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Slackware, the Oldest Actively Maintained Linux Distro, Releases Version 15.0
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

'Slackware, the oldest actively maintained Linux distribution, released version 15.0 yesterday after a long release cycle that goes all the way back to 2016 where the last version (14.2) was released. According to the release notes, the whole spirit of this release is: "Keep it familiar, but make it modern." Among the news, this release offers kernel 5.15.19, PAM, PipeWire and PulseAudio, Wayland and X11 graphical systems, and Rust and Python 3. As graphical environments, both Xfce 4.16 and the latest Plasma 5 (Plasma 5.23.5, Frameworks 5.90, KDE apps 21.12 running under Qt 5.15.3) are available, with Cinnamon and Mate also available from third parties. The main compilers are gcc-11.2 and llvm 13.0. The default browser is Firefox 91.5esr, with Chromium available as a third-party repository. And... no systemd at all. Slackware can be downloaded from a variety of mirrors. BitTorrent downloads are going to be available too. I've used Slackware for 20 years and it's always impressed me with its stability and speed. I encourage everyone interested to try it.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/22/02/04/027213 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up To 8 Hours of Online Time To Update
by Peter Reutemann 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

'According to a post on the Microsoft IT Pro Blog, Windows computers will need at least eight hours of online time to obtain and install the latest OS updates successfully. Tom's Hardware reports: Another revelation in the post is that Microsoft tracks how long PCs are connected to Windows Update, calling the statistics "Update Connectivity." The data is available to IT managers in the InTune app, a component of the Endpoint management suite. The post details Microsoft's attempts to figure out why some Windows devices aren't getting the latest quality and feature updates, and discovered that two hours of continuous connectivity was required to get updates. It then took six hours after the release of the patch for a machine to update itself reliably. Microsoft's figures show that 50 percent of Windows devices left behind by Windows Update and running a build of Windows 10 that's no longer serviced do not spend enough time connected to have the patches downloaded and installed in the background. This figure drops to 25 percent for customers using a serviced build of the operating system that lags behind in security updates by 60 days or more. The goods news, as noted by Tom's Hardware, is that "Windows 11 updates are smaller than their Windows 10 counterparts due to improved compression [and] new Microsoft Graph APIs," which should help speed up the update process.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/02/01/2056211 Bloatware? I can download/install full Linux distros in less time (and updates don't take that long either, not even a full version upgrade!). Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Insights Into WSL 1.0
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

You may remember that Microsoft’s initial attempt at “Windows Services for Linux”, WSL 1.0 (or maybe just plain “WSL”), involved emulating Linux APIs on top of the Windows kernel. This was later scrapped in favour of the current WSL 2.0, which runs an actual Linux kernel, virtualized. Clearly, Microsoft found it problematic trying to keep things compatible with the native Linux kernel, and decided it was simpler to just run the real article. This report <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/02/oracle_linux_microsoft/> links in passing to an interesting blog post <https://jmmv.dev/2020/11/wsl-lost-potential.html> covering some of the technicalities of how WSL 1.0 was implemented. Windows NT has, or had, the notion of different “environment subsystems” or “personalities” implemented in layers on top of the core kernel; in fact, Win32 is (or was) just one of these “personalities”, with the original POSIX layer being another. That blog post says that WSL1 was implemented as just such a “personality”. And if that had not been scrapped, it would have made some interesting kinds of integration across Windows and Linux processes possible. However, a reader comment to the original article <https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/02/02/oracle_linux_microsoft/…>, claiming to come from a former “PM” (“Product Manager”?) for WSL, emphatically declares ... WSL is not an NT kernel "personality" and is in no way related to NT's POSIX subsystem. Not even slightly. They are entirely different implementations of different things and share zero architecture and implementation details. This reinforces an impression I’ve had, that much of the modularity of the original Windows NT architecture has decayed away over the years, sacrificed by Microsoft to marketing exigencies. And that includes the whole “environment subsystem” concept. So WSL1 was actually less modular than it might have appeared to begin with, and that would have added to the support headaches.

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64-bit Raspberry Pi OS exits beta, is available for all Pi 3, 4, and Zero 2 boards
by Peter Reutemann 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

'The Raspberry Pi hardware has included a 64-bit processor since the Pi 3 launched in early 2016, but the Raspberry Pi OS (formerly known as Raspbian) has remained primarily 32-bit. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has been testing a 64-bit version of the OS since 2020, though, and today the organization announced that the 64-bit version is leaving beta and is now a fully supported OS option on all 64-bit Pi hardware. This includes the Pi 3, Pi 4, Pi Zero 2 W, and all variants thereof.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/64-bit-raspberry-pi-os-exits-beta-i… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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Backblaze Hard Drive Reliability Stats For 2021
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Feb '22

02 Feb '22

Data-backup company Backblaze has released its annual report on hard-drive reliability for 2021 <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/01/backblaze_hd_reliability_stats_show/>. Interesting that there is an overall longer-term downward trend in drive failures, though this can fluctuate some. The company is in a good position to compare different brands and models, since they tend to shop around a lot (look at that list). Their whole system is designed to cope with drive failures, and given how many drives they have, they get a lot of failures. So there is plenty of raw data available to analyze, which they make freely available.

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Remembering Windows Vista
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Feb '22

02 Feb '22

Here is a look back <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/01/happy_birthday_windows_vista/> at the troubled gestation of Windows Vista. It’s useful as a retrospective, full of links to reports on developments from that time. One of the article links is to this analysis <https://www.theregister.com/2001/08/07/ms_poised_to_switch_windows/> of where Microsoft was supposedly going at the time. (Re)reading that is like peering through a portal into an alien, forgotten world -- one where the company was full of grandiose plans for building an entire OS on Dotnet, making your Exchange mail folders look like a filesystem volume, tying the representation of Office documents to proprietary features of NTFS, and turning the filesystem itself into a database. And one where users and pundits took such plans seriously.

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German Court Fines Company For Linking To Google-Hosted Web Font
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Seems lots of websites link to web fonts hosted by Google. But do they realize this means that users of their sites are sending their IP addresses to Google’s servers? And that not getting the consent of your users to such a thing can land you in legal trouble, at least in the EU? <https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/> I don’t know why people do this anyway -- depending on another site just introduces an additional potential point of failure to your site. Fonts are not that big‡: how great a hardship would it be to copy them to your own site, and link to them there? ‡Had a quick check of my /usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/ directory, which contains an installation of Google’s entire Unicode-friendly “Noto” font collection; that’s got 2380 entries totalling not quite half a gigabyte.

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A Developer Watching QA Test The Product
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Those with OCD tendencies might want to look away ... <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baY3SaIhfl0>

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Fwd: [NZLUG] Fwd: Flounder startup 5th Feb 1PM Melbourne time
by Peter Reutemann 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Apologies for cross-posting, but this event might be of interest to some of you. Cheers, Peter ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Russell Coker <russell(a)coker.com.au> Date: Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 10:53 PM Subject: [NZLUG] Fwd: Flounder startup 5th Feb 1PM Melbourne time To: DL Neil <nzlug(a)etelligence.info>, Stephen Dalton <steve(a)refactor.com.au>, NZ Linux Users Group <nzlug(a)lists.nzoss.org.nz>, Mark Foster <blakjak(a)blakjak.net> https://flounder.coker.com.au/2022/01/30/flounder-overview/ The FLOSS Down Under group (Flounder) group is starting next Saturday 1PM Melbourne time (the above page summarises it). https://b.coker.com.au/ The above URL will redirect to the meeting URL, it's deliberately short so if your primary device has an issue you can quickly type it into another device. We haven't entirely decided on the main feature, but thinking of having it be hands on training on BTRFS and ZFS while at the same time discussing new advances (both new technology and older technology that has become cheaper and thus more usable) in storage for FOSS systems. If there's someone who has experience with Optane on Linux who could give a 10+ minute talk about it then please contact me off list. The meetings will include a summary and discussion of new free software that is noteworthy (with input welcome from anyone who thinks we missed something noteworthy). We will also have some mention of recent security issues and other changes to the environment that we operate in. Anyone who wants to contribute to a meeting can contact me in advance to have some time reserved for a lightning talk or a feature talk at a future meeting. Please forward this message to all free software users groups in Australia and NZ. Note that this is not designed to compete with existing LUGs, but to offer something different. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ _______________________________________________ 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 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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A Bug in Early Creative Commons Licenses Has Enabled a New Breed of Superpredator
by Peter Reutemann 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

'Here’s a supreme irony: the Creative Commons licenses were invented to enable a culture of legally safe sharing, spurred by the legal terror campaign waged by the entertainment industry, led by a literal criminal predator who is now in prison for sex crimes. But because of a small oversight in old versions of the licenses created 12 years ago, a new generation of legal predator has emerged to wage a new campaign of legal terror. To make matters worse, this new kind of predator specifically targets people who operate in good faith, only using materials that they explicitly have been given permission to use.' -- source: https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-en… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

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