October 2017 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Endless OS Is First Linux Distro to Support Flatpak Apps from Flathub by Default
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '17

13 Oct '17

'Flatpak has been around for some time now, and it's gaining more and more popularity among GNU/Linux distributions. Endless OS is the latest to announce that it brings support for Flatpak apps, though it's the first to offer support for this universal binary format directly from the Flathub repository, by default. Last month, the Flatpak developers over at Red Hat announced that their Flathub software repository received a modern, web-based frontend, which allows users to easily browse all available Flatpak apps at a glance, and developers to add their own Flatpaks to the list of more than 100 apps.' -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/endless-os-is-first-linux-distro-to-enable-s… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Purism Linux smartphone makes its $1.5 million crowdfunding goal
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

'Hundreds of millions are happy with Android smartphones and iPhones. But there are some users who want the maximum possible control over their smartphones. For those people, Purism now has the funding it needs for its free-software smartphone without a trace of proprietary code or firmware: The Purism Librem 5 smartphone. At first, it appeared Purism wouldn't make its $1.5-million goal. The Librem 5 crowdfunding campaign staggered forward at first. Them, when KDE and then GNOME threw their support behind the project, the project picked up steam.' -- source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/purism-linux-smartphone-makes-its-1-5-million-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 2

How to test internet speed in Linux terminal
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

'Most of us check the internet bandwidth speed whenever we connect to new network or wifi. So why not our servers! Here is a tutorial which will walk you through to test internet speed in Linux terminal. Everyone of us generally uses Speedtest by Ookla to check internet speed. Its pretty simple process for a desktop. Goto their website and just click GO button. It will scans your location and speed test with nearest server. If you are on mobile, they have their app for you. But if you are on terminal with command line interface things are little different. Lets see how to check internet speed from Linux terminal.' -- source: https://kerneltalks.com/tips-tricks/how-to-test-internet-speed-in-linux-ter… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Europe pledges support for open source government solutions
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

'Estonia has long been the digital envy of many European Union member states. An effective and open policy approach to digital government has yielded extraordinary results—from 90%+ uptake of electronic identification (E-ID) solutions to an open source e-government platform (X-Road) to meet the ever-growing expectations of IT-savvy citizens as well as other countries wanting to pool IT across borders. It was thus fitting that Estonia, the current EU presidency, brought together Ministers from 32 countries (under the umbrellas of the EU and European Free Trade Association) to adopt the Tallinn Declaration on E-Government, creating a renewed political dynamism coupled with legal tools to accelerate the implementation of a range of existing EU policy instruments (e.g., the e-Government Action Plan and ISA² program). Perhaps the most significant development for open source supporters is the explicit recognition of open source software (OSS) as a key driver towards achieving ambitious governmental digitisation goals by 2020.' -- source: https://opensource.com/article/17/10/eu-open-source Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

How to Enable Fractional Scaling in Gnome
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

'Fractional scaling is practically necessary if you’re running a HiDPI display, and you want your desktop to scale uniformly to match your display. It’s always been an issue on Linux, but the latest version of the GNOME desktop has implemented a true fractional scaling feature to keep your desktop looking good. Even though GNOME 3.26 does have fractional scaling support, it wasn’t mature enough to make the release. As a result, it’s still a testing feature that you need to enable yourself.' -- source: https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-fractional-scaling-gnome/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Sonos Speakers: Refuse Updates, They Stop Working
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Oct '17

12 Oct '17

In August, when wireless speaker maker Sonos decided to update its privacy policy to allow it to gather more data on its customers from their devices, it characterized the consequences of refusing to accept the change as being left out of future feature upgrades. ... "If you choose not to provide the functional data, you won't be able to receive software updates," a Sonos spokesperson explained at the time. "It's not like if you don't accept it, we'd be shutting down your device or intentionally bricking it." ... However, the [spokesperson] acknowledged that a few people who have updated their apps, manually or through automatic updates, have ended up with software on their handsets that isn't compatible with their firmware – which did not update because they would not accept the privacy policy change. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/11/sonos_privacy_speakers/>

1 0

Adventures In E-Mail
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

I am currently messing about with a virtual private server at Rimu Hosting, with a view to have it take over my e-mail serving after Vodafone turns off its provision of that service. Eventually I will have an MX record for my domain pointing at that server, so it will receive all e-mail addressed to me. Next part is, I want to periodically suck all that mail back to my main office machine. Currently I have a cron task that periodically connects to Vodafone’s POP server, fetches all the mail, and delivers it locally. When I try to do the same thing with the VPS, my local Postfix bounces the attempt at local delivery, saying something like <user(a)domain> (expanded from <user>): mail forwarding loop for user(a)domain A bit of hunting around online found this <http://postfix.1071664.n5.nabble.com/What-is-causing-this-mail-forwarding-l…> likely discussion, where the problem seems to be that the incoming message already has a “Delivered-To:” header pointing at my e-mail address, so Postfix concludes that the message is stuck in a forwarding loop, and refuses to pass it on. The exchange ends with this response from Wietse Venema, “Mr Postfix” himself: You can use header_checks to remove the problem header, but I will not help with implementing such iodiocy. Hmm, looking at the local(8) man page, it says In order to stop mail forwarding loops early, the software adds an optional Delivered-To: header with the final envelope recipient address. If mail arrives for a recipient that is already listed in a Delivered-To: header, the message is bounced. The key being that word “optional”. So it looks like I simply have to disable the addition of “Delivered-To:” on the VPS. Stay tuned.

2 3

OpenBSD 6.2 Released
by Peter Reutemann 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

'OpenBSD 6.2 has now been released. Some of the new features and systems include improved hardware support, vmm(4)/ vmd(8) improvements, IEEE 802.11 wireless stack improvements, generic network stack improvements, installer improvements, routing daemons and other userland network improvements, security improvements and more.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/10/09/2029219 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor
by Peter Reutemann 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

'"SiFive has declared that 2018 will be the year of RISC V Linux processors," writes Design News. An anonymous reader quotes their report: When it released its first open-source system on a chip, the Freeform Everywhere 310, last year, Silicon Valley startup SiFive was aiming to push the RISC-V architecture to transform the hardware industry in the way that Linux transformed the software industry. Now the company has delivered further on that promise with the release of the U54-MC Coreplex, the first RISC-V-based chip that supports Linux, Unix, and FreeBSD... This latest development has RISC-V enthusiasts particularly excited because now it opens up a whole new world of use cases for the architecture and paves the way for RISC-V processors to compete with ARM cores and similar offerings in the enterprise and consumer space... "The U54 Coreplexes are great for companies looking to build SoC's around RISC-V," Andrew Waterman co-founder and chief engineer at SiFive, as well as the one of the co-creators of RISC-V, told Design News. "The forthcoming silicon is going to enable much better software development for RISC-V." Waterman said that, while SiFive had developed low-level software such as compilers for RISC-V the company really hopes that the open-source community will be taking a much broader role going forward and really pushing the technology forward. "No matter how big of a role we would want to have we can't make a dent," Waterman said. "But what we can do is make sure the army of engineers out there are empowered." ' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/10/09/0019212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Review by many eyes does not always prevent buggy code
by Peter Reutemann 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

'There is a view that because open source software is subject to review by many eyes, all the bugs will be ironed out of it. This is a myth.' -- source: https://opensource.com/article/17/10/many-eyes Even if a project has many contributors, you will get a lot of contributors in areas that are easy to contribute in (eg spelling, expanding documentation, simple additions) and hardly anyone in the difficult areas. The less contributors in an area, the less likely they will overlap and therefore the less code review will happen. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 8