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Links 24/07/2023: Debian 12.1 and Neptune 8.0



  • GNU/Linux

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNLinux 6.5-rc3
        Things continue to look pretty normal - there's nothing here that
        would seem to stand out, with both the commit counts and the diffs
        looking pretty much normal for rc3.
        
        

        We've got the usual driver updates being about half the diff (with gpu, networking and sound drivers dominating as always). The other half is a pretty random mixed bag of small fixes all over - core networking, some tooling header updates, various filesystem fixes, some minor architecture fixes...

        Full shortlog appended,

        Linus
      • LWNLinux 6.4.5
        I'm announcing the release of the 6.4.5 kernel.
        
        

        All users of the 6.4 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 6.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-6.4.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h
      • LWNLinux 6.1.40
      • LWNLinux 5.15.121
      • LWNKernel prepatch 6.5-rc3 and three stable kernels

        Meanwhile, Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the large 6.4.5, 6.1.40, and 5.15.121 stable updates; each contains another set of important fixes.

    • Applications

      • 9to5LinuxInkscape 1.3 Open-Source SVG Editor Is Out with New Shape Builder Tool, Many Changes

        Inkscape 1.3 is here a year and two months after Inkscape 1.2 and introduces a new tool called Shape Builder, which lets you create new shapes by combining and building new paths even from multiple overlapping shapes. Best of all, the new shapes will retain their original color, too.

        Also new is a Document Resources dialog that can show statistics about your documents and gives you a more efficient way of organizing your Inkscape documents. Moreover, a new Font collections feature will help those of you who have way too many fonts in your collection to better categorize them.

      • Inkscape launches version 1.3 with a focus on organizing work efficiently
        With version 1.3 of Inkscape, you’ll find improved performance, several new features, and a solid set of improvements to a few existing ones.

        This version is squarely focused on helping users get organized and work more efficiently with our free and open source vector-editing software.

        In fact, our project developers, most of them volunteer contributors from around the world, have been working hard behind the scenes on the code base to improve the performance of the software. Some of the heavy rendering tasks have been separated internally, to help with performance when zooming, panning and transforming objects. By default, Inkscape will now leverage the power of all your computer's cores when it renders objects, but you can also choose to limit its powers in the preferences.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • RlangStep-by-Step Guide to Scrape UN Comtrade metadata with R and Selenium

        UN Comtrade is a great source of data for international trade. However, some countries report imports with a different convention than CIF (Cost, Insurance, and Freight), which is the standard for international trade. The same happens with exports, which are reported with a different convention than FOB (Free on Board).

        In order to be aware of this and know which countries report with a different convention, we need to download the metadata for each country. This is a time-consuming task, as we need to download each country’s metadata one by one, because this information is not contained within UN Comtrade API, spreadsheets or bulk downloads in CSV.

        A slightly more processed version of this data is available in my valuation system repository.

      • IT TavernGetting started with netcat on Linux with examples

        In this blog post, I'll focus on the basics of netcat. More advanced options and scenarios will follow in separate posts at some point.

        Netcat is available on almost any Linux host and is easy to use. It is an excellent tool for troubleshooting network issues or gathering information and a great addition to any tool portfolio.

      • TecMint15 Useful “ifconfig” Commands to Configure Network Interface in Linux

        ifconfig in short “interface configuration” utility for system/network administration in Unix/Linux operating systems to configure, manage, and query network interface parameters via command-line interface or in a system configuration scripts.

        The “ifconfig” command is used for displaying current network configuration information, setting up an ip address, netmask, or broadcast address to a network interface, creating an alias for the network interface, setting up hardware address, and enabling or disabling network interfaces.

      • TecMintHow to Find My DNS Server IP Address in Linux

        DNS (Domain Name System) is a fundamental facilitator of several networking technologies such as mail servers, Internet browsing, and streaming services e.g. Netflix and Spotify, among others.

        It works on a special computer called a DNS server – which keeps a database record of several public IP addresses along with their corresponding hostnames for it to resolve or translate hostnames to IP addresses upon user request.

      • TecMint10 Best File Comparison and Difference (Diff) Tools for Linux

        While writing program files or normal text files, programmers and writers sometimes want to know the difference between two files or two versions of the same file.

        When you compare two computer files on Linux, the difference between their contents is called a diff. This description was born out of a reference to the output of diff, the well-known Unix command-line file comparison utility.

      • LinuxTechiHow to Install Apache Kafka on Ubuntu 22.04
      • Linux BuzzHow to Install k3s Kubernetes Cluster on Ubuntu 22.04

        Kubernetes has revolutionized the world of container orchestration, enabling developers to manage and scale their applications effortlessly. While setting up a Kubernetes cluster can be a daunting task, K3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution, makes the process much more accessible.

      • [Old] A Novice’s Intro to XSLT

        Let’s talk first about what XSLT is before we talk about how to use it. XSLT is unique in that it’s specifically designed to transform XML documents. This doesn’t necessarily mean it was designed for mapping from one metadata schema to another, as XML is used for more than just metadata & XSLT can do more than just shuffle around values, but it does mean that the language is uniquely suited to that task. XSLT allows us to change certain elements in the original document, alter text, & add or drop pieces of information.

        In this post, we’ll specifically look at converting the Library of Congress’ MODS schema to Dublin Core. LOC has provided a handy map between the two which illustrates the complexity of the task. A few things that we need to address: [...]

    • Games

      • GamingOnLinuxGet a whole lot of Myst and other adventures in this bundle

        Love mysterious puzzle adventures like Myst? The Humble Myst & More Redux Bundle may be worth a look for you then. Here's the compatibility to expect on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

      • GamingOnLinuxChimeraOS Linux for handhelds and couch gaming v43-1 released

        After their huge version 43 release recently bringing with it initial ASUS ROG Ally support, ChimeraOS Linux has a first bug fix release out. This is the Linux distribution aimed primarily at gaming devices, giving you a SteamOS-like environment with a bunch of extra tweaks along with wider hardware support.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Make Use OfThe 8 Best GNOME-Based Linux Distros

          If you're looking for an intuitive, user-friendly, and visually appealing desktop environment, GNOME is the answer.

          GNOME is one of the most preferred desktop environments among the Linux desktop community. Let's take a journey to explore and review some of the most notable GNOME-based Linux distributions available today.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Distro WatchReview: Murena on Fairphone 4 in North America

        I really like what Murena is trying to do with their focus on open source software and privacy. They make an unusually polished, de-Googled experience which is still compatible in virtually every way with the existing Android ecosystem. The Fairphone is a great idea, in my opinion. Too many phones get thrown away these days due to dead batteries or a malfunctioning component. The Fairphone addresses this problem really well by making it easy to pop open the device and replace a component at a reasonable price.

        Often times devices and operating systems which exist outside the mainstream struggle to be polished, performant, or to be compatible with existing apps. Murena running on the Fairphone doesn't have these drawbacks. It's basically Android, but with more privacy features and Google's cloud services swapped out for Nextcloud. The Fairphone is far from under powered, in fact it's sporting approximately the same CPU and memory as my laptop and is pleasantly fast.

        I had a little trouble getting the device to charge from a computer's USB port, but otherwise the experience was fantastic. The phone is fast, we have access to virtually all the apps in the Android ecosystem, and I like that F-Droid is enabled by default.

        I also like the Murena cloud services. They're optional and opt-in, making them non-invasive. I appreciated being able to synchronize all my devices - sharing tasks, contacts, and files.

        Finally, I really appreciate that this phone feels like a phone and computing device that is designed to be useful for me rather than an advertising platform for a large company. Whenever I have the misfortune to use other people's Android phones or iPhones, I always feel as though the goal is to see how much the device can annoy me before I stop using it. The pop-ups, the ads, the nagging prompts to enable things on those phones are frustrating and time consuming. This phone feels like it is there to make my life easier, and its repairable nature means it can continue to do so for the next five years without requiring me to buy another device.

        In short, I think Murena's Fairphone offering is a solid product. It's a decent price, offers the power and flexibility of Android, with an added set of privacy protecting tools. Plus the phone is repairable and the software is supported for five years. This makes the device ideal for people who are environmentally or privacy focused as well as people who would like to keep their devices running for longer periods of time rather than upgrade steadily.

    • BSD

      • Updating FreeBSD on armv6 board (RPI-B)

        One of my old home automation boards running ebusd is still using Raspberry PI 1 B SoC. FreeBSD is still perfectly supporting this hardware, however, due to being a Tier-2 platform, binary updates freebsd-update are not supported. Of course, one can download the new image, but this will mean re-installing and reconfiguring all the software, which is time-consuming and painful. Also, the traditional “build from source” way will probably take forever on this tiny board and also could potentially destroy the SD card. So obvious alternative was cross-compilation.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Joe Brockmeier Red Hat and the Clone Wars VI: Obfuscating Kernel Code for Fun and Profit

        In our last episode we talked about the origins of Oracle Linux. This time around, we’ll look at one of Red Hat’s responses to the threat posed by Oracle Linux. Specifically, Red Hat’s decision to “obfuscate” the kernel source delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, and how it communicated (or didn’t) those decisions.

    • Debian Family

      • Whonix 17 has been Released! (Debian 12 bookworm based) - Major Release

        Debian 12 bookworm based. Major release.

      • Neptune 8.0 "Juna" is here - Neptune EN

        We are proud to announce the release of Neptune 8.0 ("Juna"). This is the first major release of version 8.0 based on Debian 12 ("Bookworm")

        This version comes with the latest major underlying changes from Debian 12 ("Bookworm"). The Linux Kernel has been updated to Version 6.1 to provide support for new hardware and better compatibility with current hardware. Additionally, KDE Plasma has been upgraded to version 5.27 along with all KDE applications present in version 22.12.3.

      • 9to5LinuxNeptune 8.0 “Juna” Is Here Based on Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm”

        Dubbed “Juna”, Neptune 8.0 is here eleven months after Neptune 7.5 and it’s the first release of this GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian’s stable branch to rebase the entire system on the recently released Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series.

        Being based on Debian Bookworm, Neptune 8.0 inherits all of the upstream package versions, including the kernel, which is based on the long-term supported Linux 6.1 series that will receive updates until December 2026.

      • DebianUpdated Debian 12: 12.1 released

        The Debian project is pleased to announce the first update of its stable distribution Debian 12 (codename "bookworm"). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.

        Please note that the point release does not constitute a new version of Debian 12 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "bookworm" media. After installation, packages can be upgraded to the current versions using an up-to-date Debian mirror.

        Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages, and most such updates are included in the point release.

        New installation images will be available soon at the regular locations.

        Upgrading an existing installation to this revision can be achieved by pointing the package management system at one of Debian's many HTTP mirrors. A comprehensive list of mirrors is available at...

      • nixCraft Debian Linux 12.1 released with Security Updates

        Debian Linux project announces the first update of the Debian project’s stable distribution, Debian 12 (codename “bookworm”) named Debian 12.1. This update mainly addresses security issues and significant problems. Security advisories have been published and are now available to download.

      • Aurélien JarnoWelcome Debian riscv64

        After many years of effort, I am happy to announce that Debian riscv64 is now an official architecture!

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Nicolas FränkelApache APISIX without etcd

        For all those reasons, you may prefer to use a standard SQL database with Apache APISIX. In this post, I’ll show how you can use MySQL.

      • OMG! LinuxFirefox 116 Enables Video Hardware Acceleration on Raspberry Pi 4

        Also, this is h2.64 only for the moment. Hardware accelerated VP8/VP9 decoding is the next goal and will help bring Firefox’s media capabilities on the Raspberry Pi 4 in-line with other platforms.

    • Programming/Development

      • Brian CallahanUsing non-GNU assemblers with the Portable C Compiler

        While PCC is a complete compiler, including a libpcc.a runtime support library akin to libgcc.a for GCC and libcompiler_rt.a for Clang, PCC is not a complete compilation system. PCC relies on someone else to provide an assembler and a linker to complete the process of processing object code, shared libraries, and executables. In contrast, LLVM includes everything you need to go from zero to an executable: a preprocessor, C compiler, assembler, linker, runtime support library, and is even developing their own C standard library implementation. The GNU system also has a complete preprocessor, C compiler, assembler, linker, runtime support library, and C standard library implementation; at least all under the same umbrella if not all in the same single monorepo like LLVM. PCC only provides a preprocessor, C compiler, and runtime support library.

      • Thorsten BallAllergic to Waiting

        Many times in your day-to-day programming life you have to wait. Wait for your development environment to boot up, wait for the formatting-on-save command to finish, wait for the website you just opened to load, wait for tests to run, wait for the CI build to finish.

        The waiting doesn’t really cause me physical pain, but it does evoke a physical reaction alright. I just can’t stand it. Maybe it’s because I’m impatient by nature. Maybe it’s knowing that things could be faster that causes it. When I have to wait ten seconds for a test to finish that I plan to run many times over the next hour, I tell you, it feels as if I’m about to lose my mind.

  • Leftovers

    • BrrSouth Pole Signage

      But – this place is also fascinating, and I think signage is a fun, respectful, and quirky way to explore it.

    • University of TorontoSome cheap things are only cheap if they have enough volume

      Today, if you go looking around your local bicycle retailer or favorite online outlet, you'll probably find much less selection and rather higher prices (and what's left is often much more basic than before). This isn't necessarily because the basic components of a bike computer have gotten more expensive; if anything, tiny low powered computers have gotten even cheaper. Instead, it's probably because these basic bike computers have gotten much less popular. Today, most people who're interested in this sort of information use either their phones or a GPS based bike computer (which doesn't even need a sensor, although it does need a GPS signal).

    • Eric BaileyFormative posts

      I wouldn’t be the person I am today without these sorts of brilliant insights and observations. and I’m thankful these people exist in the world, thinking these thoughts and choosing to share them.

    • James BrownToo many social media!

      I don't know what the point of all this is. Twitter was a lot of fun — a social network that almost everyone was on, where you could use great native applications and see the posts from only the people you wanted to see, or if you prefer, use the terrible first-party application and see a constant feed of celebrity click-bait.

      Maybe I should just stick to IRC.

    • The AtlanticOppenheimer Nightmares? You're Not Alone.

      Those inexorable, ominous seconds were the basis of a nightmare I had recently. It’s an old adage that nobody wants to hear about anyone else’s dreams, but perhaps we can make an exception for nuclear night terrors this summer. Poke around social media right now, and you’ll notice that scores of people are experiencing acute nuclear anxiety. (“Too many Oppenheimer dreams last night 😵‍💫,” reads one representative tweet.) My bomb dream happened last Sunday night. I was dead asleep, watching a missile carve an arc across the sky. I awoke just before impact, sweating, heart thumping, fists clenched. I did not get back to sleep.



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