August 2020 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Chrome and Edge Rise In Popularity. Firefox, Opera, and Safari Drop.
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '20

04 Aug '20

'July's statistics from web analytics firm Net Applications showed continuing changes in the most frequently-used web browsers. Softpedia reports: Last month, Google Chrome increased its market share from 70.19% to 71.00%, while Microsoft Edge jumped from 8.07% to 8.46%... The migration to the Chromium engine allowed Microsoft to turn Edge into a cross-platform browser, and this is one of the reasons that contributed to the growth of the new app. Edge is now available not only on Windows 10, but also on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and even macOS. At the same time, Microsoft is also working on a Linux version of the browser, and a preview build is expected by the end of the year. But what made Microsoft Edge the second most-used desktop browser out there so fast after the switch to Chromium is definitely Microsoft offering it as the default browser in Windows 10. But what about Firefox? And Opera, and Apple's Safari? Computerworld reports: A decade ago, Mozilla's browser may have dreamed of upsetting the then-order of things, taking its April 2010 share of 25.1% and parlaying it into victory over IE — down to 61.2% by then... But that was Firefox's peak. At the end of July, Firefox stood at 7.3%, down three-tenths of a percentage point from the previous month... Firefox let its second-place spot (far, far behind Chrome) slip away in March, when Edge snatched it. That did not change in July. The gap between the two more than doubled, in fact, to 1.2 points. On almost every browser share metric, Firefox is in trouble... Since the end of January, Firefox has been stuck in the 7s; for the eight months before that, it was mired in the 8s; and between May 2018 and March 2019, Firefox floundered in the 9s. The trend is crystal clear... Elsewhere in Net Applications' numbers, Apple's Safari plunged to 3%, a loss of six-tenths of a point, its lowest mark since late 2008. Opera software's Opera also took a dive, ending July at 0.8%, a decline of three-tenths of a point. Those numbers have to be frightening to both those browsers' makers.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/08/03/028217 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/

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Package management mistake borking some Ubuntu machines running WireGuard
by Eric Light 04 Aug '20

04 Aug '20

Morning folks! For those who watch WireGuard, Jason Donenfeld is giving the Canonical kernel team a damn roasting after they bungled a Provides statement in about half of their Linux kernel manifests... which borks certain systems running WireGuard. For example, systems with the linux-image-oem kernel will try to install the linux-image-gke kernel (meant for the Google Kubernetes Engine), in order to receive the wireguard-modules package, leading to Proper Breakage. Donenfeld: "I'll note that this is at least the third time Canonical has forgotten the "Provides:" line for kernel packages. I'd highly recommend they put some time into double checking their procedures. [...] Usually things go quite a bit better with the WireGuard side of things, but this seems pretty par for the course with _Ubuntu_ and Canonical's kernel team. We've had perpetual issues over the last 6 months with getting Canonical to release high quality packages in a timely manner. A pretty large portion of my time is spent dealing with these bugs and Ubuntu in general." Looks like Canonical's kernel packaging team are already working on it, after Jason Donenfeld escalated a bug report earlier this morning. E -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es

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Red Hat Security Update Renders Systems Unbootable
by Peter Reutemann 04 Aug '20

04 Aug '20

'A recently released Red Hat update for the BootHole Vulnerability (firehose link) is causing systems to become unbootable. It is widely reported that updates to the shim, grub2 and kernel packages in RHEL and CentOS 7 and 8 are leaving various systems that use secure boot unbootable. Current recommendations are to avoid updating your system until the issue is resolved, or at least avoid updating the shim, grub2 and kernel packages. Update, shared by PAjamian: Red Hat is now recommending that users do not apply grub2, fwupd, fwupdate or shim updates until new packages are available.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/07/31/158212 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/

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O/T: Waikato-based laptop repairer
by David McNab 01 Aug '20

01 Aug '20

Hi all, Apologies for being slightly off-topic. Does anyone know of a computer repairer in/around Hamilton, who can do board-level troubleshooting and repair on laptops, without having to "send it to Auckland"? I've got a Gigabyte i7 laptop which became unable to charge its battery a couple of years ago. I was able to run it plugged into the mains since then. But just now, it won't even start up at all. I'd like someone to do some quick tests to determine if it's a feasible repair and, if so, give a cost estimate. Oh, but it was running Ubuntu, so not completely off-topic ;) All suggestions appreciated Cheers David

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