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Links 18/6/2021: Mir 2.4, ActivityWatch 0.11, Microsoft Breaks Its Own Repos



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Intel i915g Mesa Driver Now Goes Goes Through NIR, Fixes Some Past Test Failures - Phoronix

        While this week's landing of the Crocus Gallium3D driver for Intel Gen4 through Gen7 graphics (i965 through Haswell) in Mesa is exciting for Linux users that are still running aging Intel systems, going back even further has been the i915g Gallium3D driver and there this week there happens to be a big improvement too.

        Emma Anholt's work on switching i915g to the NIR-to-TGSI path has been merged. Rather than the i915g going GLSL-to-TGSI as has long been the case, it's now employing the GLSL-to-NIR and NIR-to-TGSI route. In turn, i915g can leverage the common NIR optimizations utilized by other drivers and NIR just being the more modern and popular intermediate representation used by today's Mesa drivers. The Gallium3D TGSI IR is ultimately still used by the i915g driver for now rather than native NIR.

      • Upcoming online training courses in 2021

        Throughout this first half of 2021, our online training courses available for individual registration have been very popular.

        [...]

        These courses are delivered entirely online: you don’t need any hardware to participate, as the hands-on labs are replaced by live demonstrations made by the trainer. All you need is a web browser, a good Internet connection and an audio headset!

      • New Linux Patch To Allow Booting From Arbitrary Non-Block Device File-Systems - Phoronix

        The Linux kernel currently has code to allow booting an initial root file-system via NFS or CIFS for non-blockdevice file-systems while a new patch aims to allow for mounting of arbitrary non-block device file-systems as root.

        Longtime kernel developer Christoph Hellwig sent out this new patch based on earlier work by Red Hat's Vivek Goyal. Extending the CIFS and NFS root file-system support right now in the kernel, this extension allows for arbitrary non-block device file-systems to be used for the root file-system.

      • Adreno 660 GPU Support Landing For Linux 5.14 - Phoronix

        The MSM DRM driver changes have been submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.14 cycle for improving this open-source Qualcomm Adreno kernel graphics/display driver.

        Most notable with the MSM driver updates for Linux 5.14 is now having the Adreno 660 graphics support for that updated GPU found with the Snapdragon 888 SoC. The Adreno 660 support in MSM builds off the existing Adreno 650 series support.

      • Linux 5.12.12

        I'm announcing the release of the 5.12.12 kernel.

        All users of the 5.12 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.12.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.12.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h

      • Linux 5.10.45

        I'm announcing the release of the 5.10.45 kernel.

        All users of the 5.10 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.10.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.10.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h

      • Linux 5.4.127

        I'm announcing the release of the 5.4.127 kernel.

        All users of the 5.4 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.4.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h

      • Graphics Stack

        • Mir 2.4, enhancing digital signage and smart screen development

          Another cycle brings another release of Mir, with new features and new innovative use cases. For those of you new to Mir, our flexible display server provides a set of libraries and Wayland compositor for building Wayland-based shells with integrated window management. It is widely used in different IoT applications, including digital signage solutions and desktops shells. And today, Canonical is launching Mir 2.4, a new version of Mir that improves Mir interfaces for graphics platforms to make them more suitable for use on hybrid systems.

    • Benchmarks

      • GravityMark OpenGL/Vulkan Performance For NVIDIA RTX 30 vs. AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series

        A few days ago I wrote about GravityMark as a new cross-API GPU benchmark from a former Unigine developer. Being curious about the Linux GPU driver performance for this benchmark that is focused on delivering maximum GPU acceleration support, I ran some benchmarks on the latest NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards with this benchmark for OpenGL and Vulkan.

    • Applications

      • 5 Best htop alternatives to monitor Linux systems

        Htop is a process manager that allows us to see the processes in execution and the usage of system resources using the Linux terminal. With its text-based interface that supports the mouse, we can easily operate it and perform various functions such as it is very easy to kill any process on htop. In short, it has all functions we required to monitor and manage system processes using the command terminal. Further, easy to understand due to the simple fields of CPU, Mem, PID, and Command when opening htop.

        At the top of htop, the usage rate of each CPU will be listed. It is worth noting that the number of logical cores of the CPU is displayed there. However, htop is no the only way on Linux to monitor process and hardware resources there are other good options as well. Thus, that’s why we decided to come with some good htop alternative tools in this list.

      • Time Tracker ActivityWatch v0.11 Released with UI Improvements and New Features

        ActivityWatch is a cross-platform open-source and privacy-respecting time monitoring application.

        It informs you of the activities you have been doing on your devices.

        With its latest 0.11 release, ActivityWatch has made progress on the user experience along with several technical improvements.

        Let’s dive right into the features this version has to offer.

      • 7 Free And Open Source Download Managers For Windows And Linux

        Download Managers are one of the great ways to boost and manage your downloads from the internet. However, settling on one best download manager could be challenging as there are tons of them out there. Hence, let’s look at some of the best, free, and open-source download managers for Windows and Linux.

        IDM (Internet Download Manager) is considered one of the most popular download managers, but it’s paid and isn’t available for Linux. You can also take the Download Managers in this list as IDM alternatives. Mind you, the order in which the apps are listed has nothing to do with how good an app is. If you are also looking for the best DMs for Android, check out our best download managers for Android list.

        [...]

        The UI is simple, clean, and highly customizable. One of the app’s differentiating features is that it acts as a front-end for one of the popular command-line software Youtube-dl. Downloading videos from YouTube was a breeze, but it also works for DailyMotion and Vimeo. These features, combined with the download speed and open-source nature, make it one of the best IDM alternatives and best download managers.

        To install the Persepolis download manager, head over to the official website to install instructions for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

        2. Motrix

        Another completely free software that works like a charm. Motrix is an open-source download manager that looks great UI-wise and also offers great features. We tested it out and found that it takes time to initialize the download, but once it starts downloading, the speed is better than a browser.

      • Fotoxx – Photo Editor & Large Collection Manager while Super Fast

        Looking for a lightweight photo editor and management app for Linux? Try Fotoxx, a free and open-source software which is super fast.

        Fotoxx is a GTK application to organize and manage a large image collection, edit and optimize photos, and perform batch operations.

        Unlike other image editor, Fotoxx has app menus in the left pane with ability to toggle file view, and edit photos. While providing many functions to meet the needs of serious photographers, it remains fast and easy to use.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Playbooks, host vars, group vars

        This is part of a series of posts on ideas for an ansible-like provisioning system, implemented in Transilience.

      • Systemd Timers for Scheduling Tasks - Fedora Magazine

        Cron can schedule a task to be run at a granularity ranging from minutes to months or more. It is relatively simple to set up, requiring a single configuration file. Although the configuration line is somewhat esoteric. It can also be used by general users.

        Cron, however, fails if your system happens to not be running when the appropriate execution time occurs.

        Anacron, overcomes the “system not running” issue. It insures that the task will be executed when your system is again active. While it was intended to be used by administrators, some systems give general users access.

        However, the anacron frequency of execution can be no less than daily.

        Both cron and anacron have issues with consistency in execution context. Care must be taken that the environment in effect when the task runs is exactly that used when testing. The same shell, environment variables and paths must be provided. This means that testing and debugging can sometimes be difficult.

        Systemd timers offer the best of both cron and anacron. Allows scheduling down to minute granularity. Assures that the task will be executed when the system is again running even if it was off during the expected execution time. Is available to all users. You can test and debug the execution in the environment it will run in.

        However, the configuration is more involved, requiring at least two configuration files.

        If your cron and anacron configuration is serving you well then there may not be a reason to change. But systemd is at least worth investigating since it may simplify any current cron /anacron work-arounds.

      • How to play Just Cause 3 on Linux

        Just Cause 3 is a 2015 action-adventure game developed by Avalance Studios and published by Square Enix. In this game, the player controls Rico Rodriguez as he returns to his homeland of Medici. Here’s how to play it on Linux.

      • How to Install Windows After Ubuntu Linux in Dual Boot

        When it comes to dual boot, the general idea is that you have a system preinstalled with Windows and then you install Linux alongside Windows. On the boot, you select whether you want to use Windows or Linux.

        How about the opposite situation? What if you have a system that has only Linux installed on it and you want to install Windows alongside Linux in dual boot mode?

        In this tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how you can install Windows after Ubuntu Linux in dual boot.

      • How to Install The Latest Sigil EPUB Ebook Editor 6.0 in Ubuntu 20.04, 21.04 | UbuntuHandbook

        For those sticking to the latest Sigil ebook editor, here’s Ubuntu PPA maintains the 6.0 release packages for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Linux Mint 19 & 20.

        Sigil is a free and open-source ebook editor designed to edit books in ePub format (both ePub 2 and ePub 3). The software offers official binary packages only for Windows and Mac OS.

        The editor in Ubuntu repositories is always old. And no Flatpak or Snap package for Sigil. So far, using a third-party PPA is the only way besides compiling from the source tarball.

      • MySQL Security Tips €» ADMIN Magazine

        MySQL security configurations include a range of topics, along with their possible effects on MySQL servers and corresponding applications. In this article, I look at MySQL security encryption services, account-associated authorization systems, and other required security precautions to ensure protection against misuse and attacks. This security guide will help you protect sensitive data, even if the MySQL service is compromised at some point.

        Most of the advanced MySQL security configurations require changes to the server's main configuration file my.cnf. This file is generally located inside the /etc/mysql directory or in the /opt/lampp/etc/ folder for LAMPP installations. However, you can locate the file with the find or locate command in Linux.

      • How to install Redmine Project Management Software on Ubuntu 20.04

        Redmine is a free and open-source project management application written in Ruby. It provides a web-based interface that allows you to manage your project from the web browser. It is a cross-platform, and cross-database application that provides free and paid tools, and supports for wikis, forums, calendars, etc.

      • How to Install Centrifugo Messaging Server on Ubuntu 20.04

        Centrifugo is a free, open-source, and real-time messaging server. It supports WebSocket and SockJS to make a connection from the application clients through the web browser. It is fast and able to handle millions of simultaneous connections. It can easily integrate your existing application. It is language-agnostic and its API can be used from any programming language.

        In this guide, we will show you how to install Centrifugo on Ubuntu 20.04 server.

      • How to Check a TLS/SSL Certificate Expiration Date on Ubuntu

        The purpose of using TLS/SSL certificates on web servers is to encrypt the connection between the web browser and server. However, these certificates are not valid for a whole life rather they also have a finite expiration date after which the web browser will show an error message when connecting to the website. Today, I will show you how you can check the TLS/SSL certificate expiration date of an SSL certificate of a website using OpenSSL on Ubuntu 20.04.

      • Perform a kaniko build on a Red Hat OpenShift cluster and push the image to a registry | Red Hat Developer

        Typically, building containers and images from a standard Dockerfile requires root access and permissions. This can create a challenge when working with public or shared clusters. For example, cluster admins don't often allow permissions to run this type of workload, as it might compromise the security of the entire cluster.

        In these situations, many developers use a build tool such as kaniko to simplify the effort. Kaniko can build your images without requiring root access. This capability makes kaniko a feasible alternative for building containers and images in any kind of environment; for example, standard Kubernetes clusters, Google Kubernetes Engine, and public or shared clusters. Kaniko can also automatically push your images to a specified image registry.

        This article shows you how to use kaniko to build a container image in a Red Hat OpenShift cluster and push the image to a registry.

      • Use this nostalgic text editor on FreeDOS

        In the very early days of DOS, the standard editor was a no-frills line editor called Edlin. Tim Paterson wrote the original Edlin for the first version of DOS, then called 86-DOS and later branded PC-DOS and MS-DOS. Paterson has commented that he meant to replace Edlin eventually, but it wasn't until ten years later that MS-DOS 5 (1991) replaced Edlin with Edit, a full-screen editor.

        You may know that FreeDOS is an open source DOS-compatible operating system that you can use to play classic DOS games, run legacy business software, or develop embedded systems. FreeDOS has very good compatibility with MS-DOS, and the "Base" package group includes those utilities and programs that replicate the behavior of MS-DOS. One of those classic programs is an open source implementation of the venerable Edlin editor; Edlin is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

      • Linux Release Roundup #21.25: ActivityWatch 0.11, elementaryOS 6 Beta 2, and More New Releases - It's FOSS News

        ActivityWatch is a unique time tracker available for Linux and other platforms. The latest release improves the user interface with more features.

        You can read more about it in our original coverage.

      • How to Clear Apt Cache

        When you install packages in Debian/Ubuntu using the apt-get command, a copy of the .deb file is locally stored. This helps in case you need to reinstall them after removal, then packages can be accessed locally (in another way called cache). Each time when you reinstall, the system doesn't need to go through the network.

        Downloaded package are locally cached in /var/cache/apt/archives/. Each time when you run apt-get update and apt-get install command, the apt cache is updated.

        In this tutorial we learn how to clear apt cache on Debian and Ubuntu systems.

      • foursixnine's lair - How to test things with openQA without running your own instance

        Yes, there are couple of ways for you, the user, the contributor, the amazing human being who wants to improve the software that is used by millions, to write automated tests and have bots doing all the work for you, once you’ve signed a binding contract with the blood of an unicorn, and have obtained api keys for our public https://openqa.opensuse.org instance.

        For now I will leave out the details on how to get those, but will rather point you to the #factory irc channel (or dischord), where you can get in touch with current admins, whom will be able to guide you better in the process.

      • How to Install Syncthing on Linux Mint 20 - LinuxBabe

        This tutorial will show you how to install Syncthing on Linux Mint 20. Syncthing is a free, peer-to-peer continuous file synchronization program that allows you to synchronize your files across multiple devices, available for Linux, BSD, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS and Solaris.

        It’s an open-source alternative to the popular Resilio Sync (formerly known as BitTorrent Sync) application. The creation, modification or deletion of files on one machine will automatically be replicated to your other devices. Syncthing does not upload your files to a central server like Nextcloud, but exchange your data directly between your devices. All your data is encrypted with TLS when transmitting between your devices.

      • How To Install Inkscape on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Inkscape on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows desktop computers. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming, and flowcharting.

        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 the step-by-step installation of the Inkscape 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 Fix Scrolling Not Working Issue in Chrome - Make Tech Easier

        You’re using Chrome like any other day, but for some reason the scrolling is not working. The scrolling feature works fine on other browsers but not on Chrome. Since this is something that you continuously do to move around on a site, this is something that needs to be fixed ASAP.

        If you notice that this also happens on other browsers and programs, there is a good chance there is something wrong with your mouse. But, if this only happens on Chrome, the following tips should help you fix the issue.

    • Games

      • YoYo Games launches Fire Jump - a new game-making Drag and Drop tutorial for GameMaker Studio 2

        18 June 2021, Dundee, Scotland: YoYo Games today announced the launch of Fire Jump - a new game-making tutorial designed to introduce new users...

      • Learn how locks really work in Sophie's Safecracking Simulator now on Steam | GamingOnLinux

        After appearing on itch.io, the very clever Sophie's Safecracking Simulator is now available on Steam if that is your preferred way to grab Linux games. What is it? It teaches you how to crack simulated (obviously) locks by using real-world techniques. It's a wonderful idea for a sort-of game.

      • Guilty Gear: Strive - Fighting at It's Finest - Boiling Steam

        Mankind knew that they cannot change society. So instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed the Beasts.

        These are the words you’ll hear upon starting a matchup in Guilty Gear: Strive. Next, you’ll see your character and your opponent walking close to each other, and once they stop walking, you’ll get a nice butt shot of your character, and you’ll hear the words “Heaven, or Hell.”

        Who are the Beasts exactly? Well, I frankly couldn’t tell you, because behind the Guilty Gear series is a ton of lore that I have yet to catch up on. I dabbled a little bit with Guilty Gear: Xrd, but otherwise I knew little to nothing about the Guilty Gear series prior to picking up this game. Regardless, Guilty Gear: Strive (I will try to refrain from using the acronym “GG”, as some might confuse it for “good game”) — it’s a game that I just can’t seem to give enough praise for. It’s not just the fighting mechanics — it’s the lighting, the artwork, the fluid animations, the stellar soundtrack, the rollback netcode, the deep, deep dive into the lore tour via the story mode, combined that makes this a gem worth paying the $60 asking price.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • GSoC’21 Week 1: The Beginning

          GCompris is a high quality educational software suite, including a large number of activities for children aged 2 to 10, some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational.

          Currently GCompris offers more than 100 activities, and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, it means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it, and most importantly share it with children everywhere.

          The GCompris project is hosted and developed by the KDE community.

        • KDE neon now on Linux 5.8

          Here at KDE neon we pride ourselves on giving you the latest from KDE built pronto and QAed and shipped to you with no questions asked. We also base on the stable Ubuntu LTS 20.04 release giving a generally stable system. If you want an updated version of an app which isn’t from KDE we advise you to use a non-distro package from the Snap store, AppImage or Flatpak. But Linux has one property which is still inconvenient for the end user even the more nerdy of end users, which is that drivers are shipped with the Linux version you get and there’s no stable programmer interface for them so they can’t easily be shipped externally. That means if you use Linux 5.4 which is what comes with KDE neon and Ubuntu 20.04 you will get drivers which are a few years old, which is no good for those shiny new AMD Radeon graphics chips. So we’ve now switched the installable images to the HWE build which brings in Linux 5.8. Neon installs should just install it on upgrade and use it on the next boot. Chat on our forum and report bugs on bugs.kde.org as ever.

    • Distributions

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • The role of the Orchestrator in GitOps-driven operations

          Typically, when a new technology or pattern emerges, various approaches are taken to determine how it best fits into a transformed model. Proponents of traditional methods are sometimes initially met with resistance by eager early adopters, who may discard lessons learned from foundational practices.

          Established orchestration approaches versus GitOps methodologies demonstrate this inflection point.

          While it would be an oversimplification to assume that one approach entirely can replace the other, we’ll examine the strengths and weaknesses of each in this post and find a balance between the two.

        • Switching SELinux on and off - Linux Concept

          This is perhaps a weird section to begin with, but disabling SELinux is a commonly requested activity. Some vendors do not support their application running on a platform that has SELinux enabled, as those vendors do not have the expertise to develop SELinux policies for their own applications, or are not able to educate their own support lines to deal with SELinux.

          Furthermore, system administrators are generally reluctant to use security controls they do not understand or find too complex to maintain. Luckily, SELinux is becoming a de facto standard technology in several Linux distributions, which is increasing its exposure and understanding among administrators. SELinux is also capable of selectively disabling its access controls for a part of a system rather than requiring us to disable it for a complete system.

        • Podman is gaining rootless overlay support | Enable Sysadmin

          Podman can use native overlay file system with the Linux kernel versions 5.13. Up until now, we have been using fuse-overlayfs. The kernel gained rootless support in the 5.11 kernel, but a bug prevented SELinux use with the file system; this bug was fixed in 5.13.

        • Leveraging Cloud Computing to Enhance the Nation’s Cybersecurity [Ed: Pushing clown computing as a security 'solution' is truly insane (it's the cause of so many issues and a privacy/data protection catastrophe), but this is what IBM emeritus IWB is doing today]

          There’s clearly an urgent need to significantly improve the security and resilience of IT systems and applications in light of the growing threat of cyberattacks, which FBI director Christopher Wray recently compared to addressing the challenge of global terrorism following the 9/11 attack. Earlier this week, the NY Times published this front page article - Once, Superpower Summits Were About Nukes. Now, It’s Cyberweapons, that said: “The rising tempo and sophistication of recent attacks on American infrastructure - from gasoline pipelines running up the East Coast, to plants providing a quarter of America’s beef, to the operations of hospitals and the internet itself - has revealed a set of vulnerabilities no president can ignore.” On May 12, President Biden issued an Executive Order to Improve the Nation’s Cybersecurity, a welcome and very important step.

          Cloud-based technologies and Cloud Service Provides (CSPs) can play a major role in improving the nation’s cybersecurity. Over the years, CSPs have invested billions in cloud security, hired thousands of top cyber experts, and developed an array of new tools and methods. CIOs generally agree that the security on cloud platforms is superior to that of in-house data centers, a major reason why the top IDC prediction for the post-pandemic new normal was that “By the end of 2021, based on lessons learned, 80% of enterprises will put a mechanism in place to shift to cloud-centric infrastructure and applications twice as fast as before the pandemic.”

        • Authorino: Making open source, cloud-native API security simple and flexible

          Authorino solves a persistent problem that arises when upgrading applications for secure internet use: the need to add authentication or authorization to APIs that were built without these security concepts in mind. Authorino provides an easy, cloud-native way to expose these APIs. You don’t have to modify or rebuild your API. A thin reverse-proxy layer with an external authorization filter, completely configurable via the Kubernetes API, allows you to add the right authentication and authorization model to suit your needs.

          This article introduces Authorino with an overview of its uses and benefits, a look at its underlying mechanics, and a brief demonstration based on an example use case.

        • Java EE and Jakarta EE: What IT leaders should know | The Enterprisers Project

          The first thing to know about Java EE is that it’s no longer called Java EE.

          “Java EE is under new management,” says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation.

          A bit of a quick history lesson, courtesy of Milinkovich: Oracle contributed Java EE to Eclipse in 2017, and it became an open source project. Subsequently, the name was changed to Jakarta EE. Today, the project is overseen by the Jakarta EE Working Group, which Milinkovich describes as a who’s who of Java industry leaders, such as Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, Payara, Red Hat, and Tomitribe.

          Jakarta EE can be viewed as a bridge between old and new, in the sense that it’s a means of adopting and working with modern technologies without dumping your existing application and infrastructure investments – a nonstarter for most companies, not to mention IT pros who’ve invested significant time and energy in their existing skill sets but want to continue to adapt to newer tools and languages.

          Jakarta EE lets you leverage your existing Java EE code - and offers a future for your skilled Java developers. “Jakarta EE provides your enterprise with two strategic advantages: a path forward for your existing investments in the Java EE application code running your business, and a bright future for the skilled Java developers on your staff,” Milinkovich says.

        • Hybrid work: 7 signs that meeting should be an email | The Enterprisers Project

          Pointless meetings are nothing new; they’re so pervasive that surviving another meeting that should have been an email reached meme status back in the 2000’s. However, this problem risks reaching epidemic status in the age of Zoom. With the ongoing shift to hybrid work - combining office and remote work - video calls are going nowhere soon, so leaders need to know when to use them and when to skip directly to email or chat.

          Many people are not using collaboration tools for informal updates. Six out of ten individuals surveyed early this year by virtual work consultancy Vitira reported that the number of meetings they must attend has increased significantly since the pandemic began. “Most say that the ad-hoc chats they had at the office have been replaced by formal meetings,” says Cynthia Watson (formerly Spraggs), CEO of Vitira and author of a book on how to work from home, “which indicates that many are not using collaboration tools for informal updates.”

      • Debian Family

        • Debian GNU / Linux: Cinnamon Desktop Future (For Now) Preserved

          Debian GNU / Linux has traditionally lived off the commitment of its developers. Many packages are now managed in teams – programs like KDE or GNOME may not be prudent to handle regardless of their size. Individuals are still responsible for other packages.

          This would have disabled the popular Linux mint based cinnamon desktop. Like the current package manager Norbert Braining Announced on his blog, He currently maintains the desktop for Debian. However, according to his own report, Breening has been using KDE for a few months, and now Debian has been using KDE. He did not want to spend too much time on cinnamon.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux Mint 20.2 has a Beta version now available | GamingOnLinux

          Linux Mint 20.2 is close to being ready with a first Beta version now available with the Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktop variants up for some testing. This will be an LTS release (Long-term support), with it getting updates up until 2025.

          This is a pretty big one for the project too, with lots of changes across the whole desktop. Although, that does depend on which version of Linux Mint you go for. The main edition, Linux Mint Cinnamon is of course where the majority of their focus goes and all the changes are sounding pretty great.

        • Linux Mint 20.2 Beta Introduces Update Reminder, Cinnamon 5, New Applications, and Other Improvements - It's FOSS News

          Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” (beta) based on Ubuntu 20.04.2 is finally available to download.

          Here, I shall highlight what’s new and how to get the beta version for testing.

        • Ubuntu 20.10 Reaches End of Life on July 22, Here’s How to Upgrade

          For anyone running the Ubuntu 20.10, you have until July 22 to update to a newer version. Canonical, the company behind the distro, has announced that after that date, version 20.10 (also known as “Groovy Gorilla”) will enter its End of Life.

          Even though Ubuntu 20.10 was only released in October last year, it was an interim release with 9-months of support. While any PC running Ubuntu 20.10 will continue to work after July 22, because you won’t get security updates. It’s highly recommended that you upgrade ASAP.

        • How’s my snap faring on different distributions?

          The life of an application can roughly be divided into two: everything that happens before it goes live – building, packaging, publication – and then, everything that happens after that milestone. Traditionally, on Linux, developers didn’t always have an easy way of deriving useful numbers on how their software was doing across the distrospace. Indeed, the ability to understand one’s audience’s needs, and then react to them, perhaps by improving a product, or making changes that would help grow the usage, is an important part of the software lifecycle. The question is, how (and if) can you do that with snaps?

          Enter the Store

          Last year, we had a pretty thorough overview of the Snap Store, and the different functionalities it offers to publishers. If you have an account, and you’ve published a snap or three, you can configure and modify a whole range of settings and options for your applications. For instance, you can upload screenshots and videos, add collaborators, trigger builds, publicize your work, and check the metrics.

          By default, the metrics page displays a 30-day weekly active devices count, and a breakdown by application version. This gives you a good understanding of the overall behavior of the systems using snap. You can increase the window to get a longer view of the trends.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • KloudNote 10.3-inch E-reader supports WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular connectivity - CNX Software

        Geniatech used to be better known for their Amlogic TV boxes, before expanding their business to development boards and systems-on-modules. But the company has now introduced KloudNote, a 10.3-inch E-reader running Android 8.1 on a quad-core Cortex-A35 processor.

        The device is equipped with 2GB of RAM and a 16GB eMMC flash, supports WiFi 5 and Bluetooth, as well as optional 2G/3G/4G LTE cellular connectivity, and comes with a USB-C port and a headphone jack.

      • TI AM64x 7-core processor is made for PLC's, motor drives, industrial robots - CNX Software

        Texas Instruments AM64x is a family of 64-bit Arm processors with functional safety designed for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), motor drives, remote I/O, and industrial robots. The top-end processor of the family, AM6442, comes with seven cores including two Cortex-A53 application cores, four Cortex-R5F real-time cores, and one Cortex-M4F isolated core.

        AFAICT, while the documentation is dated January 2021 and TI announced the processor in February in a blog post with a cryptic title, it was only first picked up by Embedded Computing in early May. Besides the processor itself, TI also provides an AM64x starter kit and a full-featured AM64x evaluation kit, and several companies are already preparing development boards and modules as we’ll see further below.

      • Open Hardware/Modding

        • 14 Awesome Arduino Cloud Features You Never Knew Existed

          There are dozens, if not hundreds of amazing Arduino Cloud features. So it’s perfectly understandable if you’ve missed some of them.

          So we’ve put together a list of our favorite Arduino Cloud features that you might not know existed.

        • Homemade mechanical color TV runs on an Arduino Due | Arduino Blog

          Nearly everyone alive today has never the technical marvel that is the mechanical television. In short, the work by quickly strobing a light through a disc that has holes cut around its perimeter, with each hole being slightly lower than its predecessor. Combined with the persistence of vision effect, this gives the illusion of a still image with its number of rows being equal to the number of holes in the disc. YouTuber “Science ‘n’ Stuff” wanted to try creating a modern version that uses a microcontroller to precisely adjust an LED’s color, rather than using an analog signal.

          The device has a single large plastic disc with 32 holes for a total of 32 rows in the image. It’s spun at 1500 RPM by a DC motor that’s driven via PWM, and because there can be some variance in the motor’s speed, the synchronization signal that’s produced on each full rotation is also used to carefully adjust the motor’s speed to keep it constant. Both images and sound are read from an onboard microSD card, with the images being converted into pulses of light and the sound being played on a mono speaker. All of this is controlled by an Arduino Due board.

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The Apache News Round-up: week ending 18 June 2021

        The week has zipped by --it's Friday already-- and it's time to take a look at what the Apache community has been up to over the past week...

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Gary Linden, legendary surfer & Firefox fan

            On the internet you are never alone, and because of that at Mozilla we know that we can’t work to build a better internet alone. We believe in and rely on our community — from our volunteers, to our staff, to our users and even the parent’s of our staff (who also happen to be some of our power users). For Father’s Day, Mozilla’s Natalie Linden sat down with her father, big wave surf legend and surfboard maker, Gary Linden to talk the ocean, the internet and where humanity goes from here.

            We should probably start by telling people who we are. I am Natalie Linden, the Director of the Creative Studio in Mozilla marketing.

      • CMS

        • Top 11 open-source Kanban tools for work teams in enterprises

          Kanban is a simple but powerful tool that can help business owners and project managers stay organized maybe in a conference room and I'll explain it.

          Kanban is a Japanese term meaning something like billboard it was developed by Toyota in the 1950s for manufacturing however it has since been applied to a number of industries including construction architecture, software development, and even personal time management.

          Kanban board keeps all of your team members collaborating and informed.

          In many cases, the digital Kanban system along with thoughtful participation can eliminate the need for the dreaded weekly status report

          in its most basic form, a Kanban board has just a few columns such as to do, in progress, and completed with digital systems like stars any number of columns can be created to reflect how workflows through your organization.

      • FSF

        • GNU Projects

          • GNU Guix: Substitutes now also available from bordeaux.guix.gnu.org

            There have been a number of different project operated sources of substitutes, for the last couple of years the default source of substitutes has been ci.guix.gnu.org (with a few different URLs).

            [...]

            This change is an important milestone, following on from the work that started on the Guix Build Coordinator towards the start of 2020.

            Back in 2020, the substitute availability from ci.guix.gnu.org was often an issue. There seemed to be a number of contributing factors, including some parts of the architecture. Without going too much in to the details of the issues, aspects of the design of the Guix Build Coordinator were specifically meant to avoid some of these issues.

            While there were some very positive results from testing back in 2020, it's taken so long to bring the substitute availability benefits to general users of Guix that ci.guix.gnu.org has changed and improved significantly in the meantime. This means that any benefits in terms of substitute availability are less significant now.

            One clearer benefit of just having two independent sources of substitutes is redundancy. While the availability of ci.guix.gnu.org has been very high (in my opinion), having a second independent substitute server should mean that if there's a future issue with users accessing either source of substitutes, the disruption should be reduced.

            I'm also excited about the new possibilities offered by having a second substitute server, particularly one using the Guix Build Coordinator to manage the builds.

            Substitutes for the Hurd is already something that's been prototyped, so I'm hopeful that bordeaux.guix.gnu.org can start using childhurd VMs to build things soon.

            Looking a bit further forward, I think there's some benefits to be had in doing further work on how the nar and narinfo files used for substitutes are managed. There are some rough plans already on how to address the retention of nars, and how to look at high performance mirrors.

      • Programming/Development

        • C++ Coroutines Two: Electric Boogaloo: co_await a QNetworkReply*

          If you haven't read my previous blog post on coroutines in C++, you want to do that before reading this blog post.

          In the last blog post, I explained how to construct an awaitable Future type.

          [...]

          As far as the C++ compiler is concerned, this ain't kosher, because you're trying to define an operator for a primitive type (a pointer). Your compiler will probably tell you that this needs to be done on a class or enum type.

          But that leaves the question of “how do I make a QNetworkReply* co_awaitable if I can't define co_await on a pointer type?” It is possible.

          Your promise_type object has more last jobs than what I covered in the last blog post. One of them is to potentially provide an await_transform function.

          An await_transform function essentially “preprocesses” any values being co_awaited before the compiler attempts to look for a co_await implementation.

        • Modula-2 Programming Language Front-End Still Looking Towards Mainline GCC In 2021 - Phoronix

          The Modula-2 programming language developed from the late 70's to 80's might finally see mainline GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) support in 2021.

          The structured Modula-2 programming language is that out of ETH Zurich by Niklaus Wirth who is known for his work as well on Euler, Pascal and other programming languages. Modula-2 still has some uses today like with Russia's GLONASS satellites.

        • Remi Collet: PHP version 7.4.21RC1 and 8.0.8RC1

          Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests, and also as base packages.

          RPM of PHP version 8.0.8RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-php80-test repository for Fedora 32-34 and Enterprise Linux.

          RPM of PHP version 7.4.21RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 32-34 or remi-php74-test repository for Enterprise Linux.

        • Commercial LTS Qt 5.15.5 Released
        • Perl/Raku

          • gfldex: Despotting

            API::Discord is a bit spotty. Many classes that are typically represented as a Str don’t sport that method. In same cases bare deparsed JSON is returned. That led to a fair amount of clutter that followed a pattern. After making a remote call via the API, I mix in a role and query the API further, before passing a list on via a Supply. I do the same operation with different operants. That’s sounds like a candidate for a multi sub.

        • Java

          • Bankdata shares its results of using Quarkus on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

            Organizations across the globe and spanning various industries are turning to containerized microservices to innovate at speed. Many have adopted Red Hat OpenShift as a robust and highly-scalable enterprise-ready platform for hosting their containers.

            There are so many Java frameworks available. Deciding which to use when developing on Red Hat OpenShift can be pretty challenging for developers. After all, the business needs the applications it relies on to run efficiently and to be able to scale up quickly when required.

            This post compares how well three different Java frameworks – specifically Spring Boot, the community build of Quarkus on JVM, and the community build of Quarkus as a native Linux executable – optimized Java for Red Hat OpenShift. We’re going to be looking at an experiment Bankdata conducted last year.

    • Standards/Consortia

      • A revival at the intersection of open source and open standards – TechCrunch

        Tremendous technological innovation and transformative power are possible for the future if we re-energize the spirit of collaboration between the open-standards and open-source communities.

      • Open Source, Open Standards, and the Need for Collaboration

        “Our world has big problems to solve,” says Guy Martin, executive director of OASIS Open, and finding solutions will require open source and open standards communities to work together.

        In a recent article at TechCrunch, Martin describes the differences between open source and open standards but also examines their similarities and common goals, such as interoperability, innovation, and choice.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Microsoft's Linux work apparently broke itself

          Microsoft’s official repository, from which it serves all its cross-platform software for several Linux distros, was knocked offline for almost an entire day.

          Microsoft builds and supports a variety of software products for distros such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and others, and makes them available via standard APT and YUM package repositories.

          Early Prime Day deals: see all the best early offers right here. Many users who used these software and tools took to GitHub to raise the issue with the respective projects, including .NET Core, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SQL Server for Linux, Microsoft Edge, and others.

        • Security

          • Relaunching #ipfire

            I am sure you have already heard that the Freenode IRC Network has been hijacked and lots of people lost control over their IRC channels. So did the IPFire Project.

            Although we didn't consider IRC the best protocol for conversations that require more than average privacy, the #ipfire channel was still around. We are self hosting a Jabber server which is hosting a public channel that was meant to replace IRC, but it never caught on. It seems that the golden era of live chatting to people on the Internet is a little bit over...

          • Google funds Linux project to fix vulnerabilities and enhance security [Ed: Google paid Mozilla, which created Rust, and now Google wants to impose another programming language, controlled to a large degree by Microsoft, on Torvalds... in the name of "security"... because money buys decisions]

            Google, the search engine company and the Android-maker, has recently announced to be backing a project by Linux to make the Operating System harder to hack by fixing its vulnerabilities and enhancing its security. Google mentioned in a report on Thursday that it is funding a project to increase the security of Linux by re-writing the core parts “Kernel” of the Linux Operating System in Rust programming language which is basically a modernization effort to make it harder for the hackers to attack Linux-based devices.

          • Security updates for Friday [LWN.net]

            Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (aspnet-runtime, aspnet-runtime-3.1, chromium, drupal, intel-ucode, nginx, opera, python-django, radare2, thefuck, and vivaldi), Debian (jetty9), Fedora (dogtag-pki and pki-core), openSUSE (htmldoc and postgresql10), Oracle (dhcp), SUSE (apache2, caribou, jetty-minimal, libxml2, postgresql12, python-PyJWT, python-rsa, python-urllib3, thunderbird, tpm2.0-tools, xstream, and xterm), and Ubuntu (grub2-signed, grub2-unsigned and libxml2).

          • Determining the Source of Truth for Software Components

            Abstract: Having access to a list of software components and their respective meta-data is critical to performing various DevOps tasks successfully. After considering the varying requirements of the different tasks, we determined that representing a software component as a “collection of files” provided an optimal representation. Conversely, when file-level information is missing, most tasks become more costly or outright impossible to complete.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Partial win for Heckler & Koch in assault rifle procurement in Germany

          The German Federal Procurement Body (Vergabekammer des Bundes), headed by Hans-Werner Behrens, has decided that competitor C.G. Haenel was misinformed. The body has decided that, upon recalculation, C.G Haenel’s bid to supply 120,000 assault rifles to the German army was ultimately less economical than Heckler & Koch’s.

          The decision comes after, following a break from tradition, the army awarded the contract to C.G. Haenel in late 2020. For 60 years, the German Armed Forces’ assault rifle supplier was Heckler & Koch. Haenel is a traditional German company, known in the market for its hunting rifles.

          Surprisingly, patent-related allegations against Haenel played a marginal role in the hearing. Instead, the body looked mainly at which supplier put forward the most economical bid. However, the patent dispute could still gain importance over the coming year.

          [...]

          Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court case law, which requires the awarding authorities to examine whether possible infringements of industrial property rights restrict the ability to supply and thus bidder suitability, forms the background to these expert opinions. Accordingly, the awarding authority does not necessarily have to wait for the outcome of a patent dispute.

          The BAAINBw dismissed as irrelevant whether it acted correctly in this case, since the bid was eliminated anyway because it was less cost-effective. Observers criticised that the Federal Procurement Body did not decide on this point.

          Düsseldorf Regional Court will hear Heckler & Koch’s infringement suit against Haenel on 12 October. In parallel, Heckler & Koch has filed a negative declaratory judgment action against rifle magazine manufacturer Magpul, which accuses the arms manufacturer of infringing its patents.

        • Micron, Mouser sued in Germany

          US patent firm Innovative Foundry Technologies (IFT) is suing Micro and Mouser in a court in Dusseldorf, Germany, for patent infringement. A US patent company has filed a suit in Germany against Micron and Mouser

          Innovative Foundry Technologies (IFT), a US patent company, is suing Micro and Mouser in a court in Dusseldorf, Germany, for patent infringement.

          The company was formed in 2017 and acquired patents from AMD. It has successfully sued TSMC and UMC and now SMIC in China.

          It has acquired new patents, one of which it asserted in a new infringement lawsuit filed in Germany. The case in the Dusseldorf Patent Court alleges that Micron Technologies, Micron Semiconductor (Deutschland), and Mouser Electronics infringed a German Patent De 10 2008 030 854 B4, "MOS transistors having depressed drain and source regions and conforming metal silicide regions, and methods of fabricating the transistors."



Recent Techrights' Posts

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"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
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Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
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Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
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Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day