Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 04/02/2023: FOSDEM Happening and Ken Thompson in SoCal Linux Expo



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • HowTo GeekWhy QtFM Could Become My Favorite Linux File Manager

        The Qt file manager called QtFM has great features, such as storing custom commands so you don’t need to open a Linux terminal window to run them. The only drawback is getting it installed. Let’s look at what makes this file browser special and how you can (maybe) try it out.

      • Linux Links10 Best Free and Open Source Zsh Configuration Frameworks

        Zsh has many strengths such as interactive tab completion, regex integration, automated file searching, advanced shorthand for defining command scope, and a very rich theme engine.

        We highly recommend installing a framework with Zsh as it makes dealing with configuration, plugins and themes a lot more straightforward. Frameworks are essentially collections of plugins and themes, which you can enable very easily, without needing to manually configure and make everything work together.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • HowTo ForgeLinux md5sum Command Tutorial for Beginners (5 Examples)

        While we have already discussed the cksum command line utility, there's another tool that you can use in scenarios where, say, you need to verify the integrity of files during transfers. The tool we're talking about here is md5sum. In this tutorial, we will discuss the basics of this command using some easy to understand examples.

      • H2S MediaHow to Install Sourcetree on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 Linux

        Wine is the solution that we can use to install the SourceTree software on Linux systems including Ubuntu. Here is the tutorial to learn the steps we need to follow to get this free Git Client software.

      • UbuntubuzzHow To Install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors 7.3 on Ubuntu

        This tutorial will help you to add version 7.3 of OnlyOffice Desktop Editor to your Ubuntu computer. You can do it easily using Ubuntu Software or alternatively Terminal. Happy writing!

      • Upgrading system Off-line with ISO and Yum

        Upgrading a system can be a daunting task, especially if it is an off-line system. An off-line system is one that is not connected to the internet and cannot access online resources. The good news is that you can still upgrade your system even when it is not connected to the internet.

      • FOSSLinuxConverting MKV to MP4 on Ubuntu: A Step-by-Step Guide

        Learn how to convert MKV to MP4 on Ubuntu using Handbrake in this step-by-step guide. Convert high-quality MKV videos to widely supported MP4 format for use on various devices.

      • Configuring Yum

        Introduction Yum (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is a package manager for Red Hat based Linux distributions, including Fedora and CentOS. It helps in managing and updating the software packages on the system, including their dependencies and conflicts. In this article, we will learn how to configure Yum to manage packages on your Linux system.

      • Net2How to Install Microsoft Office on Ubuntu 22.04

        Are you tired of having to use different software just because you prefer using Ubuntu instead of Windows? Look no further, 'cause you can now have the best of both worlds!

      • Yum Commands and Options

        Introduction Yum is a package manager used in Red Hat-based systems like Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Yum, users can easily install, update, and remove packages from the terminal. In this article, we'll explore the basic Yum commands and their options, with examples to help you get started.

      • Setting up a YUM Repository

        Introduction YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is a popular open-source package management system used to install, update, and remove packages in Linux distributions such as Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and CentOS. YUM makes it easier to manage packages by resolving dependencies, downloading packages from a central repository, and installing them.

      • C.J. Adams-Collier: IPv6 with CenturyLink Fiber

        In case you want to know how to configure IPv6 using CenturyLink’s 6rd tunneling service.

      • TecAdmintail Command in Linux with Examples

        The tail command in Linux is a powerful tool used for displaying the end of a file. By default, it displays the last 10 lines of a file, but this can be modified by specifying a different number of lines to display.

      • TecAdminWhat is a Orphan Process in Unix/Linux

        An Orphan Process is a process that has lost its parent process, which normally takes care of cleaning up the process's resources. In Unix/Linux, when a parent process terminates, its child processes become Orphan processes and are adopted by the init process, which becomes the new parent.

      • The New StackInstall Minikube on Ubuntu Linux for Easy Kubernetes Development

        Not only is deploying pods and services to a cluster a

    • WINE or Emulation

      • GamingOnLinuxProton 7.0-6 out now fixing EA App, Ubisoft Connect and games on Steam Deck / Linux

        More weekend goodies from Valve have arrived! Proton 7.0-6 is officially out now, fixing up many bugs like with the EA App and Ubisoft Connect. Pulling over a bunch of changes from Proton Experimental, this is a smaller release mainly aimed at fixing up issues across a bunch of games that appeared over the last few months.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Use Oracle VM VirtualBox on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

        VirtualBox 7 enables organizations, for the first time, to centrally manage their development and production VMs running on-premises and on OCI instances using any OS that supports VirtualBox, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS.

      • SJVNRocky Linux offers code security patches and info in real-time. | Open Source Watch

        Last year, with the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF)'s release of Rocky Linux 9, CentOS and Rocky Linux co-founder Gregory Kurtzer also released a completely cloud-native Linux distribution build stack called Peridot. Then, Kurtzer said, "anyone can create, build, enhance, and manage Rocky Linux, or other distros for that matter. Now, CIQ engineers have also released the Rocky Linux 9 errata subsystem as an open-source project, which is fully integrated with Peridot.

        What that means is you can now build and enhance your own take on Rocky Linux, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone with full access to the latest bug fixes, security patches, and feature enhancements. RESF will continue to maintain the project, providing users with more granular control over their systems.

      • SJVNYou can now get Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the Oracle Cloud | Open Source Watch

        Over the years, Red Hat and Oracle have gotten along like cats and dogs. The main reason for this was that in 2006, Oracle released its own version of Linux, Unbreakable Linux, which was little more than a copy and paste of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with Red Hat's name and Red Hat’s trademarks globally replaced with Oracle's name and trademark. That went over like a lead brick in Red Hat circles. Now, RHEL is available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • peppe8oManaging the Raspberry PI Undervoltage Detected Warning

        Similarly to all electronic computers, the Raspberry PI computer boards need a stable power supply in order to work correctly.

      • AdafruitSee N Say Brain Transplant

        This project replaces the brains of a classic talking toy with a modern, CircuitPython-powered KB2040 microcontroller, with a collection of typical urban sounds and custom illustrations.

      • HackadayScratch Your Itch To Program A Microcontroller

        One of the fun things about “old school” computers is that it was fairly easy to get kids into programming them. The old Basic interpreters were pretty forgiving, and you could do some clever things easily with very little theory or setup. These days, you are more likely to sneak kids into programming via Scratch — a system for setting up programs via blocks in a GUI. Again, you can get simple results simply. With Scratch or Basic, complex things have a way of turning out complex, but that’s to be expected. If you want to try a Scratch-inspired take on microcontroller programming, check out MicroBlocks. It will work with several common boards, including the micro:bit and the Raspberry Pi Pico. You can use it in a browser or download versions for Linux, Windows, Mac, or even Chromebooks.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • SJVNThe Open Source Initiative improves its licensing rules | Open Source Watch

      Back on February 3rd, 1998, shortly after the Netscape web browser source code --Firefox's ancestor--was released, a group of developers came together to label and define a pragmatic, business approach to sharing software code. Of course, there was already "free software," but that term, then and now, came loaded with a particular business/political take that not everyone cares for. So, it was that at the meeting Christine Peterson came up with the term "open source." The group that would shepherd this idea going forward is the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

    • OSI BlogOpen Source Initiative joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance

      OSI to contribute to Digital Public Goods Alliance’s mission to address world’s most pressing economic challenges by furthering adoption of Open Source software.

    • Jonathan DowlandJonathan Dowland: FreedomBox

      Moxie Marlinspike, former CEO of Signal, wrote a veryinteresting blog post about "web3", the crypto-scam1. It's worth a read if you are interested in that stuff.

    • Events

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Chromium

        • Barry KaulerChromium bumped, more pkgs compiled in OE

          The upcoming Kirkstone-series had chromium 106.0.5249.119, have compiled a later version in OE, and some more packages:

          chromium-x11-109.0.5414.74
          fbgrab-1.5
          gmime-3.2.7
          gtkperf-0.40
          leptonica-1.82.0
          libforms-1.2.3
          libyui-4.1.1
          pointercal-0.0
          stalonetray-0.8.3
          tesseract-4.1.3
          tesseract-lang-4.1.0
          tslib-1.22
          xbindkeys-1.8.7
          xf86-input-tslib-2_1.1.1

          There was interest expressed in tesseract OCR package on the forum, so compiled that. No GUI though. One of the best-looking GUIs for tesseract seems to be gimagereader, but it has lots of dependencies. I could compile it if there is sufficient interest.

      • Mozilla

    • Programming/Development

      • Debugging with Git Bisect

        Git is a powerful version control system that helps developers manage and track changes in their codebase.

      • RlangProbot: building a Mastodon bot

        I have long admired albums2hear, a Twitter bot that posts albums. You can read a bit more about it here. There was no mastodon equivalent and so I decided to build one. You can follow the bot – currently called Albums Albums Albums (or AlbumsX3) – here.

      • Computing UK'Sheer greed': Industry reacts to Oracle's new Java pricing

        'Vendors have worked out a model where they can get more money out of you'

      • Python

        • Tim Bielawa: Querying block device sizes in Python on Linux and Mac OS X

          I drafted this blog post in 2016 (at least), but held off publishing it until I could have it fact checked. Well, 6 years have passed… I am 99% sure the information in this blog post is correct. But if you find an error with my explanation of the userspace-kernel-device dataflow then please send me an email so I can understand it better and update this post.

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Rubber Soul - moving out/procrastinating

        I'm not sure if I could fully tell you why, but I've had this compulson in my mind that I need to purchase The Beatles - Rubber Soul on vinyl - but specifically around the time that I'm moving in with my partner (next weekend). I guess I've been listening to this album a fair bit recently, and maybe it's just that it reminds me of this moment - and I want to have something material as a kind-of calendar item to mark the moment.

      • After the session

        I seem to have settled in a nice "one page a day" routine with Knives. I'm not sure how many more pages there will be. Something about players gaining a talents. Something about them making plans. Something about finding campaign goals.

      • Tilting at the Belltower

        Robotic lies are spread across the room. My modem howls in silent disbelief. Machines are parrots. Maybe so are we, as chafing bones are slouching to be born in fire, as I draw my final breath and sleep. Perchance to dream. Perchance to scream.

        So gently whispered is this lifelong scream while ghostly passing through my inner room. A chalkboard’s nail. A raspy smoker’s breath. A regent clad in finest disbelief. A crawling insect hatches to get born, and in the skylit evening, so were we.

      • Notes about an overheard conversation while driving home
    • Technical

      • A Tale Of Two Times

        The claim is that "time" disagrees with the documentation for time(1) on OpenBSD, and the evidence for this may look pretty solid

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Silence, please!

          One of those protection rackets, properly known as a performance rights organisation, recently sent out a news letter. There was a short paragraph that caught my attention. Since their business model is to rake in money for their members from all sorts of venues that play their music, they are in fact interested in increasing the number of such venues, including restaurants and shops. Studies, they claimed, have shown that customers enjoy the _right kind_ of music being played in the stores. So, what a win-win situation: entice the venues to play more music, make their customers buy more, and collect larger royalties for the composers.

      • Programming

        • systemd and my bot

          I wrote a bot that connects to Discord last year. It's a nice bot. It keeps facts for channel, it keeps timestamped notes per channel, it also connects to IRC (all of which we don't use) and it rolls dice (which is what we use).


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete