● 03.09.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 9/3/2022: Dedoimedo Dumping Windows and Plasma 5.24.3 Comes to Kubuntu 21.10

Posted in News Roundup at 1:54 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• There you go. A very early, rudimentary plan for what I have in mind. Now, if I look at my computer usage over the past 10-15 years, it has changed quite a bit. Less Windows and significant fewer Windows-based software, more Linux and more serious Linux cases. I have, in a way, started this migration a long time ago, only now I’ve realized that it needs to be finished.

• I am not happy that this is what I must do. But hey. Using Windows has become onerous. Even in Windows 10 Pro, I have to deal with low-IQ nonsense that simply has no place in a professional system I’ve paid for. Not in the mood to be the padding for the bonus for some marketing person somewhere. Treat me with respect, and we will have common ground. I’ve spend thousands of dollars on Microsoft products over the years, including several Windows Phones and whatnot. Not anymore. No settings headerbar rewards, no Edge begging to be default browser, no advertising ID, no cloud this or that, none of that nonsense.

Applications

• Corel Corporation is a Canadian software company specializing in graphics processing. They are best known for developing CorelDRAW, a vector graphics editor. They are also notable for purchasing and developing AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio, MindManager, and WordPerfect.

• Corel has dabbled with Linux over the years. For example they produced Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution which bundled Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux. While Corel effectively abandoned its Linux business in 2001 they are not completely Linux-phobic. For example, AfterShot Pro has an up to date Linux version albeit its proprietary software.

• Google Photos is one of the most popular options to back up your photos and videos.

• Considering that it is the default choice for most Android phones, it is a seamless experience managing photos/videos using Google Photos.

• But, what if you want to move away from it for something open-source and more privacy-friendly? Not just from Google Photos, from proprietary photo hosting platforms overall.

• Coming two months after Blender 3.0, the Blender 3.1 update is all about performance and speed to make Blender faster and more reliable. For example, it brings performance improvements to Mesh Vertex and Face Normals, as well as to Blender’s procedural system, which also received 19 new nodes, mesh modeling tools, advanced Fields control, access to time, and much more.

• Blender 3.1 also adds support for the new Point Cloud object to be rendered directly with Cycles when creating sand, water splashes, particles, or motion graphics, support for Pixar OpenSubDiv for modeling, rendering, as well as Alembic and USD import and export, and faster workflow by dragging sockets to get a list of automatically filtered nodes.

Instructionals/Technical

• Neofetch is a free, open-source command-line system information tool written in bash 3.2+. Neofetch displays system information in a beautiful aesthetic way, such as system, software, memory resources, kernel version, and much more.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Neofetch on Linux Mint 20 using the command line terminal with examples on how to maintain and remove the application with bonus command examples.

• MyPaint is a free, open-source digital painting program that you can edit your artwork. It has many features for easy to create backgrounds and figures on canvas or paper! For users migrating from Windows and using the native paint program, this feels similar to it but has much more features.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MyPaint on Linux Mint 20 using two different methods, which are APT and Flatpak and how to maintain remove in the future using the command line terminal.

• SharedPreferences is a module bringing the functionality of Android’s eponymous API to your cross-platform Flutter apps. It uses Apple’s similar NSUserDefaults API when running on iOS and macOS. Implementations are also included for Linux and Windows so it’ll run everywhere Flutter apps can.

• In this guide, we’ll show how you can use SharedPreferences to persist simple settings within your app. The module is best used for small pieces of non-essential state such as user preferences, saved bookmarks, and cached config values sent by a server.

• Docker uses tags to identify distinct versions of an image. In common with the broader container community, tags should be used to mark each release so users can select between different versions.

• Tags may also be used to describe other characteristics of an image such as the identity of a key dependency when multiple options are offered.

• Podman is a Linux-native tool for deploying applications using Open Container Initiative (OCI) containers and container images. It supports multiple container image formats, including Docker images and OCI container images. Also, Podman supports managing pods, groups of containers. Podman is a daemon-less tool, running as a single binary command-line without a service. It provides a command-line similar to Docker, you can use an alias such as ‘alias docker=podman’.

• To run containers and manage container images, Podman relies on libpod and OCI container runtimes such as runc, crun, and runv.

• When working in a Linux terminal, we often use various commands. We typically use the ifconfig command to perform network configuration.

• However, another command, ip, can be used for network configuration, which is considered a replacement for the ifconfig command. It has much more capabilities than the ifconfig command.

• Using the ip command, we can perform various tasks, such as changing the network configuration by modifying its interface and assigning or checking the IP address on a network interface.

• We can also enable or disable a network interface. This is not an exhaustive list but some of the activities we can perform with the ip command.

• In this tutorial, we will go through the basics of systemctl command and examples. You can also get a basic idea regarding the usage of Systemctl. It is the tool to manage the init system. With these tools, you can manage services, check statuses, work with the configuration files, and do a similar job. Systemd is a critical part of Linux,

• Linux Kernel is the backbone of the Linux-based operating system. No matter which Linux you are using, Linux Kernel will be the same and will remain the crucial section of your operating systems. Linux Kernel is the heart of the operating system.

• Before installing or updating Kernel, you have to make sure that you have a backup of the system and other important files so that you can restore it in case of any emergency.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Android Studio on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Android Studio is the official Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android app development, based on IntelliJ IDEA. Android Studio is developed by Google and it can run on different operating environments like Windows, macOS, and Linux.

• 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 Android Studio on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• Interested in using a shared library in your C or C++ application? Not sure how to build your application with the GCC compiler, such that it properly links the shared library? This article explains how to link a shared library to your application, built with the GCC toolchain. It covers three scenarios: (1) Calling GCC directly from the terminal, building with a Makefile and auto-generating the build environment with CMake.

• The Python Mistune package is a fast and robust Python3 markdown parser that provides renderers and plugins. The Python mistune package is tested and proven in Python 2.7, Python 3.5+, and PyPy.

• It is the fastest in all the Python markdown parsers and provides a bunch of useful features such as footnotes, fenced code, auto-links. Table etc.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install VLC on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux Desktop.

• VLC is a free and open-source multimedia player available for Ubuntu 22.04. It supports a wide range of multimedia formats such as MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, WebM, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, BluRays, DVDs, VCDs, podcasts, and multimedia streams from various network sources.

• In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to install fonts on your Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux system. This is relatively easy to do, whether with a font manager application or installing the fonts manually. Whatever your preference, we’ve got you covered with both methods in this article.

• In this short guide, we will be installing Telegram on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. Telegram is a messaging and voice over IP application available on various Linux distributions of your choice and, in particular, Ubuntu 22.04. As a user of Telegram you will be able to send messages, photos, videos or other files over this service.

• The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to change the system language from command line on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. This configuration is especially applicable for Ubuntu 22.04 servers, where there is no GUI to change your system language, although this also works fine on desktop systems.

• The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to configure one or more applications to start up automatically upon system boot in Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, specifically on the GNOME desktop environment. Follow our step by step instructions below as we set an application to autostart.

• If you have any experience on the Linux command line, then you should have run into command flags, which help us modify the behavior of a command that we are executing.

• For example, if we execute the ls -l command, the -l part of the command is a flag that we are passing as an argument to ls. This same functionality can be used in a Bash script, allowing us to pass some input to the script through flags when we are executing the script.

• Modifying a Bash script’s behavior via runtime options, just like we normally do with command line programs, can be very useful. The Bash shell provides the getopts builtin command, a standard way to achieve this. In this tutorial, you will see how to use flags as arguments when executing a Bash script, through use of the getopts builtin.

Games

• I was just doing my daily refresh and wow! What a surprise. There are now more than 1220 games working on the Steam Deck – the real number if 1223 at the time of writing…

• When we expected the year of Linux Gaming in 2022, most of us were thinking about the Steam Deck. Turns out it may not be the biggest story yet. There’s a Google for Games Developer Summit planned for March 15 and Stadia will introduce some kind of Windows emulator to run Windows games on Linux.

• A fresh episode of Steam Deck news is live right now.

• How can Linux compete with Windows for gamers’ attention? This can be a difficult question to answer. Why don’t we look at each option one by one and see which one is the most suitable? Wisely speaking, Linux is or was a first choice for Gamers. But The OS is not so bad though for the players. Depending on the choice available for Linux distro, it could be the trend breaker.

• Accepting the fact that limited options are available here, but still Linux cannot be neglected for Gaming niece. In this article, I tried to list top 6 Linux distributions that can be a good choice. I am offering this suggestion based on my own personal experiences, and audience opinion may differ. Let’s get started.

• With competition everywhere, Valve still manages to keep on growing at a rapid pace with the new yearly review up. Going over what happen through 2021 and a little of 2022, it’s clear that Valve are doing well.

• Swapping from Deck to my main Linux PC was also without hassle thanks to Steam Cloud integration, where it also works beautifully.

• We have all been eagerly waiting for Apex Legends to work on Linux, considering it is one of the most popular multiplayer titles.

• Especially, after the announcement of official support for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattleEye for Linux.

• However, the official support for the game wasn’t announced anywhere, until now.

• shapez.io is a game about building an ever-expanding factory, that cuts up various shapes to make other shapes. It’s gloriously engrossing and time consuming and now there’s modding involved too.

• You could already easily put tons of hours into it, now maybe even more so. This is not using the Steam Workshop though, instead they’re using the standalone cross-platform mod.io platform. It does involve downloading files manually for now, with an in-game browser to come later.

• With 7 episodes planned in total, episode 3 for the well-reviewed Scarlet Hollow from Black Tabby Games is out now.

• Even as someone who doesn’t usually like playing through Visual Novel styled games, I can safely tell you this is one that manages to push through. It’s genuinely interesting, with some pretty great writing and surprising events that will hook you right in. You can try it free too, since the first episode has no price attached. Pretty great artwork too overall.

• Valve continue working quickly to fix up issues that are flowing in against the Steam Deck software, with a new update out now and ready to download onto your Deck.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• We are pleased to announce that Plasma 5.24.3 is now available in our backports PPA for Kubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri).

• The release announcement detailing the new features and improvements in Plasma 5.24.3 can be found here.

Distributions

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Snap app fans will want to check out an extension for GNOME Shell that makes it easier to manage, update, and configure software installed using the packaging format.

• It’s called Snap Manager and while it’s not an official Snapcraft/Canonical add-on (it’s made by a third-party) it does boast a neat front-end for many of the snapd engine’s command-line actions.

• For example, instead of open a terminal and running snap list or snap refresh you can just click the options in the Snap Manager menu.

• cPanel® L.L.C., the Hosting Platform of Choice, a WebPros® portfolio company, is expanding its collaboration with Ubuntu to provide full support for Ubuntu LTS 20.04 with cPanel & WHM version 102.

• In the winter of 2020, CentOS 8 announced that it would be reaching its end-of-life in December of 2021. This news was somewhat unexpected in the open-source and web hosting worlds. In response, cPanel has been working towards providing solutions that will benefit our partners and customers and expand options as we move forward together.

• As part of diversifying their supported range of Linux distributions since it was announced CentOS 8 would be going end-of-life, the popular cPanel commercial software package for easing the administration of Linux web server has added support for AlmaLinux and wit cPanel v102 is full support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

• Cyber attacks present an imminent threat to our digital assets. And they come in a variety of ways, including computer viruses, Denial-of-service (DoS), hacking, ransomware, memcached. In February 2022, White House deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger claimed that the Russian hackers conducted a DDoS attack on the Ukrainian banks and Ministry of Defense before their military attacks. To defend against those threats, people relentlessly develop new Cyber Security technologies, such as AI & Deep Learning that add additional layers of authentication, Behavioral Analytics that helps determine patterns of cyber threats, Embedded Hardware Authentication like Intel’s Sixth-generation vPro Chips, and Zero-Trust Models that assume a network is already compromised. For all cyber security technologies, encryption is considered an essential technology to protect sensitive data. Encryption is a technology that attempts to make the information unreadable by anyone other than the intended recipients. People normally grant their audience access to encrypted data via passwords or decryption keys. On the Internet, encryption technologies include Encryption in transit, such as Virtual Private Network (VPN); and Encryption at rest, such as Encrypted Storage; and Encryption in use, such as Confidential Computing.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

• About 60% to 80% of users are using Google Chrome as the regular browser. But besides Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, there are a lot of browsers available in the market. Brave is one of the newest ones that come with all sorts of advanced technology. Eventually, it started competing with Google Chrome already. People who are updated about the technology news are so being confused about which one to try. Indeed, many of you already have asked about the fact between Brave vs. Chrome.

• There is no way we can take the battle between Chrome and Brave lightly. So, we have found out the major facts, where they are different from one another. If you are confused about which browser to try, we suggest you check out the facts properly. But first, I would like to give you a proper introduction to Brave and Chrome browser.

FSFE

• Installing and uninstalling software as we wish on any device is a right that comes with an extra benefit: we can fix our devices and keep using them longer, avoiding the environmental impact of a new device. So what is keeping us from fixing existing devices by installing Free Software? Unfortunately, legal and technical barriers are often intentionally imposed on users so that they cannot change the operating system on their devices. 2022 offers a unique opportunity to improve the situation in Europe. The EU is about to redraft its ecodesign criteria of products with the Sustainable Products Initiative, the Circular Electronics Initiative, the Right to Repair, and other directives.

• This is our chance to claim the right to install any operating system on any device. The FSFE started to advise the European Commission as early as possible on this. But a positive outcome is far from certain; counter-lobbying is there. If the role of software freedom is not considered as essential to the longevity and re-usability of our devices, the throw-away culture will continue. We will advocate for the necessary changes in the upcoming legislation. Manufacturers must not be allowed to create artificial restrictions preventing users from installing Free Software operating systems.

• Help us push for the universal right to install Free Software. Become a supporter.

Programming/Development

• Many people ask me: “Which distributed version control system should I use for my programming project, GitHub or GitLab?” It’s not that simple a question. Let’s break it down, shall we?

• Technical Artists play an important role in bridging UI design and software development of embedded devices. Their core task is to implement the UI vision to a functional user experience. They do so by composing the UI from 2D and 3D UI assets, creating visual effects, and optimizing the rendering performance for the target hardware. So, how are they doing it?

Leftovers

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• The two-year fight against COVID-19 has turned technology into a weapon of choice to defeat the virus but experts now worry that tech will outlive the pandemic and normalise mass surveillance.

• From contact tracing apps to facial recognition, technology has become part of the arsenal used to protect public health.

• While this might have helped save lives, rights advocates say intrusive solutions could already be so entrenched that personal privacy is the long-term price many people may yet pay.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Authoritarian Tech is a weekly newsletter tracking how people in power are abusing technology and what it means for the rest of us. Also in this edition: Kenya’s controversial digital ID scheme; and Chinese social media censors respond to Ukraine

• Russia’s blocking of Facebook is a symptom of its broader effort to cut itself off from sources of information that could imperil its internationally condemned invasion of Ukraine, experts say.

• The often-criticized social network is part of a web of information sources that can challenge the Kremlin’s preferred perspective that its assault on Ukraine is righteous and necessary.

• Blocking of Facebook and restricting of Twitter on Friday came the same day Moscow backed the imposition of jail terms on media publishing “false information” about the military.

• Russia’s motivation “is to suppress political challenges at a very fraught moment for (Vladimir) Putin, and the regime, when it comes to those asking very tough questions about why Russia is continuing to prosecute this war,” said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

• As Russian forces shelled cities across Ukraine on Thursday, unidentified hackers took control of the website for the local government in the western province of Volyn, putting up a fake notice that government officials there had agreed to surrender.

• The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, had prepared for such a scenario. It had been warning for days on social media, especially on Telegram, its most-followed social media channel, that Russia would try such a tactic. It quickly alerted its nearly 800,000 followers that the surrender claim was a fake, and that Volyn was still in Ukrainian hands.

• But SBU’s Telegram channel doesn’t just counter Russian propaganda. Taking advantage of the fact that Telegram, unlike Facebook and Twitter, is almost entirely unmoderated, it publishes plenty of its own. Its feed is full of videos of despondent, apologetic and sometimes bloodied Russians who are allegedly prisoners of war, which some experts have argued violates the Geneva Conventions.

• As the T-Mobile blockade of the Google Play Store in the Chicago region of the US, and apparently others now, continues for the second week for some people….T-Mobile “support” pretends not to know anything about it.

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