The 3 Best Alternatives to Mandriva Linux

Mandriva Linux has been discontinued for a long time now. Check out these three alternatives to relive the pure Mandriva experience. Mandriva Linux is a fusion of Brazilian distribution Conectiva Linux and French distribution Mandrake Linux. It is developed by Mandriva S.A.; however, the company has not released any new version since 2011. Although the distro has not been updated for a long time and considering the features it offered, it’s a little difficult to undermine its existence. Mandriva might not exist any longer, but its memories are still functional in the form of different Linux distros, discussed below.

Building A Custom Linux Single Board Computer Just To Play Spotify

Housed inside a tidy little wooden enclosure of his own creation, the Spotify Box can turn any amplifier into a remote-controlled Spotify player via Spotify Connect. Pick the songs on your smartphone, and they?ll play from the Spotify Box as simple as that. The project is based on the Allwinner V3S, a system-on-chip with a 1.2GHz ARM-Cortex-A7 core, 64MB of DDR2 RAM, and an Ethernet transceiver for good measure. There?s also a high-quality audio codec built in, making it perfect for this application. It?s thrown onto a four-layer PCB of [Evan?s] own design, and paired with a Wi-Fi and BlueTooth transceiver, RJ-45 and RCA jacks, a push-button and some LEDs. There?s also an SD card for storage. With a custom Linux install brewed up using Buildroot, [Evan] was able to get a barebones system running Spotifyd while communicating with the network. With that done, it was as simple as hooking up the Spotify Box to an amp and grooving out to some tunes.

Security Leftovers

• Security updates for Wednesday

  Security updates have been issued by Debian (grilo), Fedora (curl, firefox, mingw-python-pillow, python-pillow, python2-pillow, and webkit2gtk3), openSUSE (chromium, grafana-piechart-panel, kernel, libcroco, php-composer, and xen), Oracle (curl, kernel, and nss and nspr), Red Hat (nodejs:12), Slackware (alpine), SUSE (ghostscript, grafana-piechart-panel, kernel, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-hwe, linux-hwe-5.11, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, and linux-raspi2).

• FBI held back ransomware decryption key from businesses to run operation targeting hackers [Ed: Microsoft Windows TCO]

  The FBI refrained for almost three weeks from helping to unlock the computers of hundreds of businesses and institutions hobbled by a major ransomware attack this summer, even though the bureau had secretly obtained the digital key needed to do so, according to several current and former U.S. officials.

• FBI Had REvil's Kaseya Ransomware Decryption Key for Weeks: Report

  After the Kaseya attack, the feds somehow came into possession of a decryption key but waited nearly a month before delivering it into the hands of businesses.

• FBI Had the REvil Decryption Key - Schneier on Security [Ed: Those "trade-offs" should include removing Windows altogether]

  Fighting ransomware is filled with security trade-offs. This is one I had not previously considered.

• Ransomware Attacks Have Gone Stratospheric: Report [Ed: Overlooks the fact that many target Windows in particular; instead it focuses on "UNIX" and "Linux", which seems strange. What's the motivation? Meanwhile, mainstream media barely even mentions "Windows" when only Windows is impacted.]

  Positive Technologies on Wednesday released a report that indicates ransomware attacks have reached “stratospheric levels.”

• Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome | CISA [Ed: Proprietary software]

  Google has released Chrome version 94.0.4606.54 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This version addresses vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system.

today's leftovers

• Windowsfx 11, a whole Linux flavored like Windows 11 and without the need for TPM - itsfoss.net

  Windowsfx 11 is the new version of another of the GNU / Linux distributions that try to bring the free system closer to Windows users using the fantastic possibilities of visual and interface customization of Linux. Windowsfx already had custom versions of Windows 7 and Windows 10 and before Microsoft publishes the final version of Windows 11 they already have the one dedicated to the new system. And it offers what is expected. Windowsfx 11 Preview for x86 adapts the user interface to what Windows 11 offers, the general visual appearance and icons, a new start menu or the default centered start panel, as well as using Wine 6 to run Windows applications.

• Mecanum Omnidirectional Robot Car using the Quantum Integration System

  In this project, we’re going to be building a wireless robot car that uses mecanum wheels to enable omnidirectional movement. If you haven’t heard of mecanum wheels before, they’re tireless wheels with a series of rubberized rollers around the circumference.

• Keeping things creative: Real-world learning from a remote perspective

  Teaching students complex concepts from a remote distance is something that many educators have had to get to grips with over the last 18 months. Especially where engineering is concerned. Keeping things hands-on and with a strong connection to real-world scenarios is vitally important for students to progress. We recently discovered this MathWorks mechatronics article by Mojtaba Azadi at the San Francisco State University. Azadi was able to create several different types of drawing robots using the Arduino Education Engineering Kit. Aiming to foster independent confidence and strengthen the skills and abilities of students, this project is perfect for those teaching outside of the classroom setting or when running courses online.

• LibreOffice Conference 2021: How-to for participants

  The online LibreOffice Conference 2021 starts tomorrow! Here’s how to take part…

• 17 Best Open-source Headless eCommerce Solutions

  A headless software is a program that can work and performs without a user interface. A headless Linux and a headless Google Chrome can perform seamlessly and smoothly without the need to run its GUI. Likewise, a headless web system is a functional web app but without a user interface. Developers often use a headless web app as a base to build mobile, desktop, web, and IoT apps.

• Patch origin trust vs GitHub’s URL hierarchy

  Attentive readers may have noticed something a bit weird with the GitHub patch links in my last article. I shared links to two patches for Ruby's Rake build system which I also said hadn't yet been accepted into Rake. Yet, the patches looked like they came directly from the Rake project's official code repository at https://github.com/ruby/rake/. So, how did I get a patch URL that’s indistinguishable from commits/patches that are part of a project? [...] You could trick someone through social engineering to deploy a malicious patch that appears to legitimately have originated from a target project. All it would take to get a legitimate-looking URL is to open and close a pull request in the project. It’s not unheard of that large deployments receive an early heads up about critical security patches. The malicious source code and intent would then be public, but a quick “oops, that was stupid — honest mistake” comment on the pull request could be enough to defuse suspicions.

• Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Bing [Ed: Well, hardly anyone even uses this junk from Microsoft and the first 3 entries violate privacy, including DDG and Startpage. LinuxLinks spreads Microsoft misinformation about "embracing" Open Source by naming proprietary things like GitHub and Visual Studio Code (both proprietary). Very disappointing.]

  Microsoft’s stance for decades was that community creation and sharing of communal code (later to be known as free and open source software) represented a direct attack on their business. Their battle with Linux stretches back many years. Back in 2001, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously tarnished Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”. Microsoft also initiated its “Get the Facts” marketing campaign from mid-2003, which specifically criticized Linux server usage, total cost of ownership, security, indemnification and reliability. The campaign was widely criticized for spreading misinformation.