Fedora and Red Hat users are getting a web-based installer, and a new legal situation for Bitcoin smells like retro SCO FUD.
Our road trip machine is loaded up from solar to networking, the tech that made working, living, and recording from the road possible for 44 days and over 2,200 miles.
In this video, we are looking at how to install the Brave Browser on Elementary OS 6.0.
While not something you need everyday every so often it can be advantageoust to add a custom entry into your Linux bootloader such as grub or systemd boot for example to drop yourself into a root shell whenever you need it.
Back in 2019 the Linux kernel deprecated a.out support for that file format used several decades ago before ELF tookover. Now in 2022 it looks like that a.out code will be removed from the kernel.
Linux relied on the a.out format until v1.2 in the mid-90's when ELF became the popular format for binaries. While the a.out format hasn't been widely used on Linux in many years, it took until 2019 for the support to be deprecated for running a.out binaries on x86 32-bit. Compilers and other toolchain components have moved on from the a.out file format for years.
Almost seven months in development, NetworkManager 1.34 is here to further improve support for the WireGuard VPN tunnel protocol and implementation by introducing support for WireGuard profiles to NetworkManager’s text user interface (nmtui), as well as improving import of WireGuard profiles with DNS domain and address family disabled via the command-line interface (nmcli).
Lead Fwupd/LVFS developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat today released v1.7.4 for this open-souce utility to allow firmware updating on Linux of system motherboards and peripherals.
The Fwupd 1.7.4 release adds firmware branch support for ModemManager devices, support for firmware engineers to be able to patch files at known offsets, and a variety of bug fixes.
SciDAVis is a free interactive application aimed at data analysis and publication-quality plotting. It combines a shallow learning curve and an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface with powerful features such as scriptability and extensibility.
Alternative to:
SciDAVis is similar in its field of application to proprietary Windows applications like Origin and SigmaPlot as well as free applications like QtiPlot, Labplot, and Gnuplot.
What sets SciDAVis apart from the above is its emphasis on providing a friendly and open environment (in the software as well as the project) for new and experienced users alike.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Eclipse IDE on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment (IDE) and an extensible plug-in system. The most popular Eclipse product is Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but there are other pretty cool IDEs, including our C/C++ IDE, JavaScript/TypeScript IDE, PHP IDE, and more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Eclipse IDE on a Fedora 35.
For Ubuntu 20.04+ and other Linux with GNOME desktop (e.g., Fedora workstation, Debian and Arch Linux), there’s an extension lets you quickly locate mouse pointer.
The extension is called “Jiggle“. It highlights the mouse pointer position when it moved rapidly by applying 3 cool animation effects: Cursor Scaling, Spotlight, and Fireworks.
cURL (Client URL Library) is a command-line tool for transferring data using various network protocols, typically HTTP/s, though it supports many more including ftp, scp and smb. Curl has been around for quite a while – it was first released in 1996 (though back then it was called httpget).
cURL is a command-line tool for getting or sending data including files using URL syntax. If you are a Linux user there is a good chance you have come across it at some point. Curl is often used as a way to download files from the internet, although it is capable of much more.
Quite often it can be found on most Linux distributions, or if not it is straight forward to install it. This article shows you how to install curl on Ubuntu systems if it isn’t already present, and gives some simple examples to show you how to use curl and confirm that it is working as expected.
In today’s guide, we are going to learn how we can install Java SE 17 on Fedora 35. Java is widely used in programs like Cassandra, Graylog, Wine, etc.
Java delivers thousands of performance, stability, and security updates that is the reason why java is widely used and has a larger community base worldwide.
NFS(Network File System) is a distributed file system protocol that allows a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. It is a popular, cross-platform and distributed file system protocol used to export local file systems over the network so that clients can share directories and files with others over a network and interact with them as though they are mounted locally. This distributed file system protocol allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network in the same way they would access a local storage file. Because it is an open standard, anyone can implement the protocol.
Rocky Linux 8 supports NFS version 3(NFSv3) and 4(NFSv4). The default NFS version is 4.2 which features support for Access Control Lists (ACLs), server-side copy, sparse files, space reservation, labeled NFS, layout enhancements, and much more.
In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure the NFS Server and NFS client on Rocky Linux 8.
In this guide, we will learn how to install and configure Elasticsearch on Ubuntu 20.04 using Ansible.
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch has quickly become the most popular search engine and is commonly used for log analytics, full-text search, security intelligence, business analytics, and operational intelligence use cases.
Ansible is an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool enabling infrastructure as code. It runs on many Unix-like systems, and can configure both Unix-like systems as well as Microsoft Windows.
MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. Its one of the popular relational management system.
Mysql is commonly installed as part of the popular LAMP or LEMP (Linux, Apache/Nginx, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP/Python/Perl) stack. It implements the relational model and Structured Query Language (SQL) to manage and query data.
In this guide we are going to install mysql 8 on FreeBSD 13.
Today we are looking at how to install Godot Game Engine on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!
Notification of the change is abrupt, leaving gamers with only two weeks to download copies of their games from Humble Bundle into their humble bindles. Perhaps the biggest issue is that Humble Bundle will not deliver updates to these games. Those who yearn for the latest content update in this month's Retired Men's Nude Beach Volleyball will be out-of-luck. They will forever be locked behind the Humble Choice subscription plan and only be offered to Windows users.
Today a small bug-fix update went out for Proton Experimental, as Valve continues readying it up ahead of the launch of their handheld Steam Deck. What is Proton? It's a compatibility layer designed to run Windows games from Steam on Linux. See more about it in our full guide.
The Anacrusis is a brand new release from Stray Bombay, and it's another entry in the swarm-shooter like Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood. Running it on Linux is possible too. Interestingly, Stray Bombay was co-founded by former Valve designer Chet Faliszek who worked on the likes of Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead.
"The Anacrusis is a four-player, cooperative first-person shooter set aboard a massive starship stranded at the edge of explored space. Team up with your friends in an infinitely-replayable fight against alien hordes to unlock perks, weapons, and new ways to play that you can share with your team!"
While we are very eager for Godot 4.0 with everything that this open-source game engine is going to deliver on, Godot 3.5 beta is out today and is a rather nice interim step forward.
Exciting with Godot 3.5 is the cross-platform game engine bringing asynchronous shader compilation. Godot 3.5 beta introduces async shader compilation to reduce stuttering with its OpenGL rendering. This new implementation uses an "ubershader" that is compiled on start-up and cached for subsequent runs. For gamers this ubershader system should mean less stalling (or ideally none) during gameplay.
Ubuntu initially garnered attention for being a version of Linux that was easy to install and actually use. But that wasn't all. Ubuntu was exciting. Canonical and the Ubuntu community innovated the desktop, thinking creatively about what the Linux experience needed or could become.
Two decades later, Ubuntu has more users, but that fire doesn't seem to burn as bright. Here are some reasons the Ubuntu desktop now seems relatively dim.
Ever wanted to try out a Linux-based operating system like postmarketOS on your phone… but didn’t want to overwrite the operating system that’s already installed? Now it’s possible.
As reported by TuxPhones, a recent postmarketOS update has added support for “network boot,” which essentially lets you plug an Android phone with an unlocked bootloader into your computer with a USB cable and boot the mobile Linux distro on your phone. Just unplug and reboot to return to Android.
To spread awareness of the Linux ecosystem, the very first "Live CDs" played a crucial role: by taking away most of the fear of overwriting their hard drives, they allowed more people to test and effectively use any spin of the Operating System, and by keeping the filesystem in RAM, have any changes magically disappear on reboot. This has always been possible, RAM constraints aside, because desktop BIOSes tend to support easy booting from external devices.
The situation on Android devices is, however, more complex. Since most consumer ARM devices are not allowed to boot by any drive other than the internal flash storage, the fastboot protocol used on most Android phones solved this by enabling, in most of its implementations, commands to boot a custom kernel (just on unlocked devices). Furthermore, by unofficial means, even iPhones supported by projects like checkra1n could theoretically sideload kernel code from the modified bootloader.
As the mainline porting workflow becomes more streamlined, we found ourselves able to automate and simplify a lot of things that previously required a lot of manual work. A great example of this is the mdss-panel-driver-generator which is able to convert vendor devicetree panel control sequences into a driver which meets the requirements for upstreaming into mainline.
More recently, tools like the new msm-firmware-loader for postmarketOS, and the potential for scripts which can extract and package firmware simply given a link to an OTA update, we might now have a generation of porters with little/no knowledge on how firmware works in the context of downstream / mainline. Qualcomm platforms differentiate between mdt firmware files where the firmware is split into many files, and mbn files where it is squashed into one larger one.
We’re excited to announce the Arduino Open Source Report for 2021 is now available, offering many insights into the development of our open-source ecosystem during the past year.
In this retrospective report you’ll learn about the activities Arduino carried out in the last twelve months, thanks to the hard work of the employees, contractors and volunteers on our team and to the passion of our vibrant community, fueling our mission every day.
We’re proud of the many achievements we celebrated in 2021. It was one of the busiest and most productive years in Arduino’s history of commitment to open source.
The OnePlus 5 is a popular high-end phone from 2017, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and Adreno 540. It has a 1080p display and up to 8GB of RAM.
Mainline support for the device has been around for a while, since early 2020 in fact. Unfortunately, the Snapdragon 835 SoC it is based on lacks the same interest upstream that has benefited SDM845 devices so much, requiring a lot of work to reach a usable level of functionality.
Despite that, after a lot of time and effort from Jami Kettunen and several other Snapdragon 835 developers, we can finally welcome a postmarketOS port based on a close-to-mainline kernel! A surprising amount of the hardware already works, although there are a few known stability issues, such as the requirement to run diag-router, a tool meant for debugging the modem to prevent WiFi from crashing.
The RISC-V ISA is commonly divided into two architectures, namely RV32 and RV64, covering 32-bit and 64-bit register sizes respectively. And although the RV64 standard is not yet fully RV32-compatible, the two are, except from some minor divergences, closely associated products of the same family.
In fact, it took some years to see the Linux kernel running on RV64 (and partially RV32). The first obstacle was predictably the lack of suitable and powerful enough silicon for the new software, and the next - which was thankfully solved quite fast - was porting the entire kernel to a new architecture.
But now, with Linux support approaching full stability on a variety of RISC-V chipsets, distributions like Alpine starting to add support for RV64 packages, and an increasing quantity of chips powering Linux single board computers which retail for prices as low as $12, another challenge for most consumer producers occurs: how to turn this into a competitive ecosystem for Android smartphones?
As most readers will know, the PinePhone is essentially considered to be the reference mobile Linux hacker's playground. And while this achievement may be for the most part thanks to its flexible software, its hardware structure, and the Quectel EG25-G baseband in particular, are no exception. The modem firmware can be flashed through fastboot over USB like a regular Android phone, and in recent months, even an open-source firmware for it was developed, for what could be the first time ever on this kind of device, including audio, GPS and proper power management. In fact, what stopped this impressive operating system from spreading further, or being shipped by default on new Pines, is not really its lack of maturity, but rather the set of legal problems that are associated with re-flashing of mobile broadband modems. (There are still instructions on how to flash it, of course)
It was not three years ago that the PinePhone was announced. With entry-level, but relatively modern specifications, video output through Type-C, and full openness to custom software and mainline Linux, the device grew to be possibly even more popular than expected. Name it, and most Linux enthusiast will either know it, or own one themselves.
While its humble specifications did not put it directly on the same league as Purism's Librem 5, the community grew large enough to test most pieces of modern open-source software to its form factor.
As many will know, the main difference between commercial phones and Linux-native alternatives is in how the latter is more of a "pocket computer" that can be used without firmware limitations. Coupled with often very open, if often modular, hardware, this category of devices kind of takes on the PDAs which we missed since the smartphone era. Having proper desktop-ready apps and advanced hardware in your pocket brings not only somewhat better freedom but also improved possibilities. This, naturally, if you can accept the still limited usability of most mobile Linux software, which is far from the ease of use and stability of commercial models.
If choosing a graphical environment for traditional Linux computers is already confusing for some users, deciding one for Linux phones is twice as hard. Most mobile interfaces still lack the maturity and usability of their traditional counterparts, also because integrating all kinds of desktop applications without keyboard can be tricky, given the graphical toolkit fragmentation and the challenges of functionally scaling most windows to very small sizes.
Here we will briefly showcase the main mobile Linux projects, most of which we mentioned in the past, to give an overview of the reasonable choices for most users.
UNISOC (and formerly Spreadtrum) chips have always been a very popular choice for Android device manufacturers. However, they were not commonly known for having wide mainline compatibility. Similarly to Rockchip and AllWinner, these chips became popular for their fast performance and relatively low prices, to the point of being used on devices ranges from the (just released) JingPad A1 to mainstream Android Samsung and Teclast tablets.
In the last years, the number of Linux distributions aimed at smartphones and tablets has grown considerably. What was initially a land of projects like UBPorts, Armbian and postmarketOS has grown to interest projects like Manjaro, and several Debian and Arch spins.
However, the newborn Kupfer does not look like yet another fork for Linux phones. While at an early stage, the ambitious project's infrastructure mimics that of postmarketOS, and even shares some early testers and users. The aim is not only to build a ready-to-flash Arch with some added mobile packages, but rather to have a complete pmbootstrap-like suite of tools (the Docker-based kupferbootstrap) to easily port new devices, and maintain existing ones. The first devices to be supported are Snapdragon 845 phones (OnePlus 6T, Poco F1 among others) and the BQ Aquaris X5 – and, interestingly, no PinePhone yet.
You have most likely heard of Fairphone, who iFixit claim to be "the world's most repairable phone", and certainly lives up to it. But now, there's a new kid on the block, and they have a different approach.
SHIFT are a very small phone manufacturer based in Germany, they produce quite a few models and even have a fully convergent device planned, sort of like the Motorola Lapdock of yonder years. In this article, I will discuss my experience with the SHIFT6mq, and why I think you will hear a lot more about SHIFT in the future.
The Pocket P.C., short for Pocket Popcorn Computer, is a handheld created by the independent hardware manufacturer Popcorn Computer, and originally announced in the fall of 2019. This PDA comes with an integrated keyboard, and runs a pure Linux OS based on the Allwinner A64 platform.
By now, most readers will be aware of the quick progress of Qualcomm phones in the mobile Linux ecosystem. This became especially true with the SDM845 platform, powering the near-stable Linux ports of devices like the Oneplus 6/6T and Poco F1 which we often mentioned in the past.
However, after some work, a new family of popular Android devices is entering the kernel: the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 from 2019, was finally shown to boot the 5.15 kernel, and should be soon entering the mainline Linux kernel tree in a set of new patches. The Note 7 (not that one) is based on the Snapdragon 660 chipset, a 14nm SoC which is focused on high performance and power efficiency. Powered by eight Kryo cores (custom ARM64), it can be clocked as high as 2.2GHz, supports LPDDR4 memories, top-speed LTE modems and high-speed I/Os while keeping a close eye to the power consumption.
There have been some recent waves in the Pine64 community, as user Federico Izzo (@_symmetrist_) found a PinePhone mod which can roughly double the eMMC speed simply by moving a single resistor. But, anyone can write a flashy headline, how the heck does this actually work?
Federico did a write-up on their blog which explains where they got the idea from and how to perform the mod for yourself, as well as how distros can support the mod. Thanks to this it is now already supported in postmarketOS!
To summarise, the PinePhone eMMC ships in the "DDR52" timing mode by default, which modes are allowed depends on the eMMC controller voltage (this voltage is supplied by the VCC-PC power rail and provides power to the eMMC controller). DDR52 is the highest timing mode supported at 3.3v, which is what the PinePhone uses. To run this any higher, the supply must be at 1.8v or 1.2v.
The cold months are here, people are looking forward to the holidays, and of course there is a new FSF Ethical Tech Giving Guide. This is the yearly Free Software Foundation article giving advice what hardware to avoid for reasons of freedom, and which ones are instead recommended.
This year, the guide starts at the top with advice for smartphones, which is great since these account for a large chunk of computing use these days. Let's take a closer look at the advice in this screenshot below.
If you're new to this whole full-stack development thing and get confused by some of the words people use when talking about full-stack development, then stick around because here, I'll be compiling the most common words and phrases related to full-stack development. Of course, it will take much more time to learn the details of each of the things I'll be mentioning. Each of the words and phrases will be summarized to give you an idea of what these words and phrases mean, so that you can understand what people are referencing with them when talking about certain areas of full-stack development.
Everett is a configuration library for Python apps.
The Rust team is happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.58.0. Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
If you have a previous version of Rust installed via rustup, getting Rust 1.58.0 is as easy as...
A couple of weeks ago when it emerged that a new Tesla might have a four-wheel steering capability, our colleague Dan Maloney mused aloud as to how useful a four-wheel steering system might be, and indeed whether or not one might be necessary at all. This is hardly the first time four-wheel steering has appeared as the Next Big Thing on the roads. It’s time to take a look at the subject and ask whether it’s an idea with a future, or set to go the way of runflat tyres as one of those evergreen innovations that never quite catches on.
What’s your dream vehicle? If you’re like me, you have more than one. There in my lottery-winner’s garage, alongside the trail bikes and the mobile hackerspace, the dictator-size Mercedes and the Golf Mk1, will be a vehicle that by coincidence has four-wheel steering. The JCB Fastrac is a tractor that can travel across almost any terrain at full speed, and though I have no practical use for one and will never own one, I have lusted after one of these machines for over three decades. Their four-wheel steering system is definitely unusual, but that makes it the perfect vehicle with which to demonstrate four-wheel steering.
We ignored the warning and jumped right in. The “high” voltages in the case of an electric vehicle (EV) like the Model S is approximately 400 volts. Briefly, external input via the charge connector can be single or three phase, 120 or 250 VAC, depending on your region and charging station. This get boosted to a nominal 400 VDC bus that is distributed around the various vehicle systems, including the motors and the battery pack.
When we think of tracked vehicles, we normally think of tanks, or perhaps heavy construction machinery. Meanwhile the average member of the public is left out of the fun. [Bob] of [Making Stuff] won’t be one of them, however, having put together a ride-on tracked vehicle for his own enjoyment.
The machine is welded together from plenty of steel, making it more than tough enough to soak up the punishment of off-road duty. The design features four suspended buggy wheels on either side running inside rubber tracks, with a cogged drive wheel at the front. Propulsion is thanks to a 440 cc DuroMax engine good for a full 18 horsepower and 26 ft-lbs of torque, driving the tracks through a differential mounted up front.
If you are an old hand at RF design, you probably have a good handle on matching impedance. However, if you are just getting started with RF, [FesZ Electronic]’s latest video series on lossless impedance matching is well worth watching.
Matching is important for several reasons. Maximum power transfer occurs when the source and load impedance match. Also, at RF, mismatched impedance can cause reflections which, again, robs you of useful power. The video covers some math and then moves on to LTSpice to simulate a test circuit. But the part you are really waiting for — the practical circuits — is about 15 minutes in. Since the values you need are often oddball, [FesZ] makes his own adjustable inductors and uses a trimmer capacitor to adjust the actual capacitance value.
Smart meters form mesh networks among themselves and transmit your usage data all around. Some of them even allow the power company to turn off your power remotely, through the mesh. You might want to know if any of this information is sesnsitive, or if the power shutdown system has got glaring security flaws and random people could just turn your house off. Hash Salehi has set out to get inside these meters, and luckily enough for the rest of us, he was kind enough to share his findings in Remoticon 2021. It’s a journey filled with wonderful tidbits about GNU Radio, embedded devices, and running your own power company inside a Faraday cage.
The smart meter in question is deployed by a power company known as Oncor in the Dallas, Texas, area. These particular meters form an extensive mesh network using a ZigBee module onboard that allows them to to pass messages amongst themselves that eventually make their way to a collector or aggregator to be uploaded to a more central location. Hash obtained his parts via everyone’s favorite online auction house and was surprised to see how many parts were available. Then, with parts in hand, he began all the usual reverse engineering tricks: SDR, Faraday cages, flash chip readers, and recreating the schematic.
IDrive€® 360, a secure, enterprise-scale endpoint cloud backup solution from IDrive, has added backup support for Linux machines, enabling IT admins to schedule and automate backups for all of their organizational Linux data into a single account through a unified web console.
The Zephyr™ Project announces a major milestone today with Baumer joining as a Platinum member and Infineon Technologies, Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc., Percepio and Silicon Labs joining as Silver members. These new members have selected Zephyr RTOS as one of the key technologies to build their next generation of connected products and solutions.
IBM has joined forces with the Linux Foundation and the Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service and AgStack Foundation on a new project seeking to provide farmers with detailed information about how to grow crops sustainably and deal with the effects of climate change.
IBM developers began working with Clemson researchers through the Call For Code program, which IBM created as a way to support people building innovative technology solutions to persistent global problems.
Many rural farmers in the U.S. do not have easy access to necessary crop and pest management data. Farmers often rely on information they receive from Research and Cooperative Extension Services. Traditionally, getting this information required calling or going in person to Cooperative Extension Service offices to ask questions. This approach could be prohibitive for those farmers not located near a physical office location. Even farmers in close proximity to an Extension Service office often need faster access to this information to make decisions while they are on the farm.
If data sources were more accessible to farmers, they could have the crop management resources they need in a more timely manner. Clemson University’s Cooperative Extension Service is one such important data source, providing cooperatives and farmers with agriculture recommendations to improve their yields and day-to-day farming practices. Modernizing and digitizing this kind of data to make it accessible online helps bring agriculture recommendations to farmers when and where they need it, without having to be in a particular location.
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) participated today in a meeting hosted by the White House to discuss security of open source software, and how to improve the "supply chain" of open source software to better facilitate the rapid adoption of security fixes when necessary.
The virtual summit included representation from a number of companies and U.S. departments and agencies. Three representatives of the ASF participated in the virtual summit, ASF President David Nalley, VP of Security Mark Cox, and ASF board member Sam Ruby.
