Tech Freedom

Distro Monday 52

DM 52.1 – Straight Ubuntu or Mint?

What’s the difference anyway? Isn’t Mint based on Ubuntu? Actually, there are quite a few noticeable differences. Yes, Mint is derived from Ubuntu, just as Ubuntu is derived from Debian. There is also a Debian edition of Mint (which, personally, I would point you to). Personal preferences aside, what are the big differences?
· Mint
o Has only 3 Desktop environments (all are GNOME forks from yesteryear)
§ Cinnamon (in-house development, flagship option)
· Easy to use, instantly familiar for windoesn’t users, fairly lightweight
§ Xfce for the very resource-conscious
· Extra lean, bare-bones, may remind you of windoesn’t 9x by default
§ Mate which is also relatively light and quick, based on an older version of GNOME than Cinnamon is
o Has Timeshift to allow you to undo dumb choices on the computer easily
o Update manager is very easy to use
o Flatpak rather than Snap support by default
o Community based
· Ubuntu
o Supported by Canonical, LTD.
o This is “Linux” to most people who are not familiar with Linux
o By default, ships a heavily tweaked version of GNOME, with modded dash-to-dock and a few other things as well
§ Also has numerous other desktops, from LxQt to Xfce, Budgie, KDE, Cinnamon, Unity, and a host of other options which are community supported rather than being official iterations from Canonical
o Snaps, because no one else wants them
o Easy to use, I suppose, but not as easy as Mint
o Vanilla Ubuntu is disorienting because of the tweaked GNOME they ship, but if you want a more windoesn’t feel, as I said earlier, they have several other possible flavors with different desktop environments available, which is far more extensive than Mint.
I do not put any stock in Ubuntu, personally because I do not appreciate the deals they’ve made with the Devil in order to build their business to where it is today. On one hand, I suppose it has helped to raise the profile of Linux, and Ubuntu has become a more commonly used platform for servers and other enterprise-level applications. However, they compromised deeply and are almost treating their branch of the Linux family tree like a proprietary OS. I respect the Mint team for stripping out much of that garbage, and having the foresight to start a Debian edition of Mint. Is Mint perfect? No. Due to the bases on which they build, they are slow on the uptake for updates and upgrades, but that makes them more stable and less prone to break than my personal preferences, currently.

https://linuxiac.com/linux-mint-vs-ubuntu/#main

#distromonday #Linux #LinuxMint #ubnuntu #better #newbies #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

 


DM 52.2 – New ISO for OpenMandriva rolling edition out now

I talked about OpenMandriva a couple of months ago, but it is the descendant of a legendary Linux distro, Mandrake Linux. I talked about it a then because they just rolled out the first version of their rolling release edition, codenamed “Rome”. Well, this one is roughly on par with Arch in terms of being bleeding edge, so let’s find out what changes they’ve made here:

· Linux 62 kernel series
· Latest From
o KDE
o Mesa graphics stack,
o Wayland
o XOrg Server
o LLVM/Clang
o GNU Binutils
o GCC
o GNU C Library
o systemd 253
· LibreOffice 7.5.1 office suite 
· Firefox 111 
· Chromium 110
· Krita 5.1.5
· digiKam 7.9
· GIMP 2.10.34 
· Calligra Suite 3.2.1
· SMPlayer 22.7.0
· VLC 3.0.18 video players
· VirtualBox 7.0.6
· GNOME 43.3
· LxQt 1.2

OpenMandriva Lx 23.03 Released with Linux 6.2, Mesa 23, and KDE Plasma 5.27

#distromonday #openmandriva #Linux #indie #rollingrelease #Rome #TechFreedom #FOSSnews


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DM 52.3 – blendOS: One Distro to Rule Them All?

I talked about this when it first came out, and even daily drove it on my Surface (not a representative sample) for about a month. The concept is cool. It is based on Arch, which gives you the rolling feel along with the excitement of being on the bleeding edge of development for the OS, but also gives you access to containerized ways to use APT and DNF package managers if you really want or need to. This, in concept, as I said, is a sweet setup, almost ideal, really. However, I do not think that it is ready for mass adoption yet, as on my system (again, not any kind of representative sample for computers in general, as it has been a thorn in my backside since I bought it about 2 years ago), it became unstable and sluggish far more quickly than it should have in my opinion. Perhaps I didn’t use it as intended, as I used the basic, standard pacman to install packages most of the time. I didn’t take advantage of the semi-immutability offered by the containerized version of pacman, though I did play with DNF and APT just a little. Which package managers are in play, here?
· apt
· dnf
· yum
· pacman
· yay
· Blend

It currently uses a distrobox implementation, and this is admittedly in the early stages of development, so my experience will not necessarily be representative in your case, either. I installed the KDE version (big shock, I know), and used it as normal for about a month, when it started to break pretty badly on me and I couldn’t get what I needed to do done easily because of instability. It also ships with the Flathub store app as an app which can fully install flatpaks, rather than simply downloading their flatref files for something else to install. I mentioned distrobox, but it will not be around in this distro for much longer, as it will be replaced with podman very soon. They will also soon be shipping a GUI config tool for the containers, rather than relying on CLI to get the job done. It is a cool option, and perhaps when it is more stable, I will try it again, and do it more properly this time. Is it the One? Not at this time, but I will keep an eye on it as it develops. I like the idea of an immutable Arch install, though that kinda messes with my head, to be honest.


https://news.itsfoss.com/blendos/

#distromonday #Linux #blendOS #arch #onedistrotorulethemall #goodstuff #notreadyyet #FOSS #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

Tech Freedom Intro: What to expect from my channels and website.

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TTT 52: Ubuntu PSA & Linux Mobile News

TTT 52.1 – Running Ubuntu? Here’s Another Reminder to Keep it Updated
Well, Canonical has released a new round of CVE (Critical Vulnerability Exploit) Patches, so run your updates to close these 9 attack surfaces down for your machine:
· CVE 2022-2196
o Could leave your VMs open to leaking private data from either the host or a fellow guest OS
·  CVE-2022-42328 and CVE-2022-42329
o Which are both race conditions in the Xen networking backend and could cause the kernel to crash
§ What’s a race condition?
· A situation where two drivers are trying to access the same resource at the same time, and do not get scheduled properly by the kernel and it causes problems, often a denial of service (crash, etc)
·  CVE-2023-0266
o a use-after-free vulnerability discovered in the ALSA subsystem that could allow a local attacker to crash the system by causing a denial of service
· CVE-2023-0469
o a use-after-free vulnerability discovered in the io_uring subsystem
· CVE-2023-1195
o another user-after-free vulnerability found in the CIFS network file system. Both vulnerabilities could allow a local attacker to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code
· CVE-2022-4382
o A race condition in the USB Gadget file system implementation, which could lead to a use-after-free vulnerability in some situations and allow a local attacker to crash the system by causing a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code
· CVE-2023-0045
o a flaw in the prctl syscall implementation that made the kernel fail to protect against indirect branch prediction attacks and allowed a local attacker to expose sensitive information
· CVE-2023-23559
o an integer overflow vulnerability found in the RNDIS USB driver that could allow a local attacker with physical access to cause a denial of service (system crash) or execute arbitrary code by plugging in a malicious USB device

https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-22-10-users-get-new-linux-kernel-security-update-9-vulnerabilities-patched
#TTT #patches #ubuntu #security #Linux #PSA #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
TTT 52.2 – UB Touch OTA-1 Out Now for you Linux Mobile Devotees
Wow, I just talked about OTA 25 last week, and the devs shocked us with the first rebased OTA update already… Welcome to Focal Fossa, everyone. What else is new with this surprise (limited) release? Which devices is it currently available for?
· Devices
o Fairphone 4
o Google Pixel 3a
o Vollaphone 22
o Vollaphone X
o Vollaphone
· New Stuff
o Focal Fossa LTS
o Lomiri UI
o The systemd init system
o Ayatana Indicators
o Waydroid
o a new porting style for device porters
o support for building many components against GCC 12 and Qt 5.15 LTS
· Improvements
o fix for an issue when trying to mute the phone’s microphone during phone calls
o a fix for a context menu issue in the Morph Browser
o fixes for various issues when receiving MMS messages.
o XWayland integration
o support for running legacy X11 apps on Lomiri,
o support for PIN codes between 4 and 12 digits
o updates broadband provider data
o adds support for USB-C USB-PD
o improves PAM/logind integration
o and refreshes various Lomiri effects.
· New
o Morph Browser
§ received hardware-accelerated video decoding with support for up to 2K video playback and video chat support
o Camera app
§ supports barcode reading
o Messaging app
§ now lets you zoom in on conversation text using a pinch and spread gesture, and the Addressbook app now lets users add notes for a contact and a URL address

https://9to5linux.com/first-ubuntu-touch-ota-release-based-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts-is-out-now
#TTT #UBTouch #Linuxmobile #updates #FOSS #TechFreedom #FOSSnews

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TTT 52.3 – Ventoy 1.0.90 With Support for Even More Stuff
The boys and girls on the Ventoy team have expanded support even further by adding updated LibreElec and Chimera Linux to their repertoire. That means that the easiest USB/SD Card/ external storage bootable media creation and management solution that much better. If you ever

https://9to5linux.com/ventoy-1-0-90-adds-support-for-libreelec-11-0-and-chimera-linux
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FFW 37: Counter-Strike 2: Confirmed and More

FFW 37.1 – Counter-Strike 2 is For Real

I covered the likelihood that it would be coming soon about a month ago… Valve has confirmed and told us that it, along with a huge upgrade for Source 2 would drop by this summer. I suggest you look at the videos in the article below if you want more of a tease. I don’t play, but know that many do, and there will be lots of good stuff being improved and changed in the new game vs CS:GO. Here is a short list:
· responsive smoke
· sub-tick updates for more responsive gameplay
· overhauled maps
· Source 2 tooling for the community
· your whole inventory carries over from CS:GO
· higher resolution models for basically everything
· improved visual effects
· an upgraded UI
· And more


https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/counter-strike-2-from-valve-releasing-summer-2023/

#FFW #Linux #FOSSnews #CS2 #valve #steam #linuxgaming #TechFreedom

FFW 37.2 – What Happened to AMD GPUs in DOTA2?

If you play DOTA2 and run it on a Linux box with an AMD GPU, you may have noticed reduced fluidity in the game of late. This is due to an updated Graphics Pipeline Library issue causing the driver, while in game to consume a ridiculous 3GB of RAM. Luckily, this bug has been squashed after it was demonstrated to developers working on the project, and it now takes a more reasonable 450MB RAM vs the 3 GB they were seeing. On the other hand, unless you are adventurous, you may not have seen it anyway. However, that feature will be enabled by default in the next version of the MESA stack, so getting that bug squashed now is excellent. Good on you, Devs.


https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/amd-radv-driver-will-soon-stop-eating-ram-with-some-games/

#FFW #Linux #DOTA2 #AMD #gfxdirvers #bugssquashed #performance #FOSSnews #linuxgaming #TechFreedom

 

 


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FFW 37.3 – NVidia Graphics Driver News

We have a new full version of drivers from Dr. Huang and team Green. What’s new in this one?

· Indirect Branch Tracking support
· Better Xfce support
o New profile to prevent degradation when
§ OpenGL compositor backend is enabled along with G-SYNC
§ suspend and resume support when using GSP firmware
· ZSTD compression to shrink the installer and make it quicker
· Better flatpak support
· improved support for Wayland apps running on using the PRIME render offload feature on a system with an integrated AMD GPU
· And more…
As always, check the link if you want more information on this driver release.

NVIDIA 530.41.03 Graphics Driver Brings Better Xfce Support, Faster Installer

#FFW #Linuxgaming #nvidia #graphics #drivers #updates #TechFreedom #FOSSnews


What to use instead of Big Tech online:

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WE 31: Violence, Banks, and AI, Oh My!

Bob Lee Stabbed to Death in SF
Credit Suisse Buyout News
Amazon Vs Labor and UK May Sue Over Cloud Monopoly
AI News
Tiktok News


Weekend Edition, Cashapp founder stabbed to death in SanFran, Credit Suisse & UBS, Amazon Labor Union Woes, UK signals lawsuit over AWS and Azure in UK stifling competition, pResident Depends holding meetings on AI, chatGPT makes wild accusations, Head of Signal Foundation reaffirms dedication to never adopt AI tech in the Signal system, Other popular Chinese Apps, TikTok opinions

WE 31.1 – Bob Lee, Founder of CashApp Stabbed to Death
Sad story to start off the day, but I’m committed to doing some sort of human interest piece at the top of the weekend edition from now on. It would appear that Bob Lee, who was a fixture in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years or so, first as an engineer at Square, then when he founded CashApp later, was stabbed to death in the Rincon District of San Francisco. Many will miss him, he sounded like a genuinely great guy. Good bye, Bob.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/tech/bob-lee-tech-executive-death/index.html
#cashapp #boblee #rip #sadday #square #cashapp

WE 31.2 – Shotgun Wedding in Switzerland
UBS and Credit Suisse tied the knot, so to speak, in a very rushed ceremony due to the failing health of Credit Suisse over the last handful of months. Swiss authorities pushed them together, and both parties were willing, for the most part, however, others around them are questioning the pairing. some are concerned that it concentrates too much risk in UBS specifically and Switzerland generally. We will see what becomes of this union which apparently will take 3-4 years to completely effect, due to the gargantuan nature of both partners. It looks like there will be significant layoffs as these two big banks become one, after all it doesn’t make sense to have reduplication of efforts when part of the point of mergers like this is to streamline operations. Some shareholders were pretty mad at the meetings which each bank held in the beginning of the week. Markedly moreso on the Credit Suisse side than on the UBS side, but no one was really happy that they didn’t get a vote in the matter. Sure, the UBS shareholders were happy to have one fewer competitors in the world, but having a major deal like that crammed down their throats tempered their enthusiasm a bit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/ubs-holds-first-shareholder-meeting-since-controversial-credit-suisse-takeover.html
#UBS #creditsuisse #mergers #banking #highfinance


WE 31.3 – Amazon in Trouble More?
31.3a – Ever Hear About the Amazon Labor Union?
Well, they won their court case a year ago, but Amazon still refuses to acknowledge that they exist. A guy named Christian Smalls, who was let go from one of the NY Amazon warehouses back in 2020, decided that workers needed to unionize to protect themselves from the increasingly poor working conditions they faced in the warehouses. As you can imagine, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for the fledgling union, because even though they won the first battle, which is simply to be able to organize at all, there have been other hurdles. Personality conflicts, differences of opinion, and of course resistance from the behemoth that they are trying to organize in order to have a voice in order to bargain with. Amazon has hardly bothered to notice that this ragtag, grassroots group, headed by an individual whom Amazon lawyers thought was “not smart or articulate” a few years ago. It will be interesting to see what happens with the ALU’s efforts to move any further than they have already, which is quite something. I’m neither a huge fan of mega-corps like Amazon nor of the overtly socialist nature of unions, which is already starting to manifest itself in Mr. Smalls. He travels all over the country, wearing Versace, and hobnobbing with celebrities, then passes down pronouncements as if from on high.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/tech/amazon-labor-union-one-year-later/index.html

31.3b – AWS and Azure to Face Anti-trust Litigation in UK
OFCOM, the UK communications regulator looks poised to bring a case against both tech monsters’ cloud divisions for being anti-competitive. What are they looking at here, though? In the words of the Ofcom’s director, they have found, “High barriers to switching are already harming competition in what is a fast-growing market. We think more in-depth scrutiny is needed, to make sure it’s working well for people and businesses who rely on these services.”
In light of that, they have decided to refer the matter to the Competition and Markets Authority, who is ready to do an investigation of their own, actually seems to be champing at the bit, so to speak. They have already reviewed preliminary findings from Ofcom and is primed to look into the matter. The issues that led to Ofcom referring them to the CMA center around high egress fees, artificial technical barriers to interoperability with other providers, as well as incentive fee structures meant to encourage clients to only use one cloud provider for all their needs. This strikes me as a fairly open & shut case, as far as I’m concerned, but the giants, including Google, which speak for between 65-75% of the cloud market in the UK are all using these tactics (not all that differently from here in the States). Well, we will see what these regulators do and can do to these big dogs. I have my doubts that it will wind up as anything more than a slap on the wrist for these tech giants, but who knows, maybe they’ll be out for a pound and a half of flesh this time instead of 3 ounces. I’ll keep an eye on it, but it sounds like the earliest there is likely to be more movement on this issue will be something like November.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/tech/amazon-microsoft-uk-cloud-services/index.html
WE 31.4 – AI News
31.4a – Johnathan Turley: Falsely Accused of Harassing a Student by a ChatGPT Hallucination
Wow… Dr. Turley is a rare “conservative” within the halls of legal academia, and has never done anything like what chatGPT hallucinated he did to a student, this thing even fabricated a WaPo article about the incident. I have to wonder how much of this happens on a regular basis as people overuse that damned thing for crap it was never intended to do. So a colleague of Dr. Turley’s from UCLA, who was doing some research on harassment accusations against law professors via chatGPT. It manufactured this whole thing, which strikes me as about the same level of nonsense as a hit piece in a tabloid, a blatant example of libel, only there is no one to sue over it. Of course, Dr. Turley has never taken students on trips in 35 years of teaching law, much less has he ever even been accused of anything untoward… Obviously there was never a WaPo article about a non-existent incident. So, if it can make things up whole cloth like that and no one is available to refute the spurious claims, then that gets added to the list of sources for future research. Dr. Turley is trying to say that these tools are untrustworthy in this opinion piece, and I have heard of other similar things happening, so I tend to agree with him on this.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/04/03/chatgpt-misinformation-bias-flaws-ai-chatbot/11571830002/

31.4b – pResident Depends Holds Meetings About AI
Wow, his handlers must really be trying to focus everybody on this issue for some reason, just like the Trump indictment earlier this week. This article is kind of unfocused and feels a bit rushed, to me, but that is beside the point, it is a story about Brandon Depends. He can’t even pay a visit to the necessary on his own successfully (see stain on his pants at the Vatican, lol), much less speak coherently about any topic, not even ice cream. “You know, the thing…” this clown is a colossal embarrassment and humiliation for our country. We were at least semi-functional under Trump and his admin. The cracks were certainly beginning to show then, but the level of dysfunction in this country now is almost incomprehensible to me. I digress, though. They are supposed to meet and talk about the “risks and opportunities” of AI, in the face of the runaway success of tools like chatGPT. They are also likely to push congress to pass legislation to allegedly limit the data collection of Big Tech companies in America. As long as that bill isn’t as much of an inversion of the rights of US citizens enshrined in our Constitution, or is not really about something else, like limiting free speech in the name of protecting us from “misinformation” which is anything that an administration chooses to deem as “wrongthink” or inconvenient, such as in the RESTRICT Act. That monstrosity needs to be shouted down harder than Dinesh D’Souza at U Mass Amherst a few years ago. If it were really what it claimed to be instead of a blank check for the Secretary of Commerce to sign whenever they feel like it to shut down inconvenient information being shared on social media, because apparently bans and shadow bans aren’t enough, shoot, even jailing someone over a meme and a joke shared during the 2016 election is apparently not enough for them, they want absolute control of the internet, just like the CCP has with their “Great Firewall”. But again, I digress. I am glad to hear that the privacy of Americans is suddenly on the radar for Resident Depends.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/biden-to-discuss-ai-risks-and-opportunities-in-meeting-with-advisors.html

31.4c – A Bright Spot for Signal
The president of the Signal Foundation is making lots of noise about how they will never incorporate AI tools into the encrypted messaging app. Does she want a cookie or a ribbon? The app is meant to be a tool for more private communications, not a data farming enterprise like social media is in general. She also made it clear that they hold onto as little user information as possible to still be able to provide the services that they do through the app. This puts me a bit more at ease about using Signal, however, I am very uncomfortable with the people who endorse it, such as people with thoroughly mixed reputations such as Edward Snowden. However, that is not the point right now. The point is that they are standing up to pressure to incorporate some of those God-awful privacy violators called “generative ‘AIs’” into their non-profit based private communication app. Good on them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-learned-what-not-to-do-from-google.html

WE 31.5 – Tiktok Thoughts
31.5a – Public Sentiment About the Ban
As of a week ago, half of the people surveyed by Pew Research were behind the idea of ban, overall, and most (64% of) respondents were aware of the CCP connections for TikTok and ByteDance, most (60% of) GOP-aligned people were in favor of the ban, while only 43% of Dem-aligned respondents were favorable toward the idea. I feel like there is a huge influence operation underway about this issue, precious little real information on either side of the issue, and I am finding myself leaning toward supporting TikTok’s continued operation in the country, but not because I actually like the platform, which I don’t, I think it can be and often is used to manipulate people in certain ways which are counter to their well being. Rather because I get very, very uneasy when the two wings of the political bird of this country come together on anything, as 95% of the time, whatever that issue that got overwhelming bipartisan support winds up stripping us of freedoms and rights which should be guaranteed by the limits placed on the government by the documents upon which this country allegedly rests (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/31/tech/tiktok-ban-pew-survey/index.html

31.5b – Is TikTok the ONLY Popular Chinese App in the US and UK?
Simple answer: No.
What else is there? CapCut (a popular video editor often used to create videos for TikTok), Shein (a fashion app aimed at younger millennials and Gen Z), and Temu (an online shopping app which has quickly overtaken WalMart and Amazon for the younger set). If we are really concerned about China getting our data, then we need to be consistent and ban all of these other big China-related apps – these are just the 3 biggest, other than TikTok, though, out of thousands of others. Ooh, how many mobile games which are little more than shinier, more engaging methods of data harvesting are there that should be banned similarly, if we are to be concerned with TikTok purely due to its alleged CCP ties? Either it all needs to be shut down faster than a nerd asking a prom queen out, or our gov’t needs to shut its increasingly corrupt and inept trap about all of this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65072407