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Links 02/03/2023: KDE Gear 22.12.3 and Phipps Versus Standard-Essential (Software) Patents



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • New MakuluLinux Teaser…

        A new little Teaser showing off some new Features being worked on at MakuluLinux for our Upcoming "Max" release.

      • Jupiter BroadcastingLinux Action News 282

        FFmpeg gets new superpowers, Plasma’s switch to Qt6 gets official; what you need to know. Plus we round up the top features coming to Linux 6.3.

      • The BSD Now PodcastBSD Now: 496: Hacking the CLI

        Automation and Hacking Your FreeBSD CLI, Run your own instant messaging service on FreeBSD, Watch Netflix on FreeBSD, HardenedBSD January 2023 Status Report, How To Set Up SSH Keys With YubiKey as two-factor authentication, OpenSSH fixes double-free memory bug that’s pokable over the network, A late announcement, but better late than never, Next NYC*BUG and more

      • fossified

        Magnus, Daniel, Henrik, and I have met here and there when doing various things around open source. It can range from hanging out over beers at fosdem, to doing compliance work together at customers. Regardless of context, we always have fun and lots to talk about. So what's better than starting a podcast -- that way, we need to meet up just to talk. From this, fossified was born.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Trend OceansHow to List all Open File Descriptors

        One of the easiest ways to list all open file descriptors is to use the lsof command If you are here to list out all the open file descriptors, then you may be aware of what a file descriptor is and what the use of it is, but if you are unaware of file descriptors...

      • UNIX CopHow to install Podman on CentOS 9 Stream / Fedora?

        Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Podman on CentOS 9 Stream / Fedora. What is Podman? Podman is a container engine compatible with the OCI Containers specification. Podman is part of Red Hat Linux, but it can also be installed on other distributions.

      • HowTo ForgeHow to Install CryptPad Collaborative Office Suite on Ubuntu 22.04

        Cryptpad is an open-source collaborative office suite that serves as an alternative to Office 365. It allows you to access office applications via the web browser. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install the Cryptpad suite on a Ubuntu 22.04 server.

      • Linux CapableHow to Visual Studio Code on Manjaro Linux [Ed: This is proprietary Microsoft spyware and sites called "linux" something ought not recommend or even mention it; it gives Microsoft power and data]

        Microsoft Visual Studio Code, commonly known as VS Code, is a free, open-source, cross-platform code editor developed by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 and has since gained immense popularity among developers across the globe.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install yay AUR Helper on Manjaro Linux

        Yet Another Yogurt, or YAY, is a popular AUR helper written in Go programming language. AUR (Arch User Repository) is a community-driven repository of user-created packages for Arch Linux and its derivatives.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install WPS Office on Manjaro Linux

        WPS Office is a popular office suite software that provides users various tools for creating, editing, and sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The software was developed by Kingsoft Office Software Corporation Limited, a Chinese company, and is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS platforms.

      • Linux CapableHow to Install LibreOffice Manjaro Linux

        LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite first released in 2010. It includes programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and more. LibreOffice is available for various platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS, making it a popular choice for users who want a free and reliable alternative to proprietary office suites.

      • Linux Cloud VPSHow to Install Node.js on AlmaLinux

        In this guide, we will show you, how to install Node.js on Almalinux. It is an open-source JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Nodejs also provides an event-driven architecture and non-blocking I/O that is optimized & scalable.

      • List all files in a folder in a git repository by last commit date
        $ git ls-tree --name-only HEAD foldername/ | while read filename; do echo "$(git log -1 --format="%ci " -- $filename) $filename"; done | sort -r
      • OMG UbuntuHow to Upgrade to KDE Plasma 5.27 on Kubuntu 22.10

        Upgrade to KDE Plasma 5.27 on Kubuntu 22.10 using the Kubuntu Backports PPA. Learn how to add the PPA to upgrade Plasma in minutes.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • 9to5LinuxXfce’s Apps Update for February 2023: Ristretto Gets Printing Support, Major Notifications Changes, and More

        February 2023 was another busy month for Xfce devs as they released many new versions of popular Xfce apps and core components to bring you new features and improve reliability and stability by fixing more bugs, crashes, memory leaks, and other annoyances preventing you from fully enjoying your Xfce desktop.

        Major changes were brought to the xfce4-notifyd notification daemon that implements the Freedesktop.org desktop notifications specification on Xfce, which received no less than four releases up to version 0.8.2. These include a new setting to never expire notifications, the ability to reposition notifications when the work area changes, and an improved Xfce panel icon when there are unread notifications.

      • It's FOSSPop!_OS is Working on a New Text Editor, Taking Cues from Vim and VS Code

        System76 has been busy adding things to their upcoming COSMIC DE on Pop!_OS; they recently shared what they were up to for the month of February.

        A new Bluetooth applet was included with the rest of the work-in-progress applets for the 'cosmic-panel', with discussions about how config files and widget layering should work on COSMIC DE.

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDEKDE Gear 22.12.3

          Over 120 individual programs plus dozens of programmer libraries and feature plugins are released simultaneously as part of KDE Gear.

          Today they all get new bugfix source releases with updated translations, including...

        • 9to5LinuxKDE Gear 22.12.3 Is Out to Improve Kdenlive, Ark, Kate, and Other Apps

          KDE Gear 22.12.3 is here to improve various of the included KDE apps for a better, more stable, and reliable experience. For example, it improves the Ark archive manager to properly check if there is sufficient free space available before extracting archives.

          The Kdenlive video editor received some fixes as well, such as a fix for a crash and offset when moving a group that includes a subtitle, a subtitle scrolling issue, the ability to scroll the timeline when moving a subtitle, a subtitle overlap issue on import, as well as a subtitle snapping issue.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • OpenSUSEopenSUSE Tumbleweed gains optional x86-64-v3 optimization

        Tumbleweed users who performed a distribution upgrade or zypper dup the last weeks on the rolling release with “recommended packages” enabled (the default) and matching hardware received a new package named patterns-glibc-hwcaps-x86_64_v3 automatically installed. This is a new Tumbleweed feature which will also automatically install the “recommended” package named with the -x86-64-v3 name suffix that provides the optimized version of the library.

        “The performance optimizations people will gain from this change is the result of much effort and discussion,” said Douglas DeMaio, a member of the openSUSE release team. “The x86-64 architecture thread on the mailing list really drove the discussion and the results will immediately provide performance improvements for those with x86-64-v3 hardware. It would be great if people write about these improvements so the results can be shared among users of our rolling release.”

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Which distribution to choose from the RHEL family?

        In today’s post we are going to recommend which distro use, from the RHEL family, for office environments and which one for a business environment.

      • Enterprisers ProjectPillars of resilient digital transformation: New HBR Analytic Services report
      • Fedora ProjectFedora Community Blog: From FCAIC to FCA: Evolving to Community Architect

        In January 2023, the Fedora Council approved a title change for the Fedora community role. The Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator (FCAIC) is now renamed to Fedora Community Architect (FCA).

        Does a title change make sense?

        Last December, I was working together with Matthew Miller and Ben Cotton on our role pages in the Council docs, as part of a planned review of our role documentation. While reviewing the FCAIC role documentation, I took a new look at the role title and whether I felt it was still right. While it does describe the role and responsibilities well, it still doesn’t feel quite right to me, in a similar way that Community Lead didn’t feel right in 2016. I spent some time thinking about the FCAIC role, how it has changed over the years, and what I feel it describes. Since I am still early in the role, it felt like a good time to consider a title change.

        I settled on Fedora Community Architect as the new title for the FCAIC role. In addition to being shorter, I feel like it better describes the role. Community work does not have an industry-accepted job ladder, as is more common with software engineering. Red Hat eventually settled on the title of community architect to encapsulate and describe community work in its pioneering open source communities. I also like Community Architect as a title. There is more literature and examples for others to understand the work.

      • Kevin Fenzi: Tracking down a bug

        I thought I’d share a fun hour or so of my afternoon and how I approached tracking down a bug in the Fedora Xfce spin.

        The bug is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2170682 “Updates cause Xfce to lose all menu icons”. A curious bug, on updating to the latest version icons in menus no longer were enabled (although the user didn’t disable them and they are enabled by default).

        Since the report happily had the update where it started, I went and looked first upstream (which turned out to be a mistake, but you never know). I looked through the recent commits for xfce4-settings to see if anything stood out as possibly being related to this. Nothing really did. All the changes seemed minor and unrelated.

      • Fedora MagazineFedora Magazine: 4 cool new projects to try in Copr for March 2023

        This article introduces four new projects available in Copr, with installation instructions.

      • Jakub Kadlčík: For my Fedora packaging sponsorees

        You have just been sponsored to the Fedora packager group and your review ticket was formally granted the fedora-review+ flag?

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • CNX SoftwareLILYGO T-TWR is an ESP32-S3 board with an SA868 Walkie-Talkie module

        LILYGO T-TWR is an ESP32-S3 development board fitted with an SA868 Walkie-Talkie module and a UHF or VHF antenna, a speaker, a microphone, a small 0.96-inch OLED, and a 18650 battery holder, plus some I/Os for expansion. Equipped with an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-16NR8 module, the T-TWR offers WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, a dual-core processor with 16MB flash and 8MB PSRAM, and enables users to design their own Walkie-Talkie, while its expansion capabilities allow the control of devices. L

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • OSI BlogWhy Open Source should be exempt from Standard-Essential Patents

      With the European Commission soon to offer the Parliament a bill relating to Standard-Essential Patents (SEPs), it is worth taking time to understand exactly why vendors requiring negotiations to use the patents they have embedded in “open” standards is antithetical to Open Source practice. The value and prosperity generated from Open Source arises from Open Source software licenses seamlessly and frictionlessly permitting anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the software for any purpose including monetization. When SEPs are licensed in such a way that bilateral negotiation with the licensors is a necessary element of software use, Open Source projects must necessarily avoid implementation of the associated standards to the extent that it is possible for them to do so. A requirement for bilateral, after-the-fact patent licensing is by definition not Open Source due to this introduction of licensing friction.

      This is not a matter of ideology but of pragmatics. Open Source developer communities operate on the assumption that the intellectual property owners – including both copyright and patent owners – have granted in advance all necessary rights to enjoy the software in any field of use and in any way. SEPs licensed on bilaterally-negotiated terms break this model and thus are naturally avoided. Further, the tendency for such bilateral negotiations to have some form of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) as a prerequisite also prevents many communities wanting to engage with them as unlike companies they do not have the mechanisms or resources to “firewall” NDA terms and thus routinely refuse NDAs.

    • It's FOSSFOSS Weekly #23.09: Fedora 38 and GNOME 44 Features, NixOS Guide and More

      April will see the release of next versions of Ubuntu and Fedora. March will have next version of KDE and GNOME.

    • Events

      • Brendan GreggBrendan Gregg: USENIX SREcon APAC 2022: Computing Performance: What's on the Horizon

        At USENIX SREcon22 APAC I gave the opening keynote on the future of computer performance, rounding up the latest developments and making predictions of where I see things heading. This talk originated from my updates to [Systems Performance 2nd Edition], and this was the first time I've given this talk in person!

        [...]]

        I began my tech career as a junior Unix sysadmin in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in 1999, with no connection to the exciting world of tech in Silicon Valley, New York, or even nearby Sydney. As I was determined to become great at my new occupation regardless of my location, I read every sysadmin book, article, and magazine I could find on the shelf. This included SysAdmin magazine, which contained articles from various experts including Amy Rich, and a couple of advertisements: One was to submit your own articles to the magazine for publication (by writing to the editor, Rikki Endsley) and another was to attend USENIX conferences in the US and learn directly from the experts! I made both of these my goals, even though I'd never been published before and I'd never been to the US. Or even on a plane.

        I didn't end up getting published in SysAdmin directly, but my performance work did make it as a feature article (thanks Matty). As for attending USENIX conferences: I finally started attending and speaking at them in 2010 when a community manager encouraged me to (thanks Deirdre Straughan), and since then I've met many friends and connections, including Amy who is now USENIX President, and Rikki with whom I co-chaired the USENIX LISA18 conference. USENIX has been a great help to my career and my employers, and I hope it is just as helpful for you. It's an important vendor-neutral space to share the latest in technology.

      • Carl SchwanDigital Market Act workshop in Brussels

        This Monday, I was in Brussels to attend a stakeholder workshop for the Digital Market Act (DMA) organized by the European Commission. For those who don’t know that is the DMA, it’s a new law that the European Parliament voted on recently and one of its goals of it is to force some interoperability between messaging services by allowing small players to able to communicate with users from the so-called Gatekeepers (e.g., WhatsApp).

        I attended this meeting as a representative of KDE and NeoChat. NeoChat is a client for the Matrix protocol (a decentralized and end-to-end encrypted chat protocol). I started developing it with Tobias Fella a few years ago during the covid lockdown.

        I learned about this workshop thanks to NLNet, who funded previous work on NeoChat (end-to-end encryption). They put Tobias Fella and me in contact with Jean-Luc Dorel, the program officer for NGI0 for the European Commission. I would never have imagined sitting in a conference room in Brussels, thanks to my contribution to open-source projects,

      • UbuntuMeet Canonical at Embedded World 2023

        Embedded World is almost here! With 930+ exhibitors, 200 nonstop hours of knowledge sharing, and an exciting programme structured along 9 tracks with 60+ sessions and 18 classes, Embedded World is the must-attend global event for the embedded community.

        [...]

        The embedded ecosystem is a key focus area for Canonical. We are fully committed to supporting device manufacturers and IoT pioneers across their deployment journeys by providing a best-in-class experience for embedded Linux in production.

        At Embedded World, you’ll connect with manufacturers engaging in large-scale, mass-deployments of Linux boards. Those forward-thinkers and innovators push the envelope of digital infrastructure by adopting Ubuntu Core, the most popular Linux-based operating system (OS) purposefully designed for the embedded world. By relying on an enterprise-grade Linux distribution supported over 10+€  years, they empower their enterprise customers to focus on what drives their business, shortening time-to-market.

        Meet our experts at€  Booth 4-600 in Hall 4 to learn about Ubuntu Core, the secure, application-centric IoT OS for embedded devices. Embedded devices on Ubuntu Core remain fully operational during both application and system updates, as the delta, OTA, transactional updates are either 100% successful or not installed, leaving no trace of failure other than log details. Device manufacturers are relieved of the time and effort required to implement reliable updates.€ 

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • LibreOffice 7.5.1 Community available for download

        LibreOffice 7.5.1 Community, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 7.5 line, the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop productivity, is available from our download page for Windows (Intel/AMD and ARM processors), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel processors), and Linux [1].

    • GNU Projects

    • Programming/Development

  • Leftovers


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