As expected, this week was slow in Linux news and releases due to the New Year festivities. Yet, we still got new exciting releases of the HandBrake video transcoder and IPFire hardened Linux firewall, as well as new releases of the siduction and Calculate Linux distributions.
On top of that, Linux hardware vendor Slimbook announced a Limited Edition in black color of their Slimbook Kymera Ventus Linux gaming PC and Ubuntu Unity devs teased us with some of the upcoming features of the Unity 7.7 desktop environment. Below, you can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for January 1st, 2023.
The start of a new year seems like a great time to show you my Linux desktop and some of the tweaks I make to it. It's pretty much vanilla Debian Testing with a very minimal KDE Plasma Desktop.
Josh and Kurt talk about the LastPass saga. There’s a lot of great explanations about what happened, but there hasn’t been a lot of info on how to start cleaning up this mess. We rehash some of the existing details then try to untangle what existing users can do to try to start recovering. The real problem is how LastPass is dealing with this, not the technical details.
We assemble to predict what will happen in 2023 and score how our 2022 predictions turned out.
2022 was a good year for Linux but 2023 is turning out to be an even more interesting year for the linux desktop, with some massive improvements to come that you should watch out for.
This week in Business News, did Bitcoin mining save Texas during a cold snap? Also, Handbrake gets AV1 support, Meta and Alphabet are losing advertising market share, and developers are switching to Linux for their coding.
So the week started so slow due to the holidays that I thought I might not have any reason to do an rc2 at all, but by the end of the week I did end up getting a smattering of pull requests, so here we are. It's tiny, even smaller than usual for an rc2, and honestly, I'd expect that trend to continue for rc3. A lot of people are still off for another week on a well-deserved winter holiday, and so I suspect things will continue to be fairly quiet.
Anyway, last week saw mainly some nvme fixes, some i915 drm work, and some kvm fixes (and kvm testing fixes). See below for the full shortlog, and if you're not still in a food coma from the holidays, please do give this all a good testing.
Linus
The second 6.2 kernel prepatch is out for testing — but there isn't a lot there.
For Chinese users or those who have friends or business in China, native QQ app is finally working well in Linux by releasing the 3.0 version!
QQ is one of the top popular instant messaging apps in China. It has an official Linux client since 2019, which was however old, crash often, and not suitable for daily use.
By releasing 3.0, QQ for Linux finally got a modern UI powered by its QQNT framework. Similar to the Windows app, it has the user avatar and a few navigation buttons in far left pane, friends and group chats in center, and messages in right.
After releasing the Open Source Vulnerabilities database (OSV.dev) in February, Google has launched the OSV-Scanner, a free command line vulnerability scanner that open source developers can use to check for vulnerabilities in their projects’ dependencies.
Here are the latest updates to our compilation of recommended software. It’s been a busy month in December. We have published new group tests and updated a few others.
We are planning a lot more this year to massively ramp up coverage.
As always, we love receiving your suggestions for new articles or additional open source software to feature. Let us know in the comments box below or drop us an email.
Kubernetes v1.26, released last month, introduced an alpha feature that lets you specify a data source for a PersistentVolumeClaim, even where the source data belong to a different namespace. With the new feature enabled, you specify a namespace in the dataSourceRef field of a new PersistentVolumeClaim. Once Kubernetes checks that access is OK, the new PersistentVolume can populate its data from the storage source specified in that other namespace. Before Kubernetes v1.26, provided your cluster had the AnyVolumeDataSource feature enabled, you could already provision new volumes from a data source in the same namespace. However, that only worked for the data source in the same namespace, therefore users couldn't provision a PersistentVolume with a claim in one namespace from a data source in other namespace. To solve this problem, Kubernetes v1.26 added a new alpha namespace field to dataSourceRef field in PersistentVolumeClaim the API.
Unbeknownst to me, Blender has a built-in video sequence editor (VSE). This is cool, because Blender is available on every major platform, is open source, and is under active development.
Clicking Video Editor in the Blender splash screen will take you to a timeline where you can do basic video editing. It’s a bit different from other packages I’ve used, but I’ve cut together and exported a few things for work on it, and have been pleasantly surprised.
This step-by-step guide will show you how to easily install the Google Chrome web browser on your Manjaro Linux system.
Are you ready to upgrade your web browsing experience on Manjaro? Google Chrome is a reliable, user-friendly browser that offers a range of features and security measures to enhance your online experience.
Unfortunately, Manjaro, like most Linux distributions, does not come with it preinstalled. That is why you must follow the instructions below to install Google Chrome on your Manjaro system.
So, whether you’re new to Manjaro or a seasoned user, this guide will walk you through the installation process so you can start using Google Chrome in no time.
Python Flask is a lightweight Python web framework that makes it easy to build web applications quickly. It’s a microframework that doesn’t include an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) or such features and is instead extensible through Flask plug-ins.
Flask is easy to get started with and doesn’t require any particular directory structure. A Flask application is a Python script that imports the Flask module, creates an instance of the Flask class, and then starts the development server using a line of code.
In this article, we’ll show you how to install Flask on Ubuntu 22.04. Also, create a simple Hello World application using the Flask Python module.
Here’s a beginner’s guide on understanding who command in Linux with several examples.
The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a comprehensive solution that helps you automate collaboratively.
Shell variables are important for the smooth running of any Linux system. For example, every time you run a program or command, your system looks in the PATH variable to check if the program is present. Knowledge of shell variables is important for your daily use or administration of Linux systems.
Linux being a multi-user system allows multiple users to log in and run various programs at the same time. As a normal Linux user or system admin, you may sometimes need to check which users are currently logged into your system.
This information can be useful for various reasons such as for troubleshooting performance issues, monitoring user activity, or for simply checking who else is using the system.
There are several methods to list current logged-in users on Linux and see what they are doing.
In this video, we are looking at how to install LeoCAD on KDE Neon.
Have you ever wished you could run Linux terminal commands directly from within your ChatGPT GUI interface? If you’re a fan of ChatGPT and also a command line enthusiast, this article is for you! We’re going to explore a new way to integrate the power of the terminal into your ChatGPT experience. It’s a game-changer for those who want the convenience of a GUI with the flexibility of the command line. Are you ready to dive in and see how it’s done? Let’s get started!
For all the KDE Plasma and Arch Linux fans, XeroLinux is probably the best distro to experience. It's loaded with goodies and brings a customized KDE Plasma theme with the goodness of Arch Linux.
This distribution is mainly for those who like eye-candy desktops with the latest packages+KDE Plasma but do not want to re-configure the Plasma desktop. XeroLinux primarily uses a pre-configured Latte dock with Kvantum to give the desktop a distinct look.
This tutorial will walk you through installing XeroLinux in a physical system as a standalone or dual-boot.
Between 2022-12-26 and 2023-01-02 there were 28 new games validated for the Steam Deck.
A new year means new goals, and this one is a challenge: migrating the old digiKam documentation based on DocBook format to a new architecture, more simple and easy to maintain. After 20 years, we left the DocBook version for the modern Sphinx/ReStructuredText framework. This one is really a pleasure to use by documentation writers.
The content is published in a dedicated web site, internationalized by the KDE translation teams. An EPUB version is also available for the off-line use cases.
Leading up to this week, and its 1,000th edition of DistroWatch Weekly, we wanted to mark the occasion by having our contributors talk about Linux distributions which were special to them in some way. It could be a favourite distribution, it could be their first, or even one they don't currently use but which encapsulates something special.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years and writing for DistroWatch for over 12. I have probably test driven an average of two distributions per week during my time with this publication, which means I've used in the range of 1,200 versions of Linux distributions for over a day. I'd also estimate that, including brief first-look experiences, I've probably run over 500 distinct Linux projects over the past decade, between writing reviews, evaluating projects on the waiting list, and gathering information for the DistroWatch database.
Narrowing this collection of experiences enough to focus on just one project that would stand out as being special to me was going to be difficult.
I thought about revisiting my first Linux distribution, a long since extinct, minimal flavour of Slackware called Pygmy Linux. Armed with no compiler, desktop, or package manager its claim to fame was it could be run from a DOS/Windows partition and fit on about five floppy disks. I was looking for a free flavour of Unix I could run at home (and download over a dial-up connection) with minimal destruction to my existing system. Pygmy Linux, with its extremely limited, bare bones approach, proved to be a worthwhile learning tool for someone trying to wrap his head around shell scripting and Linux internals.
I could talk about my first full-time Linux distro, the one which made me believe Linux could replace Windows on my computer eventually: Phat Linux. Phat was much larger than Pygmy, featured the KDE 2 desktop, and was based on Mandrake Linux. It, like its parent, is long since gone, but it got me using Linux as my primary desktop operating system.
The Linux distro scene just got A LOT more interesting thanks to the first stable release of Vanilla OS.
If you’re not familiar with Vanilla OS then honestly, you’re not alone. It’s a relatively new Linux distribution that has only been in development for the past four months. Plus, outside of a closed beta, it’s not been available for the wider community to try.
[...]
Ubuntu-based Linux distros are ten a penny, but few tend to diverge from their parent OS in any interesting or unique ways. Not so with Vanilla OS. Far more than “just another” Ubuntu fork, the distro takes a novel new approach to computing thanks to an immutable file system.
Vanilla OS doesn’t use apt. Instead, it uses its own package manager and subsystem called apx. This is described as “a wrapper around multiple package managers to install packages and run commands inside a managed container” and is inspired by Distrobox.
There is a move to Bring Back Blogging and having recently sorted out my own FreshRSS install I am completely in favour of such a thing. RSS feeds with complete posts, for preference, not just a teaser intro sentence/paragraph.
It’s also a reminder to me that I should blog more, and what better way to start 2023 than with my traditional recap of my Free Software activities in 2022. For previous years see 2019, 2020 + 2021
[...]
Most of my contributions to Free software continue to happen within Debian.
Edubuntu arrived on the scene in 2005 when it debuted as part of the Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger” series. The scholastic spin continued to issue new releases up until Edubuntu 14.04 LTS which, due to a lack of contributors, wound up being its final release an official favour.
Fast forward to 2023 and the forgotten flavour is feeling optimistic about its future.
During its original run Edubuntu was available variously as a LiveCD, a LiveDVD, and as a series of packages users could install atop a regular Ubuntu release. Curating and shipping educational software and tools was always the core focus, with GNOME and Unity desktops driving the core UI during its original tenure.
Ubuntu Studio’s Erich Eickmeyer and his wife Amy, whose background is in education, are the ones stepping up to reboot and revive this spin. They’ve reams of ideas, plans, and goals under their collective sleeves and seem well-placed to help reposition this flavour for a new generation.
Too expensive? Too lacking? There’s a lot to be said with the official Arduino Uno design. If you’re looking for something that gives more bang for the buck, though, then here are five alternatives using the famous Arduino Uno’s form factor!
Today our data is becoming vulnerable each day. This is attributed to how some operating systems are not giving enough attention to privacy or malware, phishing, and viruses which with time are becoming powerful.
We need to opt for OS which provides the most privacy features and you know that all of the base, backend, and source code is open source. This is why we have recommended some of the best Linux smartphones that you can choose.
On November 1st, I joined familiar faces from my days at Opera Software and new colleges at Vivaldi Technologies. I joined as a Quality Assurance Tester working on the Vivaldi web browser product for mobile and desktop.
I didn’t expect to ever work for a social media company. Two short weeks after I joined Vivaldi, it jumped on the decentralized social networking craze and launched a new Mastodon instance called Vivaldi Social.
No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it's still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator's whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good – but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically.
That is, even if you trust Tim Cook to decide what apps you are and aren't allowed to install – including whether you are allowed to install apps that block Apple's own extensive, nonconsensual, continuous commercial surveillance of its customers – you should also be prepared for Cook to get hit by a bus and replaced by some alt-right dingleberry.
What happens next is a matter of technology and law. It's a matter of whether you have to give up your media and your apps and your data to escape the no-longer-benevolent dictatorship. It depends on whether the technology is designed to let you move those things, and whether the law protects you from tech companies, or whether it protects tech companies from you, by criminalizing jailbreaking, reverse engineering, scraping, etc.
Last year I wrote about my predictions for what would happen in 2022. A look back at what I was thinking: First, a few meta-lessons learned, at the risk of extrapolating from only a few data points: Predictions, like goals, should be observable and testable. It's maybe better to treat it as a hypothesis. For example, one of my "predictions" was "remote development hits the mainstream." While it has surely grown in popularity, it's unclear how you'd score something like this: what does mainstream mean? It might have been better to be more concrete in my thinking. The best predictions were events where the pieces were just starting to get into motion. It might just be a simple fact of predicting fewer things in the causal chain. There's an enormous recency bias in predictions – last year, I found myself writing about events that had recently happened. Most of these events were fleeting. It's easy to overlook things that continue to gain steam, even after the initial buzz dies down.
This is one of those cliched posts: Reflection on the year that's ending, and talking about goals and whatnot for next year. They're cliche, but they're also useful. The planning and reflecting process is a useful one, and sharing openly means other people can come along and learn with me.
The year 2022 was partially eclipsed by COVID-19 for me.
Every day, I revisit all the posts I've ever made, over more than 20 years of blogging; I review posts from one year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and 20 years ago, revisiting my priors and regrounding myself in the arc of stories I've followed for decades.
In 2022, much to my surprise, I finished and reviewed 51 books, a substantial increase over last year and once again the best year for reading since 2012. (I read 60 books that year, so it's a hard mark to equal.) Reading throughout the year was a bit uneven; I avoided the summer slump this year, but still slowed down in early spring and September. As always, the tail end of the year was prime reading time.
This year has been a crazy rollercoaster ride. Very less ups and a lot of downs, the year began with mourning the loss of my father, and I am fortunate and grateful that at least the year is ending on a positive note.
Qantas’ Sydney to London double decker jumbo QF1 flight has been forced to land in Baku, capital of central Asian nation Azerbaijan last night, after a smoke detector went off in the cargo hold, reports Michael Sainsbury.
Qantas has scrambled to dispatch an A380 double decker jumbo to Baku, where 385 passengers are stranded after their flight from Singapore to London was forced into an emergency landing.
The aircraft VH-OQD left Sydney today at 10.40am to fly directly to Baku, after Qantas spent the night gaining the requisite take off and landing permissions needed for an international flight.
The pilot of Qantas flight QF verbally issued a mayday and squawked the emergency 7700 code on his transponder to alert all nearby aircraft and airports when it was flying over the former Soviet state of Georgia. The aircraft would have to land at the closest airport that was capable of accommodating the largest commercial aircraft in the world. That airport was at Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan which required a u turn by the flight crew.
Brands are owned by companies, and companies are run by people. People have values, behaviour, and history. You’re not being rational by discounting these; you’re falling into the trap of ignoring the human factor.
[...]
Assuming your loyalty has been earned—as opposed to blindly following a trend or crowd—I see no problem with it. Because it’s also theirs to lose.
This seems unusual for someone like me. I have spent my adult life deeply engrossed in computer-based activity, and am often described to others, by friends and family, as a “computer guy.” That makes me a geek and/or nerd by definition. But I’ve never been comfortable with either of those terms.
FYI, this server is named after Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world.
Unfortunately, Covid lockdowns and remote work reinforced these tendencies to such a degree that I think it started to impact my mental health. Even the most closeted of individuals need to spend time with people they care about, and being in a small group sharing in a hobby for a few hours is lovely.
The Linux Foundation announced it formed the Overture Maps Foundation, a collaborative effort to create interoperable open map data.
If you’ve been keeping up with security news, you may have noticed that it seems as if there have been an increasing number of attacks on Linux in recent years. The number of new Linux malware variants reached a record high in the first half of 2022, as nearly 1.7 million samples were discovered. This observation is somewhat counterintuitive, as Linux is generally regarded as a highly secure operating system.
So what exactly has been going on lately, and are these attacks being blown out of proportion by the media? Is Linux still a viable OS for security-conscious users? LinuxSecurity.com aims to put the recent attacks on Linux into context, provide some background on Linux malware and shed some light on these questions in this article.
As a remote worker, it's expedient that you're cautious of cybersecurity threats. You need to monitor your Wi-Fi networks to ensure they are safe enough to access sensitive data. This is because the slightest vulnerability in your system can expose you to cybercriminals. Thankfully, there are cybersecurity tools to avert this.
These tools protect company data from theft and come in different forms. While a few beef up your security by warning you of possible attacks, others directly protect you from cybercriminals. Here's a list of the best free cybersecurity tools to keep you safe as a remote worker.
As the tech guy among friends and family for years, people are surprised by my militant (that’s foreshadowing!) reluctance to buy smart, Internet-connected home devices. I wish it were based on a philosophical stance on privacy and sticking it to the proverbial man who wants to track everything we do to sell us rubbish… or heck, even for the mundane reason that half the stuff never works properly!
[...]
I bring this up again, because yet another smart camera device manufacturer was caught out earlier this month making claims about their tech that were unsubstantiated, and doubled down when security researches proved otherwise. This is completely predictable if still frustrating. But in this case, the company even falsely claimed their devices kept video local, in an attempt to assuage concerns about smart devices in the first place. This is worse than false advertising, it’s fraud.
Lawyer and Lendlease tax-fraud whistleblower Anthony Watson writes on Australia’s whistleblower laws and why reform is vital to protect those who expose wrongdoing from having to choose between their careers and silence.
Disclosing serious failings in the public interest must not remain the preserve of those citizens who are prepared to sacrifice their personal lives and those of their relatives, as has happened too often in the past. Sounding the alarm must become a normal reflex of every responsible citizen who has become aware of serious threats in the public interest.
[...]
Bessie’s competence as a teacher was never in question and had nothing to do with her dismissal. Rather, her employers were distressed by Bessie’s complaints, made to Principal Leach, her immediate superior, about school practices she believed were unlawful and which she felt were harming the students. Bessie complained that the school administration were reserving administrative positions for white staff, and that black youths were being fenced out of the more desirable jobs given to their white peers.
Bessie took her case to court, arguing that her communications were protected by the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech).
Both the lower courts found the School’s decision to terminate Bessie was motivated primarily by the fact that Bessie had made the complaints. The District Court found that the School’s motivation “…was almost entirely a desire to rid themselves of a vocal critic of the district’s policies and practices which were capable of interpretation as embodying racial discrimination.”
The Albanese government’s gas caps are not enough. Gas reservation for the East Coast of Australia is likely as both industry and electricity consumers are held to ransom by high prices and gas cartel threats to withhold supply. Analyst Bruce Robertson reports.
Even before the government’s price cap legislation passed through parliament last week, the gas industry was vigorously opposing it. Yet the $12 a gigajoule (GJ) price cap now enacted in law ensures a bright future for gas companies but continual decline for Australia’s manufacturing industries
The gas industry, however, has continued to characterise the price cap as a calamity, with Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher going as far as to label it a “Soviet Style” response. Mr Gallagher has now warned of gas rationing in the domestic market or the breaking of international contracts.
Those people were misinformed, unqualified, or had ulterior motives. There was enough information about NFTs, web3, and other psuedo-decentralised puffery that anyone in a position of authority or responsibility voicing any kind of interest should be immediately dismissed. It’s the same people who question vaccines in 2022, or think the jury is still out on homeopathy.
These switches (certainly older models) often use a neon lamp as light source.
I measured the electric energy consumption of a powerstrip with switch on and neon lamp burning (without anything plugged into the powerstrip’s outlets).
Cancel your flights, lock your bedrooms. If you’re off to Bali and you’re not married, forget having sex, they’ll put you in gaol! So say Australian mainstream media and the Government’s travel advisory. Except they didn’t check the story, Duncan Graham and Kim Wingerei report from Indonesia.
Nothing quite like a bonk-ban to excite the headline writers at Fairfax, News Limited, The Guardian and the ABC. Even the Government’s own Smarttravellers website got in on the act. Failing to check their facts, all in the interest of a saucy story or updated advice to sex-hungry travellers.
The G20 in Bali last month was a splendid success – and not just because world leaders talked to each other proving differences can sometimes be understood, if not always accepted.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced a long stint in the witness box before the Robodebt Royal Commission this week over his involvement in the disastrous scheme and any pressure he exerted to stop public servants coming forward with appropriate legal advice. Callum Foote reports.
The Royal Commission was established to investigate the Centrelink “Robodebt” scheme, an automated debt recovery program that was established in 2015 and ran until November 2019 when the Attorney-General advised it was unlawful.
It is attributed to more than 2000 people taking their own lives and resulted in a $1.8 billion settlement to hundreds of thousands of victims who were forced to pay illegitimate debts.
Morrison was compelled to appear at yesterday’s commission hearing as he was the Social Services Minister when the scheme first went live, then subsequently Treasurer and Prime Minister throughout the life of the scheme.
Scott Morrison approved tens of billions in foreign takeover deals after secretly being appointed Treasurer last year, compromising Australia’s national interest.
Deep winter has come to my Baba Yaga cabin. The snows pile in rolling pillows, crystalline breasts of milky white. As yet they are unmarked by animal tracks. The smarter, or at least more prudent, animals are abed. Now and again a jay or chickadee peeps sadly from a branch, but they are rare visitors. Only Raven keeps company with my days, a few neighbouring pairs flying about in search of a stray mouse. I’m glad of their company for many reasons. The coyotes who had been howling downhill have moved on, I think. I’ve not seen their tracks this past æâ¬, nor heard their dusk light howls. So the ravens fly overhead, once in a while to circle above me to espy my doings. They must find me inexplicable and a nuisance, for they often wind their routes around mine airspace. Mad dogs and Englishmen and me.
Not sure how you can find the software you are going to like. Today I was trying to copy the style of an artist that had drawn a few pictures for a megadungeon of mine but everything about it was hard. When I finally switched to a messy brush, the process finally agreed with my brain again. So what makes good for me software?
I don't usually write status update, even though I like the idea, because I'm most of the time too lazy to do so, but I thought it was a good way to kick off this year with a first post.
I'm still unsure while writing this if I will actually publish it on my blog or on my gemlog. I guess I like the idea of using my blog only for technical posts, so it might end up in my gemlog…
A new year begins, and I will start by looking back on the old one! One year ago I made a post about my plans for 2022 [1]. Let's see how that went.
The clock keeps ticking and calendars have again rolled back to January 1st. Here are some tidings for the New Year.
Constructing the Foundation was the name of my theme in 2022. A markdown file summarizing it can be found on my codeberg€¹. In short, I wanted to focus on building positive aspects of myself rather than criticizing parts of myself I don't like. I would overall call this year a success with my theme, but I don't have another complete theme year to compare it to.
That in general was an important goal for me, I was able to maintain my journaling, theme, and general mental health for the whole year. I haven't made progress in all the areas I wanted, but I haven't gone backwards anywhere, and I want to congratulate myself for that.
ay mates, i'm back yet again! happy VERY LATE new year! i gotta try to be more comfortable with writing stuff, so expect more posts this time. no, not like 2022-07-11. there's gonna be some stuff going on here, i'm sure of it.
i used to have an html page that hosted my drawings and stuff, wanted to have my gemini posts be turned into html pages (especially the megaman 8bit deathmatch one) but i just didn't do that. today i deleted that side of the lelkins page of altesq in favor for my gem capsule you are reading all of this from, as it's a better place for my stuff. i also remade the capsule and added the art from the www page. this is my home now, my castle, my whatever you'd like to call this gemini capsule.
I'm a person who used to have lots of clocks, everywhere. Around the house, a watch, on my status bar, on my (un)smartphone, on my IRC client. Time was omnipresent. Not anymore. I've since removed all the clocks, everywhere. If I want to check the time, I do it manually via the $date utility, no more compulsive, unconscious, checking the time. This post will focus on how is it so far, I'll probably do multiple updates. There will be a technical follow-up post on how I removed the clocks.
To everyone reading this (and even to those that do not), I wish you all a happy new year 2023! I won't talk about expectations or resolutions here, because we all know here that if you want to set a goal for yourself, do it whenever you want, and not when the calendar tells you to :).
Last year I published my first "year review" on gemini[1] (and not on my blog) and I thought I would do the same this year :). Not many things to talk about, as this year has been very busy with "day job" so finding time to write is not always easy. Or maybe it is just my brain not trained well enough to force myself to write instead of doing more passive things sometimes. Anyway, here a short review of 2022 and some plan for 2023.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.