Free Software and GNU/Linux Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 07, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • LWN ☛ LWN site tour 2025

    Over the past year or so, LWN has added a number of useful new features for our subscribers to enhance the experience of reading and commenting on our content. Those features are of little use, however, to readers who do not know about them. It has been more than a decade since we last provided a tour of the site—it seems that another is in order. Walk this way for a look at the LWN kernel source database (KSDB), enhanced commenting features, EPUB downloads, and more.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Hackaday ☛ FLOSS Weekly Episode 819: Session, It’s All About The Metadata

      This week, Jonathan Bennett talks Session and cryptocurrency skepticism with Kee Jefferys! Why fork Signal? How does Session manage to decentralize? And why the cryptocurrency angle? Listen to find out!

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • New Releases

    • Distro Watch ☛ Distribution Release: Univention Corporate Server 5.2-0

      Univention Corporate Server is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The company's latest release is Univention Corproate Server (UCS) 5.2-0. Some of the highlights of the new version focus on single sign-on and block list filters: [...]

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ Self-hosting my emails again

    After three years with Purelymail, I’m back at self-hosting my mail server. Not because it’s cheaper (it’s actually much pricier to pay for a VPS), but because my mails are now hosted in Europe (who knows what happens next in the USA), I have more control to configure things how I want, and I can comply with GDPR.

    This time, I decided to use docker-mailserver (boring setup with Postfix + Dovecot + Rspamd with Abusix Guardian Mail + ClamAV) running on a Fedora CoreOS VPS at Hetzner in their Finland data center.

  • Klara ☛ ZFS Orchestration Tools – Part 1: Snapshots

    Snapshots have a variety of uses, including forming the underpinnings of FreeBSD boot environments feature. With regular snapshots of data files, it can be easy to recover files that were accidentally deleted or modified. While some desktop environments provide a “Trash” folder as a protection against accidental deletions, it can be hard to resist the compulsion to empty it. Moreover, a trash folder only contains deleted files, which is no help if you want to go back to the previous content of a file that has been overwritten.

    With regular snapshots in place, it is tempting to think of them as backups. While they do provide an easy means to recover individual files, they still reside on the same physical storage media and use the same operating system and filesystem as the live data. Backups are meant for disaster recovery, and ZFS snapshots won’t be of any help if your data center burns down.

  • [Repeat] FSF ☛ Free Software Foundation to auction off original GNU drawings, awards, and historic tech

    In its program for their fortieth anniversary, the organization hinted that it would organize an unprecedented virtual memorabilia auction, and left collectors and free software fans wondering which of the pieces of the FSF's history would be auctioned off. Today the FSF lifted the veil and gave a sneak peak of some of the more prestigious entries in the memorabilia auction. The bidding will start as a virtual silent auction on March 17 and run through March 21, with more auction items revealed each day, and will culminate in an virtual live auction on March 23, 2025, 14:00 to 17:00 EDT.

  • SaaS/Back End/Databases

    • Marc Brooker ☛ Versioning versus Coordination

      Today, we’re going to build a little database system. For availability, latency, and scalability, we’re going to divide our data into multiple shards, have multiple replicas of each shard, and allow multiple concurrent queries. As a block diagram, it’s going to look something like this: [...]

    • The New Stack ☛ Aerospike Debuts High-Performance Distributed ACID Transactions

      The traditional trade-off for distributed databases with high write speeds was availability for consistency. Version 8 of Aerospike’s performant multimodal database, which was unveiled Wednesday, helps dispel this notion by offering real-time distributed ACID transactional support at scale.

      Already known for its high-performance online transactional processing (OLTP), Aerospike’s engine has been updated with key features that are ideal for ensuring consistency without sacrificing speed. In addition to providing distributed ACID transactions, version 8 guarantees strict serializability of those transactions.

  • Content Management Systems (CMS) / Static Site Generators (SSG)

    • Kiwi TCMS: Kiwi TCMS 14.0

      We're happy to announce Kiwi TCMS version 14.0!

      This is a major version release which includes security related updates, backwards incompatible changes, several improvements and new translations.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Rlang ☛ Open Science and Open Source only with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

        The open in open source and open science means more than how we share code or data. It means knocking down the barriers to participation so that it is open and accessible to all, that everyone can join in the benefits and joys of science, and removing our blinders to the humanity of those we previously missed.

        By expanding the circle of our collaborators, we expand knowledge and perspectives. This in turn helps us solve problems more quickly and efficiently, and helps us to anticipate and adapt to more situations. A diverse circle of collaborators enables more robust results, better software and stronger science. We can move towards those goals faster, further, and better together.

      • Axios ☛ Doctors sue Trump administration over removed health data

        Zoom in: The lawsuit seeks to compel the CDC, the FDA and HHS to restore webpages and datasets and to stop the agencies from further removing or substantially modifying significant health information, when doing so would prevent timely public access to the information.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Matt Langford ☛ Which RSS App Do People Actually Use?

      I recently asked what people are using for RSS these days on a couple different platforms. I didn’t necessarily expect a clear winner, but I was still surprised at how completely spread out the results were. I decided to tally the results and create a chart (because why not) for all to see.

    • APNIC ☛ The DNS root server system gets surprisingly few queries

      At the ICANN 81 meeting in Istanbul on 10 November 2024, ISC president Jeff Osborn gave a presentation about the DNS Root Server System, in an effort to increase understanding of the Root Server System (RSS) and Root Server Operators (RSOs). The talk was intended for the members of the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), but much of Jeff’s explanation may be of interest to general audiences.