We are happy to announce the release of Qt Tools for Android Studio 3.0. It can be downloaded from the JetBrains marketplace. 

16 Sep 2024 1:26pm GMT

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 857 for the week of September 8 - 14, 2024. The full version of this issue is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS released
• Oracular Oriole (to be 24.10) now in Kernel Feature Freeze
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• UbuCon North America 2025 Status Update
• LXD: Weekly news - 362
• Starting of Ubuntu Bengal, a LoCo of Ubuntu based on Bengal, India
• Opportunity Open Source Conference - IITK 2024
• UbuCon Asia 2024: My first ever conference!
• LoCo Events
• Ubuntu Desktop's 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 5: Introducing Permissions Prompting
• Upstream release of cloud-init 24.3
• ODH-029: Documenting a new project
• Dealing with spam on Matrix
• Advisory: Spam invite incident (2024-09-13)
• Other Community News
• Canonical News
• In the Blogosphere
• Featured Audio and Video
• Meeting Reports
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security for Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04
• And much more!

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Krytarik Raido
• Bashing-om
• Chris Guiver
• Wild Man
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

.

16 Sep 2024 12:55pm GMT

SerNet secured €688,800 in funding from Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund to boost Samba's security, scalability, and functionality.

16 Sep 2024 9:43am GMT

Following @t0xic0der and @humaton's talk on the Git forge ARC (Advance Reconaissance Crew) investigation during Fedora Linux Release Party 40 and more recently, @humaton's talk on the topic during Flock To Fedora 2024 - we have opened up our ARC investigation to all contributors within the Fedora Project. Please refer to the ARC initiative page to create or retrieve the use case requirements for the Git forge replacement. As part of that we created community deployments for GitLab and Forgejo.

Testing GitLab instance

The GitLab instance has limited access and needs manual approval of the account. To get an account on this instance please follow the instructions below:

1. Create an account on the GitLab instance
2. Open a ticket on Fedora Infrastructure issue
   1. Use Approve my user on GitLab test instance as summary
   2. In Types choose gitlab_testing_request template
   3. Fill in the template
3. Wait for us to approve your account

Our test GitLab instance doesn't allow SSH pushes. You need to use HTTPS to push changes to the repository.

Testing Forgejo instance

Forgejo test instance is much more straightforward when creating an account as it is connected to our staging Fedora Account System. To get an account follow the instructions below:

1. Create an account in staging Fedora Account System (you can skip this step if you already have the staging Fedora account)
2. Login to Forgejo test instance with your staging Fedora account using Sign In with Fedora Accounts button

Our test Forgejo instance is hosted in the same environment as the GitLab test instance so it doesn't allow SSH pushes either. You need to use https to push changes to the repository.

Since the Forgejo test instance is using a staging Fedora account you can use the same username for HTTPS push, but for the password you need to generate a token in Settings->Application->Access Tokens.

Sharing feedback with us

To share your testing results use this discussion thread and let us know if either Forgejo or GitLab is suitable for tested use cases.

How to contact us

You can reach us with any question either in this discussion thread or in our Matrix ARC investigation room.

16 Sep 2024 8:00am GMT

Last February 2024, after FOSDEM, the Fedora Council met for a couple of days to discuss strategy and future of Fedora. As part of this discussion, the council also discussed the proposed initiatives, Community Ops 2024 Reboot and Mentored Projects 2024. We are glad to announce that the council approved both of them!

What is the Fedora Mentored Projects initiative?

Fedora is a place where people with very different backgrounds and skills come together, from experienced professionals to students just starting out on their journey, and spanning various sectors such as engineering, marketing, design, and more. This diversity makes it the perfect place to promote mentoring programs.

Historically, the Fedora community has participated in the Outreachy and GSoC mentoring programs. However, we aim to simplify the process for mentors and mentees, making it easier to apply to existing mentoring programs under Fedora or even coordinate new ones!

From our initiative wiki, our mission is:

The Mentored Projects team improves the overall onboarding experience for
Fedora Mentored Projects by equipping participants with role handbooks,
by creating community spaces for mentors to connect with each other,
and by advocating the new role handbooks and community spaces. 

What have we already accomplished?

The initiative was created in November 2023, and since then, we have made significant progress. Here's an update on our work:

• We presented the initiative to the Fedora Council, receiving their approval and feedback.
• We identified past mentors and mentees and conducted several interviews to gather feedback on their experiences.
• We applied to Outreachy, Google Summer of Code, and Google Season of Docs and secured a budget for three Outreachy interns.
• We've begun drafting role handbooks, although they are not yet complete.
• We created a new private matrix room for mentored project mentors to collaborate and discuss. We used this actively during the project application period with Outreachy.
• We facilitated the use of a public Matrix room for all project applicants and mentors to ask general questions about participating in Fedora.

What do we want to do next?

There is still plenty of work to do to consider the initiative completed.

• Finish the role handbooks and translate the one for accepted interns into three major languages.
• Present the Mentored Projects Showcase at Flock 2024
• Present the Mentored Projects Initiative at Flock 2024
• Work with the Mindshare committee to properly schedule future mentorship opportunities' timeline
• Create custom swag for mentees and mentors recognition.

End goals

We envision a future where mentors and mentees know what is expected of them when entering a Fedora Mentored Project and have a smooth onboarding process. In addition, there is a culture of recognition for all the effort they put into the projects to be successful.

The post Fedora Mentored Projects - Council Hackfest appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

16 Sep 2024 8:00am GMT

MX Linux 23.4 "Libretto" released, bringing bug fixes, kernel 6.1, app updates, and more. Based on Debian 12.7 "Bookworm."

16 Sep 2024 6:04am GMT

Review: The Wings Upon Her Back, by Samantha Mills

The Wings Upon Her Back is a political steampunk science fantasy novel. If the author's name sounds familiar, it may be because Samantha Mills's short story "Rabbit Test" won Nebula, Locus, Hugo, and Sturgeon awards. This is her first novel.

Winged Zemolai is a soldier of the mecha god and the protege of Mecha Vodaya, the Voice. She has served the city-state of Radezhda by defending it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for twenty-six years. Despite that, it takes only a moment of errant mercy for her entire life to come crashing down. On a whim, she spares a kitchen worker who was concealing a statue of the scholar god, meaning that he was only pretending to worship the worker god like all workers should. Vodaya is unforgiving and uncompromising, as is the sleeping mecha god. Zemolai's wings are ripped from her back and crushed in the hand of the god, and she's left on the ground to die of mechalin withdrawal.

The Wings Upon Her Back is told in two alternating timelines. The main one follows Zemolai after her exile as she is rescued by a young group of revolutionaries who think she may be useful in their plans. The other thread starts with Zemolai's childhood and shows the reader how she became Winged Zemolai: her scholar family, her obsession with flying, her true devotion to the mecha god, and the critical early years when she became Vodaya's protege. Mills maintains the separate timelines through the book and wraps them up in a rather neat piece of symbolic parallelism in the epilogue.

I picked up this book on a recommendation from C.L. Clark, and yes, indeed, I can see why she liked this book. It's a story about a political awakening, in which Zemolai slowly realizes that she has been manipulated and lied to and that she may, in fact, be one of the baddies. The Wings Upon Her Back is more personal than some other books with that theme, since Zemolai was specifically (and abusively) groomed for her role by Vodaya. Much of the book is Zemolai trying to pull out the hooks that Vodaya put in her or, in the flashback timeline, the reader watching Vodaya install those hooks.

The flashback timeline is difficult reading. I don't think Mills could have left it out, but she says in the afterword that it was the hardest part of the book to write and it was also the hardest part of the book to read. It fills in some interesting bits of world-building and backstory, and Mills does a great job pacing the story revelations so that both threads contribute equally, but mostly it's a story of manipulative abuse. We know from the main storyline that Vodaya's tactics work, which gives those scenes the feel of a slow-motion train wreck. You know what's going to happen, you know it will be bad, and yet you can't look away.

It occurred to me while reading this that Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory told a similar type of story without the flashback structure, which eliminates the stifling feeling of inevitability. I don't think that would not have worked for this story. If you simply rearranged the chapters of The Wings Upon Her Back into a linear narrative, I would have bailed on the book. Watching Zemolai being manipulated would have been too depressing and awful for me to make it to the payoff without the forward-looking hope of the main timeline. It gave me new appreciation for the difficulty of what Tesh pulled off.

Mills uses this interwoven structure well, though. At about 90% through this book I had no idea how it could end in the space remaining, but it reaches a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Mills uses a type of ending that normally bothers me, but she does it by handling the psychological impact so well that I couldn't help but admire it. I'm avoiding specifics because I think it worked better when I wasn't expecting it, but it ties beautifully into the thematic point of the book.

I do have one structural objection, though. It's one of those problems I didn't notice while reading, but that started bothering me when I thought back through the story from a political lens. The Wings Upon Her Back is Zemolai's story, her redemption arc, and that means she drives the plot. The band of revolutionaries are great characters (particularly Galiana), but they're supporting characters. Zemolai is older, more experienced, and knows critical information they don't have, and she uses it to effectively take over. As setup for her character arc, I see why Mills did this. As political praxis, I have issues.

There is a tendency in politics to believe that political skill is portable and repurposable. Converting opposing operatives to the cause is welcomed not only because they indicate added support, but also because they can use their political skill to help you win instead. To an extent this is not wrong, and is probably the most true of combat skills (which Zemolai has in abundance). But there's an underlying assumption that politics is symmetric, and a critical reason why I hold many of the political positions that I do hold is that I don't think politics is symmetric.

If someone has been successfully stoking resentment and xenophobia in support of authoritarians, converts to an anti-authoritarian cause, and then produces propaganda stoking resentment and xenophobia against authoritarians, this is in some sense an improvement. But if one believes that resentment and xenophobia are inherently wrong, if one's politics are aimed at reducing the resentment and xenophobia in the world, then in a way this person has not truly converted. Worse, because this is an effective manipulation tactic, there is a strong tendency to put this type of political convert into a leadership position, where they will, intentionally or not, start turning the anti-authoritarian movement into a copy of the authoritarian movement they left. They haven't actually changed their politics because they haven't understood (or simply don't believe in) the fundamental asymmetry in the positions. It's the same criticism that I have of realpolitik: the ends do not justify the means because the means corrupt the ends.

Nothing that happens in this book is as egregious as my example, but the more I thought about the plot structure, the more it bothered me that Zemolai never listens to the revolutionaries she joins long enough to wrestle with why she became an agent of an authoritarian state and they didn't. They got something fundamentally right that she got wrong, and perhaps that should have been reflected in who got to make future decisions. Zemolai made very poor choices and yet continues to be the sole main character of the story, the one whose decisions and actions truly matter. Maybe being wrong about everything should be disqualifying for being the main character, at least for a while, even if you think you've understood why you were wrong.

That problem aside, I enjoyed this. Both timelines were compelling and quite difficult to put down, even when they got rather dark. I could have done with less body horror and a few fewer fight scenes, but I'm glad I read it.

Science fiction readers should be warned that the world-building, despite having an intricate and fascinating surface, is mostly vibes. I started the book wondering how people with giant metal wings on their back can literally fly, and thought the mentions of neural ports, high-tech materials, and immune-suppressing drugs might mean that we'd get some sort of explanation. We do not: heavier-than-air flight works because it looks really cool and serves some thematic purposes. There are enough hints of technology indistinguishable from magic that you could make up your own explanations if you wanted to, but that's not something this book is interested in. There's not a thing wrong with that, but don't get caught by surprise if you were in the mood for a neat scientific explanation of apparent magic.

Recommended if you like somewhat-harrowing character development with a heavy political lens and steampunk vibes, although it's not the sort of book that I'd press into the hands of everyone I know. The Wings Upon Her Back is a complete story in a single novel.

Content warning: the main character is a victim of physical and emotional abuse, so some of that is a lot. Also surgical gore, some torture, and genocide.

Rating: 7 out of 10

16 Sep 2024 2:03am GMT

Back from Akademy

Welcome to the first post in our "This Week in KDE Apps" series! You may have noticed that Nate's "This Week in KDE" blog posts no longer cover updates about KDE applications. KDE has grown significantly over the years, making it increasingly difficult for just one person to keep track of all the changes that happen each week in Plasma, and to cover the rest of KDE as well.

After discussing this at Akademy, we decided to create a parallel blog series specifically focused on KDE applications, supported by a small team of editors. This team is initially constituted by Tobias Fella, Joshua Goins and Carl Schwan.

Our goal is to cover as much as possible of what's happening in the KDE world, but we also encourage KDE app developers to collaborate with us to ensure we don't miss anything important. This collaboration will take place on Invent and on Matrix #this-week-kde-apps:kde.org.

We plan to publish a new blog post every Sunday, bringing you a summary of the previous week's developments.

This week we look at news regarding NeoChat, KDE's Matrix chat client; Itinerary, the travel assistant that lets you plan all your trips; the Gwenview image viewer; our sleek music player Elisa; KleverNotes, KDE's new note-taking application; the KStars astronomy software; and Konsole, the classic KDE terminal emulator loaded with features and utilities.

We also look at how Android support has been subtly improved, and the effort to clean up our software catalogue, retiring unmaintained programs and getting rid of cruft.

Let's get started!

NeoChat

Emojis in NeoChat are now all correctly detected by using ICU instead of a simple regex. (Claire, NeoChat 24.08.2, Link)

On mobile, NeoChat doesn't open any room by default any more, offering instead a list rooms and users. (Bart Ribbers, NeoChat 24.08.02, Link)

Filtering the list of users is back! (Tobias Fella, NeoChat 24.08.02, Link)

Itinerary

The seat information on public transport is now displayed in a more compact layout. (Carl Schwan, Itinerary 24.12.0, Link)

Gwenview

Rendering previews for RAW images is now much faster as long as KDcraw is installed and available (Fabian Vogt, Gwenview 24.12.0, Link)

Elisa

We fixed playing tracks without metadata (Pedro Nishiyama, Elisa 24.08.2, Link)

KleverNotes

The KleverNotes editor now comes with a powerful highlighter. (Louis Schul, KleverNotes 1.1.0, Link)

KStars

The scheduler will now show a small window popup graphing the altitude of the target for that night. (Hy Murveit, KStars 3.7.0, Link)

Konsole

You can set the cursor's color in Konsole using the OSC 12 escape sequence (e.g., printf '\e]12;red\a'). (Matan Ziv-Av, Konsole 24.12.0, Link)

Android Support

The status bars on Android apps now follow the colors of the Kirigami applications (Volker Krause, Craft backports, Link)

Cleaning Up

We have archived multiple old applications with no dedicated maintainers and no activity. This applies to Kuickshow, Kopete and Trojita, among others. Link

...And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you're hungry for more, check out Nate's blog and KDE's Planet, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

Get Involved

The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped achieve that status. As we grow, it's going to be equally important that your support become sustainable.

We need you for this to happen. You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don't have to be a programmer, either. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.

You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and in general help KDE continue bringing Free Software to the world.

16 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

A new release 0.0.3 of the RcppFastAD package by James Yang and myself is now on CRAN.

RcppFastAD wraps the FastAD header-only C++ library by James which provides a C++ implementation of both forward and reverse mode of automatic differentiation. It offers an easy-to-use header library (which we wrapped here) that is both lightweight and performant. With a little of bit of Rcpp glue, it is also easy to use from R in simple C++ applications. This release turns compilation to the C++20 standard as newer clang++ versions complained about a particular statement (it took to be C++20) when compiled under C++17. So we obliged.

The NEWS file for these two initial releases follows.

Changes in version 0.0.3 (2024-09-15)

• The package now compiles under the C++20 standard to avoid a warning under clang++-18 (Dirk addressing #9)

• Minor updates to continuous integration and badges have been made as well

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release. More information is available at the repository or the package page.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

15 Sep 2024 11:19pm GMT

I've stopped calling it weekly…until it's actually weekly again. Read on for a little roundup of some of the things happening around the Project!

Fedora Linux Development

Fedora Linux 40

We hope you are enjoying this release of Fedora! To shine a light on some of the folks who helped with in the quality department of this release, make sure to read the blog post Heroes of Fedora Linux 40. If you would like to help out with any Fedora release, make sure to get involved with Test Days. We are always happy to have more testers!

Fedora Linux 41

The F41 Beta will be arriving on Tuesday 17th September! We are really looking forward to hearing how the Beta performs, we know it wont be perfect, but its important to get some feedback so we can make sure F41 Final continues the trend of 'the best version yet!'. Keep an eye out for announcements on the Beta in Fedora Magazine and in the usual places like discourse and mailing lists, and if you find a bug, please report it on the Blocker Bugs app.

We are going in to Final Freeze on 15th October, so please make sure you have made any necessary changes or updates to your work by then, as we are still on track to release F41 Final on 5th Novmeber 2024 at this time. Keep an eye on the schedule for a more detailed view of tasks and remember that F39 will EOL on 19th November 2024.

Fedora Linux 42 & Co.

A.K.A, the answer to life, the universe and everything. But this is also a fast approaching Fedora release! Development is now underway and change requests are starting to come in. We also have some changes accepted for this release too, so for a preview of what the release should include, check out the Change Set page. Here is also quick reminder of some important dates for changes if you are hoping to land one in time for this release:

• December 18th - Changes requiring infrastructure changes
• December 24th - Changes requiring mass rebuild
• December 24th - System Wide changes
• January 14th - Self Contained changes
• February 4th - Changes need to be Testable
• February 4th - Branching
• February 18th - Changes need to be Complete

Be sure to keep an eye on the Fedora Linux 42 release schedule, and for those who are super-duper organized (I am very jealous), the Fedora Linux 43 and Fedora Linux 44 schedules are now live too to bookmark.

Hot Topics

Git Forge Replacement

The git forge replacement effort is still going strong, with members of the ARC team working through testing these user stories against instances of GitLab and Forgejo that are deployed in the Communishift app. We are asking anyone who would like to help out with testing to get involved by requesting access to these instances and working through the use cases in the investigation tracker. The team are collecting results as comments in the discussion thread for now and are working with Fedora QA on creating Test Days in the coming weeks.

At Flock this was a general topic of conversation, and as someone who is overseeing this work on behalf of the council, I was able to meet with Tomas Hckra who is leading this investigation and work on a proposed timeline. We are aiming to adhere to this high level timeline:

• End of October '24 - the report comparing the two git forges against the list of user stories/requirements is finished and submitted to Fedora Council for review.
• Around the same time - the report is also made public
• Mid - End of November '24 - A decision is made on what git forge the project will migrate to
• December '24 - A migration plan for the project is created and shared publicly
• January '25 - A Giant Change Proposal, likely spanning many releases, is created and proposed.
• Sometime a little later (probably Feb/Mar '25) - The change proposal is iterated on based on feedback if appropriate, and the Change is broken down into smaller changes targeting specific Fedora releases so the migration can be rolled out slowly and with care

I expect next year we will see the git forge evaluation well concluded, a migration plan in place, and the project will begin to migrate to the new platform. The ideal milestone is that by F44 we will successfully be using the new git forge to build and release Fedora Linux, and by F45 we will look back on pagure with great fondness for the service it did provide us all for so many years

You can get involved with and follow the conversation by using the #git-forge-future tag on discussions.fpo and joining the ARC matrix room.

The post Fedora Operations Report appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

15 Sep 2024 11:13pm GMT

Kdenlive open-source video editor releases version 24.08.1 with important fixes for playback and rendering.

15 Sep 2024 9:41pm GMT

~$ mkdir moin-test

~$ cd moin-test

~/d/moin-test►python3 -m venv .                                00:04

~/d/moin-test►ls                                        2.119s 00:04
bin/  include/  lib/  lib64@  pyvenv.cfg

~/d/moin-test►source bin/activate.fish                         00:04


~/d/moin-test►pip install --pre moin                 moin-test 00:04
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Installing collected packages: XStatic-svg-edit-moin, XStatic-Pygments, XStatic-JQuery.TableSorter, XStatic-jQuery-File-Upload, XStatic-jQuery, XStatic-Font-Awesome, XStatic-CKEditor, XStatic-Bootstrap, XStatic-autosize, XStatic, whoosh, pytz, passlib, typing-extensions, six, pygments, pycparser, markupsafe, Markdown, lxml, itsdangerous, greenlet, emeraldtree, docutils, click, charset-normalizer, cachelib, blinker, Babel, Werkzeug, sqlalchemy, python-dateutil, mdx-wikilink-plus, Jinja2, flatland, cffi, Flask, feedgen, cryptography, pdfminer.six, Flask-Theme, Flask-Caching, Flask-Babel, moin
Successfully installed Babel-2.16.0 Flask-3.0.3 Flask-Babel-4.0.0 Flask-Caching-2.3.0 Flask-Theme-0.3.6 Jinja2-3.1.4 Markdown-3.7 Werkzeug-3.0.4 XStatic-1.0.3 XStatic-Bootstrap-3.1.1.2 XStatic-CKEditor-3.6.4.0 XStatic-Font-Awesome-6.2.1.1 XStatic-JQuery.TableSorter-2.14.5.2 XStatic-Pygments-2.9.0.1 XStatic-autosize-1.17.2.1 XStatic-jQuery-3.5.1.1 XStatic-jQuery-File-Upload-10.31.0.1 XStatic-svg-edit-moin-2012.11.27.1 blinker-1.8.2 cachelib-0.9.0 cffi-1.17.1 charset-normalizer-3.3.2 click-8.1.7 cryptography-43.0.1 docutils-0.21.2 emeraldtree-0.11.0 feedgen-1.0.0 flatland-0.9.1 greenlet-3.1.0 itsdangerous-2.2.0 lxml-5.3.0 markupsafe-2.1.5 mdx-wikilink-plus-1.4.1 moin-2.0.0b1 passlib-1.7.4 pdfminer.six-20240706 pycparser-2.22 pygments-2.18.0 python-dateutil-2.9.0.post0 pytz-2024.2 six-1.16.0 sqlalchemy-2.0.34 typing-extensions-4.12.2 whoosh-2.7.4

~/d/moin-test[1]►pip install setuptools       moin-test 0.241s 00:06
Collecting setuptools
  Using cached setuptools-75.0.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.9 kB)
Using cached setuptools-75.0.0-py3-none-any.whl (1.2 MB)
Installing collected packages: setuptools
Successfully installed setuptools-75.0.0



~/d/moin-test►moin create-instance --full     moin-test 1.457s 00:06
2024-09-16 00:06:36,812 INFO moin.cli.maint.create_instance:76 Directory /home/raj/dev/moin-test already exists, using as wikiconfig dir.
2024-09-16 00:06:36,813 INFO moin.cli.maint.create_instance:93 Instance creation finished.
2024-09-16 00:06:37,303 INFO moin.cli.maint.create_instance:107 Build Instance started.
2024-09-16 00:06:37,304 INFO moin.cli.maint.index:51 Index creation started
2024-09-16 00:06:37,308 INFO moin.cli.maint.index:55 Index creation finished
2024-09-16 00:06:37,308 INFO moin.cli.maint.modify_item:166 Load help started
Item loaded: Home
Item loaded: docbook
Item loaded: mediawiki
Item loaded: OtherTextItems/Diff
Item loaded: WikiDict
Item loaded: moin
Item loaded: moin/subitem
Item loaded: html/SubItem
Item loaded: moin/HighlighterList
Item loaded: MoinWikiMacros/Icons
Item loaded: InclusionForMoinWikiMacros
Item loaded: TemplateSample
Item loaded: MoinWikiMacros
Item loaded: rst/subitem
Item loaded: OtherTextItems/IRC
Item loaded: rst
Item loaded: creole/subitem
Item loaded: Home/subitem
Item loaded: OtherTextItems/CSV
Item loaded: images
Item loaded: Sibling
Item loaded: html
Item loaded: markdown
Item loaded: creole
Item loaded: OtherTextItems
Item loaded: OtherTextItems/Python
Item loaded: docbook/SubItem
Item loaded: OtherTextItems/PlainText
Item loaded: MoinWikiMacros/MonthCalendar
Item loaded: markdown/Subitem
Success: help namespace help-en loaded successfully with 30 items
2024-09-16 00:06:46,258 INFO moin.cli.maint.modify_item:166 Load help started
Item loaded: video.mp4
Item loaded: archive.tar.gz
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Item loaded: archive.zip
Item loaded: logo.png
Item loaded: cat.jpg
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Success: help namespace help-common loaded successfully with 7 items
2024-09-16 00:06:49,685 INFO moin.cli.maint.modify_item:338 Load welcome page started
2024-09-16 00:06:49,801 INFO moin.cli.maint.modify_item:347 Load welcome finished
2024-09-16 00:06:49,801 INFO moin.cli.maint.index:124 Index optimization started
2024-09-16 00:06:51,383 INFO moin.cli.maint.index:126 Index optimization finished
2024-09-16 00:06:51,383 INFO moin.cli.maint.create_instance:114 Full instance setup finished.
2024-09-16 00:06:51,383 INFO moin.cli.maint.create_instance:115 You can now use "moin run" to start the builtin server.



~/d/moin-test►ls                             moin-test 15.295s 00:06
bin/      intermap.txt  lib64@      wiki/        wikiconfig.py
include/  lib/          pyvenv.cfg  wiki_local/



~/d/moin-test►MOINCFG=wikiconfig.py                  moin-test 00:07
fish: Unsupported use of &apos=&apos. In fish, please use &aposset MOINCFG wikiconfig.py&apos.

~/d/moin-test[123]►set MOINCFG wikiconfig.py         moin-test 00:07


~/d/moin-test[123]►moin account-create --name test --email test@test.tld --password test123
Password not acceptable: For a password a minimum length of 8 characters is required.
2024-09-16 00:08:19,106 WARNING moin.utils.clock:53 These timers have not been stopped: total




~/d/moin-test►moin account-create --name test --email test@test.tld --password this-is-a-password
2024-09-16 00:08:43,798 INFO moin.cli.account.create:49 User c3608cafec184bd6a7a1d69d83109ad0 [&apostest&apos] test@test.tld - created.
2024-09-16 00:08:43,798 WARNING moin.utils.clock:53 These timers have not been stopped: total



~/d/moin-test►moin run --host 0.0.0.0 --port 5000 --no-debugger --no-reload
 * Debug mode: off
2024-09-16 00:09:26,146 INFO werkzeug:97 WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment. Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Running on all addresses (0.0.0.0)
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000
 * Running on http://192.168.1.2:5000
2024-09-16 00:09:26,146 INFO werkzeug:97 Press CTRL+C to quit

15 Sep 2024 6:45pm GMT

The post Kdenlive 24.08.1 released appeared first on Kdenlive.

15 Sep 2024 6:23pm GMT

Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux kernel 6.11, which is the kernel version Ubuntu 24.10 and Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS will offer. Fittingly, this update arrives a few days before the Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit takes place in Vienna, Austria. In his message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List to sign-off on the release Torvalds' writes: "I'm once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it's Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out", and asks kernel devs to "give the latest release a try" before getting stuck in with the 6.12 merge window, […]

You're reading Linux Kernel 6.11 Released, This is What's New, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

15 Sep 2024 4:32pm GMT

Recently there have been a number of reports (bug 2183743, bug 2276698, bug 2283839, bug 2312355) about the plymouth boot splash not showing properly on PCs using AMD GPUs.

The problem without plymouth and AMD GPUs is that the amdgpu driver is a really really big driver, which easily takes up to 10 seconds to load on older PCs. The delay caused by this may cause plymouth to timeout while waiting for the GPU to be initialized, causing it to fallback to the 3 dot text-mode boot splash.

There are 2 workaround for this depending on the PCs configuration:

1. With older AMD GPUs the radeon driver is actually used to drive the GPU but even though it is unused the amdgpu driver still loads slowing things down.

To check if this is the case for your PC start a terminal in a graphical login session and run: "lsmod | grep -E '^radeon|^amdgpu'" this will output something like this:

amdgpu 17829888 0
radeon 2371584 37

The second number after each is the usage count. As you can see in this example the amdgpu driver is not used. In this case you can disable the loading of the amdgpu driver by adding "modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu" to your kernel commandline:

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu"


2. If the amdgpu driver is actually used on your PC then plymouth not showing can be worked around by telling plymouth to use the simpledrm drm/kms device created from the EFI framebuffer early on boot, rather then waiting for the real GPU driver to load. Note this depends on your PC booting in EFI mode. To do this run:

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="plymouth.use-simpledrm"


After using 1 of these workarounds plymouth should show normally again on boot (and booting should be a bit faster).

comments

14 Sep 2024 1:38pm GMT

Discover a step-by-step guide to install and configure MariaDB on Ubuntu and how to update and remove it with practical examples.

The post How to Install MariaDB on Ubuntu 24.04: A Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on Linux Today.

14 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

With the release of version 7.0.0 pacman has added support for downloading packages as a separate user with dropped privileges. For users with local repos however this might imply that the download user does not have access to the files in question, which can be fixed by assigning the files and folder to the alpm group and ensuring the executable bit (+x) is set on the folders in question. $ chown :alpm -R /path/to/local/repo Remember to merge the .pacnew files to apply the new default. Pacman also introduced a change to improve checksum stability for git repos that utilize .gitattributes files. This might require a one-time checksum change for PKGBUILDs that use git sources.

14 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS is here six and a half months after Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS as an up-to-date installation media designed for those of you who want to install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) on a new computer and don't want to download hundreds of updated packages from the repositories after the installation.

The post Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) Is Now Available Powered by Linux Kernel 6.8 appeared first on Linux Today.

13 Sep 2024 8:00pm GMT

The KDE Gear 24.08.1 apps collection is now available for download, with key fixes for Dolphin, KClock, and Filelight and updated translations.

The post KDE Gear 24.08.1 Apps Collection Rolls Out, Here's What's New appeared first on Linux Today.

13 Sep 2024 6:45pm GMT

I am pleased to introduce the first stable release of Casilda!

A simple Wayland compositor widget for Gtk 4 which can be used to embed other processes windows in your Gtk 4 application.

It was originally created for Cambalache's workspace using wlroots, a modular library to create Wayland compositors.

Following Wayland tradition, this library is named after my hometown in Santa Fe, Argentina

License

Casilda is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 only.

Where to get it?

Source code lives on GNOME gitlab here

git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/casilda.git

Manual installation

This is a regular meson package and can be installed the usual way.

# Configure project in _build directory
meson setup --wipe --prefix=~/.local _build .

# Build and install in ~/.local
ninja -C _build install

How to use it

To add a Wayland compositor to your application all you have to do is create a CasildaCompositor widget. You can specify which UNIX socket the compositor will listen for clients connections or let it will choose one automatically.

compositor = casilda_compositor_new ("/tmp/casilda-example.sock");
gtk_window_set_child (GTK_WINDOW (window), GTK_WIDGET (compositor));

Once the compositor is running you can connect to it by specifying the socket in WAYLAND_DISPLAY environment variable.

export GDK_BACKEND=wayland
export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=/tmp/casilda-example.sock
gtk4-demo

API

The api is pretty simple CasildaCompositor has two properties, socket and bg-color.

• socket: The unix socket file to connect to this compositor (string)
• bg-color: Compositor background color (GdkRGBA)

Matrix channel

Have any question? come chat with us at #cambalache:gnome.org

Mastodon

Follow me in Mastodon @xjuan to get news related to Casilda and Cambalache development.

Happy coding!

13 Sep 2024 5:36pm GMT

Parasocial chat

On Linux Matters we have a friendly and active, public Telegram channel linked on our Contact page, along with a Discord Channel. We also have links to Mastodon, Twitter (not that we use it that much) and email.

At the time of writing there are roughly this ⬇️ number of people (plus bots, sockpuppets and duplicates) in or following each Linux Matters "official" presence:

Preponderance of chat

We chose to have a presence in lots of places, but primarily the talent presenters (Martin, Mark, and myself (and Joe)) only really hang out to chat on Telegram and Mastodon.

I originally created the Telegram channel on November 20th, 2015, when we were publishing the Ubuntu Podcast (RIP in Peace) A.K.A. Ubuntu UK Podcast. We co-opted and renamed the channel when Linux Matters launched in 2023.

Prior to the channel's existence, we used the Ubuntu UK Local Community (LoCo) Team IRC channel on Freenode (also, RIP in Peace).

We also re-branded our existing Mastodon accounts from the old Ubuntu Podcast to Linux Matters.

We mostly continue using Telegram and Mastodon as our primary methods of communication because on the whole they're fast, reliable, stay synced across devices, have the features we enjoy, and at least one of them isn't run by a weird billionaire.

Other options

We link to a lot of other places at the top of the Linux Matters home page, where our listeners can chat, mostly to eachother and not us.

Being over 16, I'm not a big fan of Discord, and I know Mark doesn't even have an account there. None of us use Twitter much anymore, either.

Periodically I ponder if we (Linux Matters) should use something other than Telegram. I know some listeners really don't like the platform, but prefer other places like Signal, Matrix or even IRC. I know for sure some non-listeners don't like Telegram, but I care less about their opinions.

Part of the problem is that I don't think any of us really enjoy the other realtime chat alternatives. Both Matrix and Signal have terrible user experience, and other flaws. Which is why you don't tend to find us hanging out in either of those places.

There are further options I haven't even considered, like Wire, WhatsApp, and likely more I don't even know or care about.

So we kept using Telegram over any of the above alternative options.

Pondering Posting Polls

I have repeatedly considered asking the listeners about their preferred chat platforms via our existing channels. But that seems flawed, because we use what we like, and no matter how many people prefer something else, we're unlikely to move. Unless something strange happens 👀 .

Plus, often times, especially on decentralised platforms, the audience can be somewhat "over-enthusiastic" about their preferred way being The Way™️ over the alternatives. It won't do us any favours to get data saying 40% report we should use Signal, 40% suggest Matrix and 20% choose XMPP, if the four of us won't use any of them.

Pursue Podcast Palaver Proposals

So rather than ask our audience, I thought I'd see what other podcasters promote for feedback and chatter on their websites.

I picked a random set from shows I have heard of, and may have listened to, plus a few extra ones I haven't. None of this is endorsement or approval, I wanted the facts, just the fax, ma'am.

I collated the data in a json file for some reason, then generated the tables below. I don't know what to do with this information, but it's a bit of data we may use if we ever decide to move away from Telegram.

Presenting Pint-Sized Payoff

The table shows some nerdy podcasts along with their primary means (as far as I can tell) of community engagement. Data was gathered manually from podcast home pages and "about" pages. I generally didn't go into the page content for each episode. I made an exception for "Dot Social" and "Linux OTC" because there's nothing but episodes on their home page.

It doesn't matter for this research, I just thought it was interesting that some podcasters don't feel the need to break out their contact details to a separate page, or make it more obvious. Perhaps they feel that listeners are likely to be viewing an episode page, or looking at a specific show metadata, so it's better putting the contact details there.

I haven't included YouTube, where many shows publish and discuss, in addition to a podcast feed.

I am also aware that some people exclusively, or perhaps primarily publish on YouTube (or other video platforms). Those aren't podcasts IMNSHO.

Key to the tables below. Column names have been shorted because it's a w i d e table. The numbers indicate how many podcasts use that communication platform.

• EM - Email address (13/18)
• MA - Mastodon account (9/18)
• TW - Twitter account (8/18)
• DS - Discord server (8/18)
• TG - Telegram channel (4/18)
• IR - IRC channel (5/18)
• DW - Discourse website (2/18)
• SK - Slack channel (3/18)
• LI - LinkedIn (2/18)
• WF - Web form (2/18)
• SG - Signal group (3/18)
• WA - WhatsApp (1/18)
• FB - FaceBook (1/18)

Linux

Open Source Adjunct

Other Tech

Point

Not entirely sure what to do with this data. But there it is.

Is Linux Matters going to move away from Telegram to something else? No idea.

13 Sep 2024 4:00pm GMT

Well, it's time for another release.

Last cycle wasn't particularly exciting, only featuring the new dialogs and a few smaller changes, but this one should be more interesting. So let's look at what's new.

Bottom sheet

Last cycle libadwaita got new dialogs, which can be presented as bottom sheets on mobile, and I mentioned that they will also be available as a standalone widget in future - so AdwBottomSheet exists and is public now.

As a standalone widget, bottom sheets work a bit differently from dialogs - they are persistent instead of being destroyed upon closing, more like the sidebar of AdwOverlaySplitView.

They also have a few new features, such as a drag handle, or a bottom bar presentation. This is useful for apps like music players.

AdwHeaderBar also integrates with bottom sheets - it hides the title when used in a bottom sheet with a drag handle.

Spinner

Libadwaita also has a new spinner widget - AdwSpinner. It both refreshes visuals and addresses various problems with GtkSpinner.

GtkSpinner is a really simple widget. Both the spinner itself and the animation are set in CSS. The spinner is just a symbolic icon, and the animation is a CSS animation. This approach has a few problems, however.

First, the old spinner has a gradient. Symbolic icons don't actually support gradients, so it has to resort to dithering, as Jakub Steiner explained in his blog a few years ago. This works well if the spinner is small enough (16×16 - 32×32), but becomes very noticeable at larger sizes. This means that the spinner didn't work well for loading screens, or status pages.

Meanwhile, CSS animations are entirely disabled when system animations are off. Usually that makes sense, except here it means the spinner freezes, defeating the entire point of having it (indicating that the app isn't frozen during long operations).

And, while CSS animations are pretty sophisticated, you can only do so much with a single element - so it's literally a spinning icon. elementary OS does a more interesting thing - it spins it in steps, while the icon consists of 12 dashes, so it looks like they change color instead. Even then, more complex animations are impossible.

AdwSpinner avoids all of these issues. Since it's in libadwaita and not in GTK, it can be more opinionated with regard to styling, so instead of using an icon and CSS, it's just custom drawing. And since it's not using CSS animations, it can keep spinning with animations off, and can animate in a more involved way than a simple spinning icon.

It still has a size limit - 64×64 pixels. While it can scale further, we don't really need larger sizes and capping the size makes it easier to use - to make a loading screen using GtkSpinner, you have to set the :halign and :valign properties to CENTER, as well as :width-request and :height-request properties to 32. If you fail to do these steps, the spinner will either be too large, or too small respectively:

Meanwhile if you just put an AdwSpinner into a large bin, it will look right by default.

Oh, and GtkSpinner is invisible by default and you have to set the :spinning property to true as well. This made sense back in the age of foot and dinosaur spinners, where the spinner would stay in place when not animating, but that's not really a thing anymore.

(though Nautilus wasn't actually using GtkSpinner)

It also didn't help that until this cycle, GtkSpinner would continue to consume CPU cycles even when not visible if the :spinning property is left enabled, so you had to start the spinner in the ::map signal and stop it in ::unmap. That is fixed now, but it was a major source of lag in, say, Epiphany in the past (which had a spinner in every tab, another spinner in every mobile tab switcher row and another one in the floating bar that shows URLs on hover, copied from Nautilus).

Spinner paintable

In addition to AdwSpinner, there's also AdwSpinnerPaintable. It can be used with GtkImage, any other place that accepts paintables (such as status pages) or just manually drawn. It is a bit more awkward to use than the widget, as it needs to reference another widget so it can animate (since paintables cannot access the frame clock), but it allows to use spinners in contexts that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

AdwStatusPage even has a special style for spinner paintable - similar to the .compact style, but applied automatically.

Button row

Another widget we have now is AdwButtonRow - a list row that looks more or less like a button. It has a label, optionally icons on either side, and can use destructive and suggested style classes.

This pattern isn't new - it has been used in mockups for a while (at least as early as 2021) - but it varied quite a bit between different mockups and implementation and so having a standard widget for it wasn't viable. This cycle Jamie Gravendeel and kramo took time to standardize the existing designs into a tangible proposal - so it exists as a standard widget now.

Most of the time these rows aren't meant to be linked together, so AdwPreferencesGroup has a new property :separate-rows. When enabled, the rows within will appear separately. This is mostly useful for button rows, but also e.g. entry rows. When not using AdwPreferencesGroup, the same effect can be achieved by using the .boxed-list-separate style class instead of .boxed-list.

Multi-layout view

Libadwaita 1.4 introduced AdwBreakpoint, which allowed to easily set properties on window size changes. However, a lot of apps need layout changes that can't be expressed via simple properties - say, switching between a sidebar and a bottom sheet. While it is possible to do it programmatically anyway, it's fairly involved and not a lot of apps went to those lengths.

Back then I also prototyped a widget for automatically reparenting children between different layouts via using a property mentioned a future widget for automatically reparenting children between different layouts, and now it's finished and available for use as AdwMultiLayoutView.

It has changed somewhat since the prototype, e.g. it doesn't dynamically create or destroy layouts anymore, just parents/unparents them, but the gist is still the same:

• Put multiple AdwLayouts into a multi-layout view
• Put one or more AdwLayoutSlot into each layout, give them IDs
• Define children matching those IDs

Then those children will be placed into the slots for the current layout. When you switch the layout, they will be reparented into slots from that layout instead.

So now it's possible to define completely different layouts for desktop and mobile entirely via UI files.

CSS variables and colors

I've already talked about this in a lot of detail in my last blog post, but GTK has a lot of new CSS goodies, and libadwaita 1.6 makes full use of them.

To recap: GTK now supports CSS variables, as well as color-mix(), relative colors, as well as new color spaces, most importantly Oklab and Oklch.

Libadwaita now provides CSS variables for all of its old named colors, with a docs page to go with it, as well as new variables: --dim-opacity, --disabled-opacity, --border-opacity and --window-radius.

This also allowed to have matching focus ring color on .destructive-action buttons, as well as matching accent color for the .error, .warning and .success style classes. And because overriding accent color for a specific widget is now possible, .opaque button style class has been deprecated in favor of overriding accent colors on .suggested-action. Meanwhile, the white accent color of .osd is now more reliable and automatically works for custom widgets, instead of trying (and often failing) to manually override it for every standard widget.

I mentioned that it might be possible to generate standalone accent/error/etc colors from their respective background colors. However, the question was how to make that automatic, so at the time we didn't actually integrate that. Now it is integrated, though it's not completely automatic - only for :root.

Specifically, there's a new variable: --standalone-color-oklab, corresponding to the correct color transformation for the current style.

So, when overriding accent color for a specific widget, there is a bit of boilerplate to copy:

my-widget {
  --accent-bg-color: var(--accent-purple);
  --accent-color: oklab(from var(--accent-bg-color) var(--standalone-color-oklab));
}

It's still an improvement over calculating the color manually, both for light and dark styles (which a lot of apps didn't do at all, resulting in poor contrast), so still worth it. Maybe one day we'll be able to make it completely automatic - e.g. by ensuring that using variables with wildcards doesn't regress performance.

Meanwhile adw_rgba_to_standalone() allows to do the same thing programmatically.

Accent colors

Another big feature is system accent color support. While it's not a strictly libadwaita change, this is the developer-facing part, so it makes sense to talk about it here.

Behind the scenes it's using the settings portal which provides a standardized key for the system accent color. Many other environments support it as well, so libadwaita apps will follow their accent color preferences too, while non-GNOME apps that follow the preference will follow it on GNOME too. Note that while the portal exposes arbitrary sRGB colors, libadwaita will pick the closest color from a list of nine colors, as visible on the screenshot above. This is done in the Oklch color space, mostly based on hue, so should work even for really dull colors.

Accent colors are also supported when running on Windows and macOS, and like with the color scheme and high contrast, the libadwaita page in GTK inspector allows to toggle the system accent color now.

Apps are still free to set their own accent color. CSS always takes priority over the system accent.

A lot of people helped push this over the finish line, with particular thanks to Jamie Murphy, kramo and Jamie Gravendeel.

API

AdwStyleManager provides new properties for fetching the system color - :accent-color and :accent-color-rgb, as well as :system-supports-accent-colors for querying whether the system has accent color preferences - same as for color scheme.

The :accent-color property returns a color from the AdwAccentColor enum, so that individual colors can be special cased (say, when using bitmap assets). This color can be converted both to background color RGBA (using adw_accent_color_to_rgba()) and to standalone color (adw_accent_color_to_standalone_rgba()).

All of these colors use white foreground color, so there's no API for fetching it, at least for now.

Note that :accent-color-rgba will still return the system color even if the app overrides its accent color using CSS. It only exists for convenience and is equivalent to calling adw_accent_color_to_rgba() on the :accent-color value.

While we still don't have a general replacement for deprecated gtk_style_context_lookup_color(), the new accent color API can replace at least some of its uses.

On CSS side, there are new variables corresponding to each accent color: --accent-blue for blue and so on. Additionally, every system color, along with their standalone colors for both light and dark, is documented and can be used as a reference.

Destructive buttons

Having accent color that's not always blue means having to rethink other style choices. In particular, .destructive-action buttons were just a red version of .suggested-action, same as in GTK3. This was already questionable from accessibility perspective, but breaks entirely with accent colors, since suggested buttons would look exactly same as a destructive ones with red accent. And so .destructive-action has a distinct style now, less prominent than suggested.

Alert dialogs

Another area that needed updates was AdwAlertDialog - it was also using color for differentiating suggested and destructive buttons.

Coincidentally, the alert dialog style went almost unchanged from GTK3 days, and looked rather out of place with the rest of the platform. So kramo came up with an updated design.

AdwMessageDialog and GtkAlertDialog received the same style, or at least an approximation - it's not possible to replicate it entirely in GTK dialogs. Even though neither is recommended for use (when using libadwaita, anyway - nothing wrong with using GtkAlertDialog in plain GTK), regressing apps that aren't fully up to date with the platform wouldn't be very good.

Adapting apps

Accent colors are supported automatically, and in most cases apps don't need any changes to make use of them. However, here's a checklist to ensure it works well:

• Make use of the accent color variables in custom CSS, like --accent-bg-color. Using the old named colors like @accent_bg_color works as well. Don't assume accent color will be blue.
• Conversely, don't use accent color when you mean blue. We have variables like --blue-3 for that - or even --accent-blue.
• When using accent color in custom drawing (say, drawing a graph), make sure to redraw it when AdwStyleManager:accent-color value changes - same as for color scheme and high contrast.

• Deprecations

  Last cycle we introduced new dialog widgets that are based on AdwDialog rather than GtkWindow. However, that happened right at the end of the cycle, without giving apps a lot of time to port their existing dialogs. Because of that, the old widgets (AdwMessageDialog, AdwPreferencesWindow, AdwAboutWindow) weren't deprecated and I mentioned that they will be deprecated in future instead. So, they are now.

  If you haven't migrated to the new dialogs yet, see the migration guide for how to do so.

  Other changes

  As always, there are smaller changes that don't warrant their own sections, so let's look at those:

  • AdwWindow and AdwApplicationWindow now have a default minimum size (360×200 px), meaning you don't have to set it manually to use breakpoints or dialogs anymore. Apps can still override it if they need a different size, but it works out of the box now.
  • AdwComboRow now has the :header-factory and :search-match-mode properties, following GtkDropDown. So it's now possible to, say, have separators in the dropdown list.
  • AdwEntryRow got the :max-length property, matching GtkEntry.
  • AdwPreferencesPage description now can be centered, using the :description-centered property.
  • Documentation now lists available style classes for each widget, in addition to the centralized list of style classes.
  • Markus Göllnitz made the .navigation-sidebar style class support GtkFlowBox and GtkGridView, as seen in Papers.
  • Property rows now support the .monospace style class.
  • GtkTextView now supports the .inline style class, removing its background and resetting its foreground color. This allows to use it in contexts like cards.

  Future

  As usual, there are changes that didn't make it this cycle and will land the next cycle instead. Most notably, the old toggle groups branch by Maximiliano is finally finished and will land early next cycle.

  

  ---

  Big thanks to STF for funding a lot of this work (GTK CSS improvements, bottom sheets, finishing multi-layout view and toggle groups, general maintenance), as well as people organizing the initiative and all contributors who made this release happen.

13 Sep 2024 3:32pm GMT

We recorded a playback of the 10:00 session which you can watch:

https://bbb1.lpc.events/playback/presentation/2.3/62e3456da3c0598910e28d204ee24b669d714c04-1725975646004

To get a feel for how the BBB platform works. In addition, your credentials are the email address you registered with in cvent and the confirmation number of the registration it sent you back. You can use those to log in here:

https://meet.lpc.events

And practice in a Hackroom (after logging in select Hackrooms from the leftnav and then pick a Hackroom which is empty).

13 Sep 2024 2:37pm GMT

You don't need to own a Raspberry Pi to make use of the Raspberry Pi Imager. This nifty image writer makes flashing ISO, IMG, and similar files to USB drives and SD cards mighty easy. A new update, Raspberry Pi Imager 1.9, was released this week with some big changes. For one, this open-source and cross-platform image writing tool now uses Qt 6. This framework uplift offers a stack of underlying improvements in terms of stability, plus visual changes too. Raspberry Pi say the Qt 6 port provides "a lightly refreshed UI throughout on all platforms." Comparing the Qt 6 […]

You're reading Raspberry Pi Imager Gets Qt 6 Port, Now Offers AppImages on Linux, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

13 Sep 2024 1:59pm GMT

Ubuntu 24.10 features a clutch of headline-worth changes, but also plenty of less obvious fixes for "paper cuts" - including a decades-long issue with thumbnails in the GTK file picker. Feeling deja-vu? GNOME 44 (shipped in Ubuntu 23.04) included a thumbnail grid in the GTK file picker to make it quicker and easier to select the right files to upload, or open in an app, and so on. A feature long overdue, resolving a "bug" which had been open for 20 years! Only, there is a bit of a problem with how it works - some of you may have […]

You're reading Ubuntu 24.10 Fixes a Pesky File Picker Paper-Cut, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

13 Sep 2024 12:47pm GMT

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, and Cloud products, as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support.

As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Kubuntu 22.04.5 LTS, Ubuntu Budgie 22.04.5 LTS, Ubuntu MATE 22.04.5 LTS, Lubuntu 22.04.5 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 22.04.5 LTS, Ubuntu Studio 22.04.5 LTS, and Xubuntu 22.04.5 LTS are also now available. More details can be found in their individual release notes (see 'Official flavours'):

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes/24668

Maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years from the initial 22.04 LTS release for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, and Ubuntu Core. All the remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years. Additional security support is available with ESM (Expanded Security Maintenance).

To get Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS

In order to download Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS, visit:

https://ubuntu.com/download

Users of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 22.04.5 LTS via Update Manager.

We recommend that all users read the 22.04.5 LTS release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth notes on the release itself. They are available at:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes/24668

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but aren't sure, you can try asking in any of the following places:

• #ubuntu on irc.libera.chat
• https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
• https://ubuntuforums.org
• https://askubuntu.com

Help Shape Ubuntu

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/contribute

About Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops, clouds and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information
about support, visit:

https://ubuntu.com/support

More Information

You can learn more about Ubuntu and about this release on our website listed below:

https://ubuntu.com/

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's very low volume announcement list at:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list on Thu Sep 12 20:05:59 UTC 2024 by Paride Legovini on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

13 Sep 2024 1:21am GMT

Over the last years, MIPS and Alpha support in Gentoo has been slowing down, mostly due to a lack of volunteers keeping these architectures alive. Not anymore however! We're happy to announce that thanks to renewed volunteer interest both arches have returned to the forefront of Gentoo Linux development, with a consistent dependency tree checked and enforced by our continuous integration system. Up-to-date stage builds and the accompanying binary packages are available for both, in the case of MIPS for all three ABI variants o32, n32, and n64 and for both big and little endian, and in the case of Alpha also with a bootable installation CD.

11 Sep 2024 5:00am GMT

Some thoughts on why I started livestreaming my open-source development sessions and my future plans.

06 Sep 2024 12:00am GMT

Exciting news for stable Gentoo users: It's time for the upgrade to the new "megaversion" of the KDE community desktop environment, KDE Plasma 6! Together with KDE Gear 24.05.2, where now most of the applications have been ported, and KDE Frameworks 6.5.0, the underlying library architecture, KDE Plasma 6.1.4 will be stabilized over the next days. The base libraries of Qt 6 are already available.

More technical information on the upgrade, which should be fairly seamless, as well as architecture-specific notes can be found in a repository news item. Enjoy!

31 Aug 2024 5:00am GMT

In the previous article I investigated how to create a reproducible image but ended up with only managing to create two identical image directories. In this article we'll end up with a fully bit-by-bit reproducible filesystem image! Some things have changed since the last post, mkosi now no longer creates …

31 Aug 2024 12:00am GMT

There's been a couple of mentions of Rust4Linux in the past week or two, one from Linus on the speed of engagement and one about Wedson departing the project due to non-technical concerns. This got me thinking about project phases and developer types.

Archetypes:

1. Wayfinders/Mapmakers

2. Road builders

3. Road maintainers

Interactions:

Wayfinders and maintainers is the most difficult interaction. Wayfinders like to move freely and quickly, maintainers have other priorities that slow them down. I believe there needs to be road builders engaged between the wayfinders and maintainers.

Road builders have to be willing to expend the extra time to resolving roadblocks in the best way possible for all parties. The time it takes to resolve a single roadblock may be greater than the time expended on the whole wayfinding expedition, and this frustrates wayfinders. The builder has to understand what the maintainers concerns are and where they come from, and why the wayfinder made certain decisions. They work via education and trust building to get them aligned to move past the block. They then move down the road and repeat this process until the road is open. How this is done might change depending on the type of maintainers.

Maintainer types:

1. Positive and engaged

2. Positive with real concerns

Agrees with the road's direction, might not like some of the intersections, willing to be educated and give feedback on newer intersection designs. Moves to group 1 or trusts that others are willing to maintain intersections on their road.

3. Negative with real concerns

4. Negative and unwilling

5. Don't care/Disengaged

Where are we now?

I think my request from this is that contributors should try and identify the archetype they currently resonate with and find the next group over to interact with.

For wayfinders, it's fine to just keep wayfinding, just don't be surprised when the road building takes longer, or the road that gets built isn't what you envisaged.

For road builder, just keep building, find new techniques for bridging gaps and blowing stuff up when appropriate. Figure out when to use higher authorities. Take the high road, and focus on the big picture.

For maintainers, try and keep up with modern road building, don't say 20 year old roads are the pinnacle of innovation. Be willing to install the rumble strips, widen the lanes, add crash guardrails, and truck safety offramps. Understand that wayfinders show you opportunities for longer term success and that road builders are going to keep building the road, and the result is better if you engage positively with them.

30 Aug 2024 1:52am GMT

Ah, the life of a package maintainer. As far as controversial figures go, we probably rank somewhere under florist and nowhere near politician. Update software, back-port patches, submit patches upstream, stay on top of critical bugs and all of this in a Linux Distribution that has seen a decline in popularity. How much hate could I possibly stir up ?

Apparently, for one person, quite a lot. Living a pretty reserved life, I have never before experienced a real or implied threat. Note that I do drive on American roads, so I'm know people have expressed displeasure with my driving at points in the past, but nothing beyond normal, and nothing that I can recall short of a middle finger or two.

The below shows an exchange with an individual who apparently has a concerning sense of entitlement for the kind of work guarantees he receives from no cost software maintained by a volunteer who has never, and still does not, receive enumeration of any kind.

Stay safe everyone.

Note: The only editing I did was to fix the flow or add a comment to make it easier to read since this person likes to top post.

On Friday, July 26, 2024 at 12:43:26 PM GMT+2, Max Dubois
makemehappy@rocketmail.com wrote:

Hello,

According with this bug in bugzilla:

219061 - Memory leaks on vmalloc crash every 32 bit kernel after a
commit in 6.6.24 branch
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219061

219061 - Memory leaks on vmalloc crash every 32 bit kernel after
a

    commi...

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219061

Evey kernel.org (pure X86 platform) is serious bugged after 6.6.23,
also Gentoo (my preferred distro) has the bug so you should,
eventually after try the bug yourself, mark 6.6.23 in Green, becouse
all the others listed in the gentoo kernel-source page got the bug
(and obviously also the kernel-bin packages too).

The bug is a memory leak that produce vmalloc errors on machines
using highmem (>1024 MB) and this like explained in the bugzilla
will crash very fast a running machine destroying bowser tabs,
preventing for opening apps, terminals and so on).

To reproduce the bug is very easy:

build, if you don't always have it, an x86 virtual machine and
configure it with 4 GB of ram, Virtualbox or VMware is the same,

Boot it with any kernel (gentoo or kernel.org or every kernel) over
6.6.23 (the last working). The machine will boot fine and it seems
to work as expected. Open a terminal and run a logging program (I
like metalog) and then start to use it to run apps, open a firefox
browser, some other terminals. Open some tabs on browser and look at
the logs. In minutes you will get messages like this and others in
the log, probably some kernel oops too:

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 24576
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:37 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:42 debian1232vm kernel: alloc_vmap_area: 104 callbacks
suppressed

Jul 24 17:04:42 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:42 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:42 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

Jul 24 17:04:42 debian1232vm kernel: vmap allocation for size 20480
failed: use vmalloc= to increase size

The running kernel s a brand new 32 bit 6.10.1 downloaded from
kernel.org and compiled.

Increasing the vmallOn Friday, July 26, 2024 at 12:43:26 PM GMT+2, Max Dubois
makemehappy@rocketmail.com wrote:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1169951.html
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1169951.html

X86 is no more widely used then if we say we maintain compatibility
with x86 systems this bug has to be fixed and the Gentoo kernel x86
shouldn't have anything called stable after 6.6.23.

Regards from sunny italy to a fellow "paisano" like you probably are

Max

PS: grateful for any feedback for my e-mail to you and for any
eventually fix.

Note from Mike: So this was right before a business trip, and I'm not a great flyer, so I was mentally focused on getting through that trip. Got to fly home in a Tropical Storm. Yay.

Second email from my new fan:

Il giorno 23 ago 2024, alle ore 15:27, Mike Pagano
mpagano@gentoo.org ha scritto:

On 8/22/24 18:41, Max Dubois wrote:

Hello mr. Pagano,

After quietly one month of no reply and no action, I can see you
ignored my previous mail.

That is not a good service for the Gentoo community, you still serve
to Gentoo 32 bit kernel like all after 6.6.23 (gentoo or not gentoo)
without even a comment. And make it even greeen!

There is a bug and that bug not allow any use of the 32 bit system
when > 1 GB memory is installed in the system and this bug is
recognised by the kernel.org developers (if not they probably had
closed the ticket in the kernel.org bug section, don't you think
so?).

Now, I'm aware 32 bit systems are not used anymore, then it is not
serious from Gentoo and in this case from a good paisano like you
are, do nothing to inform people related to the gentoo-sources
branch you maintain.

This is not a good service to the community and I'm sad this is done
by an italian like you!

As a true italian and good friend of many paisani like you, I think
you should act in some way to inform Gentoo user base about this
problem. Obviously do your tests before, you should if you still
didn't them silently.

I know, you are a busy man, then it is simply not serious to act
like this.

BTW, I've been also waiting for your reply to my previous e-mail
then you ignored my concise and very precise mail to you. Many guys
in the kernel.org kernel list were interested and contacted me, but
you, mr. "not interested" Pagago.

Mr. Pagano, people in wonderful Campania, the region where your
blood come from, don't act like this! You are probably from small
Frignano, I visited it and it is a wonderful little village, and
Caserta and his reggia is so fantastic (I hope your visited it,
lotsa real americans visit it, so someone from USA - with roots
there - should come to visit!) and I also had a girlfriend years ago
from there (southern italian girls are the best and the prettiest
all around).

Back in subject, please do something for this problem, don't fool
gentoo users and gentoo tree.

Ciao paisano!

MD

PS: I want escalate the problem if you don't want to take any action
and act silently. Gentoo users don't deserve a maintainer not
pointing out if not solving problems in the package they maintain.

My Reply

On 8/23/24 15:27, Mike Pagano wrote:
We do not hold up stabilization for bugs that impact such a small niche of users.
If we accommodated all of these kinds of requests, no kernel would ever be stable.
Good luck with your issue. In the future, keep your emails to me technical and exclude
references to my nationality, real or imagined.

Mike Pagano

Note from Mike: This has been true for the nearly 17 years I have been maintaining the Kernel in Gentoo. Sometimes people have hardware failures, sneak in a proprietary driver, who knows. But unless it impacts a large subset of people, we don't hold up stabilization. Plus, this particular stabilization was for a root exploit.

On Fri, Aug 23, 2024 at 06:59:45PM +0200, Max Dubois wrote:

You like it technical fellow Michele? Here it is!

I forgot this and this is valid for kernel.org guys too.

I wrote it in the bug notes too when someone asked me to fix this!

First of all I'm not a developer, you can call me an advanced user,
second for someone that always have a developer machine with a local
copy of github kernel.org is a lot simple to bisecting the kernel
compared to me I don't need such a blob on my machines!!!

Thankx to me, you guys all knows the bug happen between 6.6.23
(working) and 6.6.24 (not working).

You guys patch the kernel all the time so it isn't complicated at all
bisecting the kernel to find the culprit modification bug that
introduced the problem.

You, dear Michele, maintain gentoo sources, you should have all the
tools around to do that and serve the community!

Inviato da iPhone

---

Another reply….

---

Il giorno 23 ago 2024, alle ore 18:39, Max Dubois
makemehappy@rocketmail.com ha scritto:

You should proud to be italian, mr. Pagano!

And I bet you also speak some broccolino and you should proud of that
too…

New York, New Jersey that is the broccolino nation and we, from the
real thing, we love you all… and i'm sorry you guys, your
ancestors, been forcing to left such a fantastic place like Italy for
such a shitty place, horrible weather, no history, poor quality life
New York, New Jersey allways offered, not talking about how this places
are adter covid panthomine

Tou should move in California if you can

And yes this bug just impact a small percentual of users then it is
just becouse just few people are 32 bit now! This doesn't mean that not
all the 32 bit aren't buggy for ALL the 32 bit users and it still seems
incredible to me you ignore that and act if the problem is not there.

It is not a not working driver, it is the WHOLE system, all the 32 bir
linux systems, real or virtual, crashing after boot, in minutes!!!

Ciao fratello Michele, stammi bene!

MD (from a beach in the Pontine Islands named Ponza)

[1]945 Isola Di Ponza Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images
[2]gettyimages.it
[3]

---

My last Reply

On 8/23/24 19:26, Mike Pagano wrote:

Do not contact me any further

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2024 20:57:04 +0200
From: Max Dubois makemehappy@rocketmail.com

Lol

You are sooo conceited! I saw a picture of you and you look exactly like some good men fron the area of naples!!! You could be a great pizzaiolo or a great mafia man, choose you if you prefer to be around the shitty jersey or the fantastic costiera amalfitana (pizza in your area even if they call it ITALIANA is pure shit) you look perfect for a new soprano serie and believe me all this is a big compliment to you!!!

Ciao michelino, alla prossima!

PS: your actual contribution to gentoo project is now pure shit! You shouldn't mark green buggy kernel (everything over 6.6.23), you are completeky not honest with the community and even with yourself. And a broccolino like you shouls behave better also professionaly! You should let your gentoo-soirces commitment becouse you fail.

24 Aug 2024 3:46pm GMT

Every year the Android Micro-conference brings the upstream Linux community and the Android systems developers together at the Linux Plumbers Conference. They discuss how they can effectively engage the existing issues and collaborate on upcoming changes to the Android platform and their upstream dependencies.

This year Android MC is scheduled to start at 10am on Friday, 20th Sep at Hall L1 (Austria Center). Attending Android MC gives you a chance to contribute to the broader discussion on Android platform ecosystem and Linux kernel development. You can share your own experiences, offer feedback, and help shape the future direction of these technologies.

Discussion topics for this year include:

• Android kernel support and long term AOSP maintainership to support device longevity
• The pursuit of AOSP developer community
• Android Generic bootloader efforts
• Supporting generic restricted dmabuf heap
• memcg v2 updates in Android
• Bring-up devices with 16kb page_size support
• ublk based zero copy I/O use case in Android
• Leveraging large folios (mTHP) on Android phones

Android MC will be followed by a Android BoF session, which will be a audience directed discussion. It can be a follow-up of the discussions from any of the Android MC topics or a free-form discussion on Android related topics.

23 Aug 2024 5:34pm GMT

3D Gaussian splatting is the emerging rendering technique that is overtaking NeRFs. Since it is centered around point primitives, it is more compatible with traditional graphics pipelines that already support point rendering.

Gaussian splats essentially enhance the concept of point rendering by converting the point primitive into a 3D ellipsoid, which is then projected into 2D during the rendering process.. This concept was initially described in 2002 [3], but the technique of extending Structure from Motion scans in this way was only detailed more recently [1].

In this post, I explore how to integrate Gaussian splats into the traditional graphics pipeline. This allows them to be used alongside triangle-based primitives and interact with them through the depth buffer for occlusion (see header image). This approach also simplifies deployment by eliminating the need for CUDA.

Storage

The original implementation uses .ply files as their checkpoint format, focusing on maintaining training-relevant data structures at the expense of storage efficiency, leading to increased file sizes.

For example, it stores the covariance as scaling and a rotation quaternion, necessitating reconstruction during rendering. A more efficient approach would be to leverage orthogonality, storing only the diagonal and upper triangular vectors, thereby eliminating reconstruction and reducing storage requirements.

Further analysis of the storage usage for each attribute shows that the spherical harmonics of orders 1-3 are the main contributors to the file size. However, according to the ablation study in the original publication [1], these harmonics only lead to a modest PSNR improvement of 0.5.

Therefore, the most straightforward way to decrease storage is by discarding the higher-order spherical harmonics. Additionally, the level 0 spherical harmonics can be converted into a diffuse color and merged with opacity to form a single RGBA value. These simple yet effective methods were implemented in one of the early WebGL implementations, resulting in the .splat format. As an added benefit, this format can be easily interpreted by viewers unaware of Gaussian splats as a simple colored point cloud:

By directly storing the covariance as previously mentioned we can reduce the precision from float32 to float16, thereby halving the storage needed for that data. Furthermore, since most splats have limited spatial extents, we can also utilize float16 for position data, yielding additional storage savings.

With these changes, we achieve a storage requirement of 22 bytes per splat, in contrast to the 44 bytes needed by the .splat format and 236 bytes in the original implementation. Thus, we have attained a 10x reduction in storage compared to the original implementation simply by using more suitable data types.

Blending

The image formation model presented in the original paper [1] is similar to the NeRF rendering, as it is compared to it. This involves casting a ray and observing its intersection with the splats, which leads to front-to-back blending. This is precisely the approach taken by the provided CUDA implementation.

Blending remains a component of the fixed-function unit within the graphics pipeline, which can be set up for front-to-back blending [2] by using the factors (one_minus_dest_alpha, one) and by multiplying color and alpha in the shader as color.rgb * color.a. This results in the following equation:

\begin{aligned}C_{dst} &= (1 - \alpha_{dst}) \cdot \alpha_{src} C_{src} &+ C_{dst}\\ \alpha_{dst} &= (1 - \alpha_{dst})\cdot\alpha_{src} &+ \alpha_{dst}\end{aligned}

However, this method requires the framebuffer alpha value to be zero before rendering the splats, which is not typically the case as any previous render pass could have written an arbitrary alpha value.

A simple solution is to switch to back-to-front sorting and use the standard alpha blending factors (src_alpha, one_minus_src_alpha) for the following blending equation:

C_{dst} = \alpha_{src} \cdot C_{src} + (1 - \alpha_{src}) \cdot C_{dst}

This allows us to regard Gaussian splats as a special type of particles that can be rendered together with other transparent elements within a scene.

References

1. Kerbl, Bernhard, et al. "3d gaussian splatting for real-time radiance field rendering." ACM Transactions on Graphics 42.4 (2023): 1-14.
2. Green, Simon. "Volumetric particle shadows." NVIDIA Developer Zone (2008).
3. Zwicker, Matthias, et al. "EWA splatting." IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 8.3 (2002): 223-238.

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17 Jun 2024 1:28pm GMT

During all these years using GStreamer, I've been having to deal with GstSegments in many situations. I've always have had an intuitive understanding of the meaning of each field, but never had the time to properly write a good reference explanation for myself, ready to be checked at those times when the task at hand stops being so intuitive and nuisances start being important. I used the notes I took during an interesting conversation with Alba and Alicia about those nuisances, during the GStreamer Hackfest in A Coruña, as the seed that evolved into this post.

But what are actually GstSegments? They are the structures that track the values needed to synchronize the playback of a region of interest in a media file.

GstSegments are used to coordinate the translation between Presentation Timestamps (PTS), supplied by the media, and Runtime.

PTS is the timestamp that specifies, in buffer time, when the frame must be displayed on screen. This buffer time concept (called buffer running-time in the docs) refers to the ideal time flow where rate isn't being had into account.

Decode Timestamp (DTS) is the timestamp that specifies, in buffer time, when the frame must be supplied to the decoder. On decoders supporting P-frames (forward-predicted) and B-frames (bi-directionally predicted), the PTS of the frames reaching the decoder may not be monotonic, but the PTS of the frames reaching the sinks are (the decoder outputs monotonic PTSs).

Runtime (called clock running time in the docs) is the amount of physical time that the pipeline has been playing back. More specifically, the Runtime of a specific frame indicates the physical time that has passed or must pass until that frame is displayed on screen. It starts from zero.

Base time is the point when the Runtime starts with respect to the input timestamp in buffer time (PTS or DTS). It's the Runtime of the PTS=0.

Start, stop, duration: Those fields are buffer timestamps that specify when the piece of media that is going to be played starts, stops and how long that portion of the media is (the absolute difference between start and stop, and I mean absolute because a segment being played backwards may have a higher start buffer timestamp than what its stop buffer timestamp is).

Position is like the Runtime, but in buffer time. This means that in a video being played back at 2x, Runtime would flow at 1x (it's physical time after all, and reality goes at 1x pace) and Position would flow at 2x (the video moves twice as fast than physical time).

The Stream Time is the position in the stream. Not exactly the same concept as buffer time. When handling multiple streams, some of them can be offset with respect to each other, not starting to be played from the begining, or even can have loops (eg: repeating the same sound clip from PTS=100 until PTS=200 intefinitely). In this case of repeating, the Stream time would flow from PTS=100 to PTS=200 and then go back again to the start position of the sound clip (PTS=100). There's a nice graphic in the docs illustrating this, so I won't repeat it here.

Time is the base of Stream Time. It's the Stream time of the PTS of the first frame being played. In our previous example of the repeating sound clip, it would be 100.

There are also concepts such as Rate and Applied Rate, but we didn't get into them during the discussion that motivated this post.

So, for translating between Buffer Time (PTS, DTS) and Runtime, we would apply this formula:

Runtime = BufferTime * ( Rate * AppliedRate ) + BaseTime

And for translating between Buffer Time (PTS, DTS) and Stream Time, we would apply this other formula:

StreamTime = BufferTime * AppliedRate + Time

And that's it. I hope these notes in the shape of a post serve me as reference in the future. Again, thanks to Alicia, and especially to Alba, for the valuable clarifications during the discussion we had that day in the Igalia office. This post wouldn't have been possible without them.

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30 Apr 2024 6:00am GMT

Just a quick update on something that I've been working on in my free time.

I recently refurbished my old Nintendo Wii, and for some reason I cannot yet explain (not even to myself) I got into homebrew programming and decided to port libSDL (the 2.x version -- a 1.x port already existed) to it. The result of this work is already available via the devkitPro distribution, and although I'm sure there are still many bugs, it's overall quite usable.

In order to prove it, I ported the game VVVVVV to the Wii:

During the process I had to fix quite a few bugs in my libSDL port and in a couple of other libraries used by VVVVVV, which will hopefully will make it easier to port more games. There's still an issue that bothers me, where the screen resolution seems to be not totally supported by my TV (or is it the HDMI adaptor's fault?), resulting in a few pixels being cut at the top and at the bottom of the screen. But unless you are a perfectionist, it's a minor issue.

In case you have a Wii to spare, or wouldn't mind playing on the Dolphin emulator, here's the link to the VVVVVV release. Have fun! :-)

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02 Feb 2024 5:50pm GMT

I've mentioned some of my various retronetworking projects in some past blog posts. One of those projects is Osmocom Community TDM over IP (OCTOI). During the past 5 or so months, we have been using a number of GPS-synchronized open source icE1usb interconnected by a new, efficient but strill transparent TDMoIP protocol in order to run a distributed TDM/PDH network. This network is currently only used to provide ISDN services to retronetworking enthusiasts, but other uses like frame relay have also been validated.

So far, the central hub of this OCTOI network has been operating in the basement of my home, behind a consumer-grade DOCSIS cable modem connection. Given that TDMoIP is relatively sensitive to packet loss, this has been sub-optimal.

Luckily some of my old friends at noris.net have agreed to host a new OCTOI hub free of charge in one of their ultra-reliable co-location data centres. I'm already hosting some other machines there for 20+ years, and noris.net is a good fit given that they were - in their early days as an ISP - the driving force in the early 90s behind one of the Linux kernel ISDN stracks called u-isdn. So after many decades, ISDN returns to them in a very different way.

Side note: In case you're curious, a reconstructed partial release history of the u-isdn code can be found on gitea.osmocom.org

But I digress. So today, there was the installation of this new OCTOI hub setup. It has been prepared for several weeks in advance, and the hub contains two circuit boards designed entirely only for this use case. The most difficult challenge was the fact that this data centre has no existing GPS RF distribution, and the roof is ~ 100m of CAT5 cable (no fiber!) away from the roof. So we faced the challenge of passing the 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal reliably through several steps of lightning/over-voltage protection into the icE1usb whose internal GPS-DO serves as a grandmaster clock for the TDM network.

The equipment deployed in this installation currently contains:

• a rather beefy Supermicro 2U server with EPYC 7113P CPU and 4x PCIe, two of which are populated with Digium TE820 cards resulting in a total of 16 E1 ports

• an icE1usb with RS422 interface board connected via 100m RS422 to an Ericsson GPS03 receiver. There's two layers of of over-voltage protection on the RS422 (each with gas discharge tubes and TVS) and two stages of over-voltage protection in the coaxial cable between antenna and GPS receiver.

• a Livingston Portmaster3 RAS server

• a Cisco AS5400 RAS server

For more details, see this wiki page and this ticket

Now that the physical deployment has been made, the next steps will be to migrate all the TDMoIP links from the existing user base over to the new hub. We hope the reliability and performance will be much better than behind DOCSIS.

In any case, this new setup for sure has a lot of capacity to connect many more more users to this network. At this point we can still only offer E1 PRI interfaces. I expect that at some point during the coming winter the project for remote TDMoIP BRI (S/T, S0-Bus) connectivity will become available.

18 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

Almost one year after my post regarding first steps towards a V5 implementation, some friends and I were finally able to visit Wobcom, a small German city carrier and pick up a lot of decommissioned POTS/ISDN/PDH/SDH equipment, primarily V5 access networks.

This means that a number of retronetworking enthusiasts now have a chance to play with Siemens Fastlink, Nokia EKSOS and DeTeWe ALIAN access networks/multiplexers.

My primary interest is in Nokia EKSOS, which looks like an rather easy, low-complexity target. As one of the first steps, I took PCB photographs of the various modules/cards in the shelf, take note of the main chip designations and started to search for the related data sheets.

The results can be found in the Osmocom retronetworking wiki, with https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Nokia_EKSOS being the main entry page, and sub-pages about

• Node Control Unit

• 16x BRI Uk0 Line Card

• 32x POTS Line Card

• Line Measurement Unit

• Shelf

In short: Unsurprisingly, a lot of Infineon analog and digital ICs for the POTS and ISDN ports, as well as a number of Motorola M68k based QUICC32 microprocessors and several unknown ASICs.

So with V5 hardware at my disposal, I've slowly re-started my efforts to implement the LE (local exchange) side of the V5 protocol stack, with the goal of eventually being able to interface those V5 AN with the Osmocom Community TDM over IP network. Once that is in place, we should also be able to offer real ISDN Uk0 (BRI) and POTS lines at retrocomputing events or hacker camps in the coming years.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

If you have ever worked with Digium (now part of Sangoma) digital telephony interface cards such as the TE110/410/420/820 (single to octal E1/T1/J1 PRI cards), you will probably have seen that they always have a timing connector, where the timing information can be passed from one card to another.

In PDH/ISDN (or even SDH) networks, it is very important to have a synchronized clock across the network. If the clocks are drifting, there will be underruns or overruns, with associated phase jumps that are particularly dangerous when analog modem calls are transported.

In traditional ISDN use cases, the clock is always provided by the network operator, and any customer/user side equipment is expected to synchronize to that clock.

So this Digium timing cable is needed in applications where you have more PRI lines than possible with one card, but only a subset of your lines (spans) are connected to the public operator. The timing cable should make sure that the clock received on one port from the public operator should be used as transmit bit-clock on all of the other ports, no matter on which card.

Unfortunately this decades-old Digium timing cable approach seems to suffer from some problems.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT