● 07.19.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/07/2023: EasyOS 5.4.8 and a Call to Financially Support the Future of PCLinuxOS

Posted in News Roundup at 8:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• NVIDIA has released their latest Linux graphics driver update with version 535.86.05. So here’s what’s new and improved for you. This is classed as a stable driver release for all users, mostly just bug fixing so you should be good to go ahead and install it right now.

Applications

• You know the feeling of actually coding something, a new library which doesn’t exist yet but you know exactly how it should look and you just need to chip away at the problem space until its final form appears ?

• I was really lacking any creative flow recently and decided to flesh out the libgnomesearch library that I proposed a while ago, which my colleague Kaspar Matas already made a start at developing.

• The purpose of this library is to consolidate existing search code that currently lives in Nautilus, GTK, GNOME Shell and various core apps. There are some interesting designs for improving GNOME’s desktop search functionality, and I suspect it will be easier to prototype and implement these if there is a single place to make the changes.

• This post describes how to deploy cilium (and hubble) using docker on a Linux system with k3d or kind to test it as CNI and Service Mesh.

• I wrote some scripts to do a local installation and evaluate cilium to use it at work (in fact we are using cilium on an EKS cluster now), but I thought it would be a good idea to share my original scripts in this blog just in case they are useful to somebody, at least for playing a little with the technology.

• We definitely need various applications to make our things better while using Linux operating systems. These days there are thousands of the best and most useful Linux applications available on the internet.

• An updated version of Black Box, a GTK4/libadwaita terminal app for Linux desktops, is now available — and it’s a big ‘un!

Instructionals/Technical

• Linux networking can be confusing due to the wide range of technology stacks and tools in use, in addition to the complexity of the surrounding network environment. The configuration of bridges, bonds, VRFs or routes can be done programmatically, declaratively, manually or with automated with tools like ifupdown, ifupdown2, ifupdown-ng, iproute2, NetworkManager, systemd-networkd and others. Each  of these tools use different formats and locations to store their configuration files. Netplan, a utility for easily configuring networking on a Linux system, is designed to unify and standardise how administrators interact with these underlying technologies. Starting from a YAML description of the required network interfaces and what each should be configured to do, Netplan will generate all the necessary configuration for your chosen tool.

• In this article, we will provide an overview of how Ubuntu uses Netplan to manage Linux networking in a unified way. By creating a common interface across two disparate technology stacks, IT administrators benefit from a unified experience across both desktops and servers whilst retaining the unique advantages of the underlying tech.

• Nano command in Linux is not just a command but it is a text editor.

• Are you facing the problem at the time of adding a new PPA repository?

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FreeIPA on Debian 12. FreeIPA, an open-source identity management solution, offers centralized authentication, authorization, and account information, making it an essential tool for network security and management.

• In the Linux environment, signals play a vital role in managing and controlling processes. Signals like SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGKILL allow users to interrupt, terminate, or kill processes, respectively. Understanding these signals is crucial for effective system administration, debugging, and overall system control.

• As you might already know, ‘cp’ is the command line program in Linux to copy files and directories. The simple and most common use of

• Having fun while upgrading Debian 10 to 11.

• Want to configure the OSD (on-screen display) pop-up in Ubuntu and other Linux with GNOME? There’s an extension to do the job in GNOME 42 ~ 44. When changing volume, screen brightness, device status (e.g., Bluetooth), etc via keyboard shortcuts in GNOME, there will be on-screen pop-ups indicate the status changes.

• Kali Linux, widely renowned for its powerful security and penetration testing tools, also offers features that make remote collaboration a breeze. One of these is the screen sharing function, which allows others to view or control your desktop remotely. This can be incredibly handy for troubleshooting, remote work, or collaboration on complex projects.

• Pop!_OS is a Linux distribution that is gaining popularity for its user-friendly interface and robust performance. Similar to other Linux distributions, it’s important to have administrative privileges for tasks such as software installation, service configuration, and file management.

• VirtualBox, a widely recognized open-source virtualization product, has recently launched its 7.0 version, bringing a host of new features and improvements to the table. This major update has been designed to enhance the user experience, offering more flexibility and control over virtual environments.

• Jupyter Notebook: the name has resonated in the realms of data analysis, machine learning, academic research, and software development, becoming an indispensable tool for many. Jupyter Notebook combines the power of interactive computing, data visualization, and easy documentation into one platform, empowering professionals and enthusiasts alike.

• In this article, we will explain how you can check the available memory in Ubuntu. For this, we will take the help of various tools or commands.

• In this tutorial post you will find the step by step guide to install jq on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Written in C, jq is a command line based lightweight and flexible JSON processor.

• This article guides you through all the steps to upgrade your current Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” system to Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria.”

• Curl is an amazing open source command-line tool and a library for transferring data with URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). It provides support for 26 protocols and allows you to send requests and retrieve responses through these protocols.

• The pkill command is typically used to terminal or stop the processing of a certain process in a Linux-based or Unix-based operating system. However, the pkill command allows the user to send specific signals to the process based on which the termination of the process is dealt with. If you are a Linux beginner or a Linux System Administrator, then the pkill command is something that you will be using a lot to deal with unwanted processes.

• Nix is a tool that allows you to define your software environment from code. Nix has several components to it, and one of the most interesting to me is NixOS, which lets you use Nix tooling to define your entire OS configuration using plaintext files.

• I only recently started experimenting with Nix, and there’s a huge amount to learn. One of the first things I tried to do was install NixOS on my Raspberry Pi, but my first several attempts failed. Every NixOS Pi tutorial I could find was either incomplete or out of date.

• I present to you my complete and working guide to installing NixOS on a Raspberry Pi 4. I’m a newcomer to NixOS, so this guide is for Nix beginners, but I assume you have basic familiarity with Raspberry Pi and Linux.

• The only way to navigate to it is via keyboard navigation. Hit your Tab ⭾ button!

• These days, modern versions of su interpret ‘su -’ as ‘su -l’ (via). Although they have different implementations of su, this is true on Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. However, it turns out that this feature wasn’t always in Unix’s su.

• It is now possible to upgrade Linux Mint 21 and 21.1 to version 21.2.

• If you’ve been waiting for this we’d like to thank you for your patience.

• Cloning is the meticulous process of creating an exact replica of a live Linux server by employing the powerful rsync command-line tool, which is an efficient file synchronization and transfer tool.

• Cloning entails the utilization of two server instances: the source server, which serves as the server to be cloned, and the destination server, where the actual cloning process takes place.

• Rsync (Remote Sync) is the most commonly used command for copying and synchronizing files and directories remotely as well as locally in Linux/Unix systems.

• With the help of the rsync command, you can copy and synchronize your data remotely and locally across directories, disks, and networks, perform data backups, and mirror between two Linux machines.

• Proxmox is one of my favorite hypervisors because of its flexibility, the fact that it basically costs nothing unless you need support, and the fact that it is fairly simple to get the hang of and use (easier than, in my opinion, hypervisors like VMware’s ESXi or Hyper-V, which are paid software, and have somewhat of a learning curve.

• In the fast-changing field of online safety, tools like OpenSnitch have become very important for keeping your Linux system safe and secure. OpenSnitch, the GNU/Linux port of the renowned Little Snitch application firewall, provides an unparalleled layer of security to your Linux environment. This blog post aims to explore what is OpenSnitch, and its impressive features, how to install OpenSnitch in various Linux distributions, and finally how to use OpenSnitch to secure your Linux system.

Games

• Want a little more info on how Vampire Survivors came to be? The great people at Noclip have their next documentary up with the small team behind the absolute surprise smash-hit and it’s well worth a watch.

• Game store GOG has launched the Make Classics Last Forever Sale, a good chance for you to pick up some retro beauties with money left to spare. There’s plenty of retro games and some not-so retro but still considered classics – somehow.

• Set in a dystopian future, Full Void from OutOfTheBit Ltd is out now with Native Linux support. It’s a cinematic 2D puzzle-platformer telling the story of a young teenager alone in a hostile world controlled by a rogue AI. Fight your way through puzzles and obstacles to uncover the story that surrounds this broken, run down society, where only children are still free. But for how long?

• Puzzle game lovers will want to check out Lovux, newly released from developer Mindlabor it’s all about smashing glass. Note: the developer sent a key. Available on Steam with Native Linux support, it’s absolutely delightful in the simplicity of the design but how it quickly smashes in many unique mechanics to keep you thinking.

• Awesome Linux Game Tools is a series of reviews showcasing the finest tools for Linux gamers.

• NoiseTorch-ng (let’s call it NoiseTorch) is billed as an “easy to use open source application for Linux with PulseAudio or PipeWire”. The software creates a virtual microphone that suppresses noise.

• Noise suppression is a pretty old topic in speech processing, dating back to at least the 1970s. As the name implies, the idea is to take a noisy signal and remove as much noise as possible while causing minimum distortion to the speech of interest.

• NoiseTorch uses RNNoise, a noise suppression library based on a recurrent neural network (RNN). A RNN is a class of artificial neural networks where connections between nodes can create a cycle, allowing output from some nodes to affect subsequent input to the same nodes. RNNs are particularly effective for background noise removal because they can learn patterns across time which is essential for understanding audio.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• In this guide, I’d like to share with you how to install Alpine Linux, so it runs entirely from RAM, but using its built-in tool to handle persistency. Perfect setup for a NAS or router, so you don’t waste a disk for the system, and this can even be used for a workstation.

• Apparently, desktop Linux use measures 3.08 percent, lagging about a quarter behind the usage of ChromeOS at 4.15 percent. The problem with this is that ChromeOS is also a Linux distribution. It’s a strange distro, non-standard in several ways, but current versions are built on the basis of Gentoo Linux, switching from an Ubuntu basis some years earlier.

• We feel that a more accurate reckoning would be that Linux has now reached 7.23 percent of Statcounter’s usage figures, with ChromeOS at just over half: 57.4 percent of the total. That seems like a more positive interpretation, one that Linux fans would be keen to make, but apparently not. By example, Linux advocacy site Linuxiac doesn’t even mention ChromeOS in its write-up.

New Releases

• Version 5.4.7 was released on July 13, 2023:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202307/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-547-released.html

• If you are a newcomer to EasyOS, recommend that you read the 5.4 announcement:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202306/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-54-released.html

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• PCLinuxOS is made possible thanks to the donation of people like you

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Containers have become an integral part of any modern software stack. They are a de facto standard in cloud computing. Containers provide strong isolation, extra layers of security, increased portability, and consistent operation. All this contributes to better development approaches. SUSE already collaborates with the automotive industry and SUSE Linux Enterprise is running in vehicles.

Fedora Family / IBM

• Oracle, SUSE, and Rocky Linux are all taking aggressive stances against Red Hat’s new rules for using Red Hat Enterprise Linux open-source code. AlmaLinux, however, is taking a more amicable approach.

• I imagine I am not the only systems administrator who struggled with driving security compliance across a disparate fleet of Linux systems. It took up hours of administrative time and often required interaction with a third-party auditor to validate the results.

• Let’s talk about the multiplication here: You may have a batch of systems that handle payment processing, so they are required to comply with the rules for PCI-DSS. You may have another set of systems that handle your patient’s medical records, which would fall under the purview of HIPAA.

• At Red Hat Summit 2023, the engineering team announced two projects that will change the way developers and ops develop and deploy their applications to Red Hat OpenShift. These projects are the Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline and the Red Hat Developer Hub. They are a little different from the usual Red Hat products in that they directly address critical composite problems in the DevSecOps space that customers are starting to experience issues.

• Red Hat has long been acknowledged as the provider of enterprise strength frameworks and platforms, notably Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift, the enterprise distribution of Kubernetes. Both are incredibly powerful product sets, but to get the most out of them, we have to understand and use them as experts would. Most developers and ops personnel don’t have the time, on top of their day-to-day jobs, to learn every aspect of the underlying technology. The likely result of this missing knowledge is the eventuality of various security issues.

• Custom server tasks can be deployed to the Red Hat Data Grid server for remote execution from the command line interface (CLI) and Hot Rod or REST clients. Tasks can be implemented as custom Java classes or as scripts in languages such as JavaScript.

• In this article, we will deploy a Java class that will evict and reload the cache in order to pick up modified entries in the original database table from which we loaded the cache. Data Grid will automatically load new entries added to the database table, however modified rows will require reloading using a server task, as shown in the following example.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• The latest update to Linux Mint is here, with expanded video file format support and a tweaked Cinnamon desktop. It’s as cool and refreshing as ever.

• As usual 21.2 comes in three separate editions – Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce, which very approximately equate to being best suited to high, medium, and low-end PCs. Cinnamon is the best choice if you have a decently specified PC, especially if it has a HiDPI screen or a dedicated GPU – or, of course, both. MATE is a bit more traditional, and as there hasn’t been a new stable release in a couple of years, you get the same version as Mint 21 had when it came out. Xfce is the best of the trio for low-end hardware, needing no 3D support and using the least RAM.

• Ubuntu Pro is a security-hardened version of Ubuntu targeted at enterprise and corporate users who cannot compromise on stability. It is sold as a subscription, but it is free for non-commercial use on up to five computers.

• Ubuntu Linux is free, both as a server and on the desktop. It’s released twice a year, in April and October. The version numbers are the year and the month. Every two years, the April release is an LTS, or Long Term Support, version.

• The interim releases get nine months of support from Canonical for patches and updates, the LTS versions get five years of support.

• Corporate consumers of Ubuntu require enterprise-grade support. They need stability and security. They want as little operating system churn as possible, but they do need patches and updates to keep their systems secure. Needless to say, they’ll use the LTS releases, and skip the interim releases.

• Today, I’m going to share with you my top ten Ubuntu-based Linux distributions for 2023. Linux distributions, or “distros,” as we affectionately call them, are operating systems that bring together the Linux kernel with other software to provide a complete computing experience.

• Ubuntu, based on Debian, is one of the most popular distros, and it has spawned many offshoots. Each of these Ubuntu-based distros offers a unique take on the Linux experience, and today, I’ll give you the lowdown on each one, complete with practical examples and pro tips. So, whether you’re a newbie just dipping your toes into the Linux waters or a seasoned penguin looking for a change, read on! But before jumping on to the lust, l think it’s fair to list the criteria for listing these.

• Linux Mint announced the new 21.2 point release this Sunday! The new release introduced Cinnamon Desktop 5.8 with built-in gestures support for touchpad and touchscreen. With the touchegg service running in the background, System Settings now provides a ‘Gestures’ option, allowing to configure actions for 3-finger/4-finger swipe, 2-finger/3-finger/4-finger pinch, and activation thresholds.

• In a previous blog, we talked about patterns to run a database in a highly available manner.  In this blog, we present our recipe for MySQL high availability. We will also explain how our solution interacts with K8s objects to provide some of its features.

Devices/Embedded

• Arduino announced yesterday a new development board from the Nano family. The Nano ESP32 integrates a u-blox NORA-W106 (Espressif ESP32-S3) module with support for Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.

• The Alp Electronix RP2040-ESP32C3 Dev Board is a versatile and compact development board designed to meet the needs of both hobbyists and developers. The board is equipped with a MicroSD card slot, a 1.9″ LCD connector and various other features.

• Framework have now put up the modular and customizable Framework Laptop 16 for pre-order featuring the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs and AMD Radeon GPUs. An exciting time to be a hardware fan because Framework do some great stuff.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The Squirrel Box is a small, remote device that measures key soil metrics, like pH levels, moisture content, ambient conditions, and NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) levels. That data is important in determining the health of the soil in a field. It is useful for protecting potential yields and also for maintaining the soil to achieve maximum productivity. The Squirrel Box can transmit its readings over long distances via LoRaWAN® to a WisGate Edge Lite 2, which is an eight-channel gateway that many boxes can connect to in order to provide a comprehensive picture of soil health across an entire farm. An Arduino MKR WAN 1310 board monitors the sensors and contains an onboard LoRa® transceiver.

• This paper presents the Squirrel Box, a robust device for outdoor soil and environmental monitoring, providing data on soil metrics, pH, NPK levels, and ambient conditions. Its data, transmitted over a LoRaWAN, aids data-driven farming and environmental decisions. Beyond its technical capabilities, we address the critical issue of trust in smart agritech, ensuring data security and considering stakeholder perception and technology security. We discuss two projects: one exploring system resilience and reliability, particularly during LoRa gateway outages, and another scrutinizing data accuracy and integrity, essential for trust in system output. By developing a resilient, secure sensor box and examining these trust-focused projects, we aim to inspire confidence in smart agritech for environmental and farming decisions, discussing trust in the Squirrel Box and IoT in agricultural applications.

• Beyond controlling the geared DC and servo motors, an onboard Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect receives commands over Wi-Fi® from a host PC running the control software. In here, the user can view a live camera feed coming from an ESP32 camera module as well as virtually view the robotic arm’s position in 3D space. Similar to a video game, pressing keyboard keys such as ‘WASD’ and sliding the mouse provide general movements for the chassis and arm, respectively. Meanwhile, other keys allow for manipulating the end-effector, moving the arm to default positions, and adjusting the speed.

• MiuraKit isn’t any one robot, but rather a set of tools and designs that can be combined to build robots and shape-changing interfaces. Anything made with MiuraKit will have a few things in common: pneumatic actuation, flexibility, and origami-like structures. Those structures expand or deform in a variety of different ways to suit the application. For example, one type is a simple one-dimensional expander similar to a linear actuator. Another type twists for rotary actuation. By linking different types together, roboticists can achieve complex motion.

• Neo6502 Firmware development update. Paul Robson does amazing work, and on top of his super Basic he added Apple ][ compatible mode. How cool is this? if you type “][” in the prompt you go to Apple ][ firmware and you can run all the Apple ][ old code: [...]

• Our favourite thing about the weekend was noticing just how many exhibits were powered by Raspberry Pi. From university racing car team vehicles to violent chess games and our friends at ISS Mimic. Take a scroll through a carefully curated selection of the bajillion videos we took during the inaugural Open Sauce.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• In today’s digital age, securing personal data has become paramount. As users, we need to take into account the platforms and tools we use regularly. /e/OS is the open-source mobile operating system focused on privacy, that has emerged as a noteworthy solution to this challenge. This post is a comprehensive guide on how to utilize encrypted emails in /e/OS to bolster your digital privacy.

• /e/OS is a privacy-focused fork of Android, designed to minimize data leakage and remove reliance on most Google services. It offers an array of apps and a cloud storage service, all engineered to uphold user privacy and safeguard data.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Data scientists play pivotal roles in gathering, aggregating, interpreting, and visualizing information. In the top 100 best jobs list compiled by US News, the information security analyst takes a fifth, data scientist the twenty-second spot, followed by a database administrator, and market and operations research analyst professions.

• Data scientists are welcome in most businesses, especially in large companies that deal with vast amounts of user or scientific data. They are essential in healthcare, gathering and interpreting large diagnostic datasets. Data scientists also optimize public transport, scrape the web to improve marketing campaigns, and work closely with machine learning algorithms.

• As you can see, data scientists often work with projects aimed at public well-being, and this is where open-source technologies jump in. Unlike proprietary software, open source is usually aimed at solving problems that are common across many industries. For example, Facebook’s ReactJS open-source JavaScript library was not developed to drive more revenue to the company. Instead, it provides tools for everyone to build interactive user interfaces more efficiently. Simultaneously, Facebook became a part of the open source community, participating in developing the World Wide Web and attracting talent already familiar with their technology.

• I’ve been doing my email using the Mimestream app for the last six weeks or so, and apparently I’m not going back to Gmail-in-the-browser; the choice wasn’t a slam-dunk but I seem to have made it. Mimestream is a Gmail client (specifically, not IMap generally) and a native MacOS app. Now (assuming you know what Gmail and MacOS apps are) you know exactly what to expect, and whether or not you might like it. I’m just here to fill in the corners.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

• Thunderbird 115 “Supernova” has been released! During the next several weeks, you should begin to see your installation of Thunderbird 102 automatically update to Thunderbird 115. Whether you’re upgrading or coming in as a brand new user, now is the perfect time to introduce you to the various elements of the software. This guide will introduce you to the main window of Thunderbird (in its Classic layout and new “Vertical Cards” layout), get you familiar with the terminology, and help you navigate Thunderbird like a pro!

• (If you enjoy keyboard navigation, we encourage you to learn the many keyboard shortcuts available in the main window to help you quickly perform functions, such as message actions and navigation, searching, and calendar actions.)

• So, let’s take a tour around the various sections of your main Thunderbird window.

Programming/Development

• The Cloud Development Kit for Terraform (CDKTF) is an alternative to the traditional HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL). With it, you can create infrastructure as code (IaC) using your favorite programming language, obliviating any HCL limitations and opening up a broad range of options.

• This article is a beginner’s introduction to CDKTF; however, you should already be familiar with Terraform and HCL. You’ll learn about the basics of CDKTF, its core components, and how to deploy a small Amazon Web Services (AWS) stack using TypeScript.

• Lessons on code quality start in the first few weeks of learning to program, when a newcomer to the field is taught the basics of variable naming and told why programming languages have comments. They continue in countless blog posts and in every debate on a pull request.

• Avoid it or embrace it, code quality training permeates one’s entire career.

• But it is so easy to lose sight of why.

• In data analysis and manipulation tasks, it’s common to encounter situations where we need to identify and handle duplicate rows in a dataset. In this blog post, we will explore three different approaches to finding duplicate rows in R: the base R method, the dplyr package, and the data.table package. We’ll compare their performance using the benchmark function and provide insights on when to use each approach. So, grab your coding gear, and let’s dive in!

Python

• Python is a high-level general-purpose language that supports classes as part of its built-in object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm. Occasionally, when working with variables in Python, you may want to hide a variable without writing an unnecessary class to keep the code more maintainable. Moreover, you may want to add minor functionality to a function without creating another redundant function. In such scenarios, closures, and decorators can be used as solutions: closures for variable hiding and decorators for function modification. This guide will demonstrate the concept of closures and decorators, explain how and where to use them, and explain when it’s most appropriate to use them instead of traditional classes and unnecessary functions.

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