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Links 6/8/2021: GNOME’s New Human Interface Guidelines and KDE's GSoC Progress



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Does the Dell XPS 17 support Linux?

        Unlike the XPS 13, however, the larger 17-inch model isn’t available as a Developer Edition. This means Dell doesn’t sell an Ubuntu version of XPS 17 — it’s only available with Windows 10 preinstalled.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • WILL IT LINUX? | The Ascent

        the Ascent is a new cyberpunk-infused action RPG with a touch of Twin Stick Shooter combat. I have opinions and impressions of how it runs on Linux with Steam Proton!

    • Kernel Space

      • LTTng 2.13.0 - Nordicité - Linux kernel and user-space tracer
        Hi everyone,
        

        Today is the official release of LTTng 2.13 - Nordicité! It is the result of one year of development from most of the EfficiOS team.

        The most notable features of this new release are:

        - Event-rule matches condition triggers and new actions, allowing internal actions or external monitoring applications to quickly react when kernel or user-space instrumentation is hit, - Notification payload capture, allowing external monitoring applications to read elements of the instrumentation payload when instrumentation is hit. - Instrumentation API: vtracef and vtracelog (LTTng-UST), - User space time namespace context (LTTng-UST and LTTng-modules).

        This release is named after "Nordicité", the product of a collaboration between Champ Libre and Boréale. This farmhouse IPA is brewed with Kveik yeast and Québec-grown barley, oats and juniper branches. The result is a remarkable fruity hazy golden IPA that offers a balanced touch of resinous and woodsy bitterness.

        Based on the LTTng project's documented stable releases lifetime, this 2.13 release coincides with the end-of-life (EOL) of the LTTng 2.11 release series.

        Read on for a short description of each of the new features and the links to this release.

        A prettified version of this announcement will be available soon on GitHub: https://github.com/lttng/lttng-tools/releases/tag/v2.13.0
      • Amazon's DAMON Landing For Linux 5.15 - Phoronix

        Amazon's Data Access Monitor "DAMON" code is now set for introduction in Linux 5.15.

        Amazon has been posting DAMON patches for over a year and has gone through nearly three dozen revisions for this kernel module to monitor data accesses for specific user-space processes. DAMON is designed to be lightweight and accurate for performance-centric domains. The core infrastructure of DAMON is now ready for mainline while building off DAMON are more features coming down the pipe. One worth noting is DAMON-based proactive memory reclamation for providing sizable memory savings. There are also various open-source user-space utilities built by Amazon around DAMON.

      • Paragon is working to get its ntfs3 filesystem into the Linux kernel

        In March of last year, proprietary filesystem vendor Paragon Software unleashed a stream of anti-open source FUD about a Samsung-derived exFAT implementation headed into the Linux kernel. Several months later, Paragon seemed to have seen the error of its ways and began the arduous process of getting its own implementation of Microsoft's NTFS (the default filesystem for all Windows machines) into the kernel as well.

        Although Paragon is still clearly struggling to get its processes and practices aligned to open source-friendly ones, Linux kernel BDFL Linus Torvalds seems to have taken a personal interest in the process. After nearly a year of effort by Paragon, Torvalds continues to gently nudge both it and skeptical Linux devs in order to keep the project moving forward.

      • Paragon’s NTFS3 Driver is About to Become A Part of the Linux Kernel

        Paragon Software is looking to mainline their read-write NTFS3 driver into the mainline kernel tree as a significant improvement over the existing NTFS kernel driver.

        The New Technology File System (NTFS) is Microsoft’s proprietary file system first introduced with Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. It is the default file system used by Microsoft operating systems since Windows XP.

        With NTFS support, Linux users can use attaching external NTFS drives or boot Windows PCs into Linux for troubleshooting.

      • This Week In Security: Insecure Chargers, Request Forgeries, And Kernel Security | Hackaday [Ed: Google has the nerve to allege Linux it not secure after Google itself put NSA-connected weakened encryption (back door) inside Linux]

        [Kees Cook] of Google’s Open Source Security Team published a post this week, talking about the state of security in and around the Linux kernel. He makes the point that while the kernel runs very well when things are working properly, when it breaks, it can break in insecure ways. Put another way, he would like to see more work done to make the kernel resilient to compromise even in the case of flaws. While the changes needed to do this aren’t spelled out in the post, I can only think of efforts like adding Rust to the kernel and doing additional address randomization.

        The majority of the post isn’t aimed at the upstream kernel, but at downstream integrators. The advice here is simple. Track the latest release or stable kernel. Don’t use a 10 year old kernel. Is that a challenge because you have so much out-of-tree kernel code? Upstream your changes. It makes everyone more secure. Rather than spending so much engineering effort backporting fixes to your ancient kernel, spend that effort making the upstream kernel more secure. It’s interesting that he ends the article with the opinion that the Linux kernel and toolchain needs about 100 more skilled engineers to be effectively maintained.

      • Graphics Stack

        • NVIDIA release a new Vulkan Beta Driver with 470.56.05 | GamingOnLinux

          Following on from the huge recent 470.57.02 stable release that added in the likes of DLSS for Proton, hardware accelerated OpenGL and Vulkan rendering on Xwayland, and asynchronous reprojection - there's a new Vulkan Beta Driver out today with 470.56.05.

        • AMDVLK 2021.Q3.3 Released With Performance Tuning For Rage 2 On Navi 2 - Phoronix

          AMD has published their newest open-source Vulkan driver snapshot from their official sources that comprise this "AMDVLK" offering for Linux users.

          AMDVLK 2021.Q3.3 is this latest routine update for their official open-source Vulkan driver. This driver alternative to Mesa RADV and the official closed-source Vulkan driver (to which AMDVLK shares sources, but alternative shader compiler back-end) is now being re-based against the Khronos Vulkan 1.2.185 header files and performance tuning for the Rage 2 engine on Navi 21.

    • Applications

      • lfs – list your filesystems

        The Command Line Interface (CLI) is a way of interacting with your computer. To harness all the power of Linux, it’s highly recommended mastering the interface. It’s true the CLI is often perceived as a barrier for users migrating to Linux, particularly if they’re grown up using GUI software exclusively. While Linux rarely forces anyone to use the CLI, some tasks are better suited to this method of interaction, offering inducements like superior scripting opportunities, remote access, and being far more frugal with a computer’s resources.

        The part of the operating system responsible for managing files and directories is called the file system. It organizes our data into files, which hold information, and directories (also called ‘folders’), which hold files or other directories. We cover the basics of the file system in Linux for Starters – Part 12.

        lfs is billed as a better df, a standard Unix command used to display the amount of available disk space for file systems on which the invoking user has appropriate read access.

      • Download Google Fonts Quickly with this Neat GTK App

        Looking for an easy way to search and download fonts from Google Fonts on your Ubuntu desktop?

        Try Font Downloader, a perfectly formed GTK front-end for the Google Fonts repository. The app makes it easy to browse, search, and filter (e.g., monospace, handwritten, etc) from the 1,075 free and open source fonts available on Google Fonts.

        When you touch upon some typography you like the look of, Font Downloader makes it easy to test the font within the app (perfect to check it has the character coverage you need) as well download the font (to a folder of your choice) or install it on your system in ‘one-click’.

        “One day I was bored of my terminal font and wanted to switch, unfortunately going through the entire process of searching Google Fonts for a font, then downloading, then copying and pasting it into my .fonts folder to only then test a font was a pain. So I decided to create this app,” the developer, Gustavo Peredo, explains on the GitHub page.

      • Top Android Emulators For Linux : Run Android Apps on Linux

        Linux Kernel is open source and anyone can work on it and build something new and creative. Android is also built on the Linux kernel. This post is for those people who are wondering to run Android apps on Linux-based operating systems.

        Can We Run Android Apps on Linux?

        Ans: Yes, you can run android apps on Linux but need to take help from android emulators.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt Certificate on Rocky Linux

        In our previous guide, we walked you through the installation of the LAMP stack on Rocky Linux and further proceeded to configure Apache virtual hosts in case you need to host multiple websites on a single server.

        But it doesn’t just end there. Website security is now one of the greatest concerns across most organizations and users alike in the face of growing cyber threats. There are several ways of securing your website. One of the primary ways of implementing some basic protection against hackers is to encrypt your site using an SSL/TLS certificate.

        An SSL/TLS certificate is a cryptographic certificate that authenticates the identity of your website and encrypts data exchanged between a user’s browser and a webserver.

      • Copy files in the Linux terminal

        To copy a file on a computer with a graphical interface, you usually either drag and drop a file from one window to another window, sometimes using a modifier key. Alternately, you might prefer to right-click on a file icon, select Copy, and then Paste the file icon into another window.

        To copy a file in a terminal, you use the cp command, which works exactly like the mv command, except that it duplicates the contents of a file rather than moving them from one location to another.

      • Access OpenVPN from a client computer

        OpenVPN creates an encrypted tunnel between two points, preventing a third party from accessing your network traffic. By setting up your virtual private network (VPN) server, you become your own VPN provider. Many popular VPN services already use OpenVPN, so why tie your connection to a specific provider when you can have complete control yourself?

        The first article in this series set up a server for your VPN, the second article demonstrated how to install and configure the OpenVPN server software, while the third article explained how to configure your firewall and start the OpenVPN server software. This fourth and final article demonstrates how to use your OpenVPN server from client computers. This is the reason you did all the work in the previous three articles!

      • How to Access Linux Ext4 Partition from Windows - Make Tech Easier

        If you dual boot Windows and Linux, you may find it useful to be able to access the files on the ext4 partition of your Linux system while logged in to Windows. This means you can access your Linux files from Windows without having to reboot into Linux. Here we will show you a couple of ways you can access an Ext4 partition from Windows.

        Note: While you can access Ext4 partition, you cannot modify/edit these Linux-based journaling file systems on a Windows computer because it only supports FAT32 and NTFS.

      • How To Install Elgg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Elgg on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, It is highly customizable with a simple and powerful user interface that makes it easy to build and manage content online over the web. Elgg is managed by the Elgg Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization.

        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 Elgg open source social networking engine on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

      • How to Convert a PDF File to PNG/JPG Image in Linux

        Portable Document Format (PDF) files are widely used nowadays. Images in any format are still easier to edit and manipulate than PDF files so it is general practice to convert pdf files to images to edit them.

        In this article, you will learn different ways to convert PDF files to images.

      • Enable Ubuntu 16.04 Unity Style Login Screen in Ubuntu 20.04 & Higher | UbuntuHandbook

        Missing the old Ubuntu Unity style login screen? It’s easy to get it back in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and higher.

        LightDM, stands for Light Display Manager, is a free open-source project by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Ubuntu up to version 16.04 LTS uses it as the default display manager. And it’s present in Linux Mint 20 and some Ubuntu flavors.

      • How To Install Apache Tomcat on AlmaLinux 8 - idroot

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Tomcat on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Tomcat (formerly known as Jakarta Tomcat) is an open-source web server developed by Apache to provide a Java HTTP server that allows you to easily run Java files. In most of the production, Tomcat is used in conjunction with Apache HTTP Server where Apache HTTP Server attends static content like HTML, images, etc., and forwards the requests for dynamic content to Tomcat.

        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 Apache Tomcat for system administration on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.

      • How to Install and Configure HAProxy on Rocky Linux 8

        When you deploy an application on the Internet, the availability, scalability and performance of the application are very important for a better user experience. There are many technologies that introduce redundancy, such as load balancing, clustering and proxy.

        HAProxy is a free, open source and reliable load balancer designed for high traffic websites. It load balances incoming traffic by distributing it across multiple backend servers.

        In this article we show you how to install HAProxy on Rocky Linux 8.

      • How to Install Fail2ban with Firewalld on Rocky Linux 8.4

        Fail2ban is a system daemon for protecting servers from malicious login and brute-force attacks. Fail2ban is an open-source IPS (Intrusion Prevention Software) framework written in Python and it's extremely configurable. It works as a daemon service that will monitor SystemD journal and log files and then looking for any failed authentication attempts. When the failed authentication reaches the max X number, the fail2ban will automatically block the IP address using the firewall software.

        If you're a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or dedicated server owner, you should consider installing fail2ban on all of your servers. It will help you to protect some basic services such as SSH and FTP from malicious brute-force attacks. Also, fail2ban is very handy, easy to configure, and flexible.

        In this guide, you will learn how to install fail2ban on Rocky Linux, configuring fail2ban with firewalld, and securing the SSH service against brute-force attacks.

      • How to Convert a PDF File to PNG/JPG Image in Linux – VITUX

        Portable Document Format (PDF) files are widely used nowadays. Images in any format are still easier to edit and manipulate than PDF files so it is general practice to convert pdf files to images to edit them.

      • Podman Tutorial - Get Started With Podman - OSTechNix

        This tutorial explains how to get started with Podman in Linux operating systems. By the end of this Podman tutorial, you will learn Podman basics, such as how to search and download images, create a new container from the image, run a container, remove a container, and build your own image from the container and more.

        Before we get started with Podman, make sure you have installed Podman on your Linux machine.

      • 20 Command Line Tools to Monitor Linux Performance [Ed: Just updated]

        It’s really a very tough job for every System or Network administrator to monitor and debug Linux System Performance problems every day.

        After being a Linux Administrator for 10 years in the IT industry, I came to know that how hard is to monitor and keep systems up and running.

        For this reason, we’ve compiled the list of Top 20 frequently used command line monitoring tools that might be useful for every Linux/Unix System Administrator.

    • Games

      • Flax Engine 1.2 Brings Many Big Improvements For This Open-Source Commercial Game Engine

        Flax Engine 1.2.6222 is out today as the first v1.2 update for this cross-platform, open-source but commercial game engine.

        Flax Engine 1.2.6222 rolls out with support for vehicles in games, Nintendo Switch support, various game development / editing additions, new low-level networking code, dynamic textures streaming based on visibility, a new job system, various Vulkan usage improvements, temporal anti-aliasing improvements, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution plug-in, optimized scene rendering, and much more.

      • Why does the Steam Deck run Linux? Blame Windows

        Valve’s “Steam Deck” handheld PC has caused quite a stir among PC gaming geeks, but the biggest shakeup might not be its Nintendo Switch-like form factor. The software running inside of it is the real surprise. Why does the Steam Deck run Linux? Blame Windows.

        The Steam Deck and the software inside of it are the culmination of a nearly decade-long “hedging strategy” embarked upon by Valve chief Gabe Newell and company many moons ago, when Microsoft tried exerting more control over developers with Windows 8.

        But it’s also the next phase of Valve’s escape plan.

      • GameMaker Studio 2 introduces an Ubuntu Linux editor in Beta | GamingOnLinux

        Well this is certainly a surprise. YoYo Games have announced an early Beta for GameMaker Studio 2 version 2.3.4 that brings with it a new IDE for Ubuntu Linux. So you can make GMS games on Ubuntu now.

        YoYo are very clear that they're continuing to only support Ubuntu directly, so don't expect it to work or to get support on other distributions. They've also changed the editor to use SDL for all input and audio output, which they say fixes some long standing differences between the editor on different platforms and to "better support modern input devices and new OSes going forward". Not only that they're also using FNA3D, the 3D graphics library for FNA, across all platforms for the editor too.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • GSoC’21 Week 7 and 8: Mouse Control Action Activity

          In my previous blog, I discussed the progress on adding new activities to GCompris project. In the past 2 weeks, I was working on implementing a new activity: ‘Mouse Control Action’ activity.

          The goal of this new activity is to provide audio-visual feedback in a relatively meaningful way when using the mouse to help in discovering its usage for a young kid.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Ivan Molodetskikh: GSoC 2021: Screenshots with Pointer

          Over the summer I’m working on a new screenshot UI for GNOME Shell. Here’s my progress since the last post.

          First of all, I made the window selection mode work across multiple screens and ensured that it works correctly with HiDPI and mixed DPI setups. Each screen gets its own Overview-like view of all the windows, letting you pick the one you need at your leisure.

          In this and the following showcases, you can see GNOME Shell running with two virtual monitors: one regular DPI on the left, and one high DPI (200% scaling) on the right. Both virtual monitors use the same resolution, which is why the right one appears two times smaller.

        • GNOME's New Human Interface Guidelines Now Official - Phoronix

          In recent months there has been an effort to update GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to reflect the GTK4 toolkit and recommendations around new widgets, utility panes, and more for enhancing the accessibility of GNOME applications, arguably looking better, and just otherwise modernizing aspects of the HIG that haven't been touched in months. That updated GNOME HIG is now official.

        • Tobias Bernard: Community Power Part 5: First Steps

          In the previous parts of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) we looked at how power works within GNOME, and what this means for people wanting to have an impact in the project. An important takeaway was that the most effective way to do that is to get acquainted with the project’s ethos and values, and then working towards things that align with these.

        • Tobias Bernard: Berlin Mini GUADEC

          Like everyone else, I’m sad that we can’t have in-person conferences at the moment, especially GUADEC. However, thanks to the lucky/privileged combination of low COVID case numbers in central Europe over the summer, vaccines being available to younger people now, and a relatively large local community in and around Berlin we were able to put together a tiny in-person GUADEC satellite event.

    • Distributions

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2021/31

          How often did you update your machine during the last week? If you were to follow every single snapshot, you had to do it seven times. That’s how many snapshots passed openQA and had been pushed out to the mirrors.

          What were the main changes in the snapshots 0729…0804?

        • SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 Public Beta (Beta 2) is out!

          We are thrilled to announce the Public Beta (Beta 2) of SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1! SLE Micro is an ultra-reliable, lightweight operating system purpose built for edge computing. Please check out our Product page to learn more, but for the beta program, please refer to our dedicated beta page.

      • IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

        • On August 9, join the Red Hat Learning Community “Answer the Unanswered” contest!

          Ready to test your knowledge? Put your skills to the test with our "Answer the Unanswered" contest. We will select an array of 25 questions found within the “Unanswered” section of the RHLC discussion form. Once questions are revealed, users will have one week to provide the most accurate, relevant, and helpful answer.

          The contest timeline will be Monday, August 9 to Friday, August 13, with winners receiving an RHLC JBL waterproof speaker. We will update this thread with the question bank, and contest terms and conditions on Monday, August 9.

        • ACM 2.3 - Jeff Brent, Red Hat - Digital Anarchist

          Alan and Jeff Brent of Red Hat talk about the latest release of ACM 2.3, Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

        • [Red Hat on] 10 steps to become a Linux samurai

          The beauty of Linux is that it is made by programmers, for programmers. It can run on almost any hardware and there is an endless variety of distributions for almost every use case. It is preferred by programmers for its versatility, scalability, container portability, security, and many other features. Most importantly, it’s free and open source, which means that it’s built and supported by a community of developers who are always at the forefront of innovation and are willing to help each other out.

          Knowing a few useful command-line tricks can save you a lot of time and frustration. Some you may already know, and others may prove to be a hidden gem you weren’t aware of before. Either way, here are some of the essential command-line tips and tricks that could save you a couple of keystrokes.

        • How to deal with a toxic teammate

          The law of averages suggests that sooner or later, you’re likely to encounter someone in your organization who exhibits toxic behavior.

          “Most of our work environments have elements of what we refer to as ‘toxicity’,” says AmyJo Mattheis, executive leadership coach and CEO of Pavo Navigation Coaching, “and the impact can be devastating to a team. When things are unclear and confusing, that is when people begin to feel afraid and [under] threat, which fuels the spread of toxicity.”

          That can have significant effects on the rest of us. “Individuals will experience health issues due to stress, burnout is common, constant worry, lack of ability to perform to full ability, and many other dysfunctions as a result of bullying in the workplace, lack of psychological safety, and persistent stress and pressure,” says Jeanet Wade, business consultant and author of The Human Team: So, You Created a Team But People Showed Up!

          Toxic behavior can result in communication problems, project issues, and deliverable delays. The impact on the team and larger organization can be just as devastating. “A toxic team member casts a pall over the team and is a drag on the performance of each individual on the team and the whole team,” says Kevin Cuthbert, consultant and executive advisor at executive coaching and assessment firm Bates (a BTS company). That can result in communication problems, project issues, and delays getting deliverables across the finish line – for a start.

        • Use OpenCV on Fedora Linux ‒ part 2 - Fedora Magazine

          Welcome back to the OpenCV series where we explore how to make use of OpenCV on Fedora Linux. The first article covered the basic functions and use cases of OpenCV. In addition to that you learned about loading images, color mapping, and the difference between BGR and RGB color maps. You also learned how to separate and merge color channels and how to convert to different color spaces. This article will cover basic image manipulation and show you how to perform image transformations including:

        • What to do when Robotic Process Automation is not enough

          With robotic process automation (RPA) tools, companies can automate human tasks with software, as a means to capture greater operating efficiencies and realize cost savings. In the financial services industry, this might mean using software to process loan applications, or to approve and fulfill a credit card request within a much shorter time frame, increasing customer retention and satisfaction.

        • What's a TAM and why might you want to be one?

          A TAM is a technical account manager, but what does that even mean? The IT industry has latched into the idea of a TAM, and many companies offer TAM as a subscription. Maybe you're curious about whether your business needs the services of a TAM, or perhaps you're considering if you might make a good TAM. Either way, this article is for you!

          When I considered joining Red Hat as a TAM, I can say that the whole concept was a little fuzzy. Would I be a glorified help desk staff member? Am I working tickets? Didn't I spend my entire career trying to move out of a support role? And, while technical support is a vital part of any enterprise, I was ready to grow... why would I go back? Well, in this article, I'll try to demystify the position, and maybe it'll help you decide if you'd like to be a TAM or employ one.

        • COVID-19 Global Updates: Default to remote + vaccination and mask guidance [Ed: Seems like IBM/Red Hat, following the so-called 'Linux' Foundation, will impose proprietary software and surveillance on people wishing to attend events]

          Red Hat is extending its global default to remote guidance to the first business day of 2022. Beginning Monday, Aug. 9, 2021, Red Hatters working or gathering in a Red Hat office in the United States must be vaccinated. We are currently determining how this vaccination guidance will be extended across countries, including considering the availability of vaccines.

        • A technical deep-dive on integrating Cloudera Data Platform and IBM Cloud Pak for Data

          This blog post is the first of a three-part series authored by software developers and architects at IBM and Cloudera. This first post focuses on integration points of the recently announced joint offering: Cloudera Data Platform for IBM Cloud Pak for Data. The second post will look at how Cloudera Data Platform was installed on IBM Cloud using Ansible. And the third post will focus on lessons learned from installing, maintaining, and verifying the connectivity of the two platforms. Let’s get started!

          In this post we will be outlining the main integration points between Cloudera Data Platform and IBM Cloud Pak for Data, and explaining how the two distinct data and AI platforms can communicate with each other. Integrating two platforms is made easy with capabilities available out of the box for both IBM Cloud Pak for Data and Cloudera Data Platform. Establishing a connection between the two is just a few clicks away.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • The importance of LinkedIn Pages for the LibreOffice Project [Ed: Worse than foolish to make LibreOffice dependent on a manipulative censorship network of a LibreOffice enemy, Microsoft. Italo Vignoli wants to cancel Richard Stallman, based on lies, but he makes excuses for Microsoft, which attacks LibreOffice. But then again, Italo Vignoli is in the Board of a Microsoft-connected front group, OSI.]

        LinkedIn has reached the number of 750 million subscribers worldwide, and is now the best social media to support products, as it is used by almost 100% of enterprises (click on the above thumbnails to see the full image). The Document Foundation has launched the foundation and the LibreOffice LinkedIn pages a while ago, followed in late 2020 by the LibreOffice Enterprise LinkedIn page. These pages have grown organically during the years to reach respectively 1,169, 1.055 and 197 followers. It is now time to leverage the effective potential of these content resources for the growth of the project, especially in areas which are not directly related to the FOSS ecosystem.

      • The Apache News Round-up: week ending 6 August 2021

        Welcome, August --we're opening the month with another great week. Here's what the Apache community has been up to...

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Firefox 92 To Try Again With AVIF Image Support By Default

            Mozilla is trying once again to enable AVIF image decoding support by default within the Firefox web browser. AVIF is the promising image file format based on using AV1 in the HEIF file format.

            AVIF 1.0 was firmed up in early 2019 and supports multiple color spaces, both lossy and lossless compression methods, up to 12-bit color depth, film grain, and more. Since last year Google Chrome has fully supported AVIF images as well as support being found in WebKit and other browser engines and other desktop software and libraries. Months ago Firefox tried to enable AVIF by default but was ultimately reverted ahead of release due to lingering issues.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

      • Programming/Development

        • Porting your code to C++17 with GCC 11

          The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), which is the standard compiler on GNU/Linux distributions such as Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, moved from version 14 to version 17 of C++ in April 2021. Thus, the -std=gnu++17 command-line option is now used by default.

          C++17 brings a host of new features, but also deprecates, removes, or changes the semantics of certain constructs. This article looks at some of the issues you might face when switching to GCC 11. Remember that it is always possible to use the previous version of C++ by specifying the -std=gnu++14 option. Moreover, this article deals only with the core language; we won't discuss deprecated or removed features in the standard C++ library (such as auto_ptr). For a broader overview, I encourage visiting the paper Changes between C++14 and C++17. For more information regarding switching to using GCC 11, please see our upstream document, Porting to GCC 11.

        • Learn how to become an exceptional developer from Himalaya Saxena

          While working on an android app, you might have to switch between Linux or Ubuntu. Awareness about the environment will save your time and make you more versatile. Himalaya says he never felt the urge of mastering all the platforms, but a little exposure was sufficient for him.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • Security updates for Friday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (tomcat8), Mageia (bluez, exiv2, fetchmail, libsndfile, nodejs, php-pear, python-pillow, and rabbitmq-server), openSUSE (apache-commons-compress, balsa, djvulibre, mariadb, mysql-connector-java, nodejs8, opera, and spice-vdagent), Red Hat (ruby:2.7), SUSE (apache-commons-compress, djvulibre, java-11-openjdk, libsndfile, mariadb, nodejs8, and spice-vdagent), and Ubuntu (docker.io).

          • Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 180 released

            The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 180. This version includes the following changes:

            * Don't include specific ".debug"-like lines in the output, as it invariably
              a duplicate of the debug ID that exists in a better form in the readelf(1)
              differences for this file.
            * Also ignore include short "GCC" lines that differs on a single prefix byte
              too. These are distracting, not very useful and are simply the strings(1)
              command's idea of the build ID, which, again, is displayed nearby in the
              file's diff.
            * Update the invocation arguments and tests for the latest version of
              odt2txt.
            

          • [JumpCloud] Recent Linux Releases: Desktop MFA & Security Commands

            Operating system diversity is a defining characteristic of today’s IT environments. Windows may have dominated historically, but enterprise Mac management has evolved in a meaningful way and Linux distributions have become a critical part of IT infrastructure. Cross-OS device management is here to stay, and presents a unique challenge for IT admins.

          • Intel Working To Combine The Best Of CET + CFI Into "FineIBT" - Phoronix

            Intel security researchers have been working on implementing toolchain-optimized fine-grained Control Flow Integrity (CFI) support on top of Intel's hardware-based Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). By leveraging Intel CET, the Control-Flow Integrity overhead is much lower than the otherwise pure software/compiler-based approach. This Linux security improvement is being worked on under the name of FineIBT.

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • On Apple, Trojan Horses and Truth

        In the story of the Garden of Eden, it is said that the forbidden fruit was encouraged to be eaten by the Devil. The story goes that eating the fruit was the direct action that resulted in man to be expelled from the garden.

        Fast forward to 2021, Apple has now spent the past several years re-positioning itself as a privacy company. Much like the story of the Trojan Horse, which appeared to be a gift, Apple too appeared to be a truly trustable and hardlined privacy company. In the end, however, with the masses having migrated to Apple products, like Trojan Horses and Pandora's Boxes go, there's no turning back. Apple has scientifically proven and asserted that encrypted content scanning is absolutely possible - now it will be enforced. Some fruits really aren't meant to be eaten.

        Although people get themselves caught like Hillary's admin in terms of the emails she allegedly illegally deleted and was not jailed for, someone can also plant evidence and determine your fate. We've seen planted evidence from the US government. Even though the FBI was the one making the posts, a little too coincidentally, the FBI suddenly labeled forums and conspiracy theorists as terrorists.

        [...]

        Anyway, I will no longer be using Apple from this day forward, even though while getting shit on in the FOSS community for it, I continued to do so. Trust is really dead - don't trust, verify is really where we're at. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise - without verification.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • China: CNIPA And EPO Collaborate To Simplify Patent Application Process [Ed: The corrupt EPO management finds allies in the Communist Party of China because high levels of crimes at EPO are only tolerated in oppressive regimes (other than EU)]

          The CNIPA and the European Patent Office (EPO) have reached a consensus that from July 1, 2021, there will be no need to submit a copy of the prior application search report made by the CNIPA when a European patent application or a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application claiming priority from an earlier application in China filed with the EPO enters the European phase. Refer to the website of the EPO.



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