Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the Service Management and systemd Microconference.
The focus of this microconference will be on topics related to the current state of host-level service management and ideas for the future.
Most of the topics will be aroind the systemd ecosystem as the most widely adoped service manager. The Service Management and systemd microconference also welcomes proposals that are not specific to systemd so we can discover and share new ideas on how to improve service management in general.
This is a project I’ve been working on lately. Build Clear Linux kernel for Fedora users. All Clear Linux patches and almost full kernel config are working currently. Only minor changes to get modprobe, hostname, fbdev, etc. working on Fedora. This is currently still at testing stage and not recommend on any production environment(s). Also remember backup all important data!
RCU is a specialized synchronization mechanism, and is typically used where there are far more readers (rcu_read_lock(), rcu_read_unlock(), rcu_dereference(), and so on) than there are updaters (synchronize_rcu(), call_rcu(), rcu_assign_pointer(), and so on). But does the Linux kernel really make heavier use of RCU's read-side primitives than of its update-side primitives?
One way to determine this would be to use something like ftrace to record all the calls to these functions. This works, but trace messages can be lost, especially when applied to frequently invoked functions. Also, dumping out the trace buffer can perturb the syatem. Another approach is to modify the kernel source code to count these function invocations in a cache-friendly manner, then come up with some way to dump this to userspace. This works, but I am lazy. Yet another approach is to ask the tracing folks for advice.
This last is what I actually did, and because the tracing person I happened to ask happened to be Andrii Nakryiko, I learned quite a bit about BPF in general and the bpftrace command in particular. If you don't happen to have Andrii on hand, you can do quite well with Appendix A and Appendix B of Brendan Gregg's “BPF Performance Tools”. You will of course need to install bpftrace itself, which is reasonably straightforward on many Linux distributions.
Intel recently updated the oneAPI Video Processing Library, also known as oneVPL, to version 2022.1. The new update changes Intel's focus on VA-API and Media SDK to the current standard of oneAPI acceleration.
On Windows and Mac machines, it’s not too troublesome to add text or drawings (such as signatures) to PDF files, but [Mansour Behabadi] found that on Linux machines, there didn’t seem to be a satisfying way or a simple tool. Being an enterprising hacker, [Mansour] set out to fill that gap, and the way it works under the hood is delightfully hacky, indeed.
The main thing standing in the way of creating such a tool is that the PDF format is a complex and twisty thing. Making a general-purpose PDF editing tool capable of inserting hyperlinks, notes, images, or drawings isn’t exactly a weekend project. But [Mansour] didn’t let that stop him; he leveraged the fact that tools already exist on Linux that can read and create PDF files, and tied them all together into what was at one point “a horrific patchwork of tools” which inspired the name pdfrankenstein.
PulseAudio 16.0 release brings a handful of changes across its components.
The freedesktop.org project announced the release of the PulseAudio 16.0 sound server with some new features. So let’s take a look at what’s new and enhanced.
PulseAudio is a general-purpose sound server designed to act as a bridge between your programs and hardware devices that support ALSA or OSS. Furthermore, if Avahi is enabled, it can provide simple network streaming across local devices.
Although PipeWire has grown in popularity in recent years and is currently the primary choice for a sound server in many Linux distributions, PulseAudio is not yet out of the game and is still evolving. And its most recent release, PulseAudio 16, proves this.
 Fortunately, there are some excellent open source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. The software featured in this article offer more than displaying PDF files; many are versatile document viewers.
Here’s our verdict on the PDF viewers. We only include open source software here.
Got some photo images in .webp file format? Here’s how to open them with system default image viewer (and other GTK apps), and generate image thumbnail in File manager in Ubuntu 22.04 & Ubuntu 20.04
Webp is an image file format developed by Google. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. The file format has smaller size while keeping good image quality.
You may view the WebP images in Linux via many applications, such as Firefox, Chrome and gThumb. But, that’s not enough! Files (aka nautilus file manager) does not show image thumbnail for webp, and image annotation tools may not open and save images in that file format.
So, this open-source library is present to deal with WebP support for GTK applications.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to change the timezone on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Ubuntu server users, the time zone by default is not set. However, desktop users with an active Internet connection may automatically set up this. Providing correct Timezone information is essential for performing different system-related tasks. Also, when you set up automatic corn jobs that depend upon the Timezone of your system, providing inaccurate information can cause problems.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step change of the timezone on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.
A QR code is a type of barcode that stores information and is read using a digital device, including smartphones. If you've been to convenience stores or cafés, you'd have probably seen QR codes there for receiving payments or sharing Wi-Fi passwords, among other things.
But that's not all. QR codes have other useful applications in today's world. For instance, you can use QR codes to share access to your home Wi-Fi with guests or to share your contact card.
Follow along as we explain how to create QR codes on Linux using qrencode.
Most enterprise architectures use a single, reverse proxy server to handle all incoming requests.
The proxy server then inspects each HTTP request and identifies which backend system, be it an Apache, Tomcat, Express or NodeJS server, should handle the request.
The reverse proxy then forwards the request to that server, allows the request to be processed, obtains a response from that backend server, and then send the response back to the client.
That is the function an Nginx server configured as a reverse proxy would serve.
Valve has released a few days ago a new update for the Steam Deck, SteamOS 3.2. One of the main improvements is around Refresh Rates.
A tutorial on how to compile GNOME from its source, including the shell, mutter and some native apps.
This is a minor (point) release in the 4MLinux STABLE channel, which comes with the Linux kernel 5.16.20. The 4MLinux Server now includes Apache 2.4.53, MariaDB 10.7.4, and PHP 7.4.29 (see this post for more details).
You can update your 4MLinux by executing the "zk update" command in your terminal (fully automatic process).
Earlier this month, I took a look at Arch Linux’s new menu-based installer, which made installing Arch Linux easier for newcomers. Today, archinstall 2.5.0 has been released with a plethora of new features, including FIDO2 (HSM) support for systemd-boot when unlocking disk encryption with a master password as backup during enrollment. Archinstall now lets users use FIDO2 devices as an unlocking mechanism to a partition.
Archinstall’s main menu has been enriched in this release with a new disk preview, a new disk layout preview, as well as a user preview to the main menu.
The developers rolled out a newer version of the Arch Linux text-based installer including beta support of FIDO2 (HSM) support for systemd-boot and many other improvements and changes can be found here:
Linux Mint is an ideal distribution for those users who are new to Linux. It is fast, stable, with many packages available, but above all easy to use. However, Linux Mint has several desktop environments, whose choice can confuse the user. Today, in this post, we will help you answer the question of Which Linux Mint Desktop Should I Use? Let’s see.
I built a retro console for my kids some time ago and they asked me if they could have one but that was portable.
Now that I finished the retro handheld console, thought that could be useful to share how it was done in case others wanted to replicate.
 I also used the board as it was a Ubuntu 22.04 computer. Tasks like checking emails with Thunderbird, browsing the web with Firefox or Chromium, photo editing with Gimp, using LibreOffice office suite, or even watching YouTube videos work pretty well, and it’s almost the same experience as on my AMD Ryzen laptop, although it was a tad more sluggish. But everything typically makes use of 3D acceleration with the GPU can still work with software rendering, but it’s really slow, and for instance, both the WebGL Aquarium demo and SuperTuxKart game had a frame rate of about 1 to 2 fps.
A Jasper Lake mini PC will cost roughly the same, and deliver a better experience, but Khadas VIM4 still has advantages for applications that require a small form factor, MIPI DSI, eDP and/or LVDS display interfaces, MIPI CSI, HDMI input (not working in Linux yet), an accelerometer, and/or other features typically not found on off-the-shelf low-cost Intel hardware.
This is one awful phone.
If you’re reading this waaaay later, it might have become good, just as Light and Punkt eventually improved. But it’s not now.
I’ve used this as my one and only phone for six months. And since it’s so unusable, that has meant pretty much emergencies & delivieries only.
Any real conversations I’ve had to have over email and Jitsi (which means being at home since I don’t have Internet on the go). Not that that’s necessarily a bad setup. The promise of being able to disconnect was the whole point of the phone.
There are some problems which make this thing an unfriendly complete pain.
On Saturday, Dublin airport officials were in the news promising to resolve the problems at the airport. Yet on Sunday things only got worse, dramatically, airport security and police overwhelmed by a crowd.
The airport has become so dysfunctional that there are crowds outside on the road, reminiscent of the scenes outside Kabul airport when America abandoned Afghanistan.
Following the excitement over T 1989/18, there has been a second Board of Appeal decision finding a lack of legal basis for the requirement to amend the description in line with the claims. The decision in T 1444/20 found that it was not necessary for the applicant to delete claim-like clauses and redundant subject matter from the description, given that the claims were clear without need for recourse to the description. The decision in T 1444/20 however, follows a flurry of Board of Appeal decisions that contradicted T 1989/18 and did find legal basis for the requirement to amend the description in Article 84 EPC. Where does this all leave applicants faced with onerous description amendment requests in Examination?
In January 2022 we reported on decision T 1989/18, published in December 2021, which found there to be no legal basis for refusing an application on…
On May 23, 2022, the PTAB entered adverse judgment with respect to claims 1, 16, 19, 21, and 22 (all challenged claims) of U.S. Patent 6,115,174, owned by Optic153 LLC, an Equitable IP entity, in IPR2021-00932 filed by Unified Patents. After the PTAB instituted trial, Optic153 filed a statutory disclaimer with the USPTO disclaiming the challenged claims. The PTAB treated Optic153's disclaimer as a request for adverse judgment as to the challenged claims and granted the request.
Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Mani Manikandan and Kartikeya Srivastava, who split a cash prize of $3,000 for their prior art submissions for U.S. Patent 8,676,668. The patent is owned by by Gridley IP LLC, an IP Edge entity. The '668 patent generally relates to mapping population activity by discerning a location, speed, and direction of wireless mobile devices within a geographic region. It has been asserted against Waitr, Route4Me, WorkWave, Instacart, Doordash, NeighborFavor, Cabconnect, Zum Services, HopSkipDrive, SuperShuttle, and Flywheel Software based on their respective delivery and ridesharing services and apps.
Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Ramesh Varadharaj, who was awarded a cash prize of $2,000 for his prior art submission for U.S. Patent 8,495,167. The patent is owned by Lauri Valjakka, an NPE. The '167 patent generally relates to data communication networks and has been asserted against Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Netflix, Cisco, Amazon, and Akamai Technologies.
The '113 patent relates to generating artist-specified dynamic albums.
The ‘275 patent is generally related to financial document retrieval and storage systems and has been asserted against Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One, PNC Bank, BancorpSouth Bank, and others.
On May 25, 2022, Unified added 4 new PATROLL contests, with a $3,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by Ollnova Technologies Limited, an NPE and Atlantic IP Services subsidiary. The contests will all end on September 16, 2022. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.
The Board has re-designated as precedential its March 22, 2022 decision denying Opposer Conopco's motion to re-open its discovery and trial periods, granting applicant's motion to narrow its identification of goods, and dismissing this Section 2(d) opposition to registration of LUX ENHANCER for certain hair care products in view of Conopco's registered mark LUX (Stylized) for "soap and body cleansing wash." Conopco, Inc. v. Transom Symphony OpCo, LLC DBA Beauty Quest Group, Opposition No. 91256368 (Redesignated May 23, 2022) [precedential].
