We manifest some useful and generally simple abstractions (instructions, statements, functions, classes, modules, etc.) as “code” using other abstractions we call “languages.” Languages give us a common vocabulary for us to communicate about those abstract building blocks and to produce the corresponding bits. There are many useful tools that can and should be created to help us understand the code-level operation of a system.

          But most systems we build today are too complex to be fully understood at the level of code. In designing them we must use higher-level abstractions to conceptualize, compose, and organize code. Abstract machines, frameworks, patterns, roles, stereotypes, heuristics, constraints, etc. are examples of such higher-level abstractions.

          The languages we commonly use provide few, if any, mechanisms for directly identifying such higher-level abstractions. These abstractions may manifest as naming or other coding conventions but recognizing them as such depends upon a pre-existing shared understanding between the writer and readers of the code.

        • Perl/Raku

        • Python

          • How to Convert Integer into String in Python | Linuxize

            Python has several built-in data types. Sometimes, when writing Python code, you might need to convert one data type to another. For example, concatenate a string and integer, first, you’ll need to convert the integer into a string.

          • How To Install PyCharm on Debian 10

            In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PyCharm on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, PyCharm is an intelligent and fully-featured IDE for Python developed by JetBrains. It also provides support for Javascript, Typescript, and CSS, etc. You can also extend PyCharm features by using plugins. By using PyCharm plugins you can also get support for frameworks like Django, Flask. We can also use PyCharm for other programming languages like HTML, SQL, Javascript, CSS, and more.

            This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of PyCharm on a Debian 10 (Buster).

        • Rust

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Isovalent Launches Linux Network Enterprise Product, Closes $29M Round | Data Center Knowledge

            The startup's networking platform Cilium runs inside Linux, instead of running on top of the OS.

          • ZDNet and Linux often provide a good chance for a laugh

            The site's security writer, Catalin Cimpanu, has form [1, 2, 3] in screwing up when he writes about Linux. And ZDNet has a person on staff, Stephen J. Vaughan-Nicholls, who knows the Linux very well. So why exactly the kind of dross that was published on 24 November was ever allowed to pass the editor's knife is puzzling.

            To details. In this case, Cimpanu was writing about a botnet known as Stantinko, a new version of which has apparently been detected by the Israeli security firm Intezer and detailed in a blog post which was shared with Cimpanu before being made available to world+dog.

            Before I go any further, let me say that i have reported on Intezer at least thrice, and they are sound when it comes to their research. There is no hyperbole and when they say something, they have enough evidence to do so.

          • Security updates for Wednesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (spip and webkit2gtk), Fedora (kernel and libexif), openSUSE (chromium and rclone), Slackware (mutt), SUSE (kernel, mariadb, and slurm), and Ubuntu (igraph).

          • Top Tips to Protect Your Linux System

            Linux-based operating systems have a reputation for their high-security level. That's one of the reasons why the market share for Linux has been growing. The most commonly used operating systems such as Windows are often affected by targeted attacks in the form of ransomware infections, spyware, as well as worms, and malware.

            As a result, many personal, as well as enterprise users, are turning to Linux-based operating systems such as the Ubuntu-based Linux OS for security purposes. While Linux based systems are not targeted as frequently as other popular operating systems, they are not completely foolproof. There are plenty of risks and vulnerabilities for all types of Linux devices which put your privacy as well as your identity at risk.

          • Building a healthy relationship between security and sysadmins | Enable Sysadmin

            Learn how to bridge the gap between operations/development and security.

    • Defence/Aggression

      • India takes aim at Alibaba with new round of Chinese app bans

        India has banned another 43 apps from operating in its territory.

        As was the case with previous bans, India's Ministry of Electronics & IT (MEITY) said the prohibited apps are “engaging in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.” Just how the apps do that was not explained in the announcement of the new ban.

        The new list includes Alibaba's apps for both buyers and sellers, plus an app named Alipay Cashier that facilitates AliPay payments.

        Whether India worries that Alibaba is misusing locals’ data, represents a threat to local payment schemes, or has been censured for otherwise behaving badly is not known. What is certain is that India and China have recently skirmished on a disputed border and previous app bans were interpreted as a de facto reprisals. India is also running a self-sufficiency drive that it hopes will increase local production to the point at which buyers beyond its shores consider it a viable rival to China as an offshore manufacturing destination.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Women state in India and proposal for corporates in Indian banking – Experiences in the community

        But all hope is not lost. There have been a couple of good judgements, one from the CIC (Chief Information Commissioner) wherein in specific cases a wife can know salary details of her husband, especially if there is some kind of maintenance due from the husband. There was so much of hue and cry against this order that it was taken down from the livelaw RTI corner. Luckily, I had downloaded it, hence could upload and share it.

        Another one was a case/suit about a legally matured women who had decided to marry without parental consent. In this case, the Delhi High Court had taken women’s side and stated she can marry whom she wants. Interestingly, about a week back Uttar Pradesh (most notorious about crime against women) had made laws called ‘Love Jihad‘ and 2 -3 states have followed them. The idea being to create an atmosphere of hate against Muslims. This is when in a separate suit/case against Sudharshan TV (a far-right leaning channel promoting hate against Muslims) , the Government of India itself put an affidavit stating that Tablighis (a sect of Muslims who came from Malaysia to India for religious discourse and assembly) were not responsible for dissemination of the virus and some media has correctly portrayed the same. Of course, those who are on the side of the Govt. on this topic think a ‘traitor’ has written. They also thought that the Govt. had taken a wrong approach but couldn’t tell of a better approach to the matter.

        There are too many matters in the Supreme Court of women asking for justice to tell all here but two instances share how the SC has been buckling under the stress of late, one is a webinar which was chaired by Justice Subramaniam where he shared how the executive is using judicial appointments to do what it wants. The gulf between the executive and the SC has been since Indira Gandhi days, especially the judicial orders which declared that the Emergency is valid by large, it has fallen much more recently and the executive has been muscling in which have resulted in more regressive decisions than progressive.

        This observation is also in tune with another study which came to the same result although using data. The raw data from the study could give so much more than what has been shared. For e.g. as an idea for the study, of the ones cited, how many have been in civil law, personal law, criminal or constitutional law. This would give a better understanding of things. Also what is shocking is none of our court orders have been cited in the west in the recent past, when there used to be a time when the west used to take guidance from Indian jurisprudence sometimes and cite the orders to reach similar conclusion or if not conclusion at least be used as a precedent. I guess those days are over.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • CNIPA-EPO Pilot For ISA Files - Intellectual Property - China

          China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and European Patent Office (EPO) launched a two–year pilot on December 1, 2020 aiming to give nationals or residents of the P.R. China the option of selecting the EPO as their International Searching Authority (ISA) and as their International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) when filing international patent applications in English under the PCT. The pilot is of particular relevance to Chinese applicants who intend to enter the European phase in the following three aspects:

        • EU Pledges To Up The Stakes In Protecting IP Abroad

          The EU has announced plans to beef up its intellectual property protections, amid concerns that foreign nations are unreasonably appropriating European IP.

          In its new Action Plan on Intellectual Property, the European Commission says it aims to promote a global level playing field, improving IP protection and awareness, particularly amongst SMEs, facilitating the sharing of IP and improving the enforcement of IP rights.

          "Europe is home to some of the world's leading innovations, but companies are still not fully able to protect their inventions and capitalise on their intellectual property," says commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton.

        • Action Plan on Intellectual Property - Questions and Answers

          Why is intellectual property important for the EU economy and its recovery?

          Intangible assets such as inventions, cultural creations, brands, software, know-how and data are the cornerstone of today's economy. Over the last two decades, the volume of annual investments in such ‘intellectual property products' increased by 87% in the EU, while the volume of tangible investments increased by only 30%.

          Intellectual property (IP) rights are titles for patents, trade-marks, designs, copyright, geographical indications, plant variety rights as well as trade secrets which help companies and creators protect and valorise their intangible assets.

        • Second medical use claims in pharmaceutical patents – sharp sword or toothless tiger?

          Discovering a previously unknown indication for a known drug is a common pattern in pharmaceutical research and development. Perhaps the most widely known example for the repurposing of a known drug is acetylsalicylic acid, also known as aspirin. Originally developed by Bayer in 1897 as a pain and fever medication, long-term low dosing of aspirin was later discovered to be an effective cardiovascular medication that can lower the chances of a heart attack or certain kinds of stroke.

          There are many other examples of successfully repurposed drugs. Pregabalin was originally developed to treat epileptic seizures and it was later discovered to be effective in treating neuropathic pain and generalised anxiety disorder. Similarly, sildenafil was originally developed to treat cardiovascular diseases and only later discovered to be effective in treating erectile dysfunction, eventually leading to Pfizer’s blockbuster drug Viagra.

        • European Commission unveils new IP Action Plan [Ed: UPC is dead, not "currently on hold pending German ratification of the UPC agreement." The delusionists are still pushing lies.]

          The EC supports a rapid roll out of the unitary patent system, to create a one-stop-shop for patent protection and enforcement across the EU (2021), currently on hold pending German ratification of the UPC agreement.

          [...]

          Pooling

          Following the patent pledges and pooling related to the COVID 19 therapeutics and vaccines, the Commission states to be “looking into ways to incentivise the rapid pooling of critical IP in times of crisis, for instance through a novel licensing system making critical IP available(…)”, including via compulsory licences as last resort.

          SEPs

          Recognising that SEP disputes currently seen in the automotive sector might extend to many other sectors, the Commission wishes to reduce frictions between SEP owners and implementers via industry-led initiatives, but most importantly, through reforms to improve the rules governing essentiality declarations, licensing and enforcement of SEPs, including a third-party essentiality check independent system.



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
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
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
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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