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Links 05/02/2023: Wayland in Bookworm and xvidtune 1.0.4



  • GNU/Linux

    • Linux Magazine Latest Issue

      • Linux MagazineDebian opens a door for non-free firmware

        The topic of non-free firmware has caused some turbulence within the Debian project, but now the community has a new direction.

      • Linux MagazineReduce PDF file sizes with Minuimus

        The Minuimus Perl script helps you save disk space by reducing the file size of PDF files with just a few commands.

      • Linux MagazineZack's Kernel News

        This month in Kernel News: Bug Tracking

      • Linux MagazineSparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software

        Over the past couple of months, Graham's ever-versatile Steam Deck has synced books to an e-reader, played movies on a television, joined Mumble, recorded two podcast episodes, and even played a few games.

      • Linux MagazineThe tool isn't the problem

        Restricting uses for FOSS may seem appealing, but it also might not be the solution some imagine.

      • Linux MagazineA style checker for LibreOffice Writer

        The Angry Reviewer style check can be used to evaluate and improve any type of writing, including academic articles and grant applications.

      • Linux MagazineOn the DVD

        MX Linux 21.3 and Puppy Linux FossaPup 9.5

      • Linux MagazineI'll Be Watching You

        The elite gathering known as Davos is not an ordinary business convention. The annual conference of the World Economic Forum is an uber-exclusive event, not a meeting of governments but rather a gathering of representatives from around 1,000 member companies – the biggest companies in the world – along with a smattering of political leaders and academics.

      • Linux MagazinePredicting the productivity of a solar array with Perl

        A forecast service and some Perl magic help predict the solar power yield of a residential photovoltaic array.

      • Linux MagazineCloning a Debian system with apt-clone

        In the right circumstances, apt-clone can be a simple option for cloning your Debian system.

      • Linux MagazineIn the news

        In the news: Nobara Project; Gnome 44; Nitrux 2.6; Vanilla OS; Critical Linux Vulnerability Found to Impact SMB Servers; Linux Mint 21.1; Another Attempt at a Linux Tablet; Designing with LibreOffice 2nd Edition; and KaOS Linux 2022.12.

      • Linux MagazineRemote access from the outside with DWS Remote Control

        DWS Remote Control offers convenient browser access to computers outside of your home network.

      • Linux MagazineRequest Spotify dossiers and evaluate them with Go and R

        Spotify, the Internet music service, collects data about its users and their taste in music. Mike Schilli requested a copy of his files to investigate them with Go.

      • Linux MagazineBuild LEGO models with LDraw and LeoCAD

        LDraw and LeoCAD help you become a virtual LEGO architect.

      • Linux MagazineLinux Voice

        This month in Linux Voice.

      • Linux MagazineTV over the Internet with IPTVnator

        Thanks to the IPTV standard and free software, you can view your favorite channels on Linux without any problems.

      • Linux MagazineCustomize your system tray with YAD

        YAD lets you customize your system tray with one-line Bash tray scripts.

      • Linux MagazineAn inside look at a small distro

        Thierry Nuttens, the developer of NuTyX, shares a behind-the-scenes look at a small Linux distribution.

      • Linux MagazineSwap snaps for Flatpaks with unsnap

        If you want to move away from Ubuntu's Snap package format, the unsnap script removes snaps from your computer and replaces them with Flatpaks where possible.

      • Linux MagazineEnhanced searches with fzf

        Simplify your searches and get better results with fzf, a modern search tool based on fuzzy logic.

      • Linux MagazineBackdoors in Machine Learning Models

        Machine learning can be maliciously manipulated – we'll show you how.

      • Linux MagazineRaspberry Pi automated fish feeder

        Whether at work or on vacation, every pet lover worries about how to take care of their little roommates in their absence. What aquarium owners need is an automatic feeder.

      • Linux MagazineUse Ubuntu and other distributions as Docker containers

        Do you work with Ubuntu but want to test something quickly on an openSUSE system? You don't need a second PC or a virtual machine to do it – a single container is quite enough.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • CubicleNateLinux Saloon | News Flight Night 10

        This night of Linux Saloon chat was some of my most favorite I have had since this started. I would say that the show went completely off the rails but that would imply that it was a disaster.

      • GNU World Order (Audio Show)GNU World Order 498

        **libkdepim** , **libkedevocdocument** , **libkexiv** , **libkgapi** , **libkipi** , **libkleo** , **libkmahjongg** , **libkomparediff2** , **libksane** , **libkscreen** , **libksieve** , **libksysguard** , **libktorrent** , **lokalize** , **lskat** , **mailcommon** , **mailimporter** , **marble** , **markdownpart** , **mbox-importer** , **messagelib** , **milou** , **minuet** , **modemmanager** , **networkmanager-qt** from the Slackware **kde** package set.

        shasum -a256=b54e187450d7502596b9b252b984e9b8e9f01e4cd6d5236ffaba49c6e66a60d1

    • Graphics

      • Russell CokerRussell Coker: Wayland in Bookworm

        We are getting towards the freeze for Debian/Bookworm so the current state of packages isn’t going to change much before the release. Bugs will get fixed but missing features will mostly be missing until the next release.

      • xvidtune 1.0.4
        In honor of the ten year anniversary of the xvidtune 1.0.3 release, here's
        a new release to deliver everything accumulated in git in the past decade.
        
        

        Alan Coopersmith (8): configure: Drop AM_MAINTAINER_MODE autogen.sh: Honor NOCONFIGURE=1 Update README for gitlab migration Update configure.ac bug URL for gitlab migration gitlab CI: add a basic build test Build xz tarballs instead of bzip2 gitlab CI: stop requiring Signed-off-by in commits xvidtune 1.0.4

        Emil Velikov (1): autogen.sh: use quoted string variables

        Mihail Konev (1): autogen: add default patch prefix

        Peter Hutterer (1): autogen.sh: use exec instead of waiting for configure to finish

        Stéphane Aulery (2): Use real program name for help message Ensure consistency between the manpage and the output of the -h option

        git tag: xvidtune-1.0.4

    • Applications

      • Linux Links11 Best Free and Open Source Terminal-Based Podcast Tools

        To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 11 high quality open source podcast tools that let you manage and download podcasts. The selection includes terminal-based tools only. We feature GUI podcast tools in this roundup.

        Here’s our verdict captured in a LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. We only feature free and open source software here.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • TecAdmin11 Practical Example of cat Command in Linux

        The cat command in Linux is a simple yet powerful tool that is used to view and manipulate text files. It is short for "concatenate," which means to combine or link together.

      • TecAdminsleep Command in Linux with Examples

        The sleep command is a simple command-line utility that pauses the execution of a script or process for a specified amount of time. This can be useful in a variety of scenarios, such as waiting for a process to complete, or automating tasks that need to be performed at regular intervals.

      • University of TorontoThe practical appeal of a mesh-capable VPN solution

        The traditional way to do a VPN is that your VPN endpoint ('server') is the single point of entry for all traffic from VPN clients. When a VPN client talks to anything on your secured networks, it goes through the endpoint. In what I'm calling a mesh-capable VPN, you can have multiple VPN endpoints, each of them providing access to a different network area or service. Because it's one VPN, you still have a single unified client identity and authentication and a single on/off button for the VPN connection on clients.

      • Derek SiversWant anonymity? Make a persona not a mystery.

        That’s a problem if you really want to be anonymous. If you defiantly refuse to say who you are, it can make people angry that you’re upsetting social reciprocity. You know who they are, but they don’t know who you are. It feels rude. An obsessive personality might make it their damn mission to figure out who you are! You don’t want that.

        So for real anonymity, don’t create a mystery. Create a believable persona. Then nobody will wonder.

      • University of TorontoIn a university, people want to use our IPs even for external traffic

        Universities are not one of those places. In universities, quite often you'll find that people actively need to use your VPN server for all of their traffic, or otherwise things will break in subtle ways. One culprit is the world of academic publishing, or more exactly online electronic access to academic publications. These days, many of these online publications are provided to you directly by the publisher's website. This website decides if you are allowed to access things by seeing if your institution has purchased access, and it often figures out your institution by looking at your IP address. As a result, if a researcher is working from home but wants to read things, their traffic had better be coming from your IP address space.

      • UbuntubuzzHow To Install GoldenDict with English-Indonesian on Ubuntu for Language Education
      • dwaves.deLibreOffice Calc – how to insert muliple new empty rows ABOVE (below does not work)
      • How to Install Wine 8.0 On Ubuntu / Linux Mint

        WineHQ is a compatibility layer that allows users to run Windows applications on Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, and BSD.

        Its purpose is to provide a way for users to continue using their favorite Windows applications on a non-Windows platform without the need for a virtual machine or dual-booting. WineHQ translates Windows system calls into their equivalent POSIX calls on the host system, allowing Windows applications to run seamlessly on the host operating system.

        It is an open-source project and free software, actively developed and maintained by a community of developers and users.

    • Games

      • Boiling SteamBest Steam Deck Games Released in the Past Week – 2023-02-05 Edition

        Between 2023-01-29 and 2023-02-05 there were 103 new games validated for the Steam Deck.
      • Jon Chiappetta: A History Of Console Gaming

        So I usually try to save my money where possible and I don’t celebrate my birthday but I wanted get an updated gaming console so that I could continue to play Fortnite when I have some free down time. Way back in the day, my grandpa gave me an original Nintendo (which I sadly didn’t think of keeping over time) and eventually I got the Nintendo 64 when it came out as well. I then purchased the original Xbox (which had the Halo title on it) and that was one of my first Microsoft products that I enjoyed owning. After that, I switched over to the Sony side and purchased the Playstation 2 – and then the Playstation 3 – and then the Playstation 4 (so that I could keep playing the different GTA versions).

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in January 2023

      Welcome to the first report for 2023 from the Reproducible Buildsproject!

    • James Valleroy: A look back at FreedomBox project in 2022

      This post is very late, but better late than never! I want to take a look back at the work that was done on FreedomBox during 2022.

      Several apps were added to FreedomBox in 2022. The email server app (that was developed by a Google Summer of Code student back in 2021) was finally made available to the general audience of FreedomBox users. You will find it under the name “Postfix/Dovecot”, which are the main services configured by this app.

    • Gavin HowardMy Code Conquered Another OS!

      From the Mac OSX release history, Mac OSX versions appear to be supported for three years, so in three years, my bc should be in the majority of Mac OSX installs, which would make my bc the most widely-deployed bc in the world!

    • Libre Arts[librearts] Weekly recap — 5 February 2023

      Week highlights: new features in GIMP, Inkscape, Penpot, and Ardour, Mayo review, Paul Davis in the Bezos movie, and more.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • 8 Major Advantages of Using MySQL

        From its open-source nature and robust security features to its flexibility and scalability, MySQL has a lot to offer. Let's take a closer look at MySQL and the benefits it offers, so you can make the right choice on determining whether to use it in your technology stack.

    • GNU Projects

      • GNUgpaint @ Savannah: version 0.3.4 released

        Hi, a new release,.

        Version 0.3.4 is now available as

        https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gpaint/gpaint-2-0.3.4.tar.gz

        This release combines existing patches from GNU/Linux distributions into an official release.€  In addition,
        the build infrastructure is modernized to be based on
        current versions of the GNU Autotools

        Changes in this version:

        * adding guix.scm, development under GNU Guix support

        Debian patches from Goedson Teixeira Paixao <goedson> incorporatd into main release
        includng patches for
        * fixing missing heds libs by <goedson>
        * Fix toolbar behaviour so that gpaint follows the style set in
        the user preferences by <goedson>
        * Fix foreground/background color selection by <goedson>
        * Fix crash when saving in unsupported format by <goedson>
        * Add accelerator keys to common functions by Matt Wheeler <m@funkyhat.org>
        * Ignore non-printable characters on text input by Ying-Chun Liu (PaulLiu) <grandpaul@gmail.com>
        * fix crash on fill button click by <goedson>
        * Fix line width combo box by Thomas Viehmann <tv@beamnet.de>
        * Fixes rotation operations: Implement the rotation in multiples of 90 degrees using the
        gdk_pixbuf_rotate_simple function by <goedson>
        * Avoids crash on font selection by <goedson>
        * Fixes the gpaint.desktop file by <goedson>
        * Removes reference to non-existent menu.h file by <goedson>
        * Fixes compiling with recent versions of libgtk by <goedson>

        This release represents gpaint is resuming active development.

        Roadmap is detailed in README file but suggestions are welcome.

    • Programming/Development

      • Deno Land IncThe Future (and the Past) of the Web is Server Side Rendering

        This is the problem with being a frontend dev today. What started out fun for frontend developers, building shit-hot sites with all the bells and whistles, has kinda turned into not fun. We're now fighting different browsers to support, slow networks to ship code over, and intermittent, mobile connections. Supporting all these permutations is a giant headache.

        How do we square this circle? By heading back to the server (Swiss basement not required).

      • Federal Trade CommissionSecurity Principles: Addressing underlying causes of risk in complex systems

        On December 14th, 2022, in collaboration with technologists on team CTO and attorneys in BCP, I gave a presentation at the Federal Trade Commission’s December Open Commission meeting on the systemic approach to security found in the Commission’s orders.

        The goal of this post is to first explain how the FTC has worked to strengthen its remedies to address the underlying causes of risk in complex systems. The post then highlights some of the Commission's recent order provisions from data security and privacy cases and explains how they seek to systemically address risk.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Dominic SzablewskiTime Domain Audio Compression at 3.2 bits per Sample

        Audio formats typically fall into one of three categories: “lossless”, “complicated” or “bad”. After developing a simple image format last year, I tried to come up with an audio format that fits neither of these categories.

        In other words: a format that is lossy, simple and quite ok. Naturally, it's called QOA — the Quite OK Audio Format.

      • Enews NigeriaWith access to my records, I took my business elsewhere – The Health Care Blog

        It’ll be even better in the coming years because data #interoperability via FHIR will let apps and hospitals go GET the data … or, even better, let consumers already have their data in their own app, to do anything they want with it. True patient autonomy.

  • Leftovers

    • TruthOutBerlin’s Pledge to Socialize a Quarter Million Apartments Faces Obstruction
    • HackadayReliving A Bitmapped Past With A Veritable Hoard Of Bitmap Fonts

      The fonts seen with old computer systems such as those from Apple and Commodore, as well as Microsoft Windows 3.1 and older, form an integral part of our interaction with these systems. These days such bitmap fonts are a rarity, with scalable vector-based fonts having taken their place on modern-day systems. This unfortunately also means that these fonts are at major risk of being lost to the sands of time. This is where [Rob Hagemans] seeks to maintain an archive of such bitmap fonts, ranging from Acorn to MSX to Windows.

    • HackadayThe Effect Of Filament Color On Print Strength And More

      What is an FDM filament coloring’s purpose but to be an aesthetic choice? As it turns out, the additives that create these changes in coloring and transparency also affect the base properties of the polymer, whether it’s PLA, PETG, or another material. This is where a recent video by [CNC Kitchen] is rather illustrative, using a collection of colored PLA filaments from a single filament manufacturer.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Fighting is a form of intimacy
      • Vocab Sunday

        The only productive activity today was that I read a passage of Latin text and did the vocabulary in Anki.

        To my horror, I realized that I had not left the house the whole week! That's crazy. Once again I had some health issues so on Monday I decided to work from home, which I then extended till Friday. Wife took Friday off as she also felt some flu symptoms.

      • Stop with the ball

        The chaos makes sense. The chaos means activity and the activity means... something, I swear. I'm trying. What story should I tell this time? I need to write it down, do I? Do I pick the story based on the story or do I pick it based on the reaction? Is there even a difference? I tell myself that it is because the cynicism will overpower my power of will otherwise.

        It's like 3am and I'm fully awake. Where is the Pilot 912? I woke up early, I stay up late. It's a new day? What happened to my hamsters? The I, the II... Named as kings, treated as such, favorite pastime was time passing. They were onto something and I looked at them amazed by their simplicity, their foolishness. Stop with the ball, Hamtaro.

    • Technical

      • Emulators in Debian Buster and Bullseye
      • Bitwise Harmony

        Electronic music is perhaps my second favorite hobby (programming being #1, of course). My earliest memory in this field is from the C64, where one of the tapes "borrowed" from a friend had a piano simulator where you could play and record a short song. It was slow, clunky and sounded horrendous in every way, but the idea of using a computer as a musical instrument really resonated with me — there are endless possibilities for creativity!

        Over the years I played around with ProTracker on the Amiga 500 and later did more serious work with Scream Tracker on the PC. My skills growing, eventually I moved on to MIDI trackers on Windows, intent on composing some orchestral music using Standard MIDI instruments. This was around the year 2000. My music was starting to gain some complexity at that point, thanks to not being restricted to keyboard and mouse input and using an actual synthesizer keyboard for recording the notes. Later on, after becoming a Mac user, I went all in on Logic Pro and even recorded a couple of songs with lyrics.

      • Wrapper Script Etiquette

        A wrapper script is one that makes various changes (flags, environment, logging, etc) and then runs some other program. Variations are possible.

      • MNT Reform 2 OS Update

        I have decided that I want the battery status in the Waybar (a bar on the top of the screen). It wasn't that easy on the MNT: the battery status is controlled by the system controller (that thing which also communicates with you through the small OLED screen at the top of keyboard) and to be able to read the data inside the operating system a kernel driver is needed.

      • Programming

        • Filtering Lists with Dependent Types

          Filtering a list is a pretty fundamental operation when programming and most modern programming languages provide such a function as part of their standard library.


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



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