● 10.03.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/10/2022: OpenMandriva ROME Gold Candidate and IceWM 3.0.0

Posted in News Roundup at 12:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• What’s up, guys!!! In this video, we check out Crystal Linux. Crystal Linux is a brand new Arch Linux-based distribution. Friendly, powerful, and easy to use.

• This shows you all the steps to install a MacOS VM in Linux QEMU using Virtual Machine Manager or virt-manager.

• In the fortieth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy sits down with special guests Anne McCarthy and Brian Alexander to discuss the Testing Team and how to get started with testing in the WordPress project.

Kernel Space

• Linux 6.0 is a major new kernel number, but doesn’t represent big fundamental changes. That’s coming in Linux 6.1.

• The new version of Linux — Linux 6.0 — has been launched. However, based on its founder Linux Torvalds’ reactions, the best of this new OS is yet to come. Torvalds is more excited about the upcoming 6.1 version of the Linus kernel. He mentioned that Linux 6.0 does not contain the ‘core new things’ coming in Linux 6.1.

• Nonetheless, Torvalds hailed Linux 6.0 as “one of the bigger releases at least in numbers of commits in a while”, thanks largely to the inclusion of “15,000 non-merge commits in there in total”. In open source, the ‘number of commits’ means that the user is permitted to contribute source code changes.

• The Linux Kernel 6.0 officially drops, and now, it introduces an interesting new feature which is its support for AArch64 hardware architecture. This allows it to swap huge transparent pages without even needing to split them.

• Although it will be some time before most Linux distributions ship with the latest kernel, the next major release is now available.

• Over on the Linux Kernel Mail List, Linus Torvalds announced the availability of the latest kernel by saying, “So, as is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes.”

• That doesn’t mean, however, there aren’t any changes and new editions to be found in the 6.0 release. In fact, with regards to the number of commits, the 6.0 kernel is one of the biggest releases in a while.

• The new additions to the Linux kernel include a new graphics driver for the AMD RDNA 3 GPU, a new audio driver for AMD’s “Jadeite” systems, support for PCI buses on OpenRISC and LoongArch systems, improved cache block management for RISC-V, new support for the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 laptop, fixes for TUXEDO and Clevo laptop touchpads, initial support for XP-PEN Deco L Drawing Tablets, support for AMD Sensor Fusion Hub for Ryzen laptops, and functioning Thunderbolt support for Intel Raptor Lake.

Applications

• Containerization is all the rage right now. Docker, introduced back in 2014, has become the most popular tool for managing containers. Later, in 2018, Red Hat unveiled Podman as an alternative to Docker.

• Since both Docker and Podman are intended to do the same thing, let us see what advantages one holds over the other.

• This is a series that surveys popular streaming services from a Linux perspective. We are not reviewing any of the streaming services themselves although we may make subjective comments along the way.

• TIDAL is a global music streaming platform. It was the first streaming service to offer hi-res audio thanks to its adoption of MQA technology. Its competition has caught up in the hi-res player stakes with Amazon Music HD, Apple Music and Qobuz also offering better-than-CD streams – and at a cheaper price point. We tested “Tidal HiFi” which offers audio at up to 1411kbps (i.e. CD quality) from a Linux perspective.

• There are Windows and Mac desktop apps, web player and Android and iOS mobile apps. But we’re running Linux. There’s no official or even semi-official client for Linux from TIDAL. Instead, the only choices are to use the web player or install TIDAL Hi-Fi, a third-party client. Let’s examine the web player.

Instructionals/Technical

• The Linux Test Project (LTP) offers a comprehensive suite of tests to cover the reliability, robustness, and stability of Linux subsystems.

• The much-anticipated Ubuntu 22.10 release is just around the corner, and with it comes significant improvements and the highly anticipated GNOME 43 and Linux Kernel 5.19. For users that would like to get a head jump now, you can begin to upgrade your Ubuntu system now as the full release is not far away.

• Do note with any pre-release, even the final version before release, bugs can occur for users with data or documents that they cannot afford to lose. Remember to back your important files up as you should be doing already.

• Django is a python based full stack framework. This framework works based on the model-template-view architectural patterns. Django is considered to be one of the popular web based development frameworks for developing Python’s server applications.

• The high profile websites that use Django are Disqus, Instagram, MacArthur Foundation, National Geographic channel, Knight Foundation, Pinterest, Open knowledge foundation, and open stack software.

• We will be installing Django application in a Python virtual environment. It is very useful because it allows developers to run and develop an application with different python versions.

• In early 2022, Google and Valve announced that Steam would be coming to Chrome OS. This instantly made Chromebooks much more capable gaming devices. It took a long time for this to happen, so how does it work?

• Technically, there are two ways to play Steam on a Chromebook. You can download the Steam Link Android app, which streams games from your PC to the app, or the newer method that lets the games actually be played on your Chromebook. That’s the method we’ll be focusing on.

• Learn the steps to install OpenToonz 2D animation software on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish Linux using the command terminal.

• “OpenToonz” is a 2D animation software that allows you to bring static drawings such as animals, people, and entire environments to life. In this way, short films, cartoons, or entire animated series can be produced. Among other things, the program offers the possibility to import hand-made sketches and convert them into editable lines and shapes.

• In addition, you can use the Paint tool to add color to scenes and objects and blend them together on multiple layers. Effects such as image style, the incidence of light, or distortion can be inserted or removed with just a few clicks. In the timeline and the node tree, you keep track of all settings and parameters of the animation.

• Even well-known TV series such as Futurama rely on the animation software Toonz. Now the program is also available for free as an open-source tool. After a bit of learning, you can create moving figures from static drawings or even your own animated series.

• The open-source version of Toonz is based on the normal Toonz software which is also used by the Japanese Studio Ghibli. Thus, all features developed by the studio itself are also included in OpenToonz.

• Linux 6.0 will soon make its way into the stable software repositories of some of the most popular rolling-release distributions like Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed, and it’s coming to major distro releases this fall, such as the upcoming Fedora Linux 37.

• But what about Ubuntu? Well, Ubuntu 22.10 will be released on October 20th and it will ship with Linux kernel 5.19, which will probably reach end of life before Kinetic Kudu hits the streets. This means that you’ll probably want to install a newer kernel, such as Linux 6.0.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The sun is shining, the beach is busy, the cava is flowing, the record shops are full of hipsters. Akademy is in full swing here in Barcelona, Here’s some scribbled notes I took from some of the talks I went to incase they are any interest to anyone.

• The keynote was from Ashai dev Hector Martin. Ashai Linux runs on M1 ARM macs. EFI is a security nightmare, it’s an operating system in itself. Linus said Apple Macs won’t be available for Linux unless Apple opens up its GPU. Macs have a permissive mode to boot custom kernels including XNU (Apple’s open source OS kernel). He got himself a patreon and github sponsorship and enough people fund him to do it as a job. He did lots of impressive things to get Linux working on ARM M1 Macs and voila his video shows a Plasma desktop on a Mac.

• The latest released version is 3.0.0 (2022-10-03).

Distributions and Operating Systems

Screenshots/Screencasts

• In this video, I am going to show an overview of TUXEDO OS 1 and some of the applications pre-installed.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• ROME is the rolling release designed for individual users, it will receive the most up to date packages including recent security and bug fix upgrades. Some of the major changes since ROME Silver Candidate:

• Kernel 5.19.12 (clang compiled kernel as default, with the option to install GCC compiled kernel easily from the om-welcome module) The very latest KDE products: KDE Frameworks 5.98.0, Plasma Desktop 5.25.90, KDE Gear 22.08.1 LibreOffice suite 7.4.1, VLC 3.0.17, Krita 5.1 LLVM/Clang 15.0.1, systemd 251,Calamares 3.2.61 More software upgraded to the latest version

• If you want to contribute to making ROME even better please have a look at the Backgrounds contest.

• The ROME final release, suitable for a wide audience of users will be out very soon. Stay in touch with us and continue to enjoy the new ROME Project.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

CentOS, Red Hat, and Fedora Family

• Since the last update, the SIG gained two new members (Quentin Deslandes and Richard Phibel).

• We welcome anybody that’s interested and willing to do work within the scope of the SIG to join and contribute. See the membership section on the wiki for the current members list and how to join.

• [...]

• The latest version in the Hyperscale SIG is systemd 251.4 for both CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Stream 9. While the “hs+fb” version has been tagged and rolled out within Meta, we are still working on resolving issues with SELinux policies in the “hs” version before tagging and releasing it. In the meantime, the “hs” version is available on CBS for testing.

• If you’re interested in learning more about how we roll out systemd in the Hyperscale SIG, we did a talk about it at the CentOS Dojo this past August. You can find out more about this and our other systemd-related conference activities this quarter in the conference recap linked below.

• With the world increasingly becoming digital-first, organizations are aggressively moving towards the cloud—or clouds, to be precise. Modern IT teams often find themselves utilizing more than one cloud to solve a problem. In fact, leveraging a hybrid or multicloud strategy is becoming the new norm.

• Given this, how can an organization stand out from the competition? Through cloud-native innovation.

• Red Hat is the Linux distro security leader. And with its latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) beta releases, RHEL 8.7 and 9.1, the Linux powerhouse company is continuing to stake out its security claims.

• Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora Linux work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started. The F37 Upgrade Test Day is Wednesday, October 5.

• [...]

• A test day is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. Test days are the perfect way to start contributing if you not in the past.

Debian Family

• One of the key features of the news reporting are the words of an expert witness who reviewed the online content and reported that he was unable to sleep.

• Over the summer, I was one of the Debian volunteers reviewing evidence of the Frans Pop suicide. I wrote some of the blogs about it and I created the Debian.Day web site with some of Frans’ last emails.

• There are thousands of emails in the threads leading up to Frans’ first and second resignation. I emphasized that in one of the blogs. We can imagine the participants in those discussions suffering from the same sleepless nights that haunted the expert witness, a psychiatrist, in the Molly Russell inquest.

• Despite Frans sending that last email the night before Debian.Day, some people insist on deflecting responsibility with comments asserting that “Frans had his own reasons” for the suicide. Nobody gave any examples of those reasons. In fact, everybody has reasons to contemplate suicide. Google and Ubuntu have both applied unreasonable pressure on volunteers. Their business practices keep people up at night and they keep people at work seven days per week. If somebody is suffering from depression or thinking about suicide, they need that energy to protect themselves. Sadly, Debian harassment culture has stolen the energy from some people.

• In a vote held over the past two weeks, Debian’s developers decided to include non-free firmware by default in the Debian installer.

• Debian has always aimed to adhere to the spirit of FOSS as closely as possible. As a result, its developers are known for their careful approach to the software included in the distribution.

• However, times are changing. This necessitates either evolving and adapting to new realities or stubbornly refusing to accept them, putting your future at risk. Fortunately, the Debian developers went with the first option.

• This month I didn’t have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

• This month I accepted 226 and rejected 33 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 232.

• All in all I addressed about 60 RM-bugs and either simply removed the package or added a moreinfo tag. In total I spent 5 hours for this task.

• Anyway, I have to repeat my comment from last month: please have a look at the removal page and check whether the created dak command is really what you wanted. It would also help if you check the reverse dependencies and write a comment whether they are important or can be ignored or also file a new bug for them. Each removal must have one bug!

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Martin Wimpress, one of the founders and maintainers of Ubuntu MATE, has mentioned something rather interesting in the beta release notes for Ubuntu MATE 22.10.

• He aims to bring the Ubuntu MATE experience to Debian

• Wait, can’t you already install MATE on Debian?

• Yes, but what about an akin user experience to Ubuntu MATE with all the modern tools on Debian?

• Amazon Web Services has added an Ubuntu option for customers that use Amazon Workspaces to distribute virtual desktops.

Devices/Embedded

• ANAVI Macro Pad 10, Knobs 3, and Knob 1 are open-source hardware input devices based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040-powered Xiao RP2040 mini module, and equipped with mechanical keys and/or rotary encoders

• Leon Anavi has some experience under his belt with the earlier Macro Pad 2 and Macro Pad 8 open-source keypads with mechanical keys running QMK open-source firmware on a Microchip 8-bit microcontroller. The new models switch the MCU to the Raspberry Pi RP2040 and to KMK open-source firmware written in CircuitPython.

• If you’re looking for a reliable operating system with support for file systems and connectivity, an embedded version of Linux is probably one of the possible candidates. With a huge installed base, plenty of experienced developers, and active development, it’s available for all the major SoCs. So, who is behind its development, and can it get any better?

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Programming/Development

• Just a quick report. I have posted the latest Limine Installer scripts here

• These articles are an interesting read not only if you’re working on WebKit, but also if you are curious on how a modern browser engine works and some of the moving parts beneath the surface. So go check them out!

• Hello all, a quick post today. Inspired by Rust as a Language for High Performance GC Implementation by Yi Lin et al, a few months ago I had a look to see how the basic Rust concurrency facilities that they used were implemented.

• One of the key components that Lin et al used was a Chase-Lev work-stealing double-ended queue (deque). The 2005 article Dynamic Circular Work-Stealing Deque by David Chase and Yossi Lev is a nice read defining this data structure. It’s used when you have a single producer of values, but multiple threads competing to claim those values. This is useful when implementing per-CPU schedulers or work queues; each CPU pushes on any items that it has to its own deque, and pops them also, but when it runs out of work, it goes to see if it can steal work from other CPUs.

• [...] The funny thing is that I looked at the proof and I looked at the industrial applications of the deque and I thought well, I just have to transcribe the algorithm exactly and I’ll be golden. But it just goes to show that proving one property of an algorithm doesn’t necessarily imply that the algorithm is correct.

• If you have been programming for a while, you know the grind. You see a problem; you brainstorm the solution – the casual trial and error. However, we know that it can get frustrating to keep looking up at the same dull screen every time. So, if you are using IntelliJ IDEA, we can help you spice things up by introducing you to some awesome IntelliJ Themes.

• We can also help you if you use other Jetbrains IDEs because you can find compatible versions of the ones we will talk about as Pycharm themes or as themes for PhpStorm – as well as any other IntelliJ-based IDE created by Jetbrains. You also do not need to worry about the costs as the themes we’ll discuss are all free.

• That takes away precious hours, so it’s no wonder that 58% of US workers believe they can work remotely and finish job tasks on time.

Perl / Raku

• Vadim Belman has started preparing for a set of teaching classes about developing the Rakudo core, and would like to know if you’re interested! It’s a great chance to get a flying start into contributing to the Raku Programming Language.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• For years we have heard about the influence of social media on teens who take their own lives, but just how culpable are they? A London coroner has answered this question. He officially decided against officially declaring a 14-year-old girl’s death a suicide. The coroner listed Instagram and Pinterest as contributing factors in the teen’s death, declaring her suicide was “an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.”

• [...]

• Molly Russell died in 2017 by taking her own life. Her family’s attorneys have said that in the six months before she died, the 14-year-old showed an interest in 16,300 posts on Instagram by liking, sharing, or saving, with 2,100 of the posts self-harm related. She had 5,793 impressions and 2,692 close-ups on Pinterest in that same time frame.

• [...]

• But was her excessive use of social media the fault of the algorithms? Did it lure her into that behavior? It’s a hard call.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, gdal, kernel, libdatetime-timezone-perl, libhttp-daemon-perl, lighttpd, mariadb-10.3, node-thenify, snakeyaml, tinyxml, and tzdata), Fedora (enlightenment, kitty, and thunderbird), Mageia (expat, firejail, libjpeg, nodejs, perl-HTTP-Daemon, python-mako, squid, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (firefox and thunderbird), SUSE (buildah, connman, cosign, expat, ImageMagick, python36, python39, slurm, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial and linux-gke-5.15).

• How long will you support your device? Long-term support for IoT is a simple but difficult question for many device manufacturers.

• If you are developing a smart home device, a mobile robot for hospitality, or the next iron man jetpack, you need to consider how long you will support the device on the market. This will have implications on your operational expenses, team resources and customer satisfaction. Simply put, the longer you support your device, the happier your user will be. But the more expensive it will be for you.

• What does this mean for your company in practice? And what are the costs associated with it? Let’s have a look!

• CISA has issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 23-01: Improving Asset Visibility and Vulnerability Detection on Federal Networks, which seeks improve asset visibility and vulnerability enumeration across the federal enterprise.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• This is, of course, not the last word. Deepfake generators will figure out how to use these techniques to create harder-to-detect fake voices. And the deepfake detectors will figure out another, better, detection technique. And the arms race will continue.

• Generative machine learning models have made convincing voice synthesis a reality. While such tools can be extremely useful in applications where people consent to their voices being cloned (e.g., patients losing the ability to speak, actors not wanting to have to redo dialog, etc), they also allow for the creation of nonconsensual content known as deepfakes. This malicious audio is problematic not only because it can convincingly be used to impersonate arbitrary users, but because detecting deepfakes is challenging and generally requires knowledge of the specific deepfake generator. In this paper, we develop a new mechanism for detecting audio deepfakes using techniques from the field of articulatory phonetics. Specifically, we apply fluid dynamics to estimate the arrangement of the human vocal tract during speech generation and show that deepfakes often model impossible or highly-unlikely anatomical arrangements. When parameterized to achieve 99.9% precision, our detection mechanism achieves a recall of 99.5%, correctly identifying all but one deepfake sample in our dataset. We then discuss the limitations of this approach, and how deepfake models fail to reproduce all aspects of speech equally. In so doing, we demonstrate that subtle, but biologically constrained aspects of how humans generate speech are not captured by current models, and can therefore act as a powerful tool to detect audio deepfakes.

• Imagine the following scenario. A phone rings. An office worker answers it and hears his boss, in a panic, tell him that she forgot to transfer money to the new contractor before she left for the day and needs him to do it. She gives him the wire transfer information, and with the money transferred, the crisis has been averted.

• The worker sits back in his chair, takes a deep breath, and watches as his boss walks in the door. The voice on the other end of the call was not his boss. In fact, it wasn’t even a human. The voice he heard was that of an audio deepfake, a machine-generated audio sample designed to sound exactly like his boss.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• In February 2021, we filed Right to Information (‘RTI’) applications with the Department of Telecommunications (‘DoT’) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (‘MTNL’). We asked for the number of websites they blocked because of orders of competent courts in 2020 and 2021, and copies of such orders. While DoT did not provide us with complete information, MTNL claimed exemption under S.8(1)(a) and 8(a)(d) of the RTI Act, 2005. We appealed to the Central Information Commission (‘CIC’), which held hearings on both the RTIs on 20.09.2022. Before the hearing, MTNL reconsidered its stance and informed us that it had blocked 4700 websites in 2020 and 2021. On the other hand, CIC directed DoT to provide copies of the banning orders from 2020 and 2021.

• [...]

• DoT had directed the banning of 3725 websites till February 2021, and MTNL blocked 4700 websites in 2020 and 2021. This is a considerable number. Censorship of these websites directly impacts the right to speech on the internet. Thus, examining the underlying orders based on which such websites have been banned is essential. As a result of our efforts before CIC, we now have copies of those orders. We believe an analysis of these orders could provide important insight into the nature of information being censored by courts. We will study these orders and inform you of our findings.

• [...]

• We welcome both the decisions of the CIC. Online censorship is a serious threat to free speech, and the free exchange of ideas that has been enabled by the internet. The information we have received and will receive because of these orders will improve our understanding of the nature of information censored regularly by courts. We are thankful to advocates Krishnesh Bapat, Tanmay Singh, and Anandita Mishra, who appeared before the CIC in these proceedings and provided legal assistance by drafting written submissions.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• “How are you?” is the default answer, as my brain either goes completely blank before receding into a state of existential crisis, or I just blurt out a “fine” and keep it moving.

• I learned early on that most people don’t care how you’re actually feeling; they use it as a greeting instead, and engage in a baffling exchange of useless filler phrases (“I’m fine, how are you?”) before transitioning into actual conversation.

• [...]

• This was after I sort of snubbed him the previous week, when I only said “Yeah” and didn’t elaborate further. Cause ya know…my writing isn’t an interesting topic to him. Tried again last week, and he just walked away.

• I get that he asks to be polite or whatever, but what’s the point if you aren’t going to even fake enthusiasm? Don’t bother me with pointless pleasantries, it just makes us both feel awkward.

Politics

• If you’re not someone who’s trans/gender-divergent (TGD), trying to navigate the various language issues related to sex and gender can be bewildering. This piece is an attempt to note some language that’s currently considered problematic, and to provide some more appropriate language and alternatives.

Technical

Science

• The fewer materials I posses the more cognizant I become of their hollow nature. When this line of thinking is taken to its logical conclusion it becomes obvious that the mad rush to accumulate money and materials is essentially a form of collective insanity. Expressed somewhat more bluntly, there is no salvation for a culture that converts the bounty of nature into plastic garbage because there is only so much that can be plundered and pillaged from the biosphere before it can no longer sustain human existence.

• This post is about “politics qua politics,” a topic I hoped to avoid writing about. I read something from a thinker I hold in high regard, and I feel like it deserves a rebuttal. But if you’re burnt out on talk about political parties and the like, feel free to skip this.

• [...]

• I think she’s mistaken. There are several reasons why I don’t believe that electoral paths to climate protection are worth pursuing, but I want to talk about how long and difficult this path actually is. I’ll focus on the US because I’m most familiar with its politics, but also because it is the world’s biggest barrier to mitigating climate change. The US military alone is probably responsible for more CO2 emissions than any other entity on Earth.

Programming

• At one point in my life, I knew Python well. That point has receded to the point that much of the syntax escapes me. Though more so than the syntax itself, the practise of using list comprehensions and generators escapes me. Well, it *escaped* me. It no longer escapes me, as I am using these constructs in my current Python programming, though I’m certainly not adept at it yet. I have no recollection of using list comprehensions or generators when I initially obsessed myself with the language. I believe I was more concerned with object design. Those constructs may not have existed yet in Python, in fact. Possibly, my Haskell explorations were the first to enlighten me with higher programming paths, which brings me to the point of the current blog entry: My memory erodes more quickly than I’d like. This is especially true concerning anything academically oriented. Programming is very much at home in this bucket.

• I want AWK to be more well known. It was treated as soem weird-ass tool that somehow works but no one knows why. It’s all over the place on StackOverflow whenever we need to select a reagon of a file or something. I didn’t apprishate this in the beginning. I was forced to learn `sed` and `awk` back in collage. Now I absolutely love awk. It’s a standard tool shipped on every UNIX system (so, anywhere besides Windows). Being readily available and easy to use. It’s a great tool to have in your toolbox if you work with any kind of data.

• Last year I decided to read Doom’s source code to learn how to organize big C projects. Even though my exploration of doom’s source code was short I learned a lot from that experience and also made me realize some things that I never thought about Video Game preservation.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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