Here's a quick recap from this week's DebugPoint.com weekly roundup (Week Ending May 9, 2021). Have a quick read.
This week has been full of great news, starting with the release of the GParted 1.3 open-source partition editor, the Nitrux 1.4 Linux distribution, the Cawbird 1.4 Twitter client, the KDE Frameworks 5.82 software suite, as well as the Armbian 21.05 ARM distro.
On top of that, I take a first look at the elementary OS 6 beta, Star Labs kicks off pre-orders for its brand-new StarBook Mk V Linux laptop, UBports calls for testing for their upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-17 software update, and Rocky Linux 8.3 and Linux kernel 5.13 now have a Release Candidate ready for public testing.
There are many reasons why Linux is such a popular platform for processing Internet of Things (IoT) edge applications. A major one is transparency. Linux security capabilities are built on open source projects, giving users a transparent view of security risks and threats and enables them to apply fixes quickly with security module patches or kernel-level updates. Another Linux advantage is that developers can choose from various programming languages to develop, test, and run device communications over various networking protocols—other than HTTP(s)—when developing IoT edge applications. It also enables developers to address server programming for controlling data flow from IoT devices to front-end graphical user interface (GUI) applications.
If you need a fast computer but don’t have much to spend, consider picking up an off-lease refurbished system. These PCs are a few years old and have seen some use, but they are often heavily discounted and offer a lot of bang for your buck.
In this article we consider hard disk drives which form a central part of every modern PC. If you have lots of documents, music, photos and videos, you’ll need plenty of disk space.
Meanwhile, on the East coast, Richard Stallman threw a fit when he couldn’t get the source code to his printer driver. He founded the GNU (GNU’s not Unix) project in 1983 intending to make a free Unix-like operating system, only better. After a little hesitation, the kernel of this operating system was chosen to be Hurd, which is going to be usable any decade now. Many components of the GNU project are included in all current free unices, in particular the compiler GCC.
Over the last few years Chinese electronics company has been reducing its reliance on tech from other countries in response to trade restrictions imposed by the US. That’s meant developing a home-grown Android alternative for smartphones (albeit one that’s largely based on Android so far).
Now Huawei has launched its first laptop that doesn’t feature an Intel or AMD chip. The Huawei Qingyun L410 is powered by Huwaei’s own Kirin 990 processor, an ARM-based chip that was initially developed for smartphones and tablets.
Both Precisely and Infogix have a history of developing products for IBM i and mainframe systems, and that will continue going forward, the Precisely spokesperson said.
"When can I buy a System76 Linux PC in Europe WITHOUT the high cost of shipping and other fees?" System76 engineer Jeremy Soller hears this question all the time, and he's got an answer.
Cmake. The demo Cmake script from this episode is : cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10) project(World VERSION 1.0) add_executable(World world.c) file(COPY assets DESTINATION "${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}") target_include_directories(World PUBLIC "${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}") install(TARGETS World) install(DIRECTORY assets/ TYPE DATA)
Why has Pull Request #835 raised the ire of so many free software advocates? Because Audacity had the... errr... well... audacity to introduce opt-in telemetry collection into the application.
AMD has published a set of patches refactoring their MCE kernel driver, making various machine check architecture (MCA) address translation updates in preparing for "future systems" while at the same time finally introducing Data Fabric 3 support for EPYC 7002 "Rome" processors and newer.
Published on Friday were a set of 25 patches to improve the AMD MCA address translation code within their machine-check exception driver. The patch cover letter notes that "the reference code was recently refactored in preparation for updates for future systems."
IT’s Mr Sweary Linus Torvalds appears to have disappointed an Apple fanboy interviewer by playing down Apple’s new ARM64 chips.
Torvalds was actually asked in an interview by Jeremy Andrews who was the CEO of Drupal outfit Tag1 if he was going to be an early adopter of Apple’s ARM64 chip when it boots Linux and invited him to praise Apple’s chip.
Much to Andrews surprise, Torvalds failed to praise the new chip to the skies or talk about how wonderful the Apple's MacBook was.
The Linux Kernel 5.13 RC1 - first release candidate is here for you. You can download and test now. We take a look at the new features in this Kernel release.
Oracle UEK kernels have been providing the btrfs filesystem since release 5 (UEK5). The most recent UEK kernel is release 6 (UEK6), which is based on Linux kernel 5.4, where as UEK5 is based on Linux kernel 4.14. UEK6 as you would expect contains a lot more fixes and improvements as compared to UEK5.
With specific regard to the btrfs filesystem, I will skim through a few significant improvements and fixes in UEK6. Bear in mind that UEK6 btrfs includes many other bug fixes other than what is listed below. In general as a rule of thumb, it is encouraged to use UEK6 when possible. Also, the backporting of newly reported btrfs mainline bugs is more likely to occur and more feasible in UEK6 when compared to UEK5.
Following the recent RTX 30 series Linux gaming benchmarks and RTX 30 compute comparison, I was curious how the Linux performance for the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card compares to the Windows 10 performance in various GPU compute workloads. Well, here are those benchmarks for those wondering about Vulkan / OpenCL / CUDA / OptiX compute performance between Windows and Linux with the very latest NVIDIA drivers.
With the official NVIDIA Windows and Linux (and FreeBSD and Solari) drivers being comprised from largely the same sources, historically the performance has been close to the same across platforms when it comes to the binary driver speed. It mostly though comes down to a function of the application/game under test how well it is optimized for a given platform and if it's relying upon any emulation / additional abstraction layers primarily on Linux. For today's article is a fresh look at the Windows vs. Linux NVIDIA performance when focusing in on the GPU compute performance.
Blender has dropped its annual report for 2020 [PDF], and in it, we learn that the 3D graphics software was downloaded over 14 million times last year.
Having rolled out four major releases during the year, that's an average of 3.5 million downloads per release. "This is a significant increase across all operating systems," the report reads.
Audio streaming services are extremely popular nowadays when listening to music. However, a local collection is still a useful way that does not require to be constantly connected to the Internet.
Even though a streaming music service is convenient, you do not really own the music. So, if there is a licensing issue, the platform might remove your favorite music, and you cannot do anything about it.
And, with a local music collection, you do not have that problem. But, how do you stream your local music over a network of devices or share with a group?
Want to try out the Pipewire sound server? It’s easy to do this in Ubuntu 21.04, and here’s how!
PipeWire is a server for handling multimedia on Linux. Its most common use is for Wayland and Flatpak apps to implement audio and video playback and capture with minimal latency. And it offers seamless support for PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA, and GStreamer based applications.
In this video, I am going to show how to install GhostBSD 21.04.27.
Like many who work in open source communities, IRC is a key part of my daily life. Its simplicity has made it a mainstay. But the lack of richness also makes it unattractive to many newcomers. As a result, newer chat protocols are gaining traction. Matrix is one of those. I first created a Matrix account to participate in the Fedora Social Hour. But since Matrix.org is bridged to Freenode, I thought I’d give Element (a popular Matrix client) a try as an IRC client, too.
I’ve been using Element almost exclusively for the last few months. Here’s what I think of it.
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Generally, using Element for IRC has been a net positive. I’m looking forward to more of the chats I use becoming Matrix-native so I don’t have to worry about the IRC side as much. I’d also like the few chats I have on Facebook Messenger and Slack to move to Matrix. But that’s not a windmill I’m willing to tilt at for now. In the meantime, I’ll keep using Element for most of my IRC needs, but I’m not quite ready to uninstall Konversation.
TeamViewer is software for remote access and remote control, allowing you a remote access to other computers and devices.
It was first released in 2005 and its functionality is expanding step by step. TeamViewer is proprietary software, but does not require registration and is free for non-commercial use.
One cool thing about TeamViewer is that is available for all desktop computers and smartphones with common operating systems, like Linux, Windows, BSD, Android, Apple and etc.
You might have come across PDF files while sharing or viewing digital documents. But do you know that you can easily edit these files on your Linux machine? This guide will show you how to edit and create PDF files using the LibreOffice suite, a free and open-source office suite alternative to Microsoft Office.
What Is LibreOffice?
LibreOffice is an open-source office software suite mainly comprised of LibreOffice Draw, LibreOffice Writer, and LibreOffice Calc. You can use LibreOffice for editing and creating PDF documents, word documents, excel sheets, etc.
Most Linux distros such as Ubuntu use LibreOffice as the default office suite; many other distros prefer OpenOffice as well. The LibreOffice suite is also available on other mainstream operating systems such as Windows and macOS.
As wonderful as the Linux command-line is, it can sometimes need a little customization to make it truly our own. While most terminal emulators ship with a few different theme options such as Solorized, Orchid, etc. out of the box, you might on occasion feel the need for different color schemes. While you could manually play with the different color palettes to create a scheme that you find appealing, this is a time-consuming process.
Paleta is a nifty little tool that provides more than 150 different color schemes for your terminal. It works across many Linux distributions including the Raspberry Pi and switching color schemes involves running a single command from the terminal.
Redirection is a feature in Linux such that when executing a command, you can change the standard input/output devices. The basic workflow of any Linux command is that it takes an input and give an output.
Referring from Redhat, Red Hat€® JBoss€® Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) is a middleware platform built on open standards and compliant with the Java Enterprise Edition specification.
Network Time Protocol – NTP- is a protocol which runs over port 123 UDP at Transport Layer and allows computers to synchronize time over networks for an accurate time. While time is passing by, computers internal clocks tend to drift which can lead to inconsistent time issues, especially on servers and clients logs files or if you want to replicate servers resources or databases.
Zabbix is a open source monitoring tool which keeps an eye on various IT components such as network, servers, Virtual Machines in real time. It can not only monitor thousand of metrics collected from physical as well as virtual machines but also network utilization, CPU load and Disk space consumption. Zabbix has a web management interface which is centralized through a database. Zabbix has the power to visualize your data in the form of graphs ,maps, screens and overviews.
Maintaining accurate date on a Linux system is one of the essential skills that any Linux user should have at their fingertips. The Linux date command is used to display and set the date and time settings on a Linux system. This tutorial gives you a glimpse of how you can use the date command to display and set the date on your Linux system.
LinuxShellTips is happy to present a series on Vagrant. If you are someone who is using virtualization software like VirtualBox, Hyper-V, KVM, Docker, and AWS then this tool will be a great addition to your toolbox.
This Vagrant series is focused on introducing what is vagrant, core aspects of vagrant, and automation features it provides.
Another problem is that the 'PuppyPin' and 'globicons' files are at different places, depending on the distro. Easy and many pups have them at /root/Choices/ROX-Filer, but some pups may have them at /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer, and fatdog has them initially at /etc/xdg/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer.
Jenkins is a free and open source automation server for building, testing, and deploying code. It's the backbone of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and can save developers hours each day and protect them from having failed code go live. When code does fail, or when a developer needs to see the output of tests, Jenkins provides log files for review.
The default Jenkins pipeline logs can be difficult to read. This quick summary of Jenkins logging basics offers some tips (and code) on how to make them more readable.
This is the second article of a two-part series in which I describe the automated testing infrastructure that I am developing for the SystemTap project. The first article, “Automating the testing process for SystemTap, Part 1: Test automation with libvirt and Buildbot,” described my solution for managing test machines and for producing SystemTap test results. This follow-up article continues by describing Bunsen, the toolkit I developed for storing and analyzing test results.
0 A.D. Alpha 25, the very impressive free and open source RTS is closing in on the next release and it's entering a Feature Freeze soon to focus on stability. The last release back in February took a very long time, partly as some major internal upgrades were done so now they're hoping to be a bit more regular.
We released Godot 3.3 a couple of weeks ago, and feedback so far has been pretty good! But like with any major milestone, there are some bugs which are worth addressing with low-risk maintenance releases to further improve the experience for all Godot users.
The upcoming Godot 3.3.1, like all future 3.3.x releases, focuses purely on bug fixes, and aims to preserve compatibility. This Release Candidate should help us validate the fixes done so far, and ensure that the release is ready to publish. As there is no new feature and only bug fixes, this RC 1 should be as stable as 3.3-stable and can be used in production if you need one of the fixes it includes.
There are several games explicitly developed for the Linux platform. This article will discuss the best free Linux games suitable for your Linux distro. Remember, there are other paid Linux games. However, in this article, you will spend nothing since we shall only cover the free Linux games.
Generally, Linux has lots of outstanding games offered at fair and affordable prices. However, this does not favor all users since some require only free games. A key point to note about the Linux games is that nearly all of them are categorized as open-source. This means that their initial source code can be altered or modified to the gamer’s preference.
Short on time and want to try something new? It's Free Game Mondayââ¢! Come check out Fate of Dynasty which is open source. Originally created for the Global Game Jam 2021, it was created over 48 hours and shows a great example of what a small team can do.
"Fate of Dynasty is a short lore exploration puzzle game inspired by walking simulators such as Gone Home, Dear Esther, and Layers of Fear. Figure out how to perform the ritual to put an end to the tyranny of the ruling dynasty."
Two interesting projects we've not covered here before are UltraStar Deluxe and the newer UltraStar Play, both open source games aimed at karaoke fans. You've likely somewhere heard of SingStar, an exclusive PlayStation series. Sadly, it was shut and so it's mostly lost. Thankfully though, as usual, open source to the rescue!
It is time! I finally have a Valve Index with thanks to supporter Scaine and it has genuinely blown a few braincells away with just how incredible an experience it actually is.
Unlike some, I wasn't originally sold on VR — at all. Partly because of the price factor, which is a genuine issue to adoption, especially with the more limited VR options on Linux with just the HTC Vive and the Valve Index. The big point was the idea of having a weighty device strapped to my face did not appeal to me. I stayed mostly away from it and didn't follow much - oh how wrong I have been all this time. It's simply like nothing else.
Featuring a top-down view, Super Woden GP looks like it could bring some excitement when it comes to Linux later this year from developer ViJuDa.
"Feel the excitement of the 90s with the isometric perspective, its huge number of vehicles and its brilliant soundtrack. More than 60 cars from six manufacturers from different countries to buy, an extensive campaign mode, dozens of circuits, rally stages, championships, and much more awaits you!"
Not a big fan of permadeath? Good news for you as Caves of Qud, the awesome science fantasy roguelike epic, now has new game modes in Beta.
While the traditional and normal mode of the game remains as permanent death, the current opt-in Beta on Steam now has new options available which should help people explore its truly wonderful and bizarre world.
I actually started writing on this blog post last December, to have plenty of time for collecting trivia and ideas, never before seen prototype screenshots, and more. I surely wouldn’t have thought this to turn into half an autobiography. Mind that I’ll try my best to verify the statements that follow but they can still be inaccurate or skewed from being just memories. Now grab a cup of your favorite beverage, sit back, and join me on this trip down memory lane.
My earliest recollection of using KDE was in 1999 on SuSE Linux 6.1. Back when the “KDE Desktop Environment” was the actual product name, which is why you still hear people say “I use KDE 5” today. I still fondly remember how it had an isometric K for its start button rather than the gears logo we know and love today. I was also quite fascinated by the green and blue, depending on your edition, crystal formations on SuSE packaging – the physical cardboard boxes, that is. You could even find those 2 kg boxes that featured a tome of a manual and several CD-ROMs at your local electronics store.
I still used Windows as my main operating system, though, originally Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, later Windows 98 because a video editing software I wanted required it, and finally Windows XP, which would be the last Windows release I used on a daily basis. I occasionally toyed around with later SuSE releases, I went to 6.4 and then 7.1, which was the first one to come on a DVD. We didn’t have a DVD drive back then, so I had to put up with the 7 or so CDs it came with. For some reason I don’t remember we had to reinstall the system several times and at some point we created a backup copy of the first CD, and as if we had known, it actually shattered in the drive on the next installation attempt.
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In Summer 2014 Jos Poortvliet persuaded me to sign up for my very first Akademy, KDE’s annual developer conference, in Brno, Czechia in September. Getting there was quite a chore, as I had to fly into Vienna and then proceed to Brno by coach. That bus departed every other hour but I didn’t want to risk missing it so I had to spend three hours at Vienna airport. I still vividly remember a thread on the Akademy mailing list about “bring your own toilet paper” and indeed the hotel we stayed at featured the roughest, grayest recycling tissue I have ever seen. The week was great fun with delicious food and made me wonder why I didn’t go to an Akademy sooner – make sure, whenever we can meet again in person that you, dear reader, go, too!
We have now arrived in the year 2015 where I will wrap up this post. This blog instance was set up in that year and from now on you’ll be able to follow my development on your own. While there are surely many more fun stories and anecdotes to tell, there has to be some material left for a sequel ;) I hope you enjoyed this history lesson and I can only encourage you to do the same, reflect on what you’ve achieved and tell the world, inspire others! Bhushan Shah once told me how some of my posts on Google+ years ago got him into KDE and can you imagine KDE and Plasma Mobile without him? I owe my entire professional career, pretty much all my debugging, and programming skills to all those talented people in the KDE Community.
GNOME 40 is finally out and I'm happy to say a small contribution of mine made it into the release. My contribution adds a new feature to GNOME System Monitor version 40. Few articles about GNOME 40 mention it, but some power users might find my contribution useful.
This new feature essentially turns GNOME System Monitor into a graphical user interface for GNU Taskset, allowing you to set or adjust the CPU affinity of any process using a simple check box dialog window similar to how it's done in the Windows Task Manager.
To use this new feature all you need to do is right click any process and then click the "Set Affinity" menu item, this will bring up the CPU affinity dialog with check boxes for each processor core. These check boxes will be prefilled/auto-checked based on the process' current CPU affinity. Check or uncheck specific cores, then hit apply and you've successfully adjusted which CPU cores the process is allowed to run on.
Based on Xubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) and powered by Linux kernel 5.4 LTS, Freespire 7.5 is here as an update to Freespire 7.0 and a free version of the Linspire operating system, featuring the latest Xfce 4.16 desktop environment and various updated components.
Freespire releases are usually based on the most recent LTS (Long-Term Support) version of Ubuntu Linux, and Freespire 7.5 looks to incorporate all the updates from the upstream repositories of Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, but it sticks with the long-term supported Linux 5.4 kernel series instead of the newer Linux kernel 5.8, which can be installed from the repos.
The Illumos project born out of the former Sun Microsystems OpenSolaris codebase has decided to end support for SPARC hardware.
While SPARC and Solaris/OpenSolaris once went hand in hand, with major SPARC development pretty much being over and Oracle having laid off much of their SPARC engineers years ago, the future isn't exactly vibrant. However, more immediately pressing is that Illumos developers don't even have sufficient SPARC hardware access.
Starting with SP3, we are now offering packages pre-built binaries from SLE in addition to the sources we were previously providing to openSUSE. This means that openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise are closer together than before, thus easing the migration from openSUSE Leap to SLES.
This article will tell you more about how openSUSE and SLE were made in the past years but also the important changes with openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 3.
How often have you or your team answered cursory or even critical IT related questions with an approach of “I’ll just Google or YouTube it”? With the skills shortage at record highs and the skills gap a continuing concern among IT departments, you might be hearing this more and more often.
It gives me great pleasure to announce that four of our talented colleagues at SUSE have been recognised by CRN in their Women of the Channel listing for 2021.
As we prepare for our second annual online SUSECON Digital event, we’ve extended our theme of ‘Innovate Everywhere’ and taken it quite literally. This year, SUSECON will ‘launch’ into another universe, and take you to three virtual worlds; Linux World, Kube World and Edge World. Where your SUSECON rocketship will take you, will be up to you. But, what we can promise you is that SUSECON Digital 2021 will be ‘out-of-this-world’.
At one time or another, I'm sure all of these commands had their purpose but whatever that purpose was, it no longer exists. Programming is hard work. It's time-consuming, it's tedious, and when something goes wrong, it can take hours or days to find that missing semicolon or extra space that throws everything off. I get that and I apologize to the dedicated programmers who wasted their time creating these filesystem invaders.
Technology and infrastructure generate an enormous amount of data on a day-to-day basis. Building knowledge out of this data in various real-world domains can be a big challenge. This article describes how to derive concise and precise knowledge from data and use it to track vulnerabilities in the software stack. It presents challenges related to package security and vulnerability and how they can be addressed using a knowledge graph. After reading this article, you’ll understand the concept of the knowledge graph and how you can apply it to your domain.
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Most large organizations employ open source libraries and components to build software used internally and externally. While open source helps solve many problems, developers need to understand how to track security vulnerabilities in all the software they use. Security vulnerabilities can be brought into host software by the libraries and tools on which it depends. The problem grows as more and more dependencies are included.
Ensuring the most secure versions of software dependencies are used can be tedious and time consuming. Although open source package vulnerability databases are frequently updated, tracking those databases on a daily basis, or even per release, can be difficult during medium- and large-scale software development.
Baseboard management controllers (BMCs) are a mainstay in data centers. They enable remote monitoring and access to servers, and they’re responsible for the rise of “lights out management.” But from a hardware perspective, there has been little innovation in this space for years. BMC processors are built on legacy architectures that are proprietary and closed.
The OpenPOWER Foundation is announcing a new workgroup to develop LibreBMC, the first ever baseboard management controller with completely open-source software and hardware. The processor will be based on the POWER ISA, which was open-sourced by IBM at OpenPOWER Summit North America in August, 2019.
Once the LibreBMC design is complete, which will be worked on using the open-source LiteX software, the plan is for LibreBMC to run the OpenBMC software stack. LibreBMC intends to be compatible with the Open Compute Project's DC-SCM specification. LibreBMC is being designed from the start to be open-source compared to the various BMCs today running Linux/open-source software now only after the fact when being "freed" by various organizations caring about open-source support at such low levels in the server.
Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 10 May at 1300UTC in #fedora-neuro on IRC (Freenode). The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend
During the last year, we are incrementally dropping support for Copr’s APIv1 and APIv2. We kindly ask you to migrate to APIv3. Some reasoning and our motivation for doing so can be found the Copr has a brand new API blog post.
On Red Hat’s User Experience Design (UXD) team, our connection to user experience runs deep (and not just because it’s in our name). We research, design, develop, and write together to make UX more accessible, intuitive, and inclusive across Red Hat’s product portfolio.
What can you and your team gain from focusing on these experiences too? From streamlined project plans to smoother communication, evaluating and strengthening the experiences you create brings no shortage of internal and external advantages to your team, your work, and your users. We’ll highlight some of these benefits in this post.
John Roesler released 2.8.0 on April 19. A post was published on the Apache blog, and as always you can find the full list of changes in the release notes or in the release plan on the wiki.
Kafka 2.8.0 introduces the option to run Kafka without ZooKeeper in early access (KIP-500). This mode is named KRaft, for Kafka Raft. This is not for production as there is currently no migration path and many features are still disabled, but if you want to try it out in a test cluster before 3.0.0, see the KRaft README.
Call for Code is a global initiative that aims to take on the world’s most urgent issues, such as climate change and racial injustice, with open source, sustainable solutions. But developers can’t do this alone — they need support from IBM and ecosystem partners to ensure that they have the right tools to build solutions and support for deployment.
Esri, a global leader in mapping and location intelligence, is partnering with IBM and David Clark Cause as a Call for Code supporter. Esri’s ArcGIS Platform, apps, and data combine mapping and data analytics to deliver location intelligence to help solve difficult problems and inspire positive change.
Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim has used Red Hat OpenShift to accelerate the development of its digital healthcare portfolio and enable the continuous delivery of new applications and services. With Red Hat OpenShift, Boehringer Ingelheim has increased productivity, streamlined compliance and achieved up to five times faster delivery to market of new services through automated scaling and management processes.
Running self hosted Red Hat OpenShift in its datacenters around the globe and Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, a fully managed service of Red Hat OpenShift on Amazon Web Services, Boehringer Ingelheim’s developers can develop and deploy applications faster and in the environment of their choice.
Ansible community reviewed the Ansible codebase and documentation and made alternative terminology recommendations across the board.
The words “master” and “slave” have been widely used for decades in computing and other technical contexts, as a reference to situations where one process or entity controls another. Nowadays the organization is tackling to getting rid of computer engineering terms that evoke racist history, like “master” and “slave” and “whitelist” and “blacklist.”
So now the Ansible project is working to eliminate racism and other harmful prejudices from the project’s code and community. During the current development cycle, the Ansible project has made significant progress in its goals to make the community and code more welcoming and inclusive. With the release of Ansible Core 2.11, harmful terminology in the Ansible codebase is deprecated and it comes with new replacement terms.
If you’re setting up a new server, one of the most important decisions to make is the operating system you’ll be using.
Debian and Ubuntu are used both as a desktop OS and as a server. They are two of the most popular Linux distributions in history. As everybody know, Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution, but it is not an exact copy by any means and there are great similarities but also great differences between the two. In other words, they are two sides of the same coin.
When it comes to taking a look at the servers of these two OSs and choose which one is the better one, it should be said that this decision heavily depends on your preferences.
You may have heard that Debian is a distribution for experts, and Ubuntu for beginners. That is true, so far as it goes. However, that distinction is more historic than contemporary.
The Armbian developers have released the latest update to the Debian-based Linux distribution geared for ARM and embedded devices.
For anyone that makes use of ARM-based architecture, you have a friend in Armbian, which is a Debian-based Linux distribution, purpose-built for ARM and embedded devices (including development boards and Linux phones). Armbian is a simple-to-use, lightweight, secure Linux distribution, optimized for ARM-based hardware. This new release includes the 5.11 kernel, which now includes support for the Orange Pi R1 Plus as well as improved NVIDIA Jetson Nano support.
Here are some uploads for April.
I just started looking at the Kubernetes documentation and interactive tutorial [1], which incidentally is really good. Everyone who is developing a complex system should look at this to get some ideas for online training. Here are some notes on setting it up on Debian.
JingOS developers are gearing up to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the iPad-inspired slate next month. But, ahead of that they give us an up-close look at the hardware itself in a video preview.
Sadly, it’s not my hands doing the previewing, but those of a JingOS developer. JingPad reviews from independent/third party folks will, I’m told, appear around the time that the crowdfunding campaign goes live.
In this video a JingOS dev gives us a tour of the JingPad A1 hardware on the first unit fresh out of the factory. We get to see the premium-looking gorilla glass back (though lacking a fingerprint resistant coating foe now); discover that the A1 has a front 8MP camera and 16MP rear facing camera; and learn that the power/lock button comes with a built-in fingerprint sensor — a nice touch.
As I wrote about the “Summer 2021 of Open Source Promotion Plan” earlier, I noticed a new open-source operating system called HybridOS described as “totally new” and designed for “smart IoT devices and cloud computing environment”.
It’s actually more of an ecosystem than an operating system, as it offers three main components with a device side running on devices running Linux kernel or another POSIX-compatible kernel, a server side running on servers in the cloud, and a client side to manage the cloud and devices from Windows, Linux distributions, iOS, or Android.
That also means an Android 10.0 SDK, and support for Allwinner wireless chips namely Allwinner XR829 802.11 b/g/n WiFI 4 & BT4.2, and Allwinner AW859A 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFI 5 & BT 5.0. Allwinner designed an R818 evaluation board, but I cannot find it for sale anywhere yet. Besides Android support, another operating system is being developed partially based on Huawei HarmonyOS, more specifically OpenHarmony. I’ll try to get more details and write about it tomorrow.
I’ve worked hard on making the presentation I ended up calling libcurl under the hood. A part of that presentation is spent on explaining the main libcurl transfer state machine and here I’ll try to document some of what, in a written form. Understanding the main transfer state machine in libcurl could be valuable and interesting for anyone who wants to work on libcurl internals and maybe improve it.
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What this state diagram and explanation doesn’t show is of course that in each of these states, there can be protocol specific handling and each of those functions might in themselves of course have their own state machines to control what to do and how to handle the protocol details.
Each protocol in libcurl has its own “protocol handler” and most of the protocol specific stuff in libcurl is then done by calls from the generic parts to the protocol specific parts with calls like protocol_handler->proto_connect() that calls the protocol specific connection procedure.
This allows the generic state machine described in this blog post to not really know the protocol specifics and yet all the currently support 26 transfer protocols can be supported.
ComMa is a method that TNO-ESI developed together with Philips and will soon be offered as an open source resource via the Eclipse Foundation.
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ComMa will be available as an open source package via the Eclipse Foundation. The Eclipse Foundation is a renowned worldwide community for cooperation and innovation in the field of open source software. TNO recently became a member of this non-profit organisation. Expectations are that this will be realised by mid 2021 under the name Eclipse CommaSuiteââ¢. Until that time, the technology is available to ESI partners and others through a licencing agreement.
My browser is my like an office room with desk and shelves, where the information is accessible. Information is stacked, accessible, sometimes open and browsable at glance and some deep on the shelves. But how would I want to have access it in the browser.
Currently we bury the information of tabs and bookmarks in a big bind of context without giving any help for managing apart of having to go through the list of pages one by one. No wonder why people feel overwhelmed and try to limit the number of tabs they have opened. Because big numbers rely on external tools (Tree Style Tabs, Sidebery, Containers, etc) which do not go far enough to manage the tabs.
We are humbled to announce the release of GNU Guile 3.0.7. This release fixes a number of bugs, a couple of which were introduced in the previous release. For full details, see the NEWS entry. See the release note for signatures, download links, and all the rest. Happy hacking!
Welcome the first feature release in accordance with the new release schedule – Kotlin 1.5.0!
This release delivers stable language features such as JVM records, sealed interfaces, inline classes, and includes the new default JVM IR compiler. Your feedback on the feature previews in Kotlin 1.4.30 and Kotlin 1.5.0 EAP releases have really helped us to stabilize these features.
JetBrains has released the latest version of the free and open source Kotlin programming language. Kotlin is a general purpose programming language designed for Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and Android that combines object-oriented and functional programming features.
Linux Foundation Editorial Director Jason Perlow had a chance to speak with Masato Endo, OpenChain Project Automotive Chair and Leader of the OpenChain Project Japan Work Group Promotion Sub Group, about the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s (METI) recent study on open source software management.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (libxml2), Fedora (autotrace, babel, kernel, libopenmpt, libxml2, mingw-exiv2, mingw-OpenEXR, mingw-openexr, python-markdown2, and samba), openSUSE (alpine, avahi, libxml2, p7zip, redis, syncthing, and vlc), and Ubuntu (webkit2gtk).
Writing software is similar to translating from one language to another. Specifically, it is similar to translating from your native language to some other language. You are translating to that other language so that you can help those others do some task for you. You might not understand this other language very well, and some concepts might be difficult to express in the other language. You are doing your best though when translating, but as we know, some things can get lost in translation.
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When security researchers perform software testing with an aim of finding software defects, we say that they are performing security fuzzing, or just fuzzing. Therefore, fuzzing is similar to software testing, but with the focus on identifying ways to make the software malfunction in a really bad way.
Security researchers find security vulnerabilities, ways to break into a computer system. This means that fuzzing is the first half of the job to find security vulnerabilities. The second part is to analyse each software defect and try to figure out, if possible, a way to break into the system. In this post we are only focusing on the first part of the job.
An app developer discovered Apple gave Zoom access to the iPad multitasking camera that no other third-party video conferencing app has.
Nikeeta Slade was one of our favorite people. She died suddenly on May 7 from a heart attack. She was only 32. The Greens have lost one of their most committed, knowledgeable, and talented organizers.
An Echo Chamber is a group of people who reinforce the same ideas and who often preemptively strike against opposing ideas (for example the right wing denigrating “mainstream media” to prevent their followers from straying from their approved message). An Epistemic Bubble is a group of people who just happen to not have contact with certain different ideas.
When reading that article I wondered about what bubbles I and the people I associate with may be in. One obvious issue is that I have little communication with people who don’t write in English and also little communication with people who are poor. So people who are poor and who can’t write in English (which means significant portions of the population of India and Africa) are out of communication range for me. There are many situations that are claimed to be bubbles such as white people who are claimed to be innocent of racial issues because they only associate with other white people and men in the IT industry who are claimed to be innocent of sexism because they don’t associate with women in the IT industry. But I think they are more of an echo chamber issue, if a white American doesn’t access any of the variety of English language media produced by Afro Americans and realise that there’s a racial problem it’s because they don’t want to see it and deliberately avoid looking at evidence. If a man in the IT industry doesn’t access any of the media produced by women in tech and realise there are problems with sexism then it’s because they don’t want to see it.
The legal basis for compulsory licenses under German Patent Law is under Section 24 of the German Patent Act. The German Patent Act meets the requirements of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and the implementation of the Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions (Directive 98/44/EC). A claim to the grant of a compulsory license may also arise from competition law provisions and Regulation (EC) No 816/2006 which is related to the manufacture of pharmaceutical products for exports to countries with public health issues.
As of March 2020, the German Government amended Section 5 of the German Infection Protection Act (Act). Under Section 5 of the Act, an invention relating to the supply of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and products for disinfection and laboratory diagnostics shall be used in the interest of public welfare or security. The German Government enacted the Infectious Diseases Prevention and Control Act that gives the Federal Ministry of Health powers that include the ability to issue a compulsory license. The Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Act gives the government a legal basis to limit patents allowed by Section 11 of the German Patent Act. Under Section 11, a patent is not extended to acts done for experimental purposes related to the subject matter of a patented invention. The measures are only lawful as long as Germany is under a state of emergency as provided by Section 13 of the Patent Act. Section 13 provides for administrative orders to be issued by the federal government against patentees that enable the government or Any designee to use for the public welfare. This measure can be revoked upon repeal or its expiration on March 31, 2021.
While the details of the WTO patent waiver have not been determined (or more properly negotiated), it is important to consider the structure of the international trade regime in which the waiver will operate and the consequences of any agreement defining exactly what will be waived.
The GATT/TRIPS agreement is a treaty, which (of course) is an agreement between countries, and disputes and accommodations are between their governments. The extent to which a private company's patent or other IP rights are protected under the terms of these agreements depends on actions of these governments in enforcing them on the company's behalf. Thus, for protections like patents, a government can agree to "turn a blind eye" to infringement by companies in other countries (or other governments) by refusing to press the rightsholder's case before the WTO, to pressure the governments unilaterally (as in the Watch List and Special Watch List of the U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Report), or otherwise support a private company's private actions using an infringing country's legal system. Such "passive" actions (i.e., refusing to enforce rights in violating or "scofflaw" countries) requires very little affirmative action by a government. These are the types of de facto waivers that can be effective, for example, for patented drugs that can be produced by conventional drug production technology wherein description of an active pharmaceutical ingredient molecule.
In contrast to litigation proceedings in national courts, an opposition may be filed against a European patent in the name of a so-called straw man, behind which the identity of the interested party may be hidden. In a recent Board of Appeal case (T 1839/18), a patentee questioned whether straw man oppositions are in line with the principle that acts performed before the EPO require a legitimate purpose. In its decision, the Board of Appeal presented strong support for the established case law that anyone should be able to file an opposition. The Board cited the broader public interest that invalid patents should be challenged in view of the patent bargain between the state and the patentee.
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In support of their decision, the Board of Appeal in T 1839/18 noted that the EPO's approach to straw man oppositions was not unique. The Board particularly cited a comparative overview of oppositions published by WIPO. The WIPO report noted that in many jurisdictions (e.g. Japan) an opposition may be filed by any person. This corresponds to the broader principle that the validity or invalidity of a patent does not concern a specific individual, but is a matter of broader public interest.
For good measure, the Board of Appeal also referenced the original English Statute of Monopolies 1623/24, which set out the fundamentals of what has become to be known as the "patent bargain". In the original statue, patents were accepted as burdens to society, whose grant could only be justified by their technical contribution to society. Patents granted without meeting the requirements of patentability, the Board noted, put the patent system's purpose in jeopardy by wrongly preventing competitor research and development. Consequently, according to the Board, any person challenging a patent by way of opposition contributes to society by clearing the register from undeserved monopolies or by adding legal certainty (i.e. where the patent is maintained unamended) (r 2.11).
The March 2021 decision orders W.D.Tex. Judge Albright to immediately decide TracFone’s venue motions (and write a reviewable opinion). Judge Albright immediately complied by denying TracFone’s motion to dismiss or transfer the case. The Federal Circuit’s April 2021 decision concluded that Judge Albright had “abused [his] discretion.” The appellate panel then ordered the case to be transferred to Florida.
Although the April 2021 decision provides finality, it is actually the March 2021 decision that is perhaps more interesting. The appellate panel ordered immediate action on the venue question and generally suggested that a district court should drop-everything to decide venue motions. The judge’s familiarity with the facts/law of a particular case is typically seen as relevant the outcome of an inconvenient venue motion under 1404(a).
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In re Western Digital (Fed. Cir. 2021). In a separate decision today, the Federal Circuit denied Western Digital’s petition for writ of mandamus to escape from W.D. Tex. The appellate panel did find that Judge Albright had applied the wrong legal standard by stating Western-Digital faced a “heavy” and “significant” burden before a case would be moved for convenience.
Beate Schmidt has handed over the leadership of the German Federal Patent Court to Regina Hock. The new leadership, which came into effect at the end of April, is the fourth time that a female has led the court in Munich.
Among other IP-related issues, the court decides on patent validity. Thus, along with the infringement courts in Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Munich and Hamburg, the Federal Patent Court is a decisive pillar of the German bifurcation system. The X. Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice supervises decisions handed down by the Federal Patent Court.
Counsel say changes in the law, preparing for licensing and litigation, and sowing uncertainty among competitors are great reasons to file continuations
While COVID-19 cases continue to drop in the United States, many countries are fighting resurgences of the virus and struggling to obtain vaccines and medical supplies. Back in October, India and South Africa petitioned the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive all IP protection surrounding drugs and medical products needed to combat the pandemic. The petition also called for “the unhindered global sharing of technology and know-how.”
Existing safeguards regarding IP rights during public health emergencies have some issues. TRIPS Article 31 permits countries to issue compulsory licenses of patented technology, but the process for importing patented drugs is cumbersome under Article 31bis. Countries must also pay “adequate remuneration in the circumstances of each case” to the patent holder. Moreover, the U.S. government has a lengthy history of punishing countries that utilize compulsory licensing with trade-related sanctions.
This is an update to our posts on April 8, 2021, March 15, 2021 and March 10, 2021. As readers are aware, the Brazilian Supreme Court was scheduled to decide the constitutional challenge involving Article 40 of the Brazilian Intellectual Property (IP) Statute (ADI 5529), on April 7, 2021; however, the hearing was delayed due to a discussion in another case.
The Biden administration dropped the bombshell last Wednesday, May 5, that it was supporting a waiver of all intellectual property rights, including patents, to COVID-19 vaccines. Just a day later, the Brazil Supreme Court removed the guarantee of a 10-year minimum term for successful pharmaceutical patent applicants.
It goes without saying, therefore, that it’s been a tough week for IP – and patents in particular – not just in the Americas but more generally too. Public understanding of the need for IP can be shaky at the best of times, but it’s really been put to the test in the past few days.
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What’s concerning about the Biden decision is that it buys into and perpetuates the anti-IP rhetoric, even if inadvertently. Biden seems like a wholly reasonable politician, and I’m sure he’s trying to do the best for the global population.
In this episode, Josepha is joined by the co-founder and project lead of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Tune in to hear Matt and Josepha discuss the relaunch of CC Search (Openverse) in WordPress and the facets of the open source ecosystem.
