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● 07.23.22

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● Links 23/07/2022: GNU Datamash 1.8, Gemipedia Supports All Languages Now

Posted in News Roundup at 7:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ 7 Myths About Linux That You Should Stop Believing

• The internet is full of myths about practically everything and is jam-packed with people always ready to promote such misconceptions. If you’ve ever found yourself reading about Linux on an online forum, it’s highly likely you’ve come across a few of the widely-known Linux myths.

• Here are some of the myths about Linux that have spread all across the internet like wildfire.

• 1. Linux Is Only for Developers and Coders

• The history of Linux has been closely related to programmers and even today, most of the people contributing to the project are software developers. This is why most casual desktop users think that Linux is reserved for computer users with technical backgrounds.

• Indeed, most of the standard utilities and packages that come preinstalled on a Linux distro are associated with software development, but almost every distribution has now started adding applications for the general public that’s not interested in writing code at all.

• What most people don’t realize is that Linux has become an integral part of their daily lives. Anyone going over to the internet to browse a website, or a person using an Android smartphone is using Linux, in the form of web servers and a customized operating system for handheld devices.

• Keeping aside the indirect Linux usage, you can even install a beginner-friendly Linux distro on your computer if you want. You don’t need to be a programmer or tech-geek to learn how to use it. What’s needed is a strong will to learn and a dash of persistence.

=> ↺ Linux Around The World: Brazil – LinuxLinks

• Brazil is a country in South America. It borders all the other countries and territories in South America with the exception of Ecuador and Chile.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Window 10 EOL In 2025: Year Of The Linux Desktop? – Invidious

• Surely this time it’s the year of the Linux desktop surely with Windows 10 reaching it’s end of life in 2025 that will be when everybody decides to finally migrate to Linux. While it’s certainly possible I find the idea kind of unlikely.

=> ↺ Kaisen Linux 2.1 Quick overview #linux #KaisenLinux #Shorts – Invidious

• A Quick overview of Kaisen Linux 2.1.

=> ↺ Should LINUX DISTROS still PACKAGE applications? The problem with UNOFFICIAL packages – Invidious

Benchmarks

=> ↺ Latest performance tests show Ubuntu 22.04 with Linux 5.19 creeping up on Windows 11 fast – Neowin

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS shipped with Linux kernel version 5.15 in general, barring the desktop which came with version 5.17. And with an upgrade to Linux 5.19, it looks like Ubuntu 22.04 LTS could have some big gains, even going toe to toe with Windows 11 under certain circumstances. At least, this seems to be the case with AMD’s Ryzen 6000 series Rembrandt APUs which come with the updated Zen 3+ micro-architecture and RDNA 2 on-board graphics.

=> ↺ Intel Linux Driver Patch Brings a Whopping 100x Performance Uplift in Ray-Traced Vulkan Titles

• Intel has rolled out a new Linux graphics driver patch for the Arc Alchemist GPUs, drastically improving ray-tracing performance in games leveraging the Vulkan API. As reported by Phoronix, the patch rolled out the other day was aimed at improving ray-tracing performance, yielding “like a 100x (not joking) improvement“. And the best part? A single line of code brought about this massive boost.

Applications

=> ↺ Nala – A Feature-rich Commandline Frontend For APT – OSTechNix

• Apt, stands for “Advanced Package Tool”, is the default, command line package manager for Debian, Ubuntu and its derivatives such as Elementary OS, Linux Mint and Pop!_OS. Using apt, we can search, install, update, upgrade and remove packages in a DEB-based system. There are a few APT frontends exists. Two popular APT front-ends are Aptitude and Synaptic. Today, we will talk about yet another APT frontend tool called “Nala”.

=> ↺ Tidal-hifi: Stream Music from Tidal on Linux System – TREND OCEANS

• It’s been a very long time since any standalone application for streaming music from Tidal came to the Linux desktop. However, you already have command-line based programs like tidal-cli-client, but it was discontinued and left without any updates since 2019.

=> ↺ Limine Installer version 1.0

• We have been working on this for a couple of weeks, and it looks mature enough to bounce up to 1.0. The Limine Installer version 1.0 has been announced on the forum, where you can find PET packages:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=6406

• Today I gave it a quick test on an old BIOS laptop, an Acer Aspire. I bought this in 2012, one of the last before UEFI computers took over. It has a Intel i3 CPU and originally had Windows 7, but I removed it. A couple of days prior, had tested on my Mele mini-PC, a UEFI computer, with Windows 10 and a frugal EasyOS, and that went well. The Acer laptop has Grub4dos installed, so will be supplanting that. Note, theoretically, will be able to uninstall Limine and restore Grub4dos.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Resolved – Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead – TecAdmin

• With the latest version of Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11, users start getting a warning message during the GPG key import that “Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8))“. The apt-key stores the key file in /etc/apt/trusted.gpg or /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d. In that case, a single key is also trusted for other repositories configured on your system. That creates security issues for the repositories on your systems. To overcome this issue, Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 11 prompted to manage OpenPGP as keyring files.

• Even if this is a warning message, you can continue to use apt-key, but it will be removed in the next releases. So it will be a good idea to start using the new way.

=> ↺ How to Install Opera Browser on Rocky Linux 9

• Opera is a freeware, cross-platform web browser developed by Opera Software and operates as a Chromium-based browser. Opera offers a clean, modern web browser that is an alternative to the other major players in the Browser race. Its famous Opera Turbo mode and its renowned battery-saving mode are the best amongst all known web browsers by quite a margin, with a built-in VPN and much more. As an extra add-on for its users’ peace of mind, it has integrated security features that make it the safest browser. Overall, Opera provides a great browsing experience that is fast, efficient, and secure – making it one of the best browsers available today.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Opera Browser on Rocky Linux 9 workstation desktop with optional branches stable, beta, or the nightly development version using the command line terminal with tips on maintaining and removing the browsers if required.

=> ↺ How to Install Minecraft Launcher on Rocky Linux 9

• Minecraft is a game that has taken the world by storm, allowing players to explore a vast and ever-changing world. The Minecraft Launcher is the game downloader and launcher for Minecraft: Java Edition and one of the game downloaders and launchers for Minecraft for Windows (Bedrock Edition) and Minecraft Dungeons. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The Minecraft Launcher allows players to easily find and download the game, as well as keep it up to date with the latest version.

• In addition, the Launcher offers players a variety of options for customizing their game experience, including the ability to choose their preferred language and difficulty level. Whether you’re a seasoned player or just starting, the Minecraft Launcher is an essential tool for anyone looking to enjoy this unique and fantastic game.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Minecraft Launcher on Rocky Linux 9 workstation desktop using a copr third-party repository using the command line terminal.

=> ↺ How to Install Liquorix Kernel on Rocky Linux 9

• Liquorix Kernel is a free, open-source general-purpose Linux Kernel alternative to the stock kernel shipped with Rocky Linux 9. It features custom settings and new features and is built to provide a responsive and smooth desktop experience, especially for new hardware. Liquorix Kernel is popular amongst Linux Gaming, streaming, and ultra-low latency requirements and often boasts the latest Linux Kernel version release.

• Some of the Liquorix Kernel features include CPU frequency scaling for power conservation, process nice level controller for overall system responsiveness fluidity, improved security withexecShield, PaX support, and various other stability improvements. Liquorix Kernel is also one of the lightweight Linux Kernels, making it perfect for resource-intensive tasks such as gaming and streaming. If you’re looking for an alternative to the stock kernel that comes with Rocky Linux 9, look no further than Liquorix Kernel.

=> ↺ How to Install Steam on LMDE 5 “Elsie”

• In 2003, Valve launched Steam as a way to provide automatic updates for their games. However, the platform quickly expanded to include games from third-party publishers. Today, the Steam library is filled with thousands of games across all gaming consoles. One of the key features of Steam is its cross-platform compatibility. This allows gamers to play their favorite games on any platform, including PC, Mac, Linux, and more. Another great feature of Steam is its ability to connect gamers from all over the world. Through the Steam community, gamers can connect, share tips and tricks, and even compete against each other in online tournaments. With so many unique features, it’s no wonder Steam has become the go-to platform for gamers all over the globe.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Steam on Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 or also known as LMDE 5, using the command line terminal and APT package manager utilizing the APT binary from the default repository or importing the official steam repository, which you can then install the stable branch, or for users that want to see the next version release of Steam’s launcher, you can install the beta branch.

=> ↺ How to Install Spotify Player on Linux System

• Spotify is leading the race of music streaming services in the world along with its counterparts Tidal and Apple Music. It provides you access to over 70 million songs, 2.2 million podcasts, and 4 billion playlists from its web or desktop application.

=> ↺ How to install Miniconda on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal

• Learn the ways to install MiniConda3 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa to use Conda package manager to install Anaconda Packages.

• The Anaconda distribution is a collection of software for scientific purposes. It includes a Python installation, an R installation, and the Conda package manager, which can be used to install Anaconda packages. Since the complete Anaconda distribution with all packages consumes a lot of storage space, there is also the variant known as Miniconda, which contains only Python, Conda, and a few basic packages. Both variants are completely free and open source.

• We need around 400 MB of free space to download and install MiniConda3.

=> ↺ Install Miniconda on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Linux

• Learn the ways to install MiniConda3 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish to use Conda package manager to install Anaconda Packages.

• The Anaconda distribution is a collection of software for scientific purposes. It includes a Python installation, an R installation, and the Conda package manager, which can be used to install Anaconda packages. Since the complete Anaconda distribution with all packages consumes a lot of storage space, there is also the variant known as Miniconda, which contains only Python, Conda, and a few basic packages. Both variants are completely free and open source.

• We need around 400 MB of free space to download and install MiniConda3.

=> ↺ How to install Arduino IDE on Ubuntu 22.04

• Arduino is nothing more and nothing less than a board based on a microcontroller, specifically an ATMEL. It is one of the most popular types of boards in the maker world, along with the Raspberry Pi.

• We can also say that Arduino is a board based on free hardware that by combining it with software we can create very useful electronic parts.

• One of the reasons why Arduino is so important nowadays and is used by many students is because Arduino offers the basis for any other person or company to create their own boards. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

• Well, there are different models and prices, but they must be combined with software to be functional. What tool can we work with? Well, with Arduino IDE.

=> ↺ Running a Cron Every 30 Seconds – TecAdmin

• Crontab is used to schedule a script to run at regular intervals. In this blog post, you will learn to schedule a script in crontab every 30 seconds.

=> ↺ LibreOffice Calc Basics VII: VLOOKUP

• This is the seventh part of Calc Basics and in this chance we will learn about VLOOKUP formula. For that purpose, we will make a simple student score viewer, so we can select a student’s name for the computer to display his/her scores. As a reminder, if you haven’t followed this Calc series, read the first and second parts here. Now let’s try it.

=> ↺ How to set up your printer in Zorin OS

• After reading the previous tutorials you will probably realize that I am extremely enthusiastic about everything Linux and especially what Zorin OS has to offer to make Linux potentially a future mainstream operating system. But not everything is automatically great and one of those relatively less positive things has been the installation and use of printers in Linux. Much has changed in recent years, but there is still some room for improvement. And this is not necessarily an issue with respect to the quality or completeness of Linux, but has more to do with the willingness of printer suppliers to write good drivers for Linux. There is plenty to say about installing a printer in Linux, so in this comprehensive tutorial I will discuss how to setup your printer in Zorin OS and overcome some potential issues.

=> ↺ How To Install HAProxy on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install HAProxy on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, HAProxy is an open-source load balancer proxy that is used to run different web applications with high performance and improve the speed by distributing loads on different servers. Moreover, if any server fails, HAProxy detects it and re-routes the web traffic of that server to other servers so the clients will not experience any interruption.

• 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 HAProxy on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

=> ↺ How to install Buildah OCI on Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS

• Install Buildah on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa Linux using the command terminal for building container images from their source codes.

• In today’s fast world, developers need a mechanism to deploy their applications as fast as they could and keep them up to date as well. That is the reason why containerized apps are becoming increasingly important and to create containers automatically, images are necessary. These can be created with Buildah.

=> ↺ How to Add a Website in ISPConfig

• ISPConfig is a hosting control panel for Linux servers that provides functions for managing websites, databases, FTP and shell users, email accounts, and DNS. In this guide, we will show you step by step how to add a website, MySQL/MariaDB database, FTP-user, and SSH-user in ISPConfig.

=> ↺ How to Deploy a VMware vCenter Appliance using Terraform

• Following on from this post covering how to deploy vSphere virtual machines using Terraform, I thought I’d take a look at how I could deploy vCenter itself, with the aim of speeding up vCenter deployments in my home lab. The objective here was to have Terraform deploy a new vCenter appliance onto my ESXi host, then carry out some initial configuration of vCenter using the Terraform vCenter provider.

=> ↺ How to Use the wc Command in Linux

• Counting the number of lines, words, and bytes in a file is useful, but the real flexibility of the Linux wc command comes from working with other commands. Let’s take a look.

Games

=> ↺ Steam Deck: The Ratio of Verified Titles is Falling. What’s Happening? – Boiling Steam

• The Steam Deck is a great success story so far in 2022. Great design, frequent firmware updates, lots of games for the platform… but is the picture as rosy as it sounds? Actually, not many people may have noticed, but there’s clearly something happening with the number of Steam Deck verified titles over time. It’s going down, percentage-wise. Don’t believe me? Here’s a visualization of all titles added until now, and their category in a given week.

=> ↺ The Intel Xeon W9-3495 processor of the Sapphire Rapids family wasspotted on Linux – Game News 24

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ Xinerama becomes hard requirement of KWin – Vlad Zahorodnii’s Blog

• This is going to be a rather short blog post, but I think it’s still worth mentioning. Since 5.26, kwin will support only one way of handling multiple monitors on X11 – Xinerama. However, despite how “setup-breaking” it may sound, this will most likely not affect you as you probably already use Xinerama.

• Before diving any deeper, it’s worth providing you some background. On X11, there are several ways how you could configure your desktop environment to run with multiple monitors – multi-head and Xinerama.

• Multi-head is an old school way to run multiple monitors. Basically, with that mode, there’s an X server per monitor. In Xinerama mode, there’s only one X server that “drives” all outputs. Both modes have their advantages and disadvantages, for example you can’t freely move windows between screens when using multi-head, etc. Xinerama is younger than multi-head and it provides the most user friendly workflow on multi-screen setups, so it’s usually enabled by default in all Linux distributions and many desktop environments are optimized for running in this mode, including Plasma.

• Technically, kwin does provide support for both multi-head and Xinerama. But multi-head support has been in neglected and unmaintained state for many many years, e.g. some code (primarily, old code) supports multi-head, while lots of other code (mostly, new code) does not, various system settings modules and plasmashell components do not support multi-head either, etc. It’s also safe to say that no kwin developer has ever tested multi-head within last 5+ years.

• So, rather than keep advertising the support for a feature that we don’t maintain and have no plans to fix it, we decided to drop the support for multi-head mode and make Xinerama a hard requirement since 5.26.

=> ↺ Porting a Tiling Window Manager Extenstion to C++ (Bismuth): Part-1 :: Kushashwa Ravi Shrimali (Kush) — Learning never stops!

• Porting a Tiling Window Manager Extenstion to C++ (Bismuth): Part-1

• Hi everyone! I understand it’s been a long time, and I’m so excited to be writing this blog today. In today’s blog, I wanted to talk about my journey (so far) on contributing to Bismuth (a KDE’s Tiling Window Manager Extension), mainly how and why I started, and where I am right now.

=> ↺ KDE Eco Sprint July 2022

• Following a similar sprint two month ago, we had another small KDE Eco meeting in Berlin a week ago. Joseph will probably write a more comprehensive summary like last time, here are just some of the things I looked at and/or worked on.

=> ↺ Be Careful With Signal Slots – GSoC’22 post #9

• Here’s something interesting thing I stubled across today. (more like, struggled with for a day and half) This might be something obvious to regular Qt programmers, but I’m not a professional.

• In my last post I told how Tobias helped me get cacheSpaceHierarchy() function working as expected. The fix was easy. That doesn’t mean I’ll take half a minute to code and commit.

• cacheSpaceHierarchy() was being called correctly as expected. But now this function stopped functioning. It worked until two days back when it was being called at the wrong time. But today when I call it at the right place, it decides it won’t work.

=> ↺ Getting Stuck and Unstuck – GSoC’22 post #8

• I made progress – on getting stuck in my work.

• In my meet with my mentors last week, we decided I’ll work on the Space home page while finalizing the merge request I had opened.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ GNOME at 25: A Health Checkup – Et tu, Cthulhu

• Around the end of 2020, I looked at GNOME’s commit history as a proxy for the project’s overall health. It was fun to do and hopefully not too boring to read. A year and a half went by since then, and it’s time for an update.

• If you’re seeing these cheerful-as-your-average-wiphala charts for the first time, the previous post does a better job of explaining things. Especially so, the methodology section. It’s worth a quick skim.

=> ↺ #53 GUADEC 2022 · This Week in GNOME

• Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from July 15 to July 22.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Want to help make Rolling better?

• For anyone that wants to use OMLx Rolling there is some information about that here.

• There is a good bit of information for any users of any OMLx version here and here.

• OpenMandriva is a community distribution of Linux. All the folks that do things are part time unpaid volunteers. And we all wish there were more of us.

• Installing Rolling is pretty much the same as installing Rock. But in this thread we are trying to get some folks to try or help test a Technical Preview of what we plan to push to Rolling in a few weeks.

=> ↺ T2 SDE Linux 22.6 Released – and an AI Bot Contributed More Revisions Than Humans

• “T2 SDE is not just a regular Linux distribution,” reads the announcement. “It is a flexible Open Source System Development Environment or Distribution Build Kit (others might even name it Meta Distribution). T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with state of the art technology, up-to-date packages and integrated support for cross compilation.”

=> ↺ The Zorin OS editions explained – Real Linux User

• Everyone is different and everyone has personal preferences. Those preferences can be emotion based, financial, practical, thoughtful, or studied. Everyone has their own reasons for consciously choosing something and not something else. This also applies to Linux distributions. Zorin OS is one of the many available distributions, but the Zorin OS team also has several editions within its Zorin OS offering. In this tutorial, as part of my Zorin OS beginner course, I want to provide some insight into these different Zorin OS editions.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

=> ↺ SUSE Rancher Manages Amazon EKS Hybrid Landscape

• As you know, SUSE Rancher is the most-used, and most-loved Kubernetes management solution on the planet with over 400 enterprise customers and 174 Million Docker pulls. SUSE Rancher manages any CNCF Certified Kubernetes distribution. SUSE Rancher also does additional engineering collaboration with key partners for increased life cycle management and other functionality. One of these partners is Amazon Web Services.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Red Hat’s Next Steps, According to Its New CEO – Slashdot

• IBM saw its hybrid-cloud revenue jump 18% to $5.9 billion in the last three months, reports ZDNet — while also experiencing “its highest sales growth in a decade.

Debian Family

=> ↺ List of Open Source suicides and accidents: volunteers and developers down

• Volunteers are currently working to try and decode the Frans Pop Debian Day suicide. Here at the Fellowship we thought it would be helpful to look at Pop’s case in the context of all the other suicides and accidental deaths across the entire open source ecosystem.

• The Open Source mafia has been putting far too much pressure on volunteers in recent years. We decided to look at the cases of those who didn’t survive.

• We feel these cases demonstrate there are issues in the open source challenge to work/life balance and the systematic pushing of volunteers to work for free.

=> ↺ Frans Pop suicide and Ubuntu grievances

• Looking through the Debian email archives, we quickly find a long list of messages from Frans Pop expressing grievances with Ubuntu, Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Converting a Commodore PET into a USB docking station | Arduino Blog

• The Commodore 64 is one of the most iconic computers of all time and it is Commodore’s best known model. But Commodore made many other well-loved models, including the VIC-20, the Amiga, and the PET. The Commodore PET 64, which Commodore released late in the model range’s life for educational use, was Dave Luna’s first computer. Sadly, it bit the dust sometime in the ‘90s and Luna was never able to revive it. In 2005, he attempted to convert it into a PC, but never completed the project. Older and wiser, Luna was finally able to give the PET new life as a docking station.

• Docking stations come in many forms with many different purposes, but the general idea is always to expand a laptop’s (or tablet’s) capabilities. In this case, it turns the connected laptop into a desktop experience with a dedicated screen and a full tactile keyboard. The keyboard wasn’t actually very good in the Commodore PET 64, but Luna has plans to upgrade it with a MechBoard64 to keep the original look with modern high-quality mechanical keyswitches. As it stands, the PET 64’s keyboard connects to the docked laptop and a 12” TFT LCD screen (in place of the PET 64’s original CRT monitor) acts as a second monitor for the laptop.

=> ↺ Soil Moisture Sensor with Arduino Uno

• To measure the water level of a pot plant, analog soil moisture sensor is good to use as its implant inside the soil to measure the level. It is good to use in an irrigation system and plants watering system

=> ↺ Five years of responsible gold

• For the past five years, Fairphone has been an active participant in a broad coalition within the Dutch gold sector aimed at ensuring greater respect for human rights, the environment and biodiversity in the gold value chain. This “gold covenant” was spearheaded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-signed by a variety of groups with an interest in the gold sector, including HIVOS/Stop Child Labour, Philips, Closing the Loop, and the Dutch Gold and Silver Federation (FGZ), as well as other parties like trade unions, importers and recyclers. Fairphone chaired the Gold Agreement task force on improving artisanal gold mining and responsible supply during the duration of the initiative. In June, this covenant came to an end; now comes the time to apply the lessons learned and make responsible gold the norm.

=> ↺ Business card-sized SBC ships with Intel Core Tiger Lake or AMD Ryzen V2000 processor – CNX Software

• We’ve already written about the UP 4000 SBC as a more powerful x86 alternative to Raspberry Pi 4, but if it still does not cut it, AAEON de next-TGU8 or de next-V2K8 should as the business card-sized single board computers are equipped with respectively an Intel Tiger Lake processor up to a Core i7-1185G7E, or and AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC up to Ryzen Embedded V2516.

• But the comparison stops at the size, as both SBCs offer sets of features different from the usual Raspberry Pi form factor with notably up to 16GB RAM, SATA and NVMe storage, dual Ethernet (1x 2.5GbE, 1x Gigabit Ethernet), dual 4K display output via HDMI and eDP, some USB 3.2 ports, as well as serial and I/O interfaces via headers.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Best Android Switch Emulator: Play Nintendo Switch on Android

=> ↺ Android Game of the Week: Roll the dice to determine your fate in Dicey Elementalist | Android Central

=> ↺ Here are Samsung One UI 5’s new emojis that you can install right now

=> ↺ Hey Google, How Do I Take a Screenshot on an Android Device? | PCMag

=> ↺ Tired of SPAM calls? It is easy to block on Android, just do these simple steps | How-to

=> ↺ Sony Xperia 1 IV review: Simply outrageous – Android Authority

=> ↺ It’s Pixel 6a review time on the Android Police podcast

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Apache Beam users detail stream data processing applications

• The open source Apache Beam batch and stream data processing technology is finding a home in a growing number of large organizations.

• At the recent Beam Summit hybrid conference, users from Google, Twitter, Spotify, Adobe, Intuit, LinkedIn and others outlined how and why they are using the Apache Beam technology.

• Beam became a top-level project at the Apache Software Foundation in 2017. Beam provides capabilities that enable organizations to manage data pipeline workflows for both batch and stream processing for data.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: pgAdmin User Survey

• In order to help us better plan the future of pgAdmin, it’s essential that we hear from users so we can focus our efforts in the areas that matter most.

• We’d like to gather feedback from as many users as possible, so please take a few minutes and complete the survey below. Feel free to share the link with any friends or colleagues who you think may also want to provide their input.

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: Coroot-pg-agent – an open-source Postgres exporter for Prometheus

• The Coroot team is happy to announce coroot-pg-agent – an open-source (Apache 2.0) Postgres exporter for Prometheus focusing on query performance statistics.

=> ↺ PostgreSQL: Human vs. OtterTune AI PostgreSQL tuning contest. $10,000 cash prize

• The Relational Riverside Rumble will pit one of the world’s best PostgreSQL DBAs against OtterTune’s AI-powered PostgreSQL tuning algorithms, originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

• We will award somebody $10,000 (USD) in cash if they can make an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database run better than OtterTune from tuning knobs. If OtterTune wins, we will still give the DBA $4,000 for their time and make a $6,000 donation to the International Otter Survival Fund in their name.

FSF

=> ↺ GNU Datamash 1.8 released

• This is to announce datamash-1.8, a new release.

• Datamash is a command-line program which performs basic numeric, textual and statistical operations on input textual data.

=> ↺ FSD meeting recap 2022-07-15 — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software

• Check out the great work our volunteers accomplished at today’s Free Software Directory (FSD) IRC meeting. Every week, free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on Libera.Chat to help improve the (FSD). This recaps the work we accomplished at the Friday, 15th, 2022 meeting, where we saw one new program added and had a discussion about the current state of free software in VR headsets.

=> ↺ FSD meeting recap 2022-07-22 — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software

• Summary text: Check out the great work our volunteers accomplished at today’s Free Software Directory (FSD) IRC meeting.

• Every week, free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on Libera.Chat to help improve the (FSD). This recaps the work we accomplished at the Friday, July 22, 2022 meeting.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Toolbx — bypassing the immutability of OCI containers | Debarshi’s den

• OCI containers are famous for being immutable. Once a container has been created with podman create, it’s attributes can’t be changed anymore. For example, the bind mounts, the environment variables, the namespaces being used, and all the other attributes that can be specified via options to the podman create command. This means that once there’s a Toolbx, it wouldn’t be possible to give it access to a new set of files from the host if the need arose. The Toolbx would have to be deleted and re-created with access to the new paths.

• This is a problem, because a Toolbx is where the user sets up her development and troubleshooting environment. Re-creating a Toolbx might mean reinstalling a number of different packages, tweaking configuration files, redeploying various artifacts and so on. Having to repeat all that in the middle of a long hacking session, just because the container’s attributes need to be tweaked, can be annoying.

• This is unlike Flatpak containers, where it’s possible to override the permissions of a Flatpak either persistently through flatpak override or temporarily during flatpak run.

• Secondly, as the Toolbx code evolves, we want to be able to transparently update existing Toolbxes to enable new features and fix bugs. It would be a real drag if users had to consciously re-create their containers.

=> ↺ GSOC 2022: Second Update

• In my previous blog post, I mentioned using the GtkListView for the templates submenu. But, after a few discussions with my mentor @antoniof, we decided to use the GtkListBox to create the custom widget for the new documents creation feature, as it would be easier to implement and there is no need to create a factory for it.

=> ↺ Planet Grep now running PtLink

• Almost 2 decades ago, Planet Debian was created using the “planetplanet” RSS aggregator. A short while later, I created Planet Grep using the same software.

• Over the years, the blog aggregator landscape has changed a bit. First of all, planetplanet was abandoned, forked into Planet Venus, and then abandoned again. Second, the world of blogging (aka the “blogosphere”) has disappeared much, and the more modern world uses things like “Social Networks”, etc, making blogs less relevant these days.

• A blog aggregator community site is still useful, however, and so I’ve never taken Planet Grep down, even though over the years the number of blogs that was carried on Planet Grep has been reducing. In the past almost 20 years, I’ve just run Planet Grep on my personal server, upgrading its Debian release from whichever was the most recent stable release in 2005 to buster, never encountering any problems.

• That all changed when I did the upgrade to Debian bullseye, however. Planet Venus is a Python 2 application, which was never updated to Python 3. Since Debian bullseye drops support for much of Python 2, focusing only on Python 3 (in accordance with python upstream’s policy on the matter), that means I have had to run Planet Venus from inside a VM for a while now, which works as a short-term solution but not as a long-term one.

=> ↺ Looking at project resource use and CI pipelines in GitLab | Philip Withnall

• While at GUADEC I finished a small script which uses the GitLab API to estimate the resource use of a project on GitLab. It looks at the CI pipeline job durations and artifact storage for the project and its forks over a given period, and totals things.

• [...]

• If total pipeline durations are long, either reduce the number of pipeline jobs or speed them up. Speeding them up almost always has no downsides. Reducing the number of jobs is a tradeoff between convenience of development and resource usage. Two ideas for reducing the number of jobs are to make some jobs manual-only, if they are very unlikely to find problems. Or run them on a schedule rather than on every commit, if it’s OK for them to catch problems up to a week after they’re introduced.

• If total artifact storage use is high, store fewer artifacts, or expire them after a week (or so). They are likely not so useful after that point anyway.

• If artifacts are being used to cache build dependencies, then consider moving those dependencies into a pre-built container image instead. It may be cached better between CI runners.

=> ↺ Best Alternatives to PhpStorm (Paid & Free) | TechRepublic

• Software development with the PHP programming language is a venture many developers enjoy as long as they have the right integrated development environment (IDE) solution. Among many IDEs available to PHP developers, PhpStorm stands out as one of the most adopted IDEs in software development companies; however, there are alternatives to PhpStorm available for PHP developers to explore. Here is a breakdown of the best PhpStorm alternative to help you make a choice, if you need to expand your IDE tools.

Perl / Raku

=> ↺ Integrated Inconsistencies. | Saif [blogs.perl.org]

• I will get it wrong. I will start off by saying that, not just because I am married and this sentiment has been conjugally programmed in me for years, but because doing things “my way” will not suit everybody. We approach life, programming, drawing from different perspectives, different analogies, and one method however disagreeable to one person, may be perfectly logical to another. Even our own actions and analysis show conflicts. Take a cup of tea. I drink from the top of the cup, but measure from the bottom. Take character position in programming code…we measure lines from the top, then character on that line. But when we write, we write one line at a time, populating columns in a line before going to the next line.

• The same applies to drawing onto a screen. The reason I want to draw on a screen is because I want to be able to draw charts…following the example of Descartes, one plots a point on X,Y coordinates with the origin on the bottom left hand corner. x comes before y. The same screen is drawn from top to bottom, and the print coordinates are described as row, column. with the origin at top left. Then examine what happens if I were to draw an SVG graph according to the Perl Weekly Challenge 165 by Ryan Thompson. How many people realised that the SVG coordinate system the x,y coordinates are not the same as Cartesian coordinates? You did? Well done!…but I dare say plenty of people didn’t.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Are we finally post-COVID thanks to Paxlovid? – BaronHK’s Rants

• Are we finally post-COVID thanks to Paxlovid?

• I blogged, previously, that my mom and my brother both came down with COVID-19 and the flu at the same time.

• I leaned on them to go get Paxlovid, because they both sounded like hell over the phone, and it took some doing, but they finally agreed.

• About the only side effect they both had from the medication was that if they ate anything a couple of hours after one of their doses, it had a strange “metallic”-like taste to it, so they both had to take it, quickly eat breakfast, and then not eat anything for a while. Then eat dinner, then take the pills again at bedtime.

• I was fairly impressed by how fast the antivirals turned both of them around. I thought for sure that we were going to be talking about hospitalizations and that I’d be in Indiana consenting to medical care for both of them while they were unconscious on a ventilator.

• The fact that President Biden now has COVID-19, and is on Paxlovid, and it’s basically just a cold, even at his age (he’s not in good health….better than Trump, but they’re both quite old), makes me wonder if there’s even any rational point to take more vaccinations, or if we should just plan to go to a test and treat center if and when we have any actual problems.

Security

=> ↺ Detectree: Open-source tool simplifies data analysis for blue teams, reduces alert fatigue – Help Net Security

• Many companies struggle to understand malicious activity and its effects while a security incident is in progress. It eats up time and resources that defenders need to contain the attack and minimize damage. However, a new open-source tool built to increase visibility on suspicious activities detected by organizations aims to relieve this pain.

=> ↺ Returning to Hacker Summer Camp · System Overlord

• It’s that time of year again – Hacker Summer Camp. (Hacker Summer Camp is the ~weeklong period where several of the largest hacker/information security conferences take place in Las Vegas, NV, including DEF CON and Black Hat USA.) This will be the 3rd year in a row where it takes place under the spectre of a worldwide pandemic, and the first one to be fully in-person again. BSidesLV has returned to in-person, DEF CON is in-person only, Black Hat will be in full swing, and Ringzer0 will be offerring in-person trainings. It’s almost enough to forget there’s still an ongoing pandemic.

• I did attend last year’s hybrid DEF CON in person, and I’ve been around a few times, so I wanted to share a few tidbits, especially for first timers. Hopefully it’s useful to some of you.

=> ↺ How to Configure a CA SSL Certificate in HAProxy

• The HAProxy is a widely-used, reliable, high-performance reverse proxy, that offers high-availability and load balancing capabilities for TCP and HTTP applications. By default, it is compiled with OpenSSL, thus supporting SSL termination, enabling your website/application stack to encrypt and decrypt traffic between your “web entry server” or application access gateway server and client applications.

• This guide shows how to configure a CA SSL certificate in HAPorxy. This guide assumes that you have already received your certificate from the CA and are ready to install and configure it on an HAProxy server.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Gemipedia now supports all languages!

• While the Gemipedia interface will continue to be in English, article content, image captions, search results, and featured content of the day will be in the language you choose. When you select a language, it changes which instance of Wikipedia that Gemipedia talks to. As an example, the “Featured Content” for German Wikipedia won’t simply be the popular content from English Wikipedia, translated to German. It’s the featured article, and the top 25 most read articles, from German Wikipedia!

=> ↺ Collaborating on small things

• Recently I was talking to Greta about wikis. Well, I guess we were talking about many different things, including collaboration. She was wondering about the feasibility of a “hypertext network for friends” that I had mentioned wishing for a while back.

Programming

=> ↺ Good Languages, Bad Programmers

• I know a programmer who says C# is an almost-perfect language. When that person wanted to add a third command-line option, he refactored Main() and added classes (= many LOC) to make the code “beautiful”. This took hours and created a conflict against another branch, which does the same thing in 2 lines, using the “if” technology. Meanwhile, this product has serious performance issues and doesn’t work at all for the first big customers.

• I know a Python programmer who writes everything in Python, and uses frameworks like Django even for simple microservices. He presents himself as a “productivity guru” and talks way too much about productivity and ergonomics. He believes Python is the “best” language, but this person creates so much technical debt and monthly costs, when his microservices misbehave under load and must be scaled both horizontally and vertically. He sits on a comfortable chair at the peak of a pyramid built using high-level “black boxes” and has excuses for everything, while the customers don’t understand how to manage the product and wonder why it needs to be restarted often.

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

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