Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 02/07/2022: Debian 9 (Stretch) EOL, FocusWriter 1.8.1, and Darktable 4.0



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • First RISC-V Laptop Announced
      • ForbesThe 7-inch Pocket Reform Laptop Is Pure 1990s Nostalgia

        Do you want a laptop computer you can slip into a jacket pocket? Well, the Pocket Reform is promising to bring back the 1990s days of PDAs.

        Described by its makers MNT Research as the “the ultimate sofa computer”, the 7-inch laptop is based on open-source software and will come in a variety of hardware configurations.

        The standard configuration will offer an NXP i.MX8M Plus module, which includes a quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor and 8GB of RAM. Alternatively, you might choose a configuration based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, which also includes a quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and 8GB of RAM.

        The Pocket Reform will ship with 128GB of built-in storage, but that can be boosted up to 2TB via the SSD slot. There’s also a MicroSD slot for less expensive storage expansion.

        The 7-inch display is Full HD, although it can output at up to 4K resolution via the Micro HDMI port if you want to connect the Pocket Reform to an external screen.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Kernel Space

      • LWNLinux 5.18.9
        I'm announcing the release of the 5.18.9 kernel.
        
        

        All users of the 5.18 kernel series must upgrade.

        The updated 5.18.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.18.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

        thanks,

        greg k-h
      • LWNLinux 5.15.52
      • LWNLinux 5.10.128
      • LWNLinux 5.4.203
      • LWNLinux 4.19.250
      • LWNLinux 4.14.286
      • LWNLinux 4.9.321
    • Applications

      • Linux Links4 Best Free and Open Source Elm Static Site Generators

         LinuxLinks, like most modern websites, is dynamic in that content is stored in a database and converted into presentation-ready HTML when readers access the site.

        While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

      • FocusWriter 1.8.1 Released

        Always write plain text as UTF-8 Always write RTF as codepage 1252 Replaced QTextCodec with ICU Translation updates: Estonian, German

      • darktable 4.0: 3763 Days Later | darktable

        A little over 10 years since darktable 1.0 was first released, the darktable team is proud to present darktable 4.0!

        For a complete changelog, please see the release notes. The latest version of the user manual is here. Ukrainian and Polish translations are currently available and we expect to add more over the coming months.

      • 9to5LinuxDarktable 4.0 Released to Celebrate 10 Years of Open Source RAW Image Editing

        Coming more than five months after darktable 3.8.1, the darktable 4.0 release is here to introduce a new feature called Color and Exposure Mapping to ensure uniform color rendition, which is implemented in the Exposure and Color Calibration modules and lets you define and save a target color/exposure for the color pickers. For example, you can use it to perform white balance against non-gray objects of known color.

      • LWNDarktable 4.0.0 released

        Other changes include new exposure and color-calibration modules, a reworked "filmic" color-mapping module, guided laplacian highlight reconstruction, and more.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Trend OceansHow to Install Latest Mozilla Firefox on Linux Desktop

        Most Linux distributions already ship with Firefox installed by their distribution package manager and configured as the default browser. It might be unavailable in the minimal version of the distribution.

    • WINE or Emulation

      • Ubuntu HandbookWine 7.12 Released! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

        Wine, the popular software for running Windows apps on Linux, macOS & BSD, released new development version 7.12 a day ago.

        The new Wine 7.12 features theming support for Qt5 applications, bundled vkd3d upgraded to version 1.4, QWORD support in registry tools, and improved effect support in Direct2D.

        As usual, there are various bug-fixes. And, this release includes fixes for Star Citizen, Total War: Shogun 2, Argentum 20 RPG Launcher, MetaTrader4, and more. See the release note for details.

      • PCLOS OfficialWine 7.11 €» PCLinuxOS

        Wine is a program which allows running Microsoft Windows programs (including DOS, Windows 3.x and Win32 executables) on Unix.

    • Games

      • Xonotic 0.8.5 Release - Xonotic

        Xonotic 0.8.5 is here at last! There’s been thousands of commits since 0.8.2 making this quite a long read for all the right reasons: refined gameplay, new and updated maps and models, new sound effects, more dangerous bots, new HUD and menu features, more translations, better infrastructure, too many fixes to count, and much more.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • Pitivi GSoC Update

          This is the 4th week since GSoC coding period officially began, this summer I'm hacking on the Pitivi project, porting it to GTK4, a much-requested feature for the editor.

        • [Old] Selected for GSoC'22

          I'm pleased to share that I'm accepted for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2022 under GNOME Foundation umbrella on the Pitivi project. This summer I will be updating the project from GTK3 to the latest GTK4 toolkit.

          To anyone that wants to be a part of GSoC, I have only one piece of advice, just go for it. Don't think if you can do it or not, don't assume failure before attempting, and don't overthink. I always felt that it is for the best of the best, and I won't be able to clear it, all the big organizations on the GSoC page overwhelmed me, but instead of making it a dream, I made it a life goal. And well, now I'm enjoying it.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • MedevelPain Diary: is an Open-source Pain Logger for Patients

      Pain Diary is an Android app which can help you track and share your pain with your doctor.

      It does not collect, share, track or share any of your data with any third party.

      It allows you to make daily diary entries recording your condition and the intensity, location, nature and time of the pain you feel, as well as the medication you take and additional notes.

      Pain Diary records of your pain can help health professionals gain an insight into the pain you are experiencing.

      [...]

      Privacy Friendly Pain Diary is licensed under the GPLv3.

    • The Register UKCloudera adopts Apache Iceberg tables to show OS commitment ● The Register

      Developed through the Apache Software Foundation, Iceberg offers an open table format, designed for high-performance on big data workloads while supporting query engines including Spark, Trino, Flink, Presto, Hive and Impala.

    • Programming/Development

      • RlangHow to Recode Values in R | R-bloggers

        How to Recode Values in R, On sometimes, you might want to recode specific values in an R data frame. Fortunately, the recode() method from the dplyr package makes this simple to accomplish.

      • Perl / Raku

        • PerlMite: an OO compiler for Perl

          Moose is great, but it does introduce a slight performance hit to your code. In the more than 15 years since it was first released, hardware improvements have made this less of a problem than it once was. Even so, if performance is a concern for your project, Moose might not be what you want. It also has a fairly big collection of non-core dependencies.

          Moo is a lighter weight version, minus with meta-object protocol, but supporting nearly all of Moose's other features. It loads faster, sometimes runs faster, and has fewer dependencies. (And most of the dependencies it does have are just modules which used to be part of Moo but were split out into separate distributions.)

          But what if you could have fast Moose-like object-oriented code without the dependencies?

          In 2013, Michael Schwern started work on Mite to do just that. It was abandoned in 2014, but I've taken it over and expanded the feature set to roughly equivalent to Moo.

      • Rust

        • FudzillaLinux could go Rusty in the next release

          Linux has been written in the C programming language for more than 30 years but the last few years have seen a growing momentum to make the Rust programming language Linux's second Linux language.

  • Leftovers

    • Security

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • ACMCybercriminals Eye Biometrics

          Biometric markers such as fingerprints, the irises of one's eyes, and individual's entire faces are increasingly popular for proving identity. If criminals can steal such biometric data, they can pose as users, potentially accessing your Intellectual Property, customer data, and financial assets.

          "While criminal hackers can offer the stolen biometric data for sale online for huge sums, the goal is targeting specific networks to bring them down," says Jake Moore, global security adviser for ESET UK, an anti-malware company. Cybercriminals sell the data on the Dark Web, an uncharted part of the Internet where buyers and sellers reach sites via encrypted channels using TOR browsers.

          Organizations go to the trouble of adding biometrics to other authentication factors such as the one-time passcodes (OTPs) that arrive on your smartphone because the data they protect is precious. A successful biometric hack combined with other compromised authentication factors almost certainly equate to massive losses for an enterprise.

          "With persistent attacks comes continual entry," says Moore. Though cybercriminals often have to work to hack biometrics successfully, once they are in the system, significant disruption is likely; without the proper security procedures and continuity plans in place, it can take a long time for organizations to return to business as usual, Moore says.

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • Israel Doesn’t Allow Jailed Female Soldiers to Write. Yes, You Read Correctly

        The Israel Defense Forces does not allow female soldiers to write. Yes, you read correctly. It applies “only” to soldiers incarcerated in the new military prison at Neve Tzedek (in Hebrew, Oasis of Justice), but they’re not allowed to hold writing implements, except for a half hour or 20 minutes a day at best. This ban did not exist in the old military prisons, which have been closed. It’s happening only in the new one, which has won praise.

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

    • Politics

      • How to phase out residential leasehold



        The system of long leases for residential property in the UK has an intrinsic tendency towards abuse, due to the one-sided availability of forfeiture. There is limited parliamentary time available for reform, necessitating prioritisation. Some potential reforms are politically infeasible due to powerful opposition, but the detail of the opposition is often misunderstood by reformers.

        [...]

        It may take many years before the generality of leaseholders with third-party building owners or managers can convert to superior tenures.

        [...]

        Some campaigners speak loosely of "abolishing" leasehold, without stating how they want to do this. This helps the opponents of reform, by implying that campaigners are open to confiscating some or all of the value of existing freeholds. A *charitable* view of "abolishing leasehold" would mean "phasing out residential leasehold, compensating freeholders for their legitimate property interests". But the reality of politics is that campaigners are portrayed as favouring the least charitable interpretation of their views.

        [...]

        Mortage lenders are worried about the value of their collateral being damaged. Mostly, the reforms will be neutral or beneficial from their point of view.

        Property developers and managing agents benefit from the "economic rents", that is, the amount that can be charged above the market rate for services. The reason such income streams exist at all is that some leaseholders have no choice but to deal with the monopoly provider of management services, and all leaseholders face a service charge regime that facilitates waste and makes fraud undetectable.

      • Debate

        I participated in a formal debate once. Moderation, time, a judge, everything. A friend invited me to debate club. He warned me to not expect to win, but we did.

        We were arguing for something I don’t agree with in real life, and that probably helped as I was trying my best to “steel-doll”, to take the other part’s arguments seriously, and try to predict their arguments and preempt them (that ended up being super effective—when they went to present their case, they had already been refuted), and avoid using our own worst arguments and preemptively refute those too, “but,” and then use some unusual ones.

        Our refutations of our own bad arguments were rock solid (maybe better than what they were coming up with), and our “refutations” of their arguments weren’t soundest or particularly complete, but preemptive and I guess convincing enough. I can’t read the mind of the judge, what made him side with us, and maybe it wasn’t the clearest of calls.

        It was all meaningless sophistry, word-dazzly tricks, manipulative and dishonest. Covering our “seams” with 99% truth making them really hard to spot.

    • Technical

      • Quick and dirty fix for the SFOS 4.4 not working hotspot

        On some carriers like the german Congstar Sailfish OS can't open a working hotspot. The clients can connect to it but no connection can be made to the internet. The problem is, that the network on SFOS to carrier is IPv6 only and but must be IPv4 - or both - to work with the hotspot. SFOS doesn't also make a translation so the connection don't work.

      • the joy of fixing a laptop



        I own a Thinkpad X390, and it is probably my most treasured device. I managed to find it used in 2019, the year of its release, with my only theory that a company bought a fresh fleet of machines before shuttering months later. I love this machine, it has a great keyboard (hush, Thinkpad purists), excellent Linux compatibility, and until recently a very decent battery life.

        It had gotten a healthy 8-9 hours when I bought it. Through 4 years of daily college use, it had dwindled to a pitiful 2.5 (if I was lucky). Not a problem! I ordered a battery online (unfortunately not a factory Lenovo product) and it shipped in a week. 20 minutes of futzing and cursing my lack of a spudger later it was installed.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Re: A convention for gemlog tags



          I started with hashtags - simple to use, widely understood. I added the others as I found them because they seemed sensible tagging systems. I bet I missed some.

          My guess is that mostly Geminauts are tagging their own content for their own purposes, and they're not too bothered about anyone else's tags. But who knows.

        • On Indexing Pages

          There has been recent discussions in Geminispace about indexing of pages... I'd like to share my own thoughts on the matter. Bear in mind that they're just /thoughts/, not /suggestions/. I keep a physical note- book, mostly of technical information. Stuff like microcontroller pinout diagrams, programming notes, etc.. I keep an index at the back. I find it invaluable for finding stuff later. I also keep a table of contents at the front. This isn't particularly useful for the specific medium that I record my notes in, because notes are written as required, rather than in a structured way. For struc- tured content, though, a table of contents makes sense.

          Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the purpose of an index:

          Indexes are also designed to help the reader find information quickly and easily. A complete and truly useful index is not simply a list of the words and phrases used in a publication (which is properly called a concordance), but an organized map of its contents, including cross-references, grouping of like concepts, and other useful intellectual analysis.

        • Building Lagrange



          Whenever I want to upgrade Lagrange, I'm a bit confused. It uses git submodules, CMake instead of GNU make and so it's super weird for me. I wrote myself a little shell script to handle it. I keep it in my work directory. What do you think?

        • Surfing the web in 2022

          In the post, I list things I noticed while using the web. I use firefox only for banking, tax and looking at financial web sites.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

It Has Cost $215,000 in Legal Costs to Sue IBM for Wrongful Termination
IBM typically settles out of court and demands secrecy (to avoid anyone else benefiting from the very expensive outcome)
The PIPs or 'Voluntary Termination Offers' Help IBM Fake Its Situation
"IBM is not a tech company"
General Assembly Covers EPO Strikes on Thursday, September 17th (2026)
The EPO's staff representation at The Hague has asked people to join an upcoming online session about industrial actions
 
LG Lies to Cover Up Lies About Its Spying TVs (It Records and Transmits Conversations in Rooms)
This is what a lot of "modern" technology is like
Oracle's Debt Continues to Soar (Increase of 60 Billion Dollars in 15 Months, Not Counting the Secret Debt, With Off-balance-sheet Debt Having "Grown Roughly Thirtyfold in Four Years")
Oracle debt continues to grow
Apple's iOS and macOS Measured as Bigger Than Windows in the US, Linux-Based OSes at Almost 30%
Expect the silent layoffs at Microsoft to continue at a rapid pace
Oracle, Like Microsoft, Drowns in Debt and Discards Tens of Thousands of Staff (Microsoft Does the Same More Discreetly)
The main difference between Microsoft and Oracle is that the latter is honest about what's going on
Gemini Links 14/09/2026: First Android Phone, Leaving Sony, and Rant About Gemini-to-HTTP Proxy Providers
Links for the day
Links 14/09/2026: "Scam Altman Now Trying to Gain Control of Electric Grid" and Sweden Moving to the Right
Links for the day
Vista 11 Flunked
Microsoft cannot start a "Vista 12" campaign as it would only make matters worse
Microsoft Urgently Needs Distraction: There's No "Next XBox", But There's a New Boot Screen (Like 'Dark Mode', a Feature That Can be Implemented in Mere Minutes/Hours)
Anything to distract from XBox fiasco
IBM Flying Away to Sweatshops (So Will Red Hat)
Even on Sunday people post about 'leaving' IBM
RFID Ambitions Already Established by Widespread Skinnerbox Adoption
A society that cannot maintain privacy for those who deserve it will not manage to assure dignity of citizens
SLAPP Censorship - Part 183 Out of 200: What Actually Happened Two Months Ago (Based on People Who Attended)
It's dangerous to assert what happened in a hearing you did not attend (there was no video stream or recording, either)
Phil Harvey, an Editor-in-Chief in a B2B Site, Explains Why ChannelFutures (Connected to TechTarget) and Other Sites That Used to Cover Linux Deleted Many Articles
Every old article in channelfutures is gone!
Software Freedom Day 2026 is 5 Days From Now, Fresh Reminder to Boycott Proprietary Software
Let this be a timely reminder of why people should avoid proprietary software
Links 14/09/2026: Slop Hardly Used for Actual Work (Chatbots Are for Lonely People), Slop Bots (Scrapers, Plagiarism) "Are Thirsty for Power"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/09/2026: Trip, Hiding, and OCR
Links for the day
IBM PIPs Are Layoffs (RAs Come Later Even If You Satisfy the "Performance" and "Plan")
Notice how "the media" almost never mentions silent layoffs, as if just because they're silent, there's nothing to investigate, nothing to see there
Slop Companies Engage in Plagiarising the Web, Now They Pay People to Contaminate the Web With Their Lies
Remember that the lawfare against us is funded by slop salaries!
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 13, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 13, 2026
Microsoft is Laying Off All Year Long (It's Just Keeping Quiet About It)
The issue here is also the media. It's complicit.
MElon's Twitter Takeover Was Meant to Amplify People Like Himself or David Heinemeier Hansson (Slop Pyramid Schemes and Bigotry)
Social control media is not neutral
Microsoft Lunduke of 'Linux Sucks' (and Microsoft Corp.) Tries to Replace GNU/Linux With Toxic Discussions About Toxic Politics
Poisoning the well people drink from
Links 13/09/2026: Republican Campaign Aide Uses Nazi Photo and Convicted Felon is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/09/2026: Never Settling, Plain Text Digital Life, and Newsgroups
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 182 Out of 200: UK Dockets With Machine-Generated Applications to the Court (From American Slop Companies)
Earlier this year Garrett was using machine-generated output as legal papers and submissions
Efforts to Cancel Matt Mullenweg Have Made Us More Sympathetic Towards Mullenweg and More Sceptical of the People Who Run Automattic (Named After Mullenweg)
Mullenweg, unlike Automattic, is not "in it for the money"
Boosters of Omarchy Are No 'Underdogs'
There are many Arch derivatives that do not rely on "viral" marketing in MElon's child porn-pushing social control media and are instead relying on real development, not slop
PIPs Are a Setup: They Set Workers Up to Fail While Working Their Arse Off Before Getting Kicked (Out) in the Arse
Malicious and exploitative
SLAPP Censorship - Part 181 Out of 200: This is Really More Like Brett Wilson LLP v Schestowitz (Using Money From American Slop Companies, Plagiarism Pushers)
We approach the parts where we explain that the Application to the Court with Garrett's name on it was instead complaining about fair criticism of the combative law firm (irrelevant to any injunctions) as if it was impermissible to explain what it had done - and still does - to my wife and I
It Sometimes Feels Like Slop Companies Are Committing Online/Digital Crimes
"GPT" out of control
Gemini Links 13/09/2026: Why Omarchy is "Plain Disgusting" and "AI Slop" and Why "Plain Text To Do List" Rocks
Links for the day
Links 13/09/2026: Scam Altman Admits Issues (Financial), Rival Says Stop Slop (Plagiarism)
Links for the day
Windows Down to New Lows as Switzerland's Federal Government Abandons Microsoft (Where Feasible for Now)
That's how it starts...
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 12, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, September 12, 2026
Televisions Have Become Billboards
Bottom line: you get what you pay for
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft as "Voluntary Separation Agreement" (or PIP)
the man who kept lying about the layoffs has just left the company
The Cyber Show on Media Clickbait About Slop as 'Existential Threat' and Derek Thompson's Response to That
Ignore the hype, focus on real news
Links 12/09/2026: "Revolt Is Here" Against Slop and "Top Chinese Court" Cracks Down on Slop That's Fake/Misleading
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/09/2026: Rants About Slop, Switching From QWERTY, and Why TVs Are 'Cheap'
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 180 Out of 200: A Third Act, (Mis)Using Your Client's Application to the Court for Your Own Purposes as a Law Firm (Reputation Management and Censorship)
How much can a lawfare firm get away with?
Canonical Has Withdrawn Ubuntu 24.04.5 Installer Due to a Critical Bug Connected to Microsoft-Controlled Restricted Boot and TPM
already breaking systems running GNU/Linux [...] Who asked for TPM in Linux?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 179 Out of 200: Using One's Clients to Save Face at Their Expense
Who's being served really?
Switzerland's Software Freedom/Digital Sovereignty is Improving as People Move to GNU/Linux
Well done to them
Links 12/09/2026: "U.S. Debt Surpasses $40 Trillion" and "Trump Wants to [Illegally] Bribe Voters."
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/09/2026: Readjusting, Fighting Sleep, and FreeBSD bhyve
Links for the day
Matt Mullenweg Got the 'Linus Treatment' or 'RMS Treatment'
"back, but not in charge any more..."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 11, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, September 11, 2026