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Links 18/04/2023: Fedora GNU/Linux 38 and LXD 5.13 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • Applications

      • PowerDNSPowerDNS Authoritative Server 4.7.4

        This is the release of version 4.7.4 of the Authoritative Server. It contains various bug fixes, some performance improvements, and one new feature (pdnsutil list-member-zones). A full list of changes can be found in the changelog. Please make sure to read the Upgrade Notes before upgrading.

      • Linux LinksLinux Candy: linuxwave – generate music from the entropy of Linux

        Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.

        A diverse range of programs are included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.

        linuxwave is a small utility that’s designed to generate music from the entropy of Linux. What’s entropy? Think of entropy as the computer’s way of getting close to “randomness”.

        Computers are incapable, by design, of generating truly random numbers, because no number produced by a mathematical operation is truly random. However, computers can get pretty close with entropy. A Linux machine collates “random numbers” by monitoring different events such as network activity, key-clicks etc. These are fed to the kernel entropy pool, which is used by /dev/random and /dev/urandom. Some programs need to use /dev/random or /dev/uradom as their source of entropy e.g. cryptography tools. linuxwave also uses entropy via /dev/urandom.

      • LXD 5.13 has been released

        The LXD team is very excited to announce the release of LXD 5.13!

        This is quite the jam packed release featuring a lot of improvements for those using OVN networks, but also very exciting developments for VM users, including much faster live migration and AMD SEV support. On top of that, we’re also adding OpenID Connect support for user authentication, dedicated network bridges for multi-user environments and a long requested one, the ability to resize storage pools through LXD itself.

        For quite a while now LXD has supported live migration of virtual machines. But the way this was done was far from ideal. It was effectively all dependent on LXD’s support for stateful stop, that is, the ability to write down all the memory and CPU state to disk, then fully stop the virtual machine but with the ability to start it back up exactly where it left off.

        That means that for live migration, the process was effectively to write down all the memory (potentially several GiBs of it), write down the CPU state, then have the VM exit, move all the state (disk, memory and CPU) to the target system and finally restore it.

      • LWNLXD 5.13 released
    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Matthew GarrettMatthew Garrett: PSA: upgrade your LUKS key derivation function

        Here's an article from a French anarchist describing how his (encrypted) laptop was seized after he was arrested, and material from the encrypted partition has since been entered as evidence against him. His encryption password was supposedly greater than 20 characters and included a mixture of cases, numbers, and punctuation, so in the absence of any sort of opsec failures this implies that even relatively complex passwords can now be brute

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • New Releases

      • 9to5LinuxSolus Linux to Be Rebased on Ikey Doherty’s Serpent OS

        For those not in the know, Solus is an independent Linux distro created from scratch by ex-Intel employee Ikey Doherty and using an in-house developed graphical environment which most of you now know as the Budgie Desktop.

        A few years after its creation, Solus was passed to another maintainer, namely Joshua Strobl, who did an amazing job keeping Solus alive for a few good years until last year when he decided to leave the project and focus on the Budgie Desktop.

      • IPFire Official BlogIPFire 2.27 - Core Update 174 released

        The next Core Update has been released: IPFire 2.27 - Core Update 174. It is a traditional spring clean release which updates major parts of the core system and comes with a large number of bug fixes throughout.

        This update also comes with a number of security patches in Apache, cURL and more, but none of them have been assessed as being exploitable on IPFire. Nevertheless, we intend to bring those updates to all of our users as soon as possible, and encourage speedy installation of Core Update 174.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Red Hat OfficialEnabling Kubernetes self-service the operator way

        Learn how operators can serve as governance tools in a multitenant setting.

      • Red HatMy advice for building maintainable, clean architecture

        To say that DevOps is an illusion is a controversial statement to start this article. What I mean is that I often see DevOps passing by, but I have the feeling that they forgot the “and.” Development and operations are often two separated silos, not looking at each other, not looking at each other’s principles, even in cloud development. One of the best examples of looking for best practices in other silos is (in my opinion) agile software development, which originated from the Japanese car manufacturer, Toyota.

      • Enterprisers ProjectIT leadership: Mission-driven IT and finding your "why"

        I recently had the opportunity to interview Enterpriser Jay Ferro,€ EVP, chief information, technology, and product officer at Clario. During our discussion, Jay spoke about the importance of being mission-driven in IT–something he has been in every IT leadership role he has held throughout his career. Whether you call this your North Star or "finding your why," this work is critical for retaining talent and delivering value to customers. Watch the video for Jay's advice on this topic and others, like how to build consensus for your digital transformation, how to foster a culture of resilience in IT, and why leaders should never stop asking questions.

      • Enterprisers ProjectGenerative AI: 3 do's and don'ts for IT leaders [Ed: Red Hat promoting hype again]

        Over the next few years, enterprises will fall somewhere on the spectrum of fully embracing and shunning the technology outright as part of their digital transformation journey. As IT leaders, we need to help our organizations and their employees understand its benefits and risks and make informed decisions on how to apply it appropriately.

      • 9to5LinuxFedora Linux 38 Arrives with Linux Kernel 6.2, GNOME 44, Mesa 23, and More

        Powered by Linux kernel 6.2 and the Mesa 23 graphics stack, Fedora Linux 38 includes the recently released GNOME 44 “Kuala Lumpur” desktop environment for its flagship Workstation edition, which comes with numerous new features and improvements like a new lock screen, new Quick Settings, new accessibility settings, and much more.

        The Fedora Linux 38 Spins ship with new desktop environment releases as well, including KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, Xfce 4.18, Cinnamon 5.6, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, Budgie 10.7, LXDE, i3, and SoaS desktop flavors.

      • DebugPointFedora 38 is now Available for Download. This is What's New

        Fedora Linux is a popular distribution that provides the latest software packages and technologies. It is a community-driven project sponsored by Red Hat, and is a pioneer in adopting new tech and features before any mainstream Linux distributions.

        The latest version of Fedora Linux, Fedora 38, has been released, bringing with it a host of exciting new features and updates. Here are some of the highlights.

    • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Devices/Embedded

      • CNX SoftwareBLIKVM open-source KVM over IP works with Raspberry Pi CM4, Raspberry Pi HAT, PCIe card, and soon Allwinner H616

        BLIKVM is an open-source KVM over IP software that helps you manage servers or workstations remotely regardless of the health of the target system, and currently working with Raspberry Pi CM4 hardware, a Raspberry Pi HAT, or a PCIe board, and a new model based on MangoPi’s Allwinner H616 CPU module is coming soon.

        We’ve previously written about the Raspberry Pi-based PiKVM DIY project, followed by the PiKVM v3 Raspberry Pi HAT from the same project, and now I can see there’s a CM4-based PiKVM V4 that was on Kickstarter last month and raised over $800,000… You’d think this kind of system would be rather a niche market, but there’s even demand to have a similar open-source project called BLIKVM offering many of the same features since it’s based on PiKVM, except for the option to use a PCIE card fitted with a CM4 module.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • ArduinoECLIPSE is a beautiful ring lamp that lightens progressively

        Have you ever exited a dark movie theater in the middle of the afternoon and found yourself blinded by the sudden transition to bright sunlight? Etienne Leroy faces the same problem after watching a movie on his home projector and turning on the lights.

      • ArduinoMini WALL-E robot delivers gifts

        While brainstorming gift ideas, Professor Boots settled upon creating a tiny present-delivering robot that could move around on its own power. Because WALL-E’s design already has a built-in compartment and is quite memorable, it became the jumping off point for the project.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • MozillaSupport.Mozilla.Org: What’s up with SUMO – Q1 2023

          Hi everybody,

          I know some of you have been asking about the monthly blog post since January. We’re back today, with a summary of what happened in the past 3 months. This will be our new cadence for this kind of post. So please look out for our next edition by early July.

          I hope the past 3 months have treated you well. Time surely flies so fast. We’ve done a lot of internal research for the past 3 months, but in Q2, I promise you will see more of me all around our various community channels.

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • PostgreSQLPG Failover Slots (pg_failover_slots)

        EDB is pleased to announce the release of PG Failover Slots (pg_failover_slots). This database extension is released as open source software under the PostgreSQL license and is for anyone who has logical replication publications on Postgres databases that are also part of a Streaming Replication architecture.

    • Programming/Development

      • ButtondownWhat TLA+ Can't Check

        Hi everyone,

        I wrote a new blog post, Breaking the Limits of TLA+ Model Checking. It’s the first (non-learntla) TLA+-related content I’ve put out in what, almost two years? It also comes with a GitHub project with all the software artifacts: the spec, the graphing software, the scripts, etc. It’s about how to test the things that TLA+ can’t natively check, like hyperproperties and probabilistic properties.

        So what do I mean by “things that TLA+ can’t check?” I spent ten minutes writing and rewriting two paragraphs carefully defining the differences between the language and the model checker before giving up and saying “this is a newsletter, nobody wants to read this.” So here’s the oversimplification. In TLA+ we have a spec that has multiple behaviors, or traces. Properties in TLA+ are things that are true for every behavior. Some such properties: [...]

      • Hillel WayneBreaking the limits of TLA+ model checking

        I haven’t written much about TLA+ on the blog since the new learntla went up. Any examples or special topics I think of go there instead. But I recently thought of a cool demo that doesn’t quite fit the theme of that book: there are some things you can’t easily check with the model checker but can check if you work with the state space as a directed graph.

      • Frederik BraunFrederik Braun: Examine Firefox Inter-Process Communication using JavaScript in 2023

        This is my update to the 2021 JavaScript IPC blog post from the Firefox Attack & Defense blog.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Rakulang2023.16 Student.?win

          If you're a programming student, you can win a free ticket to TPRC in Toronto (11-13 July) by taking part in the contest! Meanwhile, a preliminary schedule is available! Anton's Corner Anton Antonov has been busy again this week: a new module (WWW::MermaidInk) and an associated blog post with an introduction and examples!

    • Standards/Consortia

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Technical

      • AI for creativity and repression

        Who is pushing us artists to use AI? Nobody, because it promises unheard of artistic liberation and a creative explosion – an opportunity we don't want to miss? Or is someone nudging us? And in a near future, when everyone uses some form of AI-assisted artistic tools, why resist?

        I would argue there are a few good reasons to resist, or at least to reflect on the pros and cons. First and foremost: outsourcing creativity may have the effect of weakening our inherent creative capability. It's like driving a car instead of walking and getting in good shape, or using a pocket calculator and forgetting how to do mental calculations, or taking photos everywhere instead of trying to recall what a place looked like. The danger of all these useful tools is that we forget to excercise our own capabilities and gradually lose them. Creating art or music is in part a problem solving skill, a skill that can be largely outsourced to AI tools.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Gemini as Tor Hidden service (onion)

          I really like Tor Hidden services since they give a DNS-free URL amongst other things, I wanted to get my onion url for gemini.

          However, gemini require correct TLS certificates. Problem, the onion string don't match my domain, of course. I had to set a new certificate

        • Whither the Apps?

          The campfire (that is, the #gemini IRC channel on tilde, which serves a similar function to gather round, minus smoke-in-eyes) brought up the notion of Gemini applications, which would presumably be little todo apps or similar treats. Doubt was expressed.

      • Programming

        • Using Multiple Git Identities

          As I am slowly transitioning from using github as my main hosted git platform, to sourcehut^ and codeberg^, I am running into the issue that I want to use a different git identity per provider. For example, I still use github at work, so this means I need to be able to push commits under my real name, and with a different email address. But on sourcehut and codeberg, I want to use a different email and an alias for my name. This presented me with a practical problem: is there an easy way to switch my gitconfig, based on the service I use?


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



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