● 08.15.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 15/08/2023: Devuan 5.0.0 and OpenMandriva Lx 23.08

Posted in News Roundup at 6:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• The 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup for August 13th, 2023, brings news about Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, Rhino Linux, GNOME Asia 2023, NetworkManager 1.44, NVIDIA 535.98, and as well as all the latest distro and software releases.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Rare praise for Mozilla as more extensions come to Firefox on Android, Fedora is coming to Arm Macs, a rolling version of “Ubuntu” appears, an unwise solution to the problem of funding open source, SUSE might be the baddies, LXD is forked, and more. With guest host popey from Linux Matters.

Kernel Space

• The 2023 Maintainers Summit will be held on November 16 in Richmond, VA, immediately after the Linux Plumbers Conference.

Applications

• Web hosting control panels offer an attractive solution to developers and designers that host multiple web sites on virtual private servers and dedicated servers. This type of server management software simplifies the process of managing servers. By offering an easy to user interface, the control panels avoid the need to have expert knowledge of server administration.

• Two of the most popular control panels are Plesk and cPanel. These are web-based graphical control panels that allow you to easily and intuitively administer websites, DNS, e-mail accounts, SSL certificates and databases. However, they are both proprietary software. Hosting providers will charge a monthly fee for these control panels to be installed on a server. Fortunately, there is a wide range of open source software available to download at no cost that offers a real alternative to these proprietary solutions.

• Data mining (also known as knowledge discovery) is the process of gathering large amounts of valid information, analyzing that information and condensing it into meaningful data.

• This article spotlights alternative tools to talk, a venerable talk client.

• Emacs configuration frameworks take the vanilla Emacs and add their own configuration.

• The Ubuntu File Manager, often known as Nautilus, is a powerful tool that acts as the gateway to your files, folders, and documents on Ubuntu. Offering a user-friendly interface paired with robust functionality, it’s an essential tool for both new and experienced users.

Instructionals/Technical

• The vnet (network subsystem virtualization infrastructure) on FreeBSD is both a blessing and a curse. For me, it isn’t working well with IPv6. I’ve hit issues with pf (since solved, I’m sure). It’s a useful feature but can be confusing. It helps to have lots of time to think about it and what you’re doing.

• Pop!_OS, developed by System76, is renowned for its user-friendliness and constant improvements, making upgrades a welcome event for its users. As with any operating system, keeping up-to-date ensures not only new features and smoother performance but also better security.

• If you’re gearing up for a journey into the realm of Linux interviews, you’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we’ll be delving into the essential Linux interview questions that are your key to unlocking success.

• R is a versatile programming language and environment designed specifically for data analysis and statistical computing, making it an incredible choice for data-driven work.

• AWStats (Advanced Web Statistics) is an open-source web analytics tool that analyzes and generates comprehensive reports about web server log files.

• Are you a new user of Linux OR You are trying to delete a directory in Linux…

• Tasksel is a command line app that you can use to install different packages on Debian 12, such as : web server, ssh server, Desktop environments and more.

• Sublime Text is a text editor app that you can use to code. Sublime Text, supports multiple programming languages, which means you can use it to code in any coding language that you are familiar with.

• I’m ready to downsize. I’m going to replace knew with r730-03. The former has 20 5TB drives. I don’t need all that space now. I’ll settle for 12TB instead.

• The lsblk command in Linux is a useful command for administrators, which is used to list information about all available block devices.

• If you are an email system administrator, you are probably using DKIM to sign your outgoing emails. You should be rotating the key regularly and automatically, and publishing old private keys. I have just released dkim-rotate 1.0; dkim-rotate is tool to do this key rotation and publication.

• If you are an email user, your email provider ought to be doing this. If this is not done, your emails are “non-repudiable”, meaning that if they are leaked, anyone (eg, journalists, haters) can verify that they are authentic, and prove that it to others. This is not desirable (for you).

• Linux shells like bash have a convenient way of remembering commands that you type, making it easy to run them again without having to retype them. Just use the history command (which is a bash built-in) and then use an exclamation point followed by the number shown in front of the command in the history command output that you want to rerun. Alternatively, you can back up to that command by pressing the up arrow key as many times as needed to reach that command and then press return. Don’t forget, though, that you can also set up commands you are likely to use often as aliases by adding a line like this to your ~/.bashrc file so that you don’t need to search for them in your command history.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Linux has come a very long way. Not only is the kernel far more sophisticated and capable than during the 1990s, but the GUIs make everything so easy that working with the operating system is almost boring.

• Back in the early years, running Linux on the desktop meant doing a lot of configuration via text files. And even though every window manager did things differently, it was almost an inevitability that a user would have to open a terminal window and work with the command line.

Distributions and Operating Systems

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• Coming nearly five months after OpenMandriva Lx 23.03, the OpenMandriva Lx 23.08 release is powered by the latest Linux 6.4 kernel series (6.4.8 is the default kernel shipped with the ISO images), as well as the latest Mesa 23.2 open-source graphics stack series for Linux gaming.

• The devs note the fact that OpenMandriva Lx’s kernel comes with HT/SMT NICE enabled by default for better responsiveness and real-time behavior on PCs with HT (Hyper-Threading), which improves the performance of foreground apps at the expense of background apps.

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Last week, companies like SUSE, Oracle, and CIQ formed a non-profit called the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). The founding companies are Linux entities that make Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This collaboration seeks to develop distributions that are compatible with RHEL by offering open and free enterprise Linux source code.

• Linux Wars continue: Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ form Open Enterprise Linux Association (watch for upcoming episodes on @HPCpodcast on this)

Fedora Family / IBM

• AlmaLinux had been on something of a three-year roll, when suddenly a move by Red Hat upset the apple cart.

• I wondered what it felt like to have an open-source project that was young but essential, getting lots of uptake from both home users, but especially from the enterprise, and to suddenly have the upstream open-source project that was your source rip the rug out from underneath you by denying you access to your source.

• As part of the same process outlined in Matthias Clasen’s “LibreOffice packages” email, my management chain has made the decision to stop all upstream and downstream work on desktop Bluetooth, multimedia applications (namely totem, rhythmbox and sound-juicer) and libfprint/fprintd. The rest of my upstream and downstream work will be reassigned depending on Red Hat’s own priorities (see below), as I am transferred to another team that deals with one of a list of Red Hat’s priority projects.

• My first conference outside of Brno after the pandemic. I forgot how stressed I am from the travelling. Didn’t have to wait long to realize why: [...]

• We will be updating/rebooting various servers. Services may be up and down in this outage window.

Devuan Family

• Based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 12 “Bookworm” operating system series, Devuan GNU+Linux 5 is powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series.

• New features in this release include the use of the libseat1 library for rootless startx and access to input and video devices, which removes the DBus dependency from xserver-xorg-core, and the enablement of a true Wayland desktop without elogind.

• Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers,

• Devuan Developers are delighted to announce the release of Devuan Daedalus 5.0.0 as the project’s new stable release. This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community.

• Devuan Linux is a Debian fork, built by self-described Veteran Unix Admins, that aims to provide a free and open-source operating system without the controversial systemd init system.

• First announced in November 2014, with the initial Devuan Jessie release in May 2017, the distro emerged in response to concerns and debates within the Linux community about Systemd’s design, complexity, and its potential to centralize too much control over system processes.

• Version 5.0 (“Daedalus”) of the Debian-based Devuan distribution has been released. “”This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community.”” The announcement lists a couple of new features but mostly defers to the Debian 12 (“bookworm”) release notes.

Debian Family

• Later this year, Softbank hopes to spin off Arm Ltd in an IPO worth up to $70 billion. We’ve previously looked at two Debian-related deaths having connections to Arm (Frans Pop’s experience with an Arm Netbook and then Lucy Wayland) and now it is time to look at a third, Chris Rutter, who was hit by a car in 2001, age 19.

• There are significant connections between Arm Ltd & Debian. The former Debian leader Steve McIntyre was an Arm Ltd employee for many years. There is an annual MiniDebConf organized in Arm’s offices in Cambridge. Various other Arm-affiliated volunteers hold senior positions in the Debian hierarchy.

• [...]

• Dr Falder admitted blackmailing his victims to eat dog poo, among other things. We can see that Dr Preining was blackmailed to write a self-deprecating forced confession, thanking the DAMs for blackmailing him: [...]

• Mexico’s education sector had one of the longest lockdowns due to COVID: As everybody, we “went virtual” in March 2020, and it was only by late February 2022 that I went back to teach presentially at the University.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Three editions are available — a generic ISO for x86_64/ARM64, an ISO for the experimental PinePhone, and the Raspberry Pi ISO. Most likely, you should select the generic ISO, then click the download button for your computer’s architecture type.

• PinePhone is an interesting concept but not necessary for desktop or laptop use. This version for the PinePhone is a Rhino Linux port for PinePhone devices based on the latest version of Ubuntu Touch (20.04); it is the first Xfce-based mobile environment.

• One major drawback to Rhino Linux version 2023.1 is its Arch Linux-like sparsity of included software. No doubt, this was an effort to make the download as minimal as possible.

• Regardless, rather than leave it up to new users to track down productive software, the developers should provide some fancy scripting to allow pre-bundled applications to download after system installation completes.

• The default installation only includes Firefox 116 Web Browser, Mousepad 0.6.1 Simple Text Editor, mpv 0.36 Media Player, and VSCodium 1.80.1 integrated development environment (IDE). However, the installation also includes nearly two full screens of tools.

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 800 for the week of August 6 – 12, 2023. The full version of this issue is available here.

Devices/Embedded

• In the year that I have been kicking around here on Medium, I got back into the technical side of me.

• For those that don’t know, in addition to photography and arts, I also have a background in computers and technology. I spent over 15 years of my life in fact in various companies doing everything from technical support to coding.

• Along the way, my interests grew into building robots for personal projects more than anything. I was fascinated how one could take something so small such as a Raspberry Pi 4 (note: Affiliate links here if you would be so kind to help me out while I share knowledge with you also), and create so many different functions for it.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

• I’ve always admired DEF CON from a distance. I’ve watched DEF CON talks for years, but I’ve never been able to go. This year I was able to go, and I had a great time. This post is gonna be about my experiences there and what I learned.

• In short: I had a great time. I got to meet up with people that have only been small avatars and text on my screen. I got to see talks about topics that I would have never sought out myself. I’m gonna go again next year if the cards allow it.

• Every trip to Defcon – the massive annual hacker-con in Las Vegas – is a delight. Partly it’s the familiar – seeing old friends, getting updates on hacks of years gone by. But mostly, it’s the surprises, the things you never anticipated. Defcon never fails to surprise. I got back from Vegas yesterday and I’ve just unpacking my suitcase, and with it, the tangible evidence of Defcon’s cave of wonders.

GNU Projects

• Hi, all I am very glad that we have a new member.

• [...]

• Jing Luo will show his/her passion in Free Software, and try to let more people know about GNU. I wish Jing Luo a pleasant journey to a better world. Let’s welcome Jing Luo in this big family. wxie

Programming/Development

• One of the annoyances I had when I upgraded from Buster to Bullseye (yes, I’m talking about an upgrade I did at the end of 2021) is that I ended up moving from Mailman 2 to Mailman 3. Which is fine, I guess, but it meant I could no longer use listadmin to deal with messages held for moderation. At the time I looked around, couldn’t find anything, shrugged, and became incredibly bad at performing my list moderation duties.

• Last week I finally accepted what I should have done at least a year ago and wrote some hopefully not too bad Python to web scrape the Mailman 3 admin interface. It then presents a list of subscribers and held messages that might need approved or discarded. It’s heavily inspired by listadmin, but not a faithful copy (partly because it’s been so long since I used it that I’m no longer familiar with its interface). Despite that I’ve called it listadmin3.

• It currently meets the bar of “extremely useful to me” so I’ve tagged v0.1. You can get it on Github. I’d be interested in knowing if it actually works for / is useful to anyone else (I suspect it won’t be happy with interfaces configured to not be in English, but that should be solvable). Comment here or reply to my Fediverse announcement.

• I watched this year’s Assembly democompo live, as I usually do—or more precisely, I watched it on stream. I had heard that ASD would return with a demo for the first time in five years, and The legend of Sisyphus did not disappoint. At all. (No, it’s not written in assembly; Assembly is the name of the party. )

• I do fear that this is the last time we will see such a “blockbuster” demo (meaning, roughly: a demo that is a likely candidate for best high-end demo of the year) at Assembly, or even any non-demoscene-specific party; the scene is slowly retracting into itself, choosing to clump together in their (our?) own places and seeing the presence others mainly as an annoyance. But I digress.

• Hello all, hope you’re doing well. This is my week 11 report for my

• Similar to last two weeks I took up bugs from the tracker randomly and patched them, sending patch upstream whenever possible. Unfortunately, nothing new or interesting.

• I’ve some open PRs at ::gentoo that I would like to work on and get reviews on from mentor/s.

• This coming week is going to be the last week, so I would like to few more bugs and start working on wrapping things up. However, I don’t plan on abandoning my patching work for this week (not even after GSoC) as there is still lots interesting packages in the tracker.

• Till then see yah!

• We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 11.0.2!

• I posted about this problem, and a fix, about a month ago:

• https://bkhome.org/news/202307/argon2-illegal-instruction.html

• Easy 5.4.10 is built with the argon2 PET package that I compiled in the Compaq Presario. OK, this has a very old CPU, an Intel Core2, and I did test the ‘argon2′ binary in the Compaq and it worked.

Rust

• Since last Friday, librsvg is available from crates.io. You can add this line to your dependencies in Cargo.toml: [...]

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