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Internet Society

Community Snapshot—March

Internet Society chapters work tirelessly around the world to grow, strengthen, and protect the Internet. Each month, we provide a brief overview of just some of the things our network of chapters and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) has been working on throughout the previous month.

9to5Linux

Mozilla Thunderbird 137 Open-Source Email Client Released, Here’s What’s Changed

Thunderbird 137 doesn’t introduce any new features apart from a splash screen to encourage users to donate to help keep Thunderbird’s development alive. However, it disables the system tray icon on Linux systems until it gains functionality and adds support for using file names when storing mail folders on Windows systems.

Slackware-Based PorteuX 2.0 Distro Released with GNOME 48 and Linux Kernel 6.14

Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.14 kernel series, PorteuX 2.0 comes about two months after PorteuX 1.9, featuring the latest GNOME 48 desktop environment for the GNOME editions, as well as experimental Wayland sessions for the Cinnamon, LXQt, and Xfce editions.

KDE Plasma 6.3.4 Is Out Today to Fix the Most Common Crashes and Other Bugs

Coming three weeks after KDE Plasma 6.3.3, the KDE Plasma 6.3.4 release is here to fix the most common Plasma crash that could happen when unplugging screens, especially when using a dock, improves the pixel-perfection of various KWin effects, including Wobbly Windows, and adds keyboard navigation and interaction to the User Switcher widget’s popup.

Firefox 138 Is Out for Public Beta Testing with New Contrast Control Settings

With vertical tabs and tab groups now available to everyone, Firefox 138 looks like a smaller update promising only support for copying links for background tabs using the tabstrip context menu on Linux and macOS systems, as well as an improved address and credit card autofill feature that better handles dynamically updated forms.

Valve’s Latest Steam Client Release Brings Faster Download of Updates on Linux

For Linux users, the new Steam Client update improves the download speed of Steam client updates, fixes a rare issue on Linux where non-steam Protons could get assigned an incorrect compatibility tool, and no longer applies compatibility tool filtering to shortcuts.

LinuxGizmos.com

ESP32-P4-Module-DEV-KIT Introduces Wi-Fi 6, Dual-Core RISC-V, and Ethernet

The ESP32-P4-Module-DEV-KIT is a low-cost development board based on the ESP32-P4, with an integrated ESP32-C6 coprocessor. It supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5/BLE, and is designed for embedded HMI applications and edge computing.

NV8600-Nano AI Kit: Jetson Orin Nano Super Mode + 4x GbE, CANBus, MIPI

AAEON’s UP brand has introduced the NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit, combining an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano module with Super Mode support, an expanded I/O carrier board, and a preinstalled AI software package designed for embedded and computer vision developers.

Efinix Titanium Ti180 FPGA Delivers Embedded LPDDR4x Memory and Expanded I/O

Efinix has introduced the Titanium Ti180J484D1 FPGA, which includes 2 Gb of embedded LPDDR4x memory. By integrating memory directly within the FPGA package, the number of pins required for external memory interfaces is reduced, simplifying PCB design and lowering system complexity.

(Updated) OrangePi RV SBC Gains JH7110 RISC-V Processor and PCIe 2.0 Interface

The OrangePi RV is a development board based on the open-source RISC-V architecture, designed to offer high performance with low power consumption. This single-board computer features a JH7110 quad-core RISC-V processor, an M.2 M-key 2280 PCIe slot for SSD expansion, and supports up to 8GB of RAM.

Review: MiniOS 20230606

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Aug 21, 2023

MiniOS seems to do what it sets out to accomplish, being a live desktop distribution with a variety of editions in different sizes. It provides a portable, desktop flavour of Debian which can be quite minimal or fairly robust. While I found MiniOS wasn't able to boot on my laptop, it did a fine job in a virtual machine and offered a smooth experience with no surprises. With this in mind, it's tempting to declare "mission accomplished" and give MiniOS a gold star.

On the other hand, MiniOS's website says the project has been around for over a decade (in one form or another) and, to date, there is very little in the way of useful documentation or infrastructure. There is almost no documentation on the distribution's concept of modules or setting up a configuration file. There is very little in terms of explaining what these optional modules are or why we would want to use them compared to other package/service formats. The discussion forum is almost empty, which feels weird for a project claiming over a decade of experience.

The current release (at the time of writing) is still based on Debian 11 which means the most up to date software in MiniOS is about three years old. This might not be a problem, exactly, but it does make the distribution look dated compared to some other live desktop distributions.

None of these concerns I mentioned is a critical problem, the distribution still accomplishes its core goal. However, it feels like there are some pieces missing - user support, documentation, newer hardware support - which could make running the distribution go from merely usable to a powerful, customized experience.

I'd also like to acknowledge that it seems the project quietly publishes new ISO files semi-regularly. There have been a few updates in the week I've been writing this overview of the project. So it looks like development is quite active. It's not always clear if the new snapshots are offering complete new versions of the distribution or minor fixes as there do not appear to be any release notes. However, I am hoping this activity indicates there were be more improvements and refreshed documentation in the future.

Read on

Tux Machines