This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2022/12/29/mostly-howtos/.

● 12.29.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 29/12/2022: Mostly HowTos

Posted in News Roundup at 3:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Lazyweb: Best Linux distro for a 2015 MacBook Pro? : Dissociated Press

• Apple has decided that my 2015 MacBook Pro isn’t deserving of the latest macOS, so I’m looking to run Linux on it to get a few more years out of it. My first plan was to put Fedora on it, but Fedora 36 and 37 have failed to “set a new efi boot target.”

• Chrome OS Flex installed just fine, but I don’t know if I want to stick with Chrome OS long-term. It’ll do if all I use it for is couch surfing, but I might like to turn this machine into a home server running a few VMs or similar.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ vulkan video encoding: radv update

• After the video decode stuff was fairly nailed down, Lynne from ffmpeg nerdsniped^Wtalked me into looking at h264 encoding.

• The AMD VCN encoder engine is a very different interface to the decode engine and required a lot of code porting from the radeon vaapi driver. Prior to Xmas I burned a few days on typing that all in, and yesterday I finished typing and moved to debugging the pile of trash I’d just typed in.

• Lynne meanwhile had written the initial ffmpeg side implementation, and today we threw them at each other, and polished off a lot of sharp edges. We were rewarded with valid encoded frames.

• The code at this point is only doing I-frame encoding, we will work on P/B frames when we get a chance.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ What is inode in Linux?

• In this article, you will learn what an inode is, how to check an inode and its size in Linux, and their roles in soft/hard links and system updates.

=> ↺ The curious case of bad blocks on an SSD, and how I got rid of them – Andrea Corbellini

• In this article, you will learn what an inode is, how to check an inode and its size in Linux, and their roles in soft/hard links and system updates.

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

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install QOwnNotes on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, QOwnNotes is a note-taking application that allows users to create and organize notes, to-do lists, and ideas. Additionally, it integrates with the notes feature of ownCloud or Nextcloud. it is also available for a wide range of platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the QOwnNotes open-source text editor 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 Boost Speaker Volume in Ubuntu and Other Linux (beyond 100)

• Here’s how you can boost your Laptop and desktop’s volume by more than 100% in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.

• Have you ever felt that your Ubuntu Laptop’s volume is too low, despite you selected the volume to 100%? I’m sure you had. The primary reason is – obviously, laptop speaker output intensity is lower than large speakers.

• In addition, Ubuntu and other distros set the default maximum volume to 100%, i.e. 0dB (decibel). The 0dB is the maximum volume reference. To compare, if you set the volume to -10dB, that means your volume is quieter than the maximum 0dB.

• VLC and some media players allow you to increase the volume by up to 200%. Using some settings in the latest Ubuntu, you can boost the volume to further.

=> ↺ 3 Commands to Shutdown Linux systems with options

• Yes, we can use the regular Power Off button on our Linux system to shut down it but what if you are using a command line system? Then how are you going to shut down it properly without pressing the hardware power-off button on the PC Cabinet?

• Shutting the system properly is necessary to not only close the application process in the right way but to also avoid any data corruption problems. On the one side, it not only helps to reduce our electricity bills even the component from unnecessary usage.

=> ↺ How to Install Python 3.12 on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

• Python 3.12 is still in the development phase, which started on the 24th of May, 2022. For developers and enthusiasts that wish to install the latest version of Python 3.12 to get a head start, this tutorial will teach you how to import the Python PPA and install Python 3.12 on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa. The tutorial will also cover swapping alternative default versions, so you can easily switch between Python versions.

=> ↺ How to Install MakeMKV on Linux Mint 21 | 20

• MakeMKV is a free, open-source tool that can convert video clips from DVDs and Blu-rays, usually encrypted. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MakeMKV on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 utilizing the command line terminal using the recommended Launchpad PPA repository MakeMKV team to provide the most up-to-date version.

=> ↺ How to Install Blender on Linux Mint 21 | 20

• Blender is a 3D creation suite that is free and open-source. It supports the entire 3D pipeline, from modeling and rigging to animation and rendering. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Blender on Linux Mint 21 or Linux Mint 20 release using two different methods: APT and Flatpak, using the command line terminal alone.

=> ↺ How To Install Kapacitor on Ubuntu 20.04 | 22.04 LTS

• In this tutorial, We will show you how to install Kapacitor on Ubuntu systems

• Kapacitor is a real-time streaming data processing engine.It is designed to process streaming data in real-time. It can be deployed across the infrastructure as both a pre-processor to down sample and perform advanced analytics before shipping the data to InfluxDB, and a post-processor allowing older high-precision data to be stored in data stores like Hadoop (for example) for further analysis. Kapacitor is very easy to use and is also very powerful. It allows the scripting to be done using lambda expressions to define transformations on data points as well as define boolean conditions that act as the filter.

=> ↺ How to Install VSCodium on Ubuntu 20.04 22.04 | LTS

• VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code. VScode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

=> ↺ [Older] Ubuntu 22.10 on Dell XPS 15 9520

• I recently purchased a new laptop after spending a few months without one. This purchase has been a long time coming as I was waiting for Black Friday deals to start in the US to save some money.

=> ↺ Required key not available fix for CUPS

• It is because of fscrypt. This is the ext4 per-folder encryption mechanism. In the initrd, when the password is entered, a kernel “key” is acquired that decrypts the folders. This key applies to the root user after login; however, if an ‘su’ or ‘sudo’ is performed to a non-root user, the key has to be linked to the user “keyring” to be able to read/write files.

=> ↺ How to Install Odoo 15 on Linux Mint 21

• Odoo 15 is a customizable management software that comes in handy in many businesses, applications like inventory management, billing, e-commerce, and many others. Further read this guide to install Odoo15 on Linux Mint 21.

=> ↺ How to Install and Configure an NFS Server on Linux Mint21

• File sharing is one of the major issues Linux users faces, especially transferring files from one system to another though there are some easy ways to transfer a file. Using the NFS tool on Linux Mint is the best way to share files between other systems as long as all the systems are connected to a network. So, if you are interested in sharing files and looking for an easy-to-use tool then try NFS and for that read this guide.

=> ↺ How to Install Apache Subversion on Linux Mint 21

• Apache subversion is a version control system that keeps track of changes in the files, folders, and directors of your Linux Mint 21. Not only that this also allows users to restore files to their previous versions and gives the whole history of all changes. Further if you are looking for an easy way to get Apache subversion on Linux Mint 21 then this guide is for you.

=> ↺ How to Install Django on Linux Mint 21

• Looking for an easy and robust way to make web applications then try the Django framework as it requires less lines of code and is highly scalable. Its framework is based on Python; if you have sound knowledge of the Python programming language then it would be of great help. If you are interested in using this Django framework for web-based applications then you need to to install it on Linux Mint 21 so read this guide to get complete information on its installation.

=> ↺ How to Install FreeFileSync on Linux Mint 21

• File syncing is one of the most demanded features particularly when it comes to sharing files, not only that it also serves the purpose well for syncing the data with cloud storage. So, if you are looking for a tool that is freely available and is easy to use on Linux Mint then try FreeFileSync 11.29 and for that read this guide.

=> ↺ How to Install MinIO Server and Client on Linux Mint 21

• If you are looking for a substitute for the Amazon S3 cloud storage system, then try MinIO as it is free and quite easy to use. It is primarily an object storage system that can be used for a number of applications related to AI and machine learning.

• Moreover, its functionality can be increased when used with Intel products and not only that MinIO provides MinIO server, MinIO client and some software development kits as a solution for cloud storage. So, if you are interested in using MinIO on Linux Mint 21 and looking for a complete installation guide for MinIO server and client then go through this guide.

=> ↺ How to Use Raspberry Pi GPIO Pins – Python Tutorial

• One of the amazing features of Raspberry Pi is its programmable pins known as GPIO Pins. Just like any microcontroller, these GPIO pins can be used as output or input pins to control different circuits using Raspberry Pi. The official language for the Raspberry Pi operating system is Python so, in this tutorial, we will show you in detail how to use Raspberry Pi GPIO pins through Python.

=> ↺ How to Install RISC OS on Raspberry Pi

• The Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) OS is based on RISC architecture which is an open-source, lightweight architecture designed for the ARM chipset that supports Raspberry Pi devices. Most of the OS that can be installed on Raspberry Pi are Linux based but RISC OS is a non-Linux OS. So if you are looking for some non-Linux OS for Raspberry Pi, then RISC OS is a good option.

• The complete installation of the RISC OS on Raspberry Pi is discussed in the article.

=> ↺ How to Install QT Creator on Raspberry Pi

• QT Creator is based on the complete Integrated Development environment (IDE) tool, which allow developers to create software, access embedded platform, and mobile applications including Android and iOS. Additionally, QT Creator facilitates developers to share different projects throughout multiple development platforms with the help of a single tool for development and debugging. The major objective of QT Creator is to satisfy the development requirements of QT Creator’s developers seeking productivity, and ease of use.

• Based on the debugging and ease integration of QT Creator with other platforms, this tool can easily be merged with Raspberry Pi OS.

• If you are a Raspberry Pi user and looking forward to work on the QT Creator, this guide will help you install QT Creator on Raspberry Pi device.

=> ↺ How to Install TShark on Raspberry Pi

• TShark is a command line-based tool that allow users to examine the ongoing traffic of the network. It allows users to save and retrieve information of ingoing and outgoing data from network packets. TShark utilizes the command line terminal to capture data instead of the graphical user interface.

• If you are a Raspberry Pi user and want to monitor traffic, this article will help you to install TShark on Raspberry Pi.

=> ↺ How to Install Gifsicle on Raspberry Pi

• The Gifsicle is a command line tool that allows user to create, edit, optimize, and retrieve information, about Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images and animations. Additionally, the integration of Gifsicle with Raspberry Pi allows users to modify pictures within the Raspberry Pi terminal.

• If you are a Raspberry Pi user and want to edit pictures using Gifsicle, then this article gives you a guide install and user this tool on Raspberry Pi system.

=> ↺ How to Install Memcached on Raspberry Pi

• Memcached is an open-source general-purpose memory caching system widely used for increasing the speed and performance of dynamic database-driven websites. It reduces the load on databases by storing the data objects in dynamic memory.

• Since Raspberry Pi is highly utilized for database management, installing Memcached on the system helps to improve the performance of different web-based applications. You can follow this article to install Memcached on Raspberry Pi.

=> ↺ How to Install Raspberry Pi OS on SD Card Using Raspberry Pi Imager

• The Raspberry Pi is a device that has a CPU module used to run a lightweight operating system. It doesn’t come with a pre-installed operating system however; the users can install the OS on the SD Card or portable USB according to their own choice. Utilizing the different imager tools make the Raspberry Pi device capable to install any operating system. The Raspberry Pi Imager is one of the most compatible tools that can be utilized for install Raspberry Pi OS on the SD card.

• This article describes step by step method to install Raspberry Pi operating system on the SD card by utilizing Raspberry Pi Imager.

=> ↺ How to Install Any OS on Raspberry Pi – 3 Different Methods

• A single-board computer, Raspberry Pi can be used to perform various computing tasks. Just like any other computer Raspberry Pi also requires an operating system to perform different operations/tasks. There are multiple operating systems that can be installed on Raspberry Pi such as Raspberry Pi OS, tiny core Linux, RISC OS, and many others.

• If you need help installing an operating system on Raspberry Pi, follow this article for guidance.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Be Delighted! Unity Teases Version 7.7 as the Sign of Active Development

• Unity, the classic desktop environment, a part of Ubuntu from 2010 to 2017, is all set to receive a big new release. You can expect it to release sometime in 2023, but there is no concrete release date yet.

• But not by Canonical.

• If you did not know: The development of Unity was taken over by a young developer, Rudra Saraswat, who is also the creator of Ubuntu Unity, an official flavor of Ubuntu.

• In a recent blog post, Rudra showed us a sneak peek of Unity 7.7 and the various improvements that are set to come.

• Let me take you through those.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Pico-ITX SBC features NXP i.MX 93 LGA system-on-module – CNX Software

• iWave Sytems iW-RainboW-G50M is an NXP i.MX 93 OSM-L compliant LGA module with up to 2GB RAM, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 module that is found in the company’s iW-RainboW-G50S Pico-ITX SBC designed for industrial applications.

• The NXP i.MX 93 single and dual-core Cortex-A55 processor with an Ethos U65 microNPU was announced in November 2021, but we had yet to see any hardware based on the new NXP i.MX 9 processor family. The iW-RainboW-G50M and iW-RainboW-G50S change that with a system-on-module and single board computer.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ A glimpse of 2022 – The Mozilla Support Blog

• Time surely flies, and here we are, already at the end of the year. 2022 has been an amazing year for the Customer Experience team. We welcomed 5 new people to our team this year, including 2 engineers, and 1 technical writer.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ RC Week 12: What’s Next, and Speedrunning Crafting Interpreters | nicholas@web

• And that’s it. My batch at RC ended yesterday. I have so many thoughts and feelings from this time, but it’s going to take time to coalesce them all. I’ll write up my Return Statement in a week or two, but for now, here’s what I was up to the last week!

• Mostly, this last week was an attempt to speedrun Crafting Interpreters. This book has been on my shelf for a while, and I got started on it after I decided to stop learning Idris. A friend from this batch has done really cool work going through Crafting Interpreters, so I wanted to see how much I could get through while we can still easily pair program on it.

• Turns out, a lot! In the last 1.5 weeks or so, I read through the first 11 chapters and implemented everything from the first 10. All that’s left is doing chapter 11 (which should fix a hole in the semantics and improve performance) and then read two chapters focused on classes! It’ll be really cool to see how object-oriented programming can be implemented at the language level.

=> ↺ BridgeStan: Stan model log densities, gradients, Hessians, and transforms in R, Python, and Julia | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

• We’re happy to announce the official 1.0.0 release of BridgeStan.

=> ↺ ChatGPT can Create Datasets, Program in R… and when it makes an Error it can Fix that too! – Learning Machines

• ChatGPT from OpenAI leaves me speechless over and over again. I have been in the AI industry for many decades now and it has been a long time since I last had this feeling of utter fascination mixed with disbelief mixed with anxiety.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Docker Build: A Beginner’s Guide to Building Docker Images – TecAdmin

• Docker is a popular tool for packaging and deploying applications in an isolated environment, and a key part of the Docker workflow is building Docker images. We can build our own images with the help of base images and use them to create containers. We can also pull the images directly from the docker hub (https://hub.docker.com/) for our application. In this beginner’s guide, we will explain what Docker images are and how to build them.

=> ↺ A Beginner’s Guide to Use Bash Functions! – TecAdmin

• Bash functions are a handy way to group a series of commands that you often use together. They allow you to reuse code, make your scripts more organized and easier to read, and save you time by not having to type out the same commands over and over again.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Rubenerd: You searched for a user’s guide, sir?

• Online store recommendation engines are always funny, whether they’re advertising mattresses to the happy owner of a new one, a guide to Windows 11 after you bought a MacBook, or cuts of meat to someone wheeling out a stack of new vegetarian cookbooks. They offer us a glimpse behind the hubris of so many systems sold as intelligent, but in practice are anything but.

=> ↺ Thousands of Canceled Flights Cap Holiday Weekend of Travel Nightmares – The New York Times

• Thousands of travelers were stranded at U.S. airports on Monday as a wave of canceled flights — many of them operated by Southwest Airlines — spoiled holiday plans and kept families from returning home during one of the busiest and most stressful travel stretches of the year. The cancellations and delays one day after Christmas left people sleeping on airport floors, standing in hourslong customer service lines and waiting on tarmacs for hours on end.

• The problems are likely to continue into Tuesday and later this week. As of Monday night, about 2,600 U.S. flights scheduled for Tuesday were already canceled, including 60 percent of all Southwest flights.

=> ↺ Southwest Airlines Has Fallen Apart

• I too was surprised to see Southwest handling this so badly. For the last decade or so I’ve mostly flown American, because they have such a dominant position in Philadelphia and I’ve racked up a slew of points and status with them. But before that I flew on Southwest frequently, and was always impressed by their combination of low prices, great execution, and their outstanding, very friendly customer service. One time I missed a flight home to Philly from Chicago, and I expected it would be a hassle — and expensive — to get rebooked. Instead, I was on the phone for no more than five minutes, and they rebooked me on the very next MDW-PHL flight for no charge. I don’t think that would have happened with any other airline. Southwest also has, in my experience, the very best flight attendants in the industry.

=> ↺ Media I experienced in 2022 – Xe Iaso

• Over the year I took some notes on the games, hardware, and TV shows I experienced. Here’s the best and worst of what I experienced and some thoughts on all of it. I hope you enjoy all these mini-reviews.

=> ↺ BREAKING: The Lunduke Journal predicts 37% more buzzwords in 2023

• The Lunduke Journal has predicted unprecedented, and terrifying, increases in the total number of buzzwords, in use by the Tech industry, for the coming year.

• “2023 is going to see an onslaught of new buzzwords — resulting in a 37% increase in total buzzwords by years end,” stated Bryan Lunduke, the Tech industry’s leading prognosticator. “What those buzzwords will be, we can only speculate. But there’ll sure as heck be a lot of them. Swarms of them. Coming from almost every direction. Imagine a sharknado… but with buzzwords instead of sharks. Horrifying.”

• Industry analysts from both IDC and Gartner issued their own 2023 predictions regarding buzzwords.

Hardware

=> ↺ What was the first PDA?

• It’s always fun to look at who was the “first” to do something amazing.

• Who made the first computer shell? Who was the first computer programmer? What was the first smartphone?

• Today, let’s ask another simple question: What was the first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)?

=> ↺ PDA Week Wrap-up!

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Time to pause covid mass vaccination

• My name is John Campbell, I am a semi-retired clinical nurse, nurse lecturer, academic, researcher and author of numerous articles and two text books.

• My specialisms are human physiology and pathophysiology, as applied to clinical practice. I have also produced many educational videos which are used extensively around the world.

• In my view the UK health authorities should pause the current covid-19 vaccination programme, due to the risks associated with vaccination.

Finance

=> ↺ Foreign fossil fuel juggernauts dominate the annual MWM Top 40 Tax Dodgers chart – Michael West

• It’s a post-Christmas feast. We are rolling out the Top 40 Tax Dodgers, the crème de la crème of Australia’s biggest and meanest tax tricksters. Callum Foote reports.

• [...]

• There are a few notable inclusions in the latest Top 40 charts due to a change of methodology, notably the property development giant Lendlease. Lendlease has made a total of $68.1 billion in total income since 2014 when the ATO’s public records begin and posted just $8 million in tax payable in 2021. Having been outed here for its $300m retirement village tax scam, the big developer sups large on government contracts largesse but has paid more tax in other countries over the past 8 years than it has in Australia. Profit margin, prima facie, is just 0.85%.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Dies septimus

• The seventh day of our vacation. This far I haven’t really done

• anything. As always full of plans, but at the end none becomes

• reality.

• Christmas was great, although far from the family (only my brother

• came to visit us).

• At least I upgraded NetBSD on the Pi. sysupgrade(8) works fine, it

• upgrades the sets and whatnot, but can’t upgrade the kernel. The Pi

• expects netbsd.img on the FAT partition mounted under /boot (as

• configured in /boot/config.txt). So I downloaded the generic kernel

• img for evbarm-aarch64 and copied it to /boot. Now I have a 9.3

• system. Then I upgraded all the packages with pkgin. That went well,

• too.

• 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

=> Techrights

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