● 05.31.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 31/05/2022: Distrobox 1.3.0 and NVIDIA 515.48.07 Linux Graphics Driver

Posted in News Roundup at 12:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ The cynic’s guide to desktop Linux • The Register

• It is a truth universally acknowledged that all operating systems suck. Some just suck less than others.

• It is also a comment under pretty much every Reg article on Linux that there are too many to choose from and that it’s impossible to know which one to try. So we thought we’d simplify things for you by listing how and in which ways the different options suck.

• This would be an impossibly long list if we looked at all of them since Distrowatch currently lists 270. So we need to thin the herd a bit.

• If you’re interested in a comparison like this, you probably don’t have a favorite already.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA 515.48.07 Linux Graphics Driver Released as First Version with Open-Source Modules

•  As announced earlier this month, NVIDIA 515.48.07 is the first stable version of NVIDIA’s graphics driver for UNIX systems to offer the source code to a variant of the NVIDIA Linux kernel modules. For that, this release adds a new “kernelopen” feature tag to the supported-gpus.json file to indicate the NVIDIA GPUs that are compatible with open-gpu-kernel-modules.

• The new version also brings several enhancements, such as support for the VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf and VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier Vulkan extensions, which requires the loading of the nvidia-drm kernel module with DRM KMS mode setting enabled, improved performance of GLX and Vulkan apps running in Gamescope, and much more.

Applications

=> ↺ Top 15 Best Video Editing Software for Linux System in 2022

• Many of you think that Linux is not a suitable system for video editors. But the fact is not like that. Most people fail to choose the best video editing software for Linux and get disappointed in the end. For sure, it’s not a problem with Linux but the app the editor chose. However, there are many Linux/Ubuntu video editors available out there, and you must get excited once you learn about them. And this content is completely about it.

=> ↺ Rocket.Chat is Switching to Matrix to Enable Cross-App Messaging

•  Rocket.Chat is an excellent open-source messaging (collaboration) platform.

• In fact, it is one of the best open-source Slack alternatives available. We use it as well for internal communication.

• Rocket.Chat is also making good progress compared to some of its open-source competitors. For instance, they teamed up with Nextcloud to provide an alternative to Office 365.

=> ↺ Distrobox 1.3.0: Run (pretty much) any Linux distro under almost any other

• Developer Luca di Maio has released version 1.3.0 of DistroBox, a tool to simplify running different versions of Linux in containers.

• Distrobox is likely to be one of those tools that sounds either great or totally mystifying, depending on the sort of Linux user you are. If you routinely have to work with multiple different distros, you may be in the former group, and DistroBox could save you a fair amount of time and effort.

• The tool is intended to simplify the creation and use of Linux system containers, making it easy to run one distro on top of another without the overhead of virtual machines. If you actively want virtual machines, or you’re more used to them, you might know Vagrant.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How To Install PHP 8 on AlmaLinux 9 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 8 on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language that many devs use for web development. The new PHP 8.1 brings enums, fibers, never return type, final class constants, intersection types, and read-only properties among new features and changes.

• 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 PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

=> ↺ Fedora docs is about to change significantly! Check it out still in statu nascendi.

• In a recent Fedora Magazine article we shared about a new burst of energy regarding the Fedora docs. We already implemented various improvements and worked on a plan to generally improve and update Fedora documentation.

• The latter will lead to far-reaching changes in Fedora documentation and is about to happen now and entail continuous changes over the next approximately 12 months. We present here our analysis, our content concept and our implementation planning. We hope for ideas from the community to further enhance the concept and for support to turn it into reality.

=> ↺ How to Install NVIDIA Drivers on AlmaLinux 9

=> ↺ How to Unpack Files in Linux Terminal

• Linux is a popular operating system that includes various utilities for handling files, including zipping and unzipping files. Some other zip operations are zipcloak, zipdetails, zipsplit and zipinfo, but in this article, we will discuss how to extract data from files (unzip operation). In this article, I have used Ubuntu 22.04, a widely used and popular Linux distribution.

=> ↺ Linux Crash Course – The ping Command – Invidious

• The Linux Crash Course is a tutorial series that goes over all of the core concepts regarding Linux that you’ll need to know, one video at a time. In this episode, the ping command is covered.

=> ↺ What are man pages and why are they important to your Linux education? | ZDNet

• If you’ve had someone tell you to RTFM, depending on what software you are using, that manual might be a challenge to find. On Linux, however, you’ll find hundreds upon hundreds of manuals ready to view. Jack Wallen explains.

=> ↺ LibreOffice Calc Basics IV: LEFT, MID, RIGHT

• This tutorial continues Calc Basics III now with LEFT, MID, and RIGHT formulas. By practicing this, you will be able to cut some text by number of characters to help you, for example, get first, middle and last names of students. Like usual, if you haven’t followed this LibreOffice Calc series, read the first and second parts here. Let’s start!

=> ↺ How To Upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 LTS via Command Lines Made Simple

• This simple tutorial explains how to upgrade Ubuntu computer from 20.04 to 22.04 LTS using command lines in four steps. The benefit of upgrading is that you do not need to reinstall or reformat Ubuntu disk partition while keeping all installed applications intact. However, please note that this requires a lot of time. So prepare the requirements, be ready, and happy upgrading!

=> ↺ How to Install Node.js and npm on Ubuntu 22.04

• Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment built on Chrome’s JavaScript, designed to execute JavaScript code outside a web browser. It is generally used to build fast and scalable server-side and networking applications. npm is the default package manager for Node.js and also the name of the world’s largest software registry.

=> ↺ How to install vim editor on Rocky Linux 8 – VITUX

• Vim is a text editor used for effective text editing and is also known as an editor for programmers. It is a free open-source tool that supports many programming languages and is available with both a graphical user interface and a command-line interface. Vim is used for editing the source code of large files and offers several functions with different plugins. It is used for editing configuration files and consumes very little system resources.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install the Vim editor on RHEL-based Linux Distributions like AlmaLinux 8, CentOS 8, and Rocky Linux 8 using the terminal.

=> ↺ How To Use Handlers In Ansible Playbooks – OSTechNix

• Handlers are just like regular tasks in ansible that only run when notified. Handlers are a very useful as well as important concept in Ansible.

=> ↺ How To Install OnlyOffice on Ubuntu

• This tutorial will guide you through installation of OnlyOffice version 7 and later on Ubuntu Desktop. OnlyOffice is a GNU AGPL licensed, alternative to LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, which is full featured, beautiful looking and cross-platform. We will install it on Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” on this exercise.

=> ↺ .netrc pains | daniel.haxx.se

• The .netrc file is used to hold user names and passwords for specific host names and allows tools to login to those systems automatically without having to prompt the user for the credentials while avoiding having to use them in command lines. The .netrc file is typically set without group or world read permissions (0600) to reduce the risk of leaking those secrets.

=> ↺ Linux network services: How to start, stop, and check their status | Enable Sysadmin

• A service (also called a daemon process) is software that runs on a computer, generally in the background. This is usually because it’s something that the administrator isn’t likely to interact with directly.

=> ↺ How to Install Latest Git on Ubuntu 22.04

• Git is the most popular version control system. It is designed to handle small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system.

• An older version of the Git client is also available under the default Apt repositories. The latest versions come with multiple enhancements and security updates. So, we always recommend using the latest Git client for the security of valuable and hard work.

• This article will guide you to install the latest Git client on Ubuntu 22.04 Linux system via PPA.

=> ↺ How to Install EPEL Repository in RHEL 9 Linux

• Installing the EPEL repository is one of the most recommended steps after you install RHEL 9. To make things easy for you, we are not just going to show you installation steps but rather we are going to explain what is EPEL, what makes it so special, and how you can use EPEL to install packages.

=> ↺ How to Install LXQt Desktop on Alpine Linux

• Based on Qt, LXQt is an open-source and minimalistic desktop environment for all major Linux and BSD systems. LXQt is an implementation of Razor-Qt, a discontinued desktop environment, and LXDE. the latter is based on GTK while the former was based on Qt.

• LXQt is a lightweight desktop environment popular for its low resource utilization and is, hence, recommended for old PCs or systems with low computing specifications. In fact, LxQt is said to only use up to 95 MB of RAM while Openbox, its default window manager, uses only 78 MB of RAM.

• In this guide, you will learn how to install the LXQt desktop environment on Alpine Linux.

=> ↺ How to Install Openbox GUI on Alpine Linux

• Openbox is an open-source, lightweight and highly configurable window manager that is the standard windows manager for LXDE and LXQt desktop environments. It is highly configurable and allows you to make multiple tweaks that determine how you interact with your desktop environment.

• In this guide, you will learn how to install Openbox desktop environment on Alpine Linux.

=> ↺ Install Firefox 101 On Ubuntu / Linux Mint / Alma Linux & Fedora | Tips On UNIX

• This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to download and install Firefox 101 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04, LinuxMint 20.3, Rocky Linux 8, Alma Linux 9, and Fedora 36.

• Firefox is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is a cross-platform browser and is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

=> ↺ Configuring Apache Solr to Accessible on Public IP – TecAdmin

• Apache Solr is a highly reliable search platform written in Java and developed by Apache Foundation. That provides production-level features like distributed indexing, replication, load-balanced querying, automated failover, and recovery.

• The default Apache Solr runs on localhost only. It doesn’t allow users to access it over the network. In this tutorial, we will learn how to change configure the Apache server to listen on a LAN network or the public network.

=> ↺ 5 different ways to count the number of lines from a file

• While working on a file, you may be required to count the number of lines, or else you want to know how many lines have been written to a specific text file. So to find it, you will see five different ways to count the number of lines in a Linux, which will be very easy to use.

• Before proceeding ahead, let me create a dummy file that will hold a number of new lines of data to test out the command capability.

Games

=> ↺ Linux gaming demo on Dragon Canyon Intel NUC – Geeky Gadgets

• If you are interested in learning more about how the latest Intel NUC from Simply NUC will perform when tackling Linux gaming, your be pleased to know that YouTuber ETA Prime has created a demonstration video showing just how good Linux gaming has become in recent years.

• The Dragon Canyon Intel NUC is powered by a 14 Core 24 Thread i9 12900 CPU and backed by An EVGA RTX 3080 and has been loaded with Manjaar Linux and games have been played using Steam Play / Proton with amazing results. Handling emulation like RPCS3 for PS3 and Orginal XBOPX using XEMU with ease.

• “Overpower the competition in the greatest games and experiences with the all-new Dragon Canyon, powered by Intel’s latest 12th Gen Core i9-12900 processor. Implementing an LGA1700 CPU socket makes Dragon Canyon the first ever Intel NUC to support a socketed Desktop CPU, giving you scorching performance in an 8L Chassis that can span processor generations. Supporting up to three Gen4 PCIe Drives and 64GB of 3200MHz RAM, alongside a full-length GPU in its Gen5 x16 PCIe slot, Dragon Canyon is the new industry leader in small form factor gaming.

Desktop Environments/WMs

=> ↺ GSoC 22 – The First Blog Post

• I’m really looking forward to this summer, since my project proposal for this year’s Google Summer of Code has been selected! I’ll be working on adding features to Thunar file manager, an XFCE application, with the help of my mentor Alexander Schwinn.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Jonas Dreßler: Towards GNOME Shell on mobile

• One of the main things we want to unlock with this project is the fully semantic two-dimensional navigation gestures we’ve been working towards since GNOME 40. This required reworking gesture recognition at a fairly basic level, which is why most of the work so far has been focused around unlocking this. We introduced a new gesture tracker and had to rewrite a fair amount of the input handling fundamentals in Clutter.

• Designing a good API around this took a lot of iterations and there’s a lot of interesting details to get into, but we’ll cover that in a separate deep-dive blogpost about touch gesture recognition in the near future.

• Based on the gesture tracking rework, we were able to implement two-dimensional gestures and to improve the experience on touchscreens quite a bit in general. For example, the on-screen keyboard now behaves a lot more like you’re used to from your smartphone.

=> ↺ Ooh, GNOME Shell on Mobile is Shaping Up Nicely – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Dream of using GNOME Shell on your smartphone? Well, the reality is much closer than you think!

• Of course, if you’re familiar with Linux phone development you will should of heard of (and maybe even tried) Phosh by now. This is a mobile UI associated with the GNOME project but initially spearheaded by Purism (with design by Tobias Bernard) that uses core GTK technologies and comes with a UI inspired by GNOME Shell.

• Now work on making this the “real deal” is picking up pace.

=> ↺ Afshan Ahmed Khan: Beginning Outreachy journey with Gnome

• I am currently in the third year of my integrated Master’s Program at a tier-3 college in Indore, India. I am a technophile since childhood and in those days , I once installed kali-linux in vm (as google searches always show it was easy to hack neighbour’s wifi with kali-linux 🤣 and cellular internet was expensive back then) but to my surprise the kali-linux looked very complex, then I again google searched and one advice got fix in my mind and that was “Kali linux is complex , start with a simple linux distro (ubuntu) and use it instead of windows” (A simple way to learn a tech thing is to use it). So When I entered college, one thing I was determined at … and that was using Linux. I installed ubuntu Linux and loved the way it was beautiful and responsive, just one click and the application gets open immediately. Later I come to know that GUI which I am looking at and experiencing is actually gnome desktop.

=> ↺ Ignacy Kuchciński: GSoC 2022: Introduction

• My name is Ignacy Kuchciński and I’m studying computer science at UMCS in Lublin, Poland. I’ve been making minor contributions to GNOME over the past few years, and among the projects I was looking into was GNOME Files, a.k.a Nautilus. I learned about GSoC in #nautilus irc chat room as I observed the effort to port nautilus properties dialog to use GtkBuilder, and I really liked the idea of it – have a chance to make a more significant contribution and be a part of an awesome community on a deeper level. Fast-forward two years, I’ve applied to Nautilus for GSoC’22 and got accepted to help revamp the “New Document” submenu – an adventure I’m very excited to undertake.

=> ↺ Aman Kumar: Beginning my GSoC’22 journey with GNOME

• It was the late night of the 20th of May. My eyes were glued to the email, waiting for the results of the GSoC’22 when I finally received an email that started with a Congratulations message rather than a Thank You for applying message. I was overjoyed when I read the message “Congratulations, your proposal with GNOME Foundation has been accepted!”. This post describes my GSoC project and my journey so far with the GSoC, GNOME Foundation, and Open Source.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Improving images for Welcome page

• The first image, showing the desktop, with superimposed text, is a problem, as there are three factors that affect how it looks, whether there is support for containers, top-level zram, and language.

Reviews

=> ↺ Titan Linux Beta Brings Simplicity, Finesse to KDE Remake | LinuxInsider

• Titan Linux is not an operating system that casual Linux users — especially new adopters — should install on their primary or only computer. But seasoned Linux distribution hoppers looking for a pleasant new Linux experience should not pass up the new offering.

• Titan is a new distro built on the Debian Stable branch. Developers first announced its arrival on April 24. It is a very early beta release, so it is mostly bare bones. Still, it is surprisingly very stable given this phase of its development.

• I looked at version 1.2 and found very few things on which to harp about its performance. The new distro’s two-person developer team has a growing community of testers for such a new project; about 60 at last count.

• Typically, such small start-up teams cannot sustain forward progress and often fall by the Linux distro wayside. But I am impressed so far with this team’s accomplishments.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ What is openSUSE and who is it for?

• If you’re looking for a new Linux distribution, you might come across openSUSE. What is this flavor of Linux and is it right for you? Jack Wallen has the answers.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ RHEL 9 syslog-ng news – Blog – syslog-ng Community – syslog-ng Community

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 became generally available recently. Version 3.35 of syslog-ng has been part of EPEL 9 (the semi-official extra software repo for RHEL maintained by Fedora packagers) for a while and now I enabled a few more destination drivers. I also enabled RHEL 9 support in my unofficial Git snapshot packages, so I can support RHEL 9 together with other RHEL and Fedora versions on the next syslog-ng release.

=> ↺ What IT leaders should look for in cloud managed services

• A technologist might feel like a kid in a candy store in today’s cloud environments, but that doesn’t mean they should shop like one.

• Pick virtually any platform, however, and the temptation to do so is real. There’s a lot to choose from, and an IT pro’s geek mode can go into overdrive.

• Cloud managed services – whether a cloud database, a fully managed container platform, or simply managed infrastructure – streamline things a bit. There’s less picking and choosing to do because by definition, the cloud provider is taking at least some of that off of your plate with a more turnkey solution.

=> ↺ 4 takeaways for CIOs from the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium

• Last week saw a return to a partly in-person MIT Sloan CIO Symposium event. As usual, there was a wealth of insights from senior IT leaders – some related to ongoing trends, others to new or at least accelerated ones.

=> ↺ Integrate a Spring Boot application with Red Hat Data Grid

• Red Hat Data Grid is a middleware solution that has been developed for application cache data storage. It makes it possible to access and process in-memory data, improving the end-user experience.

• This article offers guidance for Spring Boot and Red Hat Data Grid integration on version 4.9 of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. You will set up a Red Hat Data Grid 8.2 cluster and deploy a Spring Boot application with separate namespaces to use Hot Rod communication between them.

=> ↺ IT leadership: 3 ways to ease the pressure on development teams

• In a world where reinforcements may not be arriving anytime soon, how can IT leaders help prevent team burnout while also enabling them to focus on projects that bring the highest value to their organizations?

• Treat your developers’ time like any other critical company asset – because that’s exactly what it is. To preserve this asset, recognize that you might need to change or adjust some normal protocols. Consider how you might shift priorities, restructure teams, and introduce new tools to lighten your software team’s workload.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ New Banana Pi BPI-CM4 compute module unveiled

• A new compute module has been unveiled by the engineers at Banana Pi, who have released the few renderings of the new BPI-CM4 compute module board to compete with the likes of the Raspberry Pi CM4. Designed as a specific replacement to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, the small form factor mini PC features plenty of power and features a Quad core Arm Cortex-A73 and dual core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU compared to the RPi CM4 which features a BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 (Arm v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz.

• Graphical power is provided by an Arm G52 MP4(6EE) GPU on the Banana Pi BPI-CM4 compared to a Broadcom VideoCore VI on the Pi. The BPI-CM4 is available with either two or 4 GB of RAM and storage is available from 16 to 120 GB of eMMC. Other features of the Banana Pi BPI-CM4 compute module include 1 x 4K HDMI output (via carrier board), Wi-Fi 5 and 6 options, Gigabit ethernet via the carrier board and One interface expansion via carrier board.

=> ↺ Lichee RV-86 RISC-V Linux 4-inch panel targets home automation, HMI applications

•  When Sipeed first introduced the Lichee RV module with Allwinner D1 RISC-V SoC last November, they also teased the Lichee RV-86, an “86 Box” with a 4-inch 480×480 touchscreen display, an XR829 WiFi and Bluetooth module, Ethernet (via USB), two microphones, a GPIO header, and support for WAFT (WebAssembly Framework for Things).

• I’ve just noticed the Lichee RV-86 has been for sale for several months, so it may be interesting to have a closer look, and now there’s also an option to get a 720×720 touchscreen display.

=> ↺ Linux gaming demo on Dragon Canyon Intel NUC

•  If you are interested in learning more about how the latest Intel NUC from Simply NUC will perform when tackling Linux gaming, your be pleased to know that YouTuber ETA Prime has created a demonstration video showing just how good Linux gaming has become in recent years.

• The Dragon Canyon Intel NUC is powered by a 14 Core 24 Thread i9 12900 CPU and backed by An EVGA RTX 3080 and has been loaded with Manjaar Linux and games have been played using Steam Play / Proton with amazing results. Handling emulation like RPCS3 for PS3 and Orginal XBOPX using XEMU with ease.

=> ↺ ARIES Embedded unveils OSM modules based on Renesas Arm or RISC-V microprocessor

•  In another case of “Arm or RISC-V? Why not both“, ARIES Embedded has introduced “MSRZG2UL” and “MSRZFive” OSM compliant system-in-packages (SIPs) based on respectively Renesas RZ/G2UL Arm Cortex-A55/Cortex-M33 and RZ/Five AX45MP RISC-V microprocessors and designed for industrial controllers, IoT devices, and embedded systems with a basic GUI.

• Both solder-on modules come in the OSM Size S form factor (30x30mm), 512MB to 4GB of DDR4 RAM, a 4GB eMMC NAND flash, various interfaces including Gigabit Ethernet and CAN-FD, and are available in either commercial (-0°C to +70°C) or industrial (-40°C to +85°C) temperature ranges.

=> ↺ 4K USB AI camera is powered by Rockchip RV1126 SoC with 2.0 TOPS NPU

•  ThinkCore TC-RV1126 is a USB AI camera powered by Rockchip RV1126 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor with a 2.0 TOPS NPU and equipped with a Sony Starvis IMX415 CMOS image sensor with 4K resolution (3840 x 2160).

• The Linux-powered camera module features a USB Type-C port compatible with UVC & UAC protocols so that it can work without drivers on Windows, Android, Linux, Mac OS, and most other operating systems with a USB stack.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Sketch the current time with this Magna Doodle clock | Arduino Blog

• The Magna Doodle is a classic children’s toy that works by embedding a layer of iron shavings just below the surface of a canvas and then using a magnetic pen to pull them up, thus showing whatever lines might have been drawn. Steve Turner had the idea to automate this drawing process by converting his Magna Doodle into a clock for displaying the current time in almost any TrueType font.

• To begin, Turner created a simple wooden frame with several cut slots for its three NEMA17 stepper motors, the electronics housing, and the Magna Doodle itself. At the bottom of the frame sits a timing belt loop that, when pulled in one direction by the stepper motor’s pulley, drags the erasing head in order to reset the canvas for the next drawing cycle. Meanwhile, the top has a pair of stepper motors arranged in a SCARA design, which uses a couple of arms joined at a single point to move the magnetic head over the area.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Realme 9i enters Android 12 early access program – Gizchina.com

=> ↺ OnePlus Nord 2 is now receiving the stable update to Android 12 – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ Nokia G50 5G receiving a new Android 12 Build now – Nokiapoweruser

=> ↺ Onyx BOOX Note Air2 Plus E Ink Android 11 tablet – Geeky Gadgets

=> ↺ Android Auto on phones reaches the end of the road… it’s time to let it go | T3

=> ↺ How To Connect PS5 Controller To Android Smartphone?

=> ↺ YouTube Music gets a new settings layout for Android tablets

=> ↺ [Working] 3 Ways to Magnify or Zoom Android Phone Screen

=> ↺ This hidden Android phone Wi-Fi sharing trick makes passwords a thing of the past | TechRadar

=> ↺ How to use an Android phone as a Bluetooth mouse with a PC or laptop | Business Insider India

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Volunteers organise ‘Public Money? Public code!’ tour in Italy

• Code paid by the people should be available to the people! Volunteers will present the ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ campaign in Trento, Bologna, and Caltanissetta. If you live in Italy, now you have a perfect chance to learn more about the initiative and support it.

• We want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well. More than 30.000 people and 200 organisations adopt this position. Public administrations that use Free Software do not have to reinvent the wheel in programming similar applications, so they can share costs and save taxpayers’ money. The use of Free Software serves the public and promotes innovation too, as users can utilise the code found in the public digital infrastructure. The FSFE explains the benefits of Free Software and shares best practices in the dedicated ‘Public Money? Public Code!’ brochure for public administrations. Volunteers translated the brochure into Italian.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: temBoard 7.11 : performance and reliability

• A new maintainance version of temBoard 7 has landed. This 7.11 release improves reliability and performances.

• temBoard is a monitoring and administration tool for PostgreSQL instances fleet. Its non-intrusive design eases deployment without weakening your PostgreSQL instance. temBoard alerts you, allows you to handle locks, bloat, configuration and more – remotely.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Top Free and Open Source Scala Web Frameworks

•  One of the types of software that’s important for a web developer is the web framework. A framework “is a code library that makes a developer’s life easier when building reliable, scalable, and maintainable web applications” by providing reusable code or extensions for common operations. By saving development time, developers can concentrate on application logic rather than mundane elements.

• A web framework offers the developer a choice about how to solve a specific problem. By using a framework, a developer lets the framework control portions of their application. While it’s perfectly possible to code a web application without using a framework, it’s more practical to use one.

=> ↺ Decommissioning an old project feels odd

• I recently finished decommissioning an old project of ours: CentOS Stream 8 source-git repositories.

• It was one of the weirdest tasks I have done in my career.

• Why?

• Removing, not adding My main task was to remove ~1500 git repositories that almost no one used for more than 12 months.

• That wasn’t my typical assignment. I am used to work on new features, resolving problems, getting feedback; not removing content. That felt just weird to me. I had to constantly remind myself I am doing the right thing and that’s what we decided to complete.

• [...]

• I am glad we can now fully focus on our current future goal: having source-git workflow available in Fedora Linux and CentOS Stream 9. Source-git repos for Stream 8 didn’t work because of the nature of its relationship with RHEL 8. With Stream 9 we can focus on the endgame, not just some temporary solution.

=> ↺ Compiling QML to C++: Avoiding duck typing

• This is the fourth installment in the series of blog posts on how to adjust your QML application to make the most of qmlsc. In the first post we’ve set up the environment. You should read that post first in order to understand the others. In the second post I’ve shown how to add type annotations to JavaScript functions. In the third post I’ve shown how to navigate around various pitfalls you may find when making types visible at compile time.

=> ↺ How dynamic linking for modular libraries works on Linux | Opensource.com

• Ultimately, these files must be compiled into a single executable. You can do this by creating either static or dynamic libraries (the latter are also referred to as shared libraries). These two types of libraries vary in how they are created and linked. Both have advantages and disadvantages, depending on your use case.

• Dynamic linking is the most common method, especially on Linux systems. Dynamic linking keeps libraries modular, so just one library can be shared between any number of applications. Modularity also allows a shared library to be updated independently of the applications that rely upon it.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Perl Weekly Challenge 167: Circular Primes

• These are some answers to the Week 167 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ 2022-05-31 – Hafnium Paging Protocol (HFNP) and quasidomain system updates

• It’s been a week or so of hard work and thinking to make the renewed version of the protocol possible! I thank so much everyone who took the trouble to check it out and gave feedback. Your feedback has been valuable and actually it made me do some big changes, particularily, in how the quasidomain idea works. So, thank you!

Leftovers

=> ↺ Practical Wireless “Tele-Tennis” Build After Only 34 Years

• Back in November 1974 the publication “Practical Wireless” produced a five-part article series showing the reader how to construct a version of the popular “pong” game that could be played on the television screen available in the typical British home. [Grant Searle] had wanted to build this project for years, but it took him until 2008 to find the opportunity to do so. The magazine article printed PCB layouts to 1:1 scale, with a bill of materials and assembly instructions. After each month, the reader would have an assembled the project a little more, with the final month dedicated to point-to-point wiring and final setup. Subsequent months contained some enhancements such as a scoring system and sound effects, but these are not yet part of the main build. In order to understand the build, you will need to download the PDF copy of the magazines prints. (And if you’re an electronics nerd like this scribe, you’ve already done that right?)

=> ↺ Candids

• During the first Covid lockdown, I, like so many other people, took to wandering my neighborhood alone, observing details that I might otherwise have glossed over. Perfectly black irises in an otherwise colorful garden; street graffiti declaring “Black Lives Matter”; a root shoving up from beneath the sidewalk; the house down the street with seven-foot-long wooden dinosaur skeletons in the front yard; handmade posters stapled to telephone poles demanding that the state “Cancel Rent.” I took pictures of my shoes next to cracks in the sidewalk, fallen flowers, and, later, autumn leaves—and I took lots of pictures of myself, of course. I sent them to friends by text and WhatsApp or posted them to Instagram, where we all filled our grids with strangely empty cityscapes and wilderness. Did we record these images for ourselves or for the friends we were no longer able to see? Did we post them to feel connected or just to remember that we were still alive?

=> ↺ Domino Row Goes With The Flow

• Around here, we’re always excited about a new actuator design. Linear actuators are particularly hard to make cheap, fast, and good, so it’s even better when something new that we can build ourselves slides onto the scene.

=> ↺ 1st Decan of Gemini

• I’ve started working a new job and am absolutely exhausted because of it. I’m often too tired even to read! But things should lighten up in a week or two. One welcome side effect of working so much is sleeping more heavily.

Hardware

=> ↺ An MP3 Player That Gives Off Nintendo Vibez

• We’re definitely pretty fond of the DIY MP3 players here at Hackaday, but we don’t think we’ve seen one like CartridgeMP3 from [jpet26] before.

=> ↺ 3D Printing A Water-Cooled Jet Engine?

• Everybody knows the trick to holding a candle flame to a balloon without it bursting — that of adding a little water before the air to absorb the heat from the relatively cool flame. So [Integza], in his quest to 3D print a jet engine wondered if the same principle could applied to a 3D printed combustion chamber. First things first, the little puddle of water was replaced with a pumped flow, from an external reservoir, giving the thin plastic inner surface at least a vague chance of survival. Whilst this whole plan might seem pretty bonkers (although we admit, not so much if you’ve seen any of other videos in the channel lately) the idea has some merit. Liquid cooling the combustion jacket is used in a great many rocket engine designs, we note, the German WWII V2 rocket used this idea with great success, along with many others. After all, some materials will only soften and become structurally weak if they get hot enough in any spot, so if it is sufficiently conductive, then the excess heat can be removed from the outer surface and keep the surface temperature within sensible bounds. Since resin is a thermoset plastic, and will burn, rather than melt, this behaviour will be different, but not necessarily better for this application.

=> ↺ Can You Build An Industrial Grade CNC With Only DIY Resources?

• [FloweringElbow] aka [Bongo] on YouTube is certainly having a go at this, and we reckon he’s onto a winner! This epic flatbed CNC build (video, embedded below) starts with some second hand structural I-beam, with welded-on I-beam legs, DIY cast aluminium side plates and plenty of concrete to give a strong and importantly, heavy structure.

=> ↺ VMware customers have watched Broadcom’s acquisitions and don’t like what they see

• VMware customers have seen companies acquired by Broadcom Software emerge with lower profiles, slower innovation, and higher prices – a combination that makes them nervous about the virtualization giant’s future.

• The Register offers that assessment after spending the day at a VMware user group conference in Melbourne, Australia, where we interviewed over a dozen VMware customers to ascertain their reaction to Broadcom’s surprise acquisition of the virtualisation giant. The customers all requested that The Register not use their names, or those of their employers, as none were authorized to speak to the media.

• One of those customers was a sysadmin at a sporting organisation that has decided to drop Symantec products because product evolution has slowed under Broadcom’s ownership. The sysadmin has also heard, from multiple sources including Broadcom partners, that the company uses price hikes to discourage customers it does not want.

=> ↺ Frontier Supercomputer Breaks Exascale Barrier

• The Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the United States has moved to the No. 1 spot on the TOP500 list of supercomputers. “With an exact HPL score of 1.102 Exaflop/s, Frontier is not only the most powerful supercomputer to ever exist – it’s also the first true exascale machine,” according to the announcement.

• Frontier is an HPE Cray EX system with 8,730,112 cores. It is currently being integrated and tested at ORNL, where it will be operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Coronavirus Cases Are Being Undercounted. What Should You Do? – The Atlantic

• The numbers do still have some use, even if they’re less illuminating than before.

Linux Foundation

=> ↺ Where My Journey Started and Where It’s Going

=> ↺ a lot of unethical things

=> ↺ hopes to be saved by political pandering

• Watching a recent TV show “Pachinko,” I was truly impressed by how the directors used screen arts and music. Based on the New York Times bestseller, this show chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive. It was relatable and magical and wonderful to see how they focused on how three generations of a family dealt with biggest challenges of their times. After watching the first season, I couldn’t help thinking about my parents and my own family here in U.S.

=> ↺ Google Cloud, Société Générale, American Express, Point72, Mirantis, and The Digital Dollar Project Join FINOS, as Open Source Collaboration Becomes Increasingly Critical Across the Global Financial Ecosystem

Security

=> ↺ Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2022 – Schneier on Security

• Today is the second day of the fifteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, hosted by Ross Anderson and Alice Hutchings at the University of Cambridge. After two years of having this conference remotely on Zoom, it’s nice to be back together in person.

• SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, Alice Hutchings, and myself. The forty or so attendees include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, geographers, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.

=> ↺ Looking inside sudo shell sessions: auditd, session recordings, log_subcmds

• There are situations where you cannot avoid giving a user full shell access through sudo. A shell with administrative privileges gives complete control over your hosts. Until recently, sudo could only log the start of the shell, not the commands executed within it. You could record sessions with sudo, but watching recordings is boring, time consuming and can still be subverted. Version 1.9.8 introduced logging of sub-commands, but that is not yet available on many systems. An alternate approach is to use auditd to log commands started from a root shell.

• From this blog you will learn how to use auditd to log commands from a sudo-run root shell, why it is better to use the sub-command logging built into recent sudo releases, and why you should still record sessions with sudo.

=> ↺ Is your Go application FIPS compliant?

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ships with several Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)-validated cryptography libraries, including OpenSSL. This allows applications that use these libraries to operate in FIPS mode, which means that the cryptographic techniques they use can are in compliance with the FIPS-140-2 standard. Any organization that works with the U.S. Federal government must comply with this standard.

• By default, applications written in Go use cryptographic functions from the Go standard library, which is not FIPS-validated. However, the version of Go shipped in RHEL is based on upstream Go’s dev.boringcrypto branch, which is modified to use BoringSSL for crypto primitives. Modifications made in the RHEL version replace BoringSSL with OpenSSL. These modifications allow applications written with RHEL’s Go to use crypto functions from a FIPS-validated version of OpenSSL. This article will show you how to verify that your system, including your installation of the Go language, is capable of operating in FIPS mode.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Katalin Novák: We demand an investigation of all war crimes in Ukraine

=> ↺ [rewind] Ron Kovic and Maj. Danny Sjursen: The Great Con of American Patriotism

• The two veterans trace the United States’ violent trajectory since the Vietnam War.

=> ↺ Memories of a Sai Gon Orphanage

• Though opposed to the Viet Nam war, I went through ROTC in college. Between our junior and senior years, cadets filled out a “dream sheet” to request our branch of service, any special training we wanted, and where we would like to be assigned. Long tours were 2 or more years, and short tours were 12 months. At that time there were only 2 short tours—South Korea and Viet Nam. I requested Infantry, Airborne and Ranger training. For both my long and short tour, I listed Viet Nam. My reasoning, in part, was I owed a debt to my nation even if I didn’tbelieve in the war. Also, fighting in it was the best way to determine whether it was right or wrong. When I returned and spoke against the war, my time in combat gave me a certain moral authority the war mongers could not challenge by accusing me of cowardice.

• Upon completion of my training, I was assigned for a few months to the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and then went to Viet Nam where I had the honor of serving as an advisor to an infantry company of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) Airborne Division. At the time I was there (1969-1970), the ARVN Airborne Division was on a joint mission with the U.S. First Cavalry Division, one of the better U.S. divisions in the Nam. We operated northwest of Sai Gon near the Cambodian border, seeking out North Viet Namese units crossing into South Viet Nam through Cambodia.

=> ↺ Say Their Names: Buffalo Mass Shooting

=> ↺ Caitlin Johnstone: WaPo’s Glimpse of the Battlefield

• Contrary to widespread triumphant Western narratives, this reporting describes Ukrainian troops surviving on one potato per day and deserting their posts.

=> ↺ President Biden’s Trip to Asia

• President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Asia and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s May 26 speech on China were both meant to communicate the same message: Although determined to help the Ukrainians resist Russian aggression in Europe, the administration remains equally committed to curbing China’s rise in Asia. “Even as President Putin’s war continues,” Blinken declared, “we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order—and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China.” Determined to demonstrate toughness and leadership in the struggle to subdue Beijing, as it is in the struggle to subdue Moscow, the administration is working to encircle China with an unbreakable chain of military bases and US–armed allies—a strategy that is bound to encounter opposition from some regional actors and could result in a major, even a nuclear, war.

=> ↺ Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter on Ukraine, Russia, China

• Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern discuss China relations with Taiwan and the US, the lemming-like bloc heads now leading the NATO bloc, and Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Google: Saudi project raises dissent among shareholders over Gulf cloud plans

• Google shareholders will push the tech giant this week to explain how it will protect digital rights as it launches a major project in Saudi Arabia which has a track record of spying on its critics.

• A vote on the shareholder resolution, scheduled for Wednesday, is unlikely to pass because co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and former CEO Eric Schmidt control a majority of shareholder votes in Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

• But digital rights advocates say it is a first-of-its-kind push from investors that could influence shareholders in other tech companies with cloud services in the Gulf and beyond to be more transparent about how they deal with human rights risks on specific projects.

• “The entire point of it is to send out a beacon that signals that shareholders care about fundamental human rights issues,” said Jan Rydzak, investor engagement manager with Washington, DC-based Ranking Digital Rights.

Finance

=> ↺ Hedges: How to Defeat the Billionaire Class

• Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and the Socialist Alternative (SA) party have, for nearly a decade, waged one of the most effective battles against the city’s moneyed elites. She and the SA have adopted a series of unorthodox methods to fight the ruling oligarchs and, in that confrontation, exposed the Democratic Party leadership as craven tools of the billionaire class. Her success is one that should be closely studied and replicated in city after city if we are to dismantle corporate tyranny.

=> ↺ Cancel Student Loan Debt. Bail Out Regular People.

• Robert P. Alvarez explains how even writing off every penny of student debt would cost less than Trump’s tax giveaways for corporations and the rich.

=> ↺ Inconveniencing Myself and Reducing Consumption

• As people are overworked and seek greater and greater degrees of ‘productivity’ there’s an ever-greater need for ‘lifehacks’ and conveniences to make life bearable. For folk that are overworked, convenience defines many people’s work, social and ‘free time.’ Smart phones enable this to a large degree. Other conveniences are the US food delivery ecosystem; personal transportation via app; meal delivery ‘kits’; Zooming versus meeting in-person; texting vs talking; dog walking via service workers; robot food delivery; ordering via touchscreen; fast food (bowls) versus cooking at home. This list could obviously go on and on.

=> ↺ Following the money

• One thing that has long baffled me about our ongoing global clusterfuck has been the push to just pretend that it’s not happening. Who benefits financially from that? I think the answer is, commercial landlords and hotel financiers.

• Backing up:

• I don’t think that the dropping of all mitigation measures happened just because “people” are “over it”. I don’t think it’s some spontaneous groundswell. People have been given permission to say they’re “over it”, by misinformation campaigns that have been inflicted upon them.

• Random individuals may be driven by infantile short-sightedness, but they are being encouraged in this by businesses, governments and state actors; they are being given cover to just pretend that it’s not happening. Businesses are legendarily short-sighted, rarely able to see past the end of the quarter, but more than two years into this, shouldn’t they have seen some patterns emerge? Even from the point of view of Capitalism Red in Tooth and Claw, how is it in their interest to have their employees dying by the thousands? To have them become saddled with life-long disabilities that will impact work and jack up the companies’ own insurance costs for decades to come?

• [...]

• If a CEO wanted their employees back in the office for whatever reason (they think they’re more productive, more controllable, whatever) they would just DO it. they don’t need permission. They don’t need the mayor campaigning for it. It’s literally their call, and theirs alone. So why is the mayor campaigning for this? On whose behalf? We know it’s not the CEOs, those are the targets of the campaign.

• Part of the party line on this has been about the financial pain suffered by other downtown businesses, so is this on behalf of the hot dog cart on the corner? The food truck, the pizzeria, the upscale lunchtime businessman steakhouse?

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Roe vs. Wade, and the “Pro-Choice” State of California – The Project Censored Show

• Notes: Jessica Pinckney is Executive Director of Access Reproductive Justice, a California organization that advocates for choice, and also provides support services for women seeking an abortion.

=> ↺ After Which Failed Pregnancy Should I Have Been Imprisoned? Rep. Lucy McBath on Reproductive Rights

• During a recent meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressmember Lucy McBath of Georgia shared her personal story about accessing reproductive care after experiencing a stillbirth. In doing so, she pointed out how anti-abortion politicians and legislators fail to see the medical necessity of abortion in instances such as hers. “We can be the nation that rolls back the clock, that rolls back the rights of women, and that strips them of their very liberty, or we can be the nation of choice, the nation where every woman can make her own choice,” says McBath.

=> ↺ “Policing the Womb”: Law Professor Michele Goodwin on SCOTUS, Anti-Abortion Laws & the New Jane Crow

• As the Supreme Court appears poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, we speak with law professor Michele Goodwin, author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.” She describes how the U.S. has historically endangered and denied essential health services to Black and Brown women, and calls new abortion restrictions “the new Jane Crow,” warning that they will further criminalize reproductive health and encourage medical professionals to breach their patients’ confidentiality and report self-administered abortions to law enforcement.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Antitrust Experts Critique Antitrust Bills Promoting Other Interests – Disruptive Competition Project

• In recent panels and opinion editorials, leading competition economists, antitrust enforcers, and antitrust lawyers criticized recent antitrust bills, such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), that de-prioritize the consumer welfare standard and economic analysis. Competition economists and antitrust lawyers have particularly criticized recent antitrust proposals that attempt to use antitrust as a Swiss Army Knife policy tool to address policy priorities outside the scope of competition policy, like reducing income inequality or protecting organized labor, instead of maximizing consumer welfare, competition policy’s primary concern. While these other policy priorities reflect legitimate interests, antitrust bills are not the appropriate solution and competition policy is not the appropriate arena. Instead, these bills are only harming what antitrust has tried to achieve. The competition experts included in this article have studied and influenced antitrust policy and enforcement for decades. They are adamant that the current bills are reminiscent of a troubling policy landscape from decades ago, and will lead to harmful effects, like increased inflation, hindered innovation, and disorganized legislation policy.

• Joshua Wright, the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute and a Professor at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, discussed how antitrust activists are hoping to bring back ideas “that will exacerbate inflation in healthcare, groceries, consumer products and beyond.” He noted that antitrust laws were created to protect competition, and “competition benefits society – and consumers – by spurring innovation, improving quality, and lowering prices.” While companies may rise and fall, the competitive process ensures American consumers benefit. Which is why antitrust protects consumers from mergers or other business. However, more and more U.S. antitrust laws are attempting to “promote other interests like protecting less efficient competitors and organized labor and reducing income inequality,” which are not issues best solved through antitrust.

Copyrights

=> ↺ ‘App Stores Should Screen Developers and Apps to Prevent Piracy’

• The U.S. Government wants to know what challenges and barriers exist in the mobile app ecosystem. While piracy is not at the center of this inquiry, the Copyright Alliance suggests that screening apps and developers will be helpful. Apple, meanwhile, stresses that “piracy” is one of the reasons why sideloading isn’t allowed; a notion that’s disputed by Cydia creator “saurik”.

=> ↺ Anti-Piracy Company Targets Sites That Shut Down a Decade Ago

• Ten years ago Google launched its DMCA takedown transparency report. The piracy ecosystem has changed dramatically since then but it appears that not everyone received that memo. Even today, some companies are still requesting the removal of “infringing” links to sites that have long since gone.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.