• Sven-Hendrik Haase: Manual pages indexing service

  We are happy to announce our newest public service: A manual pages indexing site at man.archlinux.org that publishes the man pages of all our packages and allows you to search and browse them. Check out, for example, the man page of tar.

• Find new ways

  Sometimes it is time to critically question things and look for new ways. This is what we as the Ubuntu Community Council have initiated with the existing Local Communities (LoCo) project.
  The LoCos have been an integral part of the Ubuntu family since almost the beginning of Ubuntu. The aim of the LoCos is that people who are involved with Ubuntu find contact persons and like-minded people in their area, so that they are included in the Ubuntu community and also get help with possible questions or problems with Ubuntu.It is also the aim that these local units fill Ubuntu with life and organise events. In the past years they have been an important institution in building the community around Ubuntu.
  Last year, we at the newly elected Community Council wanted to re-staff the international council that oversees this LoCo and called for nominations. Unfortunately, there were not enough candidates so that we could re-staff this council.

• Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Management & Strategy Training Program

  The Linux Foundation has announced a new training program designed to introduce open source best practices to management and technical staff within organizations, Open Source Management & Strategy.

• How to Integrate Your Google Account into GNOME Shell

  Regardless of your feelings about Google, many people around the world use Google services every day. As such, it’s important to talk about all the amazing ways you can get easier access to your Google account, particularly for those trying to use Linux in the enterprise. This tutorial shows you how to integrate your Google account into GNOME Shell.

• How to install notepadqq on Linux Mint 20.1

  In this video, we are looking at how to install notepadqq on Linux Mint 20.1.

• How to install SMPlayer on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install SMPlayer on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• How to install Eternal Terminal for persistent SSH connections

  If you're an admin with Linux servers in your data center or cloud hosted account (such as AWS and Google Cloud), chances are pretty good you connect to those machines via SSH. Sometimes you need to remain connected for a good amount of time. You could be debugging code, working on containers or Kubernetes, or just about a thousand other reasons.

• Install Windows 10 like Kylin desktop environment on Ubuntu 20.04

  Kylin Linux distro is the official flavor of Ubuntu released by Canonical and China’s MIIT to target the Chinese laptop and PC consumer market. Although it is based on the same official Ubuntu, however, its interface is much beautiful than the standard custom Gnome one. Ubuntu Kylin desktop environment which is also known as UKUI is more inclined towards the Windows 10 or Deepin like interface with sleek and colorful icons along with user-friendly elements that make it easy to use.

• How To Install Apache Maven on Linux Mint 20 - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Apache Maven on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Apache Maven is an open-source project management and comprehension tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven uses a Project Object Model (POM), which is essentially an XML file containing information about the project, configuration details, the project’s dependencies, and more.

  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 through the step by step installation of Apache Maven open-source data visualization and monitoring suite on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

• How to use Cloudformation to create an EC2 instance

  Before we proceed I assume you are aware of the EC2 service on AWS and know its basic components. I would recommend visiting my article to create an EC2 instance using the AWS Console and understand the basics of the EC2 instance, click here to go to the article. In this article, we will create an EC2 instance with the latest Linux AMI using Cloudformation hence knowing the basics of cloud formation is required. Even if you are not aware of Cloudformation and would just like to create an instance using it, do not worry and proceed with the article.

• Garuda KDE Dr460nized 210107 overview | performance & beauty.

  In this video, I am going to show an overview of Garuda KDE Dr460nized 210107 and some of the applications pre-installed.

• What Is RISC V: Should You Even Care

  RISC V gets thrown around a lot but what is it and how does it differ from what we're already using on our desktop and mobile systems.

 

• BSD Now #385: Wireguard VPN mesh

  Description: History of FreeBSD: Early Days of FreeBSD, mesh VPN using OpenBSD and WireGuard, FreeBSD Foundation Sponsors LLDB Improvements, Host your Cryptpad web office suite with OpenBSD, and more.

• Ravgeet Dhillon: Dynamic Home Route in a Flutter App

  In any production app, the user is directed to a route based on some authentication logic whenever the app is opened. In our Flutter App, we have at least two routes, Login and Dashboard. The problem is how can we decide which route should a user be redirected to?

  In this app, we will check the value of a locally stored boolean variable to dynamically decide the home route. We can use any method for writing our authentication logic, like checking the validity of the API token, but for the sake of simplicity, we will explore a simple logic.

• How to add and customize Bootstrap in Nuxt.js

  Configuring things in any framework is always tricky especially when we are just starting. We will learn today that how can we add and customize Bootstrap in our Nuxt project. Once we go through this guide, we will get an overall idea of how to make things work in Nuxt. By learning how to setup Bootstrap, we can install Popper.js and JQuery as well which are peer dependencies for Bootstrap.

• GCC 11 Is Moving Closer But Still Challenged By Many Regressions - Phoronix

  GCC 11 is slated to enter "Stage 4" development at the end of this weekend after which only regression and documentation fixes will be permitted. The first GCC 11 stable release should be out in 2~3 months, but at the moment there is an increasing number of P1 regressions that are of the highest priority.

  SUSE's Richard Biener announced today that GCC 11 will transition from stage three to stage four at the end of the week, at which point only regression fixes and documentation updates can be merged to trunk.

  There has been though another 30 P1 regressions, which are bugs of the highest priority, bringing the total count to 67. There is also 331 P2 regressions, 34 P3 regressions, 190 P4 regressions, and 24 P5 regressions. While some 60 P3 regressions were closed, there is a net gain of around 50 new bugs since the prior GCC 11 status report.

• Cross-compiling made easy with Golang | Opensource.com

  I work with multiple servers with various architectures (e.g., Intel, AMD, Arm, etc.) when I'm testing software on Linux.

  [...]

  Until then, I had never accounted for this scenario (although I knew about it). I primarily work on scripting languages (usually Python) coupled with shell scripting. The Bash shell and the Python interpreter are available on most Linux servers of any architecture. Hence, everything had worked well before.

  However, now I was dealing with a compiled language, Go, which produces an executable binary. The compiled binary consists of opcodes or assembly instructions that are tied to a specific architecture. That's why I got the format error. Since the Arm64 CPU (where I ran the binary) could not interpret the binary's x86-64 instructions, it errored out. Previously, the shell and Python interpreter took care of the underlying opcodes or architecture-specific instructions for me.

• C++ Types

  A C++ entity is a value, object, reference, function, enumerator, type, class member, bit-field, structured binding, namespace, template, template specialization, or parameter pack. An entity can be of one or more types. There are two categories of C++ types: fundamental and compound types. A scalar is arithmetic or a pointer object type. Fundamental types are scalars, while the rest of the entity types are compound types.

  The memory of a computer is a series of cells. Each cell has the size of one byte, it is normally the space occupied by a Western European character. The size of an object is given in bytes. This article gives a summary of C++ types. You should already have basic knowledge of C++, in order to understand this article.

• Firebird Embedded in a sandboxed MacOS App

  For those who might not be aware, Firebird on MacOS is now relocatable, in that you don't necessarily have to install it as a Framework, this also means that you can create an embedded version out of the current installer.

• 5 things we learned about Java in 2020 | Opensource.com

  In 2020, Java marked its 25th anniversary and, despite its age, remains strong and active. Its seven to 10 million developers make it one of the top three languages in use today, according to the TIOBE Index.

  To help celebrate Java reaching a quarter-century, Daniel Oh recounted Java's history before he explained How to install Java on a Mac (because its future depends on more people using it). To continue the party, we've compiled the top five things we learned about Java in 2020. Whether you're just starting with the language or experienced and trying to improve your Java development skills, these are things you should know.

• Formatting tricks for the Linux date command | Enable Sysadmin

  The date command is simple. However, it has several useful options that enhance it. It's also capable of giving you practical information about past or future dates. This article shows you some of the format controls to manipulate the date command's output. At the end of the article, I offer some practical suggestions about how you can use this command in conjunction with common tasks.

• 7 Essential Linux Commands for Managing Users

  From the very beginning, the Linux operating system was designed to be a multi-user OS. As such, one of the most common administrative tasks performed on a Linux machine is managing user accounts. It’s a critical part of keeping a healthy and secure Linux machine.

  You might think that it is overwhelming to manage users from the command line. On the contrary, it is not at all. There are only a few basic commands that you need to know, and I will cover them in this article.

• Analyze Kubernetes files for errors with KubeLinter | Opensource.com

  KubeLinter is an open source project released by Stackrox to analyze Kubernetes YAML files for security issues and errant code. The tool covers Helm charts and Kubernetes configuration files, including Knative files. Using it can improve cloud-native development, reduce development time, and encourage DevOps best practices.

• Remote Directory Tree Comparison, Optionally Asynchronous and Airgapped

  In the previous installment on store-and-forward backups, I mentioned how easy it is to do with ZFS, and some of the tools that can be used to do it without ZFS. A lot of those tools are a bit less robust, so we need some sort of store-and-forward mechanism to verify backups. To be sure, verifying backups is good with ANY scheme, and this could be used with ZFS backups also.

• Run a variety of virtual machines on your Chromebook with Gnome Boxes

  Now that Chrome OS is offering an official Windows Desktop via Parallels, Enterprise customers have a fully-supported and very viable way to access legacy applications while still embracing the cloud. That’s all fine and well for companies that have the means to purchase high-end Chromebooks along with licenses for Windows and Parallels but not so much for us common folk. Lucky for us – where there’s a will, there’s a way and we have a way.

  In the early days of Chrome OS, running a separate operating system meant putting your device in developer mode and jumping through a bunch of hoops to essentially dual boot a version on Linux on your machine. In all honesty, the process isn’t that difficult and when you’re finished, you have a fully-functional version of Linux running side-by-side with Chrome OS. The main drawback – aside from the technical expertise required – was the fact that developer mode technically makes a Chromebook less secure and it throws out any and all support you may get from Google should you brick your machine.

• Security updates for Thursday

  Security updates have been issued by Fedora (adplug, audacious-plugins, cpu-x, kernel, kernel-headers, ocp, php, and python-lxml), openSUSE (crmsh, firefox, and hawk2), Oracle (thunderbird), Red Hat (kernel-rt), SUSE (kernel and rubygem-archive-tar-minitar), and Ubuntu (openvswitch and tar).

• Minimizing cyberattacks by managing the lifecycle of non-human workers

  The number of non-human workers is growing, particularly as global organizations increasingly prioritize cloud computing, DevOps, IoT devices, and other digital transformation initiatives. Yet, organizations frequently only apply access controls to humans (employees, contractors, etc.), despite the risks associated with cyberattacks and data breaches linked to non-human workers and their privileged access to sensitive information.

• The Mozilla Blog: Why getting voting right is hard, Part IV: Absentee Voting and Vote By Mail

  As with in-person voting, the basic idea behind securing mail-in ballots is to tie each ballot to a specific registered voter and ensure that every voter votes once.

  If we didn’t care about the secrecy of the ballot, the easy solution would be to give every voter a unique identifier (Operationally, it’s somewhat easier to instead give each ballot a unique serial number and then keep a record of which serial numbers correspond to each voter, but these are largely equivalent). Then when the ballots come in, we check that (1) the voter exists and (2) the voter hasn’t voted already. When put together, these checks make it very difficult for an attacker to make their own ballots: if they use non-existent serial numbers, then the ballots will be rejected, and if they use serial numbers that correspond to some other voter’s ballot then they risk being caught if that voter voted. So, from a security perspective, this works reasonably well, but it’s a privacy disaster because it permanently associates a voter’s identity with the contents of their ballots: anyone who has access to the serial number database and the ballots can determine how individual voters voted.

  The solution turns out to be to authenticate the envelopes not the ballots. The way that this works is that each voter is sent a non-unique ballot (i.e., one without a serial number) and then an envelope with a unique serial number. The voter marks their ballot, puts it in the envelope and mails it back. Back at election headquarters, election officials perform the two checks described above. If they fail, then the envelope is sent aside for further processing. If they succeed, then the envelope is emptied — checking that it only contains one ballot — and put into the pile for counting.

  This procedure provides some level of privacy protection: there’s no single piece of paper that has both the voter’s identity and their vote, which is good, but at the time when election officials open the ballot they can see both the voter’s identity and the ballot, which is bad. With some procedural safeguards it’s hard to mount a large scale privacy violation: you’re going to be opening a lot of ballots very quickly and so keeping track of a lot of people is impractical, but an official could, for instance, notice a particular person’s name and see how they voted.1 Some jurisdictions address this with a two envelope system: the voter marks their ballot and puts it in an unmarked “secrecy envelope” which then goes into the marked envelope that has their identity on it. At election headquarters officials check the outer envelope, then open it and put the sealed secrecy envelope in the pile for counting. Later, all of the secrecy envelopes are opened and counted; this procedure breaks the connection between the user’s identity and their ballot.

• Files 40.alpha: Creation timestamp & Wallpaper portal

  In my last post I’ve promised that the next one would have screenshots of new developments in the Files app, and it’s finally here!

  It took me longer than I expected back then. After the 3.38 release, I had to had to focus my time elsewhere: assisting and training local primary health care teams in managing and following up of the raising number of COVID-19 cases assigned to them. With this mission accomplished, in December I’ve picked up again on my GNOME contributions and have something to show you now.

• GNOME Shell Merges Port Of Extensions App + Portal To GTK4 - Phoronix

  With GTK4 out and stabilizing well, more GNOME components are working to migrate to this updated toolkit as part of the GNOME 40 development cycle.

  The latest GTK4 porting work to be merged is GNOME Shell's extensions application and portal components being moved from GTK3 to GTK4.

• GNOME 40 Will Finally Show File Creation Times Within Its File Manager - Phoronix

  Finally in 2021 with the GNOME 40 release is the ability of GNOME's Nautilus file manager to show and sort by file creation times...

  Going back more than a decade have been requests for being able to show timestamps for when files are created within the GNOME file manager or to be able to sort by file creation times in a folder rather than the last modified date. Initially that was blocked by the Linux kernel / file-systems exposing the information while in recent years that's been addressed and more time until it was implemented for GNOME.

• Philip Withnall: Add extended information to GErrors in GLib 2.67.2

  Thanks to Krzesimir Nowak, a 17-year-old feature request in GLib has been implemented: it’s now possible to define GError domains which have extended information attached to their GErrors.

  You could now, for example, define a GError domain for text parser errors which includes context information about a parsing failure, such as the current line and character position. Or attach the filename of a file which was being read, to the GError informing of a read failure. Define an extended error domain using G_DEFINE_EXTENDED_ERROR(). The extended information is stored in a ‘private’ struct provided by you, similarly to how it’s implemented for GObjects with G_DEFINE_TYPE_WITH_PRIVATE().

After the latest WhatsApp privacy policy updates, many users who trusted the service seem to be making the switch to alternatives like Signal.

Even though WhatsApp tries to clarify and re-assure the change in the policies, users have made their mind while considering the benefits of using privacy alternatives to WhatsApp.

But, what are some useful and impressive alternatives to WhatsApp? In this article, let us take a look at some of the best options.

[...]

Signal is the best blend of open-source and privacy. They’ve improved a lot over the years and is safe to assume as a perfect alternative to WhatsApp. You get almost every essential feature compared to WhatsApp.

However, just because it does not store your data, you may not be able to access all the messages of your smartphone on Desktop. In addition to that, it relies on local backup (which is protected by a passphrase) instead of cloud backups. So, you will have to head to the settings, start the backup, safely copy the passcode of the backup, check where the local backup gets stored, and make sure you don’t delete it.

Bullseye is freezing! Yay! (And Trondheim is now below -10.)

It's too late for that kind of change now, but it would have been nice if plocate could have been default for bullseye...

It seems that since buster, there's an override in place to change its priority away from standard, and I haven't been able to find anyone who could tell me why. (It was known that it was request moved away from standard for cloud images, which makes a lot of sense, but not for desktop/server images.)

The recent rise in popularity of eBooks has led to the emergence of several different file formats, of which the most popular and the most widely used is the Portable Document Format, or PDF for short. PDFs are one of the most reliable and efficient formats of documents that can easily be shared across computer systems. These files are also secure enough to prevent people from easily updating file contents. This article looks at seven of the best PDF Editors available on all major platforms.

[...]

Scribus is a free and open-source publishing software that is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Scribus provides several different PDF editing tools to users, of which the most notable features include highlighting, moving, and adding text; creating PDFs and lists; and making PDF files more interactive by adding text fields, checkboxes, and more. This is a property unique to Scribus, setting it apart from other PDF editors in this list.

The big news Collabora wants to share with us is the fact that they’ve added desktop OpenGL 3.1 support in the open source Panfrost graphics driver for Midgard (Mali T760 and newer) and Bifrost GPUs, which will be available for most GNU/Linux distribution as part of the upcoming Mesa 21.0 open source graphics stack.

This work follows on the footsteps of the initial OpenGL ES 3.0 support on Midgard GPUs added last year to the Panfrost driver as part of the Mesa 20.0 graphics stack series. This implemented new features like 3D textures, uniform buffer objects, instanced rendering, as well as multiple render targets on Mali T760 GPUs and higher.

• CXL 2.0 Support Steps Closer To The Mainline Linux Kernel - Phoronix

  So far for the virtual CES this week there hasn't been any big CXL 2.0 announcements since the Compute Express Link 2.0 specification was finalized back in November, but the Linux kernel support for this CPU-to-device interconnect continues coming together and will be hopefully mainlined in a coming release.

  Back in November the CXL 2.0 spec was published and immediately following that Intel began posting Linux support patches for implementing the specification with an initial focus on type-3 memory devices as memory expanders for RAM or persistent memory.

• Systemd 248 To Allow Unlocking Encrypted Volumes Via TPM2 / FIDO2 / PKCS#11 Hardware

  For those with TPM2 security chips in your system or various hardware security tokens like YubiKeys, the upcoming systemd 248 will make it much easier to use then for unlocking your encrypted LUKS2 volumes.

  While systemd-cryptsetup has already supported unlocking LUKs2 volumes at boot via user-supplied passphrases and key files on a local or removable disk, with systemd 248 will be the ability to make use of TPM2 / FIDO2 / PKCS#11 security hardware for unlocking volumes if desired.

• Unlocking LUKS2 volumes with TPM2, FIDO2, PKCS#11 Security Hardware on systemd 248

  Blogging is a lot of work, and a lot less fun than hacking. I mostly focus on the latter because of that, but from time to time I guess stuff is just too interesting to not be blogged about. Hence here, finally, another blog story about exciting new features in systemd.

• Following LTO, Linux Kernel Patches Updated For PGO To Yield Faster Performance - Phoronix

  Clang LTO for the Linux kernel to provide link-time optimizations for yielding more performant kernel binaries (plus Clang CFI support) looks like it will land for Linux 5.12. With that compiler optimization feature appearing squared away, Google engineers are also working on Clang PGO support for the Linux kernel to exploit profile guided optimizations for further enhancing the kernel performance.

  Google engineers on Tuesday posted their latest patches providing the necessary kernel infrastructure around Clang Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO). This is more complicated than LTO support since with compiler PGO functionality it relies on first collecting profiles during run-time to then provide that feedback back to the compiler in order to generate a more optimized binary based on that actual run-time profile/feedback.

• Some Older ARM Platforms Will Be Saved While Others On The Chopping Block For Linux

  Following the very active discussions the past several days over the Linux kernel potentially dropping a number of old CPU targets/architectures, an updated list of planned ARM platforms for removal has been published now that some have been saved thanks to expressed interest.

  Several platforms like Axxia, Broadcom Kona, Digicolor, Dove, Nspire, and Spear are no longer expected for removal at this time. Work on them will supposedly resume otherwise they might be dropped in the future.

• Final days for some Arm platforms

  Arnd Bergmann stirred up a bit of a discussion with his January 8 "bring out your dead" posting, wherein he raised the idea of removing support for a long list of seemingly unloved Arm platforms — and a few non-Arm ones as well. Many of these have seen no significant work in at least six years. In a January 13 followup, he notes that several of those platforms will be spared for now due to ongoing interest.

• Knowledge meets machine learning for smarter decisions, Part 1

  Drools is a popular open source project known for its powerful rules engine. Few users realize that it can also be a gateway to the amazing possibilities of artificial intelligence. This two-part article introduces you to using Red Hat Decision Manager and its Drools-based rules engine to combine machine learning predictions with deterministic reasoning. In Part 1, we’ll prepare our machine learning logic. In Part 2, you’ll learn how to use the machine learning model from a knowledge service.

• Using OpenSCAP to help achieve HIPAA compliance with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3

  Tracking and controlling activities across a large environment is challenging in any IT environment. Adding requirements like HIPAA compliance makes life even more challenging for IT teams, and takes time away from addressing higher-level business problems. In this post, we'll look at how teams can use OpenSCAP in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to help with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance and focus on work that delivers real value for the business.

• Finally, The Right Pilot At The Intel Helm

  IBM’s vaunted mainframe business in the 1960s and 1970s was knocked down a few pegs by the advent of proprietary and then RISC/Unix and then Wintel/Lintel systems, and it was blindsided by the rise of the PC to a certain extent. Even though it recovered for more than a decade, IBM could just not keep up. And while Microsoft was able to take its hegemony on the Windows desktop into the datacenter with Windows Server and a large stack of systems software, it has not been able to keep Apple from rising from the dead – for the second time, mind you – and creating a huge and profitable client machine. Intel similarly made the leap from the desktop to the datacenter, and has become the dominant compute engine maker to an extent that we have not seen since the late 1960s with the IBM mainframe. In 2020, if the final quarter works out as we expect, X86-based machines will account for over 90 percent of the $82 billion in server revenues and approaching 99 percent of the more than 12 million server shipments worldwide. And Intel Xeon SP processors will be in the overwhelming majority of those machines. Still. After years of Arm and AMD.

• Develop Eclipse MicroProfile applications on Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform XP 2.0

  This article shows you how to install Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) XP 2.0.0 GA with support for Eclipse MicroProfile. Once you’ve enabled Eclipse MicroProfile, you will be able to use its quickstart examples to start developing your own MicroProfile applications with Red Hat CodeReady Studio. In this demonstration, you’ll learn two ways to build and run the MicroProfile Config quickstart application.

• The Eclipse Foundation’s move to Europe will bring open standards and open source together

  Today, the Eclipse Foundation announced that they are moving their headquarters from the U.S. to Brussels, Belgium. As a founding member of the new Eclipse Foundation AISBL nonprofit association, IBM believes this move to Europe will accelerate global collaboration around open source projects and pave the way for richer technology as a result of Europe’s rigorous privacy and security standards.

  The Eclipse Foundation has a proven historical record for being a fair, secure place to collaborate in the open. With more than 170 members and over 900 committers based in Europe, it’s fair to say that European open source developers are already invested in the Eclipse Foundation projects, so moving its headquarters makes sense to continue to support this growth.

• Red Hat, Intel Align R&D For 5G, Hybrid Cloud, Edge Computing

  Red Hat OpenShift will pair with Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Ethernet Network Adapters, FlexRAN reference software and Open Network Edge Services Software, an edge computing software toolkit.

The Astro Slide is a 5G smartphone with a 6.5 inch display and a physical keyboard that slides out from behind the screen, allowing you to use the phone like a tiny laptop computer. It will ship with Android, but the plan is to also make GNU/Linux distributions including Debian and Ubuntu Touch available for download.

First announced by Planet Computers in March, 2020, the phone went up for pre-order through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $1.6 million in hopes of shipping the Astro Slide to customers by March, 2021.

Now the makers of the phone are providing an update – because of pandemic-related delays it will likely ship in June instead. And the specs have changed (the phone has more RAM than initially planned, but a less powerful processor and smaller battery).

• Intel Sends In Another Batch Of Graphics Work For Linux 5.12 - More Display Fixes - Phoronix

  At the start of the month Intel sent out their initial graphics driver changes targeting Linux 5.12 while now a secondary set of changes have been sent to DRM-Next.

  That initial pull included restoring Tiger Lake Gen12 frame-buffer compression, HDR display support for select Intel Gen9 graphics hardware support, atomic mode-setting improvements for Big Joiner, and other changes.

• AMDGPU Working On "Secure Display" Functionality - Phoronix

  The AMD Radeon "AMDGPU" open-source Linux kernel driver is tacking on another new feature: Secure Display TA.

  Over the past two years we have seen AMD Linux driver developers work on more "security" features that at least initially appeared to be driven by AMD picking up Chromebook design wins and needing to support this functionality for those use-cases. There has been HDCP display support for APUs to land as well as Trusted Memory Zones - TMZ for securing video memory buffers. The latest feature being tackled is "Secure Display TA".

• Mike Blumenkrantz: Overhead

  As in all software, overhead is the performance penalty that is incurred as compared to a baseline measurement. In Mesa, a lot of people know of driver overhead as “Gallium sucks” and/or “A Gallium-based driver is slow” due to the fact that Gallium does incur some amount of overhead as compared to the old-style immediate mode DRI drivers.

  While it’s true that there is an amount of performance lost by using Gallium in this sense, it’s also true that the performance gained is much greater. The reason for this is that Gallium is able to batch commands and state changes for every driver using it, allowing redundant calls to avoid triggering any work in the GPU.

  It also makes for an easier time profiling and improving upon the CPU usage that’s required to handle the state changes emitted by Gallium. Instead of having a ton of core Mesa callbacks which need to be handled, each one potentially leading to a no-op that can be analyzed and deferred by the driver, Gallium provides a more cohesive API where each driver hook is a necessary change that must be handled. Because of this, the job of optimizing for those changes is simplified.

• What Never Was: Chapter II gets a teaser trailer and a Steam page | GamingOnLinux

  What Never Was is a free short, story-driven first-person puzzle-solving adventure that released back in 2019. It was so popular that the developer is bringing out What Never Was: Chapter II.

  The first part released in January 2019, with a Linux build arriving later in April 2019. It went on to gather over 4,000 user reviews and still has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating today. Epic Games later noticed it and gave the developer an Epic MegaGrant (no exclusivity) to help Acke Hallgren work on more of it.

  "Starting immediately after the events of What Never Was - Sarah finds herself magically whisked away to a strange place. Where did the magical clock take her? What other secrets are to be discovered? What more did her eccentric grandfather hide from her?"

• Dead Cells: Fatal Falls releases January 26 and gets a new trailer

  Ready for more Dead Cells? I know I am! Motion Twin and Evil Empire have announced the Dead Cells: Fatal Falls expansion will release on January 26.

  This is the third expansion, although only the second that's paid as Dead Cells: Rise of the Giant was released free and comes after over 20 major updates to the game that have been released free. At release, they're also putting up a 'complete the set' bundle to save you 15% on The Bad Seed and Fatal Falls DLC together.

  So what to expect from Dead Cells: Fatal Falls? There's two new mid-game biomes, which are alternative paths to Stilt Village / Clock Tower and Slumbering Sanctuary / Forgotten Sepulcher. "One is the Fractured Shrines, which is a load of floating islands connected by ledges that are covered with traps and ready to drop you into the abyss below. When you're not falling you'll be dealing with pagan snake people and giant statues with even bigger axes. After that you'll enter The Undying Shores where you need to descend a cliff in the middle of a storm. Some caves offer a way out of the rain but they're full of weird experiments and undead healers, so good luck getting out!"

• Love turn-based strategies? Check out the Turn-Based Tactical Bundle on Steam

  It appears that more developers are teaming up to create game bundles on Steam, where you get a couple games from different teams plus a discount to get them all together.

  Much like the Devolver Digital Hidden Gems Bundle, this is a good chance to pick up even more indie greats if you don't already own them.

• HotShot Racing, Review in Video

  Following the article published at the end of 2020, here’s the follow up in video. It should have been published much earlier, but you know how plans go… Anyway, if you haven’t checked the review yet, this is a good and quick summary alongside some footage...

• Patent Propaganda and UPC Jingoism Instead of Actual News
• Links 14/1/2021: Season of KDE 2021 Selection, Mesa 21.0.0-RC1, Tor Browser 10.0.8
• InteLeaks – Part XIV: Technical Incompetence and Incoherence Leading to Alienation and Brain Drain
• IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 13, 2021
• Links 13/1/2021: $150 RISC-V Computer With GNU/Linux, Intel Replaces CEO Again, and New Fedora 34 Plans
• Unitary Patent is Dead and Lies About the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Aren't Ending

• Here’s why everyone should own a cheap Android tablet

• How to See Which Apps Can Access Your Location on Android

• Huawei P50 Pro might offer Android, Harmony OS variants

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This article explains the reasons and process to switch from Windows 10 to the latest Linux Mint version, which is Linux Mint 20 Ulyana.

I was using Microsoft Windows for almost 10 years. As of January 2020, Microsoft has terminated the support for windows. I had the option to use windows 7 by paying for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates or upgrade to Windows 10 for free. But I was not interested to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10. Now, I have decided to move to the Linux based operating systems rather than Microsoft Windows.
The first question that arose in my mind is which Linux Distro will fulfill my needs in terms of professional and personal use. Some of the Linux distros are fine for professional use, but not meant for personal use like Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Therefore, I was keen on finding the best distro that can be used for professional, as well as personal use, and great community support.

Community support is an important aspect to consider when you are selecting any distro. The reason is that if you face any problem while installing any software applications or doing some configuration, then you can post your problem on the community website, and anyone can give the solution.

Linux initially started as the OS of choice for servers, but not so much for PCs. However, that has drastically changed over the years, and currently, in 2021, Linux is more than capable of replacing the Mac or Windows installation on your desktop.

And to prove this point, we have put together a list of the most compelling reasons you should use Linux. So without wasting any more time by prolonging this introduction, let’s dive into what’s really important.