Allan McRae

What’s that? It is now May and it has been for a few days… Better do this post then!

News from the world of distributions:

• This relatively unknown distro got a release…. (Raring Ringtail)
• Although there might be a lack of co-operation between them and Debian
• Fedora 19 was slightly delayed.
• openSUSE is doing lots of ARM stuff.
• Debian Wheezy should be released soon…
• Sabayon is rolling out systemd.
• What is the best distro? If you can access Linux Format, you will see… (Arch was runner up in the power-distro section.
• And here is how to choose a distro that suites you… I got Arch even without demanding pacman, but Qubes OS and Slakel were close runners up. Never heard of them!
• DragonFly BSD 3.4 was released using GCC-4.7.
• An interesting addition of the /extra hierarchy by Chakra.

Software releases and news of interest:

• A remote desktop backend was merged into Wayland
• Speaking of Wayland, it got updated.
• Google forks Webkit in a Blink (was my pun better than the articles?)
• R-3.0.0 was released. Grab it from the Arch [testing] repo.
• Chakra released Alpha 2 of the Akabei package manager
• A project to set-up a lightweight KDE desktop.
• GDB 7.6 added AArch64 support.
• The Open Build Service 2.4 was released with supports PKGBUILDs… although I’m sure I posted it did before in one of these.
• A talk about Glibc development.
• Another attempt as SELinux on Arch
• Clang is C++11 complete when 3.3 gets released.

And some fun stuff to finish:

• The value of case badges. My laptop has an Apple logo, so that must really boost speed given the price it adds.
• A simple game of 22 vs 11.
• The revenge of the game developer.

And we come to the end of another month. And not surprisingly, more stuff happened…

Software news first:

• There was lots and lots and lots and lots of talk about Mir – Ubuntu’s new anti-Wayland.
• And if that was not enough, here are more comments from people on the issue
• Speaking of Wayland, here is a summary of its progress in Arch land…
• And how its support in GTK and GNOME is progressing
• Wayland/Weston also have a new fork – for some reason
• gcc-4.8 was released (get it from the Arch [testing] repo) and now builds in C++
• ZFS is ready for use
• GTK+-3.8 was released, closely followed by GNOME-3.8
• The math library performance in glibc is getting continuous improvements
• A new startup manager for KDE is in the works and it looks like it will speed up your login
• ownCloud 5 was released
• A summary of plans for libsystemd-bus and kdbus
• The security features of RPM – I thought installed file validation would be in there…
• Ever wondered how often assembly is used in the software carried by a distribution?
• Finally, if you use PostgreSQL, be prepared for the 4th of April…

Various distro news:

• openSUSE released an ARM64 port (although there is no hardware…)
• Ubuntu also looked at rolling releases, but decided not to
• Instead, they halved the support time of non-LTS releases
• It seems Arch Linux is the best multimedia distribution (WTF!?)
• How Fedora manages building for multiple architectures

And finally…

• Want to go to Mars – on a permanent trip? Probably do it with a company with more than a handful of employees…

I’m a bit late with the links this month due to travel (more on that later…), but as is the case every month, it is entirely worth the wait!

How to split this up… Lets start with software related links:

• More and more and more and more on secure boot
• There was (and maybe still is) a bug to brick some Samsung laptops, although not Linux specific
• GNOME has made JavaScript its default language for applications and apparently that is a good thing
• Google provided some C++ containers that are faster and more memory efficient than the STL versions
• Debian has been recompiled with Clang again…
• But why would you bother for a whole distribtion when gcc -O1 is equal to (or even a little bit better than) clang -O2 in performance and compile speed
• Libreoffice is now one impressive user of make
• Almost every piece of software will need an autoreconf to build for AArch64
• It seems you can now use OpenRC on Arch Linux – because systemd is evil
• Some magic involving the kernel and dbus
• A groundbreaking revelation on how to install LibreOffice-4.0 in Arch Linux
• This post on shared library permissions can out the same week I was reading up on it! Arch Linux still has no policy on these permissions…
• A new XFCE release is always good, mainly due to its minimal change.
• Tom did not read the Arch wiki when installing on his MacBook, so another way to remove the boot-up sound
• No choice here – I enjoy a good rant
• This is why all bug fixes should be accepted by upstream first
• A report on what happened with Xorg in 2012
• The Python trademark is having issues in Europe – with update

Various Linux distribution stuff:

• The AArch64 (64bit ARM) Debian port can boot
• Or is the distro called Debian/Ubuntu?
• The GNU Hurd moves along slowly, slowly.
• Arch Linux is crap and full of broken packages, but here is how to deal with it…
• Bad statistics and wobbly lines
• Another month, another Arch spinoff…
• Remember how last month it was concluded Ubuntu was not going rolling release? To clear that up, things may or may not have changed.
• Debian Wheezy is getting closer. Here is what is new.

And some fun stuff:

• I saw this post about needed punctuation marks and was reminded of this comedy sketch.
• Type your address and watch this go…
• Monopoly can be finished rather quickly
• Google has some interesting issues in Australia!
• And they should give me one of these… I would use it to increase my awesomeness

End of January already! Not sure where that month went…

Lets start with some distro news:

• More Arch spinoffs are in the works (and real ones!) – Arch BSD which is a BSD in the Arch sytle and Starch Linux which focuses on static linking
• Fedora 18 finally appeared and plans for inclusions in 19 are being worked out
• Ubuntu going rolling release? No…

Software related:

• If you are using MoinMoin for a wiki, you better update… It is rather critical!
• More software nearing python-3 ready. This time django is close…
• Given how much is still using libjpeg-6, I’m not sure I’d be compressing JPEGs using this yet…
• Bye bye systemd myths – and here goes the prize for best comment.
• Another post in the “autotools mythbuster” series – the main “book” is worth a read too

And some collected commentary:

• How to get involved at Gentoo – most applies to Arch too..
• A quite good summary of what it means to be a rolling release
• What is the best MAKEFLAG for your number of processors?
• I’m always impressed by the ability to brick things just by booting!
• A fix for a timing issue in the “-ck” kernel, discovered by an Arch user tying to compile glibc
• Hrmm… which one is supossed to be the bad guy here?

Final collection of links for the year…

Software related:

• More posts on secure boot
• i386 support was dropped from the Linux kernel, which immediately sparked a discussion about dropping it from GCC (glibc has not for a long time)
• After several moths of discussion, eudev was officially announced
• A new release of the GNU C Library was announced (and is in the Arch repos)
• As was the release of LLVM 3.2
• A summary of C 2011 standard implementation status and why GNU should allow it
• The Wikipedia visual editor went live

Thinks happening in other Linux distributions:

• The Linux Format comparison of Linux distribtions (mentioned a few months back) was made available on-line
• But should OpenSUSE Tumbleweed have beaten Arch?
• A stroy about the history of the HURD
• Debian’s m86k port got some love
• Chakra fixed the bug I found in their installer
• A Manjaro demonstrated why automatically updating config files is bad – read the command they run for good entertainment value…

It was a month for some good rants:

• RMS does not like Ubuntu’s spyware…
• But he is childish, or maybe not!
• Anonymous bug reports are fun!
• GnuTLS is moving away from GNU and the maintainer of sed and grep feels the same way
• I am not sure if I understand what a Manjaro Linux release means

And because it is the end of the year:

• We moved ever so slowly into the future

Software related:

• Fedora 18 was delayed until next year
• GNOME dropped fallback mode but the “old-style” GNOME look may appear via extensions
• Another month, another udev fork – is this number three? This time is is done by people at Gentoo and is called udev-ng… no, its eudev. But is that fork any good? Some opinions…
• glibc-2.17 is in freeze and it looks like it will be a relatively easy update
• A “new” package manager – Guix – which is just Nix with some Guile thrown on top…
• A post about Upstart working in Debian – speed comparisons are the most interesting thing there
• And while we are speaking of upstart, what does Lennart think?

And things that entertained me:

• This song was stuck in my head…
• Which lead me to some great ukulele playing (including weirdness such as this)
• And that reminded me of a great comedy sketch

Another month, another bunch of links…

Software and release announcements:

• openSUSE released RC1 of their 12.2 release on the ARM architecture. RC2 has made an appearance too!
• Speaking of ARM, multiplatform support was merged into the kernel.
• There was probably earlier releases, but this was the first time I noticed the Cinnarch distrolet.
• There is a fork of Arch Linux initscripts, which I do not recommend given the lack of understanding of bash shown by some of the changes…
• Wayland 1.0 had a fairly quiet release announcement.
• I “discovered” the pkgng package manger for FreeBSD. I need to look at it in detail to see if there are ideas to steal for pacman.

There were many posts about UEFI and secure boot:

• Although most of them came from Matthew Garrett…
• The Linux Foundation made an announcement too.

Other collected Linux-ish links that interested me:

• Ubuntu has a donation screen shown on the way to the download. I accept Amazon.com gift vouchers!
• A tutorial on how to remove watermarks in GIMP.
• Details of the systemd journal file format.
• A report on issues with major updates in Gentoo.

And some fun stuff…

• Anime News Network’s Fall 2012 preview guide.
• I am enjoying xkcd’s What If – especially this one
• The Handbook of the Birds of the World is being adapted into an online version.
• My idea got made into a cartoon! Well… sort of… not really… But I am mentioned.

What has interested me in the world of the internet in the last month?

Lets start with some release announcements:

• Linux From Scratch 7.2 was announced.
• Python-3.3 was released.
• The first alpha of Akabei (Chakra’s pacman replacement) was announced.
• Not exactly a “release” announcement, but Clang will be the default compiler on FreeBSD 10.0.

A good rant or two is always entertaining:

• Thomas (Arch dev) on systemd.
• Anti /tmp on tmpfs.
• An Arch Bang moderator has discovered I can be… let say opinionated… about incompetency.
• And this was just, well…

And some random links:

• Some posts about dealing with misbehaviour on the Debian developmental lists.
• The Open Build Service can now create Arch Linux packages.
• A warning about automatic updates in Fedora.
• An interesting approach to teaching programming (specifically Python) online.
• The first commit I pushed to the glibc git repo.
• Discussion about a format to replace tar. I want the ability to easily remove/replace files…

Finally, I do genetics too…

• The ENCODE project gave us a major insight into just how complex the human genome is.

When preparing to move my Firefox profile to a new computer I noticed that I collect a lot of bookmarks that I do nothing with. Instead, I have decided to make a monthly post of the “interesting” stuff I collect and so clean them out on a regular basis.

• The GCC cxx-conversion branch was merged. That means that GCC is now compiled as C++.
• The Hijinks Ensue podcast is back.
• The Chakra Linux distribution is dropping their i686 support.
• A forum post be Tom Gundersen explaining why the move towards systemd in Arch is a good idea.
• Blog post about progress on the Cupt package manager. No features I immediately want to implement in pacman…
• The Slackware documentation project is underway.
• A systemd-to-sysvinit converter is being developed in a Summer of Code 2012 project.
• How does Arch Linux compare to openSuse Tumbleweed? I do not know because I can not access this article (hint, hint…)
• Found this Pixies cover via reddit. Had to watch Fight Club again…
• The results of Gentoo offering a bounty to fix a bug. This reminded me of Arch Bounty, which failed to even get a single project up.
• Despite this blog post, I understand even less about the version numbers for packages in Debian!
• A project to write a tutorial on x86_64 assembly.