August 2024 - wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

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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Floorp browser
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Hi everyone Just came across the Floorp browser, which is based on Firefox. Refreshing news, as most new browsers nowadays seem to be Chromium-based... 'Floorp, an amazing free and open-source browser backed by a Japanese company, has gained quite a bit of attention recently for offering data and privacy protection, including high customization options such as Vivaldi in relation to Chrome. The browser's performance was quite fascinating, as it was able to achieve 60% more speed compared to Firefox when tested with Speedometer and JetStream 2 benchmarking tools. If your current browser is Firefox and you love to tweak your browser, then I highly recommend you give it a try. The following is a list of data privacy and customization options offered by Floorp: - An option to enable strong fingerprints, disabling WebGL, and HTTPs for every site is available. - Open the link, image, and media in a new tab and immediately move to it. - Provide a vertical tab on the right side of the browser to quickly open certain sites or browser settings. - Built-in option to change between different user agents. - Offers a preset of 80 keyboard shortcuts for different browser actions. - It comes with Floorp Notes Sync, similar to Vivialdi, to keep your notes. - Integrated with Firefox sync to synchronize your browser bookmarks, cookies, logins, open tabs, etc.' -- source: https://ubuntushell.com/install-floorp/ -- project: https://floorp.app/ Cheers, Peter

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Linux 6.12 To Optionally Display A QR Code During Kernel Panics
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '24

31 Aug '24

'A new feature has been submitted for inclusion in Linux 6.12, allowing the display of a QR code when a kernel panic occurs using the DRM Panic handler. This QR code can capture detailed error information that is often missed in traditional text-based panic messages, making it more user-friendly. The feature, written in Rust, is optional and can be enabled via a specific build switch. This implementation follows similar ideas from other operating systems and earlier discussions in the Linux community.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/1856206 Cheers, Peter

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Malware Infiltrates Pidgin Messenger's Official Plugin Repository
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '24

31 Aug '24

'The Pidgin messaging app removed the ScreenShareOTR plugin from its third-party plugin list after it was found to be used to install keyloggers, information stealers, and malware targeting corporate networks. BleepingComputer reports: The plugin was promoted as a screen-sharing tool for secure Off-The-Record (OTR) protocol and was available for both Windows and Linux versions of Pidgin. According to ESET, the malicious plugin was configured to infect unsuspecting users with DarkGate malware, a powerful malware threat actors use to breach networks since QBot's dismantling by the authorities. [...] Those who installed it are recommended to remove it immediately and perform a full system scan with an antivirus tool, as DarkGate may be lurking on their system. After publishing our story, Pidgin's maintainer and lead developer, Gary Kramlich, notified us on Mastodon to say that they do not keep track of how many times a plugin is installed. To prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, Pidgin announced that, from now on, it will only accept third-party plugins that have an OSI Approved Open Source License, allowing scrutiny into their code and internal functionality.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/2047211 Cheers, Peter

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$50 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 comes with a lower price and a tweaked, cheaper CPU
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '24

30 Aug '24

'We're many months past the worst of the Raspberry Pi shortages, and the board is finally widely available at its suggested retail price at most sites without wait times or quantity limitations. One sign that the Pi Foundation is feeling more confident about the stock situation: the launch of a new 2GB configuration of the Raspberry Pi 5, available starting today for $50. That's $10 less than the 4GB configuration and $30 less than the 8GB version of the board. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton writes that the 2GB version of the board includes a revised version of the Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC that is slightly cheaper to manufacture. Upton says that the D0 stepping of the BCM2712C1 strips out some "dark silicon" built-in functionality that the Pi wasn't using but was still taking up space on the silicon die and increasing the cost of the chip. "From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, [the chip] is functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; the same multimedia capabilities; and the same PCI Express bus that has proven to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform," Upton writes. "However, it is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost. And this, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, has allowed us to take $10 out of the cost of the finished product." At $50, the price tag is still north of the baseline $35 price that the Pi started at for many years. The Pi 4 had a 1GB model for $35 when it launched, and there was a $35 2GB model available for a while in 2020, but widespread shortages and supply chain issues led to a "temporary" price increase in late 2021 that is, as of this writing, still in place. At least the 2GB Pi 5 is only $5 more expensive than the 2GB version of the Pi 4, which is still in stock for $45 at many retailers.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/new-2gb-raspberry-pi-5-option-knock… Cheers, Peter

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'Uncertainty' Drives LinkedIn To Migrate From CentOS To Azure Linux
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '24

30 Aug '24

'The Register's Liam Proven reports: Microsoft's in-house professional networking site is moving to Microsoft's in-house Linux. This could mean that big changes are coming for the former CBL-Mariner distro. Ievgen Priadka's post on the LinkedIn Engineering blog, titled Navigating the transition: adopting Azure Linux as LinkedIn's operating system, is the visible sign of what we suspect has been a massive internal engineering effort. It describes some of the changes needed to migrate what the post calls "most of our fleet" from the end-of-life CentOS 7 to Microsoft Azure Linux -- the distro that grew out of and replaced its previous internal distro, CBL-Mariner. This is an important stage in a long process. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn way back in 2016. Even so, as recently as the end of last year, we reported that a move to Azure had been abandoned, which came a few months after it laid off almost 700 LinkedIn staff -- the majority in R&D. The blog post is over 3,500 words long, so there's quite a lot to chew on -- and we're certain that this has been passed through and approved by numerous marketing and management people and scoured of any potentially embarrassing admissions. Some interesting nuggets remain, though. We enjoyed the modest comment that: "However, with the shift to CentOS Stream, users felt uncertain about the project's direction and the timeline for updates. This uncertainty created some concerns about the reliability and support of CentOS as an operating system." [...] There are some interesting technical details in the post too. It seems LinkedIn is running on XFS -- also the RHEL default file system, of course -- with the notable exception of Hadoop, and so the Azure Linux team had to add XFS support. Some CentOS and actual RHEL is still used in there somewhere. That fits perfectly with using any of the RHELatives. However, the post also mentions that the team developed a tool to aid with deploying via MaaS, which it explicitly defines as Metal as a Service. MaaS is a Canonical service, although it does support other distros -- so as well as CentOS, there may have been some Ubuntu in the LinkedIn stack as well. Some details hint at what we suspect were probably major deployment headaches. [...] Some of the other information covers things the teams did not do, which is equally informative. [...] ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/24/08/28/2345255 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft Donates the Mono Project To Wine
by Peter Reutemann 28 Aug '24

28 Aug '24

'Microsoft has decided to donate the Mono Project to the developers of Wine, FOSS that allows Windows applications to run on Unix-like operating systems. "Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications," notes GameOnLinux's Liam Dawe. "It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime." "Wine already makes use of Mono and this move makes sense with Microsoft focusing on open-source .NET and other efforts," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "Formally handing over control of the upstream Mono project to WineHQ is a nice move by Microsoft rather than just letting the upstream Mono die off or otherwise forked." Microsoft's Jeff Schwartz announced the move on the Mono website and in a GitHub post: The Mono Project (mono/mono) ('original mono') has been an important part of the .NET ecosystem since it was launched in 2001. Microsoft became the steward of the Mono Project when it acquired Xamarin in 2016. The last major release of the Mono Project was in July 2019, with minor patch releases since that time. The last patch release was February 2024. We are happy to announce that the WineHQ organization will be taking over as the stewards of the Mono Project upstream at wine-mono / Mono - GitLab ( winehq.org) Source code in existing mono/mono and other repos will remain available, although repos may be archived. Binaries will remain available for up to four years. Microsoft maintains a modern fork of Mono runtime in the dotnet/runtime repo and has been progressively moving workloads to that fork. That work is now complete, and we recommend that active Mono users and maintainers of Mono-based app frameworks migrate to .NET which includes work from this fork. We want to recognize that the Mono Project was the first .NET implementation on Android, iOS, Linux, and other operating systems. The Mono Project was a trailblazer for the .NET platform across many operating systems. It helped make cross-platform .NET a reality and enabled .NET in many new places and we appreciate the work of those who came before us. Thank you to all the Mono developers!' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/27/2043216 Cheers, Peter

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OSMC Vero V
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Aug '24

28 Aug '24

Just thought I’d mention, I got one of these gadgets <https://osmc.tv/> (the latest “Vero V” model) delivered to my doorstep today. This is to replace a Western Digital “WDTV” media streamer that I got from Dick Smith over a decade ago, that I have been getting more annoyed with. The OSMC software is built on Kodi, with some extra stuff of their own. You should be able to download it and set up your own installation, I just decided to get one of their boxes preassembled and preinstalled. They’re based in the UK. That WDTV box was always fussy about the kinds of files it would play, and what codecs and what bit rates etc it could cope with. When I tried something like .flv files for example, it would play OK if I didn’t try going fast forward/reverse, otherwise it would get stuck. Certain kinds of files could screw it up so badly, the only way to recover was to turn it off and on again. This new box is built on a much more modern Linux base, so I expect its media support will be correspondingly improved. Already it has started playing a .webm file, which the old box wouldn’t even look at. If anybody is curious to know more, just ask. I see there is even an online “store” of addons I can install, for extra capabilities.

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