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Links 26/7/2021: Nanotale on GNU/Linux and IBM Promoting Microsoft GitHub



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • LHS Episode #421: YOTA Camp Deep Dive | Linux in the Ham Shack

        Hello and welcome to Episode 421 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this episode, the hosts interview Neil Rapp, WB2VPG, coordinator of the IARU Region 2 YOTA camp and Peter Lafreniere, N8JPL, one of the youth participants. The topics include an in-depth look at what the campers experienced, events held, challenges faced, and the future of the event. We hope you enjoy this interview and deep and have a great week until the next time we meet.

      • Linux overview | Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” Xfce

        In this video, I am going to show an overview of Linux Mint 20.2 "Xfce" and some of the applications pre-installed.

      • Full Review: The new InfinityBook Pro 14 Linux Notebook from Tuxedo Computers

        Tuxedo sent over their InfinityBook Pro 14 Linux notebook to the studio for me to review, and in this video, I'll give you my thoughts. And it very well might have the best screen from any notebook I've ever reviewed.

    • Kernel Space

      • WiFiWart Boots Linux, Moves To Next Design Phase | Hackaday

        Over the last few months we’ve been keeping an eye on WiFiWart, an ambitious project to develop a Linux single-board computer (SBC) small enough to fit inside a USB wall charger. Developer [Walker] says the goal is to create an easily concealable “drop box” for penetration testing, giving security researchers a valuable foothold inside a target network from which to preform reconnaissance or launch attacks. Of course, we don’t need to tell Hackaday readers that there’s plenty of other things you can do with such a tiny open hardware Linux SBC.

        Today we’re happy to report that [Walker] has gotten the first version of the board booted into Linux, though as you might expect given a project of this complexity, there were a few bumps along the way. From the single missing resistor that caused U-Boot to throw up an error to the finer points of compiling the kernel for an embedded board, the latest blog post he’s written up about his progress provides fascinating insight into the little gotchas of bringing up a SBC from scratch.

      • antiX Security updated kernels

        Latest security fix kernels should now be in the repos. All users are strongly advised to upgrade (via synaptic, cli-aptiX or package-installer).

      • Linux X86 Assembly – How To Make Payload Extraction Easier - Security Boulevard [Ed: Very Linux-hostile site with connections to Microsoft]

        In the last blog post of the X86 Linux assembly series, we focused on how to make our Hello World payload friendly for use as a payload in exploits. However, we didn’t cover how to extract the payload itself for use in exploits. Sure you could view the Objdump output and copy each hex byte out by hand, but that would be tedious and time consuming. Today I want to cover a method for extracting our custom payload from an object file created with GAS using Objcopy.

      • Linux Regressed Its Floppy Disk Driver - Someone Actually Noticed Just A Few Months Later - Phoronix

        It turns out there is actually people running modern versions of the Linux kernel in 2021 that also are using floppy disks.

        There remains a lot of vintage hardware code within the Linux kernel like enthusiasts maintaining the Motorola 68000 series support, among a lot of other older hardware and many drivers for peripherals that haven't been sold new in many years -- including the floppy disk code. But as is often the case, besides it becoming increasingly rare for users of old hardware in general, it's increasingly rare to find vintage computer owners running modern versions of the Linux kernel. But some still do, with the latest example being a regression report over the Linux floppy driver.

      • Graphics Stack

        • DXVK 1.9.1 Improves Support for Far Cry 5, GTA IV, Risen 3, Roblox, and Other Games

          The DXVK 1.9.1 release comes one and a half months after DXVK 1.9 to improve support for various games, including Roblox, which should perform much better on NVIDIA GPUs, Risen 3, which should no longer crash on NVIDIA GPUs, as well as GTA IV, which should no longer break when playing with an NVIDIA graphics card.

          The Roblox performance improvements were achieved by rewroting the way staging textures are handled in D3D11, which also reduces memory usage and the number of image copies needed to move data between the GPU and CPU.

        • An interview with Joshua Ashton, developer on the likes of DXVK, VKD3D-Proton and more

          Time for another GamingOnLinux interview! This time, we have someone who many that follow Valve and Steam Play Proton will be familiar with - it's Joshua Ashton.

    • Applications

      • Top 6 Weather Apps You Can Try for Ubuntu Linux in 2021

        Halfway through the year, many new apps released and many abandoned. Here are 6 weather apps that are still useful in 2021.

        Without searching in web browser or watching an app on mobile, there are quite a few weather apps for Linux that display weather conditions and forecast either on desktop or via system tray applet.

        And here are top ones still in active development and well working in all current Ubuntu releases.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Basic Linux Kernel module administration commands

        The kernel of a Linux system is the core that everything else in the operating system relies on. The functionality of the kernel can be extended by adding modules to it. As such, a user can fine tune their kernel settings by enabling or disabling modules. This level of granular control is one of the many reasons why users love Linux in the first place.

        In this guide, we'll go over some of the most essential kernel module administration commands on Linux. Knowing these commands will help you understand the components that have been loaded into your system's kernel, and will also allow you to load, reload, or unload modules in the system kernel.

      • Linux Fu: Superpowers For Mere Mortals | Hackaday

        You can hardly mention the sudo command without recalling the hilarious XKCD strip about making sandwiches. It does seem like sudo is the magic power to make a Linux system do what you want. The only problem is that those superpowers are not something to be taken lightly.

      • How To Install Suricata on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Suricata on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Suricata is a free and open-source, mature, fast, and robust network threat detection engine. It can function as intrusion detection (IDS) engine, inline intrusion prevention system (IPS), network security monitoring (NSM) as well as an offline pcap processing tool. Suricata inspects the network traffic using powerful and extensive rules and signature language and has powerful Lua scripting support for the detection of complex threats.

        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 the Suricata on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

      • Linux 101: How to add directories to your Linux $PATH - TechRepublic

        At some point, you're going to want to run commands from non-standard directories. When that happens, you'll want to add those directories to your $PATH. Jack Wallen shows you how.

      • Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Harvester

        Virtual machines (VMs) have transformed infrastructure deployment and management. VMs are so ubiquitous that I can’t think of a single instance where I deployed production code to a bare metal server in my many years as a professional software engineer.

        VMs provide secure, isolated environments hosting your choice of operating system while sharing the resources of the underlying server. This allows resources to be allocated more efficiently, reducing the cost of over-provisioned hardware.

        Given the power and flexibility provided by VMs, it is common to find many VMs deployed across many servers. However, managing VMs at this scale introduces challenges.

      • How to Install elementary Tweaks Tool

        This quick tutorial demonstrates the steps to install elementary Tweaks tool/Pantheon Tweaks Tool.

      • Commands to find Linux-package updates | Network World

        Did you know that you can ask your Linux system to tell you what upgrades are available for the packages installed on it? You might be surprised by how many you’ll see, especially if you’re using the current release and don’t have your system set up for frequent or automatic updates.

        Updates play an important role in keeping your Linux systems secure and performing well. Since most packages are updated as fixes or improvements to the code become available, it’s hard to predict how many will show up on any particular day. (Note: Updates should be done when your system is not performing other important tasks.)

      • Live patching Kubernetes nodes | SUSE Communities

        Rancher’s system-upgrade-controller allows to upgrade Kubernetes nodes using privileged pods within that Kubernetes cluster. This can be very helpful to install latest updates to fix CVE or to upgrade used software to a later version. But sometimes those updates require the system to reboot to take effect.

        This might be no problem for most of the workloads running in pods on that machine. But what if your workload isn’t stateless and its rescheduling would lead to outages of your services?

        SUSE’s Kernel live patching might help here as the Kernel modules of the Kubernetes node can be updated without requiring a reboot of the machine and without forcing the pods to be rescheduled.

      • Zypper Package Manager Cheat Sheet - Make Tech Easier

        Zypper is the default package manager for openSUSE distributions and SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers. It differs from APT and YUM package managers, as it employs SAT solver, one of the best package dependency libraries. This Zypper cheat sheet covers the main zypper commands, segmented into various categories.

      • How to Install CSF (Config Server Firewall) on CentOS 8

        CSF is a Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall, Login/Intrusion Detection and Security application for Linux servers.

        t consists of the firewall itself (CSF) which is comprehensive, straightforward, easy, and flexible to configure.

        It also has a Login Failure Daemon (LFD) that perfectly complements CSF. This LFD runs all the time and periodically (every X seconds) scans the latest log file entries for login attempts against your server that continually fail within a short period of time. Such attempts are often called “Brute-force attacks” and the daemon process responds very quickly to such patterns and blocks offending IP’s quickly

      • How to Install MERN Stack for JS based applications on Ubuntu 20.04

        The MERN Stack is made from four components: MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. It provides a bundle of JavaScript technologies used for building dynamic JS websites.

        MongoDB is an open-source and most widely used NoSQL database system used for developing robust web applications. Express.js is a Node.js web application framework used for developing hybrid web-based applications. React.js is an open-source JavaScript framework used to create a front-end interface for mobile applications. Node.js is a JavaScript environment that allows developers to run codes on the server.

        In this guide, we will show you how to install the MERN stack on Ubuntu 20.04.

      • Setup Local WordPress Development Environment In Linux - OSTechNix

        This detailed tutorial explains what is LocalWP, benefits of using LocalWP, how to install LocalWP to deploy and setup local WordPress development environment in Linux and Unix-like operating systems.

      • How to Install Odoo on AlmaLinux 8 - RoseHosting

        Odoo is a group of open-source business apps that offers a wide range of applications including, CRM, accounting, billing, inventory, warehouse, e-commerce, project management and more. It is simple, customizable, fully integrated and helps you to manage your business and be more efficient wherever you are. It is written in Python and uses PostgreSQL as a database backend.

    • Games

      • Closed Hands is a deep interactive fiction about a terror attack out now for Linux

        Developer Passenger has announced that their interactive fiction game Closed Hands is now available with a native Linux version from itch.io.

        While the story itself and the city are fictional, it pulls from Passenger founder and artist Dan Hett's own personal experience of losing his brother Martyn Hett in the Manchester terror attack in 2017. It's a pretty powerful piece of fiction that isn't often explored, especially not in this way.

      • Nanotale Now Available on Mac and Linux From Fishing Cactus

        Fishing Cactus has revealed that their latest fantasy adventure in the Typing Chronicles series, Nanotale, is now available on Linux and Mac. If that wasn’t enough, they are also bringing the hotly requested Arena mode to all versions of the game, as well as a 25% off discount on Steam if you buy the game within the first 48 hours of the update, starting from today at 7pm CEST/10am PT, bringing endless replayability to keyboard wielding adventurers and travellers alike.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Get macOS ‘Quick Look’ on Ubuntu with GNOME Sushi

          Sometimes file thumbnails in Nautilus aren’t enough. Sometimes you need a closer look at a file, photo, or folder to make sure it’s the one you actually want, but without the hassle of opening a full-blown app to find out.

          And that’s where GNOME Sushi comes in.

          GNOME Sushi is an alternative to macOS ‘Quick Look‘ for Linux desktops that use Nautilus, aka GNOME’s famous file manager.

          You select a file in Nautilus, tap the spacebar, and an instantaneous (and usually interactive) preview of the file appears — no need to open a full app.

          Sushi supports file previews for most plain-text documents, including scripts with syntax highlighting, as well PDFs, HTML files, and LibreOffice documents. Music and video file previews use the GStreamer framework to let you to seek/scrub through them.

    • Distributions

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Start contributing to open source Call for Code projects [Ed: IBM says "For GitHub basics, the best place to start is, unsurprisingly, GitHub." So basically, IBM wants you to contribute to Microsoft monopoly.]
        • AI for code: IBM CodeNet data set empowers AI to tackle programming challenges [Ed: IBM is so proud to be outsourcing almost everything to monopolistic proprietary software controlled by Microsoft and the NSA (GitHub)]

          Software permeates every part of our existence. Google services alone combine for 2 billion lines of code, and a vehicle contains approximately 100 million lines of code. It’s a monumental challenge to create, debug, maintain, and update these complex software systems.

          A fast-growing discipline known as AI for Code aims to help software developers improve their productivity by automating the software engineering process. AI for Code researchers have been leveraging technologies like natural language processing and augmenting them with code analysis and compilation techniques to perform a myriad of practical tasks, such as code search, summarization, and completion, as well as code-to-code translation. And, the discipline isn’t limited to academic research. Ruchir Puri, IBM Research’s chief research scientist, discussed in a recent podcast how technologies from AI for Code are being used to modernize legacy software by helping to migrate monolithic applications to microservices for IBM enterprise clients. To serve that purpose, the IBM AI Research division has released a new data set called Project CodeNet.

        • Data controls in the DevSecOps life cycle

          Data controls help protect data integrity and prevent unauthorized data disclosure for stored data and data in motion. In this post we'll dive deeper into the concepts of data controls and how they fit into the DevSecOps framework.

          July is "Data Controls" month in Red Hat’s monthly Security series! Since March 2021, the Red Hat Security Ecosystem team has published monthly articles and videos on DevOps Security topics to help you learn how Red Hat can help you master the practice called DevSecOps.

          By explaining how to assemble Red Hat products and introducing our security ecosystem partners, we aim to aid in your journey to deploying a comprehensive DevSecOps solution.

        • Red Hat Training early access can help you keep pace with evolving technologies

          With the pace of technology, software training must evolve quickly to help workers build new IT skills. Whether enterprises are adopting new software or upskilling on new versions of open source technologies that they’ve been using for years, they need the most relevant training materials delivered with flexibility for various jobs roles, business objectives, and learning styles.

          In this post, we’ll share why it’s important for us to have Red Hat Learning Subscription users be a part of the content development process and how you can be the first to see new, hands-on training.

          One way that we’re helping learners meet their needs faster is by providing them early access to content within the Red Hat Learning Subscription platform. With early access, subscribers get first-look access to course chapters and lab environments before they are released for public purchase.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Linux Mint 20.2 arrives: Top desktop Linux keeps improving

          While I prefer the Gnome-2-based Cinnamon desktop (now up to version 5.04), Mint gives you a choice of fully supported interfaces. These include MATE, a Gnome-2 fork, and the ultra-lightweight Xfce. Most desktop users will be pleased with Cinnamon or MATE. But if you have older low-powered systems or if you're running Linux on Chromebooks or Windows 10 PCs with Windows SubSystem for Linux (WSL) 2, Xfce is an excellent choice.

          Even PCs built in the 2000s can run Mint. If the box has a 64-bit processor, it can run Mint. The full version of Linux Mint requires a mere 2GB of RAM, but you can run it with as little as 1GB. This is not Windows -- where trying to run it on 4GB is asking for trouble.

          You'll also need at least 20GB of disk space, but Mint recommends 100GB. Finally, you'll need a graphics card and monitor that supports a 1024×768 resolution. In other words, you can pretty much run Mint on any PC you find in a second-hand junk shop.

          I like running the fastest and best hardware, but let's face it, sometimes we can afford the latest and hottest. That can be a real problem. For example, Windows 11 won't run on hardware dating from 2016 and earlier. It also won't run on some processors from 2019 or earlier. Linux Mint? I know people who are running it on 2009 Intel Core i5 desktop processors. To get the most of your old gear, you want to use Linux Mint.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Support for Istio 1.9 ends on August 18th, 2021

        According to Istio’s support policy, minor releases like 1.9 are supported for three months after the next minor release. Since 1.10 was released on May 18th, support for 1.9 will end on August 18th, 2021.

      • Corporate Participation in the Open Source Community [Ed: Corporate Participation or Corporate Takeover? This mentions GitHub, which is a hostile abduction of projects to undermine the freedom of software and to interfere with communities (giving Microsoft control over them)]

        Open-source software is prolific in technology today. Just about everything from supercomputers to consumer electronics is powered by at least one piece of open source code.

        But many businesses find themselves launching open-source products at a rapidly accelerating pace without truly understanding either the benefits that come with it or the potential pitfalls that must be avoided.

        Let’s talk about what open source means to your business, and how you can leverage it to serve both your customers and your business needs.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • LibreOffice Conference Sponsorship Package

          By sponsoring the LibreOffice Conference you will have the opportunity to connect with one of the largest and most dynamic FOSS communities, with supporters, volunteers and users in every country in the world. The virtual event lasts for three days, from 23 to 25 September 2021.

      • Programming/Development

        • Week 6-7 KDE GSoc

          setting up mingw on windows is PITA, at first since i am not used to backslash for filepaths, it load the gdb printers, i then realised that it does not come with python enabled. Downloaded a new one it does not come with python3 instead it is python 2.7.

          [...]

          it inherits from a QFiledeviceprivate, but the size of the qfiledeviceprivate is not consistent across operating system, architectures and qt5 versions.I got the list of offset from the qtcreator types this problem exists for also qprocess (not fully implemented as of now) and for others as i may not be able to get it size for all operating systems, architectures and qt5 versions.

        • Eclipse OpenJ9 0.27 Released For OpenJDK 8/11/16 Alternative

          The Eclipse Foundation has released OpenJ9 as the latest version of their high performance virtual machine that continues advancing four years after IBM donated the original J9 code.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Security updates for Monday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (aspell, intel-microcode, krb5, rabbitmq-server, and ruby-actionpack-page-caching), Fedora (chromium, containernetworking-plugins, containers-common, crun, fossil, podman, skopeo, varnish-modules, and vmod-uuid), Gentoo (leptonica, libsdl2, and libyang), Mageia (golang, lib3mf, nodejs, python-pip, redis, and xstream), openSUSE (containerd, crmsh, curl, icinga2, and systemd), Oracle (containerd), and Red Hat (thunderbird).

          • Running FIPS 140 workloads on Ubuntu | Ubuntu

            Even though cryptography is used by almost every application today, the implementation of it is usually delegated to specialized cryptographic libraries. There are multiple reasons for that, including that implementing cryptography is not easy, and in fact it is easy to get wrong. Small mistakes–such as reusing a nonce–may render the data encrypted by an application recognizable. At the same time, the security landscape changes so fast that secure software of 10 years ago can no longer withstand attacks that exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities. For instance, algorithms like RC4 that were dominant in the early days of Internet commerce are today considered broken.

            How can we be assured that these cryptographic applications and libraries implement cryptography correctly and follow best practices such as not using legacy cryptography? As cryptography is sensitive to governments around the world, there is no universally accepted answer yet. To address this problem in the U.S., NIST developed FIPS 140, a data protection standard that is our focus in this article.

            FIPS 140 defines security requirements related to the design and implementation of a cryptographic module, or in software terms, for an application or library implementing cryptography. The standard has multiple levels of security, from levels 1 to 4, with level 1 applying to software implementations, while level 2 and further applying to specialized hardware alongside its software. On level 1, the standard requires the use of known, secure cryptographic algorithms and modes for data protection and requires their logical separation from the application. It further includes a certification process that ensures that the claims are tested and attested by an accredited lab by NIST.

            In essence the FIPS 140 standard ensures that cryptography is implemented using well known secure designs, follows certain best practices, does not involve obscure algorithms, and that there is a due process in attestation.

          • Renewed FIPS 140-2 Validation For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 | TFiR: Interviews, News & Analysis by Swapnil Bhartiya

            Red Hat has announced the renewal of the Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2) security validation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2. The second FIPS certification for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 platform, this validation indicates Red Hat’s leadership and commitment to providing a more secure backbone for the innovation of open hybrid cloud.

            With this validation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2, many of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud offerings also retain the FIPS 140-2 certification as layered products building on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2’s cryptography modules. These include but are not limited to: Red Hat Ceph Storage, Red Hat Gluster Storage, Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat Satellite, and Red Hat Virtualization.

          • The 10 Best Tools to Scan Your Linux Server for Malware and Security Flaws

            Linux is downright one of the most popular and secure operating systems for large-scale servers. Despite its widespread usage, it remains vulnerable to cyberattacks. Hackers target servers to either shut them down or steal valuable information.

            There is a pressing need to develop counter-hacking methods to brace security breaches and malware attacks. This is possible by hiring cybersecurity professionals; unfortunately, this can prove to be a costly affair. The next best solution is to install scanning tools that fit like a hand in glove for your Linux systems.



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Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles