This week started strong with the release of the Firefox 100 web browser, which finally enables GTK overlay scrollbars on Linux systems by default, a new Nitrux monthly update with the latest KDE goodies and a few surprises, as well as the Tails 5.0 OS for anonymous web surfing and communication, a major update based on Debian GNU/Linux 11.
Talking about Debian GNU/Linux 11, it received a major Linux kernel security update that addressed 19 security vulnerabilities. But the week ended up quite very slow on news and releases, so you can enjoy these news and the latest downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for May 8th, 2022, below!
If you’ve been closely following Linux news, you may have heard about Germany dumping Windows in favor of Linux on over 25,000 PCs last year. At that point, the community predicted that a lot of other countries might ditch Windows for Linux. The prediction was pretty much on point as China has recently announced that it’ll be ditching Windows for Linux on over 50 million PCs!
While the end goal of both the countries is the same, their reasoning for doing the same differs. Germany did it so that the government could save on licensing costs and promote open-source. China’s doing it to “remove foreign operating systems” so that they could maintain the OS in the country.
While this is a big win for Linux and open-source software, it’s bad news for laptop/PC manufacturers like Dell, HP, etc., and software companies like Adobe and Microsoft, except Lenovo and Kingsoft. While manufacturers will be driven into the corner for being “foreign” companies, homegrown companies like Lenovo, Huawei, and Kingsoft might see rapid market growth in the forthcoming years.
Each of us brings a secret topic to the show, and we discover a common theme about using the wrong tool for the right job.
Sometimes you want to go and inspect details of the shaders that are used with specific draw calls in a frame. With RenderDoc this is really easy if the driver implements VK_KHR_pipeline_executable_properties. This extension allows applications to query the driver about various aspects of the executable code generated for a Vulkan pipeline.
I implemented this extension for V3DV, the Vulkan driver for Raspberry Pi 4, last week (it is currently in review process) because I was tired of jumping through loops to get the info I needed when looking at traces. For V3DV we expose the NIR and QPU assembly code as well as various others stats, some of which are quite relevant to performance, such as spill or thread counts.
Then a good thing happened – but if 2022 has any lessons for us, it's that we can't have good things.
Social media is becoming more prevalent in our society by the day, and all the big players in the field know how to attract massive audiences – through pictures, of course. Whether you’re on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit, keeping up appearances is crucial on every platform.
Image editors are what keep the ball rolling in terms of pretty pictures on the internet. Luckily for Linux users, there is a reasonably wide variety of powerful image editors out there. In this guide, we’ll mention the best ones and dive into their functionality.
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Since Adobe Photoshop isn’t directly available on Linux, editing images has never been as simple on Linux as it is on Windows. Nonetheless, there are some quite powerful replacements out there, such as GIMP and Krita. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a simpler option, Pinta can be a great choice. Hopefully, you are now well equipped to edit images on your Linux system!
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CyberPanel on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, CyberPanel is a free and open-source web hosting control panel that comes with an OpenLiteSpeed Web server to provide the best possible performance. With CyberPanel, you can manage SSL certificates, use a user-friendly file manager, configure the web application firewall, manage DNS, manage emails, and more.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the CyberPanel open-source web hosting control panel on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.
In this post, you will learn How to install Foreman on Ubuntu/Debian Servers
Foreman is an open-source software which is used for managing the lifecycle of virtual and physical servers. It is a server management tool that helps system administrator to perform configuration, server deployment, provisioning, orchestration and monitoring and more. Foreman offers support for tools like Puppet, Salt Stack, Ansible, Chef. It helps in automating repetitive tasks. It has a great, responsive, full of features WebGUI which makes system administrator to perform tasks more quickly.
The latest Ubuntu systems use GNOME as a default theme. GDM3 is the default display manager which is responsible for loading the login screen. We need to tweak settings in gdm3 to change the background of the login screen.
This tutorial will help you to change the default login screen background on Ubuntu systems.
One of the most common tasks in Linux is setting file permissions, on this article we will explore some cool tips on how to do you job easier!
systemd is a robust tool for handling Linux services. If you've interacted with a systemd service file, it's probably been a simple or forking type. There are many other service types in systemd, including exec, dbus, notify, idle, and oneshot, each with different functions.
One of the first Docker commands you use is the docker ps command. It shows the running containers:
docker ps Actually, running this command gives you a list of running containers and their unique container ID, image name, the command it is executing, time since it is running (uptime), and the ports it is using.
But you can do a bit more with it. You can display stopped containers, filter the result or just display the container IDs.
Let's take a bit more detailed look at this essential Docker command.
Swift is a programming language developed by Apple that can be used alongside Objective-C for programming apps and applications. It is a beginner-friendly language that a developer can use to develop apps for iOS. It was introduced to the world in 2014 as a new programming language for programming in the Apple ecosystem.
The language is especially relevant in the development of iOS apps, but can also be used in the macOS environment. However, Swift is not limited to Apple systems, Linux users can also use it to develop applications.
Docker is a set of platform-as-a-service products that uses OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. Containers are usually isolated from one another and bundled with their own software libraries and configuration files, they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.
Docker makes it possible to get more apps running on the same old servers and also makes it easy to package and ship programs. In this tutorial am going to show you how you can install Docker-CE on Ubuntu 20.04.
The best way to keep your Ubuntu 22.04 system and files completely secure in the case of theft is to enable full disk encryption. This way, if your device is stolen or someone is sitting at your desk and trying to boot into your PC, they will need to know your password in order to mount any partitions. Even if they access the hard drive content through other means, all files would be encrypted and no one could read their contents.
If you are having trouble booting into your Ubuntu 22.04 system, there is a tool called Boot Repair that can remedy a broad range of frequent issues. Usually trouble with booting can be due to the GRUB boot menu or a corrupt file in the /boot directory. Whatever the case may be, Boot Repair is an excellent software to help us start troubleshooting.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to boot your computer into recovery mode and download the Boot Repair utility to perform troubleshooting. Follow along with us below for help with troubleshooting boot issues on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.
Vagrus - The Riven Realms, an impressive deep and challenging turn-based fantasy RPG has a big post-release update out now, which brings a new companion.
A multi-award winning game, with a strong focus on the narrative (you need to love to read for this one), open-world exploration and lots of strategy elements make up a thoroughly unique experience for fans of RPGs and turn-based combat — along with plenty of trading and decision making. You lead a caravan through a completely ruined world hit by multiple cataclysmic events that's created a dark and strange world.
With the new update out, it adds in a new Companion to the game: the garrulous Undead cook called Vorax, who brings new perks to the table such as his Deputy role Supercargo, as well as his cooking during camping and combat Skills that make him a great support fighter. He comes with his own, expansive Loyalty quest chain, which involves a cooking challenge as well as a less gleeful delve in his dark past.
Stardew Valley, the peaceful farming life sim from ConcernedApe has hit over 20 million sales two years on from hitting 10 million. While the creator has moved onto the next project, Haunted Chocolatier, it seems there's no stopping the massive amount of sales on Stardew.
One of the oldest skill-based strategy games in the world, chess is played and loved by millions all around the globe. It is a war fought over the board, and every war requires strategy – the main playing component of chess. Whether you’ve been a chess player for many years or here because of the recent popularity boom that chess is experiencing, there are tons of Linux chess apps you can enjoy. In this guide, we’ll go over the 5 best ones – let’s get into it!
Heroic Games Launcher continues evolving to provide a way to manage your Epic Games and GOG libraries on Linux and other platforms with a fresh Beta release out now.
This is version 2.3.0 Beta 2, another chance for people test before the next full release. One of the major additions is support for themes, so you can pick from a few built-in and no doubt they will expand it over time. Currently, it's just tweaking the colours. See the default (left) versus Dracula theme (right) — click to enlarge.
Wave Break, originally a timed-exclusive for Stadia that released on Steam in June 2021 just had a big upgrade, which also included a new Native Linux version. Not only that, it's also Steam Deck Verified now too with this Native Linux build.
Never seen it before? Imagine skateboarding — with boats. Inspired by skateboarding classics, you will grind, grab, kickflip and shoot your way through an explosive 80s crime-filled Miami Vice themed world.
Another classic gets a new life thanks to ScummVM, which just recently added support for the 1995 shooter Wetlands.
Work on this and the HYPNO game engine has been ongoing for some time now, with the team mentioning that it's now properly ready for some public testing.
"This sci-fi rail shooter was created by Hypnotix and published by New World Computing in 1995. The game includes 20 action-packed levels, cinematic cutscenes, attractive hand-drawn characters, and stunning 3D backgrounds.
Set in 2495, humanity is now forced to live in underwater cities after a nuclear test gone wrong caused uninterrupted worldwide rain. A war is unleashed between The Federation (Earth’s remaining governments) and the Volarins, a group of terrorists led by the mad scientist and Wetlands’ main villain, Phillip Nahj. You’ll play as John Cole, a ruthless mercenary hired to catch Nahj alive."
fheroes2, a game engine reimplementation for Heroes of Might and Magic II, has another release out further improving the game for various platforms.
Continuing to be the best choice to play this classic, the developers working on it have continued to expand what's possible. Featuring support for the Black and White cursors, they said "Now some players can enjoy the perfection of monochrome graphics". Hotkey support was expanded too with a separate window where you can view them all to make it easier.
Ready for a colourful and modern point & click adventure game set all across Europe? Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit from Tag of Joy and publisher Thunderful is out now.
With development lead by the art director from Broken Sword 2.5 and featuring a talented voice cast that have starred in the likes of The Monkey Island series, Day of the Tentacle, the upcoming God of War: Ragnarok, The Wolf Among Us and more, Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit takes you on a thrilling trip across beautifully rendered locations in Eastern Europe imbued with romanticism and conspiratorial intrigue.
The Linux operating system has come a long way from its original, simple, server-based look. Linux has become a powerhouse due to its extremely large community. The development of so many Linux-based distributions is each catered to the interests of a particular fanbase.
This evolution has revolutionized the dynamic of gaming in Linux as well. There are now hundreds of games available in Linux, and the list keeps on growing. In this, we will go over the best Linux distros for gaming that are currently available.
We’re past the soft feature freeze of the next Plasma release, so it’s a good time to step back and a have look at the work that has been done in KWin during 5.25 development cycle.
A lot of focus has been put into improving gesture integration in the Wayland session. In 5.24, the desktop grid effect got support for real-time gestures. In 5.25, the support for real-time gestures has been expanded. Effects such as slide, window aperture (animates windows when transitioning to the “show desktop” mode), and overview now support animations that “follow fingers.”
With the update to qemu 7.0.0 the package has been turned into a more fine grained split package utilizing meta packages.
Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 9 May at 1300 UTC The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.
As with the PC sitting on your desk, the laptop in your backpack, and the virtual private server you rent from your favorite web hosting service, you have your choice in vendors for cloud computing. The brand names are different than the hardware brands you've known over the years, but the concept is the same.
To run Linux, you need a computer. To run Linux on the cloud, you need a cloud service provider. And just like the hardware and firmware that ships with your computer, there's a spectrum for how open source your computing stack can be.
The perils of using the Unsafe class in Java applications are well documented. Although Unsafe has historically offered access to low-level programming features, it exposes internal details of the implementation and its use is therefore highly discouraged. If you submit code that uses the Unsafe API to the GraalVM Native Image compiler, you can encounter even more problems that don't exist on dynamic JVMs such as HotSpot.
This article looks at the issues that GraalVM Native Image can potentially introduce with Unsafe, and offers coding techniques that can help you achieve some of the goals you might want to use Unsafe for. Among other things, we'll look at the VarHandles API, which was introduced in the JDK as an alternative to some of the Unsafe APIs.
This is the 51st edition of the Kafka Monthly Digest, and covers what happened in the Apache Kafka community in April 2022.
Qualified talent has been hard to come by in 2022 and even harder to retain as the Great Resignation continues. The most profound impacts are being felt by the tech and healthcare industries as mid-level employees leave in droves.
Everyone who is associated with technology and programming must have heard of names like Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Debian, and Mint. While many of you have years of experience working on various kernels, switching platforms, and developing software, there’s a fair amount of individuals who don’t have enough knowledge regarding the smaller and currently emerging distributions. One such distro is Manjaro. Today, we’ll be comparing the two Linux distributions, Ubuntu and Manjaro.
As a parent open-source software, Linux was released way back in 1991 with its UNIX-like operating systems that were based on the Linux Kernel. For operating systems on servers, mainframe computers, and supercomputers, Linux’s working environment proved a turning point in providing ease, security, and a reliable platform to code on. Some of the most popular distributions of Linux include Ubuntu, Mint, Arch Linux, Debian, and Fedora.
Welcome back to the monthly State of IoT. In case you missed it, here is a roundup from last March’s news.
Vehicle connectivity, smart homes, new SoCs and a real-time Ubuntu kernel captured the headlines this April. Let’s jump straight into it!
Hannover Messe, one of the world’s largest trade fairs, dedicated to the industrial sectors (drive engineering, automation, robotics, R&D and industrial IT), will be held in Hannover, Germany from May 30th to June 2nd 2022.
Come join us at Hall 5, Booth B51/1, where we will discuss all things IoT and embedded and introduce you to a new Ubuntu Core version.
The Nicla Vision is built around the STM32H7 (dual core M7/M4). This board comes in a tiny form factor and offers an on-board 2MP camera, Bluetooth 4.2 , Wi-Fi support and a 6-axis IMU. The Nicla Vision can be used as a standalone or in conjunction with Portenta and MKR components.
The microcontrollers used by the Nicla Vision are the Arm Cortex M7 (up to 480MHz) and the Arm Cortex M4 (240MHz). The wireless interface consists of a Murata 1DX Wi-Fi/BT LE module. The 2MP onboard camera supports tinyML which is a platform to run machine learning modules on low power MCUs.
When talking about open source, people usually talk about software. Data may be part of the conversation as well. Hardware? Not so often. Especially when it comes to complex devices like microprocessors.
However, we’re starting to see significant projects that open up hardware to a large community of individuals and companies. Perhaps none is bigger than RISC-V.
Businesses using open-source code — which is embedded in a large majority of enterprise-grade software — need a full-scale inventory of its existence. That is missing in many corporate IT records.
Without a detailed accounting of open-source code running within their software, companies have no way to monitor software policies, licenses, vulnerabilities, and versions. That means IT departments are clueless about the overall health of the open-source components they use.
Quality Assurance (QA) is a cornerstone of the LibreOffice project, thanks to the activity of a large number of volunteers and the feedback of many users who help in reporting bugs and regressions.
The arguments for dockerizing the whole development environment are usually in terms of matching production. That means running the same versions of databases, utilities, and services. Having it formalized also means that every team member can immediatelly start working or return to a working setup.
I understand this argument a lot as it’s the reason I usually had a Vagrant environment around for my own projects. Even when I developed without a virtual machine, I would write a Vagrantfile to be able to run things in case of anything breaking. So I get it.
But it’s not the same with Docker. Dockerizing an entire development setup requires a bit different mindset in my opinion. And while leaving virtual machines behind sounds like an improvement, performance might still suffer.
So, I’ve finally started implementing Pickhardt Payments in Core Lightning (#cln) and there are some practical complications beyond the paper which are worth noting for others who consider this!
The year was 2007. I was much younger and had a lot more hair. I was also a couple of years into the data storage industry, working for a little known data storage company called Xyratex. Xyratex spun out of IBM in the UK nearly three decades ago. They knew how to build quality storage products (and were acquired by Seagate in 2014). It was still considered a small company by the time I joined the team in 2005. Our team focused on building and testing both enterprise grade RAID and JBOD equipment.
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Then, in around 2014-15, companies such as Seagate and Toshiba started to prototype dual-actuator HDDs. It was a 5.25ââ¬Â³ HDD with two independent actuator arms, each with its own head and a dedicated set of platters, essentially splitting the drive into two. Yes, pretty much my idea.
I do not remember what year it was exactly. At the time, I was employed by IBM (formerly, Cleversafe). It was either 2017 or 2018 that Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba were showing us their product roadmaps and sharing details about this exact technology. And around 2020, the drives were being produced and these same vendors were working with key partners to help define use cases and a market for the technology.
This follows the report that the NiceHash team has successfully removed the hashrate limiter from NVIDIA cards. NBMiner is now also available with 100% LHR unlock for RTX 30 GPUs. Both software is closed-source, so we can’t see how exactly was the LHR cracked (it would be very interesting for sure).
What is apparent here though is that two teams running popular crypto-tools have managed to unlock LHR cards almost at the same time. This raises a question if they shared information with each other and how did they found the method in the first place.
Our followers have confirmed that NBMiner v41 software does indeed work, which is the first time LHR has been cracked for Linux.
It’s not uncommon for developers to find that they need to help their end users. For starter, the business requirements for software can be highly convoluted and technical. Working with banking systems, insurance firms, actuarial services etc, most developers aren’t going to understand the process they need to add into their software.
As the software because more intricate, end users often find problems navigating the software, and that doesn’t help a business whatsoever. Without proper documentation, help desks are going to become overrun with requests that the developers think are easy, but end users are struggling with. So how do developers resolve this issue? They provide documentation in various ways to help their users.
This documentation is often a gold mine for penetration testers and security researchers alike. They give us an understanding of an API so we can hunt for rogue parameters. This software supports tasks which run on the underlying operating system? Looks like a quick win. Then there’s the breakout assessment, where help functions have assisted pen testers in bypassing security restrictions since Citrix first thought of Receiver.
On May 9, 2022, transfer petitions filed by the Union of India, asking for challenges across High Courts to the IT Rules, 2021 to be transferred to the Supreme Court were heard. LiveLaw and Carnatic classical vocalist Mr. T.M. Krishna are petitioners in two challenges to the IT Rules, 2021 before the Kerala HC and Madras HC, respectively, where we have provided legal assistance, and have been able to secure protective interim orders. Today, the Supreme Court stayed further proceedings in the IT Rules challenges before HCs. As of now, there is no stay on any orders passed by the HCs in these IT Rules challenges, including the order of the Kerala HC.
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The IT Rules, 2021 have far-reaching consequences on online privacy, freedom of speech and expression, as we have written before. They give the government considerable control over social media platforms, digital news publications, and on-video entertainment services, making these services seriously prone to censorship. Injunctions against specific provisions of the IT Rules, 2021 were secured after months of sustained efforts, and the next few hearings before the Supreme Court will be crucial as the hard-earned stay orders secured from high courts in these matters will be put to the test.
The report alleges this to be a failure to meet the requirements of the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency & Public Safety) Rules, 2017 and the Supreme Court’s Anuradha Bhasin judgement that backs the rules. These provide the Union government with the power to call for a temporary shutdown of telecom services in a region on grounds of public emergency for up to 15 days at once.
“The lack of a centralized repository continues to make it difficult for civil society and other actors to effectively monitor and document shutdowns, and some are likely to go unreported,” the paper noted.
On April 25, Elon Musk successfully negotiated a deal to buy Twitter for USD 44 billion, the equivalent of Venezuela’s GDP. What does it mean for Venezuelan Twitter, where inauthentic activity intended to manipulate public opinion is rife?
Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, it was a public company that was regulated by a board. But now, when the company goes private, the social media platform will have fewer safeguards regarding its content moderation. Musk will have the power to reshape discourse on a social network used by more than 200 million people every day and undermine the work the company has made in the last couple of years to mitigate the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Some people celebrate Musk’s ideas regarding freedom of speech, but specialists and digital rights activists are worried that this is a step backward that could undermine democracies, rather than strengthen them.
