June 2024 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Weta Digital’s Technology Division Sold To US Firm
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

Let me see if I understand this article <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sir-peter-jackson-to-sell-weta-digital-…> correctly: the part of Weta Digital that used to develop the in-house 3D graphics/effects tools that they use in all those movies is being sold to US-based Unity Software. The part that is left will be called “WetaFX”, and will become a customer of Unity for the use of those tools, no longer doing its own development in-house. By the way, I’ve been looking at the Unity site <https://unity.com/>, and it looks like all their products are rentware (subscription-based).

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New systemd update will bring Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death to Linux
by Peter Reutemann 18 Nov '24

18 Nov '24

'Windows' infamous "Blue Screen of Death" is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD. But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes. The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/linux-distros-are-about-to-get-a-ki… 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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Juice TV Hiccup
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Oct '24

15 Oct '24

Currently when I switch to FreeView Channel 200, it shows a frozen image with the text “Cinegy” and “Demo Version” on it. Searching for that name takes me to a site that talks about “software defined television”. Either their product licence has expired, or they never had one in the first place ...

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List Of IPTV Resources
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Sep '24

22 Sep '24

This user <https://github.com/iptv-org> just popped up in my GitHub feed. One repo <https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv> claims to be a list of links to over 8000 streaming TV channels from nations all over the world, while the other is a list of tools*, providers and other resources. Do be aware it’s a bit of a mixed bag: yes, there are legitimate channels (no encryption so far that I have noticed), but also some dubious-looking links. *Oddly, FFmpeg and youtube-dl aren’t in the list.

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Made Move To Wayland
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Jul '24

01 Jul '24

I’d been running Wayland OK on my laptop for some months now, but I held off putting it on my main machine for one reason: when I logged into a Wayland session, Emacs would not recognize my Compose key (which I have set to Caps Lock). Today I finally figured out I have to install the “emacs-pgtk” package instead of “emacs-gtk”; the former is built with a version of GTK that works with Wayland. And yes, my Compose key works again. Still have to get used to slightly different input behaviour: previously, once I hit Compose, nothing would appear until I finished the whole key sequence. Now it echoes each keystroke immediately as I type it, in place, overwriting the previous echo (starting with an underline for the Compose key itself), then when I have typed the last key, it overwrites the echo area with the final character.

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From Jupyter To JupyterLab
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Jun '24

28 Jun '24

I’ve been using Jupyter <https://jupyter.org/> as a convenient basis for “scratchpad” programming (not just in Python, but also some other languages) for a while now. I had heard about this next-generation “JupyterLab” thing they were working on, but always held off trying it out. Then I did my usual monthly upgrade of Debian Unstable on my main machine a few days ago, and this time my Jupyter installation broke. So I updated my wrapper scripts for building Jupyter from source, to check out more recent versions of all the necessary components. Got the build done, started it up, and ... it seems my Jupyter has turned into JupyterLab. Yup, it has a new interface now. The file-manager display no longer seems to open things with a single click; that now only selects items, and you then have to perform an action (like open a notebook) from a right-click menu. And there is no “open in new tab/window” menu item; creating a new tab always happens when opening a notebook, while opening a subfolder always replaces the current tab contents. I used to be able to middle-click on a folder to open it in a new tab, but that option is now gone. There is an option in the right-click menu to “Copy Shareable Link”. When you do this on a notebook or folder and paste the result into the address bar, it opens the item in what I can only call “lab” mode. The window now has three panes, with the middle one an editor-type display, for viewing/editing notebook contents and other document content. The left-hand pane can show various things, selected by clicking one of the icons in its leftmost margin: it can show folder contents, or the table of contents of the current notebook, or a summary of open notebooks, running processes etc. And in the right-hand pane, there are various kinds of “tools” (for debugging, inspection etc) that only seem to appear when viewing notebook content. Ah, discovered how to control the visibility of this “tool” pane: it has two icons for selecting the two different categories of this it can display. But if you click the icon for the section that is already showing, the whole pane shrinks down to a narrow strip just showing the icons. Click again to expand the pane, of course. Further ah, same thing happens with the left-hand pane: click the icon for the section that’s already showing, and that pane too shrinks down. Hiding both the left- and right-hand panes brings you almost back to the old-style minimal-frills notebook/document display, except it only takes a click to bring one of those extras back. The middle pane has its own tab system, to let you have multiple documents open at once. You can drag its internal tabs around to tile them vertically or horizontally. And you can just drag a document to here from the folder display on the left to open it. Click on the document tab header, and that item opens in a separate browser window/tab. If nothing is open here it defaults to showing a “Launcher” tab, with icons for creating notebooks, opening terminal sessions, and creating other document types. The “lab” mode is activated by having an extra “/lab” part in the URL; if you remove this, it reverts to the old-style view of a single folder or notebook. Another thing that has changed is the way notebooks are saved. Previously, there was a menu option to “save and checkpoint” (with no option to do a manual save without checkpointing). And I found that if you tried to close the view of a modified notebook, it would ask to confirm you wanted to close the tab/window, but regardless of which you selected, the notebook would still be saved back to the file. Now that confirm-close trick no longer does saving; you have to explicitly select Save from the File menu, or hit CTRL/S. Checkpointing might still happen automatically as part of autosaving; I can’t find a menu option for explicitly creating a checkpoint, only for restoring from one. So anyway, a lot of intriguing new stuff in there to discover. If you like experimenting with code (as I do), Jupyter can be a great way to do it.

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Superfile: A Modern Terminal File Manager for Linux and macOS
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jun '24

20 Jun '24

'Superfile is a modern terminal file manager that recently caught my attention; it’s not only easy to use but is very user-friendly compared to its alternatives, such as Ranger, MC, or nnn. It allows you to create files and directories, view (process, metadata, clipboard), provide a navigation pane, create multiple panels to work in two separate directories, support plugins, offer a variety of themes, and much more. The project is new, so there have been active updates every week, allowing you to see new features quickly. I’ve also been using it for a few days, and honestly, one key factor in using DE in Linux for me was its easy-to-use file manager, but with Superfile, there’s no need for that now.' -- source: https://linuxtldr.com/installing-superfile/ I've used mc in the past, being familiar with norton commander, but I might give Superfile a go in the future. Cheers, Peter

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systemd-tmpfiles, deleting /home
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

Saw this on my mastodon feed: 'TIL (thankfully second hand) that running "systemd-tmpfiles --purge" will delete /home in systemd 256 [1]. Apparently if you think linux is mainly for running cloud services, this seems reasonable to you. Or something. [1] tested with systemd-tmpfiles --dry-run --purge on debian. I guess it _could_ be a Debian addition, but I'm guessing not.' -- source: https://mathstodon.xyz/@bremner/112615591101488528 Anyone keen on giving it a go??? :-) Cheers, Peter

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DietPi Released a New Version 9.5
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

Just saw these release notes come across my feed: https://dietpi.com/docs/releases/v9_5/ Since I'd never heard of DiePi before: 'DietPi is a highly optimised & minimal Debian-based Linux distribution. DietPi is extremely lightweight at its core, and also extremely easy to install and use. Setting up a single board computer (SBC) or even a computer, for both regular or server use, takes time and skill. DietPi provides an easy way to install and run favourite software you choose.' -- source: https://dietpi.com/docs/ And it supports a range of boards: https://dietpi.com/docs/hardware/ RPis, Odroid, Pine64, Radxa, Sparky, ASUS Tinker board, NanoPi, Orange Pi Cheers, Peter

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KDE Plasma 6.1 Released
by Peter Reutemann 19 Jun '24

19 Jun '24

'"The KDE community announced the latest release of their popular desktop environment: Plasma 6.1," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. From the announcement: While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct, Plasma 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level. In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too). Among some of the new features in this release you will find improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server, overhauled and streamlined desktop edit mode, restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland, synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color, making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it, edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edges between screens), explicit sync support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland, and triple buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/18/2050203 Cheers, Peter

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