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Links 26/10/2021: SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 and Multi-Distro Benchmarks



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Intel AMX Support Appears Ready For Linux 5.16 - Phoronix

        It's been over one year since Intel disclosed Advanced Matrix Extensions and began posting patches for bringing up AMX support under Linux in anticipation of Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors. While the compiler-side work to GCC and LLVM/Clang has been landing, finally with the forthcoming Linux 5.16 cycle that AMX support appears ready for landing.

        Merged today to tip/tip.git's "x86/fpu" branch where kernel FPU changes are queued ahead of the next merge window, the last of the AMX enablement patches were queued up. Most notably, the work for actually enabling the AMX feature and being able to expose it to user-space via the new interface.

      • BLK-MQ Support For OpenZFS Pending As Latest Performance Optimization

        A new pull request is pending for implementing multi-queue block (blk-mq) support within OpenZFS' Zvol code, which can lead to sizable performance benefits.

        Tony Hutter opened up the pull request at the end of last week for blk-mq support. Utilizing blk-mq allows for queuing and submitting I/O requests to block devices simultaneously. With modern multi-core CPUs and speedy storage devices, BLK-MQ can lead to very real benefits.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Linux Continues To Improve Power Management For Older NVIDIA Tegra SoCs To Avoid Overheating

          While the Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 SoCs are a decade old, the mainline Linux kernel continues working to improve the power management / thermal behavior for them in order to deal with heating issues for devices relying on these SoCs.

          We've seen improved thermal code for these hot and aging Tegra devices, among other work. Most recently though is now a set of Tegra power management patches revised for a 14th time that are seeking to be included with Linux 5.17 (not to be confused with the Linux 5.16 cycle kicking off in a week or two).

        • NVIDIA 495.44 stable driver is out for Linux, adds in GBM API support | GamingOnLinux

          Following on from the NVIDIA Beta 495.29.05 earlier this month, today NVIDIA has a fresh 495.44 stable driver release that builds upon it with some additional extras. This is the big one for Wayland fans, since it now works with the GBM API.

          With this API now hooked up, it should mean a better Wayland experience and it's something that the KDE Plasma team are already working on supporting too.

          You will also find in this release an indicator (on supported desktops) for showing Resizable BAR and the minimum Kernel version got bumped from 2.6.32 to 3.10.

        • NVIDIA 495.44 Linux Driver Released With GBM Support

          Following the NVIDIA 495 beta Linux driver from earlier this month, NVIDIA 495.44 is out today for Linux users as the stable release.

          The NVIDIA 495.44 Linux driver is the stabilized version of the earlier beta, that most notably introduces Generic Buffer Manager (GBM) support for sharply improving the proprietary driver's Wayland support.

        • AMDGPU DP 2.0 MST Support Sent In For DRM-Next - Phoronix

          AMDGPU changes already queued up in DRM-Next for Linux 5.16 brought initial code for DisplayPort 2.0 ahead of next-gen GPUs with this connectivity support. Sent out today as a separate pull request is wiring up the DisplayPort 2.0 Multi-Stream Transport (MST) capability for the AMDGPU kernel driver.

          Sent in as a late topic branch is the AMDGPU DP 2.0 MST support along with a necessary change to the DRM common DisplayPort MST helper code. Multi-Stream Transport allows for multiple independent displays to be driven from a single DisplayPort output, AMDGPU has supported DP MST for DisplayPort 1.x, but additional changes are needed for DP 2.0 compatibility.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Core i9 11900K: Five Linux Distros Show Sizable Lead Over Windows 11

        Now that Windows 11 has been out as stable and the initial round of updates coming out, I've been running fresh Windows 11 vs. Linux benchmarks for seeing how Microsoft's latest operating system release compares to the fresh batch of Linux distributions. First up is the fresh look at the Windows 11 vs. Linux performance on an Intel Core i9 11900K Rocket Lake system.

    • Applications

      • OVPN-Admin is a Simple Web UI to Manage OpenVPN Users

        OVPN-Admin makes the administration of OpenVPN users, their certificates and routes quickly and easily by using a convenient web-based UI.

        OpenVPN is one of the most popular VPN protocols among VPN users. It’s both – a VPN protocol and software that uses VPN techniques to secure point-to-point and site-to-site connections.

        OpenVPN is an open source and free VPN option for those looking to protect their privacy. It uses the TLS/SSL protocol for key exchange and can travel through firewalls and NATs (Network Address Translators).

        However, the administration of the OpenVPN users requires certain level of skills with the Linux command line.

      • Authelia: Open-source SSO Single Sign-on for enterprise

        Single Sign-on (SSO), is a technology that combines several app login screens into one single login.

        In contrast, it offers a session and user authentication service for a user to use a single login for many apps.

        Let us take Google as an example, soon as login into your Google Gmail account, you have access to all Google services like Google calendar, Google Drive, Developer account YouTube, and Google Play Store, and more other services.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install and Configure Postgres 14 on Fedora 34

        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.

      • Master-Slave replication with MariaDB

        This is how I configured Master-Slave replication with MariaDB. Since MariaDB is fork of MySQL, you should follow the same steps.

      • WAZUH Agent Installation - Unixcop

        The Wazuh agent is multi-platform and runs on the hosts that the user wants to monitor. It communicates with the Wazuh manager, sending data in near real time through an encrypted and authenticated channel.

        The agent developed considering the need to monitor a wide variety of different endpoints without impacting their performance. Therefore, it is supported on the most popular operating systems and only requires about 0.1 GB of RAM

      • Penetration Testing Tools for Beginners - blackMORE Ops

        Karkinos is a light-weight Beginner Friendly Penetration Testing Tool, which is basically a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ for pen-testing and/or hacking CTF’s.

      • Should you use Docker on your VPS server? - The Jerusalem Post

        Unlike other popular tools that can trace their roots back to the nineties or even earlier, Docker didn't exist until 2013.

        Yet, in a very short period of time, it has managed to become something of a household name (assuming the household consists primarily of IT specialists).

        But what is Docker exactly? How did it manage to become so popular so quickly? And how can you deploy it on your VPS? Let's find out.

      • Hacking tools: Set up the hacking stick with Kali Linux - Market Research Telecast

        Kali Linux is a useful helper in many situations: It contains a number of hacking tools that you can try out immediately. The often cumbersome setup of the programs is no longer necessary. This not only allows you to detect security problems, the tools supplied are also suitable for saving data and much more. With little effort you can create a bootable USB stick with which you can see for yourself.

      • Sending logs to Humio using the elasticsearch-http() destination of syslog-ng - Blog - syslog-ng Community - syslog-ng Community

        One of the most popular syslog-ng destinations is Elasticsearch. Humio, a log management provider, supports a broad range of ingest options and interfaces, including an Elasticsearch-compatible API. Last week, Humio announced Humio Community Edition, which provides the full Humio experience for free, with some limitations on daily ingestion and retention time. I tested the Community Edition, and it works perfectly well with syslog-ng.

        If you come from the Humio side, you might wonder what syslog-ng is. It is an application for high performance central log collection. Traditionally, syslog messages were collected centrally and saved to text files. Nowadays, syslog-ng acts more like a log management layer: collects log messages from hosts, saves them for long term storage, but also forwards them to multiple destinations, like SIEMs and other log analysis solutions. This way, it is enough to collect log messages only once, and syslog-ng delivers the right log messages to the right destinations in the right format, after some initial processing.

        Humio is available as a cloud service or self-hosted, where you can send all your logs for storage and analysis. It has an easy-to-use interface to query log messages which can be extended with further analytics possibilities from the Humio marketplace.

        From this blog, you can learn how to get started with Humio and syslog-ng. While Humio provides many other APIs for log ingestion, I focus on the elasticsearch-http() destination of syslog-ng, demonstrating that there is no vendor lock-in: the same driver works equally well for Elastic’s Elasticsearch, AWS’s OpenSearch and for Humio.

      • Mastering Linux Administration - Book Review

        People frequently inquire about the best ways to learn Linux. I’ve already done extensive research on the subject and written three articles on how to learn Linux online. Candidates that are serious about learning Linux can get started immediately by joining online communities or purchasing video courses. Books, on the other hand, have always been the best source of in-depth knowledge on any topic, including learning Linux.

        In this article, I’ll be discussing Mastering Linux Administration, a book that will undoubtedly help you get closer to your objective of learning Linux. Alexandru Calcatinge and Julian Balog wrote the book; both have over ten years of experience in programming or Linux system administration.

      • Deploy Quarkus applications to Kubernetes using a Helm chart | Opensource.com

        Serverless functions are driving the fast adoption of DevOps development and deployment practices today. Knative on Kubernetes is one of the most popular serverless platforms to adopt serverless function architectures successfully. But developers must understand how serverless capabilities are specified using a combination of Kubernetes APIs, Knative resources, and function-oriented programming. DevOps teams also need to standardize runtime stacks (that is, application runtime, builder image, deployment configuration, and health check) to execute the functions on Kubernetes. What if you, a developer, could set this up with familiar technology and practice?

        This article guides you on the way developers can get started with serverless function deployment with the Quarkus Helm chart on Kubernetes. Furthermore, developers can avoid the extra work of developing a function from scratch, optimizing the application, and deploying it to Kubernetes.

        If you haven't experienced using Helm for cloud-native application deployments on Kubernetes, I will tell you what Helm is and what benefits you have with it. Helm is one of the most popular package managers for Kubernetes. Helm provides a chart that simplifies Kubernetes resources within a single package file for an application build and deployment. Developers can install the chart to Kubernetes using the Helm command-line interface or graphical dashboard.

      • How to Customize the Linux Terminal Splash Screen

        The terminal is like a virtual second home for many Linux users since they spend most of their working time typing commands in it. It's important to personalize the terminal to your heart's desire if you don't want to bore yourself with the dull, black command-line screen.

        Linux offers you the choice to customize any facet of the terminal—its appearance, behaviour, color schemes, font, and splash screen.

        In this article, we'll take a look at how you can customize your Linux terminal's splash screen to jazz up your command-line sessions.

      • How to Install & Configure Postgres 14 on OpenSUSE Leap 15.3

        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 run Redis 6 with Docker and Docker-Compose

        In this guide we are going to explore how to run Redis 6 locally with docker and docker compose. This can be helpful if you want to run Redis locally without installing it in your server or if you want to run multiple versions of Redis seamlessly.

      • Install OpenVPN Server on Debian 11/Debian 10 - kifarunix.com

        In this guide, we are going to learn how to install OpenVPN Server on Debian 11/Debian 10.

      • Some quick framework laptop power saving tips – Kevin's musings

        Some of these may apply to all laptops and some may be frame.work specific, but I thought I would throw them out there to help folks out.

      • How To Install Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority (CA) that provides an easy way to obtain and install free TLS/SSL certificates, thereby enabling encrypted HTTPS on web servers. This guide will tell you about installing the Nginx web server, installing the Certbot, generating an SSL certificate with Certbot, and creating additional SSL configuration to get the A+ from the SSL test SSL Labs.

        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 the step-by-step installation of the Nginx with free SSL 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.

      • How to install SpeedCrunch on Linux

        Are you in need of a scientific calculator for your Linux PC? Can’t find anything good to use? Check out SpeedCrunch! It’s a high-precision, scientific calculator that sports tons of features and a speedy keyboard-driven interface. Here’s how to set it up on your system.

      • How to install OBS Studio on Elementary OS 6.0 - Invidious

        In this video, we are looking at how to install OBS Studio on Elementary OS 6.0. Enjoy!

      • How to Enable Nautilus Typeahead Search in Ubuntu - OMG! Ubuntu!

        In this post I show you how to get the Nautilus typeahead feature back on all supported versions of Ubuntu.

        Nautilus’ type ahead functionality was retired way back in 2013. Ubuntu devs continued to patch the feature back in until 2017 when they switched to a more ‘vanilla’ GNOME desktop experience.

        So chances are you’ve adapted to life with out it.

        Thankfully in the world of open source: if you have an itch, you can scratch it — and fans of Nautilus typeahead search have done just that.

      • How to install the Skeuos GTK theme on Linux

        Skeuos is a GTK3/4 theme for Gnome Shell, as well as other GTK-based desktop environments on Linux. It comes in several different color variants and sports a clean, slick design that is sure to spice up your Linux setup. Here’s how to install the Skeuos GTK theme on your system.

    • Games

      • Yuzu (Switch Emulator): Introducing Project ART - Boiling Steam

        Shortly after the interview with GDKChan — creator of the Ryujinx Switch emulator — was published, one of the developers of Yuzu, the competing Switch emulator, contacted me and asked if I would be willing to take a look at his pull request for Yuzu. This pull request is called Project ART (Advanced Rendering Techniques, or Aristotle’s Right Testicle…yuck) and was developed in collaboration with a few other developers. In a nutshell, this PR adds the following features to the emulator:

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDE Plasma 5.23.2, Bugfix Release for October
          Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.23.2.

          Plasma 5.23 was released in October 2021 with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

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

        • PCLinuxOS KDE Plasma Update

          The KDE Plasma pkgs were updated to 5.23.2 today. This is a bug fix release update to KDE Plasma 5.

        • KDE Connect iOS Enters Public TestFlight Testing!

          After being picked up again earlier this year, the KDE Connect iOS project is now moving towards public beta testing with TestFlight to collect more user feedback and problem reports as the project inches further towards a full release sometime in the (near?) future.

        • Linux Application Ecosystem 2021 Changsha

          Since I started discussing with Aniqa about organizing some events in China to promote KDE in China in April this year, after half a year of hard work and attempts, I helped KDE Network China and Ubuntu Kylin first event to be successfully held on October 23rd at Central South University.

          The name of this event is Linux Application Ecosystem Salon, 2021 Changsha marked it as one event in Changsha in 2021. Our goal is to promote the development of FOSS/FLOSS software within Chinese universities and to make it easier for students to understand the development of open source in China nowadays by popularizing KDE software and open-source activities in the other communities.

    • Distributions

      • We're not in Ubuntu Anymore: The Linux Distros You've (Probably) Never Heard About Before

        Unlike Windows and macOS, there is a world of Linux versions, known as distributions, for users to experience. However, those switching to Linux on the desktop usually get pointed in the direction of Ubuntu due to its popularity and large community.

        That’s a fair suggestion since Ubuntu is frequently updated and supports a lot of hardware. But when there are so many other Linux distros out there, users may be curious about what else might work for them. Fortunately, there is a quick guide...

        [...]

        If you want to get away from Ubuntu entirely, there are a few more options that stand out:

        The emergence of Manjaro has been a pleasant surprise in the Linux community as it’s closely related to Arch, which is a bleeding-edge distro with tons of new features but can be cumbersome to use, especially for Linux newcomers. It has an easy-to-use interface and is available with a wide variety of desktop environments including Xfce, KDE, and Gnome. Manjaro also offers a version for Arm systems like the Raspberry Pi, Odroid, and Pine products.

      • 6 Reasons Why Experienced Linux Users Would Love elementary OS
        elementary OS has a reputation for being great for newcomers to Linux, but in a way, that's selling the operating system short. There are ample reasons for experienced, committed Linux users to check out elementary OS as well. It is one of the most exciting free desktops around, and here are just a few reasons why it's worth a look.

        1. A Consistent and Attractive Design

        Traditional desktop Linux attempts to build a functional desktop out of various components that all come from different developers and projects. Most options have come a long way since the early days, but even on the most popular Linux desktops, you can still find a wide variance in how apps look and function.

        On elementary OS, there's a way app icons are supposed to look, a way to design app windows, and a proper way to use color. The project has a very detailed set of Human Interface Guidelines to guide developers and app designers.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Digest of YaST Development Sprints 133 & 134

          Let us start by quoting our latest report: “regarding the management of users, we hope to report big improvements in the next blog post”. Time has indeed come and we can now announce we brought the revamped users management described in this monographic blog post to the last parts of YaST that were still not taking advantage of the new approach. The changes are receiving an extra round of testing with the help of the Quality Assurance team at SUSE before we submit them to openSUSE Tumbleweed. When that happens, both the interactive YaST module to manage users and groups and its corresponding command line interface (not to be confused with the ncurses-powered text mode) will start using useradd and friends to manage users, groups and the related configurations.

        • SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 is Generally Available

          Today, we are proud to announce the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 – a lightweight and secure operating system built for containerized and virtualized workloads.

          [...]

          SLE Micro can be used as a single-node container host, Kubernetes cluster node, single-node KVM virtualization host or in public cloud. Since its built to scale, customers can incorporate SLE Micro into their digital transformation plans – whether at the edge or supporting edge deployments with mainframes – in a way that allows them to transition workload designs from monolithic to microservices, at their own pace. They can start with container workloads or virtualize their current legacy workloads, then move to containerized workloads when they are ready, with no change in the underlying system platform.

        • SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 Comes With Edge-Focused Security Features

          SUSE has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) Micro 5.1, a lightweight and secure operating system built for containerized and virtualized workloads. SLE Micro 5.1 adds edge-focused security features such as secure device onboarding and live patching, and it enables the modernizing of workloads with support for IBM Z and LinuxONE.

        • SUSE Expands Computing Possibilities Beyond the Edge with SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1
        • SUSE Expands Computing Possibilities Beyond the Edge with SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1
        • Document formats – There is choice [Ed: Meike Chabowski on formats of documentation files in SUSE]

          For publishing large documentation projects, DocBook is the ideal framework. It consists of a language (DocBook XML) and a set of stylesheets to translate this language into different output formats such as HTML, PDF, and EPUB. The stylesheets define the layout you want to apply when transforming the XML sources into output formats. For SUSE documentation, we wrote our own XSLT stylesheets to ensure the corporate design is properly reflected.

          The language DocBook XML is based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and defines the content in a semantic way through elements like in HTML. DocBook itself is written as a schema that defines the element names and the content and where they can appear. The DocBook schema is used to fulfill two tasks: guided editing and validation.

          Guided editing is done via an XML editor (such as oXygen, Vim or Emacs). The editor reads in the DocBook schema and suggests which elements are allowed in the current context. Validation gives hints about structural errors in an XML document; this could, for example, be a missing element.

      • Slackware Family

        • liveslak-1.4.0 and new ISO images are available

          It’s that time again for a fresh batch of ISOs for Slackware Live Edition. The ISO files are based on Slackware-current of “Sat Oct 23 18:57:30 UTC 2021” and using the liveslak-1.4.0 scripts.

          The Slackware-current snapshot on which the Live ISOs are based contains a Linux 5.14.14 kernel. This is not yet the pre-emptive variant of 5.14.14 which you can find in “./testing” inside today’s Slackware-current mirrors. However, you can use liveslak’s “upslak.sh” script to easily upgrade the kernel on your persistent USB Live if you want. It’ll be interesting to see how it improves real-time performance on the DAW Live platform.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Fedora 34, A Review of Flatpak-Wayland Desktop Mix Part I

          Fedora already did a great job in Flatpak integration. They made their own Flatpak repository and made it easy to add Flathub.org. The initial experience is very poor, it is very slow and almost often freezing the system, although how to use it is already clear enough. Also, we think the incorrect licensing information displayed on Software is a deep issue they should fix as soon as possible.

          About the functionality? The apps and games we installed work well. OBS and Kooha can record screen (even camera) into videos. Those games can be played normally, with great visuals and audio, we could not tell that they use a different technology.

          On Flatpak, in general we want to say F34 works but with a very poor initial experience.

        • Do host firewalls matter in cloud deployments?

          Cloud deployments enable incredible amounts of network flexibility for any workload. Companies build, connect, and configure networks at a rapid pace via convenient application programming interfaces (APIs). However, these easily configurable interconnections lead to situations where dangerous network paths remain open due to misconfiguration or complexity.

          Someone asked me recently if host firewalls still matter in cloud deployments. In short: they do still matter. Host firewalls, such as iptables or nftables, play a key role in a defense-in-depth strategy, and they often close gaps in critical network infrastructure. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) includes firewalld, a firewall management framework, that delivers reasonable defaults and makes rule management easy.

          This post covers some potential scenarios where a host firewall could reduce risk in a cloud deployment.

        • Saaf Water provides insights for safe water consumption

          Many of us take for granted that clean, safe drinking water will be instantly available when we turn on a tap in our home. But 2 billion people around the world lack access to safely managed drinking water, and in order for that to change by 2030, the current rate of progress would need to double in 129 countries. The issue is especially challenging for remote communities who have to gather their drinking water from unreliable sources. Helping these communities make informed decisions about their drinking water can greatly mitigate the risks.

          For the team in India behind Saaf Water (“saaf” is a Hindi word for “clean”), the inspiration to take on the issue of clean drinking water was personal. Team member Hrishikesh saw firsthand the danger of unsafe drinking water when his mother became ill by drinking from her village’s groundwater supply that was assumed to be safe. Even though the team members are all from different villages, they all have friends or family members impacted by contaminated water. They realized that communities need data and information about their local drinking water to be able to make safe decisions about purification and consumption.

        • Honestly leads consumers to more ethical purchases

          How can you really know the environmental impact of that pair of jeans you just ordered online? Household consumption of goods contributes to over 60% of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Now, e-commerce is causing an increasing share of the environmental damage created by consumer goods: The UN reports that during the COVID-19 pandemic, online sales jumped from 16% to 19% of all retail sales. Individual consumers want to do the right thing and are often willing to spend a bit more to make sustainable purchases. However, it can be overwhelming to try to fully understand the ethical practices of the businesses they buy from or the environmental footprint of the products they consume.

        • Top Call for Code Global Challenge University Teams

          In the fight against climate change, we know fresh thought and innovation can come from anywhere. Yet every year we’re continually inspired by the Call for Code submissions from universities. And this year is no different. The top five entrants cover a broad range of solutions, ranging from agriculture to waste management, and from sanitation to zero hunger. Check out the entries from across the globe and tune in to the 2021 Call for Code Awards on November 16 to learn who will be the winner of the University Edition of the Call for Code Global Challenge.

        • Plenti cuts kitchen waste to shrink carbon footprint [Ed: IBM pretends to care about carbon footprint; same as Microsoft]

          Did you know the average household throws away 1 in 5 bags of spoiled groceries? Beyond the economic impact on households, the environmental impact is exacerbated by the fact that food products create a considerable carbon footprint from the farm, to the store, and into your kitchen before getting dumped.

          The Plenti team are looking to change this and help us better manage our groceries. As a Top Five finalist in the 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge, Plenti was developed as a mobile app that alerts you before your food goes off.

        • Project Scavenger manages e-waste for a healthier world [Ed: IBM kicked off another greenwash campaign today]

          Once an anomaly, working remotely has become a common practice for many employees over the course of the past 20 months — and it shows no sign of receding. Gartner estimates that remote workers will represent 32% of all employees worldwide by the end of 2021. While there are wide-ranging opinions surrounding the work-from-home dynamic, one objective truth is that there has been a massive increase in home office set-ups, and demand for home office devices like keyboards, mice, CPUs and more. Manufacturers are trying to keep up with this rapid increase in demand. Combine those new devices with the thousands still residing in now abandoned on-site offices, and the result is an alarming amount of e-waste.

        • Green Farm supports sustainable community agriculture

          Agriculture accounts for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. While sustainable farming plays an important role in helping reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change, it still only represents a small share of all agricultural production. Community supported agriculture (CSA) has increased in popularity during recent years as an answer to this global challenge, especially during the supply chain disruptions and day-to-day hurdles consumers have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the rapid growth of this type of farming model brings its own set of challenges. Small farmers struggle to ensure their planting methods are sustainable, eco-friendly, and transparent as they attempt to scale and reach new customers. It is difficult for them to experiment with alternative agricultural methods because of local volatility, both ecologically and in the market, brought on by climate change and the ongoing pandemic. Consumers, meanwhile, face uncertainty about the quality and availability of local produce.

        • Digital transformation: 7 in-demand technology skills

          The pandemic jolted businesses across the globe, forcing them to accelerate their digital initiatives – some achieved years’ worth of digital transformation initiatives in a matter of months. And with remote work in effect, organizations also had to invest in collaborative platforms for employees and self-service portals for customers to ensure business continuity.

          Organizations today continue to invest in digital transformation priorities, and the demand for those with skills in cloud, rapid application development (low code), and new-age technologies is growing. As companies compete to attract candidates who are proficient in emergent technologies, candidates with extensive experience in these areas are in a strong position to drive digital transformation initiatives, optimize costs, approach complex issues innovatively, and aid in the decision-making process.

        • How to put people at the center of digital transformation

          Many businesses saw the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerate their digital transformation plans. Going digital is imperative in the new reality, characterized by hyper-connection and an ever-increasing consumption of online products and services. Even so, many still struggle to understand and apply the concept of going digital in real life.

          However, some organizations have failed in their digital transformation journey as they overlooked a fundamental aspect in these times of change ‒ the human factor.

          At first glance, it may seem odd that this is considered a factor. Still, digital transformation and innovation are related to profound human transformation. A Boston Consulting Group publication, “It’s Not a Digital Transformation without a Digital Culture,” argues that “like any major transformation, a digital transformation requires instilling a culture that supports the change while enabling the company’s overarching strategy.”

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Canonical Looking For Community Feedback As Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Development Begins

          With Ubuntu 22.04 LTS "Jammy Jellyfish" beginning development, Canonical is soliciting community feedback as they plot out more of the planned changes for this next major release and areas to focus on enhancing over the next six months.

          Monica Ayhens-Madon as the Ubuntu Community Representative at Canonical has begun collecting community feedback and input for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. In particular, areas of the desktop to focus on heading into this next Long Term Support release. The feedback collected will help shape their road-map for this cycle.

        • Ubuntu Blog: In defence of pet servers

          We all know the drill by now: modern compute infrastructure needs to be deterministic, disposable, commoditised and repeatable. We’re all farmers now, and our server estates must be treated like cattle – ready for slaughter at a moment’s notice.

          However, we must remember that the driver behind the new design rationale is primarily the unreliable nature of modern cloud compute infrastructure and its associated feeble Service-level agreements (SLAs). Let’s just take a step back from the cattle over pets mantra for a moment, and evaluate if this is really always the right path to be going down.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Mozilla Open Policy & Advocacy Blog: Mozilla and Omidyar Network launch new Reimagine Open initiative: Powering Local Innovation in the Global South [Ed: Mozilla doing politics with notorious oligarchs now]

            Mozilla and the Omidyar Network are thrilled to launch the new global initiative, Powering Local Innovation, focused on deepening the conversation around “local innovation” within different regions in the Global South. Our organizational partners in the Africa region (AfriLabs, Lawyer’s Hub, African Union Development Agency, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Smart Africa), and in India (Hasgeek), will bring together entrepreneurs, technologists, activists, policymakers, private sector leaders and lawyers for creative dialogue around the present and future of user technology innovation in their regions.

          • Webcompat issues and the bots! [Ed: More Microsoft outsourcing]

            Recently, Ksenia (Mozilla Webcompat team) adjusted BugBug to make it work on GitHub.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • From ‘guix environment’ to ‘guix shell’

            There are times when what looked like the right design choice some years back comes out as an odd choice as time passes. The beloved guix environment tool is having that fate. Its command-line interface has become non-intuitive and annoying for the most common use cases. Since it could not be changed without breaking compatibility in fundamental ways, we devised a new command meant to progressively replace it; guix shell—that’s the name we unimaginatively ended up with—has just landed after a three-week review period, itself a followup to discussions and hesitations on the best course of action.

            This post introduces guix shell, how it differs from guix environment, the choices we made, and why we hope you will like it.

        • Licensing/Legal

          • Trump's Truth Social beta site violates open source license

            Ex-President Donald Trump and his associates have been accused of many crimes, but here's a new one. The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit organization that promotes open source software and defends open source licenses such as the Gnu Affero GPL version 3 (AGPLv3) license, has accused the Trump Media and Technology Group of violating the AGPL by illegally copying the Mastodon social network source code for its Truth Social social network beta.

      • Programming/Development

        • Run your own CI pipeline with GStreamer's new monorepo

          Recently, the GStreamer project merged all its git repositories into a single, unified repository, often called monorepo. You can read more about this change here.

          One benefit is it greatly simplifies maintaining custom, project specific, GStreamer patches. Previously, projects that needed to develop, or backport, some patches had to go through multiple steps to complete the task. Projects had to fork various git repositories (e.g. gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-bad, etc), each repository would then have a new branch with the extra commits, and often, gst-build was used to pull all of these repositories together (and gst-build itself had to be patched beforehand to download forked repositories). Thankfully, all that will be a thing of the past.

        • GitOps: Best practices for the real world

          There is a common misunderstanding about how GitOps should be applied in real-world environments. Developers equate Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with GitOps in concept or believe that GitOps can only work with container-based applications — which is not true. In this blog, you will learn what GitOps is and how to apply its principles to real-world development and operations.

        • 5 Open Source tools for Documenting your React Component - DEV Community

          Documenting our code is of course not the easiest part of the development process and at times developers even avoid it saying that it's really boring. In this article, we will take an overview of 5 tools whose purpose is to help us in documenting our React Components with bare minimum efforts thus, which have made documenting our React Components a piece of cake.

        • Meson version bumped to 0.59.2

          Meson is a source package build system. EasyOS has version 0.53.0, however, I wanted to compile the latest 'pipewire' package and it requires meson version 0.54.0 or later.

          So, have recompiled meson in OpenEmbedded, now version 0.59.2.

        • Perl/Raku

          • Reviving Net::Pcap

            ... in which I look at how existing patches floating on the internet can be integrated into Net::Pcap to make it compile again.

            Net::Pcap is dear to me, as I have a module implementing an HTTP sniffer using its network capture. So I like it when the module compiles without too much manual work.

        • Python

          • Smart Flower Pot Build Is All About That Base | Hackaday

            This attractive beginner build is a Python-powered project that runs on a PyPortal Titano and has a speaker that anthropomorphizes the thing so it can berate you politely ask for water in English. But the real magic of this build is in the enclosure itself.

          • Best Plugins for PyCharm

            Plugins are add-ons that enable you to optimize your applications. For instance, if you want to live-stream a soccer match on a website, you may need to install a plugin because your browser doesn’t come with preinstalled streaming tools.

            You might want to think of plugins as an integral part of your computing and web browsing, making sure each activity you do is running smoothly, even if it is just about viewing a document or surfing a blog.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • Duplicate records differing only in unique identifiers

            There's a big data table with lots of fields and lots of records. Each record has one or more unique identifier field entries. How to check for records that are exactly the same, apart from those unique identifiers?

            I've been tinkering with this problem for years, and you can read my last, fairly clumsy effort in this BASHing data blog post from 2020. Here I present a much-improved solution, which has also gone into A Data Cleaner's Cookbook as an update.

            In 2020, the fastest and most reliable method I used to extract these partial duplicates was with an AWK array and two passes through the table. In the first pass, an array "a" is built with the non-unique-identifier field entries as index string and the tally of each different entry as the value string. In the second pass through the table, AWK looks for records where the value string for the same index string is greater than one, and by default prints the record.

          • Excellent Free Tutorials to Learn Bash - LinuxLinks

            Bash (acronym for the ‘Bourne-Again-SHell’) is the GNU Project’s shell and programming language. It’s an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and C shell (csh). Bash has become a de facto standard for shell scripting. It runs on almost all versions of Unix and a few other operating systems including Windows platforms.

            A Unix shell is both a command interpreter and a programming language. As a command interpreter, the shell provides the user interface to various utilities. The programming language features of Bash allow these utilities to be combined. Files containing commands can be developed, and become commands themselves. A shell script is therefore a quick way of prototyping a complex application. Shell scripting follows the classic Unix philosophy of breaking complex projects into simpler subtasks, of chaining together components and utilities.

            Like all Unix shells, Bash supports filename globbing (wildcard matching), piping, here documents, command substitution, variables and control structures for condition-testing and iteration. The keywords, syntax and other basic features of the language were all copied from sh.

            Here’s our recommended free tutorials to learn Bash.

  • Leftovers

    • Hardware

      • Classic 80s Text-To-Speech On Classic 80s Hardware | Hackaday

        Those of us who were around in the late 70s and into the 80s might remember the Speak & Spell, a children’s toy with a remarkable text-to-speech synthesizer. While it sounds dated by today’s standards, it was revolutionary for the time and was riding a wave of text-to-speech functionality that was starting to arrive to various computers of the era. While a lot of them used dedicated hardware to perform the speech synthesis, some computers were powerful enough to do this in software, but others were not quite able. The VIC-20 was one of the latter, but thanks to an ESP8266 it has been retroactively given this function.

        This project comes to us from [Jan Derogee], a connoisseur of this retrocomputer, and builds on the work by [Earle F. Philhower] who ported the retro speech synthesis software known as SAM from assembly to C which made it possible to run on the ESP8266. Audio playback is handled on the I2S port, but some work needed to be done to get this to work smoothly since this port also handles the communication with the VIC-20. Once this was sorted out, a patch was made to be able to hear the computer’s audio as well as the speech synthesizer’s. Finally, a serial command interface was designed by [Jan] which allows for control of the module.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • SuperSlicer Reviewed: Another 3DP Slicer? | Hackaday

          When you think of slicers for FDM 3D printing — especially free slicers — you probably think of Cura, Slic3r, or PrusaSlicer. There are fans of MatterControl and many people pay for Simplify3D. However, there are quite a few other slicers out there including the one [TeachingTech] has switched to: SuperSlicer. You can see his video review, below.

          Of course, just as PrusaSlicer is a fork of Slic3r, SuperSlicer is a fork of the Prusa software. According to the project’s home page, the slicer does everything Prusa does but adds custom calibration tests, ironing, better thin wall support, and several other features related to infill and top surfaces. The software runs on Windows, Linux, or Mac.

        • Axle.ai Launches Connectr 2021 Software For Windows, Mac and Linux
        • Axle.ai Launches Connectr 2021 software for Windows, Mac and Linux

          Axle.ai, the leader in bringing radical simplicity to video search and collaboration, is announcing availability of Connectr 2021, its revolutionary NoCode software for automating media workflows, for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The company is a Silver sponsor at the Adobe MAX virtual conference, starting today.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Openwashing

            • When leading openly means leading with vulnerability

              In the second part of my interview with Sam Knuth, a fellow Open Organization Ambassador, we discussed how leaders can identify areas for coaching open management practices within their organization to ensure the managers they lead are letting open values guide their work teams and associates. It takes emotional intelligence—and effort.

              To wrap our time together, Sam and I discussed understanding and showing vulnerability with others in the workplace. Sam has authored articles on this important topic for Opensource.com, and his stories about life as an open leader showcase a passion for those (and other) open values. In this interview, we discuss the benefits of leaders showing vulnerability.

            • Intel hopes to burn newly open-sourced AI debug tech into chips [Ed: Shoddy openwashing by Intel with "hey hi" thrown into the mix for hype or good measure]

              Intel Labs has big plans for a software tool called ControlFlag that uses artificial intelligence to scan through code and pick out errors.

              One of those goals, perhaps way out in the future, is to bake it into chip packages as a last line of defense against faulty code. This could make the information flow on communications channels safer and efficient.

          • Privatisation/Privateering

          • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

            • GitHub stale bot considered harmful

              One of GitHub’s “recommended” marketplace features is the “stale” bot. The purpose of this bot is to automatically close GitHub issues after a period of inactivity, 60 days by default. You have probably encountered it yourself in the course of your work.

              This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.

        • Security

          • Open Source Community Shifts Left With OpenSSF, Google SLSA [Ed: Disclosure missing; LF pays them to write these puff pieces]

            Security is becoming an increasingly key piece of the open source puzzle amid industry-wide pushes to shift left and integrate security during early stages of application development.

            The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is one example of how the open source community is working to improve software security through an ecosystem approach, vying for proactive handling of security by default.

          • Lead Cloud-Native Security Analytics Engineer Shares Top Tips for Securing the Enterprise

            Cloud and container adoption is on the rise, as organizations are increasingly recognizing the potential for rapid growth and evolution that cloud-based infrastructure offers. That being said, along with these advantages comes significant security challenges.

            The modern cloud-native attack surface is complex and difficult to secure with many “moving pieces” including endpoints, servers, containers and cloud providers. This makes integrating Threat Intelligence data gathered from all of these surfaces and evaluating potential security and compliance risks and active threats no easy task. Not only is risk harder to identify and evaluate in cloud and container environments, security vulnerabilities, malware and other threats that are also easier to inadvertently inherit from common layers and shared components frequently used in container builds.

          • Released: MITRE ATT&CK v10 - Help Net Security

            MITRE Corporation has released the tenth version of ATT&CK, its globally accessible (and free!) knowledge base of cyber adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations.

            Version ten comes with new Data Source objects, new and changed techniques in its various matrices, key changes to facilitate hunting in ICS environments, and more.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • Being Green, It’s A Rich Man’s Game | Hackaday

        It’s an old saying with an apocryphal origin: “May you live in interesting times“. We Brits are certainly living in interesting times at the moment, as a perfect storm of the pandemic, rising energy prices, global supply chain issues, and arguably the post-Brexit departure of EU-national truck drivers has given us shortages of everything from fresh vegetables in the supermarket to carbon dioxide for the food industry. Of particular concern is a shortage of automotive fuels at the filling station, and amid sometimes-aggressive queues for the pumps it’s reported that there’s a record uptick in Brits searching online for information about electric cars.

      • Energy

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • What you need to know about the Facebook Papers - Access Now

        Facebook is now undergoing what may be the tech giant’s biggest crisis in its 17-year history. On Friday, The Washington Post reported that a second Facebook whistleblower came forward to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that the company prioritizes growth over combating hate speech, disinformation, and other threats to the public. The whistleblower’s testimony follows that of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, whose legal counsel released what’s known as the Facebook Papers — a 10,000-page collection of internal reports, memos, and chat logs leaked to more than a dozen major news outlets.

        The documents paint a grim picture of how Facebook has repeatedly and knowingly put profit ahead of people’s safety. From Facebook’s role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection, to its system for sorting the world into “tiers,” to its disregard for clear evidence its platform was causing harm, here is just a snapshot of what we know from the Facebook Papers so far.

    • Misinformation/Disinformation

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Vietnam: Immediately release Pham Doan Trang

        Today, ahead of Pham Doan Trang’s trial on November 4, Access Now and other human rights organizations are urgently calling on Vietnam’s government to immediately release the independent journalist and human rights defender. The coalition condemns the arbitrary detention of Doan Trang, and is pushing for all charges against her to be dropped.

        “The arrest and arbitrary detention of Doan Trang — a prominent civil society leader — is a signal to all that the authorities in Vietnam will quash any critical speech,” said Dhevy Sivaprakasam, Asia Pacific Policy Counsel at Access Now. “She should not have been arrested in the first place — the politically-motivated charges against her must be dropped.”

        Doan Trang was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City on October 7, 2020, and charged with “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” She has been held in arbitrary detention and denied access to her family for over a year. She was also prevented from meeting with a lawyer until October 19, 2021. Her indictment — which was only made public on October 18, 2021 — confirms a charge of alleged dissemination of anti-State propaganda under article 88 of the 1999 Penal Code. A similar charge under article 117 of the 2015 Penal Code was dropped.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • On television streaming boxes and streaming disservices. – BaronHK's Rants

        Returning the Comcast XFi box a couple of months ago reminded me of how many of these damned things there actually are out there.

        Back when people were crazy and just wanted things to work, we used discs or tapes.

        Now, we have boxes.

        Amazon has a box. Roku has a box. Comcast has a box. Apple has a box. There’s so many boxes that I’m sure I haven’t even started with all of the boxes.

        None of the boxes run all of the same apps.

        None of the apps have all of the shows.

        If you use the boxes and apps, your TV will turn into a Christmas tree of boxes hanging off of it, and your bills for the apps will be enormous.

        The boxes can’t run off the TV, so you’ll need to also find a way to plug them all into an outlet. They don’t power down properly, so they run up your power bill.

        On top of that, these things spy on you and sell that data to advertisers who know more about you now, and use that data to manipulate you to buy more products you don’t want that clutter your house and empty your bank account.

      • Digital rights champions nominated to lead U.S. FCC and NTIA - Access Now

        Today, U.S. President Joe Biden nominated Jessica Rosenworcel as the first permanent chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Gigi Sohn as the fifth commissioner of the FCC, and Alan Davidson as the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

        With these nominations, the FCC and NTIA have complete leadership for the first time since President Biden took office. After former FCC Chair Ajit Pai stepped down nine months ago, the FCC has been deadlocked at 2-2. The deadlock has prevented progress on critically important issues at the Commission, and affected programs like the Emergency Broadband Benefit and the Emergency Connectivity Fund. Similarly, the NTIA has lacked a permanent leader since January, which has impeded action from President Biden’s primary telecommunications advisory agency.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Software Patents

          • YADRO Joins the Open Invention Network Community

            Open Invention Network (OIN), the organization formed to safeguard open source software (OSS) and the largest patent non-aggression community in history, announced today that YADRO has joined as a community member. According to IDC, YADRO is the market leader in enterprise storage and high-performance servers in Russia and Eastern Europe. Offering a full range of high-performance servers, storage systems and industry specific services and tools, YADRO leverages OSS to deploy best-in-class systems. By joining OIN, YADRO is demonstrating its commitment to patent non-aggression in OSS.

      • Copyrights



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