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Links 31/7/2021: Wine 6.14 and Chrome 93 Beta



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • LHS/Linux in the Ham Shack Episode #422: The Weekender LXXV

        It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

      • Perfect Plex Setup | Self-Hosted 50

        We discuss Chris's latest wall-mounted tablet solution for Home Assistant and several scripts to pimp your Plex setup.

    • Kernel Space

      • VMware Hits A Nasty Performance Regression With Linux 5.13

        VMware has found the Linux 5.13 kernel that was released as stable one month ago has led to a serious performance regression for their ESXi enterprise hypervisor.

        VMware found that there is a big performance regression with Linux 5.13 under their ESXi software. They found that ESXi compute workloads could be affected by up to 3x while networking workloads were at only a 40% regression. Their compute tasks were as simple as Linux kernel compile times that were severely impacted.

        VMware engineers found that this very significant performance regression came from a scheduler change... While the patch in question "sched: Move SCHED_DEBUG sysctl to debugfs" sounds rather mundane, it was found to ultimately impact the default value of sched_wakeup_granularity_ns.

      • Graphics Stack

        • Radeon "Cyan Skillfish" Navi 1x APU Submitted For Linux 5.15 Plus Many Fixes - Phoronix

          AMD driver engineers have submitted their latest batch of AMDGPU feature updates to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of the Linux 5.15 merge window opening up in about one month's time. With this latest pull request the big addition is the new "Cyan Skillfish" GPU support.

          Posted earlier this month were Linux graphics driver patches for "Cyan Skillfish", which is the Navi 1x graphics in an APU form factor. Yes, forthcoming Navi 1x APU/SoC rather than Navi 2x or the many Vega-based APUs out there. Details on what "Cyan Skillfish" ultimately maps to remains to be confirmed beyond being an RDNA(1) part.

        • OpenGL Drivers In 2021 Still Sadly Benefit From Faking Their Driver Name / GPU - Phoronix

          Years ago particularly when the open-source Linux GPU drivers were in their infancy it was known in some cases having to fake/spoof the GPU driver name or model in order to workaround artificial bugs / problematic code paths targeted to a particular OpenGL driver or even to achieve greater performance. With a new Mesa merge request called "Unleash the dragon!", this is still very much a problem in 2021 even now in the Android space.

          Google's Rob Clark who founded the Freedreno project for open-source Qualcomm Adreno project years ago created this new "Unleash the dragon!" merge request for Mesa. In 2021 the problem has shifted to Android games still relying on OpenGL have become accustomed to artificially changing their settings/capabilities based on the OpenGL renderer and GPU model.

        • Mike Blumenkrantz: Timelines

          I don’t feel like blogging about zink today, so here’s more about everyone’s favorite software implementation of Vulkan.

        • xf86-video-amdgpu 21.0.0 Released For Radeon Linux Users Still On X.Org

          It's been one year since the last xf86-video-amdgpu release in the form of v19.1 and about two years since the release before that with v19.0... Now the xf86-video-amdgpu 21.0 driver is ready for those who need it. As with all open-source Linux graphics drivers, these X.Org DDX releases are of little value these days given the migration to Wayland and those sticking to X.Org most often just using the generic xf86-video-modesetting driver. All the interesting open-source graphics magic these days happen within the DRM/KMS kernel driver components and Mesa. But unlike Intel who hasn't even issued a new xf86-video-intel development release in six years or going back seven years to the last stable release, AMD does still put out the yearly or so DDX update.

    • Applications

      • Styli.sh is a Great Dynamic Desktop Wallpaper Changer for Linux

        Bored seeing the same wallpapers every day? This article will show you how to automatically set new wallpapers using Styli.sh on Linux.

        More often than not, we get bored with our current desktop wallpaper as the time passes. If you ever needed a way to automate changing your desktop wallpaper on Linux, this might be the right article for you.

        Automatically switching wallpapers is probably the best way to keep your desktop fresh and full of surprises. There are many apps that can help you do this, but is it worth using an application for such an easy task?

      • The 6 Best Android Emulators for Linux

        One cannot deny the influence of smartphones on people’s lives. These days, there is an application for everyone and everything. Whether it's a news application to start your day or social media platforms to keep you close to your loved ones, smartphones have truly evolved to be a handy solution.

        There are many loyal Linux users who want to run their favorite Linux apps on the computer. Android is a common de-facto operating system for smartphones to leverage the Linux ecosystem. To initiate this feature, you need to use Android emulators to do your bidding, literally.

        Emulators are computer applications that help you run your Android applications and games on your Linux machine. Here are some common Android emulators that you can use to run and test Android apps on Linux.

      • The 7 Best Open-Source Paint Alternatives for Linux

        There are tons of open-source drawing software in the Linux ecosystem that come with surprisingly enticing features. Linux users have many options when it comes to drawing applications that offer a user-friendly interface and photo editing options.

        You can also create online rooms where multiple users can draw simultaneously. If you are getting excited looking at some of these features, and you feel you can unleash your creativity with these free-to-download software, then hop onto the bandwagon for a ride of a lifetime.

        Check out these seven open-source paint applications for Linux users that offer unique features and great functionalities.

      • Linux Release Roundup #21.31: PulseAudio 15.0, Linux Lite 5.6 RC1, and More New Releases

        PulseAudio 15.0 is an exciting release that adds new hardware support and introduces LDAC and AptX Bluetooth codecs for a high-quality audio listening experience with supported headphones.

      • VirtualBox 6.1.26

        VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Create a VirtualBox virtual machine backup on a Linux host for security - TechRepublic

        Jack Wallen teaches you how to use simple bash scripts to automate backing up your VirtualBox VMs.

      • How to play Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne on Linux

        Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is the sequel to the original Max Payne game developed by Remedy and published by Rockstar. It follows detective Max Payne and continues his story. Here’s how to play it on Linux.

      • How to play Tyranny on Linux

        Tyranny is an RPG video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Paradox Interactive. Currently, it is out on Windows, OSX, and Linux. Here’s how to get it working on your Linux PC.

      • How to play Middle-earth: Shadow of War on Linux

        Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action RPG developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. It is the second game in the Middle Earth series and is available for PS4, Windows, and Xbox One. Here’s how you can play it on Linux.

      • 10 helpful tips on MySQL performance tuning | FOSS Linux

        Like all other databases, MySQL can be complicated and can stop at a moment’s notice putting all your businesses and tasks on the line. However, common mistakes underlie most of the problems affecting the performance.

        To ensure your server operates efficiently and effectively by providing stable and consistent performance, you must eliminate the mistakes often caused by some subtlety in the workload or configuration trap.

        As data volume grows, it becomes increasingly complex. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the databases well to deliver an efficient end-user experience. MySQL performance tuning is the ultimate solution as it will help provide solutions to these database problems.

      • How to install Jetbrains PhpStorm 2021 on a Chromebook

        Today we are looking at how to install Jetbrains PhpStorm 2021 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 see what packages updates available on Alpine Linux - nixCraft

        n Debian or Ubuntu Linux, one can run ‘apt list --upgradable‘ command to see and list available package updates. On RHEL, we can use ‘dnf check-update‘ to list available updates on screen. However, the apk command does not have an option to show and list available security software updates. But fear not. Some other tricks can list, and you can see what packages updates are available on Alpine Linux using the apk command.

      • How To Reuse SSH Connection To Speed Up Remote Login Process Using Multiplexing
      • The Linux Upskill Challenge
      • How to Send Email From the Linux Terminal - Make Tech Easier

        The Linux terminal gives us the power and capacity to perform tons of tasks with a few keyboard strokes. For those who spend most of your time in the terminal, you can also send email directly from the Terminal. This guide takes you by the hand and shows you how you can use various methods and tools to send email straight from the Linux terminal.

      • Linux System Information Commands

        If you’re coming from Windows or macOS, you may be used used to easily finding system information about your machine via the GUI (graphical user interface).

        Since you’ll probably interact with Linux via the command line most of the time, and will operate multiple machines, it’s good to know a few useful commands to know useful information about your system.

      • How to Create Restricted Guest Account in Ubuntu 20.04 / 21.10 GDM | UbuntuHandbook

        ant to enable Guest account in Ubuntu? Without switching to another display manager, you can add Guest in Gnome login screen for people to use your computer while NOT being able to install/remove app, change system wide settings, and access files outside its own directory.

        Guest is available by default in Ubuntu 16.04 Unity desktop. After Ubuntu switched to Gnome Desktop, the feature is removed. For those need Guest account, it’s easy to add it back via following steps.

      • How to install phpPgAdmin on CentOS 7 | LinuxCloudVPS Blog

        phpPgAdmin is a web-based administration tool for PostgreSQL (one of the most popular open-source database management systems). It is written in PHP and it is based on the popular phpMyAdmin interface originally written for MySQL administration. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install phpPgAdmin on CentOS 7. The installation is quick and easy and if you follow the instructions carefully, you will have phpPgAdmin installed on your CentOS 7 VPS in less than 10 minutes. Let’s get started!

      • How to Install aaPanel on Ubuntu 20.04 - RoseHosting

        aaPanel is an open-source and lightweight server control panel used for managing a web hosting environment. It is a simple and alternative to other famous control panels including, cPanel, VestaCP, etc. It comes with a simple and user-friendly web UI that makes your job easier for managing web hosting environment. It consumes very low resources and offers an auto-installer that allows you to install multiple apps with one click. It offers a rich set of features including, File manager, SSL, Cron, Firewall, FTP, Mail, Databases, DNS and Web domain.

      • Removing PipeWire in Gentoo Linux

        PipeWire, all the rage these days, was originally developed for video but was later enhanced to support audio as well, and is now an alternative to PulseAudio and JACK. My laptop running Gentoo Stable (amd64) with the KDE Plasma Desktop had been working fine with PipeWire for some time. The pulseaudio and screencast USE flags were both declared in the file /etc/portage/make.conf. Both audio playback and recording worked fine until a recent upgrade of the packages in my world file, when neither worked any more. The Audio Volume loudspeaker icon (the applet kde-plasma/plasma-pa) on the KDE Plasma panel had a red line through it, and the KMix loudspeaker icon (the applet kde-apps/kmix) on the panel was greyed out. Although I cannot be sure, I suspect the problem started when the first version of PipeWire that supported audio was released. The output of the command ‘ps -ef | grep pulse‘ showed me that both PulseAudio and PipeWire were running. At the time I did not know that PulseAudio is not supposed to be running at the same time as PipeWire. Sometimes when I booted the laptop and logged in, the loudspeaker icons on the Panel would appear correctly and audio output would work properly, but usually this was not the case. This behaviour made me wonder if there was some sort of race condition between the two applications at startup.

      • Install SonarQube on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server - Linux Shout

        SonarQube is an open-source program to analyze the code quality, formerly it was known as Sonar. Here we will let you know the commands and steps to install SonarQube on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04 LTs server

        This program can find the security vulnerabilities in more than 20 programming languages along with auto analyzing of code quality to detect code bugs and smells. It also offers reports on duplicated code, coding standards, unit tests, code coverage, code complexity, comments, bugs, and security vulnerabilities.

      • Install balenaetcher using repository on Linux - Linux Shout

        balenaetcher is a popular cross-platform bootable USB maker available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.With the minimal interface, this program is very easy to use and operate. Well, on the official website for Linux systems Etcher is available in AppImage format, however, if you don’t want it instead a completed installation using BalenaEtcher repository via command terminal then here is the tutorial for the same.

      • SSH Tunnel using Putty and Firefox | LinuxHostSupport

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to create an SSH Tunnel using Putty and Firefox. SSH tunnel is an encrypted tunnel created through an SSH protocol. SSH Tunnel will be used to transfer unencrypted data over a network through an encrypted channel. If your service provider or some organization has blocked certain sites using their proxy filter you can bypass them with a SOCKS 5 proxy tunnel. In general, SOCKS is a protocol that establishes a TCP connection and exchanges network packets between a client and a server through a proxy server. If you can connect to an external SSH server, you can create an SSH tunnel to forward a port on your local machine to a port in the other machine which will be the other end of the tunnel.

      • How to Securely Transfer Files on Linux With sftp

        Want to share files to and from a remote server? Use the sftp command in Linux to transfer data securely over the internet.

        This guide will explore how to use sftp (SSH File Transfer Protocol), a command-line program for securely transferring files between two Linux computers over a network.

      • How To Install Brackets Editor on Linux Mint 20 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Brackets Editor on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, A brackets code editor is an open-source, lightweight, modern code editor for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The functionalities of the Brackets code editor can also be extended using the extensions. It is a cross-platform code editor that is supported on all three major OS platforms: Linux, macOS, and Windows.

        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 Brackets’s modern open-source code editor on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

      • Install MongoDB on Ubuntu 20.04

        MongoDB is an open-source document-oriented database system. It is a NoSQL database.

        Instead of storing data in tables of rows or columns like traditional RDBMS databases, MongoDB stores data as documents. Documents consist of fields and value pairs. Documents are stored as JSON format and internal as BSON format. A collection is a group of MongoDB documents.

        MongoDB comes with two editions - Community edition and Enterprise. The community edition is completely free.

        In this tutorial, you will learn how to install MongoDB Community Edition on Ubuntu 20.04.

      • How To Install and Configure Viber Messenger App on Linux Distros

        Viber is one of the oldest online-based communicating applications that has been using widely. It was initially released in 2010 for VoIP services and instant messaging. Viber messenger app is now available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can install the Viber messenger app on your Linux for audio calling, video calling, and chatting. It has a huge amount of stickers, emojis, and filters for making video calling and chatting more fun and user-friendly. Moreover, you can also use the Viber business app for client meetings and other professional works.

      • How To Install Foreman on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Foreman on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Foreman is a complete lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. This app gives system administrators the power to easily automate repetitive tasks, quickly deploy applications, and proactively manage servers, on-premise or in the cloud. Foreman, available as open-source software, becomes even more powerful when integrated with other open-source projects such as Puppet, Chef, Salt, Ansible.

        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 Foreman 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.

      • Success Story: Preparing for Kubernetes Certification Improves a Platform Development Engineer’s Skills
      • System Administrator Appreciation Day 2021: A Panel Discussion
      • Makeshift Kubernetes external load balancer with haproxy | -ENOTTY

        Some time ago I've replaced Google Analytics with Plausible. It works great, except for one tiny thing. The map of visitors was empty. Due to various layers of Network Adress Translations in k3s networking setup, the original client IP address information was not reaching analytics engine.

        There are solutions – there is a PROXY Protocol exactly for that case. And Traefik, which handles ingress in k3s, supports PROXY. Only a bit of gymnastic was needed.

        Legacy IPv4 traffic entry point to my bare-metal cluster has a form of a small in-the-cloud virtual machine. It routes incoming TCP/443 traffic over the VPN into the cluster. The VM itself is not a part of kubernetes setup – I cannot run any pods on it. I've decided to use Ansible to configure it.

    • Wine or Emulation

      • Wine Announcement

        The Wine development release 6.14 is now available.

        What's new in this release (see below for details): - Mono engine updated to version 6.3.0, with upstream updates. - 32->64-bit thunks implemented in WOW64 dll. - More preparation work for the GDI syscall interface. - Various bug fixes.

        The source is available from the following locations:

        https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/6.x/wine-6.14.tar.xz http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/6.x/wine-6.14.tar.xz

        Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

        https://www.winehq.org/download

        You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation

        You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details.

        Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

      • Wine 6.14 Implements More 32-bit To 64-bit Thunks, Updated Mono

        Wine developers have popped open a new bi-weekly development snapshot of this software that allows Windows games/applications to run on Linux and macOS along with being what powers Valve's Steam Play (Proton) and CodeWeavers' CrossOver.

        Wine 6.14 is this latest development snapshot for enjoying Windows applications and game support under Linux. With Wine 6.14 their integrated Mono engine is updated against Mono 6.3, more 32-bit to 64-bit thunks have been implemented in the WOW64 DLL, there is continued preparations around GDI system call support, and various bug fixes.

      • Wine 6.14 released with Mono updates, more prep work for GDI syscall interface | GamingOnLinux

        The Wine hackers have today popped open another bottle to let it breathe for a bit, with the development build Wine 6.14 now available for testing.

        For newer readers and Linux users here's a refresher - Wine is a compatibility layer built for operating systems like Linux, macOS and BSD. The idea is to allow other platforms to run games and applications only built and supported for Windows. It's also part of what makes up Steam Play Proton. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

    • Games

      • Latest Steam Client Beta Adds a Storage Manager, Linux Improvements

        Valve released a Steam Client Beta update that introduces a Storage Manager, updated the Downloads page, and made other improvements that seem intended to prepare the platform for the release of the new Steam Deck handheld gaming device later this year.

        The new Storage Manager is supposed to allow Steam users to "better manage various game content installed on your drives," as Valve puts it, by making it easier to see what exactly is installed on each drive. That could prove vital for the Steam Deck, which ships with 64GB, 256GB, or 512GB of onboard storage that can be supplemented by a microSD card.

        Valve also made significant changes to the Downloads page. In addition to user interface tweaks meant to highlight the game that's currently being downloaded, the new page adds drag-and-drop support for reordering the update queue, changes the Latest News button to a Patch Notes button, and makes it easier to view the contents of an update, among other things.

      • Weekly poll results: Valve's Steam Deck beats the Nintendo Switch OLED

        Valve stole Nintendo’s thunder – people were already lukewarm on the minimal upgrades brought on by the Switch OLED, but then Valve’s own portable console arrived to offer people an alluring alternative.

        Many complain about the lack of physical game media, which makes it easier to sell old games you no longer need. And that’s true, but Steam’s whole reason for being is to make buying, installing and playing a new game just a few clicks away and doing it online makes the whole process frictionless

      • Epic's Tim Sweeney Calls Steam Deck 'Amazing Move By Valve'
      • Steam Deck: 6 New Points You Need to Know

        The Steam Deck is an exciting device for numerous reasons, and we will keep giving you updates as we keep learning about some additional details as they come. In the past week, several additional details have surfaced...

      • Get a free copy of Wanderlust: Transsiberian on GOG with their publisher sale

        Publisher Walkabout is having a bit of sale over on GOG.com and you can grab yourself a free copy of the travelling adventure Wanderlust: Transsiberian.

      • Steam Beta Brings Linux Improvements Ahead of Steam Deck

        There was much excitement for Linux gamers with today’s release of a new Steam beta that brought several Linux-specific updates among a range of cross-platform improvements, most hopefully aimed at optimizing the gaming client before the launch of the Steam Deck.

    • Distributions

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Node.js, curl update in Tumbleweed

          Among the updated packages that landed this week in the rolling release were curl, GNU Compiler Collection, Node.js, redis and LibreOffice.

          The office suite package LibreOffice came in snapshot 20210728. The update to version 7.1.5.2 provided bugfixes addressing some regressions and a few fixes were made to prevent crashes in Writer. Linux Kernel firmware was updated in the snapshot and PDF rendering library poppler 21.07.0 provided some minor code improvements for build systems while also fixing a memory leak on broken files. The 2.32.3 webkit2gtk3 fixed several crashes and rendering issues and addressed a dozen Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.

          The 20210727 snapshot provided just a single package update to gcc11. The update of the head branch included the 11.2 release candidate and a corrected adjustment to the General Public License version 3.0. The package update also provided a libc-bootstrap cross compiler for AArch64 and RISC-V.

        • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2021/30

          Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

          Solid and predictable – that’s what openSUSE Tumbleweed tries to offer to the users. This also shows in the number of snapshots we release. 5 – 7 snapshots a week is absolutely normal – and was also achieved this week, in which we have published 6 snapshots (0723, 0724, 0725, 0726, 0727, and 0728).

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2021-30

          Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

        • CodeFlare: A New Open-Source Framework For Big Data Integration And Scaling

          CodeFlare is all about end-to-end workflows and pipelines and aims to drastically reduce the time it takes to set up, run, and scale machine-learning tests. The motivation behind CodeFlare, according to Priya Nagpurkar, Director of Cloud Platform Research at IBM Research, “was the emergence of these converged workflows. So you have AI, machine learning, big data, and even simulations and modeling, all coming together into tightly integrated workflows.” But how does this differ from traditional AI/ML platforms? According to Nagpurkar, the difference is, “When I can think about my logic, and I have higher-level interfaces, and I don’t have to worry about the runtime aspects, how do I scale? How do I map it to massive infrastructure?” In the end, CodeFlare deals with workflows as a whole, instead of individual elements.

        • [IBM emeritus who originally brought GNU/Linux to IBM] The Coming Era of Productivity Growth

          “The last 15 years have been tough times for many Americans, but there are now encouraging signs of a turnaround,” wrote economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Georgios Petropoulos in The Coming Productivity Boom, a recent opinion article in the MIT Technology Review. “Productivity growth, a key driver for higher living standards, averaged only 1.3% since 2006, less than half the rate of the previous decade. But on June 3, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US labour productivity increased by 5.4% in the first quarter of 2021. What’s better, there’s reason to believe that this is not just a blip, but rather a harbinger of better times ahead: a productivity surge that will match or surpass the boom times of the 1990s.”

          After growing at an average annual rate of around 2.8% between 1947 and 1973, US productivity has significantly slowed down, except for the Internet-driven productivity boost between 1996 and 2004. Despite the relentless advances of digital technologies over the past 15 years, - from smartphones and broadband wireless to cloud computing and machine learning, - productivity has only grown at an anemic 1.3%, between 2006 and 2019. Most OECD countries have seen similar slowdowns.

          What accounts for this puzzling so-called productivity paradox and when might it finally end? Over the past several years, Brynjolfsson and his various collaborators have explored this question, first at MIT where he was faculty director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy, and since 2020 at Stanford, where he’s Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Brynjolfsson discussed alternative explanations for the paradox at a recent MIT conference.

        • Open source meets open design (system)

          In 2019, the Red Hat User Experience (UX) team set out to create our Red Hat digital design system. It has evolved from a few research decks and Adobe XD files to a comprehensive shared design kit library and documentation website that many internal and external teams use every day.

          Our mandate was to design flexible building blocks and use new web technologies to create consistent user experiences that instill trust among visitors or customers who use our system of websites and apps. In this post, we’ll share some of our challenges, actions and outcomes.

      • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Xubuntu 21.10 to Include New Apps, Including a Clipboard Manager

          Xubuntu users can look forward to some new default apps later this year.

          A handful of additional desktop applications are set to ship in Xubuntu 21.10 when it’s released later this year.

          “Recent team votes have expanded Xubuntu’s collection of apps’”, writes Xubuntu developer Sean Davis in a blog post detailing work going into the upcoming release.

          The applications set to be added include disk usage analyser app Baobab (pictured above, image credit Sean Davis) and the GNOME Disk Utility. Both of these are handy tools to have around. The former is incredibly useful for hunting down disk-space hogging files and folders, while the latter is my (and many others’) go-to partition manager.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Web Browsers

        • I’ve had enough of QtWebEngine

          I’ve been using the web browser qutebrowser for several years now. It has been my favorite web browser since the very first day when tried it. I like the minimal user interface and I love that it’s 100% keyboard driven.

          Unfortunately, after more than 5 years with qutebrowser, I’m back with Firefox. I don’t know if it’s temporary or not. The reason for it is primarily due to the elephant in the room; QtWebEngine.

        • Chromium

          • Chromium Blog: Chrome 93: Multi-Screen Window Placement, PWAs as URL Handlers, and More

            Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome beta channel release for Android, Android WebView, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Learn more about the features listed here through the provided links or from the list on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 93 is beta as of July 29, 2021.

          • Chrome 93 Beta Brings Multi-Screen Window Placement API, CSD-Like Overlay Option

            Following last week's release of Chrome 92, Google has now made available the Chrome 93 beta as the next iteration of their cross-platform web browser.

            Arguably most interesting with Chrome 93 beta is the Multi-Screen Window Placement API. This new API makes it easier to manage several displays and can be used for use-cases like presentations where one display may be showing a slide deck while another display is showing the speaker notes, managing multiple windows for tool panes like for image and video editors, or virtual trading desks with showing multiple related windows. With Chrome 93 this new Multi-Screen window Placement API is exposed as an origin trial.

        • Mozilla

      • FSF

        • GNU C Library changes copyright policy for glibc contributors [Ed: Coup against FSF]

          The steering committee of the GNU C Library (glibc) has decided that contributors no longer have to automatically transfer their copyrights to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The changes for glibc will take effect on August 2, 2021 and will be effective for all ongoing development branches of the Library project. From this point onwards, everyone who contributes code to the glibc project is free to decide whether they want to apply their patches with or without transferring rights to the FSF.

        • Licensing/Legal

          • Understanding and Complying with Open Source Software Licenses - Why, When and How [Ed: Lawyers view free software as an "open" door and an opportunity to rob technical people who actual make something]

            Auditing open source software license terms is easier said than done. Like any well-managed process, ongoing compliance is the best practice. This article briefly expands on earlier provided practical open source software compliance tips (see OSS an IP Perspective and Why Security Matters Even More for On-premise Software Vendors | The Privacy Hacker).

      • Programming/Development

        • [KDE] GSoC’21 Week 7: Layout for Oware Activity

          he layout is fairly intuitive. The upper half of the board is controlled by player 1, and the lower half of the board is controlled by player2.

          I also worked on the basic working of the game. I am currently detecting mouse clicks on any of the valid pits on each player’s turn, and moving the corresponding seeds to adjacent pits. If the number of seeds in a pit after dropping a seed into it are 2 or 3, its seeds are captured and added to the score of the player.

        • [Godot Engine] GSoC 2021 - Progress report #1

          We selected 5 projects back in May, and the 5 students and their mentors have now been working on their projects for almost two months. We omitted to announce the projects formally (sorry about that!), but this first progress report written by each student will make up for it by giving a direct glimpse into their work.

        • Python

          • About half of Python libraries in PyPI may have security issues, boffins say ● The Register

            Boffins in Finland have scanned the open-source software libraries in the Python Package Index, better known as PyPI, for security issues and said they found that nearly half contain problematic or potentially exploitable code.

            In a research paper distributed via ArXiv, Jukka Ruohonen, Kalle Hjerppe, and Kalle Rindell from the University of Turku describe how they subjected some 197,000 Python packages available through PyPI to a static analysis tool called Bandit and found more than 749,000 instances of at best poor, or at worst insecure, programming.

        • Rust

          • Rust Compiler August Steering Cycle

            n Friday, July 30th, the Rust Compiler team had a planning meeting for the August steering cycle.

            Every fourth Friday, the Rust compiler team decides how it is going to use its scheduled steering and design meeting time over the next three Fridays.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

    • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • An Experimental Alternative to the NFT Market Frenzy

          I first learnt of Hic et Nunc (HEN) in March of 2021, when artist Mario Klingemann began to tweet about the non-fungible token (NFT) platform and the experimental artworks he was minting on the site. I was thinking about how NFTs might reshape the digital economy, while wary of how they could exacerbate the rapid commodification of art and culture. I was also concerned, given how frequently NFTs are written about that there was too much focus on the market versus the actual art. HEN presented itself as a friendly alternative to the hyper-market-driven narrative around NFTs, offering a safe haven for many emerging or experimental artists.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"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
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
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
Links for the day
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
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
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)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
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