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GCC Steering Committee Announces a Code of Conduct
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jun '23

26 Jun '23

'GCC is the GNU project's free and open-source cross-platform compiler collection. Now an anonymous reader shared this announcement from the mailing list for GCC: The GCC Steering Committee has decided to adopt a Code of Conduct for interactions in GCC project spaces, including mailing lists, bugzilla, and IRC. The vast majority of the time, the GCC community is a very civil, cooperative space. On the rare occasions that it isn't, it's helpful to have something to point to to remind people of our expectations. It's also good for newcomers to have something to refer to, for both how they are expected to conduct themselves and how they can expect to be treated... At this time the CoC is preliminary: the code itself should be considered active, but the CoC committee (and so the reporting and response procedures) are not yet in place. There's also an official FAQ, and GCC's Code of Conduct begins with this introduction. "Like the free software community as a whole, the GCC community is made up of a mixture of professionals and volunteers from all over the world, working on every aspect of the project — including mentorship, teaching, and connecting people." Where this leads to issues and unhappiness, "we have a few ground rules that we ask people to adhere to... [T]ake it in the spirit in which it's intended — a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us, the project, and the broader communities in which we participate."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/06/25/2255253 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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PipeWire Versus PulseAudio+JACK
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 25 Jun '23

25 Jun '23

Came across this PipeWire FAQ <https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ>, which among other things explains why there is a need to replace both PulseAudio and JACK. Briefly, it started from a wish to manage video inputs and outputs in a similar way to audio inputs and outputs, and also fix some performance/configuration limitations in the older specs. And if you are wondering why all your sound devices have suddenly acquired a “Pro Audio” option in their settings, this explains that as well. Also, for those complaining that Wayland’s stricter security model breaks basic functionality like screen recording and sharing, it appears PipeWire is the basis for the solution to that problem.

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DuckDuckGo browser beta for Windows bakes in a lot of privacy tools
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jun '23

23 Jun '23

'Privacy-focused firm DuckDuckGo has released a public beta of its browser for Windows, offering more default privacy protections and an assortment of Duck-made browsing tools. More than a year after debuting its browser for Mac in private beta, the search engine and tracking antagonist offers many of those same features to a much wider audience. Like its Mac browser, DuckDuckGo (DDG) uses "the underlying operating system rendering API" rather than its own forked browser code. That's "a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath," according to DuckDuckGo's blog post. Fittingly, the browser reports itself as Microsoft Edge at most header-scanning sites.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/duckduckgo-offers-its-privacy-cente… 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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The Art Of Refurbishing Old Computers
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 22 Jun '23

22 Jun '23

Interesting report <https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/21/pc_officina_positive_trashware/> on an Italian organization, which mentions some points which could be useful to those doing the same thing here: how to salvage and refurbish old PCs for donation to those who can’t afford something new. Note that they won’t take any old rubbish: they will no longer accept 32-bit machines or those needing DDR2 RAM, for example. Their current recommended OS is Linux Mint 21 with XFCE, but they will source Microsoft Windows for those who really want it (at what cost?).

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Latest SUSE Linux Enterprise Goes All in With Confidential Computing
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jun '23

21 Jun '23

'SUSE's latest release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 5 (SLE 15 SP5) has a focus on security, claiming it as the first distro to offer full support for confidential computing to protect data. From a report: According to SUSE, the latest version of its enterprise platform is designed to deliver high-performance computing capabilities, with an inevitable mention of AI/ML workloads, plus it claims to have extended its live-patching capabilities. The release also comes just weeks after the community release openSUSE Leap 15.5 was made available, with the two sharing a common core. The Reg's resident open source guru noted that Leap 15.6 has now been confirmed as under development, which implies that a future SLE 15 SP6 should also be in the pipeline. SUSE announced the latest version at its SUSECON event in Munich, along with a new report on cloud security issues claiming that more than 88 percent of IT teams have reported at least one cloud security incident over the the past year. This appears to be the justification for the claim that SLE 15 SP5 is the first Linux distro to support "the entire spectrum" of confidential computing, allowing customers to run fully encrypted virtual machines on their infrastructure to protect applications and their associated data. Confidential computing relies on hardware-based security mechanisms in the processor to provide this protection, so enterprises hoping to take advantage of this will need to ensure their servers have the necessary support, such as AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) and Intel's Trust Domain Extensions (TDX).' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/06/20/1846203 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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PostgreSQL Reconsiders Its Process-Based Model
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jun '23

20 Jun '23

'Jonathan Corbet, writing at LWN: In the fast-moving open-source world, programs can come and go quickly; a tool that has many users today can easily be eclipsed by something better next week. Even in this environment, though, some programs endure for a long time. As an example, consider the PostgreSQL database system, which traces its history back to 1986. Making fundamental changes to a large code base with that much history is never an easy task. As fundamental changes go, moving PostgreSQL away from its process-oriented model is not a small one, but it is one that the project is considering seriously. A PostgreSQL instance runs as a large set of cooperating processes, including one for each connected client. These processes communicate through a number of shared-memory regions using an elaborate library that enables the creation of complex data structures in a setting where not all processes have the same memory mapped at the same address. This model has served the project well for many years, but the world has changed a lot over the history of this project. As a result, PostgreSQL developers are increasingly thinking that it may be time to make a change.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/06/19/1723259 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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KDE Plasma 6 Is Now 'Fairly Livable'
by Peter Reutemann 20 Jun '23

20 Jun '23

'Prominent KDE developer Nate Graham believes that Plasma 6 is now "fairly livable" and recommends KDE developers and power users / enthusiasts start giving it a try. Phoronix reports: He characterized Plasma 6 as: "Basically everything in Plasma compiles with Qt 6, and at this point Plasma 6 is fairly livable. To give you a sense of how livable, it's good enough that over the past 2 months, I've gone on three KDE-related trips from the USA to Europe, with my only computer running Plasma 6 in "current git master" state, with work-in-progress merge requests applied! Its stability has been good enough that this has caused me no apprehension, and indeed, it's been totally fine on each trip. So seriously, if you're a KDE developer or an adventurous user, start living on Plasma 6! Jump right in, the water's fine. :)" He went on to write more about the current development activities around Plasma 6. He also shared his personal beliefs around Plasma 6.0 release timing although no official release schedule is yet to be determined. Nate's belief is that Plasma 6.0 will likely be ready for release sometime between December and March.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/06/19/212256 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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The State Of Linux Music Production
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Jun '23

17 Jun '23

Been messing about with my old MIDI keyboard again, after a long while putting it aside. It now complains about a “low battery” warning, but I think that only affects the onboard sound settings, which I’m not particularly fussed about. I got a USB-MIDI interface a few years back, and I can use that with the keyboard to drive sound sources on my main machine. But things have changed in the Linux music world since the last time I tried this (at least on Debian). JACK and PulseAudio have both been replaced by this new thing, PipeWire, which is supposed to handle video, audio and MIDI routing through a common architecture. So I no longer have to start up jackd when I want to switch to music-production mode (in fact, trying to run jackd under PipeWire will screw up your audio something awful). Instead, patching between sources and sinks is done via WirePlumber, for which a convenient GUI frontend is available in the form of qpwgraph. All the main PipeWire-related processes are managed as user-level services via systemd. One thing hasn’t changed, and that is the incompatibility between ALSA MIDI ports and JACK MIDI ports: that USB-MIDI interface only appears to the system as ports of the ALSA kind, whereas JACK-aware apps want to accept MIDI data via ports of the JACK kind. So I still have to start up the old “a2jmidid” program to provide a bridge between these two. qpwgraph shows all these different kinds of entities, each labelled with its type: “ALSA”, “PW” (PipeWire) or “JACK”. The latter two can be connected directly to one another, while ALSA ports can only be connected to ALSA ports. The colour-coding--purple for ALSA MIDI ports, red for JACK/PipeWire MIDI, green for JACK/PipeWire audio--is a hint that you can only connect matching colours. Some JACK-aware apps still have trouble running under PipeWire; for these, there is the “pw-jack” tool, which substitutes the JACK dynamic libraries with ones that hook directly into PipeWire before launching the specified app. E.g. I had to run a2jmidid with pw-jack a2jmidid Also, the command pw-jack zynaddsubfx -O jack tells ZynAddSubFX to run with its JACK interface active, and I can route events from my keyboard to it via the intermediary nodes automatically created by a2jmidid. Don’t forget to hook up its audio output terminals to the box representing my speakers, and voilà, I can make sound.

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Analysis Of The GMail Fake Email Exploit
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Jun '23

15 Jun '23

You may have heard about an interesting hack a few days ago <https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/09/google_bimi_email_authentication/>, where some low-lifes figured out how to send fraudulent emails to GMail users that showed a “verified” blue BIMI checkmark, indicating that the recipient could trust the from-address as authentic. But of course it was not. The details of how the hack was perpetrated are quite intricate, and involve some subtle interplay between the mail-processing policies of GMail (where the recipients had their accounts, and which implements the BIMI check), Microsoft (which ran the Exchange servers where the fraudsters got accounts, and from which the fraudulent messages were sent) and UPS (the purported sender of the fake emails). Of course, all three parties have since taken action to ensure this particular scenario will not happen again. ThioJoe offers up a good explanation of how it all worked here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czc0F_A82rE>. If your eyes glaze over at the mention of SPF versus DKIM versus DMARC--well, you’re not alone. When I looked at whether I should implement something like this on my own mail server to try to ensure that spammers could not send out fake emails under my name, I felt the same way. So I just decided not to bother. For now ...

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Question re: Desktop computer running Ubuntu is slow, mouse and keyboard missing commands
by Michael James 14 Jun '23

14 Jun '23

Can anyone please assist with this Ubuntu desktop severely slowed down, mouse and keyboard severely delayed, skipping and or typing multiple letters/numbers with the problem progressively getting worse. Internet speed is at standard mark. Thanks, Noho ora mai, All the best, Michael James __________________________________________________________________________________________ MICHAEL JAMES PASTROFF phone: inside New Zealand 021 115 3713 outside New Zealand 64 21 115 3713

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Edge Sends Images You View Online To Microsoft
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

'Not so long ago, Microsoft Edge ended up in hot waters after users discovered a bug leaking your browser history to Bing. Now you may want to toggle off another feature to ensure Edge is not sending every picture you view online to Microsoft. Edge has a built-in image enhancement tool that, according to Microsoft, can use "super-resolution to improve clarity, sharpness, lighting, and contrast in images on the web." Although the feature sounds exciting, recent Microsoft Edge Canary updates have provided more information on how image enhancement works. The browser now warns that it sends image links to Microsoft instead of performing on-device enhancements.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/06/12/182216 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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Debian 12 'Bookworm' Released
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '23

12 Jun '23

'Slashdot reader e065c8515d206cb0e190 shared the big announcement from Debian.org: After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name bookworm). bookworm will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team... This release contains over 11,089 new packages for a total count of 64,419 packages, while over 6,296 packages have been removed as obsolete. 43,254 packages were updated in this release. The overall disk usage for bookworm is 365,016,420 kB (365 GB), and is made up of 1,341,564,204 lines of code. bookworm has more translated man pages than ever thanks to our translators who have made man-pages available in multiple languages such as: Czech, Danish, Greek, Finnish, Indonesian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Russian, Serbian, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. All of the systemd man pages are now completely available in German. The Debian Med Blend introduces a new package: shiny-server which simplifies scientific web applications using R. We have kept to our efforts of providing Continuous Integration support for Debian Med team packages. Install the metapackages at version 3.8.x for Debian bookworm. The Debian Astro Blend continues to provide a one-stop solution for professional astronomers, enthusiasts, and hobbyists with updates to almost all versions of the software packages in the blend. astap and planetary-system-stacker help with image stacking and astrometry resolution. openvlbi, the open source correlator, is now included. Support for Secure Boot on ARM64 has been reintroduced: users of UEFI-capable ARM64 hardware can boot with Secure Boot mode enabled to take full advantage of the security feature. 9to5Linux has screenshots, and highlights some new features: Debian 12 also brings read/write support for APFS (Apple File System) with the apfsprogs and apfs-dkms utilities, a new tool called ntfs2btrfs that lets you convert NTFS drives to Btrfs, a new malloc implementation called mimalloc, a new kernel SMB server called ksmbd-tools, and support for the merged-usr root file system layout... This release also includes completely new artwork called Emerald, designed (once again) by Juliette Taka. New fonts are also present in this major Debian release, along with a new fnt command-line tool for accessing 1,500 DFSG-compliant fonts. Debian 12 "bookworm" ships with several desktop environments, including: - Gnome 43, - KDE Plasma 5.27, - LXDE 11, - LXQt 1.2.0, - MATE 1.26, - Xfce 4.18' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/06/11/0333242 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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Microsoft Excel Has Become A Threat To Democracy
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

Austria’s Social Democratic Party recently held an election for a new leader, according to <https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/06/austria_election_excel_blunder/>. Trouble was, two days after announcing the result had gone one way, they then had to report that in fact it was the other way round, owing to a stuffup involving an Excel spreadsheet. I suppose the only good news is that this was strictly an in-party election, not something involving any level of Government.

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The State Of Fibre Broadband In The USA
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

Came across this report <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/internet-users-love-fiber-servi…>, which is interesting to compare with conditions in NZ: In terms of availability, the Federal Communications Commission broadband map indicates that about 38 percent of US residents can get fiber. The percentage drops to 29 percent when including only fiber services that offer gigabit download speeds and at least 100Mbps upload speeds. Basically, US broadband is dominated by companies with heavy investments in cable (and some ADSL), who have no interest in obsoleting that investment any sooner than they have to. Moral: there are places where a free market works, but strategic infrastructure buildouts is not one of them.

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Trouble Accessing .nz Sites, Anybody?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 May '23

30 May '23

Seems some people have had trouble accessing various .nz sites since last night, and into this morning <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/banking-apps-some-websites-down-as-inte…>. The explanation at the end seems to indicate that InternetNZ is rolling out DNS security, and caching inconsistencies on ISPs’ servers are leading to hiccups for users. Hopefully this will be resolved soon as the outdated DNS entries get flushed.

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Microsoft Releases Azure Linux
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 May '23

26 May '23

Microsoft has announced a commercially-supported product it calls “Azure Linux” <https://devclass.com/2023/05/25/azure-linux-released-at-build-where-microso…>. This is essentially the same code as its custom “CBL-Mariner” distro that it runs internally on its Azure servers. While this is RPM-based (the same package manager used in Red Hat), it is not a fork of Red Hat, but is built specially from the ground up. Project lead Jim Perrin explains why: “The reason we chose not to fork a different distro … Microsoft has kind of a history with Linux. … I think the Balmer quote is from 2001, but a lot of the sentiment still lingers even today. Part of the reason we did not choose to start with a distribution and then fork it for our needs is we didn’t want to be seen as doing the embrace and extend thing again, we didn’t want to wake any of that up, we figured, build it from scratch, we can tailor it to our needs … we’re scratching an itch we had and offering the solution back to the community.” The “Ballmer quote” being the infamous phrase “Linux is a cancer” that then-CEO Steve Ballmer uttered back in 2001. Yes, nice to see some past sins are still kept in mind, at least in some corners of Microsoft ...

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Fast Restart For Java Apps
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 May '23

23 May '23

Java continues to be popular for server-side apps. But one problem is that starting a Java app can be slow. So if you have some Java code that performs a service on demand, runs for a short while and then shuts down again, that hurts performance. Enter “CRaC”, or “Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint” <https://devclass.com/2023/05/22/azul-makes-openjdk-with-fast-start-crac-gen…>, from a company called Azul, which seems to centre its entire business around OpenJDK <https://www.azul.com/about/>. This system lets the app dump its state to disk in a form that allows for quick resumption. This state cannot include things like open files/network connections, so the app itself needs to implement handlers to close these before the dump and reopen them after the restore, saving enough state as part of the dump to allow this to happen with minimal impact on the rest of the application. Interestingly, this system is built on another piece of software called “CRIU” or “Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace” <https://criu.org/Main_Page>, which is Linux-only. As Azul’s CTO says: “We submitted CRaC to OpenJDK as an idea for a project … and they’ve included it as one of the many project they have. The reason it isn’t in the mainstream yet, and I’m not even sure it will make it into the mainstream, is that we rely on the CRIU technology underneath on Linux, and there isn’t an equivalent that we’re aware of on Windows or on Mac. So you lose that cross-platform functionality … ” But as the article says, that may not such a big showstopper any more: Java applications are often developed on Windows or Mac, but most often deployed to Linux, suggesting that the lack of cross-platform support is not a deal-breaker for everyone.

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Fibre Connection -- Separating Modem & Router Functions
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 16 May '23

16 May '23

Most people probably have their internet connection provided through a single box. There are two separate functions going on: * “Modem” (layer 2) -- handling the low-level signalling with whatever is at the other end of the wire (whether copper or glass); * “Router” (layer 3) -- routing TCP/IP packets between your house LAN and your ISP, which provides the connection between there and the rest of the Internet. At one point I was running a cheap little Conexant AccessRunner USB box (bought from Dick Smith) on my ADSL connection; while this could also perform both functions in one, I found a version of the firmware that implemented only the modem function. Plugging this into a Linux box caused it to appear like an additional network interface (the drivers are already in the standard kernel). I could then control this via the “ppp” package <https://ppp.samba.org/>, using its PPP-over-ATM plugin to implement the correct low-level signalling (just VPI/VCI selection, really). I could then exploit the full power of the Linux network stack on that box to manage the connection to the rest of my house LAN. Anyway, as my own house gets wired up for fibre (soon...), I was curious as to whether something equivalent could be done for a fibre connection. And the information I’ve found so far (e.g. <https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=81&topicid=274586>) indicates it might actually be simpler than this. The “ONT” (“Optical Network Terminator”) box that gets installed in your house has phone ports and Ethernet ports on it, and it appears that (once you have your ISP connection up and running) the Ethernet connection behaves just like a regular LAN connection, with a DHCP server (and ISP’s router) listening on the other end. So instead of an Internet router at your end, you can plug a regular PC directly into that port, pick up an allocated address, and have it immediately connected to the Internet. In short, there is nothing fibre-specific about the Internet router that the ISP provides to you at all. However, there might be issues with VLAN-tagging of the Ethernet frames, and this is not standardized between ISPs. (By the way, I see several folks claiming there is no “modem” in a fibre connection. Of course there is.) Not sure whether I’ll try this right away. Might be safest to do things the ISP-provided way, at least to begin with.

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Unkillable UEFI Malware Bypassing Secure Boot Enabled By Unpatchable Windows Flaw
by Peter Reutemann 12 May '23

12 May '23

'Researchers have announced a major cybersecurity find -- the world's first-known instance of real-world malware that can hijack a computer's boot process even when Secure Boot and other advanced protections are enabled and running on fully updated versions of Windows. From a report: Dubbed BlackLotus, the malware is what's known as a UEFI bootkit. These sophisticated pieces of malware hijack the UEFI -- short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface -- the low-level and complex chain of firmware responsible for booting up virtually every modern computer. As the mechanism that bridges a PC's device firmware with its operating system, the UEFI is an OS in its own right. It's located in an SPI-connected flash storage chip soldered onto the computer motherboard, making it difficult to inspect or patch. Because the UEFI is the first thing to run when a computer is turned on, it influences the OS, security apps, and all other software that follows. These traits make the UEFI the perfect place to run malware. When successful, UEFI bootkits disable OS security mechanisms and ensure that a computer remains infected with stealthy malware that runs at the kernel mode or user mode, even after the operating system is reinstalled or a hard drive is replaced. As appealing as it is to threat actors to install nearly invisible and unremovable malware that has kernel-level access, there are a few formidable hurdles standing in their way. One is the requirement that they first hack the device and gain administrator system rights, either by exploiting one or more vulnerabilities in the OS or apps or by tricking a user into installing trojanized software. Only after this high bar is cleared can the threat actor attempt an installation of the bootkit. The second thing standing in the way of UEFI attacks is UEFI Secure Boot, an industry-wide standard that uses cryptographic signatures to ensure that each piece of software used during startup is trusted by a computer's manufacturer. Secure Boot is designed to create a chain of trust that will prevent attackers from replacing the intended bootup firmware with malicious firmware. If a single firmware link in that chain isn't recognized, Secure Boot will prevent the device from starting.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/23/03/06/1854200 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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OpenOffice: The One FOSS Project That Deserves To Die, But Won’t
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 May '23

06 May '23

The ever-dependable Brodie Robertson has a look at the ongoing (!) development history of OpenOffice here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdpMxmFvGBA>. Those of us on FOSS platforms moved to LibreOffice years ago. But among some sectors (my guess is, predominantly Microsoft Windows users?), OpenOffice still has the dominant name recognition. And just to add to the fun, the project actually continues putting out updates! Though these are just minor ones -- I don’t think there have been any major functional changes in the better part of a decade. The source code commit history also continues to bubble over, though a lot of the patches are tiny, almost trivial things, like fixing typos and making random-looking changes to whitespace.

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I used System76’s Pangolin for weeks, and Linux was not the biggest problem
by Peter Reutemann 05 May '23

05 May '23

'After using System76’s Pangolin as my primary work laptop for nearly six weeks, I can tell you this: If you need a 15-inch Linux-focused laptop, this is the one to get. The Pangolin is a solid device, designed more for dependability and convenience than ultrabook portability or cutting-edge parts, but it still has reasonably modern hardware (especially its 144 Hz screen). The Pangolin and its native Pop!_OS are a showcase for how remarkably normal Linux can feel as a daily driver in 2023. Normal, and with lots of ports. It’s hard to do a nuts-and-bolts comparison of the Pangolin to most other laptops, due largely to benchmark comparability between Linux and most laptops running Windows or macOS. But it’s also not entirely necessary. There’s only one real version of the Pangolin available—one processor, one amount of RAM, then variable, user-expandable storage. We’ll show you how the Pangolin did on a couple tests. But how this laptop works for you is much more about what you’re bringing to it and what you're willing to put into customizing it to your liking. I came to the Pangolin as someone who has made a few attempts at using Linux as a daily driver. I know enough command line, vim, and Unix-based architecture to be conversant, and I have two Raspberry Pis that are constantly being improved. Still, I'm more hobbyist than practitioner. And yet the Pangolin presented no real problems as I used it for almost any task I needed to get done. Its combination of solid software and practical hardware choices make it an easy system to recommend, so long as you know you need Linux. Its maker-made operating system, Pop!_OS, almost never gave me problems, except when I was trying to make it run benchmarks. Starting with a rock-solid Linux install, where every bit of hardware is supported and functional, made me more eager to poke at the edges and see what I could customize.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/review-system76-pangolin-is-a-solid… 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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'sudo' and 'su' Are Being Rewritten In Rust For Memory Safety
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '23

02 May '23

'Phoronix reports: With the financial backing of Amazon Web Services, sudo and su are being rewritten in the Rust programming language in order to increase the memory safety for the widely relied upon software... to further enhance Linux/open-source security. "[B]ecause it's written in C, sudo has experienced many vulnerabilities related to memory safety issues," according to a blog post announcing the project: It's important that we secure our most critical software, particularly from memory safety vulnerabilities. It's hard to imagine software that's much more critical than sudo and su. This work is being done by a joint team from Ferrous Systems and Tweede Golf with generous support from Amazon Web Services. The work plan is viewable here. The GitHub repository is here. ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/05/01/0020239 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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Linux Foundation Announces DentOS 3.0, an Open Source Network OS for Disaggregated Networks
by Peter Reutemann 01 May '23

01 May '23

'This month the Linux Foundation announced version 3.0 of DentOS, an open source network operating system using the Linux kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux-based projects for a standardized network operating system "without abstractions or overhead," according to the project's web page. "All underlying infrastructure — including ASIC and Silicon for networking and datapath — is treated equally; while existing abstractions, APIs, drivers, low-level overhead, and other open software are simplified. DENT unites silicon vendors, ODMs, SIs, OEMs, and end users across all verticals to enable the transition to disaggregated networks." Or, as the Linux Foundation, the operating system provides "a flexible and customizable platform for network administrators to manage their networks." DENT provides access to open source-based switches at a lower cost and with more flexibility compared to proprietary switches with locked ecosystems. Network wiring closets in many facilities--including retail stores, warehousing, remote locations, enterprises, and small and mid-sized businesses--are often small, requiring a compact solution for network management. Additionally, staff expertise may be limited, and branch-office switches from leading suppliers can require costly contracts. DENT can be easily deployed on white-box hardware in small spaces, providing an efficient and cost-effective solution for network management. As a result, DENT deployment can significantly enhance network management in a wide range of environments, providing greater efficiency, reliability, and scalability... DentOS enables Amazon's Just Walk Out Technology to connect and manage thousands of devices like cameras, sensors, entry and exit gates, and access points on the network edge. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/30/010222 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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Not-So-Stupid(?) Linux Trick
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 28 Apr '23

28 Apr '23

Here’s a command that can sometimes look a bit unnerving in operation, but is actually quite safe: rmdir -p «dir» where «dir» is some directory. Or to watch the whole process in action, add the option to give progress messages: rmdir -pv «dir» Background: the basic command rmdir «dir» deletes the named directory, but only if it is empty. The “-p” option takes this further, by then trying to delete the parent of «dir», and if that succeeds, the parent of that, and so on. It stops only when it gets to a nonempty directory, or when it has done all components of «dir». So if, for example, you try this on an absolute path, this will mean the command always stops on an error. And the error could quite likely be on a directory which contains important stuff that you care about. But, as I said, it’s quite safe, since it won’t delete that stuff. But I told you it could be unnerving, didn’t I?

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New Intel Linux Graphics Driver Patches Released, Up To 10-15% Better Performance
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '23

28 Apr '23

'A new set of patches have been released for the Intel Linux graphics driver that "can provide 10-15% better performance when operating in the tuned mode," reports Phoronix. From the report: The set of Intel i915 Linux kernel graphics driver patches are about exposing the Intel RPS (Requested Power State) up/down thresholds. Right now the Intel Linux kernel driver has static values set for the up/down thresholds between power states while these patches would make them dynamically configurable by user-space. Google engineer Syed Faaiz Hussain raised the issue that they experimented with the Intel RPS tuning and were able to manage up to 15% better performance. With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with OpenGL was a 14.5% boost, CS:GO with Vulkan was 12.9% faster, and Civilization VI with OpenGL was 11% faster while Strange Brigade was unchanged. No other game numbers were provided. But as this is about changing the threshold for how aggressively the Intel graphics hardware switches power states, the proposed patches leave it up to user-space to adjust the thresholds as they wish. Google engineers are interested in hooking this into Feral's GameMode so that the values could be automatically tuned when launching games and then returning to their former state when done gaming, in order to maximize battery life / power efficiency. The only downside with these current patches are that they work only for non-GuC based platforms... So the latest Alder/Raptor Lake notebooks as well as Intel DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics currently aren't able to make use of this tuning option. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/27/1927209 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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