● 09.17.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 17/09/2023: Kraft 1.1 Released, Nextcloud Taking on Microsoft

Posted in News Roundup at 11:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• I am very happy with the laptop. Buying a new machine is always a gamble, even more so if you go with Linux as your operating system of choice. But the Executive does a fantastic job. Yes, there were some problems and niggles, mostly on the software side. I hope they will remain in the past, and will not resurface at some point in the future. My productivity is high, the keyboard is excellent (even with the weird power button), the heating can be a little annoying, but it’s nothing major, and the battery delivers a mighty punch.

• The Plasma desktop is a joy of sleek elegance and extreme yet understated customization, which never gets in your face if you don’t want it to, a common (pet) peeve voiced by people who don’t really use Plasma as their daily driver. Anyway, all in all, pretty jolly for the first month, the first report. Coincidentally, the results with this machine also give me extra confidence that I can fully and totally ditch Windows in the next year or so, save perhaps an odd, locked-down ’10 box used purely for gaming. Well, see you around for more Linux fun!

• [...]

• Yo yo yo, here we are. It’s now been roughly a month and change since I first got me hands on the lovely and sleek Slimbook Executive, my new productivity laptop running Kubuntu 22.04 LTS. The initial impression has been amazing, on all fronts. But using a machine for a day or two ain’t the same as using it fo r a month or two.

• Well, in much the same fashion I did with the previous productivity machine, the Slimbook Pro2, we’re gonna have a series of “combat” reports, which document the everyday usage, the niggles, the problems, all the grueling details of a super-long-term hardware & software review. Over roughly five years of non-stop usage, I wrote some fourteen articles about the Pro2, the unexpected but successful battery replacement, and we shall yet continue that saga, as the laptop lives on. Now, let us focus on the Executive and see what it does for us. Begin.

• The uConsole is the latest offering from ClockworkPi, a company known for their innovative game shell and dev term handheld gaming uConsoles. This new kit provides everything necessary to assemble the device, with the exception of the 18650 batteries. The uConsole is powered by a Raspberry Pi CM4, a choice made for its compatibility with ongoing community development. This compatibility ensures that the uConsole remains up-to-date and relevant in the fast-paced world of gaming technology.

• This do-it-yourself (DIY) Linux-powered handheld device doubles as a PC, game console, development unit, terminal emulator, and much more. It’s a fascinating piece of technology that has caught the attention of gaming enthusiasts and tech aficionados alike.

• The ClockworkPi uConsole is a unique and versatile handheld device that offers a range of features and capabilities. Its high build quality, easy assembly, and compatibility with various operating systems make it a standout in the world of handheld gaming technology. Whether you’re a Linux enthusiast or developer, the uConsole handheld PC is worth exploring over on the official website.

Server

• Quick anticipation of the Oracle Cloud World session going to cover “Linux Internals for Developers: Tips and Tricks to Make Your Systems Run Better”.

• A decade ago, Solomon Hykes founded Docker. The container revolution this sparked is still burning bright to this day. Its trilogy of a long-running daemon process server, dockerd; application programming interfaces (API); and command line interface (CLI) client, docker, would prove the foundation for the evolution of a comprehensive set of developer tools. Today, Docker’s container-oriented development tools form a comprehensive foundation for building, packaging, shipping, and securing code.

• While Docker’s foundations come from container development, it offers much more than that. Docker provides a comprehensive container development stack to help teams collaborate and innovate better. Indeed, the entire cloud-native revolution couldn’t have happened without Docker. It’s the wellspring of modern cloud computing. Read on to learn how to make the most out of Docker’s developer tools by leveraging its full ecosystem of software development tools.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Hello and welcome to Episode 516 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this deep dive episode, the hosts interview Aaron, the creator and maintainer of DragonOS about software-defined radios: … [...]

Instructionals/Technical

idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install HandBrake on AlmaLinux 9. Video content has become an integral part of our digital lives, from entertainment to educational materials. However, working with video files often requires converting them to different formats. HandBrake, a versatile and open-source video transcoder, simplifies this process.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Minikube on AlmaLinux 9. Kubernetes is a powerful container orchestration platform, and Minikube is the perfect tool to set up a local Kubernetes cluster for development and testing purposes. AlmaLinux, a community-driven Linux distribution, provides a solid foundation for this endeavor.

• In today’s digitally connected world, security is paramount. Ensuring the safety of your Linux system is crucial, and one of the fundamental aspects of security is managing incoming and outgoing network traffic effectively.

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Seafile on Debian 12. Seafile is a versatile, self-hosted file synchronization and sharing solution that empowers individuals and organizations to manage their files and data efficiently.

• The NSA created the SELinux policy to provide security to applications. SELinux policies best suit an app under specific conditions, which can be found in this tutorial.

• For Activ8te’s latest track, Netrunner, I am producing a music video that tells the story of Lucy, a netrunner who uses social engineering to extract secrets from a Militech corporate hacker. The music video is produced completely in Unreal and makes use of Unreal’s metahuman technology. Unfortunately, during the production of the video, I ran into a large number of challenges. For many of them, it was difficult to find solutions just via searching on the web or the unreal forum. I’ll explain how I solved one of the challenges: Running a cloth simulation in Houdini and bringing it back into Unreal.

• Raspberry Pi imager is an app that allows you to install an operating system on your Raspberry PI device.

• Slurm which stands for (Simple Linux Utility For Resource Management) is a great, powerful, modular, and open-source workload manager and job scheduler built for Linux,

• $ yt-dlp --external-downloader ffmpeg --external-downloader-args "-ss 00:05:00 -t 00:01:00" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6DGABIcB3w"

• Assembly language is one of the most popular topics in the coding community as it offers you the ability to work at a low level that is closely tied to a computer’s architecture and hardware.

• It beats launching everything manually every time your PC restarts.

• xargs lets you use data from one Linux command as parameters in another.

• If you’re troubleshooting a Linux computer and need to identify the graphics card, you’ve come to the right place!

• Netstat might be a little old, but it gets the job done.

• Use find with xargs and exec to take your Linux file searches to the next level.

• More information than you can shake a stick at.

• Finding the current user account from the Linux terminal is simple

Games

• Using Sunshine and Moonlight you can stream AAA games from your gaming PC to a Raspberry Pi.

• Pac-Man was great in the 80s, but it doesn’t quite match up to today’s standards, so I added a couple of features that every modern game needs to have.

• For those who wish to test out the very latest improvements to the Steam Deck, Valve has put up Steam Deck OS 3.5 into Preview now. In the official announcement Valve go over a big list of new features and fixes, so here’s some of what’s included.

• Fanatical continues their Bundle Fest, with even more game bundles live so you can fill up your backlog some more. Here’s a run over what they’ve added recently with the Bethesda Favourites Bundle and how they run on Steam Deck and desktop Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Kraft (Github) is a desktop utility making it easy to create offers and invoices quickly and beautifully in small companies.

• Today we are releasing Kraft Version 1.1 with significant improvements for users and the Krafts integration with latest software such as cmake and KDE.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• This is fascinating! Previously, I haven’t paid much attention to forum member’s wiak and rockedge work with KLV/FirstRib projects. That’s because I my attention was all on my own project. Then, very recently, I started to get interested in Void Linux — really like it.

• So, wondered about building EasyOS with Void Linux packages, and found that forum member peebee had already done a lot of work with VoidPup, with help from jamesbond, wiak and rockedge. Some scripts from VoidPup were very helpful and I soon had an EasyOS desktop running built from Void .xbps packages, and codenamed it “easyVoid”. Created a forum thread to discuss this: [...]

• I have a need for ‘openssl’ binary executable standalone without needing any shared libraries. Why, will be explained later.

• In OpenEmbedded/Yocto, took the normal openssl build recipe and hacked on it to build the statically-linked ‘openssl’ binary, compiled with musl. Wasn’t easy, took 4-5 hours, but got there. Here is the recipe, file ‘openssl-bin-static_3.0.10.bb’: [...]

• About a month ago, I did something I haven’t done in over two decades. Something I previously thought unthinkable. After about twenty four years with Debian, I switched distributions. This is the second time in my entire life that I changed my distribution: first in 1999 from SuSE to Debian, then now, in 2023, from Debian to NixOS. A month later, it still feels weird. Not NixOS, I’m pretty comfortable with it by now. The thought. I spent more than two decades with Debian. At some point, I considered them my second family – and I still think fondly of those times. We’ve grown apart since, I hung up my hat a couple of years ago, but remained a faithful, happy user.

BSD

• I tried creating an OpenBSD 7.3 virtual machine on my new computer (Arch Linux host) and the installed kept crashing with the error: [...]

Debian Family

• News has appeared about the death of a volunteer, Abraham Raji, at DebConf23 in Kochi, India.

• There is a more complete report published by The Hindu. The key point to note is that the official search was abandoned and it was local residents who found the body. The report doesn’t mention whether anybody from Debian stayed to help the local people search after the fire and rescue teams went home at sunset.

• The location was the Nihara Resort & Spa in Pizhala.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Canonical is planning an ‘All Snap’ desktop next year. It will likely be available side-by-side with the traditional deb-based installation we’ve been used to since 2004.

• If the “All Snap” or “immutable” platform is to be a success, Canonical needs to get a grip on the broken, uninstallable, insecure, and outdated snaps provided in the snap store.

• This is a long post, so feel free to skip to the ‘Solutions’ section for my positive thoughts.

• The snap store has an “Editor’s Picks” section which is used to promote applications. Featured applications generally get a ton of eyeballs, and thus installs. Many people may be surprised to hear that ’normies’ often use the graphical software storefront to install applications on Ubuntu (and other distros). Not everyone uses apt or synaptic as their software store frontend.

• Some of those featured lists aren’t kept up to date much anymore, though. Meaning that some high-profile applications are missing out on promotion. Worse, outdated applications are being promoted.

• Phased updates are software updates that are rolled out in stages, rather than being provided to everyone at the same time. Initially, the update is provided only to a small subset of Ubuntu machines. As the update proves to be stable, it is provided to an ever-increasing number of users until everyone has received it (i.e., when the update is “fully phased”).

• The good news is, you don’t need to do anything about the “packages kept back” message – you can safely ignore it. Once the update has been deemed safe for release, you will receive the update automatically.

Devices/Embedded

• Earlier this month, Armbian OS 23.08 (codename Colobus) was announced with support for various new devices including the Khadas VIM1S, VIM4, TI AM26, and Lichee Pi 4A. Similarly, DietPi announced support for the Orange Pi 5 Plus and enhancements for other boards.

• Armbian is an open-source OS based on Linux designed specifically for ARM-based single-board computers (SBCs). It provides a lightweight and customizable environment for SBCs, allowing users to run various applications and services on devices such as the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, etc. Refer to the Armbian GitHub to see what devices are supported.

• In their latest announcement, Armbian is expanding device support to include Khadas VIM1S, Khadas VIM4, TI AM26, and Lichee Pi 4A, making their platform even more versatile.

Open Hardware/Modding

• The CM4 XGO Lite is a smart robot dog based on Raspberry Pi CM4 system-on-module and designed to learn to program using Blockly, Python, and ROS. This four-legged robot also happens to feature a 3-joint robot arm and a robot gripper installed on the back that can pick up light objects. The Raspberry Pi CM4 module drives the LCD screen and camera and performs AI and computer vision processing, while each joint is controlled with a servo motor, and a 6-axis tilt sensor ensures stable walking and movement.

• Once upon a time, NASA-JPL put out a design for an open-source rocker-bogie rover. It was an impressive and capable thing, albeit a little expensive and difficult to build. Now, the open source community has dived in and refreshed the design, making it cheaper and more accessible than ever before.

• Camera modules for the Raspberry Pi became available shortly after its release in the early ’10s. Since then there has been about a decade of projects eschewing traditional USB webcams in favor of this more affordable, versatile option. Despite the amount of time available there are still some hurdles to overcome, and [Esser50k] has some supporting software to drive a smart doorbell which helps to solve some of them.

• It turns out there’s a reason for that, and we’re going to patch the operating system so we can make the Fossil Wrist PDA into what may be the smallest (and first wrist-mounted) Gopher client. That also required an update to the Overbite Palm Gopher client (which you’ll want for your 68K Palm anyway), and then there’s the matter of the battery refusing to charge as well. And finally, we want to make all of this portable!

• But let’s start with the history first …

• Air quality concerns encompass several different pollutants and irritants. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were, for example, a major concern in the 20th century due to the damage they cause to the ozone layer. But not all pollutants are easy to monitor. Hydrogen sulfide, which causes irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat at low levels and much more serious symptoms at high levels, can collect in pockets. To find them, researchers from Brazil have a developed a low-cost lab-on-a-drone.

• There are three main aspects of air quality that the sensor is able to register. The sensor reports total volatile organic compounds (TVOC), equivalent CO2 (eCO2), and air quality index (AQI). According to Karabudak, the idea behind this project was to both monitor the air quality and raise awareness about air quality in general and how it impacts public health.

• Last Updated on 16th September 2023 by peppe8o This tutorial will show you how to install and use Hashcat with Raspberry PI computer boards.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Companies are pulling the rug out from under the communities that helped them gain popularity

• Red Hat, famously, had a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi on the walls of its offices about the fight to drive Linux and open source adoption. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” While inspirational, it’s a little misleading.

• SBSA Reference Platform (“sbsa-ref” in short) is now at version 0.3 one. Note that this is internal number. Machine name is still the same.

• This blog runs on WordPress. Thanks to the tireless work of Matthias Pfefferle, there’s now an official WordPress ActivityPub plugin.

• Google Docs Editors is a freeware web-based productivity office suite within Google Drive service. What are the best open source alternatives?

• Hoo-boy, if you pay even mild attention to the video game industry, you’re already going to be aware of the complete shitshow famed game-engine Unity has on its hands right now. By way of throat-clearing, you need to know how Unity got to where it is to understand what’s happening now.

• FTP file Sync and FTP Back Tools are software tools that enable users to synchronize and back up files using the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) protocol.

Events

• New features in Nextcloud Hub 6 include optional AI features, with Nextcloud’s Ethical AI ratings which provide information on the privacy and data sovereignty implications of the various options.

• [...]

• Saturday morning at the Nextcloud Conference in Berlin, Nextcloud announced the release of Nextcloud Hub 6, which is the latest and greatest version of the company’s collaboration platform that was first released in January 2020.

• At the time of that first release, Hub’s distinguishing feature was its integration of the OnlyOffice productivity suite, which allowed it to compete with Office 365 and Google Docs. Since then, its capabilities have expanded greatly enough that Office 365 and Docs are now eating its proverbial dust, and with this release Hub is looking a lot like I imagine Microsoft’s SaaS platform would look if it were on steroids.

• The GStreamer Conference team is pleased to announce that the full conference schedule including talk abstracts and speaker biographies is now available for this year’s lineup of talks and speakers, covering again an exciting range of topics!

Web Browsers/Web Servers

• There is one useful (or even critical) piece of information that Apache does log in the standard log format, and that is whether or not the HTTP 401 was because of a lack of authorization. Both normally get HTTP 401 responses (although you can change that with AuthzSendForbiddenOnFailure and perhaps should), but they appear differently in the normal access log. If there was a successful authentication but the user was not authorized, you will see their name in the log file: [...]

Education

• Join our workshop on Introduction to Topic Modelling in R and Python, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series!

• [...]

• Description: This workshop offers an in-depth exploration of topic models, which allow extracting meaningful insights from extensive text corpora while minimizing the reliance on prior assumptions or annotated data. The workshop will start with the basics of text data preprocessing and progress to a general understanding of the underlying principles of topic modeling. It will cover a range of topic modeling techniques, such as Structural Topic Models, BiTerm, and Keyword Assisted Topic Models in R, and BERTopic in Python. We will explore the cases where each model is particularly promising. Participants will learn about the practical considerations when choosing a topic modeling algorithm, and how to apply these techniques to their own data. The lecture will be of interest to researchers and practitioners who are interested in extracting insights from large volumes of textual data, such as social media, news articles, or scientific publications.

Programming/Development

• The “config()” function can be applied on the label to change its text, while the “set()” is used on the StringVar variable to change Tkinter Label text.

• Please don’t use bounties to incentivize Zig development.

• This blog post is inspired by this GitHub issue from three days ago: Support WASIX (see also)

• Here are some reasons why we believe bounties are a poor form of sponsorship when it comes to software development:

• • Bounties foster competition at the expense of cooperation.• Bounties are an utterly simplistic way of dealing with the business management side of creating software:[...]

• If you are having a problem with some code and seeking help, preparing a Short, Self-Contained, Correct Example (SSCCE) is very useful. But what is an SSCCE?

• It is all in the name, really. Take a look at each part. The version prepared for others to see should be:Short (Small) – Minimise bandwidth for the example, do not bore the audience.Self-Contained – Ensure everything is included, ready to go.Correct – Copy, paste, (compile,) see is the aim.Example – Displays the problem we are trying to solve.

Python

• In our last discussion we learned all about bloom filters. It’s a unique data structure that provides membership queries in constant time while using a minimal quantity of memory. Primarily, you will find them being used in large scale and streaming applications where it is infeasible to keep all the data in memory. Examples include NoSQL databases, CDNs, load balancers, etc. However, it also has uses in some unexpected places. For instance, Python uses them in some of its string processing APIs. As string processing is one of the most common tasks in real-world code, it has to be fast. Therefore, the situations in which Python has used bloom filters and the way it has implemented them makes for an excellent case study.

• In this article we will examine in detail the places where CPython has used bloom filters. We will also cover the specific implementation detail of the bloom filter inside the string data structure of CPython and analyze how it works. So let’s get going!

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• Within a terminal you can start a process, such as updating your system packages. But what if you want to perform more tasks rather than wait for the update to finish?

• We can place processes in the background and let them continue to run while we run other processes in the foreground. It is possible to cancel paused processes. If needed, we can put the process back in the foreground.

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