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Links 17/3/2021: OpenJDK 16, RHEL Inside Cars, Ubuntu Touch OTA-16, System76's Pangolin, and Pangolin Mobile



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Pangolin: The New All-AMD Laptop from System76

        Shortly after the release of the Thelio Mira desktop, System76 has followed up with a new laptop, the Pangolin. Those of you who have been waiting for a fully AMD-powered experience, can now do so with the release of this product.

        [...]

        It has a dimension of 14.19″ x 9.42″ x 0.78″ (36 x 23.9 x 1.99 cm), and apparently is the lightest 15″ laptop in System76’s inventory at 3.64 lbs (1.65kg). It can be opened at up to 180 degrees. The battery is rated at 49 Wh, and the webcam is 1M, being able to capture at 720p resolution. The Pangolin can come pre-installed with either Pop!_OS or Ubuntu.

      • System76 Launches Its New AMD-Powered Linux Laptop

        Linux users, pay attention: System76 is launching an AMD-powered Linux laptop. Better still, it has great specs, looks good, and most of all, is powered by an AMD Ryzen 4000U processor.

        Although Linux laptops are becoming increasingly common, most run on Intel hardware and use Nvidia graphics cards, if using a discreet GPU at all. So, the launch of a Linux laptop running with AMD hardware is a welcome addition to the market, especially one that allows you to pick and choose your hardware.

      • System76 Pangolin Linux laptop with AMD Ryzen now available for $849 and up - Liliputing

        The System76 Pangolin is a 3.6 pound notebook with a 15.6 inch full HD matte display and a choice Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux operating systems.

        But what makes the Pangolin stand out from other Linux laptops from System76 is the processor options: the notebook is powered by an AMD Ryzen 4000U “Renoir” processor.

        First unveiled in December, the System76 Pangolin is now available for purchase for $849 and up.

      • System76 Pangolin is the AMD-powered Ubuntu Linux laptop of your dreams
        If you are a Linux user, you can't go wrong with Intel. That company's processors, chipsets, wireless cards, and other hardware have long been very compatible with Linux-based operating systems. An all-Intel system should be a headache-free experience with Linux. If you want to game or do other graphic-intensive actions, however, an NVIDIA GPU has historically been the best option -- a better experience than AMD graphics cards.

        Nowadays, AMD-based systems are Linux-friendly too, and Radeon graphics are becoming more commonplace in computers running Linux distros. Today, popular Linux-based computer-seller System76 finally launches its first-ever laptop to have both an AMD processor and AMD graphics -- the 2021 "Pangolin" that we told you about in December. This is not only historic for System76, but it is a godsend for Linux users that are fans of AMD.

      • System76 Pangolin Laptop Launches - Powered By AMD Ryzen 4000 Series
        Going back to last December System76 had been teasing a new Pangolin laptop that would be AMD powered. Finally their new laptop has launched with Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors and making use of the integrated Radeon graphics.

        The new Pangolin "pang10" model features the choice of the Ryzen 5 4500U or Ryzen 7 4700U "Renoir" processors with integrated Radeon graphics. The Pangolin features a 1080p 15.6-inch display, up to 64GB of RAM, and one M.2 SSD. The new AMD-powered Pangolin weighs 1.65kg and measures in at 36 x 23.9 x 1.99 cm.

      • Linux vendor System76 releases the Pangolin, a full AMD laptop
        Ready for an all-AMD solution to your hardware problems? Not long after announcing their new Thelio Mira desktop, System76 believe they hold the AMD answer with the new Pangolin. The first System76 laptop that comes with both an AMD CPU and AMD graphics, along with it also being their first AMD CPU powered laptop in the line designed specifically for "everyday computing". This is the same unit they teased out late last year, with it now becoming available.

        "Our customers have long been asking for a lightweight, versatile laptop fully powered by AMD," says Sam Mondlick, VP of Sales. "We believe the Pangolin answers this demand with its sleek lightweight design and easily upgradable components. It’s definitely a fantastic addition to our line."

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • antiX kernel updates

        Users are advised to update to the latest kernels via Package Installer, synaptic or cli-aptiX.

        5.10.22 (antiX-19, bullseye, testing and sid 64bit only) 4.19.180 (antiX-19, bullseye, testing and sid) 4.9.261 (antiX-19, bullseye, testing and sid) 4.4.261 (antiX-19, bullseye, testing and sid)

      • Siemens Working To Upstream More Linux Drivers For Their Industrial PCs - Phoronix

        Siemens has recently been engaging directly with the upstream Linux kernel developers in aiming to mainline various drivers for benefiting their industrial PC platforms.

        For Siemens industrial PCs like the SIMATIC IPC line-up, the German industrial giant is looking to begin upstreaming more of their drivers. The initial area includes watchdog and LED support for these x86-based industrial PCs while more platform drivers and expanded device support is expected to come with time. They do have more code internally left to be sanitized and published around hardware monitoring and other features.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Wayland on FreeBSD

          One more in my series of “things on FreeBSD”, but this road does lead to things-KDE: KDE Plasma Wayland on a FreeBSD desktop. On my Slimbook, in fact. Many thanks to angry_vincent on IRC for showing some bits and pieces to me, and to David Faure for moaning about failing unit tests (which is what made me decide to figure out this Wayland stuff for once and for all).

          My main desktop runs KDE Plasma on it. On FreeBSD, with X11, with an nVidia card (a fanless 730 – with great graphics power comes nothing useful) and the proprietary nVidia drivers. Works great, has for years. Since so many of the Wayland documents (e.g. the sway wiki say to piss off if you use nVidia), I did my testing on my laptop instead, which has an Intel iGPU.

          [...]

          This is the stuff I actually want to have for Wayland. I generally install the “fat” package from ports, kde5 (which includes KDE Frameworks, KDE Plasma and KDE Applications / Release Service / soon-to-be-Gear). There was a conflict with xwayland-devel since the KDE bits built (like, up until today) against slightly-older Wayland. I updated the x11-wm/plasma5-kwin port to use the -devel version too, which is what we ought to have as long as things are still being hashed out.

        • Mike Blumenkrantz: Getting Back In

          I got a weird bug report the other day. Apparently Unigine Superposition, the final boss of Unigine benchmarks, was broken in zink(-wip). And it was a regression, which meant that at some point it had worked, but because testing is hard, it then stopped working for a while.

        • V3DV Vulkan Driver Enjoys More Optimizations To Help The Raspberry Pi 4 - Phoronix

          Igalia has outlined some of the recent V3D compiler work they've been engaging in to help with the Vulkan driver performance on the Raspberry Pi 4 while the compiler back-end work also benefits the Mesa OpenGL driver too.

          Back in November the V3DV driver became officially Vulkan conformant and since then the Igalia developers working with the Raspberry Pi Foundation have been working to support more Vulkan extensions, provide various bug fixes, and squeeze out more performance.

        • Iago Toral: Improving performance of the V3D compiler for OpenGL and Vulkan

          Lately, I have been looking at improving performance of the V3DV Vulkan driver for the Raspberry Pi 4. So far we had been toying a lot with some Vulkan ports of the Quake trilogy but we wanted to have a look at more modern games as well, and for that we started to look at some Unreal Engine 4 samples, particularly the Shooter demo.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Details Rocket Lake S Processors, Linux Benchmarks To Come

        Intel today is publicly detailing their 11th Gen "Rocket Lake S" processors. Here is what you need to know about Rocket Lake S although we cannot yet share any Linux performance figures until that later Rocket Lake S review embargo lift date.

        As has been reported previously with Rocket Lake S there is an IPC improvement of up to 19% thanks to this backport of the Cypress Cove core back to 14nm-based process. Rocket Lake S also allows up to twenty PCIe 4.0 lanes, Deep Learning Boost / VNNI support, and DDR4-3200 memory support.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Kubuntu Focus Team Announces $10,000 Technical Authorship Program

        The Kubuntu Focus Team today announced a “get published and get paid” Guided Solution Authorship Program, where technical writers can earn up to $500 per article plus hundreds more in value awards. The initial allocated budget is $10,000. Authors may apply now using the Application Form.

      • Control Scanners in Linux With the SANE API

        Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE) is an API for scanning devices including flatbed scanners, video cameras, and stills cameras.

        SANE can be installed via your command line package management system either as a stand alone library or as part of one of the front ends.

      • Hans de Goede: Fixing the Sierra Wireless EM7345-LTE modem not working on Linux

        I spend quite a bit of time on getting a Sierra Wireless EM7345-LTE modem to work under Linux. So here are some quick instructions to help other people who may hit the same problem.

        These modems are somewhat notorious for shipping with broken firmware. They work fine after a firmware upgrade, but under Windows they will only upgrade to "carrier approved" firmware versions, which requires to be connected to the mobile-network first so that the tool can identify the carrier. And with some carriers connecting to the network does not work due to the broken firmware (ugh). There are a ton of forum-threads on how to work around this under Windows, but they all require that you are atleast able to register with the mobile-network.

      • Ubuntu: copy files over SCP [Guide]

        If you need to copy files over the SCP protocol, the best way to do it is via the Ubuntu command-line. SCP isn’t as complicated as it is made out to be, and with some guidance, you’ll be able to figure out how to transfer any file or folder you like!

      • How To Install ReactJS on CentOS 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ReactJS on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, React is an open-source JavaScript library for creating web frontend and UI components. It is developed and maintained by Facebook and a large community of developers. ReactJS can be used in the development of Web Applications or Mobile Apps.

        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 install of the ReactJS on CentOS 8.

      • Top 5+Best Linux Port Scanners For Network Admins In 2021

        Let’s have a look at the list of the best Linux port scanners for network administrators.

      • Upgrading Ubuntu Server - Alan Pope's blog

        I have a few old and crusty HP MicroServers in the loft at home. I started out with one when HP did a cashback offer, making them very affordable. Over time I’ve acquired a couple more. One, named colossus is running rsnapshot to provide backups of my other machines. Another, called shirka is a Plex Media Server and the last, robby is a general purpose box running various jobs and reports. All run Ubuntu Server as the OS.

      • How To Install OpenVPN on Debian 10 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenVPN on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenVPN is an open-source application that is widely used to create secure virtual private networks over the unsecured public Internet. OpenVPN is an SSL VPN solution that drains your system connection securely through the Internet. OpenVPN functions in the client-server structure. All the devices connected to a virtual private network act as if they’re linked to your local area network. The packets sent through the VPN tunnel are encrypted with 256 bit AES encryption making data theft impossible.

        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 the OpenVPN server on a Debian 10 (Buster).

      • How To Install PlayOnLinux on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PlayOnLinux on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, PlayOnLinux is an implementation of Wine which makes it easy to install Windows software on Wine. The PlayOnLinux overcome Wine’s complexity by providing a graphical user interface, and you can easily install windows application on Linux.

        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 the PlayOnLinux graphical front-end interface for Wine on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • 5 Cybersecurity Tips to Help Linux Users Protect Their Computers

        Cybercrime is a growing threat that has caused most internet users to rethink how they protect their data and information. Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated with their methods and are coming up with new ways to mask their internet identity to avoid a jail term. Whether is through phishing attacks, ransomware or hijacking a computer to mine cryptocurrency, evidence shows that criminals are honing their skills and are becoming more brazen in their attack.

        There are numerous Linux computers out there, they’re so much that it’s practically impossible to say the exact number that’s currently being used. This popularity has made hackers see it as a perfect beehive to harness the private information of private individuals, and also install ransomware and milk users’ of their hard-earned money. As such, it is essential that every Linux user take steps to protect their identity and data from these nefarious individuals. The cost of cybercrime is over $600 billion annually, this shows that it’s a highly sophisticated threat you should take seriously.

      • How to resize OpenStack instance from the command line | FOSS Linux

        OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform that enables organizations to control and compute large data pools, networking, and storage in a data center.

        Anyone can download OpenStack’s source code, make alterations, and share it with others because the software is Open-Source. Hence, you do not need to worry about extra costs that can be incurred while using this software.

        This article will give detailed information on how to resize OpenStack instances using a command line.

      • How to Install 0 A.D. Alpha 24 via Another PPA in Ubuntu 20.04, 20.10

        0 A.D., a free open-source real-time strategy video game, released Alpha 24 “Xšayāršā” a few weeks ago. Here’s how to install the game in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10 via PPA.

      • How to install Godot 3 on Linux Mint 20.1 - YouTube

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Godot 3 on Linux Mint 20.1.

      • How To Install XAMPP Plugins \ How to Install XAMPP WordPress Plugin [Ed: Windows-centric unfortunately]

        Simple tutorial on how to use XAMPP’s Plugins and installing WordPress for an example.

      • How to use FIND command in Linux

        In this tutorial on how to use the ‘Find command’ in Linux, we will discuss in brief what is find command & will also discuss some examples for the same.

        Find command is a pretty useful command for easily locating files & folders in Linux. What makes it a powerful command is that we can use a number of search criteria/options to refine the search.

        It can be found & used on almost all Linux distros by default.

      • How to Configure ZRAM on Your Ubuntu Computer - Make Tech Easier

        While ZRAM is a fantastic solution to trade some CPU horsepower to gain more RAM, how can you configure it to dedicate more or less RAM to ZRAM? How can you change the compression algorithm? In what scenarios are such changes worthwhile? Read on to find out how to configure ZRAM on Ubuntu.

      • Install and configure the Whisker menu as your XFCE start menu

        Disappointed after first seeing the plain vanilla XFCE desktop environment? Do not let the default theming discourage you. XFCE can easily be tweaked to look as appealing as any modern desktop environment. For starters, I recommend replacing the default XFCE start menu with the Whisker menu. It looks better and offers an improved work flow. This article describes how to install and configure the Whisker menu as your XFCE start menu.

      • How to install qBittorrent on Kali linux - Linux Shout

        Peer-to-peer file sharing is not a new concept, however, to download files from such a network we need client software like qBittorrent. Here we let you know the steps to install qBittorrent on Kali Linux.

        qBittorrent is a file-sharing client that allows access to the BitTorrent network and participation in sharing is possible. It is one of the popular alternatives to client uTorrent.

        It is an open-source cross-platform available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. In addition to this qBittorrent also offers a portable version, so that installation on the computer is no longer necessary.

        The first version of qBittorrent was published in March 2006 and since then the program has been in an active development phase.

      • How to get started with Git on Linux

        Developing applications is not as easy as many might think. It requires coding skills and the use of productivity tools that make the development process fast and efficient. One of those handy coding tools is a version control system called Git. Since its debut in 2005, Git has become the de-facto standard for maintaining code versions, and now it is a must-have tool for any developer who is participating in an open-source project. However, at first, it can be a bit difficult to learn about it, and that is why this post has been written to provide a basic guide to Git.

      • How to Restore and Backup PPAs, Applications, and Packages in Linux With Aptik

        Reinstalling or upgrading your Linux distribution? Use Aptik and take your existing application packages, data, and settings with you.

        When you install or upgrade your Linux system, you not only need to configure your system from scratch again, you also have to install your favourite applications, repositories, and in-application settings and configurations.

        So, we introduce a tool called Aptik, that can help you by back up your PPAs, installed software, application settings, and much more in just few clicks.

      • Install macOS Big Sur Or Catalina In A Virtual Machine Using Docker-OSX - Linux Uprising Blog

        Docker-OSX is a project that makes macOS run near native using OSX-KVM inside a Docker container. Using this, you'll be able to install macOS in a QEMU virtual machine (via Docker), and run the macOS Catalina or Big Sur desktop, or boot to the OSX shell.

    • Games

      • The developer of Rise to Ruins is absolutely mad and has secured funding for their games

        Sometimes you read a story that's really hard to believe it's true but probably is. In this case it's Raymond Doerr of SixtyGig Games doing something absolutely nuts to secure funding for their games.

        They are the developer of Rise to Ruins, a brutal godlike village sim that melds the god game, management, and tower defense genres. A game I'm actually pretty fond of, written in Java and with Linux support it's a fun way to spend a number of hours. It's a successful game too, going on to sell at least a few hundred thousand copies. After releasing Rise to Ruins out of Early Access, eventually updates slowed down even though many more along with another game are planned. As Doerr outlined in this rather personal post on Steam, there was a good reason for that.

        Doerr goes into a little history about how Rise to Ruins (previously called Retro-Pixel Castles) got started and it's quite surprising. Doerr did the "totally rational" thing of giving up a well paying job at Lockheed Martin to "change career paths into a job with an extremely high rate of failure that you have literally zero professional experience what so ever in doing". They're just very lucky it all worked out…

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Plasma 5.21.3, Bugfix Release for March
          Plasma 5.21 was released in February 2021 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

          This release adds two weeks' worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important and include...

        • More Statistics

          Right now the feature set of LabPlot that can be used for the statistical analysis is very limited – we only show some values from the descriptive statistics for the selected data set in the spreadsheet. While we’re thinking about which features to add and which workflows to enable in our application to support this kind of analysis in near future, we decided to implement and to add some “quick wins” now.

          [...]

          The next natural step for this feature would be to enable this functionality in the worksheet and to extend it. E.g., it should be possible for the user to create such a Q-Q plot on the worksheet and to specify which probability distribution to use to compare the data set quantiles against. Similar for the KDE-plot where it should be possible to specify the kernel or for the box plot where the user can modify the type of the whiskers, etc.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • The Last Minute GNOME Shell + Mutter 40 Release Candidate Changes

          GNOME developers remain very busy as they approach the finish line for GNOME 40.

          In preparing for the GNOME 40 release candidate this week, maintainers have begun tagging their new packages. Released yesterday were the GNOME 40 release candidates for GNOME Shell and Mutter with plenty of noteworthy changes in tow.

        • Molly de Blanc: GUADEC 2021 Keynotes and Updates

          The GNOME Foundation is excited to announce that GUADEC 2021 will take place July 21 -25. This year’s conference will be held online and last five days. The first two days of the conference, July 21 – 22, will be dedicated to presentations. The 23 – 24 will be Birds of a Feather sessions and workshops, and the last day will be for social activities.

    • Distributions

      • New Releases

        • IPFire 2.25 - Core Update 155 available for testing

          The upcoming release IPFire 2.25 - Core Update 155 is available for testing. It comes with important security fixes for the NAT Slipstreaming attack which might require attention if you are currently using the Application Layer Gateways for SIP or FTP.

          Peter has recently announced our measures against NAT Slipstreaming. Through feedback from the community, we have seen that most people are not affected by these changes.

      • BSD

        • In-kernel WireGuard is on its way to FreeBSD and the pfSense router

          This morning, WireGuard founding developer Jason Donenfeld announced a working, in-kernel implementation of his WireGuard VPN protocol for the FreeBSD 13 kernel. This is great news for BSD folks—and users of BSD-based routing appliances and distros such as pfSense and opnSense.

          If you're not familiar with WireGuard, it establishes connections more quickly than traditional VPNs like OpenVPN. It's also, in our personal experience, overwhelmingly more reliable when managing large numbers of connections. Your author used to spend several hours a month shelling into machines and manually re-establishing broken OpenVPN tunnels, even after writing watchdog scripts to attempt to detect and re-establish them automatically—tearing it all out and replacing this several-hundred-machine-monitoring network with WireGuard-based infrastructure cut that down to "zero hours per month."

          In addition to performance and reliability, WireGuard brings modern protocols, versioned crypto that literally cannot be set up incorrectly, and a far cleaner, lighter codebase than most competitors—Linus Torvalds once declared it "a work of art" by comparison to OpenVPN and IPSec.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • Arch Family

        • Arch Linux Developers Discuss Idea Of Providing An x86-64-v3 Port

          While recently Arch Linux developers and stakeholders were discussing the possibility of raising the x86-64 base requirements for this Linux distribution to the "x86-64-v2" micro-architecture feature level that roughly correlates to Intel Nehalem and newer, now the discussion has shifted to keeping the same x86-64 base level while potentially offering a "x86-64-v3" port for those with newer Intel/AMD CPUs.

          Rather than raising the Arch Linux x86 64-bit requirements to the "x86-64-v2" level that would yield issues for those trying to run this distribution on the oldest of original x86-64 AMD/Intel processors, the proposal has morphed into providing an x86-64-v3 port that would be maintained concurrently to base x86-64. With this, users running Arch on vintage PCs wouldn't lose out on updates while those on more recent hardware would be able to tap into more optimized packages by default.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Schaller: What to look for in Fedora Workstation 34

          Christian Schaller looks forward to the Fedora 34 release with a detailed write-up of the desktop-oriented changes.

        • Fedora Electronic Engineering Tools

          This article reports you a collection of Fedora's Electronic Engineering software. They are tools you can use to create electronic circuits, schematics, drawings, and simulations as well as to produce the Printed Circuit Boards -- and the good news is they are all Free Software. We see here same set of applications, such as Kicad and NGSpice, as well as the ones only Fedora had currently, like KTechLab and Qucs, compared to the electronics sets of Debian and Ubuntu. Finally, I write this article as a tribute to Fedora Electronic Lab (FEL) -- the special OS for electronic engineering that was dismissed years ago and is planned to be released along with Fedora 34 -- as I want this distro to be available once again.

        • Fedora 34 GNOME 40 Test Day 2021-03-17 through 2021-03-19

          Wednesday, 2021-03-17 is the Fedora 34 Gnome 40 Test Day! As part of the changes Gnome 40 in Fedora 34, we need your help to test if everything runs smoothly!

        • 2020 digital re-skilling across Europe, a Red Hat study

          In December 2020, Red Hat commissioned a Europe-wide study with YouGov and Kantar Sifo, reaching more than 30,000 respondents to learn about the new skills they’ve taken up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were curious about the impact COVID-19 has had on digital upskilling.

        • RHEL In Your Car? Red Hat Building Out Automotive Infotainment Team

          Red Hat is in the process of building out an "infotainment" team to work on low-level Linux infrastructure work around their growing automotive efforts.

          Red Hat has begun listing jobs for this automotive team and I am told they will be listing more positions over the next two quarters. Of the positions so far range from Kdump for automotive, security engineer for the automotive team, a QA engineer for "our latest initiative in the automotive area", and more. Again, I am told this is just the start of Red Hat's build out for this automotive work and in particular for an infotainment team.

        • AlmaLinux OS, The CentOS Replacement Arrive On March 30, 2021

          AlmaLinux OS is a 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL 8. In other words, it can be used as a direct CentOS replacement.

          The team behind the distribution announced the long-awaited launch of the first stable release of AlmaLinux OS. The date is March 30th, 2021.

          Launched with the code-name Project Lenix, AlmaLinux OS is an open-source, community-driven project that intends to fill the gap left by the demise of the CentOS stable release. It is built by the creators of the established CloudLinux OS.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • [Older] Dell Latitude 5310

          On my first day they handed me an XUbuntu 20.04 usb stick and that’s probably what I would’ve chosen anyway, given the fact that Ubuntu was recommended. Installation worked flawlessly and all the hardware seems to work fine.

        • Ubuntu Blog: CSS Animations

          In our team, we run “masterclasses” every few weeks, to share knowledge throughout the team.

          Similar to Robin’s post on regex basics, here’s the contents of the masterclass on “CSS animations” that I just presented to the team.

        • Running an open source multi-cloud with Ubuntu, LXD, and Mist

          One of the advantages that Ubuntu brings to the cloud equation is improving an organization’s ability to run in multiple clouds. Running containers on top of Ubuntu further increases portability. Mist is an open-source multi-cloud management platform that helps teams centrally manage and control their Ubuntu instances across many different cloud environments and/or bare metal. This removes some of the operational and financial barriers to running applications in multiple clouds.

          [...]

          bare metal, and completely isolate their customers’ workloads.

          This customer was already using Ubuntu and LXD, both chosen for their baked-in security and robustness, and both open-source. LXD is a container and VM management tool that allows users to create, run, and maintain containers as if they were VMs, and VMs as if they were their own cloud. LXD uses pre-made images available for a range of Linux distributions and is built around a powerful, but simple, REST API. A good tool for orchestration of ‘single-cloud’ virtual environments.

          However, the customer still needed to have visibility and control over the entire stack, from LXD down to the cloud environment, and they needed a way to centrally manage all of their deployments in different clouds. For both general monitoring as well as to make changes around access control if someone joined the team, was reassigned, or left.

          They adopted Mist to get a unified view of their entire setup and to be able to centrally control certain aspects of their deployments. Here are some of the things that Ubuntu users get by layering Mist on top:

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 Release

          Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom-respecting mobile operating system by UBports. Today we are happy to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-16, our sixteenth stable update to the system! OTA-16 will be available for the following supported Ubuntu Touch devices over the next week:

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 Released As The Second Largest Release Ever - Phoronix

          UBports released Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 as their largest update since the days of OTA-4 when the transition happened from an Ubuntu 15.04 base to 16.04 LTS.

          Ubuntu Touch OTA-16 is a big boy with many updates albeit not the elusive update shifting from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Ubuntu Touch is still working towards that big migration but they aren't there yet.

        • Multi Monitor and HiDPI Setup is Looking Better on Ubuntu 21.04 [My Experience So Far]

          I upgraded to Ubuntu 21.04 beta yesterday and I can say I am pretty happy with it.

          I know it doesn’t have the awesome GNOME 40 yet but the thing that makes me happy is that I can use my multi-monitor setup quite happily now.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • FSFE

        • Lenovo Loses Case Involving Pre-Installed Windows Refund

          Lenovo was ordered to pay 20,000 euros in damages for refusing to refund the price of a pre-installed Windows license, according to the judgement last December of a court case initiated by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) supporter Luca Bonissi.

      • Programming/Development

        • Advantages of React JS and Why You Will Love It

          It is an open-source, scalable JavaScript library with which you can build intuitive UIs (user-interfaces), particularly for single-page applications. React efficiently handles the view layer for your applications, be it mobile or web apps. Besides, it also helps you split the UI into reusable components.

          Seeing how you do not need to have much expertise in HTML and JavaScript, React JS has grown to be extremely popular in the industry for easy front-end web development.

          React JS is widely used for front-end web development in the industry due to the fact that you don’t need much expertise in JavaScript and HTML.

        • Zlib-ng 2.0 Released As More Performant + Modern Zlib Fork

          Zlib-ng 2.0 is out today as the first stable release of this zlib fork focused on "next generation" systems with speedier performance and a more modern API, among other changes.

          Zlib-ng 2.0 sports a modern native API as well as a Zlib-compatible API. This fork has cleaned up the original code-base, supports making use of modern CPU intrinsics like AVX2 / NEON / VSX, pulling improvements from Zlib forks maintained by Intel and CloudFlare, and a variety of other enhancements.

        • How to Handle UI Events in Jetpack Compose

          In this short and practical article, we will talk about how to handle UI events in Jetpack Compose.

          In the old system, we used OnClickListeners and other interfaces. In Compose, we can take full advantage of Kotlin’s Sealed Classes, Function Types and Lambda Expressions.

        • Perl/Raku

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • How to fix "one2many" data issues

            I explained the "one2many" problem in an earlier BASHing data post and showed how to detect it (with the "one2many" function) in that post and in A Data Cleaner's Cookbook. In a nutshell, the problem occurs when each entry in a field (call it field A) should have only one corresponding entry in a second field (B).

        • Java

          • JDK 16

            JDK 16 is the open-source reference implementation of version 16 of the Java SE Platform, as specified by by JSR 390 in the Java Community Process.

            JDK 16 reached General Availability on 16 March 2021. Production-ready binaries under the GPL are available from Oracle; binaries from other vendors will follow shortly.

            The features and schedule of this release were proposed and tracked via the JEP Process, as amended by the JEP 2.0 proposal. The release was produced using the JDK Release Process (JEP 3).

          • OpenJDK 16 Released With The JDK Source Beginning To Use C++14 Features

            Java 16 is out today in the form of the OpenJDK 16 general availability release.

            OpenJDK 16 now allows the use of C++14 language features within the JDK C++ source tree where as prior releases were bound to C++98/C++03 standards. This does up the build system requirements for OpenJDK but still rather lax by today's standards with only needing GCC 5.0+ or Clang 3.5+.

          • Oracle JDK 16 builds on Java's strengths and makes the programming language more cloud friendly - TechRepublic

            The Oracle JDK 16 is another step in modernization efforts to make it easier for Java developers to use the programming language with APIs, microservices and other cloud technologies. This release brings Records and Pattern Matching out of preview. Those two JDK enhancement proposals and the other 15 JEPs in this release improve developer productivity and application performance, according to Oracle.

            Chad Arimura, vice president of Java developer relations at Oracle, said these new features build on the fundamental strengths of Java--ease of use, reliability, security and platform independence--while making the language easier to use in cloud deployments. "It's a thoughtful evolution of the language, but we're thinking about what's coming down the path as well," he said.

          • Oracle releases Java 16 with 17 new enhancements

            Oracle has announced general availability of Java Development Kit (JDK) 16, its reference implementation of the Java 16 programming language spec.

            Rolling out in line with Oracle's six-monthly release schedule that began with Java 10 in 2018, JDK 16 includes 17 enhancements that Oracle has touted would continue to further developer productivity.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Linux Foundation Sigstore Aims to Be the Let's Encrypt of Code Signing

                Backed by the Linux Foundation, Sigstore aims to provide a non-profit service to foster the adoption of cryptographic signing by open source projects to make the software supply chain more secure.

                The main issue Sigstore attempts to tackle is the difficulty of knowing the origin of a piece of software, or how it was built. This becomes especially tricky when that software is included in a larger project, paving the way to external attacks. As Google security engineers Kim Lewandowski and Dan Lorenc put it introducing the initiative,

              • XenProject at Linaro Connect - Xen Project

                Linaro Virtual Connect 2021 provides a platform to discuss and learn about the leading software topics, challenges and opportunities in the Arm Ecosystem today. The event will have 60+ technical keynotes, sessions, and more, and it’s taking place March 23-25, 2021.

              • Generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) with Open Source Standards and Tooling [Ed: Linux Foundation uses proprietary software Zoom again]

                Every month there seems to be a new software vulnerability showing up on social media, which causes open source program offices and security teams to start querying their inventories to see how FOSS components they use may impact their organizations.

                Frequently this information is not available in a consistent format within an organization for automatic querying and may result in a significant amount of email and manual effort. By exchanging software metadata in a standardized software bill of materials (SBOM) format between organizations, automation within an organization becomes simpler, accelerating the discovery process and uncovering risk so that mitigations can be considered quickly.

              • Open Source Projects Accelerate Growth of Edge Ecosystem

                The recently released State of the Edge 2021 Report provides insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the edge ecosystem in 2020, examines emerging infrastructure, and explains how open source has accelerated adoption of edge applications.

                "In our individual lock-down environments, each of us is an edge node of the Internet and all our computing is, mostly, edge computing," said Wenjing Chu, senior director of Open Source and Research at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. and LF Edge Governing Board member. "The edge is the center of everything."

              • Certified Hyperledger Fabric Developer (CHFD) Exam Has Relaunched

                The Certified Hyperledger Fabric Developer (CHFD) exam, which initially launched a year ago and enables candidates to demonstrate the knowledge to develop and maintain client applications and smart contracts using the latest Fabric programming model, is once again available for scheduling. The exam had been paused pending updates of the exam content to align with the most recent Long Term Support (LTS) version of Fabric, v2.2.

                Holding this certification provides confidence to supervisors and hiring managers that a team member or job candidate possesses the necessary skills to package and deploy Fabric applications and smart contracts, perform end-to-end Fabric application life-cycle and smart contract management, and more. The CHFD exam platform is Node.js for both Client Application and Smart Contract.

        • Security

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (tomcat8), Fedora (git), openSUSE (opera), Oracle (python), Red Hat (ipa, kernel, kernel-rt, kpatch-patch, and pki-core), SUSE (compat-openssl098 and python), and Ubuntu (glib2.0, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gke-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-dell300x, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.8, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-raspi2, linux-snapdragon, and openjpeg2).

          • Pwning the pen tester: Malicious Wireshark packet capture file risk revealed

            Maliciously constructed Wireshark packet capture files might be used to distribute malware, providing recipients can be tricked into double clicking file URL fields.

            Variants of the same attack could potentially be thrown against users of the popular network security tool, widely used by security analysts and penetration testers, whether they use Windows or Xubuntu Linux-based systems. The attack, discovered by security researcher Lukas Euler of Positive Security, is explained in a recent post on GitLab that features proof-of-concept videos.

          • Slackware: Chromium security updates (and fix for 32-bit crash)

            I have updated the ‘chromium‘, ‘chromium-ungoogled‘ and ‘chromium-widevine-plugin‘ packages in my repository.

            For Chromium (-ungoogled) these are security updates. The new 89.0.4389.90 release addresses several critical vulnerabilities (it’s the third release in the 89 series in rapid succession actually, to fix critical bugs) but in particular it plugs a zero-day exploit that exists in the wild: CVE-2021-21193. You are urged to update your installation of Chromium (-ungoogled) ASAP.

            I made chromium-ungoogled also available for Slackware 14.2, I hope that makes some people happy.

            Since I had to build packages anyway, I took the opportunity to apply a patch that fixes the crashes on 32-bit systems with glibc-2.33 installed (i.e. on Slackware-current). In that same chromium-distro-packagers group that is the home of the discussion about Google’s decision to cripple 3rd-party Chromium browsers, I had asked the Chromium team to address the crash Slackware users are experiencing. Google is no longer offering 32-bit binaries which means, issues like these are not likely to be caught in their own tests, but they are listening to the packagers who do build 32-bit binaries. Luckily. And the fix took a while to actually get implemented, but in the end it all worked out. I assume that the patch will end up in the Chromium source code after it passes the internal review process.

          • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

            • Linux Vulnerable To Fifteen-Year-Old Security Bugs
            • ProxyLogon updates. Operation Diànxùn targets telecoms. Linux vulnerabilities. Malware operator plays innocent.

              Researchers at GRIMM have discovered three vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, including a Local Privilege Escalation affecting several Linux environments. Patches for the flaws were released on March 7th. The researchers explain, "Due to the non-deterministic nature of heap overflows, the first vulnerability could be used as an unreliable, local DoS. However, when combined with an information leak, this vulnerability can be further exploited as a LPE that allows an attacker to escalate from an unprivileged user account to root. A separate information leak is not necessary, though, since this vulnerability can be used to leak kernel memory as well. The second vulnerability (kernel pointer leak) is less impactful and could only serve as a potential information leak. Similarly, the third vulnerability (out-of-bounds read) is also limited to functioning as a potential information leak or even an unreliable local DoS."

            • The Linux Kernel Had 3 Potential Root Access Vulnerabilities For 15 Years

              Linux kernels prior to 5.11.4, 5.10.21, 5.4.103, 4.19.179, 4.14.224, 4.9.260 and 4.4.260 have three 15 year old vulnerabilities in the iSCSI subsystem that could potentially allow a hostile local user to gain root privileges. Most GNU/Linux distributions compile their kernels with ISCSI_TARGET=y so this affects all of them.

              [...]

              GRIMM has developed a proof-of-concept Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) exploit using one of the tree vulnerabilities known as CVE-2021-27363, CVE-2021-27364 CVE-2021-27364 and CVE-2021-27365. It works, given the right circumstances, but that does not mean most people running Linux need to panic and upgrade within the next few minutes.

    • Finance

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Patents prevent vaccines for all

          Although pharmaceutical companies poured public money into the development of Covid vaccines, they are selling them to the highest bidder. Sometimes, at best, they agree to reserve doses for their countries of origin. What if governments force them to lift intellectual property rights, so that countries with the capacity to do so can produce the vaccine for the others?

          [...]

          Individual states and the European Union, trapped by their public declarations, engage in doublespeak. In reality, realpolitik has won, and favours multinational pharmaceutical companies. Despite great opacity surrounding the ‘advance purchase agreements’, some useful information has been leaked. Once again we can see that the iron law of neoliberal capitalism holds: losses have been socialised and profits privatised. Pharmaceutical companies were subsidised to the tune of billions of euros by EU member states and the European Commission — which poured more than €2bn euros into the development of vaccines — for research and development, then the massive production of doses, thereby limiting the risks to business. Yet these businesses retain control over patents, fiercely negotiate prices with states, and restrict donations and possible resale to developing countries. According to the Belgian Secretary of State for the Budget Eva de Bleeker, the rates negotiated by Brussels range from €1.78 for AstraZeneca to €10 for CureVac and €14.68 for Moderna (2).

          [...]

          Add to these unbelievable contracts a geopolitical clash between the nations fighting over the development, manufacture and access to precious vaccines. This involves China and the United States, of course, but also Russia — which has just won a strategic victory with the growing recognition of its Sputnik V vaccine — as well as Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom. Despite several false and deceptive starts, the UK managed to organise a dynamic vaccination drive, undermining the arguments advanced by a protective European Union during the arduous scraps over Brexit. As early as May 2020, Boris Johnson’s government created a Vaccine Taskforce to develop research, production and strategy for vaccines, for example establishing a partnership with the French company Valneva to produce a new vaccine in Scotland.

          It was the opposite of France’s slowness and passivity. As of 4 February, the UK had administered at least one dose of the vaccine to 16.2% of its population, compared to 4% in Spain, 3.9% in Italy, 3.6% in Germany and only 2.7% in France. Not only is France lagging behind in this concert of nations, but its vaccination centres were set up hastily in January 2021 under media pressure, and rely on overwhelmed and exhausted medical staff. Worse, and against all logic, the government continues to reduce the number of hospital beds. After failing to win the race for a ‘national vaccine’, French multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi — along with other companies like Delpharm or Recipharm — began to work as a subcontractor (bottling, packaging, etc) late, in February.

        • Mylan Wins Costs After Neurim Drops EU Patent Appeal [Ed: EPO is not EU]

          After initially losing a bid to invalidate an insomnia drug patent, Mylan was dubbed the winner and convinced a London judge to award costs after Neurim Pharmaceuticals abandoned its bid to defend its claim in parallel European Patent Office litigation.

          High Court Judge Marcus Smith said in light of the outcome at the EPO, Mylan is also the "obvious" winner in the case before his court, making Neurim Pharmaceuticals Ltd. "the loser."

          Mylan had challenged the validity of the patent in litigation brought by Neurim, which sells the insomnia medication under the brand name Circadin.

        • European Patent Office intends to grant PyroGenesis plasma atomisation patent [Ed: Nowadays the EPO is compelled to grant a lot of stuff without challenge and without proper prior art search]

          PyroGenesis Canada Inc., Montreal, Quebec, Canada, reports that the European Patent Office has issued its intent to grant the company a patent based on its prosecuted application for a “Plasma Apparatus for the Production of High Quality Powders at High Capacity”. This patent relates to the production of high-purity spheroidal powders for use in Additive Manufacturing, but can also be used in Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP).

          The company explains that the patent aims to provide a simplified device geared to increasing productivity while at the same time allowing for further control over particle size distribution, thereby reducing overall costs. This patent has reportedly been filed for patent protection in an additional six different jurisdictions.

          “European patents provide protection not only in the thirty-eight member states of the European Patent Organization, but also in two extension states plus four validation states,” commented Pierre Carabin, Chief Technology Officer of PyroGenesis. “This represents an area with approximately 700 million inhabitants. This new addition to our intellectual property portfolio brings the total number of issued and pending patents held by the company to 124, which is a historical high. We currently have 100 patent applications in progress, covering nineteen families of invention. When combined with our significant know-how and trade secrets, we are continuing to create a formidable barrier to entry in the markets we serve.”

        • Software Patents

          • IPR Games: RPI; No Appeal; and Analogous Arts

            Google won its IPR challenge against CyWee’s U.S. Patent Nos. 8,441,438 (claims 1 & 3-5) and 8,552,978 (claims 10 & 12). On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed with a short opinion by Chief Judge Prost focusing on three discrete issues:

            Real Party in Interest: The patentee argued that Google did not disclose all real parties in interest as required by statute 35 U.S.C. €§ 312(a)(2). On appeal, the Federal Circuit held that institution stage real-party-in-interest questions are institution related and thus is not reviewable under the no-appeal provision of 35 U.S.C. €§ 314(d). This issue was previously decided in ESIP Series 2, LLC v. Puzhen Life USA, LLC, 958 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2020). One difference here from ESIP is that the challenge was not raised to the institution decision itself, but rather as part of a post-institution motion to terminate based upon newly discovered evidence. On appeal though, the Federal Circuit found the new motion equivalent to a request to reconsider the institution. The court also held that the Board’s refusal to allow ESIP additional discovery was “similarly unreviewable” because the discovery ruling is tightly associated with the institution decision.

            The court did not delve into the RPI issue, but CyWee was complaining about a coordinated effort by defendants in the district court litigation (including Samsung and Google) to ensure that Backmann was only seen by the Board and not also by Judge Bryson who was sitting by designation in the district court.

            [...]

            Obviousness: On the merits of the obviousness case, the patentee argued that the key prior art reference was not “analogous art” and therefore could not be used for obviousness.

          • $3,000 for Acacia subsidiary prior art, Stingray IP Solutions [Ed: Microsoft-connected patent troll active in the Eastern District of Texas.]

            On March 10, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $3,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 51 of U.S. Patent 7,224,678. The patent is owned by Stingray IP Solutions, LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research Group, an NPE.

            The '678 patent generally relates to wireless LAN with intrusion detection features. It has been asserted against TP-Link Technologies, Signify, and Samsung in the Eastern District of Texas.

          • Proven Networks patent challenged

            On March 16, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,018,852, owned by Proven Networks, LLC. This patent relates to a port selection technique used in a network switching environment where there are multiple equal-cost paths between two nodes. The ‘852 patent has been asserted against Palo Alto Networks, Dell, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, HPE, NetApp, Arista, F5, and Extreme Networks.

            View district court litigations by Proven Networks. Unified is represented David Tennant, David Markoff, and Kiersten Batzli of White and Case and by in-house counsel, Ashraf Fawzy and Jessica L.A. Marks.



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