Open-source News

Qt 5.15.4 LTS Release Now Available As Open-Source

Phoronix - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 19:55
Back in March marked the release of Qt 5.15.3 as open-source, one year after it was released to commercial customers of The Qt Company. Today a similar Qt 5.15.4 open-source release is now available, one year after its commercial release...

Intel Gets Back To Working On Linear Address Masking Support For The Linux Kernel

Phoronix - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 17:37
Back in December 2020 Intel's programming reference manual was updated to cover Linear Address Masking (LAM) as a future CPU feature and there was some GNU toolchain activity around LAM while not much to report on the effort since then -- until today. A revised "request for comments" has been posted on the Intel Linear Address Masking enabling for the Linux kernel that allows for using untranslated address bits of 64-bit linear addresses to be used for storing arbitrary software metadata...

Mesa 22.1-rc5 Released With Dozens Of Fixes For Zink, RADV & Intel Vulkan Drivers

Phoronix - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 17:13
There was hope that Mesa 22.1 would have been released this week but instead it's been diveted to at least next week due to more than 90 patches flowing in the past week. As such, today we have Mesa 22.1-rc5 for another week of testing...

How to Install Slack Messaging Tool in Linux

Tecmint - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 16:05
The post How to Install Slack Messaging Tool in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides .

Slack is a modern, popular, feature-rich, flexible, and secure business communication and collaboration platform. It’s an enterprise-grade tool that ships with numerous features including channels, direct messaging, huddles and clips, and Slack connect for

The post How to Install Slack Messaging Tool in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.

5 surprising things I do with Linux

opensource.com - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 15:00
5 surprising things I do with Linux Seth Kenlon Wed, 05/11/2022 - 03:00 1 reader likes this 1 reader likes this

When you're used to one operating system, it can be easy to look at other operating systems almost as if they were apps. If you use one OS on your desktop, you might think of another OS as the app that people use to run servers, and another OS as the app that plays games, and so on. We sometimes forget that an operating system is the part of a computer that manages a countless number of tasks (millions per second, technically), and they're usually designed to be capable of a diverse set of tasks. When people ask me what Linux does, I usually ask what they want it to do. There's no single answer, so here are five surprising things I do with Linux.

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles 1. Laser cutting with Linux Image by:

(MSRaynsford, CC BY-NC 4.0)

At my nearest makerspace, there's a big industrial machine, about the size of a sofa, that slices through all kinds of materials according to a simple line-drawing design file. It's a powerful laser cutter, and I the first time I used it I was surprised to find that it just connected to my Linux laptop with a USB cable. In fact, in many ways, it was easier to connect to this laser cutter than it is to connect with many desktop printers, many of which require over-complicated and bloated drivers.

Using Inkscape and a simple plugin, you can design cut lines for industrial laser cutters. Design a case for your Raspberry Pi laptop, use these Creative Commons design plans to build a cryptex lockbox, cut out a sign for your shopfront, or whatever it is you have in mind. And do it using an entirely open source stack.

2. Gaming on Linux Image by:

The Lutris desktop client

Open source has always had games, and there have been some high profile Linux games in the recent past. The first gaming PC I built was a Linux PC, and I don't think any of the people I had over for friendly couch co-op games realized they were using Linux by playing. And that's a good thing. It's a smooth and seamless experience, and the sky's the limit, depending on how much you want to spend on hardware.

What's more is that it's not just the games that have been coming to Linux, but the platform too. Valve's recent Steam Deck is a popular handheld gaming console that runs Linux. Better still, many open source software titles have been publishing releases on Steam, including Blender and Krita, as ways to encourage wider adoption.

3. Office work on Linux Image by:

Opensource.com

Linux, like life, isn't always necessarily exciting. Sometimes, you need a computer to do ordinary things, like when you pay bills, make a budget, or write a paper for school or a report for work. Regardless of the task, Linux is also normal, everyday desktop computer. You can use Linux for the mundane, the everyday, the "usual".

You're not limited to just the big name applications, either. I do my fair share of work in the excellent LibreOffice suite, but on my oldest computer I use the simpler Abiword instead. Sometimes, I like to explore Calligra, the KDE office suite, and when there's precision design work to be done (including specialized procedural design work), I use Scribus.

The greatest thing about using Linux for everyday tasks is that ultimately nobody knows what you used to get to the end product. Your tool chain and your workflow is yours, and the results are as good or better than what locked-down, non-open software produces. I have found that using Linux for the everyday tasks makes those tasks more fun for me, because open source software inherently permits me to develop my own path to my desired outcome. I try to create solutions that help me get work done efficiently, or that help me automate important tasks, but I also just enjoy the flexibility of the system. I don't want to adapt for my tool chain, I want to adapt my tools so that they work for me.

4. Music production on Linux Image by:

Opensource.com

I'm a hobbyist musician, and before I started doing all of my production on computers I owned several synthesizers and sequencers and multi-track recorders. One reason it took me as long as it did to switch to computer music was that it didn't feel modular enough for me. When you're used to wiring physical boxes to one another to route sound through filters and effects and mixers and auxiliary mixers, an all-in-one application looks a little underwhelming.

It's not that an all-in-one app isn't appreciated, by any means. I like being able to open up one application, like LMMS, that happens to have everything I want. However, in practice it seems that no music application I tried on a computer actually had everything I needed.

When I switched to Linux, I discovered a landscape built with modularity as one of its founding principles. I found applications that were just sequencers, applications that were just synthesizers, mixers, recorders, patch bays, and so on. I could build my own studio on my computer just as I'd built my own studio in real life. Audio production has developed in leaps and bounds on Linux, and today there are open source applications that can act as a unified control center while retaining the extensibility to pull in sounds from elsewhere on the system. For a patchwork producer like me, it's a dream studio.

5. Retro computing on Linux Image by:

Opensource.com

I don't like throwing away old computers, because very rarely do old computers actually die. Usually, an old computer is "outgrown" by the rest of the world. Operating systems get too bloated for an old computer to handle, so you stop getting OS and security updates, applications start to demand resources your old computer just doesn't have, and so on.

I tend to adopt old computers, putting them to work as either lab machines or home servers. Lately, I find that adding an SSD drive to serve as the root partition, and using XFCE or a similar lightweight desktop, makes even a computer from the previous decade a pleasantly usable machine for a lot more work than you might expect. Graphic design, web design, programming, stop-motion animation, and much more, are trivial tasks on low spec machines, to say nothing of simple office work. With Linux driving a machine, it's a wonder businesses ever upgrade.

Everybody has their favorite "rescue" distribution. Mine are Slackware and Mageia, both of which still release 32-bit installer images. Mageia is RPM-based, too, so you can use modern packaging tools like dnf and rpmbuild.

Bonus: Linux servers

OK, I admit Linux on servers isn't at all surprising. In fact, to people who know of Linux but don't use Linux themselves, a data center is usually the first thing that pops into their heads when "Linux" is mentioned. The problem with that assumption is that it can make it seem obvious that Linux ought to be great on the server, as if Linux doesn't even have to try. It's a flattering sentiment, but the fact is that Linux is great on servers because there's a monumental effort across global development teams to make Linux especially effective at what it does.

It isn't by chance that Linux is the robust operating system that powers most of the internet, most of the cloud, nearly all the supercomputers in existence, and more. Linux isn't stagnate, and while it has a rich history behind it, it's not so steeped in tradition that it fails to progress. New technologies are being developed all the time, and Linux is a part of that progress. Modern Linux adapts to growing demands from a changing world to make it possible for systems administrators to provide networked services to people all over the world.

It's not everything Linux can do, but it's no small feat, either.

[ Red Hat Enterprise Linux turns 20 this year: How enterprise Linux has evolved from server closet to cloud ]

Linux isn't that surprising

I remember the first time I met someone who'd grown up using Linux. It never seemed to happen for most of the time I've been a Linux user, but lately it's relatively common. I think the most surprising encounter was with a young woman, toddler in tow, who saw whatever geeky t-shirt I was wearing at the time and casually mentioned that she also used Linux, because she'd grown up with it. It actually made me a little jealous, but then I remembered that Unix on a desktop computer simply didn't exist when I was growing up. Still, it's fun to think about how casual Linux has become over the past few decades. It's even more fun to be a part of it.

Linux powers most of the internet, most of the cloud, and nearly all supercomputers. I also love to use Linux for gaming, office work, and my creative pursuits.

Image by:

Opensource.com

Linux What to read next 26 open source creative apps to try in 2022 11 surprising ways you use Linux every day 3 ways to play video games on Linux This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

Manage your Gmail filters from the Linux command line

opensource.com - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 15:00
Manage your Gmail filters from the Linux command line Kevin Sonney Wed, 05/11/2022 - 03:00 2 readers like this 2 readers like this

Automation is a hot topic right now. In my day job as an SRE part of my remit is to automate as many repeating tasks as possible. But how many of us do that in our daily, not-work, lives? This year, I am focused on automating away the toil so that we can focus on the things that are important.

Server-side mail rules are one of the most efficient ways to pre-sort and filter mail. Sadly, Gmail, the most popular mail service in the world, doesn't use any of the standard protocols to allow users to manage their rules. Adding, editing, or removing a single rule can be a time-consuming task in the web interface, depending on how many rules the user has in place. The options for editing them "out of band" as provided by the company are limited to an XML export and import.

I have 109 mail filters, so I know what a chore it can be to manage them using the provided methods. At least until I discovered gmailctl, the command-line tool for managing Gmail filters with a (relatively) simple standards-based configuration file.

$ gmailctl test
$ gmailctl diff
Filters:
--- Current
+++ TO BE APPLIED
@@ -1 +1,6 @@
+* Criteria:
+ from: @opensource.com
+ Actions:
+ mark as important
+ never mark as spam

$ gmailctl apply
You are going to apply the following changes to your settings:
Filters:
--- Current
+++ TO BE APPLIED
@@ -1 +1,6 @@
+* Criteria:
+ from: @opensource.com
+ Actions:
+ mark as important
+ never mark as spam
Do you want to apply them? [y/N]:

To define rules in a flexible manner gmailctl uses the jsonnet templating language. Using gmailctl also allows the user to export the existing rules for modification.

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles

To get started, install gmailctl via your system's package manager, or install from source with go install github.com/mbrt/gmailctl/cmd/gmailctl@latest. Follow that with gmailctl init which will walk you through the process of setting up your credentials and the correct permissions in Google. If you already have rules in Gmail, I recommend running gmailctl download next, in order to backup the existing rules. These will be saved in the default configuration file ~/.gmailctl/config.jsonnet. Copy that file somewhere safe for future reference, or to restore your old rules just in case!

If you wish to start from a clean slate, or you don't have any rules yet, you need to create a new, empty ~/.gmailctl/config.jsonnet file. The most basic structure for this file is:

local lib = import 'gmailctl.libsonnet';
{
  version: "v1alpha3",
  author: {
    name: "OSDC User",
    email: "your-email@gmail.com"
  },
  rules: [
    {
      filter: {
        or: [
          { from: "@opensource.com" },
        ]
      },
      actions: {
        markRead: false,
        markSpam: false,
        markImportant: true
      },
    },
  ]
}

As you can see, this file format is similar to, but not as strict as JSON. This file sets up a simple rule to mark any mail from opensource.com as important, leave it unread, and not mark it as spam. It does this by defining the criteria in the filters section, and then the rules to apply in the actions section. Actions include the following boolean commands: markRead, markSpam,markImportant, and archive. You can also use actions to specify a category for the mail, and assign folders, which we will get to later in the article.

Once the file is saved, the configuration file format can be verified with gmailctl test. If everything is good, then you can use gmailctl diff to view what changes are going to be made, and gmailctl apply to upload your new rule to Gmail.

$ gmailctl diff
Filters:
---
Current
+++ TO BE APPLIED
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
* Criteria:
from: @opensource.com Actions:
+ archive
  mark as important
  never mark as spam
+ apply label: 1-Projects/2022-OSDC

$ gmailctl apply -y
You are going to apply the following changes to your settings:
Filters:
--- Current
+++ TO BE APPLIED
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
* Criteria:
  from: @opensource.com Actions:
+ archive
  mark as important
  never mark as spam
  apply label: 1-Projects/2022-OSDC

Applying the changes...

As mentioned previously, new mail messages can be auto-filed by setting labels in the configuration. I want to assign all mails from Opensource.com to a folder specifically for them, and remove them from the inbox (or archive in Gmail terms). To do that, I would change the actions section to be:

  actions: {
        markRead: false,
        markSpam: false,
        markImportant: true,
        archive: true,
        labels: [
          "1-Projects/2022-OSDC"
        ]
      },

As you can see in the image above, gmailctl diff now shows only what is going to change. To apply it, I used gmailctl apply -y to skip the confirmation prompt. If the label doesn't exist, then an error is given, since a filter cannot be made for a label that does not already exist.

You can also make more complex rules that target specific conditions or multiple emails. For example, the following rule uses an and condition to look for messages from Cloudflare that are not purchase confirmations.

filter: { and: [ { from: "noreply@notify.cloudflare.com" }, { subject: "[cloudflare]" }, { query: "-{Purchase Confirmation}" } ] },

In the case of a rule that performs the same action on multiple messages, you can use an or structure. I use that to file all emails relating to tabletop games to a single folder.

filter: { or: [ { from: "no-reply@obsidianportal.com" }, { from: "no-reply@roll20.net" }, { from: "team@arcanegoods.com" }, { from: "team@dndbeyond.com" }, { from: "noreply@forge-vtt.com" }, { from: "@elventower.com" }, { from: "no-reply@dmsguild.com"}, { from: "info@goodman-games.com" }, { from: "contact@mg.ndhobbies.com" }, { from: "@monkeyblooddesign.co.uk" }, ] },

For people with multiple Gmail accounts that need their own sets of rules, you can specify a unique configuration file for them with the --config command line parameter. For example, my work uses Gmail, and I have a whole other set of rules for that. I can create a new gmailctl directory, and use that for the work configuration, like so:

$ gmailctl --config ~/.gmailctl-work/ diff

To make this easier on myself, I have two shell aliases to make it clear which configuration I'm using.

alias gmailctl-home="gmailctl --config $HOME/.gmailctl" alias gmailctl-work="gmailctl --config $HOME/.gmailctl-work"

The one drawback gmailctl has is that it will not apply a new filter to existing messages, so you still have to manually do things for mail received before doing gmailctl apply. I hope they are able to sort that out in the future. Other than that, gmailctl has allowed me to make adding and updating Gmail filters fast and almost completely automatic, and I can use my favorite email client without having to constantly go back to the web UI to change or update a filter.

The gmailctl command-line tool manages email filters with a simple standards-based configuration file.

Image by:

Ribkahn via Pixabay, CCO

Email Command line Linux What to read next 5 open source alternatives to Gmail This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

Open-Source Firmware For The MSI Alder Lake Motherboard Taking Shape

Phoronix - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 15:00
Last month was the surprising news of open-source Coreboot working on a readily available Intel Alder Lake motherboard. That work for the MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR4 motherboard is being carried out by independent firmware consulting firm 3mdeb and using the Dasharo open-source firmware distribution with Coreboot...

Catalyzing an ecosystem of co-creators for the cloud

Red Hat News - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 12:00

There is no doubt that cloud has transformed the IT industry. This transformation has only accelerated due to the global pandemic, with many organizations leaning on hybrid clouds to achieve the necessary balance of speed, efficiency and scale offered by cloud-native technologies and the reliability of existing on-premises infrastructure. As a result, how customers access cloud technology and services has evolved.

How CIOs can build the future they want with open source

Red Hat News - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 12:00

The following is an excerpt from my Red Hat Summit keynote today.

 

Just over a decade ago, Marc Andreessen pointed out that software was eating the world. We can definitively update his quote to be more accurate: "Software ate the world." Software has taken over our businesses and how you create value for your customers.

Intel oneAPI Level Zero Loader 1.8 Released For Supporting New L0 Features

Phoronix - Wed, 05/11/2022 - 12:00
Another Intel (open-source) software update coinciding with the company's Vision 2022 conference is a new oneAPI Level Zero Loader release...

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