T2 21.4 "Fully Automated"

Today the T2 Project released version 21.4, with the largest amount of pre- and cross-compiled set of architectures so far! A total of 15 architectures: x86-64, x86, arm64, arm, riscv64, riscv, ppc64le, ppc64-32, ppc sparc64, mips64, mipsel, hppa, m68k, alpha and ia64! As usually most packages are up-to-date, with 1294 change-sets, 1179 updates, and 120 fixes, including Linux 5.11.16, GCC 10.3, LLVM/Clang 12, as well as the latest version of Rust, X.org, Mesa, KDE and GNOME 40! Also: T2 SDE 21.4 Released With This Linux Distribution Supporting 15 CPU Architectures

Getting Fractal up to speed

Fractal is a popular Matrix chat client for the GNOME desktop which has been in development since 2017. Fractal was designed to work well for collaboration in large groups, such as free software projects. However, there are still two main areas where it would benefit from improvements: its performance and maintainability are limited, and it lacks some important features such as end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Adding E2EE will increase the confidence that users have in the privacy of their conversations, making it nearly impossible for their conversations to be accessed by others. Because E2EE aims to prevent the service provider from being able to decrypt the messages, because the encryption keys are stored only on the end-user’s device. The direct consequence of this is that some work is delegated to the client. Some of this functionality is the same for each and every Matrix client, and includes technical components that could easily be implemented in the wrong way (especially the various encryption and security features). Most security researchers agree that redoing this work is a bad idea as it can lead to vulnerabilities. More generally, reimplementing the same functionality for each client doesn’t make much sense. On the other hand, sharing it with others allows projects that use it to contribute their expertise and polish it together instead of competing on a multitude of implementations. That shared work is called an SDK and could be considered the future “engine” of Fractal. When Fractal was created, there was no existing code that we could rely on. We had to implement ourselves bits of the Matrix protocol in Fractal, at a low level. In the meantime, the Matrix Foundation has kickstarted matrix-rust-sdk, a library to channel the Matrix community efforts into a common, efficient library. This library, still in development for now, will allow us to drop a lot of our own code.

today's howtos

• How to add PHP support for jailed SSH users in ISPConfig 3

  Jailkit is an easy-to-use tool to create and maintain jail environments for shell users on Linux. In this guide, I will show you how to move PHP and its dependencies into the jail so that the jailed user can execute PHP scripts inside the jail on an ISPConfig server.

• Installing other DEs in Nitrux

  During last month’s release of Nitrux, we made available a minimal ISO to let users install Nitrux and also install a different desktop environment and a selection of applications than the ones we include by default. We figured it’d be simpler to do this since we don’t have any plans to release different ISO images with different desktop environments.

• How to Change Cursor Size on Ubuntu Desktop

  #Nitrux is not just #KDE anymore https://nxos.org/tutorial/installing-other-des-in-nitrux/

• How to clear Bash history on Linux

  The bash history is a log file that contains all commands that the user executed on the Linux shell. When you use the "arrow up" key on our keyboard, then Bash will look up the previous command from that file and display it on the screen, ready to be executed again.

• How to set a VNC password

  The Linux TigerVNC Server provides a command to set a new password.

• How to kill an OpenVZ Container

  This guide shows you how to kill an unresponsive OpenVZ container in case the normal stop procedure fails. Killing the container will not delete any files or remove the container, it just kills all processes so that you can start or restart the container again when it gets stuck. I will use container ID 101 in all commands, please replace that ID with the ID of the container that you like to kill.

• How to install TagScanner on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux - Linux Shout

  TagScanner, a freeware program, is only available for Windows 10/8/7/ to easily edit metadata information of audio or music files. However, that doesn’t mean we cannot install and use Tagscanner on Linux systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others, yes we can using Wine. You can get TagScanner for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. It is one of the popular tools to edit audio file metadata and available to download free of cost from official or third-party websites. Let’s see the steps involve to run Tagscanner on Linux systems.

Debian Installer Bullseye RC 1 release

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the first
release candidate of the installer for Debian 11 "Bullseye".


Improvements in this release
============================

 * base-installer:
    - Re-add the removed is_ports_architecture() function - it's used by
      other packages and library.sh looks like a fair central place for it
      to be (#979193).
 * brltty:
    - Update udev rules.
    - Make sure the hardening flags are used in the udeb build.
 * choose-mirror:
    - Update Mirrors.masterlist.
 * debian-archive-keyring:
    - Add bullseye keys, remove jessie keys.
 * debian-cd:
    - Shorten "ppc64el" to "p64el" in the volume ID.
    - Include eatmydata deb for the installer to use offline (#986772).
 * debian-installer:
    - Build in libinput instead of evdev driver for the graphical
      installer. This should improve support for touchpads in particular.
    - Bump Linux kernel ABI to 5.10.0-6.
    - Add wireless-regdb-udeb to all Linux arch images (#979104).
    - Correct keyword for bootloader arguments in netboot/xen/debian.cfg
      example file (#904131).
    - Update debian-internals manual to current development state.
    - Update minimum disk and memory sizes.
 * debian-installer-utils:
    - list-devices-linux: Support partitions on USB UAS devices.
 * espeakup:
    - Carry over the alsa mixer levels into the installed system.
 * grub-installer:
    - Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is
      mounted when needed.
 * grub2:
    - Add support for SBAT.
    - grub-install: Fix inverted test for NLS enabled when copying locales
      (#979754).
 * installation-report:
    - bugscript: do not include template in script output (#980929).
 * libdebian-installer:
    - Remove the arbitrary limitation on maximum line length in Packages
      and Sources files (#971946).
 * libinih:
    - Add libinih1-udeb for Debian Installer (#981864).
 * libinput:
    - Drop libwacom support from the udeb.
 * libmd:
    - Add a udeb package needed by libbsd.
 * libwacom:
    - Drop the udeb, libinput no longer needs it.
 * linux:
    - Add bonding driver to the nic-modules udeb.
    - Remove efivars from the efi-modules udeb.
    - arm64: Fix i2c-mv64xxx module name.
 * localechooser:
    - Disable Kabyle for the text-based installer, as switching keyboard
      fails there (#973455).
    - Correct Kabyle locale definition in languagelist to its real naming.
 * lowmem:
    - Delete graphical terminal related files when memory is low
      (#977490).
    - 5lowmem: Rename to 05lowmem so that rescue actually overrides it
      (#870574).
    - S15lowmem: Update minimum memory sizes.
 * nano:
    - Compile the udeb with --without-included-regex to make binaries
      substantially smaller.
 * netcfg:
    - Update testcases to work with current Check API (#980607).
    - Satisfy GCC pedantry for strncpy() calls.
 * os-prober:
    - Probe Microsoft OS on arm64.
 * partman-btrfs:
    - Add minimal subvolume support for / (#964818).
 * partman-efi:
    - Make sure that efivarfs is loaded and the efivars pseudofs is
      mounted when needed.
 * rootskel:
    - Use /dev/tty0 as a console even if it's not in /proc/consoles.
    - Do not remove the font when bterm is not started (#977466).
 * rootskel-gtk:
    - Switch to Homeworld theme for Debian 11 by Juliette Taka.
 * user-setup:
    - Allow underscore in username of first account (#977214).


Hardware support changes
========================

 * debian-installer:
    - arm64: Add support for puma-rk3399.
    - arm64: Update to use u-boot-install-sunxi.
    - armhf: Make hd-media and netboot sdcard images start at offset
      32768, for compatibility with rockchip platforms.
    - arm64, armhf: Update SD-card-images sizes for netboot, netboot-gtk
      and hd-media.
 * flash-kernel:
    - Add support for Orange Pi One Plus (#981328).
    - Add support for ROCK Pi 4 (A,B,C).
    - Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M2-Ultra (#982089).
    - Add support for Banana Pi BPI-M3 (#981561).
    - Fix missing ESPRESSObin variants (#969518).
    - Fix several DTB-Id entries that incorrectly referenced the
      .dts instead of .dtb file.


Localization status
===================

 * 78 languages are supported in this release.


Known bugs in this release
==========================

 * Broken rescue mode with the graphical installer (#987377).
 * amdgpu firmware required for many AMD graphic cards.

See the errata[2] for details and a full list of known issues.


Feedback for this release
=========================

We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so
please try it. Installation images, and everything else you will need
are available at our web site[3].


Thanks
======

The Debian Installer team thanks everybody who has contributed to this
release.


 1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Team
 2. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata
 3. https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer