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Links 18/10/2021: Porteus Kiosk 5.3 and Ventoy 1.0.55



  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux Tablets: What are Your Options?

      There are plenty of Linux-based laptops available. There are also mini-PCs preloaded with Linux.

      A few Linux-based smartphones are also present in the market.

      How about tablets? Are there some good Linux-based tablets? The answer is not straightforward.

      Many Linux-only system manufacturers focus on creating desktop computers. This is primarily due to the fact that the Linux experience on touch devices is no where close to what Android and iOS provide.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Juno’s Linux laptops now available with Intel Tiger Lake-H or AMD Ryzen 5000H

        Juno Computers sells a line of desktop and laptop computers that ship with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, and this month the company updated its lineup with several new high performance models sporting 11th-gen Intel Core “Tiger Lake H” or AMD Ryzen 5000H processors.

        They don’t come cheap, with starting prices ranging from $1,150 to $2,250. But the new laptops pack a lot of horsepower.

        The most affordable, least powerful of the bunch is the Juno Nyx 15″ AMD V2, a 3.64 pound laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor, a 15.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a 49 Wh battery, support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, and a selection of ports including HDMI, Ethernet, and USB Type-C and Type-A.

      • Linux Release Roundup #21.42: Ubuntu 21.10, KDE Plasma 5.23, Lutris 0.5.9 and More New Releases - It's FOSS News

        In the Linux Release Roundup series, we summarize the new distribution and application version releases in the past week. This keeps you informed of the latest developments in the Linux world.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • WP Briefing: Episode 18: The Economics of WordPress

        In episode 18 of WP Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on a recent lecture that she gave to students at Hendrix College in which she explored the economics of WordPress and the principles that sustain the project’s ecosystem.

      • Linux Action News 211

        We cover what's special about Plasma's 25th-anniversary edition, chat with CloudLinux's CEO, and detail why Apple supporting Blender is good for all of us.

      • These Open Source SCAMMERS are getting out of control! - Invidious

        No, Inkscape isn't a scam. In fact, it's the best vector illustration tool on the planet. But, much like Krita just a few weeks ago, scammers have registered official-looking domains that are meant to trick people into downloading and installing ransomware. It's sad to see and I can't think of many ways we can combat this besides raising awareness.

      • Josh Bressers: Episode 293 – Scoring OpenSSF Security Scoring

        Josh and Kurt talk about the release of OpenSSF Security Scorecards version 3. This is a great project that will probably make a huge difference. Most of the things the scorecards are measuring are no brainier activities. We go through the list of metrics being measured. There are only a few that we don’t think are fantastic.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux 5.15-rc6 Ticks Up In Size, Stops Using AMD SME By Default - Phoronix

        We'll see how this week plays out to see if it will be worrisome or not the rest of the cycle. The brief 5.15-rc6 announcement can be read on the kernel mailing list.

        This past week saw mostly the wide assortment of fixes as usual for this stage of development. One somewhat notable change that landed this weekend is AMD SME no longer defaulting to being used on capable machines but rather needing to opt-in to that memory encryption feature. This was done to some buggy platforms that would otherwise experience boot problems with SME.

      • Kernel prepatch 5.15-rc6

        The 5.15-rc6 kernel prepatch is out. "I'd love to say that it's all looking average, but rc6 is actually bigger than rc5 was, and larger than normal for this time in the release cycle. It's not _enormously_ larger than normal, and it's not the largest rc6 we've had, but it's still slightly worrisome."

      • AMD Secure Memory Encryption Has a Flaw, Now Disabled by Default in Linux Kernel

        According to a report from Phoronix, the Linux 5.15 kernel is receiving a new fix that involves disabling AMD's Secure Memory Encryption, or SME. This feature is normally enabled by default, but due to unexpected boot failures on some AMD machines, SME will now be disabled by default. Devs will update the Linux 5.15 kernel first, but the change will also move to prior kernels.

        AMD Secure Memory Encryption is a feature exposed to AMD's EPYC and Ryzen Pro processors that allows the CPUs to encrypt the memory at a hardware level. AMD says the feature offers no significant impact on system performance and works with any OS and application because it's hardware-accelerated and doesn't rely upon software.

      • [Older] Linux Kernel Concurrency Cheat Sheet

        Navigating Linux kernel APIs can be very time-consuming, so Linux ksplice guru Vegard Nossum put together a very handy time-saving cheat sheet to help traversing Linux kernel concurrency primitives.

        As a child, I spent countless hours playing games on my Nintendo Game Boy. As I grew older and started programming in QBasic on MS-DOS, I also got curious about how Game Boy games worked.

      • Habana Labs For Linux 5.16 To Bring Peer-To-Peer Support With DMA-BUF - Phoronix

        The drama around DMA-BUF code for the Habana Labs AI driver appears to be wrapping up with the Linux 5.16 cycle that is coming up.

        The Habana Labs driver changes were mailed out today for queuing in char/misc ahead of next month's Linux 5.16 merge window. This driver for supporting the AI inference and training accelerators at the Intel-owned company has some exciting updates for this next kernel release.

      • Graphics Stack

        • mesa recompiled with gallium drivers

          The guys have been reporting slow Nvidia performance, for example a report from forum member Keef here:

          https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=39261#p39261

          I had compiled all of the packages in OpenEmbedded without libllvm, as it is a hug library, about 60MB. However, it meant had to leave out some drivers in the 'mesa' package.

        • Mesa 22.0 Lands Some Patches Toward OpenCL Image Support - Phoronix

          Mesa 22.0-devel is one step closer to having OpenCL image support that is sought after by many individuals for allowing more OpenCL-enabled desktop software to work nicely with this open-source OpenCL component in Mesa.

          For nearly a year there has been the work-in-progress merge request implementing OpenCL 1.2 image support. That work was started by Red Hat's Karol Herbst.

    • Applications

      • Ventoy 1.0.55
        Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With Ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly. You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them. Both Legacy BIOS and UEFI are supported in the same way. Most type of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/Vmware/Xen...)

      • CuteFish – An Elegant, Beautiful and Easy-to-Use Linux Desktop

        CutefishOS is a new free and open-source desktop environment for Linux operating systems with a focus on simplicity, beauty, and practicality. Its goal is to create a better computing experience for Linux users.

        Cutefish OS is among the newest kids on the block of desktop environments. And since it has been born at such a time when the KDE aesthetic leads in the UI/UX stand for Linux users, it features a design that is strikingly similar.

        Given its goal of making a better desktop experience, the team uses KDE Frameworks, KDE Plasma 5, and Qt. My guess is that Qt is the source of its “cute” name. They seem to have collaborated heavily with JingOS, a beautiful Linux OS targeted at Tablets.

      • Annotator: Open-Source App for Linux to Easily Add Essential Annotations to Your Images

        When it comes to image manipulation and editing, there are many tools available. However, options like GIMP are not necessarily the solution to everything.

        Yes, GIMP offers plenty of features for beginners and advanced users, but it could be time-consuming to learn something and apply visual enhancements to any image you want.

        Annotator is an impressive open-source tool that lets you do a lot of things in a couple of clicks.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install WordPress on Debian 11 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WordPress on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, WordPress is an open-source CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create a website that is tailored to your specific requirements. With WordPress, you can create a blog, a company website, a portfolio, an online store, or anything else you can think of.

        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 WordPress cms on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

      • How to Download & Install Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri - LinuxCapable

        Ubuntu has officially released the Ubuntu 21.10 codenamed Impish Indri. This has seen the introduction of GNOME 40 as the default desktop, and sadly GNOME 41 did not make the final cut. The release also introduces Linux Kernel 5.13 among new applications and other back-end performance improvements.

        Some of the other features.

      • How to Install Docker Engine on Debian 11 (Bullseye)

        Docker is an open platform tool which provides container run time environment. With the help of docker, developers can build, ship and run their code as a container anywhere like on-prem or public cloud. Docker makes use of OS-level virtualization to spin up the containers. The host on which docker is installed and containers are spun are called as ‘Docker Engine’.

        In this post, we will cover how to install Docker Engine (Community Edition) on Debian 11 (Bullseye) step by step.

      • How to Install GNOME 41 Desktop Unstable on Debian 11 Bullseye - LinuxCapable

        Many Debian 11 users know that Gnome 38 is the default version that ships with the codename Bullseye operating system. However, as much hype has been built around the new Gnome 41 desktop, many would be looking for an opportunity to install and test or permanently use the latest on offer from GNOME.

        GNOME 41 introduces many changes from visual changes, new apps, and overhaul back-end changes to improve performance. Overall, it is vastly different from what previous GNOME versions have looked before.

        In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the new GNOME 41 desktop from the unstable (sid) repository on your Debian 11 Bullseye operating system.

      • How to Install Odoo 15 on Ubuntu 20.04 - SpeedySense

        In this article, we explain you how to install Odoo 15 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Follow 8 easy steps for install Odoo 15 on Ubuntu. Odoo 15 was released on Oct 06, 2021. It is very easy to install Odoo in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.

        Odoo is a most extensive open-source ERP that provides all business related application. Such as Accounting, CRM, Sales, Purchase, Project, Point of Sale, E-Commerce and many more. So Let’s start how to install and configure Odoo 14 in Ubuntu. Every year Odoo comes up with more new features and make platform more user-friendly.

      • How to Install Slack on Fedora 35 - LinuxCapable

        Slack is one of the most popular collaboration communication platforms in the world. From it was initial launch in 2013, it has grown. It is now favored amongst development teams and corporations to integrate many services, run groups, meetings, etc. The way Slack works is to create channels for your teams, topics, customers, or co-workers. Slack also features voice and video calls, file sharing.

        In the following tutorial, you will know how to install the Slack communication platform on Fedora 35.

      • How to Install and Configure Postgres 14 on Debian 11

        In this guide we are going to install Postgresql 14 in Debian 11.

        Postgresql is an open source object-relational database system with over 30 years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance. Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the Ingres database developed at the University of California, Berkeley. PostgreSQL is used as the primary data store or data warehouse for many web, mobile, geospatial, and analytics applications. PostgreSQL can store structured and unstructured data in a single product.

      • How to Perform a Remote Linux Backup Using SSH

        Secure Shell or SSH is responsible for successful network communication between two remote computers. For a Linux system administrator, this networking tool is the perfect solution for remote server/machine access over unsecured networks.

      • How to manage wireless connections using iwd on Linux

        Iwd is the acronym of “iNet wireless daemon”. As the name suggests, it is a free and open source wireless management daemon written by Intel for Linux. It is designed to avoid the usage of external libraries it just relies on the functionalities integrated into the kernel. It can be used together with NetworkManager as a substitute for wpa_supplicant, or in standalone mode. In this tutorial we will explore the latter option.

      • Linux Uptime Command with Examples

        The uptime command displays how long the system has been up (running) along with the current time, number of logged-in users, and the system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

        In this tutorial, we learn the Linux uptime command.

    • Games

      • Valve launches Deck Verified, to show off what games will work well on the Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

        We've been wondering what Valve had planned to show off Steam Deck compatibility for games and now they've launched Deck Verified as their answer.

        Valve say they are reviewing the entire Steam catalogue on the Steam Deck, with each of them gaining a category that it falls under that will show up across Steam from the store to your own Steam Library. The ratings will be split across Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Unknown. This is good because there's a lot of reasons why games will mix between perfect and unplayable on Steam Deck and the Arch Linux-based SteamOS it ships with.

      • Valve Launches "Steam Deck Verified" Program For Games That Run Well On The Steam Deck - Phoronix

        Valve is introducing a Steam Deck Verified system for helping gamers find out what games have been verified to work well on their forthcoming AMD+Linux-powered handheld game console.

      • VKD3D-Proton v2.5 is out for Direct3D 12 on top of Vulkan, improving DirectX Raytracing | GamingOnLinux

        VKD3D-Proton is the project that translates Microsoft's Direct3D 12 to Vulkan, another big part of Steam Play Proton and there's a new release out. If you wish to know more about Steam Play and Proton do check out our dedicated section.

        A continued focus of VKD3D-Proton is bringing up support for DirectX Raytracing (DXR). As of this version 2.5 the developer notes that DXR 1.0 "is more or less feature complete". A few weird issues are left and eventually the config variable to enable it will be removed when it's stable enough.

        Further work went into improving DXR 1.1 and it's now experimentally exposed, with it being enabled by setting VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11. They say that DXR 1.1 cannot be "fully implemented" just yet, although the feature support missing doesn't seem to currently be used by games. As of now DXR 1.1 inline raytracing is also fully implemented.

      • VKD3D-Proton 2.5 Released With Experimental DXR 1.1, More Games Working - Phoronix

        VKD3D-Proton as Valve's Direct3D 12 over Vulkan implementation for Steam Play's Proton is out with a big feature update.

        VKD3D-Proton 2.5 brings experimental, opt-in support for DXR 1.1 ray-tracing. DXR 1.1 isn't yet fully implemented but does add inline ray-tracing support and other features. DXR 1.0 ray-tracing meanwhile is now considered effectively feature complete with VKD3D-Proton 2.5.

      • Timberborn: a cute beaver colony sim with an unrewarding late game

        The game only supports Windows. However, it runs excellently on Linux in Steam Proton compatibility mode.

      • Swarming RTS Age of Darkness: Final Stand is in Early Access and works great on Linux | GamingOnLinux

        Age of Darkness: Final Stand is like a fantasy version of They Are Billions, and compared with the latter it runs great on Linux thanks to Steam Play Proton. No native Linux version here but honestly it runs so well you can't tell the difference, it's click and play thanks to Proton and as such a massive fan of real-time strategy games I couldn't resist playing this one myself. Note: key provided by Team17.

        The world in Age of Darkness is one of constant fear. Darkness brings out Nightmares, strange hellish creatures with a taste for flesh and destruction. It's a constant battle of preparation. Right now it only has a survival mode, which sees you build up a village as you attempt to survive each night. All the traditional elements of a base-building RTS are here with population management, resource gathering, army building and more. A game very much for those of you who like "turtling", where you focus on building up a heavy defence.

      • Playing Deltarune: Chapter 2 natively on Linux | GamingOnLinux

        So, some time ago Toby Fox released the second chapter of the Deltarune series. Sadly, as was the case with the previous chapter, this one too comes without official Linux support. However, if the [HeartShapedObject] is willing, there is a way to play the game natively on Linux, albeit without official support.

        The trick is essentially the same as I described back in 2018 when the first chapter of Deltarune was released. Essentially, Deltarune is made with the GameMaker engine, and you can do a "port" of games like that as long as you can find a compatible GameMaker runner binary to pair up with the game data.

      • War Thunder is getting more terrain deformation in the upcoming 'Ground Breaking' upgrade | GamingOnLinux

        Ground Breaking is the name of the next major update for War Thunder and it sounds quite exciting, with some game engine upgrades to allow for more terrain interactions and deformation.

        Not only will you see huge craters left over from some of the more explosive ordinance, you will also be able to push around the ground. Soil, sand and snow will be movable with your tanks, allowing you with a little patience to create your own little protective barriers. That's right, self-entrenching is going to be a thing. In the Ground Breaking update the developers will add in a new animation for vehicles digging in.

      • Hugely popular mobile roguelike Shattered Pixel Dungeon is coming to Steam | GamingOnLinux

        For the PC release the developer now has a Steam page live and they've confirmed it will have a native Linux version.

      • Steam Play tool Luxtorpeda for running games in native Linux engines sees a major upgrade | GamingOnLinux

        Steam Play allows Linux gamers to use many different compatibility layers like Proton for running Windows games but Luxtorpeda instead makes games use an available native Linux game engine. It's a thoroughly clever and awesome project, as there's a number of games that just run better (regardless of the platform) on an up to date native game engine.

        Quite a few games are supported with it including: Arx Fatalis, Caesar 3, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion, multiple Doom games, Descent 1 / 2, Freespace 2, Ocean's Heart, PowerSlave, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Warzone 2100 and the list goes on.

        The new version 40 that's out now moves over to a more modern Steam Runtime (Soldier). The developer mentions that this "leads to better tooling with the newer starting point, less extra dependencies, and will be much more future proof".

      • Marci from the DOTA: Dragon's Blood anime will join Dota 2 later this year | GamingOnLinux

        Valve has announced that the next hero joining the ranks in Dota 2 will be Marci, the silent companion to Mirana from the DOTA: Dragon's Blood anime. It's not a big surprise as Marci ended up being quite the fan favourite.

        Not much is known about the Marci update, as the official post from Valve was short and to the point simple confirming Marci is coming along with an animation by Studio Mir. The only other thing we actually know is that Marci will drop into Dota 2 "this Fall".

      • OpenTTD 12.0 is out now improving multiplayer for fans of Transport Tycoon Deluxe | GamingOnLinux

        Based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe, the free and open source OpenTTD has release version 12.0 as the multiplayer update.

        The big thing with this new release is improved multiplayer and it's much less of a hassle to setup. You no longer need to mess with port-forwarding. The game now does pretty much everything for you. All you need to do now is setup a server, share a code and your friends can join in - nice.

    • Distributions

      • BSD

        • OpenBSD 7.0 adds 64-bit RISC-V, improves Apple Arm silicon support

          OpenBSD 7.0, the 51st release of the UNIX-like operating system, was outed on October 14, 2021, with the introduction of 64-bit RISC-V support for HiFive Unmatched and PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit boards, as well as further improvements to ARM64 targets, notably for Apple Silicon Macs, although it’s not quite ready for general use yet.

          You’ll find the complete list of new features and updates on the OpenBSD website, but here are some of the highlights...

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

      • Gentoo Family

        • Gentoo-Based Porteus Kiosk 5.3 Released with Hardware Video Decoding, Virtual Keyboard

          Porteus Kiosk 5.3 is here about six months after Porteus Kiosk 5.2 to add several new features, including experimental hardware video decoding support and virtual keyboard for both Mozilla Firefox ESR and Google Chrome web browsers.

          While the hardware decoding feature can be enabled in remote config with the hardware_video_decode parameter, the virtual keyboard feature comes as an extension and will pop-up automatically when clicking an input field on a web page. Users can control the virtual keyboard in remote config with the virtual_keyboard parameter.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Use and contribute to a new Open Source Cloud Guide

          Today, at All Things Open, IBM is releasing the Open Source Cloud Guide, which highlights various use cases that are important in hybrid cloud environments, features the important open source projects in those areas, and discusses how various clouds are using open source in their offerings. By open sourcing the guide, developers are able to both use and contribute to the learnings and use cases

        • Announcing Cryostat 2.0: JDK Flight Recorder for containers

          Cryostat is a container-native JVM application that provides a secure API for profiling and monitoring containers with JDK Flight Recorder (JFR). JDK Flight Recorder collects profiling and diagnostic data from applications using JFR events stored in binary flight recordings. When requested, Cryostat can retrieve, store, and analyze flight recordings from containerized Java virtual machines (JVMs) to assess overall application health. Users can download recording files and upload them to JDK Mission Control (JMC) or Grafana for further analysis.

          This article introduces Cryostat and shares new features in the 2.0 release, including example use cases, tips for getting started, and additional release notes. For more information about Cryostat fundamentals, visit Introduction to Cryostat: JDK Flight Recorder for containers.

        • Kafka Monthly Digest: September 2021

          Welcome to the 44th edition of the Kafka Monthly Digest. In this edition, I'll cover what happened in the Apache Kafka community in September 2021.

          For last month’s digest, see Kafka Monthly Digest: August 2021 on IBM Developer.

        • Sensitive information detection using the NVIDIA Morpheus AI framework

          The growth of cloud-native applications has driven an explosion of east-west network traffic within a datacenter where applications can create hundreds of thousands of network connections among virtual machines and containers. As a consequence, the ability to track, monitor, and secure a datacenter in a timely manner has risen above that of any individual or team, thus requiring the help of AI and machine learning (AI/ML) to enable ITOps, infrastructure security, and DevSecOps teams to manage the complexity of modern cloud-native applications and the underlying platforms.

          Red Hat and NVIDIA have been working together to bring the security analytics capabilities of the NVIDIA Morpheus AI application framework to Red Hat infrastructure platforms for cybersecurity developers. This article provides a set of configuration instructions to Red Hat developers working on applications that use the NVIDIA Morpheus AI application framework and NVIDIA BlueField data processing units (DPUs) to secure interservice communication.

        • DevSecOps: 11 questions to ask about your security strategy now

          It’s the fourth and final quarter of 2021, believe it or not. That makes it time for IT leaders to review and evaluate how things are going – and plan for 2022. Security sometimes gets left out of those conversations. We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen, with an extensive list of questions worth asking as you assess your security posture and look for ways to improve.

          We’ll start with a series of topics that are particularly relevant for teams that are considering or already implementing a DevSecOps strategy, then we’ll cover a series of fundamental questions worth asking in any organization – especially those currently struggling to modernize their security approach.

        • How Podman runs on Macs and other container FAQs | Enable Sysadmin

          As the Podman machine function becomes more used—particularly on Macs—there have been many questions about how this all works. Some of what is tossed around on the internet is pure speculation, so this article aims to eliminate any speculation.

          Many people do not realize that containers are really Linux. As such, Linux containers cannot run natively on macOS. Therefore, the containers must run in a Linux virtual machine (VM), and a Podman client interacts with that VM. This is in line with all solutions for running containers on macOS.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Ubuntu 21.10: Plan to do yourself an Indri? Here's what's inside... including a bit of GNOME schooling
          Canonical has released Ubuntu 21.10, or "Impish Indri" as this one is known. This is the last major version before next year's long-term support release of Ubuntu 22.04, and serves as a good preview of some of the changes coming for those who stick with LTS releases.

          If you prefer to run the latest and greatest, 21.10 is a solid release with a new kernel, a major GNOME update, and some theming changes. As a short-term support release, Ubuntu 21.10 will be supported for nine months, which covers you until July 2022, by which point 22.04 will already be out.

        • Ubuntu 21.10 Radeon Gaming With KDE Plasma vs. GNOME Shell + Wayland vs. X.Org

          With last week's release of Ubuntu 21.10, here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the Linux gaming performance on this new release while testing both the GNOME Shell 40 default desktop to that of its KDE Plasma 5.22 based option. Both the X.Org and Wayland sessions for KDE and GNOME were benchmarked for seeing how the Linux gaming performance compares with the Radeon open-source GPU driver stack.

          In the past we've seen the GNOME Shell Wayland-based Linux gaming experience to be in very good shape and in some games performing even better than the X.Org based environment. With GNOME / Mutter continuing to mature as well as running the latest open-source Radeon drivers, now with the Ubuntu 21.10 release it's a good time to re-test the performance. Additionally, the KDE Plasma Wayland experience has matured a heck of a lot this year and is now in much better shape for day-to-day use so it's been also included for this comparison.

        • Ubuntu Studio: Ubuntu Studio 21.10 Released

          The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 21.10, code-named “Impish Indri”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 30th release. This release is a regular release, and as such it is supported for nine months until July 2022.

          Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes and known issues.

          You can download Ubuntu Studio 21.10 from our download page.

        • Lubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) Released!

          Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 21.10 has been released. With the codename Impish Indri, Lubuntu 21.10 is the 21st release of Lubuntu, the seventh release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Results from the Survey about LibreOffice Calc

          Earlier this year we run a survey on LibreOffice Calc. It was inspired by a similar questionnaire for LibreOffice Draw (see first and second blog post). The Calc survey was used to learn about how Calc is being used, what features are most important to users and where they expect to see the improvements to the software. The work was done by Maria Berg, thanks a lot for your contribution.

          This blog post shows some results in detail. You may also watch the recording of the presentation at the LibreOffice conference at http:// (link will be added later)

          In total 1797 people started the survey and 1229 completed all questions. Many thanks to everyone!

          We started with a couple of demographic questions that demonstrated the limits of online surveys: most participants were middle age (65% between 33 and 65 years old), technology-affine (60% use Linux as operating system), and power users (45% run the application every day). We advertised the survey on our blog and social media such as Twitter (you may also follow the design team), Reddit, and Facebook. And while LibreOffice has roughly 200 millions users, most of those who are following us are technology enthusiastic.

      • Programming/Development

        • Play DOOM Using Web Browser Checkboxes (Finally) | Hackaday

          While the resolution and color palette aren’t what we have come to expect from DOOM, it’s likely that the graphics could be further improved by tinkering with the dithering and threshold settings. Higher resolutions may also be possible with further optimization.

  • Leftovers

    • Opinion | I Hear America Screeching

      In the weeks since the 20th anniversary of 9/11, sensory memories of that disastrous day -- things I haven’t thought about in years – came flooding back.

    • Health/Nutrition

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Microsoft admits to yet more printing problems in Windows as back-at-the-office folks asked for admin credentials
        • Security

          • Former Microsoft Security Analyst Claims Office 365 Knowingly Hosted Malware For Years

            Malware on Windows devices has become a real problem in the last few years, specifically with a recent uptick in ransomware. It appears that Microsoft has been trying to combat this issue, though, with updates to Microsoft Defender, so it has more teeth than ever before. However, what if Microsoft is part of the problem too?

            On Friday, cybersecurity researcher TheAnalyst explained on Twitter how BazarLoader malware leads to ransomware that can severely affect healthcare, among other industries. He then called out Microsoft, asking if the company has “any responsibility in this when they KNOWINGLY are hosting hundreds of files leading to this,” alongside an image of what appears to be malicious files being hosted in OneDrive.

          • Windows 10, Linux, iOS, Chrome and Many Others at Hacked Tianfu Cup 2021

            Windows 10, iOS 15, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Ubuntu 20 were successfully broken into using original, never-before-seen exploits at the Tianfu Cup 2021, the fourth edition of the international cybersecurity contest held in the city of Chengdu, China.

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (amd64-microcode, libreoffice, linux-4.19, and nghttp2), Fedora (chromium, libopenmpt, vim, and xen), openSUSE (firefox, kernel, krb5, libaom, and opera), Oracle (thunderbird), SUSE (firefox, firefox, rust-cbindgen, iproute2, javapackages-tools, javassist, mysql-connector-java, protobuf, python-python-gflags, and krb5), and Ubuntu (nginx).

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • CIA Funding Arm Gave Encrypted App Wickr $1.6 Million

              In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit investment firm started by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), recently poured more than $1.6 million into encrypted messaging platform Wickr, according to public disclosure records reviewed by Motherboard.

              The $1.6 million was transferred before Amazon purchased the company, but highlights Wickr's continuing position as an end-to-end encrypted messaging app for government agencies. Beyond the In-Q-Tel investment, Wickr also has a specific product approved by the Department of Defense, and as Motherboard reported last month, a new $900,000 contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

              Jack Poulson, executive director of Tech Inquiry, first flagged the money transfer to Motherboard. As he pointed out, one of In-Q-Tel's Form 990s, which describes compensation paid to outside contractors, mentions a payment to a company called "W I." That company's address—1459 18th Street, San Francisco—is identical to that of Wickr Inc., according to other public corporate records.

            • Fingerprint biometrics and IDV set for rapid growth, big players consider blockchain | Biometric Update

              Forecasts of rapid growth in fingerprint sensors and digital identity verification are backed up by reports from technology providers of market progress in both areas, with Fingerprint Cards moving forward with PC deployments and a biometric payment card project, and new deals for FSS, Blinking, FacePhi, Socure, HooYu and Ondato, and a launch for ComplyCube. Digital identity decentralization, at least in terms of computation, also continues to gain steam, while centralized national ID projects in India and Pakistan are considered for the lessons, positive and negative, they can provide.

            • Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children
    • Environment

      • Opinion | Beyond Science: Art and the Environment

        In 1871 photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran joined an expedition to the Yellowstone region of the United States, which they documented in a series of powerful and moving creative works. Soon after, Jackson’s and Moran’s images became the catalysts for Congress to designate the very first national park at Yellowstone.

      • Wildlife/Nature

    • Finance

      • Opinion | A Smiling Sayonara from Private Equity’s Pioneers

        The billionaire founders of KKR, America’s first nationally celebrated “private equity” giant, have just announced they’re stepping down as the company’s co-CEOs. Henry Kravis, now 77, and George Roberts, 78, helped found KKR in 1976. They opened up shop with $120,000 in capital to invest. Their KKR portfolio currently holds assets valued not all that far from half a trillion.

      • Mondaire Jones Warns Against Watering Down Human Infrastructure Proposals

        Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones on Sunday criticized efforts to include means-testing requirements on programs in his party's reconciliation package as an approach that is not cost-effective and that could exclude those most in need.

        The vocal opposition to means-testing from Jones and other progressive Democrats came amid a push by conservative Democrats including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to pare back the climate and safety net package by imposing income limits on proposals like Medicare expansion.

      • Why Everything is Suddenly Getting More Expensive — And Why It Won’t Stop

        It’s not just me. It’s probably you, too. Have you noticed that it’s starting to be hard to just…get stuff? If you’ve tried buying a car lately, you might have observed that even used car prices have climbed to relatively astronomical levels. The same is beginning to hold true for good after good — from electronics to energy. What’s going on here? I have some bad news, and I have some…well…worse news. We’re at the beginning of of an era in economic history that’ll probably come to be known as the Great Inflation. Prices are going to rise, probably exponentially, over the course of the next few decades. The reason for that’s simple: everything, more or less, has been artificially cheap. The costs of everything from carbon to fascism to ecological collapse to social fracture haven’t been factored in — ever, from the beginning of the industrial age. But that age is now coming to a sudden, climactic, explosive end. The problem is that, well, we’re standing in the way. Let me explain, with an example. I was looking for a microphone for a singer I’m working with. I was shocked to read that a well-know German microphone company had just…stopped making them. And furloughed all its workers. It didn’t say why — but it didn’t need to. The reason’s obvious. Steel prices are rising, and they’re going to to keep rising, because energy prices are rising. Then there’s the by now infamous “chip shortage,” chips they probably rely on, too. Add all that up, and bang — you’ve got an historic company suddenly imploding.

    • Civil Rights/Policing



Recent Techrights' Posts

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