Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 06/08/2023: Games, GNOME, and IBM History With GNU/Linux



  • GNU/Linux

    • Kernel Space

      • Dave AirlieDave Airlie: nvk: the kernel changes needed

        The initial NVK (nouveau vulkan) experimental driver has been merged into mesa master[1], and although there's lots of work to be done before it's application ready, the main reason it was merged was because the initial kernel work needed was merged into drm-misc-next[2] and will then go to drm-next for the 6.6 merge window. (This work is separate from the GSP firmware enablement required for reclocking, that is a parallel development, needed to make nvk useable). Faith at Collabora will have a blog post about the Mesa side, this is more about the kernel journey.

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Boiling SteamDave the Diver Review on the Steam Deck

        Dave the Diver was an Early Access game that just jumped to a 1.0 Release within the past month. It’s been doing very well since then and passed the million sales mark, which is awesome for an indie game.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Akademy 2023

          (German version of this post: https://wordsmith.social/felixernst/akademy-2023)

          37 €°C were the average daily temperature heights during the Akademy week in Thessaloniki. When you walk outside at these temperatures, your first thought is that you would rather go back inside. This used to be a temperature that one would hardly ever see there. 38 €°C has not been exceeded in Thessaloniki in the 5 year span 1980 to 1984. But actually we were lucky, because the real heat wave only came around when we already left with around 44 €°C in Thessaloniki and forest fires everywhere. It is a shame that with the current global political landscape none of this seems likely to become any better (to put it mildly) within our lifetimes. The nature in Greece is very nice aside from that.

        • Nate GrahamKDE: Bug fixes are a good thing, not a bad thing

          Occasionally I see online comments saying things like, “more bugfixes week after week; KDE must be a real train wreck!” or “15 years of Wayland and it’s still needing bug fixes; it’ll never be ready!”

          It can be a bit funny to see people interpret normal code maintenance as evidence of critical bugginess. But this does make some sense; most objects and systems you’re familiar with around your house and in your life don’t require constant fixing to avoid collapsing, right? They have a bounded problem space; the scope of what they’re expected to do is fixed. Your coffee maker just needs to make coffee! Tomorrow you aren’t going to ask it to make juice, and the electrical outlet it plugs into isn’t going to morph overnight into something physically incompatible with the plug. So the people who built that coffee maker just have to make sure it brews coffee correctly and reliably given the current arrangement of the world around it. Its problem space is bounded.

        • Harald SitterHarald Sitter: Windows Store Crashes in Sentry

          At KDE we make software for many different platforms. One of them is Microsoft Windows. But what if an application crashes on Windows? New tech enables us to track crashes right in Sentry! Time to learn about it.

          When an application crashes on Windows the user can submit crash data to Microsoft. Later KDE, as publisher of the app, can retrieve the crashes from there. This is the standard crash handling for the platform and it works incredibly well. What’s more, it means we don’t need to engineer our own custom solution for the entire process. So, that is all lovely.

          Alas, since we are rolling out a KDE-wide crash tracking system called Sentry it would be even nicer if we had Windows crashes in there rather than third party service. That is just what I’ve built recently.

          Crashes for our Windows applications now get imported into Sentry!

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • This Week in GNOMEThis Week in GNOME/Felix Häcker: #107 Reduced Overheads

          Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from July 28 to August 04.

        • GNOMEChristian Hergert: More Sysprof’ing
          GWeather

          Last time I wrote we talked about a new search index for libgweather. In the end I decided to take another route so that we can improve application performance without any changes. Instead, I added a kdtree to do nearest neighbor search when deserializing GWeatherLocation. That code path was looking for the nearest city from a latitude/longitude in degrees.

          The merge request indexes some 10,000 lat/lon points in radians at startup into a kd-tree. When deserializing it can find nearest city without the need for a linear scan. Maybe this is enough to allow significantly more data into the database someday so my small hometown can be represented.

          Nautilus
          I found a peculiarity in that I was seeing a lot of gtk_init() calls while profiling search. That means processes are being spawned. Since I have D-Bus session capture in Sysprof now, I was able to find this being caused by Nautilus sending an org.freedesktop.DBus.Peer.Ping() RPC to kgx and gnome-disks.
  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Josh JusticeInstalling Haiku on Apple silicon Using UTM

      Haiku is an open-source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. It’s inspired by BeOS. To learn about the history of BeOS and Haiku, check out the video The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of BeOS.

      Haiku runs on Intel processors, but what are your options if you have an Apple silicon Mac? You can actually run Haiku in UTM, a virtual machine platform that supports emulating other processors.

      Let’s walk through the process of installing Haiku on UTM. You can go through the steps in this blog post or watch in video form: [...]

    • HaikuOS[GSoC 2023] VPN Support Project Update #5
      Tempered Optimism

      So great news everyone, OpenVPN and the TUN/TAP driver is working on Haiku! While this is great news for the development of the project, I need to temper it with some problems that the project has encountered now. So first thing that I had to change first was going from TUN to TAP since OpenVPN wanted a Point-to-Point connection for the TUN driver and Point-to-Point isn’t quite a thing on Haiku yet. I had a lot of trouble with routing with TUN, so I moved onto TAP, and that seems to work… sort of. The main thing is that Haiku can be a client fine but it has some trouble being a server as OpenVPN can set the server up, and have a client OpenVPN connect to it (let us say the client is running Linux), but the client cannot ping the Haiku server. When I try to ping the server, ping will just say Destination Host Unreachable. Looking further into it using tcpdump, I realized that the client is trying to send ARP request to try and find the server and the Haiku server isn’t responding. Checking the Haiku side of things, I noticed that it wasn’t receiving the ARP requests to begin with so I have a hunch it might be the VirtualBox NAT Network I am using but I am not ruling out the possibility of the TAP driver or the TAP interface.

    • Barry KaulerParcellite and Qlipper clipboard managers compiled in OE

      Commits. Parcellite:

      https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-kirkstone/commit/a1bca6f38dcfe5c21fa919ff46676a2363bb7b70

      Qlipper:

      https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-kirkstone/commit/1a1c99f1bae70b1600b77c6fd083a7596c0fa24d

      I have removed Glipper-lite clipboard manager from the inbuilt package-list for EasyOS, as it is English-only. Have replaced it with Parcellite.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

      • PCLOS OfficialPCLinuxOS: Firefox updated to 116.0.1

        Mozilla Firefox has been updated to 116.0.1 for PCLinuxOS. This is a bug fix update to the 116.x series. Now available in the software repository.

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Dominique LeuenbergeropenSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the weeks 2023/30 & 31

        Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

        As so often during the vacation season, I take some Fridays off and am punished for it by having to do reviews spanning more than one week. The same thing happened this time, so you had to wait an extra week again to find out what happened in Tumbleweed. A total of 10 snapshots have been published since my last review (0719, 0724, 0727..0731, 0801, 0802, and 0803). Between 0719 and 0724, there was a more significant gap due to SUSE moving some infrastructure between data centers.

      • SUSE's Corporate BlogCentOS Alternatives: Migrating Workloads From CentOS To OpenSUSE Leap – Automating With Ansible Part 1

        In this blog posts, we’ll dive into adapting your Ansible code made for CentOS to openSUSE Leap, ensuring seamless compatibility. In this first part, we’ll provide advice and a general introduction to ease your way into the process.

    • Fedora Family / IBM

      • ! Avi Alkalay €¡: My time on the IBM Linux Impact Team, and legacy

        In this extensive article, Jon “MadDog” delves into the behind-the-scenes narrative of how Linux and Open Source gained acceptance within the corporate sphere, eventually establishing itself as the dominant platform in today’s enterprise information technology. It has become the operating system powering contemporary cloud infrastructure and, most notably, has transformed into the primary methodology for driving software innovation.

        Interwoven throughout the article are accounts of my personal journey during my time at IBM, specifically during the unforgettable years as a member of the IBM Linux Impact Team. Our mission achieved remarkable success, evident today every time a non-desktop IT professional interacts with a computer system, which is now commonly built entirely on dependable, enterprise-ready Open Source software.

        While people tell success stories in specific projects, what we did between 2001 and 2008 changed the entire IT industry! Without that evangelism and adoption of Open Source work, you as an IT professional would probably be using only Windows and Solaris today. You wouldn’t have embraced the cloud, wouldn’t know what DevOps is, and would likely be completely 100% dependent on software licensing.

        My blog is full of stories from that time.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • LinuxiacIncus Project: A Breakaway from Canonical’s LXD
        In the fast-paced world of technology, open-source projects often experience changes in leadership and direction.

        One such instance occurred when Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, recently took over LXD, a widely-used container and virtual machine manager, which was part of the Linux Containers Project for years.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Linux GizmosAvalue launches 3.5” SBC with Hybrid design

        Avalue launched this week a 3.5” Single Board Computer that supports both 12th Gen CPUs and Intel 13th Gen i5/i3 processors. The ECM-ADLS is also equipped with multiple peripherals including dual 2.5GbE ports and NVMe support.€ 

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • ArduinoProject Hub highlights: There’s something for everyone!

        The three great projects selected in May for our Arduino Project of the Month competition are a reminder that making allows anyone to work (or play!) with technology – regardless of their goal, skill level, budget or inspiration.

      • Tom's HardwareUnihiker Single-Board Computer Review: Fun for Beginners, Less-so for Makers

        Another Raspberry Pi alternative but this time the form factor is all about the screen.

      • peppe8oRaspberry PI Pico W Weather Monitor with e-Paper

        This tutorial will show you how to create a cool Raspberry PI Pico Weather Display with an e-Paper (e-Ink) monitor showing the weather status...

      • James StanleyThe Egyptian coin box

        I have invented a new magic trick. It involves a very thin wooden box with 5 locations for coins inside, each labelled with one of the 5 bodily senses. A spectator places a coin inside, without telling the magician where it is. The magician then makes a show of listening to the box, sniffing the box, etc., and successfully determines where the coin was placed.

      • Ken ShirriffA close look at the 8086 processor's bus hold circuitry

        This blog post explains in detail how the bus hold feature is implemented in the processor's logic. (Be warned that this post is a detailed look at a somewhat obscure feature.) I've also found some apparently undocumented characteristics of the 8086's hold acknowledge circuitry, designed to make signal transition faster on the shared control lines.

      • Andrew HutchingsAmiga 4000 Restoration x2: Part 2

        Both Amiga 4000s are missing covers for the bottom drive bay. There are STL files to 3D print for these readily available, so the question is, what colour?

      • Tom's HardwareRaspberry Pi Lightsaber Puts the Force in Your Hands

        The housing for the project is available for anyone to download and 3D print at home. You can find them on the project page over at the Adafruit website. In addition, you’ll need an Adafruit RP2040 Prop-Maker Feather with I2S Audio Amplifier, a push button, an LED strip, a slide switch, a speaker module and in this case, they recommend a 3.7V Lithium-Ion cylindrical battery.

    • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Medevel15 Open-source Free Self-hosted Survey Poll and Vote Generator Solutions

      A survey generator is a tool that allows users to create and distribute surveys to collect data from a specific audience. These generators can be built into a website or hosted separately, and offer various features such as customizable questions and templates, skip logic, and data analysis tools.

    • Programming/Development

      • Balthazar RouberolHow to profile a FastAPI asynchronous request

        I have been experimenting with FastAPI recently, a Python API framework self-describing as "high performance, easy to learn, fast to code, ready for production".

        One of the features I wanted my project to have is to be fully asynchronous, from the app server to the SQL requests. As the API is mostly I/O bound, this would allow it to handle many concurrent requests with a single server process, instead of starting a thread per request, as one commony seen with Flask/Gunicorn.

        However, this poses a challenge when it comes to profiling the code and interpreting the results.

      • Gilles ChehadePlakar: vfs importer interface

        I reworked the virtual filesystem layer in plakar, making it possible to write custom importers of data: use plakar to backup an s3 bucket, for instance.

      • QtQt Creator 11.0.1 released

        We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 11.0.1!

      • TecAdminChanging default Host and Port in React.JS

        React.js, a powerful JavaScript library developed by Facebook, is used to build user interfaces, especially for single-page applications. You’ll often use it to build complex UIs out of small, reusable pieces called “components”.

      • HackadayMicroLisp: Lisp For Microcontrollers Now Has Lisp-Based ARM Assembler

        In a way it feels somewhat silly to market a version of Lisp as targeting resource-constrained platforms, considering the systems it ran on back in the 1960s, but as time goes on, what would have given 1970s Big Iron a run for its money is now a sub-$5 microcontroller that you can run uLisp (MicroLisp) on. This particular project now even has an ARM assembler that is written in Lisp whose source code (GitHub) fits on a mere two A4-sized pages.

      • Python

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Carl SchwanReuse annotate automation

          Someone pointed out that it would be great to automate the addition of the metadata inside the files based on the git repository.

          So here is a small script that does exactly that. It goes over all your .cpp and .h file and will add the header based on the list of authors as well as the first commit on that particular file.

        • University of TorontoHow the rc shell handles whitespace in various contexts

          I recently read Mark Jason Dominus's The shell and its crappy handling of whitespace, which is about the Bourne shell and its many issues with whitespace in various places. I'm a long time user of (a version of) Tom Duff's rc shell (here's why I switched), which was written for Research Unix Version 10 and then Plan 9 to (in part) fix various issues with the Bourne shell. You might ask if rc solves these whitespace issues; my answer is that it about half solves them, and the remaining half is a hard to deal with problem area (although the version of rc I use doesn't support some things that would help).



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Brand 'Watsonx' is a Terrible Name for IBM 'Hey Hi' (Chatbots) Because Watson Agreed With Adolf Hitler
Almost a century has passed and IBM still believes that selling "intelligence", chatbots in particular, should be done under the name "Watson"
Digg's Latest Incarnation Already Failed, It's Infested With LLM Slop
Many submissions go to slopfarms and some get summarised by slop
Microsoft-Controlled Media With Embargo and Press Operatives
This won't be the last example of media manipulation for narrative control or face-saving "damage control"
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part III - It's in His Eyes
Workers are free to draw their own conclusions
Former Debian Project Leader Branden Robinson Cautions Against Cover-up and Censorship in Debian
Debian drama. Again.
 
GNU/Linux Grew a Lot in Nicaragua
We've not noticed until today
Techrights Has Over 1,000 Good Articles 'in the Tank'
Drafts, notes, and lengthy documents
New Article Challenges Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Choosing the Wrong SLAPP Cases to Investigate
The one point we can agree on is that SRA does not know how to correctly select the worst culprits/offenders
Why IBM is Still Scary and Dangerous
Keep a distance from "Big Blue" Bully
Measuring the Growth of Our Mission and Community
Something between experiment and prototype
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part III - Georgia Tech Did a Fine Job Upholding Free Speech Principles
The real problem was social control media (toxic)
Debian's Master is Deleting Criticism of SystemD and Other Things (On-Topic and Published by Debian Developers), Resorts to the Excuse Messages Are "Too Long"
Censorship serves nobody except the masters that control this censorship
Gemini Links 21/02/2026: Veganism and DeskPi RackMate T0
Links for the day
On The Web, XBox Already a Dying Breed
Down to about 0.05% on large machines, based on statCounter [...] Microsoft will never publicly admit or say how many billions it lost on the XBox
2026 a Year of 'Top-Down' Microsoft Layoffs (Management First)
Stay tuned for what comes next
Your "Likes" Aren't Yours and They're Mostly "Worthless Clicks"
Social hermits are not popular, irrespective of how many "Facebook friends" or "likes" they get
Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw Lied, There Are Definitely Microsoft Layoffs
Microsoft never issued a formal statement, it made allusions by proxy
Slop Hype Makes Our Core Technology Less Reliable and Far Less Resilient (We Pay for the Catastrophe That Follows)
Only slop-free projects can be trusted
Going for 1,000 (Days of Uptime)
universal records are vastly better
Firefox is No-Go in China, Not Even 1% "Market Share" Anymore
Given Mozilla's utterly rubbish marketing these days (politics over technical aspects), set aside the cheerleading for slop, there's hardly a chance of Mozilla Firefox reaching or exceeding 10% again
Links 21/02/2026: Tensions Over Iran and Illegal Cheeto Tariffs, Presidential Approval Sags
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2026: "Moving Away From Cloudflare", Many Layoffs or Shutdowns in Games (Including XBox/Microsoft)
Links for the day
GNU Linux-libre is a Grown-Up Today
"before that, every distro that wanted to respect its users' freedom had to remove itself all of the binary blobs that were distributed as part of the kernel Linux's so-called sources"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 20, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/02/2026: "The Evil of Action" and Slop Bots Causing Great Harm Online (Not Just the Web)
Links for the day
Like a Shell
Overreactions can backfire
Not Only Leaders of XBox Got Sacked (Layoffs)
Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond got laid off
9PM on a Friday Night: Microsoft Says the Layoffs Are Not Layoffs
We've said for a long time that XBox is doomed this year
Gemini Links 20/02/2026: Misfin Server and Magic in Programming
Links for the day
analytics.usa.gov Reckons Windows "Market Share" Fell to Just 38%, Vista 11 Not Even a Third of Windows Users
This coming summer Vista 11 turns 5
The New Digg.com is Slop
Slop "summaries" and Serial Sloppers are drowning out the site with fake 'articles' (plagiarism)
Linus Torvalds: Bill Epsteingate Good Enough for Me to Wine and Dine With
Torvalds is more connected to Jeffrey Epstein than Richard Stallman ever was
Our Uptimes Are Always Better Than Any Site That Uses Clownflare
Clownflare as a company operates like a cult
GNU/Linux Apparently Rose to 6% in Uzbekistan
If accurate, this represents a new problem for Microsoft and a big win for Software Freedom
Sponsored Videos and 'Articles' in The Register MS, Stenography as a Service/Product
They should more accurately label these actors
It's Friday Again and Many People Leave IBM for Good (IBM Should be Reported for Illegal NDAs That Hide Layoffs)
we very seldom see anyone deviating a lot from the "template-like" narrative, let alone mentioning "layoffs" or "RA" or some other term that implies non-consensual departure
The Little Clique of Sloppers/Spammers About "Linux" Got Even Smaller
Thankfully there are still genuine and legit GNU/Linux sites out there
Links 20/02/2026: Microsoft Intentionally Kills Older Hardware, "The Story of XBox" Shows How Defective Microsoft Hardware Really Was
Links for the day
Turkmenistan One of Many Countries Where Microsoft Fell to Distant Third in Search
We expect many layoffs in Bing some time soon
Don't Wait for "Red Hat Layoffs" Because After Bluewashing They're IBM RAs and Don't Wait for "IBM Layoffs" Because They're Perpetual
IBM layoffs are silent and "forever" (small trickle that never ends and is widespread - after all IBM is a very global and ubiquitous firm)
Links 20/02/2026: Standards, Science, and Politics
Links for the day
What Do People Ever Buy From Microsoft Anyway (Not PCs)?
Microsoft sells two things these days: 1) vapourware/promises. 2) its stock.
Gemini Links 20/02/2026: "Mainstream Unix, Underground Unix", Slop Staging DDoS Attacks Against Small Sites
Links for the day
IBM Inclusivity: Red Hat Summit is for Rich Sponsors Like Microsoft and Rich Guests Who Pay $500 a Day
Nothing signals societal tolerance more than paying a large military contractor
GNU/Linux Adoption is Higher in Richer Countries
Is it because freedom is actually expensive - something that only privileged people can pursue?
Links 20/02/2026: Windows TCO Versus Deutsche Bahn, Europe Seeks More Independent Digital Future
Links for the day
IBM, Red Hat and Fedora: Don't Say "Master", It Offends People. Also IBM, Red Hat and Fedora: "Master Podman".
The hypocrisy at Red Hat and Fedora shows no boundaries
IBM Layoffs Aren't Just in IBM 'Proper'
Who is still using Lotus after the HCL move?
The Register MS Gets Paid by Gartner to Promote a Ponzi Scheme for Gartner, Microsoft, and Others
The credibility of that site will suffer because it tries to sell a major scam to its audience
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, February 19, 2026
Gemini Links 19/02/2026: "Towards a Gemini Famicom Resource" and Dumping Microsoft
Links for the day
IBM Behaves Like a Company Looking for Loose Change Between Sofa Cushions
Chasing laid-off workers for dollars and even pennies, making excuses and devising loopholes (such as PIPs) to flout severance obligations
Microsoft Found Another Bailout Opportunity: Killing People
Good thing that Nadella is not racist!
No "Smart Mobs" (Social Control Media) in BRIC?
It looks like the "Social" "Media" sites tracked by statCounter see little from (or of) BRIC, and moreover it is declining fast
The Few Slopfarms We Saw Today
The sentiment has changed a lot
Links 19/02/2026: Protecting Framework Laptop 13, Hardware Drive Shortages
Links for the day
In Africa's Second-Largest Nation, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Opera 10 Times Bigger Than Firefox (and GNU/Linux Now at 5%)
This will become an accessibility problem
Links 19/02/2026: "A.I.pocalypse" Inevitable and "Butlers to LLMs"
Links for the day
An Inherently Royal (Monarchs') Legal System Where Size Matters (Big Capital Eats the Small)
This reinforces the notion that justice is only for those who can afford it
These Statistics Should Keep Microsoft Shareholders Awake at Night
Windows is, in general (all versions collectively), declining over time
Economic Failure and Other Harsh Realities Have Nothing to Do With Slop 'Innovation'
Advanced propaganda, not advanced 'AI' [...] They attack workers while insulting their intelligence
Spaniards Shutting Down MElon's Digital Weapon of "Smart Mobs"
Are the Spanish people already acting based on gut feeling and shunning/shutting out the provocation vector?
Bitcoin: government engagement contradictions
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part II - "Haters Gonna Hate"
we shall carry on with this series at the right pace
Typical! Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Tells Victims of Fraud to Wait 10 Weeks
justice delayed is justice denied
EPO Union Leaders in Rijswijk Explain Where EPO Strikes Stand and How to Prepare for Next Week's
We have some revelations to share in a few days
statCounter: Only One in 350 Iranians Would Use Microsoft for Web Search
Microsoft is trying to fake "demand"
Slides Shown a Week Ago by the EPO's Staff Committee Ahead of the Second Very Large Strike
This coming weekend we'll drop a 'bombshell' of sorts
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part II - Illegal Drug Addicts Mobbing the Wrong People, This Will Definitely Backfire
This year may well be the last year of Team Campinos. Nobody will hire them after that.
Mass Layoffs (But Silent Layoffs) Still Happening in IBM, You Need Only Look Closely (There Are NDAs, PIPs, 'Early Retirement' Sweeteners and IBM - Like Microsoft - Skirts the WARN Act)
the layoffs are definitely happening
Microsoft's "AI CEO" (Slop Propagandist) is Projecting, Many Microsoft "Jobs to be Replaced With All-Indian Low-Paid Staff in 12 Months"
Windows is perishing
Very Little Slop
We are not finding much slop anymore
Links 19/02/2026: Illegal Kangaroo Court for Patents Attracts Aggressive Firms, Public Domain Review Grows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/02/2026: Taxing the Rich, Raspberry Pi 4 Tinkering
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 18, 2026