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Links 24/9/2021: GNU Coreutils 9.0, BattlEye GNU/Linux Support



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Linux Release Roundup #21.39: GNOME 41, Sailfish OS "Verla", Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 and More New Releases - It's FOSS News

        In the Linux Release Roundup series, we highlight the new distribution and application version releases in the past week. This keeps you informed of the latest developments in the Linux world.

      • Full Circle Magazine #173
      • Make Linux look like Windows 10

        As the days pass, Linux is on its way to becoming the go-to operating system for users. With its superior command-line interface, better security, and a helpful community that offers support and fixes for most issues, no doubt switching to Linux-based distributions seems like a tempting option.

        If you’re coming from a Windows 10 background, switching to the graphical user interface (GUI) of Linux would seem like unknown territory to you. Navigating through the unfamiliar GUI might be a little confusing.

        If we just described your situation, then fear not; the purpose of this guide is to make sure that you get that familiar OS feeling of Windows 10 on your Linux system. With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at the methods to make Linux look like Windows 10.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • Examining btrfs, Linux’s perpetually half-finished filesystem

        Btrfs—short for "B-Tree File System" and frequently pronounced "butter" or "butter eff ess"—is the most advanced filesystem present in the mainline Linux kernel. In some ways, btrfs simply seeks to supplant ext4, the default filesystem for most Linux distributions. But btrfs also aims to provide next-gen features that break the simple "filesystem" mold, combining the functionality of a RAID array manager, a volume manager, and more.

        We have good news and bad news about this. First, btrfs is a perfectly cromulent single-disk ext4 replacement. But if you're hoping to replace ZFS—or a more complex stack built on discrete RAID management, volume management, and simple filesystem—the picture isn't quite so rosy. Although the btrfs project has fixed many of the glaring problems it launched with in 2009, other problems remain essentially unchanged 12 years later.

      • Google is bringing Android closer to the Linux kernel

        Google has shared more details about how it aims to bring the Android kernel a lot closer to the mainline Linux kernel with the impending release of Android 12.

        The news came courtesy of a presentation at the Linux Plumbers Conference by Google’s software engineer Todd Kjos.

        Commenting on the development, Ars Technica shares that typically the mainline Linux kernel goes through three major forks before it is shipped to the end users on an Android device.

    • Benchmarks

      • SiFive HiFive Unmatched Hands-On, Initial RISC-V Performance Benchmarks

        A few weeks ago I finally received the HiFive Unmatched from SiFive as their flagship RISC-V development board. As a reminder this is their mini-ITX development board that is powered by their U740 SoC and features 16GB of DDR4 system memory, one PCI Express x16 slot that can work with AMD Radeon graphics cards on Linux, and other features. It's been a delight playing with this developer platform and enclosed are some early benchmarks as well showing off the U740 performance as well as how the Linux software support/performance has been evolving.

        The SiFive HiFive Unmatched is what many developers and enthusiasts have long been waiting for and began shipping this summer after being announced at the end of last year. The mini-ITX board is powered by a 24-pin ATX power supply connection, the PCI Express x16 slot (at PCIe x8 speeds) can power a graphics card if wanting to use this board as a workstation, 16GB of DDR4 is sufficient for most of today's development needs, there is integrated Gigabit Ethernet, both microSD and NVMe M.2 storage support, one M.2 E-key slot for WiFi/Bluetooth, and four USB 3.2 Gen1 ports.

    • Applications

      • Sepia, Search Engine For PeerTube

        Want to search for videos published at PeerTube? Now it is easy with Sepia, the search engine for PeerTube. Go to sepiasearch.org and simply type a keyword then click search to find videos. Please help us share about PeerTube, a YouTube alternative that is fully controlled by users.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Zoom Tmux Panes For Better Text Visibility In Linux - OSTechNix

      I have been using GNU Screen and Tmux terminal multiplexers for many years now. They comes in handy when performing different tasks in multiple terminal windows simultaneously. Today I learned one of the useful feature of Tmux - Zooming panes. Yes, we can zoom Tmux panes to fit them into the full size of current Terminal window for better text visibility and for viewing more of its contents.

      It is useful when you need more space or focus on a specific task. After finishing that task, you can zoom out (unzoom) the Tmux pane back to its normal position or size.

    • Common Apache Commands on Ubuntu & Debian – TecAdmin

      Apache is the most popular web server developed by the Apache Foundation in 1995. It comes under Apache License 2.0. It is a cross-platform application available for most of the older operating systems like Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. With a 45% of market share, Apache is serving almost every second website on the internet. Which tells its popularity between users.

      In this tutorial, we will discuss some commonly used commands for managing Apache servers on Ubuntu and Debian-based systems. This includes how to enable/disable a virtual host, module, or configuration file in the Apache server.

    • Use DVD as Local Repository in CentOS 8

      Appstream (Application Stream) and BaseOS are the two repositories that ship with CentOS 8. Centos 8 has two repositories, and they are different from one another. Among AppStream’s components are software packages such as databases and dependencies. BaseOS repository provides requisite packages, which are useful for an operating system that is minimal. If you also want to use DVD as a Local repository, then go through this article because we have written everything regarding CentOS use DVD as local repo.

    • how to tail logs in kubectl

      For container orchestration, Kubernetes has now become the industry standard. It provides the needed abstraction for successfully administering large-scale containerized systems with clear configurations, a straightforward deployment method, and scalability abilities. Like any other system, Logs allow developers to gain visibility into containers and the Kubernetes clusters they are operating on, and their importance is clear in many Kubernetes failures. However, Kubernetes presents a distinct set of logging issues. Application logs can assist you in figuring out what’s going on inside your app. The logs are very helpful for troubleshooting and tracking cluster activities. A logging feature is present in almost all current programs. Container engines, too, are built to handle logging. Publishing to standard output and standard error streams is the simplest and most often used logging option for containerized applications. These logs show you what’s happening and can be useful for debugging master node issues. Unfortunately, these logs cannot be viewed via the kubectl command; instead, they must be viewed directly from the computer. You may need to SSH into the node directly, based on where you are hosting the computer. This understanding enables you to observe the relationships between these resources and the consequences of one action upon another. In this guide, we are checking different ways to tail logs in kubectl. To execute this whole process, we are utilizing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. We have installed and started the minikube cluster. Also, kubectl is already installed and configured on our system.

    • Tips to fix your drawing and linearts on Krita

      The Mirror tool in Krita is cruel and reveal the truth... But, once you spot the deformation on a drawing or line-art, what method you can use to fix it? This video shows you my method within all the limit of my actual skill. You'll know at least how I manage my correction pass over the art of Pepper&Carrot. Sorry for my french accent and english mistakes.

    • How to Replace Substring in Bash Natively

      Here's the scenario. You have a big string and you want to replace part of it with another string.

      For example, you want to change "I am writing a line today" to "I am writing a line now".

      In this quick tutorial, I'll show you how to replace a substring natively in Bash. I'll also show the sed command example as an extension.

    • SS Command in Linux with Useful Examples

      The ss tool is a CLI command used to display information about the network socket in Linux. The ss stands for socket statistics. It is a similar tool to netstat, which can display more information such as TCP and state information.

      The ss tool comes with the iproute2 package. It can display stats for PACKET, TCP, UDP, DCCP, RAW, and Unix domain sockets.

      In this tutorial, we learn ss command in Linux with useful examples.

    • Atheros Wireless in Alma, CentOS and Rocky Linux

      Not that long ago, I took AlmaLinux for a second spin, this time for a more detail review of the distro on my brand-newish IdeaPad 3 machine. Things went reasonably well, except one big glaring problem. I didn't have Wireless connectivity, right after the installation. This is major, because you can't really use a modern system without (some) network, especially this early on.

      Soon, I spent a couple of hours trying to fix this. The problem turned out to be rather quirky. Supposedly, I did have all the right drivers and whatnot, but the system couldn't really utilize the hardware. A combination of two factors contributed to the issue, which we will solve in this tutorial.

    • How To Install AnyDesk on Debian 11 - idroot

      In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AnyDesk on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Anydesk is a remote desktop application. It is a cross-platform software that provides platform independent remote access to different PCs and other host devices. It provides remote access, file transfer, VPN features. It provides secure and reliable access to IT professionals.

      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 AnyDesk remote desktop application on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

    • How Do You Check ZSH History

      As Linux power users, we often come across instances where we need to rerun specific commands. Although some are simple commands that we can retype, some are complex and messy regular expression queries that will take time to reconstruct.

      In such scenarios, we can use our shell command history to scroll through our previous commands or use the reverse search to search for a specific command using the up and down arrows.

      This tutorial will discuss ways to find and reuse our previous commands using the ZSH command history feature.

    • How Do I Zoom In and Out on My Bluestacks Emulator? [Android]

      Over the years, we have seen the rise and fall of many android emulators. However, there is one that has been the king: Bluestacks Emulator.

      Bluestacks is an android emulator that uses virtualization technology to emulate android devices on Windows and macOS systems. It offers modern features to run modern games and applications with minimal or no compatibility issues.

      Zooming in and out of Bluestacks may seem impossible, especially if you are emulating an app or game that requires a touch display.

    • How to Configure Apache Tomcat in Linux

      Apache Tomcat, or simply Tomcat, is a free and open-source web server developed by the Apache Software Foundation to implement Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, Java Expression Language, and web-socket technologies. It provides a ‘pure Java’ http server.

      Apache Tomcat provides a default HTTP connector on port 8080, allowing you to use it as a web server such as Apache for your Java applications.

    • How to Configure mod_jk in Apache HTTP Server

      Mod_jk is an Apache module or connector that connects the Apache Tomcat Servlet container with web servers such as Apache, IIS, and more. The mod_jk is a complete replacement of the older mod_jser module that handles communication between Tomcat and HTTP servers using Apache JServ Protocol.

      We will not get into the deeper workings of the mod_jk module as it is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Instead, we shall focus on how to integrate it with the Apache HTTP Server.

    • How to Deploy VDO on a Disk | RedHat - Unixcop

      VDO : Short of Virtual Data Optimizer and is a block virtualization technology that provides Deduplication and compression of data at a block level.

    • How to Do a for loop in ZSH Script

      Every sysadmin should know how to implement scripts to automate their workflow. Although we have many automation tools such as Ansible, scripting remains a critical tool to automate tasks in the Linux world.

      This tutorial will look at loops, a fundamental concept in scripting and programming in general. We will specifically focus on how for loops work.

    • How to Enable Debug Logging in Apache

      As a system administrator, you will need to understand what is going on under the hood of various services in your system. Logging is probably the best way to do that.

      Logs allow you to collect information about the services and applications running on your system and save that log to a file for future use.

      This tutorial will learn how to collect detailed information about the Apache Tomcat service by enabling the DEBUG mode.

    • How to Encrypt Storage Drives Using LUKS in Linux

      This article will cover a guide on using the “Linux Unified Key Setup” or LUKS encryption standard that can be used to create encrypted and password protected storage drives. During encryption, LUKS reserves a space on the storage drive and stores necessary information required for encryption and decryption on the storage drive itself. This on-disk encryption methodology ensures near plug and play compatibility across Linux distributions and easy transferability of data drives. As long as you have LUKS installed on your Linux system and you know the password, you will be easily able to decrypt any LUKS encrypted data drive on any Linux distribution.

    • How to Install Apache, MariaDB, PHP7 (LAMP) on openSUSE Leap 15.3 - Unixcop

      In this tutorial, we will explain to you how to install LAMP stack on the latest openSUSE release. Let me just refresh your mind that LAMP is a combination of the words Linux Apache MySQL and Php.

    • How to Install Arch Linux: Beginner's Step-by-Step Installation Guide

      Arch Linux is not difficult to install. In this guide I will going to show you how to easily install Arch Linux with the GNOME Desktop Environment.

      Many Linux users really want to give Arch Linux a try, but the general notion that Arch is difficult to learn stops many of them. When people say it’s “hard,” they really mean that it takes effort. And they’re right – you do have to put a little bit more effort into installing your system, setting everything up, and reading about how to do what you want to do.

      However, you end up with a system you understand very well and set up just the way you want it. Once installed, Arch Linux is as easy to run as any other distro, if not easier.

      You can install Arch Linux directly to your computer by following this guide, but you can also install it on a virtual machine by using VirtualBox. This Arch Linux how to installation guide shows the whole process in easy-to-follow steps.

    • How to Install SQL Server in RHEL, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux

      On March 7, 2016, Microsoft announced the introduction of the MS SQL server in Linux systems. The goal was to deliver more flexibility for users and to do away with vendor lock-in with the aim of accelerating the adoption of the SQL database server. If you didn’t know already, MS SQL is a relational database server developed by Microsoft.

    • How to Monitor Linux Machine via Nagios - Unixcop

      Nagios is a powerful tools that allows you to monitor your IT infrastructure and notify you if any hosts, service or machine specs are malfunctioning. We will see to monitor a linux machine’s basic health check e.g. Current load, Disk Space and Ram Usage etc. in this tutorial.

    • How to Remove (^M) Characters from a File in Linux

      A common functional uniqueness of different operating system environments is in the way they handle and process data. This functionality is in the way a file’s text data is perceived and processed.

      For instance, you can have a normal text file created and populated under a Windows computing environment but once that same file is transferred to a Linux computing platform, it is processed and displayed differently.

      There is a logical explanation for these transferred text file’s misbehavior. On a Windows computing environment, the OS acknowledges the presence of a new line within a text file through a specific carriage return.

      While the representation of this carriage return (CR) character is hidden from the eyes of these Windows users, transferring this file to a Linux computing environment exposes it as ^M characters.

    • How to Rename Files in Linux (mv and rename Commands)

      Renaming files in Linux is a very common operation.

      In this article, we will discuss how to rename single or multiple files using the mv and rename commands in various Linux distributions.

    • How to Use Rc.local on CentOS 8

      During the boot process of Linux, we start the script using rc.local. Due to the complex init script process, it causes the user to spend a lot of time using it. Many people look for the methods to use rc.local on CentOS 8 easily. That’s why we have written this blog to give you a brief on the ways to use rc.local on CentOS 8.

    • How to Use fdisk Command to Create Partition in Linux

      The fdisk command utility is useful for viewing and editing hard disk or SSD partitions on Linux and its distributions, such as Ubuntu. It is one of the most powerful tools to manage disk partitions on Linux. Other tools are also available to perform disk partition on Linux, but fdisk is one of the most commonly used ones.

      fdisk is a menu-driven command-line utility, and hence new users find this tool confusing and difficult to use. fdisk is not an easy tool to use and should be used with caution. You need to have root access or sudo privileges to make changes to storage partitions.

      So, today in this article, I will give you a tutorial on how to create a partition in Linux using the fdisk command.

    • How to Use nmcli in Ubuntu

      Network manager manages all the network settings of the computer. With which network a machine should be connected, which type of traffic should be allowed and how to save data from the online servers are all managed by the network manager. Network managers have different tools, for example we have nm-connection-editor, nmcli, nm Gnome etc. All the tools or utilities have their own specific functions like nm-connection-editor is used to manage the wired connections of the machine, by Gnome settings we can manage all the network settings easily, by nmcli we can do the setting by the command line mode.

      This write-up will demonstrate the installation of the network manager then in detail we will discuss the nmcli command for what purpose and how it can be used.

    • How to install Apache Tomcat on Debian 11

      This tutorial explains how to install Apache Tomcat on Debian 11, its predecessors, and Debian-based Linux distributions.

      Before writing a tutorial for Linux Hint, I always check other blogs’ content in order to make ours better. This time I was surprised that no available tutorials on installing Apache Tomcat on Debian 11 included the apt-get installation method, which is easier to execute. Therefore I decided to include both methods: Installing Tomcat on Debian 11 using apt and Tomcat manual installation.

    • How to manage local storage using stratis | RedHat - Unixcop

      stratis : is a new technology started in redhat enterprise linux ( RHEL 8 ) used as a local storage-management solution for Linux. It is focused on simplicity and ease of use, and gives you access to advanced storage features.

  • Wine or Emulation

    • The Waydroid project develops a package to run Android on GNU / Linux

      The project Waydroid has prepared a toolkit that allows you to create an isolated environment in a regular Linux distribution for loading a complete system image of the Android platform and organize the launch of Android applications with it. The code of the toolkit proposed by the project is written in Python and is released under the GPLv3 license. Ready packages are generated for Ubuntu 20.04 / 21.04, Debian 11, Droidian and Ubports .

      The environment is built using standard technologies to create isolated containers such as namespaces for processes, user IDs, networking subsystem, and mount points. The toolkit is used to manage the container LXC . To run Android on top of a regular Linux kernel are loaded , the modules binder_linux and ashmem_linux .

      The environment is designed to work with a session based on the Wayland protocol. Unlike the similar environment Anbox , the Android platform provides direct access to hardware, without additional layers. The proposed Android system image for installation is based on assemblies from the project LineageOS and Android 10 .

  • Games

    • BattlEye confirms Linux support for Steam Deck, will be opt-in like Easy Anti-Cheat

      Just recently we had Epic Games announce that Easy Anti-Cheat now offers proper native Linux support and in addition support for Wine and Steam Play Proton - now we have BattlEye also confirming the same readying up for the Steam Deck.

    • BattlEye To Support Valve's Steam Deck / Proton

      Yesterday it was Epic Games confirming Easy Anti-Cheat for Linux and Wine/Proton ahead of the Steam Deck launch and today it's BattlEye confirming Proton / Steam Deck support.

      BattlEye has already provided native Linux support albeit not widely used. Today they tweeted that they will also be supporting the upcoming Steam Deck or more specifically the use of BattlEye within Proton.

      BattlEye is making this opt-in for game developers who wish to support its usage under Wine / Proton.

    • Epic Games Announces Easy Anti-Cheat Support for Linux, Wine, Proton, and Steam Deck

      One of the main obstacles Linux Gaming faces are anticheats, which make it impossible for Open Source users to play many titles online (and in some cases also block single-player modes). Luckily, there has been an important advance in this area recently, since Epic Games has announced the support of Easy Anti-Cheat for Linux, Mac and Steam Deck (sic), covering, of course, the Wine and Proton compatibility layers (the second is nothing more than a re-implementation of the first).

      Yes, as you are reading, Epic Games already gives official support for Easy Anti-Cheat for Linux and Wine, or at least that is how it has been announced on the company’s developer website . In recent years, the relationship between Epic Games and the Linux community has deteriorated considerably, mainly due to the fact that the corporation still does not give official support for its game store and the presence of the aforementioned Easy Anti-Cheat, which has made it impossible to Linux users play every title that has implemented it.

    • Epic Brings Easy Anti-Cheat Support For Proton and Wine On Linux!

      There’s no denying the fact that Linux gaming has improved to a great extent over the past few years. This was made possible through the Proton compatibility layer, which translates Windows DirectX to Vulkan. As of today, over 16,000 games can be played on Linux.

      But one of the areas where Linux gaming takes a hit is when running games with anti-cheat mechanisms. Today, that changes, thanks to Epic games bringing Easy Anti-cheat support to Proton and Wine on Linux. Here’s everything you need to know about the same.

    • A first Release Candidate for Proton 6.3-7 is up with more games working

      Time for a weekend of testing for many of you? A fresh version of Steam Play Proton is on the way, with a CodeWeavers developer on GitHub announcing a Release Candidate build of Proton 6.3-7.

      Now is the time to log issues new to this version of Proton before it rolls out to everyone. They're only interested in issues that didn't happen in previous versions, as they of course don't want to roll it out with regressions.

    • Linux gaming just got a BIG boost! - Invidious

      Big news on EAC in Linux, but there are other problems no one is talking about. Let's go over the future of Linux Gaming!

    • My Top 3 HOPES For Steam Deck (+ 2 Big FEARS) - Invidious

      This changes EVERYTHING for Linux Gaming! Epic Games has officially extended Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) support to Proton and Wine. Let's talk about it.

    • All You Need to Know About Linux Gaming

      Windows is a de facto operating system for PC gamers, and most gamers consider Linux for gaming a distant possibility. While for some gamers, it is not the first choice. But the closed source nature and handling of personal data on Windows is an off point for many. Even though Linux distributions are not as optimal for gaming as Windows, some gaming-specific distributions and platforms have open doors of possibilities.

      The article explains the distant possibility of Linux gaming turning into reality by answering some potential questions of games compatibility with Linux and Linux suitability. We also discuss various platforms that support native, Windows, terminal, and browser-based games in Linux.

    • Thatcher’s Techbase, the Doom II mod where you take down Maggie Thatcher is out | GamingOnLinux

      A mod of Doom II that we covered a week ago set in the good old United Kingdom, Thatcher’s Techbase, is out now and sees you take down Subject M4GG-13 who is none other than former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Risen from the dead and fresh out of Hell, Thatcher is up to something and it's your job to take 'em down.

    • Gorgeous looking TMORPG Book of Travels enters Early Access on October 11 | GamingOnLinux

      After repeated delays the TMORPG (Tiny Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) Book of Travels has been confirmed now to enter Early Access on October 11. The developer is now confident enough that they've solved the most pressing issues.

      This is only the first step for the game, with it being "Chapter Zero" of the ongoing story the game will tell which will last for at least two years during Early Access. They said to see it like other games have seasons, with this not quite technically being the first.

    • Subterranean survival shooter Lumencraft will have you dig deep | GamingOnLinux

      Lumencraft has been announced from 2Dynamic Games and Star Drifters that promises quite an unusual blend of survival and tower defense while you dig through the terrain.

      The first game from 2Dynamic, they say it has "strands of Alien Breed in its DNA, as well as nods to Darkwood, but with a tactical and survival spin to it" and it will present you with an "unprecedented level of environment interaction, along with fully destructible terrain and dynamic lighting system".

      [...]

      From what we've been told they will have a Linux native build available at the Early Access release but not for the upcoming demo for Steam Next Fest. No exact date is being given for the release yet.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • New Book: Krita Secrets by Bohdan Kornienko

        “Krita Secrets” is a book that aims to deliver as short tutorials as possible. Each tutorial covers one specific action with its result. The tutorials range from how to do little tricks, like draw Parallel Lines, to complex tools such as Gradient Mesh. By September 22, 2021 the book contains 60 tutorials and it keeps growing.

        The intent is to create a compendium of short tutorials that each aim to solve one single problem. This way people will not have to spend a lot of time reading through pages online, or watching video after video, while figuring things out. Hopefully with the help of this book artists would spend more time creating than searching online for instructions.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • CutefishOS: Unix-y development model? Check. macOS aesthetic? Check (if you like that sort of thing)

        One of the reasons Linux has never caught on as a desktop operating system, as Linux fans know, is that Linux isn't a desktop operating system, it's a kernel. And assembling it into a coherent package users can install is the job of a distribution.

        This is a very different distribution model than the one Apple or Microsoft uses, and it confuses newcomers. Windows and macOS are easier to understand, they are single things made by single companies. Canonical and Red Hat notwithstanding, Linux is not packaged and presented this way at all. I've long believed that this difference is one of the key stumbling blocks to wider Linux adoption.

        Apple has macOS, Microsoft has Windows, Linux has... hundreds of awkward, confusingly named options.

        This is both Linux's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness. For those who already understand and use it the options are welcome. I've been a Linux user for over a decade and I've used several dozen distros, some of them so different from one another it's difficult to believe they're built from the same base. This wealth of options is great, but it's both confusing and overwhelming for new users.

        Distributions like elementary OS are popular with people switching from macOS and Windows because elementary OS offers that same highly polished, all-in-one package that makes the transition from proprietary operating systems smoother. But this is Linux, so you can't just have elementary OS.

        The latest distro to catch my eye is CutefishOS, which owes considerable design debt to both elementaryOS and the operating system made by that fruit company.

    • BSD

      • MidnightBSD 2.1.0 Available to Download

        Lucas Holt has announced the release of MidnightBSD 2.1.0, the latest stable build of the project’s FreeBSD-derived operating system for desktops: “I am happy to announce the availability of MidnightBSD 2.1 for amd64 and i386.

        This is an incremental release focusing on bug fixes, improvements to the package manager and a new system compiler. LLVM updated to 10.0.1, mport 2.1.4. The majority of improvements come from the MidnightBSD package manager, mport. A number of long-standing bugs have been fixed. It now can update dependencies properly on install, update or upgrade scenarios. Previously, it would sometimes crash and force the user to do it manually. Several fixes have been made around PLIST processing. The mport utility now sets a character encoding so that extracting files with libarchive with special characters is more likely to work properly without a crash occurring. (lang/go port is a fun trigger of this bug). The libmport library no long relies on libdispatch. This is slower in a few scenarios, but most invocations are now faster as it doesn’t need to setup the thread pools or do the locking it once did.” See the release notes for a full changelog, upgrade instructions and known issues.

      • MidnightBSD 2.1 Released For This Desktop-Minded BSD

        MidnightBSD 2.1 debuted this week as the latest version of one of the few desktop-focused BSD open-source operating system projects.

        MidnightBSD 2.1 updates to the (somewhat out of date still) LLVM 10.0.1 compiler stack, moves to mport 2.1.4 for a newer version of its package manager, and has a number of other bug fixes and security updates. The mport package manager update in particular should address a number of problems previously plaguing MidnightBSD users.

      • MidnightBSD 2.1 Operating System Released

        There was a release of a desktop-oriented operating system MidnightBSD 2.1 , based on FreeBSD 12 with elements ported from DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. The basic desktop environment is built on top of GNUstep, but users have the option to install WindowMaker, GNOME, Xfce, or Lumina. A for downloading prepared 743 MB installation image ( x86 , amd64 ) has been .

        Unlike other FreeBSD desktop builds, MidnightBSD was originally developed as a fork of FreeBSD 6.1-beta, which was synchronized with the FreeBSD 7 codebase in 2011 and later incorporated many of the features from FreeBSD 9, 10, and 11. For package management MidnightBSD uses the mport system, which uses a SQLite database to store indexes and metadata. Installing, removing and searching for packages is carried out using a single command mport .

    • SUSE/OpenSUSE

      • Playing with the openqa API

        Today we are going to play a bit around with the amazing API that every openQA instance provides. The aim of this tutorial is to show how the API can be accessed using a simple language like python. More advanced topics like job posting, deletion and other methods that require authentication are possible but not covered extensively in this post. The reference for this post will be openqa.opensuse.org, but everything works pretty much with every openQA instance.

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the weeks 2021/38

        This week we have shipped the long-awaited glibc 2.34 update. Unfortunately, as was the case with earlier glibc updates, some containerization methods are blocking new syscalls, which can lead to issues out of the control of Tumbleweed. Our docker packages have been adjusted to handle Tumbleweed inside the containers, but many container providers might not be there yet. Besides the full rebuild snapshot with glibc, we released a total of 4 snapshots this week (0916, 0920, 0921, and 0922).

    • Arch Family

      • Cloud Native and Arch Linux

        In this article I want to give a short overview over the current state of Arch Linux with respect to cloud native technologies. I would like to show why I think Arch Linux is perfect as a daily driver in the cloud native ecosystem and how the current state of cloud native software in Arch Linux looks like.

    • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

      • Fedora Workstation: Our Vision for Linux Desktop

        So I have spoken about what is our vision for Fedora Workstation quite a few times before, but I feel it is often useful to get back to it as we progress with our overall effort.So if you read some of my blog posts about Fedora Workstation over the last 5 years, be aware that there is probably little new in here for you. If you haven’t read them however this is hopefully a useful primer on what we are trying to achieve with Fedora Workstation.

        The first few years after we launched Fedora Workstation in 2014 we focused on lot on establishing a good culture around what we where doing with Fedora, making sure that it was a good day to day desktop driver for people, and not just a great place to develop the operating system itself. I think it was Fedora Project Lead Matthew Miller who phrased it very well when he said that we want to be Leading Edge, not Bleeding Edge. We also took a good look at the operating system from an overall stance and tried to map out where Linux tended to fall short as a desktop operating system and also tried to ask ourselves what our core audience would and should be. We refocused our efforts on being a great Operating System for all kinds of developers, but I think it is fair to say that we decided that was to narrow a wording as our efforts are truly to reach makers of all kinds like graphics artists and musicians, in addition to coders. So I thought I go through our key pillar efforts and talk about where they are at and where they are going.

      • Fedora 35 Workstation Installation Guide / Gnome 41 Quick Tour

        This is quick guide / tour howto install Fedora 35 Workstation / Desktop on real PC.

        Just testing Fedora 35 and everything works very smooth, even GNOME 41.0.

      • Fedora Community Blog: Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2021-38

        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)!

        Fedora Linux 35 Beta is GO!

      • IBM Engineer Has Been Exploring Possible Rust Modules For GRUB

        IBM engineer Daniel Axtens presented at this week's Linux Plumbers Conference on the prospects of using the Rust programming language for creating modules for the GRUB2 boot-loader.

        The proposal is not about rewriting GRUB2 in Rust or transitioning it in any large part to Rust, but allowing GRUB2 modules to be created in Rust if so desired by developers. Similar to the growing number of other projects adopting Rust, the motivation is on the prospects of safer code compared to C.

      • Hey syadmins, what device do you update first? | Enable Sysadmin

        Undoubtedly, all the software in their house is out of date. Whether it's a smartphone, smart TV, laptop, refrigerator, a child's tablet, or the dreaded printer, there is always something not talking to something else. It took quite a few years for me to learn, but before I open up Wireshark to start checking dropped packets or pop open top to look around, I open something else: software updates.

      • IBM's IWB: Realizing the Economic Promise of Predictive Analytics

        Wikipedia defines predictive analytics as a set of statistical techniques, - such as data mining, business analytics, and machine learning, - “that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events.” Increasingly powerful and inexpensive computing technologies, new algorithms and models, and huge amounts of data on almost any subject have led to major advances in predictive analytics over the past two decades.

        “Worldwide revenue for ‘big data’ and business analytics solutions is forecasted to reach $274.3 billion by 2022,” wrote economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Wang Jin, and Kristina McElheran in The Power of Prediction, a research article published earlier this year. In principle, such widespread use of predictive analytics should have a positive impact of the performance of firms. “However, these investments have yet to yield productivity gains in the aggregate,” said the authors. “At the firm level, managers struggle to close the gap between the promise of predictive analytics and its performance. These concerns have been difficult to tackle empirically due to the rate of technological change and, ironically, a dearth of data.”

        To address these concerns, the authors launched a research study in collaboration with the US Census Bureau to collect information on the use of predictive analytics in a representative sample of the US manufacturing industry, - an industry that’s historically been an early adopter of leading-edge technologies.

      • Fedora Magazine: PowerShell on Linux? A primer on Object-Shells [Ed: Why is Red Hat and/or Fedora pushing Microsoft lock-in so hard? This is a shot in their own foot and it is second time in a week that Fedora Magazine pushes Microsoft's PowerShell.]
      • Red Hat and SAP Innovation Success Stories e-book [Ed: Who at Red Hat decided that proprietary software should be presented as "success stories"?]
      • DevSecOps: 5 ways to learn more | The Enterprisers Project

        One upside of a new technology trend taking flight: A glut of new opportunities to learn about said trend usually follows.

        This often requires finding the more valuable signals amidst the noise, and that’s true with DevSecOps. There are increasingly abundant resources for learning more about DevSecOps culture and practices, enough so that it might seem tough to know where to begin.

        That’s why we’re here for you and your team. Below, we share five overlapping ways to dig into DevSecOps and learn more about this modern approach to secure applications and infrastructure.

      • Containerized Python Flask development on Red Hat OpenShift | Red Hat Developer

        Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces provides developers with containerized development environments hosted on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. Having a hosted development environment that's pre-built for your chosen stack and customized for your project makes onboarding new developers easier because everything they need is already running in a containerized workspace.

        In this article, I'll show you how to use CodeReady Workspaces to get up and running quickly with a Flask-based Python project. We'll set up the environment, make a few modifications to the application, then validate and verify the changes from within the containerized development environment.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

      • Ubuntu Linux 21.10 'Impish Indri' Beta is here

        Happy Friday, dear BetaNews readers! The weekend is almost here, so hopefully you can take some time to do the things you want to do, rather than the tasks your boss or teacher makes you do. For some, that means spending time with family, watching movies, or resting up. For nerdier people, it is an excellent time to test a Linux distribution!

        Today, Canonical releases the official beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu 21.10 Linux distro. Code-named "Impish Indri," the operating system features Linux kernel 5.13. Also notable, the Firefox browser that comes with Ubuntu 21.10 is a Snap rather than a typical deb -- this may prove controversial for some.

        "Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed ‘Impish Indri,’ continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs," says Brian Murray, Canonical.

      • Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) Final Beta released
      • Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) Final Beta released
      • Ubuntu 21.10 Beta Week Has Started: Let's Get To Testing - Front Page Linux

        Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” beta week just kicked off on September 23. This includes Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and all official Ubuntu flavours.

        This is an excellent opportunity for everyone to help out. All Ubuntu users and members of Ubuntu communities can help a great deal by running tests and reporting bugs before final release. The more help we get, the better final products we will see on release day.

        A very useful list of tests needed by Ubuntu and its flavours can be found here. You can look and choose a few tests you can help us with, and use the same page to report your findings or file bugs: http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/427/builds

        Ubuntu ecosystem makes it quite easy and convenient to download beta ISOs, see which tests are needed, and how to send those test reports. But first of all, let’s see what is available here. Ubuntu ecosystem has been growing for a long time, and nowadays we have a wide variety of flavours.

      • Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri Final Beta Released
        The Ubuntu team announced the release of Ubuntu 21.10 Beta, code name ‘Impish Indri’. The release features Linux Kernel 5.13 and GNOME 40 desktop.

        Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”, continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

      • Ubuntu 21.10 Beta Available to Download - itsfoss.net

        Brian Murray has announced the release of a new development snapshot of Ubuntu. The project has published Ubuntu 21.10 Beta which showcases the technology of the upcoming release of 21.10.

        “The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 21.10 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”, continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs. This Beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu flavours.”

      • Ubuntu 21.10 Beta Available to Download with GNOME 40 - LinuxStoney

        A beta release of the Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” Beta Available to Download with GNOME 40, The release is scheduled for October 14th. Ready test images created for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server , Lubuntu , Kubuntu , Ubuntu Mate , Ubuntu Budgie , Ubuntu Studio , Xubuntu, and UbuntuKylin (China Edition).

      • Ubuntu Studio 21.10 Beta Released – Ubuntu Studio

        The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”.

        While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper DVD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 21.10 is released on October 21, 2021.

        Please note: Due to the change in desktop environment, directly upgrading to Ubuntu Studio 21.10 from 20.04 LTS is not supported and will not be supported. However, upgrades from Ubuntu Studio 21.04 will be supported. See the Release Notes for more information.

      • Kubuntu Impish Indri (21.10) Beta Released

        The Beta of Impish Indri (to become 21.10 in October) has now been released, and is available for download.

        This milestone features images for Kubuntu and other Ubuntu flavours.

      • Ubuntu Blog: Bare metal cloud support for Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 LTS

        Whether you’re running a small or a large fleet of servers in your bare metal cloud, it’s crucial to have a way to ensure consistency and repeatability across them – not only to save time on wondering what the state of a particular machine is (and it’s operating system), but also for security reasons.

        With the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) phase of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS, it’s worthwhile highlighting that MAAS provides automated OS image synchronisation – including for these releases as well as many others.

      • Design and Web team summary – 10 September 2021

        The Web and design team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of the Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work from this iteration.

  • Devices/Embedded

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Why Do Companies Still Have a Fear of Open Source?

      Open Source Software, since its birth, has made people wonder about its effects. The debate is never-ending, and for the right reasons. Giants like Apple have often viewed Open Source skeptically because they are mostly unfounded. However, one cannot deny that these sources are functional and flexible. They are also partly responsible for bringing the technological world in the right direction. But are they worth it? In this article, we shall learn all about open source companies and why use open source software, and why open source software is still not greeted warmly by certain companies. Therefore, without further ado, let's start right away.

    • Events

      • Samuel Iglesias: X.Org Developers Conference 2021

        Last week we had our most loved annual conference: X.Org Developers Conference 2021. As a reminder, due to COVID-19 situation in Europe (and its respective restrictions on travel and events), we kept it virtual again this year… which is a pity as the former venue was GdaÅ„sk, a very beautiful city (see picture below if you don’t believe me!) in Poland. Let’s see if we can finally have an XDC there!

        [...]

        Big shout-out to the XDC 2021 organizers (Intel) represented by Radosław Szwichtenberg, Ryszard Knop and Maciej Ramotowski. They did an awesome job on having a very smooth conference. I can tell you that they promptly fixed any issue that happened, all of that behind the scenes so that the attendees not even noticed anything most of the times! That is what good conference organizers do!

      • Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference 2021

        This month has been nothing short of hectic, with back to back to back conferences filling up the calendar. Following Linaro Virual Connect, XDC, and Linux Plumbers (which ends today), Collaborans will be attending (virtually) next week's Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference 2021.

        Connecting the open source ecosystem under one roof, the conference is "a unique environment for cross-collaboration between developers, sysadmins, devops, architects and others who are driving technology forward". Taking place from September 27-30, the event will be held in a hybrid format for the first time, with both in-person and virtual offerings, to ensure that everyone who wants to participate is able to do so.

    • Web Browsers

      • Chromium

        • Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome

          Google has released Chrome version 94.0.4606.61 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This version addresses a vulnerability—CVE-2021-37973—that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. An exploit for this vulnerability exists in the wild.

        • Google Chrome 94 Released with Sharing Hub feature

          Google has unveiled the release of the Chrome 94 web browser . At the same time , a stable release of the free Chromium 94 project is available , which serves as the basis for Chrome. The Chrome browser is distinguished by the use of Google logos, the presence of a system for sending notifications in case of a crash, modules for playing protected video content (DRM), a system for automatically installing updates and transmitting RLZ parameters when searching . The next release of Chrome 95 is scheduled for October 19th.

          Starting with the release of Chrome 94, development has been moved to a new release cycle. Significant new releases will now be published every 4 weeks, rather than every 6 weeks, to accelerate the delivery of new features to users. It is noted that the optimization of the release preparation process and the improvement of the testing system make it possible to generate releases more often without compromising quality. For enterprises and for those who need more time to update, once every 8 weeks, the Extended Stable edition will be released separately, which will allow you to switch to new functional releases not once every 4 weeks, but once every 8 weeks.

    • FSF

      • GNU Projects

        • Subject: coreutils-9.0 released [stable]
          This is to announce coreutils-9.0, a stable release.
          
          

          This is a new major release, with these significant changes: - cp has changed how it handles data - enables CoW by default (through FICLONE ioctl), - uses copy offload where available (through copy_file_range), - detects holes differently (though SEEK_HOLE) - This also applies to mv and install.

          - utilities are more tuned to the hardware available - wc uses avx2 instructions to count lines - cksum uses pclmul instructions for --algorithm=crc

          - More amalgamation of utilities - cksum now supports the -a option to select any digest. - This is the preferred interface, rather than sha*sum etc. - This is similar to the amalgamation of encoding utilities introduced in the basenc command in v8.31. See the NEWS below for more details.

          Thanks to everyone who has contributed! There have been 257 commits by 25 people in the 81 weeks since 8.32 Andreas Schwab (1) KOBAYASHI Takashi (2) Arman Absalan (1) Kamil Dudka (4) Assaf Gordon (1) Kristoffer BrÃ¥nemyr (3) Ben Pfaff (1) Nikolay Nechaev (1) Benno Schulenberg (1) Nishant Nayan (1) Bernhard Voelker (17) Paul Eggert (97) Carl Edquist (2) Pádraig Brady (110) Emanuele Giacomelli (1) Tianjia Zhang (1) Erik Auerswald (1) Tim Gates (1) Grigorii Sokolik (2) Tobias Stoeckmann (1) Jason Kim (1) Zorro Lang (1) Jim Meyering (7) nl6720 (1) Justin Tracey (1)

          Pádraig [on behalf of the coreutils maintainers]

          ==================================================================

          Here is the GNU coreutils home page: https://gnu.org/software/coreutils/

          For a summary of changes and contributors, see: https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v9.0 or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory: git shortlog v8.32..v9.0

          To summarize the 1615 gnulib-related changes, run these commands from a git-cloned coreutils directory: git checkout v9.0 git submodule summary v8.32

          ==================================================================

          Here are the compressed sources: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.gz (14MB) https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.xz (5.4MB)

          Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.gz.sig https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.xz.sig

          Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth: https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

          Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

          027a318930f295cb5bbc0dd06fb47a3b8552fc80 coreutils-9.0.tar.gz b9TriKUVAEl3/HLX9HtAYgQJzEHfrwBBn90b4XZjxDQ coreutils-9.0.tar.gz e2623469f37259d4a89ced5f91af5eaf0ab8792d coreutils-9.0.tar.xz zjCs30pBvFuzDdlV6eqnX6IWtOPesIiJ7TJDPHs7l84 coreutils-9.0.tar.xz

          The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

          [*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this:

          gpg --verify coreutils-9.0.tar.gz.sig

          If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, then run this command to import it:

          gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys DF6FD971306037D9

          and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

          This release was bootstrapped with the following tools: Autoconf 2.71 Automake 1.16.4 Gnulib v0.1-4937-g9aca7b673 Bison 3.7.4
        • coreutils-9.0 released

          The GNU Core Utilities (coreutils) has announced the release of version 9.0 of "the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities" used by the GNU operating system and various Linux distributions. In the year and a half or so since the last major release (8.32), various new features were added, including...

        • GNU Coreutils 9.0: cp Now Enables CoW By Default + Copy Offload, wc Now Uses AVX2

          Coreutils 9.0 is now available and it's a significant update to this collection of common open-source utilities found on effectively all Linux systems.

          First up, the widely-used cp utility for copying files/directories has some notable changes. With Coreutils 9.0, cp now enables copy-on-write (CoW) support by default using the FICLONE ioctl. Additionally, cp now uses copy-offload where possible by means of the copy_file_range system call. The cp command also now detects holes differently, among other changes. These cp changes also apply to the mv and install utilities too.

    • Programming/Development

      • New tool: an nginx playground

        On Wednesday I was talking to a friend about how it would be cool to have an nginx playground website where you can just paste in an nginx config and test it out. And then I realized it might actually be pretty easy to build, so got excited and started coding and I built it.

      • C++

        • Next generation of IBM C/C++ and Fortran compilers are now available on IBM AIX – IBM Developer

          In February 2020, IBM announced the intention to adopt open source LLVM infrastructure for the next generation of IBM XL C/C++ and Fortran compilers. As an active sponsor and strong supporter of LLVM, IBM is committed to bring the benefits and innovations from the LLVM community to our enterprise clients.

          With the launch of IBM Power10, the IBM XL C/C++ and Fortran compilers have been modernized and now rebranded to IBM Open XL C/C++ for AIX and IBM Open XL Fortran for AIX. IBM Open XL C/C++ and Fortran for AIX 17.1.0 combine Clang/LLVM technology with IBM’s industry-leading optimizations.

        • C++ String to double Conversion

          in C++, you will not end up with 49.12. In fact, the compiler should issue an error message. To have the result, 49.12, “14.25” has to be converted to a number type of double or float, and “34.87” has to be converted to a number type of double or float.

          The title of this tutorial is “C++ String to Double Conversion”. Is your aim to convert string to double; or to do all of the following, which are related?

        • C++ string append

          The word “append” means to add something at the back of another thing. A string can be declared in C++ in two main ways. Declaring a string as an array-of-chars or as a constant-pointer-to-chars is one way. Instantiating a string object data structure from the string class is another way. To instantiate a string object from the string class, the C++ string library has to be included in the program.

        • C++ String trim Methods

          C++ does not have a function to trim a string. There is a subject in computer programming called, Regular Expressions, abbreviated regex. This subject has schemes, which enable the programmer to search for a sub-string in a target string and replace the sub-string found. The sub-string found can be replaced with nothing, and so erasing it.

          The search-and-replace with nothing idea can be used to trim a string. So look for all white space characters in front of the string and all white-space characters behind the string, and replace them with nothing. Luckily, C++ has a regex library, which has to be included in the program to do this.

        • C++ String Replace

          C++ String Replace deals with locating a particular sub-string in a target string and then replacing it. A string can be created in two main ways: using a constant character pointer (char array) or instantiating it from the string class. The string class has a replace() member function. This does the locating and replacement. Locating and replacing is done with instantiated string objects and not strings created using a constant character pointer.

          The string object is a data structure, and its main component is a list. Each cell of this list has a character. The total sequence of characters forms the literal string. Each character position can be accessed by an index or by an iterator. Index counting begins from zero. An iterator is an elaborated pointer.

          The C+ string class has different variants of the replace() member function. Such a set of functions are called overloaded functions. This article explains how to use different overloaded string replace() member functions.

      • Python

        • Pandas to check cell value is NaN

          The main documentation of the pandas is saying null values are missing values. We can denote the missing or null values as NaN in the pandas as most developers do. The NaN and None keywords are both used by developers to show the missing values in the dataframe. The best thing in the pandas is that it treats both NaN and None similarly. To check the missing value of a cell, pandas.notnull will return False in both cases of NaN and None if the cell has NaN or None.

          So, in this article, we will explore different methods to check whether a particular cell value is null or not (NaN or None).

      • Raku and Perl

        • gfldex: Convolution

          Flavio wrote a straightforward solution to PWC-131-1 and wondered if there is a idiomatic way. Assuming, that “idiomatic” means to use language features which lesser languages refuse to require, I’m happy to deliver convoluted code.

        • Perl Weekly Challenge 131: Consecutive Arrays

          These are some answers to task 1 of the Week 131 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

          Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on September 26, 2021 at 24:00). This blog post offers some solutions to this challenge, please don’t read on if you intend to complete the challenge on your own.

        • My Favorite Modules: if | Tom Wyant [blogs.perl.org]

          My blog post My Favorite Warnings: redundant and missing touched on the use of the if module. Comments on that post made me think it deserved a top-level treatment, expanding on (though not necessarily improving on) Aristotle's comment.

  • Leftovers

    • Yikes! You Call That a Pencil?

      The mergers and acquisitions aspect of 1980s corporate culture made some strange bedfellows among companies. While this era gave us some now commonly known hyphenated companies, like Time Warner...

    • Hardware

      • Told You!

        I predict the ARM deal for NVidia will fall through, due to the anti-competitive advantage it would provide them & a Monopolistic advantage at that. I highly doubt I am wrong,

      • This (Obsolete Technology) Museum is (Not) Obsolete

        You know, we’re not sure how this escaped our attention for so long. Blame it on the summer heat. Did you know that [Look Mum No Computer] opened a museum of obsolete technology a few weeks ago?

      • Making A Metal Hand Doorknob | Hackaday

        The finished piece looks great attached to a door knob, and we’re sure it’s quite satisfying shaking hands with your hefty metal self every time you open the door. It bears noting that the same techniques can be used with 3D printing, too! If you pull off your own great home casting project, be sure to drop us a line. Video after the break.

      • Handheld Bot Takes The Tedium Out Of Guitar Tuning | Hackaday

        Luckily, technology can come to the rescue in the form of this handy open-source automatic guitar tuner by [Guyrandy Jean-Gilles]. The tuner has a Raspberry Pi Pico inside, with a microphone attached to the ADC. The program running on the Pico listens for the sound of a plucked string and determines whether the note is sharp or flat. The Pico then drives a small DC gear motor in the appropriate direction, which turns the peg the right way to bring the string into tune. The tuner makes ample use of 3D-printed parts, STLs for which are included in the project repo. [Guyrandy] has also made some updates to the project to make the tuner a little easier to use.

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Found a hidden malware on Windows… in Linux? [Ed: This is a Windows problem; WSL is just Microsoft's attack on GNU/Linux; The solution to WSL/WSL2 woes is to delete Windows completely and install/use the real thing.]

          This strange weird world of computing continues to amaze us. From ‘s Microsoft love of all that is open-source to the publication of Edge on Linux , these two worlds – once poles apart and with great feuds between their users – are increasingly mixing.

          But you have to be careful to mix things up, especially when you can’t have 100% control between the two cohabiting environments.

          [...]

          Black Lotus Labs recommends that you enable and monitor the WSL system, if you have it installed, at the time to check for suspicious activity. While waiting for this new attack vehicle to be detected as well.

        • A New Bug in Microsoft Windows Could Let Hackers Easily Install a Rootkit
        • Google Warns of a New Way Hackers Can Make Malware Undetectable on Windows
        • NYT Crossword Decision Puzzles Many | Hackaday

          Central to this issue are Across Lite .puz files, a format which hasn’t been upgraded in twenty years. Despite being aged and proprietary, an entire community of solvers, developers and checkers has sprung up around the availability of puz files, making them a de-facto standard. Not only are puz files used to distribute daily crosswords, the NYT maintains an archive of all its crosswords in puz format going back to 1993, even before online puzzles were introduced. There are various newer formats floating around, but with the entrenchment of the puz format none has emerged as a clear winner. The Across Lite team even developed a new format at the request of NYT in back 2015, but strangely, the NYT has never used it.

          [...]

          Based on the information made available so far, several things don’t make sense to many in the community. Why the sudden notice, and not a transition period to give the community time to make an orderly transition to this new “something”? Why is the archive of puz files being removed, given that the problem is with preparing puz formatted files, not maintaining them? Almost overnight, scripts have popped up to convert the NYT website crossword into puz format, and similar scripts have been around for some time. This begs the question, just how difficult is it to prepare puz files? And other than printing your puzzle on paper, this announcement ends the ability to solve puzzles offline, such as when you’re flying.

          Many third-party puzzle app and program developers have reached out to Ms. Mason asking that she reconsider.

        • Pseudo-Open Source

          • Privatisation/Privateering

            • Linux Foundation

              • Cloud, Linux Top List of Open-Source Skills Desired by Companies [Ed: By Microsoft Nick]

                What kind of open-source skills do companies actually want technologists to possess? That’s a key question for technologists who are trying to deepen their open-source knowledge; after all, they don’t have time to learn everything out there.

              • Linux Foundation Announces 2 Millionth Course Enrollment On edX Learning Platform

                The Linux Foundation has announced that there have been two million enrollments to date across all of its online courses offered on the edX platform. These open source training courses have continually increasing rates of enrollment growth as the curriculum continues to expand, with offerings covering technologies like cloud infrastructure, blockchain, networking, and DevOps.

              • Results from the 2021 Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election [Ed: Microsoft inside the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board, still]

                This year's election for the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board had 1012 authorized voters; 237 of them cast ballots. The results were:

                1. Greg-KH 2. Jonathan Corbet 3. Steven Rostedt 4. Theodore Ts'o 5. Sasha Levin --- 6. Dave Hansen 7. Kent Overstreet 8. Dave Taht

                The top five will serve two-year terms on the TAB.

                Thank you to all the candidates for their nominations and to everyone for voting.

                If you have any questions please reach out to tab-elections@lists.linuxfoundation.org

                Thanks, Laura

              • Results from the 2021 Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election

                The 2021 election for the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory board resulted in all five incumbent members (Greg Kroah-Hartman, Jonathan Corbet, Steven Rostedt, Ted Ts'o, and Sasha Levin) being re-elected. Of the 1,012 developers authorized to vote, 237 actually cast ballots.

        • Security

          • 5 current topics for research paper about Linux cybersecurity

            Are you a student who is studying data security in college? Are you looking for ideas for your research paper about Linux cybersecurity? You’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will talk about five current topics for a research paper on Linux cybersecurity, as well as how to approach each of them. Being a student who wants to pursue academic success is not something unnatural.

            However, along this journey, there could be many setbacks and obstacles to overcome. But these challenges will help you become better at this topic, especially because it is of high importance. As technology evolves even more, new software products, apps, websites appear.

            And so, it is increasing the possibility of a hacker attack, identity theft, and many other cyberattacks that can happen online. So, discussing Linux security in your research paper is essential, and here are five current topics.

          • This Week in Security: Somebody’s Watching, Microsoft + Linux, DDoS

            Last week we talked about the simple-to-exploit vulnerability in the Open Management Infrastructure, commonly installed on Linux VMs hosted in the Azure cloud. Botnets are already scanning the internet for vulnerable machines, and installing malware. The primary payload seems to be a Mirai variant, which among other things closes the vulnerable ports upon infection. Even though your VM doesn’t currently expose OMI to the internet, it may already be compromised. According to Caddo Security, there still haven’t been any automatic updates pushed to fix vulnerable servers, so unless a VM was manually updated last week, it should probably be assumed to be compromised at this point if it has OMI installed. This has the potential to be quite a big problem.

          • Security updates for Friday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (mupdf), Fedora (ghostscript, gifsicle, and ntfs-3g), openSUSE (kernel and nodejs14), and SUSE (curl, ffmpeg, gd, hivex, kernel, nodejs14, python-reportlab, sqlite3, and xen).

          • The Proliferation of Zero-days
    • Defence/Aggression

      • Invisible Enemies: Parallels Between the Anthrax Attacks and Covid-19
      • 9/11 and Anthrax 20 Years On with Graeme MacQueen

        Whitney is joined by author, academic and researcher Graeme MacQueen to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 and anthrax attacks, why those events still matter today and why there remains such a stigma in many circles when it comes to questioning the official stories of those events.

      • Hong Kong’s uncertain tech future

        Previously an entrepôt for western technology firms, the city-state is being bound ever closer to the economy of mainland China.

        Every morning the planes from Hong Kong touch down at London Heathrow, quickly disgorging their complement of passengers into the arrivals hall before refuelling their spent engines. Clutching British National (Overseas) passports, the line of travellers that begins to snake from border control is a testament to a new and sudden migration from this former colony to former colonizer. For almost all of these people, an uncertain future in the UK is preferable to the growing sense of political repression in Hong Kong.

        Almost 65,000 Hong Kongers have applied to settle in the UK this year, out of an eligible 5.4 million people. As a result, the city’s labour pool is beginning to dry up. “Go to schools and they’re saying they’re losing students because of immigration,” says Charles Mok, a former legislator for Hong Kong’s IT sector and now director of the think tank Tech for Good Asia. Recent figures suggest the city’s population has dropped by 1.2% in just one year. “That exodus of talent is huge, and it’s difficult for companies. Many of them are losing their employees in many sectors, including IT, including banking.”

    • Finance

      • Bruce Schneier: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

        For the record, I am not Satoshi Nakamoto. I suppose I could have invented the bitcoin protocols, but I wouldn’t have done it in secret. I would have drafted a paper, showed it to a lot of smart people, and improved it based on their comments. And then I would have published it under my own name. Maybe I would have realized how dumb the whole idea is. I doubt I would have predicted that it would become so popular and contribute materially to global climate change. In any case, I did nothing of the sort.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

      • Facebook Oversight Board’s Palestine decision: right direction, not enough

        The Facebook Oversight Board’s latest decision on the platforms’s unjustified removal of news content related to the recent bout of violence in Palestine and Israel is welcomed, but not enough.

        “The details of the Oversight Board’s first MENA case affirms, once again, that Facebook’s arbitrary and non-transparent decisions are a feature, not a bug,” said Marwa Fatafta, MENA Policy Manager at Access Now. “We support the Board’s decision on this occasion, but demand accountability, transparency, and assurance that blatant censorship and disrespect for a people, a language, and a complex social context will never put us in this situation again.”

        On May 10, 2021, a Facebook user in Egypt shared a news item from news platform, Al Jazeera, which contained a threat of violence by a Qassam Brigades spokesperson. Facebook initially removed the content after being reviewed by two content moderators for violating its Community Standard on Dangerous People and Organizations. Although Facebook restored the content, this is emblematic of Facebook’s systematic overenforcement of this Community Standard, particularly in relation to Arab and Muslim communities.

      • Canada’s online censorship plan endangers free expression - Access Now

        Today, Access Now urged the Canadian government to ensure its plan to address harmful content online complies with international human rights standards. The current online censorship proposal is an attack on freedom of expression.

    • Monopolies

      • Microsoft is heading for a new antitrust showdown

        In July 2021, the UK government invited startups, businesses, and policymakers to a consultation about the most pressing competition problems in the tech industry, ahead of the launch of its new Digital Market Unit (DMU). One person familiar with the discussions says that something odd was happening behind closed doors. In private discussions entrepreneurs claimed Microsoft was behaving in a way they thought was detrimental to healthy competition; yet none dared to publicly call Microsoft out in the consultation.

        Most startups complained about Microsoft’s tendency to “bundle” new features in its products that directly competed with the startups’ core creations. But the source says startup founders were too scared of Microsoft’s reaction to go public with their gripes. The founder of an enterprise software startup said that Microsoft would "absolutely kill" their business if they spoke out, the source claims– implying that they feared the tech giant would make their products incompatible with Microsoft’s software ecosystem.

        The DMU consultation is slated to conclude on October 1 – whether any British startup will publicly denounce Microsoft is anyone’s guess.

        The episode is indicative of an ongoing shift. While Microsoft has been largely absent from heated discussions about Big Tech’s anticompetitive practices for nearly a decade, new entrants are increasingly worried – if not necessarily vocal – about the company’s dominance in both the enterprise software and cloud domains. Regulators in the UK and Europe might soon start taking notice of that, too.

        In the past, Microsoft’s tendency to bundle its software products – such as browsers and media players – together in a way that was considered damaging to competition was slapped down by the EU with multimillionaire fines. But since 2014, under the stewardship of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has managed to pull off two great pivots. First, it swore off a software licence model in favour of Office 365’s cloud-based subscription-based model. Then it restyled itself as a tranquil benevolent actor, a far cry from both the second-wave tech giants routinely on the front pages of newspapers for data gluttony and fake news, and Microsoft’s own cutthroat reputation of yore. But several companies, especially in the less headline-grabbing b2b sector where Microsoft is king, think that it has not really changed.

      • Patents

        • Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court - finally happening? [Ed: More fake news from Team UPC, hoping that by lying to people they can make something impossible and illegal magically come about (also, they pay the Web sites to help spread lies)]

          The project to establish a Unitary Patent in Europe and a Unified Patent Court to handle patent infringement litigation for European patents is underway again. After several years’ further delay due to constitutional challenges in Germany, progress towards setting up this project, 40 years in the making, is again resuming. The Preparatory Committee expects the Court to open for cases in mid-2022.

        • ZTE reportedly goes on the offense, sues unnamed Chinese smartphone maker over 4G standard-essential patents: possibly Tinno or Transsion?

          The Wechat platform may be an unusual place for patent litigation information to leak, but that's what just happened. According to this Chinese article, Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has brought a 4G standard-essential patent (SEP) case against a fellow Chinese device maker in Shenzhen. The defendant has not been announced yet--and according to the article may not even have been served yet.

          Rumor (on the same webpage) has it that ZTE is suing a company with a small market share in China but a much larger one abroad. If true, that would rule out companies like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus. The more likely targets would then be Tinno Mobile, which is known as a contract manufacturer (Original Device Manufacturer, "OD"M) but also owns a French device maker named Wiko, or Transsion, which is huge in Africa and has a presence in South Asia. Transsion's brands include Tecno, Itel, and Infinix.

          A recent ruling by the Supreme People's Court (SPC) of the People's Republic of China" laid out the criteria for Chinese jurisdictions over a global SEP dispute. At a conference hosted by Renmin University of China, IP-specialized judges discussed that case in a wider context. While it weighs in favor of Chinese jurisdiction over a worldwide FRAND matter if the implementer generates a high percentage of its worldwide sales in China, it is not an absolute requirement as other factors, particularly where products are developed and manufactured, are also considered in the Chinese judiciary's very case-specific and fact-intensive decisions.

        • Vizio sued for TV display patent infringement

          According to Reuters, Maxell has alleged that Vizio infringed on a patent that includes the ability to display content from certain sources via USB, wireless adapters or digital broadcast signals. The case also accuses Vizio of infringing on a patent around the upscaling of images and image-processing technology.

          The company acquired the patents from Hitachi in 2009, and licences them along with other patents to consumer electronics brands.

          The complaint goes on to claim that Vizio had been aware of the patent portfolio since 2013 when it entered an agreement with Hitachi while being aware that two of its suppliers have licensed Maxell’s patents.

        • IPKat in conversation with Tim Moss, CEO of the UK IPO [Ed: Pushing the "Hey Hi" agenda in the context of patents is a big jar of worms. Also, UK-IPO-connected delegates opposed EPO corruption until Tim Moss was shoehorned into this role]

          This Kat was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Tim Moss, Chief Executive Officer and Comptroller General of the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI).



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
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
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
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