If you’re new to Linux or are switching to Linux from Windows, you’ll want an operating system that is GUI-focused like Windows. There are many different distributions of Linux, and some aim to replicate the look and feel of Windows. This helps during the transition from Windows, since you don’t have to fight with an unfamiliar interface. With Linux boasting improved hardware support, long term stability, and a more comprehensive range of software applications, there is no better time to try it!
In this roundup, we introduce you to the best Linux distributions for Windows users looking to switch to Linux.
Platform: that’s the key word that sprung to mind after attending Kubecon-CloudNativeCon Europe 2022, hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in Valencia last week. As in, Kubernetes isn’t a project any more, it’s a platform – and it’s one that’s now being used by thousands of organisations world-wide to build very real, very working applications and systems.
Yes, I know there’s not one single Kubernetes platform – every big cloud provider has its own hosted and certified distribution, there are managed services and there’s third-party commercial and free offerings from companies of all sizes (for example, VMware just released a new version of its free Tanzu Community Edition) that application developers can download and just get to work on.
The software Vulkan renderer in Mesa, lavapipe, achieved official Vulkan 1.2 conformance. The non obvious entry in the table is here.
Thanks to all the Mesa team who helped achieve this, Shout outs to Mike of Zink fame who drove a bunch of pieces over the line, Roland who helped review some of the funkier changes.
A couple of days ago I was looking a way for easily drop all tables of a MySQL database.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KiCad on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, as well as some extra required packages by KiCad
Nginx is the DevOps community’s most beloved http web server.
And developers love the PHP programming language because it allows them build and deploy interactive websites quickly.
As such, it’s no wonder that some many deployments need to configure Nginx, PHP and PHP-FPM on both Linux and Windows servers alike.
This quick tutorial will show you how to quickly setup PHP and Nginx on Ubuntu Linux with the fastCGI process manager (PHP-FPM) configured as Nginx’s PHP engine.
WordPress is a free, open-source and one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP, combined with MySQL/MariaDB database. Millions of websites are currently running on it and remains perhaps the most popular CMS for blogging, which was its original use case.
In this tutorial we’ll show you how to setup a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) stack and install WordPress on AlmaLinux 9 OS.
While the additions are progressing, it’s been a little slower to reach the new milestone for the Steam Deck. There are now more than 3100 games validated (3120 games to be precise at the time of writing) on the Steam Deck – in two categories as usual...
I've been playing Sound Voltex, an arcade music game by Konami, off and on since 2015. While my scores and unlocks take place in the arcade itself, I practice on a version of the game at home.
A list of nice and clean GNOME themes with screenshots for your Ubuntu desktop in 2022 which you can download and install.
Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from May 20 to May 27.
I'm pleased to share that I'm accepted for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2022 under GNOME Foundation umbrella on the Pitivi project. This summer I will be updating the project from GTK3 to the latest GTK4 toolkit.
To anyone that wants to be a part of GSoC, I have only one piece of advice, just go for it. Don't think if you can do it or not, don't assume failure before attempting, and don't overthink. I always felt that it is for the best of the best, and I won't be able to clear it, all the big organizations on the GSoC page overwhelmed me, but instead of making it a dream, I made it a life goal. And well, now I'm enjoying it.
Here's a quick tutorial on how to setup Nginx with PHP support. The key? The installation of fastCGI, aka PHP-FPM, so Nginx can serve PHP files to clients.
Clonezilla 3 is a new version of an (almost) universal disk-imaging and duplication tool which can copy, or image, almost any mass storage device.
Remember Norton Ghost? It was discontinued nearly a decade ago now, in 2013. There are lots of alternatives to it out there, including commercial ones, but Clonezilla is handy because it can handle almost any disk format, and it's totally free. Version 3 just appeared and it's got a bunch of new features, including support for Apple APFS, ChromeOS Flex, and Linux drives encrypted with LUKS.
Clonezilla is not a general-purpose tool, or a graphical live desktop for general disk work. If you want that, try SystemRescue 9, which we looked at earlier this year.
Clonezilla is more focused. It's a small (roughly 350MB) live Linux ISO image which boots into text mode – in a choice of resolutions – and it copies disks, and that's pretty much all. (To be fair, it does have a memory-tester and a copy of FreeDOS 1.0 built in for emergencies. It would be good to see that upgraded to FreeDOS 1.3.)
Choose either the i686 (32-bit) or x86-64 ISO file, download it, and then write it onto a USB key, or just copy the file onto a Ventoy key. Even burn it onto a CD or DVD if you're retro. You then boot the machine whose disk you need to duplicate and copy away.
As the company behind TrueNAS, iX relies on collaboration and feedback from the TrueNAS Open Source community of >250K users. This input builds the backlog from which issues are resolved and software feature requests are prioritized. One of the company’s core values is “pursue kaizen” or continuous improvement, which the company strives to apply to both TrueNAS products and the people at iX that create and support them.
The Systemd Linux init system has hit v251. It should soon be included in major updates of popular distributions, including Ubuntu and Fedora. Owing to the major revision, the Linux ecosystem, specifically the bountiful app and OS updates segment, could undergo a significant change.
The unified system and service manager for Linux, Systemd, is growing rapidly. The latest version has been released on GitHub, and is accompanied by a lengthy changelog. The majority of popular Linux platforms usually append the latest, stable release of Systemd every six months.
Copr is a build system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects for various purposes and audiences. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already being transitioned to the official Fedora Linux repositories, and the rest are somewhere in between. Copr gives you the opportunity to install third-party software that is not available in Fedora Linux repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favorite tools to support some non-standard use cases, and just experiment freely.
The partnership should make Ultifi-based GM models easier and quicker to update over the air, among other things.
Software on Linux is distributed in various formats: DEB, RPM, Snaps, tarballs, etc., but some users have embraced Flatpak more than others as it's supported on all Linux machines, irrespective of the distro installed.
Google Chrome is now officially available on Flathub and Flatpak aficionados can now download their favorite browser from their preferred software source. Here's how to install Google Chrome as a Flatpak on Linux.
The maintainers of the Tails project have issued a warning that the Tor Browser that's bundled with the operating system is unsafe to use for accessing or entering sensitive information.
"We recommend that you stop using Tails until the release of 5.1 (May 31) if you use Tor Browser for sensitive information (passwords, private messages, personal information, etc.)," the project said in an advisory issued this week.
The Tor Browser may give users a sense of false security.
The only way to avoid fingerprinting while using it is to set its Security Level at "Safest", disabling all JavaScript. As long as JS is enabled, the browser will leak operating system and screen size information that can be used to identify a user, especially on a network as small as Tor.
Many years ago, when Raspberry Pi appeared, I was kind of excited, but was busy with kids and other things. But I was reasonably excited about a really affordable and stable platform for projects.
Some years later, I was visiting an acquaintance who had one sitting in a pile of junk. Noticing my interest he said, with a slight tinge of disgust, "Take it! I don't want it". I was surprised, but he insisted that it was a piece of junk. And it was - too slow for anything useful, too complicated to use as a simple microcontroller.
[....]
What does it mean when a product with MSRP of $35 is sold for hundreds of dollars? Not just a blip – it's been months of this. Did speculators corner the market? Is inflation out of control? Is there a real chip shortage? Is the economy collapsing? Did we finally piss off China? All of the above, I suppose. [Must... not... rant... about the economy!]
After a bit of soul searching with regards to the future of the website, I've decided to open source the code for marginalia.nu, all of its services, including the search engine, encyclopedia, memex, etc.
A motivating factor is the search engine has sort of grown to a scale where it's becoming increasingly difficult to productively work on as a personal solo project. It needs more structure. What's kept me from open sourcing it so far has also been the need for more structure. The needs of the marginalia project, and the needs of an open source project have effectively aligned.
Time flies! I can't believe it's been 6 months since I launched SpellBinding...
What's even more amazing is that I managed to write a wordlog entry every day! (I think I missed a few days when I was on the road)
It's become my morning routine to look up any words I am not too sure about, and sometimes even those I thought I was sure about - the dictionary is full of surprises. And post about them. I've definitely learned a few words (not as many as I had hoped, but still).
Apache OpenJPA is the Java persistence project of the Apache Software Foundation. After quite some time flying under the radar, there's a new release. Let's look into it.
I too, love Perl. And I could not have phrased nearly as well as Paul. I even learned Perl 4 when I started out, because Perl 5 was yet to be released. Without Perl I would have had a hard time to extract and condense the data from my many simulations into smaller, meaningful chunks, including but not limited to the data as \LaTeX tables, ready to be included into the appendix of my thesis.
So, to all you typists and mechanical keyboard maniacs: get out your old fountain pens from days past, clean them and start using them again! And be patient!
Robots have been working in factories for many years. But given the related safety concerns to the tasks they perform, most operate inside cages or behind safety glass to limit or prevent interaction with humans.
In warehouse operations, where goods are continuously sorted and moved, robots can be neither caged nor stationary. And while large corporations like Amazon have already incorporated robots into their warehouses, they are highly customized and costly systems where robots are designed to work within one facility on predefined grids or well-defined pathways under the guidance of specific, centralized programming that carefully directs their activity.
Compute Express Link (CXL) is the next spec of significance for connecting hardware devices. It will replace or supplement existing stalwarts like PCIe. The adoption is starting in the datacenter, and the specification definitely provides interesting possibilities for client and embedded devices. A few years ago, the picture wasn't so clear. The original release of the CXL specification wasn't Earth shattering. There were competing standards with intent hardware vendors behind them. The drive to, and release of, the Compute Express Link 2.0 specification changed much of that.
There are a bunch of really great materials hosted by the CXL consortium. I find that these are primarily geared toward use cases, hardware vendors, and sales & marketing. This blog series will dissect CXL with the scalpel of a software engineer. I intend to provide an in depth overview of the driver architecture, and go over how the development was done before there was hardware. This post will go over the important parts of the specification as I see them.
All spec references are relative to the 2.0 specification which can be obtained here.
All still-supported flavours of macOS (Monterey, Big Sur and Catalina), as well as all current mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and Apple Watches), get patches.
[...]
Kernel-level code execution holes could grant an attacker control over the entire system, including the parts that manage the security of the rest of the system.
At its swampUP event, JFrog today launched Project Pyrsia, an open source project that uses a blockchain platform and Sigstore Cosign and Notary V2 cryptographic signature software to secure software packages. In addition to JFrog, other contributors to the project include Docker, Inc., DeployHub, Futureway and Oracle.
In its latest move, Codenotary has added free background vulnerability scanning service to its free and open source Community Attestation Service (CAS) code signing and attestation service to further secure open source supply chains. This new service uses hashes to identify known security vulnerabilities. Then if the scans find any it alerts you to the untrustworthy packages. CAS can then be used to “untrust” any problematic artifacts. This new scanning service is also continuously self-updating so it can help you stay ahead of would-be attackers.
Screencastify, a popular Chrome extension for capturing and sharing videos from websites, was recently found to be vulnerable to a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw that allowed arbitrary websites to dupe people into unknowingly activating their webcams.
A miscreant taking advantage of this flaw could then download the resulting video from the victim's Google Drive account.
Software developer Wladimir Palant, co-founder of ad amelioration biz Eyeo, published a blog post about his findings on Monday. He said he reported the XSS bug in February, and Screencastify's developers fixed it within a day.
But Palant contends the browser extension continues to pose a risk because the code trusts multiple partner subdomains, and an XSS flaw on any one of those sites could potentially be misused to attack Screencastify users.
The Screencastify page on the Chrome Web Store says that the browser extension has more than 10 million users, which is the maximum value listed by store metrics. As Palant points out, the extension is aimed at the education market, raising some unpleasant possibilities.
Democrat senators have urged America's Federal Trade Commission to do something to protect the privacy of women after it emerged details of visits to abortion clinics were being sold by data brokers.
Women's healthcare is an especially thorny issue right now after the Supreme Court voted in a leaked draft majority opinion to overturn Roe v Wade, a landmark ruling that declared women's rights to have an abortion are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.
If the nation's top judges indeed vote to strike down that 1973 decision, individual states, at least, can set their own laws governing women's reproductive rights. Thirteen states already have so-called "trigger laws" in place prohibiting abortions – mostly with exceptions in certain conditions, such as if the pregnancy or childbirth endangers the mother's life – that will go into effect if Roe v Wade is torn up. People living in those states would, in theory, have to travel to another state where abortion is legal to carry out the procedure lawfully, although laws are also planned to ban that.
Which is why keeping a lid on data on people's whereabouts, especially their journeys to abortion clinics, is more important than ever.
I posted yesterday that the police were mostly to blame for the school shooting in Uvalde, TX claiming so many victims while they stood outside and did nothing for nearly an hour.
Now, the police admit that’s exactly what happened, and that they were afraid to go in because they might have been shot.
The one thing the left and the right appear to agree on is that the police are heroes. They’re not. They’re cowards. Their only goal here was to contain the situation while people inside the building continued to be murdered.
The left thinks we don’t need to open carry because the police will protect us.
Well, here’s why you’re wrong.
The right worships the ground the cops walk on.
Well, here’s why you’re wrong.
US President Joe Biden has heralded an Indo-Pacific trade deal signed by several nations that do not include Taiwan. At the same time, Biden warned China that America would help defend Taiwan from attack; it is home to a critical slice of the global chip industry, after all.
The agreement, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), is still in its infancy, with today's announcement enabling the United States and the other 12 participating countries to begin negotiating "rules of the road that ensure [US businesses] can compete in the Indo-Pacific," the White House said.
University of Surrey geomechanics chair Subhamoy Bhattacharya is keen to promote engineering’s role in tackling climate change.
Cryptocurrency firms, many of which lined the main street in Davos this week, were told they will need to clean up their act before gaining complete acceptance from the World Economic Forum's old guard.
"The future of crypto, I'm sorry to say, looks regulated to me," said Nela Richardson, senior vice president and chief economist for human resources software provider ADP. She said she thinks central banks will step in to provide oversight.
Early this year when anything still seemed possible for technology companies, futurists and venture capitalists were enthralled with the idea of building a new internet. Web3, as it became known, was poised to recapture the 1990s promise of a decentralized internet, free from gatekeepers and trillion-dollar platforms.
Recent surveys show that Americans viewed inflation as the top problem facing the country as headline inflation readings exceeded 8% in April 2022. In light of inflation’s newfound prominence, policymakers have asked after the causes of the inflation surge to inform possible solutions. Most economists have concluded that the primary driver of the current inflationary surge is excess aggregate demand, commonly described as “too much money chasing too few goods,” with a smaller contribution from supply chain disruptions. Consequently, most economists advocate combating inflation with monetary policy, the policy tool designed to manage inflation tradeoffs. By contrast, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s recent testimony before Congress alleges that corporate concentration during a time of supply chain disruptions is the primary driver of recent inflation. Reich concludes that increased antitrust enforcement, rather than monetary policy, is the logical policy response to inflation.
Unsurprisingly, only 7% of surveyed economists agree with Reich’s argument on corporate concentration driving inflation, and only 5% of surveyed economists agree that antitrust enforcement is a plausible remedy for current inflation. Indeed, economists tend to regard increased antitrust enforcement as more likely to be inflationary than disinflationary.. However, given Reich’s large audience, it is worth rebutting Reich’s conclusion, argument by argument, to show why the overwhelming majority of expert economists find his position implausible, rather than deferring to the wisdom of expert crowds.
Companies that have come under fire for encroaching free speech, such as Twitter, Meta, and Alphabet, are all on the list.
While the US Supreme Court considers an emergency petition to reinstate a preliminary injunction against Texas' social media law HB 20, the US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday partially upheld a similar injunction against Florida's social media law, SB 7072.
Both Florida and Texas last year passed laws that impose content moderation restrictions, editorial disclosure obligations, and user-data access requirements on large online social networks. The Republican governors of both states justified the laws by claiming that social media sites have been trying to censor conservative voices, an allegation that has not been supported by evidence.
A Florida teenager taking a biology class at a community college got an upsetting note this year. A start-up called Honorlock had flagged her as acting suspiciously during an exam in February. She was, she said in an email to The New York Times, a Black woman who had been “wrongfully accused of academic dishonesty by an algorithm.”
What happened, however, was more complicated than a simple algorithmic mistake. It involved several humans, academic bureaucracy and an automated facial detection tool from Amazon called Rekognition. Despite extensive data collection, including a recording of the girl, 17, and her screen while she took the test, the accusation of cheating was ultimately a human judgment call: Did looking away from the screen mean she was cheating?
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Poland’s Fundacja Powszechnego Czytania (Universal Reading Foundation) rallied Polish publishers and their international colleagues in an emergency effort to get Ukrainian-language books to children in Poland. Now three months in, the effort has shifted from an emergency operation to a long-term initiative involving multiple partners. According to recent UN estimates, 14 million Ukrainians have fled their homes as a result of the war. It’s estimated that there are currently 200,000 Ukrainian refugee children in Poland—double the number in the country in mid-March. Tens of thousands have settled in other European countries, including more than 300,000 in Romania, 280,000 in Germany, and more than 200,000 in Moldova.
Trying to follow the criticisms of the two bipartisan Big Tech competition bills—the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) and the Open App Markets Act (OAMA)—can be dizzying. Recently we’ve seen arguments both that they would increase Big Tech’s “censorship” and that they would give Big Tech an excuse not to do needed content moderation to protect marginalized voices on their platforms. Luckily, these bills would do neither of those things. The bills do not address content moderation, yet they are crucially important in the broader push to hold Big Tech accountable.
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would ban Big Tech self-preferencing and establish common-sense rules of the road for Big Tech platforms so small businesses get a fair shot and consumers get more choice. The Open App Markets Act would open up app stores by allowing alternative payment systems; ending self-preferencing; and halting tying with a mobile operating system. Both bills represent a once-in-a-generation chance to reform increasingly critical technology markets that have had competitors and innovation quashed by Big Tech gatekeepers for far too long.
The creation of a dedicated administrative tribunal could be a way to improve the settlement of labour disputes at the European Patent Office. Eric De Brabandere, professor of international dispute settlement at Leiden University in the Netherlands said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law.
The tensions at the EPO have risen over the last few months. Industrial actions and a strike have been organised and in a remarkable meeting with the Central Staff Committee (CSC) on 26 April 2022 president António Campinos apparently had an outburst of anger, cursing and interrupting other speakers and telling them they should finally accept his proposals.
At least, that is what we know from a letter the CSC distributed among staff members. In a notice of the management, no more was said than: ‘Unfortunately, the meeting was less constructive than expected, with some issues creating tension at times.’
[...]
It doesn’t help either that the European Patent Office is an organisation that the average man in the street isn’t particularly interested in, even if the EPO is of paramount importance economically with its ability to grant valuable patents in pharma, digital communication, computer technology etc. Media coverage is scarce and so is outside pressure. It was only during the worst period of social troubles under former EPO president Benoît Battistelli that national news outlets paid attention and parliamentarians and governments in several states demanded improvements. But due to the EPO’s immunity, little was achieved.
This immunity from legal process is a crucial issue. Immunity protects the EPO – and many other international organisations – from the jurisdiction and enforcement measures of member states. ‘There are good reasons for this immunity’, says De Brabandere. ‘It protects both the organization and its member states by preventing national courts from determining the legal validity of acts of the organization. Without immunity, member states (through their courts and tribunals) would be able to unilaterally influence its activities.’