In this video, I decided to install Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix 21.04, and check it out. Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix is not an official flavor of Ubuntu (at least not yet) but maybe it will be recognized as being official if all goes well.
Chris struggles with his nature, while Mike shares some sage developer advice that everyone should hear before using a platform like AWS.
Then we react, strongly, to Docker charging to skip updates.
NetBSD: aiomixer, X/Open Curses and ncurses, and other news
aiomixer is an application that I've been maintaining outside of NetBSD for a few years. It was available as a package, and was a "graphical" (curses, terminal-based) mixer for NetBSD's audio API, inspired by programs like alsamixer. For some time I've thought that it should be integrated into the NetBSD base system - it's small and simple, very useful, and many developers and users had it installed (some told me that they would install it on all of their machines that needed audio output). For my particular use case, as well as my NetBSD laptop, I have some small NetBSD machines around the house plugged into speakers that I play music from. Sometimes I like to SSH into them to adjust the playback volume, and it's often easier to do visually than with mixerctl(1).
However, there was one problem: when I first wrote aiomixer 2 years ago, I was intimidated by the curses API, so opted to use the Curses Development Kit instead. This turned out to be a mistake, as not only was CDK inflexible for an application like aiomixer, it introduced a hard dependency on ncurses.
Core Scheduling Looks Like It Will Be Ready For Linux 5.14 To Avoid Disabling SMT/HT
It looks like the years-long effort around CPU core scheduling that's been worked on by multiple vendors in light of CPU security vulnerabilities threatening SMT/HT security will see mainline later this summer with Linux 5.14.
Linux core scheduling has been worked on by pretty much all of the hyperscalers and public cloud providers to improve security without disabling Hyper Threading. Core scheduling is ultimately about what resources can share a CPU core and ensuring potentially unsafe tasks don't run on a sibling thread of a trusted task.
With the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.3, Red Hat announced an rpm-ostree version of RHEL targeted for Edge use cases called RHEL for Edge.
One of the unique features of rpm-ostree is that when you update the operating system, a new deployment is created, and the previous deployment is also retained. This means that if there are issues on the updated version of the operating system, you can roll back to the previous deployment with a single rpm-ostree command, or by selecting the previous deployment in the GRUB boot loader.
While this ability to manually roll back is very useful, it still requires manual intervention. Edge computing use case scenarios might be up in the tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes, and with this number of systems, automation is critical. In addition, in Edge deployments, these systems might be across the country or across the world, and it might not be practical to access a console on them in the event of issues with an updated image.
This is why RHEL for Edge includes GreenBoot, which can automate RHEL for Edge operating system rollbacks.
This post will cover an overview of how to get started with GreenBoot and will walk through an example of using GreenBoot.
In complex IT infrastructure, there are many repetitive tasks. Running those tasks successfully is not easy. Human error always presents a chance of failure. With help of Ansible, you perform all of the tasks through a remote host and, as the tasks are executed with playbooks, and those playbooks can be reused as many times as you need. In this article you will learn how to install and configure Ansible on Fedora Linux and describe how to use it to manage and configure Podman containers.
Ansible
Ansible is an open source infrastructure automation tool sponsored by Red Hat. It can deal with all the problems that come with large infrastructure, like installing & updating packages, taking backups, ensuring specific services are always running, and much more. You do this with a playbook which is written in YAML. Ansible playbooks can be used again and again, making the system administrator’s job less complex. Playbooks also eliminate repetitive tasks and can be easily modified. But we have many automation tools like Ansible, why use it? Unlike some other configuration management tools, Ansible is agentless: you don’t have to install anything on managed nodes. For more information about Ansible, see the Ansible tag in Fedora Magazine.
Since the release of Fedora 32, a new mechanism has been in place to better count the number of Fedora users while respecting their privacy. This system is explicitly designed to make sure that no personally identifiable information is sent from counted systems. It also insures that the Fedora infrastructure does not collect any personal data. The nickname for this new counting mechanism is “Count Me”, from the option name. Details are available in DNF Better Counting change request for Fedora 32. In short, the Count Me mechanism works by telling Fedora servers how old your system is (with a very large approximation). This occurs randomly during a metadata refresh request performed by DNF.
Just over one month has passed since the release of Radeon ROCm 4.1 and it's now been succeeded by the ROCm 4.2 feature release.
The Radeon Open eCosystem 4.2 release comes with changes such as:
- HIP target platform macros were added for easily targeting HIP_PLATFORM_AMD / HIP_PLATFORM_NVIDIA code differences such as including different header files.
- Stream Memory Operations now allow direct synchronization between network nodes and GPUs.
With C2X and potentially a future version of C++, there is finally the #elifdef and #elifndef directives. The GNU Compiler Collection is preparing its support.
There has long been #ifdef, #else, #elif and similar directives for controlling conditional compilation in C/C++. While there has been #ifdef, until the upcoming C2X there hasn't been #elifdef for else if defined or #elifndef for else if not defined... Short of pairing "#elif defined()" or so. With C2X the #elifdef and #elifndef pre-processor directives are finally there and it's being looked at for C++ as well.
Good static analysis can save a lot of effort and time. With customized static code analysis, the project code can be checked not only for general programming errors but also for project-specific conventions and best practices. The Clang Compiler Framework provides the ideal basis for this.
The programming language C++ manages the balancing act between maximum performance, which is essential in the embedded sector, on the one hand, and maximum code correctness through a high level of abstraction on the other. The balancing act is achieved by focusing on compile-time checks and opportunities for optimization. Calculations that could be carried out more efficiently by low-level code should not, where possible, be rewritten by the developer, but by the compiler. Additionally, errors should already be excluded during compilation, instead of taking up valuable computing time for checks at runtime.
Clang has become very popular in recent years and has long since established itself as one of the most important C and C++ compilers. This success is due not least to the architecture of Clang itself. Clang is not just another compiler, but a compiler framework. The essential parts of the compiler are a carefully designed library, thus enabling the diverse landscape of analysis and refactoring tools that has already emerged around the framework based on the LLVM project.
The command-line tool, clang-tidy, offers static code analysis and checks compliance with coding conventions, among other things, but can also refactor code independently. The clang-format tool can automatically standardize the coding style. The Clazy tool, which was developed by the author’s company, supplements the compiler with a variety of warnings around the Qt software framework and warns of frequent anti-patterns in the use of the same. Many other useful tools exist in the Clang universe, as well. Even integrated development environments, such as Qt Creator or CLion, rely on the Clang Compiler Framework for syntax highlighting, code navigation, auto-completion, and refactoring.
Anyone who knows the tools of the Clang world in their entirety is well positioned as a C or C++ developer. But if you want to get everything out of the technology, that is not the end of the story. The LibTooling library, on which most Clang tools are based, also allows you to create your own customized code analysis and refactoring tools, with little effort.
I’ll give you an example. A small but recurring piece of the puzzle of embedded software is the exponentiation of real numbers, mostly with static, natural exponents. Of course, the std::pow function would be used for this, had it not been determined in extensive profiling that on-the-target architecture std::pow(x, 4) is many times slower than x*x*x and forms a bottleneck in particularly performance-critical code. The senior developer of the project has therefore created a template function, usable as utils::pow<4>(x). And thanks to compiler optimizations, it’s just as nimble as the manual variant1. Nevertheless, since then the usual std::pow variant has crept in again at various places in the code, and even several hundred thousand lines of code have not been ported consistently.
The first attempt to automate the refactoring is, of course, the search and replace with a regular expression. std::pow\((.*), (\d+)\) already finds the simplest cases. But what about the cases where the “std::” is omitted or the second parameter is more complicated than an integer literal?
There is no secret that machine learning is getting better with time and the predictive models. Predictive models form the core of machine learning. It is good to improve the accuracy of the model for better results in the machine learning model. A technique called “ensemble machine learning” is used for increasing the performance and accuracy of a model.
Ensemble learning uses different models of machine learning for trying to make better predictions on the dataset. A model’s predictions are combined in an ensemble model for making the final prediction successful. However, many people are not familiar with ensemble machine learning. Read below; we explain everything about this machine learning technique using Python with appropriate examples.
Suppose you are participating in a trivia game and have good knowledge of some topics, but you don’t know anything other few topics. A team member would be required to cover all of the game topics if you wish to achieve a maximum score in the game. It is the basic idea behind ensemble learning in which we combine the predictions from different models for accurate output.
Recently I have been doing a lot of work for SUSE with how we package the Rust compiler. This process has been really interesting and challenging, but like anything it’s certainly provided a lot of time for thought while waiting for my packages to build.
According to the announcement, Vircadia has partnered with Linux Professional Institute (LPI) on this project and will be adding support for Vircadia’s servers to communicate with web browsers over WebRTC.
As an alternative to public cloud and large enterprise database vendor DBaaS offerings, this on-demand self-service option provides users with a convenient and simple way to deploy databases quickly. Plus, using Percona Kubernetes Operators means it is possible to configure a database once, and deploy it anywhere.
Microsoft Censorship of Free Software, Again (Shoot First, Ask Questions Later, or Respond to PR Backlash/Public Outcry)
Remember recently we had a release of the reverse-engineered GTA III and Vice City code that worked well on Linux? Which was then promptly taken down by a DMCA notice? Well, it's back.
Not the original mind you, one of the forks on GitHub has returned as the forker issued a DMCA Counter Notice and intends to actually fight it. According to TorrentFreak, New Zealand-based developer named Theo is taking a stand against this DMCA behaviour and has managed to get GitHub to restore their fork.
The strange flip-flop by Rockstar Games on being open and cool with its fans continues. By way of context and a bit of throat clearing, recall that Rockstar is both the company that whipped out the ban-hammer on Grand Theft Auto 5 players over the use of mods, and the company that paid out money to a modder that fixed that same games long loading times. In addition, Rockstar is both the company that happily used intellectual property to try to silence a documentary while also being the company that enthusiastically embraced gamers making short films out of GTA footage.
Arduino Pro is introducing a powerful new member of the Portenta product family, the Portenta Machine Control. It’s a fully-centralized, low-power, industrial control unit able to drive equipment and machinery. Plus, you can program it using the Arduino framework or other embedded development platforms.
Digi International has just announced the Digi IX15 IoT gateway and cellular router with Ethernet and 4G LTE connectivity as well as support for Zigbee, Bluetooth 5.0, 2.4 GHz proprietary via an XBee module.
Most of the under-$200 SBCs offer varying degrees of open hardware support. Schematics and other open hardware files are typically available, and most offer community resources like forums and online tech support.
Customized Linux and Android images are typically available, which are increasingly tied to mainline Linux. There is a lot of sloppy work out there in OS support, especially on the lower-cost models, but OS reliability is improving.
The most popular OS choices for Linux SBCs are Ubuntu and Yocto Project, which is not a distribution but a standardized collection of components and libraries. Other desktop distros such as Fedora are sometimes supported on higher-end x86 SBCs.
Linux continues to dominate the Arm SBC world and increasingly competes with Windows 10 in the larger market for commercial x86 SBCs. Low-power microcontroller-driven boards that run real-time operating systems such as FreeRTOS, tend to be more like SOMs (see the new Raspberry Pi Pico). Many Arduino boards, however, are more like SBCs.
In both the Linux and RTOS MCU board markets, the open source RISC-V architecture has begun to make inroads, with new Linux-driven SBCs such as SiFive’s HiFive Unmatched. We will examine RISC-V in a future article.
MontaVista Software has announced the availability of MVShield for Yocto, a professional services offering to support customer’s Linux distribution created with Yocto Project software, giving access to support and maintenance services without any migration effort to commercial Linux baselines.
MontaVista will maintain and support the customer’s specific Yocto Project created Linux distribution.
IAR Systems®, the future-proof supplier of software tools and services for embedded development, today presented the latest addition to its powerful build tools for Linux, which are based on the well-known build tools in the development toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench®. The extended tools now support deployment in Linux-based frameworks for Renesas' low-power RL78 microcontrollers (MCUs), enabling organizations to streamline building and testing workflows.
Printer-friendly version
PDF version
.svg_.png)
Content (where original) is available under CC-BY-SA, copyrighted by original author/s.
linux
linux is pretty much dominant on servers and phones right now (with android using a patched linux kernel).