● 08.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/08/2023: Slackware Live ISO Refresh

Posted in News Roundup at 8:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• As we conclude this exploration of UNIX and Linux, we find ourselves in awe of the vast differences that define these two operating systems. UNIX, with its proprietary legacy, continues to influence industries that require steadfast performance. In contrast, Linux’s open-source foundation has ushered in a new era of collaboration, flexibility, and innovation. The key to making an informed choice between UNIX and Linux lies in understanding their respective strengths and weaknesses, and how they align with your technological needs. With both systems constantly evolving, there’s no better time to delve deeper into the world of operating systems and the endless possibilities they offer.

• The ongoing evolution of UNIX and Linux is a testament to the enduring power of innovation and collaboration. While UNIX laid the groundwork for modern operating systems, Linux harnessed the potential of open-source philosophy to democratize software development. As we navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, the journey through UNIX and Linux serves as a reminder of the transformative nature of technology, and the limitless potential that lies ahead.

Applications

• Most of these solutions provide free storage space, with more features available if you are willing to pay for a premium account. However, there are problems with these solutions. Leaving aside privacy and ownership issues, these services typically do not provide good integration with other platforms. There is a simple alternative which gives you more control and flexibility – self-hosted open source gallery software.

• Anyone with a large photo collection will know that cataloging and finding a specific picture can be very time consuming. The purpose of this article is to identify Linux software that helps to host, organize, describe and share your collection by using a number of different techniques including tagging and albums. Good software makes the task of deciding which photos to keep and which to delete less time consuming.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 12 of the most useful open source web photo gallery software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to host and share their photos.

• We give our strongest recommendation to PhotoPrism, Piwigo, Immich, Photoview, and LibrePhotos but each of the solutions has something to offer. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

• Now that it’s more convenient for me to run containers at home, I thought I’d write a bit about web apps I am enjoying.

• First up, FreshRSS, a web feed aggregator. I used to make heavy use of Google Reader until Google killed it, and although a bunch of self-hosted cloned sprung up very quickly afterwards, I didn’t transition to any of them.

• A common category of software you will find on many Windows PCs are system optimizers and cleaners. One such application is CCleaner, a powerful and popular Windows PC cleaner that scans for and deletes unwanted files, and private information such as browsing cache and history, freeing up space and guarding your privacy, and more.

• Unfortunately, there is no CCleaner release for Linux systems, so if you were using it on Windows and made a switch to Ubuntu Linux (one of the recommended distros for Linux beginners), you are probably wondering which software to use for the same purpose on your new platform.

• The podresources API is an API served by the kubelet locally on the node, which exposes the compute resources exclusively allocated to containers. With the release of Kubernetes 1.28, that API is now Generally Available.

Instructionals/Technical

• I often need to work with PDF, sometimes I need to extract a single page, or add a page, too often I need to rotate pages.

• Fortunately, there is a pretty awesome tool to do all of these tasks, it’s called PDFtk.

• With summer in full swing, there has never been a better time to improve your understanding of ZFS. For your summer reading pleasure we have compiled a set of articles that explore the fundamentals of OpenZFS and help you get started with the last word in filesystems. Building on our recent webinar, OpenZFS Data Protection – Best Practices for Keeping Your Data Safe, we also cover how to make sure your data is safe from internal, external, and environmental threats.

• Working on a huge project with multiple contributors requires managing multiple branches in Git.

Games

• Today Sniper Elite 5 got updated and it seems they upgraded Easy Anti-Cheat from Epic Online Services, including making sure it works on Linux and Steam Deck.

• Valheim just had one of the best updates ever since being in Early Access, finally giving you a bit more control over how you play it with the world modifiers and much more.

• Want to jump into some Darkest Dungeon II? Well now it’s easier than ever thanks to the addition of controller support and full Steam Deck support too. It’s even now Steam Deck Verified. Thanks to the additions desktop players too can now kick-back with a gamepad, if that’s your preferred input.

• A while ago I mentioned (in a video) how the upcoming SteamOS 3.5 for Steam Deck added in a colour vibrance setting, and now Valve seems to have expanded it even further with a screen colour temperature setting as well.

• While we have DeckHD launching their higher-resolution Steam Deck screen replacement, we also now have JSAUX who have launched their own Steam Deck Anti-Glare screen replacement.

• Good news for Roblox fans, as the game will soon start working in Wine again as the developers have been working to update it since the big breakage with the new client.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Xfce desktop has a stock menu that’s quite user-friendly and straightforward. However, if you’re looking for a more advanced and modern menu for your Xfce desktop, I highly recommend trying the Whisker menu. It’s a fantastic option for those wanting to customize their menus further and ensure everything is easily accessible.

• Whisker Menu is a feature-rich and user-friendly application menu for the Xfce desktop environment. It’s one of the easiest and most organized ways to access all the apps and settings on your Xfce desktop. Plus, you can customize it to make it totally your own! And the search function is a lifesaver when you need to find something fast.

• Here’s how to install and configure.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

• Bodhi Linux is a popular lightweight distro that features the Moksha desktop environment, which provides a unique user experience.

• The last major release was Bodhi Linux 6.0, which came more than two years back with impressive improvements.

• Bodhi Linux 7.0 has been on the roadmap for a while, but the development was stalled because the creator had some health issues. Hoping that the developer is doing better now; Let us look at the next upgrade.

Slackware Family

• Last weekend I pushed version 1.7.0.1 of liveslak code to my git repository and used it to generate a fresh batch of Slackware Live ISO images. Main change between 1.7.0 and 1.7.0.1 is fixing the broken Ventoy support on UEFI computers. Slackware Live ISO works out of the box on Ventoy again.

Fedora Family / IBM

• I have just become aware that Fedora users using the packaged IPU6 camera stack are having an issue where the output from the camera is black. We have been updating the stack and the new version of ipu6-camera-bins has hit the stable updates repo, while the matching new version of ipu6-camera-hal is currently in the updates-testing repo.

Devuan Family

• 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.

Debian Family

• Matthew Garrett has admitted that a female colleague was so afraid of something that she would unplug his computer and phone whenever he was not in the office.

• What made her paranoid? Was she afraid that Garrett was spying on her, in the manner of the notorious Cambridge graduate Matthew Falder, who wired up the bathrooms of Clare College with hidden cameras?

• Garrett is also using a ucam.org Cambridge affiliates email address.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• We looked at UbuntuDDE Remix last year when they released a new LTS release. And now, almost a year later, we have a new non-LTS release in the form of UbuntuDDE Remix 23.04 based on the recently released Ubuntu 23.04 release.

• If you didn’t know, Ubuntu DDE Remix is a distro that features Deepin desktop environment (DDE) on top of Ubuntu to give a unique user experience.

• UbuntuDDE is a nice alternative for users who dislike Deepin for its slow servers and other concerns because of its Chinese origin (yet like the desktop experience).

• Let’s see what they are offering with this release.

Devices/Embedded

• I’ve been using the PineTime with the InfiniTime firmware and GadgetBridge for quite a while now. I’ve had some battery issues with my first one so now I’ve ordered a bunch. The upside with that is that the kids now get a cool smartwatch each when going to school – and I didn’t have to take out a mortgage to afford it

• Today’s consumer and professional drones are very stable. They’re easy to pilot and we’re past the era of rampant out-of-control drone crashes. But drones can still fail and benefit from a system that lets them return safely to the ground without damage.

• For a while now moteus has had the ability to configure what action takes place upon a CAN message watchdog timeout during position control mode. If configured with ‘servo.default_timeout_s’ moteus requires that CAN messages be sent at a regular rate. If ever a message is delayed by more than the timeout period, the mode switches in a latching manner to the “timeout” mode, where a special action is undertaken. This is configured with ‘servo.timeout_mode‘ in tview, and as of firmware release 2023-07-25 the available values are as follows: [...]

• Most entries to the Microtransat Challenge are unmanned sailboats with robotics controlling the sail, but Matt wanted to try something different and use purely electric propulsion. You may have noticed the lack of a rudder on Casper the boat: this is because he opted to use differential thrust for yaw control.

• This tutorial will show you how to install and configure Easy!Appointments on Raspberry PI…

• Guy Dupont has created a Raspberry Pi-powered effects pedal that lets you apply crazy effects to your keyboard and mouse input.

• If you’re an engineering student or a robotics fanatic, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the Raspberry Pi and Pi projects. The regular Raspberry Pi boards and Pi projects are more often for robotics and simulations. The Pi board 3B, 4B, and higher versions are similar to a single-board computer (SBC).

Open Hardware/Modding

• The car is smartphone operated and stands out with 4-wheel drive alongside two differentials lending to some serious precision driving. The SaraKIT board makes it easier to control these extra components with features like fractional angle control. Of course, the body is made using LEGO for fun but you can also make adjustments to the build by changing the gears at the rear to impact both power and speed.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The big idea is that it combines all your chat apps into one. I installed it on my Mac and iPhone and configured it to work with: [...]

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• I recently migrated my blog from running on Ghost to Hugo. With that, came a few changes to how the pages were built, how the URLs were formed, and also the rules around showing 404s and redirecting where possible.

Mozilla

• In a major update towards cross-browser compatibility, Firefox users are set to enjoy the benefits of importing Chrome extensions, thanks to a new feature unveiled by Mozilla. This is a big deal because it brings us one step closer to having more compatibility between browsers.

• No worries, it’s super easy to enable this feature. Just follow these few simple steps and you’ll have access to the Chrome extension import feature.

Licensing / Legal

• The ideas about and methods for protecting software rights have evolved as computers have moved from expensive and relatively rare to far more affordable and ubiquitous.

Programming/Development

• New blog post, which is also a new project: Learn AutoHotKey by stealing my scripts. It’s about this project. Patreon notes here.

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