The way you utilise your PC can often depend on the operating system you use as well as your level of technical knowledge. Even though most people will turn to macOS or Windows when deciding on an OS, if you want something you can customise, there's nothing better than Linux.

Despite the fact that it isn’t as popular as Windows, Linux offers far more avenues for customisation than any other OS as it's built on an open source foundation. It's certainly more intimidating to the average user as a result, but it can be incredibly powerful, and rewarding, if you possess the skills to fully take advantage of it.

Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages with both systems that are useful to know before making the decision on which is best for you.

• FreeBSD Quick Guide: Audio on FreeBSD

  Whether for music, communication, or notifications, audio is an important feature of many personal computer systems. In a new FreeBSD system, an audio card will need to be configured to process audio files and send them to the connected speakers. Our newest FreeBSD quick guide will walk through setting up and configuring audio, connecting a pair of headphones (including pairing Bluetooth models), and testing the system’s sound, all in under 10 minutes!

• Speeding up autoconf with caching - Julio Merino (jmmv.dev)

  In the recent Remembering Buildtool post, I described how setting up a cache of configuration checks was an important step in Buildtool’s installation process. The goal was to avoid pointless repetitive work on every build by performing such common checks once.

  Episode 457 of BSD Now featured my post and Allan Jude wondered how much time would be saved in a bulk build of all FreeBSD packages if we could just do that same kind of caching with GNU Autoconf. And, you know what? It is indeed possible to do so. I had mentioned it en passing in my post but I guess I wasn’t clear enough, so let’s elaborate!

• How To Put Linux On A Laptop

  Linux is an operating system that comes with different distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch Linux. Just like macOS and Windows, Linux is also a popular operating system that is installed on computers and laptops to manage the hardware of the respective machine and perform the different tasks requested by the users.

  In this guide, different ways of installing or putting the Linux operating system on a laptop have been discussed.

• What Is cURL Command and How to Use It (With Examples)

  This article explains the curl command in Linux and how to use it with examples based on best practices.

• Tiny Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Robot Made For Robot Sumo | Tom's Hardware

  The Raspberry Pi in robotics is a smart mix—but what happens if the kit you ordered doesn’t support the Pi? You get creative like maker and developer WallComputer, of course! In this Raspberry Pi Zumo project, they've converted the classic Pololu Arduino Zumo kit to support the latest Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

  This tiny robot uses tank-like treads to get around, which provide the traction needed for Sumo robots designed to push each other around. Traditionally this type of robot is controlled by an Arduino Uno, but this version uses both a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and an STM32 microcontroller with a little help from a couple of custom PCBs. To see how much has been modified, take a look at the original product listing for the Zumo kit over at Pololu’s website. This modification was not only necessary to use the Pi, but also to add additional features like a rechargeable battery pack.

• Best Raspberry Pi Deals 2022 | Tom's Hardware

  With more than 40 million units sold and a powerful community of makers and fans behind it, Raspberry Pi is more than a single-board computer; it's a huge platform with an even bigger ecosystem behind it. Whether you want to build your own robot, create an A.I.-powered security camera, or just set up a simple computer for programming and web surfing, the Pi is for you.

• Raspberry Pi Pico Drives $10 Nintendo 64 Flash Cart | Tom's Hardware

  We love retro gaming on the Raspberry Pi but there’s nothing quite like retro gaming with a Raspberry Pi. Instead of running an emulator on a Pi, this Raspberry Pi Pico Nintendo 64 cart project, created by maker and developer Konrad Beckmann, is using the Raspberry Pi Pico to host a ROM that runs on the original Nintendo 64 console.

  I built a working Nintendo 64 flash cart with a Raspberry Pi Pico, a breakout board and some extra flash for less than $10.It boots Super Mario 64. Can't wait to optimize, improve and add more features to it!Lots of stuff left before it's ready for general users though. pic.twitter.com/C1qVaTTfHiJune 22, 2022

• Raspberry Pi Pico Detects Gamma Rays in Open Spectroscopy Project | Tom's Hardware

  There are many useful things you can do with a Raspberry Pi Pico (opens in new tab), as our listing of the best Raspberry Pi Projects (opens in new tab) underlines. However, here’s one we admit we’d never thought of: detecting radiation. Physicist Matthias Rosezky, AKA Nuclear Phoenix (opens in new tab), whose work has also been covered by Hackaday (opens in new tab), has written up a detailed account of building a DIY gamma-ray spectrometer in IEEE Spectrum (opens in new tab).

Projects involving motion detection actions require a reliable way to run their code when an object movement happens. One of the most common solutions to accomplish this task is by the HC-SR501 PIR sensor with Raspberry PI.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to connect and use a PIR with Raspberry PI computer boards using Python.

What is a PIR

A PIR (Passive InfraRed, sometimes named “PID” as “Passive Infrared Detector”) sensor is an electronic device able to measure the infrared (IR) light radiating from objects. The term passive means that the PIR module doesn’t radiate energy for detection purposes: it only detects infrared radiation emitted by or reflected from objects.

It can make your project aware if a generic movement happened in its range of view, but it can’t give more information (like, for example, who, where and how many the object moved).

You can find a more detailed description of how the PIR works from the following Glolab PIR page.

• How To Install Franz Messaging on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Franz Messaging on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Franz is a free messaging app that allows users to access various social media accounts. Franz centralizes all of the popular services like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Line. You can choose to connect with whatever services right from your computer and use them.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Franz 5 on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

• WordPress: Fix Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response - kifarunix.com

  In this tutorial, I will show you a quick fix to the command WordPress Fix Updating failed. The response is not a valid JSON response related to default Gutenberg editor.

  Note that I experienced this issue while adding a specific block of text on WordPress post. Whenever i tried to save the post after adding that block, it always resulted in the annoying message;

• How to Enable Function Keys on a Toshiba Laptop

  There are usually 12 different function keys ranging from F1 to F12 that you can find on a laptop, but their uses and functionality may vary depending on which company’s laptop you are using. These function keys provide the additional benefit of using them as a shortcut, which will also save you time. So, if you own a Toshiba laptop and are now looking for how you can enable the function keys, then you need to read this article.

• EasyOS: Boot menu in initrd when no password

  Without setting up a password, the boot time choices for no-x, rollback or file check were not presented.
  A password is entered at first bootup, which has the important security feature of encrypting certain folders in the working-partition.

  However, you may opt not to have a password, or you might not be able to. Folder encryption requires that ext4 "encrypt" feature be enabled in the partition. However, some older boot-managers, such as grub4dos version 0.4.4 (there are later versions, that I don't know about), do not recognize enhanced ext4 features such as "encrypt" and "64bit" and won't even recognize the existence of such partitions.

  With such an old boot-manager, you are forced to bootup without a password.

Mixtile Edge 2 Kit is a mini PC/IoT edge computer powered by a Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor coupled with up to 4GB RAM and 32GB flash that features a 12V SATA + SMBUS port that allows the insertion of a 20Ah battery pack lasting up to 12 hours for locations where power may be intermittent.

[...]

Software support includes Android 11 with Linux containers (Mixtile OS) like initially announced for the Blade 3 but based on customers’ feedback, I’ve read Mixtile changed their mind for the latter and now plans to make a proper Linux image without Android running in the background.

Accessibility is key to promoting an open society.

We learn online. We bank online. Political movements are won and lost online. Most importantly, the information we access online inspires us to make a better world. When we ignore accessibility requirements, people born without sight or who lost limbs in war are restricted from online information that others enjoy.

We must ensure that everyone has access to the open internet, and I am doing my part to work toward that goal by building Equalify.

A role-playing game (RPG) is a genre of video game where the gamer controls a fictional character (or characters) that undertakes a quest in an imaginary world. RPG video games originate from tabletop or pen-and-paper RPGs, such as Rolemaster or Dungeons & Dragons — a type of game in which the players impersonate their characters by actively describing their actions and thoughts.

It’s difficult to define an RPG given that modern games often contain elements from another genre. Traditional RPGs often let you improve your character as you play and interact with elements of the environment or storyline. You may have a menu-based combat system, and a central quest.

There is an eligibility criteria that needs to be met to be included in this round up (see below).

Let’s explore the 10 games. For each game we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screen shot of the game in action, together with links to relevant resources.

• Beginnings of more flexible encoder and I/O support

  However, the moteus hardware has always been capable of more, both because the processor is a very capable one, and the exposed IO pins are relatively flexible. While looking at some future designs that incorporate even more IO options, I decided it was time to update the firmware to finally start taking advantage of that flexibility.

  My goals can be broken down into two parts. First, what types of IO (input/output) to support, and second, how those inputs and outputs can be used.

• F37 change proposal: Make Fedora CoreOS a Fedora Edition (System-Wide change

  This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

• Hacker Diary: Embedded World 2022

  Yesterday I went up to the Embedded World trade fair in Nuremburg, Germany. As a lone hacker, you often feel more than a little out of place when you buy chips in single unit quantities and the people you’re talking to are used to minimum order quantities of a million. But what’s heartening is how, once you ask an interesting question, even some of the suit-wearing types flip into full-on kids who like to explain the fun tech. I struck up conversations with more than a couple VPs of global chip behemoths, and they were cool.

• Release day - Hubert Figuière

  It's release day, sorta. Both libopenraw and Exempi got a new release within two days. Here is what's up.

• More detail on software requirements

  My talk at AppDevCon discussed the Requirements Trifecta but turned it into a Quadrinella: you need leadership vision, market feedback, and technical reality to all line up as listed in the trifecta, but I’ve since added a fourth component. You also need to be able to tell the people who might be interested in paying for this thing that you have it and it might be worth paying for. If you don’t have that then, if anybody has heard of you at all, it will be as a company that went out of business with a product “five years ahead of its time”: you were able to build it, it did something people could benefit from, in an innovative way, but nobody realised that they needed it.

• Sequencing

  Sequencing is doing things in the right order. At a macro level, it's about inflection points – Uber couldn't have existed without Google Maps and consumer GPS. But the tougher to solve and more interesting type of sequencing is when the goal is obvious, but the path unknown.

  It's difficult because you can't always mimic past successes – an olympian's workout plan might be optimal, but not for someone just starting out. It's also difficult because you can't even copy the order – the temporal aspect of "the right time" means that the "right order" is always changing.

  Some examples of sequencing across different disciplines.

• Managing risk in blockchain deployments

  Blockchains have significantly different constraints, security properties, and resource requirements than traditional data storage alternatives. The diversity of blockchain types and features can make it challenging to decide whether a blockchain is an appropriate technical solution for a given problem and, if so, which type of blockchain to use. To help readers make such decisions, the report contains written and graphical resources, including a decision tree, comparison tables, and a risk/impact matrix.

• Charting Kaggle’s growth to 10 million users | R-bloggers

  A few days ago, the Kaggle community crossed the amazing milestone of 10 million registered users! In celebration, I’ve put together a forum post that visualises the accelerated growth over the years. Here I show the R code behind those plots and talk a bit about my visualisation choices.

• Visualizing the Invasion of the Soviet Union with Luftwaffe Locations

  On June 22 1941 (81 years ago) Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union with the largest military force assembled in history. Behind the ground troops the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) quickly setup forward bases to support the campaign. Using data from http://ww2.dk I put together an infographic visualizing the monthly movements of the Luftwaffe during this time (map borders are current not the ones that existed in 1941).

  One can see planes flying into Poland from the west (Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, and The Netherlands were conquered the previous year) and Greece (conquered the previous month) right before the campaign. As the Germans advanced along the Northern, Central, and Southern fronts one can also see the indecisive plan of attack. First they locate more planes to the North to attack Leningrad and then shift focus to the attack on Moscow.

• Style scoping versus shadow DOM: which is fastest?

  My new benchmark largely confirmed my previous research, and shadow DOM comes out as the most consistently performant option. Class-based style scoping slightly beats shadow DOM in some scenarios, but in others it’s much less performant. Firefox, thanks to its multi-threaded style engine, is much faster than Chrome or Safari.

• Shell vs R Fundamentals – From Syntax to Control Structures with Zsh & BASH

  This walkthrough of the fundamentals of shell programming with Z shell (Zsh) and Bourne Again SHell (BASH) includes a comparison of similar components and features in R and RStudio. An alternate perspective from R is provided for you to leverage while learning the fundamentals of shell programming.

  It is important to be aware of the similarities and differences between Zsh and BASH when working with shell programming, particularly considering that Zsh is the default shell for Mac systems as of macOS Catalina, while BASH is the default shell of most distributions of Linux operating systems (OS). BASH is also included in the infrastructure of many remote servers.

• Even for us, SSD write volume limits can matter

  Famously, one difference between HDDs and SSDs is that SSDs have limits on how much data you can write to them and HDDs mostly don't (which means that SSDs have a definite lifetime). These limits are a matter both of actual failure and of warranty coverage, with the warranty coverage limit generally being lower. We don't normally think about about this, though, because we're not a write-intensive place. Sometimes there are surprises, such as high write volume on our MTAs or more write volume than I expected on my desktops, but even then the absolute numbers tend to be low and not anywhere near the write endurance ratings of our SSDs.

• Quick Reminder that Details/Summary is the Easiest Way Ever to Make an Accordion

  Gosh bless the <details> element. Toss some content inside it and you have an accessible expand-for-more interaction with just about zero work.

• Download YouTube Videos with VLC (Because, Why Not?)

  VLC is one of the most popular video players for Linux and other platforms.

  It’s not just a video player. It provides a number of multimedia and network-related features among other things. You’ll be surprised to learn what VLC is capable of.

  I’ll demonstrate a simple VLC feature and that is to download YouTube videos with it.

  Yes. You can play YouTube videos in VLC and download them too. Let me show you how.

• Microsoft Receives Backlash Over Minecraft Moderation Changes

  Ever since Minecraft's release, fans have set up servers to allow for multiplayer in the game. However, a recent update is causing concern among server moderators and players alike, as Microsoft is moving to implement its own moderation on top of the already-existing tools provided to server owners.

  For several years now, Minecraft has been split into two versions. The Java Edition allows for more freedom with modding and server hosting, while the Bedrock edition allows cross-platform multiplayer, implements microtransactions, and gives its server owners less freedom.

• A Deep Dive into Minecraft 1.19.1's Report System

  To accomodate the chat reporting system, chat messages are now signed using the user's keypair. There is a setting under Options → Chat Settings... → Only Show Secure Chat that toggles whether messages with invalid signatures are hidden. This setting is off by default at the time of writing (1.19.1-pre1).

• ‘3.5 million cyber security jobs will open up by 2025’ [Ed/iophk: their approach to "security" is job security (for them alone) and not actual computer security]

  Pointing out how the world is facing a major workforce shortage in the cybersecurity sector, Kate Behncken, vice- president and global head of Microsoft Philanthropies, on Friday, said that there would be 3.5 million open roles in cyber security around the world by 2025.

  Speaking at the launch of CyberShikshaa initiative, launched by Microsoft India in collaboration with ICT Academy as part of its ongoing commitment to create a robust cybersecurity ecosystem in the country, Behncken said, “The number of cyber security incidents in India have increased from 2.9 lakh in 2018 to almost 1.5 million in 2021.

• Cisco announces plan to exit Russia and Belarus

  The networking company first made a statement on March 3, declaring that it would be halting all business operations in Russia and Belarus "for the foreseeable future." On Thursday the company released another statement, noting that it had continued to "closely monitor" the war in Ukraine and as a result, a decision had been made to "begin an orderly wind-down of our business in Russia and Belarus."

• After years of delay, Plex replaces its desktop media player client

  Mediaphiles have had years to cope with the imminent demise of the Plex Media Player. Plans were first announced in August of 2019, right when the Plex had also released its intended replacement, the Home Theater PC app. Outrage from the crowd stopped everything in its tracks for three years, but at last, Plex is now calling time of death for PMP. Long live HTPC.

• Android and the war: Developing Android apps in Ukraine in 2022

• Clear Your Android Phone's Cookies and Cache To Get Rid of Excess Junk Files - CNET

• Pixel 4 accidentally receives Android 13 update weeks too early - PhoneArena

• Android warning: Millions targeted by growing threat, you could be next | Express.co.uk

• Richard Stallman Interview Removed by Google (Because He Was on RT)
• Rogan and Richard Stallman: What Mobile Phones Really Are
• Making Gemini Better and Helping It Grow Even Faster
• [Meme] Fireside Chat With EPO Management
• The Past Week at EPO, Europe's Most Corrupt Patent Office

• MPROCS Offers The Best TMUX Feature Minus The Bloat - Invidious

  Tmux is a great program if you need everything it does, but it seriously does a lot luckily there are programs like MPROCS which take small pieces of what Tmux offers without all of the stuff I don't need.

• 203: Linus Torvalds at Open Source Summit, Manjaro 21.3, AMD, KDE, Steam Summer Sale and more Linux news - This Week in Linux - TuxDigital

  On this episode of This Week in Linux: Linus Torvalds Fireside Chat at Open Source Summit, Manjaro Linux 21.3.0, Steam Summer Sale, Help Shape the Future of KDE, Flameshot 12.0, Dooit Terminal Task / To-do Manager, FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 Open Sourced by AMD, NoiseTorch 0.12.2, Zoom Now Supports Screensharing On Wayland, all that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

• New Linux Foundation Podcast: 'Untold Stories of Open Source' [Ed: 'Untold Stories of Open Source' outsourced to Microsoft proprietary software (don't miss the irony!)]

  The nonprofit Linux Foundation pays Linus Torvalds' salary and supports many other open source projects. But they also launched a new podcast series this week covering "The Untold Stories of Open Source."

• eBPF - Understanding How It Works

  In a lot of scenarios, eBPF is not used directly but indirectly via projects like Cilium, bcc, or bpftrace which provide an abstraction on top of eBPF and do not require to write programs directly but instead offer the ability to specify intent-based definitions which are then implemented with eBPF.

• How To Install Docker on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Docker on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Docker is basically a container engine that uses the Linux Kernel in order to create the containers on top of an operating system. Docker provides a portable environment for both development and production environments. You can create a container from one set of files that works anywhere else without having to worry about dependencies being different on each new server.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Docker CE on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

• How to Use tree to Show a Directory Tree in the Linux Terminal

  With the tree command on Linux, you can view your entire filesystem in a hierarchical tree-like representation. Here's how to do it.

  While you may use ls in the Linux terminal to display directories, what if there was a tool that could show the directory listings hierarchically, like a tree? Fortunately, such a program does exist, and it's called "tree."

• Backup all starred repositories from Github

Two months have passed since the release of Shotcut 22.04, and now users of this powerful video editor have a new update to enjoy. Shotcut 22.06 is here with a big new feature, namely the integration of the Glaxnimate 2D vector drawing and animation program.

In the new Shotcut release, Glaxnimate is bundled within the video editor and lets you apply complex masks to your video clip via the new Mask: Draw (Glaxnimate) video filter. On top of that, there’s also a preview in the Shotcut timeline within Glaxnimate.

• Links 25/06/2022: Pitivi 2022.06 and PeaZip 8.7.0
• Links 25/06/2022: EasyOS 4.2 and Arti 0.5.0
• Links 25/06/2022: Games and Security by Diversity
• IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 24, 2022
• Links 25/06/2022: EndeavourOS Artemis and Foundries.io IPO Ambitions
• Links 24/06/2022: GNU PSPP 1.6.1

We review the Arch-based Manjaro Linux based on its features, performance, and hardware support and help you to decide on your use case.

• 3600 Games Now On The Steam Deck with Teardown, a Great Demolition Game as Verified

  Valve has provided more verification in the past few days vs usual for the Steam Deck. We are now more than 3600 games validated (3626 games to be precise at the time of publication) on the Steam Deck – in two categories...

• The Steam Deck’s Super Power: Super Sleep

  The Steam Deck undeniably has some great features, but if it were a superhero its superpower might not be what you expect. No, it’s not the powerful processor or advanced options and software, but seemingly the complete opposite of that: the Steam Deck’s real power is its super sleep.

  First, a superpower needs to be reliable and without any big caveats. The Deck’s sleep ability is just that: every time it works quickly and flawlessly. It is a quick power button press away or in the Steam button’s power menu. In the middle of a game without a pause button (hi, Elden Ring)? No problem. Running low on battery or just need a moment to move the Deck without accidentally hitting the buttons? Or want to resume in that spare minute to get in a quick gaming fix? The Deck delivers every time. You can also set the Deck to go to sleep after some idle time, confident you won’t lose your game progress or battery life.

• [Slackware] Chromium 103 (regular and ungoogled) available as Slackware package

  Apologies for the delay, I was out of town, but i have finally uploaded my new chromium 103 packages for Slackware 14.2 and newer. Their un-googled siblings are also available. Thanks as always to Eloston and his friends for updating the patch-set for ungoogled-chromium.
  Last week saw a Google Chromium update which addresses a series of vulnerabilities, which is nothing new of course, but in particular one security hole that has now been patched would allow remote attackers to take control of your computer and execute arbitrary code. See CVE-2022-2156. An update of your installed browser package seems in order.

• I bought THIS LAPTOP: Tuxedo Stellaris 15 Gen 4 Review - Invidious [Ed: Nick from The Linux Experiment already got his channel banned before... for shilling laptops. Maybe he's not afraid of it happening again.]