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Links 10/06/2023: libei 1.0.0 and Qt Creator 11 Beta



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Linux in the Ham ShackLHS Episode #506: The Weekender CIV

        It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our departure into the world of hedonism, random topic excursions, whimsy and (hopefully) knowledge.

    • Applications

      • Beebom5 Best Sticky Note Apps for Linux (2023) | Beebom

        One of the best ways to take note of your schedule, chores, and things to do is by using sticky note apps. For those unaware, a basic sticky notes app can be used to pen down important things, which could be chores, to-do lists, or ideas when you’re browsing. Linux has quite a decent collection of productivity apps and here are the five best sticky note apps for Linux.

      • TechRepublic6 Best Linux project management software in 2023

        Project management solutions allow for efficient task management, project progress tracking, smooth team collaboration and several other benefits. There are several project management applications that work on Linux. In this article, we share the six best Linux project management software in 2023. You will get to learn about the key features, pros, cons and pricing for each software. We also shared some tips on choosing the best Linux project management software for your needs.

      • Free Desktoplibei 1.0.0
        libei 1.0.0 is now available.
        
        

        libei is a library to send Emulated Input (EI) to a matching Emulated Input Server (EIS) which can receive those events with libeis, also part of this project.

        libei uses GitLab releases, for tarballs please see: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libei/-/releases/1.0.0

        # Changes:

        Note that there is one minor protocol change (`ei_connection.sync`) and one ABI (not API) change in libeis since the RC2 despite previous statements that the protocol and API are stable. In both cases it was better to do it now while every user of libei(s) is still in draft than having to special-case those instances for the next 10 years. An rebuild will take care of of the ABI change, making sure libei
    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • QtQt Creator 11 Beta released

          We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 11 Beta!

        • GSoC-23 Community Bonding Period Blog #2

          Hello world,

          This is my second blog post for Google Summer of Code 2023, where I will share what I accomplished during the GSoC-23 community bonding period.

          Community Bonding period

          During this time GSoC contributors spend 3 weeks learning about their organization’s community and preparing for their coding project. They get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects

          During the community bonding period, the organizers took two introductory sessions kick starting our journey. The first Welcome Session was about the best practices and tips for a successful Google Summer of Code. Following that, GSoC Contributor Summit took place, during which previous participants and mentors shared their experiences of being part of GSoC.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Akshay Warrier: GSoC 2023: Week 2 Report

          In this post, I’ll go over everything I did in my first two weeks of€ GSoC.

          Project

          Make GNOME Platform demos for Workbench

          Mentors

          Sonny Piers, Andy€ Holmes

          Project Planning

          We first started out with a meeting to discuss a project plan, decide what needs to be done, and came up with a workflow that’ll work for everyone. Sonny made a Kanban board and filled it with some tickets to start us off. Our mentors briefly explained to us the functionality of some of the widgets and gave us an idea of what’s expected from the demos, so that we are not completely clueless when we start working on them. And when everyone is on the same page, we mark the ticket as “Ready” which means anyone is free to take up the ticket and start working on it. We also decided that we’ll have meetings weekly, to discuss the upcoming week’s work and also solve any issues or roadblocks that we may have come across along the€ way.

          Week 1

          The first thing I did was finish one of my previously open pull requests which was a demo for AdwHeaderBar, a simple widget but a very commonly used one. The demo shows a header bar with a primary menu, a secondary “Open” menu, and a “New Tab” button similar to Text€ Editor.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • GNUGNU Guix: Parameterized Packages for GNU€ Guix

      Hello Guix!

      I'm Sarthak and I'll be working on implementing Parameterized Packages for GNU€ Guix as a Google Summer of Code intern under the guidance of Pjotr Prins and Gábor Boskovits.

      What are Parameterized Packages?

      One of the many advantages of free software is the availability of compile-time options for almost all packages. Thanks to its dedication to building all packages from source, Guix is one of the few GNU/Linux distributions that can take advantage of these compile-time features; in fact, many advanced users such as those using Guix on High-Performance Computing Systems and new ISAs like RISC-V have already been doing this by utilizing a feature known as Package Transformations.

      Parameterized Packages are a new type of package transformations that will be able to tweak an even wider array of compile-time options, such as removing unused dependencies or building a package with support for just a specific locale. These will have a wide variety of applications, ranging from High-Performance Computing to Embedded Systems and could also help tackle a few of Guix's issues like large binary sizes and dense dependency graphs.

    • Barry KaulerlibGLX.so.0 fix for Kdenlive AppImage

      I posted about the missing libGLX.so.0 in the Kdenlive AppImage:

      https://bkhome.org/news/202305/kdenlive-appimage-vs-flatpak.html

      libGLX.so.0 is in the 'libglvnd' package, that is in mainstream Linux distributions, but not in EasyOS. It is a wrapper for different libGL packages, as explained here: [...]

    • Barry KaulerRun QEMU VM in EasyOS

      I haven't had much to do with VMs in the past, but there is a lot of interest, so looking into it.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • Fedora ProjectFedora Community Blog: CPE Weekly Update – Week 23 2022

        We provide you both infographic and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

        Week: 05 June – 09 June 2023

      • My thoughts on Flatpak (that nobody asked for)

        Hindsight preface: This was written in very tired state.

        I have been chatting about this with people who know more than I ever will about Flatpak.

        Soo I have added few edits here and there.

        If I seem frustrated, most of my frustration is aimed at the unnecessary shit slinging over packaging formats.

        We all want the good stuff, why the hell are we fighting?!

      • Jiri Eischmann: Help Us Test Evolution

        It was not an easy task to make Evolution run nicely as a flatpak, but Milan Crha managed to do it and we’ve been fine-tuning it for the last 3 years. There are still some use cases that don’t fully work in a flatpak, but they don’t affect most users. Evolution has established itself well on Flathub, too. It has accumulated over 130k installs. There are roughly 12-15k “active” installations.

        Some time ago I also started building Evolution for the beta channel on Flathub. When there are already development releases of the upcoming version (it will be 3.49.x this cycle), I build those for the beta channel. If they’re not available yet, I push stable releases there right after the upstream release is done, roughly one week before they go to the stable channel.

    • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • UbuntuRelease management for snaps made simpler

        Release management is the process of planning, scheduling, testing and deploying new versions of software. To make this process simpler for snap developers, we have released a new feature called progressive releases. Continue reading to understand what they are, why they are important and how you can use them in the Snap Store.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • NXP Releases New Processor Family to Support Linux-based Edge Devices

        The latest NXP edge processor has built-in support for a familiar development tool.

        Aiming to bring the flexibility of Linux to edge computing hardware, NXP Semiconductors has released the i.MX 91 family of processors. The i.MX 91 family is the latest release in the i.MX 9 series of applications processors that provide higher performance and improved security to bolster the extensibility at the edge.

      • A No-Fee Linux CVE Scan from Wind River

        Wind River released a no-fee professional-grade scanning tool to identify Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). The Wind River Studio Linux Security Scanning Service is designed for the distinct requirements of embedded Linux environments indicating when a fix or patch is available for a given CVE.

      • Electronics WeeklyProcessor boards for touch displays can run Linux

        Powertip has created a multi-option display-driving single-board computer (right) that uses daughter boards (left below) to add Quad core 64bit Arm CPUs running at 1.6GHz – either NXP with four Cortex-A53 CPUs, or Rockchip with four Cortex-A35 CPUs.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • CollaboraMLfix to quickly fix datasets

      Contrary to traditional software development, data is more important than code in machine learning. Building a high-performing model requires using reliable, precisely labelled data but poor-quality data is not always obvious.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Programming/Development

      • My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects

        Whether it's building a new project from scratch, implementing a big feature, or beginning a large refactor, it can be difficult to stay motivated and complete large technical projects. A method that works really well for me is to continuously see real results and to order my work based on that.

        We've all experienced that feeling of excitement starting a new project. The first few weeks you can't wait to get on the computer to work. Then slowly over time you get distracted or make up excuses and work on it less. If this is for real work, you forcibly slog your way to the finish line but every day is painful. If this is for fun, you look back years from now and remember what could've been.

        I've learned that when I break down my large tasks in chunks that result in seeing tangible forward progress, I tend to finish my work and retain my excitement throughout the project. People are all motivated and driven in different ways, so this may not work for you, but as a broad generalization I've not found an engineer who doesn't get excited by a good demo. And the goal is to always give yourself a good demo.

      • The Many Problems with Celery | Log Blog Kebab

        With some possible fixes

      • InfoQDebugging Outside Your Comfort Zone: Diving Beneath a Trusted Abstraction

        This article takes a deep dive through a complex outage in the main database cluster of a payments company. We’ll focus on the aftermath of the incident and dive deep into the internals of Postgres.

      • Python

        • TecAdminSetting and Getting the Default Timezone in Python

          Working with timezones is an essential part of many Python applications. Whether you're building a scheduling system, a logging tool, or any other application that involves dates and times, setting the default timezone is a critical function.

      • Rust

        • The Rust I Wanted Had No Future

          In a recent podcast about Rust leadership, the BDFL question came up again and Jeremy Soller said (in the understatement of the century) that "I believe Graydon would have said no to some things we all like now". And this echoes a different conversation on reddit where I was reminded that I meant to write down at some point how "I would have done it all differently" (and that this would probably have been extremely unsatisfying to everyone involved, and it never would have gone anywhere).

          Boy Howdy would I ever. This is maybe not clear enough, and it might make the question of whether the project "really should have had a BDFL" a little sharper to know this: the Rust We Got is many, many miles away from The Rust I Wanted. I mean, don't get me wrong: like the result. It's great. I'm thrilled to have a viable C++ alternative, especially one people are starting to consider a norm, a reasonable choice for day-to-day use. I use it and am very happy to use it in preference to C++. But!

          There are so, so many diferences from what I would have done, if I'd been "in charge" the whole time.

  • Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Slow News, But Not Slow for Us
So far this year (maybe premature to say so because many journalists are still on holiday) the news is very, very slow
A Golden Opportunity that Canonical and IBM Intentionally Ignore (in Order to Appease Microsoft)
They're too dependent on Microsoft "sweeteners"
Canada: Windows at All-Time Lows, ChromeOS and GNU/Linux Rise to Almost 8%
It is widely known that many schools in Canada adopted ChromeOS
In Mexico, Windows Down to All-Time Low, GNU/Linux Up to All-Time High
Yesterday we showed that in North America adoption of GNU/Linux is growing fast
GNU/Linux and ChromeOS in Australia Tripled in 5 Years? That's How statCounter Sees It....
Based on statCounter...
GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Indonesia (Population Size Near 300 Million)
You would need not envy "Microsoft Indonesia" right now
GNU/Linux Back to 5% in 2025
That's not counting ChromeOS
GNU/Linux Gained About 0.5% Last Year, According to StatCounter
2024 ended with "proper" GNU/Linux at +0.4%, ChromeOS at +0.1% (based on statCounter/StatCounter)
 
Engineering Things to Last 70 Years in an 8-Bit, 16-Bit, and 32-Bit World
Nowadays they make things that barely last 7 years
GNU/Linux Rose to 5% in Belgium (It Was 1.66% Last January)
Trebling in 12 months, according to statCounter
[Memes] Two Dictators. Donald Trump Loves TikTok.
This is a problem
Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) Spreads Political Propaganda Against the Internet (and the Web)
Then people wonder why trust in the media has gotten so low
[Meme] Crushing Free Speech Before Even Taking Public Office...
someone who isn't even president is already meddling
[Meme] Be a Good and Obedient Citizen. Use Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft actively works with China to censor search results and spy on citizens
In Hong Kong and Taiwan People Flock to GNU/Linux (Unlike Windows, GNU/Linux Doesn't Capture Screenshots of Everything You Do and Add Back Doors to Encryption)
Hong Kong and Taiwan have bright engineers. They know Windows is a joke.
The Free Software Foundation Extends Cutoff Date (Two More Weeks), Raises About 330,000 Dollars
Isn't it predictable that people who worked for Microsoft GitHub gave money to some unscrupulous lawyers in London to harass us?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 02, 2025
Windows Falls to ~22% in France and Spain, Based on statCounter
Windows 'corrected' at 22% "market share" in France - i.e. roughly the same as Spain
Gemini Links 02/01/2025: Goals 2025, Microsofter Clickbaiting Again, Advice for the Newbie or Returning Perl Hacker
Links for the day
When Your Get Your "Latest Technology News" From an LLM Slop Farm
They still call themselves "BetaNews" (the word "news" is in the name)
[Meme] Wrestling With Pigs in Social Control Media
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Even Worse Than Racism at the Linux Foundation
And worse than corporate colonialism
It's Not Just MElon X, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, All Social Control Media is Basically a Digital Weapon
The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Microsoft Especially Important to Phoronix (It Also Gives Gifts to Phoronix)
A whole section devoted to Microsoft, mostly with puff pieces/ads of proprietary things
For Software Freedom (and for Broader Personal Freedom), the Goalposts Are Moving
we need to open up our eyes and identify/classify other threats, such as social control media
Microsoft Plummets to New Lows in Azerbaijan
Perhaps the Azerbaijani population is looking for something other than the NSA's foremost facilitator
We Need Something More Like DMOZ, Not Search Engines and Bill-Funded Wikipedia (Censoring Unfaltering Information About Powerful People and Institutions)
era of LLMs trained on Wikipedia... Microsoft tried - and failed - to game the narrative to the same extent Google does
Tens of Billions of Dollars Down the Drain (Microsoft Lost the Search "Arms Race" or Market)
But caused injury to itself and others, just like with Nokia in mobile
Seems Like GNU/Linux Usage Doubled in Japan Last Year
So says statCounter data anyway
GNU/Linux Measured at 4.4% in South America and 3.34% in Africa, Based on 2025's Preliminary Data
All-time highs
GNU/Linux Leaps to 6% in the United States of America (Not Even Counting ChromeOS)
Additionally, the FSF in Boston is managing well
GNU/Linux Usage in Europe Leaps Above 6% in 2025
This is a big deal because a lot of Microsoft's revenue came from Europe
Windows Falls to 22.5% Worldwide, Android Up to 48%
The world's (by far) biggest populations don't use Windows much
Links 02/01/2025: Production of Apple Vision Pro Halted, More on Public Domain Day 2025
Links for the day
Links 02/01/2025: OpenAI Whistleblower Suchir Balaji Alleged to Have Been Murdered, Islamic Terrorism in New Orleans
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/01/2025: Friends, Blunder Valley, and New Year
Links for the day
Links 02/01/2025: Violence Crisis in South Africa and Arrest Warrant for South Korean Leadership
Links for the day
Rumour: IBM Will Try to Induce Mass Resignations This Month Using R.T.O. (Just Like Amazon Does This Month)
Amazon will start some of this in March, sources have told us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Last Day of 2024 Was Spent by Brittany Day Publishing Only Fake 'Articles' (LLM Slop) About "Linux", Joined by Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli
Not even a holiday was enough to stop Day from "spamming" the Web with fake 'articles' (LLM slop) about "Linux"
Gemini Links 01/01/2025: Looking Back at 2024 and Happy 2025
Links for the day
Addendum: What the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) Really Is
Not serum free light chains (SFLC)
Microsoft FakeHub: Identity Theft in Microsoft GitHub (Microsoft Won't Bother Addressing It; It Gives a False Impression of Adoption by GNU/Linux Veterans)
This is the same company that kept intact deleted accounts and counted them as if they're live and active (to hide the gradual abandonment and demise of the "hub")
Microsoft Tries to Force People Into Vista 11 by Stopping Vista 10 Patching, Herding Them Into TPMdom
It's backfiring
CyberShow Blog Upgraded, RSS Feed Added
CyberShow Blog has just had somewhat of a facelift
Sitting on a Mountain of Money (Almost 8 Million Dollars) is "Pro Bono"
Does the general public realise what SFC is?
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc (SFC) Lost Revenue and Also Got Rid of "Senior Director of Diversity and Inclusion" (Sage A Sharp, Formerly Known as Sarah Sharp, Who Ran an Ill-Spirited Campaign Against Linus Torvalds, Theodore Tso, and Other Prominent Linux Developers)
Not much needs to be said; a little needs to be shown (from an authoritative source, the IRS)
In Operating Systems, Google Was the Biggest Winner in 2024
Nevertheless, 10% of the managers are to be laid off shortly (after a leak led to confirmation by the CEO)
FSF-EEE (Colonial Splinter Group Based in Germany) Promotes Microsoft
New and misleading
Did GAFAM or IBM 'Downgrade' Pensions to 'Insurance' (Which Can be Denied)?
'Insurance' does not mean what it may sound like
Gemini Protocol Continued to Grow in 2024
it's no longer hosted from home
Geoffrey Knauth, FSF President and Treasurer, Comments on the FSF Raising Over $300,000
Now almost $304,000
Links 01/01/2025: Whistleblowers Shunned, EU/Germany Blasts Twitter (X, MElon) Interference
Links for the day
Mother of OpenAI Whistleblower Says Her Son Was Murdered (He Accused OpenAI of Copyright Violations at a Massive Scale, OpenAI is Running Out of Money That It Borrowed)
"Mother of OpenAI Whistleblower Alleges He Was Murdered, Says There Were Signs of Struggle"
Housekeeping and Productivity
The less we tinker with those things (system administration tasks), the more we can write and curate links
The Engineering Side in 2024: A Look Back, Taking Stock
uptime was somewhere around 99.95%
Dr. Andy Farnell Nominates Gromit the Dog "as an Unlikely Hacker Hero."
The world needs more decent engineers
The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Holiday Fund-Raising Campaign Reaches About $303,000
in some parts of the US it's still 2024
[Meme] The Microsoft Syndrome
Typical Microsoftism
Gemini Links 01/01/2025: Reflecting on 2024 and FSMs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 31, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 31, 2024