today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 10, 2025

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Vote with your wallet

  • Barry Kauler ☛ PKGget update databases improved

    Testers of PKGget in Easy Excalibur have experienced issues. The URL 'deb.devuan.org' in particular is very unreliable. I have improved the code, and also made the startup of PKGget much faster by backgrounding some operations.

    The startup script that is run when PKGget starts, is /usr/local/petget/update_dbs.sh. What is does now is timeout if the package database server fails for some reason or takes too long. What then happens, is the user is offered to download from an alternative URL. The alternative URLs are specified in these 'sources.list*' files: [...]

  • BSD

    • [Old] Abdul Wahad Junaid ☛ OpenBSD vs Linux classic comparison between two Unix-like operating systems

      Look at both systems, highlighting architecture, development model, licensing, package management, administration, and typical use cases. No single section “wins” universally—your priorities (security, hardware support, ease of use, licensing, etc.) will guide the choice.

    • [Old] Linux Foundation ☛ Interview: Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD

      Theo de Raadt is the project leader for OpenBSD, a Unix-like operating system. We spoke with Theo about the upcoming release of OpenBSD, 3.9, the financial state of the project, and about companies that profit from free software without contributing back.

      NewsForge: Hello Theo. Could you tell us a few things about yourself and your involvement in the OpenBSD project?

      Theo de Raadt: I have been the project leader for OpenBSD now for more than 10 years, and along the way I have had some good adventures with the developers in the group. We’ve developed some side projects as well, which are heavily used by everyone in the Unix world, such as OpenSSH.

  • Debian Family

    • Thorsten Alteholz ☛ Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in July 2025

      Debian LTS

      This was my hundred-thirty-third month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. During my allocated time I uploaded or worked on: [...]

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • ZDNet ☛ Canonical's OpenJDK builds promise Java devs more speed - and a whopping 12 years of security support

      Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has announced the introduction of its own certified OpenJDK builds. With 90% of Fortune 500 companies relying on Java for their backend development, this move is designed to address the growing complexity and security demands faced by Java developers.

      It starts with Canonical committing, via an Ubuntu Pro subscription, to up to 12 years of security support for all OpenJDK Long Term Support (LTS) releases. This will extend the life cycle of legacy applications for the foreseeable future.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Education

    • Phil Eaton ☛ What even is distributed systems

      The best way to learn about the principles and fundamentals of distributed systems is to 1) read Designing Data Intensive Applications and 2) read through the papers and follow the notes in the MIT Distributed Systems course.

      For Designing Data Intensive Applications (DDIA), I strongly encourage you to find buddies at work or online who will read it through with you. You can also always join the Software Internals Discord's #distsys channel to ask questions as you go. But it's still best if you have some partners to go through the book with, even if they are as new to it as you.

    • Jason Bryer ☛ Predictive Modeling with Missing Data

      I will be giving a talk at useR 2025 on predictive modeling with missing data.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • The Verge ☛ Why Donald Trump’s environmental data purge is so much worse this time

        A watchdog group that monitors publicly-available environmental data has recorded 70 percent more federal website changes during Trump’s first 100 days in office in 2025 compared to the start of his first term in 2017.

        Federal agencies are taking broader swings to ax public resources from their websites this time around, the report shows. They’re hiding which communities are most affected by pollution. The Trump administration has not only tossed out the most authoritative national reports on climate change, they’re starting to replace facts and evidence with disinformation. We’re seeing a revisionist history unfold.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Howard Oakley ☛ A brief history of PDF on the Mac

      When the first version of PDF was released in 1993, with its Carousel reader app, it faced competition from other similar ideas, and Adobe found itself competing against products including Farallon’s Replica, and Tumbleweed’s Envoy that gained the support of WordPerfect, then a popular cross-platform word processor. PDF didn’t become dominant until Adobe distributed its reader app free, rather than charging $50 for it as it had initially.