● 07.11.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/07/2023: Mint Release Soon

Posted in News Roundup at 8:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Will finds a domain registrar with a terrible name, Graham baffles us with 3D graphics, Félim discovers hidden python tools, and Joe does some maths to reveal how many Linux users there are on Steam. Plus bulletin boards, free hot water, music from /dev/urandom, and more.

Kernel Space

Applications

• The popularity of digital e-books has been accelerated by a number of dedicated portable e-book readers. The various Amazon Kindle are extremely popular devices which have enabled readers to conveniently access a huge library of books, magazines and newspapers on the move. What is particularly noteworthy is that Linux is the operating system that runs the devices.

• However, Linux is also an attractive way of reading e-books on a desktop computer or notebook. Linux has a good range of open source software which helps users to organize their e-book collection, catch up on a novel, or even to create and publish their own e-book.

• This article selects our pick of the available eBook web apps. We only explore free and open source software here.

• No GUI, no TUI, AND no menus. Just you and a powerful, file-management oriented command line.

• BlazeRAT is a free and open-source Telegram Bot written in Python that allows anyone to control his Linux directly by sending messages to the bot.

• Katalog is an innovative desktop application that simplifies the management of storage and catalogs of files. With Katalog, users can create catalogs from various sources and devices, enabling them to easily access their files without having to search through each individual device.

• It was reported that sftp mode does not work in gFTP:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=8960

• It was reported that the rtw89 kernel module does not work for “be” hardware variants:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=9077

• There was a report that ‘fbxkb’ keyboard layout switcher tray-app does not work:

• https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=93154#p93154

• I think that the gFTP problem is fixed. I have compiled the latest source from here, in OE:

• https://github.com/masneyb/gftp

Instructionals/Technical

• Kali Linux, renowned for its advanced penetration testing and security auditing features, is a versatile operating system. However, there may be situations where you need to access your Kali Linux system remotely. Whether it’s from a different room or a different part of the world, enabling Remote Desktop and Secure Shell (SSH) access will give you the control you need.

• Python 3.7, a significant milestone in the history of Python, was officially retired in December 2022 with the release of Python 3.7.16. This marked the end of life for the 3.7 series, concluding its journey with a final security bugfix.

• Netcat is a powerful command line network utility in Linux that can send and listen for TCP and UDP packets. Unlike other network tools, netcat is extremely basic. However, its simplicity also allows it to do almost any type of activity over a network.

• And it can be done easily, ackshually.

• But what is that all about?

• The problem It has been a longstanding complaint that the ~/.config/ directory on Linux systems can get riddled with configuration files. This is the case with KDE software as well.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache CouchDB on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache CouchDB is a NoSQL document-oriented database system that is known for its simplicity, scalability, and fault tolerance.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Composer on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, Composer has become an essential tool for PHP developers, enabling efficient management of package dependencies in their projects.

• Let me share an installation guide on OpenBSD for a product I like: kanboard. It’s a Kanban board written in PHP, it’s easy of use, light, effective, the kind of software I like.

• Deploying and configuring a database can be a challenging task, especially when sensitive data such as passwords and API keys are involved.

• Neovim is an extendable, highly configurable text editor designed for efficient coding. As a fork of Vim, Neovim retains the same mode-based usage while introducing new features, such as improved GUI, better integration with external tools, and asynchronous job control. If you are using Ubuntu and looking for a powerful, customizable text editor, Neovim could be the perfect solution.

• Python PIP, short for “PIP Installs Packages,” is a crucial tool that every Python programmer should be familiar with. As the de facto package manager for Python, PIP allows users to install and manage software packages written in Python.

• The Nvidia CUDA Toolkit offers a comprehensive development environment for creating high-performance GPU-accelerated applications. With its suite of compilers, libraries, and debugging tools, developers can exploit the power of Nvidia GPUs more efficiently and effectively.

• WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) used for creating and managing websites.

• Want to install the Metasploit Framework on Linux? Look no further! Follow these simple steps to get started:  The Rapid7-powered Metasploit Framework is the world’s leading penetration testing framework. The Project is a collaboration between the open-source community and Rapid7 to provide a tool for developing and executing exploit code against a target machine.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Ever look at Nautilus’ sidebar and think there are a few too many entries? GNOME devs have.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• We are pleased to announce the release of IPFire 2.27 – Core Update 176. It features a large amount of package updates which include a security fixed and updated microcode for Intel processors as well as a couple of bug fixes.

• Before we start talking about the changes in detail, we would like to ask for your donation. We have put a lot of effort into building and testing this update and could not do any of this without you. Please, if you can, donate to the project helping us to put more resources to bring you more and better updates. It is very much appreciated by all of us here!

• Latest release includes plenty of software updates, a new default file manager, and even better hardware support.

BSD

• The May 2023 FreeBSD Developer Summit and BSDCan 2023 marked the return of in person events for a number of FreeBSD community members, myself included. It was such a great experience to see everyone in person again. In person events, especially ones like the Developer Summit are such an integral part of the FreeBSD community.

Fedora Family / IBM

• As the world’s leading provider of enterprise-ready open source software, Red Hat is uniquely positioned to help prepare the widely varying users of its embedded platform cryptography for the transition to a post-quantum world.

Debian Family

• Debian‘s contributions to the free software community has been tremendous. Debian was one of the early distributions in the 1990’s that combined the GNU tools (compiler, linker, shell, editor, and a set of Unix tools) with the Linux kernel and published a free software operating system. Back then there were little guidance on how to publish free software binaries, let alone entire operating systems. There was a lack of established community processes and conflict resolution mechanisms, and lack of guiding principles to motivate the work. The community building efforts that came about in parallel with the technical work has resulted in a steady flow of releases over the years.

• From the work of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) during the 1980’s and early 1990’s, there was at the time already an established definition of free software. Inspired by free software definition, and a belief that a social contract helps to build a community and resolve conflicts, Debian’s social contract (DSC) with the free software community was published in 1997. The DSC included the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), which directly led to the Open Source Definition.

• There is an RFP for it. While playing with it, I also discovered another benefit of the viewer, a sort of side-benefit, it tells you if any images have gone corrupt or whatever and you get that info. on the CLI so you can try viewing that image with the path using another viewer or viewers before deleting them. One of the issues is there doesn’t seem to be a magnify option by default. While the documentation says use the ^ key to maximize it, it doesn’t maximize. Took me a while to find it as that isn’t a key that I use most of the time. Ironically, that is the key used on the mobile quite a bit. Anyways, so that needs to be fixed. Sadly, it doesn’t have creation date or modification date sort, although the documentation does say it does (at least the modification date) but it doesn’t show at my end. I also got Warning: UNKNOWN command detected! but that doesn’t tell me enough as to what the issue is. Hopefully the developer will fix the issues and it will become part of Debian as many such projects are. Compiling was dead easy even with gcc-12 once I got freeimage-dev.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Stéphane Graber has announced their resignation from Canonical after 12 years of working at the company, mostly on LXD. The decision follows news last week that Canonical has taken the LXD project in-house after years of it existing as a community endeavour under the Linux Containers (LXC) umbrella. Stéphane’s engineering expertise and enthusiasm for LXD (and containers in general) has arguably made them the “face” of LXD. In social media replies to their (somewhat unexpected) decision, many have commented on this and thanked them for their contributions and help over the years.

• Linux Mint 21.2 ISOs are undergoing final testing.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 795 for the week of July 2 – 8, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 795 for the week of July 2 – 8, 2023.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The Rockchip RK3588 SoC on the Rock 5 packs an 8-core CPU (4x A76, 4x A55, in a ‘big.LITTLE’ configuration). This SoC powers a PCIe Gen 3 x4 M.2 slot on the back, which is used in this tiny 6-drive design to make a compact, but fast, all-flash NAS: [...]

• The entire purpose of virtual reality (VR) is to improve immersion beyond what can be achieved with a regular TV or monitor. So it can be frustrating to VR users when the darkness in their peripheral vision reminds them that they are, in fact, wearing a headset.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

Events

• PGDay UK 2023 will take place in London on September 12th at the Hallam Conference Centre in Marylebone!

GNU Projects

• Week highlights: new releases of GIMP, Godot, Armory3D, libjpeg-turbo, fancy new features in Ardour, update on Inkscape v1.3 release status.

• The new version is finally out. This is not the development stage where things get super fancy. The major news is that the GTK3 port is finally done. The rest is mostly quality-of-life improvements, improved file formats support, and suchlike.

• The next release is likely to be along these lines, except probably less new features (on-canvas alignment and distribution will hopefully be in v2.99.18, unless things go really wrong).

• GIMP image editor announced a new development release for next major 3.0 this Sunday!

Programming/Development

• Like, you know, about Python and compiler warnings and stuff.

• Version 0.0.14 of RcppSpdlog is now on CRAN and has just been uploaded to Debian. RcppSpdlog more at the nice package documention site.

• Flutter is a mobile app development framework created by Google. It allows developers to build high-quality apps for iOS and Android using a single codebase. Flutter has gained popularity in recent years due to its ease of use, fast development cycle, and strong community support.

Python

• Python, a versatile and powerful programming language, offers a plethora of methods for manipulating files. One such operation is overwriting a file, which involves replacing the existing data with new information. This guide will delve into the various methods Python provides to overwrite a file, offering a detailed explanation and examples for each.

• In Python, various functions/methods, such as the “index()”, and “find()” methods are used for getting the exact position of an element.

• In Python, the “seaborn.catplot()” method of the “seaborn” module is used to create a variety of categorical plots, including strip plots, swarm plots, etc.

• To get the most frequent value in pandas, use the panda series “mod()” method or the “value_counts()” method followed by “idxmax()” method.

• In Python, the “seaborn.regplot()” method of the “seaborn” module takes the “Datasets” and draws/constructs the regression plot.

• The “scipy.integrate.tplquad()” method is used to perform triple integration of simple to complex functions over a range of variables in Python.

• The “time.sleep()” method of the “time” module is used in Python to suspend the execution of the current thread for a given number of seconds.

• In Python, the inbuilt “bytearray()” method is utilized to retrieve a bytearray object which is an array of specified bytes.

• Python, a versatile and powerful programming language, offers a wide array of modules to handle different tasks. One such module is the datetime module, designed to manipulate dates and times.

• Python, a versatile and robust programming language, offers a plethora of methods to perform mathematical operations, including the calculation of percentages. This article aims to provide an in-depth guide on how to calculate percentages in Python, with a focus on simplicity and clarity.

• Python, a dynamic and versatile programming language, is celebrated for its powerful string manipulation capabilities. Among these, string concatenation—a fundamental operation in Python—stands out as a critical skill for developers. This comprehensive guide offers an in-depth exploration of Python’s string concatenation techniques, providing you with the knowledge to join strings in your code seamlessly.

• Matplotlib, a Python library, is a powerful tool in the field of data visualization. Among its many capabilities is the ability to plot data on a logarithmic scale, a feature that is particularly useful when dealing with data that spans several orders of magnitude.

Java

• While running CI tests for a application that is implemented in C and Java, some configuration scripts set the current timezone. The C implemented parts catch the change just nicely, but the java related parts still report the default image timezone.

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