Welcome to the DebugPoint Weekly roundup #22.02, which briefly explains what happened this week across various segments, mainly in GNU/Linux space. We scan through thousands of updates every day, filter out the relevant updates for you and present them on this page.
We cover events and user groups that are running in the US state of Ohio. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.
Recently grub has been going through a few challenges and Fedora Silverblue was not safe and it had a pretty serious issue you literally couldn't update your system as an update is treated like a new OS
On this episode of This Week in Linux, GNOME is in a bit of hot water this week with a new tool they announced and CodeWeavers announced the latest version of CrossOver. Deepin Linux is currently deep in the midst of changes. Plus we’ve got some updates for Firefox, Flatpaks, Lutris, Napster, Compiz, Cemu and so much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
Welcome to Hardware Addicts, a proud member of the TuxDigital Network. Hardware Addicts is the podcast that focuses on the physical components that powers our technology world.
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about AMD’s new Zen 4 versus Intel’s Raptor Lake…which one should take your upgrade dollar bills. Is Intel finally ready to take back their crown? Then we head to Camera Corner where Wendy will discuss Making Full Frame Affordable
As we covered last week, Intel has just launched its first desktop-bound Arc GPU, A380, in North America, with Newegg selling cards on both its American and Canadian storefronts. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, the initial units that were made available disappeared fast, so both Newegg websites currently show the card on backorder.
Something we’ve noticed during the lead-up to Arc’s launch is that many seemed to wonder whether or not Intel was planning a Linux driver. It’d hopefully be obvious that Intel would in fact plan a Linux driver, as it’s no stranger to the OS, and typically supports its own hardware well ahead of time. Arc is also planned for enterprise use, and Linux is generally the target there.
As explained in the Arch wiki entry on "Machine check exceptions", an MCE is generated by your CPU when the CPU detects that some sort of a hardware situation has happened.
By itself, the kernel doesn't do anything more than log these very non-specific messages. If you want to know what exact machine check exceptions happened, you need something that pulls additional information out of the kernel and the hardware. The program the Arch wiki will refer you to and that seems to mostly work for us is rasdaemon (also, also), which replaces the earlier mcelog. On Ubuntu, just installing the 'rasdaemon' package will do everything necessary.
PeaZip is a free and open-source archive manager that brings additional features such as file management, command line scripts, etc. It’s one of the unique apps written in the legacy language Lazarus IDE and FreePascal and is still popular today.
The Arduino IDE is a fantastic software that allows you to write code for your Arduino board and upload it without switching between different programs. The editor has assisted editing enabled by the compiler, so you can do everything from within one program without switching between files or windows often. This is a huge time saver and prevents issues like forgetting to save your changes in one file before opening another. The Arduino IDE is free and open-source, so anyone can download it and start using it immediately. There is a wide range of tutorials and resources available online, so even if you’re new to programming, you can quickly learn how to use the Arduino IDE. If you’re looking for a powerful and user-friendly way to write code for your Arduino board, the Arduino IDE is a perfect choice.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Arduino IDE on Linux Mint 21 LTS desktop with either APT or Flatpak package manager method using the command line terminal and instructions on how to update and remove the software in the future if required.
AnyDesk is a cross-platform software that provides secure remote access for file transfer or VPN features but also works well as just another tool in professionals’ arsenal when they need more control over what’s going on their machine than what is available through other means. It is an easy-to-use software with a sleek and intuitive interface that makes it simple to connect to your computer from anywhere in the world. With AnyDesk, you can remotely access your files, applications, and settings as if you were sitting right in front of your computer. AnyDesk also includes a range of powerful features that make it perfect for businesses and power users, such as the ability to remotely reboot or shut down your computer, transfer files between computers, and even encrypt your connection for added security. Whether you need remote access for work or school or to keep an eye on your home computer while you’re away, AnyDesk is the perfect solution.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install AnyDesk on Linux Mint 21 LTS. The tutorial will import the official repository and gpg key and update and remove the remote desktop software using the command line terminal.
As a digital painting program, MyPaint has many features that make it easy to create backgrounds and figures on canvas or paper. This feels similar to users migrating from Windows and using the native paint program but has many more features. The software is updated regularly with new brushes, so you can keep your artwork fresh and unique. MyPaint is also free and open-source, so you can customize it to fit your needs. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned artist, MyPaint is an excellent choice for creating digital art.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MyPaint on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using two different methods: APT with the default repository or the Flatpak third-party package manager using the command line terminal.
VeraCrypt is a free, open-source, and cross-platform data encryption tool available for all major Operating systems. It is an alternative to TrueCrypt, the popular encryption tool discontinued in 2014. VeraCrypt is easy to use and offers a variety of features that make it an excellent choice for encrypting data. For example, VeraCrypt supports on-the-fly encryption, meaning that data is encrypted and decrypted in real time as it is accessed. This ensures that your data is always protected, even if someone gains access to your computer while it is turned on. In addition, VeraCrypt offers plausible deniability, meaning that if you are forced to reveal your password, you can do so without revealing the existence of any hidden volumes. As a result, VeraCrypt provides a high level of security for your most sensitive data.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install VeraCrypt on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using a LaunchPAD APT PPA with the command line terminal with how to import and install, update, and, if required, remove.
In this guide, we will discuss how to manage persistent data in Docker containers.
Docker is one of the most popular container technology. It allows running applications in an isolated environment. Nowadays, container technologies are deployed in production environments as well.
Data management in Docker is significantly different than traditional server-based computing. In the case of Docker, all files are created on a writeable layer by default.
Windows and macOS have had Microsoft’s fonts pre-installed for decades. These fonts – Arial, Courier New, Times – are some of the most commonly used typefaces in the world. However, on Linux, Microsoft’s fonts are not installed by default. This is because most Linux distributions use open-source fonts as substitutes. For most users, this is preferred, especially among open-source enthusiasts. However, there are times when you may require the use of Microsoft Fonts for your project or work. In these cases, you can follow the instructions below to install Microsoft Fonts on your Linux machine.
The following tutorial will teach you how to install Microsoft Fonts on Linux Mint 21 LTS release series using the command line terminal, along with how to verify the fonts are installed, which in future can be used for any other method of checking for additional fonts.
Since Google’s announcement of the image format in 2018, you may have seen more images with the “.webp” extension on them instead of the ever-dominant JPEG and PNG formats. Normally, you’ll often see these images when browsing the web on a popular browser that already contains support libraries for displaying them. But when it comes time to view images you downloaded using your file explorer, you might run into problems.
Depending on your distro and desktop environment, image viewers might not always have compatibility with Google’s WebP format.
This article shows you the three best ways to completely erase data from your disk using the dd, shred and wipe command.
Sometimes we have to erase all the information from our disk in a way that ensures it is impossible to recover. The most typical reason for completely and irreversibly deleting a device is when, for example, it is to be given away or sold.
Many users probably believe that deleting their data using the file manager or the rm command ensures security. The truth, however, is slightly different.
Using the rm command or a file manager to delete files just removes the pointer to the filesystem. So the original data is still available. As a result, with a high probability, a considerable portion of this data can be recovered using specific techniques.
However, wiping the disk with one of the following commands, shred, dd, or wipe, assures that the information you erased is unrecoverable. So, let us show you how to do it.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Jekyll on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Jekyll is a free and open-source static website generator written in Ruby. Using Jekyll, you can easily manage your site from the initial development stage using the command line. Moreover, Jekyll is blog-aware and gives precedence to permalinks, posts, pages, categories, and layouts.
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 installation of the Jekyll static site generator 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.
Follow through this tutorial to learn how to configure Postfix to use Gmail App Passwords. Previously, Gmail would allow you to use “third-party apps or devices which ask you to sign in to your Google Account using only your username and password“. For example, if you were configuring Postfix to use Gmail SMTP relay, then you may need to turn on Less Secure App Access so that the username/password authentication may work. However, this flexibility come to an end as from May 30, 2022.
Sysadmin trick of the day – if a server is down and you don't know when it will be back up, use ping -a to hear when it comes back up. The -a flag enables audio alert.
There are endless situations, wherein you need to toggle between different applications on your desktop. Linux Mint has the perfect solution to ease your application management woes. You can use workspaces to maintain some semblance of neatness in an otherwise messy desktop screen.
If this interests you, here's how you can use workspaces and hot corners in Linux Mint to categorize your tasks and bring some order to your monitor.
Openbox is a lightweight, configurable, stacking window manager available for Linux. It supports many standards making it a good fit for any desktop.
You will be surprised to know that LXDE and LXQT desktop environments are built around Openbox. You can even replace the window manager of your desktop environment with it.
Of course, you can install Openbox on almost any Linux distribution. However, configuring it takes time and effort.
An easier way out would to be to use a distribution that provides an Openbox variant. In this article, I list some distros that give you an out-of-the-box Openbox experience.
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This is one of the exciting choices if you want to get your hands on the Openbox window manager. Openbox is the default desktop for the distro so you can expect it to be great unlike other distros.
But Proposal A adds that "We will publish these images as official Debian media, replacing the current media sets that do not include non-free firmware packages," while Proposal B says those images "will not replace the current media sets," but will instead be offered alongside them.
And Proposal C? "The Debian project is permitted to make distribution media (installer images and live images) containing packages from the non-free section of the Debian archive available for download alongside with the free media in a way that the user is informed before downloading which media are the free ones.
When I began working on Ubuntu Studio, I was working for a large church. We were doing amazing things in our services every Sunday. Our video, audio, and lighting were top-notch, but the problem was that it was hard to replicate without spending thousands of dollars.
This made me frustrated when running services for our youth in the church’s youth center. I couldn’t use those same tools and didn’t have a budget to spend. This got me wondering what tools existed in the open-source world. Remembering my days of experimenting with Linux and multimedia, I remembered seeing audio plugins in Ubuntu Studio, so that was the first place I looked.
Back then, I thought, “What would it take to replace all of these Apple and Windows computers with Ubuntu Studio?” We could use that money we would otherwise spend on software, on stage lighting, projectors, and audio equipment upgrades. Unfortunately, at that time, we were missing key components. While the audio was top-notch, it was lacking a good video editor and good software for controlling DMX-based lighting. This isn’t even to mention lyric and presentation software, which couldn’t hold a candle to ProPresenter.
[...]
With that, I hope to find a church that would be willing to try Ubuntu Studio for its multimedia production needs.
Linux smartphones aren't as popular as they should be for several reasons, some of which include the duopoly of Android and Apple and lack of enough native phone apps. Linux technology has always been a powerhouse when used properly and offers many features such as increased privacy, a seamless desktop interface, and enhanced control. Operating systems have competed for users in both the mobile and desktop space, from Apple's macOS and iOS, to Google's Android and Chrome OS, to Microsoft's Windows, but Linux is rarely considered due to its lack of market share.
Android and iOS have dominated the smartphone market for a long time. Other mobile operating systems, including Microsoft's Windows Phone, have failed to break through and reach a large audience. Linux is an operating system that can be installed on almost any desktop or laptop, is open-source, free, and provides many distributions to choose from to satisfy any user's needs. When it comes to Linux though, there is a much greater learning curve, fewer supported applications, and more troubleshooting.
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Linux for mobile devices is already being used widely on smartphones, without most users even realizing this. Android is based on the Linux kernel, and Linux powers Android's operating system.
Lolin S3 is the first ESP32-S3 board from the company, but instead of using the more compact D1 mini form factor, the board features a longer design with two rows of 20 pins offering up to 31 GPIOs.
A month or two ago I got a 40mm RGB fan with a cooler. In addition to the usual black and red power input leads, it had a third blue lead for PWM input. This seemed like quite a nice idea, slow down the fan when the Pi doesn’t need it and I’d have a much quieter setup.
A highly optimized Chromium based browser for highend CPUs. It won’t launch on CPU’s below 2nd gen Core or AMD FX, but benefits from Advanced Vector EXtensions. Version 107.0.5253.0 now available in the software repository!
Waterfox G is a free and open source web browser based on Firefox but with additional optimizations. Updated to 4.1.5 and sent to the software repository.
GIMP 2.99.12 is a huge milestone towards GIMP 3.0. Many of the missing pieces are getting together, even though it is still a work in progress. As usual, issues are expected and in particular in this release which got important updates in major areas, such as canvas interaction code, scripts, but also theming…
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We still can’t give you any date for GIMP 3.0, but we are getting there!
This new development version of GIMP is a bit of a game-changer as it arrives with some long-anticipated CMYK-related features. The way they are implemented will make some users happy, but some users might feel annoyed. It’s got to do with early binding vs late binding. So let’s talk about it.
If you are interested to learn more about data science, you can find more articles here finnstats.
Which programming language should I learn? The world has been changing at an astounding rate, and application developers deserve a large portion of the credit for that progress.
If you haven’t already noticed, application development has been very popular recently.
Heroku is a platform-as-a-service that lets you push git repositories to the cloud and then magically get a URL to that application running somewhere. This "Heroku magic" was catalytic to my career.
In July, we wrapped up rstudio::conf(2022). Throughout the conference, we had an exciting array of workshops, an inspiring lineup of speakers, Birds of a Feather meetups, sticker drops, and a few surprises — like RStudio becoming Posit in October 2022! Whether you joined us in person in Washington, D.C., or virtually from around the world, thank you for attending.
Shekhar Kirani treats talented engineers like a rare dog breed he’s learned to spot. This is obviously wrong, but the subject of the 10x engineer won’t go away. So let’s dissect this concept a little bit, see when it makes sense, when it doesn’t, and maybe arrive at a better way to frame things.
After the recent 1.7.1 release of hunspell I spent a little time massaging the source to address some long standing coverity complaints and achieved the elusive 0 outstanding defects with 0 dismissed state.
I’m not a moderate on this issue. I don’t believe, in general, that any supernatural event has ever occurred or, in particular, that any prayer has ever been answered. In my lifetime the outputs of organized religion have been mostly war, sexual abuse, and political support for venal rightist hypocrites.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph in August 2022, Tony Blair bemoans that: “We have analogue learning for a digital age: a paper-based system that revolves around snapshot judgments instead of assessing whether schools are preparing young people for the future they face.”
Such evocation of the need for education change in the face of a radically different digital future is remarkably reminiscent to the arguments made by Tony Blair when UK Prime Minister during the 1990s – leading a New Labour government that made a concerted effort to push ‘information and communications technology’ (ICT) into schools.
Floppy disks. Zip disks. Hard disks. These sorts of spinning, magnetic storage mediums have been critical to several decades of computers. It’s almost hard to imagine the computers of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s without floppy disks (and other magnetic drives).
But how, exactly, did they come into existence?
Let’s take a quick look at the very first of such devices… and its inspiration.
The goal of each offer is the same. The solicitor wants to add malicious code for some unnamed, nefarious purpose. Usually it’s ad tech-related spyware.
We already wrote a long story looking at many of the eye-opening claims from Peiter “Mudge” Zatko in his whistleblower report regarding Twitter’s security operations, and the possibility that the company both has shit security practices and violated its FTC consent decree regarding those security practices. As I noted, the report is a mixed bag of things that sure sound pretty serious, and a few that are greatly lacking in context. Some of them might be really bad, but might not be quite so bad if we knew the full context.
This post just focuses on the first claims in Mudge’s report, which (honestly) seem to have been written more to jump on the current news cycle than to address an actual issue at Twitter. It’s entirely unrelated to the other claims in the report, but instead is focused on the question of Twitter and spam/bot reporting. And… it’s weird. It is framed as though it supports Musk’s claims that Twitter is lying about spam. But, the details actually show the opposite.
As Masnick exquisitely illustrates, the problem for Musk is that when he agreed to buy Twitter, he agreed based on Twitter’s mDAU figures. If he wanted to object about the actual amount of active spam, bots, crooks, and foreign agents on Twitter that aren’t counted in the company’s mDAU figures, he needed to do that before agreeing to buy the company.
As consumers become more aware of how much data their devices take in and how often that data gets sold or shared with third parties, Maks Czuperski is hoping there’s a market for services that can expose the data-hungry devices in the vicinity.
While the media is flaying the political corpse of Scott Morrison, quite deservedly over the former prime minister’s secret power grab, the new government has quietly stripped Australians of their 40-year right of access to government forums. Transparency warrior Rex Patrick is fighting it.
The Commonwealth Freedom of Information (FOI) Act first came into force in December 1982. Since then, Australians have had a legally enforceable right-of-access to the submissions and minutes of inter-governmental meetings; at least they did, until last week.
As everyone’s attention was focused on the secret self-ministerial-appointments of former Prime Minister Morrison, the current Prime Minister was quietly engaging in a secrecy manoeuvre straight out of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s ‘Handbook of Government Transparency’.
It was shovels at the ready as Australia plotted recovery from the economic ravages wrought by the pandemic. Buildings, roads, ports, dams. But hasty decision making is leading to long-term regrets among some affected communities. Kurt Johnson hones in on one example.
Demolition of office buildings and the clearing of 1253 trees has begun for a 418-home “family friendly community” in Sydney’s West Pennant Hills. A black wall more than two metres high has been erected right up to the kerb. It blocks neighbours from monitoring the impact on wildlife but they can hear the earthmovers. It sounds like “a rumbling … like thunder” says one resident. In a concession to complaints, developer Mirvac has agreed to paint the wall a light green to be more visible to passing traffic.
The national airline’s losses under Alan Joyce are approaching an eye-watering $3 billion amid self-administered engineering and pilot crises. But win or lose, the chief executive is always flying high, writes Michael Sainsbury.
Qantas has posted a loss of $860 million for the 2021-22 financial year bringing total losses under the reign of chief executive Alan Joyce to nearly $3 billion since the 2009 financial year.
In the same period he has been given a salary of $104 million plus this year’s (yet to be announced) salary, including a ‘‘deferred bonus’’ of $3.7 million.
Computer scientist Stephen Thaler was dealt another blow in his battle for artificial intelligence machines to be recognized as inventors on patents, after the nation’s top patent court found that inventors must be humans.
The term “individual” in the Patent Act refers only to humans, meaning an AI doesn’t count as an inventor on a patentable invention, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday.
The decision lines up with courts in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia that have refused to accept Thaler’s argument. His only currently existing win is from a South African court that said an AI can be a patent inventor.
People that I've met tend to dislike new things. It could be because they tend to be more confortable around what they have, which is completely fair. However, that also leads to the phenomenon in which people only try new things out when they ended up first liked the new thing, or to simply put, first impression determines everything.
This is funny because in many cases the first impression would be very far off from what the thing actually is, and that happens a lot with things, like video game trailers.
When cyberpunk2077 was announced back in the day, people were really hyped over the game, mainly because the series had been doing great, so surely this successor would also be good, right?
So the business trip was good, lasting just a few days. My supervisor is alright, just not someone I'd like to spend time around. The board meeting was productive, and we have a good plan in place for the future. The hotel was nice, and I'm grateful to have been able to go.
It's also interesting how everyone has a different definition of what counts as a "computer." To me, it seems like one of the best indicators that something counts as a computer is the ability to change the software it runs: whether because it has a full general-purpose OS, it has onboard programming, it supports swapping cartridges, or it can receive firmware updates.
There's something about the fact that the most brutal, incredible, unprecedented irony in the entire universe was pulled off without prior thought, without any thought at all, by the universe itself.
Neil deGrasse Tyson claims that the most astounding fact about the universe is the knowledge, that the atoms that make up the human body were once in the stars. Galaxies. These atoms are traceable to the very beginnings of all and everything.
We dropped off my son at college today. It is his first year. My wife is sad and has been dreading this day, even more so since he graduated from high school. I am ok and I think he is ready to go. My son is excited to go.
I am proud to announce that I've released Gemtexter version `1.1.0`. What is Gemtexter? It's my static site generator written in GNU Bash...
In college, when I began dabbling with my personal website and browsing Orange Website, I formed some opinions. One was on JavaScript. How dare a website have the audacity to load an entire megabyte of JS just to display some text and links
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.