This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2023/01/03/budgie-f38/.

● 01.03.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/01/2023: Budgie Enters Fedora Linux 38 as ISO

Posted in News Roundup at 7:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Top 10 ubuntu laptops : A buying guide

• Ubuntu laptops offer the latest in computing technology packed into a light and portable form factor. With the Ubuntu operating system, users get a powerful, secure, and reliable platform to work and play on. Ubuntu laptops are designed to meet a wide range of needs, from simple web browsing to advanced programming. With a wide range of hardware configurations, users can find the perfect laptop that fits their needs. Whether you’re looking for a basic laptop or a powerful workstation, Ubuntu laptops are a perfect choice.

• [...]

• It runs on Ubuntu, offering a secure, stable and user-friendly interface.

=> ↺ Best Linux Distro for Beginners in 2023: Top 6 Picks

• Looking for the best Linux distro for beginners in 2023? We compared and ranked the best picks. If you want to know more about this topic, we recommend you read our article!

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Late Night Linux – Episode 210 – Late Night Linux

• Real hope for a local-only voice assistant, Matrix learns an age-old lesson about funding FOSS, 2022 was the year of Linux on the desktop, Mozilla is about to catch up to the Mastodon trend, there definitely won’t be a Raspberry Pi 5 this year (honest), and KDE Korner.

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ 7 Best Free and Open Source Stacking Wayland Compositors – LinuxLinks

• A window manager is software that manages the windows that applications bring up. For example, when you start an application, there will be a window manager running in the background, responsible for the placement and appearance of windows.

• It is important not to confuse a window manager with a desktop environment. A desktop environment typically consists of icons, windows, toolbars, folders, wallpapers, and desktop widgets. They provide a collection of libraries and applications made to operate cohesively together. A desktop environment contains its own window manager.

• There are a few different types of window managers. This article focuses on stacking Wayland compositors. We cover tiling Wayland compositors in a separate article.

Applications

=> ↺ ’Converter’ is a Slick Image Conversion Tool for Linux – OMG! Ubuntu!

• On the hunt for an open-source Linux app you can use to quickly convert images from one image format to another?

• I know I was!

• Don’t get me wrong, online image converters are okay. But sometimes they don’t work, sometimes they take too long, and sometimes they subject me to a barrage of pop-ups, prompts and other annoyances — “No, I don’t want to enable push notifications for this site”, I hiss, “cos you’re an image converter, not a news source”.

• But all that is forgotten since I discovered Converter, a new GTK4/libadwaita image converter for Linux desktops — and this post is about it!

=> ↺ Whereis Command in Linux and BSD with Examples

• The whereis command is a command line program that helps you to find out the path or location of any binary executable, source file or manual page.

• Here’s some examples for you to learn this command.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ What you need to do to secure Ubuntu

• Ubuntu is a popular and secure operating system, but there are still steps you can take to further secure your system and protect your data. In this tutorial, we will explore a variety of tips and techniques to secure your Ubuntu system, covering topics such as updating and patching, strong passwords, firewalls, antivirus software, and more. Here are several tips to help with Ubuntu security.

=> ↺ Top 10 Linux security tutorials for sysadmins from 2022 | Enable Sysadmin

• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

=> ↺ How to Create Bash Aliases with Parameters – TecAdmin

• Bash aliases are shortcuts that allow you to use a shorter or simpler command to represent a longer or more complex command. Bash aliases are useful when you frequently use long or complex commands and want to save time and effort by using a shorter or simpler command instead. To create a Bash alias with arguments and parameters, you can use the alias command and include variables in the alias definition.

• In this article, we will explore how to create Bash aliases with arguments and parameters.

=> ↺ How to Install Pip on Ubuntu 22.04 – TecAdmin

• Pip is a package management system used to install and manage software packages written in Python. It stands for “Pip Installs Packages” and is a helpful tool for developers to easily share and collaborate on code. In this article, we will explain how to install Pip on Ubuntu 22.04.

• Before installing Pip, make sure that Python is installed on your system. Ubuntu 22.04 comes with Python 3.9 pre-installed, so you don’t need to worry about installing it.

=> ↺ How to Check If Crontab Is Working

• Crontab stands for cron table, where cron is obtained from the Greek word Chronos which means time. Crontab is a scheduler that is responsible for managing the tasks that are scheduled by the user. The crontab is the set of commands that enables the system to perform the tasks automatically. It is the silent job handler. Due to which, it becomes necessary to check whether it is working properly or not. If we don’t check for the crontab whether it is working or not, it stops the system from working. For example, if we want to back up the database regularly for some reason, crontab stops working. If we don’t check for that until the crontab is started again by the user, the whole data will be lost. The sixth is a fixed number of fields. The first five of which are used to store the time and date on which the job is done and the sixth one is the command to be executed.

=> ↺ How to install PHP 5.6 and 7.0 – 8.2 with PHP-FPM and FastCGI mode for ISPConfig 3.2 with apt on Debian 9 to 11

• In this guide we will take you through installing additional PHP versions (5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.1, and 8.2) on a Debian server…

=> ↺ How to Install Wike on Fedora Linux – LinuxCapable

• Wike is a lightweight and open-source Wikipedia reader app for Linux-based GNOME desktops and uses the MediaWiki API to fetch content from Wikipedia. The following tutorial will teach you how to install Wike on Fedora Linux using a COPR repository or the Flatpak package manager utilizing the Flathub with cli commands for those looking for a fast and lightweight way to view Wikipedia articles on their Fedora desktop.

=> ↺ List of Special Parameters in Bash with Examples

• Before you can understand what special parameters are, you must first understand what parameters are: Any entity that stores a value (also known as a variable) is the parameter.

• Yes, it’s that short in definition; now, special parameters are a few predefined parameters given by your shell that hold read-only information related to your existing shell session.

• This parameter can be used in your terminal or shell script to control how the script runs by figuring out the user’s shell session or getting the arguments the user has given.

=> ↺ Startup/execution time for a specific command line tool

• Generally I don’t have to bother about the startup time of any command line tool. For a human eye and normal day to day usage, if a command takes half a second to finish the job, it is not much of a problem. But, the story changes the moment we talk about a command which we have to run multiple times. What about about a command which have to execute multiple times every minute? This is the time when the startup and execution time matters.

• A few weeks ago I was looking at a Python script which was executing as part of Nagios run, it was doing an API call to a remote server with JSON data coming in as command line arguments. Now, to make it scale more the first thought was to move the actual API call to a different process and get the original script to load things into a Redis queue. But, the other issue was the startup time for the Python script, having something with lesser startup time would be more help in this case, where nagios may execute the script/command over a few hundred times in every minute.

=> ↺ Beginners Guide for Sleep Command in Linux

• As its name suggests, the sleep command is commonly used by shell script writers to delay the execution of individual or portions of commands specified after this command in script.

• Using this command, you can delay the next command’s execution for the specified number of seconds (the default), minutes, hours, and days using different suffixes.

• In this article, you will learn about the sleep command with its different suffixes and how to use it in shell scripts to pause the execution for a certain period of time.

=> ↺ Starlink -> Google -> Blocking altnerative DNS Servers!!! – how to setup Firefox to use Tor Proxy

• the reason this time was NOT on the server-side, but on the Google side, blocking all DNS servers that are NOT google.

• while this can be understood in the terms of CyberSec:

• • (manipulation of DNS servers, forwarding visitors of banking.com to a malicious website, that looks exactly like the original site).

• – it is another step towards more internet surveillance, as a DNS server is de-facto asked EVERY time a client makes a connection to domain.com

• possible solution: tunnel all traffic over tor.

=> ↺ Update the ISPConfig Perfect Server from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04

• This tutorial will take you through updating a server managed by ISPConfig from Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) to Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish).

=> ↺ A Beginner’s Guide to a Multistage Docker Build

• Docker multi-stage build is the process of specifying a series of builds in a Dockerfile. In other words, the Dockerfile contains multiple “FROM” statements in a single file, and the new from statement utilizes different or previous base instructions. The multistage build enables developers to break down the development process into multistage. Moreover, the base instruction is referred to as installation or setup instructions, and other instructions use dependencies of base instruction to function properly.

=> ↺ How to Install or Upgrade PHP 8.2 on Ubuntu 22.04 – Cloudbooklet

• The most recent version of PHP, 8.2, was published in 2022. You will learn how to install the most recent PHP version, which is 8.2, on your Ubuntu 22.04 machine or server and configure it with Apache and Nginx in this tutorial.

• Additionally, you’ll discover how to set up an alternative PHP version and downgrade or upgrade to an earlier or newer version.

• This guide also shows you how to configure PHP INI settings, FPM settings, pools, and other things that are more effective for an effective execution of your application.

• On the Google Cloud Platform, a Compute Compute Engine VM Instance running the Ubuntu 22.04 operating system is used to test this installation. All Linux distributions will support this setup.

=> ↺ How to Install Git on Fedora Linux – LinuxCapable

• GIT is a free, open-source version control system that can efficiently manage small or huge projects. The following tutorial will teach you how to install the latest or upgrade GIT on Fedora Linux using the command line terminal and some basic commands and tips on using GIT cli commands.

=> ↺ How to Use dd Command in Linux [15 Useful Examples]

• In this advanced guide, we will discuss some practical examples of the dd command. After following this guide, advanced users will be able to work with the block devices comfortably from the command line interface.

• In Linux, everything is a file and the block devices are not an exception to it. Often time, we need to work with block devices. As Linux users, we perform a variety of operations on block devices, such as, – taking a backup of a disk or partition, backing up Master Boot Record (MBR), making a bootable USB drive, and the list goes on.

• Certainly, we can use graphical tools to perform all these operations. However, most Linux administrators prefer to use the dd command due to its rich functionality and robustness.

• In this advanced guide, we will learn about the dd command to convert and copy files. However, unlike the cp command most of the time it’s used with block devices.

=> ↺ How to Find the System Restarted Time in Linux – TREND OCEANS

• Because Linux systems do not require reboots, we run them for a week, month, year, and so on. To find out how long it’s been running, use the last, who, and uptime commands.

=> ↺ How to Install Kate on Fedora Linux – LinuxCapable

• Kate is a free, open-source, multi-document, multi-view text editor developed by KDE. It has many useful features for programmers and other power users, including code folding, syntax highlighting, dynamic word wrap, an embedded console, an extensive plugin interface, and some preliminary scripting support. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Kate Text Editor on Fedora Linux using the command line terminal with various installation options to install the text editor.

=> ↺ How to Install Chromium on Fedora Linux

• Chromium is an open-source browser project that builds a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web on their Fedora desktop. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Chromium Web Browser on your Fedora Linux desktop using two Fedora default repository methods or the Flatpak method and how to maintain and remove the browser in the future.

=> ↺ How to Install OnlyOffice on Fedora Linux

• ONLYOFFICE is a powerful and versatile office suite that allows you to edit text documents, spreadsheets, or presentations easily. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install OnlyOffice on Fedora Linux by downloading the official RPM repository and installing it manually or using the third-party package manager Flatpak which is natively installed.

=> ↺ How to Install Foliate on Fedora Linux

• Foliate is free, open-source software that focuses on reading and supports book management with a detailed library view that supports most e-book formats, such as EPUB and AZW(3). In the following tutorial, you will learn to install Foliate on Fedora Linux using one of two methods: dnf package manager with Fedora’s repository, flatpak package manager, and some tips for maintaining or removing Foliate in the future.

=> ↺ How to Install FileZilla Fedora Linux

• FileZilla is one of the most popular FTP clients, and for a good reason. It’s easy to use, free, and has cross-platform support. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install FileZilla on Fedora Linux using the standard Fedora repository, which often has the newest version, or the alternative natively installed Flatpak manager with Flathub using the command line terminal.

=> ↺ How To Install VirtualBox 7 On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS [2023] | Itsubuntu.com

• VirtualBox is a popular system virtualization software. It is powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization cross-platform virtual software that is loaded with plenty of features. It is available in both free and professional editions.

=> ↺ How to Install Geany on Fedora Linux

• Geany is a popular open-source text editor that can also be used as an IDE for programming languages such as Python. It is known for its simplicity and speed, making it a good choice if you need a fast and lightweight text editor. Geany also has enough features to meet most needs, making it an excellent all-purpose text editor worth checking out on your Fedora desktop.

Games

=> ↺ [GNOME] Crosswords: Puzzle update – Jonathan Blandford

• Happy New Year, Crossword-lovers!

• This is a minor update in preparation for a bigger release in the next few weeks. We’ve done a lot of exciting work on Crosswords over the past few months that’s almost ready for release. However, there are a few things available already that I wanted to highlight early.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ Kali Linux: What’s next for the popular pentesting distro? – Help Net Security

• If you’re interested in penetration testing and digital forensics, you know that Kali Linux is worth a try. And if you’re already doing it, chances are good you are already using it.

• We talked to Jim O’Gorman, Chief Content and Strategy Officer at Offensive Security (OffSec), about the direction in which the development of the open-source distro is headed.

=> ↺ Top 10 Linux Distributions for Windows Users in 2023

• We compiled an inventory of the ten best Linux distributions for Windows users in 2023 based on how easy they are to adopt and successfully migrate from Windows.

• Although there are hundreds of Linux Distributions, very few of them can seriously replace Windows operating system. With the advancements and stability across Linux Kernel and desktop environments, 2023 is the perfect year to adopt Linux as a daily driver. This applies to students, school administrations, hobbyists, scientists, and related work profiles. In addition, the hardware makers also provide Linux support for their device line-ups.

• Linux, in general, still requires some workaround for specific workflows. However, Linux is still catching up on specific niche work profiles. The reason is some specific application vendors do not provide Linux executables. But there are plenty of alternatives available for everything in the Linux world.

• Moreover, for day-to-day work from an average user standpoint, the Linux operating system is now at a stage that can perform all the work you throw. With that in mind, we compiled the below 10 best Linux distributions in 2023 for Windows users. These should cover almost all possible use cases and work profiles (including Desktop or Laptop).

=> ↺ Limine Installer check duplicate UUID, PARTUUID and label

• I have now added a check in Limine Installer for non-unique UUID, PARTUUID (GUID), or filesystem label. If two partitions have one of those the same, and it is specified in the ‘limine.cfg’ file, at bootup Limine and/or EasyOS will get very confused.

• Now, these conflicts are detected. In the case of the conflict being a partition on an internal drive and on a USB-stick, the user is advised to avoid the conflict by unplugging the USB-stick before the next bootup.

New Releases

=> ↺ Nitrux 2.6 Is Out Powered by Linux 6.1, Adds PipeWire and Wayland by Default

• Uri Herrera announced today the release of Nitrux 2.6 as the latest stable update for this Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution that does not use the systemd init system and it’s built around the latest KDE Plasma desktop environment.

• Powered by the latest Linux 6.1 kernel and the upcoming Mesa 23 graphics stacks, Nitrux 2.6 comes with the PipeWire multimedia server enabled by default for its NX Desktop graphical session built on top of the KDE Plasma 5.26.4 desktop environment, which is accompanied by the KDE Frameworks 5.101 and KDE Gear 22.12 software suites.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ It’s Official: Fedora Linux 38 Will Offer Fedora Budgie and Sway Spins

• Ex-Solus project leader and Budgie desktop maintainer Joshua Strobl announced today on social media that an official Fedora Budgie Spin featuring the latest Budgie desktop environment is coming as part of the Fedora Linux 38 release in late April 2023.

• Budgie desktop is an independently-developed desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, initially created by Ikey Doherty for the Solus distribution. Budgie is now actively maintained by a team of contributors led by Joshua Strobl and it’s available for other popular distros like Arch Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora Linux.

=> ↺ Rocky Linux vs. AlmaLinux: Which One to Choose? – idroot

• AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux are two free and open-source operating systems based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. Both are designed to be community-driven, transparent, and stable, but there are some key differences between the two.

• [...]

• Rocky Linux is a free and open-source operating system based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. It was created as an alternative to RHEL and aims to be a community-driven, transparent, and stable operating system.

=> ↺ Weekly status of Packit Team: Packit January 2023

=> ↺ Contribute at the Fedora Linux Test Week for Kernel 6.1 – Fedora Magazine

• The kernel team is working on final integration for Linux kernel 6.1. This version was just recently released, and will arrive soon in Fedora Linux. As a result, the Fedora Linux kernel and QA teams have organized a test week from Tuesday, Jan 03, 2023 to Sunday, Jan 07, 2023. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. Continue reading for details.

• [...]

• A test week is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora Linux work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.

=> ↺ How to be the manager your IT team needs in 2023 | The Enterprisers Project

• For all our talk about the value of leadership, too often, we focus on high-level, C-suite leaders. This leaves a valuable category outside consideration: the manager.

• The role of a manager goes beyond managing the workforce’s day-to-day tasks. Managers are pivotal in driving the company culture, mission, and values. By leading the workforce, they become integral to driving the enterprise forward. They are also one of the main reasons employees stay with their company – we’ve all heard that “people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers.”

• Employees rely on and take cues from the attitudes and behaviors of their immediate manager – more so than those in the C-suite. Still, recent NTT DATA research shows that investment in leadership development is a relatively low priority for business leaders. Managers must cultivate a culture of support, transparency, growth, and collaboration to see positive team results.

=> ↺ 7 resources to advance your automation journey in 2023 | The Enterprisers Project

• Automation is no longer a futuristic concept. It is now embedded within a variety of industries and throughout all areas of business. In addition to automation trends, our contributing authors covered stories of how it is being implemented in the real world. Instead of viewing automation as a threat, modern IT leaders are embracing its potential. Whether it is used to enhance employee experience in the workplace or improve medical technology to save lives, we are all impacted by automation.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu 23.04 Daily Builds Now Include the New Installer By Default

• At the end of the installation process, a new end screen is shown with options to either restart Ubuntu or shut down.

• The overall install experience has been upgraded to current standards, which makes it more appealing, providing a modern user experience.

• Unfortunately, you will have to wait a bit more for Ubuntu 23.04′s release or at least its beta release to get your hands on to properly test it out without risking encountering bugs.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ MediaTek Genio 700 Cortex-A78/A55 IoT processor targets industrial and Smart Home applications – CNX Software

• MediaTek Genio 700 is an octa-core Arm processor with two Cortex-A78 cores, six Cortex-A55 cores, a Mali-G57 GPU, and a 4 TOPS AI accelerator designed for consumer and industrial IoT applications.

• The new processor is a cost-down version of the Genio 1200 premium AIoT processor introduced last year with four Cortex-A78 and four Cortex-A55 cores. The Genio 700 offers many of the same features but with lower performance/capabilities, including a 3-core GPU and an AI accelerator limited to 4.0 TOPS, as well as support for dual displays up to 4K + Full HD (instead of 2x 4K), and 32MP single cameras (instead of 48 MP).

=> ↺ MediaTek introduces Genio 700 for industrial and smart home products – Help Net Security

• MediaTek announced the latest chipset in the Genio platform for IoT devices, the octa-core Genio 700 designed for smart home, smart retail, and industrial IoT products.

• With a focus on power efficiency, the MediaTek Genio 700 is a N6 (6nm) IoT chipset that boasts two ARM A78 cores running at 2.2GHz and six ARM A55 cores at 2.0GHz while providing 4.0 TOPs AI accelerator. It comes with support for FHD60+4K60 display, as well as an ISP for better images.

• “When we launched the Genio family of IoT products last year, we designed the platform with the scalability and development support that brands need, paving the way for opportunities to continue expanding,” said Richard Lu, Vice President of MediaTek IoT Business Unit. “With a focus on industrial and smart home products, the Genio 700 is a perfect natural addition to the lineup to ensure we can provide the widest range of support possible to our customers.”

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Sidecar: How to get a Psion online in 2023 • The Register

• Code whizz and tinkerer Kian Ryan’s ingenious “Sidecar” is a self-contained, battery-powered Wi-Fi-to-RS232 bridge that enables his elderly Psion 5MX PDA to access a little bit of the modern internet.

• The Sidecar is an inspired homemade device which combines an assortment of bits of hardware and software, a 3D-printed case, plus considerable ingenuity, to create a pocket-sized gadget that turns a vintage mobile computer into a mobile Linux terminal – and which can also permit elderly gadgets access the internet.

• You can trace the development of the Sidecar over six months on Ryan’s blog. Back in June, he described a fairly complicated setup. This used a MAX3232-based [PDF] RS232-to-TTL level converter, plus a gender-converter and a null-modem adapter to hook a Psion serial cable to a Raspberry Pi Zero. (He didn’t mention it, but we think it must a Pi Zero W to provide an upstream network connection.)

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Russell Coker: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014

• In May 2014 I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition tablet (wikipedia page [1]) with 32G of RAM. It’s display is 2560×1600 resolution which still compares well to the latest tablets. The Galaxy Tab S8 [2] is the latest high-end tablet series from Samsung and the 11 inch tablet in that series also has a 2560×1600 giving it a slightly lower DPI! The latest series also has 12.4″ and 14.6″ tablets with resolutions of 2800×1752 and 2960×1848 respectively. Obviously if you want a 14″ tablet then the latest offerings are good, but if you want a 10″ or 11″ tablet then Samsung hasn’t improved much. The Note 10.1 has 3G of RAM and a choice of 16G, 32G, or 64G of storage. The latest Tab S8 tablets have 8G to 16G of RAM and 128G to 512G of internal storage, which are great if you need such things. For many tasks 3G of RAM is quite adequate and as I chose the 32G model I haven’t had a problem with storage. The s-pen is a feature of this tablet which is also on the latest high-end Samsung tablets, it is useful for accessing small elements in web sites designed for desktop use and for graphics editing.

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy A03 and Galaxy F12 are the latest to receive Android 13 update – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ People are just noticing game-changing Android trick that could save you hundreds | The US Sun

=> ↺ Colorful Stage for Android app crashing after completing a song

=> ↺ HarmonyOS is neither Android nor iOS: Father of HarmonyOS

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Document with BookStack, an open source Confluence alternative

• BookStack is an open source, web-based documentation system, that allows you to create a structured knowledge store for personal, team, or company use. BookStack focuses on ease-of-use and design to provide an experience suitable for an audience with, potentially, mixed skills in technology. It’s built upon the PHP framework Laravel, with MySQL or MariaDB used as a datastore.

• I built BookStack after attempting to find a documentation or wiki system for my workplace. Confluence was the closest option to suit my requirements but the user-based pricing introduced a barrier. The closed nature of Confluence also raised questions to the longevity of the documentation I’d be building. In the end, I decided to build my own platform to suit my needs. I released it under the MIT license to give back to the open source community that I’d come to love and benefit from over the years.

=> ↺ Create a highly available distributed database with Apache ShardingSphere | Opensource.com

• Modern business systems must be highly available, reliable, and stable in the digital age. As the cornerstone of the current business system, databases are supposed to embrace high availability.

• High availability (HA) allows databases to switch services between primary and secondary database nodes. HA automatically selects a primary, picking the best node when the previous one crashes.

=> ↺ Two observations about Mastodon in early 2023 : Dissociated Press

• Tonight, not for the first time, I learned about a “breaking news” item from Mastodon. That’s been happening more often over the past few weeks, whereas this time last year I’d have gotten this kind of thing via Twitter first.

• This seems significant to me because Mastodon is making the leap from “a small group of people talking about the service itself a lot” to “several of my friends are here and there’s some community” to “a news source” rather quickly. It took Twitter a long time to cross that chasm. And it’s one of the things that made Twitter valuable, if also a primary source of doom scrolling.

• This doesn’t mean Mastodon is a drop-in replacement for Twitter. But. Mastodon, and the larger “Fediverse,” seem to be gaining critical mass beyond just numbers but also in the way it’s used.

• The other observation is providers like Linode and Digital Ocean offering quickstarts for Mastodon hosting.

• That’s good, it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not the kind of “batteries included” offering that’s going to really cause self-hosted Mastodon to take off. Deploying a service is not the hard part. Maintaining the service, the “day two” operations, is what you have to worry about.

=> ↺ The Significance of Open Source Software in the Digital-First Future Enterprise | SUSE Communities

• As companies shift their focus from the digital transformation of individual processes to the business outcomes enabled by a digitally transformed organization, software engineering will become a core enterprise capability. To become a software-powered organization, companies must first identify and address the concerns of its developers in areas such as developer experience, developer velocity and software security.

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

=> ↺ What is Miklos hacking – Improved number portion formatting in Writer

• Number portions generated when using lists/numberings/bullets in Writer now can have formatting which is preserved in ODT files as well.

• First, thanks Docmosis for funding this work by Collabora.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

=> ↺ Kiwi TCMS – Kiwi TCMS 11.7

• We’re happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 11.7 and Happy New Year!

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Inet Pton() Function in C Language

• The socket functions use structures in their input arguments that contain client and server specific data. The most important information in these structures is undoubtedly the IP addresses.

• There are several types of structures which are used by socket functions to store these addresses. For example: sockaddr, addrinfo or in_addr, etc.

• Regardless of the type of structure in which they are stored, IP addresses are not encoded, which means that each of the numbers in their fields is represented by its binary equivalent. This means that in certain cases, it is necessary to convert the IP addresses to strings or strings to IP addresses in order to work with them.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

=> ↺ Bash Set Command

• Bash has many environment variables for various purposes. The set command of Bash is used to modify or display the different attributes and parameters of the shell environment. This command has many options to perform the different types of tasks. The uses of set command for various purposes are described in this tutorial.

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ 1500 experts dislike blockchain, and so should you | Stop at Zona-M

• About 1500 computer scientists, software engineers, and other technologists just signed a Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy. The paragraphs that follows are the snippets of that letter that, with as little editing from me as possible, summarize why you should ask your representatives to do the same.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Microsoft Edge gained less than 2% market share in 2022

=> ↺ Windows 11 is still not really faster than Windows 10 despite what Microsoft suggested

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ [Old] Did Facebook shadow profile you? | Stop at Zona-M

• “Shadow profile” is the common name for information about you that Facebook collected and stores without your explicit knowledge or consent. Even if you’ve never used Facebook yourself.

Gemini* and Gopher

Technical

Programming

=> ↺ Some notes on working with old C code

• The post is briefly about testing the old game Star Trek that was popular in the 70s, and in this case, it’s been ported to C probably sometime in the 80s. The game is interactive so writing any form of tests (much less “unit tests”) will be challenging, to say the least. (the post does go on to say that possibly using expect [2] would probably be in order).

• I have a bit of experience here with older C code. At one point, I got interested in Viola [3], an early graphical web browser from 1992, and is the type of C code that gives C a bad name. It was written in a transition period between K&R (Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie) C and ANSI (American National Standards Institute) C, so it had to cater to both, so function prototypes were spotty at best. It also made several horrible assumptions about primitive data types—mainly that pointers, integers and long integers were all interchangable, and plenty of cases where signed quantities were compared to unsigned quantities.

• 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.