● 08.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 15/08/2023: KDE Announces Wallpaper Competition and Linux 0.01 Analysed

Posted in News Roundup at 10:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Maya OS is set to replace Windows as the operating system on the Defence Ministry’s computers, according to a report. Instead of Microsoft’s widely used proprietary operating system (OS), the Ministry of Defence will use a Linux-based OS based on the popular Ubuntu distribution. The OS was reportedly developed by government agencies over a period of six months in response to rising cybersecurity threats and is equipped with built-in malware protection for computers that are connected to the Internet.

• The Hindu recently reported that the Ministry of Defence has begun to replace Internet-connected computers with a new operating system called Maya OS. It is based on the free and open-source Linux distribution Ubuntu that is maintained by British firm Canonical. However, unlike traditional Linux-based distros, the Maya OS interface looks similar to Microsoft Windows, which could aid in the transition process.

Kernel Space

• Linux kernel is often mentioned as a overwhelmingly large open source software. As of this writing, the latest version is v6.5-rc5, which consists of 36M lines of code. Needless to say, Linux is a fruit of hard work of many contributors over the decades.

• However, the first version of Linux, v0.01 was pretty small. It consisted of only 10,239 lines of code. Excluding comments and blank lines, it was only 8,670 lines. It’s small enough to understand and is a good starting point to learn about the internals of UNIX-like operating system kernels.

• Reading v0.01 was really fun for me. It was like visiting Computer History Museum in Mountain View – finally I witnessed tales are indeed true! I wrote this post to share this exciting experience with you. Let’s dive in!

• Disclaimer: Obviously I’m not the author of Linux v0.01. If you find any mistakes in this post, please let me know!

• For those who find the 6.x kernel intimidating, Seiya Nuta has written a look at the 0.01 kernel, which reflects a simpler time.

• For those unaware of the feature, FreeSync Panel Replay is a new feature that works so that when the content on the screen is unchanged, the refresh rate is dropped automatically to reduce power consumption. The feature is similar to Apple’s ProMotion display technology but is intended to be used in monitors and laptops. AMD released the initial patch of the feature on Linux a month ago, intending to reduce the workload on GPU when content is unchanged.

Graphics Stack

• With some work currently pending to be pulled into Mesa, the open source AMD RADV driver could be about to get much faster with Ray Tracing which is exciting to see.

Instructionals/Technical

• This brief guide explains how to type Indian Rupee symbol in Linux operating systems. The other day, I wanted to type “Indian Rupee Symbol (₹)” in a word document. My keyboard has a rupee symbol on it, but I don’t know how to type it. After a quick web search, I found a way to configure keyboard layout for using Indian Rupee symbol. If you ever wondered how to type rupee (Indian currency) symbol in Linux and Unix-like operating systems, follow the steps given below.

• The Linux Foundation announced the LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Sysadmin) certification, a new program that aims at helping individuals all over the world to get certified in basic to intermediate system administration tasks for Linux systems.

• This includes supporting running systems and services, along with first-hand troubleshooting and analysis, and smart decision-making to escalate issues to engineering teams.

• The Linux ‘du‘ (Disk Usage) is a standard Unix/Linux command used to check the disk usage information of files and directories on a machine.

• The du command has many parameter options that can be used to get the results in many formats. The du command also displays the files and directory sizes in a recursive manner.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Lapce on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Lapce, a cutting-edge code editor known for its performance and versatility, has gained popularity among developers seeking an efficient and feature-rich coding environment.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nano Text Editor on Debian 12. For those of you who didn’t know, Nano, a command-line text editor, embraces simplicity without compromising utility. It’s especially useful for those transitioning from graphical editors to command-line environments.

• In the realm of Bash scripting, the Find command stands as a stalwart tool, wielding its exceptional prowess to navigate and locate files and directories with remarkable precision. Its versatile capabilities make it an invaluable asset for developers, administrators, and anyone navigating the intricate landscapes of file systems.

• In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, the ability to deploy and manage applications with ease and efficiency is paramount. Enter Dokku: a lightweight, extensible platform that empowers developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications in the cloud.

• Secure communication between systems is essential in our interconnected world. SSH, or Secure Shell, is a cryptographic network protocol that provides encrypted communication over unsecured networks.

• SSH, or Secure Shell, is a cryptographic network protocol that allows users to access one computer from another over an insecure network securely. It’s a powerful tool that has become an essential part of the toolkit for system administrators, developers, and IT professionals.

• No matter what type of data a computer is working with or storing, it is held as binary information. Images, text, music, video, and everything else are stored as binary data. Whether the data is on a storage device or loaded into the computer’s memory, it’s still represented by binary values.

• If the data is text, and we want to display that text on screen, there’s a translation that has to happen to convert the binary values into characters. To perform the translation, we need to know which values were used to represent each character when the data was created. The software can then work backward and map the stored numerical values back to characters.

• Because success depends on knowing what type of mapping has been used and rigorously adhering to the rules of the mapping during data creation and data usage, standards have been created that formalize such character mappings. They’re easy to understand if we get the jargon straight.

• There are hundreds of settings that can have far reaching consequences. I encourage administrators to understand the settings through the service that they procure. To further protect email, some new security vendors are parsing emails to look for pig butchering or invoice scams, which look for behavioral clues compared to a standard baseline that an organization might have. These can help layer on protection to prevent fraud or deception early, often targeted towards certain users (such as your CEO or CFO).

• Rulebooks are the system by which Ansible is told which events to use in Event-Driven Ansible. They are written in YAML and contain three main components: sources which define the event sources to be used, rules which define conditionals matched from sources, and actions which trigger what should occur when a condition is met.

• Here’s a small example I’ve cobbled together to test Event-Driven Ansible (EDA).

• We often see the web’s stack of technologies written together: “HTML, CSS, and JS”. What was reinforced to me from Zach’s presentation is that the ordering of this list of technologies has meaning.

• As I noodled with my words on this subject, trying to re-state what Zach had said so clearly, I ended up expressing his point anew in HTML (which was kind of fun).

• Tailwind CSS is the new ubiquitous frontend framework. It replaces a generation of sites built with Twitter Bootstrap. However, Tailwind CSS is not a UI framework itself but has become synonymous to some degree with the UI components shipped through Tailwind UI (which is a UI framework). Why did Tailwind CSS become so popular? A few hypotheses: [...]

Games

• Some sad news to share this Monday morning. A name I imagine a lot of newer readers won’t actually know, Dustin “Crusader” Reyes sadly passed away (as confirmed on Nuclear Monster) – someone who was a pioneer of Linux gaming news.

• The best way to play the classic Theme Hospital on modern systems is here, with the release of the game engine reimplementation CorsixTH version 0.67. Read on for what’s new.

• Arcen Games developers of AI War, The Last Federation, Bionic Dues have said they’re no longer doing Native Linux support for their upcoming game Heart of the Machine and will instead rely on Proton.

• Crowsworn looks like it’s coming along nicely and fans of Hollow Knight will want to keep a close eye on it. Celebrating two years since their Kickstarter, they have a new trailer up.

• Do you remember the original wipEout? An absolute classic racer originally released 1995 for Sony PlayStation, DOS and later the SEGA Saturn. Now there’s a modern cross-platform remake available to try out.

• While other developers like Larian are riding high with Baldur’s Gate 3, it seems Blizzard are not doing so well with the recent Steam release of Overwatch 2 becoming the worst user-reviewed game of all time on Steam (via Steam 250). Overwatch 2 is playable on Linux and Steam Deck thanks to Proton.

• It’s important coming into this story to know and note that Rockstar, the publisher behind hit franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, has waged a very public war on modding communities for its games for years now. Despite just how useful these modding communities tend to be in elongating the sales cycle for video games, Rockstar has gone after the tools for making mods for its games, has banned players for using mods even when those mods don’t change online gameplay, has DMCA blitzed the mods themselves, and so on. It’s a very purposeful series of actions clearly based on company policy.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• “Prizes?”, you ask – yes, prizes plural: a 13-inch Framework laptop and your work being used as the default wallpaper in KDE Plasma 6.0 (currently in development and due for release next year).

• Opportunities like this don’t come up often!

• Wallpapers entered in to the KDE wallpaper competition need to be original and made specifically for it – no rehashing your greatest hits or dusted off that DeviantArt classic.

• Are you a creative designer passionate about open-source, technology, and aesthetics? Do you enjoy crafting stunning visual experiences that define the look and feel of operating systems?

• If so, KDE has an exciting opportunity for you! The community is thrilled to announce its Plasma 6 wallpaper competition, inviting designers worldwide to showcase their talents and contribute to the next generation of this much-loved and widely-used desktop environment.

• KDE has long been renowned for its user-friendly and customizable desktop. Moreover, the upcoming Plasma 6 release, built on top of Qt 6, increasingly takes shape and promises to raise the bar even further with enhanced performance, features, and visual appeal.

• With the release of KDE Plasma 6 closing in, a Wallpaper Competition is live and the prize is pretty awesome – you can win a Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition!

Distributions and Operating Systems

BSD

• After his work on Jails, Professor Watson joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge in the UK, where he continues to research and develop breakthrough ways to improve computer system security. His work earned him the EuroSys Jochen Liedtke Young Researcher Award, granted annually to European early researchers (i.e., those no more than 10 years on from receiving their PhD) who have demonstrated exceptional creativity and innovation in systems research.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE have come together to create the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). Because those organizations have business models that depend upon maintaining compatibility with RHEL, they created OpenELA to share resources and work communally on a solution that will provide downstream compatibility.

• This new organization describes itself as a “community repository for enterprise Linux sources.” What’s at the heart of the Open Enterprise Linux Association is that the source will be available with no subscriptions, passwords, or barriers. In fact, the group goes so far as to say, “Freeloaders welcome.”

• The creation of the Open Enterprise Linux Association on Aug. 10 shows Oracle, SUSE and CIQ (maker of RockyLinux, which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux) taking a stance to promote open source and their competing products against Red Hat’s new policy for Linux distributions. The new trade organization was created after Red Hat made the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription-only. OpenELA’s goal is to “encourage the development of distributions compatible with RHEL by providing open and free Enterprise Linux source code.”

Fedora Family / IBM

• About 20 years ago, I started my own technology consulting company. We mostly did strategic consulting in IT – architecture, strategy, IT effectiveness, projects rescues and Lean Six Sigma consulting. Those sorts of things.

• But at the same time I was fascinated with open source – and I’ve mentioned this before. I couldn’t believe that individuals and even companies would collaborate to develop sophisticated software that could run at an enterprise level and that the source code would be freely available for anyone to take and even modify.

• It was a new world. But how did you make money in a world like this? That was the question.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• I think I started exploring Linux in 1995 with a Caldera CD that came with a massive book. I had two computers at the time, a Pentium II 400Mhz, which replaced an aged OG Pentium 200Mhz that I used for noodling around with stuff like Linux.

• I didn’t switch full-time until around 2001. By then I’d started using Red Hat Linux. I used to get pretty annoyed with the ‘RPM Hell’ so when my good friend Hugo suggested I take a look at Debian which didn’t have this problem, I was interested.

• I switched to Debian for a while. However, I got annoyed when kernel updates would break my Phillips webcam. The Philips webcam driver would require recompiling with each kernel update. I recall at the time the maintainer refused to allow it into Debian proper as it has some license questions.

• Again, my friend Hugo, from the local Linux User Group suggested I look at Ubuntu, as they kept the pwc kernel driver in the distro, no recompilation needed by me.

• So I switched to Ubuntu around the start of 2005, enjoyed the experience, and have used it ever since, on whatever my primary device is.

• Picture this: you’re on a dream vacation with your family on a serene tropical island. The weather is perfect, the sea is mesmerising, and you’re ready to enjoy a relaxing day at the beach. Just as you’re about to unwind, your phone rings: it’s your manager calling to inform you that your IT infrastructure is down, and you need to fix it immediately.

• [...]

• While some organisations attempt to manage everything in-house or seek help from upstream communities to save costs, they quickly realise that the open source landscape is vast, fragmented, and complex.

Devices/Embedded

• A Raspberry Pi might not be the best NAS, but it’s probably the cheapest. But in cutting this corner, I have understood true purgatory.

• I have started writing this article three times, each time trying to provide helpful information, and each time having the copy tainted more and more by misery.

• It has become a millstone around my neck, and almost mythical, like that Guns ‘n’ Roses album. And when the article at last tumbles from my runny brain, into the website tin, and onto your monitor plate (which it has now, because I’ve gone back and added this bit in, cheers), it will be like that album: a damp squib, a void.

• It is not a slight on the Raspberry Pi, Linux, or the very idea of cheap DIY tech projects to say that, because of the former, I now see life in cold monochrome. In a world where one operating system has achieved boot-human-face-stomping dominance despite its own deeply ingrained frustrations, they are utopian ideas. It is a slight on me: an idiot.

• I won’t dwell on my failures too much, for I may at last physically shrivel into nothing from embarrassment, like a Franz Kafka novel. Do be aware, however, that I’m aware that my experience is the direct parallel of ‘games journalist plays Cuphead’, so don’t write in.

Open Hardware/Modding

• This is a design for a tube furnace that can reach 1200°C, similar to the kind that labs buy for many thousands of dollars. Producing that much heat in a controllable manner is not a trivial task and this is much more complicated than constructing a furnace for something like aluminum casting. The heating element is a coil of nichrome wire, which wraps around a quartz glass tube that can withstand the heat. A ridiculous amount of insulation surrounds the tube and wire to contain the heat.

• We’ve been following Horne’s progress since July and we just had to write about it. The Cyberdeck is currently a work in progress and so things are liable to change. Powering the project is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, yes they do exist, but are hard to get hold of. The Pi Zero 2 W appears to be in an injection molded case (that doesn’t feature on our list of best cases!). On top of the Pi Zero 2 W is a Pimoroni Enviro+ HAT board. This hat provides a power input from the 2200 mAh LiPo battery (via the LM2596S buck converter) to power the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. It also provides a slew of environmental sensors.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• The 2023 Hackaday Superconference isn’t taking place until November, but the time to get your tickets is right now.

Education

• Description: This workshop will cover a basic introduction to Bayesian inference, A/B Testing, and decision theory for the analysis of large-scale field experiments in industry settings. After introducing the foundations of the Bayesian approach to A/B Testing, we will work through real-world examples using the probabilistic programming language Stan along with its R and Python interfaces.

Programming/Development

• The start and stop arguments can be either integers or character strings. If they are integers, they specify the positions of the characters in the string. If they are character strings, they specify the characters that should be used as the starting and ending positions of the substring.

• The halting problem is “undecidable”: there’s no algorithm which can tell you if an arbitrary program with an arbitrary input will halt or not. IE, if you give me a proposed “halt-detector”, I can inspect it and come up with a program and input for which it would give the wrong answer.

• Does Linux help DevSecOps grow or is it DevSecOps that helps software development with Linux better? The relationship between Linux and security-fortified DevOps is as complex as the chicken-and-egg casualty dilemma. It is difficult to pinpoint which serves as the tool to advance the other. Some would say that Linux development accelerates and becomes more efficient by integrating DevSecOps, but some say that the former helps bolster the latter’s adoption.

• However, what is clear is that both of them benefit from each other. DevSecOps and Linux share a symbiotic and deeply intertwined relationship. As an Oracle-published white paper puts it, Linux plays a crucial role in the progress of DevSecOps. With its open-source nature, Linux provides a good staging ground for DevSecOps adoption. Conversely, DevSecOps amplifies the existing pros of software development with Linux.

Standards/Consortia

• Despite all the fancy features on modern Apple Mac systems like USB-C and Thunderbolt, they have one glaring omission: the absolute lack of any form of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). This is an issue that [Ivan Kuleshov] sought to rectify with some delicate board-level surgery. Since the original Ethernet jack on the lucky vic^Wrecipient M1 Mac Mini does not have integrated magnetics (magjack), tapping into the appropriate lines would have been rather awkward, with questionable results on the side of the PCB traces that would suddenly be used for PoE purposes they were never designed for.

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