Since my last blog post I have been working on implementing a selection mode for Epiphany’s History Dialog. The selection mode is a pretty common pattern seen throughout GNOME applications. It’s used to easily manipulate a set of selected items from a list or grid. I’ve used the selection mode from GNOME Boxes as a reference when implementing it in Epiphany.

This is how the History Dialog looked like before...

• How to disable the Google Meet tab in Gmail on Android

• Google Pixel 4a vs OnePlus Nord: Which cheap Android phone should you buy?

• Google Launches Nearby Share for Android

• Google introduces a new file sharing feature for Android users and it is much similar to the AirDrop by Apple

• Google launches the final beta of Android 11

• OnePlus One gets Android 10 thanks to LineageOS 17.1, available now

• Samsung has promised three major Android updates for its latest flagships

• Samsung’s Android update guarantee might actually be better than Google’s

• Samsung maintained its lead in the Android tablet segment in Q2 2020

• Android TV’s new Cast Connect library will enable remote control support for casted videos

• Kodak launches new range of TV series on Android platform, ranges from Rs 10,999 to Rs 99,999

• AnTuTu releases Top 10 list of Android performers for July

• #BHUSA: Android Phones at Risk of BlueRepli Bluetooth Attack

• Latest Zoom update adds support for dark mode on Android (APK Download)

• 5 ways to make your Android phone faster

• Twitter Rushes to Fix Flaw in Android Version

Today, the first point release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS went live! To celebrate, we wanted to share how Ubuntu has evolved since the first release in 2004 to where we are today with 20.04. Thanks to those in the community and our users for your contributions and joining us on this journey. Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS now!

Also: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa) Released, Available for Download Now

Lubuntu 20.04.1 LTS Released!

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS Released, Available to Download Now

Keeping full control over your personal data and documents, is more and more important. Sharing by email or via the services of big tech companies is losing its shine, for obvious reasons. To help our users we introduce a new fresh Nextcloud Ubuntu Appliance for the Intel NUC, that comes with Collabora Online.

Simply take an Intel NUC server, install the Ubuntu Appliance and take back control over storing and sharing your personal data and files with Nextcloud. Next, of course, you want to read and edit your documents, now stored on your own server, wherever you are. Naturally you will be able to allow others to review and comment on text, presentations, charts and more, perhaps during a video call or chat. All this under your own control!

The new Ubuntu Appliance with Collabora Online and Nextcloud offers you just that – and more too. Do read these articles about the Ubuntu Appliance and the Nextcloud features. Now, let’s have a look at Collabora Online and some of the great features that you will benefit from.

Wooo, summer... Hot weather and a quick computer reinstall right in the middle of the production of the books because my previous Kubuntu 19.10 was obsolete and reached end of life in July. Bad surprise for me this time in the process: no way to install Scribus 1.4.8 stable anymore and all my books are done with that. The package was savagely forced replaced by 1.5.5~Development and no way to reinstall the previous version flagged as stable by the Scribus team.

So, I'll have to move the book project to this development version (it will take hours of adaptation because the text-engine changed between 1.4x and 1.5x). If you are on Windows, Mac, 18.04 or CentOS no worry for you: the package still exists there. Sad to see that no Appimage, Flatpack or Snap are around to rescue this issue... But let's close for now this parenthesis with a taste of bitterness. I'll cope with that, I saw uglier situations of upgrade in my life and this Kubuntu 20.04 is −about all other aspect− a splendid distribution so far.

The GNU C Library version 2.32 is now available.

The GNU C Library is used as *the* C library in the GNU system and
in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux
as the kernel.

The GNU C Library is primarily designed to be a portable
and high performance C library. It follows all relevant
standards including ISO C11 and POSIX.1-2017. It is also
internationalized and has one of the most complete
internationalization interfaces known.

One secret sauce of GNOME Boxes is libosinfo. It basically is an umbrella for three components: libosinfo, osinfo-db-tools, and osinfo-db.

libosinfo offers programmatic means to query for information about OSes. osinfo-db-tools is a set of tools that help manipulate and extract information from OS images (such as ISO files). osinfo-db is a database of operating system information describing requirements for virtualized installations as well as virtual drivers and devices that work with each OS in the database.

Have you ever played a VR game and needed a tip for beating the game... but you didn’t want to take off your headset to find that solution? Or, have you wanted to watch videos while you played your game? Or, how about wanting to immerse yourself in a 360 video on Youtube?

Released today, Firefox Reality PC Preview enables you to do these things and more. This is the newest addition to the Firefox Reality family of products. Built upon the latest version of the well-known and trusted Firefox browser, Firefox Reality PC Preview works with tethered headsets as well as wireless headsets streaming from a PC.

• Video: Microsoft-Sponsored ‘Copyleft’ Conf (Keynote Sold to Microsoft, a Serial GPL Violator and Primary FUD Source) Features Previous FSF (Co)President and RMS Ouster
• Miseducation
• [Meme] RMS Succeeded by a Microsoft Sponsor
• Controlling Your Computing
• User Libre: Free Computing For Everyone, Start With Perfection
• Release: Search Warrant and Reports on Findings When Bill Gates’ Engineer Arrested for Pedophilia
• SUSE is Still Pushing Microsoft Proprietary Software and Bragging About the Novell Patent Collusion With Microsoft
• Release: 29 Pages of Internet Access Report About Pedophile Working for Bill Gates at His Home
• IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 05, 2020
• IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 04, 2020
• Links 6/8/2020: FSF Has New Chief, LibreOffice 7.0, Linux App Summit Goes Online
• Links 5/8/2020: Wayfire 0.5 and Plasma Browser Integration
• Links 4/8/2020: Kodachi 7.2, Collabora Office 6.4

• The 10 Best Games for Linux

  Online games have come this far and gained their place in the world of online streaming. Millions of internet users from all over the world invest their time in playing games online. In fact, numerous online gaming competitions and fests are organized now and then where players can showcase their interest, passion, and awareness towards the game.

  There is an endless number of gaming options when it comes to Windows, Android, and macOS however, when it comes to Linux, this gaming list begins to shrink. Well, if you are passionate about gaming and own Linux based machines then this post is just for you.

 
       

• Decide who lives and dies in the open source 'Death and Taxes' now on GOG

  Death and Taxes, a release from early 2020 that later had the code open sourced is now available to pick up on the DRM-free store GOG.

  You play the role of the Grim Reaper, although not in the way you might expect. It's a bit of a weird underworld office job. Using your stamp of doom, you get to pick who lives and who dies and you have a quota to fill. Is your boss a bad guy or is this just how the afterlife really is? That's up to you to find out. Made in the spirit of "Papers, Please", "Reigns", "Beholder" and "Animal Inspector" to name a few.

• Aethernaut looks like a great upcoming mind-bending puzzle room game

  Inspired by the likes of Portal and The Talos Principle, developer Dragon Slumber are working on and recently announced Aethernaut and it looks slick.

  Set in a claustrophobic steampunk world, you must solve puzzle rooms using light, sensors, portals and time travel to gather the aether vials and access the core of the "Construct". With the help of your guide, Doctor Louis Cornell, they explain how this Construct came to be abandoned and why you were chosen to help save it. Is everything as it seems though, is Cornell actually trying to help? The voices creeping in say otherwise and they want your help too.

• Resolutiion is set to get a big free expansion soon

  Fast-paced action-adventure Resolutiion from Monolith of Minds is going to be getting a big free content expansion.

  After releasing back in May, this Godot Engine powered game certainly has an impressive Hyper Light Drifter inspired style to it and for me it left quite the lasting impression. Be sure to read our previous thoughts on Resolutiion here.

  The Red Plains is the name of the new update which will be coming "Soon. Very soon.". Featuring a brand new combat-heavy biome which will expand upon the lead-up to the finale. Expect to find new enemies, few friends and 'a mysterious host will guide you through the Queen’s Gauntlet right into the Singularity'.

• Wonderful point and click comedy adventure Guard Duty is now on GOG

  Get yourself a bit of DRM-free comedy, with the release of Guard Duty onto GOG serving as a nice reminder for anyone who missed it originally. This nostalgic experience offers a bit of a wild ride.

  A love-letter to classics from the point and click adventure genre, complete with plenty of easter eggs to find. Sick Chicken Studios originally released Guard Duty back in 2019 and it went onto achieve some pretty positive remarks from various users and publications.

• Play as a small mischievous cloud with a big dream in the Rain on Your Parade demo

  Become a cloud and leak all over everything and cause absolute total chaos? Rain on Your Parade is an absolutely brilliant idea for a game.

  Rain on Your Parade is a slapstick comedy game where you play as a mischievous cloud determined to ruin everybody's day. You fly high across a wide range of levels while unlocking new abilities and mechanics that get progressively more ridiculous. Some games you just instantly fall in love with the idea and this is one such time, with this silly little cloud with its happy little face that just rains down hell on everyone. Created by Unbound Creations, the same team behind HEADLINER.

• Monster Crown appears to be an early success on Steam

  After a successful crowdfunding campaign 2018, the monster catching game Monster Crown released into Early Access at the end of July 2020 and it appears to be doing very well.

  On their original Kickstarter they had 2,921 backers, which is a pretty reasonable amount for the $45,415 in funding they gathered. The trouble is, with how many thousands of games are releasing all the time on Steam, having a previous crowdfunding campaign doesn't mean that will be replicated there. We've seen many developers struggle but it looks like Studio Aurum will have plenty of funds to keep on improving it. Their publisher, SOEDESCO, emailed us to confirm in the first 72 hours that Monster Crown had "more buyers than it got backers during the entire Kickstarter campaign".

• Party game 'Gang Beasts' gets a big new opt-in Beta that needs testing

  Ready to party? Now that Boneloaf / Coatsink are self-publishing Gang Beasts after splitting off from Double Fine they're starting to get back into major updates.

  Originally released back in 2017, Gang Beasts is a local and online multiplayer party game with gelatinous characters, brutal slapstick fight sequences, and absurd hazardous environments, set in the mean streets of Beef City. It can be a serious amount of fun and it's set to get better. Now available in the "public_testing" Beta branch on Steam is a big new build, anyone can try it by going into your Steam Library, Right Click on Gang Beasts and go into Properties and then the Betas tab.

• UnderMine is a challenging dungeon-crawler that's worth digging deep for - out now

  After a successful run in Early Access, Thorium Entertainment have today released their dungeon crawling action-adventure UnderMine. With one of the most annoyingly good gameplay loops I've seen in the past year, UnderMine is an absolute delight to die in over and over.

  They've done well in a crowded market too, announcing they've managed to sell well over 120,000 copies now.

  UnderMine is at its heart a fast-paced dungeon crawler with persistent progression and a simple loop. You jump down into the mine, grab as much gold as you can while battling various enemy types and a few difficult boss encounters and try to get as far as you can. When you die, that character is well and truly gone and another random character replaces them. However, you do get to keep a percentage of your gold for you to go and unlock more for the next run.

Almost a year after Richard Stallman, the founding president of Free Software Foundation, was forced to resign, FSF board has finally elected a new president, Geoffrey Knauth.

• How to Fix the Broken Android Auto in Volkswagen Cars

• Google Pixel 4a review: All the phone you need, none of what you don't

• Google Docs gets Smart Compose, other improvements on Android and iOS

• Google v. Oracle Perspective: Google's Android 'Cheat Code' was to Copy Oracle's Code

• Google adds Smart compose to Docs, Sheets, & Slides on Android & iOS

• Wear OS will lose Google Play Music months before a YouTube Music app exists

• Mi TV Stick With Full-HD Streaming, Android TV 9 Launched in India, First Sale on August 7

• Android TV's new curated content row simplifies finding your next binge-worthy show

• Samsung guarantees three ‘generations’ of Android OS updates for some Galaxy phones

• Twitter Fixes Security Issue Affecting Some Android Devices

• OnePlus 7T Android Smartphone drops to new all-time low at $399 (Save $200)

• Galaxy Note20 and Note20 Ultra will get three major Android OS updates

• Researchers found another way to hack Android cellphones via Bluetooth

• Latest Android update will finally protect your most important files

• 14 Reasons Why OxygenOS on OnePlus Nord is Better Than Stock Android

• TeamViewer expands remote access and control capabilities to all Android devices

• Android and Chromebook users can finally match the iPhone and MacBook's best trick

I am mostly a self-taught programmer. When I was growing up in the late 1970s, our elementary school had a small resource room with an Apple II computer. My brother and I fell into a group of friends that liked computers, and we all helped each other learn the system.

We showed such promise that our parents bought us an Apple II+ clone called the Franklin ACE 1000. My brother and I taught ourselves how to program in AppleSoft BASIC. Our parents bought us books, and we devoured them. I learned every corner of BASIC by reading about something in the book, then writing a practice program. My favorite pastime was writing simulations and games.

I stayed with BASIC for a long time. Our next computer was an IBM PC clone with a version of BASIC on it. Much later, MS-DOS 5 introduced QBasic, which was a modern version of BASIC that finally eliminated line numbers.

Do you have an old laptop that has gathered layers of dust over time and you don’t exactly what to do with it? A good place to start would be to install a Linux distribution that will perfectly support its low-end hardware specifications without much of a hassle. You could still enjoy performing basic tasks such as web browsing, word processing, and watching videos, listening to your favourite music to mention a few.

In this guide, we feature some of the best Linux distributions that you can install on your old PC and breathe some life into it.

Open source software is now mainstream; long gone are the days when open source projects attracted developers alone. Nowadays, users across numerous industries are active consumers of open source software, and you can't expect everyone to know how to use the software just by reading the code.

Even for developers (including those with plenty of experience in other open source projects), good documentation serves as a valuable onboarding tool when people join a community. People who are interested in contributing to a project often start by working on documentation to get familiar with the project, the community, and the community workflow.

There's a saying about the cloud, and it goes something like this: The cloud is just somebody else's computer. While the cloud is actually more complex than that (it's a lot of computers), there's a lot of truth to the sentiment. When you move to the cloud, you're moving data and services and computing power to an entity you don't own or fully control. On the one hand, this frees you from having to perform administrative tasks you don't want to do, but, on the other hand, it could mean you no longer control your own computer.

This is why the open source world likes to talk about an open hybrid cloud, a model that allows you to choose your own infrastructure, select your own OS, and orchestrate your workloads as you see fit. However, if you don't happen to have an open hybrid cloud available to you, you can create your own—either to help you learn how the cloud works or to serve your local network.

• Linux commands for user management

• CONSOOM All Your PODCASTS From Your Terminal With Castero

• Install Blender 3D on Debian 10 (Buster)

• Things To Do After Installing openSUSE Leap 15.2

• GSoC Reports: Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls, Part 2

  I have been working on Fuzzing Rumpkernel Syscalls. This blogpost details the work I have done during my second coding period.

• Holger Levsen: DebConf7

  DebConf7 was also special because it had a very special night venue, which was in an ex-church in a rather normal building, operated as sort of community center or some such, while the old church interior was still very much visible as in everything new was build around the old stuff.

  And while the night venue was cool, it also ment we (video team) had no access to our machines over night (or for much of the evening), because we had to leave the university over night and the networking situation didn't allow remote access with the bandwidth needed to do anything video.

  The night venue had some very simple house rules, like don't rearrange stuff, don't break stuff, don't fix stuff and just a few little more and of course we broke them in the best possible way: Toresbe with the help of people I don't remember fixed the organ, which was broken for decades. And so the house sounded in some very nice new old tune and I think everybody was happy we broke that rule.

• Podcast: COBOL development on the mainframe

  Nic reached out when COBOL hit the news this spring to get some background on what COBOL is good for historically, and where it lives in the modern infrastructure stack. I was able to talk about the basics of COBOL and the COBOL standard, strengths today in concert with the latest mainframes, and how COBOL back-end code is now being integrated into front ends via intermediary databases and data-interchange formats like JSON, which COBOL natively supports.

• What I learned while teaching C programming on YouTube

  The act of breaking something down in order to teach it to others can be a great way to reacquaint yourself with some old concepts and, in many cases, gain new insights.

  I have a YouTube channel where I demonstrate FreeDOS programs and show off classic DOS applications and games. The channel has a small following, so I tend to explore the topics directly suggested by my audience. When several subscribers asked if I could do more videos about programming, I decided to launch a new video series to teach C programming. I learned a lot from teaching C, and in the process, I came across some meaningful takeaways I think others will appreciate.

  Make a plan

  For my day job, I lead training and workshops to help new and emerging IT leaders develop new skills. Outside of regular work, I also enjoy teaching as an adjunct professor. So I'm very comfortable constructing a course outline and designing a curriculum. That's where I started. If you want to teach a subject effectively, you can't just wing it.

  Start by writing an outline of what topics you want to cover and figure out how each new topic will build on the previous ones. The "building block" method of adding new knowledge is key to an effective training program.

• Google's Flutter 1.20 framework is out: VS Code extension and mobile autofill support

• Google Engineers Propose "Machine Function Splitter" For Faster Performance

  Google engineers have been working on the Machine Function Splitter as their means of making binaries up to a few percent faster thanks to this compiler-based approach. They are now seeking to upstream the Machine Function Splitter into LLVM.

  The Machine Function Splitter is a code generation optimization pass for splitting code functions into hot and cold parts. They are doing this stemming from research that in roughly half of code functions that more than 50% of the code bytes are never executed but generally loaded into the CPU's data cache.

• Modernize network function development with this Rust-based framework

  The world of networking has undergone monumental shifts over the past decade, particularly in the ongoing move from specialized hardware into software defined network functions (NFV) for data plane1 and packet processing. While the transition to software has fashioned the rise of SDN (Software-defined networking) and programmable networks, new challenges have arisen in making these functions flexible, efficient, easier to use, and fast (i.e. little to no performance overhead). Our team at Comcast wanted to both leverage what the network does best, especially with regards to its transport capacity and routing mechanisms, while also being able to develop network programs through a modern software lens—stressing testing, swift iteration, and deployment. So, with these goals in mind, we developed Capsule, a new framework for network function development, written in Rust, inspired by Berkeley's NetBricks research, and built-on Intel's Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK).

• This Week in Rust 350

• Firefox extended tracking protection

  This Mozilla Security Blog entry describes the new redirect-tracking protections soon to be provided by the Firefox browser.

• Karl Dubost: Browser developer tools timeline

  I was reading In a Land Before Dev Tools by Amber, and I thought, Oh here missing in the history the beautifully chiseled Opera Dragonfly and F12 for Internet Explorer. So let's see what are all the things I myself didn't know.

• Daniel Stenberg: Upcoming Webinar: curl: How to Make Your First Code Contribution

  Abstract: curl is a wildly popular and well-used open source tool and library, and is the result of more than 2,200 named contributors helping out. Over 800 individuals wrote at least one commit so far.

  In this presentation, curl’s lead developer Daniel Stenberg talks about how any developer can proceed in order to get their first code contribution submitted and ultimately landed in the curl git repository. Approach to code and commits, style, editing, pull-requests, using github etc. After you’ve seen this, you’ll know how to easily submit your improvement to curl and potentially end up running in ten billion installations world-wide.

• Zoombomber crashes court hearing on Twitter hack with Pornhub video

• Security updates for Wednesday

  Security updates have been issued by Debian (net-snmp), Fedora (mingw-curl), openSUSE (firefox, ghostscript, and opera), Oracle (libvncserver and postgresql-jdbc), Scientific Linux (postgresql-jdbc), SUSE (firefox, kernel, libX11, xen, and xorg-x11-libX11), and Ubuntu (apport, grub2, grub2-signed, libssh, libvirt, mysql-8.0, ppp, tomcat8, and whoopsie).

• The CNCF etcd project reaches a significant milestone with completion of security audit

  This week, a third-party security audit was published on etcd, the open source distributed key-value store that plays a crucial role in scaling Kubernetes in the cloud. For etcd, this audit was important in multiple ways. The audit validates the project’s maturity and sheds light on some areas where the project can improve. This sort of audit is required criteria for any project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to qualify for graduation from the CNCF.

  Read the CNCF blog post that I co-authored to learn more about the audit and what it uncovered. As one of the project maintainers and one of two members of the etcd Project Security Committee, I’d love to share a few reasons I’m hopeful for etcd’s future and why now is a great time to contribute to etcd’s open source community.

• Application Ecosystem Microconference Accepted into 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the Application Ecosystem Microconference has been accepted into the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference!

  The Linux kernel is the foundation of the Linux systems, but it is not much use without applications that run on top of it. The application experience relies on the kernel for performance, stability and responsiveness. Plumbers is the perfect venue to have the kernel and app ecosystems under one roof to discuss and learn together and make a better application experience on the Linux platform.

• Google Opens Patches For "METRICFS" That They Have Used Since 2012 For Telemetry Data

  The METRICFS file-system has been in use internally at Google since 2012 for exporting system statistics to their telemetry systems with around 200 statistics being exported per machine. They are now posting the METRICFS patches as open-source for review and possible upstreaming.

  A "request for comments" on METRICFS was sent out today on the Linux kernel mailing list. Their motives for now finally publishing these patches is as a result of the recent Statsfs proposal by a Red Hat engineer for a RAM-based file-system for exposing kernel statistics to user-space. METRICFS has a similar aim to Statsfs.

• FS-Cache Rewritten But Even Its Developers Are Hesitant About Landing It For Linux 5.9

  FS-Cache provides the Linux kernel with a general purpose cache for network file-systems like NFS and AFS but also other special use-cases like ISO9660 file-systems. FS-Cache has been rewritten for better performance and reliability, among other benefits, and while it has been sent in as a pull request for Linux 5.9 even its own developers provide some caution over landing it this cycle.

  FS-Cache has seen work to "massively overhaul" it with a variety of improvements. The new and improved FS-Cache will now use async direct I/O in place of snooping for updated pages that in turn means less virtual memory overhead. The new FS-Cache implementation has simpler object management, changes to object invalidation, and a variety of other work.

• Corsair Commander Pro Driver Sent In To Linux 5.9

  The hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem has a new driver that is likely to excite some enthusiasts wanting greater control over thermal monitoring and fan control for their systems.

  The previously covered Corsair Commander Pro Linux driver is now coming with Linux 5.9. The Commander Pro offers six 4-pin fan ports with PWM controls, two RGB LED channels, and four thermal sensors. An interested user/developer created this Linux driver without the support from Corsair. The thermal and fan control support is in place with this new HWMON driver while the RGB lighting controls are available from OpenRGB.