GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Late Night Linux – Episode 181 – Late Night Linux

    Arch is really easy to install now, Graham uses his keyboard as a mouse, replacing expensive security platforms with FOSS, silly AI pictures, and Will baffles us with electronics technobabble. Plus feedback about all sorts, including a chance to hear the noise that sends Joe to sleep.

  • Video ☛ Stop Making This Simple Linux Packaging Mistake – Invidious

    Linux package mangers are incredibly useful however there’s one thing that stops that being the case, when packages conflict with each other for seemingly no reason, you should by all accounts be able to install them together but the package manager says no.

• Kernel Space

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Using a Tablet as a Second Monitor in Ubuntu is Actually Pretty Easy – OMG! Ubuntu!

    Today I learn that it’s pretty easy to use an iPad or an Android tablet as a second monitor with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

    Not just “access your desktop” but “use it to extend your desktop” as though it were a regular, physically connected external monitor.

    I know: I’m supposed to be on the pulse of stuff like this and yet, here I am, monsieur slow-train, only learning about this capability cos it got mentioned it in a Reddit thread that, mercifully, passed before my eyes.

• Applications

  • FOSSLinux ☛ The 5 best video players for GNOME Desktop | FOSS Linux

    Whether you’re watching your favorite YouTube video or an essential movie, listening to an audiobook or a podcast, or viewing something on Netflix, having the right video player can make all the difference.

    Although streaming online videos needs an internet browser, that doesn’t make these offline video players of no use. However, you will need a feature-full video player to play downloaded and recorded videos in different formats.

    With every operating system, a default video player comes pre-installed. Previously, Linux was mainly used for server administration, but it has been designed to be used on a personal computer with a user-friendly GUI in recent years.

  • Make Use Of ☛ The 5 Best QR Code Generator Apps for Linux

    Originally developed for the automotive industry, QR codes are gradually gaining popularity in other sectors, thanks to their high readability and the capacity to store more data.

    As a result, you’ll find QR codes in action across various applications today. Be it sharing vCards and Wi-Fi passwords or facilitating wireless payments, sharing app download links, or redirecting people to websites, QR codes can do just about anything.

    To get a QR code to do any of these, however, you need a QR code generator: a tool that can add information to QR codes. Here are some of the best QR code generators for Linux.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • uni Toronto ☛ Linux kernel mode setting on servers (and Ubuntu 22.04)

    In the abstract, Linux’s kernel mode setting (KMS) is having the kernel configure the display resolution, depth, and frequency in the graphics hardware instead of leaving it to user level code like the X server. In practice, KMS is three things that are currently completely tied together; the kernel graphics driver handling the actual mode setting, the kernel console switching from VGA text mode to a framebuffer console, and the kernel changing the graphics hardware to what is supposed to be the ideal (display) resolution when KMS activates (usually as the graphics driver is loaded).

    On desktops, this has a clear usage case and success story. The GUI environment is normally going to use KMS to set the display to its theoretical ideal resolution as soon as it starts. Setting the display up before then results in a smoother boot experience with less flashing, and it makes LCD displays happy as fast as possible (some of them will nag at users with on screen displays of ‘I am not at my ideal resolution’). And if modesetting fails, everything is out to lunch anyway (unless the login GUI can notice and invoke some sort of resolution fallback).

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ How to Install MariaDB on Ubuntu 22.04

    How to Install MariaDB on Ubuntu 22.04. MariaDB is one of the most widely used database software built over MySQL and used for several well-known applications that utilize like WordPress and many more.

    In this guide you are going to learn how to install latest MariaDB community server on Ubuntu 22.04

    This setup is tested on Google cloud, so it will work on all cloud hosting services like AWS, Azure or any VPS or any dedicated servers running Ubuntu 22.04.

  • FOSSLinux ☛ How to set up CUPS print server on Ubuntu 22.04 | FOSS Linux

    When multiple computers are connected to the same network, connecting each computer with a separate printer is impossible. Also, it is crucial to manage the print requests and send them to the appropriate printer if there are multiple printers. For this purpose, Print Servers are used.

    A print server is used to connect printers to the client’s computer. It can be a network device, an application, or a laptop. A print server’s job is to accept the print jobs, send them to appropriate printers, queue the jobs, count the pages, etc. It can manage hundreds of printers and is used in large companies and home offices.

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Firealpaca on a Chromebook with Crossover 21

    Today we are looking at how to install Firealpaca on a Chromebook with Crossover 21. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ Install phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 22.04 with Apache

    phpMyAdmin is a web-based application for interacting with MySQL database server. This tool provides you with a user interface to make MySQL operations so you don’t have to use the command line interface.

    In this guide you are going to learn how to install phpMyAdmin with Apache on Ubuntu 22.04 and secure it.

  • Network World ☛ Removing duplicate characters from a string on Linux with awk | Network World

    The awk command can make it easy to remove duplicate characters from a string even when those characters aren’t sequential, especially when the process is turned into a script.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ MakuluLinux Shift 2022-06-10

    Today we are looking at MakuluLinux Shift 2022-06-10. It comes with Linux kernel 5.13, based on Ubuntu 20.04, Gnome 3.36, and uses about 1GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!

  • Video ☛ MakuluLinux Shift 2022-06-10 Run Through – Invidious

    In this video, we are looking at MakuluLinux Shift 2022-06-10.

• BSD

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Rubenerd: Our sites are now on FreeBSD 13.1-R

    If the upgrade on my cloud instance went smoothly, you should be reading this. If not, you won’t be reading this. Which means, who would I be talking to?

    Hmm, that’s a bit meagre for a blog post, even one that’s an announcement of a job well done. Maybe it’d seem less pointless if I padded it out with a meandering paragraph of redundant prose that contains no meaningful substance whatsoever. But from which words would I construct such a literary device? And surely the modest, attractive, intelligent people who read this blog on a regular basis would see right through such an obvious charade? Fair call, I should probably avoid doing that.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview Now Available for Download

    We are pleased to announce the availability of the Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview release for the 64-bit Intel and AMD (x86_64) and 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platforms. Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview is a major release that introduces many new features, enhancements, and changes. It is 100% application binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 General Availability (GA) release; Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview can be leveraged by developers, ISV and IHV to get ready for the GA release of Oracle Linux 9.

    Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview includes security feature updates, networking, high availability, and file system improvements, and enhanced developer tools, compilers, and scripting language support. Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview ships with the kernel-uek-5.15.0-0.23.1.el9uek Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7 (UEK) and kernel-5.14.0-1.7.1.el9 Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) packages. For details of the new features, enhancements, and changes, refer to the Oracle Linux 9 Developer Preview Release Notes.

• Debian Family

  • Debian Community News: Who really owns Debian: Ubuntu or Google?

    SPI, Inc now invoices Microsoft for donations

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 739

  • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 739

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 739 for the week of June 5 – 11, 2022.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Andrew Hutchings ☛ Drag soldering a 100 pin QFP for a PiStorm 600

    I created a video to demonstrate how I drag solder QFP chips onto PCBs. This one being a CPLD for a PiStorm 600.

  • Arduino ☛ ElectriPop inflates 3D Mylar forms using electrostatic energy | Arduino Blog

    If you’ve ever stuck a balloon to your head, you know that static energy is powerful enough to overcome gravity. It is also possible to produce that energy on demand by running electrical current through some materials, including metalized Mylar sheets. In a recent project from Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group, researchers utilized this effect to inflate 3D Mylar forms.

    As demonstrated in the ElectriPop video, cutting a slit into a sheet of metalized Mylar will cause it to separate when electricity passes through. This is electrostatic energy causing the two flaps to repel each other. Similarly, the same force can cause the Mylar to lift and stand up as it repels from a charged base. By cutting complex shapes and patterns into Mylar sheets, the researchers were able to create 3D forms that come to life when they apply electricity.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • The Register UK ☛ MongoDB’s foray into analytics gets warm reception • The Register

    At MongoDB’s recent conference in New York, the company demonstrated its ambition in taking on workloads from other databases.

    The company has made significant inroads into the database market with a developer-friendly distributed document database to help devs build modern, web-based, transactional systems.

    Time series and search have become targets, with the promise of support for secondary indexes in the former, and Search Facets to help developers build search experiences more rapidly in the latter.

    But it was the continued push into analytics that impressed commentators, who were also keen to point out the limits to what could be achieved in a document database.

• Programming/Development

  • Rlang ☛ Crosstab calculation in R | R-bloggers

    Crosstab calculation in R, To create a crosstab using functions from the dplyr and tidyr packages in R, use the following basic syntax.

  • Rlang ☛ Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) using R | R-bloggers

    VMD has been used in many scientific areas with true or synthetic data. I’ll explain the functionality of the VMDecomp R package using two simple use cases.

  • Rlang ☛ Timing data.table Operations | R-bloggers

    In a post last week I offered a couple of simple techniques for randomly shuffle a data.table column in place and benchmarked them as well. A comment on the original question, though, argued these timings aren’t useful since the benchmarked data set only contains five rows (the size of the table in the original post).

    That seemed plausible, so I’ve carried the test further. Often we’re interested in vectors with hundreds, thousands, or millions of elements, not a handful. Do the timings change as the vector size grows?

    To find out, I simply extended my computation from last time using microbenchmark and plotted the results below. I’m surprised to see just how much set() continues to outperform the other options even to fairly large vector sizes.

  • Geeks For Geeks ☛ Load PDF From URL in Android with Kotlin

    PDF View is most of the applications to display the PDF files within the application to display the pdf within our own application rather than redirecting to another application. If we want to display multiple pdf files within our application we have to host these files and then access these files with the help of their URL. In this article, we will be building a simple application in which we will be loading PDF from URL using PDF View in Android using Kotlin.

  • Java

    • Geeks For Geeks ☛ Top 50 Java Project Ideas For Beginners & Advanced

      Java (originally named, “Oak”) is considered to be one of the best languages when it comes to building projects and is also a highly paid one. Be it a web app, android app, or even a gaming app, Java is best in every application. According to GitHub, there are 9 million developers globally and this community grows on a daily basis. Java is a class-based, objective, secured, and universal programming language. It has a Write Once, Read Anywhere (WORA) feature which makes it unique.

    • Geeks For Geeks ☛ Authentication with API Key in Java

      Usually, in a web application, we will log in by using a username(email id/login name) with a password. Securely we can do the same by using an APIKey as well. Let us see what is an APIKey. The API key is a unique identifier that authenticates requests and if several users are there, their username or email id can be joined with the current date and a secure code meant only for that project by using the md5 mechanism, we can create APIKey and can maintain in a database. Let us see the ways of creating APIKey and inserting it into the database.

• Standards/Web

  • Andre Franca ☛ USB-C now!

    Apart from that, to maximize profits, Apple is already not including chargers with the new iphones, which is an absurd. In Brazil, by the way, a judge, very correctly in my opinion, ruled in favor of consumer who bought a brand new phone, since this came to be considered a tying sale, that is, I sell you a product, then I sell you another one so that the first will work.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Visualizing My Blog’s Internal Links – Jim Nielsen’s Blog

    I recently read a post which spurred an idea in my head. For the life of me I can’t find the original post. I looked in my notes, my RSS reader, my browser history — nothing.

    So I’m writing this post without citing the original source — maybe if you know it, you can reach out to me.

    The post was about links and the author said something like: “You don’t need to create tags in your writing. Your links are tags.” That struck me. While I’m not quite ready to abandon the semblance of structured tagging on my blog, the idea of thinking about links as tags was intriguing.

    It made me want to see the links I’ve created on my own blog. Consider it pompous, but I link to myself a lot. It’s my way of connecting ideas in my brain, even if I don’t formally tag them.

Leftovers

• Vice ☛ Singapore Company Suing US Railroad for Train Robbery

  A Singapore-based shipper filed two lawsuits against Union Pacific for having $181,000 worth of merchandise stolen or contaminated while aboard the company’s trains somewhere between St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, according to court filings.

  Ocean Network Express, the Singapore-based shipper, claims in the first suit that $166,060 of L-Arginine, an amino acid supplement, was potentially contaminated when “The container was found at Los Angeles with doors open, the seal of the container having been breached during Union Pacific’s rail carriage of it.” The second lawsuit alleges theft of 360 solar panels worth a total of $15,796. It says the panels were “pilfered” while in Union Pacific’s custody.

• Science

  • John Goerzen ☛ Really Enjoyed Jason Scott’s BBS Documentary | The Changelog

    Like many young programmers of my age, before I could use the Internet, there were BBSs. I eventually ran one, though in my small town there were few callers.

    Some time back, I downloaded a copy of Jason Scott’s BBS Documentary. You might know Jason Scott from textfiles.com and his work at the Internet Archive.

    The documentary was released in 2005 and spans 8 episodes on 3 DVDs. I’d watched parts of it before, but recently watched the whole series.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: 12 Jun 2022

    McDonald’s had a history of serving coffee that was dangerously hot. It had received 700 complaints about the matter, and had had to settle numerous claims from people who were horribly burned by its coffee. However, it declined to settle with Liebeck, who initially sought $20k to cover her medical expenses.

• Security

  • Exploring Webauthn Use Cases — Firstyear’s blog-a-log

    Webauthn is viewed by many people and companies as the future of authentication on the internet and within our workplaces. It has the support of many device manufacturers, browser vendors and authentication providers.

    But for Webauthn’s lofty goals and promises, as a standard it has many fractured parts. Many of the features it claims at best don’t work, at worst, present possible security risks. The standard itself is quite confusing, uses dense and obtuse language, and laid out in a very piecemeal way. This makes it hard to see the full picture to construct a proper security and use cases analysis.

  • Threat Post ☛ Bluetooth Signals Can Be Used to Track Smartphones, Say Researchers | Threatpost

    Researchers demonstrated a possible way to track individuals via Bluetooth signals.

    Researchers warn Bluetooth signals can be used to track device owners via a unique fingerprinting of the radio signal. The technique was presented via a paper presented at IEEE Security and Privacy conference last month by researchers at the University of California San Diego.

    The paper suggests that minor manufacturing imperfections in hardware are unique with each device, and cause measurable distortions which can be used as a “fingerprint to track a specific device”.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ Segregating Email With Sub-Domains – Kev Quirk

    I like to segregate my email by using unique addresses for many services. This makes things more secure, but it isn’t perfect…

    My pal, Luke Harris, recently wrote about how he’s decided not to use plus addressing any more and I get why. Plus address can be useful for stopping spam, but it’s easy to lose track of which address you have used where.

    Luke talks about a recent example in his post where he thought his Twitter account used the +twitter plus address, but was actually using +social.

  • The Register UK ☛ HelloXD ransomware bulked up with better encryption, nastier payload

    Windows and Linux systems are coming under attack by new variants of the HelloXD ransomware that includes stronger encryption, improved obfuscation and an additional payload that enables threat groups to modify compromised systems, exfiltrate files and execute commands.

    The new capabilities make the ransomware, first detected in November 2021 – and the developer behind it even more dangerous – according to researchers with Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat intelligence group. Unit 42 said the HelloXD ransomware family is in its initial stages but it’s working to track down the author.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • PIA ☛ PIA Is Leaving India Due to Data Collection Directive

      The Indian government has announced a new data collection directive, No. 20(3)/2022-CERT-In, which goes into effect on June 27, 2022. The legislation forces data-handling companies, including VPNs, to collect customers’ personal information. It also requires your data to be stored and shared (if needed) for up to five years – even if you stop using the service.

      This new ruling affects VPNs directly, since any online service with physical infrastructure in India has to comply with the new legislation. To comply with the new legislation while also being able to maintain our customers’ privacy, Private Internet Access will be removing its VPN servers located in India. That said, our clients will still have access to Indian IP addresses using our geo-located servers.

    • Stacy on IoT ☛ Moving away from your smart home? Here’s what you should do

      On our latest IoT Podcast episode, we take a question that Joel left on our IoT Voicemail Hotline. Joel is moving and he’s leaving behind his smart thermostat, a video doorbell, some sensors, and a water controller. He wants to know the best way to leave the devices, as well as instructions for them, to the new homeowners.

      I assume Joel had all of these devices still installed when the house was on the market. Technically, anything installed — particularly devices that are hardwired — during a showing should stay behind. That’s something to keep in mind for any smart home owners who plan to sell their house: Disconnect any gear you want to take with you before your house hits the market.

    • Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (Italy) – 9777996 – GDPRhub

      The Italian DPA fined a public waste collection company (processor) €200.000 for installing video surveillance systems without prior authorisation of the Municipality of Taranto (controller) and posting video’s on Facebook with identifiable persons without a legal basis.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The January 6 Militia Witnesses Are Cooperating with DOJ, Probably Not the January 6 Committee

    I doubt that Cheney’s comment reflects any greater insight into where DOJ is headed than I’ve gotten from tracking DOJ’s investigation closely, though as I’ll explain below, the Committee undoubtedly has non-public insight into how the militias coordinated with those close to Trump. (One possible — and important — exception to this assumption might be Joshua James, the Oath Keeper who is known to have testified in an NYPD inquiry targeting Roger Stone associate Sal Greco.)

    While the Committee showed clips of depositions it had with Stewart Rhodes (pleading the Fifth in response to a question about arming members), Enrique Tarrio (expressing regret he didn’t monetize the Stand Back and Stand By comment), and Jeremy Bertino (who is Person-1 in the sedition indictment charging the Proud Boy leaders and who told the Committee that membership tripled in response to Trump’s comment), the more substantive claims about the militias on Thursday always cited the indictments against them, not evidence independently gathered by the Committee.

• Environment

  • Energy

    • Franz Dill ☛ The Eponymous Pickle: Rethinking Datacenters

      More efficient electronics and improved datacenter cooling systems have emerged in recent years. Yet, these gains are insufficient to offset the enormous and growing demand for computational power, and the energy it draws. Grand View Research predicts that the datacenter colocation market will grow by a 13.3% annual rate through 2028.

    • Matt Rickard ☛ The Cost to Participate In Decentralized Networks

      The cost to run an Ethereum 2.0 validator will be 32 ETH ($50,000 at today’s prices). Not to mention the operational overhead of running and maintaining complex software. Sure, you can pool resources (centralization) or outsource -as-a-Service (centralization).

• Finance

  • Michael West Media ☛ RBA’s rate rise gives free billions to Aussie banks

    When the Reserve Bank announced the biggest single rise in the cash rate in 22 years, it was not only the end of the era of ultra-low interest rates. Going it alone compared to its international colleagues to quash inflation, Australia’s central bank is gifting banks risk-free billions, reports Callum Foote.

    The move by Australia’s central bank to lift its cash rate target by 50 basis points to 0.85% made worldwide news, surprising Australian and international economists alike.

    International analysts at Reuters and Bloomberg had been expecting a rate hike of 25 basis points or 40 basis points. This was mirrored by domestic banks ANZ and Westpac who strongly argued for a 40 basis points increase in similar editorials. The domestic swaps market had priced in a 32 basis points move, with the futures market at a more conservative 29 basis points move.

    The RBA’s aggressive move was made as “inflation has picked up significantly and by more than expected,” according to the bank’s governor Philip Lowe.

  • CBC ☛ Nearly 1 in 4 homeowners say they’d have to sell home if interest rates rise more, according to survey

    Nearly one in four homeowners say they will have to sell their home if interest rates go up further, according to a new debt survey from Manulife Bank of Canada.

    The survey, conducted between April 14 and April 20, also found that 18 per cent of homeowners polled are already at a stage where they can’t afford their homes.

    More than one in five Canadians expect rising interest rates to have a “significant negative impact” on their overall mortgage, debt and financial situation, the survey found.

  • CBC ☛ Debt-to-disposable-income ratio eases down from record 185% | CBC News

    Statistics Canada says the amount Canadians owe relative to their income pulled back in the first quarter from the record level set in the fourth quarter of 2021, as incomes grew faster than debt.

    The agency says, on a seasonally adjusted basis, household credit market debt as a proportion of household disposable income fell to 182.5 per cent compared with the record 185 per cent in the previous quarter.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ More people are heading back to the workplace, but that doesn’t mean they all like it | CBC News

    Career consultant Sweta Regmi remembers the days when working from home was unfathomable to her.

    If you had asked her years ago, when she was employed at a call centre, Regmi would have had a question of her own for you.

    “Are you crazy?” Regmi, founder and CEO of Teachndo Career Consultancy in Sudbury, Ont., said, laughing at the distant memory.

    But that was then — not today, when even her former colleagues at the call centre have been working from home amid a pandemic-era pivot toward more flexible work.

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Daniel Miessler ☛ How Good is DALL·E 2 at Creating NFT Artwork? – Daniel Miessler

      So the art is a big piece of it. You still need to hype it, get people to believe in its value, etc.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Defending the Indefensible: If Bill C-11 Won’t Pass Until the Fall, Why is the Government Cutting Off Debate and Review Now? – Michael Geist

      The government’s motion to cut off Bill C-11 debate will head to a vote on Monday as it seeks to wrap up submission of amendments, voting on all amendments, the House of Commons report stage, and third reading within a week. Liberal MPs argue that Conservative filibustering at committee necessitates the motion, yet with Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez acknowledging that a Senate review of the bill will likely have to wait until the fall, there is no deadline and no obvious need to curtail proper review of amendments and House debate. Indeed, by rushing through the amendment review of the bill, the government undermines the credibility of the committee process and makes a full Senate review even more essential.

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • LWN ☛ SambaXP talk videos posted [LWN.net]

    The 2022 sambaXP conference was held online at the beginning of June. Videos of the talks given at that event have now been posted on YouTube. Topics covered include Samba in containers, certificate auto-enrollment, symlink races, and more.

  • Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) ☛ CFP Deadline Extended – Refereed Presentations – Linux Plumbers Conference 2022

    This is the last year that we will be adhering to our long-standing tradition of extending the deadline by one week. In 2023, we will break from this tradition, so that the refereed-track deadline will be a hard deadline, not subject to extension.

    But this is still 2022, and so we are taking this one last opportunity to announce that we are extending the Refereed-Track deadline from the current June 12 to June 19. Again, if you have already submitted a proposal, thank you very much! For the rest of you, there is one additional week in which to get your proposal submitted. We very much look forward to seeing what you all come up with.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • H2S Media ☛ Install Joomla on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Linux – Linux Shout

    Learn the commands to install Joomla CMS on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish Linux to start your own blog or website.

    On the Internet, after WordPress, Joomla is another popular open-source content management system to start with. The software is often offered for your own websites.

    It is a widely used CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create and manage web projects.
    Being an open-source project, it is not only free but also constantly being further developed by the community.

    The core functions of Joomla can be extended as required by components, modules, and plugins. Generally suitable for websites whose content changes frequently or is constantly being expanded. These are, for example, blogs, shops, or communities.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ How to Rename a Directory on Linux

    Renaming a directory in Linux is easy, and there are plenty of ways to go about it. From renaming a single directory to finding and renaming many, here’s how to do it.

  • Vitux ☛ Linux Basics: 3 Ways to find your local IP Address in Debian 11 – VITUX

    In our daily computer work, we need to know the IP address of our machine from time to time. This tutorial lists three ways you can use to find the IP address of your local network card in Debian 11 with the help of the terminal.

  • Audio controlled Shelly devices

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install Sysdig on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Sysdig on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Sysdig is an open-source, system-level exploration application that capture, save, filter, and examine the real-time events of Linux systems. In a nutshell, it’s a robust performance analysis meth. You can integrate Sysdig with ansible, puppet, and logstash to extend the functionality.

    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 Sysdig monitoring tool on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

  • How to Install Moodle on Debian 11 – LinuxTuto

    Moodle is a popular, free, and open-source Course Management system based on PHP released under the GNU General Public License.

    The Moodle platform is highly customizable and takes a modular approach to features, so it is extensible and adaptable to your needs. It is probably most popular open source learning management platform available today.

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Moodle on your Debian 11 OS.

  • HowTo Forge ☛ How to Install and Configure Envoy Proxy on Debian 11

    Envoy proxy is a free and open-source service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure the Envoy proxy on the Debian 11 server.

  • OSNote ☛ How to Install LEMP Stack on AlmaLinux 8 and Rocky Linux 8

    LEMP is a popular web hosting stack used by developers and web hosting companies to test and host web applications. It comprises 3 components: the Nginx ( pronounced as Engine-X) webserver, MariaDB, and PHP which is a server-side scripting language.

    In this walkthrough, you will learn how to install the LEMP stack on AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux 8.4.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • TTY

    I’ve always used tiling window managers, first i3 then more recently, dwm. In my search for something even lighter, I’ve come across dvtm, a window manager for the terminal. It acts, in most aspects, like dwm, having the same behavior, but in my case in a TTY. First impressions are that it’s much lighter, obviously, and smoother when especially when scrolling. Still getting used to the keybindings, but I definitely vouch for it. The default meta key is ctrl-g, although I’ll probably change it to alt as I’m more used to that. It has the default tiling layout of dwm, as well as a few others.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • YaST in a YaST-less system | YaST

    We all know how awesome YaST can be for administering your (open)SUSE system. From managing the software repositories and the installed software to adjusting the systemd services and sockets. From creating LVM logical volumes to configuring Kdump (or fadump). From inspecting the systemd journal to fine-tuning the boot loader. From configuring network interfaces to adjusting the mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities. From setting the firewall configuration to managing your subscriptions to the different SUSE products… and so much more!

    But all that comes with a pretty obvious price. You must install YaST and all its dependencies in the system you want to manage. Those dependencies include the Ruby runtime, either ncurses or Qt (depending if you want the text-based or the fully graphical interface) and some other packages or libraries depending on what you want to achieve. For example, you need libzypp to install software or to manage the repositories.

    What if you don’t want to pay that price? Well, we have an special offer for you! Now you can use YaST to administer your system without installing YaST or any of its dependencies. Ideal for lovers of minimal systems like the MicroOS variants of SUSE and openSUSE. All you need is a container engine like Docker or Podman… and you are using one anyways if you are using MicroOS, isn’t it?

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Red Hat ☛ Use OpenVINO to convert speech to text

    Speech to text is one of the most common use cases for artificial intelligence. It’s used all over to allow easier human interaction. Phone tree automation is a common use case.

    This article will walk you through a speech-to-text example using OpenVINO, an open-source toolkit for optimizing and deploying AI inference. This example is a variant of the OpenVINO speech-to-text demo notebook which can be found in OpenVINO’s GitHub repository.

  • Interest in a ROCm SIG? [Ed: SIG? Mainstream Fedora is stagnant owing to IBM attacking its own operating systems, starting with CentOS...]

    A few people contact me directly trying to run things like PyTorch, which requires large amounts of ROCm to get working (most of which Fedora does not have yet). I feel like a SIG, or at least some wiki page would help organize things a bit for those who want to tackle it but are unaware of the resources available. Also is there a better mailing list for this? I’d hate to keep spamming devel with my ROCm related interest

• Debian Family

  • Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, May 2022

    In May I was assigned 11 hours of work by Freexian’s Debian LTS initiative and carried over 13 hours from April. I worked 8 hours, and will carry over the remaining time to June.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Make Use Of ☛ Linux Mint Overhauls Cinnamon 5.4 Desktop for Anticipated OS Release

    
    The new version of Linux Mint’s default desktop will feature improved support for multiple monitors and other enhancements.

    The developers of Linux Mint have announced a new version of the default Cinnamon desktop environment, version 5.4. The release comes ahead of the pending release of Linux Mint 21, dubbed “Vanessa.”

    The biggest change in Cinnamon 5.4 is a new version of the Mutter window manager, according to 9To5Linux. The JavaScript engine is also being overhauled.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • XDA ☛ EU harmonizing fast charging with USB PD will be a big deal for Android

  • Android Central ☛ Moto G 5G (2022) review: Remarkably unremarkable | Android Central

  • Android Central ☛ Gamesir X3 for Android review: Making notable improvements | Android Central

  • HowTo Geek ☛ This Is How Mozilla Thunderbird Mail Will Come To Android

  • How to enable reverse wireless charging on your Android smartphone | NextPit

  • Phone Arena ☛ This incredibly simple detail would make every Android phone better, yet Samsung and Google strangely ignore it – PhoneArena

  • Phone Arena ☛ Many new malicious Android apps crop up, delete them now before they steal your data and cash – PhoneArena

  • Android Headlines ☛ Android 12 Rolling Out To Samsung’s Galaxy A13 5G In The US

  • 9to5Google ☛ Samsung set to debut Android 12L soon – 9to5Google

  • Liliputing ☛ postmarketOS v22.06 brings easier upgrades, UI improvements to the mobile Linux distro

    PostmarketOS is a Linux distribution optimized for smartphones and other devices with ARM-based processors. Initially designed as a project to breathe new life into old phones by giving them an operating system with long term support, the latest version of postmarketOS now officially supports 27 devices including phones, tablets, and single-board computers.

    It’s also now easier to update from one version of the Alpine Linux-based operating system to the next.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• LWN ☛ Mourning Marina Zhurakhinsakaya

  We are sad to inform our community that Marina Zhurakhinsakaya died on Saturday.

  CW: cancer – Marina died on Saturday after winning her struggle with cancer for three years. We would like to elevate Marina’s message to encourage people to test themselves for genetic markers for breast cancer. You can donate in Marina’s honor to Dana Farber’s Metastatic Breast Cancer Research Fund…

• Apache Blog ☛ The Apache News Round-up: week ending 10 June 2022

  We’re wrapping up another great week with the following activities from the Apache community…

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • DebugPoint ☛ Mozilla Introduces Local Machine Translation Tool for Firefox

      Mozilla introduced an Add-on to help you translate web pages locally without transmitting the data to the cloud or server.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • The Register UK ☛ New versions of Collabora, LibreOffice, KDE Gear released • The Register

    Fresh versions of three of the bigger open-source application suites just landed for those seeking to break free from proprietary office apps.

    LibreOffice is the highest profile of them, and the project recently put out version 7.3.4, the latest release in the Community version of the suite.

    The Document Foundation maintains two versions of LibreOffice; the other is the Enterprise branch.

    Both versions are free. The difference is that the Community version is the faster-moving development branch. It’s comparable to a free Linux distro, or a short-term Ubuntu release: there’s no commercial support, but you may be able to get assistance from other users – in other words, the Community.

• Programming/Development

  • GCC for New Contributors — GCC Contributors Guide 0.1 documentation

    This is an unofficial guide to GCC’s internals, aimed at new developers, and at plugin authors.

    Source: https://github.com/davidmalcolm/gcc-newbies-guide

    I’m a relative newcomer to GCC, so I thought it was worth documenting some of the hurdles I ran into when I started working on GCC, to try to make it easier for others to start hacking on GCC. Hence this guide.

  • LWN ☛ Diving into GCC internals

    For those who would like to know more about how GCC works, David Malcolm has enhanced his GCC for new contributors guide with a section on GCC internals.

  • Perl / Raku

    • Strawberry Perl

      Last week I wrote blog post Do you want to get started with Perl v5.36? where I shared my experience with the latest release Perl v5.36.

  • Rust

    • Niko Matsakis: Async cancellation: a case study of pub-sub in mini-redis

      Lately I’ve been diving deep into tokio’s mini-redis example. The mini-redis example is a great one to look at because it’s a realistic piece of quality async Rust code that is both self-contained and very well documented. Digging into mini-redis, I found that it exemplifies the best and worst of async Rust. On the one hand, the code itself is clean, efficient, and high-level. On the other hand, it relies on a number of subtle async conventions that can easily be done wrong – worse, if you do them wrong, you won’t get a compilation error, and your code will “mostly work”, breaking only in unpredictable timing conditions that are unlikely to occur in unit tests. Just the kind of thing Rust tries to avoid! This isn’t the fault of mini-redis – to my knowledge, there aren’t great alterantive patterns available in async Rust today (I go through some of the alternatives in this post, and their downsides).

      [...]

      If you’ve not seen it, mini-redis is a really cool bit of example code from the tokio project. It implements a “miniature” version of the redis in-memory data store, focusing on the key-value and pub-sub aspects of redis. Specifically, clients can connect to mini-redis and issue a subset of the redis commands. In this post, I’m going to focus on the “pub-sub” aspect of redis, in which clients can publish messages to a topic which are then broadcast to everyone who has subscribed to that topic. Whenever a client publishes a message, it receives in response the number of other clients that are currently subscribed to that topic.

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • UN World Food Programme High-Level Supporter Reggie Khumalo to Visit Humanitarian Projects in Africa [Ed: Where is the UN/WHO when it comes to protecting Africans from patents on crops, COVID-19 mitigations etc.?]

    Following years of supporting humanitarian organisations and its causes, self- taught African fine artist Reggie Khumalo, who uses his art as a vehicle for social change, will this month be visiting World Food Programme (WFP) projects in Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Edward Betts ☛ Fixing spelling in GitHub repos using codespell [Ed: Why does Planet Debian syndicate Microsoft brags?]

• Security

  • LinuxSecurity ☛ Open Source Security: Key Benefits & Drawbacks You Should Know

    This article will explore the key benefits and potential drawbacks of open source security in under a minute.

  • CISA ☛ Drupal Releases Security Updates | CISA

    Drupal has released security updates to address a Guzzle third-party library vulnerability that does not affect Drupal core but may affect some contributed projects or custom code on Drupal sites. Exploitation of this vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to take control of an affected website.

  • LinuxSecurity ☛ A Getting-Started Guide to Improving Security with Open-Source Static & Dynamic Security Scanners

    As open-source software becomes increasingly common in the infrastructure of businesses, it is essential to ensure the security of the software being relied upon. An increasingly popular cyber security solution is open-source SAST (Static Application Security Testing) and DAST (Dynamic Analysis Security Testing) security scanning, which give IT technicians and developers the ability to access the code of a certain piece of software to remove threats or improve the strength of its security.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Two Weeks Into New Job

      comfortable new start I’ve ever had on a job. A big part of that is probably the fact that I’m senior now and have finally been able to internalise that. I know my strengths and skills. I know what I can bring to the table.

      The tech stack is diverse but not too complicated. We use the tools we need, but none of the extra and horrible cruft that large cloud providers offer. Privacy has by necessity been a part of the product since the very beginning; Schrems II hasn’t caused anyone to panic or scramble because no one had assumed that the Safe Harbour provision would stand up to EU human rights in the first place.

• Environment

  • Energy

    • The useful part of cryptocurrency

      Amid the current crypto price drop. I want to write about what cryptocurrency is actually useful for. And what I believe Crypto should be used for. Non of those NFT and ICO bulls*it. Or you can think this as my DD for investing in crypto. Or confirming my confirmation bias if you read WSB.

      At the very core of the cryptocurrency is the idea of trust and decentralization. Our current banking system depends a whole lot on trust. Users trust the bank to store, provide access and transfer their money given the user’s explicit instruction. And do it very reliably. We all know how that went. Credit card fraud is a real problem. 3D Secure is really the bank, merchant and the user passing the buck. Not to mention the shit show of the bank’s website and mobile app security. All of them claim “secure”. But they never get close the level of security that most computer scientists and engineers are looking for – Noting can possibly fscks up unless I fsck-ed up.

    • Re: The useful part of cryptocurrency

      The amount of money that gets stolen daily over crypto is pretty big too. So I’m not super convinced it does a particularly good job in that regard. Like, “it’s more safe and secure” is not the hot take I would’ve expected on the same day that Celsius Network collapsed stealing everyone’s savings.

    • Oatmilk story: Anyone can charge your credit card without your consent

      Say what you will about crypto, a few things about it make a lot more sense than what we have with our current banking system. Restricting the ability to send money exclusively to the owner of such funds is obvious. Anything else is absurd.

      It is surprising that the current system works. Anyone can charge your account, leaving it up to you to argue with the bank. Signatures are no longer required, making it even stupider.

      [...]

      I switched to Minor Figures oatmilk, which also became unavailable immediately. I love their packaging, but Oatley is a little better. But I managed to order Minor Figures directly from the distributor, 4 cases (of 6) at a time. I think the only way to do so was to sign up for autodelivery, every six weeks. I figured I’d do it for a couple of deliveries, and cancel.

      More easily said than done. A year later, dozens of emails and phone calls to Minor Figures and my bank, I am drowning in oatmilk. Oatley is now available again, and is a bit cheaper at Whole Foods than what I am charged for Minor Figures (because in the US, the dealer mafia is protected, and you cannot buy cheaper from the factory). But I just can’t get my order canceled.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • 2022 Week 23: Thoughts and Photos

    It’s been a roller coaster of a week at Rob’s Gemini Capsule, and in my own life. Much of it involves a personal matter I won’t bore my visitors with, but it has taken up much of my mental energy for the last seven days.

    [...]

    Two major changes are coming to the chess backend on Rob’s capsule: I am using a database instead of flat files to store game data, and I am using a proper chess engine for calculations instead of a crude shell script. I have never seriously worked with databases before, nor have I touched a chess engine or the UCI protocol, but making these changes will allow me to add more features to the frontend. I may not be able to finish by 1 July, but the project has already been quite informative, and I know visitors will have a better chess experience as a result.

• Monopolies

  • UK CAT: Policing the Process in Facebook/GIPHY – Disruptive Competition Project

    A little over a month ago the United Kingdom’s Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) heard arguments in Meta’s appeal against the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) order that Meta (Facebook’s mother company) unwind its previously completed acquisition of GIPHY, the provider of a searchable GIF database and related services. The CMA’s order was premised on a rather questionable theory of harm. While ostensibly about innovation and dynamic competition, the CMA’s arguments basically boiled down to “any reduction in the number of players in the market must be blocked, no matter how insignificant nor how beneficial the transaction”.

    Such an approach has obviously problematic consequences for innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship. These effects would be felt not only in the UK, which is in a state of regulatory competition with the European Union, but also internationally due to competition law’s extraterritorial reach. The CAT’s judgement will surely touch upon the extent to which the CMA is able to apply the law in this way, but the hearing revealed another important aspect of the case.

    Indeed, on the first day of the hearing, it was revealed that the CMA withheld for about 14 months the fact that Snap had purchased Gfycat (a GIPHY rival, as some had pointed out in the administrative process). The CMA also withheld the fact that Snap had been interested in purchasing GIPHY, but only at a much lower valuation. Snap valued GIPHY at $142 million (not the $315 million that Meta agreed to pay) and, as Meta’s lawyers argued, placed virtually zero value on GIPHY’s nascent display advertising business.

  • Facebook/GIPHY and the (Un)innovative Theory of Harm

    Towards the end of the last decade, the success of a handful of U.S. technology companies caused significant consternation amongst European policymakers. The initial response was a series of reports extrapolating new theories of harm in competition law for digital players. Some of these went even further, resulting in the creation of new regulatory regimes handing Government enforcers’ discretionary powers to intervene in the economy, with limited safeguards. In parallel, competition authorities stepped up enforcement using existing tools, resulting in a number of new enforcement actions at European and Member State levels, including former EU Member States.

    As these competition cases are brought under judicial scrutiny, there are lessons to be learned for future policymakers, both in terms of the new theories of harm being tested, and the importance of checks and balances on administrative discretion. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decision regarding Meta’s acquisition of GIPHY is one of the first such examples. The CMA’s decision has been heralded as opening up a “new era” of antitrust enforcement against tech, and is based on an innovative theory of harm to dynamic competition. But is this new era actually going to be good for consumers and the economy more broadly? At a hearing at the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) at the end of April 2022, the parties and a handful of third-party interveners (including the Computer & Communications Industry Association) made their views known.