● 08.30.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 30/08/2022: Fwupd 1.8.4 and FTC Privacy Battles

Posted in News Roundup at 9:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

• When it comes to those we care about, we wish to see our loved ones succeed and become the best versions of themselves. We encourage them to push forward through this crazy thing we call life, and maybe even become a bit disappointed when someone we love makes a less-than-ideal decision.

• Perhaps the same can be said of fans of the Linux desktop. It’s like family to us. But to say that our relationship with Linux on the desktop has been strained would be an understatement. We love our favorite desktop distribution. Perhaps not in the same way as we would feel for a human or canine family member, but we do want to see the Linux Desktop flourish – and dare I say it, succeed.

• Perhaps that’s part of the reason why it sometimes becomes so irritating when we Linux enthusiasts witness Linux shooting itself in its own foot. Linux itself is incredibly successful, yet far from perfect – but still surprisingly popular depending on how you look at it. Chances are, the majority of your favorite sites and online services are powered by Linux. And while you were in the process of binge-watching the entirety of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds last week, it was probably a stripped-down variation of the Linux kernel running inside your television that presented Captain Pike’s latest adventures onto your screen in glorious 4K.

• If you carry around an Android phone, you can thank Linux for facilitating your recent delivery call to your favorite Chinese restaurant. Who knows, perhaps some of you are reading this article from a Linux PC. (Maybe).

• [...]

• Soon, I’ll let you know exactly why I feel as though the decisions being made for many popular distributions are causing the entire Linux desktop dream to be an exercise in futility.

Audiocasts/Shows

• I often claim that Linux is better for privacy than proprietary operating systems like Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, Android, iOS, etc. Usually, I talk about the things that are hidden from view, like the spyware and keyloggers that Windows secretly uses. Today though, I’m going to talk about easy-to-see, tangible benefits of using Linux if you are concerned about privacy.

Applications

• Fwupd 1.8.4 is here to introduce support for new hardware, including the Star LabTop Mk III Linux laptop from UK-based Linux hardware vendor Star Labs, ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Dock, ThinkPad Universal Smart Dock, Elan non-HID touchpads, as well as Google Prism.

• It also adds new features like the ability to prompt users to fix the BIOS configuration in case of issues, support for reading and writing BIOS settings, support for loading a machine-default BIOS settings policy, the ability to load BIOS settings for host emulation, and a translated title and long description for HSI security attributes.

• Today I tagged fwupd 1.8.4 which adds a few nice features and bug fixes. One specific enhancement I wanted to shout about is that we’re now supplying translated summary, description text and suggested actions for each HSI security failure. Two of the most common criticisms of the new GNOME security panel were “but what does it mean” and also “and what should I do” which ironically were fixed long before all the hubbub erupted. If you want to see both new bits of data then make sure you’re using gnome-control-center from the main branch and then install the new fwupd version – although if you’re stuck on a distro version of fwupd GNOME will still fallback to the single-line summary line as before.

Instructionals/Technical

• Hello Linux gamers! Today I came up with an useful tip for you all. In this guide, we will see what is GameReady, how to install WINE, Winetricks, Lutris, GameMode and more using GameReady in Ubuntu and its derivatives!

• Xfce is a popular lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It is designed to be fast and light on the utilization of system resources such as memory and CPU. In doing so, Xfce provides optimal performance and is usually recommended for old computers and PCs with low resource specifications.

• At the time of writing this guide, the latest version of Xfce is Xfce 4.16. It is written in C (GTK) and was released on December 22, 2020.

• Consider a scenario, you have finally managed to create and host your first web app under a Linux system and you wanted your web app to lure continuous user traffic, you beautified it with some custom images of which you have full copyright.

• However, while comparing different web apps with a similar spectrum to yours, you discover your custom images are being used without your consent. These secondary sites are using your images’ direct link to display them on their platforms. Each time your web app loads, your custom images also load on their web app platforms.

• This issue is called image hotlinking and it’s quite difficult to link it to copyright violation since these platforms are only mirroring your images. If you are lucky enough to be using Nginx as your primary web server, we can find a workaround for this issue.

• This tutorial explains the horizontal variant of vlookup formula, called HLOOKUP, on LibreOffice Calc. We will learn first about data transposing, then manipulating it with the formula. As a reminder, if you haven’t followed this LibreOffice Calc series, read the first and second parts here. Now let’s try.

• Lately, I’ve been looking at how Groovy streamlines Java. In this series, I’m developing several scripts to help in cleaning up my music collection. In my last article, I used the framework developed previously to create a list of unique file names and counts of occurrences of those file names in the music collection directory. I then used the Linux find command to get rid of files I didn’t want.

• In this article, I demonstrate a Groovy script to clean up the motley assembly of tag fields.

• WARNING: This script alters music tags, so it is vital that you make a backup of the music collection you test your code on.

• When someone needs to share their screen with you, or you need to share your screen with someone else, you have several options to choose from. Video conferencing software, like the open source Jitsi web app, and while we call that “screen sharing,” it’s really presenting. You’re presenting your screen to others, but they can’t interact with it. Sometimes you actually want to share your screen and your mouse cursor with a trusted friend or colleague, and the tool for that is VNC (Virtual Network Computing), and it’s built into your Linux desktop.

• In any screen sharing scenario, there are two computers and possibly two users. For that reason, this article has two parts. The first part is for the person setting up their computer to accept screen sharing requests, and the second part is for the person trying to connect to someone else’s screen.

• If you’re a Linux Mint fan and want to know how to install the latest version of Linux Mint with manual partitions, this is the guide for you. Follow along as we go over how to set up Linux Mint 21 with manual partitioning.

• Please note that to install Linux Mint 21, you will need a computer with at least two cores and 2-4 GB of RAM. You’ll also need a removable USB flash drive.

• GTFO is a survival horror FPS video game that is played cooperatively. It was developed and published by developer 10 Chambers and released on Microsoft Windows. Here’s how you can play GTFO on Linux.

• Halo: Spartan Strike is a twin-stick shooter game set in the Halo video game universe. It is the sequel to Halo: Spartan Assault. It was released on April 16, 2015, on Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone, and iOS. However, you can play it on your Linux PC with a few tweaks.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• Often I think that we have sufficient Linux distros already. The count is nearing thousands, and fragmentation is at its peak. That is not good for quality software, especially in the open-source space.

• There is always a distro available for every use case you can think of.

• But Arch Linux is one of the sectors, it’s still emerging – just because of its debatable complex installation methods. That’s why most of the emerging Arch Linux distributions (such as Xero Linux, Hefftor Linux, Mabox, etc.) try to invent something unique in installation and other areas.

• Crystal Linux is one of those distros with a different take on installation while being super user-friendly.

• Whether you’re a Windows user looking to try out Linux or a seasoned user searching for new distros to experiment with, Linux on VirtualBox is a very convenient way to make the switch.

• With hundreds of distros to choose from, though, picking the best Linux for VirtualBox is a common problem that many users encounter.

• The short answer to this dilemma is very simple – pick whichever you prefer. For most users, pretty much any distro will be able to fulfill their general needs.

• But at the same time, it’s also true that certain distros are better suited for certain use cases, like Ubuntu or Fedora for beginners or Kali for pen-testing and security purposes.

• Depending on what you’re looking for in a distro, you should have a better idea of what Linux distro best suits your needs after reading this article.

Screenshots/Screencasts

Fedora Family / IBM

• For a systems administrator, it seems like every project brings new complexity, more servers, and more sprawl to manage. I will assume that your messes are a lot like mine: On one server, you’re running CentOS Linux 7 from a project several years ago. Over here, you have a handful of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 servers from a recent project. Over there, you have an Oracle RAC database running on Oracle Linux 8.

• Once you’ve written your first container-based application and have it running in Docker or Podman, you’re ready to move to the next level. That means multiple applications—microservices—running within a managed environment. Kubernetes, an open source container orchestration platform, is just such an environment, and by far the most popular one at that. Let’s consider it from a developer’s perspective.

• When cloud computing came onto the scene, one fairly popular view was that it would subsume all computing. A common analogy was the electric grid which (at the time) had largely done away with distributed local power generation.

• But there are many reasons why public clouds can’t always substitute for on-prem hardware. In the case of edge computing specifically, it’s often desirable to push compute closer to the collection of data and the use of that data.

• This has become important as machine learning is increasingly used to automate local operations in time-critical situations. Furthermore, taking action locally is often not only faster, but it can be more resilient in the face of connectivity outages than always being dependent on a central site.

• However, implementing an edge architecture isn’t always straightforward. Here are four principles to consider as you take your business out to the edge of the network.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Ubuntu’s special distro for the Chinese market has a widening edge over the company’s more conventional flavors.

• Ubuntu 22.04.1 appeared earlier this month, and along with the other flavors of Ubuntu, that means a new release of Ubuntu Kylin too. We looked at its resource usage alongside two other desktops, but Ubuntu Kylin is more than just another desktop on top of the same base OS.

Devices/Embedded

• The Allwinner H616 is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with a maximum frequency of 1.5GHz. The System on Chip (SoC) also integrates the ARM Mali-T720 GPU which is compatible with OpenGL ES1.0/2.0/3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0

• The MQ-Quad comes with up to 1GB of DDR3L RAM and it also offers a Micro SD Card slot located on top of the board.

• For wireless connectivity, the device is enabled with the RTL8723DS module to support Bluetooth 4.2 as well as 802.11BGN Wi-Fi 4. The display interface consists of a mini HDMI 2.0a port with [email protected] resolution.

• Microchip’s PolarFire SoC family of chips has something of a split-personality: there’s the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) side of the chips, and there’s the RISC-V processing side, which turns it into a fully-fledged system-on-chip.

• While both halves work in tandem, giving you to ability to run an operating system or bare-metal program on the same chip you’ve programmed for a task-specific workload, there’s another way to split the resources: asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP), which carves out chunks of the chip to turn it into two distinct but interconnected devices — for some use cases effectively cutting the bill of materials in half.

• It’s this peculiar feature of the PolarFire SoC range we’re investigating this month, as we continue our deep dive into the PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit development board and its multifarious capabilities.

• We’ve seen plenty of ESP32 LoRa boards with the traditional 433 MHz, 868 MHz, or 915MHz frequencies, but I think LilyGO LoRa V1.8 (aka T3 V1.8) is the first ESP32 board that integrates a Semtech SX1280 transceiver for the 2.4GHz LoRa standard used for global coverage, notably maritime applications, and ranging.

• The ESP32 & SX1280 board also offers 26 pins for expansion, a microSD card for data storage, a 2-pin connector for batteries, a 0.96-inch OLED for information display, and comes with a 3D antenna and u.FL connector for WiFi and Bluetooth, and an SMA antenna for LoRa connectivity.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• In this competitive era, you must invest an extended amount of time to create a remark on your workability and efficiency. That means spending more time on your office desk. Well, there is an escape, and I am talking about some of the most expedient officer apps for Android.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Sidekick is a live application debugger, meaning it lets developers know about bugs and issues in their applications in real-time. It was primarily a paid tool for the job, with a 14-day trial plan to test it out.

• So, if you were hesitating to pay for the tool as a subscription, you can now self-host it and use it for free as per your requirements.

• When it comes to managing the library, the library management software can make a world of difference. It can break or make your digital library management experience.

• And, with open-source library management software, an organization/library can save investment costs, have better privacy, and have more flexibility without any vendor lock-ins.

• So, I came up with the compilation of open-source library management software to provide you with some good options to help manage your digital library. You can use some tools for personal use-case, but many of them are geared toward public libraries.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

• While we employ built-in server caching which creates static versions of the site, we don’t generate a full, static HTML website based on raw data and a set of templates. However, sometimes a full, static HTML website is desirable. Because HTML pages are all prebuilt, they load extremely quickly in web browsers.

• There are lots of other advantages of running a full, static HTML website.

Programming/Development

• Software developers are releasing code faster than ever, according to the recent GitLab 2022 Global DevSecOps Survey, with 47% of developers citing DevOps or DevSecOps as their development methodology of choice

• According to the survey, 70% of teams surveyed said they release code “continuously, once a day, or every few days,” which is an increase of 11% from 2021. Additionally, “35% said they’re releasing code twice as fast, while 15% are releasing code between three and five times faster, and 8% said the code is flying out the door more than five times faster.”

• Hooks in Git are executable scripts that are triggered when certain events happen in Git. It’s a way to customize Git’s internal behaviour, automate tasks, enforce policies, and bring consistency across the team.

• For example, hooks can check that passwords or access tokens are not committed, validate that commit messages conform to an agreed format, prevent unauthorized developers from pushing to a branch, update local directories after a checkout, and so on.

• Git supports both client-side and server-side hooks. Hooks can be written in any programming language though it’s common to use Bash, Perl, Python or Ruby.

Leftovers

Proprietary

• Microsoft Azure customers are experiencing issues on Ubuntu 18.04 virtual machines.

• The cloud company said that users are experiencing DNS errors when trying to access resources, with the issue impacting customers around the globe.

• Responding to a three-year-old complaint, Microsoft today said that it would fix its unfair licensing terms in the EU. “We recognize the importance of a competitive environment in the European cloud provider market, in which smaller competitors can thrive,” a new post to the Microsoft Corporate Blogs notes. “It is therefore critical for us to remain mindful of our responsibilities as a major technology company.”

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

• In its lawsuit, the FTC describes how with a sample of data obtained from Kochava it was possible to pinpoint a device that visited a women’s reproductive health clinic and then trace that phone back to a single family home.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• I’ve been revamping my writing workflow, and took advantage of the opportunity to count the number of words I write daily.

• These word coutns are rounded daily averages of writing over the last month (since August 1st).

Technical

• i’ve recently had something of a Knuth moment, resulting in me writing a small POSIX shell script for generating an EPUB.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.