4 Neat New GTK Themes for Your Linux Desktop

The new Yaru/Communitheme theme might be the talk of the Ubuntu town right now, but it’s not the only decent desktop theme out there. If you want to give your Linux desktop a striking new look ahead of the autumn then the following quad-pack of quality GTK themes might help you out. Don’t be put off by the fact you will need to manually install these skins; it’s pretty to install GTK themes on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS above, providing you set hidden folders to show (Ctrl + H) in Nautilus first. Also: Getting Things GNOME

Python wriggles onward without its head

At the third annual PyBay Conference in San Francisco over the weekend, Python aficionados gathered to learn new tricks and touch base with old friends. Only a month earlier, Python creator Guido van Rossum said he would step down as BDFL – benevolent dictator for life – following a draining debate over the addition of a new way to assign variables within an expression (PEP 572). But if any bitterness about the proposal politics lingered, it wasn't evident among attendees. Raymond Hettinger, a Python core developer, consultant and speaker, told The Register that the retirement of Python creator Guido van Rossum hasn't really changed things. "It has not changed the tenor of development yet," he said. "Essentially, [Guido] presented us with a challenge for self-government. And at this point we don't have any active challenges or something controversial to resolve."

Today in Techrights

• Software Patent Trolls Are Dropping Like Flies in the United States
• Admissibility of the Unitary Patent Constitutional Complaint Was Likely the Final Nail in the Coffin of the Unified Patent Court (UPC)
• The USPTO Still Down (for Nearly a Week): Multiple Systems Not Accessible
• Links 21/8/2018: deepin 15.7 and Git 2.19 RC
• Links 20/8/2018: Flatpak’s 1.0 Milestone, New GIMP, New Chinese Distro Releases

today's leftovers

• How to Install R on Ubuntu 18.04

• How to Install HTTP Git Server with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• Everything You Need to Know about Linux Containers, Part I: Linux Control Groups and Process Isolation

• Robert Roth: Five or More GSoC

• Adventures with NVMe, part 2

  A few days ago I asked people to upload their NVMe “cns” data to the LVFS. So far, 643 people did that, and I appreciate each and every submission. I promised I’d share my results, and this is what I’ve found:

• The Next Challenge For Fwupd / LVFS Is Supporting NVMe SSD Firmware Updates

  With UEFI BIOS updating now working well with the Fwupd firmware updating utility and Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for distributing these UEFI update capsules, Richard Hughes at Red Hat is next focusing on NVMe solid-state drives for being able to ship firmware updates under Linux. Hughes is in the early stages at looking to support NVMe firmware updates via LVFS/fwupd. Currently he is hoping for Linux users with NVMe drives to send in the id-ctrl identification data on your drives to him. This data will be useful so he knows what drives/models are most popular but also for how the firmware revision string is advertised across drives and vendors.

• [Older] Language, Networking Packages Get Updates in Tumbleweed

  There were two openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots this past week that mostly focused on language and network packages. The Linux Kernel also received an update a couple days ago to version 4.17.13. The packages in the 20180812 Tumbleweed snapshot brought fixes in NetworkManager-applet 1.8.16, which also modernized the package for GTK 3 use in preparations for GTK 4. The free remote desktop protocol client had its third release candidate for freerdp 2.0.0 where it improved automatic reconnects, added Wave2 support and fixed automount issues. More network device card IDs for the Intel 9000 series were added in kernel 4.17.13. A jump from libstorage-ng 4.1.0 to version 4.1.10 brought several translations and added unit test for probing xen xvd devices. Two Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures fixes were made with the update in postgresql 10.5. Several rubygem packages were updated to versions 5.2.1 including rubygem-rails 5.2.1, which makes the master.key file read-only for the owner upon generation on POSIX-compliant systems. Processing XML and HTML with python-lxml 4.2.4 should have fewer crashes thanks to a fix of sporadic crashes during garbage collection when parse-time schema validation is used and the parser participates in a reference cycle. Several YaST packages receive updates including a new ServiceWidget to manage the service status with yast2-ftp-server 4.1.3 as well with yast2-http-server, yast2-slp-server and yast2-squid 4.1.0 versions.

• Red Hat Inc Risk Points versus Technology

• 10 Efficient Raspberry Add-ons To Enhance Performance - Part 8

  Sometimes you may find yourself in great need to improve the functionality of your Raspberry Pi. There is a good chance your Raspberry does not support the functionality you want. There is also a chance that it supports your dream functionality but with the help of an external tool. An add-on in other words. It is pretty obvious that your dream add-on exists in the market or someone somewhere is cracking an algorithm to build. Never mind, here we compile a list of the best add-ons to get for your Raspberry in 2018.

• Secure Email Service Tutanota sees F-Droid Release

  Back in February, I reviewed an email provider called Tutanota. If you read the article, you will remember that I thought very highly of the service. In my eyes, there were very few downsides to using the encrypted mail service, one of them being that you couldn’t use third-party email clients like Thunderbird for desktop computers or K-9 Mail for mobile devices.

• Motorola Announces Android Pie Updates for 8 smartphones excluding Moto E5 & G5

• How To Unsend Emails On Gmail For Android?

• Nerd Knobs and Open Source in Network Software

  Tech is commoditizing. I've talked about this before; I think networking is commoditizing at the device level, and the days of appliance-based networking are behind us. But are networks themselves a commodity? Not any more than any other system. We are running out of useful features, so vendors are losing feature differentiation. This one is going to take a little longer… When I first started in network engineering, the world was multiprotocol, and we had a lot of different transports. For instance, we took cases on IPX, VIP, Appletalk, NetBios, and many other protocols. These all ran on top of Ethernet, T1, Frame, ATM, FDDI, RPR, Token Ring, ARCnet, various sorts of serial links ... The list always felt a little too long, to me. Today we have IPv4, IPv6, and MPLS on top of Ethernet, pretty much. All transports are framed as Ethernet, and all upper layer protocol use some form of IP. MPLS sits in the middle as the most common "transport enhancer." The first thing to note is that space across which useful features can be created is considerably smaller than it used to be.

• Meetings that make people happy: Myth or magic?

  People tend to focus on the technical elements of meeting prep: setting the objective(s), making the agenda, choosing a place and duration, selecting stakeholders, articulating a timeline, and so on. But if you want people to come to a meeting ready to fully engage, building trust is mission-critical, too. If you need people to engage in your meetings, then you're likely expecting people to come ready to share their creativity, problem-solving, and innovation ideas.

• Building microprocessor architectures on open-source hardware and software

   

  "The real freedom you get from open source projects is much more, and more important than the fact that you don't have to pay for it," Frank Gürkaynak, Director of ETHZ's Microelectronics Design Center, writes in an article posted on All About Circuits. "Researchers can take what we provide and freely change it for their experiments. Startup companies can build on what we provide as a starting point and concentrate their time and energy on the actual innovations they want to provide. And people who are disturbed by various attacks on their systems [1, 2] have the chance to look inside and know what exactly is in their system."

• Create DIY music box cards with Punchbox

  That first time almost brought tears to my eyes. Mozart, sweetly, gently playing on the most perfect little music box. Perfectly! No errors in timing or pitch. Thank you, open source—without Mido, Svgwrite, PyYAML, and Click, this project wouldn't have been possible.

• Fund Meant to Protect Elections May Be Too Little, Too Late

  The Election Assistance Commission, the government agency charged with distributing federal funds to support elections, released a report Tuesday detailing how each state plans to spend a total of $380 million in grants allocated to improve and secure their election systems. But even as intelligence officials warn of foreign interference in the midterm election, much of the money is not expected to be spent before Election Day. The EAC expects states to spend their allotted money within two to three years and gives them until 2023 to finish spending it. Election experts have expressed skepticism that the money will be enough to modernize election equipment and secure it against state-sponsored cyber threats.