April 2024 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

EndeavourOS Bids Farewell to ARM Branch
by Peter Reutemann 10 Apr '24

10 Apr '24

'In a heartfelt announcement today, Bryan Poerwo, founder and project leader of EndeavourOS, marked the end of its ARM product branch. This project has been part of the EndeavourOS journey since its inception from the remnants of Antergos in 2019. The initiative, which began with the help of a passionate community member known as Pudge, later a leading figure of the EndeavourOS ARM team, aimed to extend the reach of EndeavourOS to ARM devices such as the ODROID N2, ODROID XU4, and Raspberry Pi 4. Over nearly five years, EndeavourOS ARM flourished, witnessing additions like support for the PineBook Pro and Raspberry Pi 5 and implementing a Calamares install option alongside the original scripts. However, the journey was challenging. The rapid advancement of Linux and desktop environments on x86_64 devices contrasted sharply with the slower pace of development in the ARM landscape, presenting a series of obstacles that tested the resolve of the project’s pioneers. The widening gap between ARM and x86_64 architectures, reduced external support, and personal transitions in hardware preferences led to a heartfelt decision to conclude the EndeavourOS ARM project. But not all is lost. As the project ends, the community remains hopeful, inviting anyone willing to carry the torch forward. The project’s GitHub repository continues to be available, serving as a foundation for future endeavors in the ARM Linux space.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/endeavouros-bids-farewell-to-arm-branch/ Cheers, Peter

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TrueNAS Moving From FreeBSD To Debian
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Apr '24

09 Apr '24

TrueNAS, makers of a turnkey system installation designed for NAS servers, announced close to a month ago that they were changing the emphasis in their product development from “TrueNAS CORE” (which is FreeBSD-based) to “TrueNAS SCALE” (which is Linux-based, specifically Debian-based) <https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/18/truenas_abandons_freebsd/>. This article <https://blocksandfiles.com/2024/04/08/ixsystems-no-one-is-getting-marooned/> gives some more background on the move: Kris Moore, SVP for engineering, told us: “Upstream has shifted. So first of all, ZFS, that’s kind of the heart and soul of TrueNAS and was for FreeNAS as well. Most of that [development] work takes place on Linux these days; features testing, all that happens on Linux. FreeBSD is the thing you port to and you’re done. So that momentum has moved.” ... “We had a huge chunk of our engineering staff spending time improving FreeBSD as opposed to working on features and functionalities. What’s happened now with the transition to having a Debian basis, the people I used to have 90 percent of their time working on FreeBSD, they’re working on ZFS features now … That’s what I want to see; value add for everybody versus sitting around, implementing something Linux had a years ago.” The irony in that is, ZFS was deliberately released by Sun (now Oracle) under a licence that is designed to be incompatible with the GPL that covers the Linux kernel. If you want to argue otherwise, consider that Oracle still refuses to include ZFS with its own Linux distro, preferring to offer you btrfs instead. Of course, you could also view that as a sign of a lack of confidence in its own home-grown filesystem ...

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MIT License text becomes viral “sad girl” piano ballad generated by AI
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '24

09 Apr '24

'We've come a long way since primitive AI music generators in 2022. Today, AI tools like Suno.ai allow any series of words to become song lyrics, including inside jokes (as you'll see below). On Wednesday, prompt engineer Riley Goodside tweeted an AI-generated song created with the prompt "sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License," and it began to circulate widely in the AI community online.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/mit-license-text-bec… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

''Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice. As spotted by The Document Foundation, the government has apparently finished its pilot run of LibreOffice and is now announcing plans to expand to more open source offerings. In 2021, the state government announced plans to move 25,000 computers to LibreOffice by 2026. At the time, Schleswig-Holstein said it had already been testing LibreOffice for two years. -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-dit… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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OpenBSD 7.5 Released
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '24

08 Apr '24

'Slashdot reader Mononymous writes: The latest release of OpenBSD, the FOSS Unix-like operating system focused on correctness and security over features and performance, has been released. This version includes newer driver support, performance improvements, stability fixes, and lots of package updates. One highlight is a complete port of KDE Plasma 5. You can view the announcement and get the bits at OpenBSD.org. Phoronix reports that with OpenBSD 7.5 "there is a number of improvements for ARM (AArch64) hardware, never-ending kernel optimizations and other tuning work, countless package updates, and other adjustments to this popular BSD platform."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/06/0519207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ Mobile +64 22 190 2375 https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Tip For Repairing Ancient Linux Installations
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Apr '24

02 Apr '24

Here’s the scenario: there is a malfunctioning server running a really ancient Linux installation (e.g. 2.6.x-series kernel). You boot up with a reasonably recent copy of SystemRescue, mount the machine’s filesystem, try to chroot into it and run a shell ... and it segfaults. Seems there has been a subtle incompatible change in Linux kernel behaviour since those times, to do with the disabling of something called the “vsyscall” mechanism (which is specific to 64-bit x86-based machines, I understand). This was supposed to be a way to speed up certain commonly-executed system calls (I think getting the system time was one of them) by allowing direct transfers to certain entry points with fixed memory addresses for invoking them. It was later decided this was a bad idea (I think for security reasons). The mechanism has not been completely removed (yet), but nowadays it is disabled by default. To get around this, you need to boot SystemRescue with a change to the kernel command-line parameters, adding this item vsyscall=emulate After you get to a shell, you can confirm that this setting is in effect by checking the /proc/self/maps file (the memory mappings for your own process). At the bottom, there should be an entry with “[vdso]” in it, and below that another line with “[vsyscall]”. The presence of the latter line indicates that vsyscall emulation is in effect. This is not present when I check a process on my own machine, for example. Linus is legendary for being a stickler for never, ever breaking backward compatibility for userland. So the reasons for turning this off must have been pretty compelling, for him to agree to it. But the compromise is, it’s still there to be enabled if you really, really need it. There’s a bit more technical info here <https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/SysCall/linux-syscall-3.html>, if you are interested. By the way, the above page is part of a book beginning here <https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/>, about the insides of the Linux kernel. The whole book seems to be accessible from that link, but if you step up a level, the site doesn’t seem to have any idea about the existence of that book.

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