I'm announcing the release of the 5.14.8 kernel.

All users of the 5.14 kernel series must upgrade.

The updated 5.14.y git tree can be found at:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.14.y
and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

thanks,

greg k-h

Also: Linux 5.10.69

Linux 5.4.149

Linux 4.19.208

Linux 4.14.248

Linux 4.9.284

Linux 4.4.285

While modern Linux systems have attractive desktop interfaces, you may be wondering whether you can use Linux without them. The straightforward answer is "yes."

What Is a Desktop Environment?

While the desktop environments on Windows and macOS are tightly integrated and built into the system, on Linux, desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, and Xfce are just collections of programs that you can install in addition to the base operating system.

• Oracle v. Google: What the verdict means for open source | InfoWorld

  The decade-long legal battle between two of the world’s largest tech companies has finally come to an end. The result was a victory for the open-source software community.

  In case you need a refresher on the Oracle v. Google case, Oracle sued Google in 2010 for copyright infringement on Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API in its Android smartphone operating system. The District Court ruled in favor of Google, but that decision was later reversed on appeal. The case ultimately landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled six to two in Google’s favor this April.

• Jupyter Labs Desktop App: What Is It & Do We Need It?

• Apple's M1 MacBook screens are stunning – stunningly fragile and defective, that is, lawsuits allege

  Aggrieved MacBook owners in two separate lawsuits claim Apple's latest laptops with its M1 chips have defective screens that break easily and malfunction.

  The complaints, both filed on Wednesday in a federal district court in San Jose, California, are each seeking class certification in the hope that the law firms involved will get a judicial blessing to represent the presumed large group of affected customers and, if victorious, to share any settlement.

  Each of the filings contends Apple's 2020-2021 MacBook line – consisting of the M1-based MacBook Air and M1-based 13" MacBook Pro – have screens that frequently fail. They say Apple knew about the alleged defect or should have known, based on its own extensive internal testing, reports from technicians, and feedback from customers.

• A Burger King where the only Whopper is the BSOD font

  Bork goes back to its roots today, with a screen of purest blue showing its unwanted face outside a US Burger King branch.

  At least it makes a change from McDonald's, very much the DNS of Bork when it comes to failures.

  In this instance, it looks like it is the exterior signage, normally showing a slideshow of tasty (and frequently greasy) treats, that has succumbed to the curse of Microsoft.

• RISC-V Launches the Open Hardware Diversity Alliance

  RISC-V International, a global open hardware standards organization, announced the launch of the Open Hardware Diversity Alliance. The global Alliance, created by CHIPS Alliance, OpenPOWER Foundation, RISC-V, and Western Digital, will develop and provide learning and networking programs, mentorship opportunities and inclusive environments across the expansive ecosystem of open hardware. The Alliance will be focused on supporting professional advancement and encouraging equal participation for women and underrepresented individuals in the open hardware community.

• ASUS Tinker Board 2S: High-performance Raspberry Pi alternative

  The long-awaited ASUS Tinker Board 2S is out. And there's a lot packed into the 85 x 56 mm Raspberry Pi form factor.

  At the heart of the Tinker Board 2S is a Rockchip RK3399 chipset that combines two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, and an ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU.

  The board comes with 2GB or 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 16 GB of eMMC flash.

• Value Stream Management: Bringing Lean Manufacturing Techniques To IBM i Development - IT Jungle [Ed: Another example of grotesque conflict of interest by IBM. This ‘article’ is about IBM and is also sponsored by IBM.]

• Open Mainframe Project Announces Continued Growth in Community Contributions and Adoption as Mainframes Accelerate Innovation in Enterprise Hybrid Technology [Ed: "Linux" Foundation is openwashing IBM to make a monopoly seem like "community"]

  The Open Mainframe Project kicked off the 2nd annual Open Mainframe Summit today with news of record growth in contributions - with more than 105.31 Million Lines of Code written and over 9,600 commits submitted by Open Mainframe Project communities so far this year. This is 100 percent more code than last year with an increased number of active participants in the 20 project and working groups. These numbers will only increase as Open Mainframe continues to be the cornerstone of governance and innovation for modernizing the mainframe and its path to IoT, Cloud and Edge Computing.

• How to use wall command in linux - Unixcop

  wall is (an abbreviation of write to all) is a Unix command-line utility that displays the contents of a computer file or standard input to all logged-in users. It is used by root to send out shutting down message to all users just before poweroff.

  It displays a message on the terminals of all logged-in users. The messages can_be either typed on the terminal or the contents of a file.

  Also usually, system administrators send messages to announce maintenance and ask users to log out and close all open programs.The messages ‘re shown to all logged in users with a terminal open.

• Any Port in a Storm: Ports and Security, Part 1

  When IT and Security professionals talk about port numbers, we’re referring to the TCP and UDP port numbers a service is running on that are waiting to accept connections. But what exactly is a port?

• Book Review: Data Science at the Command Line By Jeroen Janssens

  Data Science at the Command Line: Obtain, Scrub, Explore, and Model Data with Unix Power Tools written by Jeroen Janssens is the second edition of the series “Data Science at the Command Line”. This book demonstrates how the flexibility of the command line can help you become a more efficient and productive data scientist. You will learn how to combine small yet powerful command-line tools to quickly obtain, scrub, explore, and model your data. To get you started, author Jeroen Janssens provides a Docker image packed with over 80 tools–useful whether you work with Windows, macOS, or Linux.

• How to Take a Typing Test on Linux With tt

  In the modern era of technology, typing has become one of the most common activities for a lot of professions. Learning to type faster with accuracy can help you get more things done in the same amount of time.

  However, touch typing is not a skill that you can master overnight. It takes regular practice and testing to improve your speed and accuracy gradually. While there are a lot of websites that help you achieve this, all you essentially need on Linux is a terminal. Let's see how.

• FIX: Google Chrome doesn’t work on Kali linux

• How to install OpenToonz on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install OpenToonz 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.

  If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!

• Azure OMIGOD Flaw Under Attack [Ed: Microsoft Azure as de facto back door in Linux]

• Microsoft Azure OMI Vulnerabilities Are Being Exploited

• Security experts weigh in on Microsoft Azure security holes [Ed: Security experts would never touch Azure]

• Microsoft asks Azure Linux admins to manually patch OMIGOD bugs

• Apple warns of arbitrary code execution zero-day being actively exploited on Macs

  Apple has warned iPhone and Mac users it's aware of security bugs in its software that are being actively exploited.

  First off, the iGiant thanked Google for spotting CVE-2021-30869 in macOS Catalina. It's a nasty flaw, as it's in the XNU kernel at the heart of Apple's operating systems including macOS and iOS.

  As Apple's advisory explains, "a malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges" by exploiting this security hole. Thus, malware running on a system can use the bug to take total control. The fruit-themed company says the flaw existed thanks to a "type confusion issue" that was sorted out "with improved state handling."

• Microsoft WPBT flaw lets hackers install rootkits on Windows devices [Ed: Even Microsoft-connected sites such as this know that Windows is inadequate for security]

  Security researchers have found a flaw in the Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) that could be exploited in easy attacks to install rootkits on all Windows computers shipped since 2012.

• Is it OK to use stolen data? What if it's scientific research in the public interest?

  There's a fine line between getting hold of data that may be in the public interest and downright stealing data just because you can. And simply because the data is out there – having been stolen by online intruders and then leaked – does not mean it is right to use it.

  A paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence this week is an effort to help guide data scientists and researchers through the ethical dilemmas which present themselves when considering using information obtained from data breaches.

• A new zero-day is being exploited to compromise Macs (CVE-2021-30869)

  Flagged by researchers Erye Hernandez and Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Ian Beer of Google Project Zero, the vulnerability is a type confusion issue found in XNU, the kernel of Apple’s macOS and iOS operating systems.

• Plug critical VMware vCenter Server flaw before ransomware gangs start exploiting it (CVE-2021-22005)

  “This vulnerability can be used by anyone who can reach vCenter Server over the network to gain access, regardless of the configuration settings of vCenter Server,” the company noted.

• Apple* and John Deere* shareholders file resolutions questioning their anti-repair stances | U.S. PIRG

  Shareholders press these leading Right to Repair opponents to explain themselves as regulatory pressure mounts 

• Ransomware attacks reach disturbing levels

• Ransomware attacks have reached 'stratospheric' levels

• Ransomware attacks reach 'stratospheric' levels finds new research

So after a somewhat rocky merge window and second rc, things are now
actually looking pretty normal for rc3. Knock wood.

There are fixes all over, and the statistics look fairly regular, with
drivers dominating as they should (since they are most of the tree).
And outside of drivers, we have a fairly usual mix of changes -
architecture fixes, networking, filesystems, and tooling (the latter
being mostly kvm selftests).

Shortlog appended, it's not too long and easy to scan through to get a
flavor for the details if you happen to care.

Please do give it a whirl,

             Linus

Also: Linux 5.15-rc3 Released - Looking "Pretty Normal" Plus Performance Fix - Phoronix

Chinese tech giant Huawei launched openEuler operating system (OS) on Saturday, another self-developed OS after the HarmonyOS, as it tries to "solve the domestic stranglehold problem of lacking its homegrown OS in basic technology," and build a full-scenario covered ecosystem to prepare for more US bans.

The openEuler OS can be widely deployed in various forms of equipment such as servers, cloud computing and edge computing. Its application scenarios cover Information Technology, Communication Technology and Operational Technology to achieve unifying an operating system with multi-device support, according to the company's introduction.

In the ICT field, Huawei provides products and solutions such as servers, storage, cloud services, edge computing, base stations, routers, industrial control among others, all of which need to be equipped with an OS. Huawei has therefore been building capabilities to achieve a unified OS architecture, and meet the demands of different application scenarios, the firm said on Saturday.

The openEuler program was initially announced back in 2019 as an open source operating system. Today's launch is an updated one.

If you're looking for a Linux laptop with a focus on privacy and security, you could roll your own. Several GNU/Linux operating systems are available that are more angled towards privacy and keeping you secure online, rather than general computing. One example is PureOS, the operating system from Purism that you will find pre-installed on the Librem 14.

A top-end ultraportable notebook with specs comparable with a MacBook Pro, the Librem 14 is arguably the most security and privacy-conscious laptop around.

But Purism's laptop costs a pretty penny – is it worth the price?

• Linux IO_uring Can Now Achieve Up To ~3.8M IOPS Per-Core - Phoronix

  It was just last month when ~3.5M IOPS per-core was impressive with the code for Linux 5.15 to further push Linux's I/O limits. Now for code likely to be included in Linux 5.16 it's currently at 3.8M IOPS with a single tread.

  With this patch series reworking and further optimizing the submission and completion paths, the I/O throughput is upped even more. With block maintainer and IO_uring lead developer Jens Axboe's Intel Optane based rig, he is enjoying around a 3% throughput improvement.

• Updated AMD P-State Driver Published For Linux - Phoronix

  Earlier this month AMD published their "amd-pstate" Linux driver that leverages ACPI CPPC data to make more informed CPU frequency scaling decisions with an aim to boost the performance-per-Watt for Zen 3 (and eventually Zen 2) processors on Linux. The second spin of that "amd-pstate" Linux kernel driver is now available for testing.

• QuickLicenseRT Linux 3.0 - Protect and License Desktop Software

  QuickLicenseRT Linux 3.0 implements the QuickLicense 9.1 runtime system to protect and license a Linux desktop applications. Apply licensing to a 32 or 64-bit executable with a few programming commands. Use LinuxWrap to license a compiled executable without programming.

• Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov on CLU and why programming is still cool • The Register

  It has been 12 years since Barbara Liskov won a Turing Award for her contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, and these days the creator of the CLU programming language continues to work on some interesting problems.

  We spoke about innovation, abstraction and encapsulation in the 1970s and today in a recent chat.

  Liskov, now in her 80s, leads the Programming Methodology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, she has been working on parallel computing and, with a student, developed Byzantine Fault Tolerance* [PDF] in the 1990s, "which turns out to be very significant for the blockchain world," she says.

• GitLab all set to go public as revenues – and losses – rise

  DevOps darling GitLab has finally filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) as revenues continue to grow and losses widen.

  The IPO had been expected in 2020 but the company put things off due to the pandemic until late last week, when the paperwork was filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

  The company, founded in 2014, has remained tight-lipped over the sums involved, although the filed S-1 form recorded that the proposed maximum aggregate offering price is estimated at $100m.

  [...]

  In the IPO document, Gitlabs said it was on course to grow revenues to $233m in its current financial year ending in 2022. This compares to the $152.2m reported in fiscal 2021 and the $81.2m in the year before that.

  However, losses also widened over those years. The net loss in fiscal 2020 was $130.7m – but it was $192.2m in fiscal 2021. Net loss reached $69m for the six months ended 31 July 2021, up from $43.5m for the same time last year.

• The 10 Core Differences Between C and C++

  C and C++ are two different well-recognized programming languages with the function of assembly language. Though both C and C ++ sound similar with an extra "++" on the latter, their features and usage are distinctive.

  C is a procedural programming language with a static system, whereas C++ is an enhanced version of the C programming language with object-oriented programming support.

• Yikes, tough crowd: Only 30% of German-speaking users are happy with SAP's cloud push • The Register

  Less than a third of German-speaking SAP users think the global application vendor is doing a good job of getting its software to work in the cloud.

  The survey from user group DSAG, which represents those in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, showed that only 30 per cent of members have had good experiences with SAP in the cloud. The figure for use of non-SAP software was around 60 per cent.

• Stealth Malware for Linux found in Windows Subsystem for Linux – Read Full report [Ed: The suggestion made here is wrong. This is a Windows problem, so users should delete Windows and move to a GNU/Linux distro, which WSL is not]

• WTF? Microsoft makes fixing deadly OMIGOD flaws on Azure your job [Ed: Bug doors or back doors (same effects) are no accident]

• September 30, 2021, is the day the Internet is disabled for millions of smartphones and computers

  Millions of smartphones, game consoles and computers will lose their Internet access by September 30, 2021, as the security certificate on all connected products expires. This applies to all devices marketed and not updated before 2017.

  Smartphones, Computers, Tablets, But game consoles and televisions … the Internet has been everywhere for years. But still, on September 30, 2021, millions of devices may lose connectivity! A giant “blackout” affecting a large number of devices designed before 2017. Why? Because this September 30, 2021, a Certificate Digital security is about to expire, and the lack of an update will prevent another certificate from becoming too widespread to connect to the Internet today, for example watching videos or viewing emails.

• How to analyze Linux system boot time with Systemd - Linux Shout

  Systemd is a system and session manager that is responsible for managing all services running on the system over the entire operating time of the computer, from the start-up process to shutdown. Processes are always started in parallel (as far as possible) in order to keep the boot process as short as possible. But how to know which process took how much time while booting your system, well for that we can use the Systemd as well.

• How To Install Figma on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Figma on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Figma is a popular tool amongst graphic designers and UI, UX designers. It can be used to create wireframes, high-fidelity interface designs, prototyping, etc. One of the most loved features of Figma is its ability to run inside a browser, which makes it platform-independent.

  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 Figma on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• How To Create and Manage Groups in Linux - ByteXD

  A group is a collection of users in Linux that shares some commonalities for the purpose of security, privilege, etc.

  Linux allows its administrators to create different user groups very easily. This is convenient because you can create a user group and manage all of the user’s permissions at once, instead of individually assigning permissions to each user.
  If you are not familiar with Linux permissions and how to manage them, take a look at this article.

  In this tutorial, we will cover how to create groups in Linux and briefly explain how to manage them.

• What's the differences between a Docker image vs a container? - Coffee Talk: Java, News, Stories and Opinions

  A container is a collection of one or more processes, organized under a single name and identifying ID that is isolated from the other processes running within a computing environment. That computing environment can be a physical computer or a virtual machine.

  A container image is a template that defines how an image will be realized at runtime.

  While containers started out as a Linux technology, you can create containers within the Windows operating system too.

  The important thing to understand about Docker technology is that it has two main components: the client CLI tool and the container runtime. The CLI tool is used to execute instructions to the Docker runtime at the command line. The job of the Docker runtime is to create containers and run them on the operating system.

• How To Install Yarn on Debian 11 - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Yarn on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Yarn is a package manager for JavaScript that runs on Node.js, allowing developers to manage their application dependencies. It was created to solve a set of problems with npm, such as speeding up the packages installation process by parallelizing operations and reducing errors related to network connectivity.

  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 the Yarn on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

• How to Install LaTeX Editor TeXstudio 4.0.0 in Ubuntu 20.04 / 21.10 | UbuntuHandbook

  The open-source LaTeX editor TeXstudio 4.0.0 was released! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu via PPA repository.

  TeXstudio 4.0.0 offers Qt6 support which should improve HiDPI handling. And the official packages for Windows and macOS are now based on Qt6, while Linux build sticks to Qt5.

  The final release is out after 8 alpha, 3 beta and 2 release candidate tests, though it’s announced only with following changes...

• How to Setup Passwordless SSH Login in Linux with Keys

  Hello Linux geeks, it is always a good practice that Linux systems should be ssh with keys rather than the password. SSH (Secure Shell) keys gives us a secure way to login to Linux and UNIX like servers. When we access Linux systems with SSH keys then it is also known as passwordless ssh authentication.

  In this post, we will learn how to setup passwordless SSH authentication with keys in Linux.

• How to prevent a Supply Chain Attack in a Linux Environment

  This is a type of cyberattack that seeks to damage an organization by attacking weaker elements in the supply chain. A supply chain attack can happen across any industry.

  Software supply chain attacks occur when attackers insert malicious code in a poorly secured part of the software supply chain. This causes a ripple effect, in which a lot of consumers of the software are impacted by the attack.

• Setup Load Balancing with HAProxy, Nginx and Keepalived in Linux

  In the conventional method of hosting a server or website, the server is hosted through a single HTTP server. When the clients hit on the server, they are allowed on the server. But, what happens when multiple users, even more; thousands of clients, hit the site at a time for some query? What will happen if the server crashes? How will the single server balance the load? To answer all these questions, we can use the term ‘Load balancing’. If you’re looking for authentic tools for managing traffic of your server, you can definitely setup the HAProxy, Nginx, and Keepalived on Linux for load balancing.

• This Will Make You a Command-Line Ninja | by Erik van Baaren | Python Land | Sep, 2021 | Medium

  A well-crafted bash command or script can save hours of manual labor. This tutorial will show you exactly how easy it is to become a command-line ninja and automate those tedious tasks. If you need to polish your basics, head over to Shell Commands Every Developer Must Know.

• What Is the Linux Command Line and How Do You Use It?

  The interface you use to view and interact with an operating system, whether text-based or graphical, is known as a shell. The first shells were text-based. This is because the earliest electronic computers were not household devices. Instead, they were giant mainframes that occupied entire rooms.

  Back then, computing power was pretty low and network connections were slow. You can store very many files, and many users can sign into a system simultaneously over a very slow connection when you’re only working with text.

  In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at Bell Labs developed the Unix operating system, one of the first mainframe operating systems to gain widespread adoption.

  Unix operated on mainframes as a shared system, with people interacting with the computer from individual terminals consisting of only a keyboard and a screen. Users did everything from creating and navigating files to transmitting data by typing commands using a shell, which the mainframe then interpreted.

  If anything went wrong, a system administrator could check via a console, a dedicated text-entry, and display device used for system-related messages such as those concerning the BIOS, bootloader, or kernel. Linux is a Unix-like system that replicates much of the functionalities of Unix, but as free software available to all.

  The Thompson shell (written by Ken Thompson) was the initial shell for Unix, but a replacement came from Stephen Bourne in 1979 known as the Bourne shell. In 1989, Brian Fox create the Bourne Again shell (bash for short) as a free software replacement of the Bourne shell as part of the GNU Project. This is the default shell for most Linux operating systems.

  Thus we have several of the names that are still commonly used for the command line today: command line, shell, terminal, console, and bash.

• Derivation: Episode 1 Motion Comic by Itizso on itch.io - David Revoy

  Game developer Itizso on itch.io made a motion comic derivation with the first webcomic episode of Pepper&Carrot. It's an interesting way to give life to this episode.

• Trouble is brewing over on GOG due to the HITMAN release needing online for some features | GamingOnLinux

  GOG.com, the store that provides itself on offering "DRM FREE" builds of games has recently released Hitman - Game of The Year Edition from IO Interactive and GOG fans are not happy.

  To set the scene a little, this is a single-player stealth game about running around assassinating various targets across a bunch of different missions. It's actually a pretty good game and it has a Linux build available on Steam ported by Feral Interactive, which is not up on GOG.

  Here's the problem: many features in HITMAN require you to have an internet connection. This is different to a game that has online modes which would of course need the internet. This is a game you play by yourself. Story missions and bonus mission can be played offline but you have to be online for most of the progression for item unlocks, new start location unlocks, special contracts, featured contracts, escalation missions and more.

• Steam Deck: Official Anti-Cheat Support Incoming in 2021

  If you have been following news closely (including with our recent Podcast with James Ramey) it should come as no surprise to see official support for EAC ahead of the Steam Deck launch. As discussed during our interview, this will probably require signed Proton builds in order to have EAC running in the games that require it (one of the requirements of Anti-cheat technology is to have reproducible environments). In practical terms this probably means that custom Proton builds made by third parties (like Proton GE) may not be able to include such support. We will have to see when more details surface.

  [...]

  With these two announcements, it looks like there should be a nice jump in compatibility for anything running under Proton in the very near future (maybe even ahead of the Steam Deck launch). Will that be enough to reach 100% compatibility as announced by Valve? Probably not, but my guess is that the fact that they are shipping a truckload of devkits of the Steam Deck early to developers is going to help for the remaining gaps.

PrefersNonDefaultGPU was added to the FreeDesktop.org Desktop Entry Specification in version 1.4. It's a hint for the desktop environment to use a non-discrete, more powerful GPU, if it is available. Support for this key was recently added to Xubuntu and elementary, and is making it's way to other desktop environments as well.

X-GNOME-UsesNotifications is used by GNOME, elementary, and other GTK desktops (possibly others as well) to inform the environment that an app can send notifications. This enables management of those notifications through a single interface. This feature is seen in GNOME and elementary.

Given last week's release of Chrome 94, here are some fresh browser benchmarks looking at Firefox 92 stable against Chrome 94 running on Ubuntu Linux.

Just as some quick weekend benchmarks and not running any cross-browser Linux benchmarks since earlier this summer, here are some fresh numbers.

The system this time around is the Intel Core i9 11900K "Rocket Lake" with Radeon VII graphics and using a development snapshot of Ubuntu 21.10 from the default GNOME Shell Wayland session.

• Samsung One UI 4: Hands-on with all the new features for Android 12

• How to Access, Listen, and Delete Google Call Recording On Android

• Best Web Browsers for Android: Brave, Chrome, Firefox, Kiwi, and more!

• 19 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (9/19/21 - 9/26/21)

• Best Free Android Apps: SudoQ - Sudoku app - LinuxLinks

• Android users will soon get a new Gmail feature that will make their lives easy. Details here

• Google Pixel UI guide: Everything you need to know - Android Authority

This week, we have focused on one thing: speed. From UI additions to under-the-hood improvements, Kalendar is now quicker to use and faster to act than ever!

A lot of this week has been spent profiling Kalendar, finding hotspots, and minimising them. As a result, lots of tweaks now help Kalendar perform better, particularly when using the month and schedule views. By limiting the number of view resets each second, using less resource-intensive components, and eliminating cruft, Kalendar is now significantly faster.

Hi,

we are happy to announce the release 2.0.0 of GNU Wget2.

Wget2 is the successor of GNU Wget, a file and recursive website
downloader.

Designed and written from scratch it wraps around libwget, that provides
the basic functions needed by a web client.

Wget2 works multi-threaded and uses "modern" features to allow fast operation.

In many cases Wget2 downloads much faster than Wget due to HTTP2,
HTTP compression, parallel connections, use of If-Modified-Since HTTP header and more.

Wget2 has several new command-line options, see the wiki page for a list and comparison with Wget.

Wget will be maintained further. The idea is that breaking changes and new functionalities go into Wget2 / libwget.

Except for WARC and FTP, Wget2 is a drop-in replacement for Wget in most cases. Of course there may be subtle differences, so make sure to test well before replacing Wget by Wget2.

GNU Wget2 is licensed under GPLv3+. Libwget is licensed under LGPLv3+.

Also: GNU Wget2 2.0 Released With HTTP2 & SSL Improvements - Phoronix

An adblocker doesn’t necessarily make your web browser load pages faster. The Brave browser introduced a shiny new and more performant adblocking system in late 2019. However, leftovers from its old system have remained in the browser and have quietly held back its performance potential.

I could spend time describing the change with numbers (I do at the end), but let’s look at the bigger picture first. The two flame graphs below show a 475 ms window during a page load with the current stable release build of Brave (top), compared to the new and improved nightly releases (bottom). The colored bars indicate work the browser has to complete to finish the page load. Ignore the minutia of the graphs, just look at the big differences.

• Awesome Raspberry Pi automatic guitar tuner project

  Musicians and Raspberry Pi enthusiasts may be interested in a new project published to the official Raspberry Pi blog this week documenting a new project using the small Raspberry Pi Pico mini PC that can automatically tune your guitar. The Pico powered guitar tuning box has been created by Redditor u/thataintthis otherwise known as Guyrandy Jean-Gilles and makes it easy for you to perfectly tune your guitar. The project is perfect for beginners or those looking for a little help to remove the boredom of tuning your axe before a session.

• First RISC-V computer chip lands at the European Processor Initiative

  The European Processor Initiative (EPI) has run the successful first test of its RISC-V-based European Processor Accelerator (EPAC), touting it as the initial step towards homegrown supercomputing hardware.

  EPI, launched back in 2018, aims to increase the independence of Europe's supercomputing industry from foreign technology companies. At its heart is the adoption of the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture for the development and production of high-performance chips within Europe's borders.

  The project's latest milestone is the delivery of 143 samples of EPAC chips, accelerators designed for high-performance computing applications and built around the free and open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. Designed to prove the processor's design, the 22nm test chips – fabbed at GlobalFoundries, the not-terribly-European semiconductor manufacturer spun out of AMD back in 2009 – have passed initial testing, running a bare-metal "hello, world" program as proof of life.

• FPGA Retrocomputer: Return To Moncky

  This project, called the Moncky project, is a step above the usual 8-bit computer builds as it is actually a 16-bit computer. It is built around an Arty Spartan-7 FPGA dev board running around 20 MHz and has access to 2 x 128 kB dual-port RAM for memory. To access the outside world there is a VGA output, PS/2 capability, SPI, and uses an SD card as a hard drive. This project really shines in the software, though, as the project creator [Kris Demuynck] builds everything from scratch in order to illustrate how everything works for educational purposes, and is currently working on implementing a C compiler to make programming the computer easier.

• Elderly Remote Keeps Things Simple | Hackaday

  If you are lucky, you’ve never experienced the heartbreak of watching a loved one lose their ability to do simple tasks. However, as hackers, we have the ability to customize solutions to make everyday tasks more accessible. That’s what [omerrv] did by creating a very specific function remote control. The idea is to provide an easy-to-use interface for the most common remote functions.