Welcome to this week's Linux Weekly Roundup. We had a full week in the world of Linux releases, many reviews will be ready next week.
Ubuntu 22.10 Beta, Linux Lite 6.2 RC1, Linuxfx 11.2.22.04.3, and Bluestar Linux 5.19.11 have been released this week.
Spectro Cloud, the Bay Area-based modern infrastructure startup, announced a new platform that promises simplified onboarding and management of edge computing devices running Kubernetes.
Kubernetes v1.25 introduces the support for user namespaces.
This is a major improvement for running secure workloads in Kubernetes. Each pod will have access only to a limited subset of the available UIDs and GIDs on the system, thus adding a new security layer to protect from other pods running on the same system. How does it work? A process running on Linux can use up to 4294967296 different UIDs and GIDs.
Josh and Kurt talk about a blog post that explains there isn’t really an open source software supply chain. The whole idea of open source being one thing is incorrect, open source is really a lot of little things put together. A lot of companies and organizations get this wrong.
Rust is going to make it's way into the linux kernel at this stage for 6.1 release but what is going to happen from here on, what challenges still need to be addressed to ensure that this is a useful addition going into the future
We go hands-on at NASA's JPL and learn why Linux is the best OS for Earth and Mars.
So, as is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes.
But of course there's a lot of various changes in 6.0 - we've got over 15k non-merge commits in there in total, after all, and as such 6.0 is one of the bigger releases at least in numbers of commits in a while.
The shortlog of changes below is only the last week since 6.0-rc7. A little bit of everything, although the diffstat is dominated by drm (mostly amd new chip support) and networking drivers.
And this obviously means that tomorrow I'll open the merge window for 6.1. Which - unlike 6.0 - has a number of fairly core new things lined up. But for now, please do give this most recent kernel version a whirl,
Linus
After being in development for two months, Linux kernel 6.0 is finally here and introduces support for the AArch64 (ARM64) hardware architecture to swap transparent huge pages without splitting them, support for NVMe in-band authentication, support for PCI buses in the OpenRISC and LoongArch architectures, async buffered writes when using both XFS and io_uring, as well as io_uring zero-copy network transmission support.
Headline features in 6.0 include a number of io_uring improvements including support for buffered writes to XFS filesystems and zero-copy network transmission, an io_uring-based block driver mechanism, the runtime verification subsystem, and much more; see the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) for more information.
Linux Kernel 6.0 is here, and it is a very exciting release. Although Linux 5.19 had primarily new hardware support, this release improves upon it with performance improvements and more.
Here, we will be looking at some of the major refinements, as well as highlighting some of the smaller ones too.
A new month, and a brand new version of the Linux kernel is now available for use.
Linux 6.0 kickstarts the 6.x series in fine form, bringing an assortment of performance improvements, new hardware support, security fixes, and the usual grab-bag of file-system tweaks to the fore.
Announcing the release over on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Linus Torvalds said: “As is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes.”
“But of course there’s a lot of various changes in 6.0 – we’ve got over 15k non-merge commits in there in total, after all, and as such 6.0 is one of the bigger releases at least in numbers of commits in a while.
For a pinch more detail on what’s new in Linux kernel 6.0, read on.
Linus Torvalds has released a stable cut of version 6.0 of the Linux kernel.
“As is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes,” Torvalds wrote in his release announcement.
Torvalds rated version 6.0 “one of the bigger releases at least in numbers of commits in a while”, thanks largely to the inclusion of “15k non-merge commits in there in total”.
But he expressed more enthusiasm for version 6.1 when reminding kernel contributors that the release of a stable kernel update means it’s time to get cracking on new additions.
“Tomorrow I'll open the merge window for 6.1. Which - unlike 6.0 - has a number of fairly core new things lined up,” he wrote.
Those “things” include support for the Rust programming language, the addition of which was all-but-assured with a Saturday pull request. Optional disabling of Spectre mitigations for some Arm silicon will be added, in recognition of the pain that fixing the speculative execution mess can inflict on Arm-powered servers. Other changes make the performance hit from Retbleed fixes less painful.
A new Kernel is here (Linux Kernel 6.0) with the best hardware support for your devices. Here’s a quick recap on the new features.
After seven release candidates and a lot of testing, Linus Torvalds released the latest mainline Linux Kernel 6.0 with significant hardware improvements and updates. This release is the successor of the Linux Kernel 5.19 and brings a bump to the major version number, i.e. Linux Kernel 6.0.
Although, as per Linus, the numbering doesn’t mean anything other than a new version.
I have long promised that Hare would not have multi-threading, and it seems that I have broken that promise. However, I have remained true to the not-invented-here approach which is typical of my style by introducing it only after designing an entire kernel to implement it on top of.1
For some background, Helios is a micro-kernel written in Hare. In addition to the project, the Vulcan system is a small userspace designed to test the kernel.
The tech-savvy Windows users might have used CPU-Z. It is an excellent utility for gathering comprehensive system information that is not available through stock applications in Windows.
[...]
In fact, if you want something similar to CPU-Z on Linux, you are in luck. A developer called X0rg on GitHub has created a CPU-Z clone called CPU-X for Linux.
The interface might not be an exact replica bit you will find it familiar.
Vim is a universal and extensible terminal-based text editor that ships with the majority of Unix-like systems. To improve extensibility, community contributions, look and feel, and to facilitate an easy maintenance process, the Neovim editor has been built based on a fork of the Vim project. Both include their unique architectures, strengths, behaviors, and features that will compare throughout this piece of writing.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Miniconda on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Miniconda is a free minimal installer for conda. It is a small, bootstrap version of Anaconda that includes only conda, Python, the packages they depend on, and a small number of other useful packages, including pip, zlib, and a few others. The simplest way to get conda on your system is to install Miniconda.
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 Miniconda 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.
In this post, you will learn how to install WP-CLI on Ubuntu 22.04. We will also take a look at some of its most basic functions.
Today we are looking at how to install Mania Cat on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
In this video, we are looking at how to install Obsidian on Linux Mint 21.
I recently upgraded my laptop to a Lenovo T14s Gen3 AMD and I am happy to report that it works just fine with Debian/unstable using a 5.19 kernel.
The only issue is that some firmware files are still missing and I had to install them manually.
Updates are needed for the firmware-amd-graphics package (#1019847) for the Radeon 680M GPU (AMD Rembrandt) and for the firmware-atheros package (#1021157) for the Qualcomm NFA725A Wi-Fi card (which is actually reported as a NFA765).
Linux users feel empowered while performing tasks using the terminal application. So why leave the terminal when you can copy files to USB from the terminal app instead of a file explorer. This guide shows how to copy files and directories from a Linux system to a USB stick.
If you want to switch to a tiling window manager without having to go through a steep learning curve, Regolith is the Linux distro for you.
All the cool kids use tiling window managers these days, but the learning curve can be too steep for some. Regolith Desktop uses the GNOME session manager, and i3 to make the climb more manageable.
Here's everything you need to know about Regolith.
SpiralLinux is a young distribution which appeared on the DistroWatch waiting list in the middle of 2022. The project is described on its website as follows: SpiralLinux is a selection of Linux spins built from Debian GNU/Linux, with a focus on simplicity and out-of-the-box usability across all the major desktop environments.
SpiralLinux serves as an alternative live installation method for a highly reliable customized Debian system using only official Debian package repositories. If the description sounds familiar it may be because SpiralLinux is developed by the same person who created GeckoLinux, a desktop-oriented spin of openSUSE which strives to be easy to set up and use out-of-the-box. The two projects, SpiralLinux and GeckoLinux, share a common developer, common goals, and the same philosophy. They just use different parent distributions to provide their packages.
SpiralLinux is available in seven desktop flavours (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, Budgie, GNOME, LXQt, and KDE Plasma) along with a more minimal Builder edition. The Builder edition offers a minimal graphical interface based on IceWM and is intended to help people start with a small operating system foundation and work up with just a few desktop tools. I decided to try the KDE Plasma edition which is 2.0GB in size.
SpiralLinux (which I'll usually refer to as Spiral) booted from its live media to the Plasma desktop. The wallpaper is green and there are icons on the desktop for handling language support and launching the system installer. A panel sits at the bottom of the screen where it is home to the application menu, task switcher, and system tray.
The popular RPM Fusion repo brings the recently disabled Mesa package.
A few days back, Fedora Linux disabled the decoding of h264dec, h264enc, h265dec, h265enc, and vc1dec via GPU from its upcoming Fedora 37 onwards. The Mesa package which was providing this feature introduced a switch to disable the patented codecs. Until now, due to an oversight, it was enabled in Fedora.
Since then, numerous users over forums debated this decision and its consequences for the users.
As always, the open-source community finds a way to resolve the situation.
The Debian GNU/Linux project has voted to change its social contract in order to solve the issue of providing proprietary firmware on its install media. Additionally, the project voted to have just a single install image.
The new social contract will have one additional sentence: "The Debian official media may include firmware that is otherwise not part of the Debian system to enable use of Debian with hardware that requires such firmware."
A statement will be issued as follows: "We will include non-free firmware packages from the 'non-free-firmware' section of the Debian archive on our official media (installer images and live images). The included firmware binaries will normally be enabled by default where the system determines that they are required, but where possible we will include ways for users to disable this at boot (boot menu option, kernel command line etc.).
"When the installer/live system is running we will provide information to the user about what firmware has been loaded (both free and non-free), and we will also store that information on the target system such that users will be able to find it later.
One of the first things I learned about programming in the RPG II language was that field and variable names had to be six characters or less and they did not have to be pronounceable. I accepted this without question, as I was new to computers and figured that everything that had to do with computers was arcane and other-worldly. It wasn’t until I began work toward my computer science degree and was privileged to learn Pascal that I came to appreciate the value of longer identifier names, and of clarity of source code in general.
You don’t have to have a computer science degree to use long field names in modern RPG. Even if your database files — physical and logical — have field names of six characters or less, you don’t have to use those short names ever again in RPG programs. It is my purpose in this article to show you how to use longer, more legible field names instead.
When even National Party MP Barnaby Joyce, not a politician known for his technological nous, seems to know the Optus attack was not in any way sophisticated, then the telco really does have a big problem.
Surprisingly, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin does not seem to be aware of this basic fact and needs a so-called independent review to find out what world+dog now knows.
The Australian quoted Joyce as saying (when and where the man made this pronouncement wasn't specified, but then it rarely is): “It wasn’t a very sophisticated way to get into the Optus information and therefore, they have absolutely compromised their capacity to do their job, their duty of stewardship to their customers in protecting their privacy.
There’s a lot going on in the world right now, so you probably don’t need something more to worry about. But the cat-and-mouse world of cybersecurity never sleeps, and one of the threats keeping the good guys up at night right now is the growing risk of software supply chain attacks. Unfortunately, security through obscurity won’t provide as much protection for the IBM i server this time around.
In 2017, the Citizen Lab, along with partners R3D, SocialTic and Article19, released a series of eight reports on widespread Pegasus targeting in Mexico. Many sectors of Mexican civil society were targeted, including investigative journalists and lawyers for cartel victims’ families, anti-corruption groups, prominent lawmakers, international investigators examining enforced disappearances, and even the spouse of a journalist killed in a cartel slaying.
A public scandal ensued when the Pegasus targeting was first revealed, resulting in extensive scrutiny into the surveillance practices of Mexican authorities, and especially prosecutors. A still-ongoing criminal investigation was also opened in Mexico.
In 2021, as part of the Pegasus Project revelations (a collaboration between Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and a coalition of media organizations), it was reported that at least 50 people in the circle of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s current president, were among individuals potentially selected for surveillance with Pegasus between 2016-2017. The targets included the now-President’s children and spouse. The same report indicated that at least 45 Mexican governors and former governors may have been similarly selected for surveillance.
I've always been a bit of a Russophile. Partly from being the annoying communist kid in high school, but even since then I've had an appreciation for Russian culture and language.
I've been hanging out more on Gemini since I caught myself slipping back into going on reddit, mostly just scrolling the front page, but I don't want to get into that bad habit again. I see a lot of Russian language posts on Gemini and would love to be able to read them.
I've half-heartedly tried to learn it in the past but never put in much effort. I'm pretty good with languages, I took Latin for a year in high school and since Latin is based so much on case and declination, not word order, you have to change how you think about language to really begin learning it.
I have done a lot of creative and productive work lately: started a new manuscript, prepared a revised manuscript to send to an editor, cleaned up some web stuff, started cleaning up the house. Things are at a point where I feel I must find something fun and useless to do before I accidentally burn out.
It has happened before. I justify a habit of working and working because I actually like my work nowadays (except for some parts of it). I gave up a lot to steer my career this way because it felt worth it, and it doesn’t stress me out in the same ways my old career used to.
Rain usually makes motor racing more unpredictable. People make mistakes, and gambling on tyre choice can turn a race around. In Singapore there were lots of mistakes. Verstappen and Hamilton both had a stupid moment and went off, but Perez did a fine job to get ahead, not have any dodgy moments, and stay ahead.
I've been waffling on starting a microblog for an unreasonable amount of time now, but I'm giving in because I've accidentally turned my website into a space for Polished Writing That I Put Effort Into (I hesitate to call it Good because good would be doing a lot of work in that sentence). This place has no such expectations, so I'm hoping I can be a bit messier here. We'll see how that works out for me.
I'll keep this post short because this post is more of a test of the cli tool of smol.pub than anything else.
As I have probably stated in the home page I'm going to talk about computer stuff more than anything else. Mainly about low level programming because browsing gemini I found little to no content dedicated about it, and after some years dabbling into C and assembly I feel that there are still things to be said about them.
I'll also probably be talking about everything Linux/FOSS, gaming, the small web and what not.
Having implemented a quick toy i386 Forth, with the hope of having a tool for an i386 OS written in assembly, I had so much fun reacquainting myself with the 32-bit i386 (and its limitations, viewed as advantages this time), I just continued plowing ahead.
Over the last week or so I revived my old sliding-window interpreter which allows me to use 8-bit bytecodes, but does not limit me to a fixed assigment, but instead, automatically adjusts the indirection table at compile-time. It is a truly awesome idea, and amazingly, no one else has used it. It is a unique privilege to be (apparently) the only one in the world doing something.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.