● 04.15.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 15/04/2022: 2022 is Officially the Year of GNU/Linux Gaming, Liam Dawe Declares

Posted in News Roundup at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• Razer’s latest laptop isn’t designed for gamers. Instead, it’s a “Tensorbook” for engineers working on machine learning applications.

• Razer is best known for its gaming PCs and peripherals, but the company has also dabbled in the productivity space on occasion.

• Lambda is a deep learning infrastructure company providing computation to accelerate human progress. The company offers GPU computing to some of the top deep learning research and engineering organizations globally.

• It is used by thousands of businesses and organizations, including all five of its largest technology companies.

• Unveiled last year in May, the StarBook Mk V laptop features a true matte 14-inch IPS Full HD (1920×1080) display with an anti-reflective coating and a 3H hard-coat, a backlit keyboard, glass trackpad, and quad speakers.

• When it was announced by Star Labs in May 2022, the StarBook Mk V notebook came only with 11th Gen Intel Core processors, but now you can configure the Linux-powered laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U Ocra-Core processor running at 1.90GHz and featuring a boost clock up to 4.4GHz.

• Razer, famed for sleek and expensive laptops made to play games on, heads in a new direction with its $3500 Tensorbook—it comes with Linux, not Windows, and is designed for demanding machine-learning tasks.

• We have a guide on how to dual-boot Linux and Windows 11, which we recommend you check out if you want to go that route. If you want to replace Windows entirely, or remove Linux, you can always back up your data and delete the partition you don’t want to use anymore.

Audiocasts/Shows

• In this video, I get to chat with DarkXero, the creator of XeroLinux. Of course, we talk about about the XeroLinux distribution, but also broader topics related to Linux, software and the community.

• This teaches you how to build everyone you want starting from a server base with No extra bloat or packages on your system.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• Mesa 22.1-rc1 was released recently as the initial transition to the complete Mesa 22.1 release in May 2022. This news follows the code branching and feature freeze of the open-source driver for Linux. The new update will improve several old NVIDIA graphics in Linux and Radeon Vulkan, or RADV, and Intel will also see additions and fixes. The new Imagination Rogue PowerVR Vulkan driver and several other enhancements and improvements.

Instructionals/Technical

• JetBrains announced the 2022.1 release of its PyCharm IDE few days ago. Here’s how to install in Ubuntu in different ways.

• Are you tired of the default cursor on your Ubuntu Linux desktop? Want to change it? Follow this guide to learn how to change the cursor theme on Ubuntu Linux!

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up two-factor authentication on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, One way to enhance SSH login security is by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to your server. In general, you only need your username and password to login into your server but after applying two-factor authentication you will also need an authentication code along with a username and password. This will significantly enhance your server’s security.

• 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 setup of SSH 2fa (Two-Factor Authentication) 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.

• Nomacs is an open-source, free image viewer that supports multiple platforms. You can use it for viewing all standard formats, including RAW and PSD files, by tapping on the widget with additional information such as thumbnails or histograms revealed beneath its semi-transparent surface – no need to open up another app!

• The imaging software also contains many features, such as it can be used to adjust the brightness, contrast, and hue of an image while maintaining saturation. It also has a pseudo color function that allows you to create false colors studies in one go with ease! Another unique feature about nomac’s software is its ability for multiple instances where it will sync up any changes made from different zoom levels or panning motions, so they match perfectly on screen at all times – making review sessions much more informative than before as well because viewers can see exactly how things changed when zooming around inside each photo frame.

• The RawTherapee application is a powerful and versatile tool for processing raw photos. This program, which runs on both PC & Mac systems using GTK+ as its interface, uses patches of DCRAW with added support from their in-house team that enhances accuracy where needed most – ensuring every photo comes out beautifully regardless of the type or model device was used when taking them!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install RawTherapee on Fedora 36 Linux using the Fedora default repository or alternative flatpak installation manager for those that require the latest released version as sometimes, on the rare occasion, Fedora may be behind in the newest version which occurs but is rare. The tutorial will utilize the command line terminal for the installation, along with tips on maintaining and removing the software in the future with both package manager’s step-by-step instructions.

• Shotwell is a simple and easy-to-use photo organizer for the GNOME desktop. You can import photos from your camera or disk, organize them by date and subject matter, and ratings on how you want to present these memories in this application with its basic editing features, including cropping red eyes away!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Shotwell on Fedora 36 Linux using the Fedora default repository or alternative flatpak installation manager for those requiring the latest released version, as Fedora’s releases often are up-to-date can be a little behind on the rare occasion.

• Imagine being able to scroll through your favorite images and watch them come alive on screen or view a slideshow of all the best moments in life. Ristretto is an innovative image viewer that allows you to scroll through images and view them in a slide show. You can also open multiple files with other applications like your computer’s built-in photo editor or use it as wallpaper on its own!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Ristretto Image Viewer on Fedora 36 Linux using the Fedora default repository or alternative flatpak installation manager for those that require the latest released version.

• VSCodium is a fork of Microsoft Visual Studio Code Editor modified to have full open-source access. The source code for this product can be found on GitHub, where it is licensed under the MIT license and, therefore, will always remain free as long you don’t mind installing extra features via plugins or extensions from third parties like Telemetry transmitting your browsing habits across networks without permission.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install VSCodium on AlmaLinux 8. The tutorial will use the command line terminal with complete steps to install the official repository and tips on updating and removing the IDE securely and adequately.

• USB drives are a great way of sharing files between systems. Plus, you can also use them for creating live Linux installation mediums. Using dedicated flash drives is easy since they’re plug-and-play devices. However, there are times when you may want to format your USB drive on Linux.

• Luckily, formatting a flash drive is not rocket science, and you can easily do it via the Linux terminal or GUI tools like GParted and Disks.

• In this guide, we will discuss how to create a MySQL database and table using PHP and also how to create the MySQL/MariaDB databases and tables via phpMyAdmin in XAMPP stack.

• Fedora Server Edition works on Single Board Computers (SBC) like Raspberry Pi. This article is aimed at data backup and restoration of personal data for users who want to take advantage of solid server systems and built-in tools like Cockpit. It describes 3 levels of backup.

• For most organizations, a major concern has been how to best secure data, preventing it from unauthorized access or exfiltration.

• HashiCorp Vault allows you to secure, store and tightly control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, encryption keys for protecting secrets and other sensitive data using a UI, CLI, or HTTP API. Secrets are any form of sensitive credentials that need to be tightly controlled and monitored and can be used to unlock sensitive information. Secrets could be in the form of passwords, API keys, SSH keys, RSA tokens, or OTP.

• In other operating system environments, creating and using filenames with spaces is irrevocably permissible. However, when we enter the Linux operating system domain, the existence of such filenames becomes an inconvenience.

• For instance, consider the existence of the following filenames inside a Linux operating system environment.

• According to its official website, Docker is a containerization platform. It enables programmers to package applications into capsules, which have been standardized executable portions that integrate program code only with OS packages and prerequisites needed to execute on nearly any architecture.

• The Docker architecture has provided a terminal service that allows everyone to run a variety of instructions to get information from vessels or containers. Dockers have different instructions that are used for various purposes. One of the most-known commands is the “docker ps” command that is used to get information regarding the docker containers currently available in your docker framework. So, we have decided to use this article to illustrate how the “docker ps” instruction works and how we can see the overall full instruction at our Linux shell using the “—no-trunc” option in it.

• To start, we will be logging in from our system and using the “Ctrl+Alt+T” for the terminal console to start quickly. You have to delete all the already installed old packages docker along with other related packages from Ubuntu 20.04 system. So, the apt-get instruction has been utilized so far followed by the keyword “remove” and the names of packages to be removed. Add your current account password and press the Enter key to continue it.

• One of the primary parts of any framework or management software is the way it handles and processes data. Considering the direction in which the world of information technology is going, it is fair to say that data is king. Huge amounts of data are being generated daily to be used for different purposes. Thus, data management and processing very important. Software such as Ansible is required to handle huge amounts of data. Looking at the facilitations these types of applications are supposed to provide, their data processing capabilities must be top-notch.

• Whenever we need to process, format, or manipulate data in Ansible, we use filters. There are two sets of filters available in Ansible. One set is the jinja2 template filters and the other set is of the custom-built filters made by users.

• However, in the background, all the filters are derived from the jinja2 template, which works in a way that the data being input into the filters is first converted into template expressions so the filters can be applied to them.

• Another important point to take note of is that all the filters are applied locally, meaning that no filtering can be done using remote hosts. So, all the manipulation and processing take place on the Ansible control machine.

• If you are looking to learn about the filters available in Ansible and how they are used, you have found the right article as we will be guiding you on how these filters work and how you can create Ansible playbooks to process data the way you want your system to.

• gThumb is the perfect tool for viewing and editing all your favorite images. It’s fully integrated with GNOME 3, so you can access it in seconds. The imaging software provides an easy way to view standard formats such as BMPs GIF(including animations), JPEGs, PNG TIFF, or RAW files — not just typical multimedia types like videos that are usually found on other platforms. You’ll also be able to use various metadata tags embedded inside photos, including EXIF IPTC XMP, which allows more customization when organizing collections across multiple devices.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn to install the gThumb on Fedora 36 Linux using two methods: dnf package manager and flatpak package manager, with some tips for maintaining or removing gThumb in the future.

• When you’re looking for an easy way to organize your photos, KPhotoAlbum is the program that will make it easier than ever before. With this simple yet powerful tool in hand, there’s no longer a need to worry about what photo goes where because everything can be done through its intuitive interface, like viewing images individually or browsing by category. Best of all, taking advantage of some excellent features like seeing which ones were taken today without having them mess up any other date stamps!

• In the following tutorial, you will learn to install the KPhotoAlbum on Fedora 36 Linux using two alternative methods: the dnf package manager or the flatpak package manager, with some tips for maintaining or removing KPhotoAlbum in the future.

• Gwenview is a simple and easy-to-use program for viewing images on the KDE desktop. It can show you full-screen slideshows, crop an image or rotate it in many different ways without much effort from yourself!

• In this tutorial you will learn how to fix the error ” Whoops! /run/nordvpn/nordvpnd.sock not found” on NordVPN, this error comes up after running the command “nordvpn connect” on console and it prevents nordvpn from running, in other words nordvpn daemon service it’s not running or has failed and you can’t connect to any server.

• TeXworks is a TeX document editor application that comes with pdfTeX, pdfLaTex, LuaTex, LuaLaTex, BibTex MakeIndex and XeTeX typesetting engines support. It generates PDF documents as the default formatted output. You can also configure a processing path based on DVI. It comes with a build-in integrated PDF viewer source/preview synchronization support.

• Suppose you are looking for an open-source TeX document editor application with additional typesetting engine support to generate PDF documents as the default formatted output. In that case, Texworks should be your go-to choice.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the latest version of TeXworks on Fedora 36 Linux using two different methods of Fedora’s repository using the DNF package manager or the natively installed Flatpak third-party manager using the command line terminal. The tutorial will also show quick tips on how to update using the command line terminal and if need be remove the software.

• Krita is a free and open-source graphics editing program designed for digital painting, 2D animation, or general image manipulation. It runs on Windows, macOS (both Intel 64bit), Linux hits, Android & Chrome OS and is one of the more popular paint applications for users that deal with digital photos.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Krita on Fedora 36 Linux using the Fedora DNF Repository or the natively installed third-party manager Flatpak using the command line terminal, along with some tips on how to update or remove the software in the future if required.

• OBS Studio is a free, lightweight open-source, cross-platform screencasting software for screen recording, camera image, and sound record. OBS Studio also makes it easier to use for those new to the world of live streaming as it is designed to be simple to use and comes with plugins and scripts that can be installed, and is considered one of the best free, open-source software of its nature.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install OBS Studio on Fedora 36 Linux by importing the RPM Fusion Repository that contains the latest stable version and updating and removing the software in the future.

• VSCodium is a fork of Microsoft Visual Studio Code Editor modified to have full open-source access. The source code for this product can be found on GitHub, where it is licensed under the MIT license and, therefore, will always remain free as long you don’t mind installing extra features via plugins or extensions from third parties like Telemetry transmitting your browsing habits across networks without permission.

• Persepolis is a download manager and GUI for ARIA 2 written in Python. It can be used on any operating system that supports Python, including Linux/BSDs, macOS & Microsoft Windows! While Fedora users may be familiar with similar software such as the uGET download manager, the Persepolis download manager is an actively developed, great lightweight alternative.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the latest version of Persepolis Download Manager on Fedora 36 Linux using the DNF package manager with the Fedora repository using the command line terminal.

• MusicBrainz Picard is an open-source software application for identifying, tagging, and organizing digital audio recordings. Developed by the Metabrainz Foundation with backing from record companies like Sony Music Entertainment Japan Inc., it was created as part of a project called “MusicKB,” which aimed to build tools that would help people discover new music more easily through data analysis.

• Okular is a free and open-source multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. The document viewer is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF, and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, KFaxview, and KDVI in KDE 4.

• Keeping your system up to date is an essential factor for anyone from simple desktop users, developers, and sysadmins; well, let’s face it, anyone with a device primarily connected to the Internet. Ubuntu, by default, is not set up for automatic updates. However, by enabling and configuring unattended-upgrades packages, you can easily apply security, package, or even new feature upgrades in an easy, simple, efficient way if you do not always have the time to check or forget. IT is highly recommended to enable this just for security alone.

• The following tutorial will demonstrate how to install, enable and configure unattended-upgrades on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system with complete steps and examples that you can fine-tune to your own requirements on either desktop or headless ubuntu server.

• 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 but has much more features.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install MyPaint on Fedora 36 Linux using two different methods: DNF with Fedora’s default repository or the Flatpak third-party package manager using the command line terminal.

• If you’ve ever used any modern Windows 10 laptop with a decent touchpad, or a MacBook, you know how touchpad gestures make using the laptop so much easier. In many ways, they make the touchpad even better than using a Bluetooth mouse. Unfortunately, Linux-based operating systems such as Ubuntu haven’t really caught up in that department. But Ubuntu is still Linux so, if you want something, you can have it with a little effort. Today we’ll see how you can customize Ubuntu touchpad gestures.

• We’re going to use a nifty little app, simply called Gesture. The interface is designed with the GNOME desktop environment in mind, but the functionality is the same on any desktop. Ubuntu and other Linux distros do come with some basic touchpad gestures for scrolling and right-click. For anything more, we can use the Gesture app. Basically, it deals with gestures that require three or four fingers.

• I’m going to start this blog by writing a very simple guide on installing Perl using perlbrew.

• To install Perl using perlbrew, first visit the website and grab it’s and paste it in your terminal, and wait for it to do its job.

• Complete steps to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish” from Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 21.10 with additional instructions.

• Being able to copy text from images is a neat little trick that allows you to extract a piece of information from an image, perhaps to copy a text snippet in it or note down an error message appearing on the screen.

• Since Linux doesn’t have a built-in OCR utility, you have to resort to third-party OCR readers. But because most of these are CLI-based tools, they aren’t very user-friendly.

• Here’s where TextSnatcher comes in. It’s a simple and intuitive program that makes it really easy to copy text from images on Linux. Let’s dive in to learn more.

• In this tutorial we are going to explain the Linux file permissions in different Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and AlmaLinux. The Linux file permissions are very important to understand and use properly, due to security reasons and user access rights. The user access rights are controlled by the permissions, attributes, and ownership. This defines who will be the authorized users and which directories and files will be accessed by them.

• In this blog post we will explain the permissions on Ubuntu 20.04 OS. You can choose by yourself which OS to use. Let’s get started!

• OpenMRS is a free and open-source project to develop software for delivering health care in developing countries. It is an enterprise electronic medical record system framework that allows the exchange of patient data with other medical information systems. It is written in Java and provides a web interface to manage electronic medical records.

• In this post, we will show you how to install OpenMRS on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Welcome. This article is another part of my ongoing series on moving away from Windows as my primary operating system. A few months back, I realized that the simplicity and user-focused control of the classic desktop so far present in Windows will most likely be gone, or at least, become severely reduced in the coming years, and that I don’t want to partake in that journey. Instead, I will be having my own journey.

• I told you about my rough plan, and I already outlined how you can get SketchUp and Kerkythea working in Linux. Now, I want to talk about a lovely, highly useful relic. KompoZer. It’s a WYSIWYG HTML editor that’s last been updated some fourteen years back. And yet, it’s still around, and I still use it, because it does the job. Now let me show you how you can get it working in Linux.

Games

• Love free games and discounts? GOG have a free copy of Iris and the Giant for keeps and you can save during their new Indie Spring Sale. Quite a short one this time though so act quickly.

• That’s it, I’m done, finished. It’s “mission complete” now is it not? 2022 is officially the Year of Linux Gaming. Yup, that’s something I am now proclaiming and I’m also putting a flag down into February 25 (the Steam Deck release date) as Linux Gaming Day every year.

• While the long-running joke of “Year of the Linux Desktop” might take forever to actually be a thing, Linux Gaming is now a lot more mainstream. Thanks largely to Valve of course bringing over Steam to Linux, and eventually producing the Steam Deck — putting the power of Linux and open source literally into peoples’ hands.

• Of course that’s not to say it’s all Valve. There’s a massively long list of open source contributors who have helped to make this happen. From drivers to desktop environment upgrades there’s so many different people, companies and organisations to thank. We wouldn’t see the Steam Deck without open source and without the Vulkan API. I’ve said for years that we needed “hardware, hardware, hardware” with more vendors to properly jump in. It’s not enough to have good marketing, or a good desktop, people needed a reason to use it to actually sway them over and clearly the Steam Deck is doing wonders.

• If you follow the Steam Deck Reddit, you’ll see a lot of people trying out (and actually enjoying) the KDE Plasma desktop mode on the Steam Deck too. Plenty of the fixes coming into KDE Plasma are as a result of people trying it out too, and finding issues, which then benefits all users. You only have to look at the regular This Week in KDE blog posts from developer Nate Graham to see how much effort goes into it.

• It’s been probably the slowest week so far after the 2100 games milestone on the Steam Deck. For a few days there were barely any games added, but we have finally got there. There are now more than 2200 games (2210 at the time of writing) working on the Steam Deck – in two categories as usual…

• Ubuntu‘s share in this dataset has shrunk by almost 3 times (from almost 45% to about 15% now) over the past 4 years

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• This is my fourth blogpost for SoK 2022.

• It’s been quite some time since my third blogpost. If you remember, I’ve been working on adding the Perspective Ellipse Assistant Tool in Krita as a part of SoK’22.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• As i mentioned last month, I bought one of these Norns audio-computers and a grey grid device to go with it. So now I have this lap-size electronic music apparatus.

• Its very fun to develop for – the truth is I’ve never got on well with the “standard” tools of Max/MSP and Pure Data, I suspect flow-based programming just isn’t for me. As within an hour of opening the web-based Lua editor on the Norns device I already had a pretty cool prototype of something I hadn’t even intended to make. More on that when I can devote more time to it.

• There is some work to make the open-source Norns software run on the Linux desktop in a container. It seems the status is “working but awkward.” I thought to myself – “How hard could it be to package this as a Flatpak?”

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

• This is a weekly report from the CPE (Community Platform Engineering) Team. If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on libera.chat (https://libera.chat/).

• RPMs of PHP version 8.1.5 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 34 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php81 repository for EL 7.

• RPMs of PHP version 8.0.18 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 34 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php80 repository for EL 7.

• RPMs of PHP version 7.4.29 are available in remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 34 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky…) and in remi-php74 repository for EL 7.

• Hybrid work technologies are hot these days, as CIOs and other decision makers sift through new, emerging, and legacy solutions to determine which ones are right for their business. Talent and company growth, workforce distribution, team culture, and other such factors all need to be considered before making an investment.

• Here are three important questions to ask as you evaluate new hybrid work tools and services.

• Learn the differences between these two important network troubleshooting commands and when you should use traceroute or tracepath.

• There’s no time to waste in the world of Linux distributions. Fedora 35 dropped in November 2021, and Fedora 36 is set to arrive a few short months later in April 2022. Here’s what’s new in Red Hat’s open-source Linux distribution.

• The latest version of the popular Linux distribution is set to be released on either April 19, 2022 or April 26, 2022 depending on how the beta testing goes—nearly coinciding with the release of Ubuntu 22.04. We’re looking at the beta in this article, but it’s close enough to the final product that we can confidently see what’s going to be new and take a quick tour for all you Fedora fans out there.

• Here’s your weekly Fedora report. Read what happened this week and what’s coming up. Your contributions are welcome (see the end of the post)!

• The F36 Final freeze is underway. F36 Final is on track for target date #1 (2022-04-26).

• I have weekly office hours on Wednesdays in the morning and afternoon (US/Eastern time) in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else. See the upcoming meetings for more information.

Devices/Embedded

• LU-ASR01 is a board capable of offline speech recognition with a built-in microphone, a speaker connector, twelve through holes for GPIOs and a temperature sensor interface for DHT11/DS18B20, plus a USB Type-C port for power and programming.

• Espressif’s ESP USB Bridge is a project based on the ESP-IDF that leverages ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 USB interface to use the board as a USB to UART or USB to JTAG debug board.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Online surveys have become popular nowadays to collect data and let people know about the opinions of other people on different topics to help them improve various areas. Many platforms allow users to take a survey or questionnaire but the LimeSurvey is the ideal pick. It is an online tool that helps businesses conduct different surveys and questionnaires needed to carry out different experimental designs or studies.

• The LimeSurvey releases an open-source version to let people use this tool in a self-hosted environment, making it quite easy for Raspberry Pi users to use the LimeSurvey services.

• As wildfires continue to get more prevalent throughout the world, new methods are required in order to track not just their flames which destroy forests and buildings, but also the vast quantities of fine particulate matter that gets thrown into the sky from the smoke. Fine particulate matter that ranges between 2.5 and 10 microns (PM 2.5 and PM 10) can cause serious health problems for anyone who breathes them in, which is what inspired Grace McNally to create a monitoring system as part of element14’s Just Encase Design Challenge.

• To begin with making electronic projects there are different kits available that include essential components that are required by the to make projects. Also, Arduino kit comes with a complete guide of how you can make multiple projects and also gives a list of projects that can be made from that respective kit.

• The first step for creating a project is to create a logic on how the controller will work and once we have created a pseudo code, we write and compile the Arduino code. Now comes the very important part as we have to design a circuit and to implement that circuit in the hardware. Before implementing the circuit in actual hardware to be sure that our project gives the desired output and all the connections of the components are correct, we run a simulation first. To create simulations of Arduino projects there are number of simulation software available and to save time of learners we have carefully shortlisted some of the best simulation software and have given brief information about each Arduino simulator:

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• On Friday, April 8th, the Rust Compiler team had a planning meeting for the April 2022 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.

• With her face and bald head as her canvas, she creates wildly elaborate and colorful makeup designs that have gained her more than 177,000 followers on TikTok. She’s transformed herself into an Easter bunny, the Cheshire cat and Homer Simpson. Once, she turned herself into Bernie Sanders from that 2020 inauguration meme.

• Abby, an L.A.-based makeup artist, didn’t always feel comfortable with people’s gaze.

• In 2006, while in high school, she started to notice clumps of hair falling out in the shower. She and her mother made multiple doctor’s visits outside her small town in Montana until she received a diagnosis: alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss as a person’s immune system attacks hair follicles by mistake.

• Different is dope. Firefox has always stood by this. It’s also the mantra of Abby Wren, the woman featured in the pilot episode of our new docuseries, “Firefox Presents.”

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. In 2021, we had elections for the foundation’s Board of Directors, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities.

FSF

GNU Projects

• Emacs is a wonderful tool and with the right third-party packages you can create your own environment within it. Functions such as window spawning and terminal emulation are just some of the parts of Emacs that are hidden to the casual user. This article aims to shed light on some of those in order to allow you to make the the most out of your Emacs installation.

Programming/Development

• As discussed in those posts, while there are definite drawbacks and challenges in basing an app on a fully custom UI toolkit, there are also unbeatable advantages. One of those is the freedom to adapt and transform the UI without limitations, like I’ve already done to have versions of Lagrange built specifically for the Mac, Windows, Linux, *BSD GUI desktops, and the iOS, iPadOS, and Android mobile operating systems. (iPadOS is worth mentioning separately as there are some unique UI variations for the tablet form factor.)

• GUIs are nowadays quite the common denominator, but in the grand scheme of computing they are relative newcomers. For decades before GUIs, various text-based terminal interfaces were the norm. I’m sure most people reading this are already very familiar with the terminal, as it remains crucial to this day for many use cases, especially when one is connecting to a server over the network. Just like Gemtext, a text-based UI is fast and easy to stream over a network connection, be it a simple command line or something more complex.

• One thing that really interests me in the Lagrange project is exploring the boundaries of native cross-platform programming, because I fundamentally dislike the notion that modern cross-platform apps need to be based on a web browser for things to make sense. With the major desktop and mobile platforms now supported by the app — at least in Beta form — I’m setting sights on more exotic frontiers, and the terminal is a logical next step.

• Isn’t Usenet more akin to Gemini than a mailing list residing on a single server – whose server?

• comp.infosystems.gemini is the first new newsgroup since eight years in the Big-8 hierarchy of Usenet! Let’s celebrate!

• I wasn’t involved in the creation of gemini. But since gemini is up and running, wouldn’t it be better to have gemini discussions on gemini?

• If we feel that gemini is lacking for using for communicating, maybe that’s something that we really should discuss.

• In the C++ programming language, you will come across many conversions and copy data from one file or one variable to another, like the conversion from int to string, character array to string, etc. A similar type of conversion will be discussed herein in which the characters from the format strings are written to the buffer. And the values will be obtained through that buffer variable. This is done through a function in C++ known as sprints().

• Dijkstra’s algorithm is also known as the shortest possible path algorithm. It is the procedure to find the shortest path between the nodes/ edges of the graph. The shortest graph of a tree is created by starting from the source vertex to all the other points in the graph.

• The fopen() function creates and correlates a stream with the file defined by the name of the file. The mode attribute is a sequence of bytes that indicates the sort of access to the file that has been provided. The positioning argument precedes additional keyword arguments in the mode attribute. Lowercase letters should be utilized for these positioning arguments. The keyword arguments might be specified in either upper or lower case. Quotation marks are used to separate them. There would only be a single indication of a keyword declared.

• Any file accessed is frequently determined by the file title given to the fopen() function. There are a variety of file-naming guidelines that we will use to design an application. Customizable characters and readable characters are arranged into sections in text files. A newline character is being used at the end of every line. The system can introduce or transform command characters in an outcome textual stream.

• Binary files are made up of a string of characters. The program will not transform control bits in input or output for these files. In this article, we’ll explore how to use the fopen() function to perform different operations in C.

• The C programming language will turn fifty years old in 2022. Yet despite its long history, C remains one of the top “most-used” programming languages in many “popular programming languages” surveys. For example, check out the TIOBE Index, which tracks the popularity of different programming languages. Many Linux applications are written in C, such as the GNOME desktop.

• This month marked my first time filing taxes in two countries, and I can assure you it is the worst. I am now a single-issue voter in the US: stop taxing expats! You can get some insight into the financials of SourceHut in the recently-published financial report. But let’s get right into the fun stuff: free software development news.

• There was some slowdown from me this month thanks to all of the business and financial crap I had to put up with, but I was able to get some cool stuff done and many other contributors have been keeping things moving. I’ll start by introducing a new/old project: Himitsu.

• Essentially, Himitsu is a secret storage system whose intended use-case is to provide features like password storage and SSH agent functionality. It draws much of its inspiration from Plan 9’s Factotum. You may have stumbled upon an early prototype on git.sr.ht which introduces the basic idea and included the start of an implementation in C. Ultimately I shelved this project for want of a better programming language to implement it with, and then I made a better programming language to implement it with.

Leftovers

Hardware

Integrity/Availability

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Privatisation/Privateering

Linux Foundation

• For many of us, it has been several years since we’ve been in conference settings, or around many people at all. As we close in on a broader return to in-person events next month, this is the perfect time to reiterate that our events are gatherings intended for professional networking and collaboration for the open source community, that exist to encourage the open exchange of ideas. Thus, they require an environment that recognizes the inherent worth of every person and group. All event participants, whether they are attending an in-person or a virtual event, are expected to behave in accordance with our Event Code of Conduct. In short: Be kind. Be professional. Treat everyone with respect.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (fribidi and python-django), Fedora (postgresql-jdbc, stargz-snapshotter, and thunderbird), Slackware (git, gzip, and xz), and SUSE (kernel, SDL2, and tomcat).

• The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 210. This version includes the following changes:

• On April 13, 2022, the Real World Crypto steering committee presented the Max Levchin Prize for Real-World Cryptography to Let’s Encrypt. The following is the speech delivered by our Executive Director, Josh Aas upon receiving the award. We’d like to thank our community for supporting us and invite you to join us in making the Internet more secure and privacy-respecting for everyone.

• Google has released Chrome version 100.0.4896.127 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This version addresses a vulnerability that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. This vulnerability has been detected in exploits in the wild.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Despite existing privacy concerns about facial recognition, the U.S. government was requiring the public to use it. After those plans were put on hold, lawmakers have swooped in and launched an investigation of ID.me, the identity verification contractor, and its use of facial recognition.

• Below, we take a look at where various states and the respective state governments stand with regard to the Pegasus revelations made in July 2021. We also take a look at the various inquiries that may have been initiated as a fallout from the revelations.

• [..]

• The Pegasus revelations demonstrated a need for urgent surveillance reform to protect citizens against the use of such invasive technologies which hamper their fundamental right to privacy and threatens the democratic ideals of our country. It has been used against constitutional functionaries such as an Election Commissioner, a Supreme Court Judge and members of Parliament but most disturbingly against activists and journalists. Use of such surveillance technology on journalists has a chilling effect as it precludes them from working and reporting on sensitive matters, some of which may also be against the ruling government, without jeopardising themselves and the personal safety of their sources. It also stops human rights defenders from working with vulnerable people, some of whom may have been victimised by their own government, without opening them up to further abuse.

Finance

• On March 16, Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) released the 2022 AI Index report, its fifth annual study on the impact and progress of AI. The comprehensive study was led by an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry, and highlights the rapid rate of technical and marketplace AI advances, as well as the growing ethical and regulatory concerns associated with AI.

• “2021 was the year that AI went from an emerging technology to a mature technology – we’re no longer dealing with a speculative part of scientific research, but instead something that has real-world impact, both positive and negative,” said Jack Clark, co-chair of the AI Index. “This year’s AI Index tells us that AI is being integrated into the economy and the effects of it are beginning to go global across research, deployment, and even funding.” Two weeks ago I attended an online HAI seminar where Clark gave this excellent presentation on the AI Index.

• The report is organized into five chapters: Technical Performance, AI Ethics, R&D, Economy and Education, and Policy and Governance. Let me summarize the key findings of each chapter.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• However, this time, it was very interesting. He made an offer to buy Twitter for about $43 billion.

• Technically, he offered way more than the market price in a bid to acquire Twitter, which is why many outlets have claimed it as an attempt at a “hostile takeover”.

• In my previous post I went a li’l bit more explicit in expressing my disdain for our elected officials than I intended, but the officials are what they are and the electorate is what it is and we can try to make the best of it and also try to improve both.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Wow, two weeks seems like such a long way off when I finish a smolZINE issue then the next one feels like comes so quickly. A lot of offline life stuff happening for me right now so this is going to be a bit of a lighter issue. BUT, there are some really cool gems in this issue.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• What happens if Apple no longer sells cell phones and rents them instead? Not much. For years the cell carriers rented hardware by the month on a multi-year contract, and consumers weren’t horribly upset. So long as Apple continues to force customers into regular replacements – the rental concept is more honest than the pretense of a sale without having the advantages of ownership.

• We’ve argued for years that a company that demands total control over their assets should not sell those assets in the first place. Retaining ownership is essential to having full control. But retaining ownership has accounting implications for Apple, that might not be so advantageous.

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