Astro Pi Mk II, the New Raspberry Pi Hardware Headed to the Space Station

While Izzy and Ed are still going strong, the ESA has decided it’s about time these veteran Raspberries finally get the retirement they’re due. Set to make the journey to the ISS in December aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon, the new Astro Pi MK II hardware looks quite similar to the original 2015 version at first glance. But a peek inside its 6063-grade aluminium flight case reveals plenty of new and improved gear, including a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8 GB RAM. The beefier hardware will no doubt be appreciated by students looking to push the envelope. While the majority of Python programs submitted to the Astro Pi program did little more than poll the current reading from the unit’s temperature or humidity sensors and scroll messages for the astronauts on the Astro Pi’s LED matrix, some of the more advanced projects were aimed at performing legitimate space research. From using the onboard camera to image the Earth and make weather predictions to attempting to map the planet’s magnetic field, code submitted from teams of older students will certainly benefit from the improved computational performance and expanded RAM of the newest Pi. As with the original Astro Pi, the ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have shared plenty of technical details about these space-rated Linux boxes. After all, students are expected to develop and test their code on essentially the same hardware down here on Earth before it gets beamed up to the orbiting computers. So let’s take a quick look at the new hardware inside Astro Pi MK II, and what sort of research it should enable for students in 2022 and beyond.

Debian: EasyOS, Rust, TeX Live 2021

• nodejs compiled in OpenEmbedded

  I posted a couple of days ago about another attempt to compile Chromium. Learnt a lot from that. One thing, is that need the 'nodejs' package in the host OS.

• Ian Jackson: Tricky compatibility issue - Rust's io::ErrorKind

  This post is about some changes recently made to Rust's ErrorKind, which aims to categorise OS errors in a portable way. [...] The Rust programming language tries to make it straightforward to write portable code. Portable error handling is always a bit tricky. One of Rust's facilities in this area is std::io::ErrorKind which is an enum which tries to categorise (and, sometimes, enumerate) OS errors. The idea is that a program can check the error kind, and handle the error accordingly. That these ErrorKinds are part of the Rust standard library means that to get this right, you don't need to delve down and get the actual underlying operating system error number, and write separate code for each platform you want to support. You can check whether the error is ErrorKind::NotFound (or whatever). Because ErrorKind is so important in many Rust APIs, some code which isn't really doing an OS call can still have to provide an ErrorKind. For this purpose, Rust provides a special category ErrorKind::Other, which doesn't correspond to any particular OS error.

• Norbert Preining: TeX Live 2021 for Debian

  The release of TeX Live 2021 is already half a year away, but due to the delay of waiting for Debian/Bullseye release, we haven’t updated TeX Live in Debian for quite some time. But the waiting is over, today I uploaded the first packages of TeX Live 2021 to unstable.

today's howtos

• How to Install Glances System Monitor on Linux Mint 20 - LinuxCapable

  Glances System Monitor is free, an open-source command-line tool for process monitoring, system resources such as CPU, Disk I/O, File System, Load Average, Memory, Network Interfaces and processes. Glances are built with Python language. Glances support cross-platform monitoring, which can be used in conjunction with a web-based interface. One of the excellent features Glances supports is the ability to set thresholds in the program. You can set careful, warning, and critical in the configuration file, which will then relay information in colors that can show alerts to systems resources bottlenecks, system resources issues, and much more. Glances, by default, comes with a pre-set list of colors, but you can modify and add additional configs.

• How To Install OpenLDAP on Ubuntu 20.04 - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenLDAP on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenLDAP (lightweight directory access protocol) provides user authentication and enables you to set up user accounts that provide the user access to each computer in your network without having to set up a local user account on each computer. OpenLDAP is the free and open-source implementation of LDAP. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the OpenLDAP on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• Add storage with LVM | Opensource.com

  Logical Volume Manager (LVM) allows for a layer of abstraction between the operating system and the hardware. Normally, your OS looks for disks (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, and so on) and partitions within those disks (/dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1, and so on). In LVM, a virtual layer is created between the operating system and the disks. Instead of one drive holding some number of partitions, LVM creates a unified storage pool (called a Volume Group) that spans any number of physical drives (called Physical Volumes). Using the storage available in a Volume Group, LVM provides what appear to be disks and partitions to your OS. And the operating system is completely unaware that it's being "tricked."

• Turn Your Old PC into an Access Point [Ed: Old article reposted]

  Got some older computer equipment lying around? Don’t throw away those old PCs just yet. Whether you’re cleaning out or upgrading the computers in the office or at home, you should be able to find something to do with them. As we’ll discuss, you can use them for experimentation, routing, security, file or Internet serving, and more. Use these five suggestions to make one of the projects your late-night endeavor on the weekend or your new project at work.

• How to back up Linux apps and files on your Chromebook - TechRepublic

  If you've made the jump and installed Linux support on your Chromebook, you've probably already started installing apps and working with files and data. That being the case, you might be curious as to how you back up those apps and data. In some cases, you'll be saving data within the Linux filesystem hierarchy (and not on either your local or cloud storage, via Chrome OS. Fortunately, the Chrome OS developers thought of this, so you don't have to bother with locating that data and running commands to back it all up.

Windows 11 will be the new Vista (or Windows 8)

I've been using Windows 10 in production for about two years now - testing it since even before the official release. Early on, my impression was that it was comparable to Windows 7. Okay. Nothing too special, new or revolutionary. Over time, this impression has changed. With subsequent semi-annual releases, I encountered issues I've never had in Windows before, mostly various system errors and bugs that speak of low quality and bad design. Then, Windows 10 would occasionally undo some of my tweaks and options, wasting my time, and forcing me to tighten the screws ever more. All in all, my outlook isn't bright or happy. Bored and exhausted by the nonsense would be the best word. Now, Windows 11 is coming. As I've done many times in the past, I logged into my Insiders account and started testing, to see what awaits me. Right away, I found the experience quite dejecting. My early impression of Windows 11 Dev Build was mediocre at best, and it progressively got worse with each update. Different from Windows 10, though. What happened was, I found myself reliving 2011, when I tested Windows 8 and came to pretty much the same conclusions. To wit, this is what I think will unfold.