I received a new laptop for work - a Dell XPS 13. Dell has been long famous for offering certain models with pre-installed Linux as a supported option, and opting for those is nice for moving some euros/dollars from certain PC desktop OS monopoly towards Linux desktop engineering costs. Notably Lenovo also offers Ubuntu and Fedora options on many models these days (like Carbon X1 and P15 Gen 2).

Obviously a smooth, ready-to-rock Ubuntu installation is nice for most people already, but I need openSUSE, so after checking everything is fine with Ubuntu, I continued to install openSUSE Tumbleweed as a dual boot option. As I’m a funny little tinkerer, I obviously went with some special things. I wanted:

• Ubuntu to remain as the reference supported OS on a small(ish) partition, useful to compare to if trying out new development versions of software on openSUSE and finding oddities.
• openSUSE as the OS consuming most of the space.
• LUKS encryption for openSUSE without LVM.
• ext4’s new fancy ‘fast_commit’ feature in use during filesystem creation.
• As a result of all that, I ended up juggling back and forth installation screens a couple of times (even more than shown below, and also because I forgot I wanted to use encryption the first time around).

First boots to pre-installed Ubuntu and installation of openSUSE Tumbleweed as the dual-boot option:

(if the embedded video is not shown, use a direct link)

Some notes from the openSUSE installation:

• openSUSE installer’s partition editor apparently does not support resizing or automatically installing side-by-side another Linux distribution, so I did part of the setup completely on my own.
• Installation package download hanged a couple of times, only passed when I entered a mirror manually. On my TW I’ve also noticed download problems recently, there might be a problem with some mirror I need to escalate.
• The installer doesn’t very clearly show encryption status of the target installation - it took me a couple of attempts before I even noticed the small “encrypted” column and icon (well, very small, see below), which also did not spell out the device mapper name but only the main partition name. In the end it was going to do the right thing right away and use my pre-created encrypted target partition as I wanted, but it could be a better UX. Then again I was doing my very own tweaks anyway.
• Let’s not go to the details why I’m so old-fashioned and use ext4 :)
• openSUSE’s installer does not work fine with HiDPI screen. Funnily the tty consoles seem to be fine and with a big font.
• At the end of the video I install the two GNOME extensions I can’t live without, Dash to Dock and Sound Input & Output Device Chooser.

openSUSE begins an image design contest for the openSUSE Conference 2022 today. The design will be used for the conference poster and t-shirt.

Submitted images must meet certain requirements listed below and on the contest wiki page. Designers are encouraged to use open-source graphic editing software like Inkscape, Gimp or Krita.

Submitted designs should be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 and allow everyone to use it without attribution. Designs submitted must be original and should not include any third party materials conflicting with CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The design contest has the following requirements:

• The image(s) design must be an .svg format
• The image(s) needs to be emailed to ddemaio (@) opensuse.org with the subject “oSC22 Design Contest”
• The image(s) design must be a size that is able to be printed at the same size on a small and 3XL t-shirt. This means that designs can not be printed at the bottom, top or edges of the t-shirt and can not wrap around the t-shirt
• Must include the words openSUSE Conference in the design
• The image should be added to the contest wiki page as a .png so people can view the design

Design Guidelines:

• Avoid using thin lines
• Avoid using gradients
• Limit design image to 2 to 3 colors
• Designs should abide by the branding guidelines and guidelines for the use of the logo in the design

The contests begins today. The deadline for the contest is March 31 at 23:59 UTC. The winning design will be announced shortly after the deadline.

The Elastic Cloud is a service by Elastic providing Elasticsearch and related services in an easy-to-use package. Last year someone reported an issue that it does not work properly with syslog-ng. I did not have time to investigate at that time. Now I started a free trial and soon my log messages from syslog-ng started to appear in Kibana in Elastic Cloud.

From this blog you can learn how to configure syslog-ng for the Elastic Cloud. I go with the most basic settings: exploring Elastic Cloud and syslog-ng Elasticsearch features are both out of scope, as both are very well documented on their respective websites.

You can read my blog at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/sending-logs-to-elastic-cloud-using-syslog-ng

The openSUSE Project added an enormous amount of compute power for its projects this past year thanks to SUSE, which is the project’s main sponsor. The added hardware will help with open-source development.

The project now uses around a thousand build workers for x86, which will help with creating and distributing software for major Linux distributions in the Open Build Service.

Multiple other architectures were added to OBS; a few months ago, the project added five new POWER9 machines, which are valued at roughly $80,000 per machine. The additional machines will put PowerPC back to a level consistent with the build power of OBS’ arm machines. PowerPC wasn’t the only IBM addition to OBS. In August, the project added an additional mainframe; an IBM LinuxONE System was added as loaner hardware. Matched with a z13 mainframe computer, this gives OBS  extensive build power for s390. A new IBM LinuxONE System without storage starts at about $135,000, so IBM is also investing a lot in the utility of openSUSE and community based open-source development. One thing for sure is that users of the Open Build Service will experience some high-performance building after receiving compute assets benefiting open-source development.

In addition, SUSE sponsored two new arm servers that are the first of its specific hardware type in Germany. SUSE also contributed an additional x86-System for rsync.opensuse.org, which was deployed in the fall. The enhancement of the rsync.opensuse.org system with its 42T direct-attached storage makes it possible to host a copy of all download.opensuse.org content; this immediately helped openSUSE Tumbleweed users across the globe since mirrors replicate package updates to end-point users of the rolling release. Thanks to another sponsor, IP-Exchange, rsync.opensuse.org is running in an external CoLocation Datacenter near Nuremberg.

The generosity to openSUSE extended not only from companies, but through individuals as well. Coly Li, who is working on bcache in the kernel,  donated two 8TB SSDs for rsync.opensuse.org; bcache is a block cache that allows people to use an SSD as a fast read/write cache for another block device. A big thank you to Li and all the companies who are for investing in the openSUSE Project.

We had a meetup in the conference room of Flying Dodo, Bagatelle, on Saturday 22 January 2022. Luboš Kocman, the Release Manager for openSUSE, who came to Mauritius on vacation was kind enough to spare a few hours and meet us.

Nirvan Pagooah, the Secretary of the Linux User Group of Mauritius, made the announcement of the meetup on the LUGM discussion list. Due to sanitary restrictions imposed by the government we could not make the meetup public. We had to keep it a private event with a limited number of attendees.

Luboš told us about some new things that will be coming to Leap in the future. He explained his role as a Release Manager for openSUSE and how the community as a whole is regarded as a SUSE partner. He explained the relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE community. He also talked about SUSE Liberty Linux, a new offering by SUSE which offers support for mixed Linux environment, like RHEL, CentOS and SLES.

Luboš showed us code.opensuse.org/leap/features/issues where community members can request the features they want most in openSUSE Leap. Hence, contributing to making openSUSE distributions better.

I asked whether the feature requests for Leap won't make it such that Leap and Tumbleweed will have different features. Luboš opened opensource.suse.com/legal/policy and explained that the contributions land in Factory first. He talked about the binary compatibility between Leap & SLES and users can test on Leap then migrate to SLES at total ease.

We talked about contributing to open source. Luboš mentioned non-code contributions and how easy it is to contribute to openSUSE. Ajay Ramjatan, one of the founders and the current President of LUGM, mentioned that for many years this is what he's been telling Linux & FOSS enthusiasts, that contributions can be in any form, like designs, translations, etc.

On that note Avinash Meetoo added that the Mauritian Creole (kreol morisien) can be an interesting FOSS project if we would consider adding Kreol support to openSUSE. He mentioned that there are people who are well versed on the topic but might not be techie, that is where we can work together and make it happen.

Renghen Pajanilingum shot a few tech questions, from containers to programming languages & having to compile software using different versions of packages. I know Renghen does not like to spend time fixing the distro problems because he'd rather spend that on actual work. However, he is one of the several Linux people that I have tried to lure to the green side. 😁 Not there yet but I am hopeful that we'll paint his laptop green one day.

I cannot end this blog without thanking Joffrey Michaïe for sponsoring a round of beer 🍺 (and other drinks) for everyone.

At around 5 p.m the meetup ended.

Some of us stayed at Flying Dodo for more beer and to have dinner. Finally, we went to Mugg & Bean for a coffee and continued chatting about work, life and the balance. At 8:30 p.m, the hotel's taxi came for Luboš.

Hoping to be able to meet and greet geekos again.

A couple of months ago my Jolla tablet was getting close to retirement, and I was looking for alternatives. The PineTab (and PineNote for that matter) wasn’t really attainable. And iOS and Android tablets don’t impress me much.

Since I was mainly using my tablet for reading my newspaper online and other reading, such as PDFs, I started looking at E-ink devices. More than ten years ago I had given e-book readers a try, without much success, the 6″ screen was too small for reading documents, the navigation was very cumbersome and the DRM situation with e-books was horrendous. But I did some research on the current situation and decided to get the 10.3″ PocketBook InkPad X. And so far I’m quite happy with it.

The main advantages of an E-ink device over a tablet is the eye-friendly E-ink screen. It’s very low weight even for a 10.3″, it’s significantly lighter than the 8″ Jolla tablet (300 g vs. 385 g). And the battery life is excellent, with about 30-45 minutes of reading per day I only have to charge it once per month – and this is with the backlight and Wi-Fi turned on.

Of course there are some limitations also. The update speed of the E-ink screen is very slow, compared to your general purpose tablet, so it’s not really a replacement. It’s a reading device only, period. The PocketBook doesn’t come with an app store where you can install additional apps, you’ll need to make do with the basic, default apps. I’ll go through the most important ones briefly below.

The web browser
The web browser is basic but it works quite well. Certainly well enough for me to read my daily newspaper online and to read Danish library e-books on the browser based system ereolen.dk. My only gripe with it, is that I’d wish there was a touchscreen gesture to page down, so you wouldn’t need to use the hardware buttons, like the books and document reader app has. The browser also works fine for text heavy web sites such as Wikipedia, but don’t even think about using the PocketBook for your general web browsing.

Documents and Books
I was really pleased to learn that these days e-readers have much better handling of PDF documents than last time I dappled with them. You can crop the margins and it handles columned documents well, so you can use screen real estate effectively and with the 10.3″ screen it comes quite close to a printed A4 version of the document.

As for books the PocketBook supports a wide range of formats and comes with the Legimi bookstore integrated, however that only has Polish and German books as far as I can tell, so it is of limited use. But these days you can buy e-pub format e-books on most online bookstores, and usually they only have watermark DRM. If you come by some books with more nasty DRM, supposedly you can transfer them to the PocketBook without the need for MS Windows-only Adobe Digital Editions, but I haven’t actually tested this feature.

You can easily transfer documents and books to the PocketBook via USB mass storage (USB-C), via an e-mail service or via DropBox.

RSS Reader
The PocketBook also comes with an RSS feed reader, however this works in a somewhat unusual way. What it does is, it downloads all your feeds and full articles to a flat local file for offline reading. Of course this is pretty smart in many cases. But for me personally it isn’t very useful, the feeds I subscribe to such as planet.opensuse.org, planetkde.org, boxingscene.com etc. tend to have a lot of new articles every day, and I just want to quickly browse the headlines and read a few select articles, and unfortunately this use-case isn’t really feasible with the PocketBook RSS reader.

The holiday season hustle and bustle is through and I am able to concentrate on reorganizing the messes I have made in getting ready for the season. As the fall time projects finished up, the Christmastime projects kicked into full gear between programming my Christmas light display, baking cookies and making Gingerbread houses with the kids. There come a bunch of other miserable cold weather chores that go along with living on a subsistence farm.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

7 days have passed since my last review – and as many snapshots have been released since then too. And this even includes my error of one day performing the check-in ‘slightly too late’ (i.e. past midnight). That’s the reason that 0119 did not exist. The check-in was too late and it was already January 20th by then. The snapshots released were numbered 0113, 0114, 0115, 0116, 0117, 0118, and 0120.

The relevant changes/updates published during this week included:

• SQLite 3.37.1 & 3.37.2
• linux-glibc-devel 5.16: syncing up with the kernel
• strace 5.16
• Poppler 22.01.0
• Mesa 21.3.4
• Mozilla Firefox 96.0.1
• shadow 4.11.1 (updated from 4.9)
• Linux kernel 5.16.1

The staging projects are still under control, and there is some space left for your submissions. Keep them coming. Just like these things being worked out at the moment:

• KDE Plasma 5.24 (currently beta is staged and being tested)
• Ruby 3.1 to be introduced and become the main ruby interpreter. Ruby 2.7 and Ruby 3.0 will disappear at the same time (waiting for apparmor fix)
• Python 3.6 interpreter will be removed (once all python36-FOO modules are gone)
• Python 3.10 as the distro default interpreter (a bit down the line)
• GCC 12 introduction has started to be as ready as possible for when the upstream release happens.

openSUSE Tumbleweed had a variety of package updates in smaller snapshots throughout this week.

A few things being prepared for Tumbleweed is that the Linux Kernel 5.16.1 was scheduled for check in and pre-integration tests for GNU Compiler Collection 12 have been started; the rolling release anticipates a merge of GCC 12 in mid-Spring.

The latest Tumbleweed snapshot, 20220117, updated Italian translations for libstorage-ng 4.4.75 and added python-rpm-macros for building the package. Haskell support was dropped in the thrift 0.15.0 package, which is a scalable cross-language service framework for Remote Procedure Call and Inter-Process Communication. No changelogs were provided for the plugins package written in Rust called gstreamer-plugins-rs. The remaining packages in the snapshot were all Python Package Index updates. Among the key PyPI packages to point out is the major version update of python-unicodedata2 14.0.0, which dropped support for End of Life Python 2.7 and 3.5 and added support for Python 3.9, 3.10 and PyPy3. A Tumbleweed arm 20220118 snapshot was release updating the same package listed above.

Anti-virus toolkit ClamAV 0.103.5 was updated in snapshot 20220116; the package fixed a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures that had an invalid pointer read that could cause a crash. The shadow package that converts UNIX password files to the shadow password format updated to version 4.11.1. This package fixed CVE-2013-4235, which affects the race condition when copying and removing directory trees. Object-oriented Universal Plug and Play framework gupnp 1.4.3 now properly propagates canceled actions in deprecated calls and fixed deprecated asynchronous calls. PyPI updates in this snapshot were python-python-lzo 1.14, python-tables 3.7.0, and the major version update of python-hiredis 2.0.0 dropped support for EOL Python versions 2.7, 3.4, and 3.5.

Mozilla Firefox 96.0.1 was updated in the 20220115 snapshot. The web browser made improvements to the parsing of content-length headers. An update of Mesa 21.3.4 was able to fix a bit of the glitches with the Rockchip RK3399 processor as well as the Panfrost G52 Firefox glitches on YouTube playback. Several patches were added in the 6.3.20220101 ncurses update, which improved the configuration check for getttynam. openSUSE’s perl-Bootloader 0.937 package now supports secure boot on PowerPC and autoyast2 4.4.25 was able to properly merge the autoupgrade workflow when using the online medium. Another package to update in the snapshot was firewalld 1.0.3, which fixed some build features, ipsets and inputs.

The 5.16 strace package had many improvements and a couple implementations in the 20220114 snapshot. The package is used to monitor and tamper with interactions between processes and the Linux kernel, which include system calls, signal deliveries, and changes of process states. The updated Strace package implemented a --secontext=mismatch option to find mismatches in SELinux contexts and implemented decoding of futex_waitv syscall introduced in Linux Kernel 5.16. The update of Flatpak 1.12.3 made minor improvements to the search command, to the list command and to the repair command. Flatpak also fixed a CVE that had a malicious repository, which could have sent invalid application metadata in a way that hides some of the app permissions displayed during installation. The snapshot was a CVE killer thanks to busybox 1.35.0, which addressed 17 CVEs. One of those, CVE-2016-6301, was an Network Time Protocol server denial of service flaw. BusyBox also added some new features in find, date and cpio. The free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol, freerdp 2.5.0 backported OpenSSL 3.0 support and some Wayland client clipboard issues. Other packages to update in the snapshot were btrfsprogs 5.16, GNOME display manager gdm 41.3, gnome-session 41.3, poppler 22.01.0 and about 15 more packages.

The snapshot to start the week, 20220113, updated only two packages. The update of 389-ds 2.0.11 fixed various User Interface bugs. This enterprise-class package for Open Source LDAP servers fixed many bugs and also fixed the multiple index types not handled in the openldap migration. The second package to update in the snapshot was sqlite3 3.37.1. This C-language library added the .connection command, allowing the CLI to keep multiple database connections open at the same time. The SQL database engine also added the --safe command-line option that disables dot-commands and SQL statements that might cause side-effects that extend beyond the single database file named on the command-line.

Another arm specific Tumbleweed snapshot was released this week; the arm 20220116 snapshot updated all the above listed packages from snapshots 20220113, 20220114, 20220115 and 20220116.

I’m not a POWER (or recently: Power) expert, only an enthusiastic user and advocate. Still, in the past couple of weeks a number of people from around the world asked my opinion how the POWER architecture could be kept relevant. This blog is really just an opinion, as I do not have the financial means to go ahead. It is full of compromises some people are not willing to make. However, I think this is the safest and fastest way forward.

Why? Is there a problem?

Power 10 was just released, and used in some of the most powerful servers ever. Power became an officially supported architecture in major Linux distributions. Why do I talk about becoming irrelevant? Is there really a problem?

Well, it all depends on the perspective. IBM treats Power as an enterprise platform, just like mainframes. And as long as they run AIX and IBMi with a couple of proprietary commercial applications, they are right. However, as far as I know, a good part of Power boxes run Linux. And Linux is a volume play. The more users and developers work on a platform the better chance it has for survival. This is how 32 bit Power support was dropped many years ago from most distributions, even if some people still have Apple Macs and Genesi Pegasos boxes running. And this is how 64bit big-endian support was removed from mainstream distributions as well.

Power 9 had a huge momentum, in most parts software support for Power 9 is now in par with x86 and ARM. Unfortunately it is not enough to reach a momentum, it needs to be maintained as well. Raptor Computing did a fantastic job making Power more affordable. Those machines reached key developers in major projects. However their prices are going up due to supply chain issues and they do not plan on Power 10 any time soon (as it would require to use some closed source software components in the firmware).

The OpenPower foundation is planing to solve the volume play in its Power Pi project, but it is still years away. Currently there is no CPU that could be used on the planned $250 board and normally it takes 1.5 years or more to go from planning to a mass produced CPU.

You might say, that there are free resources available for open source developers. There is GitHub CI support for Power and various universities provide remote access to interested open source developers to Power servers. However most developers consider having a system on their desk locally as the best way to develop software. ARM and even RiscV have a huge advantage with the average developer now.

The Power architecture is handled as first class citizen in most major Linux distributions and even in FreeBSD, but by the time we have affordable Power hardware to grow the number of Power users and developers, many of them might already drop this level of support for Power.

Affordable hardware quickly

The previous section of my blog can be easily summarized in a single sentence in a TL;DR; style: we need affordable Power hardware quickly to keep and expand the momentum. Obviously it needs compromises as well.

Keep the dream alive

Old Macs are big-endian, just as network processors from NXP. Some Power developers still want big-endian systems to keep the dream alive. But support for big-endian systems is mostly gone from Linux distributions, and when it comes to developing common utilities or even programming languages, most developers are no more even aware that a world exists outside of little-endian. As much as I love the PowerPC laptop project, I see it now as a dead end: producing hardware for an ever shrinking software ecosystem.

Power 9

As much as I’d love to see a Power 10 desktop, I do not expect it to be affordable any time soon. Right now only 15 and 30 core variants are available for high end servers. Even if Power 9 is not so power-efficient and can be outperformed in some cases by some of the latest x86 CPUs, it is already available and at a relatively good price.

Not fully open source desktop board

Raptor Computing did a fantastic job at creating fully owner controlled boards where even the smallest bit of software controlling the board is open source. However even their smaller board is a full server board. Removing server components, like remote management capabilities, could bring costs down, just like components with closed firmware. My experience with firmware is that open source does not mean necessarily better, rather the opposite (yes, I am aware that this statement contradicts my title: open source evangelist).

I would not want to compete with IBM or Raptor Computing with server boards. Both have done their optimizations in enterprise manageability or having a fully open source stack down to the lowest level. On the other hand, while using a server board in the desktop technically works, simplifying it down to the desktop both on the hardware and software side can help to make it more affordable and thus reach more users. Hopefully a lot more users.

Roadmap

Obviously, creating a more affordable Power 9 board quickly is just a first step. It helps to reach more users and developers than the current IBM and Raptor Computing offerings. It also helps to make sure that efforts of the OpenPower Foundation are not wasted and Power support stays as first class citizen in major Linux distributions.

Power 10

I do not know the Power 10 CPU roadmap and if there will be any smaller versions of Power 10, but I really hope so. Those could be used in desktop systems once available.

Power Pi

Of course the ultimate target is a board that anyone can afford without thinking twice. Just like a Raspberry Pi. The Power Pi is planing to fulfill this idea. It might be here sooner or later than lower end Power 10 systems.

Libre-soc

The Libre-soc project is also building a Power CPU with many ground breaking ideas. Unfortunately a generally available version is expected to arrive even later than the Power 10 based desktop or Power Pi.

TL;DR;

Power itself is probably not in direct danger, but Linux and open source are definitely becoming an endangered species on Power due to the lack of a large active community. This situation could be improved with more affordable Power hardware. In short term a Power 9 board could be used for this purpose, on a longer term there are many open possibilities ranging from SoC to Power 10 (or later).

Obviously, my post only covers one aspect of a problem: keeping the open source community around POWER healthy. I have no idea about the engineering or financial side. I wonder about your opinion and if anyone will step up and implement something along these lines.