01.30.23

GNU/Linux

• 9to5Linux ☛ 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 29th, 2023

  This has been a fantastic week with lots of great news and releases, starting with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro announcement and continuing with openSUSE Linux’s move to stronger security for its packages.

  Next week we got even more exciting news and releases, so stay close to 9to5Linux. Below, you can read the hottest news of the week and access all distro and software downloads available in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for January 29th, 2023.

• Kernel Space

  • LWN ☛ Linux 6.2-rc6

    Here we are, one week later, and rc6 is out.
    
    
    It's suspiciously small, but who am I to look a gift horse in the
    mouth? I'll take it and hope it's not an aberration, but instead a
    sign that 6.2 is shaping up nicely. Call me optimistic, call me naive,
    but let's enjoy it and hope the trend continues.
    
    
    The diffstat looks pretty normal too, with various driver fixes
    (networking, gpu, i2c and x86 platform drivers stand out) and
    netfilter fixes leading the pack. But there's the usual arch updates,
    random filesystem fixes, and misc other things going on too. The
    shortlog is appended for people who want to scan through the detailed
    overview.
    
    
    I've already mentioned this a couple of times earlier: despite rc6
    being nice and small, I expect to drag 6.2 out to an rc8 just because
    of the time lost to the holidays. But I'll be much happier if we can
    *keep* the remaining rc's nice and small. Ok?
    
    
                  Linus
    

• Applications

  • XRechnung Viewer

    The XRechnung format is a E-Government standard for electronic invoicing. At some point it will be mandatory for every company dealing with German governmental partners to send the invoices in this XML format.

    Many commercial vendors have already caught up and provide ways to generate XRechnung formatted documents with their software. However, to my knowledge, the availability of open source end user software is very limited. Since the standard itself is at least very open and transparently documented, so I think it is worthwhile to also support it with free software on the desktop.

  • TecMint ☛ 5 Most Notable Open Source Centralized Log Management Tools

    .

    Centralized logging, just like security, is a fundamental aspect of monitoring and sound management of core resources in an IT infrastructure including web applications and hardware devices. Competent operation teams always have in place

  • TecMint ☛ 5 Open Source Log Monitoring and Management Tools for Linux

    These events may happen

• Instructionals/Technical

  • It’s FOSS ☛ Install and Setup ZSH on Ubuntu Linux

    Want a cool looking Linux terminal? Try Zsh. Learn how to set up Zsh on Ubuntu Linux with Oh My Zsh.

  • Matthew Garrett ☛ Matthew Garrett: Further adventures in Apple PKCS#11 land [Ed: Adventure in proprietary 'security', relying on companies that snitch to the NSA]

  • Network World ☛ Using Linux hexedit and xxd commands to view and modify binary files | Network World

    The hexedit command provides a way to edit binary files, but to view and save the content in a file for later analysis without editing, try the xxd command.

  • DebugPoint ☛ Learn Gzip Command in Linux with Examples

    Gzip command in Linux is a lossless compression algorithm based on encoding LZ77 (Lempel-Ziv of 1977). It is also known as LZ1 compression, which is the basis for many lossy formats.

    Compressing files using gzip creates a compressed archive with the extension .gz and preserves the file permissions, ownership modes (read/write/execute) and access/modify date timestamps. It compresses regular files and ignores symbolic links. The same program, gzip, can compress and decompress files in Linux.

    Let’s take a look at some working examples.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Budgie 10.7 Desktop Environment Adds Dual-GPU Support, New Power Dialog

    Budgie 10.7 arrives ten mounts after the Budgie 10.6 release and promises a more polished user experience thanks to the implementation of dual-GPU support in the Budgie Menu, allowing users to launch apps with a dedicated graphics card out of the box.

    The Budgie Menu also received a new “personal user menu” feature that promises to let you open a file manager straight to predefined directories like Home, Documents, Download, Video, or Music. Moreover, Budgie Menu now features new buttons for launching Settings, Control Center, and the new Power Dialog.

  • Linuxiac ☛ Budgie Desktop 10.7: A Sleek and Improved User Experience

    Budgie is a GTK-based desktop environment built on GNOME technologies by the Buddies of Budgie organization, traditionally associated with Solus as its flagship desktop environment. The desktop emphasizes simplicity, minimalism, and elegance, featuring some unique aspects, including a sidebar.

    The brand new Budgie Desktop 10.7, released today, offers a sleek and improved user experience that will impress both new and experienced users alike. So without further ado, let’s see what’s new.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Haruna 0.10.3

      Haruna version 0.10.3 is out. You can get it now on flathub:

      [...]

      Availability of other package formats dependes on your distro and the people who package Haruna.

    • Should DocBook still serve as the sole documentation language for KDE?

      KDE’sgetting started page on documentationstates:

      KDE documentation is written in DocBook XML.

      Historically, this was probably a good decision. Who does not remember that XML was so much easier to read, parse, and work with compared to binary or virtually any propitiatory file format?

    • Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE Snaps, Debian uploads and much more in the works!

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • OMG Ubuntu ☛ An Extension to Change Battery Indicator Icon in GNOME Shell

      If so, a new GNOME extension — of course! — lets you do it.

      When you install and enable the Battery Indicator Icon you can pick from three alternative battery icons: a plain battery icon (with empty portion slightly shaded); a circle (my favourite); or a plain battery icon with the empty portion empty.

      They look like this…

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • LibreELEC (Nexus) 11 Beta1 – LibreELEC

    With the new release cycle we add a Generic-Legacy image supporting nVidia cards, Chrome Browser add-on, and older hardware. We also reintroduce support for older Amlogic devices (S905, S905X/D, S912). If you use them make sure to read the paragraphs below.

    LibreELEC 10.0 installs will not automatically update, but you can manually update. Older LibreELEC installs must make a clean install due to the Python 3 changes since Kodi v19.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Distro Watch ☛ Review: OpenMandriva ROME

    The main characteristic of OpenMandriva, which kept coming up time and again, was that the distribution was unreliable – particularly early on. Sometimes the distribution failed to boot. Sometimes it failed to login. The Calamares installer failed on its first time through, but not future times with the same settings. Discover and DNF report the status of updates differently. The desktop crashed frequently, especially with compositing enabled. With the default settings, and whenever I used the Wayland session, the system would lock up if I tried to logout. Once I stood up to get a glass of water and left my computer unattended for two minutes and, when I returned, there were multiple error reports waiting, indicating Plasma had crashed twice while I was away. I’m not sure I’ve ever come across a desktop distribution which was so error prone and unreliable. To make matters worse, almost any time I launched a software management tool, such as DnfDrake, I’d be prompted for my admin password twice. Apparently once for the graphical tool and once for the underlying DNF utility.

    Once I had disabled compositing and installed updates the experience got measurably better, but it still wasn’t great. The desktop crashed less often and I was able to shutdown the system, but it still wasn’t stable.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2023-04

  • Fedora Project ☛ Fedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 4 2023

  • Pablo Iranzo Gómez: Enable rootless podman on Fedora

  • Fedora Magazine ☛ Fedora Magazine: Using .NET 7 on Fedora Linux [Ed: Red Hat's brownshirts (HEART) Microsoft]

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • SJVN ☛ Ubuntu Pro: Security updates for all your Linux and open-source desktop and server needs | Open Source Watch

    Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, is offering a new security take on its popular Ubuntu desktop and server: Ubuntu Pro. This is an expanded security take on the Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) releases. It offers expanded security coverage for critical, high, and medium Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) to all of Ubuntu’s open-source applications and toolchains for ten years.

    That’s right, you get security patches not just for the operating system, but for all of Ubuntu’s open-source applications for a decade. Most are server programs, such as Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Nagios, Redis, and WordPress. But, it also includes such developer essentials as Docker, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Python 2, and Rust.

    Altogether, with Ubuntu Pro, Canonical supports more than 23,000 packages. The standard Ubuntu Pro subscription covers the full security updates for all packages in Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories. In short, as Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s CEO, said, “Security coverage to every single package in the Ubuntu distribution.”

• Devices/Embedded

  • CNX Software ☛ GL.iNet Beryl AX OpenWrt router review – WiFi 6 performance, repeater, NAS, and 4G hotspot modes

    In the first part of the review of GL.iNet GL-MT3000 “Beryl AX” pocket-size WiFi 6 OpenWrt router we had a look at the specifications, the package content, and the hardware design with a teardown of the little.

    I’ve now had more time to play with the router focusing the review on WiFi 6 performance, and some of its functions such as repeater, NAS, and 4G hotspot. The router also supports VPN client and server modes, the Tor network, and Adguard Home, but I’ll invite readers to check out the GL.iNet Brume 2 security gateway review since I went through all these, and the hardware is very similar minus wireless connectivity.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ i.MX 9 based SoM from Variscite starts at $39

    Some of the features of the evaluation kit include 2x GbE LAN ports, 1x optional MIPI-CSI connector, 1x optional HDMI/MIPI-CSI connector, 1x MINI PCIe connector, 2x LVDS connectors, etc. See the following board layout image for more details.

    The wiki for the VAR-SOM-MX93 can be found here and it mentions that it will provide support for Yocto Kirkstone (kernel 5.15.71), Debian, Boot2Qt and FreeRTOS.

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Clearcube new NUC Mini PCs feature Alder Lake-P processors

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ FPGA-based computer can be used as a personal server

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ Elkhart Lake Mini-PC integrates triple 2.5GbE ports and WiFi6E/BT5.2 connectivity

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ Let your coworkers know how you feel with this stress level indicator

    Asking your boss for a raise when they are in a bad mood is not ideal, and this is what prompted Mark from element14 Presents to create a stress level indicating project that could show this mood to everyone else so they could avoid this awkward situation. Mark started this project by laser cutting several panels from

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Authority ☛ What’s it like using the Nothing Phone 1 in the US? – Android Authority

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Install Android Apps via ADB

  • 9to5Google ☛ One UI 5.1 adopts new Android 13 features and more

  • Giz China ☛ Delete these malware apps from your Android device right now!

  • Indian Express ☛ Why BharOS has Indian developers excited and sceptical: ‘More choice is good for consumers… but it’s a long path’ | Technology News,The Indian Express

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Coreboot (Official) ☛ Announcing coreboot release 4.19 – coreboot

  The 4.19 release was completed on the 16th of January 2023.

  Since the last release, the coreboot project has merged over 1600 commits from over 150 authors. Of those authors, around 25 were first-time committers to the coreboot project.

  As always, we are very grateful to all of the contributors for helping to keep the project going. The coreboot project is different from many open source projects in that we need to keep constantly updating the codebase to stay relevant with the latest processors and technologies. It takes constant effort to just stay afloat, let alone improve the codebase. Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed, both in this release and in previous times.

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • Computing UK ☛ India launches indigenous BharOS mobile operating system

      New open source OS, aimed at breaking Android’s dominance, is claimed to be incapable of running malware

      India on Tuesday unveiled BharOS, a new mobile operating system with a focus on security and privacy. BharOS is a project financed by the Indian government to create a free and open source operating system….

    • Mozilla ☛ #AskFirefox host Chenae Moore on internet pranks and losing sleep over recipe videos

      Here at Mozilla, we are the first to admit the internet isn’t perfect, but we are also quick to point out that the internet is pretty darn magical. The internet opens up doors and opportunities, allows for people to connect with others, and lets everyone find where they belong — their corners of the internet.

• GNU Projects

  • GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) ☛ 2022 annual report – GIMP

    Pursuing the newfound tradition started a year ago, here is my report for past year 2022.

Leftovers

• The Age AU ☛ Man jailed after sending more than 23,000 messages to teenage girl

  Feeling lonely after a break-up, the 26-year-old started having “virtual carnal knowledge” with a 15-year-old girl.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • YLE ☛ Three years since first Covid diagnosis, Finland looks for pandemic silver linings

    Along with deaths and long-term illnesses, the pandemic has brought some positive changes to Finnish society, experts say.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea lifts indoor mask mandate as cases fall to seven-month low

    The mask mandate will remain in place at hospitals, pharmacies and on public transportation.

• Security

  • Open Source Security (Audio Show) ☛ Josh Bressers: Episode 360 – Memory safety and the NSA

  • Kushal Das: Introducing Tugpgp

  • Computer Weekly ☛ Hive ransomware gang taken down after FBI hacks back [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO]

    The FBI hacked into Hive’s servers, stole its decryption keys and then took down its servers in a major action that has successfully disrupted a prolific and dangerous ransomware operation

  • TechTarget ☛ OpenSSF GM talks funding, legal software supply chain issues

  • TechTarget ☛ Efforts to improve memory safety in software gain momentum

  • YLE ☛ Helsinki-Uusimaa health services website faces more disruption, possibly from Russian hackers

    The disruption, which recurred on Sunday, may have been caused by Russian hackers, according to the hospital group’s IT director.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New Yorker ☛ The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols

    A 1992 study claims that officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed. Law-enforcement culture has never recovered.

  • The Straits Times ☛ France, Australia to hasten comeback from submarines row in Paris

    Australian and French ministers are to meet on Monday in a fresh drive to mend fences over the row.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Straits Times ☛ India asks utilities to not retire coal-fired power plants till 2030: Notice

      Coal accounts for nearly three-quarters of India’s annual electricity generation.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • YLE ☛ Birdwatchers out in force this weekend for “Finland’s most popular nature event”

      The annual backyard bird count provides valuable data about long-term population changes – but the top three species remain consistent from year to year, says Birdlife Finland.

• Finance

  • New Yorker ☛ America!: Other Eccentric Tycoons Who Have Ruined Things

    For example, Jedediah Humble founded the Humblebrag Institute, transforming our conversational landscape.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Lale Orta first female president of Central Referee Board

    Orta, appointed by Turkish Football Federation, is a former football player, who became Türkiye’s first female football coach when the federation opened up coaching courses for women in 1985.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Interesting IPv6/NDP observation

    Guest Post: What happens when an implementation is technically compliant but doesn’t behave as expected?

• Monopolies

  • Trademarks

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Vale, Cornelia

      Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer is about to leave the German Patent and Trademark Office whose President she has been for 14 years. On 31 January 2023 she will enter into her well-deserved retirement.

Gemini* and Gopher

• Technical

  • Album #159: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

    This album is an unhappy marriage of ’70s ‘folk’ and ‘world music’ with a touch of jazz. Like Paul Simon’s Graceland (⭐), the hodge-podge it creates is interesting only as a pointer to better, more interesting music. It never really melds together, feeling more like borrowing aspects of other music without properly incorporating it. I guess the same criticism is also valid for S&M by Metallica (⭐) – maybe fusion just does nothing for me.

  • Album #160: Beyoncé

    I came in to this one expecting not to enjoy it, having never having listened to a whole Beyoncé album.

  • A pull-er computing paradigm

    The unrestricted flow of information towards our computing devices needs to be stopped because it makes us lose control of the level of information we want to see, resulting in an informational overload.

    As I’m trying to switch to a more offline computing life style, I’ve found that once I go check for something (e.g. email, IRC ect.) I usually get blocked into that task and lose more time than I’d like to.

    So one day, when I was looking at my email, I thought, why not apply the pull principle of email to everything, instead of the default push? You connect once to the internet, you sync everything, and you can go on with your life just fine, not requiring a constant internet connection that is prone to kill your attention.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Plain text is the best

      In the old days, we didn’t know any better than to use plain text:

      - email was just text, no html, no images
      - gopher was just text, sometimes you downloaded an image file
      - Usenet was just text, no html, no images
      - IRC was just plain text

      It took several years before email got poisoned with html, markup and images.

      Also it took some time before people started posting images, and other media on Usenet, and we got “binary” newsgroups.

    • Parasocial Blues

      Modern social media feels so hollow and sad. I seldom come away from it with the feeling of satisfaction in sharing one may from Smolnet/Pubnix. Strange, that. Fediverse often feels like the masked Hellfire Club in Eyes Wide Shut: perverse psychological fast food, empty communal calories. I may end up deleting it. I warrant we have all seen enough of the internet to know that one can have pseudonymity and intimacy both. But parasocial media is for the birds.

  • Programming

    • Re: Validate email address using Regex in C++

      This is well known to be impossible. The site that Martin links to claims 99.99% accuracy. Does that mean that for every billion addresses there’s 10 million that don’t match the regex!? I bet there are quite a few billion email addresses.

      And it’s not impossible just for regex reasons. Some addresses that work are invalid according to the RFC. Some addresses will be valid but not work. The way to validate an address is just to send email because it has to be handled correctly by whatever buggy mail software it passes through.