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Links 30/4/2021: Health of KDE Assessed, RISC-V International Growing



  • GNU/Linux

    • Server

      • Linux Format: SERVER UPGRADE WARNING!

        After 12 years of uninterrupted, smooth service, the stalwart Linux Format server is being put out to pasture in the great server farm in the sky.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S14E08 – Minimum Cover Novel

        This week we have been changing jobs and getting new microphones. We discuss tablets, which ones we own and why we use them, bring you some GUI love and go over all your wonderful feedback.

        It’s Season 14 Episode 08 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Martin Wimpress are connected and speaking to your brain.

      • These Brave Extensions Are Essential To My Workflow

        Ocassionally someone asks what extensions I'm running in my brave web browser so I thought I'd just be easier to go over all of them in one video, unlike my regular system apps these don't typically change too often.

      • Shading workflow for comics - Krita

        Learn to shade a comic in Krita the way I shaded Episode 34 of my webcomic Pepper&Carrot ( https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/article467/episode-34-the-knighting-of-shichimi ). The video is detailed and goes step-by-step to explain in details what I'm selecting; and more importantly maybe, why. It might sounds like this setup is long to do, but if I'm not explaining it; adding the hardlight, the mid-grey and the selection by color label can be done within a minute. It then allows to shade quickly the panels. This video follows a series of two videos: a timelapse about inking a page of this episode, and a detailed video about the flatting of the page with the colorize-mask feature of Krita.

    • Kernel Space

      • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Ubuntu 21.04 - X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance

        One of the most significant underlying changes with the recent release of Ubuntu 21.04 is the default GNOME Shell desktop environment is running the Wayland-based session by default rather than the traditional X.Org Server session. But what does this mean for the Linux gaming performance on Ubuntu 21.04? Here are some (X)Wayland vs. X.Org benchmarks.

        Ubuntu 21.04 is using the Wayland-based GNOME session by default on supported (namely non-NVIDIA) setups. However, via the log-in manager one can easily switch back to GNOME on X.Org if desired for testing/comparison purposes or if finding issue with the Wayland support.

    • Applications

      • MusE 4.0 Comes Packed with Tabbed UI, Dark Theme, and More Exciting Changes

        MusE is a popular open-source DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that has been one of the few DAWs available for Linux. The project has recently released the 4th version of their software with over 700 commits since their last release.

        [...]

        It can be a hassle to be constantly moving your hands between your keyboard and mouse all day. This has led to the rise of keyboard shortcuts, with almost all modern applications supporting them.

        Not wanting to be left out, MusE has added even more keyboard shortcuts, resulting in a huge boost to productivity. The result of this is a much easier time navigating the UI and interacting with your music.

        [...]

        While not a complete list of improvements, we have discussed the main improvements in this release. I think all these improvements will make a huge impact on productivity and the popularity of MusE as a preferred DAW for Linux.

      • The 10 Best Open Source Web Servers for Linux

        You are reading this article from a website powered by an open-source web server simply because open source web servers power over 80% of websites and applications. The term web server can be used interchangeably to refer to the hardware or software used to serve content to end-users or clients over HTTP.

        Web servers have been under development and constant improvement since the early 90s. There are different types of web servers, and they can be built for specific needs, for certain technologies, or as special options for certain corporations.

        This article will list some of the reliable and popular open source web server projects available for you to install and get your application or website running.

      • QEMU 6.0 Released With AMD SEV-ES Encrypted Guest Support, Experimental Multi-Process

        QEMU 6.0 is out today as the newest feature release for this processor/machine emulator and virtualizer that serves as an important part of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

        QEMU 6.0 brings with it many new features including the likes of experimental multi-process device emulation support, AMD SEV-ES encrypted guest support, new processor.machine support, and other virtualization improvements.

        - QEMU can now be built with link-time optimizations (LTO) and also supports LLVM Control-Flow Integrity (CFI) too.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Enable EPEL Repository on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable the EPEL repository on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is a repository with a high-quality set of additional packages for Enterprise Linux operating systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, and Scientific Linux (SL), Oracle Linux (OL), AlmaLinux, and any other Linux distribution from the RHEL family. Once you set up the EPEL repository, you can use dnf command to install any of close to 7,000 EPEL packages.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step added EPEL repository on AlmaLinux 8.

      • How to install Firefox ESR on Deepin 20.2

        In this video, we are looking at how to install Firefox ESR on Deepin 20.2. Enjoy!

      • How to download files on Linux with Curl

        Curl is one of the most used Linux utilities ever. It’s built-in so many GUI tools and used on pretty much everything. As a result, it is very reliable and one of the best tools users can use to download files.

      • How to install the Palemoon Browser on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install the Palemoon Browser, based on Firefox, on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

      • How To Enable RPM Fusion Repository In Fedora, RHEL - OSTechNix

        In this brief guide, we will see what is RPM Fusion repository, why should we install RPM Fusion repository, and finally how to enable RPM Fusion repository in Fedora, RHEL, and its clones like CentOS, AlmaLinux distributions.

      • How To Install Podman on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Podman on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Podman or Pod Manager is a very popular utility for managing containers and the storage volumes that are mounted onto those containers. All the containers and Pods are created as child processes of the Podman tool. The Podman’s CLI is based on the Docker CLI. Just like Docker, it helps developers to develop, manage, and run their applications on containers.

        This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Podman on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to Benchmark your GPU on Linux

        Linux is not famous for its gaming abilities and possibilities, and it is only natural that there aren't many GPU benchmarking tools available with which users can test their graphics hardware. There are however some benchmarking suites that can help you determine the various aspects of your GPU performance with precision. In this tutorial, I will show you GLX-Gears, GL Mark 2 and the benchmarks from Unigine Benchmark Products.

      • How to Create Bootable USB Installer for Ubuntu 21.04 / 20.04 | UbuntuHandbook

        Want to create a bootable live-USB for installing Ubuntu on your machine? Well, here’s how to do it in Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.

        I used to use UNetbootin to create bootable Live USB. However, the USB drive does not boot after writing with recent Ubuntu ISO images. So here I’m going to introduce you few other USB writing tools.

        Though I prefer the style of Ventoy, it however does not install in my USB stick for unknown reason. If you need bootable USB with other data transfer usage unaffected, try it!

      • How to Install and Configure Perf in Linux Distributions

        Monitoring a Linux system is usual for every user. Especially if you are a system admin, you might need to check your system elaborately. You can’t find many tools to know the system’s overall status; finding an application that can generate a real-time in-depth system status is complicated. The Perf is one of the Linux tools you can use to know the detailed health checkup and the live position on your system. Perf is one of the most used and robust system monitoring tools to gather information on the Linux kernel, CPU, and hardware. Moreover, it can also perform dynamic tracing, checking hardware status, and provide benchmark reports on a Linux machine.

      • How to deploy Ghost Blog with Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04

        Ghost is a free, open-source, and lightweight blogging platform built on Node.js. It is simple, customizable, and allows you to create and publish your content on the internet. It is specially designed for blogging so it is much faster than other blogging platforms.

      • How to play Dead Rising on Linux

        Dead Rising is an action/adventure open-world game. The game focuses on Frank, the photographer, just as the world descends into a zombie apocalypse. The player controls Frank as he fights to survive at an abandoned mall.

      • How to tail (follow) Linux Service Logs

        One of the most common tasks during Linux troubleshooting and software development sessions is following service logs on a Linux system.

      • Stop logging as root in 5 simple steps

        Do you still manage your virtual servers with the root superuser? Here are five easy steps to stop using root right now.

        This post is for people with an SSH-based authentication on Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL servers. If you spin up a virtual server online, you can usually choose to use an SSH-based authentication instead of providing a password. That’s great! But the initial connection would be set up for the root superuser, and that’s not a good idea.

        The first step to using root less is to stop using it to log in. You can do that by choosing a new admin account with sudo privileges and reuse the root SSH server configuration. Here’s how.

      • Start Searching In Linux Like A Pro ( 10 examples + Bonus Tip )

        Now this article is going to be as simple as possible and straight forward as possible. The idea is to help you understand the pure basics in Linux searching. In addition we are going to use several searching tools to help us with this quest.

    • Games

      • The 30 Best Game Emulator Consoles for Linux

        With the improved form of technology, powerful gadgets such as phones are taking over the market. Most people did not anticipate that the phone would stand out and be vital in today’s world. Compared to the old times when people used consoles such as Nintendos and early play station designs, personal computers have offered excellent features to gamers.

        Since many people love to relieve their childhood nostalgia, Linux developers have tirelessly worked and created a robust game emulator console system for most of us.

      • Gaming on Linux: Guide to Graphics

        GPUs are in short supply across the board due to delays brought by COVID-19, but don’t fret! Now is the perfect time to plan out your dream machine. If questions surrounding your graphics preferences render you confused, we’ve compiled some useful info below on NVIDIA GPUs and AMD GPUs, as well as suggestions for how much power you may desire.

        Don’t I just need a GPU?

        For games that require less rendering, any GPU will run just fine, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 that’s served you well over the years. However, if you want newer games to run like smooth butter at their maximum settings, your old GPU puts a technical limitation on which ones you can add to your library.

        [...]

        While the 3D space is more intensive, the use of simpler models and less detailed textures reduces the computing power necessary to make any derpy shapeman game run beautifully.

      • Total War: ROME REMASTERED from Feral Interactive is out now

        Total War: ROME REMASTERED from game developer / porter Feral Interactive and Creative Assembly with SEGA as publisher is now officially out with Linux support. [...]

        Bringing us another quality natively supported game originally known as Rome: Total War, Feral really pulled out all the stops on this one. Some remasters simply give a refreshed look but this is a truly huge revamp of all parts of the game allowing people to relive a favourite and for Linux users - to play through it perhaps for the first time.

        The file size got a bit big for their liking though, so you will notice that a free DLC is available right away with the Enhanced Graphics Pack. Not surprising though, because together the installed size comes right up close to 70GB - so if you want the true full experience be sure to have some space ready.

        [...]

        If you did play the original, you're in for an upgraded nostalgic treat. For everyone else, it makes it super easy to get into. Overall, it's absolute fantastic. To see Feral Interactive continue to support Linux with some great ports is wonderful. They've done another brilliant job, not that we expected any less from them. It's an easy recommendation to pick up if you love strategy games and previously missed out it due to the original lacking Linux support. It just became one of the best strategy games available on Linux.

      • The excellent space RPG 'Star Traders: Frontiers' is getting mod support

        Trese Brothers have announced that their fantastic space exploration RPG Star Traders: Frontiers is getting modding support, three years after the original release.

        As what looks like their most popular PC release, Star Traders: Frontiers had ended up with a bit of a following and a Very Positive overall rating on Steam from over 2.5K people. Over the years they've released something in the region of 250 free upgrades both small and some huge adding lots of new features.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Health of the KDE community

          Today, I decided to look at KDE git history and look at the project’s health as a whole. It’s inspired by the work of Hans Petter Jansson for GNOME and use the tool he made (fornalder).

          fornalder is easy to use and the documentation in the readme was beneficial. I don’t know if this is because it was programmed in Rust but fornalder was blazingly fast and most of the time spent during this analysis was spent on cloning the repos.

          These stats include all the extragear, plasma, frameworks and release service repository as well as most of the KDE websites and a few KDE playground projects I had on my hard drive. For example, it doesn’t includes most of the unmaintained projects (e.g. kdepimlibs, kdelibs, koffice, plasma-mediacenter, …). Also important to note, is that this doesn’t include translations at all, since they are stored in SVN and added in the tarballs during the releasing process.

    • Distributions

      • Modern Lightweight Linux Distro Showdown: Who is the Champion?

        As a Linux user, I was recently in search of a Linux distribution (distro) that is lightweight and runs efficiently on a virtual machine or a physical machine using minimal resources. In the end, only 1 would be chosen as the lightweight Linux distribution of choice. It would have to be good enough to deploy as a daily-driver on my main machine. So, I began the online search and found many articles recommending copious distros which claim to check the boxes for the aforementioned requirements. Needless to say, the number of returned results was staggering.

        The Long List of Contenders

        The distros which were recommended most commonly have been compiled into a list of contenders as shown below. Whenever possible, the most recent stable release of each distro was chosen. The values provided for the “RAM” and “Disk Space” columns are the preferred/recommended system requirement values (not the minimum system requirement values).

        [...]

        After installing each of these distros on a virtual machine and getting to know more about them (especially at an idle state), the following comparison is being made. The difference of CPU usage at an idle state amongst the distros is negligible. When we start to look at RAM utilization and hard disk space, the clear stand-out is Lubuntu. The LXQt desktop really puts the Qt framework in a whole new light (pun alert) of being lean and efficient, especially in terms of memory usage at idle.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • openSUSE Leap 15.3 RC Released. Download and Test Now!

          The upcoming openSUSE Leap 15.3 RC is released for developers and testers. We round up the changes and give you the details on the download.

          openSUSE Linux distribution is used by millions of users worldwide across general desktops, enterprise deployments, and servers. The openSUSE Leap is the long-term support (LTS) version of this distro while openSUSE Tumbleweed is the tested-rolling-release distribution. The leap series is rock-solid and is ideal for a variety of users. openSUSE Leap can easily compete with Ubuntu Linux operating system in terms of flexibility and ease of use.

          openSUSE project announced the release candidate of its upcoming long-term support release Leap 15.3 aligning with its schedule. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

        • Power Your Agile Data Platform with SUSE Rancher and MongoDB Enterprise Advanced

          In an earlier article of this agile data platform series, we looked at streamlining your IT landscape and gaining agility, performance and cost savings with SUSE Linux Enterprise and Microsoft SQL Server.

          In this article, we move from the traditional enterprise database into the cloud native realm with SUSE Rancher and MongoDB Enterprise Advanced.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • My immutable Fedora

          For many years now, I’ve been using immutable versions of Fedora. I remember that I started to play with immutable Fedora back in 2015 when Fedora Atomic was new. I liked the idea since the first time I’ve read about it, but in the beginning, I did not spend too much time making it work on my setup because it seemed a little bit too complex. At DevConf.cz 2016, I met Patrick Uiterwijk, who was running his spin of Fedora Atomic. We had a long chat on it, and he explained to me his workflow. Soon after, I started to use an immutable version of Fedora on my personal laptop, but I was not daring to use it on my work laptop. When I left Red Hat at the end of 2017, my personal laptop became my only laptop for a little while, and the immutable Fedora became my only OS. Since then, I’ve been using only immutable Fedora on my computers. In June 2020, I took the time to clean up my build process and files, and I moved all the needed bits to a new git repo that is now openly available and can be found here .

          If you are wondering what’s an immutable OS and why it’s different from a “mutable” (or “standard”) OS, the short version of it is that with an immutable OS, when the OS is running, the OS filesystem is in read-only mode. Therefore no application can change the OS or the installed applications. This aspect has many implications, one of which is that you can not upgrade or alter the installed software, but you need to “re-install” the whole OS while the OS is not running. This feature can seem more a problem than a feature, but as we will see, it’s not, and actually, it does bring a lot of advantages.

        • Fedora Linux 34 has landed, and it's an exquisite take on the desktop
          When last I wrote about Fedora 34, the desktop operating system was still in beta. I tested that beta and found it to be a remarkable step forward for Fedora Linux. I called it a game-changer. Why? Let me count the ways.

          First, there's GNOME 40, which turns this particular open-source desktop workflow into a thing of beauty. Although I already felt GNOME had a pretty decent workflow, everything changes with this latest iteration. Switching from the vertical to horizontal layout might seem like a small change, but it's quite profound in how well it ups the efficiency of the desktop. Everything just makes sense now; so much so that I keep asking myself, "Why didn't the GNOME developers do this all along?"

        • Download Fedora 34 Full Editions (Workstation, Server, IoT Included)

          Fedora 34 just released Tuesday, 27 April 2021 (at the same time Ubuntu 21.04 released). It is the latest stable version of the technology leading computer operating system, Fedora, one of the most popular choice from the GNU/Linux family. It features the latest Free/Libre Open Source Software technology, by the desktop with GNOME 40, by the filesystem with Btrfs compression, and many more. You can download all editions Workstation, Server, and IoT in one page below -- included with checksums for you to verify and Announcement & Release Notes information at the end. Happy downloading!

        • Red Hat Offers Complete Kubernetes Stack with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

          Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, a new edition of the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform designed to provide a holistic solution to help customers adopt DevSecOps across the entirety of the hybrid cloud. Offering a complete Kubernetes stack out of the box, Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus brings together everything needed to build, deploy and run nearly any application wherever OpenShift runs.

        • Red Hat Announces OpenShift Platform Plus

          Red Hat has announced Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, which aims to provide a complete DevSecOps solution across the hybrid cloud.

        • Red Hat Satellite 6.9.1 has been released

          We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.9.1 is generally available as of April 26, 2021.

          Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure.

        • Red Hat bolsters Edge strategy with major RHEL platform update

          Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 brings container deployment and management tools scaled around edge requirements

        • Red Hat’s Virtual Summit Airs Latest Linux Technology

          Red Hat on Wednesday concluded its April two-day Summit 2021 Virtual Experience with a hefty list of announcements and presentations by the company’s innovative customers driving the latest open-source technologies and trends.

          Perhaps one of the event’s most significant announcements was Red Hat’s plan to deliver the first functionally safe, continuously certified Linux platform for vehicles.

          The new Linux-based auto OS will be built from components of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in collaboration with exida. This operating system will be designed for continuous updates throughout its life cycle while still retaining crucial functional safety certifications.

        • Red Hat to release Enterprise Linux version 8.4

          Red Hat, has introduced new capabilities and enhancements to its enterprise Linux platform, which it says will further Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a foundation for the open hybrid cloud for data centres and edge deployments.

          Available in the coming weeks, the company says Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 aims to refine the platform’s role as a lightweight, production-grade operating system for edge deployments, adding new Linux container, deployment and management capabilities scaled for the needs of edge computing.

          According to Red Hat’s The State of Enterprise Open Source report, 72% of IT leaders surveyed expect open source to drive the adoption of edge computing over the next two years. The Linux Foundation’s 2021 State of the Edge report predicts that by 2025, Internet of Things or edge-related devices will produce roughly 90 zettabytes of data.

        • The CNCF mission to ‘get the code out there’ makes end users a priority at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021

          The pandemic has brought cloud native into the mainstream, accelerating the adoption of digital business across industries and in businesses from neighborhood mom-and-pop stores to global mega-corporations. It’s more than a surface change; companies that traditionally identified as part of the automotive, transportation or even finance industries now have software as their core.

          “The dynamics have really changed,” said Brian Gracely, senior director of product strategy at Red Hat Inc. OpenShift. “[Enterprise] has looked at Silicon Valley for years, and now they’re modeling it … it is really, really interesting in terms of how far that whole software is eating the world thing is materialized in every industry.”

          RedHat Inc.’s State of Enterprise Open Source report has charted the steady rise of open source software use in the enterprise. Out of the information technology leaders surveyed for the 2021 report, 90 percent report adopting open source software for their business, with most use around the key areas of infrastructure modernization, application development, and digital transformation.

      • Debian Family

    • Devices/Embedded

      • JingPad A1 - the world's first Consumer-level Linux tablet soon launching on Indiegogo
        The company behind JingOS plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on indiegogo for an ARM-powered tablet preloaded with their JingOS in June 2021, they call it the 'First Consumer-level Linux Tablet - JingPad A1'.

        The pre-launch page for the campaign has been online for almost a week now. People who are interested in this project can now leave an email on the page to get coupons for the product. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jingpad-world-s-first-linux-based-tablet/coming_soon

      • JingPad A1 - the world's first Consumer-level Linux tablet soon launching on Indiegogo
      • Xilinx launches UltraScale+ based SOM and $199 dev kit with AI extensions

        Xilinx has launched a “Kria K26 SOM” that runs Linux on its Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, plus a $199 “Kria KV260 Vision AI” kit with GbE, HDMI, DP, PMOD, CSI, 2x IAS, and 4x USB 3.0. Xilinx is supporting the products with a new edge AI app store.

        For years, third party vendors have been developing compute modules and SBCs built around Xilinx’s Arm/FPGA hybrid Zynq 7000 and quad -A53 Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC system-on-chips, most recently including Topc Embedded’s UltraScale+ based Miami MPSoC Plus module and Florida Plus kit. Xilinx itself has limited its homegrown hardware support to high-end evaluation kits, such as its $11,995 Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC ZCU216 Evaluation Kit. Now, for the first time Xilinx has launched its own compute module line, called Kria, as well as a $199 dev kit.

        [...]

        The SoC and module will soon be certified for Ubuntu, which is a first for the Zynq products (see farther below).

      • Using a 10-segment Led Bar with Raspberry PI and Python

        10 segment LED bar are commonly used to get visual indicators, usually to measure filling status. You can use these electronic items with Raspberry PI, switching on-off each led separately

      • 5 Great Raspberry Pi IDEs For Programmers and Students

        Raspberry Pi is one of the popular choices for single-board computers (SBCs). It's available in various models and has a wide range of uses, from creating a wireless network printer to hosting a Minecraft server.

        However, the idea that drove the development of the Raspberry Pi originally was to promote the teaching of computer science fundamentals in schools and developing countries while also making it accessible to everyone.

        It's this democratization of Pi that ultimately laid its foundation as a device that's now widely used by many to learn about concepts of computers, electronics, and other hardware verticals.

      • RISC-V International Welcomes Chengwei Capital as a Premier Member

        RISC-V International, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members to drive the adoption and implementation of the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), today announced that Chengwei Capital has joined the organization as a Premier Member. As part of the Premium membership tier, Chengwei Capital will be joining the RISC-V Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee.

        Chengwei Capital has been an active technology investor for more than 20 years, focusing on backing companies that are breaking barriers to innovation. Chengwei Capital is a significant shareholder of SiFive, one of the founding members of RISC-V International and a Premier Member. Chengwei Capital also partnered with SiFive to found StarFive Technology in Shanghai, which is now a leading RISC-V company in China.

      • Ubuntu certified system runs on AMD R1000 as low as 6W

        DFI unveiled an “EC90A-GH” industrial mini-PC built around its Ryzen R1000 based GHF51 SBC. These are among the first products to support the 6W R1102G and the first industrial systems to offer certified Ubuntu Core OTA updates.

        DFI has announced a fanless, 110 x 80 x 60mm embedded system called the EC90A-GH built around its GHF51 SBC. Both the EC90A-GH and GHF51 SBC run Ubuntu, Ubuntu Core, or Win 10 IoT Enterprise on AMD’s Ryzen Embedded R1000 and are part of DFI’s compact “Industrial Pi” family of embedded products. They are also among the first products to support the two low-power R1000 parts with TDPs as low as 6W.

      • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Michlmayr: Growing open-source projects with a stable foundation [Ed: The elephant in this room is that this is funded by an oligarch, or the Ford Foundation, which now guides the hand of some of those coup plotters (against real communities, as the author of this paper does or participates in)]

        Martin Michlmayr has put together a primer on managing open-source projects through their growth cycle, specifically with the help of a support foundation, and published the results as a 67-page PDF file.

      • Web Browsers

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Tender to implement Curl based HTTP/WebDAV UCP (#202104-01)

          The Document Foundation (TDF) is the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free/libre/open source (FLOSS) office suite LibreOffice.

          We are looking for an individual or company to implement Curl based HTTP/WebDAV UCP.

          The work has to be developed on LibreOffice master, so that it will be released in the next major version.

          The task consists of addressing two problems. All of the mentioned features and requirements are a mandatory part of this tender and therefore have to be part of the bid. This tender does not contain any optional items.

      • FSF

      • Programming/Development

        • Tomasz Torcz: At some point UI loses usefulness

          When it comes to configurability, modern software often hits a sweet spot. We are given nice, usable User Interface (UI) helping with configuration – by hinting, auto-filling and validating fields. Additionaly, the configuration itself is stored in text format, making it easy to backup and track changes. For example in git version control system.

          [...]

          Argo CD is a wonderful tool to implement GitOps with you Kubernetes cluster.

          Kubernetes is configured by plain text files in YAML format. That's a perfect form to track in git. Argo CD provides synchronization service: what you have in git repository is applied to kubernetes. Synchronization could be automatic or you can opt to sync manually. In later case, Argo CD provides a nice diff view, showing what's currently configured and how should it be.

          Argo CD also has a nice concept of responsibility boundaries: it cares only about YAML sections and fields present in the git repo. If you add new section on the running cluster, it won't be touched. It may be a single field, for example – replicas:

          Above can be utilized when you manage Argo CD by Argo CD. install.yaml file defines configuration resources likes ConfigMaps and Secrets, yet it doesn't provide actual data: sections. When you configure Argo CD installation – using nice web UI, no less - data: sections are created and configuration is stored into k8s cluster.

          Those sections are not part of what is stored in git repository, so they will neither be touched nor rewritten.

          But what happens when we want to store the Argo CD configuration in the repository, and gitops it to the Moon and back?

          If we add data: sections, they will be synced. But we will lose ability to use nice UI directly! As UI makes changes on the running cluster, Argo CD will notice live configuration differs from git repository one. It will overwrite our new configuration, undoing changes.

          If we want to gitops configuration, we basically must stop using UI and manually add all changes to the text files in the repository!

        • The Eclipse Foundation Unveils its New Vision for Managing and Operating Edge Computing Environments via Open Source Software

          The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations, as well as the Edge Native Working Group, today announced the release of a new white paper entitled “EdgeOps: A New Vision For Edge Computing” The paper articulates a new approach for building software solutions for edge computing environments, with an emphasis on open source. EdgeOps is an adaptation of DevOps, with a focus on software, tooling and processes for edge computing environments. It specifically addresses the challenges of edge computing, such as power, security, latency, communication protocols, etc., and takes into account the characteristics of edge computing solutions and associated deployment approaches required in an edge environment. The white paper is available now as a free download.

        • Build your own application with GTK 4 as a Meson subproject! [Ed: After taking money from Microsoft, Collabora's Xavier Claessens collaborates in pushing proprietary software Visual Studio, i.e. PR for Microsoft, which was maybe predictable]
        • CuPy v9 is here.

          We are excited to announce the availability of CuPy v9.0.0. This release contains the effort of development in the past 7 months, including CUDA JIT to transpile Python code to CUDA, support for NVIDIA cuSPARSELt, AMD ROCm support through binary packages, and so on.

        • CuPy 9.0 Brings AMD GPU Support To This Numpy-Compatible Library - Phoronix

          In recent months there has finally been more open-source projects traditionally focused on NVIDIA GPU compute beginning to offer mainline Radeon support using the open-source ROCm stack. Following the recent PyTorch 1.8 with ROCm support, CuPy 9.0 was released last week with that traditionally CUDA focused library now supporting AMD's ROCm stack.

          [...]

          CuPy 9.0 also features some performance improvements and improved documentation. The new AMD GPU support has been tested against ROCm 4.0.

        • Python

          • [Older] How to work with the Woocommerce REST API with Python

            Wordpress is probably the most used CMS in the world (it is estimated that almost 40% of all websites are built using the platform): it is very easy to install and use, and allows even non-developers to create website in few minutes. Wordpress has a very large plugin ecosystem; one of the most famous is Woocommerce, which allows us to turn a website into an online store in few steps. The plugin makes use of the Wordpress REST API infrastructure; in this tutorial we will see how to interact with the Woocommerce API using the Python programming language, showing how to list, create, update and delete products and categories.

          • Wireless MicroPython Programming With Thonny | Hackaday

            I had all but given up when by chance I saw this video on the Dronebot Workshop channel about running MicroPython on the new Raspberry Pi Pico boards. Bill was using Thonny, a Python IDE that is popular in the education community. Thonny was introduced in 2015 by Aivar Annamaa of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Thonny was designed to address common issues observed during six years of teaching Python programming classes to beginners. If you read about the project and its development, you’ll see that he’s put a lot of effort into making Thonny, and it shows.

            Leaning about Thonny got me curious, and after a little digging I discovered that it has WebREPL support for MicroPython right out-of-the-box. Although this is a new feature and classified as experimental, I found it reasonably stable to use and more than adequate for home lab use.

        • Rust

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Linux Stops Reverting Most University of Minnesota Patches, Admits Good Faith

                In response, the UMN researchers posted an open letter apologizing to the community, followed a few days later by a summary of the work they did [PDF] as part of the "hypocrite commits" project. Five patches were submitted overall from two sock-puppet accounts, but one of those was an ordinary bug fix that was sent from the wrong account by mistake. Of the remaining four, one of them was an attempt to insert a bug that was, itself, buggy, so the patch was actually valid; the other three (1, 2, 3) contained real bugs. None of those three were accepted by maintainers, though the reasons for rejection were not always the bugs in question.

                The paper itself has been withdrawn and will not be presented in May as was planned...

                One of the first things that happened when this whole affair exploded was the posting by Greg Kroah-Hartman of a 190-part patch series reverting as many patches from UMN as he could find... As it happens, these "easy reverts" also needed manual review; once the initial anger passed there was little desire to revert patches that were not actually buggy. That review process has been ongoing over the course of the last week and has involved the efforts of a number of developers. Most of the suspect patches have turned out to be acceptable, if not great, and have been removed from the revert list; if your editor's count is correct, 42 patches are still set to be pulled out of the kernel...

        • Security

          • Security updates for Thursday

            Security updates have been issued by Fedora (ceph, jetty, kernel, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, openvpn, and shim-unsigned-x64), Mageia (firefox and thunderbird), Oracle (nss and openldap), Red Hat (bind), Slackware (bind), SUSE (firefox, giflib, java-1_7_0-openjdk, libnettle, librsvg, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (bind9 and gst-plugins-good1.0).

          • Q1 2021 ransomware trends: Most attacks involved threat to leak stolen data

            The vast majority of ransomware attacks now include the theft of corporate data, Coveware says, but victims of data exfiltration extortion have very little to gain by paying a cyber criminal.

            The stolen data has likely been held by multiple parties and not secured, and victimized organizations can’t be sure that it has been destroyed and not traded, sold, misplaced, or held for a future extortion attempt, they explained.

          • From URGENT/11 to Frag/44: Analysis of Critical Vulnerabilities in the Windows TCP/IP Stack

            Part 2: The Armis research team finds a new primitive to bypass firewalls using CVE-2021-24094, and provides a full analysis of this Windows TCP/IP stack vulnerability patched in February 2021.

            As detailed in the first part of this two-part blog series, several significant vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows TCP/IP stack were patched in Microsoft’s February 2021 Patch Tuesday. This blog series set out to do a deep dive on the vulnerabilities, analyzing their patches, and finding the root cause and the potential ramification of these vulnerabilities.

          • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

          • Privacy/Surveillance

            • Confused Feds Subpoena Signal for Data It Doesn't Collect

              For the second time in several years, Signal has been subpoenaed by federal investigators for data that the encrypted chat app company doesn’t actually collect.

            • Signal's response to Homeland Security's grand jury subpoena for user data is basically "You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir"

              Signal, the popular messaging service with end-to-end encryption, stores precious little user data — "Unix timestamps for when each account was created and the date that each account last connected to the Signal service."

              So when Homeland Security subpoenaed Signal to turn over "a wide variety of information… including the addresses of the users, their correspondence, and the name associated with each account," Signal enlisted the aid of the ACLU, which replied to the FBI with a polite version of the Willy Winka "you get nothing" meme.

            • Signal’s response to a subpoena highlights value of encrypted messaging

              Last week we brought you news of Signal reverse engineering Cellebrite’s software and hardware and discovering a trove of vulnerabilities that it has no intention of exploiting.

              Today however Signal has shown us the value of choosing an encrypted messenger by way of a response to a subpoena from the United States Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California.

            • Vivaldi browser tries to end your cookie consent nightmare

              Chromium-based Vivaldi has released an update with a new 'Cookie Crumbler' feature to alleviate the hassle of cookie consent forms that have plagued the web for Europeans due to its new privacy laws.

              As all Europeans know, whenever they open a web page they're confronted with a message advising them that the site uses cookies for various reasons and then need to choose "I accept cookies" or "I refuse cookies" or, more often an option to "Manage Cookie Settings" or "Go to cookie settings".



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