● 02.27.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 27/2/2022: Astro Slide From Planet Computers and TeXworks 0.6.7

Posted in News Roundup at 5:51 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

• Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup.

• We had a wonderful week in the world of Linux releases, with Ubuntu 20.04.4, LMDE 5 Beta, and Manjaro 21.2.4.

• I am back at my workstation, so expect more Linux distro reviews in the future.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Some people want to call ChromeOS a linux distro but to decide if it’s a distro we first need to decide on what the term linux distro means in the first place.

• 2021 is now in the past, but there’s some very interesting details in the year-end vulnerability report produced by RBS. These details give us a look at some of the trends that will impact 2022 and beyond. In this episode, Joao and Jay discuss the report and some of its findings.

Kernel Space

• A number of accumulated bug reports had collected since the last lrzip release and since I regularly use lrzip I want to make sure it stays bug free as far as I am aware, even if I’m not planning any new features for it. As some of the changes are potentially security fixes, I urge any user to update.

Applications

• A network analyzer (also known as a packet analyzer, packet sniffer, or protocol analyzer) is software that intercepts and logs traffic that passes over a computer network or part of a network. Packet capture is the process of intercepting and logging traffic. As data streams flow across the network, the analyzer captures each packet and, if needed, decodes the packet’s raw data, showing the values of various fields in the packet, and analyzes its content according to the appropriate RFC or other specifications.

• Maintaining a live network is one of a system administrator’s most essential tasks, and keeping a watchful eye over connected systems is essential to keeping a network functioning at its best.

• A good network analyzer helps a network developer with daily Linux plumbling. They can be used for network development, debugging, analysis, auditing or network reconnaissance.

• Here’s our verdict on the finest network analyzers, captured in a LinuxLinks ratings chart. We only feature free and open source software here.

• Architects and designers need to use top-notch modeling apps to make designs. There are tons of software available for that purpose. But not all of them support technical modeling languages like RAAML, SysML, C4, UML, etc. That would be a great problem when the architects and designers are in something technically complicated. However, if you face a similar situation, I would like to introduce Gaphor. And this content will lead you to a detailed discussion on Gaphor.

• TeXworks, the free open-source application for authoring TeX (LaTeX, ConTeXt, etc) documents, released 0.6.7 today. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Ubuntu 22.04.

• TeXworks 0.6.7 added some minor new features, improved dark mode support, and fixed various bugs.

• Almost everybody loves music. We can agree that music is a universal language. Some people say music is the food for the soul because it can evoke powerful emotions from within us. If you love a great tune, depending on your favorite genre, you are definitely into audio editing software.

• Audio editing software can help you edit audio into music by arranging sounds, melody, harmony, and rhythm elements. The article will review some of the top open-source audio editing software.

• In the last few weeks we had time to nicely improve the general UI of our editor.

• Naturally, the overall structure of the main window stays the same, with a central splitter area and some tool views around.

• But if you take a look at the two screenshots below that show the last release and the current master branch version, you will spot some differences that in my eyes improve on what we have in a nice way.

• While revising the EasyApps utility, I realised there is one kind of app missing from EasyOS — a video and audio screen recorder. There have been many of these used in the pups over the years, and I perused the old forum, looking to see what has come and gone.

• A couple of them, Drec (dpuprec) and EasyCast, are GUI apps that use the ‘rmd’ CLI utility. I searched and found that the binary utility is now named ‘recordmydesktop’, and uses libtheora, libogg and libvorbis to record video actions on the desktop, and audio using alsa-lib, and save as an ‘ogv’ video file.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Gaucho on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Gaucho is an open-source, customizable task launcher to run your apps, commands, or scripts. Gaucho is a great alternative when you need to create, modify and run tasks with a simple graphical interface.

• 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 Gaucho Task Manager 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.

• Today we are looking at how to install MyPaint 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.

• One of the most confusing and often frustrating parts of Linux for new users is the concept of file system permissions. It used to be that if you wanted to change file permissions on a Linux system, you had to enter cryptic commands at the terminal. Now, however, desktop environments like GNOME and KDE Plasma make it easy to check and adjust these settings.

• In this article, we’re going to explain what each of the file permission settings is and show you how to adjust them on each of the four major Linux desktop environments: GNOME, Plasma, Cinnamon, and XFCE.

• Have you ever copied a text snippet, then copied another shortly after, only to realize that the initial text snippet is now gone?

• Well, it’s quite a common sight on most operating systems, including Linux. And it’s got to do with your system’s clipboard/pasteboard, which can hold only one instance of text at a time.

• Fortunately, you have clipboard managers, like CopyQ, that allow you to store multiple snippets in your clipboard and use them wherever required.

• Let’s check out CopyQ, its installation steps on Linux, and how to use it to manage your clipboard history.

• Most Linux Distributions use open-source fonts to substitute Microsoft’s iconic typefaces like Arial, Courier New, and Times. Red Hat created the Liberation family to replace these similar-looking but different sizes — all you have to do is select your preferred font when editing documents so that they’ll be readable without any disruptions!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Microsoft Core Fonts on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Zoom is a communications technology platform that provides videotelephony and real-time online chat services through the cloud. It’s used for everything from teleconferencing to distance education. Still, its most widespread application may be an effective way of communicating between employees geographically located far away from one another.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Zoom Video Conference Client on Manjaro 21 Linux. The tutorial will use the yay AUR helper, ideally most users may be using some wrapper for Pacman, for new users, it is essential to install one to keep your packages up-to-date while you learn Arch/Manjaro.

• Winehq Team released its new Development version 7.3

• This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install wine 7.3 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 21.10, and Linux Mint 20.3.

• This is the 8th part of Inkscape for Students the Series. After we had learned about Cropping in the previous part, now we will learn about vectorization, also known as tracing or simply redrawing. We will practice through examples of the two of vectorization methods, automatic and manual. Now let’s start practicing.

Games

• Valve’s new handled PC the Steam Deck is starting to ship out but there’s going to be a long wait for some, and others might not be able to get one at all for various reasons – I’m here to help.

• Now that any embargo is up and I can do whatever Steam Deck content I like, I had a thought. I know a lot about Linux, and since I have a Steam Deck why not help out those who need it? So that’s exactly what I’m announcing: a free Steam Deck testing service for developers.

• I’d bet the Steam Deck (and other changes) will have the following impacts on Linux overall by the end of 2022.

• [...]

• I’m expecting at least 20% increase on the Steam Hardware Survey (so 1% to 1.20%) not including Steam Deck. Right now, the Steam Linux usage is less than half what you get from other sources.

• [...]

• Encourage Linux consumer focused pre-installs with similar AMD chips to what’s in the Steam Deck (I know many have asked for more AMD preinstalls for a long while)

• So the Steam Deck has just launched, and IGN had the good idea to reconnect with GabeN to collect some of his thoughts about the device, as well as asking him what he thinks of the Ukraine conflict. Nah, that second part did not happen.

• Based on the amount of misinformation being dished out on social media and the gaming press this weekend, you deserve to hear this: Elden Ring is perfectly playable on Linux, including online functionality. That doesn’t just apply to Valve’s Steam Deck; it applies to any modern desktop Linux distribution running Steam.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• On Ubuntu you do need to disable the DING extension for the drag feature to work, but once you have you can click, hold and then pull the desktop in any direction to ‘deform’ it in to the rotating 3D cube switcher:

• If you don’t fancy disabling DING you can also click and drag from any empty part of the top bar. You can also tap super to enter the switcher and drag from any non-interactive bit of the overview…

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• The EPEL Steering Committee is implementing monthly office hours for the EPEL project. These will be held on the first Wednesday of each month at 1700 UTC. The first session will be on 2022-03-02. The openSUSE Heroes team has agreed to let us host the meeting on their Jitsi Meet Instance.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Artists, photographers, and digital designers have until March 12th to submit up to 5 pieces of original work for potential inclusion in the Xubuntu 22.04 LTS release in April.

• The Xubuntu team plan to pick 6 winners from those submitted (which means there’s more chance of being picked than in regular Ubuntu’s wallpaper contest which is only going to select 2 winners).

• The usual sort of rules apply: no brand names or trademarks; nothing saucy, salacious, or subversive; nothing political, religious, or nationalistic; and, perhaps most importantly of all, no artwork that isn’t entirely original (or derived from something that has a permissive license)!

Devices/Embedded

• Among the highlights out of the show: the new/old Astro Slide from Planet Computers.

• We had hands-on time with the prototype you see above, which is now running Ubuntu with a physical keyboard. There’s also an option to buy one with Android 11, or dual-boot with Linux as well. Price? $975. Sales start in a “few weeks.”

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• KeePass is considered the most popular open-source password manager, and not just among end-users, but also among developers who ported it to all known platforms.

• KeePass helps users to manage their passwords securely and privately, without having to worry about many technical details.

• It supports several encryption standards, AES and Twofish. It also encrypts the entire database.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• After some behind-the-scenes discussions with Michael Kohler on what I could contribute at this year’s FOSDEM, I ended up doing a presentation about my personal Suggestions for a Stronger Mozilla Community (video is available on the linked page). While figuring out the points I wanted to talk about and assembling my slides for that talk, I realized that one of the largest issues I’m seeing is that the Mozilla community nowadays feels very disconnected to me, like several islands, within each there is good stuff being done, but most people not knowing much about what’s happening elsewhere. That has been helped a lot by a lot of interesting projects being split off Mozilla into separate projects in recent years (see e.g. Coqui, WebThings, and others) – which is often taking them off the radar of many people even though I still consider them as being part of this wider community around the Mozilla Manifesto and the Open Web.

FSFE

• To honor the defiance of these Ukrainian victims, we created a new sticker in the Ukrainian national colours and we are publishing examples of fascism in the FSFE…

Leftovers

Hardware

• After browsing Thingiverse for some printable PCB probe designs, [Henry York] looked around and found a wooden clothespin on his desk. After some collaboration between his 3D printer and his CNC, Henry graced us with a nifty helper tool design that many of us might want to make in a pinch – a small, cheap and easy to make PCB probe, for circuits where soldering and headers are out of the question. Small magnets are glued to the clothespin, holding it flush to a magnetizable work surface (aka a toaster tray), and the probing itself is done by an extruder cleaning needle end. 3D printer and Edge.Cuts files are shared with us – thanks to Henry’s helpfulness, it should be easy to repeat if ever needed!

• Often, reprogramming a microcontroller involves placing it in reset, flashing the code, and letting it fire back up. It usually involves shutting the chip down entirely. However, [bor0] has built a virtual machine that runs on the ESP32, allowing for dynamic program updates to happen.

• The code is inspired by the CHIP-8, a relatively ancient interpreter that had some gaming applications. [bor0] had already created a VM simulating the CHIP-8, and repurposed it here, taking out the gaming-related drawing instructions and replacing them with those that control IO pins. Registers have also been changed to 16 bits for added flexibility and headroom.

• Often, financial motivation results in people writing great educational material for hackers. Such is absolutely the case with this extensive documentation blog post on addressable LEDs by [DeRun]. This article could very be named “Addressable LEDs 101”, and it’s a must-scroll-through for anyone, whether you’re a seasoned hacker, or an artist with hardly any technical background and a desire to put LEDs in your creations.

• This blog post is easy to read, painting a complete picture of what you can expect from different addressable LED types, and with apt illustrations to boot. Ever wonder which one of the addressable strips you should get from your retailer of choice, and what are the limitations of any specific type? Or, perhaps, you’d like to know – why is it that a strip with a certain LED controller is suspiciously cheap or expensive? You’re more than welcome to, at least, scroll through and fill into any of your addressable LED knowledge gaps, whether it’s voltage drops, color accuracy differences, data transfer protocol basics or dead LED failsafes.

• We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the best part about holding an amateur radio license is that it lets you build and use your own transmitting equipment. Hams have been doing this for more than a century — indeed, it was once the only way to get on the air — using whatever technology was available. But the mix of technologies in this low-power transmitter for the 80-meter band is something you don’t see every day.

• As ham [Helge Fykse (LA6NCA)] describes in the video below, the project began when he came into possession of a bonanza of vacuum tubes — 12A6 tetrodes, specifically. The new-old-stock tubes were perfect for an RF power amplifier, but that left the problem of what to use for an oscillator. [Helge] chose to meld the old with the new and used oscillator board that he designed. The board has an ATmega88 microcontroller and an Si5351 oscillator, along with a 3V3 regulator to let the module run on 12 volts. And for a nice retro touch, [Helge] put the board in a 3D printed case that looks like an old-fashioned quartz crystal.

• In our “hardware development gets serious” news, we’ve recently learned about AllSpice, a startup building hardware development collaboration infrastructure for companies. Hardware developers are great at building hardware tools for themselves, but perhaps not always so when it comes to software, and AllSpice aims to fill that gap at the “hardware company” level. Nowadays, what commonly happens is that software development tools and integrations are repurposed for hardware needs, and the results aren’t always as stellar as they get in the software world. In other words, AllSpice is learning from the positive outcomes of software industry and building a platform that takes the best parts from these tools, aiming to get to similarly positive outcomes in areas where currently hardware team experiences are lacking.

• What AllSpice is building seems to be an umbrella platform designed to augment, integrate and hook into a slew of different already-developed platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Jira (and some other ones), and add much-needed features that large-scale hardware developers can’t afford to maintain and develop themselves. “Design review by screenshot” isn’t unheard of in hardware circles, and likely a thing that everyone of us with hardware collaboration experience has partaken in. On a company scale, there’s a myriad of hardware-related problems like that to solve and polish over.

• I recently repaired an Apple Extended Keyboard (M0115). I took some pictures. This post is an excuse to show them. Repairs were successful, and I’m typing this post on it.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• When a piece of hardware goes unsupported by a company, it can be frustrating. Bugs may no longer get fixed, or in the worst cases, perfectly good hardware can stop working entirely as software licences time out. Sadly, for a group reliant on retinal implants from company Second Sight, the company has since stopped producing and supporting the devices that give them a crude form of bionic sight.

• The devices themselves consist of electrodes implanted into the retina, which can send signals to the nervous system which appear as spots of light to the user. A camera feed is used to capture images which are then translated into signals sent to the retinal electrodes. The results are low-resolution to say the least, and the vision supplied is crude, but it gives users that are blind a rudimentary sense that they never had before. It’s very much a visual equivalent to the cochlear implant technology.

• [...]

• It’s a sobering tale of what can happen when a tech company goes out of business. It’s a story that bears thinking about for anyone taking on a medical device from a new, untested company. Video after the break.

Monopolies

Patents

• The EPO have announced their upcoming amendments of the Guidelines for Examination which will enter into force on 1 March 2022. A number of notable amendments to the Guidelines are scheduled; we will follow with more detailed discussions regarding the changes to Description Amendments and Electronic Signatures of Assignments, whereas here we will look at some of the other significant updates with regard to Priority, the Designation of Inventor, the Claims Fee, Extension of Periods under Rule 134(1), Double Patenting, Selection Inventions, Unity, and Oral Proceedings.

Software Patents

• Artificial intelligence (AI) stands as a powerful tool undergoing rapid progression and adoption at the forefront of research and development. The continued growth in the importance of AI raises several questions for patent systems across the world. In particular, the issue of inventorship continues to unfold controversy, as the ‘inventor’ status is tested by patent offices worldwide.

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