03.31.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

Posted in News Roundup at 1:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 500: Guarding the Wire

        Wireguard VPN Server with Unbound on OpenBSD, Auditing for OpenZFS Storage Performance, OpenBSD 7.2 on a Thinkpad X201, Practical Guides to fzf, Replacing postfix with dma, and more

      • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux Action News 286

        What we’re liking about GNOME 44, how Microsoft’s Linux distro is trying to attract more users, and we bust a CentOS myth.

    • Kernel Space

      • LWN ☛ Reducing direct-map fragmentation with __GFP_UNMAPPED

        The kernel’s direct map makes all of a system’s physical memory available to the kernel within its address space — on 64-bit systems, at least. This seemingly simple feature has proved to be hard to maintain, in the face of the requirements faced by current systems, while keeping good performance. The latest attempt to address this issue is this patch set from Mike Rapoport adding more direct-map awareness to the kernel’s page allocator.

      • LWN ☛ Generic iterators for BPF

        BPF programs destined to be loaded into the kernel are generally written in C but, increasingly, the environment in which those programs run differs significantly from the C environment. The BPF virtual machine and associated verifier make a growing set of checks in an attempt to make BPF code safe to run. The proposed addition of an iterator mechanism to BPF highlights the kind of features that are being added — as well as the constraints placed on programmers by BPF.

        One of the many checks performed by the BPF verifier at program-load time is to convince itself that the program will terminate within a reasonable period of time, a process that involves simulating the program’s execution. This constraint has made supporting loops in BPF programs challenging since the beginning; it has only been possible to use loops since the 5.3 release. Even with that addition, convincing the verifier that a loop will terminate can be a challenge; this annoyance has led to, among other things, the addition of features like bpf_loop(), which puts the looping logic for some simple cases into the kernel’s C code.

        Not all problems are readily addressable by a simple function like bpf_loop(), though. Many loops in BPF programs are simply iterating through a set of objects, and BPF developers would like easier ways to do that. While numerous languages have some sort of built-in notion of iteration over a set, C does not. As noted above, though, BPF is not really C; this patch set from Andrii Nakryiko reiterates (so to speak) that point by adding an iteration mechanism to the BPF virtual machine.

      • LWN ☛ Zero-copy I/O for ublk, three different ways

        The ublk subsystem enables the creation of user-space block drivers that communicate with the kernel using io_uring. Drivers implemented this way show some promise with regard to performance, but there is a bottleneck in the way: copying data between the kernel and the user-space driver’s address space. It is thus not surprising that there is interest in implementing zero-copy I/O for ublk. The mailing lists have recently seen three different proposals for how this could be done.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links ☛ 6 Best Free and Open Source GUI Electronic Circuit Simulators

        Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulation software allows for modeling of circuit operation and is an invaluable analysis tool.

        This roundup only includes software with a graphical user interface. Circuit simulation backends are covered in this roundup. And software that offers electronic design automation are also covered in a separate roundup.

        We include software which acts as a simulation backend. We also include software with a GUI that lets you use these backends. Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.

      • PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS DNSdist 1.8.0 Released

        We are thrilled to release DNSdist 1.8.0 today! This 1.8.0 release contains a significant amount of changes since the last major release, 1.7.0, which was released a bit over a year ago. We try to stick to a major release every six months, but this one took a bit longer than expected.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Bitbucket for Newbies: Mastering Basic Commands and Collaborating on Code

        As a newbie to Bitbucket, navigating the platform and using its basic commands can be overwhelming. However, with some guidance, you can quickly become proficient in using Bitbucket.

      • nixCraft ☛ How To Install LXD on Debian 11 Linux

        You can install LXD pure-container hypervisor on Debian 11 Linux to run an unmodified version of Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Alpine, Arch and many other Linux distro. You can mimic AWS or different cloud instance types with LXD for testing and deployment purposes on your development machine. You can also run a GUI app such as Firefox completely isolated using LXD for security or privacy reasons. Let us see how to set up and use LXD on the Debian Linux 11 server or desktop.

      • urldecode with AWK

        $ awk -niord '{printf RT?$0chr("0x"substr(RT,2)):$0}' RS=%..

        Fast and simple awk urldecoder!
        Note: Parameter -n is specific to GNU awk

      • Vitux ☛ How to Verify if OpenVPN Protocol is Installed on Ubuntu

        VPN or Virtual Private Network is an encrypted path between a device and a network over the internet. VPNs ensure the security of transmitted data by providing encrypted channels for data flow.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Delete Files on Linux

        Linux has tons of commands that simplify tasks and make work more efficient. Rm is a helpful command for quickly deleting files, links, directories, etc.

      • Vitux ☛ How to Install Ansible on Rocky Linux 9

        Ansible is an open-source software platform for configuring and managing computers. It combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. Ansible works over SSH and requires no software or daemons to be installed on remote nodes.

      • Vitux ☛ How to generate CA-signed SSL certificates for a Website

        What is an SSL certificate? SSL certificate is a digital certificate that validates the identity of a website and establishes an encrypted connection. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a security protocol that allows encrypted communication between web server and client.

      • TecMint ☛ How To Exclude a Schema While Restoring a PostgreSQL Database

        Sometimes when restoring a multi-schema database from a backup file, you may want to exclude one or more schemas, for one reason or the other.

      • TecMint ☛ How to Install Spotify on Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint

        Founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon on 23 April 2006, Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Opera Browser on Manjaro Linux

        Welcome to the world of the Opera Browser, a modern, sleek, and feature-rich web browser designed to make your online experience efficient and enjoyable. As a Manjaro user, you may be considering making Opera your default browser, and for good reason!

      • Linux Shell Tips ☛ How to Run a Script Before Shutdown Under Systemd

        Modern Linux systems use systemd to manage daemons and system settings. Systemd is a service manager and initialization system, which took over from SysvInit

      • Linux Cloud VPS ☛ How to Install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9

        In this tutorial, we will explain how to install Grafana on AlmaLinux 9 OS. If you ever doubt what Grafana is and what it is used for, we are here to explain it to you.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install VSCodium on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you may have encountered Visual Studio Code—a popular and feature-rich source code editor. But have you ever wondered if there’s a more privacy-focused alternative? Introducing VSCodium, a free, open-source, and community-driven fork of Visual Studio Code.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Discord on Manjaro Linux

        As a Manjaro Linux user, you might wonder why Discord has become such a popular platform, especially among gamers and those transitioning to Linux gaming systems. This introduction will highlight the key aspects that make Discord an essential tool for Linux gamers and provide a detailed overview of its benefits.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install OpenRGB on Manjaro Linux

        OpenRGB offers a variety of advantages for Manjaro Linux users looking to manage their RGB devices seamlessly. By utilizing the AUR and command line terminal, you can unlock the full potential of your RGB hardware.

    • WINE or Emulation

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • LWN ☛ Hopes and promises for open-source voice assistants

      At the end of 2022, Paulus Schoutsen declared 2023 “the year of voice” for Home Assistant, the popular open-source home-automation project that he founded nine years ago. The project’s goal this year is to let users control their home with voice commands in their own language, using offline processing instead of sending data to the cloud. Offline voice control has been the holy grail of open-source home-automation systems for years. Several projects have tried and failed. But with Rhasspy’s developer Mike Hansen spearheading Home Assistant’s voice efforts, this time things could be different.

      Science fiction shows and movies have sold us on the idea of spaceships and homes we can talk to. In recent years, voice control at home has become possible thanks to the so-called “smart speakers” from Google, Amazon, and Apple. However, there’s nothing smart about these devices: their intelligence is almost completely in the cloud, where the user’s voice recordings are processed and translated into sentences and meaning.

      This is a complex and computationally intensive task, and these companies make us believe that their services are required to be able to use voice control. Of course this comes with downsides: users don’t have any control over what’s happening with their voice recordings, which is a big privacy risk. But, fundamentally, the problem lies even deeper. It just makes no sense for users to have their voices make a long detour through the internet just to turn on a light in the same room.

    • It’s FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #23.13: New blendOS Linux Distro, New Rust Series, Ubuntu Cinnamon and More

      This week sees the start of a new Rust tutorial series and takes a look at blendOS Linux distro.

    • OSI Blog ☛ Open Source Approved License® registry project underway with help of intern, Giulia Dellanoce [Ed: But OSI continues to shill Microsoft proprietary software, GPL violations, and openwashing. OSI has become a self-harming sham, attacking its very own mission while bagging bribes from Microsoft.]

      I shared last month the details of the new OSI website, hosted on WordPress.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQL ☛ pg_dumpbinary v2.10 released

        Zurich, Switzerland – March 30th, 2023

        pg_dumpbinary

        pg_dumpbinary is a program used to dump a PostgreSQL database with
        data dumped in binary format. The resulting dump must be restored
        using pg_restorebinary that is provided with this tool.

        pg_dumpbinary v2.10 was released today, it adds a new option to the pg_dumpbinary command:

        • -C, –compress-level 0-9 : speed of the gzip compression using the specified
          digit, between 1 and 9, default to 6. Setting it
          to 0 disable the compression.
      • YottaDB ☛ YottaDB r1.38 Released

        YottaDB r1.38 is a minor release that includes functionality needed at short notice by a customer. A MUPIP REPLICATE option provides for a replication stream to include updates made by triggers on the source instance. $ZPEEK() and ^%PEEKBYNAME() provide direct access to an additional process-private structure.

    • Licensing / Legal

      • LWN ☛ Jumping the licensing shark [Ed: GPL opportunists who slander the GPL's author for salaries like $250,000 per year]

        The concept of copyleft is compelling in a lot of ways, at least for those who want to promote software freedom in the world. Bradley Kuhn is certainly one of those people and has long been working on various aspects of copyleft licensing and compliance, along with software freedom. He came to Everything Open 2023 to talk about copyleft, some of its history—and flaws—and to look toward the future of copyleft.

        Kuhn began by saying that he spends much of his time these days thinking about the enforcement of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1; “it turns out that those are the most widely used copyleft licenses in the world”, thus they are the most frequently violated. It is sometimes painful to be looking at license text written in 1991 and 1993 as we move through 2023, but that is what he has to do. Outside of work, though, he has time to think about what sort of copyleft license he would draft if he were to do so. He was just out of high school when GPLv2 was released, so he did not participate in that process at all.

    • Programming/Development

      • Andrew Helwer ☛ Pseudocode Showdown

        Last weekend I had a conversation with an undergraduate student new to computer science, who was reading CLRS. “I wish” they said, “that all the pseudocode in my algorithms textbook was just written in Python.” “Ah” I said, “but textbook authors sometimes want their work to endure beyond a decade.” “But Python’s been around for a long time” came the reply, “and it’s very readable, and you can’t execute pseudocode anyway so what’s the harm?

      • Qt ☛ Qt Creator 10 – CMake update

        Now that Qt Creator 10 has been released, it’s time to highlight the CMake changes.

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Walking on the Katy Trail

        Took a lunch walk today with my wife and youngest son (who brought his
        bike, so he got a walk/ride experience). We drove down to Mokane and
        hopped on the Katy Trail. Walked for two miles total then came home.
        Gorgeous spring day. The trees aren’t leafed out yet, but the farmer’s
        fields are covered in soft greens and purples. Some nice bulb flowers
        budding early as well. One piece of creek that we crossed over was
        bubbling with clear water, but no fish visible. Sunny and 68F with a
        light, cool breeze, it was hard to beat.

      • I bought some books

        I usually read just Science Fiction and Fantasy for fun, or some language study books here and there, but over the past couple of years I’ve been feeling inspired by the sort of character developing advice I’ve been seeing in content I read online.

        I’ve completed a first pass of both books, but I’ve only just started to go back over them and make notes. While I read them, I did record a few quick notes here and there, but really just a few thinking points. I’ll probably post more on these two texts over the next couple of weeks.

      • On lazyness and growing up…

        While wife and son are visiting the in-laws for a week i have time to visit the pub again… bartender, do you have Grasovka in stock? Yes? Great!

        Turning in the general direction to the next patron i start to ramble…

        The biggest bane in my life always was my lazyness… but a particular kind of lazyness: If there is a deadline, a release date or an emergency i am hyper productive, i work from 05:00 – 22:00, eat, sleep and jump out of bed fresh as the morning just to head straight to work. But on the other hand… routine work is killing me. Give me a straight good workday without emergencies or big catastrophes and i am doing the bare minimum or even less to just get by. Just today my boss told me “Mr. ralfwause, i am absolutely glad you work here and i hope you will work here in 20 years from now, but sometimes… sometimes i have this urge to simply shoot you…”.

      • Testing midnight.sh

        There seems to be conditions under which “midnight.sh” does not work… in particular, the server often seems to answer that there is no content, especially when I’m sending only one line as a reply.

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

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DecorWhat Else is New

  1. IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 09, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, June 09, 2023

  2. Links 10/06/2023: libei 1.0.0 and Qt Creator 11 Beta

    Links for the day

  3. Jim Zemlin Boasting in 2022: Linux Foundation Has Revenue of Over 200 Million Dollars; IRS in 2022: Linux Foundation Has Revenue of 139 Million Dollars

    As noted here months ago, the Linux Foundation is run by a lying, manipulative charlatan who merely milks the brand “Linux” to enrich himself; where is that anomaly coming from?

  4. 'Linux' Foundation: Spendings on Salaries Increased More Than 20% in One Year

    As per the document just published after it had been submitted 7 months ago, salary-related expenditures rose from 49,386,990 to 59,791,694 in one year

  5. Links 09/06/2023: JDBC FDW 0.3.1 and Godot 4.1 Beta

    Links for the day

  6. Gemini Links 09/06/2023: Thoughts on Flatpak and Apple Cultists

    Links for the day

  7. Trying to 'Finish the Job' of Bully de Blanc and Deb Nicholson by Rewriting History (and Even Terms) for Microsoft

    Heather J. Meeker is trying to rewrite history and now we can see who her financial masters and hosts are (lots of Microsoft); The media portrayed her as some kind of historian for Free software a few months ago (as funding had been secured), but she already outsources everything to proprietary software controlled by Microsoft. This will be corporate revisionism; moreover, there’s employment history with Microsoft. As an associate put it: “The employment history with Microsoft is a dead give away that she will only spew lies and disinformation” (using books and such; the revisionism is well funded); the latest blog from the OSI is also sponsored by Microsoft (both the blog post and the person who wrote it)

  8. Links 09/06/2023: Tor Browser 12.0.7 and Many Linux Devices

    Links for the day

  9. Linux Foundation Demotes Mr. Linux, Linus Torvalds, to Third (in Salaries), Only Uses Him for the Name

    The Linux [sic] Foundation‘s tax filings (divulged by the Nonprofit Explorer) show that it now pays “CHRIS ANISZCZYK” and “JAMES ZEMLIN” more than it pays “LINUS TORVALDS”, sans bonuses. Torvalds fell to third place already. Mr. Zemlin pays himself over $1.2 million a year. He doesn’t even use Linux. He lacks credentials and accomplishments (except for selling out to companies like Microsoft), but he keeps pandering to power and money (Bill Gates). It should be noted that the Torvalds bonus was added only after backlash had erupted.

  10. HMRC is Just Taking Taxpayers' Money and Not Enforcing the Law (or Selectively Enforcing It for the Political Masters)

    What we've been demonstrating or highlighting so far this year is a defunct system of accountability, wherein the government officials and their associates are essentially above the law; can they endure the negative press that entails?

  11. GNU/Linux Decade in India: From 1.5% to 13.5%

    The world's largest population is quick to move away from Windows; not many adopt Apple (Indians don't care for overpriced junk), so GNU/Linux is growing fast

  12. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 08, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, June 08, 2023

  13. Links 09/06/2023: Microsoft's 'Online' ("Clown"/OneDrive) Storage Goes Down Again, Files Cannot be Reached

    Links for the day

  14. What Will Happen After All Major News Sites Die Isn't Pretty

    With webspam, chaff, sponsored puff pieces and worse things being presented as "the news" we're running out of actual purpose for the World Wide Web

  15. HMRC 3 Weeks Later: No Action, Same as 'Action Fraud' (Your Tax Money 'at Work')

    When people need police enforcement against a crime it turns out that police is “MIA” (missing in action); it might matter that Sirius worked with the British government, so there’s a reduced incentive to affirm crimes were committed and then arrest the perpetrators

  16. Links 08/06/2023: Istio 1.18 and FreeIPMI 1.6.11

    Links for the day

  17. Gemini Links 08/06/2023: Sourcehut, Gemini Identity, and BBS Comments on Cosmos

    Links for the day

  18. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 07, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, June 07, 2023

  19. The Need to Evolve on the Internet

    Tux Machines is one year away from its twentieth birthday and its increased focus on protocols aside from HTTP/S is paying off; Tux Machines also weaned itself off all social control media, including Mastodon and Diaspora (they're not the future, they're the past)

  20. EPO Management is Still Bullying the Staff (While Breaking the Law and Violating the European Patent Convention)

    Overloaded or overworked EPO workers are complaining about further deterioration at the workplace and their representatives say "this management style may well contribute to feelings of disengagement, depression, or even burn-out"

  21. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Not Responding After 20 Days (Well-Founded Report of Tax Fraud) and British Police Pretending Not to Exist

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ have helped unearth a profound problem in the British law enforcement authorities; What good is a monopolistic taxman (called after the British Monarchy even in 2023) that cannot assess its own tax abuses? Or abuses connected to it via a contractor? Meanwhile, as per what I was told, the police is not responding to my MP and that’s ANOTHER scandal (police not only refusing to act against crimes, committed against many people, but moreover not responding to elected politicians)

  22. Links 08/06/2023: Cinnamon 5.8 and Leap 15.5 Release Mature

    Links for the day

  23. Gemini Links 08/06/2023: Emacs and Thoughts on Bubble

    Links for the day

  24. Links 07/06/2023: Reddit Layoffs and OpenGL 3.1 in Asahi Linux

    Links for the day

  25. Gemini Links 07/06/2023: Jukka Charting Geminispace

    Links for the day

  26. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023

  27. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning

  28. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source

  29. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day

  30. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day

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