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Links 23/03/2023: RSS Guard 4.3.3 and OpenBSD Webzine



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Liliputing Kubuntu Focus Xe Gen 2 is a 14 inch Linux laptop with Intel Alder Lake-P for $895 and up

        The Kubuntu Focus Xe Gen 2 is a thin and light notebook computer with a 14 inch full HD display, support for up to up to an Intel Core i7-1260P processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and PCIe 4 NVMe storage. It ships with the Kubuntu 22.04 LTS GNU/Linux distribution pre-installed.

        An upgrade over the original Focus Xe, which launched in 2021, the new model brings up to a 60-percent boost in multi-core performance while keeping the same $895 starting price as its predecessor. It’s available now from Kubuntu Focus website.

      • HowTo Geek The New Kubuntu XE Could Be the Linux Laptop for You
        There are more choices than ever for a great Linux laptop, especially from companies like System76 and Framework. Now, the Kubuntu Focus team wants to launch the definitive Linux laptop — with the new, second-gen Focus XE laptop.

        The Kubuntu Focus XE Gen 2 laptop has arrived, promising to deliver the best out-of-the-box Linux experience for users that don’t necessarily need what a dedicated GPU has to offer. By ditching things like a dedicated GPU, the Kubuntu Focus team said that it can sell a pretty affordable package all-in-all. We wouldn’t exactly call it affordable at $895, but at least its specs make up for it.

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNHeuristics for software-interrupt processing

        The kernel's software-interrupt ("softirq") mechanism was added prior to the 1.0 kernel release, but it implements a design seen in systems that were already old when Linux was born. For much of that time, softirqs have been an impediment to the kernel community's scalability and response-time goals, but they have proved resistant to removal. A recent discussion on a proposed new heuristic to mitigate a softirq-related performance problem may have reinvigorated interest in doing something about this subsystem as a whole rather than just tweaking the parameters of how it operates.

        Hardware interrupts are generated when some component of the system needs the CPU's attention to, for example, deal with a completed I/O operation. The processing of hardware interrupts is one of the highest-priority tasks in the kernel; an interrupt will preempt almost anything else that might be running, so the amount of work done in interrupt handlers must be kept to a minimum to avoid adversely affecting the rest of the system. The softirq mechanism was designed to allow hardware-interrupt handlers to set aside work to be done urgently — but not quite as urgently as hardware-interrupt processing.

      • LWNAn EEVDF CPU scheduler for Linux

        The kernel's completely fair scheduler (CFS) has the job of managing the allocation of CPU time for most of the processes running on most Linux systems. CFS was merged for the 2.6.23 release in 2007 and has, with numerous ongoing tweaks, handled the job reasonably well ever since. CFS is not perfect, though, and there are some situations it does not handle as well as it should. The EEVDF scheduler, posted by Peter Zijlstra, offers the possibility of improving on CFS while reducing its dependence on often-fragile heuristics.

    • Applications

      • NeowinRSS Guard 4.3.3

        RSS Guard is a simple (yet powerful) feed reader. It is able to fetch the most known feed formats, including RSS/RDF and ATOM. It's free, it's open-source. RSS Guard currently supports Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian. RSS Guard will never depend on other services - this includes online news aggregators like Feedly, The Old Reader and others.

      • LWNInterview: the FreeCAD Project Association

        The sustainability of free software continues to be mostly uncharted waters. No team is the same as any other, so copying, say, the Blender Foundation’s approach to governance will, most likely, not work for other projects. But there is value in understanding how various non-commercial organizations operate in order to make informed decisions for the governance of new ones. In late 2021, the FreeCAD team launched the FreeCAD Project Association (FPA) to handle the various assets that belong to this free 3D CAD project. In this interview, Yorik van Havre, a longtime FreeCAD developer — and current president of the Association — guides us through the process of starting and managing the FPA.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • FOSSLinuxThe guide to configuring PulseAudio in Linux Mint

        PulseAudio is a sound server used in many Linux distributions, including Linux Mint. It provides advanced features like network transparency, software mixing, and per-application volume controls. However, configuring PulseAudio can be challenging for new users. In this article, we will guide you through the process of setting up and customizing PulseAudio in Linux Mint.

      • ZDNetHow to share folders across your network from Fedora Linux | ZDNET

        Fedora Linux makes it incredibly easy to share your Public folder, without having to install any third-party software or touch the command line.

      • BeebomHow to Shutdown Linux Using Command Line and GUI | Beebom

        For a fairly new Linux user, things can be a bit overwhelming in the beginning. While the robustness and unlimited customizability options are attractive, performing basic tasks can be daunting, especially if you are unaware of the proper commands to use. For instance, you need to shut down your system, but as a new user, you are struggling to figure out the right commands to turn off your Linux computer. Though shutting down may seem like an easy task, if done incorrectly, can result in loss of data or worse – could end up corrupting your system. So, if you are a novice Linux user looking to avoid any mishaps, follow this guide to learn the safest methods to shutdown a Linux system, both through the command line and the graphical user interface (GUI).

    • Games

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • LinuxiacProxmox VE 7.4 Comes with an Updated Virtualization Stack

      Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) is an open-source server virtualization management platform. Based on Debian GNU/Linux, Proxmox VE supports a variety of virtualization technologies, including KVM and LXC Linux Containers. In addition, Proxmox VE also supports various storage types, including local storage, networked storage, and software-defined storage solutions.

      The platform is often used in data centers and other large-scale IT enterprise environments where server virtualization is critical for efficient resource utilization and management. However, due to its ease of use and flexibility, it is also suitable for smaller-scale deployments, such as home labs and small businesses.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • LWNZephyr: a modular OS for resource-constrained devices

      Writing applications for devices with a lot of resource constraints, such as a small amount of RAM or no memory-management unit (MMU), poses some challenges. Running a Linux distribution often isn't an option on these devices, but there are operating systems that try to bridge the gap between running a Linux distribution and using bare-metal development. One of these is Zephyr, a real-time operating system (RTOS) launched by the Linux Foundation in 2016. LWN looked in on Zephyr at its four-year anniversary as well. Seven years after its announcement, Zephyr has made lots of progress and now has an active ecosystem surrounding it.

      Zephyr is an RTOS for connected, resource-constrained devices, such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, Bluetooth trackers, heart rate monitors, smartwatches, and embedded controllers. A typical device running Zephyr has a microcontroller with a clock frequency below 100MHz, no MMU, 32KB to 256KB of static RAM, and 512KB or less of on-chip flash memory.

    • LWNRules as code for more responsive governance

      Using rules as code to help bridge the gaps between policy creation, its implementation, and its, often unintended, effects on people was the subject of a talk by Pia Andrews on the first day of the inaugural Everything Open conference in Melbourne, Australia. She has long been exploring the space of open government, and her talk was a report on what she and others have been working on over the last seven years. Everything Open is the successor to the long-running, well-regarded linux.conf.au (LCA); Andrews (then Pia Waugh) gave the opening keynote at LCA 2017 in Hobart, Tasmania, and helped organize the 2007 event in Sydney.

      Andrews said that she has a dream of a world where government policy is built in a way that is accountable, participatory, humane, adaptive, and accessible. Those who are affected by these policies should be able to easily understand, apply, and question them; policies should not be written in some ivory tower, but should be created in conjunction with those who must follow them. She dreams of policies that are based on human values, rather than only on what is good for the economy, since relying solely on the latter has not worked out so well, she said; "make what's good for people and then the economy will follow". Rather than just writing policy once and "throwing it out in the ether and hoping", it should be iterated upon, so that even bad policy has a chance to become good based on looking at its actual impact on people. That description of her public-policy dream was met with a good bit of applause.

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • The day after a hard day's work

        It's been a particularly wet and windy winter here in northern California.

        My parents run a horse boarding operation and they've had close to 20 trees come down over the past few months. They're both getting older now and things that they used to be able to do have gotten a lot harder, especially for my dad. They're both still very mobile and capable, but they can only do physically intensive tasks for a few hours, with breaks. Before my job at the store, I was working there a few days a week to do what my parents either didn't have time for or physically couldn't do. In the first few weeks of January, before school started, any day I didn't have work at the store, I was up there helping clear out the trees that had fallen. When school started up I had to cut it down to once a week, and then when my manager tacked on an additional shift, it was dropped down to just the afternoon on one day.

      • Relocating Gornate Forest to Burdock’s Valley

        OK, def do not read this post if you are playing in an Arden Vul campaign.

        It’s for DMs only.

        I found that the module The Forest of Gornate fits pretty well in Burdock’s Valley and it’s also for 1e. Hopefully a good mashup.

      • Re: Computer Addiction

        Edward Willis over at encw.xyz wrote recently* about computer addiction[1]. No earth-shattering revelations, especially for people who use gopher I think. But still worth reading and remembering.

    • Technical

      • Search Result Quality For Multiple Terms

        Marginalia's search result quality has, for a long while, been pretty good as long as your search query is a single term, but for multiple search terms it's been a bit hit-and-miss. Marginalia was never great at this, but the quality of results in this usage pattern has taken a bit of a dive recently due to a re-write of the index last fall.

        During The Grand Restructuring, the opportunity arose to isolate the code responsible for result ranking and expose it to some well-needed scrutiny. It turns out it was pretty broken.


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



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