Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 02/07/2022: Debian 9 (Stretch) EOL, FocusWriter 1.8.1, and Darktable 4.0



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • First RISC-V Laptop Announced
      • ForbesThe 7-inch Pocket Reform Laptop Is Pure 1990s Nostalgia

        Do you want a laptop computer you can slip into a jacket pocket? Well, the Pocket Reform is promising to bring back the 1990s days of PDAs.

        Described by its makers MNT Research as the “the ultimate sofa computer”, the 7-inch laptop is based on open-source software and will come in a variety of hardware configurations.

        The standard configuration will offer an NXP i.MX8M Plus module, which includes a quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor and 8GB of RAM. Alternatively, you might choose a configuration based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, which also includes a quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and 8GB of RAM.

        The Pocket Reform will ship with 128GB of built-in storage, but that can be boosted up to 2TB via the SSD slot. There’s also a MicroSD slot for less expensive storage expansion.

        The 7-inch display is Full HD, although it can output at up to 4K resolution via the Micro HDMI port if you want to connect the Pocket Reform to an external screen.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNLinux 5.18.9
        I'm announcing the release of the 5.18.9 kernel.
        
        

        All users of the 5.18 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.18.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.18.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h
      • LWNLinux 5.15.52
      • LWNLinux 5.10.128
      • LWNLinux 5.4.203
      • LWNLinux 4.19.250
      • LWNLinux 4.14.286
      • LWNLinux 4.9.321
    • Applications

      • Linux Links4 Best Free and Open Source Elm Static Site Generators

         LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

        While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

      • FocusWriter 1.8.1 Released

        Always write plain text as UTF-8 Always write RTF as codepage 1252 Replaced QTextCodec with ICU Translation updates: Estonian, German

      • darktable 4.0: 3763 Days Later | darktable

        A little over 10 years since darktable 1.0 was first released, the darktable team is proud to present darktable 4.0!

        For a complete changelog, please see the release notes. The latest version of the user manual is here. Ukrainian and Polish translations are currently available and we expect to add more over the coming months.

      • 9to5LinuxDarktable 4.0 Released to Celebrate 10 Years of Open Source RAW Image Editing

        Coming more than five months after darktable 3.8.1, the darktable 4.0 release is here to introduce a new feature called Color and Exposure Mapping to ensure uniform color rendition, which is implemented in the Exposure and Color Calibration modules and lets you define and save a target color/exposure for the color pickers. For example, you can use it to perform white balance against non-gray objects of known color.

      • LWNDarktable 4.0.0 released

        Other changes include new exposure and color-calibration modules, a reworked "filmic" color-mapping module, guided laplacian highlight reconstruction, and more.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Trend OceansHow to Install Latest Mozilla Firefox on Linux Desktop

        Most Linux distributions already ship with Firefox installed by their distribution package manager and configured as the default browser. It might be unavailable in the minimal version of the distribution.

    • WINE or Emulation

      • Ubuntu HandbookWine 7.12 Released! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

        Wine, the popular software for running Windows apps on Linux, macOS & BSD, released new development version 7.12 a day ago.

        The new Wine 7.12 features theming support for Qt5 applications, bundled vkd3d upgraded to version 1.4, QWORD support in registry tools, and improved effect support in Direct2D.

        As usual, there are various bug-fixes. And, this release includes fixes for Star Citizen, Total War: Shogun 2, Argentum 20 RPG Launcher, MetaTrader4, and more. See the release note for details.

      • PCLOS OfficialWine 7.11 €» PCLinuxOS

        Wine is a program which allows running Microsoft Windows programs (including DOS, Windows 3.x and Win32 executables) on Unix.

    • Games

      • Xonotic 0.8.5 Release - Xonotic

        Xonotic 0.8.5 is here at last! There’s been thousands of commits since 0.8.2 making this quite a long read for all the right reasons: refined gameplay, new and updated maps and models, new sound effects, more dangerous bots, new HUD and menu features, more translations, better infrastructure, too many fixes to count, and much more.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Pitivi GSoC Update

          This is the 4th week since GSoC coding period officially began, this summer I'm hacking on the Pitivi project, porting it to GTK4, a much-requested feature for the editor.

        • [Old] Selected for GSoC'22

          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.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • MedevelPain Diary: is an Open-source Pain Logger for Patients

      Pain Diary is an Android app which can help you track and share your pain with your doctor.

      It does not collect, share, track or share any of your data with any third party.

      It allows you to make daily diary entries recording your condition and the intensity, location, nature and time of the pain you feel, as well as the medication you take and additional notes.

      Pain Diary records of your pain can help health professionals gain an insight into the pain you are experiencing.

      [...]

      Privacy Friendly Pain Diary is licensed under the GPLv3.

    • The Register UKCloudera adopts Apache Iceberg tables to show OS commitment ● The Register

      Developed through the Apache Software Foundation, Iceberg offers an open table format, designed for high-performance on big data workloads while supporting query engines including Spark, Trino, Flink, Presto, Hive and Impala.

    • Programming/Development

      • RlangHow to Recode Values in R | R-bloggers

        How to Recode Values in R, On sometimes, you might want to recode specific values in an R data frame. Fortunately, the recode() method from the dplyr package makes this simple to accomplish.

      • Perl / Raku

        • PerlMite: an OO compiler for Perl

          Moose is great, but it does introduce a slight performance hit to your code. In the more than 15 years since it was first released, hardware improvements have made this less of a problem than it once was. Even so, if performance is a concern for your project, Moose might not be what you want. It also has a fairly big collection of non-core dependencies.

          Moo is a lighter weight version, minus with meta-object protocol, but supporting nearly all of Moose's other features. It loads faster, sometimes runs faster, and has fewer dependencies. (And most of the dependencies it does have are just modules which used to be part of Moo but were split out into separate distributions.)

          But what if you could have fast Moose-like object-oriented code without the dependencies?

          In 2013, Michael Schwern started work on Mite to do just that. It was abandoned in 2014, but I've taken it over and expanded the feature set to roughly equivalent to Moo.

      • Rust

        • FudzillaLinux could go Rusty in the next release

          Linux has been written in the C programming language for more than 30 years but the last few years have seen a growing momentum to make the Rust programming language Linux's second Linux language.

  • Leftovers

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • ACMCybercriminals Eye Biometrics

          Biometric markers such as fingerprints, the irises of one's eyes, and individual's entire faces are increasingly popular for proving identity. If criminals can steal such biometric data, they can pose as users, potentially accessing your Intellectual Property, customer data, and financial assets.

          "While criminal hackers can offer the stolen biometric data for sale online for huge sums, the goal is targeting specific networks to bring them down," says Jake Moore, global security adviser for ESET UK, an anti-malware company. Cybercriminals sell the data on the Dark Web, an uncharted part of the Internet where buyers and sellers reach sites via encrypted channels using TOR browsers.

          Organizations go to the trouble of adding biometrics to other authentication factors such as the one-time passcodes (OTPs) that arrive on your smartphone because the data they protect is precious. A successful biometric hack combined with other compromised authentication factors almost certainly equate to massive losses for an enterprise.

          "With persistent attacks comes continual entry," says Moore. Though cybercriminals often have to work to hack biometrics successfully, once they are in the system, significant disruption is likely; without the proper security procedures and continuity plans in place, it can take a long time for organizations to return to business as usual, Moore says.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Israel Doesn’t Allow Jailed Female Soldiers to Write. Yes, You Read Correctly

        The Israel Defense Forces does not allow female soldiers to write. Yes, you read correctly. It applies “only” to soldiers incarcerated in the new military prison at Neve Tzedek (in Hebrew, Oasis of Justice), but they’re not allowed to hold writing implements, except for a half hour or 20 minutes a day at best. This ban did not exist in the old military prisons, which have been closed. It’s happening only in the new one, which has won praise.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Politics

      • How to phase out residential leasehold



        The system of long leases for residential property in the UK has an intrinsic tendency towards abuse, due to the one-sided availability of forfeiture. There is limited parliamentary time available for reform, necessitating prioritisation. Some potential reforms are politically infeasible due to powerful opposition, but the detail of the opposition is often misunderstood by reformers.

        [...]

        It may take many years before the generality of leaseholders with third-party building owners or managers can convert to superior tenures.

        [...]

        Some campaigners speak loosely of "abolishing" leasehold, without stating how they want to do this. This helps the opponents of reform, by implying that campaigners are open to confiscating some or all of the value of existing freeholds. A *charitable* view of "abolishing leasehold" would mean "phasing out residential leasehold, compensating freeholders for their legitimate property interests". But the reality of politics is that campaigners are portrayed as favouring the least charitable interpretation of their views.

        [...]

        Mortage lenders are worried about the value of their collateral being damaged. Mostly, the reforms will be neutral or beneficial from their point of view.

        Property developers and managing agents benefit from the "economic rents", that is, the amount that can be charged above the market rate for services. The reason such income streams exist at all is that some leaseholders have no choice but to deal with the monopoly provider of management services, and all leaseholders face a service charge regime that facilitates waste and makes fraud undetectable.

      • Debate

        I participated in a formal debate once. Moderation, time, a judge, everything. A friend invited me to debate club. He warned me to not expect to win, but we did.

        We were arguing for something I don’t agree with in real life, and that probably helped as I was trying my best to “steel-doll”, to take the other part’s arguments seriously, and try to predict their arguments and preempt them (that ended up being super effective—when they went to present their case, they had already been refuted), and avoid using our own worst arguments and preemptively refute those too, “but,” and then use some unusual ones.

        Our refutations of our own bad arguments were rock solid (maybe better than what they were coming up with), and our “refutations” of their arguments weren’t soundest or particularly complete, but preemptive and I guess convincing enough. I can’t read the mind of the judge, what made him side with us, and maybe it wasn’t the clearest of calls.

        It was all meaningless sophistry, word-dazzly tricks, manipulative and dishonest. Covering our “seams” with 99% truth making them really hard to spot.

    • Technical

      • Quick and dirty fix for the SFOS 4.4 not working hotspot

        On some carriers like the german Congstar Sailfish OS can't open a working hotspot. The clients can connect to it but no connection can be made to the internet. The problem is, that the network on SFOS to carrier is IPv6 only and but must be IPv4 - or both - to work with the hotspot. SFOS doesn't also make a translation so the connection don't work.

      • the joy of fixing a laptop



        I own a Thinkpad X390, and it is probably my most treasured device. I managed to find it used in 2019, the year of its release, with my only theory that a company bought a fresh fleet of machines before shuttering months later. I love this machine, it has a great keyboard (hush, Thinkpad purists), excellent Linux compatibility, and until recently a very decent battery life.

        It had gotten a healthy 8-9 hours when I bought it. Through 4 years of daily college use, it had dwindled to a pitiful 2.5 (if I was lucky). Not a problem! I ordered a battery online (unfortunately not a factory Lenovo product) and it shipped in a week. 20 minutes of futzing and cursing my lack of a spudger later it was installed.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Re: A convention for gemlog tags



          I started with hashtags - simple to use, widely understood. I added the others as I found them because they seemed sensible tagging systems. I bet I missed some.

          My guess is that mostly Geminauts are tagging their own content for their own purposes, and they're not too bothered about anyone else's tags. But who knows.

        • On Indexing Pages

          There has been recent discussions in Geminispace about indexing of pages... I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter. Bear in mind that they're just /thoughts/, not /suggestions/. I keep a physical note- book, mostly of technical information. Stuff like microcontroller pinout diagrams, programming notes, etc.. I keep an index at the back. I find it invaluable for finding stuff later. I also keep a table of contents at the front. This isn't particularly useful for the specific medium that I record my notes in, because notes are written as required, rather than in a structured way. For struc- tured content, though, a table of contents makes sense.

          Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the purpose of an index:

          Indexes are also designed to help the reader find information quickly and easily. A complete and truly useful index is not simply a list of the words and phrases used in a publication (which is properly called a concordance), but an organized map of its contents, including cross-references, grouping of like concepts, and other useful intellectual analysis.

        • Building Lagrange



          Whenever I want to upgrade Lagrange, I'm a bit confused. It uses git submodules, CMake instead of GNU make and so it's super weird for me. I wrote myself a little shell script to handle it. I keep it in my work directory. What do you think?

        • Surfing the web in 2022

          In the post, I list things I noticed while using the web. I use firefox only for banking, tax and looking at financial web sites.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

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Åland Islands lost the sense of urgency to move to GNU/Linux
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Why did AP take so long (nearly a week) to release these?
[Meme] Smart Alec Poettering
How many Microsofters can the Debian Project withstand?
Getting Rid of Microsoft Does Not Go Far Enough
Microsoft already has many problems. One day Microsoft won't exist anymore. But that does not guarantee users' freedom.
Alyssa Rosenzweig's LibrePlanet Talk About Freeing the Apple GPU
Alyssa Rosenzweig is the graphics witch behind the reverse-engineered drivers for the Apple GPU. She previously led Panfrost, the free drivers for Arm Mali GPUs powering devices like the Pinebook Pro. She graduated in 2023 with a Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto and now writes free software full-time.
Links 30/06/2024: LLMs Under Fire and Dictatorship of the Old
Links for the day
[Meme] Walking Outside the Guardrails of the Walled Gardens Built by Monopolies
So-called "advertiser-unfriendly" material was never a problem for Wikileaks
 
Press Complicity and Public Apathy All Along Enabled 14 Years of Illegal, Arbitrary Detention and Coercion Into Plea Bargain of Julian Assange on Brink of Death
They basically blackmailed him into letting the US 'win' the argument
At the End Journalism a Crime (If It Involves Accessing or Gaining Access to Documents Marked "Confidential" or "Classified" by Those Looking to Hide Their Misconduct/Crimes)
At least in the US, especially where the imperialism is at stake
Links 30/06/2024: Tensions in Korea and Japan, Criminalisation of Sleeping Outdoors
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100% Slop/Spam From linuxsecurity.com
This is the kind of stuff that's killing the Web faster
Gemini Links 30/06/2024: Murdoch and Ideal OS
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In the First 6 Months of 2024 Thailand Moved to GNU/Linux, Not to Windows Vista 11
maybe users moved from Vista 10 and 11 to GNU/Linux, seeing where Microsoft was heading with forced hardware "upgrades"
Eko K. A. Owen, New Outreach and Communications Coordinator for the FSF
Nice to see many new additions to the FSF's team
Microsoft Has Slaves and Enablers, Not Partners
Obligatory meme too
Tobias Platen Covered Freedom-To-Play Games in LibrePlanet 2024
Freedom-To-Play games using Taler
[Meme] Opening a 'Webapp' With 'Only' 4 GB of RAM
Until 2020 none of my PCs ever had more than 2 GB of RAM
Destination 'Five Percent'
We reckon GNU/Linux can break the 5% barrier some time by the end of this year, even without counting Chromebooks
A Crisis of Online Journalism
Almost a week ago a journalist was forced to plead guilty for an act of journalism
Germany One of Many Countries Where Microsoft's Bing Lost Market Share After All That LLM Nonsense (Bing Chat and Further Rebrands/Renames)
openai.com traffic plunged 60% last month
Microsoft’s Latest Antitrust Scrutiny
4 new stories
Microsoft Layoffs, Mass Plagiarism, and More
outrage included
GNU/Linux Climbed 0.25% This Month (in statCounter)
Around midday on Tuesday we'll start seeing preliminary data for July
Ilya Gulko Introduces Pollyanna
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'FSFE': Underage Labour, GAFAM Fronting, and Identity Theft to Undermine the FSF's Current Fundraiser
looking to raise funds at the same time as the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
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IRC logs for Saturday, June 29, 2024
Links 29/06/2024: Astronauts at Risk, Ukraine Updates
Links for the day
Fedora and Red Hat Leftovers
mostly redhat.com
Microsoft is Now Googlebombing or Spamming 'Open Source' and 'Linux' to Promote Proprietary Surveillance, Azure
Notice the title and the image, what's being promoted etc.
Seychelles: GNU/Linux Doing OK
Seychelles cannot be considered poor
This War Crime Footage, Nothing Political Per Se, Is What They Made Julian Assange Plead Guilty To (War Criminals Not Convicted, Only Those Who Expose Them)
Wikileaks' Julian Assange: Exposing the US Military Crimes
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"Lupa knows of 505,000 (half a million!) working Gemini URLs at present, up from about 425,000 this time last year"
About 10 New Free Software Foundation (FSF) Members Per Day
The total changed from 46 to 47 while typing the article
20 Years Passed, Let's Go Even Faster Now
We are hoping to bring more original stories
Vista 11 Adoption Unusually Low in Germany and It's Going Down, Not Up
This is not happening only in Germany
Kevin Korte on Computers Being Allowed to Make Decisions Based on Cryptic Algorithms and Proprietary/Secret Data
It uses buzzwords where none are needed
[Meme] Garbage In, Garbage Out (linuxsecurity.com)
It is neither Linux nor security, just chatbot-generated slop
Microsoft-Invaded CISA Spreads Anti-Free Software FUD (as If Proprietary Software Has No Memory Safety Issues), Brittany Day Uses Chatbots to Amplify and Permutate the Microsoft FUD
linuxsecurity.com became an anti-Linux spam site
Microsoft Laying Off Staff in an Act of Retaliation and Union-Busting
retaliatory layoffs at Microsoft
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Links for the day
Windows Lost Almost 92% Market Share in Egypt
From over 99% to just over 7%
In Ecuador, GNU/Linux Adoption Surged From Under 1% to Over 4% in About 3 Years
Not even counting Chromebooks
LibrePlanet: Cultivating Backups (of Recordings)
an appeal to recover some of these talks
Microsoft/Windows Machines Are Turned Off (or Windows Deleted/Decommissioned) in Web Servers, as the "Market Share" Collapse Continues
Taking full history into account, this is a decrease of over 90% in some cases
Corwin Brust Hosting Freedom: A Behind-the-scenes Tour With the GNU Savannah Hackers
"the "smiling faces" behind it."
Android at 90% or More in Chad
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David Wilson: Cultivating a Welcoming Free Software Community That Lasts
"a feeling of shared ownership for all users."
Julian Assange Might Continue Wikileaks, But Certainly Not Yet (Recovery Time Needed)
And probably at a symbolic capacity only
Bringing in 12 Santas and Taking 13 Out (Old Interview With Julian Assange)
Julian Assange's life inside the Ecuadorian embassy
Neil Plotnick on GNU/Linux in the High School Classroom
uploaded to the LibrePlanet instance of MediaGoblin
Asia Appears to be Fastest to Adopt GNU/Linux
the home of a considerable majority of the world's population
Alexandre Oliva's LibrePlanet 2024 Talk About "Software Enshittification"
in spite of technical difficulties encountered while recording
What They Used to Do With Mono They Now Do With Systemd (Lower and Deeper Down Than Userspace)
Now we have a project started primarily by Red Hat (and managed by Microsoft GitHub, which is proprietary) being managed by Microsoft and primarily serving Microsoft and IBM
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IRC logs for Friday, June 28, 2024
Links 28/06/2024: Kangaroo Courts and Patents Spam, EFF Still Fighting for CPC's TikTok (a Digital Weapon)
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Links 28/06/2024: Overton window and Polarization
Links for the day
[Meme] In 50 Years...
Microsoft's Vista 11 will take 50 years to be fully adopted
Only About 1 in 8 Russian Windows Users is Using Vista 11
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Links 28/06/2024: More Attacks on the Press, More Censorship in Russia
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Gemini Links 28/06/2024: Christmas Prematurely, Self-hosting
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IBM: So Long, Suckers. Your Free OS is Now Proprietary. Pay IBM or Else.
almost exactly a year after turning RHEL into proprietary software
Vista 11 is Doomed and Despite Lack of Adoption Microsoft Already Speaks of Vapourware ("12")
"Microsoft has pulled a Windows 11 update after users reported boot loops and startup failures."
ChromeOS Reaches Highest Share in Years at the World's Most Populous Nation, Windows Now at All-Time Low of 13%
We're talking about India today
[Video] "It Is Incredible That Julian Assange Survives"
There was a positive and mutual relationship between Wikileaks and Dr Jill Stein
Never Assume That Because the Law Exists the Powerful Will Follow the Law
Who's going to hold them accountable now?
Nearly a Month Has Passed and Nobody at the Debian Project Even Attempted to Explain What Seems Like Back-dooring of Debian (and Hundreds of Distros That Are Debian-Derived)
I can cynically guess that only matters when a user with a Chinese name does it
[Video] Julian Assange Explains Wikileaks' Logistics
predating indefinite detention
IBM Was Never the "Good Guy", Just a Self-Serving and Opportunistic Money- and Power-Hungry Monopolist, Living Off of Taxpayers' Money (Government Contracts)
The Nazi Party of Germany was its second-biggest client at one point and now it's looking to profit from the work of slaves
"I Hated Working at IBM. They Were the Most Unfriendly People."
Don't forget what Watson the son did to a poor woman on a plane
State of the News (and Depletion of Journalism Online, Not Just Offline)
Newspapers are not coming back and the Web is not coming back either
GNU/Linux Consolidates in North America
Android rising a lot this year, too
[Meme] More Monopolies Granted While Patent Examiners Die (Overworking for Less Compensation)
Work more; Get less
Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) is Taking the New Pension Scheme (NPS) to an International Tribunal (ILOAT)
SUEPO wants more EPO staff to participate in collective action
Stella Assange and the Legal Team Speak to the Media a Day After WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrives in Australia
Published yesterday by a number of mainstream publishers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 27, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, June 27, 2024
RIP Daniel Bristot de Oliveira, Red Hat death
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock