The New Stack ☛ 3 Immutable Operating Systems: Bottlerocket, Flatcar and Talos Linux

For those that don’t know, immutable operating systems have been increasing in popularity recently. An immutable operating system is one in which some, or all, of the operating system file systems, are read-only, and cannot be changed.

Immutable operating systems have a lot of advantages. They are inherently more secure, because many attacks and exploits depend on writing or changing files. Also, even if an exploit is found, bad actors cannot change the operating system on disk (which in itself will thwart attacks that depend on writing to the filesystem), so a reboot will clear any memory-resident malware and recover back to a non-exploited state.

Immutable systems are also easier to manage and update: the operating system images are not patched or updated but replaced atomically (in one operation that is guaranteed to fully complete or fully fail — no partial upgrades!)
Immutable systems also can claim to be more stable than traditional operating systems, simply by virtue of eliminating many of the vectors that introduce instability into a system — most of which are human. No sysadmins can “just change this one setting to fix things” — with unforeseen impacts that aren’t found until hours later. (I’ve been that sysadmin.) No partially complete terraform or puppet runs that leave systems in odd states…

On the workstation side, there are approaches to immutable OSes such as rpm-ostree. This attempts to create immutability and image-based deployments in the operating system, but layers a flexible file system architecture on top, so that packages can still be managed and updated by RPM.

On the server side, there is a spectrum of immutability amongst container-specific operating systems. All support image-based OS updates, and no package manager at all. Some operating systems such as Flatcar Linux make /usr read-only, but allow common runtime modifications such as dynamically loading kernel modules, and overriding systemd configurations.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ The No Container Theory | Self-Hosted 67

  Why Chris is moving away from using Containers, Alex’s new project, and some great follow-up.

Kernel Space

• Web Pro News ☛ Asahi Linux Shows the M1′s Greatest Limitation May Be macOS

  An alpha of Asahi Linux has been released for Apple’s M1, and the reviews are showing the potential it has, and the problems Apple has with macOS.

  The Asahi Linux Project has been working to port Linux to the M1 chip. Asahi is based off of the Arm version of Arch Linux. The team has been working without any assistance from Apple, adding to both the challenge and reward of releasing a working Alpha.

  Most impressive of all, however, is that Asahi is already proving to be much faster than macOS on the same hardware, in some cases as much as twice as fast, according to Lifewire.

• Asahi Linux is reverse-engineering support for Apple Silicon, including M1 Ultra | Ars Technica

  Apple Silicon Macs have gotten mostly glowing reviews on Ars and elsewhere for their speed, power efficiency, and the technical achievement they represent—the chips are scaled-up phone processors that can perform as well or better than comparable Intel chips while using less power.

  But the move away from x86 hardware has also made the Mac a bit less useful for those who want to run multiple operating systems on their Macs. While you can run ARM versions of Linux and (with caveats and without official support) Windows within virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs, running alternate operating systems directly on top of the hardware isn’t something Apple supports. Apple doesn’t distribute drivers for other operating systems, and moving away from x86 CPUs and widely supported Intel and AMD GPUs makes it harder for other developers to step in and provide those drivers.

• Tom’s Hardware ☛ Asahi Linux Is The First Linux Distro To Support Apple Silicon | Tom’s Hardware

  Asahi Linux for Apple Silicon has launched for the public. It is the first Linux distribution to offer native support for Apple M1 chips. As this is an alpha release, please be aware of the likelihood of easy to stumble upon bugs and some significant missing features. However, this critical milestone now made, “things will move even more quickly going forward,” promises the Asahi Linux development team.

  Asahi isn’t just a beer. It is the Japanese word for ‘morning sun,’ so it is quite an apt name for a pioneering Linux distribution for M1-powered Apple Macs. “We’re really excited to finally take this step and start bringing Linux on Apple Silicon to everyone,” wrote the development team in a blog post. Importantly, installing Asahi Linux on your Mac doesn’t require a jailbroken device. In addition, it won’t affect the security level of your macOS install, so Mac features like FileVault, running iOS apps, and watching Netflix in 4K can continue.

• Asahi is the first Linux distro to support Apple M1 processors | KitGuru

  The Apple M1 series of processors are still relatively new, limiting new Macs to Apple’s own operating system. That is starting to change this year, with Asahi revealing itself as the first Linux distro to work on M1-powered devices.

  Currently, Asahi Linux for M1 Macs is still in alpha, so the current version is aimed at developers and power users. With that in mind, there will likely be bugs present. Fortunately, installing Asahi will not affect the macOS data, so you can revert if you need to and you don’t need to jailbreak the Mac beforehand either.

Applications

• Make Use Of ☛ Taking Screenshots on Linux Compared: 7 Different Desktops

  Each Linux desktop environment comes with its own screenshot utility. Many have similar features, but that doesn’t make them equally usable. Whose looks the best? Which is the most powerful?

  Since this is open-source software, some desktop environments reuse the same screenshot tool. Here is a look at what the screenshot experience is like across many of the most popular Linux desktops.

Instructionals/Technical

• HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install OpenLDAP on Debian 11

• Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Audacity 3.1.3 on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install Audacity 3.1.3 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.

  This tutorial will only work on Chromebooks with an Intel or AMD CPU (with Linux Apps Support) and not those with an ARM64 architecture CPU.

• ByteXD ☛ Linux Directory Structure and Filesystem Hierarchy – ByteXD

  If you are new to Linux, and just started using it, you might have heard some terms like var, root, bin, etc and many others. Today we will talk about these terms and try to clear your confusion.

  var, root, bin, etc are actually different directories on your Linux distribution. The directory structure in Linux is quite different from the directory structure in Windows. In Windows, we see that most of the programs are being installed in a directory named Program Files and system files are in system32.

  In Linux, the file hierarchy is totally different. There is a “Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS)” maintained by Linux foundation that defines the structure and the content of directories in all UNIX based systems. Because of maintaining this standard, almost all the Linux distros have the same directory structure.

• ByteXD ☛ How to Install Docker Compose on RHEL 8 (AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux/CentOS) – ByteXD

  Docker Compose is a useful tool for running multi-containers Docker applications. Using Docker Compose, we can configure the application’s services in a YAML file that helps you to create and start all services from the defined configurations. It allows different users to launch, run, communicate and close containers using a just single coordinated command.

• Vitux ☛ How to Install Snipe-IT Asset Management Tool on Ubuntu 22.04 – VITUX

  In order to track the ownership, deployment process, and details of all servers, a powerful IT asset manager is required. This can be achieved by installing and using Snipe-IT, an open-source IT asset management tool.

  In this article, we will discuss the installation of Snipe-IT on an Ubuntu 22.04 server.

• Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Install Kernel 5.13 in Ubuntu 18.04 from the 20.04 Repository | UbuntuHandbook

  For those sticking to the old Ubuntu 18.04, but need higher Linux kernel version for specific hardware support, here’s how to install the Linux Kernel 5.13 from Ubuntu 20.04 repository.

  NOTE: Ubuntu 20.04’s kernel package does install and seems running good in Ubuntu 18.04. But I’m not sure if it will cause compatibility issues. Install it ONLY that you do require it, and use it at your own risk!!

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Drupal on Fedora 35 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Drupal on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Drupal is an open-source, flexible, highly scalable, and secure Content Management System (CMS) that allows users to easily build and create websites. It is written in PHP programming language and uses MySQL/MariaDB as a backend database. Drupal is available with thousands of add-ons, which makes it highly customizable.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the Drupal content management system (cms) on a Fedora 35.

• Trend Oceans ☛ Enable/Disable Auto Update & Upgrade in Unattended Upgrades on Ubuntu – TREND OCEANS

  Unattended Upgrades software helps us auto-update and upgrade system packages in the background without user interaction to keep up to date with the latest features and security patches.

  This feature can be a handful to secure your system with the latest security issues, even ubuntu providing it out of the box with its latest iso.

  Unexpected background updates can be irritating for regular Linux users. At the time of background update, if you try to install any package or attempt to execute the apt command, you will get a similar error as shown below.

• Configure SSSD for LDAP Authentication on Ubuntu 22.04 – kifarunix.com

  This guide will take you through how to install and configure SSSD for LDAP authentication on Ubuntu 22.04. SSSD (System Security Services Daemon) is a system service to access remote directories and authentication mechanisms such as an LDAP directory, an Identity Management (IdM) or Active Directory (AD) domain, or a Kerberos realm.

Games

• Boiling Steam ☛ 1700 Games On The Steam Deck, with Valkyria Chronicles 4 as Verified – Boiling Steam

  There are now more than 1700 games working on the Steam Deck – (1703 at the time of writing) in two categories as usual:

  Steam Deck Verified: 912 titles
  Steam Deck Playable: 791 titles
  Total: 1703 titles

• Boiling Steam ☛ The Publisher with the Best Steam Deck Support – Boiling Steam

  So tracking the number of games over time making it on the Steam Deck is fun and all, but let’s check this time what’s the situation with publishers when it comes to Steam Deck Support: namely which publisher has the most games Steam Deck Verified at this stage?

  And the answer is…

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Looks like Valve are adding a feedback system for Steam Deck Verified (update: it’s live) | GamingOnLinux

  UPDATE: shortly after, Valve officially announced this new system and it’s live now. Valve confirmed they can already grab data on things like crashes but this new opt-in system is to gather more info on the “overall experience”. They also said the “data collected by this system won’t directly change the Deck compatibility category for a title”. So they’re not crowdsourcing the compatibility process but checking to see if their process is working well or not.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Wine 7.5 is out now with initial OCSP protocol support | GamingOnLinux

  Wine is the compatibility layer that allows you to run games and applications developed for Windows – on Linux (plus also macOS and BSD). A new development release is out with Wine 7.5. It’s a major part of what makes up Steam Play Proton and enables a ton of games to work on the Steam Deck. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

• Phoronix ☛ Wine 7.5 Released With HLSL Compiler Support For Bundled VKD3D – Phoronix

  Wine 7.5 is out as the latest bi-weekly software update for enjoying Windows games and applications under Linux, macOS, and other platforms.

  Wine 7.5 continues the recent trend of converting more components to portable executable (PE) format, with this release bring Wine’s ALSA driver now converted.

• WineHQ – Wine Announcement – The Wine development release 7.5 is now available.

  The Wine development release 7.5 is now available.

  What’s new in this release:
  – ALSA driver converted to PE.
  – Locale database generated from Unicode CLDR.
  – HLSL compiler support with the bundled vkd3d.
  – Initial support for the OCSP protocol.
  – More cleanups to support ‘long’ type.
  – Various bug fixes.

  The source is available from the following locations:

  https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/7.x/wine-7.5.tar.xz

  http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/7.x/wine-7.5.tar.xz

  Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

  https://www.winehq.org/download

  You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

  You can also get the current source directly from the git
  repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

  Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
  AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Kate & KWrite on Qt 6 – Kate

    Given the great work others did already on the Qt 6 porting of KDE Frameworks, let’s take a look at Kate & KWrite on Qt 6.

    With only minor patches, both applications now run on the current master state of KDE Frameworks and Qt 6.2.

    Close to all functionality is available, I think the only stripped out part is the hot new stuff upload for snippets and I didn’t test the Konsole part.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • #36 Forty-two! · This Week in GNOME

    Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from March 18 to March 25.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • CNX Software ☛ Lakka 4.0 game emulator released with LibreELEC 10.0.2 and RetroArch 1.10.1

    Lakka 4.0 is the latest release of the game emulator based on LibreELEC 10.0.2 and RetroArch 1.10.1 frontend GUI for LibRetro game emulators cores. While Lakka was initially designed for Raspberry Pi boards in a way similar to RetroPie, it also works just fine on many other Arm platforms and PCs.

    Main changes to Lakka 4.0 compared to version 3.7…

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Parrot 5.0 Security OS Released with Linux Kernel 5.16, New Hacking Tools, and LTS Support

    Based on the Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” (Stable) operating system series and powered by Linux kernel 5.16, Parrot 5.0 is here almost a year after Parrot 4.11 with a new LTS (Long-Term Support) release model, a new architect edition, an experimental Raspberry Pi edition, as well as a plethora of new tools for ethical hackers and penetration testers.

    Meet Parrot Architect Edition, a minimalist ISO image of Parrot OS that only features an installer to let expert users fully customize their installations.

  • Parrot 5.0 Security OS Released

    The ParrotSec team (The company behind Parrot OS) made an announcement regarding the availability of Parrot 5.0 security OS. Parrot 5.0 is powered by Linux Kernel 5.16 and is based on the Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye”. Parrot 5.0 introduces a new Long Term Support release model.

  • EasyOS Dunfell-series 3.4.4

    EasyOS was created in 2017, derived from Quirky Linux, which in turn was derived from Puppy Linux in 2013. Easy is built in woofQ, which takes as input binary packages from any distribution, and uses them on top of the unique EasyOS infrastructure.

    Throughout 2020, the official release for x86_64 PCs was the Buster-series, built with Debian 10.x Buster DEBs.

    EasyOS has also been built with packages compiled from source, using a fork of OpenEmbedded (OE). Currently, the Dunfell release of OE has been used, to compile two sets of binary packages, for x86_64 and aarch64.

    The latter have been used to build EasyOS for the Raspberry Pi4, and first official release, 2.6.1, was in January 2021.

    The page that you are reading now has the release notes for EasyOS Dunfell-series on x86_64 PCs, also debuting in 2021.

    Ongoing development is now focused on the x86_64 Dunfell-series. The last version in the x86_64 Buster-series is 2.6.2, on June 29, 2021, and that is likely to be the end of that series. Releases for the Pi4 Dunfell-series are still planned but very intermittent.
    The version number is for EasyOS itself, independent of the target hardware; that is, the infrastructure, support-glue, system scripts and system management and configuration applications.

    The latest version is becoming mature, though Easy is an experimental distribution and some parts are under development and are still considered as beta-quality. However, you will find this distro to be a very pleasant surprise, or so we hope.

  • Barry Kauler ☛ EasyOS version 3.4.4 released

  • Barry Kauler ☛ OE and woofQ project tarballs used for Easy 3.4.4

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2022/12

    Once again we were able to demonstrate the power of OBS and openQA by allowing the GNOME maintainers to bring the shiny new GNOME 42 into a snapshot ‘the day it is published upstream’. GNOME 42 was released on March 23, 2022, and snapshot 20220323 already contains it. But of course, this is not all that happened during the last week. After all, we had a total of 6 snapshots published (0318…0323).

• Arch Family

  • Arch Linux – News: Keycloak 17.0.1-2 update requires manual reconfiguration

    The keycloak package prior to version 17.0.1-2 was running with WildFly server. Since upstream officially moved to Quarkus distribution, Arch Linux follows this approach. This means some manual intervention is required for the upgrade.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat Official ☛ It’s Red Hat’s 29th birthday!

    Red Hat was founded on March 26, 1993—29 years ago this month, and just over a year after Linux was first unleashed upon the world.

    So much has changed since then. Open source grew from being a little known and largely misunderstood engineering model to being one of the driving forces in modern software development. Linux evolved from a niche passion project for a handful of developers to being one of the most important technologies enabling the internet, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and more.

    But today, we invite you to go back to the beginning and revisit some stories from Red Hat’s early days.

    In December 2021, Bob Young—founder and CEO of Lulu.com and co-founder of Red Hat—returned to chat with Chief Architect Adam Clater about the early history of open source software and building what would become the largest open source software company in the world.

  • Red Hat Official ☛ The next release of Red Hat Satellite: Same great features, new version number

    Red Hat will release the next version of Red Hat Satellite as Satellite 6.11, rather than 7.0 as previously announced. Our next release is still full of enhancements, but as we got closer to completing the release we determined this release did not warrant a major version increment.

    Red Hat Satellite versions are used mainly to distinguish releases. Generally speaking, Satellite follows a scheme of Major.Minor.Patch version numbers.

  • IBM Developer ☛ Introducing StockTrader [Ed: IBM has outsourced to Microsoft's proprietary software prison again]

    The IBM Stock Trader application is a simple stock trading sample, where you can create various stock portfolios and add shares of stock to each for a commission. It keeps track of each portfolio’s total value and its loyalty level, notifying you of changes in level, which affect the commission charged per transaction. It also lets you submit feedback on the application, which can result in earning free (zero commission) trades, based on the tone of the feedback. (Tone is determined by calling the Watson Tone Analyzer, which will be covered in a future article).

    The sample is intended to showcase what one might expect after performing a lift-and-shift of a traditional monolithic, on-premises application to one that has been refactored as Docker(container)-based microservices running within a modern Kubernetes-based environment. It deliberately shows off how to use the traditional Java EE programming models, such as JDBC and JMS, to access traditional system-of-record resources, such as a relational database or a message queueing infrastructure. Note that while the application usually uses IBM Db2 and MQ, it also works great with open source technologies, like Apache Derby as the relational database, and with the JMS server built into Open Liberty, an open-source cloud-native Java runtime.

  • Fedora ☛ Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-12 – Fedora Community Blog

    Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

  • IBM Developer ☛ Learn best practices for debugging and error handling in an enterprise-grade blockchain application [Ed: IBM still trying to ride this hype wave from 2-4 years ago]

    Blockchain is a shared, replicated immutable ledger for recording transactions, tracking assets, and building trust. An asset can be tangible (for example, a house or a car) or intangible (for example, intellectual property or patents). Blockchain is built on properties like consensus, provenance, immutability, finality.

    In a traditional business scenario, a transaction that involves multiple organizations is recorded differently by each business. If two organizations disagree on the state of a transaction, then a dispute occurs, which can often be costly and time consuming to resolve. Blockchain introduces the following concepts:

• Devuan Family

  • MakeTech Easier ☛ What is Devuan Linux and How to Install It – Make Tech Easier

    Devuan is a Linux distribution that aims to provide a simpler alternative to Debian. Since 2014, the developers of Debian have started to move towards larger and larger frameworks to manage the operating system. Debian’s adoption of the SystemD initialization system (init system) created a ripple effect among its community which prompted the creation of Devuan.

    [...]

    The init system is an integral part of a Linux distribution. It is the first program that the kernel runs after starting up. Aside from that, the init system also manages all the other programs that will run after it.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ ’Ubuntu Pro’ Settings Pulled from Ubuntu 22.04

    This is a minor change that won’t affect a great many people as, thus far, it was only something those testing the latest daily builds of the upcoming release will have had access to.

    But I felt I should mention it “publicly” since I did make a bit of a hoo-hah about the (overly persistent) Ubuntu Pro notification that appeared every time you logged in.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Blog: The Evolution of the Smart Home: Current Trends [Part 2]

    The smart home industry continues to grow year after year. Devices made available only recently, such as smart speakers, are now ubiquitous. New houses often come with smart features built-in such as smart locks and thermostats. Doorbell cameras have become de rigueur in many neighbourhoods. Despite the innovation, investment, and growth in the space, smart homes have never quite lived up to their promise.

    [...]

    An open question in the smart home space is what will become of the smart home hub. Some smart home systems today run entirely on WiFi, which has no need for a dedicated hub other than a home’s WiFi router. Using WiFi only typically precludes battery powered devices, however, because WiFi requires a lot of electrical power to operate. Bluetooth uses less energy, but typically has too short of a range to be used for most smart home devices.

    Existing wireless standards like Z-Wave or Thread are low-power protocols with longer range than WiFi, but they require a dedicated hub to function. That hub also needs an internet connection to connect to any backend services associated with the smart home. This adds cost and clutter to smart home solutions compared to systems that work with a pre-existing router.

    There are a few wireless protocols that have gained some adoption recently which try to solve the hub issue as well. LTE Cat-M and NB-IoT both aim to connect IoT devices to cellular networks, while keeping power consumption low enough to allow for long battery life. Additionally, LoRa radios can give many kilometres of range, and several companies have set out to create their own networks based on this new protocol.

  • Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Blog: Inclusive Language and its Future at Canonical

    If you follow Canonical’s code and documentation, you may have noticed that we’re slowly changing some common computing terms. You might wonder what has caused these changes. You might ask why Canonical is putting in the effort to make this more inclusive language stick.

  • Ubuntu-MM: Meet ya Linux Foolish Guys

    Internet access, Electronic power, Mental and Physical issues ….
    all about is because of Military Coup.

    Sometimes feeling guilty, we are selfish ?

Devices/Embedded

• Linux Gizmos ☛ Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoC shows up on new Nezha STU dev kit and DevTerm handheld

  DongshanPI has revealed a “Dongshan Nezha STU Core” board that runs Linux on the RISC-V based Allwinner D1 and offers HDMI, GbE, Type-C, and a GPIO carrier. Meanwhile, Clockwork Pi has launched a D1 option for its DevTerm retro handheld.

  The Allwinner D1 continues to expand its claim on the low-end Linux RISC-V market. A new project has appeared on GitHub detailing an upcoming, open-spec Dongshan Nezha STU Core board featuring the D1, which is built around a single 1GHz XuanTie C906 RISC-V core from Alibaba’s T-Head subsidiary. The module plugs into a small carrier board via a SODIMM connection but can also operate on its own as an SBC. In related news from last week, Clockwork Pi has introduced an Allwinner D1 equipped DevTerm Kit R-01 version of its open-spec DevTerm retro handheld device selling for $239 (see farther below).

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • IEEE ☛ Happy 10th Birthday to the Open Source Robotics Foundation – IEEE Spectrum

    Ten years ago this week (more or less), the Open Source Robotics Foundation announced that it was spinning out of Willow Garage as a more permanent home for the Robot Operating System. We covered this news at the time (which makes yours truly feel not quite so young anymore), but it wasn’t entirely clear just what would happen to OSRF long term.

    Obviously, things have gone well over the last decade, not just for OSRF, but also for Gazebo, ROS, and the ROS community as a whole. OSRF is now officially Open Robotics, but that hasn’t stopped all sane people from continuing to call it OSRF anyway, because five syllables is just ridiculous. Meanwhile, ROS has been successful enough that it’s getting increasingly difficult to find alliterative turtle names to mark new releases.

    To celebrate this milestone, we asked some of the original OSRF folks some awkward questions, including what it is about ROS or ROS users that scares them the most.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Liliputing ☛ Capyloon’s web-based OS is now available for mainline Linux phones (PinePhone Pro and Librem 5)

    Capyloon is an operating system designed around web apps and technologies that picks up where Firefox OS when Mozilla abandoned its now-abandoned web-based operating system. Capyloon uses Mozilla’s open source Boot to Gecko operating system as its base, but features a new user interface and suite of apps designed with privacy and distributed technologies in mind.

    The new operating system is very much a work-in-progress that’s still in its early stages. But just a few days after I first took note of the OS, the developer delivered a new way to try the software: as a set of packages that allow you to try Capyloon on mainline Linux smartphones including the PinePhone Pro and Purism Librem 5.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ How to Delete Duplicate Files on Android

  • Android Headlines ☛ How To Update Discord On Desktop & Android

  • How To Clear Cache Of Any App On Android And When Should You Do It?

  • Android Police ☛ How to uninstall the Android 13 Developer Preview

  • XDA ☛ Here’s how you can boot Android 12L on your x86 PC

  • OnePlus OxygenOS 12 (Android 12) update roll out tracker [Cont. updated]

  • Android Headlines ☛ Galaxy A90 5G, M52 5G Get Android 12 Update With One UI 4.1

  • Notebook Check ☛ Xiaomi 12 Lite: Geekbench confirms Android 12 and Snapdragon 778G details as European and global MIUI 13 builds discovered – NotebookCheck.net News

  • 9to5Google ☛ Pixel 6, others support Android 12 performance class, no S22 – 9to5Google

  • Make Use Of ☛ The Nokia XR20 is a Rugged Android 11 Phone Anyone Can Use

  • Honor X8 goes global: Google apps on Android 11 OS for $240 | NextPit

  • The Original Google Pixel Gets an Unofficial Android 11 Update – Review Geek

  • Android Headlines ☛ Premium Smartphone Market Is Growing, But Not For Android OEMs

  • Android Headlines ☛ You’ll Be Able To Exit Android Beta Without Wiping Your Phone

  • Google could ban sale of all Android devices in Russia: What we know

  • Android Police ☛ Google’s rumored detachable Nest Hub tablet might run Android

  • 9to5Google ☛ YouTube Music casting broken on Chromecast, Google TV – 9to5Google

  • Google Might Release a Nest Hub Android Tablet – Review Geek

  • Make Use Of ☛ The 7 Best Websites to Check Android App Rankings

  • SteelSeries preps a controller and clip for Android gamers – Pickr

  • SteelSeries Launches New Controller Designed for Android and Chromebook Gamers – Phandroid

  • 9 to 5 Toys ☛ Android app deals of the day: The Almost Gone, and more – 9to5Toys

  • TechRadar ☛ Realme GT 2 review: a top mid-range Android phone | TechRadar

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Content Management Systems (CMS)

  • Get Creative with the All-New Pattern Creator

    It’s been less than a year since the WordPress Pattern Directory was launched, and we already have more exciting news to share. The Pattern Creator is live! You can now build, edit, and submit your best block patterns to the Pattern Directory—submissions are open to all with a WordPress.org user account!

• Programming/Development

  • Perl/Raku

    • Perl ☛ Perl Weekly Challenge 157: Pythagorean Means and Brazilian Number

      These are some answers to the Week 157 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

      Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a couple of days from now (on March 27, 2022 at 24:00). This blog post offers some solutions to this challenge, please don’t read on if you intend to complete the challenge on your own.

Where to live?

For me, this is really important as I hate being in car. It makes me sick, dizzy and angry to be in a car. Car trips ruins my day.

[...]

As we work remotely most of the time, we started to ask the question : should we move somewhere else? I’m a water-loving guy and I dream everyday of living near the ocean.

Tedium ☛ Quantel Paintbox History: The Stylus That Revolutionized Television

For a few years in the early 2000s, I worked for a public-access television station. Part of my job included adding graphics, text, station DOG/bug—the little station logo/ID that typically appears in the lower right corner of a program—to both live and recorded programs. While we used more modern (for the time) software, I’ve always been fascinated by on-screen graphics—especially from the 1970s and ’80s. But there’s one piece of graphics tech I’ve always been interested in exploring. In today’s Tedium, we’re getting a little bit graphic with a look at the Quantel Paintbox.

Hardware

• The Register UK ☛ Goldman Sachs to lead $60bn Arm IPO

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Protocol ☛ Microsoft whistleblower claims he was fired for exposing corruption

    In June 2019, former Microsoft Senior Director Yasser Elabd traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney General’s office to discuss his allegations that Microsoft was ignoring bribery at subsidiaries in the Middle East and Africa.

    The meetings lasted nearly the entire day. Federal agents asked Elabd questions for hours. Elabd’s attorney told him that it was one of the first times they had witnessed the AG’s office send a representative to a whistleblower meeting like his.

    But more than a year later, the SEC still hadn’t made a decision about Elabd’s allegations. The agency kept promising him that the team in charge of his case would make a decision soon about whether they would bring charges against Microsoft. Finally, at the beginning of March 2022, the case agent in charge of Elabd’s whistleblowing report told his lawyer that the SEC was closing the case because it didn’t have the resources to conduct interviews and find documentation abroad during the coronavirus pandemic.

    So Elabd decided to try a different route to share what he knows. Today he published an essay on the whistleblowing website Lioness that accuses Microsoft of firing him after two decades with the company because he asked questions about what he saw as bribery within the contracting services Microsoft uses to sell software to government and public bodies in countries in the Middle East and Africa.

    “We are committed to doing business in a responsible way and always encourage anyone to report anything they see that may violate the law, our policies, or our ethical standards. We believe we’ve previously investigated these allegations, which are many years old, and addressed them. We cooperated with government agencies to resolve any concerns,” Becky Lenaburg, Microsoft’s vice president & deputy general counsel for compliance and ethics, wrote to Protocol.

  • Microsoft is using illegal bribes in the Middle East and Africa. Why is the SEC turning a blind eye?

    I was recruited by Microsoft in 1998, and I helped bring the company’s products throughout the Middle East and Africa for the next 20 years. I was successful and received many promotions. But eventually, I noticed something strange: many employees younger than me, in lower positions, were driving luxury cars and purchasing homes sometimes worth millions of dollars. For my part, I could not afford to buy a home, let alone anything else luxurious, despite my career success. I wondered, naively, whether these colleagues had families with money—but if so, why would they be working on a Microsoft sales team?

    I put the thought out of mind as Microsoft’s business in the Middle East and Africa boomed. I established contracts in the public sector in Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Qatar, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and many other countries. I sold licensing and solutions to Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Interior, and National Guard. The Sub-Saharan Africa team I built generated $1 million in 2002; a year later, our revenue was over $15 million. This is, of course, a tiny amount compared to the $4 billion Microsoft now banks in the region, with its near monopoly.

    To accomplish this kind of growth in such a short time, Microsoft has long utilized a network of partners known as Licensing Solution Partners, who are authorized to engage with large public customers because they possess certain technical and business competencies. Together with these partners, Microsoft brings e-health solutions to hospitals and GPS and digitized services (such as online tax payments) to government agencies. The partner then takes a share of Microsoft’s licensing sales revenue, usually 10–15 percent.

    One way Microsoft closes deals using these partners is to create a business investment fund to pay for training or pilot projects that could cement longer-term deals. As the director of public sector and emerging markets for the Middle East and Africa, I had oversight of the requests for these funds.

    In 2016, a request came through in the amount of $40,000 to accelerate closing a deal in one African country. When I looked through the submission, I immediately knew something was wrong. The customer did not appear in Microsoft’s internal database of potential clients. On top of that, the partner in the deal was underqualified for the project’s outlined scope, and he wasn’t even supposed to be doing business with Microsoft: he had been terminated four months earlier for poor performance on the sales team, and corporate policy prohibits former employees from working as partners for six months from their departure without special approval.

    I brought these issues up with the Microsoft services architect who wrote the request, asking why she didn’t take the work in this case to our very capable in-house team, Microsoft Services. She said our in-house daily rate is very expensive, and she needed a less expensive team to handle the pilot.

    Still suspicious, I escalated the issue to my manager, and then to the human resources and legal departments. I took the business investment fund very seriously, and wondered why we would be giving money to a partner who could not achieve the desired results. The legal and HR teams put a stop to the $40,000 spend, but to my surprise, did not look deeper into the Microsoft employees who were orchestrating the fake deal.

  • Adjusting for Monterey: Fullscreen is a Bust

    Last week I posted that I was adjusting my workflow to use MacOS Native Fullscreen. Well, that was a bad idea. I ran into too many problems making it just not worthwhile.

  • Apple plans to offer the iPhone as as Disservice (iaaD), ensuring you never own even the hardware.

    Apple plans to offer the iPhone as as Disservice (iaaD), ensuring you never own even the hardware.

    Dave Ramsey offers simplistic financial advice to “consumers”, but his advice on “extended warranties” is dead on. People should refuse to buy “extended warranties”.

    They’re essentially a way to pay a “service company” that you may not actually get to honor any claims, or worse, the manufacturer itself, a portion of the device’s cost, in order to get a “service plan”.

    The reason I say paying the manufacturer is worse is because it essentially tells the manufacturer that it’s fine to produce junk that breaks a lot, and even if you are buying it through the store, it signals to the store that it’s fine to carry products that are unreliable because they’ll only make more money when customers bet against the reliability of the device they are there to purchase.

    Ramsey advises not to buy them because devices tend not to break down within the extended service period, and by the time one thing you buy has a problem, you’ll have paid for so many plans that you’ll be out more money than had you declined all of the plans, and have to fix one thing yourself out of the money that you saved by turning down the plans. And that’s _if_ you can get anyone to honor the plans. Half the time, they come up with some total bullshit reason why they don’t have to, or never even respond to your claim.

  • Windows Central ☛ Recent Windows updates create thorny situation for Windows 7 recovery discs

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

      • The Register UK ☛ Supercomputer to train 176-billion-parameter open-source AI language model [Ed: They need to delete Microsoft GitHub]

  • Security

    • The New Stack ☛ NSA on How to Harden Kubernetes – The New Stack

      The National Security Agency (NSA) has issued guidelines on how to make Kubernetes environments more secure.

    • LWN ☛ Security updates for Friday [LWN.net]

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (tiff), Fedora (nicotine+ and openvpn), openSUSE (bind, libarchive, python3, and slirp4netns), Oracle (cyrus-sasl, httpd, httpd:2.4, and openssl), Red Hat (httpd and httpd:2.4), Scientific Linux (httpd), SUSE (bind, libarchive, python3, and slirp4netns), and Ubuntu (firefox).

    • Honda Civics vulnerable to remote unlock, start hack

    • CISA ☛ CISA Adds 66 Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog | CISA

      CISA has added 66 new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. These types of vulnerabilities are a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risk to the federal enterprise.

    • Fileless Malware on Linux: Anatomy of an Attack [Ed: Peddling Microsoft talking point under the name "Linux security"]

    • Istio / Support for Istio 1.11 has ended

      As previously announced, support for Istio 1.11 has now officially ended.

      At this point we will no longer back-port fixes for security issues and critical bugs to 1.11, so we heartily encourage you to upgrade to the latest version of Istio (1.13.2) if you haven’t already.

    • Bleeping Computer ☛ Emergency Google Chrome update fixes zero-day used in attacks

      Google has released Chrome 99.0.4844.84 for Windows, Mac, and Linux users to address a high-severity zero-day bug exploited in the wild.

      “Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2022-1096 exists in the wild,” the browser vendor said in a security advisory published on Friday.

    • Bleeping Computer ☛ Public Redis exploit used by malware gang to grow botnet

      The Muhstik malware gang is now actively targeting and exploiting a Lua sandbox escape vulnerability in Redis after a proof-of-concept exploit was publicly released.

      The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2022-0543 and was discovered in February 2022, affecting both Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions.

Server

• UNIX Cop ☛ What is the future of Linux Admins?

  Today we will discuss the routine topic- What is the future of Linux Admins. Based upon my personal work experience, this is a very common question which is asked by people.

  Many freshers looking for jobs in the Linux domain as well as seasoned administrators are confused. The reason is into modern technology trends currently happening across the globe. DevOps is the new Linux Admin’s KRA (Key Responsibility Area). But what about the Tech support or IT admins who were not able to upgrade their skills? Do they still have some long-term career scopes?? We try to go through all such aspects.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Russell Coker ☛ Wayland « etbe – Russell Coker

    The Wayland protocol [1] is designed to be more secure than X, when X was designed there wasn’t much thought given to the possibility of programs with different access levels displaying on the same desktop. The Xephyr nested X server [2] is good for running an entire session from a remote untrusted host on a local display but isn’t suitable for multiple applications in the same session.

    GNOME supported Wayland by default in Debian since the Bullseye release and for KDE support you can install the plasma-workspace-wayland which gives you an option for the session type of KDE Plasma Wayland when you login. For systems which don’t use the KDE Plasma workspace but which have some KDE apps you should install the package qtwayland5 to allow the KDE apps to use the Wayland protocol. See the KDE page of the Debian Wiki [3] for more information.

    The Debian Wiki page on Wayland has more useful information [4]. Apparently you have to use gdm instead of sddm to get Wayland for the login prompt.

Applications

• Note taking with ntd

  Approximately one month ago I started taking notes on what is happening around me, what I am doing and similar things. Until now I have used wiki.vim, which was great, but I noticed I was not using many of its features, and always had a very similar style of writing that could be automated.

• Linux Links ☛ Linux Candy: emoj – find relevant emoji from text

  The internet has rapidly transformed the way we communicate. Since body language and verbal tone are not conveyed in text messages or e-mails, we’ve developed alternate ways to convey nuanced meaning. The most prominent change to our online style has been the addition of two new-age hieroglyphic languages: emoticons and emoji.

  Emoji originated from the smiley, which first evolved into emoticons, followed by emoji and stickers in recent years. Smiley first appeared in the 1960s and is regarded as the first expression symbols. Smiley is a yellow face with two dots for eyes and a wide grin which is printed on buttons, brooches, and t-shirts.

• PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL: PgBouncer 1.17.0 released

  PgBouncer 1.17.0 has been released. This release contains some new functionality and important fixes. Database definitions can now specify host lists. The maximum length of passwords has been increased again. Support for OpenSSL 3 has been fixed.

• Ghacks ☛ ProtonMail will release a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux – gHacks Tech News

  The privacy-centric email service, has gained popularity over the years, but has lacked a proper standalone mail client. It can either be used directly from your browser, or as a PWA (Progressive Web APP) in Chromium-based browsers, or by using Proton Bridge in a third-party program like Thunderbird or Outlook. That feature, sadly, is locked behind a paywall, which makes it an exclusive benefit for premium users. There is an open source, unofficial client called ElectronMail which you can use to access your inbox on your computer, without the need of other apps or Bridge.

Instructionals/Technical

• Linux Handbook ☛ Check Open Ports in Linux [2 Simple Commands]

  Whether you are using Linux as a server or desktop, knowing open ports or ports in use can be helpful in a variety of situations.

  For example, if you are running an Apache or Ngnix based web server, the port in use should be 80 or 443. Checking the ports will confirm that. Similarly, you can check which port is being used by SMTP or SSH or some other services. Knowing which ports are in use can be helpful while allocating the ports to a new service.

  You may also check if there are open ports for intrusion detection.

• Ansible Inventory And Configuration Files – OSTechNix

  A few days ago, we have discussed how to set up a three-node Ansible lab using Vagrant in Linux. In this article, we are going to learn Ansible fundamental concepts such as Ansible inventory and configuration files in detail.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Vtiger CRM on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Vtiger CRM on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Vtiger is an open source CRM that enables support, sales, marketing teams to collaborate and organize to boost business growth and improve customer delight. Vtiger CRM also includes email, inventory, project management, and other tools, providing a complete business management suite.

  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 Vtiger CRM 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.

• Fix Linux Mint booting to the black screen issue | FOSS Linux

  umerous Linux Mint users have reported seeing a dark or blank screen upon startup. This issue can be challenging to resolve, especially for Linux users with less technical skills. This problem appears to be connected to the Nvidia video drivers. Fortunately, there are several relatively straightforward ways for resolving this particular visual problem, as seen in this article guide.

• Video ☛ How To Autostart Programs On Linux – Invidious

  How do you “autostart” programs on Linux? While the big desktop environments (like GNOME and Plasma) simplify this, knowing how to setup your autostart programs is especially important for standalone window manager users. While there are a number of ways to do this, I’m going to show you the two ways that I use.

• IT Pro Portal ☛ How to remote desktop into Ubuntu | ITProPortal

  Ubuntu is the world’s most popular Linux distribution thanks to its extensive app store and robust hardware support. Whether you use it as your main operating system or you primarily use Windows, being able to remote desktop into Ubuntu from time-to-time is super useful.

  Thankfully, Ubuntu has great built-in support for remote desktops, so you can easily use some of the best remote desktop software, specifically the best remote desktop for Linux, to remotely access your Linux computer.

  Virtual network computing (VNC) is the predominant method used to remote desktop into Ubuntu, and you should be able to use any VNC-based remote desktop client to connect to it. It’s also possible to use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or third-party commercial solutions.

• How to Secure Your Linux Server – Linux Stans

  Linux servers are a great, cost-effective way for businesses to store and share data. Linux is open-source, so it provides plenty of resources and community cooperation. However, that also brings security concerns.

  If you’re going to run a Linux server, you have to know how to secure it properly. This article will provide you with all you need to know to secure your Linux server, regardless of what Linux distro you’re running.

  Here are the steps for securing a Linux server

• Video ☛ How to install SparkyLinux 2022.03 – Invidious

  In this video, I am going to show how to install SparkyLinux 2022.03.

• How to solve “Failed to connect to FTP server” in WordPress. – NextGenTips

  In this tutorial, I will show you how to solve the error message “Failed to connect to FTP server” on the WordPress site. Do not panic because this is a small issue you can sort by giving explicit permissions.

  This error does occur due to permission issues with the WordPress server. The web server does not grant permission explicitly, so the administrator must allow and grant permission so that communication can be established.

• 10 Things To Do After Installing Pop!_OS Linux

  Pop!_OS is a rather new player in the world of Linux operating systems but it has quickly risen up the ranks to become one of the more enjoyable options overall.

  With a custom Pop!_OS Shop and a variety of user experience optimizations, it certainly does appeal to the target audience of beginners, and professionals alike.

  In order to maximize the potential of your new Pop!_OS install, follow the steps below to begin customization.

• UNIX Cop ☛ How to redirect from one domain to another in Nginx and Debian 11

  We know that web servers are an important and indispensable part of the community. That’s why lately, we have dedicated some tutorials on Nginx. Today we will do another one. Today, you will learn how to redirect from one domain to another in Nginx and Debian 11.

• How to Install Pylint on Ubuntu 20.04

  When we develop an application, we need code analyzers to help us debug errors and tell us where we have made mistakes. Well, Python has a significant tool, and today you will learn how to install it. In short, this post is about how to install PyLint on Ubuntu 20.04.

• ID Root ☛ How To Install Geeqie on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Geeqie on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Geeqie is a free open software image viewer and organizer program for Linux. It is designed with several features including thumbnail view, zoom, and filtering option. Geeqie also supports external editors.

  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 Geeqie lightweight image viewer 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.

• Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Install and Secure MariaDB in RHEL 8.5

  MariaDB is a reputable and open-source relational database management system, that offers invaluable database solutions to numerous users around the operating system ecosystem.

  Since it is a MySQL fork, it has earned a community-developed status. The latter statement implies that MariaDB has growing community user support for individuals that are new to the database software or seek its advanced knowledge base and application.

  Ensure you have sudo/root user privileges on the RHEL 8 system you are using.

• Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Install TeamViewer on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04

  TeamViewer functions as a cross-platform remote desktop software application, which has the capability of connecting one remote user to another remote user’s machine to initiate application installation or make assistive system configurations.

  You do not need to worry about any security breaches while using TeamViewer because one only gets access/control of a remote computer if that remote machine has TeamViewer installed and the user of that machine avails generated User ID and Passcode from this app.

  Therefore, both remote computers need to have TeamViewer installed and configured for one user to have access control over another machine.

  Thanks to TeamViewer, it is now possible to perform remote maintenance, troubleshooting, and configuration on remote machines whose users don’t have the needed technical prowess over such tasks.

• Linux Capable ☛ How to Install uGet on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

  In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or upgrade to the latest version of uGet download manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

• TechRepublic ☛ Focalboard is a kanban tool that anyone can use for better task management | TechRepublic

  If you’re looking for a kanban board that’s simple to install and use to help you get control over your mounting tasks, Jack Wallen believes Focalboard might be just the ticket.

  Most kanban boards and project management tools are built around the idea of teams and larger projects. But what about smaller teams or even individuals that need to be able to track their projects with a kanban board-style system?

• Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install OSU! Lazer on a Chromebook in 2022

  Today we are looking at how to install OSU! Lazer 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.

Games

• Video ☛ My New Linux Desktop

  Lets go over my new setup on Linux that I’m gaming on.

• Video ☛ The Steam Deck’s software is still broken. 10 fixes and features we need YESTERDAY. – Invidious

  The Steam Deck is a brilliant little piece of kit. But as I sit here playing with my Deck all day, I get more and more frustrated by what it *could* be, but simply is not yet.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Along the Edge gets some nice improvements to be Steam Deck ready | GamingOnLinux

  Along the Edge is a visual novel set in the European countryside, where your choices impact the main character’s personality and appearance.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ DEMON’S TILT gets updated for Steam Deck to solve graphical issues | GamingOnLinux

  DEMON’S TILT, a frantic pinball game from WIZNWAR / FLARB LLC currently has a Playable rating for Steam Deck but it may get bumped up to Verified.

  In the latest patch, the developer noted: “We’re not verified quite yet, but I think this update should address the minor glitches Valve found when attempting to get Steam Deck verified.”. Nice to see more developers pay attention and fix up issues for Deck gamers.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ Valve gathering a list of Deck Verified games that have problems | GamingOnLinux

  On Steam, one of the official Valve-picked moderators of the Steam Deck hub has a new post up they’ve pinned to gather information on problematic Steam Deck Verified titles.

• GamingOnLinux ☛ NVIDIA working with Valve to get Gamescope working on their drivers | GamingOnLinux

  Gamescope, for those not aware, is a Wayland compositor originally forked from the older SteamOS 2 compositor. It’s a big part of what makes Gaming Mode on the Steam Deck do all it can.

Distributions

• Make Use Of ☛ 4 Reasons Why Hackers Use Kali Linux

  Apart from Kali Linux, there are numerous other penetration testing distros in the market. So why do ethical hackers prefer Kali over other OSes?

  Hacking has become popular because of the rapid transmission of information online. Ethical hacking helps identify vulnerabilities in a system and increases security by repairing them. It also secures systems against hackers who might steal valuable information.

• Barry Kauler ☛ Stark-black theme for pending EasyOS 3.4.4

  I am continuing to explore “strong” or “radical” themes. Easy 3.4 introduced peach-red theme with setting-sun wallpaper; photo and description here:

  https://bkhome.org/news/202202/theme-details-for-easyos-34.html

  It used to be that I would stick with mostly-blueish soothing themes, and perhaps there will be a return to them in a future release. For now however, the pending 3.4.4 will introduce another experiment, a black & white very stark theme.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD 13.1-BETA3 Now Available

    The third BETA build of the 13.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available.
    
    Installation images are available for:
    
    o 13.1-BETA3 amd64 GENERIC
    o 13.1-BETA3 i386 GENERIC
    o 13.1-BETA3 powerpc GENERIC
    o 13.1-BETA3 powerpc64 GENERIC64
    o 13.1-BETA3 powerpc64le GENERIC64LE
    o 13.1-BETA3 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE
    o 13.1-BETA3 armv6 RPI-B
    o 13.1-BETA3 armv7 GENERICSD
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 GENERIC
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 RPI
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 PINE64
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 PINEBOOK
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 ROCK64
    o 13.1-BETA3 aarch64 ROCKPRO64
    o 13.1-BETA3 riscv64 GENERIC
    o 13.1-BETA3 riscv64 GENERICSD
    
    Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without
    console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of
    freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access.  Additionally,
    the root user password is set to root.  It is strongly recommended
    to change the password for both users after gaining access to the
    system.
    
    Installer images and memory stick images are available here:
    
    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/13.1/
    
    The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.
    
    If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR
    system or on the -stable mailing list.
    
    If you would like to use Git to do a source based update of an existing
    system, use the "releng/13.1" branch.
    
    A summary of changes since 13.1-BETA2 includes:
    
    o Miscellaneous updates and fixes to the USB subsystem.
    
    o A bug fix in initialization of sblock.fs_maxbsize in newfs(8) had been
      addressed.
    
    o Miscellaneous updates and fixes to lindebugfs.
    
    o Compatibility fixes that are now not necessary in libcxxrt have been
      removed.
    
    o A compile-time change to compiler-rt had been implemented.
    
    o OpenSSL had been updated to version 1.1.1n.
    
    o A build-time fix when defining WITHOUT_BOOT in src.conf(5) had been
      addressed.
    
    o A fix to virtio_random(4) to avoid a deadlock had been implemented.
    
    o A build fix to if_epair(4) had been implemented.
    
    o The REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD option had been enabled by default.
    
    o The leap-seconds file had been updated to version 3676924800.
    
    o The timezone database had been updated to version 2022a.
    
    o A fix for vga(4) and vt(4) that could potentially lead to no
      video/console output had been addressed.
    
    o An update to arm64-specific code to make get_pcpu() a function had
      been implemented.
    
    o Support for automatically loading decryption keys from ZFS filesystems
      had been implemented.
    
    A list of changes since 13.0-RELEASE is available in the releng/13.1
    release notes:
    
    https://www.freebsd.org/releases/13.1R/relnotes/
    
    Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be
    updated on an ongoing basis as the 13.1-RELEASE cycle progresses.
    
    === Virtual Machine Disk Images ===
    
    VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64
    architectures.  Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL
    (or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):
    
    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/13.1-BETA3/
    
    BASIC-CI images can be found at:
    
    https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/CI-IMAGES/13.1-BETA3/
    
    The partition layout is:
    
        ~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label)
        ~ 1 GB  - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label)
        ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)
    
    The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image
    formats.  The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB
    respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.
    
    Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI
    loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the
    virtual machine images.  See this page for more information:
    
    https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU
    
    To boot the VM image, run:
    
        % qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt  \
    	-bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \
    	-drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \
    	-device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \
    	-device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
    	-netdev user,id=net0
    
    Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.
    

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Linuxiac ☛ openSUSE Tumbleweed Now Offering GNOME 42

    GNOME 42 is the most recent popular desktop version, but it is not yet available on most Linux distributions.

    Fortunately, individuals interested in trying out GNOME 42 can do so with openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling-release version that incorporates the most recent software upgrades. The 20220323 snapshots included this highly anticipated release from GNOME contributors.

  • Tumbleweed Gets GNOME 42

    openSUSE’s rolling release quickly gave Tumbleweed users the freshly released GNOME 42.

    This highly anticipated release from GNOME contributors landed in the 20220323 snapshot.

    GNOME 42 has a new global dark User Interface style preference and comes with a redesigned screenshot feature.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Red Hat Lowers Barriers to Artificial Intelligence Projects with Red Hat OpenShift

    Red Hat OpenShift 4.10 adds new capabilities in support of AI, along with NVIDIA AI Enterprise 2.0 certification to help streamline development and fuel innovation around intelligent applications

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Command Line Heroes: Season 9: Lurking Logic Bombs

    Logic bombs rarely have warning sounds. And when a logic bomb is discovered, there isn’t always enough time to defuse it. But there are ways to catch them.

  • Venture Beat ☛ The risk of undermanaged open source software

    There are a lot of myths surrounding open source software, but one that continues to permeate conversations is that open source is not as secure as proprietary offerings. At face value, this claim would seem to hold merit as how do you secure a supply chain for a product that is created in an environment where anyone can contribute to it?

    But perceptions are changing, as open source code is running many of the most sophisticated computational workloads known to mankind. In fact, according to Red Hat’s 2022 The State of Enterprise Open Source report, 89% of respondents believe that enterprise open source software is as secure or more secure than proprietary software.

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ 5 Harvard Business Review articles that will resonate with CIOs right now

    From hybrid work to artificial intelligence and everything in between, these HBR articles cover the critical topics IT leaders care about most

  • Enterprisers Project ☛ Remote work isn’t enough: 5 tips for the future of flexibility at work | The Enterprisers Project

    For most of us, our pre-pandemic work lives centered heavily around a physical office space. Fueled by in-person interactions, workplace perks, and office social events, a strong sense of community and culture was important to the success of any organization.

    The pandemic changed this. No longer is remote work seen as a perk – it’s now a common offering that’s here to stay. To compete for talent, companies need to focus on being “people-first.” This means providing employees with the flexibility they need, and merely offering remote work will no longer cut it.

  • Fedora Magazaine ☛ “March of the penguins” or “How the OS vendors get their ducks in a row” – Fedora Magazine

    Various engineers that work on the Fedora Linux product line are brewing up a storm again. To find out more about their plans for world domination, check out this video!

  • IBM Old Timer ☛ IBM Vet Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Widening Gap Between Technological and Institutional Change

    A few weeks ago I read The Exponential Age Will Transform Economics Forever, an article in Wired by Azeem Azhar based on his recently published book The Exponential Age. Azhar’s central thesis is that the chasm between what technology allows us to do and what our institutions are prepared to handle has been rapidly widening. New technologies are being invented and scaled at an ever-faster pace. But our institutions, – including our economic systems, political organizations and social norms, – are changing much more slowly. While technological advances follow an exponential curve, institutional adaptation follow a straight, incremental line.

    The gap between technological and institutional change is nothing new. Ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, there’s been a significant time lag between the emergence of a transformative technology and its ensuing impact on economies and societies. Even after reaching a tipping point of market acceptance, it takes considerable time, – often decades, – for their benefits to be fully realized.

    In The Productivity J-Curve, a 2018 NBER paper, Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson explained that general purpose, transformative technologies, – such as the steam engine, electricity, and semiconductors, – “are the defining technologies of their times and can radically change the economic environment. They have great potential from the outset, but realizing that potential requires larger intangible and often unmeasured investments and a fundamental rethinking of the organization of production itself.”

  • Discoverability in API design | Adam Young’s Web Log

    Answering these questions can be automated. The user, and the tools they use, can discover the answers by working with the system. That is what I mean when I use the word “Discoverability.”

    We missed some opportunities to answer these questions when we designed the APIs for Keystone OpenStack. I’d like to talk about how to improve on what we did there.

    First I’d like to state what not to do.

  • Fedora ☛ CPE Weekly Update – Week of March 21st – 25th – Fedora Community Blog

    Purpose of this team is to take care of day to day business regarding CentOS and Fedora Infrastructure and Fedora release engineering work.

    It’s responsible for services running in Fedora and CentOS infrastructure and preparing things for the new Fedora release (mirrors, mass branching, new namespaces etc.).

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Want a stronger team? Embrace open culture | Enable Sysadmin

    I’m a Red Hat technical account manager (TAM). A few months ago, a customer contacted me about a major outage when system boot drives failed on dozens of hypervisor systems at four different sites—simultaneously. The outage killed hundreds of virtual machines and stressed backup sites across the United States.

• Debian Family

  • DebConf22 Kosovo segregation of women exposed

    Accommodation plans have been published. We are alarmed to see that segregation will be in force. It makes poor doors look respectable.

    Ninety-eight percent (98%) of Debian Developers are male. These are employees of Google, Red Hat and Ubuntu disguised in Debian t-shirts. Accommodation advice gives them a list of hotels, their rooms paid by their employers. Each man will have an air-conditioned private room in the historic village center.

    Balkan women from Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and other low-income countries will be bussed in to the conference to correct the male imbalance. Fifty tickets have been reserved for this purpose, the equivalent of one bus, as we previously anticipated here. The accommodation advice tells us that Balkan women will be stored in the Innovation and Training Park (ITP). In fact, the ITP is the former KFOR base for military peacekeepers. Women will be there in the bunk beds in the dormitories.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • A New Logo for Ubuntu Studio – Ubuntu Studio

    Many of you may have seen Ubuntu’s post about their logo refresh. Since Ubuntu Studio is a part of Ubuntu, we decided to follow suit.

    Beginning with the release of Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS, you will notice a new logo in the startup and splash screens, along with the website. These changes can be seen on the Ubuntu Studio Daily Builds and will be on the Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS Beta image.

Devices/Embedded

• CNX Software ☛ OSZU3 System-in-Package (SiP) combines AMD Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC with 2GB RAM, PMIC, passive components

  Octavo Systems has collaborated with AMD Xilinx for the OSZU3 system-in-package (SiP) that combines Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZU3 with up to 2GB RAM, power management circuitry, and other components into a compact (40×20.5mm) 600-ball BGA package.

  We’ve already written about other Octavo Systems SiPs in the past with solutions like OSD3358x (TI Sitara AM3358) and OSD32MP15x (STMicro STM32MP1), but the OSZU3 packs a much more powerful and flexible chip with the AMD Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC offering both Cortex-A53 & Cortex-R5F cores, Arm Mali-400 GPU, and FPGA fabric.

• CNX Software ☛ Dongshan Nezha STU devkit features Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoM/SBC

  Dongshan Nezha STU is a development kit comprised of an Allwinner D1 RISC-V system-on-module (SoM) and a carrier board with three 40-pin headers to access I/Os from the RISC-V processor.

  While not quite as compact as the Sipeed LicheeRV module, the “Dongshan Nezha STU Core” module also doubles as a standalone single board computer (SBC) with USB-C, Ethernet and HDMI ports, plus a MicroSD card socket for the firmware, which reminds me of the Khadas Edge design.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • EIN Presswire ☛ As Purism Grows, Founder CEO Todd Weaver Transitions Role of President to Kyle Rankin & Vice-President to Nicole Faerber – EIN Presswire

    Purism announced key leadership roles to support its growth plans. Chief Security Officer, Kyle Rankin, will step up to hold the responsibilities of Purism as its President. Chief Technology Officer, Nicole Faerber will serve as Vice- President (VP) in addition to her CTO role. Todd Weaver, the Founder and CEO of Purism will maintain his position.

  • Electronics Weekly ☛ Multi-core Arduino and Linux for enterprise IoT

    The chosen hardware is the new multi-core Arduino Pro Portenta X8, which is a processing heavyweight with quad Arm Cortex-A53 cores, a Cortex-M7 and two Cortex-M4 cores.

    “Today, you cannot think about a Linux-based device without anticipating the challenges of securing and maintaining it over time,” said Arduino CEO Fabio Violante. “This requires expertise, commitment and attention to every detail related to security and maintenance. For this reason, we decided to partner with Foundries.io to simplify this approach by providing a ready-to-use solution, by embedding a FoundriesFactory in the Arduino platform.”

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Auto Rotate Not Working on Android? Try These Fixes – Gotechtor

  • Android Police ☛ Android 13 is working on a tool to —wait— slow DOWN your data?

  • 9to5Google ☛ Android TV 12 set to start rolling out ‘early’ this year – 9to5Google

  • India Times ☛ These two Realme phones are getting Realme UI 3.0 based on Android 12 – Times of India

  • 9to5Google ☛ Pixel 6 haptic vibrations reportedly weaker w/ Android 12L – 9to5Google

  • Android Police ☛ Your original Google Pixel can now run Android 11, courtesy of LineageOS 18.1

  • 9 to 5 Toys ☛ Android app deals of the day: Baldur’s Gate II, and more – 9to5Toys

  • Google Is Testing Android’s Best Productivity Feature For Chrome

  • Android Police ☛ Google will give Pixel users a chance to leave the Android beta program again in the future

  • The upcoming Android CPUs will show your location 5x more accurately than it is now with the current tech / Digital Information World

  • Giz China ☛ Top 10 flagship processors – Dimensity 9000 is the best Android SoC

  • Android Police ☛ How to forward text messages on Android

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Chromium

    • Ubuntu Pit ☛ Chrome vs Chromium: Which One Is the Best Browser?

      Google Chrome and Chromium both were released in 2008, where Chrome was introduced by Google and Chromium by The Chromium Project. Soon after that, Google Chrome gained worldwide popularity, while users appreciates Chromium for its Open-source nature and some extra features.

      However, if you want to learn which one should be your best pick, you have to learn the basic difference between Chrome and Chromium. So, we are here today to show you the points where a battle of Chrome vs Chromium can occur.

  • Mozilla

    • The Register UK ☛ Mozilla adds tiered subscription plans to MDN Web Docs • The Register

      The Mozilla Developer Network, which hosts free, open access to web standard documentation, tools, samples and other good stuff, is going pay-for-play with a premium subscription plan that adds new personalization features.

      The Firefox maker announced today the subscription service, called MDN Plus, saying it will add three features for paid MDN users at launch: Notifications, collections, and MDN Offline.

      The MDN Learning Area and the front-end web developer learning pathway in MDN were the first indicators of what users wanted, Mozilla senior head of product Hermina Condei said, noting that MDN Plus marks “our first step to providing a personalized and more powerful experience while continuing to invest in our always free and open webdocs.”

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Document Foundation ☛ LibreOffice ecosystem interview: Michael Meeks at Collabora Productivity – The Document Foundation Blog

    Following our interviews with Caolán McNamara at Red Hat and Thorsten Behrens at allotropia, today we’re talking to Michael Meeks from Collabora Productivity…

• Programming/Development

  • The Register UK ☛ Hacker language preferences change with the times • The Register

    Never mind what enterprise programmers are trained to do, a self-defined set of hackers has its own programming language zeitgeist, one that apparently changes with the wind, at least according to the relatively small set surveyed.

    Members of Europe’s Chaos Computer Club, which calls itself “Europe’s largest association of hackers” were part of a pool for German researchers to poll. The goal of the study was to discover what tools and languages hackers prefer, a mission that sparked some unexpected results.

    The researchers were interested in understanding what languages self-described hackers use, and also asked about OS and IDE choice, whether or not an individual considered their choice important for hacking and how much experience they had as a programmer and hacker.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Perl ☛ Please test DBD::Oracle v1.90_1 | dean [blogs.perl.org]

      Anyone using DBD::Oracle is invited to test out out this dev release v1.90_1

Finishing Up, Moving On

That said I’d really really like to go back to that previous job, if they make me a good offer for salary. Even the best they can do will be a step down from what I have now, because it’s a public employer, but I’m willing to go a little bit down for them.

Hardware

• Building an RC car with my son – Random [Tech] Stuff

  Two days ago, my son ran home from school excited. He told me that in one of his classes in grade school, they built little “cars”. In reality, it was nothing more that a little block where they attached the wheels. Nonetheless, he had a fun time doing it. Being the father that I was, I immediately went to Amazon and found this kit from Pica Toys: Wireless Remote Control Race Car. The best part: no soldering required. It came with all parts and tools necessary to build the car plus remote control except for the batteries.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Openwashing

      • OpenSource.com ☛ Balancing transparency as an open source community manager | Opensource.com

        Several weeks ago, my friend and colleague Kashyap Chamarthy posted an essay titled “What makes an effective open-source ‘community gardener?’” By community gardener, he means what most of us traditionally call a community manager. I like his choice of terminology, though, as I’ve written before about how difficult it is even to define what a community manager does, let alone the right thing to call it.

        The “gardener” metaphor is good because a community needs nurturing, weeding, watering, light, and so on. However, the implication that it can become overgrown with weeds without a gardener isn’t particularly charitable to the community members. Community organizers, liaisons, and leaders all suffer from different problems, too, because the community does a lot of these functions on its own.

  • Security

    • diffoscope 208 released

      The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 208.

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

      • Hacker News ☛ Hackers Target Bank Networks with new Rootkit to Steal Money from ATM Machines [Ed: Conflating Solaris with "Linux"]

        A financially motivated threat actor has been observed deploying a previously unknown rootkit targeting Oracle Solaris systems with the goal of compromising Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) switching networks and carrying out unauthorized cash withdrawals at different banks using fraudulent cards.

        [...]

        Mandiant, which was able to recover memory forensic data from one of the victimized ATM switch servers, noted that one variant of the kernel rootkit came with specialized features that enabled it to intercept card and PIN verification messages and use the stolen data to perform fraudulent cash withdrawals from ATM terminals.

        Also put to use are two backdoors known as SLAPSTICK and TINYSHELL, both attributed to UNC1945 and are employed to gain persistent remote access to mission-critical systems as well as shell execution and file transfers via rlogin, telnet, or SSH.

Defence/Aggression

• USDOJ ☛ Four Russian Government Employees Charged in Two Historical Hacking Campaigns Targeting Critical Infrastructure Worldwide [Ed: Proprietary SCADA with Windows]

  The Department of Justice unsealed two indictments today charging four defendants, all Russian nationals who worked for the Russian government, with attempting, supporting and conducting computer intrusions that together, in two separate conspiracies, targeted the global energy sector between 2012 and 2018. In total, these hacking campaigns targeted thousands of computers, at hundreds of companies and organizations, in approximately 135 countries.

  A June 2021 indictment returned in the District of Columbia, United States v. Evgeny Viktorovich Gladkikh, concerns the alleged efforts of an employee of a Russian Ministry of Defense research institute and his co-conspirators to damage critical infrastructure outside the United States, thereby causing two separate emergency shutdowns at a foreign targeted facility. The conspiracy subsequently attempted to hack the computers of a U.S. company that managed similar critical infrastructure entities in the United States.