- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Does The TPP Allow Prohibition Of The GPL?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Nov '15

12 Nov '15

Some are suggesting that article 14.17 of the TPP, which begins “No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party...”, could be interpreted to override the requirement of the GPL to provide source code. <http://lwn.net/Articles/663817/>

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File-encrypting ransomware starts targeting Linux Web servers
by Peter Reutemann 12 Nov '15

12 Nov '15

"Malware researchers from Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web have recently discovered a new malware program for Linux-based systems that they've dubbed Linux.Encoder.1." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/security/file-encrypting-ransomware-starts-target… 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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Unhashable: Why Fingerprints Are Weaker Security Than Passwords
by Peter Reutemann 11 Nov '15

11 Nov '15

"Fingerprints aren't terribly secure; you leave them on almost everything you touch. Many people won't realize that fingerprints can be captured and reproduced from casual photographs. It's actually worse than that. The very method with which fingerprints are stored is much weaker than passwords. Fingerprints cannot be hashed. By their very nature, each read of your fingerprint will be a little different, which breaks the hashing method. They can only be stored using encryption, which requires the same master password each time a new print read is compared to the stored key — a much weaker method than salted hashes. This more easily opens fingerprint credentials up to theft and brute forcing." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/11/10/228223 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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SUSE Leap reviewed
by Ian Young 10 Nov '15

10 Nov '15

Thanks for the interesting review. But you didn't say whether NetworkManager was functional. Just joshing :) I'm going to assume it does work because lightning couldn't strike twice right? And you didn't mention Fluxbox. I seem to recall it was once an option. Or am I thinking of FVWM?

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OpenSUSE Leap 42.1 Released
by Peter Reutemann 09 Nov '15

09 Nov '15

"In what they're calling the first "hybrid" distribution release, the openSUSE project have announced the availability of openSUSE Leap 42.1. Built on a core of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1 packages but including an up-to-date userspace (KDE Plasma 5.4.2, GNOME 3.16, and many other DEs), Leap aims to provide a stable middle ground between enterprise releases which are quickly out of date, and the sometimes unstable community distros. DVD/USB or Network Install ISOs are available for download now. For those who do prefer the bleeding edge, the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling-release distribution is also available." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/11/05/0246248 Sounds like an interesting concept... 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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Creative Commons case study on William Mckee
by William Mckee 06 Nov '15

06 Nov '15

Hello, Creative Commons NZ did a case study on me. It mentions my Linux usage for creating artwork. Here is the article: http://nzcommons.org.nz/artist-william-mckee-discusses-creative-commons-ope… Cheers, William.

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Latest SUSE
by Ian Young 06 Nov '15

06 Nov '15

This sounds good -- but does NetworkManager work? It would be interesting to find out. I had problems with an earlier SUSE version as I mentioned at a LUG meeting. If anyone has an iso I would like a copy. ~ Ian Y

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unbreakable encryption may be illegal
by Ian Young 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Some may not have seen this, presumably by now as seen on TV and across the web. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11970391/Interne…

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The World’s Most Frustrating Linux Install
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Nov '15

03 Nov '15

Following on from their attempt to crowdsource a Pokemon game session, video-streaming site Twitch has now tried the same for an installation of Arch Linux. Guess which was the most popular command people tried to enter? <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/02/crowdsourced_linux_installation_cri…>

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Hacking tool swipes encrypted credentials from password manager
by Peter Reutemann 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

"Using a password manager is one of the biggest ways that average computer users can keep their online accounts secure, but their protection is pretty much meaningless when an end user's computer is compromised. Underscoring this often ignored truism is a recently released hacking tool that silently decrypts all user names, passwords, and notes stored by the KeePass password manager and writes them to a file. KeeFarce, as the tool has been dubbed, targets KeePass, but there's little stopping developers from designing similar apps that target virtually every other password manager available today. Hackers and professional penetration testers can run it on computers that they have already taken control of. When it runs on a computer where a logged in user has the KeePass database unlocked, KeeFarce decrypts the entire database and writes it to a file that the hacker can easily access." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/hacking-tool-swipes-encrypted-crede… 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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Linux 4.3 Released As Stable; Improves On Open-Source Graphics, SMP Performance
by Peter Reutemann 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

"The Linux 4.3 kernel was released as stable today. The Linux 4.3 kernel brings Intel Skylake support, reworked NVIDIA open-source graphics support, and many other changes with the code count hitting 20.6 million lines of code." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/11/02/0130233 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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EFF Asks Appeals Court To "Shut Down the Eastern District of Texas"
by Peter Reutemann 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

'The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have asked a federal appeals court to make big changes to the rules governing venue in patent cases. The two public interest groups are seeking to file an amicus brief (PDF) which attacks the Eastern District of Texas as being one of the "most notorious situations of forum shopping in recent history."' -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/0239203 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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GNU Hurd 0.7 and GNU Mach 1.6 Released
by Peter Reutemann 02 Nov '15

02 Nov '15

"Halloween brought us GNU Hurd 0.7, GNU Mach 1.6, and GNU MIG 1.6. The new Hurd comes with filesystem driver improvements, provides a new rpcscan utility, and the Hurd code has been ported to work with newer versions of GCC and GNU C Library. The Mach microkernel has updates for compiler compatibility, improvements to the lock debugging infrastructure, the kernel now lets non-privileged users write to a small amount of memory, timestamps are now kept relative to boot time, and there are various bugfixes. MIG 1.6 is a small update which improves compatibility with newer dialects of C programming language. Specific details on all of the updates can be found in the full release announcement." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/1333247 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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This 11-year-old is selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

"We now live in a world where a New York City sixth grader is making money selling strong passwords. Earlier this month, Mira Modi, 11, began a small business at dicewarepasswords.com, where she generates six-word Diceware passphrases by hand." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/this-11-year-old-is-selling-cryptog… 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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Official, Customized Raspberry Pi Versions Coming Soon
by Peter Reutemann 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

"The immensely popular Raspberry Pi will soon be offered in customized versions, through an exclusive arrangement between Raspberry Pi Trading and Element14. According to the companies' announcement, Element14 will provide design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create 'bespoke designs' based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform. That's weird U.K. English for saying that contracts for creating customized Raspberry Pi SBCs will entail substantial NRE fees and 3,000 to 5,000 unit orders, depending on the nature of the customization. The tweaked Pi's are likely to have revised board layouts, additional or alternative functions, interfaces, connectors, and memory configurations, and more. A handful of unsanctioned Raspberry Pi knock-offs have already appeared over the past couple of years, including various Orange Pi and Banana Pi flavors, which certainly didn't involve any 'bespeaking.' More info is at Element14's CustomPi page." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/10/27/1211234 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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FSF-certified laptop
by Ian Young 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

This may be of interest to some. Not sure I want to try this at home except with a machine I don't mind turning into a brick. http://www.fsf.org/news/now-fsf-cerified-to-respect-your-freedom-taurinus-x…

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Intel Develops Linux 'Software GPU' That's ~29-51x Faster
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"Intel is open-sourcing their work on creating a high-performance graphics software rasterizer that originally was developed for scientific visualizations. Intel is planning to integrate this new OpenSWR project with Mesa to deploy it on the Linux desktop as a faster software rasterizer than what's currently available (LLVMpipe). OpenSWR should be ideal for cases where there isn't a discrete GPU available or the drivers fail to function. This software rasterizer implements OpenGL 3.2 on Intel/AMD CPUs supporting AVX(2) (Sandy Bridge / Bulldozer and newer) while being 29~51x faster than LLVMpipe and the code is MIT licensed. The code prior to being integrated in Mesa is offered on GitHub." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/20/2213215 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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Use GNURoot to install a GNU/Linux distribution on your Android device
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"How many times have you been on the go and discovered that you needed to pull off some Linux-fu, but the only piece of tech you had was an Android device? Imagine if you were able to fire up a Linux command prompt on that device and make use of apt-get to install whatever command line tool you needed. Wget? No problem. Traceroute? Yes. Ssh? Absolutely. Just about any tool you can install on Linux, you can install within Android. Even some graphical apps will work (even though command line tools work best)." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/use-gnuroot-to-install-a-gnulinux-… 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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Microsoft Publishes OpenSSH For Windows Code
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

"Microsoft has published early source code for its OpenSSH-for-Windows port for developers to pick apart and improve. In a blog post on Monday, Steve Lee – the PowerShell team's principal software engineer manager – said Redmond has finished early work on a Windows port of OpenSSH 7.1, built in a joint-effort with NoMachine. Their rough roadmap from here: 1) Leverage Windows crypto APIs instead of OpenSSL/LibreSSL and run as Windows Service. 2) Address POSIX compatibility concerns. 3) Stabilize the code and address reported issues. 4) Production quality release." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/20/1925226 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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AGM?
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Hi everyone I'm proposing this year's AGM to take place on November 23rd, usual place at uni, MS4.G.02. Agenda: - President's Report - Treasurer's Report - Election of 2016 Committee - Consumption of pizza Any comments or things to add to the agenda? 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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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Hi everyone Due to exams starting next week, we don't have access to our usual meeting room up at uni. Therefore we'll just meet at the The Cook for a drink next Monday to discuss all things Linux and Open-Source! More details here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/225544297/ 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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Fwd: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe
by Peter Reutemann 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

Apologies, if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: philip Date: Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 12:09 AM Subject: Re: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe To: nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz On Wed, 2015-10-14 at 08:32 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: > In Europe there is a good chance that it would be recognised that a > business like trademe is practically a monopoly, and anti-competitive > behaviour does not go down well with authorities with company > policies > not carrying much weight. E.g. google is permanently under > investigation > for something. > > In New Zealand trademe is essentially a monopoly, and they are > hindering > legitimate local businesses. (Isn't Johnny keen on local business, or > is > that only when overseas companies grease him up first?) You could try > complaining on those grounds, but the commerce commission is not > often > useful. > > Until things change use a better trading platform than tardme, and > don't > waste your time discussing anything with them, their back pockets are > far too fat to need to pay attention to you. > > Volker >From Jerry. Got a call from TradeMe today and they are happy to allow linux distributions to be listed again. This of course goes hand in hand with a pending policy wording review/change. Phil. _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- 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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Celebrating 20 Years of OpenBSD With Release 5.8
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

"20 years to the day after the OpenBSD source tree was created for the new project, the project has released OpenBSD 5.8, the 38th release on CD-ROM (and 39th via FTP/HTTP). This release comes with four release songs instead of the usual one, and a long list of improvements over the last releases." "(Probably a good time to donate to the project, too, even if you don't use it directly, because of all the security improvements that OpenBSD programmers contribute to the world.)" -- source: http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/15/10/18/1617256 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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GDrive - opens-source and command-line to the rescue
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '15

18 Oct '15

Hi everyone For some reason, my GDrive no longer allows me to download files, it simply doesn't do anything beyond the "scanning for viruses" screen. Fed up with that, I had a look around and came across the following open source project (Apache 2 licensed): https://github.com/odeke-em/drive There are instructions on how to install it straight from source: http://www.howopensource.com/2015/01/google-drive-for-ubuntu-linux/ But you can also install it from a repository, which I came across here: https://github.com/odeke-em/drive/wiki/PPA-Download-Stats Install ppa and tool: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:twodopeshaggy/drive sudo apt-get install drive One-off initialization of the synchronization directory (choose whatever location you like): drive init ~/gdrive cd gdrive gdrive pull Check out the command-line help: drive or drive help 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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Pbtech selling intel compute stick with Ubuntu
by William Mckee 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

Today I recieved an email from pbtech and was happy to see an ad for an intel compute stick running Ubuntu. It's cheaper than the windows model! Here's a link to the product - http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=MBDINT10000&name=Intel-Compute-Stic… Of course the first thing I would do is remove Ubuntu and install Debian. Cheers, William

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Comments On “Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/junk_your_it_now_before_it_drags_yo…> says: “Our computers, he argued, have become more complex and less reliable.” Yes, they have become more complex, but no, they haven’t become less reliable. Consider this paper <https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/retro.ps> from 1977 by Dennis Ritchie, entitled “The UNIX Time-sharing System—A Retrospective”: it says “the typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation”. Today, our Linux servers can have uptimes measured in months or even years. I can remember in the 1990s, there was a big gulf between the hardware reliability of commodity PCs and more expensive “workstations” or “servers”. Remember, those were the days when powerful, multitasking, multiuser OSes with proper memory protection, like Linux, the BSDs, the ones carrying the “Unix” brand, and Windows NT, were just starting to be able to run on commodity PC hardware. And the result was a lot of hardware crashes. Nowadays, there is no longer this great difference in hardware reliability. The main difference with servers is inclusion of management features (e.g. hot-swap bays, remote consoles), not the quality of the hardware.

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Walmart To Open-Source Its Cloud-Portability Code
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 Oct '15

16 Oct '15

Walmart has developed a middleware layer, called “OneOps”, which apparently allows it to move its applications between different cloud service providers. It now says it is going to offer that software as Open Source <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/walmart_opensources_its_cloudhoppin…>. When? “before the end of the year”.

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The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) Turns 19, Happy Birthday!
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '15

15 Oct '15

"Believe it or not, the KDE desktop environment turned 19 years old on October 14, 2015. Yes, it has been 19 long years since Matthias Ettrich announced his new project, the Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)." -- source: http://linux.softpedia.com/blog/the-kool-desktop-environment-kde-turns-19-h… 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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BeagleBoard-x15 to arrive in time for holiday hacking
by Peter Reutemann 15 Oct '15

15 Oct '15

"BeagleBoard.org has provided some new details, including PCIe support, for its dual-core Cortex-A15 BeagleBoard-X15 SBC, which is due by December for $239." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/beagleboard-x15-to-arrive-in-time-… 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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Is There Space For Open Hardware In Networking?
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

"Open hardware has got much attention with the advent of Raspberry Pi, Arduino and their respective clones. But most of the devices are focused either on tinkerers (Arduino) or most notably multimedia (Raspberry Pi). However, there is not much happening in other areas such as home routers where openness might help improve security and drive progress. Our company (non-profit) is trying to change this with Turris Omnia but we still wander if there is in fact demand for such devices. Is the market large enough and the area cool enough? Are there enough people who would value open hardware running open software even with a higher price tag? Any feedback would be most valued." -- source: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/10/13/191202 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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Geriatric Linux: How an 'old geezer' came to terms with computers
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '15

14 Oct '15

"I was born in 1933, so computers weren't something I grew up with. In fact, neither was TV, atomic energy, or even jet planes. For my first 70 years I had neither the need nor the desire to become involved with computers." -- source: http://opensource.com/life/15/9/my-linux-story-emery-fletcher 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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Wayland Ported To DragonFlyBSD
by Peter Reutemann 13 Oct '15

13 Oct '15

"Wayland 1.9 and the reference Weston compositor have been ported to DragonFlyBSD. Significant changes were made to get Wayland/Weston running, and you must either already be running an X.Org Server or be using the Linux-ported Radeon and Intel kernel mode-setting drivers, plus jump through a few setup steps." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/10/13/1859232 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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Fwd: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe
by Peter Reutemann 12 Oct '15

12 Oct '15

Apologies, if you've received this already. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: philip Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 6:31 PM Subject: [NZLUG] Linux Lite banned from TradeMe To: nzlug <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz> Hi folks, Jerry Bezencon, the author of the Linux Lite distribution has had his distribution banned from TradeMe. Jerry has put the correspondence on the Linux Lite forums. https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/on-topic/linux-lite-banned-as-free-s oftware-from-trademe Jerry has been given the same run around that Copyleft was given a few years ago when it was thrown off TradeMe. I had explained about Free Software, Project Gutenberg, and that eBay allowing Linux sales. All I got was "it was against policy blah blah blah" – despite the fact that TradeMe's policy did not cover FLOSS. A burnt Official Debian Disc is the original disc. Or worse, in Jerry's case he is selling his own work and that he owns the original copyright on his work. Applying Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". eBay.com.au runs Apache (FLOSS), so management has been educated by its techies about free software, how it works and the environment in which it works. So Linux sales are permitted. IMHO the root of the problem lies in the techie area of TradeMe. When I checked a few years ago I found that TradeMe was a Microsoft shop (os info is not available now). TradeMe has Microsoft techies and so management remains ignorant and open to FUD about FLOSS. OnOffer is also a Microsoft shop and has similar restrictions. Let's make waves. Phil. -- Philip Charles; 39a Paterson Street, Abbotsford, Dunedin, New Zealand +64 3 488 2818 Fax +64 3 488 2875 Mobile 027 663 4453 philipc(a)copyleft.co.nz - personal. info(a)copyleft.co.nz - business _______________________________________________ NZLUG mailing list NZLUG(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz http://lists.nzoss.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/nzlug -- 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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android-x86 marches onward in v5 alpha
by Ian Young 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

For anyone who may like this sort of thing and not seen this announcement. Sounds like some interesting progress. https://sites.google.com/a/android-x86.org/web/releases/releasenote-5-1-rc1 Key Features The 5.1-rc1 release is based on the Android 5.1.1_r24. We added many x86 specified code and fixed issues to let the system runs smoothly on x86 platforms, especially for netbooks or tablets. The key features contain Supports 64-bit kernel and userspace, as well as 32-bit system. Update kernel to 4.0.9. Enable OpenGL ES hardware acceleration for Intel/AMD(radeon/radeonsi)/Nvidia(nouveau) chipsets. Support booting from UEFI and installing to UEFI disk. Be able to install to ext4/ext3/ext2/ntfs/fat32 filesystems via a text based GUI installer. Support Multi-touch, Audio, Wifi, Bluetooth, Sensors, Camera and Ethernet (DHCP only). Auto-mount external usb drive and sdcard with filesystem vfat/ntfs/exfat/ext4. Support VM including Qemu, VirtualBox and VMware. Support foreign archs (arm / arm64) via the native bridge mechanism. (Settings -> Apps Compatibility)

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Ubuntu Plans To Make ZFS File-System Support Standard On Linux
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

'Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth revealed today that they're planning to make ZFS standard on Ubuntu. They are planning to include ZFS file-system as "standard in due course," but no details were revealed beyond that. However, ZFS On Linux contributor Richard Yao has said they do plan on including it in their kernel for 16.04 LTS and the GPL vs. CDDL license worries aren't actually a problem. Many Linux users have been wanting ZFS on Linux, but aside from the out of tree module there hasn't been any luck in including it in the mainline kernel or with tier-one Linux distributions due to license differences.' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/10/06/210202 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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Matthew Garrett Forks the Linux Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '15

07 Oct '15

'Just like Sarah Sharp, Linux developer Matthew Garrett has gotten fed up with the unprofessional development culture surrounding the kernel. "I remember having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn't be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it," Garrett writes. He has chosen to go his own way, and has forked the Linux kernel and added patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it is expected to pick up some of the power management code that Garrett is working on, and we shall see where it goes from there.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/10/06/1553233 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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Ditch Linux For Windows 10 On Your Raspberry Pi With Microsoft's IoT Kit
by Peter Reutemann 29 Sep '15

29 Sep '15

'Partnering with Adafruit, Microsoft has announced the Windows IoT Core Starter Kit. The $75 kit comes comes with an SD card preloaded with Windows 10 IoT. According to the Raspberry Pi blog: "The pack is available with a Pi 2 for people who are are new to Raspberry Pi or who'd like a dedicated device for their projects, or without one for those who'll be using a Pi they already own. The box contains an SD card with Windows 10 Core and a case, power supply, wifi module and Ethernet cable for your Pi; a breadboard, jumper wires and components including LEDs, potentiometers and switches; and sensors for light, colour, temperature and pressure. There's everything you need to start building."' -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/09/28/1949211 Looks like it wasn't vaporware after all. But I'm not gonna replace the Linux on my RPis. Especially not since I can have a full-blown Linux OS on it rather than some stripped down Windows version. :-) 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

The Life And Death Of A Laptop Battery
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Sep '15

27 Sep '15

<http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_batte…> “Why are my laptop batteries always dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe Battery University, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100% all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.” ... “Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in preparation for a longer trip?”

1 0

LibreSSL Gets Rid Of SSL
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

LibreSSL (a fork of OpenSSL created after the security scandals over the latter) has now got rid of all versions of the protocol called “SSL” (“Secure Sockets Layer”) <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreSSL-2.3-Released>. The official name of current versions of the protocol used for secure HTTP connections (among other things) is “TLS” (“Transport Layer Security”).

1 0

Why Ad Blockers Could Be A Good Thing
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Sep '15

25 Sep '15

A posting <https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/golden/has-apple-doomed-ads-on-the-web-w…> on “Freedom To Tinker”, which is part of my regular reading, talks about the potential implications of more widespread use of ad-blocker plugins in Web browsers. Not quite triggering an “arms race” of ad-blocker-blockers, and so on: If the use of these plugins becomes ubiquitous, only one thing would have to change – the publishers would have to insert the line of code in some way on the server side, and the ad would just look as though it came with the rest of the page. At that point, the browser plugin is useless. What would be the knock-on effects of this? The ad companies no longer have any way to track users as they move around the web. Absent some way on the ad companies’ part to implement a cross-site evercookie (which would be considered unethical and would quickly be blocked by browser authors if discovered), the ad companies will no longer have a way to connect users on one site to users on another. The ads you’d see on a given site could be based solely on the interactions you’ve had with that one site – which would be a boon to privacy. So rather than becoming worse, the ads would actually take on a less creepy form.

1 0

PatchSee Ethernet Cables
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Sep '15

23 Sep '15

The unique selling point is the special LED tool that, when plugged in to one end, lights up the other end. So you can tell where your cables run without having to colour-code or label them. But is it worth the cost? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PETJpmxiyOY>

1 0

Copying from a pdf, removing EOL and spaces
by Roderick Aldridge 23 Sep '15

23 Sep '15

Hi everyone I want to copy an extract from a .pdf file. When I select some text to copy and paste it puts each word followed by two spaces on a separate line. Do you know a better way to extract some text from a .pdf? Alternatively what is an easy way to remove the space and EOL to reformat the text in a readable format? I am sure there are several, but I would appreciate a really easy one. TIA Roderick

2 3

WLUG meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 22 Sep '15

22 Sep '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "Hieu Trinh will talk about how to use a Raspberry Pi for sorting fruit." More details: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223612685/ According to Hieu, his presentation will be a short one, so if you have something else from the world of Linux/Open Source, then please let me know and I'll add it. 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 1

Keith Packard On X11
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Sep '15

19 Sep '15

A half-hour talk from “Mr X11” himself, Keith Packard <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KeithP-Sustaining-X>. Notable points: * The original MIT X Consortium was dominated by the proprietary UNIX workstation vendors, who were all trying to lock in their own customers into their own ways of doing things. These “UNIX Wars” led to the whole workstation market imploding, letting Microsoft take over with Windows NT. * XFree86 was, in the beginning, like a “rebel alliance”, trying to bring X11 to commodity PC hardware. They were shunned for many years by the X Consortium. Of course this changed after all the UNIX vendors went under. Later, the revitalized X Consortium became a home for the X11 developer community which left the inflexibilities of the XFree86 corporate organization behind. * Over the last decade, the X server has become less and less of an operating system in its own right. Hardware-specific graphics drivers have been moved into the Linux kernel, leaving the X userland code to focus on the hardware-independent implementation layers. * Programs written to work with X11 nearly thirty years ago still work today. Even with all the reorganization and rewrites, X11 still remains fully backward-compatible. Which is more than Microsoft Windows can manage. * Keith made it clear he prefers GPL-style (copyleft/sharealike) licences to MIT/BSD style ones. Net contributors of code tend to prefer the former, while net consumers of code (those who don’t want to give back to the community) tend to favour the latter. In other words, freeloaders.

1 0

Microsoft Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Sep '15

18 Sep '15

Microsoft’s “Azure Cloud Switch” is a “a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux”. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/microsoft_has_developed_its_own_lin…>

1 0

Dell Reportedly Shipping Ubuntu-Based Linux On 40%+ Of PCs In China
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Sep '15

15 Sep '15

<http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Dell-China-40-Linux> As the article admits, it is common for a pirated copy of Windows to be installed on such machines after the fact. However, as a commenter points out, these machines still officially count as sales of desktop Linux regardless.

2 1

fxload - EZ USB loading firmware
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '15

14 Sep '15

Hi everyone I'm currently playing around with a Digilent Atlys Board for recording video: http://code.timvideos.us/home/ However, I've hit a snag in flashing the device, mainly because I can't find an up-to-date "fxload" executable. According to the documentation, the one that comes with Ubuntu is too old. But, the alternative downloads mentioned below for fxload and fx2loader no longer exist: https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB/wiki/Digilent-Atlys-Board:-Loading-Fi… https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB/wiki/Digilent-Atlys-Board:-Loading-Fi… Anyone an idea where to get an fxload of at least this version? Mar 12 2013 (development) Thanks. 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

Linux 4.3 Bringing Stable Intel Skylake Support, Reworked NVIDIA Driver
by Peter Reutemann 13 Sep '15

13 Sep '15

'Mr. Torvalds has released Linux 4.3-rc1 this weekend. He characterized the release as "not particularly small — pretty average in size, in fact. Everything looks fairly normal, in fact, with about 70% of the changes being drivers, 10% architecture updates, and the remaining 20% are spread out." There are a number of new user-facing features including stabilized Intel "Skylake" processor support, initial AMD R9 Fury graphics support, SMP scheduler optimizations, file-system fixes, a reworked open-source NVIDIA driver, and many Linux hardware driver updates.' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/09/13/1521216 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

Stopping A Command-Line Loop
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Sep '15

12 Sep '15

I was playing a bunch of several dozen MP3 files in sequence using a command like for f in *.mp3; do ffplay -autoexit "$f"; done Then half-way through I decided to stop it. Trouble was, every time I hit CTRL/C, it killed the playback of the current MP3 file, but the loop just went on to the next one. Finally I hit CTRL/Z. This suspended the entire command, putting it in the background, and returned me to the command prompt. Then I was able to type kill %1 to kill the background job. In future, I will remember to use a command more like for f in *.mp3; do ffplay -autoexit "$f" || break; done This terminates the loop if the playback of a file aborts with an error.

1 0

LibreOffice 5.0.2 to Feature a Lot of DOCX Fixes
by Peter Reutemann 11 Sep '15

11 Sep '15

"Usually, maintenance releases are all about fixes, and the same can be said about the 5.0.2 version. From the looks of it, it's going to be bigger than the 5.0.1 version, which landed just last week. The first RC in the series incorporates a huge number of changes and various fixes that will definitely make this office suite even better." -- source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/libreoffice-5-0-2-to-feature-a-lot-of-docx-f… Article also contains info on how to install this version (ppa + download). 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

UK Government Offering Detailed Guides On ODF Adoption
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Sep '15

10 Sep '15

After selecting ODF 1.2 last year as its standard format for editable documents, the UK Government has gone a step further to explain exactly how this standard is going to be implemented <http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/09/uk-government-backs-away-from-mic…>. A long way from the days when the US state of Massachusetts tried to do something similar, only to have its IT division outmaneouvred by backroom dealing <http://www.computerworld.com/article/2553645/enterprise-applications/inside…>.

1 0

“Linux PC Repair”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

Clicked on one of those “You may need to fix Windows errors” ad links, just for fun. Took me to a page that says “System Information: Your machine is currently running: Linux. Reimage PC Repair is compatible with your operating system”. And there is a link to download an .exe file... And on the rest of the page: “Designed for: Windows XP, Vista , 7 , 8 , 8.1 & 10”, “Using Microsoft Technologies”, “McAfee Secure”, “Norton Secured”, blah-blah-blah...

4 3

Raspberry Pi now has a $60 7-inch touchscreen display
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation today announced a touchscreen display for the small computer, on sale for $60 (or £48 in the UK). The display has an 800×480 resolution, 10-finger capacitive touch capability, and an adapter board that is used both to power the display and connect to the Raspberry Pi with a DSI ribbon cable. Using DSI keeps the Pi's HDMI port free, so people can use both the small touchscreen display and a big monitor or TV simultaneously. Some assembly is required, but later versions will come fully assembled." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/raspberry-pi-now-has-… 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

Mozilla: data stolen from hacked bug database was used to attack Firefox
by Peter Reutemann 09 Sep '15

09 Sep '15

"An attacker stole security-sensitive vulnerability information from the Mozilla's Bugzilla bug tracking system and probably used it to attack Firefox users, the maker of the open-source Firefox browser warned Friday." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/mozilla-data-stolen-from-hacked-bug… 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

New Release of the Trinity Desktop Environment
by Peter Reutemann 06 Sep '15

06 Sep '15

'A new release of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) is out. TDE is "a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the function and form of traditional desktop computers" which translates into a fully functional KDE 3 style Desktop. Something is missing in the new generation of desktop environments, since some people (perhaps more than "some") feel at home with Gnome 2 or KDE i3. They have repositories for Debian and Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now using it on Ubuntu 15.04, amazed about how well-planned things were in the previous generation of DE. We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/06/030222 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 1

Automating the 3270 part of a Debian System z install
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Sep '15

04 Sep '15

From <http://debblog.philkern.de/2015/08/automating-3270-part-of-debian-system-z.…>: “This will load the alternate kernel parameters file into the card reader, while still loading the original kernel and initrd files.” “(note the 80 character column limit)” Nope, not from the last century, but from the last month. This is how you run Linux on a “modern” IBM mainframe.

1 1

Where to Download the Best Linux Games Without Any Hassle
by Peter Reutemann 02 Sep '15

02 Sep '15

"Not even a decade ago, native gaming on Linux was barely a conceivable reality save for a few open source cross-platform games. Today, it’s clear that the “no games on Linux” myth is dead. Sure, hardcore gamers will probably still choose Windows over Linux, but there’s more than enough evidence that many high-quality games can be played on Linux, and the number of available games is just going to keep increasing." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/where-to-download-the-best-linux-g… 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

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, others, aim for royalty-free video codecs
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '15

01 Sep '15

"Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon today launched a new consortium, the Alliance for Open Media. The group plans to develop next-generation media formats—including audio and still images, but with video as the top priority—and deliver them as royalty-free open source, suitable for both commercial and noncommercial content." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/microsoft-google-amaz… 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 1

LILO Development Coming To An End
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Sep '15

01 Sep '15

<http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LILO-Bootloader-EOY> Is anybody still using LILO (the “LInux LOader”)? That was the Linux-specific bootloader from the early days, before GRUB (the “GRand Unified Bootloader”) came on the scene. I remember one difference was that LILO compiled its configuration into the bootloader binary at installation time. That way, if you made any errors in the configuration, you usually discovered that immediately. Whereas with GRUB, you only found this out when your machine failed to boot. Though with GRUB 2 commonplace nowadays, I haven’t felt the need to configure anything as yet. It seems smart enough to figure it out all by itself. :)

1 0

"Hack" Typeface Is Open Source, Easy On the IDEs
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '15

31 Aug '15

"Ars Technica writes that "At SourceFoundry.org this week, programmer Chris Simpkins debuted the 2.0 version of Hack, an open-source typeface designed specifically for use in source code." The revamped font is" characterized by a large x-height, wide aperture, and low contrast design in order to be "highly legible" at common coding text sizes," and the font specimen shows how legible it is right down to downright tiny sizes, though Simpkins says the sweet spot is between 8 and 12 pixels. " -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/08/30/1733217 Very subtle differences in comparison to "monospace", from a quick comparison: - the dash "-" is longer - the "*" has five points rather than six - the "i" looks more like an "l" (not so sure about this change, though) - the stroke inside the zero is more pronounced Using Hack in a terminal seems a bit clearer than monospace. Here's a howto for Mint on installing a new font: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/29 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/

4 10

Fake EFF site serving espionage malware was likely active for 3+ weeks
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '15

31 Aug '15

"A spear-phishing campaign some researchers say is linked to the Russian government masqueraded as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an attempt to infect targets with malware that collects passwords and other sensitive data." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/fake-eff-site-serving-espionage-mal… 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

THE MAGPI ISSUE 37 - SEPTEMBER 2015
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

Featured in The MagPi Issue 37: * Build a Raspberry Pi digital home Eight projects to build tomorrow’s home, today * Stream live from your PC Use the hottest PC software anywhere in your house * Build a fridge monitor Everyday engineering brought to life with your Pi * Build a computer vision sequencer Mike Cook continues his Pi Bakery project series * The Fallout Pip-Boy How one man made sci-fi fact, just in time for Fallout 4! -- source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/37/ PDF can be downloaded for free. 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

The NZ Herald’s Data Blog
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

Discovered this through a mention on the “Media Watch” program on RNZ National <http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/201762824/min…>. Harkanwal Singh is a “data journalist”, who uses data analysis techniques to put together news stories. His group has already published some interesting analyses, such as broadband affordability, school deciles, traffic crashes and other things. <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/data-blog/news/headlines.cfm?c_id=1503710>

2 1

Linux Kernel 4.2 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Aug '15

30 Aug '15

"The Linux 4.2 kernel is now available. This kernel is one of the biggest kernel releases in recent times and introduces rewrites of some of the kernel's Intel Assembly x86 code, new ARM board support, Jitter RNG improvements, queue spinlocks, the new AMDGPU kernel driver, NCQ TRIM handling, F2FS per-file encryption, and many other changes to benefit most Linux users." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/08/30/1949211 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

KDE Is Broken In Debian Unstable
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 29 Aug '15

29 Aug '15

Looks like KDE is in the middle of a major transition in Debian Unstable at the moment. Yesterday I did an update on my backup machine, and found that I had no window manager after logging into the GUI. This morning I did another update, and was presented with a new “flat” look after a GUI login. Checking my package versions, I believe I have some parts of KDE 5, but not all (yet). I might do another update this evening. Luckily my backup machine can still fulfil most of its functions without a GUI...

3 10

Learn FPGAs With a $25 Board and Open Source Tools
by Peter Reutemann 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

"Hackaday has a 3 part tutorial with videos of using open source tools with a cheap ($25) FPGA board. The board isn't very powerful, but this could be the 'gateway drug' to FPGAs for people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars and install 100s of megabytes of software and license keys just to get their feet wet. The videos are particularly good--like watching them over their shoulder. As far as I know, this is the only totally open source FPGA toolchain out there." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/08/27/226232 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

Ddrescue-GUI: Front-End for Ddrescue Command-line Tool
by Peter Reutemann 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

"DDRescue-GUI is a simple GUI application written in Python 2 and designed to provide users with an easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface) front-end for the awesome GNU ddrescue command-line tool which dedicated to recovering data from hard drive, USB flash drive, cd, dvd corrupt." -- source: http://ubuntuportal.com/2015/08/ddrescue-gui-ubuntu.html 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

was: Engaging Newbies In Email Encryption and Network Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '15

26 Aug '15

Hi everyone Great to see people discussing topics on the mailing list! How about we have a discussion about email encryption (incl signing) and network privacy at the next meeting? If I remember correctly, Hieu's Pi presentation will be relatively short, so we should have plenty of time. 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/

3 2

Happy Birthday, Linux! An OS At 24
by Peter Reutemann 26 Aug '15

26 Aug '15

"It has been 24 long years since the first ever release of the Linux project on August 25, 1991, which is the core component of any GNU/Linux distribution. With this occasion we want to remind everyone that Linux is everywhere, even if you don't see it. You use Linux when you search on Google, when you use your phone, when buy metro tickets, actually the whole Internet is powered by Linux. Happy Birthday, Linux!" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/08/25/1333201 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 1

Major Android remote-access vulnerability is now being exploited
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

"Based on anonymized data collected from users of an app designed to check for a newly revealed vulnerability in many Android devices, Check Point discovered that one application in the Google Play store is exploiting the vulnerability to gain a high level of access to the Android OS, bypassing user permissions—and bypassing Google’s security scans of Play applications to do so. Update: A Google spokesperson told Ars that the offending app has been suspended in the Play store. While the app was discovered installed on an infinitesimal percentage of devices checked by Check Point, it shows that the vulnerability caused by insecure OEM and cell carrier software meant to provide remote access to devices for customer service engineers has already been exploited by “legitimate” phone applications—and the method used to bypass Google’s security checks could be used for more malicious purposes on millions of devices. And there’s no easy way for Google or phone manufacturers alone to patch the problem." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/major-android-remote-access-vulnera… 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

Engaging Newbies In Email Encryption and Network Privacy
by Peter Reutemann 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

"All six parts of my series introducing beginners to PGP encryption and network privacy are now freely available. I hope it's useful for Slashdot readers to share with their less-technical acquaintances. There's an introduction to PGP, a guide to email encryption on the desktop, smartphone and in the browser, an introduction to the emerging key sharing and authentication startup, Keybase.io, and an intro to VPNs. There's a lot more work for us to do in the ease of use of communications privacy but this helps people get started more with what's available today." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/08/20/2041235 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/

5 11

Which Other OS...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Aug '15

25 Aug '15

After my latest laptop update: ldo(a)vodell:~> conv-date now '' Asia/Seoul Asia/Pyongyang Pacific/Auckland........: Tue Aug 25 17:58:22 NZST 2015 Asia/Seoul..............: Tue Aug 25 14:58:22 KST 2015 Asia/Pyongyang..........: Tue Aug 25 14:28:22 KST 2015 North Korea only announced its new time zone two weeks ago. What other OS could be this quick without any actual code patches?

1 0

Mozilla sets plan to dump Firefox add-ons, move to Chrome-like extensions
by Peter Reutemann 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

"Back in July, Mozilla disclosed plans to modernize its Firefox browser. Today, the organization made those plans more concrete, with a tentative timeline for introducing long-desired improvements such as the creation of a process per tab—and with it, a timeline for the end of support for traditional Firefox add-ons. Mozilla has been working on a multi-process architecture for years. Called the Electrolysis project, work started in 2009, but was put on hold in 2011. Work was resumed in 2013, and it's finally getting near to a release. Over the next few months, Mozilla plans to flip the switch and enable Electrolysis in its various release channels. Tentatively, it'll be an opt-in feature in the beta channel from September 22nd, on-by-default in the beta channel from November 3rd, and on-by-default in the release channel from December 15th." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/mozilla-sets-plan-to-… 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

Ubuntu Core Gets Support For Raspberry Pi 2 GPIO and I2C
by Peter Reutemann 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

"Ubuntu Core is a tiny Ubuntu distribution aimed at the Internet of Things, using a new transactional packaging format called Snappy rather than the venerable Debian packaging format. It recently gained support for I2C and GPIO on the Raspberry Pi 2, and a quick demo is given here." "Ubuntu's Core support site says that the support for Raspberry Pi 2 isn't yet official, but provides some handy tips for anyone who wants to try it out." -- source: http://build.slashdot.org/story/15/08/22/2214256 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

Please, OpenOffice, Die Already
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Aug '15

20 Aug '15

Well, maybe not in so many words, but some are saying <http://lwn.net/Articles/654776/> that OpenOffice has reached (i.e. declined) to the stage where it is getting in the way of people looking for a powerful Free Software office suite. They never hear of LibreOffice, find OpenOffice instead, and are disappointed with its (lack of) capabilities.

1 1

Why Linux-Based Steam Machines Won’t Have A “Suspend” Function
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Aug '15

19 Aug '15

Current proprietary game consoles typically have a “sleep” mode, to allow faster startups than booting from a complete power-off. It turns out <http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/steam-machines-wont-have-a-suspend-fu…> that Valve’s Steam machines are unable to offer such a facility, for quite a subtle technical reason <http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7855261&cid=50329207>: it’s because, when the Linux kernel wakes up from sleep, it forgets about all the USB devices it saw before, and rediscovers them all as though for the first time. This prevents applications (i.e. games) from preserving the state of devices like game controllers.

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No Meeting On 24th?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Aug '15

19 Aug '15

Is there a WLUG meeting on the fourth Monday of this month?

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IBM’s New “LinuxONE” Ubuntu Mainframe
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Aug '15

18 Aug '15

<http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/ubuntu-coming-to-main…> ... can "scale up to 8,000 virtual machines or hundreds of thousands of containers—currently the most of any single Linux system" ... And it won’t be limited to 26 drive letters.

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Windows 10 From a Linux User's Perspective
by Peter Reutemann 13 Aug '15

13 Aug '15

"I've spent quite a bit of time testing out Windows 10 on a secondary computer. And like any operating system upgrade, the change takes a bit to get used to. Since I feel more comfortable with Linux distributions than with Windows, I thought it would be interesting to see what Microsoft has done since Windows 7 and 8. In this article, I'll walk you through how I see Windows 10. What it did well, where it falls flat on its face and how this appears to a hardcore Linux enthusiast." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/windows-10-from-a-linux-users-pers… 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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Te Whare O Te ATA (Fairfield) computer lab
by Roderick Aldridge 11 Aug '15

11 Aug '15

Disappointing news about the computer lab in the annexe at Te Whare O Te Ata Fairfield/Chartwell Community House. The trustees have decided to use the annexe as a classroom. Manager Mike Rarere says the only practical option for the lab machines is for some of them (probably 6 or fewer) to be in the main lounge. The lounge schedule means that we could only have regular scheduled sessions on Monday and Friday mornings. Do you want to be involved in running this? It should be easier to do, although it is only a fraction of the former setup. Roderick Aldridge.

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LibreOffice under the hood: progress to 5.0
by Peter Reutemann 08 Aug '15

08 Aug '15

"Today we release LibreOffice 5.0.0, a new foundation for ongoing work over the next months and years. It also has a fine suite of new features for people to enjoy - you can read and enjoy all the great news about the user visible features from so many great hackers, but there are, as always, many contributors whose work is primarily behind the scenes, and a lot of work that is more technical than user-facing. That work is, of course, still vitally important to the project." -- source: https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-08-05-under-the-hood-5-0.html 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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EFF Releases Privacy Badger an Addon That Algorithmically Blocks Online Trackers
by Peter Reutemann 07 Aug '15

07 Aug '15

"Online tracking has become a pervasive invisible reality of the modern web. Most sites you load are likely to be full of ads, tracking pixels, social media share buttons, and other invisible trackers all harvesting data about your web browsing. These trackers use cookies and other methods to read unique IDs associated with your browser, the result being that they record all the sites you visit as you browse around the internet. This sort of tracking is invisible to most web users, meaning they never get the option to agree to or opt-out of it. Today the EFF has launched the 1.0 version of Privacy Badger, an extension designed to prevent these trackers from accessing unique info about you and your browsing." -- source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/08/07/0139241 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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Bye-Bye 32 Bits?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Aug '15

06 Aug '15

The Fedora project <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-i686-Non-Blocking> has noticed that very few of its users seem to be on 32-bit systems nowadays. This was shown by a kernel bug that went undetected for two months, that prevented 32-bit x86 systems from even booting. Time to relegate 32-bit machines to the junk pile?

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New attack on Tor can deanonymize hidden services with surprising accuracy
by Peter Reutemann 03 Aug '15

03 Aug '15

"Computer scientists have devised an attack on the Tor privacy network that in certain cases allows them to deanonymize hidden service websites with 88 percent accuracy. Such hidden services allow people to host websites without end users or anyone else knowing the true IP address of the service. The deanonymization requires the adversary to control the Tor entry point for the computer hosting the hidden service. It also requires the attacker to have previously collected unique network characteristics that can serve as a fingerprint for that particular service. Tor officials say the requirements reduce the effectiveness of the attack. Still, the new research underscores the limits to anonymity on Tor, which journalists, activists, and criminals alike rely on to evade online surveillance and monitoring." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/new-attack-on-tor-can-deanonymize-h… 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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Maybe don't smash your phone just yet
by Ian Young 30 Jul '15

30 Jul '15

Random browsing on the interwebs. Is this the year of a free cellphone OS? Alas I fear not. But we can dream. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/27/android_phone_text_flaw/ https://dot.kde.org/2015/07/25/plasma-mobile-free-mobile-platform Mentioned on the blog of Barry Kauler of Puppy Linux. Currently latest entry. http://bkhome.org/news/ Maybe you want an Android PC? http://www.slashgear.com/jide-tries-again-remix-mini-does-android-pc-153931… http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/07/17/jide-tech-is-back-on-kickstarter-wi…

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How To Test LaTeXila 3.17.0 on Ubuntu Linux
by Peter Reutemann 30 Jul '15

30 Jul '15

"LaTeXila is an editor for GNOME desktop environment, it is an open source application and lets you compile, convert and view documents on GNOME desktop. It can work with LaTeX commands and provides easier navigation through the document. It can also be installed on other desktop environments like Unity, KDE etc. Over the passage of time, it has become an important part of GNOME desktop environment. As you might already aware that GNOME dev team is working actively to announce the upcoming release 3.17.4, so in this process, GNOME development team has announced the availability of LaTeXila 3.17 now." -- source: http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/how-to-test-latexila-3.17.0-on-ubuntu-l… 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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950 million Android phones can be hijacked by malicious text messages
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '15

27 Jul '15

'Almost all Android mobile devices available today are susceptible to hacks that can execute malicious code when they are sent a malformed text message or the user is lured to a malicious website, a security researcher reported Monday. The vulnerability affects about 950 million Android phones and tablets, according to Joshua Drake, vice president of platform research and exploitation at security firm Zimperium. It resides in "Stagefright," an Android code library that processes several widely used media formats. The most serious exploit scenario is the use of a specially modified text message using the multimedia message (MMS) format. All an attacker needs is the phone number of the vulnerable Android phone. From there, the malicious message will surreptitiously execute malicious code on the vulnerable device with no action required by the end user and no indication that anything is amiss.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/950-million-android-phones-can-be-h… 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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WLUG meeting tomorrow
by Peter Reutemann 27 Jul '15

27 Jul '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting tomorrow: "Ian Stewart will talk about the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and how to connect to it using thin clients and Raspberry Pi. Peter Reutemann will give the new Linux Mint release a quick spin." Details can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223850397 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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SSH -> getting the originating IP of a client using RDP
by Eric Light 24 Jul '15

24 Jul '15

Hey all This is a total edge case, but I thought it may be interesting to some. We have thin clients, which RDP to a Windows Terminal Server, through which users SSH (using PuTTY) into our Linux server. This isn't flexible (for good reasons which I won't go into here). However, to talk properly to our new EFTPOS units, we need to know the IP of the thin client. Of course, through SSH you only get the IP of the client, which is the Terminal Server. Here's how I fixed it: 1) Add the following line to /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and restarted ssh: * AcceptEnv CLIENTNAME* 2) Added the following to the Windows login script: * REG ADD HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\DG\ /v Environment /d "CLIENTNAME="%CLIENTNAME% /f* 3) Result: * ~ $ env | grep CLIENTNAME CLIENTNAME=eric-lmde* >From there, we can do what we needed with the EFTPOS! Eric -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es

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Troubleshooting Over The Phone
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '15

23 Jul '15

I just helped someone unbork their Ubuntu system over the phone. It was reporting “disk full”, without being more specific than that. I got him to open up a terminal window, and use the “df” and “du” commands to narrow down the directory that was filling up the disk. Sometimes /tmp gets filled up with stuff, but in this case it was /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/. I have had an instance of high disk usage on that directory myself, a while back. I think it’s where apt keeps partially-downloaded repo index files, though I’m not sure why—is it to retry downloading the rest? But when the problem hits, it just seems to fill up with failed downloads. So I carefully led him up to executing the command “sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*”, and that cleared the problem. The main thing I was careful with was spelling out the commands phonetically, and getting him to read them back to me. But imagine having to do this with a GUI, over the phone. I don’t think I would even try...

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Why Debian Returned To FFmpeg
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '15

23 Jul '15

<http://lwn.net/Articles/650816/> What impresses me about this is, even though the Debian package maintainer is also a libav developer, he “...in the end, could not bring himself to say that he was sure libav was the better choice.” With regard to the commit statistics, it seems like much of the activity in FFmpeg commits is wholesale copying of code from libav. But so what? If sticking with FFmpeg gives you the best of both worlds, why bother separately including packages for libav at all?

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meeting next Monday
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '15

22 Jul '15

Hi everyone We have a WLUG meeting coming up next Monday: "Ian Stewart will talk about the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and how to connect to it using thin clients and Raspberry Pi. Peter Reutemann will give the new Linux Mint release a quick spin." Details can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/WaikatoLinuxUsersGroup/events/223850397 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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On Being Pro-GPL
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '15

22 Jul '15

'Christopher Allan Webber, recently returned from OSCON, shares his thoughts on the GPL and why he dislikes people pitting one type of software license against another. He says, "I am not only pro-copyleft, I am also pro-permissive licensing. The difference between these is tactics: the first tactic is towards guaranteeing user freedom, the second tactic is toward pushing adoption. I am generally pro-freedom, but sometimes pushing adoption is important, especially if you're pushing standards and the like. But let's step back for a moment. One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source software... at the same time that computers have become more locked down than ever before! How can this be? And notice... the rise of the arguments for permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend. ...The fastest way to develop software which locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give back at this stage... and they might not want to. ... Copyleft's strings say, 'you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it.' But the proprietary differentiation strategy's strings say, 'I will use your stuff, and then add terms which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of it.' Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are worse?"' -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/07/21/2256243 Personally, I'm a pro-GPL person. Simply because I don't like software getting locked down and nothing flowing back to the community. Especially, when open source is so community centred. 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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Open Document Format 1.2 Becomes ISO/IEC Standard
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 21 Jul '15

21 Jul '15

Only four years after its creation, ODF 1.2, the native format for the current version of LibreOffice, has been officially accepted as ISO/IEC standard 26300:2015 <https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/07/17/open-document-format-odf-1-2…>. By the way, if you try downloading the specs from the links on that page, you will be confronted by copyright warnings forcing you to click an “accept” button. You can get the same thing from here <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office#technical> without the nonsense.

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Fwd: Re: Customs Minister Wants Right To Demand Passwords From Device Users
by Chris O'Halloran 20 Jul '15

20 Jul '15

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 12:59:12 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo(a)geek-central.gen.nz> wrote: > I would say this relevant to everybody in New Zealand or visiting New > Zealand, Linux user or not. > > “Powers that would require a person to provide a password or access > to > their electronic device will be useless if their material is instead > stored online, Customs Minister Nicky Wagner admits. It's interesting in the sense that normally you're not obliged to say anything that might incriminate yourself. David Bain didn't have to give his version of events.

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Customs Minister Wants Right To Demand Passwords From Device Users
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Jul '15

19 Jul '15

I would say this relevant to everybody in New Zealand or visiting New Zealand, Linux user or not. “Powers that would require a person to provide a password or access to their electronic device will be useless if their material is instead stored online, Customs Minister Nicky Wagner admits. However, Ms Wagner insists such a change to legislation is necessary and will still enable Customs to catch people with illegal material.” <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11480…>

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ARM Support Comes To SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '15

16 Jul '15

"SUSE announced partner program expansion to include support for 64-bit ARM server processors. This expansion makes available to partners a version of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 that allows them to develop, test and deliver products to the market using 64-bit ARM chips. To simplify partner access, SUSE has also implemented support for ARM and AArch64 into its openSUSE Build Service. This allows the community to build packages against real 64-bit ARM hardware and the SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 binaries." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/07/15/1720216 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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What the GNOME Desktop Gets Right and KDE Gets Wrong
by Peter Reutemann 14 Jul '15

14 Jul '15

'Eric Griffith at Phoronix has provided a fresh perspective on the KDE vs. GNOME desktop debate after exclusively using GNOME for the past week while being a longtime KDE user. He concluded his five-page editorial (which raises some valid points throughout) by saying, "Gnome feels like a product. It feels like a singular experience. When you use it, it feels like it is complete and that everything you need is at your fingertips. It feels like the Linux desktop. ... In KDE, it's just some random-looking window popup that any application could have created. ... KDE doesn't feel like cohesive experience. KDE doesn't feel like it has a direction its moving in, it doesn't feel like a full experience. KDE feels like its a bunch of pieces that are moving in a bunch of different directions, that just happen to have a shared toolkit beneath them." However, with the week over and despite his criticism, he's back to using KDE.' -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/13/1548237 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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Speed-Ups, Small Fixes Earn Good Marks From Ars For Mint 17.2
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jul '15

13 Jul '15

'Ars Technica reviews the newest release from Linux MInt -- version 17.2, offered with either the Cinnamon desktop, or the lighter-weight MATE, which feels like what Gnome 2 might feel in an alternate universe where Gnome 3 never happened. Reviewer Scott Gilbertson has mostly good things to say about either variety, and notes a few small drawbacks, too. The nits seem to be minor ones, though they might bite some people more than others: Mint, based on Ubuntu deep down, is almost perfectly compatible with Ubuntu packages, but not every one, and this newest version of Mint ships with the 3.16 kernel of Ubuntu 14.04, which means slightly less advanced hardware support. (Gilbertson notes, though, that going with 3.16 means Mint may be the ideal distro if you want to avoid systemd.) "This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making it a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game." More "paper cut" fixes include improved multi-panel options, graphics-refresh tweaks, a way to restart the Cinnamon desktop without killing the contents of a session, graphics-refresh tweaks, and other speed-ups that make this release "noticeably snappier than its predecessor on the same hardware."' -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/07/12/1720236 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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Question - ping -f
by Eric Light 13 Jul '15

13 Jul '15

Hi guys I'm investigating a flaky printer, and was running ping -f to see when it went down. I got the following: PING prn37.forlongs.local (10.7.140.37) 56(84) bytes of data. ..................................................... ..................................................... ..................................................... .......E............................................. ... what the heck is the 'E'? I can't find it in the man pages. Eric -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email five sentences or less? A: http://five.sentenc.es

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