● 08.03.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 03/08/2023: Asahi Linux and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 6 Plans

Posted in News Roundup at 10:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Semi-pseudonymous “hobby-hopping person” Balazs has built an impressive portable Linux handheld, featuring a custom ortholinear keyboard and a full-color display with custom character set — primarily designed “to play around with the Linux command line,” its creator says.

• “I started learning electronics and Python with a Raspberry Pi 4 as a hobby last year and daydreamed a lot about turning the Pi 4 into a handled computer,” Balazs explains of the project’s origins. “I just couldn’t figure it out how to get it compact enough to make it actually comfortable to hold. After some online window-shopping I stumbled upon the NanoPi Neo Air and impulse-bought it without knowing what to do with it.”

• There was something of a space theme that pervaded the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) portion of the 2023 Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS), which is an umbrella event for various sub-conferences related to embedded open-source development. That may partly be because one of the organizers of EOSS (and ELC), Tim Bird, described himself as “a bit of a space junkie”; he made that observation during a panel session that he led on embedded Linux in space. Bird and four panelists discussed various aspects of the use of Linux in space-related systems, including where it has been used, the characteristics and challenges of aerospace deployments, certification of Linux for aerospace use, and more.

• The panelists in the room were Lenka Třísková, a lecturer and researcher at the Technical University of Liberec (which is in near Prague, Czechia, as was where the conference was held), who is also the main technical advisor for the Linux4Space project, and David VomLehn, who is the lead flight-software engineer at Astra. VomLehn gave a keynote about Linux in space (YouTube video) earlier in the conference. They were joined by two remote participants, both on the US west coast, thus joining the session at a pretty early hour for them: Steven VanderLeest, chief technologist for Boeing Linux, and Rob Bocchino, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

• In recent years, open-source server operating systems have gained popularity due to their many benefits. These collaborative and transparent operating systems offer a number of benefits that make them an attractive choice for server environments.

• Open-source operating systems operate under the belief that collaboration and shared knowledge result in more robust, customizable, and secure software. The collective effort of developers and the open nature of the codebase contribute to the continuous improvement and evolution of open-source operating systems.

Kernel Space

• The kernel’s address-space layout randomization is intended to make life harder for attackers by changing the placement of kernel text and data at each boot. With this randomization, an attacker cannot know ahead of time where a vulnerable target will be found on any given system. There are techniques, though, that can be effective without knowing precisely where a given object is stored. As a way of hardening systems against such attacks, the kernel will be gaining yet another form of randomization.

• “Heap spraying” attempts to fill the target system’s heap with known data; it generally works by allocating large amounts of memory and filling it with the data of interest. A successful attack can fill much of the heap with a known pattern. If the target system can then be convinced to dereference an invalid pointer into the heap, chances are good that the access will land on attacker-controlled data.

• The BPF virtual machine in the kernel has been steadily gaining new features for years, many of which add capabilities that C programmers do not ordinarily have. So, from one point of view, it was only a matter of time before BPF gained support for exceptions. As it turns out, though, this “exceptions” feature is aimed at a specific use case, and its use in most programs will be truly exceptional.

• Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi posted the BPF exceptions patch set on July 13. The API presented to BPF programs is simple, taking the form of two kfuncs.

• Sometimes, the shortest patches lead to the longest threads; for a case in point, see this three-line change posted by Emanuele Giuseppe Esposito. The purpose of this change is to improve the security of locked-down systems by adding a “revocation number” to the kernel image. But, as the discussion revealed, both the cost and the value of this feature are seen differently across the kernel-development community.

• The U-Boot “universal boot loader” is used extensively in the embedded-Linux world. At the 2023 Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS), Simon Glass gave a presentation (slides, YouTube video) on the status of the project, with a focus on new features added over the last several years. He also wanted to talk about complexity in the firmware world, which he believes is increasing, and how U-Boot can help manage that complexity. The talk was something of a grab bag of ideas and changes throughout the increasingly large footprint of the project.

• Yesterday Darrick Wong, the maintainer of the XFS file-system, announced in a patch series that he is calling it quits…

• For nearly 12 years Wong’s day job has been as a self-proclaimed “kernel hacker” at Oracle, where many of his duties have revolved around XFS, a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics in 1993. Before that, he spent eight years at IBM as an “open sourcer,” where he, “Wrote kernel code, mostly.”

Applications

• If you’re starting out as a DJ, you’ll probably want to try free software, as proprietary solutions can be very expensive. Fortunately, Linux has some useful software for music production.

• The chart below offers our rating for the software. Mixxx truly stands out from the crowd, it’s an awesome open source application with powerful features, great design, and good support. Use Mixxx to perform with MIDI and HID controllers, CD players, vinyl turntables or even just your computer’s keyboard and mouse.

Instructionals/Technical

• Being a System or Network administrator tasked with monitoring and debugging Linux system performance problems on a daily basis is an immensely challenging responsibility.

• It demands unwavering dedication, a profound understanding of Linux systems, and a constant commitment to ensuring optimal performance and reliability.

• We all love listening to music whether it’s in the gym, at work, or outside, music is part of our life. Everyone has their own music collection and undoubtedly everyone likes to expand it.

• While there are streaming services such as Spotify, many people still like downloading their own music and organizing their albums and playlists.

• As a Linux administrator, you must know how to add, delete and grant sudo privileges to users. Sometimes, you may give temporary sudo access to regular users for specific tasks like software installation or administrative work. Over the time, you might forget to revoke the sudo privileges. To ensure security, it’s a good practice to periodically check for super users with sudo access on your Linux system. If you find any forgotten or unnecessary sudo access, you can simply revoke them. This brief guide explains how to find all sudo users in Linux and Unix-like operating systems.

• If you have an old Android phone or tablet lying around, one of the most interesting and fun things you can do is run Linux on it. Linux is one of the most versatile operating systems around, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to run it on an Android device. You can pick from a bunch of Linux distros to use on your phone. Today, we show you how to run Ubuntu on your Android device.

• I got a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 and I’m not really happy with how the fan is managed by OpenBSD. Plus, the ThinkPad A485 running Windows for $WORK has been freezing quite a few times recently. So I decided I could try using a single ThinkPad for both $WORK and $HOME using different Operating Systems. I recently loved Slackware Linux again and wished I could use it too on that machine.

• I recently wrote about how systemd’s auto-restart of units can hide problems, where we discovered this was hiding failures of the Prometheus host agent itself. This raises the question of how and if we can monitor for this sort of thing happening with our Prometheus setup. The answer turns out to be more or less yes.

• The sudo command allows users to run commands with root privileges. This can be a powerful tool, but it can also be a security risk if not used carefully. One way to mitigate this risk is to allow sudo users to run particular authorized commands. In this guide, we will show you how to restrict sudo users to run specific commands with sudo privileges in Linux. We will also show you how to revert sudoers file back to the original configuration.

Games

• Deceive Inc. from Sweet Bandits Studios and Tripwire Presents released back in March and it recently became Steam Deck Verified. After playing quite a few hours, it quickly became a favourite on desktop Linux and Steam Deck. Note: Gamesight provided my key.

• The latest Humble Choice is out so here’s a run-down over what compatibility to expect on Steam Deck and desktop Linux. Humble Choice is a monthly curated selection of games, and if you stick around with it long enough you get a Humble Store discount too.

• Valve has revealed the most played Steam Deck games for July 2023, showing that Vampire Survivors has now been firmly knocked down a few places. DAVE THE DIVER is now the number 1!

• Launchers. Gotta love ‘em right? Major publishers just love to make Steam Deck and Linux gaming that little bit more difficult. Ubisoft Connect broke again but Valve is here to save the day.

• Valve has released another big stable update to the Steam client for desktop and Steam Deck. So here’s a run over what’s new and changed.

• Well it finally happened. According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey for July 2023 we can see that Linux users have overtaken macOS.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• If you have an old computer or laptop that’s struggling to keep up with modern operating systems, fear not. There are several lightweight Linux distributions available that can breathe new life into your aging hardware.

• Lightweight Linux distributions are designed to be fast, efficient, and lightweight, making them ideal for older computers with less powerful hardware. These distributions use less system resources and RAM, which means they run faster than traditional operating systems on older hardware.

BSD

• Last month I started a series in which I try out different operating systems with the aim of using them for my everyday work, and my pick was Slackware 15, the latest version of the first Linux distro I tried back in the mid 1990s. I’ll be back with more Linux-based operating systems in due course, but the whole point of this series is to roam as far and wide as possible and try every reasonable OS I can. Thus today I’m making the obvious first sideways step and trying a BSD-based operating system. These are uncharted waters for me and there was a substantial choice to be made as to which one, so after reading around the subject I settled on FreeBSD as it seemed the most accessible.

Fedora Family / IBM

• The Asahi Linux project, which is working to create a Linux distribution for Apple hardware, has announced that its new “flagship” distribution will be based on Fedora Linux.

• You’ve all been waiting for it, many of you have guessed, and now, as announced at Flock To Fedora, it’s time to make it official:

• The new Asahi Linux flagship distribution will be Fedora Asahi Remix!

• We’re confident that this new flagship will get us much closer to our goal of a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon, and we hope you will enjoy using it as much as we’re enjoying working on it.

• We’re still working out the kinks and making things even better, so we are not quite ready to call this a release yet. We aim to officially release the Fedora Asahi Remix by the end of August 2023. Look forward to many new features, machine support, and more!

• Later this month their own, new flagship distro will be released based on Fedora. They say Fedora Asahi Remix (to give it its official name) will bring them “closer to [the] goal of a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon”.

• However, the announcement of this distro will not detract from or dilute down the broader aim of the Asahi project – which is to bring full Linux support to Apple Silicon machines regardless of distribution.

• In a fascinating turn of events at the Flock conference today, it was announced that Fedora Linux is set to be made available on Apple Silicon Mac computers. This development is the result of a close collaboration with the Fedora Asahi Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Asahi Linux project.

• The outcome, known as Fedora Asahi Remix, promises to deliver an optimized experience for both Workstation and Server use-cases on Apple Silicon machines. The Asahi Linux project has further revealed that the Fedora Asahi Remix will serve as its new flagship distribution.

• We are going to take you on a journey into the heart of one of the most popular and well-respected Linux distributions – CentOS. Specifically, we will draw a detailed comparison between CentOS Stream and CentOS Linux, shedding light on their functionalities, distinct features, as well as their pros and cons.

• CentOS Linux is a free and open-source, community-supported computing platform that derives its roots from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It offers a stable, secure, and high-performance execution environment for a variety of applications, such as servers, desktops, and cloud infrastructures.

• One of the aspects I love about CentOS Linux is its robust stability. It’s designed for those who prioritize a rock-solid system over the latest features. CentOS Linux, however, was put to an end in 2021, with CentOS 8 being the last of its kind.

• Maintaining compliance to cybersecurity standards can be a daunting task, but you can mitigate that by using Red Hat Insights. With the latest feature update, the Red Hat Insights Compliance reporting service now allows you to edit the rules in your policies to meet your organization’s requirements, giving you visibility and control over your servers.

• Red Hat Insights is a managed service, included with every Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscription, that continuously analyzes platforms and applications to help you manage your hybrid cloud environment. Red Hat Insights uses predictive analytics and deep domain expertise to reduce the time required to perform complex operational tasks from hours to minutes. This includes identifying security and performance risks, tracking licenses and managing costs.

• CIQ, a company building software infrastructure for enterprises running data-intensive workloads atop the Rocky Linux enterprise Linux distribution — has expanded its leadership team, announcing today the addition of five seasoned veterans who bring not only deep experience and passion for the technology industry but also a wealth of expertise in their respective professional domains.

• [...]

• “CIQ has had a very productive and eventful first half of 2023 and is fully committed to bringing new levels of value to our customers and the open source community; to that end, it is a pleasure to be able to continue expanding and growing the team,” said Gregory Kurtzer, founder and CEO of CIQ.

Debian Family

• Another edition of Campus Party Brasil took place in the city of São Paulo between the 25th and 30th of July 2023. One more time the Debian Brazil Community was present. During the days in the available space, we carry out some activities: – Gifts for attends (stickers, cups, lanyards); – Workshop on how to contribute to the translation team; – Workshop on packaging; – Key signing party; – Information about the project;

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• In a much-awaited announcement for Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), the team has unveiled the commencement of work on LMDE 6, the upcoming version of their Debian-based distribution.

• Codenamed “Faye,” this release is set to build upon the solid foundation of its predecessors (LMDE 5) while incorporating the exciting features and improvements introduced in Linux Mint 21.2. Linux Mint and LMDE users have reason to anticipate this release, as it promises to refine the user experience further and bring cutting-edge functionality to the forefront.

• We don’t have a codename for the release (though we do have one of the upcoming Debian-based version of Linux Mint: ‘Faye’) but we do have some loose info about what to (not) expect.

• “We’ve got many exciting ideas, I’m sure some of the cool new features we have in mind will be implemented, but we want to prioritize some long-term aspects and dedicate some of our time to them,” writes Linux Mint lead Clement Lefebvre.

• “We want to update our ISO production tools and fix secureboot. We also want to spend time on studying the pros and cons of Wayland and to assess the work needed in its potential adoption,” he adds.

• According to a new blog post, development is officially underway for the latest version of the Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 6. Code-named “Faye,” the upcoming version of the Debian-based operating system is set to bring over all features and changes present in Linux Mint 21.2.

• With that said, there isn’t a set release date for LMDE 6 yet, as the developers are focusing on stability and completeness over speed. Once the base is ready, they intend to add more features, possibly bridging the current functionality gap between Linux Mint and LMDE.

• Simultaneously, the Linux Mint team is planning to release an EDGE ISO for Linux Mint 21.2. This ISO is expected to feature a 6.2 kernel, promising easier booting of Mint on brand new hardware, potentially enhancing user experience and broadening hardware compatibility.

• MX Linux is a Debian-based distro that focuses on providing an elegant and efficient desktop experience. Not to forget, MX Linux is also a systemd-free distro.

• The last major release was MX Linux 21, which was a long time ago.

• Luckily, a new release has been introduced that promises quite a few improvements.

• Let’s look at all the refinements with MX Linux 23, codenamed Libretto.

Devices/Embedded

• After two-and-a-half years of primarily using HomeKit, now called Apple Home, I think it’s time for a change in my smart home. Prior to settling on Apple’s platform, I used Google Home for a while. And before that, I was a Samsung SmartThings user. Moving forward, I think it’s time to transition to Home Assistant for several reasons.

Open Hardware/Modding

• In this post I will show you how you can work with the I2C from the PC Emulator application and read Nunchuk position and buttons QBASIC and TURBO PASCAL 7.0

• This build falls firmly into the category of “I don’t know what it is or why I want it but I need it.” Twiddle the steel marbles (sounds nicer than “ball bearings”), and curate your own desktop disco according to your mood.

• The replacement stem arrived, so over the weekend I set about finally fixing this keyboard. The VIC-20, C64, and C16 all share the same keyboard mechanisms, despite having subtly different layouts. This is very fortunate for C16 owners, as those other machines sold in huge quantities. Sourcing replacement parts for the Plus/4 and C128 are much more difficult.

• Radeus Labs launched today a fanless Thin Client based on a low-power processor from the AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 Series. Additionally, the device offers dual Gigabit ports and it can also be configured with multiple operating systems including Redhat, Ubuntu, Windows among others.

• A surprise is awaiting all ROS developers in the Snap Store with the release of the Vulcanexus tool kit. They are one command away from getting eProsimas’ new contribution to the robotics community. From monitoring the performance of ROS 2 networks to integrating microcontrollers into ROS 2, Vulcanexus snaps offer developers easy and personalised development of robotic applications.

• For most of us, the first soldering iron we pick up to start working on electronics has essentially no features at all. Being little more than resistive heaters plugged straight into the wall with perhaps a changeable tip, there’s not really even a need for a power switch. But doing anything more specialized than through-hole PCB construction often requires a soldering iron with a little more finesse, though. Plenty of “smart” soldering irons are available for specialized soldering needs now, and some are supported by the open-source IronOS as well.

• When looking the modify a passenger vehicle, the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus is a pretty easy target. In modern vehicles it has access to most of the on-board systems — everything from the climate control to the instrument cluster and often even the throttle, braking, and steering systems. With as versatile as the CAN bus is, though, it’s not the right tool for every job. There’s also the Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) bus which is increasingly found in automotive systems to handle multimedia such as streaming music to the stereo. To access that system you’ll need to approach it slightly differently as [Rhys] demonstrates.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• It’s already August, so let’s have a late look at the changes that happened in the second quarter of 2023!

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Basil is right; I do struggle with the irony of running a social platform, yet being increasingly disenfranchised with the whole thing.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• Apparently this behavior may actually be something that defaults to whatever the PDF asks for (also, also). I run into this routinely because a lot of academic papers in PDF form trigger this Firefox behavior (for whatever reason), which is possibly some default inherited through LaTeX or some other common scientific PDF creator.

• The curl option –write-out is one of my personal favorites and offers users an excitingly powerful way to output information from a transfer. Over time, it has been extended to provide more and more features.

Mozilla

• So while this change will be new for some Windows users, nobody should wait until their OS is out of support. They should just grab ESR. (And switch to Linux. But that’s not the main focus here.)

• Most Linux distributions where they value security, stability, and predictable software behavior, want nothing to do with Firefox’s Rapid Release channel, and it’s clear why.

Education

• In February and March, the CC Open Education Platform community voted on five winning ideas to advance open education globally. Five project teams, spanning Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Italy, Malaysia, Ukraine, South Africa, and the USA have received CC Open Education funds. The CC Open Education Platform also funded ongoing global community work supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. We are delighted to share updates about the projects now underway.

• CC lauds all of the open education community efforts, and we look forward to sharing additional highlights at the end of this year.

GNU Projects

• They’ve been busy beavers over at Gnu, with the announcement of new releases for two Gnu projects. One is Emacs, the text editor that was partly born out of the brain of Gnu’s founder, Richard Stallman — which I guess makes it 100% Gnu. The other project, GnuCOBOL, is lesser known, while at the same time being more important these days than some people might think.

Licensing / Legal

• There has to be a science to it, right? But what I’ve seen from the recent deals OpenAI has made with the Associated Press and major newspaper publishers makes me think they just suck at negotiation.

• The AP’s OpenAI deal does not list a price. A deal with a consortium of local newspapers calls their deal a $5 million investment. And the best that anyone seems to have gotten from any of these agreements, honestly, is AP getting OpenAI to pledge to pay them more if someone manages to negotiate better than they did. With a bar that low, maybe someone will cross it.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Data

• The idea of version control for data has existed for decades. Countless startups and products have tried to tackle the problem, but nothing has come close to success. Why? Is the idea flawed?

Programming/Development

• Hey fellow R enthusiasts!

• Today, we’re diving deep into the incredible world of R programming to explore the often-overlooked but extremely handy unlist() function. If you’ve ever found yourself dealing with complex nested lists or vectors, this little gem can be a lifesaver. The unlist() function is like a magician that simplifies your data structures, making them more manageable and easier to work with. Let’s unlock its magic together!

• The GNU Coding Standards were written by Richard Stallman and other GNU Project volunteers. Their purpose is to make the GNU system clean, consistent, and easy to install. This document can also be read as a guide to writing portable, robust and reliable programs. It focuses on programs written in C, but many of the rules and principles are useful even if you write in another programming language. The rules often state reasons for writing in a certain way.

• Platform engineering is an essential function in modern software development that is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining platforms that support the organization’s applications and services. A platform engineer’s role is to ensure that the platform is scalable, reliable, and secure, while also optimizing performance and minimizing downtime. However, like any other profession, platform engineers are prone to making mistakes that can negatively impact the system’s stability and performance.

• This article delves into nine common mistakes made by platform engineers and provides practical insights on how to avoid them. Key areas of focus include performance optimization, version control, security best practices, disaster recovery planning, automation, testing, keeping up with updates, documentation, and monitoring. The goal is to empower platform engineers with the knowledge and tools needed to enhance the efficiency and reliability of their platforms.

• k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and start working on your passion projects!

• During the “Build a Website in an Hour” meetup last weekend, I worked on a project that I named I, Spy: The coolest game on the web. [^1] The game is like the familiar I, Spy, with two twists: (i) the game is digital, and; (ii) you guess with photos instead of words.

• Each day, a prompt and an image are chosen. For example, the prompt could be a photo of a cat, with the label “cat.” Players are invited to take a photo (or upload a photo). This photo is compared to the prompt photo. If the player’s photo is close to the daily prompt, the app says “Warmer”; otherwise, the app says “Colder”. A “Warmer” label means you are getting closer to photographing the object in the day’s prompt.

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