05.22.22

GNU/Linux

• Linux Made Simple ☛ Linux Weekly Roundup #183

  Welcome to this week’s Linux weekly Roundup.

  We had a relatively lovely week in the world of Linux releases, with Kali Linux 2022.2, Peppermint OS 5-22-22 and openSUSE 15.4-rc.

  Inkscape 1.2 has also been released this week.

• Server

  • Silicon Angle ☛ The Kubernetes ecosystem hits its inflection point

    With the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2022 last week in València, Spain, the Kubernetes world came roaring back to life after a lackluster conference in Los Angeles last fall – in spite of a rigorous conference-wide mask mandate.

    The general feeling at the conference was that the Kubernetes ecosystem is reaching an inflection point. Work on the core Kubernetes platform itself is slowing, as it has reached a level of maturity – while rapid innovation continues unabated across the broader Kubernetes landscape.

    [...]

    The shift is subtle, but noticeable: There is less of a concern for the software infrastructure and a greater focus on the applications that run on that infrastructure – deploying, managing and securing them.

    Kubernetes may not quite be part of the background noise of information technology the way Linux and TCP/IP before it have become, but it’s well on its way. There remain a few missing pieces, and other projects are still rough around the edges, but Kubernetes – and cloud-native computing in general – are here to stay.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Going Linux #424 · Listener Feedback

    We have feedback on Deepin concerns, information about UbuntuDDE, LinuxFX, NxOS, and the application Flameshot. Bill breaks KDE Neon and Ambrose is annointed ‘Engineer Minion’.

  • Video ☛ Why Do I Use Linux Instead Of BSD? – Invidious

    A question that I often get asked is “Why don’t you use BSD?” The answer to this question is rather simple, but I wanted to ramble a bit on some of the reasons that I think people “assume” are my reason why I choose Linux over BSD.

  • Video ☛ Brodie Robertson: I’ve Finally Made 1,000 Videos: Content Changes Are Coming

    I have no idea how it’s happened but I’ve finally made 1,000 videos and that’s kind of crazy, it’s only been 3 years but it feels like it’s been so much longer and so much less at the same time.

• Kernel Space

  • 9to5Linux ☛ Linux Kernel 5.18 Officially Released, This Is What’s New

    Highlights of Linux kernel 5.18 include the switch to the C11 compiler standard, support for “user events” in the tracing system, support for AMD’s “host system management port” function, support for 64-bit integrity checksums on NVMe devices, support for the Intel’s “hardware feedback interface” feature, indirect branch tracking support for the x86 architecture, as well as better process scheduling performance on AMD Zen CPUs.

  • Linux 5.18

    o unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the
    5.18 release right on schedule.
    
    That obviously means that the merge window for 5.19 will open
    tomorrow, and I already have a few pull requests pending. Thank you
    everybody. I'd still like people to run boring old plain 5.18 just to
    check, before we start with the excitement of all the new features for
    the merge window.
    
    The full shortlog for the last week is below, and nothing really odd
    stands out. The diffstat looks a bit funny - unusually we have parsic
    architecture patches being a big part of it due to some last-minute
    cache flushing fixes, but that is probably more indicative of
    everything else being pretty small.
    
    So outside of the parisc fixes, there's random driver updates
    (mellanox mlx5 stands out, again likely because everything else is
    small), some other minor architecture fixes, some core networking, and
    some tooling stuff. And random small noise. People who really care for
    the details please just scroll down..
    
                    Linus
    

  • LWN ☛ The 5.18 kernel has been released [LWN.net]

    Linus has released the 5.18 kernel. “No unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the 5.18 release right on schedule.” Some of the headline changes in this release include the DAMOS memory-management interface, a number of random-number-generator improvements, the Intel software-defined silicon driver, strict memcpy() bounds checking, a switch to the C11 standard, and more. Also, the Reiserfs filesystem has been deprecated and the last vestiges of a.out support have been removed. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 1) and the KernelNewbies 5.18 page for more details.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Linux Kernel 5.18 Released, This is What’s New

    Ahoy, a brand new Linux kernel release is now available to download.

    Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, announced the release of Linux 5.18 in a short email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, writing: “No unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the 5.18 release right on schedule”.

    Ahh, I do approve of punctuality, monsieur Torvalds. Predictability and schedule makes writing these blog posts much easier—Wait, I’m lying: I always leave these posts until the last minute.

    What’s new? Let’s find out together!

  • Hackaday ☛ Hack Another ELF On The Stack | Hackaday

    [dropbear] recently found herself in a pickle. Dumping some data out of an Android app at a specific point for reverse engineering purposes. While it worked great in the simulator, it was painfully slow on hardware via lldb. The solution was to write a patch and apply it to the ELF file.

    Writing the AArch64 assembly to dump the buffer is relatively trivial, but adding it to the existing ELF and repackaging it into a new APK leads to strange errors. The relative offsets into .rodata are now all wrong. For those who don’t routinely interface with the format of ELF files, we have a fantastic resource to take you into the dark depths. But the quick summary version is that sections contain various resources, and you find parts of those resources by relative offsets. The program header describes what type of resources each section contains.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Video ☛ How to install Krita on Debian 11 – Invidious

    In this video, we are looking at how to install Krita on Debian 11.

  • Linux Made Simple ☛ How to install Mine-imator 1.2.8 on a Chromebook

    Today we are looking at how to install Mine-imator 1.2.8 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.

  • ID Root ☛ How To Install MPV Media Player on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MPV Media Player on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, MPV is a free and open-source media player. MPV brings a command-line-based media player, it does not contain the GUI but a small menu bar that contains all the options to control the media file. It supports operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions.

    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 MPV-free and open-source media player on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

  • TechRepublic ☛ [Older] How to share directories to your LAN From Ubuntu Desktop 22.04

    Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) has arrived, and it offers plenty of exciting new features that are sure to win over hardcore Linux users as well as those new to the world of open source. As usual, the developers of Ubuntu have gone out of their way to make everything not only “just work” but do so with ease.

  • How to Securely Delete Files in Linux

    When you delete a file on your computer, the file is removed by the system, but it isn’t permanently deleted. You can usually recover deleted files using file recovery tools.

    If you have files containing sensitive information, you can delete these files using a more secure method so they can’t be recovered and viewed. We’ll show you a few ways to do this in Linux.

    If you want to know how to securely delete files in Linux, follow our guide below.

  • How to show ink levels of your printer in Linux – Real Linux User

    Linux continues to evolve and support for internal and external devices gets better and better. There was a time when it was a real challenge to get your equipment to work properly under Linux, but those days are really gone. Linux recognizes so much out-of-the-box that you no longer have to worry that, for example, your printer will not work. But there are always minor glitches that you should expect, or at least be aware of. One of these things is when you use your printer for a while you probably want to know if your ink levels are still on a sufficient level to see if you consider ordering new ink cartridges. Of course not all printers are technically capable of giving information about ink levels, but for those who can, most of the time the Linux driver will not give you any information about it. But there is a solution. In this article I will explain how to show the ink levels for your printer in Linux.

  • How To Turn Ubuntu 22.04 into Kubuntu

    This tutorial will explain how you can turn Ubuntu 22.04 with GNOME Desktop into Kubuntu with KDE Plasma Desktop. This will not remove the original GNOME, but we simply install Plasma Desktop on top of the system so we will have two different desktop environments as the result. Follow it carefully and have a friendly computing with Kubuntu!

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Linuxiac ☛ GNOME vs KDE: Which Linux Desktop Environment to Choose

    This article introduces new Linux users to the advantages and disadvantages of the two most popular desktop environments in the Linux world, GNOME and KDE.

    One of the first things any new Linux user learns is that the Linux desktop environment can look in various ways. The second thing a user discovers is that in Linux, you can have multiple entirely independent working environments.

    This is where the confusion begins, and the first words that appear on the horizon are usually GNOME and KDE. For a range of reasons, these two desktop environments are the most popular in the Linux world, and before we go any further, we’ll provide our readers with a quick historical overview.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Debian Family

  • Ian Jackson & Debian reject mediation

    Most of the attention on DebConf19 has been about the intern scandals.

    Behind the scenes, the anti-harassment gulag organized a Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting to talk about their sinister work. There is a video available. This was not long after the blackmailing of Dr Norbert Preining and the death of Lucy Wayland.

    Jackson, a former Debian Project Leader from the UK, comments that he doesn’t like mediation. Could this be a hint about why Debian is now wasting so much money on a SLAPP attack to shut down the Debian Community News?

    In the 45 minute video, nobody presents any alternative to mediation.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu 22.10 Makes PipeWire Default

    PipeWire is the default audio server in Ubuntu 22.10.

    The latest daily builds of the development release (which is codenamed ‘Kinetic Kudu’) ship with Pipewire in place of Pulseaudio out of the box, no workarounds required. The last time Ubuntu made made a major change to its audio stack was (fittingly) in the last ‘K’-named release, Ubuntu 9.10 ‘Karmic Koala’.

    Ubuntu trails its distro rivals in adopting this next-gen sound server tech. The roots of PipeWire go back to 2015. The tech was initially conceived as a “PulseAudio for video”, but was later expanded to include audio streams. Fedora adopted the tech by default in 2021, and other desktop Linux distro’s soon followed suit.

    Technically speaking Ubuntu already includes PipeWire. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ships with both PipeWire and PulseAudio installed on the default image. However, the former stack is only used for video (mainly for Wayland compatability) and the latter remains in charge of audio duties.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android Central ☛ Android 13 is picking up native support for most braille displays | Android Central

  • Forbes ☛ Google Half-Fixes Broken Google Photos Feature For Millions Of Android Users

  • Android Police ☛ Google has made Wear OS worth believing in again to the people who matter

  • The Best Creative Games for Android 2022 – Townscaper, Levelhead, Minecraft and More – Droid Gamers

  • Make Use Of ☛ How to Uncover the Android 12 Easter Egg

  • Android Central ☛ From the Editor’s Desk: Making sense of the Google Pixel Tablet | Android Central

  • Amazon’s New Fire Tablets Run a Newer Outdated Android Version – Review Geek

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Programming/Development

  • Search

    This weekend, I finnaly did something that I should have done long ago:
    I implemented text search for my gopher- and gemini-client ncgopher.

  • Sergio Talens-Oliag: New Blog

    Welcome to my new Blog for Technical Stuff.

    For a long time I was planning to start publishing technical articles again but to do it I wanted to replace my old blog based on ikiwiki by something more modern.

    I’ve used Jekyll with GitLab Pages to build the Intranet of the ITI and to generate internal documentation sites on Agile Content, but, as happened with ikiwiki, I felt that things were kind of slow and not as easy to maintain as I would like.

    So on Kyso (the Company I work for right now) I switched to Hugo as the Static Site Generator (I still use GitLab Pages to automate the deployment, though), but the contents are written using the Markdown format, while my personal preference is the Asciidoc format.

Leftovers

• Science

  • Technology for the Ageing

    Getting old is a bitch. I have three ageing parents/in-laws over 80 (one fully independent, one pretty much functional, one with dementia). Can technology help them stay in touch with the world, or make their lives easier? I do not want to be ageist (and no spring chicken myself), but in my experience, technology is completely incompatible with the older crowd.

    I am talking about the pre-internet generation. A 90+ -year-old today was brought up in the age of horse carriages. The boomers of today will probably have an easier time, but some physical limitations will still make it hard.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The science says that ZeroWater is not worth the money or hype. Brita is among the best countertop models. – BaronHK’s Rants

    I came across a video where a man tried all of the standard cartridges for common countertop water filter systems (many of which are also meant to go directly into the fridge), which are gravity-fed.

    Now, some people swear up and down by a particular brand, and one particular brand to stay away from is ZeroWater.

    ZeroWater sells incredibly expensive replacement filter cartridges.

    [...]

    Well, my family was among the first wave of Classic Brita pitcher owners back in the 90s when owning one became one of the things you did as part of the middle class in the United States.

    Today you can get them everywhere and even the standard cartridges have improved greatly.

    Right now I am using standard Brita cartridges. They’re cheap, they’re effective at what you can expect with a countertop system, and the lab results from the video back that up.

    In fact, out of a 100 point rating scale, where 100 is best performing and 0 is absolute garbage, the video rates Aqua Crest at 88, Brita’s standard cartridge at 83, Pur’s standard cartridge at 76, and ZeroWater’s system at just 71.

    Does ZeroWater have an effect on your tap water? Sure. Provided you don’t get one of the manufacturing defects that seem quite common and it actually works, and assuming you don’t get water that tastes like it came out of a fish tank, like some people say they do.

    But for a system that’s at least more than 400% more expensive than Standard Brita to keep going once you own the pitcher, it seems like you should really question why you would invest your money into a system that does less when it’s important, does more where you don’t want it to, and is plagued by quality control problems.

    I have _never_ had a defective Brita filter that started giving me fish water 2 weeks in. I can tell you that much.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Should women worry about data from their period-tracking app being used against them? [Ed: They should be worried about their IQ if they enter such data into a so-called 'smart' 'phone']

      It’s estimated that millions of people in the U.S. use period-tracking apps to plan ahead, track when they are ovulating, and monitor other health effects. The apps can help signal when a period is late.

• Defence/Aggression

  • A wrong message at a right time?

    At a time when the anti-Gota protests is acquiring the characteristics of a Greek tragedy, for the Canadian Parliament to remind this nation of alleged ‘war crimes’ has gone mostly unnoticed. While sections of the Tamil Diaspora is as euphoric as ever, the Foreign Ministry, by issuing a strongly-worded rebuttal instantaneously, has called the shots – indicating as to whose views between those of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, prevail in matters non-economic.

    [...]

    The fact that the Canadian House of Commons’ motion coincided with the 13th anniversary of the bloody end to the ethnic war in May 2009 should show that there is more to it than meets the eye. Like many European nations, Canada is inherently touchy about the 20th century version of human rights and its adoption to the 21st century.

• Finance

  • Strange fluctuations in egg prices in the United States.

    Strange fluctuations are happening in egg prices in the United States.

    I suppose you could call it one part of the larger disaster of rising grocery prices, but since January, the price of eggs has more than doubled here.

    In fact, while brown eggs are usually a lot more expensive (there is no difference in nutrient profile or protein quality….it’s literally just different kinds of hens and feed that produce different colors, and it’s a matter of regional preference), the disruption in the white egg market has left the situation inverted at Walmart.

    At my local Walmart, you can buy a dozen brown eggs, Great Value, for $1.67, which is 13.9 cents each, but at the same time, a dozen white eggs are now 21.6 cents each, or $2.59.

  • Walmart has made sure that the people who suffer from the chicken shortage are the people who need to “save money and live better”.

    Walmart has made sure that the people who suffer from the chicken shortage are the people who need to “save money and live better”.

    Going along with my previous post about egg prices, Walmart seems to have told their suppliers to stop giving them the chicken they normally sell for $2.69 and $2.99 a pound (thighs and breasts) and start only packaging the expensive national brands that cost $7-9 a pound instead.

    So if you get your chicken at Walmart, the implication is that it’s going to be a major drag on your grocery bill.

    That’s why when I got my deep freezer this year, I hurried up and included well over 200 pounds of chicken that I bought in those enormous family packs (on sale) from Jewel Osco before the 5% quarter on grocery stores expired on my Discover card for the year.

    It’s a good thing too, because Walmart’s chicken section has been pretty wiped out for months now, and unless you want the expensive national brand, you’re probably all out of luck unless you go in there every day and toss a pack or two of store brand, if you can even find it.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Neocities: the 90′s Aesthetic as a Symbol?

    At the moment, the biggest mystery I have, is an artistic one. Many Neocities sites, including sites owned by teenagers (born after the 90′s, of course) are stylized like websites from the 90′s, or Geocities sites in particular. Some websites contain things like screenshots of applications such as Windows Live Messenger or retro-inspired design elements like Windows 9X style, “fake 3D” borders around elements, or even have a fake Windows XP taskbar at the bottom. However, in most cases, the content has nothing to do with 90′s computing, 90′s music, etc’: most of the websites I looked at are personal websites (diaries or blogs of some sort), some have a social element to them (for example, a guestbook and links to websites of real-life friends) and some showcase an art portfolio.