today's howtos

• How to Install Xrdp Server (Remote Desktop) on Raspberry Pi

• How To Generate Git SSH Keys

• How To Install Composer on CentOS 8

• How to Schedule a Task or Job on Linux Using Crontab

• X autologin

• himblick media player

• How to Create a Database, Database User and Grant Privileges in MySQL/MariaDB

• How to sync Microsoft OneDrive from command-line in Linux

• A good use of buildah and podman for Fedora packagers

• Some pretty useful SQUID proxy tips & tricks

• Temporarily suspending automount on a device

• How to enable system-wide dark mode on Ubuntu computers to make it more relaxing to use the computer at night

Migrating the MAAS UI from AngularJS to React

MAAS (metal as a service), is a Canonical product which allows for very fast server provisioning and data centre management. Around 2014, work began to build a rich UI for MAAS, primarily using the AngularJS JavaScript framework from Google. AngularJS today is in long term support (LTS) and due to reach end-of-life in 2021. This year we began the work of transitioning away from AngularJS in anticipation of this impending EOL to more contemporary tooling. Evaluating Angular vs React Google’s recommended upgrade path for applications built in AngularJS is to transition to the Angular framework. Despite the similarity in naming, Angular is very different from AngularJS architecturally, and the migration process is non-trivial. While components (allowing for the now ubiquitous uni-directional data architectural pattern) were later backported from Angular to AngularJS, most of MAAS UI predated this and consequently migration to Angular would require significant app-wide refactoring. Since the inception of the MAAS UI, a number of other products had been built at Canonical using React. As we had developed significant experience using React, and tooling in the surrounding ecosystem, ultimately it made more sense to invest in transitioning the MAAS UI to React rather than Angular. This choice conferred additional benefits, such as standardising our build and testing infrastructure, and allows for component reuse across products. We also just generally enjoy working with React, and feel that the most significant developments in web UI technology are happening within the React ecosystem (hooks, concurrent mode, suspense, CRA).

Haiku almost-monthly activity report - October and November 2019

The last two months have been quite busy for me and I had no time to write up a report. Remember that everyone is welcome to contribute to the website and if you wand to write the report from time to time, this would be much appreciated, by me because I wouldn’t need to do it, and by others because they will enjoy reading things written with a different style and perspective. Anyway, let’s look at what’s going on! Let’s start with the non-technical side of things. The months of october and november are traditionally quite active in Haiku (matching with our autumn-themed logo, of course). There was no BeGeistert this year, but I attended Alchimie and Capitole du Libre with mmu_man, while Korli, scottmc and Hy Che went to the GSoC mentor summit, which was in Germany this year. These events are an opportunity to advertise Haiku a bit, share ideas and projects with other alternative operating systems such as MorphOS, ReactOS, FreeBSD, or RTEMS, and overall meet other people working on open source software. All while managing this, we also had to get ready for Google Code-In, which is celebrating its 10th year. We are the only project with enough contributors and ideas to be able to participate every year since the contest was established, and look forward to what our contestants will accomplish this year. The first patches are already getting to our Gerrit code review. Also: BeOS-Inspired Haiku Continues Working On 64-bit ARM, Other Hardware Improvements

Linux-Capable and Linux-Ready Hardware

• Rugged Versalogic board expands upon Intel Apollo Lake

  Versalogic’s rugged, Linux-ready “Owl” SBC has an Intel Apollo Lake SoC with up to 8GB soldered ECC RAM, 8GB to 32GB eMMC, 2x GbE, 5x USB, 4x serial, and 2x mini-PCIe, plus SATA, LVDS, and mini-DP++. Versalogic announced a Linux-friendly SBC due in 1Q 2020 that continues its line of rugged, double-board Embedded Processing Unit (EPU) products built around Intel’s Apollo Lake Atom SoCs. The Owl will come out around the same time as the recently announced, avionics oriented Harrier, which followed a similar Osprey boardset from 2016.

• Versalogic Owl Small Form Factor Apollo Lake Embedded Computer Targets Military & Industrial Applications

  VersaLogic Owl VL-EPU-4012 Embedded System Computer In October 2019 we reported on the VersaLogic Harrier computer that was slightly bigger than a credit card.

• Tiny USB bridge board helps tame I2C traffic

  Excamera has gone to Crowd Supply to launch a tiny, open source “I2CMini” USB-to-I2C bridge board for controlling and monitoring I2C traffic. The $17 device has a Qwiic connector, a 4-pin header, and a micro-USB port. A year ago, Excamera Labs launched a $29 I2CDriver I2C debugging board. Now the company has returned to Crowd Supply to pitch a simpler, $17 I2CMini USB-to-I2C bridge device that is similarly designed to plug into a Linux, Mac, or Windows computer via a micro-USB port.

• Edge AI motherboard combines Coffee Lake with MXM-linked Nvidia GPU cards

  Ibase unveiled a Linux-supported “MT800M-P” motherboard for AI applications with an 8th Gen Coffee Lake CPU and an MXM slot for Nvidia GPU cards. Other features include 4x GbE, 2x DP, PCIe, M.2, and mini-PCIe. After watching the embedded industry squeeze and shrink their products for power- and space-efficient IoT devices, we’ve lately seen a modest trend towards giganticism as systems bulk up to support full-size GPU boards for edge AI applications. The latest is Ibase’s 270 x 220mm Intel Coffee Lake based MT800M-P SBC, which supports AI services such as speech recognition, image analysis, and visual search and media processing in the retail, banking and transportation industries.

• Rikomagic MK25 Amlogic S922X TV Box Supports Digital Signage Features

• Marlin 2.0 Open Source 3D Printer Firmware Finally Released

  Back in June, we wrote about Marlin 2.0 firmware supporting ESP32 3D printer board, but at the time the firmware was still in RC1 (Release for Comment) phase.

• Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 865, 765, and 765G 5G Mobile Platforms

• NVIDIA Looks To Have Some Sort Of Open-Source Driver Announcement For 2020

  We were tipped off by a Phoronix reader to this GTC session for GTC 2020 by NVIDIA engineer John Hubbard. It's about "Open Source, Linux Kernel, and NVIDIA." The talk abstract is: "We'll report up-to-the-minute developments on NVIDIA's status and activities, and possibly (depending on last-minute developments) a few future plans and directions, regarding our contributions to Linux kernel; supporting Nouveau (the open source kernel driver for NVIDIA GPUs, that is in the Linux kernel), including signed firmware behavior, documentation, and patches; and NVIDIA kernel drivers." Color us surprised and damn excited, as long as their announcement is substantive.