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Links 04/09/2023: Distro Watch Examines Debian GNU/Hurd 2023 and LibreArts Weekly is Ready



  • GNU/Linux

    • 9to5Linux9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: September 3rd, 2023

      This week was a bit slow in news and releases, but we got a new stable Firefox update, new major Nitrux, Emmabuntüs Debian Edition, and Armbian releases, as well as a new GNU Linux-libre release for software freedom lovers.

      On top of that, I show you how to install the latest Linux 6.5 kernel on Ubuntu and how to enable thumbnails for AVIF images in Nautilus. Below, you can read this week’s hottest news and access all the distro and package downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for September 3rd, 2023.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • JupiterMediaCanonical Wins by Default | LINUX Unplugged 526

        While chaos is brewing in SUSE and Red Hat land, Canonical stays the course and doubles down on the Linux desktop. Plus, our thoughts on the kernel team GPL-blocking NVIDIA.

      • GNU World Order (Audio Show)GNU World Order 528

        **harfbuzz** , **hicolor-icon-theme** , **hunspell** , **hyphen** from the

        **l** software series of Slackware.

        shasum -a256=ca1910a612e77798c323df8ee64aed22dd2179d92a71ea65d8c00511c59b203c

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Own HowToHow to install Steam on Ubuntu 23.04 Desktop

        If you've switched to Linux, and you are wondering if you can run Steam and play Steam games on your Linux machine..yes you can!

        All you have to do is Install Steam, download the game you like, and play it.

      • Ubuntu HandbookWine Dev 8.15 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu

        Wine, the popular software library to running Windows apps on Linux and macOS, announced a new development release one day ago.

      • RoseHostingHow to Install RPM Packages On Ubuntu 22.04

        RPM or Red Hat Package Manager is a free, open-source package management system.

        The RPM package management system is written in C and Perl programming languages for Linux operating systems.

        It is used in many other distributions, such as Fedora, AlmaLinux, CentOS, and OracleLinux. The Red Hat distributions are Debian and Ubuntu.

        Installing RPM packages on Ubuntu 22.04 can be done in two different ways. It is a very easy process that may take a couple of minutes. Let’s get started!

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • It's FOSSLinux Users Beware! GNOME 45 is Bad News for Extensions
          With every GNOME upgrade, some extensions break; that's not new. But, with GNOME 45, every extension will break

          And why is that? Let me tell you more about it.

          With every upgrade, there is always a technical improvement or change.

          And, GNOME 45 comes with pretty exciting changes, except this one.

        • Alan PopeUpdated 'Must-Have' GNOME extensions list

          Back in December 2020 I wrote up my personal Must-Have GNOME extensions. It’s been nearly three years, two job changes, and a few Ubuntu upgrades, so I thought I’d take another look.

          This used to crash a lot for me, to the point I’d go and look for it in the panel and it was missing. I figured if I don’t realise it’s gone, I probably don’t need it that much. Also, GNOME shell volume control has changed a bit over the last few years. It’s pretty easy to switch device now in the menu.

        • GNOMEJonathan Blandford: Crosswords 0.3.11: Acrostic Panels

          Long time, no release.

          When I last blogged about GNOME Crosswords, I had a design plan to improve the editing API. It’s been a busy summer since then. The crosswords team rewrote large chunks of code to implement and use this new API: [...]

        • Andy Holmes: Mentoring in Open Source

          This year, I was invited by Sonny Piers to be a co-mentor for the GNOME Foundation, working on platform demos for Workbench. I already contribute a lot of entry-level documentation and help a lot of contributors, so this felt like a good step in a direction I've been heading for a while.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • Reviews

      • Distro WatchReview: Debian GNU/Hurd 2023 and PCLinuxOS 2023.07 "KDE"

        While many rolling release distributions constantly chase after the latest technologies, themes, and cutting edge packages, PCLinuxOS is unusual in that it has a strongly conservative approach. The distribution does provide up to date packages, but it feels like a lot of effort has been put into keeping the distribution stable and running smoothly via older approaches. PCLinuxOS doesn't move with the latest trends. This is a project which doesn't enable a lot of visual effects, doesn't leap on newer technologies, doesn't attempt to package every new desktop that comes along. It's still running SysV init (instead of systemd), it's still using an X11 session for Plasma instead of Wayland, it still offers MATE over GNOME, and it is still using the Synaptic package manager over more modern software centres like Discover.

        In short, despite the regular flow of updated packages flowing into the distribution's repositories, not much seems to be changing with PCLinuxOS. It's reluctant to adopt new ways of doing things, like portable packages and welcome windows, and advanced filesystems. Most of the tools, approaches, and system administration modules still look and behave the same way they did ten years ago.

        This might appeal to a lot of users, particularly ones who were getting started with Linux around the time PCLinuxOS reached the top of the DistroWatch page hit ranking charts, nearly 20 years ago. People who have been comfortable with Linux for a long time and don't feel the urge to roll with the times will probably enjoy this distribution a lot. There is a strong sense when using PCLinuxOS that if something isn't broke, then they don't fix it.

        However, on the other side of that coin, there are some tools and approaches which have become so commonplace these days that it feels odd to not see them included in this distribution. It feels odd to be missing so many manual pages (though not all of them), it feels a bit strange to be manually adding and troubleshooting Flatpak at this point, it feels a bit alien to not have access to sudo (or doas) on a modern Linux distribution. PCLinuxOS is unusually static for a rolling release, to the point I was able to copy/paste some of the paragraphs in this review from a previous article I wrote about the distribution over four years ago.

        Basically, for the past decade, PCLinuxOS has been upgrading its packages to keep up with upstream, but it doesn't appear to have tried anything new or introduced any custom tools. This probably appeals to existing PCLinuxOS users as they can continue to feel comfortable, but it is a project unlikely to draw new users who expect to have access to certain modern tools or resources.

    • New Releases

      • DebugPointantiX 23: Debian 12-Powered Linux Distro for Aging Hardware

        antiX, renowned for being a lightweight, systemd-free desktop Linux distribution tailored for aging hardware, has just unveiled antiX 23, the latest iteration of its impressive distro.

        The key highlight? It's now based on Debian 12 "Bookworm".

    • BSD

      • DebugPointNetBSD's Endurance: A Decade-Long Server Uptime Record

        Software upgrades have become the norm today for all desktops and servers. Updates to consumer operating systems (Linux or Windows or Mac) are very frequent due to ever-evolving CVEs and fixes. Thus, it's rare to find a server that has been running continuously for a decade.

        Yet, such a remarkable feat has recently come to light, and it involves an unexpected champion: NetBSD.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tom's HardwareRaspberry Pi Uses AI for Virtual Painting

        The team at the Sparklers: We Are The Makers YouTube channel uses a Raspberry Pi for their virtual painting program.

      • Daniel LemireLocating ‘identifiers’ quickly (ARM NEON edition)

        A common problem in parsing is that you want to find all identifiers (e.g., variable names, function names) in a document quickly. There are typically some fixed rules. For example, it is common to allow ASCII letters and digits as well as characters like ‘_’ in the identifier, but to forbid some characters at the beginning of the identifier (such as digits). E.g., ab123 is an identifier but 123ab might not be.

      • Old VCRRefurb weekend: PowerBook Duo 2300c

        With the Dock, your little, relatively underpowered laptop was hoovered up into a beige plastic maw to make it into an average-sized, somewhat less underpowered desktop. But you got slots and ports and the ability to use it like a desktop computer — two computers in one! — and that was crucial because without any Dock, even the smaller Mini and MicroDocks, you had hardly any ports at all (MacBook Air has entered the chat). Docking was so important that Apple even intentionally gimped the 2300 by keeping the 100MHz 603e on a 32-bit bus to maintain Dock compatibility. Yet because Duos were irrepressibly cute, they turned up in many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers: [...]

      • Linux GizmosGOWIN & Andes Technologies collaborate and reveal 22nm SoC FPGA
      • HackadayGrowing Oxides On Silicon On The Road To DIY Semiconductors

        Doing anything that requires measurements in nanometers is pretty difficult, and seems like it would require some pretty sophisticated equipment. But when the task at hand is growing oxide layers on silicon chips in preparation for making your own integrated circuits, it turns out that the old Mark 1 eyeball is all you need.

      • HackadayBare PCB Makes A Decent Homemade Smart Watch

        These days, we live in a post-Dick Tracy world, where you can make a phone call with your fancy wristwatch, and lots more besides. [akashv44] has gone a simpler route, designing their own from scratch with a bare PCB design.

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Libre ArtsLibreArts Weekly recap — 3 September 2023

      This is a comparatively short recap, because there haven’t been all that many changes and releases. Highlights: new features in Inkscape and FreeCAD, new releases of BlenderBIM and libwacom, cool new stuff in Ardour.

      The Swatches dock UI has been recently updated by Mike Kowalski.

    • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

      • OMG UbuntuPapirus Icon Pack Updated with New-Look LibreOffice Icons

        A major update to the phenomenally popular Paprius icon set for Linux desktops is now available. Papirus’ September 2023 update adds a bunch of new and updated glyphs, including redesigned icons for LibreOffice that riff on the suite’s own recent icon revamp. Among the newly added apps supported in Paprius v20230901: Additional file/document types are catered for as of this update, with .hwp, .Julia, and .vue among them.

    • Programming/Development

      • 10 years of rio

        rio was the first R package I uploaded to CRAN. And actually, I had my first experience with the back then not-so-friendly CRAN team. I was accused by a CRAN team member for wasting his time 1. But after many back-and-forth e-mails and uploads, the first version of rio, v0.1.1, was released on CRAN on 2013-08-28 at 14:02 CEST. That’s right: that was exactly ten years ago today.

        I used rio in my own PhD research for quickly save and load data. But I did not find rio to be widely used in 2013-2014. There was no development for almost a year (as there was no need, rio worked well enough for my research), until I received an e-mail from Dr Thomas J. Leeper (now research scientist at Facebook Meta) in 2015 saying he updated the package to support more formats (excel, json, etc.) and asking how should he proceed with contributing to the package. At the time, I was busy with my own PhD research (plus million other research projects and services). He even offered to me to uptake the maintainership of rio. I agreed and then the rest is history.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
 
Slopwatch: Google News is Promoting Fake 'Articles' About Fake Xubuntu, Fake Articles About Replacing Windows With GNU/Linux
The quality of the Web deteriorates and unless someone cleans up the mess, real sites will lose an incentive to produce anything
When "AI Layoffs" Mean Layoffs Due to the "AI" Bubble Popping
many people that are laid off by Microsoft claim to be specialists in "AI"
Mysterious grant forfeited, $100,000 from Software in the Public Interest accounts 2023
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: bullying, student union behaviour: Armijn Hemel's FSFE resignation
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: psychological abuse, stalking, Galia Mancheva, Susanne Eiswirt ignored by FSFE judgment for Matthias Kirschner
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Helping FSFE scam victims and conference organisers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Nigerian fraud in FSFE constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Worrying and Amusing Stories of "Clown Computing" Gone Awry
Many of these disasters could be avoided
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Links 22/10/2025: Amazon Plans to Replace Workers With Robotics, AWS and Clown Computing in General Ridiculed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/10/2025: Niri Completely Changes Multitasking and Overview of Diff-ers
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2025: Study on Misinformation by Slop and Heavily Debt-Sabbled Microsoft OpenAI (ClosedSlop) Uses "Browser" as Gimmick/Distraction
Links for the day
They've Already Spent Close to a Million Dollars on Lawyers and Sent Us About 50 KG of Legal Papers (Sponsored by Mysterious Third Party) to Try to Censor Techrights, Without Success
They try to overcompensate with sheer volume for a lack of solid, clear arguments (we are the victims here)
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)
Sounds Like Fedora is Ready to Become Less of a Slave of Microsoft (GitHub)
This seems like a belated move in a positive direction
XBox is a Dead Microsoft Product in a Dying Industry
It's probable that another wave of XBox layoffs is just over the horizon (maybe even before month's end)
Progress on Techrights Site Search
Fun times
IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Means the Layoffs Are Silent, Barely Reported
Don't wait to hear about "Red Hat layoffs"
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Happy Disconnection, AWS Falling Apart, Closing of Gemlog Blue
Links for the day
Full Audio of Today's Richard Stallman Talk in the Technical University of Munich
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Microsoft XBox is Just Vapourware (Promises of Hardware That Doesn't Exist), Real Products Perish
just as developers lose interest in developing for XBox Microsoft is increasing the costs imposed upon them
Slopwatch: Fake Articles (Slop) in "Linux" Clothing in Google News (Noise)
all about what Google does
Links 21/10/2025: Even "Inventor of Vibe Coding" Rejects Vibe Coding, USPTO Experiments With Slop in Examination
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Talk Now Available for Viewing (Archived Copy, Not Live-streamed)
This recording is over 2 hours old
Links 21/10/2025: AWS-Induced Chaos and Social Control Media Curbs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Programming, StarGrid, Brand-New Palm OS Strategy Game in 2025, and Chatbot as Addiction Mechanisms
Links for the day
The African Lion and the American Cowards
Safaris exist for people to watch and enjoy animals
Amazon Web Shenanigans Perfectly Timed for Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
Maybe listen to him instead of looking for excuses to ridicule the messenger
Mission:Libre Has Taken Off (Project by Carmen Maris)
there will be a lot more to report on next month (after the event)
Techrights to Publish More EPO Leaks Next Week
We're meanwhile also doing lots of work on search, whose interface now looks better
Links 21/10/2025: 'The Lost Art' of Neon Signs and Twitter (X) to Enable Identity Theft (or Handle Theft) as a Service
Links for the day
Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
What a disgrace
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
"The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
Happy hacking
"No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
"No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
Every Morning
Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
very intellectually-dishonest human being
A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Perl also runs the sister site
The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
What has Microsoft Canonical become?
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week
Google News is Now Promoting a Parasitic Slopfarm Called "findarticles.com", Where Plagiarism of "Linux" Articles is Rampant
Does Google even care about the slop epidemic? Google itself is a vendor of slop now (and it calls it "Gemini")
Gemini Links 20/10/2025: Pumpkin Carving, "Hey Hi", and Other Buzzwords
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News Promoting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
What is the value of Google News if so many results in it are fake 'articles?
Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances
Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend
Our Uptime This Year Was Better Than AWS (Also a Lot Cheaper)
We never used "the cloud"
Amazon Web Shenanigans
An ongoing, experimental endeavour
Death of Elias Diem: FSFE mailing list archives hidden
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles