● 02.17.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 18/2/2022: Snap Flaw, PinePhone Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 9:14 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• My first interaction with Computers was in school. These machines were running a version of DOS. I had no interest in the subject, so I did not pay attention to it. Ironically, years later I landed up pursuing Engineering in Computer science.

• While being investigated in California for a potential class action lawsuit for making it difficult to cancel, NordVPN merged with another VPN company, SurfShark, and now they’ve broken the “Linux” client again.

• Version 3.12.4 for “Linux” causes the Internet Killswitch to stop working on Debian GNU/Linux 11, which means that if the VPN drops, your traffic can go out over the open Internet without warning.

• I had to go into Synaptic Package Manager, find the NordVPN repo, and select Force Version to get back to 3.12.3. Disastrous upgrades that shift bugs around are quite common in NordVPN’s clients, but are particularly bad with the “Linux” version. And they won’t tell you how to just use Wireguard and connect directly, even though behind the scenes, that’s pretty much what their piece of crap client program is doing. That and some firewall rules to implement the Killswitch.

Audiocasts/Shows

• SXIV is an amazing image viewer from the suckless style of apps but it’s been left by the way side and abandoned luckily a few devs wanted to keep it around and now with have SXIV the Neo Simple X Image Viewer.

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Kali Linux 2022.1 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• Canonical has a big week, why bcachefs looks like it’s taking another step forward, and ChromeOS Flex for PCs is released.

Kernel Space

• Loading a BPF program into the kernel involves a lot of steps, including verification, permissions checking, linking to in-kernel helper functions, and compilation to the native instruction format. Underneath all of that, though, lies one other simple task: allocating some memory to store the compiled BPF program in the kernel’s address space. It turns out that this allocation can be somewhat wasteful of memory in current kernels, especially on systems where large numbers of BPF programs are loaded. This patch set from Song Liu seeks to remedy this problem by introducing yet another specialized memory allocator into the kernel.

• The kernel allows BPF programs to be reasonably large, but most of them are, in practice, quite small. BPF can do quite a bit with a few hundred bytes of code space. But the kernel allocates space for BPF programs in units of full base (usually 4KB) pages, with all of the space past the end of each program being wasted for as long as that program remains loaded. For a small program, most of the page allocated to hold the code is unused; if there are many programs loaded, the amount of wasted memory can start to add up.

• Liu’s patch set adds a new “bpf_prog_pack” allocator to address this problem. It would be, on the surface, one of the simplest memory allocators in the system. It maintains a list of huge pages to hold BPF programs, allocating new ones as needed. Whenever space is needed for a new BPF program, a simple, first-fit algorithm allocates the amount needed. A bitmap associated with each huge page (or “pack”) tracks the free space (in 64B chunks), thus automatically coalescing chunks returned to the allocator when programs are unloaded. It is not written for speed, but it does not need to be; even on a system that makes heavy use of BPF, allocation and free operations will be relatively rare.

• The advantages of this simple allocator are reasonably clear. Because multiple programs can be packed into a single page, the memory that is wasted due to internal fragmentation will be greatly reduced. Performance will be helped by putting BPF programs into huge pages, which reduces translation lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure. But it is worth asking why yet another allocator is needed when the kernel already has memory-management code that has been extensively developed and tuned over the years. The answer is that BPF brings some special needs that cannot be met with existing allocators.

• Persistent memory has a number of advantages; it is fast, CPU-addressable, available in large quantities and, of course, persistent. But it also, arguably, poses a higher risk of suffering corruption as a result of bugs in the kernel. Protecting against this possibility is the objective of this patch set from Ira Weiny, which makes use of Intel’s “protection keys supervisor” (PKS) feature to make it harder for the kernel to inadvertently write to persistent memory.

• The Raptor Lake processor family is the 13th generation of Intel Core, which is scheduled for launch later this year.

Graphics Stack

• Intel has confirmed some updates to their tech roadmap today and the good news is that Arc Graphics are on the way.

• For notebooks, Intel Arc Alchemist will be arriving in the first quarter of this year. We already mostly knew this though, as they confirmed that before. At least now though, we’re getting clearer info on standalone cards for desktops – which will be due out in Q2 (April – June). Intel think they will manage to ship “4 million” discrete GPUs in 2022 which would be across laptops, consumer desktops and workstations.

• Can you actually believe that the Vulkan API has just crossed over the 6 year mark? Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday. It truly has helped to create some amazing stuff while it steadily takes over from OpenGL as the cross-platform open API to use.

Applications

• Accessibility is the degree to which products, devices, services, or environments are available to as many people as possible whatever their circumstances. Accessibility can be viewed as the ability to access and benefit from a system or entity. Accessibility is paramount. Social inclusion is not an act of charity but a fundamental human right.

• There are several different kinds of keyboards for PCs. The most common type is a physical, external keyboard that plugs into your PC. But you can use a virtual keyboard with Linux instead of a physical keyboard.

• This post lists the top five live streaming applications for Ubuntu Linux with features, highlights, download details, and comparison.

• Digital photography opens up a whole new world of photo postprocessing opportunities, especially if the photographer uses their camera’s raw format to take advantage of all of the data collected by the sensor. On the other hand, using raw images means doing without all of the processing done by the camera and taking on a range of complex tasks. Raw photo editors are designed to work with raw images as a key part of a photographer’s workflow. Your editor recently reviewed the darktable editor, but there are other options available in the free-software community. RawTherapee is a GPLv3-licensed raw editor that is in some ways simpler than darktable — but that is not the same as saying that it is simple.

• Superficially, RawTherapee looks a lot like darktable. The initial view is called the “file browser”; like darktable’s “light table”, it allows the user to import images into the application, add star ratings, and choose an image to edit. There are options to filter images in a number of ways, including by aperture and shutter speed, or by the lens that was used to take them. The right sidebar can also be turned into an inspection window for quickly looking at images using a 1:1 pixel ratio to check for focus.

• As an experiment in processing photos with RawTherapee, your editor used the file browser to choose the image shown below, taken on a recent outing above town. Once again, this photo is anything but a great work of art, but it does show the kind of problems that a raw editor can address. The image contains a lot of contrast, and the mountains in the background are somewhat overexposed — an ongoing hazard when photographing scenes with snow in them — while the foreground is dark. What is shown here is the image as produced by the camera; what can be done to improve it?

Instructionals/Technical

• Support for CentOS ended in 2021, but the project lives on in the form of Rocky Linux. Here’s how to install and configure Rocky Linux.

• Rocky Linux is a CentOS clone created by Gregory Kurtzer, the founder of CentOS. Kurtzer announced the Rocky Linux project hours after the RHEL development team announced support for CentOS 8 ended on December 31, 2021. The downstream, binary-compatible build based on RHEL released on June 21, 2021. Kurtzer named the distro after his late CentOS co-founder, tweeting, “Thinking back to early CentOS… My co-founder Rocky McGaugh. He is no longer with us, so as a H/T to him, who never got to see the success that CentOS came to be, I introduce to you… Rocky Linux.”

• Adding an ERP/CRM solution to your company workflow can make a huge difference in productivity. Jack Wallen shows you how to deploy the open-source Odoo system to fill this void.

• Odoo was once known as Open ERP and TinyERP and served as a complete Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management solution in one powerful, open-source package. Odoo includes all of the features you require for ERP/CRM, such as:

• OpenVPN server in a Docker container running on Kubernetes.

• Today we are looking at how to install Sonic Classic 2 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform built using the Ruby language. It is designed to work as a forum, chat software or mailing list. It integrates easily with other platforms, and its functionality can be expanded with plugins.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Discourse Forum with the Nginx server on a Debian 11 based server.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenFire on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenFire is a cross-platform, real-time chat server that is based on the XMPP protocol. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP Openfire is incredibly easy to set up and administer but offers rock-solid security and performance.

• 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 through the step-by-step installation of the OpenFire on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install ELK stack 8.x on Ubuntu systems. Elastic/ELK stack 8.0 has been released making it another major version release after Elastic 7.0.

• This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to download and install gscan2pdf 2.12.5 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Linux Mint 20.3, and lower versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

• gscan2pdf is a GUI tool used to produce PDFs or DjVus from Scanned documents,gscan2pdf works on all Linux / BSD machines.

• gscan2pdf team released a newer version 2.12.5 recently and is yet to be updated in official PPA (Jeffrey Ratcliffe) for Ubuntu 20.04 and lower versions.

• The Apache server is one of the most popular open-source web servers developed and maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache is by far the most widely used web server application in Linux operating systems, but it can be used on almost all operating system platforms such as Windows, MAC OS, OS/2, and so on. It allows developers to publish their content over the Internet.

• This article explains how to install and configure Apache web server on Debian 11 (Bullseye). The same steps work and have been tested on the older Debian 10 version as well.

• Extracting text from media like images isn’t new technology in the market. Google-like company is already trying to implement OCR in Vision API to implement text detection in their native image tool or photo managers.

• In Linux, we have multiple tools to snitch text from the images. Textsnatcher is another one of its kind. This tool performs optical character recognition (OCR) in a couple of seconds, allowing you to copy anything from the image to your system clipboard easily.

• Recently I have worked on a container that I wanted to be able to use on both x86_64 and aarch64 (in other words, on my regular laptop as well as on my raspberry pi). I could build the container on the laptop, push it to quay.io but then the container was failing to start on the raspberry pi, and obviously, the other way around as well.

• The question was then: how to make it so that I could easily pull the container image from quay.io for both architectures?

• I often read questions about how to use an old PHP version on Fedora (which have 8) or a more recent version on RHEL / CentOS / Alma / Rocky (which have 7.4).

• A developer using PHP often need to test his work with various versions. So here is a description of the Workstation I use daily.

• Old version of this entry, My PHP Workstation for old Fedora and RHEL / CentOS 7 is still available.

• Cinnamon Desktop Environment is a free, open-source desktop environment based on X Window System created from GNOME 3 by the Linux Community that was frustrated and disappointed with GNOME 3. Cinnamon offers a bright, clean look that is less bloated than alternative desktop environments and focuses on speed and flexibility.

• Cinnamon is the default desktop environment choice for Linux Mint, as many veteran Linux distro hoppers would know and are actively maintained by them.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install this alternative desktop environment on AlmaLinux 8 Workstation as an option choice to switch from GNOME.

• We have all been in a situation when our laptop (or PC) comes to the end of its life cycle. It becomes slow and difficult to use. We hang on to it for a while before it finally rests in the desk drawer for the rest of its life. Google has a unique solution for these devices that might give them a reboot.

• Google unveiled its new Chrome OS Flex. The new OS comes with most of the features of Chrome OS, like integration with Android, Google Assistant, and cloud sync (for settings, password, bookmarks, etc) with other devices. It’s free and you can install easily it on your old Mac or Windows device and give it a breath of fresh air.

• Boring with the external disk partitions, USB drive, as well as Trash icons displayed on the left panel (aka, Ubuntu Dock)? Ubuntu 22.04 now has the options in system settings to toggle display these icons.

• eDEX-UI Terminal is a fullscreen, cross-platform terminal emulator and system monitor that looks and feels like a sci-fi computer interface.

• Heavily inspired from the TRON Legacy movie effects (especially the Board Room sequence), the eDEX-UI project was originally meant to be “DEX-UI with less « art » and more « distributable software »”. While keeping a futuristic look and feel, it strives to maintain a certain level of functionality and to be usable in real-life scenarios, with the larger goal of bringing science-fiction UXs to the mainstream.

• It might or might not be a joke taken too seriously.

• Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: Desktop, Server, and Core for Internet of things devices and robots. All the editions can run on the computer alone, or in a virtual machine. Ubuntu is a popular operating system for cloud computing, with support for OpenStack. Ubuntu’s default desktop has been GNOME since version 17.10.

• Ubuntu is released every six months, with long-term support (LTS) releases every two years. As of 22 April 2021, the most recent long-term support release is 20.04 (“Focal Fossa”), which is supported until 2025 under public support and until 2030 as a paid option for companies and free for individuals who register. The latest standard release is 21.10 (“Impish Indri”), which is supported for nine months.

• Ubuntu is developed by British company Canonical, and a community of other developers, under a meritocratic governance model. Canonical provides security updates and support for each Ubuntu release, starting from the release date and until the release reaches its designated end-of-life (EOL) date. Canonical generates revenue through the sale of premium services related to Ubuntu and donations from those who download the Ubuntu software.

• VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture.

• Konversation is a user-friendly Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client which provides easy access to standard IRC networks such as Libera, where the KDE IRC channels can be found. Konversation supports popular platforms like Linux, Windows and FreeBSD. It is the default IRC client in many prominent Linux distributions, such as openSUSE, the KDE spin of Fedora, and Kubuntu. IRC users can share files with other online users. Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) is a type of peer-to-peer filesharing using an IRC server for handshaking in order to exchange files or perform non-relayed chats. A typical DCC session runs independently from the IRC server once established.

• Commands to install Sublime Text editors on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa using Terminal. Version 3 of Sublime is a sensible further development that comes up with numerous features.

• In addition to classic functions such as syntax highlighting for countless programming and scripting languages, snippets, and a code preview, “Sublime Text” has some special features that make the editor interesting for ambitious users. For example, the search and replace function also accepts regular expressions. Selections can be applied specifically to the same words, for example, to quickly adjust a class in the entire document; text blocks can also be edited quickly with a so-called batch selection.

• Coded in C++ and python, Sublime Text puts emphasis on the use of keyboard shortcuts, hence the user can use shortcuts to open and switch documents. Users can also activate the distraction-free mode and edit the text on full screen.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Percona on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Percona Server is a free and open-source distribution of the MySQL relational database management system created by Percona. Percona Server is used by thousands of enterprises to provide superior performance, scalability, and instrumentation for their workloads. It is compatible with many cloud providers including, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and many more.

• 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 Percona Database Server on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• Jenkins can make ssh connection to a remote server for the purpose of executing a command or running a script or we can also copy file from jenkins or some other server to another remote server. For this purpose, we need to create a ssh connection between Jenkins server & remote server.

• This tutorials details the process to add ssh credentials on Jenkins server & easily make a ssh connection with a remote server.

• Budgie is a desktop environment that is free and open-source that uses GNOME technologies such as GTK (> 3.x) and is developed by the Solus project, which also contributes to its design through contributors from numerous communities, including Arch Linux; Manjaro; openSUSE Tumbleweed – among others.

• For users seeking an alternative to GNOME that is lightweight and sleek with a simple UI instead of focusing on eye candy, then Budgie is worth checking out.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Budgie Desktop Environment on AlmaLinux 8 Workstation.

• For those not familiar with MATE Desktop Environment, it is the continuation of GNOME 2. It is famous for being lightweight, fast, and stable that runs on Linux and most BSD operating systems. MATE is also an excellent choice for a lower-end system or those looking to remain efficient on system resources.

• In the following tutorial, you learn how to install the MATE Desktop environment on AlmaLinux 8 Workstation.

• MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases next to its originator MySQL. The original creators of MySQL developed MariaDB in response to fears that MySQL would suddenly become a paid service due to Oracle acquiring it in 2010. With its history of doing similar tactics, the developers behind MariaDB have promised to keep it open source and free from such fears as what has happened to MySQL.

• MariaDB has become just as popular as MySQL with developers, with features such as advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, faster cache/indexes, storage engines, and features/extensions that you won’t find in MySQL.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or upgrade MariaDB 10.8 on Debian 11 Bullseye.

• MakeMKV is a free, open-source tool that can convert video clips from DVDs and Blu-rays, usually encrypted. The output will have most information preserved but not changed in any way; it’s perfect for people who want their media without hassle or headache caused by software limitations like those found with some other transcoder apps.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or upgrade to the latest version of MakeMKV on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS using a recommended repository by the MakeMKV team to provide the most up-to-date version.

• MariaDB is one of the most popular open-source databases next to its originator MySQL. The original creators of MySQL developed MariaDB in response to fears that MySQL would suddenly become a paid service due to Oracle acquiring it in 2010. With its history of doing similar tactics, the developers behind MariaDB have promised to keep it open source and free from such fears as what has happened to MySQL.

• MariaDB has become just as popular as MySQL with developers, with advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, faster cache/indexes, storage engines, and features/extensions that you won’t find in MySQL.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MariaDB 10.7 on AlmaLinux 8.

• XanMod is a free, open-source general-purpose Linux Kernel alternative to the stock kernel on AlmaLinux. It features custom settings and new features and is built to provide a responsive and smooth desktop experience, especially for new hardware.

• Installing a third-party kernel may be for you for users seeking to have their system kernel up to date and not wanting to install kernels or use the testing/unstable repositories manually.

• A text editor is often a good example application to demonstrate what a programming framework is capable of producing. I myself have written at least three example text editors in articles about wxPython and PyQt, and Java. The reason they’re seen as easy apps to create is because the frameworks provide so much of the code that’s hardest to write. I think that’s also the reason that most operating systems provide a simple desktop text editor. They’re useful to the user and easy for the developer.

• On the KDE Plasma Desktop, there are two text editors to choose from: the humble KWrite and the powerful Kate. They share between them a library called KTextEditor from the KDE Framework, which provides robust text editing options, so no matter which one you choose you have more features than you’re probably used to from a “basic” text editor that just happens to be included with your desktop. Using the same component for text editing across text editors means that once you grow accustomed to one text editing interface in KDE, you’re essentially familiar with them all: KWrite, Kate, KDevelop, and more.

Games

• Whalenought Studios and Modern Wolf have today released a native Linux port of Mechajammer, a tactical cyberpunk turn-based RPG set on an off-world grindhouse jungle colony. Mechajammer’s inspirations are rooted in clasisc 80s sci-fi/action movies like Escape from New York, Robocop, and the first Terminator. With the dark atmosphere and plenty of low-tech, you can clearly see some of it shining through.

• 86Box is a new one to me but perhaps some readers might be interested in it. It’s an IBM PC system emulator that specializes in running old operating systems and software. Now with version 3.2 it’s available for Linux.

• In other recent tech news from around the web, with the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC set to begin shipping in less than two weeks, Valve continues to improve its Proton software that allows many Windows PC games to run on Linux. Nintendo, meanwhile, is showing one of the down sides of internet-connected game consoles: the company is shutting down its eShop for the Wii U and 3DS next year, and those are the only ways to purchase some classic games for those consoles, which will make the company’s older consoles a little less useful in the future.

• For people who watch SteamDB updates, there’s been a little bit of confusion on how Valve has been testing titles ready for the release of the Steam Deck on February 25. They’ve now fully clarified.

• The issue surrounds what version they will pick for Deck Verified when games have a Native Linux build. There were a number that appeared on SteamDB, noting Steam Play Proton as the runtime picked instead (meaning the Windows build was used). As example, an update for Portal 2 on SteamDB (their own game) shows the recommended runtime being Proton. Turns out, this was not intended.

• Valve shared via email (making clear this was not embargoed info): “early on, there were a limited number of titles that were tested via Proton before Linux before we made some policy changes. Since then all of those titles are already back in the queue for re-testing using their Linux builds”.

• In parallel to our work on Godot 3.5 (with a first beta) and 4.0 (now at alpha 2!), we backport important fixes to the stable 3.4 branch for use in production.

• A number of such fixes have been queued since the 3.4.2 release, so we’re getting ready to release Godot 3.4.3, and this second Release Candidate is your chance to help us validate it.

• Jump to the Downloads section.

• As usual, you can try it live with the online version of the Godot editor updated for this release.

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Minetest on Zorin OS 16.

• In the spirit of the classics like Streets of Rage, Bitmap Bureau and Numskull Games recently announced Final Vendetta with some great pixel-art and a super soundtrack.

• The developer said “The gameplay mechanics are sure to go down well with fans of the genre, giving players a vast array of moves and the ability to block, run, dodge, strike downed opponents, and even perform juggle combos! Each character has a unique feel and move set that the player will have to master.”

• The co-op spaceship crew simulator PULSAR: Lost Colony got a nice little update recently, with some of the focus being on the Linux version and being ready for the Steam Deck. It’s clearly all hands on Deck.

• Along with fixing a bunch of bugs, the update released on February 15 swapped out their voice chat system to use Photon Voice as a backend. This will offer better direct compatibility for Linux (they have a Native build), and they say it should also “decrease the latency in certain situations”.

• ULTRAKILL might be one of the absolute most popular Early Access games from 2020 and it might just be a good pick for the Steam Deck, if you love fast-paced retro-styled shooters.

• In the “Saw Your Heart Update” released February 16, the team mentioned they’ve added in full controller support to the game. This includes for all menus, tutorials and on-screen text show controller inputs, aim / look speed is no longer affected by framerate and a few other fixes to make controllers feel good. They said they’re hoping for Deck Verification soon.

• Total War: WARHAMMER III has just released although only supported for Windows, with the Linux release due out “in Early Spring”.

• The way it’s been handled is perhaps a little confusing, if you don’t fully read the Steam page. It has a SteamOS icon on Steam (to show Linux support), plus a system requirements tab at the bottom of the store page. However, down below the buy button a bit there’s an Update Notes section that reads “Total War: WARHAMMER III will release on macOS and Linux in Early Spring” and the same is noted in the system requirements.

• Games from Paradox Interactive after a while end up building up quite a lot of DLC, it’s how they support their games for so long but it’s quite daunting for new players – perhaps this new subscription for Hearts of Iron IV may help.

• What they’ve done on Steam is add a new Hearts of Iron IV – Expansion Subscription which for a monthly, 3-monthly or yearly fee gives you access to the entire DLC collection for the game. It includes all the main expansions, plus the smaller DLC packs. Considering there’s 16, it might not be a bad deal since it includes all future DLC.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• In my last post I talked about why knowing the desktop file for a window is important for the task manager. I promised to talk about some cool stuff we did there in Plasma 5.24, so here we are.

• While hacking on the task manager code I noticed that we show a “Open new instance” action in the context menu of every task manager entry, even for those where it doesn’t make sense. A lot of apps are inherently single-window or single-instace, i.e. launching the app a second time will not open a second window but rather focus the existing one. Also, not all windows actually belong to a user-facing or user-launchable application. For example the network integration might ask you for the WiFi password, but you can’t open a new window for that from the task manager. Another kind of app where this actions doesn’t make sense is helper applications like the wizard for connecting to a new bluetooth device.

• This Saturday (Feb 19th) from 12:00pm to ~4:00pm EST I’ll be livestreaming preliminary work on the Plasma 5.25 wallpaper, as well as a brainstorming session for possible directions the Plasma 6 wallpapers could go. Iconography might also be a thing.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Clutter has been in deep maintenance mode since 2016, when 1.26 was released. I formalised this in 2019, when I updated the README, mostly because people are still filing bugs related to GNOME Shell in the Clutter and Cogl issue trackers.

Distributions

• Well, as a workaround for the next release of EasyOS, using the cifs-utils PET, that does work.

• The other news, is have been making some improvements to the JWM drives menu. In some situations it wasn’t displaying the partitions correctly. Also, now getting it to popup after unmounting a partition, which serves as a confirmation.

• After 4 years of stagnation, the lightweight Slax distribution is back in business.

• Anyone who’s ever looked into bringing computer hardware back to life has considered one or more lightweight Linux distributions. In the search for the right OS, you might have come across Slax, which was a Debian-based operating system that was quite popular for a while. However, the pandemic wreaked havoc on the development lifecycle, so we hadn’t seen anything new from the maintainer since 2018.

• That all changes now, with the release of Slax 11.2. Based on Debian Bullseye, almost ready for release and will include features like kernel 5.10, support for 32 and 64-bit systems, PCManFM file manager, Connman network manager, SciTE text editor, xterm terminal emulator, and more. The developer has opted to leave out the Chromium browser by default (due to its size), but by clicking on the Chromium icon, the browser will automatically install.

• Although Debian shifted to the OverlayFS union mount filesystem, Slax had to continue with AUFS to provide the necessary support for the slax activate command. As OverlayFS doesn’t allow for modification of the existing overlay filesystem on the fly.

• Slax, an impressive lightweight Linux distribution for 64-bit/32-bit computers, is back with an update after almost 4 years!

BSD

• Netgate announced that pfSense+ software version 22.01 and pfSense CE software version 2.6 are now available for upgrades and new installations.

• pfSense is a FreeBSD-based operating system for routers and firewalls. It can be installed on most commodity hardware, including old computers and embedded systems. pfSense is typically configured and operated through a user-friendly web interface, making administration easy even for users with limited networking knowledge.

• pfSense CE (Community Edition) is the open source branch freely available for use, as opposed to pfSense+ which is the new closed source branch.

• The pfSense CE is going to continue on the naming scheme of 2.5, 2.6, etc., and then the Plus version is going to use the year.month naming convention for the releases.

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• Joining and contributing to an open source community is a great way to use your skills in creative ways while getting exposure to interesting projects that will expand your skill set. This video shared one person’s experience transitioning from a proprietary environment to open source. The path to get started, the challenges along the way, and key lessons learned help viewers anticipate what moving from proprietary to open source culture could be like.

• Petra Sargent was a software engineer for Nortel Networks after earning her degree in Computer Science 20 years ago. She had learned Pascal in college, but once she signed on with Nortel she was trained in their proprietary programming language, operating system, and version control software, complete with a confidential system architecture book that she kept locked in her desk when she wasn’t using it.

• In this post, continuing our series on setting up Red Hat Satellite for VMware to provision virtual machines (VMs) from Satellite, we’ll look at creating templates for use with VMware.

• This initiative is working on CentOS Stream/Emerging RHEL to make this new distribution a reality. The goal of this initiative is to prepare the ecosystem for the new CentOS Stream.

• So to repeat: varnish-4.0.x is EOL. The 6.0 LTS branch may be used in VCL 4.0 mode with minimal changes, and Varnish Software provides free el7 compatible packages that are well tested for production. If you use varnish-4.0 from EPEL7 on RHEL7, CentOS7, or other clones, it is time to upgrade now. See https://packagecloud.io/varnishcache/varnish60lts/install#manual-rpm for repo details, and https://varnish-cache.org/docs/6.0/whats-new/upgrading-6.0.html for details on the upgrade process.

• In part two of our series on Automating Content Management, we created the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform job templates required to automate the content management in Red Hat Satellite for a large fleet of servers.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The Qualys Research Team has discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the snap-confine function on Linux operating systems, the most important of which can be exploited to escalate privilege to gain root privileges. Qualys recommends security teams apply patches for these vulnerabilities as soon as possible.

• A newly disclosed vulnerability in a Linux program can be exploited for local privilege escalation — and ultimately to acquire root privileges, researchers at cybersecurity vendor Qualys said today.

• The vulnerability (CVE-2021-44731)—which affects Canonical’s Snap system for packaging and deploying software—is not remotely exploitable. However, “if an attacker can log in as any unprivileged user, the vulnerability can be quickly exploited to gain root privileges,” the researchers said in a blog post.

• Qualys has disclosed a vulnerability in the snap-confine component of Ubuntu’s Snap packaging system. “Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows any unprivileged user to gain root privileges on the vulnerable host”. Affected systems with untrusted users should probably be upgraded forthwith.

Devices/Embedded

• E-Con has launched two 8MP/4K HDR cameras: a $199, CSI-linked “e-CAM81_CUNX” with an Onsemi AR0821 for the Jetson Xavier NX, TX2 NX, and Nano dev kits, and a $119 “e-CAM83_USB” with a Sony IMX317 that supports dual video streams at different resolutions.

• Over the last two weeks, E-con Systems has introduced two Linux-supported, fixed-focus, rolling shutter cameras with S-mount holders and 8-megapixel, 4K High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. The e-CAM81_CUNX is a multi-board camera kit that works with Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit, as well as the Jetson Nano Dev Kit via a MIPI-CSI-2 interface. The camera also supports the Xavier NX dev kit equipped with the similarly Linux-driven Jetson TX2 NX module. The e-CAM83_USB camera, meanwhile, was announced last week (see farther below).

• Late last month, I received hardware to test 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 with namely a Radxa E25 SBC, Xiaomi AX6000 WiFi 6 router, and an 8-port TP-Link 2.5GbE switch. I intended to start testing 2.5GbE networking with UP Xtreme i11 mini PC and Radxa E25, but I thought it might be a good idea to get a USB 3.0 to 2.5Gbps Ethernet adapter just in case.

Open Hardware/Modding

• MIDI is a standard known by musicians and instruments all over the world. The basic twist on regular serial has helped studios around the world to work more efficiently. [Kevin] wanted to try sending MIDI data wirelessly, but rather than the typical Bluetooth solution, decided to use the humble nRF24L01 instead.

• The circuitry used is simple: [Kevin] simply wired up two Arduino Unos with nRF24L01 radio modules, which communicate over SPI. Alternatively, an even quicker solution is to use a Keywish Arduino RF Nano, which packs a nRF24L01 on board. One Arduino can then be hooked up to a MIDI OUT port on an instrument, and it will send out MIDI signals wirelessly. The second Arduino can then be plugged into a MIDI IN port and repeat out what it receives over the air.

• When we need a controller of best choice, Arduino Series is best choise as it has a wide community helping new users. When you use external devices or sensors, you will need to be aware of Arduino Uno Pinout.

• It was interesting to see an apparently recent article “On the Sustainability of Free Software” published by the FSFE in the context of the Upcycling Android campaign. I have been advocating for sustainable Free Software for some time.

• [...]

• Alright, so that was a provocative heading – hardly positive or constructive – and with so much hardware hacking (of the good kind) going on these days, it might be tempting to ask “what crisis?” Well, evidently, some people think there has been a crisis around the certification of hardware by the Free Software Foundation: that the Respects Your Freedom criteria don’t really help get hardware designed and made that would support (or be supported by) Free Software; that the criteria fail to recognise practical limitations with some elements of hardware, imposing rigid and wasteful measures that fail to enhance the rights of users and that might even impair the longevity and repairability of devices.

• A lot of the hardware we rely on nowadays depends on features that cannot easily be supported by Free Software. The system I use has integrated graphics that require proprietary firmware from AMD to work in any half-decent way, as do many processors and interfacing chips, some not even working in any real way at all without it. Although FPGA technology has become more accessible and has invigorated the field of open hardware, there are still considerable challenges around the availability of Free Software toolchains for those kinds of devices. It is also not completely clear how programmable logic devices intersect with the realm of Free Software, either, as far as I can tell. Should people expect the corresponding source code and the means to generate a “bitstream” for the FPGAs in a system? I would think so, given appropriate licensing, but I am not familiar enough with the legal and regulatory constraints to allow me to expect it to be so.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• Want to practice Linux commands? You don’t need to install a full-fledge distribution for that. There are plenty of websites that let you use Linux terminal online.

• Those websites work well on the desktop but not on the mobile devices.

• Fret not. Android is based on Linux kernel, after all. There are several apps that let you use your Android smartphone to practice Linux commands to connect to a remote server via SSH.

• Bluetooth earbuds are quite common these days, and there have been many companies making them. One of them is Samsung, which makes the Buds, Buds Live, Buds+ and Buds Pro earbuds.

• Sadly Samsung does not provide a universal desktop application to adjust the settings of these earbuds for users, and hence, they are stuck with the mobile application (Galaxy Wearables) if they wish to tune and adjust the settings of their earbuds. But luckily, there is an alternative for that.

• For several years, the only major options in the smartphone market have been Android and iOS. Android is an open-source operating system, but virtually all Android devices come with significant amounts of proprietary code; iOS is almost completely proprietary. Many Android phones and all iPhones have locked bootloaders, preventing the user from replacing the operating system.

• Many phones are also carrier-locked, preventing the user from switching cell carriers without the approval of the one through which they purchased the phone. Few devices give the user root access without making modifications to the software and possibly voiding the warranty in the process. Overall, while the purchaser may legally own the device, in many ways it remains in the control of the manufacturer and often the carrier. Previous attempts at developing open-source smartphones have either failed or produced expensive devices.

• PINE64 has been making various FOSS-friendly electronic devices for several years. The company originally made single-board computers (SBCs), and later developed devices such as laptops and tablets. One of its most popular devices, however, is the PinePhone, which is designed to promote mobile Linux distributions as an alternative to Android and iOS. The phone allows the user to install any compatible operating system, and it is not locked to a particular carrier. Instead, it is designed to give the user as much control as possible.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Crunchy Data is pleased to announce the release of pgBackRest 2.37, the latest version of the reliable, easy-to-use backup and restore solution that can seamlessly scale up to the largest databases and workloads.

• pgBackRest has recently introduced many exciting new features including a built-in TLS server, binary protocol, new authentication methods, backup history retention, restore enhancements, backup integrity enhancements, and increased option indexes.

• All complaints, actions, and statistics are anonymized and aggregated to protect the identities of all parties involved.

• A security advisory has been created for the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver. The URL connection string loggerFile property could be mis-used to create an arbitrary file on the system that the driver is loaded. Additionally anything in the connection string will be logged and subsequently written into that file. In an insecure system it would be possible to execute this file through a webserver.

• While we do not consider this a security issue with the driver, we have decided to remove the loggerFile and loggerLevel connection properties in the next release of the driver. Removal of those properties does not make exposing the JDBC URL or connection properties to an attacker safe and we continue to suggest that applications do not allow untrusted users to specify arbitrary connection properties.

• This large pull request hopes to solve segfault at cleanup and problems with multiple charsets in multiple connections to Oracle.

Programming/Development

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install CMake on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, CMake is a free, open-source, and cross-platform compiler designed to build native environments, generate wrappers, build executables in arbitrary combinations. It is also designed to support complex directory hierarchies and applications dependent on several libraries.

• 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 CMake on a Fedora 35.

• Go 1.18, the biggest release of the Go language since Go 1.0 in March 2012, is expected to be released in February. The first beta was released in December with two features which, each on their own, would have made the release a big one. It adds support for generic types and native support for fuzz testing. In the blog post announcing the beta, core developer Russ Cox emphasized that the release “represents an enormous amount of work”.

• [...]

• The type parameter list is surrounded by square brackets, so that it is easy to visually distinguish it from the parameter list, which is surrounded by parentheses. The valid types for a type parameter are delimited by “|” and multiple type parameters are delimited by commas.

• This allows defining a generic min() that works for more than one concrete type. Above, we specified that min() takes a type parameter T which is constrained to be one of the types float32, float64, or int. The function takes two arguments, as before. These must be of the same concrete type; the return type is also the same concrete type. In other words, the program would not compile if we attempted to call min() with x being a float32 and y being a float64.

• This is an update to the original Dockershim Deprecation FAQ article, published in late 2020.

• This document goes over some frequently asked questions regarding the deprecation and removal of dockershim, that was announced as a part of the Kubernetes v1.20 release. For more detail on what that means, check out the blog post Don’t Panic: Kubernetes and Docker.

• Also, you can read check whether dockershim removal affects you to determine how much impact the removal of dockershim would have for you or for your organization.

• As the Kubernetes 1.24 release has become imminent, we’ve been working hard to try to make this a smooth transition.

• Digi-Key have been producing YouTube videos for a number of years now, and if you weren’t aware, they’re definitely worthy of some viewing time. The playlist we’re highlighting here is a pretty good introduction to FPGAs, specifically those supported by open source tools, with low cost hardware. If you’ve always wanted to get into hacking FPGA platforms, but don’t know where to start, this is going to be a big help. After first covering what an FPGA is and is not, and why you want to use one, [Shawn Hymel] dives in to the toolchain.

• We’re really lucky that the bitstream for the Lattice iCE40 was reverse engineered by the super talented Claire (née Clifford) Wolf (AMP hour interview) which enabled the project ICEstorm toolchain to be created. Leveraging Yosys for synthesis and logic mapping, Icarus verilog coupled with GTKwave for simulation, netpnr for place and route and finally the project ICEstorm bitstream tools for packing into iCE40 format and loading onto the hardware. The whole toolchain flow is managed by APIO for simplicity, that is, provided your FPGA board is supported!

• [...]

• What’s nice about this Digi-Key YT series, is that it doesn’t just cover the basic toolchain flow, then drop you in at the deep end of a big learning curve. There are videos covering subjects such as finite state machines (FSMs), test-benching and simulation, using embedded (block) memories, PLLs, harder subjects like dealing with metastability and clock-domain crossing (OK, he covers one technique – there’s more than one way to skin that particular cat) before finally looking at soft cores like the RISC-V. Lots to learn, and pretty well executed if you ask us! A Github version is available, for those who can’t stand watching the videos!

• ABE Quantum is the combination of Contextual Policies, one of the most requested features in NoScript’s history, and LAN protection, an important “Classic” defense lost in the 2017 Quantum migration.

• After years of waiting and months of hard work, this good stuff (which I personally missed a lot, too) is finally in the hands of all NoScript 11.3 users*, thanks to the precious support by the NLNet Foundation and the Next Generation Internet programme (more specifically the NGI0 PET fund).

• The “ABE Quantum” nickname comes, of course, from the Application Boundary Enforcer module of NoScript Classic, which both Contextual Policies and LAN protection are in a sense a “modernized” descendant of, sacrificing some of the extreme flexibility of the original’s firewall-inspired policy definition language in order to provide a simpler, more accessible and more intuitive user experience directly integrated in NoScript’s main CUSTOM UI.

• Speaking of ABE, I want to thank barbaz, a pillar of NoScript’s community whose efforts to bring back to life ABE as a stand-alone WebExtension helped a lot also in (re)developing the WAN-to-LAN cross-zone protection, which leverages the modified iputil, DNS and AddressMatcher modules he contributed back to the NoScript Commons Library.

• I applied to Debian community with a particular timeline and expected it to go that way, but after starting out i realized i had alot to learn in Ruby and the codebase. So far i have worked on issues i am proud of and when i use Debci i see some of the changes i added for example the self-service form remembering values that was filled after an error message / it reloads.

• [...]

• I had to modify my initial expectations and my mentors have been so supportive. I hope to add more features to Debci and also write more tests. So far, it has been a great experience. Till next time!

Bash/CLI

• Every few weeks, it seems like I suddenly get the urge to do some bash scripting. And today was one of those days. I was at the office and wanted to listen to some online radio, and I thought: what I need is to create a dmenu script for this!

• Most users, while working on a command prompt, need to find out the location of the binary or executable of a file for a command.

• In this case, find and whereis both commands can be used. But, the find command is much more time-consuming as compared to the whereis command.

• The Linux host command can retrieve a lot of useful information from the domain name service, but has a lot of options that you need to understand to get started.

• In Linux and Unix-based operating systems, a running command instance is known as a process. You can identify each process by a unique process ID. Linux provides command-line tools to list, manage, and monitor these processes efficiently.

• You can use these tools to prioritize each process or put them in the background or foreground to manage system resources efficiently.

• This guide to process management in Linux includes tools such as ps, kill, renice, and other commands that assist system administrators in managing and listing processes.

Rust

• On Friday, February 11th, the Rust Compiler team had a planning meeting for the February steering cycle.

• Every fourth Friday, the Rust compiler team decides how it is going to use its scheduled steering and design meeting time over the next three Fridays.

• On Friday, 18 February, we will be having a meeting to discuss the draft blog post describing the compiler team’s ambitions for 2022. pnkfelix and wesleywiser have prepared the post and circulated it amongst the compiler contributors.

Java

• In a previous article, I showed you how to detect third-party vulnerabilities in Python. This article shows how to scan your Java code for the same issues.

Leftovers

• What would you make if you were given about ten square millimeters of space on a silicon wafer on a 130 nm process? That’s the exact question that the Open MPW program asks, and that [Matt Venn] has stepped up to answer. [Matt] came to Remoticon in 2020 to talk about his journey from nothing to his own ASIC, and he came back in 2021 to talk about what has happened in a year.

• Many musicians will be familiar with the metronome, a pendulum charged with generating a rhythmic tick to keep one’s performance in regular time. With PendulumSynth, [mrezanvari] takes the same basic pendulum but uses it in an altogether different musical way.

• The build relies on a 10-inch plastic ball to serve as the weighted end of the pendulum, stuffed with a STM32F411CE BlackPill board, a BNO085 IMU, and an nRF radio module for sending out data for external processing. The pendulum’s motion is turned into MIDI data or CV for output to musical hardware which handles actually generating the output sounds.

• [DiodeGoneWild]’s latest video lives up to the name. He takes apart a laser headlight to recover a pretty powerful blue laser. You can see the video, below.

• The headlights work with blue laser diodes that excite phosphor to produce white light. Removing the outside trappings revealed a three-pin laser diode (the case is the third pin). There’s also a substantial heatsink. Removing the diode from the assembly is difficult, but it is easy enough to leave it in the heatsink and use the existing connector.

• Of course, the phosphor and a filter have to go. Some destructive work with a screwdriver and pliers broke out the optics from a diode he’d destroyed trying to remove it. Then he replaced the optics on the remaining diode with the modified housing.

• [...]

• With the proliferation of cheap laser modules, it is really worth scrapping a headlight? Maybe. But it is an interesting look inside of a modern headlight, either way. We’ve peeked inside these headlights before. Maybe you can turn those old headlights into an oven.

Science

• Along with many other natural phenomena, lightning is probably familiar to most. Between its intense noise and visuals, there is also very little disagreement that getting hit by a lightning strike is a bad thing, regardless of whether you’re a fleshy human, moisture-filled plant, or conductive machine. So it’s more than a little bit strange that the underlying cause of lightning, and what makes certain clouds produce these intense voltages along ionized air molecules, is still an open scientific question.

• Many of us have probably learned at some point the most popular theory about how lightning forms, namely that lightning is caused by ice particles in clouds. These ice particles interact to build up a charge, much like in a capacitor. The only issue with this theory is that this process alone will not build up a potential large enough to ionize the air between said clouds and the ground and cause the lightning strike, leaving this theory in tatters.

Hardware

• The company provides a lightweight SDK based on the Nordic nRF5 SDK, and that relies on tools such as yosys, icestorm & NextPNR, as well as two open-source hardware development kits with the battery-powered S1 Popout board with Stemma/Qwicc QT connector for Adafruit and Sparkfun modules, and the S1 ECG kit with Analog AD8233 front-end designed to research ML-based ECG algorithms.

• Use cases include high speed & time-critical DSP, pre-processing data on the edge, power-efficient algorithm design, parallel data processing, real-time AI inferencing, remote machine learning, Bespoke AI algorithm deployment, and Bespoke DSP algorithm deployment.

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (drupal7), Fedora (kernel, lua, vim, and xrdp), openSUSE (firejail, json-c, kafka, webkit2gtk3, and xorg-x11-server), Oracle (bind, firefox, ruby:2.5, ruby:2.6, and thunderbird), Red Hat (ruby:2.5 and ruby:2.6), SUSE (apache2, glibc, json-c, libvirt, webkit2gtk3, xen, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4).

• Recently, the Qt Project’s security team was made aware of an issue regarding QProcess and determined it to be a security issue on Unix-based platforms only. We do not believe this to be a considerable risk for applications as the likelihood of it being triggered is minimal.

• Cisco has released security updates to address a vulnerability affecting Cisco Email Security Appliance. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a denial-of-service condition. For updates addressing lower severity vulnerabilities, see the Cisco Security Advisories page.

• Drupal has released security updates to address vulnerabilities affecting Drupal 7, 9.2, and 9.3. An attacker could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system.

• A reporter interviews a Uyghur human-rights advocate, and uses the Otter.ai transcription app.

• The National Security Agency (NSA) has released a Cybersecurity Information (CSI) sheet with guidance on securing network infrastructure devices and credentials. Cisco devices are used globally to secure network infrastructure devices, including across the Department of Defense, National Security Systems, and the Defense Industrial Base. Credentials within Cisco configuration files could be at risk of compromise if strong password types are not used. The CSI reviews Cisco’s password type options, the difficulty to crack each password type, and its vulnerability severity and provides recommendations for use.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Due to the current activation of the Emergency Measures Act by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 14 in response to the Freedom Convoys and blockades both in Ottawa and across various provinces of Canada, I thought it fitting to revisit research that I had previously published as a series co-written with Paris-based journalist Benoit Chalifoux that explores the previous, controversial invocation of that same act by Justin’s father, Pierre Trudeau, in 1970.

• First, I will detail some important contextual information of the Martial Law and War Measures Act deployed by Pierre Trudeau, who utilized a demonstrably staged crisis run by Anglo-Canadian intelligence networks between 1960-1970, eventually resulting in tanks rolling across the streets of Quebec and opponents to an anti-human reform of society being crushed. This section will also deal with some important contextual matters dealing with the directing role of the eugenics-driven Fabian Society and its Canadian branches in this manufactured crisis, using it to shape a technocratic revolution in 1970. Next, I will break down the facts of the October Crisis, dismantling the official narrative of “lone cells of violence-prone separatists” and producing clear evidence that the entire operation was an inside job directed by top down agencies Anglo-Canadian intelligence.

• Revisiting the October crisis of 1970 is important given recent events as they relate to the Canadian Freedom Convoys and related manifestations. There are unsettling similarities between what transpired in 1970 and what is happening now, with the staging of Confederate and Nazi flags within the currently ongoing Ottawa protest movement, which has been used to exacerbate the State’s narrative that these peaceful protesters are “violent racist insurrectionists” that must be stopped at all costs and the February 14 warning delivered by the former head of Trudeau’s security detail of an imminent false flag in Ottawa that would be sparked by firearms planted in or around the Freedom Convoy. This exercise will not only help us gain a better understanding of the nature of the game at play, but also the weaknesses of the “deep state” apparatus long embedded within the heart of Canada’s political and intelligence establishments.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• Arthur Wesley Dow’s influential arts education handbook fused Japanese ukiyo-e with the author’s unique minimalism, which he derived from the landscapes of New England.

• [...]

• Dow’s pedagogical mastery had humble Yankee roots; as an eighteen-year-old high school graduate in 1875, he taught farm children and teenagers in a one-room schoolhouse in a remote corner of Ipswich, Massachusetts. About this same time, Dow took up sketching as a complement to his pioneering antiquarian research in Ipswich’s town records, and then, finding inadequate the heliotype productions of his own hands and those of Boston printers, he began to practice wood engraving and lithography, always with a craftsman’s rigor. (He once spent an entire day hand-grinding a carpenter’s awl into an engraving tool for his first experiments with carving local pear wood.) Absent from the early editions of Composition, some of these experiments appear in the greatly expanded 1913 edition, which also includes color plates.

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