● 03.15.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 15/3/2022: Steam on ChromeOS and Lightweight Graphical Web Browsers

Posted in News Roundup at 4:55 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

• Old-time Linux is back again. It is not uncommon for open-source software to stop in its tracks. Community and team-based projects sometimes lose developers, enthusiasm, or funding. Hundreds of Linux distributions exist. Some come and go all the time, often unnoticed.

• Usually, others take their place and the open-source software world goes on. It is much rarer, however, to see fading distributions return in full glory. That scenario happened at least three times in February. They’re back: Slackware, Peppermint, and Slax Linux.

Desktop/Laptop

• Linux has gained significant popularity in the last decade or so. Despite having a relatively low market share compared to Windows, it is well-adapted to the evolving user requirements through its constant development.

• Linux has some state-of-the-art features that other operating systems lack for now. Such features, along with its solid support, are continuously growing within its community.

• So, let’s take a look at 10 things you can do on Linux that you can’t do on Windows.

Audiocasts/Shows

• YouTube Vanced has been around for years and now Google has finally decided it’s time for it to go, but why did it happen now and not years ago.

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of Zorin OS 16.1 core and some of the applications pre-installed.

• UPS just delivered me a black box that says “YouTube” on the front.

Applications

• Current desktop machines are equipped with multi-core processors, gigabytes of system RAM and the ability to run many programs simultaneously. With the huge range of system resources available it is not surprising the software bloat phenomenon is witnessed. This is a process where successive versions of an application consume more system resources than necessary, or offer an ever-increasing number of features that the majority of users do not use or need.

• The field of web browsers is dominated by Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. To try to counter software bloat, the developers of these browsers make use of plug-ins, extensions or add-ons. This means that the extra functionality offered by these tools are made available to only those who actually need them. Nevertheless, these web browsers still have one thing in common; they do not have a small footprint. Whilst they run fast on a well specified modern PC, there are many users that are using much more limited hardware. These low spec machines can be extremely popular.

• When you think of music recognition, Shazam is probably the first service that springs to mind. It’s completely free to use and available for Android and iOS on the mobile and macOS and Windows on the desktop side of things. Linux, unfortunately, doesn’t get a desktop client.

• So how do you recognize music on Linux, then? Well, as its turns out, there’s an unofficial Shazam client to help you with music recognition on Linux. It’s called SongRec, and it can do a lot more than the official Shazam service.

• Follow along as we demonstrate its use on Linux.

Instructionals/Technical

• The Yggdrasil Network is an IPv6 overlay network that aims to create a decentralized and encrypted mesh network. It does this by treating networks as leaves in a binary tree. Being an overlay network, Yggdrasil also serves as a virtual private network (VPN) that allows its users to securely interact with each other.

• Furthermore, Yggdrasil is free, relatively easy to set up and is also available to a wide array of platforms. This makes Yggdrasil a strong alternative for people who are interested in having a secure, private connection with other people.

• Git is the most commonly used and popular distributed version control platform that is used by many commercial and open-source projects. Using Git, you can collaborate with your project developers. Moreover, you can keep track of code changes, create branches, revert to previous stages, and more.

• We will see in this tutorial how to install Git on the Ubuntu 20.04 system using the command line.

• In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install Checkmk monitoring software on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Checkmk is a free open-source monitoring server tool written in C++ and Python. It is a leading tool for infrastructure and application monitoring that has a simple configuration, flexibility, and scalability. With Checkmk we can monitor web servers, database servers, cloud infrastructure, network services, containers, and many more things.

• Installing Checkmk monitoring tool on Ubuntu 20.04 is a very easy and straightforward process, which can take up to 10 minutes. Let’s get started with the installation. Enjoy!

• Matomo, formerly known as Piwik is a free and open-source web analytics application developed by a community of developers. It is used to track your website and give detailed information on your website and its visitors, including the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, which pages they like, the files they download and so much more. It offers a lot of features including, Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Yahoo, Search Marketing, Tracking and Reporting API, and Cost Per Click (CPC).

• In this tutorial, I will show you how to install Matomo on Debian 11 with an Apache2 web server and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.

• UVdesk is an open-source Saas-based helpdesk system for companies to interact with their customers and offer round-the-clock support. Its features include tickets management, knowledgebase support, canned replies, and automatic ticket generation based on emails. Uvdesk’s capabilities can be extended using external modules. You can automate certain actions based on specific triggers to improve your workflow.

• In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Uvdesk on a Rocky Linux 8 based server using Nginx, MySQL and PHP.

• ClickHouse is a fast and open-source column-oriented database management system developed by Yandex. It allows generating analytical data reports in real-time and is built to process analytical queries while including high-availability features that work across clusters. If you are looking for a powerful column-oriented database system with a high-availability system that can manage large volumes of data, you should consider using ClickHouse as your database system of choice. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Clickhouse on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Want to limit the cpu usage of an app or process? It’s easy to do the trick in Ubuntu Linux via the LimitCPU tool.

• LimitCPU is a simple command line tool that monitors a process and makes sure its CPU usage stays at or below a given percentage, by sending SIGSTOP and SIGCONT POSIX signals to process. All the children processes and threads of the specified process will share the same percentage of CPU.

• LimitCPU is the direct child of the old CPUlimit. It’s available in the system repositories of all current Ubuntu repositories, though the package name is cpulimit.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AnyDesk on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, AnyDesk is a remote desktop application designed to be reliable and fast. It helps us to easily and quickly establish a connection between computers to remotely access and share the screen. AnyDesk is available for Linux, FreeBSD, Raspberry Pi, Windows, Chrome OS, macOS, Android, and iOS.

• 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 AnyDesk remote desktop application on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

Games

• It’s finally here in Alpha, Google and Valve have brought Steam to ChromeOS giving even more platforms using Linux a chance to get their gaming on.

• During the ongoing Google for Games Developer Summit 2022 Keynote, one of the Google team just did a talk on “How to write a Windows emulator for Linux from scratch” to help Stadia.

• They already have some existing work available to developers who want it, including their “Stadia Porting Toolkit” which actually uses DXVK to translate Direct3D to Vulkan (since Stadia is a Linux system). However, this translator seems to be their newer approach to running Windows games on Stadia.

• Do you love games that might split your brain in half? Hyperbolica might just do that with the mind-bending world design based on Non-Euclidean curved space.

• It’s a thoroughly quirky adventure, with a layout that’s similar to HyperRogue that shares the hyperbolic geometry style to it. However, these are vastly different games. While HyperRogue is a roguelike, Hyperbolica is a story-based adventure filled with exploration, mini-games and more.

• Two Point Studios might be currently working on Two Point Campus but they’re not done with their modern take on Theme Hospital with the Two Point Hospital: Speedy Recovery DLC out now.

• Speedy Recovery brings with it a new game mode, where you take command of an “extraordinary fleet of innovative and unorthodox ambulances”. As incidents pop up via a new ‘Dispatch’ button, you use your new fleet of vehicles to deliver patients to hospitals all over Two Point County while you also cure their ailments. Actually sounds like a pretty great little expansion, much more interesting than the previous additions.

• It’s already been 2 months since 3.5 beta 1! Between biweekly 4.0 alpha builds and maintenance releases for the stable branch (3.4.3, 3.4.4 RC 1), the release team – i.e. me – is spread thin… but these two months gave time for a lot of improvements in the 3.x branch and this new 3.5 beta 2 should be worth the wait!

• This is a big update with close to 350 commits from 82 contributors since the previous beta! Some of the main highlights added in beta 2 are physics interpolation for 3D, and a new OccluderShaderPolygon for your 3D occlusion needs.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• In my previous blog, I mentioned the initialization of the Left / Right click activity inside GCompris and its basic layout.

• Since my last blog, there has been significant progress. With the help of mentors Allon, Timothee, Johnny, and Harsh, I have solved the random placing of animal cards, avoiding overlapping issues.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Want to customize and tweak your GNOME desktop? These GNOME shell extensions will get you started.

• If you are new to Linux and chose GNOME as your desktop environment but are finding the desktop monotonous, the experience slow, and are after a change, you should consider installing GNOME shell extensions.

• Here are the 10 best and must-have free GNOME shell extensions to spice up your Linux user experience and breathe some life into your distro with a fresher look and feel.

Distributions

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Over the last decade, containers have become an essential part of running infrastructure more efficiently. Containers enable productivity, automation, and cost-effective deployments. But there are different types of containers to consider, and this blog explains what Linux containers are, and how they differ from application containers.

Devices/Embedded

• I’ve been gradually tweaking my PineDA (Pinephone PDA) and molding it into my ideal personal computing interface. Well as close to ideal as I can get with my limited skills. One thing that has dawned on me without planning it at all is that it is a pretty great convergence setup. As in I can easily go from using it on device to using it on a different device with larger display and full size keyboard just by logging in via SSH.

• OnLogic has opened preorders for a $333-and-up “Factor 201” industrial gateway based on the Raspberry Pi CM4 with 2x M.2 B-key, 4x USB, HDMI, COM, and 2x GbE with optional PoE-PD. An upcoming “Factor 202” will add analog and digital I/O.

• A year ago on Pi Day, OnLogic teased a One Tough Pi industrial gateway based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. One Pi Day later, the company has opened pre-orders on the system, now called the Factor 201, with shipments due “in the coming weeks.” The Vermont-based company has also revealed full specs for a Factor 202 model that will launch later this year with DIO and ADC features.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Shoulder injuries can be quite complex and require months of careful physical therapy to overcome, which is what led to Roni Bandini to build a tinyML-powered wearable that monitors a patient’s rotator cuff movements to aid in the recovery process. His system is designed around a Nano 33 BLE Sense and its onboard accelerometer that measures both the types and frequencies of certain shoulder motions.

• After 3D printing a small case to house the Arduino along with a battery pack and an OLED display, Bandini created a new project using the Edge Impulse Studio. The impulse takes in time-series three-axis accelerometer data, runs it through a spectral analysis block, and then infers the current movement being performed by the wearer.

• Nipkow displays are a special kind of persistence-of-vision device in that they use a spiral of tiny cutouts on a large spinning disk along with a single point of color generation to make an image. Maker Mac70 has come up with his own 3D-printed version, which integrates an Arduino Mega 2560 board, a fast motor, and sensors to create a machine that can show either static images or short animations — all with just one LED.

• The base of the Nipkow display is a 12V DC motor that is able to spin the disk quickly enough so that each colored dot appears as one image. Synchronization was achieved by taking an infrared object sensor and pointing it towards the edge of the disk. A small reflective strip then signals to the Arduino that one rotation has been completed and the next frame can be drawn.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Leftovers

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

• The Cloud Native Developer Bootcamp works to provide developers, cloud architects, and others who are new to cloud native technologies with the tools needed to be successful in designing, building, and deploying cloud native applications

Security

• The National Security Agency (NSA) and CISA have updated their joint Cybersecurity Technical Report (CTR): Kubernetes Hardening Guide, originally released in August 2021, based on valuable feedback and inputs from the cybersecurity community.

• On February 8, Robert Sirchia and I taught a Master Class for the SUSE and Rancher Community that explained how to use K3s with Traefik Proxy.

• The OpenSSL project has disclosed a vulnerability wherein an attacker presenting a malicious certificate can cause the execution of an infinite loop. It is thus a denial-of-service vulnerability for any application — server or client — that handles certificates from untrusted sources. The OpenSSL 3.0.2 and 1.1.1n releases contain fixes for the problem.

• CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have released a joint Cybersecurity Advisory that details how Russian state-sponsored cyber actors accessed a network with misconfigured default multifactor authentication (MFA) protocols. The actors then exploited a critical Windows Print Spooler vulnerability, “PrintNightmare” (CVE-2021-34527), to run arbitrary code with system privileges. The advisory provides observed tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as indicators of compromise and mitigations to protect against this threat.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

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