Desktop/Laptop

• Linux Made Simple ☛ Linux Weekly Roundup #172

  Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup, we had a wonderful full week in the world of Linux releases with Nitrux 2022.02.28, openSUSE 15.4 beta, Voyager Live 22.04 Alpha, Freespire 8.2, and Endless OS 4.0.3.

• OMG Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Now “Just Works” on the Framework Laptop [Ed: But for a very long time this company forced you to get and to pay for Microsoft malware (Windows), without being given a say/option]

  If you’re lucky enough to own the modular marvel that is the Framework laptop you’ll be thrilled to know that Ubuntu finally “just works” on the device.

  Ubuntu did, of course, work prior to now as well, but some of the laptop’s uniquely-upgradable hardware was not supported ‘out-of-the-box’. Many of those looking to run the latest LTS release on the device had to perform a few manual interventions to get core features, including the Wi-Fi and fingerprint reader, working as intended.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Video ☛ Be Careful With The AUR On Manjaro Linux – Invidious

  The AUR being the Arch User Repository is designed for use around Arch Linux and when you use it on anything else even something Arch based you may face depending on the configuration of that distros repos.

• Mintcast 378.5 – Oh, the Distros You’ll Go!

  1:00 The Linux Innards
  38:06 Vibrations from the Ether
  43:20 Check This Out
  45:00 Announcements & Outro

  In this episode we discuss our current daily driver distros of choice and pick alternatives that we would move to if our current distros of choice stopped being developed.

• Video ☛ Peppermint OS | The PERFECT High-Performance Alternative For Windows! (NEW CHANGES) – Invidious

  Peppermint OS 11 makes massive changes in form of the new Debian Base and Unified XFCE desktop. The system that is famous for its super-fast performance is now reborn with an even robust engine under the hood and a completely revamped experience for its users.

Kernel Space

• Linux 5.17-rc7

  No surprises this week - we still have a couple of pending things, but
  everything looks under control.
  
  Knock wood.
  
  Last week saw the usual number of small fixes all over - with btrfs
  standing out once again. But once again it's not like it's a lot of
  changes, it's just that the rest tends to be pretty small.
  
  "The rest" in this case is mostly networking (drivers but also some
  core fixes), misc other drivers (gpu and input, with some noise
  elsewhere) and arch updates (mostly devicetree and some kvm fixes, but
  also RISC-V and s390).
  
  Shortlog appended - and as things stand, I expect that final 5.17 will
  be next weekend unless something surprising comes up.
  
  Please test,
  
                  Linus
  

Applications

• Eric Hameleers ☛ Matrix.org or Rocket.chat? | Alien Pastures

  I am considering an additional article to my Slackware Cloud Server series.

  As I showed in that series, a Nextcloud server can be equipped with capable text, voice and video communication apps but they are self-contained. The Jitsi Meet stack contains an internal XMPP communication server and Nextcloud collabration apps can only connect to user accounts on other Nextcloud server instances (through a process called federation).
  What if you wanted to collaborate with people on other networks, say, other clouds? In the past I would be quick to point to XMPP server solutions like Jabber but those seem to be disappearing. Two popular platforms exist which use completely different protocols: Matrix.org is built on top of its own Matrix open standard and Rocket.chat. is built with the Meteor JavaScript platform. These two also use federation to connect to other instances of their own product but on top of that, these servers offer bridges to a whole lot of other communication platforms, such as Teams, WhatsApp, IRC, Slack etc.

  How well do these two integrate with Nextcloud? On my own cloud server (based on the Nextcloud platform) I installed Element for Nextcloud, which is an app to use the Matrix.org web client called Element (formerly riot.chat). Element can connect to existing Matrix.org servers out there, or you can setup a Matrix server yourself.
  And then there is an alpha-quality app to integrate Rocket.chat into Nextcloud but it is not advised to install that on anything else than a testing environment.
  Worth mentioning: both Matrix.org and Rocket.chat offer seamless integration of the Jitsi collaboration platform which is also covered in great detail in my article series.

• Linux Links ☛ 7 Best Free and Open Source Accountancy Software – LinuxLinks

  Accountancy is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations.

  Accounting software is a computer program that assists bookkeepers and accountants in recording and reporting a firm’s financial transactions. The functionality of accounting software differs from product to product.

  There’s a fair degree of overlap between personal finance software and accounting software. Both often provide double-entry bookkeeping functionality. The ratings featured here consider only the accountancy aspects of software. For example, you’ll notice GnuCash that scores much higher as a personal finance tool.

  Here is our opinion on the finest accountancy software available for Linux. We only include free and open source software.

Instructionals/Technical

• Seafile with Raspberry PI: self-hosted and open source file&sync solution

  As files in your devices increase, a common limitation is having a cloud storage to get your files securely stored and available for your access and collaboration. Common storage services (like Google Drive or One Drive) give you few space compared with modern needs and require a fee for bigger GigaBytes. Seafile with Raspberry PI can give a cheap solution with cross device clients

  In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install and configure Seafile with Raspberry PI by using Docker, which makes far simpler the installation procedure.

• UNIX Cop ☛ Install Velociraptor on Linux

  Similar to GRR, Velociraptor also allows for hunting across many thousands of machines. Inspired by OSQuery, Velociraptor implements a new query language dubbed VQL (Velociraptor Query Language) which is similar to SQL but extends the query language in a more powerful way. Velociraptor also emphasizes ease of installation and very low latency — typically collecting artifacts from thousands of endpoints in a matter of seconds.

• UNIX Cop ☛ How to Permanently Disable Swap in Linux

  In this article we will learn How to Permanently Disable Swap in Linux. Swap space represents a physical memory page that lives on top of disk partition or a special disk file used for extending the RAM memory of a system when the physical memory fills up.

• UNIX Cop ☛ How to Setup Openshift Origin on CentOS 8

  In this article we will learn How to Setup Openshift Origin on CentOS 8.

  OpenShift is an open-source PaaS platform that allows you to deploy an application on the cloud. It supports many programming languages including, Python, PHP, Perl, Node.js, Ruby, and Java. You can also add support for other languages. It is specially designed for a high-availability and scalable application platform. Moreover, It provides an easy way to scale your application as per your demand with zero downtime. It provides a powerful web UI that helps you to monitor container resources, container health, and the IP address of nodes.

• UNIX Cop ☛ Install and configure Kernel Crash Dump on Centos 8

  In this article we will learn how to Install and configure Kernel Crash Dump on Centos 8.

  Kdump is a service providing a crash dumping mechanism. The service enables you to save the contents of the system’s memory for later analysis. kdump uses the kexec system call to boot into the second kernel (a capture kernel) without rebooting; and then captures the contents of the crashed kernel’s memory (a crash dump or a vmcore) and saves it. The second kernel resides in a reserved part of the system memory.

• H2S Media ☛ How to Install LibreWolf Browser on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

  Learn the commands to install open source LibreWolf browser on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa LTS Linux using command terminal.

  What is LibreWorf?

  LibreWolf is an open-source browser based on Firefox. This means you will get the performance and stability of the popular Mozilla browser. Along with that, the key focus of the LibreWolf developers is to provide protection against tracking, fingerprinting techniques along with other few security improvements. It also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection, and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.

• Jamie McClelland ☛ Jamie McClelland | LVM Cache Surprises

  By far the biggest LVM Cache surprise is just how well it works.

  Between 2010 and 2020, my single, biggest and most consistent headache managing servers at May First has been disk i/o. We run a number of physical hosts with encrypted disks, with each providing a dozen or so sundry KVM guests. And they consume a lot of disk i/o.

  This problem kept me awake at night and made me want to put my head on the table and cry during the day as I monitored the output of vmstat 1 and watched each disk i/o death spiral unfold.

  We tried everything. Turned off fsck’s, turned off RAID monthly checks. Switched to less intensive backup systems. Added solid state drives and tried to stragically distribute them to our database partitions and other read/write heavy services. Added tmpfs file systems where it was possible.

  But, the sad truth was: we simply did not have the resources to pay for the infrastructure that could support the disk i/o our services demanded.

  Then, we discovered LVM caching (cue Hallelujah). We starting provisioning SSD partitions to back up our busiest spinning disk logical volumes and presto. Ten years of agony gone like a poof of smoke!

  I don’t know which individuals are responsible for writing the LVM caching code but if you see this: THANK YOU! Your contributions to the world are noticed, appreciated and have had an enormous impact on at least one individual.

• Linux Hint ☛ Drop Schema Postgres

  In this article, we will be discussing the deletion of schema from our database. Database Schemas are a group of objects of databases that hold almost every element that the database should have, like triggers, functions, tables, and predefined procedures. In PostgreSQL, only the owner or superuser may remove a schema. There are several checkpoints that we have to go through when we delete a schema; these checks will be discussed further in this article.

• Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Quadrapassel on a Chromebook – a Tetris Game

  Today we are looking at how to install Quadrapassel, a Tetris game, 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.

• Linux Hint ☛ How can we identify a RAM chip on the Raspberry Pi 4 device

  The Raspberry Pi is a mini-computer board that contains RAM, a processor, and other peripheral device connections that are required by the personal computer. These boards were initially launched for the understanding of computer usage on the school teaching level but later on, these boards were used for different electronic projects.

  The Raspberry Pi has launched different boards like Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 4 which have different technical specifications. In this write-up, we will understand the methods to identify the RAM chip on the Raspberry Pi board.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Drupal on AlmaLinux 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Drupal on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Drupal is an open-source and popular content management tool with a large, supportive community. It’s used by millions of people and organizations around the globe to build and maintain their websites.

  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 Drupal on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.

• Video ☛ How to install Krita on Zorin OS 16 – Invidious

• Linux Hint ☛ Copy Table From One Database to Another Postgres

  Data in the PostgreSQL database management system is stored in the form of tables. Each table is created in the database. The record inside the database in the form of tables can be moved from one database to another and in the same database as well. This guide will cover some methodology of creating a new database and then copying the relation in one database to the new one.

  To start the steps, open the PostgreSQL shell. It will demand the database name, username, and password for the verification. The password is a mandatory field to proceed further. After that, you are connected to the database created already.

• Video ☛ Easily Run Windows Apps On Linux With Bottles – Invidious

  Need to run Windows programs on Linux? Bottles can help with that! Bottles is a frontend to WINE. Choose between Gaming and Software environment based on the type of software you want to start. More advanced users can choose the Custom environment to configure the bottle on their own.

• Install DigiKam 7.6.0 On Ubuntu / Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX

  This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to download and install digiKam 7.6.0 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04, and Linux Mint 20.3.

  digiKam is an advanced open-source photo management application written in Qt and it is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. This application allows you to import, export, manage and edit the raw files.

  Digikam team released its stable version 7.6.0 and released on 5th Mar 2022.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install PHP 7.4 on CentOS Stream 9 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 7.4 on CentOS 9 Stream. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP, a recursive acronym for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, is a popular server-side scripting language used in web development for creating powerful and dynamic websites. The PHP Version 7.4.0 has been released for the developers, and users interested in running it in production. The official release date for GA was November 28, 2019.

  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 PHP 7.4 on CentOS 9 Stream.

• How to Setup Samba File Sharing Server on RHEL 8 (CentOS/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux)

  Have you ever wanted to share a file on your local area network with another user and make that file available with no network restriction for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems?

  This article will give you a step-by-step guide on installing and setting up Samba file sharing on RHEL 8 distros, such as CentOS 8, Rocky Linux 8, and AlmaLinux 8.

  That will give other users on your LAN easy access to your files. Samba is a free software application that helps Linux servers to share resources and files with other clients such as windows clients, Mac, and other distributions.

  Samba applications use TCP/IP for sharing data between the cross-platform servers. It is implemented using CIFS and SMB protocols. CIFS stands for Common Internet File System, while SMB stands for Server Message Block.

• Trend Oceans ☛ How to create & manage loop devices(virtual block) on Linux – TREND OCEANS

  When you run the lsblk -l or df -h command to list out the available block/storage devices, you may find the /dev/loop filesystem, especially if you are using the Snap package manager, and it’s quite common to find in Ubuntu distributions.

  If you are keen on knowing what loop devices are and how to mount and unmount them from the system, then this article will be enough for you.

  because it will cover all the necessary aspects of loop devices, like how to create a loop device, loop filesystem, mounting, and unmounting steps.

Games

• IGN ☛ Steam Deck: 7 Unexpected Things We Discovered

  Valve’s Steam Deck is here and, since we’ve had our hands on it, we’ve discovered several little things – both good and bad – that it can and cannot do.

  Here’s a round-up of the most unexpected things we discovered during our first few weeks with the Steam Deck. Please take note of time of publish, as we’ve discovered the Steam Deck is constantly evolving and some of these may change in the future (wanna know how it’s evolving? Check out our review-in-progress).

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Here’s how to transfer files from your PC to a Steam Deck | GamingOnLinux

  Want to transfer files to and from your PC to a Steam Deck? It’s easy and here’s how you can do it in a few minutes.

  Something I’ve seen asked a lot directly to me, and across numerous posts on Reddit so hopefully this will help. This way requires no extra hardware, you just need to ensure your devices are on the same network and that’s all.

• Phoronix ☛ DXVK-NVAPI 0.5.3 Released To Improve NVIDIA API Integration For Games On Steam Play – Phoronix

  Following the recent releases of DXVK 1.10 and VKD3D-Proton 2.6 this past week, DXVK-NVAPI 0.5.3 is out this Sunday as the newest update to this library providing NVIDIA driver API “NVAPI” integration around DXVK/VKD3D-Proton for Windows games running on Linux by way of Steam Play (Proton).

Desktop Environments/WMs

• 9to5Linux ☛ Budgie 10.6 Desktop Environment Improves Theme and Panel, Revamps Notification System

  Budgie 10.6 is here 11 months after version 10.5.3 and introduces improvements to application grouping, improvements to single-instance application tracking, better support for some KDE applications, as well as a revamped notification system that’s now standalone and is no longer part of the Raven notification center, paving the way for new features like support for notification badges in the icon tasklist.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • 9to5Linux ☛ digiKam 7.6 Released with New Masonry-Based Flow View Plugin, JPEG-XL Support

    Coming just one and a half months after version 7.5, digiKam 7.6 is here to introduce a new Flow View plugin based on Masonry layouts, a grid layout based on columns designed to optimize the use of space inside a canvas.

    Users interested in using this third-party plugin can access it from the View menu in all digiKam main windows, as well as in the Showfoto image editor component. However, you should keep in mind that the plugin is not considered mature due to the fact that it can’t display any metadata or details from items.

  • Looking for Translators!

    KDE produces amazing software, but sometimes not everyone can use it.

    One of the reasons that can happen is because it’s not translated to a language they understand.

    For that we are calling for translators, specially for the languages listed below which had not had a single translation update in the last year [*].

    Committing to help means that you will do some work every now and then, not just translate a few texts only.

  • First month of KDE SoK 2022

    My work centres around alerts in KDE Connect iOS app. As it’s under development, a lot of information is communicated to the user using system alerts. iOS is limited to displaying only one alert at a time and doesn’t have any native system for queuing them.

  • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ The Qt MPD Client ‘Cantata’ Finally Discontinued | UbuntuHandbook

    After 10 years of development, the Qt based graphical MPD client Cantata finally discontinued.

    Cantata is a free open source graphical client for MPD, features multiple MPD collections, highly customizable layout, MPRISv2 DBUS interface, Jamendo, Magnatune, SoundCloud, and Podcasts support.

    The source code of the project has been archived for a period of time after version 2.4.2. By releasing Cantata 2.5.0, the developer finally announced that the development of Cantata has now ceased!

  • Inscribing the Ellipse: SoK’22 #3

    This is my third blogpost for SoK 2022.

    If you have been following my earlier blogposts, you would know that I’ve been working on adding the Perspective Ellipse Assistant Tool in Krita.

Distributions

• Debian Family

  • Make Use Of ☛ What Can You Do With the 64-Bit Version of Raspberry Pi OS?

    The 64-bit version of the official Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian) operating system is now available to install using the standard Raspberry Pi Imager tool. But why should you opt to use it rather than the standard 32-bit operating system?

    Here, we will take a look at the advantages, and minor downsides, and some of the use cases for using Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit.

Devices/Embedded

• Tom’s Hardware ☛ Argon EON Review: Turns Raspberry Pi Into a NAS | Tom’s Hardware

  Argon Forty loves releasing cases with names that have permutations of the word “ONE.” So far we’ve had the Argon ONE (and M.2), NEO and now we have the EON. But rather than another wedge shaped Raspberry Pi case bound for our desktop, the EON is bound for our living room, office or small business where it helps turn your Pi into a network-attached storage drive (NAS).

  The $150 Argon EON, which goes on sale in mid March 2022, is a delightfully designed Raspberry Pi 4 case that has better aesthetics than many of the best Raspberry Pi Cases. Made from space-grade aluminum, this cyberpunk influenced aesthetic is right at home in our lives. Inside we can store up to four 2.5 inch drives, or two 3.5 inch drives, and running the show is our favorite single board computer, the Raspberry Pi 4.

  The Argon EON kickstarter was successfully funded in September 2021, with backers receiving their units in early 2022. Argon Forty raised HK$ 1,177,230 (approximately $150,609) from over one thousand backers. Ahead of the retail release we secured an Argon EON for review and put it through its paces during a week of tests and typical work scenarios.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Express ☛ New £130 Android phone will make you wish you’d not bought that flagship | Express.co.uk

  • The Best Puzzle RPGs for Android – Ticket to Earth, Spellspire, Bomb Squad and More – Droid Gamers

  • Android Police ☛ The best microSD cards for Android devices in 2022

  • TechRadar ☛ OnePlus 10 Pro vs Google Pixel 6 Pro: Android Pro face-off | TechRadar

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: nanotime 0.3.6 on CRAN: Updates

    Leonardo and I are pleased to another update to our nanotime package bringing it to version 0.3.6 which landed on CRAN earlier today.

    nanotime relies on the RcppCCTZ package (as well as the RcppDate package for additional C++ operations) and offers efficient high(er) resolution time parsing and formatting up to nanosecond resolution, and the bit64 package for the actual integer64 arithmetic. Initially implemented using the S3 system, it has benefitted greatly from a rigorous refactoring by Leonardo who not only rejigged nanotime internals in S4 but also added new S4 types for periods, intervals and durations.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Perl ☛ TWC Episode 154 – Padawan Missing

      In which we search for a needle in a lendee
      (or maybe a chatchka in a haystack),
      and delight in some lazy CPAN comfort.

  • Java

    • Linux Hint ☛ Encapsulation in Java | Explained

      Encapsulation is one of the most significant concepts of object-oriented programming that provides security by hiding the sensitive data/implementation details of the class from the users. In Java, encapsulation can be achieved by declaring the class attributes/variables as private. In certain cases, we need to access or modify the private variables, so in such a scenario, we can use the public get and set methods.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Constructor in Java | Explained

      Object-oriented programming provides a concept of constructors that allows us to initialize the newly created objects. A constructor is a special type of method/function having the same name as the class name and a constructor doesn’t have a return type.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Classes and Objects in Java | Explained

      Object-oriented programming has four primary/fundamental concepts i.e. inheritance, encapsulation, abstraction, and polymorphism, and all these concepts revolve around the classes and objects. A class is a blueprint/template that represents the properties and behavior of the objects while the objects are instances of a class. In java, defining the class wouldn’t take any memory until an object of the class is created.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Class Methods in Java | Explained

      In Java, a method is nothing but a block of code/statement that is declared within the class and can perform different actions when someone calls it. Some methods can be called directly with their name (i.e. without creating the class object) while some methods require instance/object of the class (i.e. must be invoked with the object of the class).

      The methods that can be called directly are referred as a class or static methods, while the methods that need an object of the class to be invoked are referred as instance or non-static methods.

    • Linux Hint ☛ Abstraction in Java | Explained

      Data Abstraction is one of the most important concepts of OOP that shows only essential details to the user and hides the desired details from the users. All in all the main purpose of abstraction is to provide security.

      The best example of abstraction can be an ATM machine which can be used for cash transfer, withdrawal, inquiring account balance, etc. We utilize ATM machines to achieve different functionalities but when we put the card in the ATM, we have no idea what operations are happening within the ATM machine. That’s exactly what abstraction classes, methods, and interfaces do in Java.

Applications

• digiKam 7.6.0 is released

  
  After one month of active maintenance and another huge bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.6.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.

  Long time ago, the AppImage packaging suffered from an important lack of International Components for Unicode (ICU) support. Typically, digiKam and Showfoto deal with the string internally using Qt, but the framework was not compiled with the ICU library to handle properly all string encoding used over the world.

Instructionals/Technical

• Tubsta ☛ Native IPv6 with OpenBSD and Aussie Broadband

  We are coming on two decades since IPv6 became a recognised standard and generally available but it is still not being widely adopted by people and organisations that have easy access to IPv4 address space. Even if you have a native IPv4 address, it will typically be in the form of some CG-NAT or other NAT on your customer premises equipment (CPE).

  Things work so much better when they have a dedicated, routable IP address, especially when they don’t need to share a state table with other connections.

• Mark Hansen ☛ Imaging Bad Hard Drives (with a Synology NAS)

  This is what I learned, trying to recover data from a bad drive. Most of this post should work for imaging a disk on a regular non-Synology Linux system.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install LibreWolf Browser on Debian 11 Bullseye

  LibreWolf is a Firefox fork that focuses on privacy and security by eliminating telemetry, which can be invasive to your personal information, along with increased protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install LibreWolf Browser on Debian 11 Bullseye. The tutorial will go over importing the official repository and gpg key and updating and removing the browser.

• How to install KumbiaPHP on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04?

  For many, English is the universal language, but there is also a very active community of Spanish-speaking developers. That is why we have created a PHP framework with a Latin flavor so that everyone can take advantage of it. Today, you will learn how to install KumbiaPHP on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04

• Its FOSS ☛ How to Install and Use FileZilla on Ubuntu Linux

  If you ask the geeky sysadmins, they will swear by rsync or scp commands for transferring files between remote server and local system.

  However, those are command line methods and not everyone feels comfortable.

  Thankfully, there are some GUI tools available that let you transfer files to or from the remote servers.

  FileZilla is a popular, cross-platform, open-source tool for this purpose. It supports transferring file using FTP over TLS or SSL (FTPS) and also FTP over SSH (SFTP) along with old FTP protocol.

• Tom’s Hardware ☛ How To Change File or Directory Permissions in Linux | Tom’s Hardware

  If you’ve ever tried to run a script from the command line in Linux and gotten an error message saying that it’s not executable or attempted to enter a directory only to be blocked by the system, you probably don’t have permissions to do those things. Fortunately, if you have the proper rights or the ability to act as a super user (accessible by using sudo), you can change the permissions on files and directories.

  In this how-to we’ll look at the chmod command, a powerful command that can change file and directory permissions for the owner, user group members and others. In a section below, we’ll also explain how to tell what group your user is in and exactly what Linux means by “others.”

  Whilst you become accustomed to these commands it’s good to work with example empty files and directories and you should take extra care to ensure you are carefully following the instructions.

  All the commands in this how-to will work on most Linux machines. We’ve used a Ubuntu 20.04 install but you could run this how-to on a Raspberry Pi. All of the how-to is performed via the Terminal. You can open a terminal window on most Linux machines by pressing ctrl, alt and t.

• H2S Media ☛ How to Install Krita on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish – Linux Shout

  Learn the different ways to install Krita on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish using the command terminal for creating beautiful drawings.

  What is Krita?

  Krita is free drawing software that also lets you create animations and export them as videos. What distinguishes the program from comparable applications? Krita is kept relatively slim but does not lack any of the central functions. You can customize both the user interface and the tools to suit your needs.

  For example, you can freely move and adjust the set-up of the individual tool elements on the user interface. You can save your preferred settings so that they are right there waiting for you next time.

  You also have the option to customize the existing wide brush and tool palette. For example, brushes can be imported from other drawing applications or you can create your own.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Spotify on Manjaro 21 Linux

  Spotify is a digital music streaming service with both free and paid features. It is the world’s largest music streaming service provider, with over 381 million monthly active users, including 172 million paying subscribers, as of September 2021. Spotify can give you instant access to a vast online library of music and podcasts, which is very popular as you can listen to the content of your choice whenever you feel like it.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Spotify on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install MakeMKV on Manjaro 21 Linux

  MakeMKV is a free, open-source tool that can convert video clips from DVDs and Blu-rays, usually encrypted. The output will have most information preserved but not changed in any way; it’s perfect for people who want their media without hassle or headache caused by software limitations like those found with some other transcoder apps.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MakeMKV on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Discord on Manjaro 21 Linux

  Discord is a free voice, video, and text chat app used by tens of millions of people to talk with their communities. Users can communicate via calls or videos in private chats and media files that are usually shared within servers/communities called “servers.” The software has been available on Windows systems since 2009 but also implements OS X (2010) & Linux distros too!

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Discord on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Sublime Text 4 on Manjaro 21 Linux

  Sublime Text 4 is an excellent choice as your go-to program to edit code. Sublime is known for its speed, ease of use, cross-platform, and community contribution. It natively supports many programming languages and markup tongues, but users can also expand its functionality with plugins!

  The Python API makes it easy; make sure you download within Sublime, or they won’t appear in settings. Also, you can further customize and enhance it by installing additional features using package control and custom settings.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Telegram on Manjaro 21 Linux

  Telegram is a popular free cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging system. Telegram is famous for providing end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing, amongst many other features. One of the main attractions of Telegram, it is unique in having no ties or shared interests with the big social media giants such as Facebook or Twitter. The application is also cross-platform, with app versions available for most operating systems for desktops and mobile/tablet devices.

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Telegram on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

Distributions

• Systemd Free ☛ [Updated] 2021 hardcore list of linux distributions without elogind and other systemd parts

  This list is going to be short and there may be a sublist of distros with a medium strict standard. We shall explain what the object is, below the short list (which we hope the community will assist in making longer as we have not been able to currently review the work of every distro and fork).

Devices/Embedded

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • CNX Software ☛ UP Xtreme i11 mini PC review with Ubuntu 20.04, Edge Insights for Vision

    UP Xtreme i11 is both a single board computer and a mini PC powered by an Intel Tiger Lake processor and designed for industrial edge applications. I received the one sample of the mini PC called “UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit” last December based on an Intel Core i7-1185GRE processor, fitted with 16GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, and pre-loaded with Ubuntu 20.04 operating system.

    I’ve now had more time to play with the system, and I’ll report my experience with Ubuntu 20.04 and Edge Insights for Vision, a computer vision framework that’s part of the getting started guide. The latter was missing from my package possibly because customs opened the package, and forgot to put it back in. The most important part is “devkit” is used as username and password.

  • J Pieper ☛ pi3hat support for 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS

    Now that 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS is a real thing, I finally got around to updating the pi3hat libraries. Now, as of pypi 0.3.20, you can use the pi3hat library to run console only or graphical tview on the most recent Raspberry Pi OS!

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • The Best New Games for Android This Week – Unreal Life, Irregular Recruits and More – Droid Gamers

  • Top 5 Ways to Recover Deleted Phone Numbers on Android

  • Phone Arena ☛ Android 13 Developer Preview 1 hints at new “Hub Mode” for tablet users – PhoneArena

  • Screen Rant ☛ How To Enable Live Caption On Android And Change Settings

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The National Science Foundation bets big on open source

  
  The NSF is an independent agency of the United States government and the premier funding agency for fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering. They are now major open source supporters as well. To be fair, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds medical research in the United States, is also already a big fan of open source with the first open-access mandate and even an open source 3-D Printing Exchange made famous during the pandemic.

  With PEOSE, the NSF hopes to harness the power of open source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. Existing NSF-funded research projects already result in publicly accessible, modifiable, and distributable open source software or data platforms and now even open hardware that catalyzes further innovation. Open source savings for scientists are large. The return on investment (ROI) for funders of open source development (100s-1,000s% after only a few months) is frankly too high to ignore. The NSF wants to follow the best examples of open source development where the product is widely adopted and forms the foundation of a self-sustaining open source ecosystem (OSE). A distributed community of developers and a broad base of users across academia, industry, and government make up these OSEs. Think Linux for software, Arduino for electronics, or RepRap for manufacturing hardware.

• Web Browsers

  • uni Toronto ☛ A pragmatic driver of support for serving static files on the web is efficiency

    Here is a question that you could ask in a certain sort of mood: why is serving static files from a web server so well supported? It’s not universal (there are some web server environments with no support for it), partly because it’s not as simple as it looks and you also need something approximating a filesystem, but it’s very common and has been for a long time.

  • Mozilla

    • Ghacks ☛ Firefox 97.0.2 and Firefox ESR 91.6.1 are out with critical security fixes – gHacks Tech News

      Mozilla released new versions of its Firefox web browser on March 5, 2022. The new browser versions fix two critical security vulnerabilities in the Firefox web browser.

• Programming/Development

  • Xe ☛ Want to Learn a New Language? Write a Blog Backend!

    It’s also designed to make you dip your toes into a lot of commonly used technologies and computer science fundamentals in the process. Namely it makes you deal with these buzzwords: [...]

  • Eric Rescorla ☛ Understanding The Web Security Model, Part I: Web Publishing

    Like many pieces of technology, the Web is one of those things that people are perfectly happy to use but have absolutely no idea how it works.[1] It’s natural to think of the Web as a publishing system, and at some level it is: the Web lets people publish documents for anyone to read. But what the Web really is is a distributed computing platform that lets Web sites run code on your computer.[2] Originally, of course, that code just rendered documents, but now it’s used for everything from documents (like the one you’re reading now) to text-based applications like Slack or even videoconferencing apps like Google Meet. Unsurprisingly, then, the Web has a unique security model, which is the topic of this series of (some unknown number of) posts.

    I meant to start right in on security but then I realized I first needed to provide enough background of how the Web works to have the security stuff make sense. This post is the first half of that background material, covering the structure of Web sites and pages. There will be a second post that covers Web “applications”. This isn’t a textbook or a specification, so I don’t intend to provide a complete picture; the idea here is to cover the essential elements for understand the security model.

  • Trail Of Bits ☛ Optimizing a smart contract fuzzer

    During my winternship, I applied code analysis tools, such as GHC’s Haskell profiler, to improve the efficiency of the Echidna smart contract fuzzer. As a result, Echidna is now over six times faster!

  • Remy Van Elst ☛ Qt 5.15.3 Open Source released

    Qt is a nice C++ framework with a GUI toolkit on top, actually, 2 toolkit, Widgets and Qml. Qt is available under the GPL and LPGL, open source licenses and a closed source license. Back in 2020, the Qt company decided to start a war against their own users and contributors by withholding the 5.15 code, only releasing them under a closed license, making the offline installers available to paid customers and requiring a Qt account for the online installer. Due to an agreement with the KDE project they are obliged to release the code after one year under an open source license, and that time has come for 5.15.3. For most LTS releases, the Qt company writes a blog post, but this open source release only gets a mailing list post (One day and 4 blog posts later, no mention of 5.15.3 on their blog). This short post is intended to give a bit more publicity to that release and to tell you about the KDE Qt 5.15 LTS patch collection. Even if I might not agree with the business practices, the framework is nice to work with.

  • Python

    • Earthly ☛ CircleCI with Python and Django

      I’m currently working on a project comparing different CI/CD pipelines, trying to get a better idea of what each offers, how they run, and how much it takes to get them set up. My first stop was CircleCi.

      If you’re looking for a reliable CI/CD platform to deploy your Python Django project, CircleCi offers a lot. It’s easy to set up, comes with tons of reusable set ups called Orbs, and best of all, offers up to 6,000 build minutes per month for free.

Kev Quirk ☛ What Happened When I Replied to a Sponsored Content Email?

Needless to say, I was right. The post contains absolutely no useful information whatsoever.

It starts with some useless information about why e-commerce is useful, then covers some platforms you can use, like WordPress or Shopify. Finally it talks about performance and registering a domain.

Then, somehow, Paul managed to shoehorn a link to an eCigarette shop in there. It’s so unnatural in the context of the post that it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Hardware

• Hackaday ☛ Robotic Tufting Gun Fires Off CNC Textiles

  Often used to make rugs, tufting is a process wherein a hollow needle is used to cram thread or yarn into fabric in some kind of pattern. This can be done by hand, with a gun, or with big machines. Some machines are set up to punch the same pattern quickly over and over again, and these are difficult to retool for a new pattern. Others are made to poke arbitrary patterns and change easily, but these machines move more slowly.

• Hackaday ☛ Replica Minecraft Furnace Actually Powers The Game

  Let’s face it, we all need a little distraction sometimes, especially lately. And for our money, there’s no better way to put your brain in park than to start up a Minecraft world and get to digging. The simple graphics, the open world, and the lack of agenda other than to find resources and build things are all very soothing.

• Hackaday ☛ One Stepper Plus A Whole Bunch Of Magnets Equals A Unique Seven-Segment Display

  Sometimes the cost of simplicity is extra complexity. It seems counterintuitive, but it seems to be true. And this single-motor mechanical seven-segment display seems to be a perfect example of this paradox.

• Hackaday ☛ Miniature Motorized RC Car Is Massively Impressive

  Small is often subjective. For example, a school bus is small compared to an Airbus A380. But other things are just small all on their own and need no comparison to make the point. Such is the case with this micro RC car in the video below the break. It’s an RC model of the Smart Car, that when compared to other vehicles on the road, is quite diminutive, both subjectively and absolutely. But the outward appearance of [diorama111]’s project only tells half the story.

• Hackaday ☛ Low-Cost, Two-Channel Scriptable Waveform Generator

  Microcontroller addict [Debraj] decided to make his own programmable sine wave generator, and was able to put it together for under $40 USD. Other than low-cost, his list of requirements was as follows:

• Hackaday ☛ How Small Is Too Small?

  Not a rhetorical question! This week we consider the most micro microcontroller: the HC32L110. It’s the new title holder of the smallest ARM Cortex M0+ part. But could you actually use it?

• Hackaday ☛ Depraz Mouse Clone Has A USB Tail

  In 1980, Logitech started selling a round, three-button input device known the Depraz mouse or Swiss mouse, which was made by — you guessed it — a Swiss company called Depraz. At the time, Logitech was primarily a software development outfit, but the success they saw in selling the Depraz mouse led them to leave logic and looping behind in order to pursue peripherals permanently.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• TruthOut ☛ Idaho’s State Senate Has Voted to Adopt a Abortion Ban Modeled After Texas Law

• Tim Bray ☛ Get Computer Glasses

  How to do it · First, grab a tape measure, then sit down and and measure the distance between your eyes and the screen. Then, go to the optometrist and get that examination, then go to a good glasses merchant and show them your prescription and tell them the measurement and say you want computer glasses.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • European Parliament ☛ REPORT on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (COM(2020)0825 – C9-0418/2020 – 2020/0361(COD)) [iophk: amendments as end notes]

Defence/Aggression

• TruthOut ☛ Ukrainian Civilian Death Toll Likely “Considerably Higher” Than 351, UN Says

• Common Dreams ☛ Ukraine Civilian Death Toll Likely ‘Considerably Higher’ Than 351 Confirmed: UN

  Ten days into Russia’s war on Ukraine, United Nations monitors announced Saturday that at least 351 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and another 707 injured—though the actual figures for both are likely much higher.

  The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it believes that “the real figures are considerably higher, especially in government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intensive hostilities have been going on was delayed and many reports were still pending corroboration.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• RFERL ☛ How Russians Reacted When We Showed Them Pictures From Ukraine

  Many Russians are being fed a daily media diet of Kremlin propaganda that hides the terrible destruction and human cost of their country’s invasion of Ukraine. So how did ordinary Russians in Perm and Vladivostok react when Current Time reporters showed them some images?

Environment

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The Need for Climate Reparations Is Now Undeniable

  “A brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”

Finance

• Common Dreams ☛ Calls Mount to Cancel Student Debt as Biden Weighs Longer Payment Pause

  After a White House official confirmed this week that President Joe Biden is considering further extending a pandemic-related pause on student loan payments, lawmakers and activists renewed calls for debt cancellation.

  “We have reached a student debt crisis of epic proportions.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• TruthOut ☛ House Committee Issues Subpoena to Top Trump Fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle

• TruthOut ☛ War Is Forcing Ukrainian Leftists to Make Difficult Decisions About Violence

• TruthOut ☛ Despite Right-Wing Backlash, Racial Justice Education Is Still on the Rise

• Common Dreams ☛ Dems to Biden After Court Ruling: End Covid Border Policy ‘Once and for All’

  After a federal appeals court on Friday boosted protections for migrant families endangered by the Biden administration’s continued use of a Trump-era tactic to expel them on public health grounds, Democrats called on the White House to fully scrap the policy.

  “We support yesterday’s D.C. Circuit ruling that the Department of Homeland Security can no longer use Title 42 to expel families to countries where they are likely to suffer persecution or torture,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) along with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) in a statement Saturday.

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Democracy’s Peril and Promise: Let the Ukraine Crisis Awaken Action

  The attack on Ukraine focuses the mind on a most critical question for humanity: In our fast-changing world, what is democracy’s future?

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | The US Won’t Ban the Same Lethal Weapons It’s Criticizing Russia for Using

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Hold All Politicians Accountable for Waging War, Not Just Putin

  As a U.S. diplomat who resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to Bush’s war on Iraq, I hoped at the time that all Americans would not be vilified by the world for the actions of the Bush administration.

• Common Dreams ☛ Opinion | Let’s Call the West’s Bias Over Ukraine for What It Is—Blatant Racism

  Irony does not come darker than last weekend’s statement from Richard Oppenheim, British ambassador to Yemen.

Misinformation/Disinformation

• BBC ☛ Ukraine war: ‘My city’s being shelled, but mum won’t believe me’

  It’s common for Ukrainians to have family across the border in Russia. But for some, like Oleksandra, their Russian relatives have a contrasting understanding of the conflict. She believes it’s down to the stories they are told by the tightly-controlled Russian media.

  Oleksandra says her mother just repeats the narratives of what she hears on Russian state TV channels.

Censorship/Free Speech

• NoIP ☛ Terms Of Service

  Prohibited Activities Include, But Are Not Limited To, The Following:

  [...]

  pointing hostnames on No-IP owned domains to an IRC server

• Netblocks ☛ Widespread internet outage registered in Iran amid reports of fire at datacenter

  Network data from NetBlocks confirm a major disruption to internet connectivity in Iran from the morning of Friday 4 March 2022. Metrics show the loss of connectivity across multiple providers, corroborating user reports of loss of service in several cities including Tehran. Service was largely restored some three hours after the onset of the outage.

• The Telegraph UK ☛ China to pull coverage of Premier League this weekend over support for Ukraine

  China was on Friday poised to pull television coverage of the Premier League this weekend over the planned “show of solidarity for Ukraine” during games.

  The world’s richest league was facing a complete blackout in one of its biggest markets after announcing there would be a coordinated response at matches to Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.

• Reuters ☛ China to pull broadcast of Premier League matches over support for Ukraine – BBC

  The Premier League said on Wednesday teams will show their support for Ukraine at games from March 5-7, with all 20 captains wearing special armbands in Ukrainian colours.

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• NYPost ☛ Sky News correspondent shot while covering Ukraine invasion

  Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay and his team came under fire by Russian attackers near a Kyiv checkpoint as they tried to leave the city Monday.

• BBC ☛ Ukraine war: Sky News journalist Stuart Ramsay and team shot at in ambush

  As they tried to escape from the car, a bullet hit Ramsay in his lower back while camera operator Richie Mockler took two rounds to his body armour.

  They were told a Russian reconnaissance unit was behind the attack.

• The Telegraph UK ☛ Sky News reporter Stuart Ramsay shot by Russian ‘infiltrators’ in Ukraine

  “Bullets cascaded through the whole of the car, tracers, bullet flashes, windscreen glass, plastic seats, the steering wheel, and dashboard had disintegrated,” Ramsay wrote. “I do recall wondering if my death was going to be painful.”

  They managed to film the encounter on the phones and can be heard using expletives as they duck for cover.

  He says they discovered later that they were “being ambushed by a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad”.

• Irish Mirror ☛ Sky News reporters shot at during video report in Ukraine in horrific ambush

  Their camera operator Richie Mockler took two rounds to his body armour, with Stuart being wounded after the shooting.

Civil Rights/Policing

• TruthOut ☛ Trucker Convoy Counterdemonstrations Show Need for Building Antifascist Movement

Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Nitro IPTV Faces $100m Piracy Damages But it Could’ve Been Worse

    Pirate IPTV service Nitro TV was sued by DISH Network in 2021 for mass violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions and breaches of the Federal Communications Act. A new filing reveals that Nitro’s operators could face a damages award of $100m and that’s with DISH significantly lowering what it says it is entitled to claim under the law.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ How English libel law enables Russian kleptocrats

    Both Gibson and Chatham House describe the UK (especially England, especially London, especially the City) as being uniquely well-suited among all world’s tax-havens to catering to the need of post-Soviet kleptocrats. Of course, the UK offers financial secrecy (both onshore and in its offshore “treasure islands” in the Channel, the Caribbean and elsewhere).

    But more importantly, it offers financial respectability: there are armies of estate agents that will convert ill-gotten fortunes into leafy mansions in London’s best neighborhoods, with country estates for the weekend. The Tory party has an open cash-for-access system, run by party co-chair Ben Elliot, who also runs a “luxury concierge” business for the ultra-rich. If you give the Tories enough cash, you’re rewarded with private dinners and other events with ministers and the PM.

  • Funding the Commons ☛ Funding the Commons

    Funding the Commons is a virtual 2-day summit for individuals and organizations building new models of sustainable public goods funding and value alignment in open source networks.