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Links 22/08/2022: Mozilla Firefox 104 and public-inbox 1.9.0



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • GamingOnLinuxStar Labs reveal the StarBook Mk VI with Ryzen 7 or Intel 12th Gen | GamingOnLinux

        Star Labs, hardware vendor with some really lovely looking laptops with first-class Linux support have announced the StarBook Mk VI with Ryzen 7 or Intel 12th Gen.

        [...]

        For models currently in production (sold out), they give you a 5% discount if you pre-order. Pricing usually €£1,062.00 with a current discount to €£1,008.90.

        Meanwhile, they're also working on the bigger StarFighter laptop which will be a 15.6" beast that has a 4K IPS matte display and 45W Intel / AMD processors. It will be their biggest and most expensive unit yet, with Star Labs mostly targetting low-mid ring previously.

      • MakeTech EasierHow to Cast Your Android Screen onto Your Linux Desktop

        It may not be every day, but there will be times when you need to mirror your Android screen to your Linux desktop. You might want to give a presentation from your phone, check the app you are developing without touching your Android device, view photos and other media on a bigger screen, etc. No matter what the reason is, it is actually really easy to cast your Android screen to Linux.

    • Server

      • Kubernetes BlogKubernetes Spotlight on SIG Storage

        Since the very beginning of Kubernetes, the topic of persistent data and how to address the requirement of stateful applications has been an important topic. Support for stateless deployments was natural, present from the start, and garnered attention, becoming very well-known. Work on better support for stateful applications was also present from early on, with each release increasing the scope of what could be run on Kubernetes.

        Message queues, databases, clustered filesystems: these are some examples of the solutions that have different storage requirements and that are, today, increasingly deployed in Kubernetes. Dealing with ephemeral and persistent storage, local or remote, file or block, from many different vendors, while considering how to provide the needed resiliency and data consistency that users expect, all of this is under SIG Storage's umbrella.

        In this SIG Storage spotlight, Frederico Muñoz (Cloud & Architecture Lead at SAS) talked with Xing Yang, Tech Lead at VMware and co-chair of SIG Storage, on how the SIG is organized, what are the current challenges and how anyone can get involved and contribute.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Make Use OfLinux Kernel Development Zooms Along With 6.0 Release Candidate 2

        Just a week after announcing the first Linux 6.0 release candidate, Linus Torvalds is back with the second release candidate for the Linux kernel.

        What's Changed in the Linux 6.0 Release Candidate 2?

        Torvalds once again downplayed the significance of the release.

        "Nothing particularly interesting here, rc2 tends to be fairly calm with people taking a breather and not yet having found a lot of bugs," he wrote in a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List

        Still, the release candidate does come with the usual round of bug fixes. Torvalds noted updates that smoothed out problems running tests on Google cloud virtual machines.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mike Blumenkrantz: Sp33d

        I was planning to write this Friday, but then it was Friday, so I didn’t.

        You know how it is.

        I’ve been doing a lot of work on CPU optimizations in zink lately. I had planned to do some benchmarks of this, but now it’s Monday and someone has already done it for me, so I won’t.

        Sometimes it’s like that too.

        But the overly-technical, word-heavy, bullet-point-laden blog post still needs to be written, and now it’s Monday, so here I am.

        Speed: How does it work?

        [...]

        Descriptor set allocation was another bottleneck. In order to avoid blowing out heaps on heap-based hardware, I’ve capped descriptor pools to only contain 100 sets at a time. This means that even if a set isn’t fully utilized, it’s not consuming a huge amount of resources. It also means that allocation is faster when cmdbufs (and their associated descriptor pools) get reset.

        Remember when I said that there were N descriptor pools for N cmdbufs? Obviously this was a lie. What I meant to say was there are N * O descriptor pools for N cmdbufs, where O is the number of times the descriptor pool has overflowed because it had to allocate more than 100 sets. In this scenario, the overflowed (full) descriptor pool is appended to an array which then gets freed upon cmdbuf reset. Since the pools are relatively small, this recycling operation is pretty fast.

      • Alyssa RosenzweigAlyssa Rosenzweig: Clip control on the Apple GPU

        After a year in development, the open source “Asahi” driver for the Apple GPU is running real games. There’s more to do, but Neverball is already playable (and a lot of fun!).

        Neverball uses legacy “fixed function” OpenGL. Rather than supply programmable shaders like OpenGL 2, old OpenGL 1 applications configure a fixed set of graphics effects like fog and alpha testing. Modern GPUs don’t implement these features in hardware. Instead, the driver synthesizes shaders implementing the desired graphics. This translation is complicated, but we get it for “free” as an open source driver in Mesa. If we implement the modern shader pipeline, Mesa will handle fixed function OpenGL for us transparently. That’s a win for open source drivers, and a win for GPU acceleration on Asahi Linux.

    • Applications

      • The AnarcatAlternatives MPD clients to GMPC - anarcat

        GMPC (GNOME Music Player Client) is a audio player based on MPD (Music Player Daemon) that I've been using as my main audio player for years now.

        Unfortunately, it's marked as "unmaintained" in the official list of MPD clients, along with basically every client available in Debian. In fact, if you look closely, all but one of the 5 unmaintained clients are in Debian (ario, cantata, gmpc, and sonata), which is kind of sad. And none of the active ones are packaged.

        [...]

        For now, I guess that ymuse is the most promising client, even though it's still lacking some features and performance is suffering compared to gmpc. I'll keep updating this page as I find more information about the projects. I do not intend to package anything yet, and will wait a while to see if a clear winner emerges.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • ID RootHow To Install WineHQ on Linux Mint 21 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WineHQ on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, WineHQ can be used to run Windows software and games on Linux natively without dual booting windows with Linux or without using an emulator. Wine is not only supported on Linux but also on BSD, Solaris, and macOS.

        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 WineHQ on Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).

      • Static network config with Debian Cloud images – Simon Josefsson's blog

        I self-host some services on virtual machines (VMs), and I’m currently using Debian 11.x as the host machine relying on the libvirt infrastructure to manage QEMU/KVM machines. While everything has worked fine for years (including on Debian 10.x), there has always been one issue causing a one-minute delay every time I install a new VM: the default images run a DHCP client that never succeeds in my environment. I never found out a way to disable DHCP in the image, and none of the documented ways through cloud-init that I have tried worked. A couple of days ago, after reading the AlmaLinux wiki I found a solution that works with Debian.

      • Make Use OfHow to Install the build-essential Package on Ubuntu

        Every OS has in-built dependencies to function smoothly. In short, these supporting programs are often required to compile software and ensure all dependent software is available when needed.

        Ubuntu’s build-essential meta-package includes several such packages, which ensure your Linux experience is as seamless as you would like it to be. These packages are a part of Debian and contain all the components you need to create a Debian package.

      • H2S Media4 Ways to Install Microsoft Teams on Linux Mint 21 LTS Vanessa [Ed: Microsoft malware... better not]
      • H2S MediaHow to Install SSH Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Linux Shout

        There was a time when computers on the net were accessible via the Telnet protocol. Since this protocol did not offer encryption, recording passwords became a trivial matter.

        To secure remote access, Tatu Ylönen wrote a suite of programs in the mid-1990s – consisting of server, client, and utilities – which he called ssh (secure shell).

        Later he founded the company ssh.com and offered version 2 of the SSH suite only commercially. As a result, developers of the OpenBSD operating system forked the public source code of version 1. They further developed the program under the name “OpenSSH”. This OpenSSH suite became an integral part of virtually all Linux distributions.

      • TechRepublicHow to install Ansible on Ubuntu Server 22.04 | TechRepublic

        Ansible makes it much easier for busy admins to manage a large collection of servers. Instead of having to remote into each server to handle a task, you can take care of much of it from a single point of entry. One reason why I prefer Ansible over similar tools is that Ansible doesn’t require you to install clients on remote nodes. Instead, Ansible uses SSH to execute all tasks, and YAML files hold the definitions of the tasks to be run.

      • HowTo GeekHow to Install Arch Linux From a GUI

        Although Arch Linux is great, its installation is a show-stopper for many people. But now there’s a straightforward GUI-based installer for Arch. And you already know how to use it.

      • UNIX CopHow to install the latest version of ImageMagick on Ubuntu 22.04

        The ImageMagick tool is a library with which you can create, edit, compose, or convert digital images. It supports many available formats and is presented for Linux without a lot of fuss.

        ImageMagick can resize, flip, mirror, rotate, distort, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses, and Bézier curves.

        One of the best things about this tool is that it is open source and free, and it has excellent support for Linux.

      • VideoBuild an Awesome Nextcloud Server (Updated for Ubuntu 22.04!) - Invidious

        New: The LearnLinuxTV Nextcloud guide is now updated for Ubuntu 22.04 with this video! It's time to install Nextcloud! Nextcloud is the best platform for building your very own self-hosted collaboration platform, complete with features such as online document editing, file synchronization, calendar, contacts, and countless plugins. In this video, you'll be walked through the entire process, and by the end you'll have your very own Nextcloud server that's completely set up and ready for action by the end.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • OMG UbuntuUbuntu 22.10 May Disable GNOME’s New ‘Device Security’ Panel

          A bug report filed by Ubuntu developers this weekend describes the new device security feature as “confusing and unhelpful” in its current guise.

          “A default Ubuntu install only gets us “Security Level 1”. The highest level is “Security Level 3”. There isn’t anything an Ubuntu user can do to get to a higher security level from the Device Security screen,” the bug report reads.

          “If a user attempts to get their system to a higher security level, I think they could break their system since this isn’t something we currently support. We can work towards better integrating this screen for Ubuntu in future releases”.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • InfoWorld8 open source projects taking collaboration to the next level | InfoWorld

      Open source projects are all about creativity and collaboration, and the process really shines when the project itself supports teamwork. Working together to create software for working together might seem very meta, but the results are quite tangible.

      Here are eight open source projects that can help boost your team's collaboration, whether you are working in a distributed team, from your home office, or onsite in one of the newer hybrid workplaces.

      [...]

      The team at NextCloud gathered up some of the best open source projects for supporting group collaboration with email, chat, and calendaring.

    • LWNpublic-inbox 1.9.0 released [LWN.net]
      Upgrading:
      
      

      lei users need to "lei daemon-kill" after installation to load new code. Normal daemons (read-only, and public-inbox-watch) will also need restarts, of course, but there's no backwards-incompatible data format changes so rolling back to older versions is harmless.

      Major bugfixes:

      * lei no longer freezes from inotify/EVFILT_VNODE handling, user interrupts (Ctrl-C), nor excessive errors/warnings

      * IMAP server fairness improved to avoid excessive blob prefetch

      New features:

      * POP3 server support added, use either public-inbox-pop3d or the new public-inbox-netd superserver

      * public-inbox-netd superserver supporting any combination of HTTP, IMAP, POP3, and NNTP services; simplifying management and allowing more sharing of memory used for various data structures.

      * public-inbox-httpd and -netd support per-listener .psgi files

      * SIGHUP reloads TLS certs and keys in addition to config and .psgi files

      * "lei reindex" command for lei users to update personal index in ~/.local/share/lei/store for search improvements below:

      Search improvements:

      These will require --reindex with public-inbox-index and/or public-inbox-extindex for public inboxes.

      * patchid: prefix search support added to WWW and lei for "git patch-id --stable" support

      * text inside base-85 binary patches are no longer indexed to avoid false positives

      * for lei users, "lei reindex" now exists and is required to take advantage of aforementioned indexing changes

      Performance improvements:

      * IMAP server startup is faster with many mailboxes when using "public-inbox-extindex --all"

      * NNTP group listings are also faster with many inboxes when using "public-inbox-extindex --all"

      * various small opcode and memory usage reductions

      Please report bugs via plain-text mail to: meta@public-inbox.org

      See archives at https://public-inbox.org/meta/ for all history. See https://public-inbox.org/TODO for what the future holds.
    • Web Browsers

      • Mozilla

        • 9to5LinuxMozilla Firefox 104 Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

          Firefox 104 entered public beta testing at the end of July, during which it offered a long-anticipated feature, namely the ability to swipe left and right on web pages using a two-finger horizontal swipe gesture without holding down the Alt key.

          Unfortunately, just like Firefox 103, Firefox 104 is missing this long-anticipated feature in the final release, which now appears to have been postponed for the next release, Firefox 105. Of course, you can still navigate back and forward with a touchpad using a two-finger horizontal swipe gesture while holding down the Alt key.

    • Programming/Development

      • Ubuntu Pit20 Best C++ Projects For Beginners in 2022

        When it comes to programming, the best way to test one’s skills is to implement their knowledge into projects. While this is true for every programming language out there, our focus today is on C++ specifically, and there are plenty of C++ projects/ideas for beginners to talk about.

        Projects can also challenge you to broaden your horizons and also help you get ready to work on real-time development jobs for your career. So, hopefully, you’ll get some C++ project ideas today to expand your portfolio as a beginner.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Remote notification

          This will send a notification message with the title "compile finished", and a body of "success" or "failure" depending on whether the command completed successfully, and allows you to minimize (or otherwise hide) the terminal window while you do something else, which can be a very useful thing to do.

          It works great when you're running something on your own machine, but what if you're running it remotely?

        • RakulangRakudo Weekly News: 2022.34 R(aku&ust)

          Steve Roe blogged about the union of Raku and Rust in: Option-Some-None, which also touches on a lengthy debate on the essence of nothing (/r/rakulang comments).

  • Leftovers

    • Security

      • LWNSecurity updates for Monday [LWN.net]

        Security updates have been issued by Debian (jetty9 and kicad), Fedora (community-mysql and trafficserver), Gentoo (chromium, gettext, tomcat, and vim), Mageia (apache-mod_wsgi, libitrpc, libxml2, teeworlds, wavpack, and webkit2), Red Hat (podman), Slackware (vim), SUSE (java-1_8_0-openjdk, nodejs10, open-iscsi, rsync, and trivy), and Ubuntu (exim4).

      • Red Hat OfficialGetting started with Red Hat Insights malware detection [Ed: Red Hat pushing proprietary IBM garbage by pushing FUD about "malware" on Linux. There used to be this not-so-joke about anti-virus companies producing and spreading viruses just to sell their products.]

        The beta of Red Hat Insights malware detection service is now available. The malware detection service is a monitoring and assessment tool that scans Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems for the presence of malware, utilizing over 175 signatures of known Linux malware provided in partnership with the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence team

      • CISACISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog | CISA

        CISA has added a new vulnerability 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. Note: to view the newly added vulnerabilities in the catalog, click on the arrow in the "Date Added to Catalog" column, which will sort by descending dates.   

      • Venture BeatDon’t leave open source open to vulnerabilities [Ed: 'Linux' Foundation goes out of its way to help its sponsored/owners (like Microsoft) badmouth "Open Source" and legitimise the FUD by distracting from proprietary back doors]

        “Recently, the open-source ecosystem has been under siege,” said David Wheeler, director of open-source supply chain security at the Linux Foundation.

      • LinuxSecurityBlack Hat USA 2022 & DEF CON 30: Highlights, Key Findings & Notable...

        This year, Black Hat and DEF CON events marked a return to a time before the pandemic. However, in many ways, it represents the effort that has been made despite these substantial challenges to innovate and grow within security. It has made us more willing to trust our abilities and also not to forget the details, especially when it comes to the software we use every day.

      • Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Boosts Security on Mac and Linux [Ed: More like putting a back door, not enhancing security. Microsoft works for NSA and makes things intentionally vulnerable. When Microsoft calls something security and keeps it entirely proprietary ask them what they're trying to hide. There's not even an audit.]
    • Environment

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • Programming

        • The Camplog update

          Alright, this post will explain the various updates and changes added to The Camplog[1]. For those of you that have a keen eye, you might have seen that the source code was released yesterday. You can just grab it from The Camplog index page, served off right Gemini.

        • alist-let -- or maybe, plist?

          Firstly, I am a Common Lisper and know very little Scheme.

          First question: what is the purpose of alist-let? As I understand it (confusedly scanning the code and comments), you can bind symbols specified as keys to their corresponding values. If you don't know ahead-of-time what the symbol names are, you cannot use them in the body of the let, unless you somehow define local macros that contain those symbol-names... Otherwise, it's just let with a weirder syntax...

          In Common Lisp we have another basic kind of a list, a PLIST, which takes a little more space but is a pretty generic datastructure. An alist '((a . 1)(b . 2)(c . 3)) may be converted to a plist `((a 1)(b 2)(c 3))...

        • [RFC] alist-let



          If you're a Lisper, even if you're not a Schemer, please don't skip this post! :)

          Almost two years ago I wrote a macro to make it easier to work with values of an alist ("association list" i.e. list of key/value pairs; Scheme's "default" dictionary-like structure). It was called let-aref at first and it could be used to introduce a single variable with the value associated with a key of an alist -- sort of like let but for alists and for a single variable. Soon I realized I could use it for several variables if I changed it only slightly, which became alist-let.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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