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Links 14/08/2023: GNU/Linux's Firefox Problem and MX Linux Reviewed



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

    • Server

      • Kubernetes BlogSpotlight on SIG ContribEx

        Welcome to the world of Kubernetes and its vibrant contributor community! In this blog post, we'll be shining a spotlight on the Special Interest Group for Contributor Experience (SIG ContribEx), an essential component of the Kubernetes project.

        SIG ContribEx in Kubernetes is responsible for developing and maintaining a healthy and productive community of contributors to the project. This involves identifying and addressing bottlenecks that may hinder the project's growth and feature velocity, such as pull request latency and the number of open pull requests and issues.

        SIG ContribEx works to improve the overall contributor experience by creating and maintaining guidelines, tools, and processes that facilitate collaboration and communication among contributors. They also focus on community building and support, including outreach programs and mentorship initiatives to onboard and retain new contributors.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Open Source Security (Audio Show)Episode 388 – Video game€ vulnerabilities

        Josh and Kurt ask the question what is a vulnerability, but in the framing of video games. Security loves to categorize all bugs as security vulnerabilities or not security vulnerabilities. But the reality nothing is so simple. Everything is a question of risk, not vulnerability. The discussion about video games can help us to better have this discussion.

    • Kernel Space

      • HackadayLinux Kernel From First Principles

        What to learn the internals of the Linux kernel? Version 6.5-rc5 has about 36 million lines of code in it, so good luck! [Seiya] has a different approach. Go back to the beginning and examine the 0.01 version of the kernel. Now you are talking about 10,000 lines and, removing comments and blanks, way less.

    • Applications

      • Linux Links11 Best Free and Open Source Linux Fractal Tools

        Fractal-generating software is any computer program that generates images of fractals. Linux has a great selection of fractal software to choose from.

        To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 11 absorbing fractal tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to create their own unique images from computer generated art.

        The chart below offers our verdict. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Rick CarlinoExploring Text-Based Content on the Gemini Protocol

        Picture the web. Websites and all that, right? Now, imagine getting rid of CSS, Javascript, cookies, and nosy request headers. Replace HTML with something simpler that looks more like Markdown. What’s left is the Gemini protocol, and it’s slowly been building a user base in the last few years. If you’re old enough to remember Gopher, it’s kind of like that. Or Maybe the HTML 2.0 days of the web.

        With Gemini, what you see is cleaner and loads faster. It’s just the text, and you control how it looks. No CSS, no forms, only text-based content. For search engines and similar applications, there’s a text input query, but that’s about as complicated as it gets. It’s not trying to be the web, just a place for readable content.

      • Adriaan RoselliAn alt Decision Tree Using Only :has()

        I use the CSS :has() pseudo-class to provide an interactive alt text decision tree (from the W3C WAI Tutorial) that uses no script. It is progressively enhanced, so browsers without support for :has() still get all the content.

      • [Repeat] nixCraftHow to decode BASE64 string in Linux and Unix

        To decode a Base64 string in Linux, you must use the base64 command command. The syntax for decoding a Base64 string is as follows: [...]

      • HowTo ForgeHow To Save Traffic With Apache2's mod_deflate

        In this tutorial, I will describe how to install and configure mod_deflate on an Apache2 web server. mod_deflate allows Apache2 to compress files and deliver them to clients (e.g. browsers) that can handle compressed content which most modern browsers do. With mod_deflate, you can compress HTML, text or XML files to approx. 20 - 30% of their original sizes, thus saving you server traffic and making your modem users happier.

        Compressing files causes a slightly higher load on the server, but in my experience, this is compensated by the fact that the clients' connection times to your server decrease a lot. For example, a modem user that needed seven seconds to download an uncompressed HTML file might now only need two seconds for the same, but compressed file.

      • Setting up my cloud desktop

        With VNC up and running, I added the AWS Linux server to my Tailscale network so I can route all VNC traffic through that, instead of using the public IP (yep, have ufw restricting it). My Raspberry Pi can now talk with the AWS Linux server via tailscale (configured it to have a restricted one-way communication, to protect my home network). Neat.

      • The Ultimate Guide to MetaTrader 5 on Linux: Features, Benefits, and Installation

        MetaTrader 5 (MT5) is a popular online trading platform widely used by forex traders across the globe. It offers a wide range of features and tools to analyze the financial markets and execute trades with ease. While originally designed for Windows, it is now compatible with Linux operating systems as well, providing Linux users with access to this powerful trading platform.

      • MetaTrader for Linux: The Ultimate Guide to Forex Trading on Linux

        Forex trading has become increasingly popular in recent years, and many traders rely on MetaTrader, a leading platform for accessing global forex markets. While MetaTrader is primarily designed for Windows operating system, there is also a solution available for Linux users.

      • MediumHow To Use Stable Diffusion 2 For Free— Day 10 of #30daysofAI

        These install steps assume that the computer being used is running Windows (≥ Windows 10) or directly on an up to date Linux distro like Ubuntu.

      • Make Use OfHow to Create a Windows Virtual Machine in Linux With KVM

        Running a Windows virtual machine alongside Linux has its benefits. With a Windows virtual machine set up, you don't have to wrap your head around compatibility layers or look for open-source alternatives to your favorite Windows apps. Additionally, if you're a developer, it becomes easy to test your software on multiple operating systems.

        Kernel-based Virtual Machine, or KVM is your best bet when it comes to setting up a Windows virtual machine on Linux. But how do you go about creating a new KVM and installing Windows on it?

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Distro WatchReview: MX Linux 23

        MX Linux does a great job of presenting the user with all the benefits of Debian's Stable branch (long-term support, stable packages, large repositories of software, and great hardware support) while improving on the experience. On top of Debian's solid base, MX has added a faster, more user friendly system installer, enough applications to cover a wide range of use cases without overly crowding the application menu, and provided lots of friendly tools and documentation.

        Not many Linux distributions provide great documentation and fewer include their documentation on the install media. This alone makes MX Linux stand out. The MX Tools though are what really make this distribution shine. There is a lot of useful functionality packed into the MX Tools collection, particularly the custom package installer which works across multiple repositories (including backports) and portable packages (Flatpaks).

        Not only did MX Linux work well with my hardware, it worked quickly, was stable, and I can't think of a single time I saw an error message during my trial. A lot of this smooth running was probably a credit to MX's parent, Debian, but MX also ships with a lot of custom tools and they all worked well for me too.

        Some people might find the vertical desktop panel unusual. Personally, I like it as it reduces my mouse movement, especially if I switch window buttons to the left side of the windows. People who don't like the panel placement can move it to a more conventional horizontal orientation with a couple of mouse clicks.

        I'm of the opinion MX Linux is one of the most capable, friendly, reliable desktop distributions currently available. It runs on a wide range of hardware, from older computers to more modern machines. It offers an experience which improves from its parent on multiple fronts without introducing any problems. Some of the tools and the installer might be a little overwhelming for a complete Linux newcomer, I'm not sure I'd say MX Linux is an ideal first distribution. However, I would recommend it for most people for just about any desktop experience.

    • BSD

      • Brian CallahanCan mold be used as the OpenBSD system linker?

        Recently, I taught the mold linker how to find shared libraries on OpenBSD. This was the last puzzle piece needed to get mold working on OpenBSD. Testing on some simple applications, like oksh, produced working executables.

        I would like to go a bit further and push mold to its limits. I want to know what would happen if mold was the only linker on our system.

      • Karl LevikEnforcing Fail2ban bans with PF

        In the process of configuring my FreeBSD VPS, the time had finally come to attempt configuring Fail2ban1,2 properly. I already had it up and running, but the bans weren't actually being enforced because - to my surprise - it was trying to use iptables, which is a Linux firewall that doesn't even exist for FreeBSD!

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • IT WireLinux now 'de-facto standard' for running business-critical workloads'

        VojtÄ›ch Pavlík, SUSE’s newly appointed general manager of Business-Critical Linux, said on Thursday that it would be difficult to find any hyperscaler who did not offer Linux for the enterprise or one that did not run their own services on Linux.

        Pavlik's comments come in the wake of some ructions in open source business circles, with Red Hat announcing a move in June to restrict access to the source code of its enterprise Linux distribution only to paying customers.

        In response to this, SUSE chief technology and product officer Dr Thomas Di Giacomo said on Thursday that his company had formed the Open Enterprise Linux Association along with Oracle and CIQ, the last-named being the company that is behind Rocky Linux, an RHEL clone.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Pine64Quick update: What’s going on?

        We always attempt to meet in person at least twice a year. For reasons that ought to be obvious to everyone, this wasn’t possible these past few years, but now that travel is once again viable we’re returning to a bi-annual meetup schedule. We always meet at FOSDEM in February followed by a meeting halfway through the calendar year. While FOSDEM primarily serves the function of interacting with the broader Linux community and members of other projects as well as product announcements, the second yearly meetup aims at evaluating the project’s progress, identifying issues, and creating a roadmap for the coming months. This year we’re holding the second meetup in Warsaw. TL, Ayufan, Lukasz, and I will be having lunch in Hala Gwardii on Sunday, August 20th at noon. The place offers a wide variety of foods from around the world and is a short walk from Ratusz ArsenaÅ‚ metro station. You can also reach the place easily from every corner of Warsaw via all the public transport the city has to offer. So if you’re in Warsaw or can travel to see us on this date, then consider yourself invited. We’ll be keeping an eye on the #offtopic chat on the 19th so let us know when you’ve arrived and one of us will let you know where we’re sitting. Looking forward to seeing you there!

      • HackadayPortable 1990s POS Will Strain Your Back

        [JR] over at [Tech Throwback] got ahold of an unusual piece of gear recently — a portable Point of Sale (POS) credit card machine from the late 1990s (video, embedded below the break ). Today these machines can be just a small accessory that works in conjunction with your smart phone, but only the most dedicated merchants would lug this behemoth around. The unit is basically a Motorola bag phone, a credit card scanner, a receipt printer, a lead-acid battery, and a couple of PCBs crammed into a custom carrying case

      • Andrew HutchingsAmiga 4000 Restoration x2: Part 6

        We are on part 6 of what I originally hoped would be a 3 part series. There has been some progress since last time on several fronts. As well as some setbacks. Let’s get into it.

      • Doug BrownUpgrading my Chumby 8 kernel part 6: PWM backlight

        In the previous post in this series (here are links to parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), I really got the Chumby to start looking like a Chumby. The display was alive! But getting the LCD controller working was really only one puzzle piece when it came to the display. The backlight needed more work so that I could control the brightness, and the touchscreen controller is a completely nonstandard design that is specific to the Chumby.

      • Linux GizmosNUC board comes with dual 2.5GbE and M.2 expansion options

        The MU03 by GlobalAmerican is a small embedded board with NUC form-factor featuring the Intel Celeron J6412 System-on-Chip. The board targets applications including retail, industrial automation and surveillance.

      • HackadayStuffing A 32-Pin Chip Into A 28-Pin Socket

        What’s the difference between a 64k ROM in a 28-pin DIP and a 128k ROM in a 32-pin DIP? Aside from the obvious answers of “64k” and “four pins,” it turns out that these two chips have a lot in common, enough so that it only takes a little bodging to make them interchangeable — more or less.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Mozilla

        • OS NewsDesktop Linux has a Firefox problem

          There’s no denying that the browser is the single-most important application on any operating system, whether that be on desktops and laptops or on mobile devices. Without a capable, fast, and solid browser, the usefulness of an operating system decreases exponentially, to the point where I’m quite sure virtually nobody’s going to use an operating system for regular, normal use if it doesn’t have a browser. Having an at least somewhat useable browser is what elevates an operating system from a hobby toy to something you could use for more than 10 minutes as a fun novelty.

          The problem here is that making a capable browser is actually incredibly hard, as the browser has become a hugely capable platform all of its own. Undertaking the mammoth task of building a browser from scratch is not something a lot of people are interested in – save for the crazy ones – made worse by the fact that competing with the three remaining browser engines is basically futile due to market consolidation and monopolisation. Chrome and its various derivatives are vastly dominant, followed by Safari on iOS, if only because you can’t use anything else on iOS. And then there’s Firefox, trailing far behind as a distant third – and falling.

          This is the environment desktop Linux distributions find themselves in. For the longest time now, desktop Linux has relied virtually exclusively on shipping Firefox – and the Mozilla suite before that – as their browser, with some users opting to download Chrome post-install. While both GNOME and KDE nominally invest in their own two browsers, GNOME Web and Falkon, their uptake is limited and releases few and far between. For instance, none of the major Linux distributions ship GNOME Web as their default browser, and it lacks many of the features users come to expect from a browser. Falkon, meanwhile, is updated only sporadically, often going years between releases. Worse yet, Falkon uses Chromium through QtWebEngine, and GNOME Web uses WebKit (which are updated separately from the browser, so browser releases are not always a solid metric!), so both are dependent on the goodwill of two of the most ruthless corporations in the world, Google and Apple respectively.

          Even Firefox itself, even though it’s clearly the browser of choice of distributions and Linux users alike, does not consider Linux a first-tier platform. Firefox is first and foremost a Windows browser, followed by macOS second, and Linux third. The love the Linux world has for Firefox is not reciprocated by Mozilla in the same way, and this shows in various places where issues fixed and addressed on the Windows side are ignored on the Linux side for years or longer.

        • Does Desktop Linux Have a Firefox Problem?

          OS News' managing editor calls Firefox "the single most important desktop Linux application," shipping in most distros (with some users later opting for a post-installation download of Chrome).

    • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Supabase IncSupavisor: Scaling Postgres to 1 Million Connections

        One of the most widely-discussed shortcomings of Postgres is its connection system. Every Postgres connection has a reasonably high memory footprint, and determining the maximum number of connections your database can handle is a bit of an art.

        A common solution is connection pooling. Supabase currently offers pgbouncer which is single-threaded, making it difficult to scale. We've seen some novel ways to scale pgbouncer, but we have a few other goals in mind for our platform.

        And so we've built Supavisor, a Postgres connection pooler that can handle millions of connections.

    • Programming/Development

      • University of TorontoThe tangled problems of asking for people's '(full) legal name'

        One response to my entry on the problems with 'first' and 'last' name data fields is that one should make forms that (only) ask for someone's legally recognized name, which should be unambiguous and complete. While superficially appealing, this is a terrible minefield that you should never step into unless you absolutely have to, which is generally because you are legally required to collect this information.

      • Roman KashitsynFlat in-order binary trees

        This article is an in-depth guide to the flat in-order representation of binary trees. We derive efficient operations to navigate these trees, such as finding the tree root and computing the parent and children for each node. We then use this flat representation to implement a novel efficient data structure: extensible segment trees.

      • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

        • Frederico BittencourtBash one liners

          I have a graveyard of one-time-use bash one-liners that become either aliases or get wrapped by shell functions in my .zshrc file. I often justify the effort of polishing them and adding to my dotfiles with the excuse that they will be used again in the future. Even if they are never used again, they serve as a library of examples. For every new command, there is always an old one that did a similar thing.

          More importantly, these bash one-liners are really fun to write. What once started as a thought to build a new command line application, was first challenged with a “could it be a simple bash script?” and then finally it was reduced to “could I write it one line?”. It’s like my own personal code golf challenge, where I keep trying to make the line smaller and smaller.

  • Leftovers

    • MIT Technology ReviewNext slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation

      Before PowerPoint [sic], and long before digital projectors, 35-millimeter film slides were king. Bigger, clearer, and less expensive to produce than 16-millimeter film, and more colorful and higher-resolution than video, slides were the only medium for the kinds of high-impact presentations given by CEOs and top brass at annual meetings for stockholders, employees, and salespeople. Known in the business as “multi-image” shows, these presentations required a small army of producers, photographers, and live production staff to pull off. First the entire show had to be written, storyboarded, and scored. Images were selected from a library, photo shoots arranged, animations and special effects produced. A white-gloved technician developed, mounted, and dusted each slide before dropping it into the carousel. Thousands of cues were programmed into the show control computers—then tested, and tested again. Because computers crash. Projector bulbs burn out. Slide carousels get jammed.

    • Ruben SchadeCreativity under legacy constraints

      There’s a unique kind of creativity that comes from working within a set of limitations or constraints. I know I have more fun when I don’t use cheats, and try out old things with a new twist. What’s the smallest financially viable SimCity 3000 town I can build? What are the fewest number of lines I can write a Sudoku game in with Pascal, or Perl?

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Getting back online after summer

          Its been a few months since I last wrote anything...or really ready much on smolnet. With kids being up later and no school, the days longer so I don't wind down as soon it seems like most of my hobbies and tech use in general drops off during the summer. Haven't even turned on my ham radio since we had leaves on the trees. I did find Lemmy with all the Reddit nonsense going on (not that I'm really on that site much these days). But even Mastodon barely opened on my phone.

        • What if Gemini could be served on port 80?

          I'm by no means an expert and there must be a reason solderpunk chose Gemini to get its own port. But I'm also a web developer by day and a strong advocatee of "Progressive enhancement".

          Many of us aren't. Many of us don't even care about and to some degree I feel like it is our own fault thave we didn't convince them. A lot of people treat the web as something it should never have been: A painting that has to look the same on every device. Back then, people came up with phraes like "optimized for Netscape Navigator 4.x" or "best viewed at 1024x768".


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



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