● 09.18.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 18/09/2023: Linux 6.6 RC2 and 7 New Distro Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 12:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• This week we got quite some cool news for everyone, starting with the beta version of Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 6, the end of life of Linux kernel 6.4, Fedora Project’s plans to remove the X11 session from its KDE SPin, and the return of ZFS installation on Ubuntu Linux.

• On top of that, this week brought us new updates for our LibreOffice and KDE Gear software, as well as new Linux devices from TUXEDO Computers and Purism. Below, you can read this week’s hottest news and access all the distro and package downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for September 17th, 2023.

Audiocasts/Shows

• The Justice Department is taking Google to court over whether Google has illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Apple announced new iPhones this past week: should you upgrade to the iPhone 15 / 15 Pro? Plus, Rod Pyle stops by the show to talk about NASA’s UFO report that came out.

• The Untitled Linux Show covers the week’s hottest Linux news for desktop, gaming, and even enterprise. ULS is the weekly update you don’t want to miss, from the latest kernel development to the updates on your favorite apps! Each episode finishes with a killer command line tip from each host.

• Writing a tech book is easy if you start with the proper guidance.

• Doc Searls and Simon Phipps talk with Nathan Freitas, founder of the Guardian Project about ProofMode.

Kernel Space

• Work continues apace on Intel’s Arc graphics drivers, but things have gotten to a pretty good state already. The heavily AMD-optimized Starfield notwithstanding, recent games like Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and Baldur’s Gate 3 both worked just fine on launch day, and most other applications we have tested on an Arc Alchemist GPU have been both fully functional and pretty performant, too.

• It would seem work is also progressing on Intel’s next-generation GPUs, as well. We haven’t heard an official peep from Intel about its “Battlemage” GPU yet, but we know the “Xe2″ architecture upon which it will be based is also slated to show up in the company’s Lunar Lake processors that are expected to come after Arrow Lake, likely in 2025.

• The 6.6-rc2 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

Graphics Stack

• Wayland. It comes up a lot: “Bug X fixed in the Plasma Wayland session.” “The Plasma Wayland session has now gained support for feature Y.” And it’s in the news quite a bit lately with the announcement that Fedora KDE is proposing to drop the Plasma X11 session for version 40 and only ship the Plasma Wayland session. I’ve read a lot of nervousness and fear about it lately.

• So today, let’s talk about it!

• Wayland is a set of protocols that govern how a compositor draws stuff on the screen, and how apps interact with the compositor’s drawing-stuff-on-the-screen infrastructure. It’s similar to the HTTP and SMTP protocols that govern how web browsers and email clients send and receive web pages and data.

• Wayland also includes an implementation of those protocols in a set of extremely lightweight libraries called libwayland-client and libwayland-server that offer stable and versioned APIs. Apps and compositors such as KDE’s KWin and GNOME’s Mutter use those APIs to do stuff.

Applications

• Fortunately, there is a wide range of open source scorewriters which are supported in Linux. This article recommends cost-effective alternatives to Sibelius and Finale. The software featured here is released under open source licenses, all are available to download at no charge, and generate music scores which are engraved with traditional layout rules.

• This article does not limit itself to software with a graphical user interface. One of the benefits of using software which doesn’t depend on a graphical interface is that you can create and edit music on any type of device, even small handheld devices.

• To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 12 high quality free Linux scorewriters. Whatever your requirements, one or more of these applications will meet your composition needs.

• Have you ever felt the need to edit or customize your PDFs with the ease and familiarity of a Word document? If so, you can use PDF-to-Word converters that are designed to transform static PDF documents into editable Word files, suitable for Linux users of all levels of expertise.

• Whether your goal is streamlined document collaboration, preservation of complex formatting, or user-friendly conversion, here are the best Linux-based PDF-to-Word converters.

• Are you looking for a privacy-focused, note-taking app?

• Well, then, we stumbled upon just the right thing for you!

• Beaver Notes is an open-source, cross-platform note-taking app that stores notes locally, foregoing any risk of data breaches and allowing for offline access to the stored notes.

• I think it can make its way to our list of best note-taking apps for Linux soon.

• Allow me to take you through this app; I also share my initial impressions below.

Instructionals/Technical

• Once you’ve set up a Linux environment on your Chromebook, it’s recommended that you update and upgrade the installed Linux packages.

Games

• Not one to be left out of the updating festivities it seems, Glorious Eggroll has dropped GE-Proton 8-15. This version makes a few changes but honestly it’s a smaller update than 8-14 was. The biggest news here is for fans of Mafia Definitive Edition but here’s the full rundown:

• A fresh 1.0.8 version of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 game engine has been released recently and here’re some tips about what’s new in the fheroes2 project.

• This would’ve been controversial enough by itself. Unity usually makes money off of its engine by sharing revenue with companies who make successful products, but this changes the deal dramatically in Unity’s favor, using shaky metrics that aren’t readily accessible to companies outside of Unity itself.

• Then developers subsequently noticed that Unity had quietly revised its terms of service to suggest that these changes could be applied retroactively.

• There is a lot of online outrage, and justifiably so, and to be honest, there is not nearly enough outrage enough. My perspective on this is different, because I’ve never used unity (I tried once and despised it), and have nothing at stake here. Every game I have made has had its engine coded by me, and I pay nobody anything for the privilege. I thought it might be worth blogging my view, because I think its a different one to everybody else. I’ve been thinking it over, and reckon the best way to articulate my thoughts is a series of separate points

Desktop Environments/WMs

• The transition to the Wayland display protocol has been a hot topic of discussion in the past years among leading desktop environments. Touted as the future of Linux graphics, Wayland promises smoother and more secure graphical experiences.

• At the same time, its widespread adoption across various desktop environments has been slow, and in many ways, it is still being prepared for prime time.

• However, GNOME already provides excellent compatibility with Wayland, and the upcoming KDE Plasma 6 intends to make it the default choice. Unfortunately, Xfce, a beloved lightweight desktop environment, lags far behind this trend.

• Need a lightweight operating system? These special Linux distros can run on older PCs, some with as little as 100MB of RAM.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Reviews

• Bodhi Linux 7.0.0 is a nice, light Linux distribution. By design, there is not a lot of preinstalled software, but the Bodhi AppCenter does provide a nice curated selection of recommended software. While my own personal preference for a desktop Linux ISO is for it to come bundled with a complete selection of preinstalled applications, and there is a forthcoming version of Bodhi Linux 7.0.0 that will do just that (the AppPack image), I can appreciate the minimalist approach taken by the currently available Bodhi images. Lightness and minimalism are Bodhi’s defining features and it does what it sets out to do and does it well. Having to install all the applications post-install is not for everyone, but for those who wish to go that route, Bodhi Linux 7.0.0 is a solid choice for a starting point from which to customize the application selection.

New Releases

• We hereby announce a new revision of Hyperbola live image for Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre.

• Much has changed now for the new release v0.4.3 as we have fixed and updated many packages within our repositories [core] and [extra] and added more options for running Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre on the desktop: We have therefore added fluxbox-extra and slim-theme-hyperbola as packages. With this version we end also our cycle for GNU/Linux-libre and focus on HyperbolaBSD. We have removed support for zstd, protobuf and redis, more information about that here. Also we do not support PHP any longer (more information to read here). This makes Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre acting on purpose for freedom, stability and security. So we are happy to hand over the system towards the community and invite everybody interested to enhance it.

• 4MLinux 44.0 BETA is ready for testing. Basically, at this stage of development, 4MLinux BETA has the same features as 4MLinux STABLE, but it provides a huge number of updated packages.

• HardenedBSD 14-STABLE is now officially a thing! Our mirrors are catching up with our inaugural build, and with our build infrastructure limited at 200Mbps, please be considerate with bandwidth use.

• Peropesis 2.2 Linux OS is released. In the new edition part of the old software was updated and a few new packages was installed. The newly installed tools are mainly intended for software development purposes.

• Univention Corporate Server 5.0-5 is the fifth point release for Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 5.0. It contains all erratas released since version 5.0-4 for bug fixes, performance improvements and security updates for Samba, Linux, OpenSSH, Bind and Python, among others.

• SysLinuxOS 12.1 brings some improvements and bug fixes. By default, it includes the latest kernel 6.4 directly from the backports repository, replacing the removed 6.3.8 version. Additionally, VMware Player 17 has been added. Other changes relate to some system icons, and further adjustments have been made in preparation for the upcoming integration of new custom repositories for SysLinuxOS. The changes apply to both versions, Gnome and Mate.

• Fatdog64-900 Final was released 12 September 2023.

• The Fatdog64 team is pleased to announce the first release of Fatdog64 GNU/Linux 900 series. Release 900 is based on LFS (Linux From Scratch) 11.3, replacing the LFS 8.2 used in the 800 series, with packages updated to BLFS (Beyond LFS) of the same version (11.3) or newer.

• At the time of release there are more than 2400 packages and more will be added as time permits.

BSD

• I’ve been involved with the OpenBSD ports collection since 2015, and have accumulated some notes on the topic over the years. This is an attempt at doing a redacted version, mostly for my personal use.

• It will come at no surprise that distfiles are at the core of the problem domain. The ports system fetches distribution files, most often tarballs, verifies their checksum and starts building programs. In order to be able to reliably build packages from the source tarballs, we need both availability and integrity.

Fedora Family / IBM

Debian Family

Devices/Embedded

• The module only works with Linux as the company only provides drivers for Linux for x86, ARM32, and ARM64 targets. The module targets home automation and security products such as Smart Home appliances and IP cameras, healthcare and medical equipment such as medical wearables and wellness devices, industrial and building automation, robotics, smart cities/parking, pet and animal trackers, and so on.

• The Realtek RTL8852BE wireless chip does not have a product page on the Realtek website, but it’s already widely used, as we reviewed the GL.iNet Beryl AX router earlier this year, tested an RTL8852BE WiFi 6 M.2 module with the Rock 5B SBC, and also noted its presence in another Rockchip SBC and an Android mini PC.

Open Hardware/Modding

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• The purpose in the first phase of the project was to conduct a preliminary study on how single open source based solutions and tools could be combined to a comprehensive joint solution and research the technical compatibility between the different OS solutions.

• The project aims to create a comprehensive example solution that is based on open source components. The created example solution aims to offer new business opportunities for COSS member organizations as well as provide new open source solutions especially for smaller businesses and municipalities.

• One of the best things about open source software is that, instead of being lost to the ravages of time like older proprietary software, anyone can dust off an old open source program and bring it up to the modern era. PyOBD, a python tool for interfacing with the OBD system in modern vehicles, was in just such a state with its latest version still being written in Python 2 which hasn’t had support in over three years. [barracuda-fsh] rewrote the entire program for Python 3 and included a few other upgrades to it as well.

Education

• And it has been my pleasure to again be here and take lots of pictures of the event and of the surroundings. In total I took 1852 photos and walked just over 50 km between the two venue buildings and all the rooms where action happened.

FSF

Programming/Development

• Many people, one way or another, got started programming computers using some kind of Basic. The language was developed at Dartmouth specifically so people could write simple programs without much training. However, Basic found roots in small computers and grew to where it is today, virtually unrecognizable. Writing things in something like Visual Basic may be easier than some programming tasks, but it requires a lot of tools and some reading or training. We aren’t sure where the name EndBasic came from, but this program — written in Rust — aims to bring Basic back to a simpler time. Sort of.

Perl / Raku

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• We’re moving toward the fast C++ implementation, so there are two tarballs: [...]

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