● 08.22.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 22/08/2023: siduction Linux Release and News Catchup

Posted in News Roundup at 12:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

Instructionals/Technical

• There’s no shortage of ways to get Linux onto your PC hardware, but with Ubuntu, you’ve long needed to download a bulky multi-gigabyte ISO file in one go.

• If you’re suffering from a shortage of large USB sticks, the Ubuntu mini ISO takes up only around 100MB. Here’s how to get the Mini ISO and use it to install Ubuntu.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• There is a beginning-of-the-week treat in store for Budgie users. This morning Joshua Strobl, founder and project lead at Buddies of Budgie, the organization behind the popular Linux desktop environment, announced the release of Budgie 10.8 as the successor to version 10.7, which was released seven months ago.

• Although Budgie is built using many components of the Gnome desktop, it’s largely considered to be “scratch made” and not a Gnome derivative. It was initially developed to be the default DE for Solus Linux, but soon after its release other distros began offing it as an option. In November 2016, an unofficial Ubuntu remix centered on Budgie was officially recognized as an official Ubuntu flavor under the name Ubuntu Budgie.

• At one time, it was common to hear Linux described as an operating system for developers. It wasn’t recommended for the casual or non-technical user. You had to be at least partially code-savvy to even use Linux. That may have been true for Linux in its very early days, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Distributions Like Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and Linux Mint have smoothed the path for newcomers to the Linux world.

• Of course, the developers are still here on Linux too, because Linux is such a great platform to develop on. With Linux, you get privacy, stability, and performance. You have access to all the development tools you need, and for free. You have a choice of flexible scripting languages in the terminal window, allowing you to automate build processes, testing, and more.

• If the distribution you’re using doesn’t have a particular tool installed by default, it’s usually just a case of firing up your package manager and installing it. All the parts of your tool chain are no more than a single command away.

• Linux supports containerization too, through solutions like Docker and Vagrant, and container management systems such as Kubernetes. These make it simple and fast to spin up and manage isolated environments that use far fewer resources than classic virtual machines.

New Releases

• The next chapter of TrueNAS SCALE has begun. TrueNAS SCALE already has the ability to scale up(with HA) and scale out and provides the ability to run containerized Apps directly on the storage system. Apps have been steadily improving with each new release of SCALE. More improvements are scheduled for the next TrueNAS SCALE release — codenamed “Cobia” — in Q4 of this year. Today, we announce the availability of TrueNAS SCALE 23.10 BETA, aka Cobia BETA.

• Bluefin (22.12) has been a very successful release and has grown the SCALE user base to about 70,000 systems in less than 18 months. The quality of Bluefin keeps increasing with community testing and has reached General Availability (GA) status, with iXsystems shipping nearly all platforms with Bluefin or TrueNAS 13.0. Our goal has been to give users the freedom to choose their path.

• Cobia (23.10) is the alphabetic and chronological successor to Bluefin (22.12). It is also the first release designed to enable the sidegrade from TrueNAS 13.0 HA systems. Cobia has been through two Alpha stages with the development community and has reached the point where Community testers can begin to explore what is new. It will not be ready for production until Q4, as the 23.10 name (yy.mm of target release date) indicates.

Fedora Family / IBM

Debian Family

• The siduction team is very proud to present an unscheduled release for a special occasion. Debian GNU/Linux, whose unstable branch some of us have been following for over 20 years, celebrates its 30. Birthday on 8/16/2023 and we think that is worthy of all honor.

• Debian is the second oldest distribution after Slackware, and is solely supported by the people involved, without a company standing in the background or someone at the top deciding where things go. Debian is considered the “universal operating system” because of the many architectures supported to this day, and the stability of their releases is legendary.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

• The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 7.6 Community. It is the last release using the existing numbering scheme as the office suite will move to date-based release numbers starting with LibreOffice 24.2 in February, 2024. Highlights of this release include support for document themes, including import and export of them, a new navigation panel for Impress and Draw, zoom-gesture support, font-handling improvements, and lots more; the release notes have all the details.

FSFE

Programming/Development

Perl / Raku

Leftovers

Science

Education

Hardware

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Security

• Microsoft is facing frustration for numerous security issues, including problematic transparency, numerous patch bypasses and inconsistent communication practices.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (fastdds, flask, and kernel), Fedora (chromium, dotnet6.0, dotnet7.0, gerbv, java-1.8.0-openjdk, libreswan, procps-ng, and spectre-meltdown-checker), SUSE (chromium, kernel-firmware, krb5, opensuse-welcome, and python-mitmproxy), and Ubuntu (clamav, firefox, and vim).

• Singing River Health System officials have detected unusual activity within their network, indicating a potential cyberattack.

• “We are working diligently with third-party specialists to investigate the source of this disruption and to confirm its impact on our systems as soon as possible. We have also engaged with the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” says Shannon Wall, SRHS Chief Marketing Officer.

• The Singing River Health System is continuing to see patients, and downtime procedures are in place.

• A database listed for sale on a popular hacking forum may raise some political questions for El Salvadorans.

• On August 16, a listing offered 114GB of files with facial photos and 5.1 million records with El Salvadorans’ “full name, dui, date of birth, address, telephone, email and hd photo of the face.”

• The 2nd Judicial Circuit announced Monday that law enforcement is investigating a data breach involving Gadsden County court records.

• In a news release, the circuit said that initial assessments show some of the records contained “personal identifying information.” Officials said the breach only affected Gadsden County records.

Privacy/Surveillance

Defence/Aggression

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

Environment

Energy/Transportation

Wildlife/Nature

Finance

• The Bay Area tech giant laid out its plan to hold workers to a stricter in-office regimen in a Thursday note, Insider reported. In the memo, Meta Head of People Lori Goler reportedly told employees that their managers would receive their badge data and that repeated violations of the new three-day-a-week requirement could cause workers to lose their jobs.

• Instead of halting immigration, we should regulate the investors and developers driving and profiting from sky-high housing prices

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

Civil Rights/Policing

Monopolies

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