06.24.22

GNU/Linux

• Linux Magazine

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Zack’s Kernel News

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software

  • Linux Magazine ☛ If You Think It’s Great

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Linux Mint MATE 20.3 and FreeBSD 13.1

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Play the free SuperTuxKart racing game locally or online

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Checking for broken links in directory structures

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Moving to open source

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Lightweight Internet communications with the simple Gemini Protocol

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Playing old DOS games on the Raspberry Pi

  • Linux Magazine ☛ HP and System76 Announce the Dev One Laptop

  • Linux Magazine ☛ A simple storyboard editor

  • Linux Magazine ☛ First look at the Zrythm Digital Audio Workstation

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Creating multiboot-capable USB sticks

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Backing up a living system

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Redirect data streams with pipes

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Innovation and Community

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Conveniently read system information with inxi-gui

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Managing time-triggered events with Zeit

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Detect and restart hanging programs with Go

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Taking your hardware’s temperature

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Video ☛ Transform Your Scripts With Bash Simple Curses – Invidious

    Bash Simple Curses is a simple curses library made in bash to draw terminal interfaces.

• Kernel Space

  • TechRadar ☛ Linus Torvalds: Rust is coming to the Linux kernel ‘real soon’

    The next version of the Linux kernel may come bundled with support for the Rust programming language, creator Linus Torvalds has hinted.

    At the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit, Torvalds told the audience that support for Rust in the Linux kernel could arrive with version 5.20 of the operating system.

    The wider Linux community has been pretty excited about the prospect, with members of the audience giving Torvalds a round of loud applause at the very mention of Rust, VentureBeat reported earlier this week.

• Applications

  • Make Use Of ☛ The 5 Best Dictionary Apps for Linux

    
    Everyone comes across new words every day. With these dictionary tools, you can quickly learn more about such words on Linux.

    If your work involves reading or writing a lot of text on your computer, a dictionary is an indispensable tool for you. It can save you the trouble of looking up a word on the internet and, in turn, aid you in your workflow.

    Having a dictionary app on your computer makes it easy to find the meanings of words you encounter every day, check their spellings, and learn more about them, such as their synonyms and antonyms.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Notepadqq – A powerful text editor, somewhat forgotten

    If you’re tuning late into the Dedoimedo show, here’s a TL;DR on what’s happening. I’d like to be able to move away from Windows as my primary computing platform for home use. This is easier said than done, because of a long software dependency exclusive to Windows, office and gaming being the prime culprits. My journey is starting now, but could take a good few years to complete. Along the way, I’m migrating my software workloads to Linux. Some programs are native, some aren’t. One possible solution: WINE.

    WINE, the main reason why we’re here. I’ve already shown you how to run Notepad++ this way. It’ an amazing, flexible program, with superb capabilities, and in my opinion, unrivaled by any other program of this nature. The question is then, is it possible to get Notepad++ look & feel in Linux, natively?

    Today, I’d like to figure that out. I’m not stranger to text editors, it’s just that my experience shows that whatever is out there, the other options aren’t as good or friendly as Notepad++. However, I’m always testing and trying new things. I do quite frequently use KWrite, Kate, Geany, and to some extent, Notepadqq. Indeed, it is time to tell you a bit more about the latter.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Vitux ☛ How to Echo Into File – VITUX

    The Linux shell has several operators to redirect or pipe the output of commands into a file. In this guide, I will show you several ways to redirect the echo output into a file. We will replace the content of a file with the echo output, then we will append text to an existing file using echo and finally, we will echo text to a file on a remote system by SSH. All examples that are shown here work on any Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Rocky Linux, etc.

  • Video ☛ How to install EuroLinux 9.0 – Invidious

    In this video, I am going to show how to EuroLinux 9.0.

  • Install Kali Linux 2022.2 on VirtualBox – kifarunix.com

    In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Kali Linux 2022.2 on VirtualBox. Kali Linux is an Advanced Penetration Testing Debian-based Linux distribution used for Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking and network security assessments.
    Kali Linux 2022.2 is the second (Quarter 2) 2022 Kali Rolling release. It comes pimped with various awesome updates.

• Games

  • RAGE

    The post apocalypse has always been heavily associated with the deep wilderness in my mind. As a youngling, one of the few possessions I brought with me on a family trip to Yosemite was, of all things, the novelization of RAGE. The game was the first piece of apocalyptic media that really grabbed me; my computer could barely run it, but it was the first big budget game I followed closely during it’s pre-release, in that nascent early period of mass marketing on the internet.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Clapper GTK Video App Bags Performance Boost in Latest Update

      
      I’ve written about this GStreamer-based GTK media player before, but it was a while ago and I haven’t mentioned it since. It’s actually added quite a few new features since then, including experimental and entirely opt-in Pipewire support.

      The latest version of Clapper, version 0.5, introduces a ‘new and improved GSrreamer video sink’. This switch introduces performance improvements and lays groundwork for future performance in the future, and handles overlay of subtitles.

    • This Week in GNOME ☛ #49 New Views · This Week in GNOME

      Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from June 17 to June 24.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• New Releases

  • KaOS Linux 2022.06 Is Here

    KaOS, a modern open-source, well-designed KDE-focused Linux distro, has been updated to KaOS Linux 2022.06 and incorporates several bug fixes and security enhancements.

    The newest version of KaOS is built on Glibc 2.35, GCC 11.3.0, and Binutils 2.38-based Toolchain. The update also brings theme improvements and includes DBus 1.14.0, Systemd 250.7, Nettle 3.8, and also the kernel moved to 5.17.15.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2022/25

    During this week, we sweat some blood. Not only was it really hot here, but we also had a gap in the snapshots delivered. Turned out that the update to SELinux 3.4 worked in most cases – but not so well with containers. We stopped rolling for a few days to figure out the fixes for that one issue before merging other, large changes. Nevertheless, we still delivered 6 snapshots this week (0616,0617, 0618, 0619, 0622, and 0623).

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Security features in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9) is the latest version of Red Hat’s flagship operating system, released at the Red Hat Summit in May 2022. New capabilities added to RHEL 9 help simplify how organizations manage security and compliance when deploying new systems or managing existing infrastructure. This article takes a brief look at three of the new security features available in this release.

    The default superuser account in Unix- and Linux-based systems is “root”. Because the username is always “root” and access rights are unlimited, this account is the most valuable target for hackers. Attackers use bots to scan for systems with exposed SSH ports, and when found, they attempt to use common usernames and brute-force passwords to gain entry. Of course, the impact of a successful exploit would be a lot lower if the compromised user has unprivileged access. The breach would then be contained and limited to one user only.

  • Fedora Project ☛ Friday’s Fedora Facts: 2022-25 – Fedora Community Blog

    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)!

  • Red Hat Official ☛ Red Hat Learning Community celebrates 100,000 members

    The Red Hat Learning Community (RHLC) celebrates a monumental milestone this week as it exceeds 100,000 members! At its launch in September of 2018, the main goal was simple: provide a collaborative space for open source learners to connect as they optimize their skills in working with Red Hat products. As the core of that mission has remained true since its launch, Red Hat has strived to provide our users what they need in order to collaborate, learn, build skills and meet their individual learning and career goals.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu ☛ The new classic confinement in snaps – Even the classics need a change | Ubuntu

    As part of their fundamental, security-driven design, snaps are meant to run isolated from the underlying system. In most cases, the idea works well, and granular access to system resources using the mechanism of interfaces allows snap developers to ship their applications packaged with strict confinement.

    However, there are some scenarios where even the liberal use of interface plugs cannot fully satisfy all of the functional requirements of specific applications. Certain programs need system-wide access to directories and files, and others may need to execute arbitrary binaries as part of their run. To that end, snaps can also be installed in the “classic” confinement mode, which gives them access similar to what the application would have if installed in the traditional way. The solution works, but now, there are proposals to make the classic mode even more robust and efficient.

  • Make Use Of ☛ 6 Reasons Flatpaks and Snaps Are Great for Linux

    Getting software on Linux has long been both simple and complicated. Many programs are just a mouse-click or terminal command away. But if the apps available for your chosen version of Linux are outdated, then getting the latest updates could often be a real pain.

    With both Flatpak and Snap, that has changed. Introducing more package formats in a crowded landscape sounds complicated, but they have made daily life on a Linux desktop much easier to manage. Let’s look at why.

• Devices/Embedded

  • The Register UK ☛ Startup crowdfunding high-refresh-rate e-paper monitors • The Register

    E-paper display startup Modos wants to make laptops, but is starting out with a standalone high-refresh-rate monitor first.

    The initial plan is for the “Modos Paper Monitor,” which the company describes as: “An open-hardware standalone portable monitor made for reading and writing, especially for people who need to stare at the display for a long time.”

    The listed specifications sound good: a 13.3″, 1600×1200 e-ink panel, with a DisplayPort 1.2 input, powered off MicroUSB because it only takes 1.5-2W.

    The company also has some rather impressive demonstration videos, showing that the display is fast enough to play video, albeit in monochrome. There’s also a technical explanation of how this is accomplished.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Notebook Check ☛ POCO F4 launches with Android 12, up to 8 GB of RAM and minor upgrades compared to the POCO F3 – NotebookCheck.net News

  • Google Pixel Bluetooth audio playback pausing after Android 12 update

  • Android Headlines ☛ OnePlus Nord 2 Gets New Android 12 Update Without June Security Patch

  • Dev Discourse ☛ OnePlus 9RT gets OxygenOS 12 Open Beta 1 (Android 12) | Technology

  • TechCrunch ☛ Google is notifying Android users targeted by Hermit government-grade spyware – TechCrunch

  • CNET ☛ Clear Your Android Phone’s Cookies and Cache To Get Rid of Excess Junk Files – CNET

  • Android Police ☛ Into the Breach is the latest indie game to come to Android via Netflix Games

  • Digital Trends ☛ The Galaxy Tab S8 has renewed my faith in Android tablets | Digital Trends

  • Make Use Of ☛ 6 Ways Samsung One UI Is Better Than Stock Android

  • Chrome OS update automatically brings photos from Android to your Chromebook | Ars Technica

  • GO Media ☛ 10 Ways to Make Chrome a Better Android Browser

  • Android Central ☛ Google wants input from Android app developers on device compatibility issues | Android Central

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • The Fall of The House of Waterfox

      I try not to go onto the mainweb, and Gemini has been helpful there, but occasionally, there is no choice. I’ve been using the Waterfox browser for many years, as it seemed to be more privacy-oriented.

      In 2019, it was bought by an Internet advertising company System1. ****. System1 also bought Startpage, the search engine I was using, also for privacy reasons. ****ing ****.

      [...]

      For the lack of anything better, I’ve reluctantly continued using Waterfox. Today a popup appeared, claiming that an update is available but I need to download it myself.

      So I did download the .tar.gz file, which, when unzipped, seems to contain the browser (in about 75MBytes), and no instructions of any sort. No installer. No scripts that make common sense. Now what the **** am I supposed to do with that?

• GNU Projects

  • GNU ☛ PSPP 1.6.1 has been released.

    I’m very pleased to announce the release of a new version of GNU PSPP. PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS.

• Programming/Development

  • Perl / Raku

    • Perl ☛ Annotated Perl::Critic Policy Index | Tom Wyant [blogs.perl.org]

      In the wake of my postings on the file access tests (-r and friends) I wondered if there was a Perl::Critic policy to find them. So I constructed an annotated index of Perl Critic policies. Because of its size I stuck it on GitHub rather than in-line to this blog post.

      This index assumes that any CPAN module whose name begins with Perl::Critic::Policy:: is a Perl Critic Policy. The index entry for each module contains the name of the module itself (linked to Meta::CPAN), the name of the distribution which contains it, and the abstract for the module if it contains anything other than a repeat of the module name. I suppose the module description could have been added, but I hoped the abstract would be sufficient.

Leftovers

• The Applicability of Tapes

  I’ve had my tape deck for around 4 months now, if memory serves. I don’t know why I didn’t opt in for one earlier, or how I did so long without one. For anybody who’s interested in music production, or sound design, or audio science, a tape deck is a must-have.

• Education

  • In The Case Of Online Classes

    It is what popularised online classes, or at least that made it happen for a good while.
    Usually, no matter if you like school or not, school life is typically more interesting to be dealt with with face to face classes (assuming you’re going the “right” way of the school life)
    There are a lot more options for an “ideal” school life – during free time you can go to the library, the field, or stay at the classroom abd read some books/sleep. During class hours, you may learn via the textbook/notes, from teacher’s speech, or sometimes even from advices of classmates. And with PE or Computer classes or alike where methods of learning are easily expandable, students would find different ways of retriving knowledge and ways of using the knowledge wisely.

• Linux Foundation

  • PR Newswire ☛ LF Edge Releases Industry-Defining Edge Computing White Paper to Accelerate Edge/ IoT Deployments

  • TechTarget ☛ Linux Foundation to standardize, simplify the DPU ecosystem

    The Linux Foundation has launched the Open Programmable Infrastructure project to standardize the software stack and APIs supporting data processing units to make them easier to use in enterprise data centers.

    OPI will define the DPU and develop standardized software frameworks and application programming interfaces (APIs) to make DPUs, also called infrastructure processing units (IPUs), easier to deploy in enterprise data centers, the Linux Foundation said this week.

    DPUs are smartNIC semiconductors dedicated to offloading networking and communication functions from the CPU. Businesses pursuing digital transformation are producing more data than ever before. Having dedicated network and security silicon helps to reduce latency in network traffic.

• Security

  • Reproducible Builds: Supporter spotlight: Hans-Christoph Steiner of the F-Droid project

    The Reproducible Builds project relies on several projects, supporters and sponsors for financial support, but they are also valued as ambassadors who spread the word about our project and the work that we do.

    This is the fifth instalment in a series featuring the projects, companies and individuals who support the Reproducible Builds project. We started this series by featuring the Civil Infrastructure Platform project and followed this up with a post about the Ford Foundation as well as a recent ones about ARDC, the Google Open Source Security Team (GOSST) and Jan Nieuwenhuizen on Bootstrappable Builds, GNU Mes and GNU Guix.

  • USCERT ☛ Citrix Releases Security Updates for Hypervisor | CISA

    Citrix has released security updates to address vulnerabilities that could affect Hypervisor. An attacker could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

  • The Record ☛ Ransomware groups targeting Mitel VoIP zero-day – The Record by Recorded Future

    Ransomware groups are targeting a zero-day affecting a Linux-based Mitel VoIP appliance, according to researchers from CrowdStrike.

    The zero-day – tagged as CVE-2022-29499 – was patched in April by Mitel after CrowdStrike researcher Patrick Bennett discovered the issue during a ransomware investigation.

    In a blog post on Thursday, Bennett explained that after taking the Mitel VoIP appliance offline, he discovered a “novel remote code execution exploit used by the threat actor to gain initial access to the environment.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Here We Go Again: Another Round of Changes Haven’t Solved the Problems with the JCPA – Public Knowledge

    Back in April, Public Knowledge discussed articles in the Wall Street Journal and Politico’s Morning Tech newsletter (paywalled content) that recounted a significant amendment to the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill that proposes to create a four-year “safe harbor” from antitrust law, allowing news companies to band together to negotiate compensation terms for their news stories with the largest online platforms. (We articulated our concerns about the bill here, joined with other civil society organizations urging Congress to amend it here, and talked specifically about the impact of the bill on copyright law here.) The new language would introduce baseball-style arbitration (under which an arbitrator panel chooses one side’s final offer to settle the dispute); a new clause focused on ensuring outlets of all viewpoints are eligible to participate in negotiations; and a size limit intended to focus financial help on small and local outlets. It would also extend the span of the “safe harbor” from four to ten years. The changes did nothing to assuage our (and others’) most important concerns about the bill.

    Well, we’re baaaaaaack. Last week, Bloomberg Government described another round of revisions, these intended to address concerns articulated by industry unions about the impact of the bill on actual news production. According to Bloomberg, one of the bill’s primary sponsors in the Senate, Senator Amy Klobuchar, has also confirmed the plan to schedule a markup on the bill. Spoiler alert: The changes described still don’t address the most important concerns we have about the bill.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Photogaphs And Fractals In Gemini, This Weeks Capsule Challenge

    I plan to take a sample of pictures and add them to my capsules photo gallery. I figured it would be okay to write up a little post on my thoughts seeing as there are fellow capsuleers adamantly opposed to such things.

    Cats, nature, pictures of my smoking pieces, books, some art stuff, fractals.