2020 has been a tough year. The global pandemic made it possible to work very much on my personal projects, so let’s talk about that. Also some “Thank Yous” will be given.

Celebrating Nemesis Anniversary

At January 2nd, 2020, we introduced Nemesis. Nemesis is my very own Telegram group management bot, written in Python. Back then, the very popular bot BanhammerMarie went offline in favour of a closed source, proprietary alternative I did not want to use. I first wanted to clone Marie in Java, but scraped that idea soon. So I forked Marie, and over the time, some new features were introduced.

Features arrived in 2020

Patches to version 1.x

Multi Language support

Our first real change was support for multiple languages. In theory, it is now possible to use different languages in chats using /lang, but we do not have the translations yet. Any help is appreciated, so I you want, go ahead and check out our translation portal.

Import and Export

We also added support for importing settings from the proprietary bot @MissRose_bot we wanted to replace in our groups. This should make it much easier for newcomers to migrate their chats over to Nemesis. In addition, it is now possible to export some of Nemesis settings to a nice and readable .toml file.

Version 2.0

Later the year, the first major update of Nemesis, version 2.0, was released. This version brought a lot of new features and improvements, so let’s take a look.

Migration to python-telegram-bot 12.x and 13.x

Nemesis now completely uses version 12.x of the python-telegram-bot api. Originally written for version 11.x, this transition took a lot of time, but it allows us to keep the bot running, as using an old version of the api would make it more difficult to add new features later. Some time after, we also took the transition to 13.x, which was a lot smoother then migrating to its predecessor.

Downloading stickers and creating custom packs

Another new feature is the ability to download Stickers as .png files and to create your own sticker packs! Did not try it out yet? Go ahead and send /help to the bot and let it show you how to do so! It only works with static, not animated, stickers at the moment though.

Reputation system

Also, it is now possible to vote on messages by replying to them with + or -. You can enable this feature by typing /reputation on.

Secret messages

The last feature I want to mention is the possibility to send secret messages in groups, called “whispers”. In order to enable this, it was necessary to use InlineQuerys, which actually was a pretty painful process. BUt it works now, and Nemesis replaces another bot in our groups, @whisperBot, enabling me greater privacy, since I do not need to trust a third party in order to send secret messages.

Features to come in 2021

I’ve got some ideas for new features, so here they are. Any feedback is appreciated.

REST based API

This one is not particularly useful for the user, but enables us to build great tools based on Nemesis. Building a REST Api allows us to build applications integrated into Nemesis, such as a fully functional web based administration panel.

Leveling system

Another feature to come is leveling, similar to Combot. This way it will finally be possible to manage a group with only Nemesis, without needing another bot.

Statistics

Same as above, it will be possible to get rid of Combot and do all of the management with Nemesis. Statistics will be generated based on the time of day, the sender and the message type. The message itself won’t be saved in any way, keeping your messages private. Statistics will be disabled by default.

Performance Improvements

Currently, Nemesis is not really scalable and won’t work well if the number of users grows. In order to change that, it will be necessary to change the way the bot handels database queries and processes data, as well as optimizing it to use multiple threads and cache data in memory.

GUtilities Reloaded

In 2019, we were working on creating Minecraft plugins for a multiplayer network we wanted to call “GamelMC”. This project was later scrapped, and all the code written was archived. However, in 2020, I used some of the old code and ported one plugin to Minecraft 1.16.4. The plugin adds basic functionality to the server, such as chat formatting, chat clearing, fancy kick messages, teamchat and a lot more. The source code is available here.

Kenaten

Back in late 2019, I discovered a mobile game which some of my friends played as well. Together with @ttzug I worked on creating a bot for that game, but this project was scrapped. The project was to bulky, and the game turned out not being really good. In addition, personal reasons made me quitting that game.

Contribution to other Open Source projects

Corona Warn Companion

This is an app which helps you better understand the warnings the official Corona-Warn-App in Germany. Let me quote from it’s README:

!!! quote The app reads the Rolling Proximity IDs recorded by your device from the Exposure Notifications database (this is only possible with root permissions, which is why official Exposure Notifications apps, such as Corona-Warn-App, cannot display these details). The app downloads the Diagnosis Keys from the official German Corona-Warn-Server and other countries’ servers, as selected by you. For Germany, it downloads the keys published daily for the last few days, and the keys published every hour for today. Only keys for the days found in step 1 are shown and counted.

However, the application was not able to read data from the FOSS version of the Corona Warn App, so I added that. Anyway, the companion app is really cool, so if your device is rooted, you should definitely check it out! Here is the link.

YaST

YaST is the installation and configuration tool for openSUSE and the SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions. It features an easy-to-use interface and powerful configuration capabilities. I just did some small bugfixes, and am pretty proud on my first contribution to a FOSS project.

Thank you!

Now its time to thank some people. First of all, huge thank you to the amazing people who keep Nemesis running. Namely:

Speaking of GenosseSeverus, make sure to check out their Telegram Themes: Sharry Themes

Another thank you goes to Paul Larsen for building the amazing base of Nemesis.

Happy new year!

Android telefoniert in seinen Voreinstellungen doch recht viel nach Hause zu Google, dem Gerätehersteller und anderen Parteien. In diesem Artikel ist beschrieben, wie man diese “Phone-Home Funktionen” einschränken kann. Wie viel Google so überuns erfährt, zeigt dieses Zitat von Aufsichtsratchef Eric Schmidt:

With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.

Es ist also an der Zeit, diesem Datensammeln den Stecker zu ziehen.

Der sanfte Weg

Beim “sanften Weg” werden keine Modifikationen am System vorgenommen. Alle Änderungen betreffen nur den jeweils angemeldeten Benutzer und lassen sich leicht wieder ändern. Allerdings gibt es bei dieser Methode immernoch Schlupflöcher, durch die das Gerät Daten abfließen lassen könnte.

Google Einstellungen anpassen

Für die folgenden Einstellungen müssen Sie in die Einstellungen ihres Google Kontos navigieren. Gehen Sie hierzu unter Android 10 wie folgt vor:

1. Öffnen Sie ihre Geräte Einstellungen
2. Wählen Sie den Menüpunkt “Google” aus.
3. Wählen Sie dann “Google-Konto verwalten” aus.
4. Tippen Sie unter “Datenschutz & Personalisierung” auf “Daten & Personalisierung verwalten”.

Aktivitäten abschalten

Nun können Sie die eigentlichen Einstellungen ändern:

1. Deaktivieren Sie die “Web- & App- Aktivitäten”, den “Standortverlauf” und den “YouTube-Verlauf”.
2. Deaktivieren Sie nun personenbezogene Werbung. Öffnen Sie dazu http://google.com/ads/preferences.
3. Entfernen Sie unter “Interessen” alle Häckchen
4. Scrollen Sie zu “Interessenbezogene Werbung” und deaktivieren Sie den Schalter.

Ortungsfunktion deaktivieren

Nun sollte noch die Ortungsfunktion deaktiviert werden:

1. Kehren Sie zurück zu den Google Einstellungen.
2. Wählen Sie den Menüpunkt “Sicherheit”.
3. Rufen Sie “Mein Gerät finden” auf.
4. Schalten Sie den Schalter aus.

Synchronisierungseinstellungen ändern

Konten Synchronisierung abschalten

Im nächsten Schritt schalten wir die Synchronisierung aus:

1. Öffnen Sie die Android Systemeinstellungen.
2. Navigieren Sie zu “Konten”.
3. Tippen Sie auf den obersten Eintrag.
4. Deaktivieren Sie alle nicht benötigten Einträge
5. Wiederholen Sie Schritt 3 & 4, bis Sie alle Konten abgearbeitet haben.

Google Drive Sicherungen abschalten

Nun muss noch die Sicherungsfunktion dran glauben:

1. Navigieren Sie aus den Android Einstellungen zu System -> Sicherung
2. Deaktivieren Sie “In Google Drive sichern”.

Google Play Protect deaktivieren

Um zu verhindern, dass all unsere Apps zu Google hochgeladen werden, führen wir noch diese Schritte aus:

1. Navigieren Sie aus den Android Systemeinstellungen zu “Sicherheit” und tippen Sie auf “Google Play Protect”.
2. Deaktivieren Sie sämtliche angezeigten Funktionen.

Nicht benötigte Apps entfernen

Als nächstes sollten Sie alle Apps, die Sie nicht benutzen (wollen), entfernen.

1. Navigieren Sie aus den Einstellungen zu “Apps”.
2. Klicken Sie auf “Alle Apps anzeigen”.
3. Tippen Sie auf die Apps, die Sie nicht benötigen.
4. Klicken Sie auf “Deinstallieren” oder auf “Deaktivieren”.

Wir empfehlen, alle Google Apps zu entfernen, mit Ausnahme der “Google Play Dienste” und des “Google Play Store”. Desweiteren stellen viele weitere häufig vorinstallierten Apps ein Risiko da, etwa

• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• Microsoft Office
• Samsung Health
• Diese Liste könnte endlos weitergeführt werden…

Sicherheitseinstellungen scharfschalten

Eine Displaysperre einrichten

1. Navigieren Sie zu “Einstellungen” -> “Sicherheit”.
2. Wählen Sie “Displaysperre” aus.
3. Schalten Sie eine PIN oder ein Passwort ein

Verschlüsslung aktivieren

1. Gehen Sie nun zu “Einstellungen” -> “Sicherheit” -> “Verschlüsslung und Anmeldedaten”.
2. Tippen Sie auf “Smartphone verschlüsseln” und folgen Sie den Anweisungen auf dem Bildschirm.

Freie Alternativen für Google Apps

Für die meisten Google Apps gibt es freie Alternativen. Die meisten Apps dieser Art lassen sich aus dem freiem Appstore F-Droid installieren.

F-Droid installieren

1. Laden Sie F-Droid von hier herunter.
2. Installieren Sie die APK Datei.
3. Öffnen Sie F-Droid.
4. Aktualisieren Sie die Paketquellen, indem Sie einmal von oben nach unten Wischen.

Empfohlene Apps installieren

Wir empfehlen die folgenden Apps als Alternative zu unfreien Diensten:

• K-9 Mail als Alternative zu GMail
• Telegram als WhatsApp Alternative
• Etar als Kalender App
• Firefox als Alternative zu Google Chrome
• VLC als Mediaplayer
• NewPipe als Alternative zu YouTube
• K-Music beta als Musik App
• OsmAnd als Kartenapp *SimpleSearch als Alternative zu Google.

Der “harte Weg”

Beim harten Weg wird das Betriebssystem des Telefons verändert. Dies sollte nur von erfahrenen Nutzern durchgeführt werden! Wer mehr erfahren will, sollte sich das LineagesOS Wiki ansehen.

Weiterführende Informationen

• Android ohne Google im Kuketz Blog
• Free your Android!
• Google Datenschutzeinstellungen bei Heise

The announcement was made by election official, Ariez Vachha, on the openSUSE Project's mailing list.

The election started on 15 December 2020 and it ended on 30 December 2020. The results were computed today at around 08h00 UTC. All members received the results by email.

Ariez announced the results and provided some statistics.

229 out of 518 eligible voters have cast their vote in this election. In terms of percentage, the turnout is lower than last year's board election.

The complete results are as follows:

• Axel Braun — 142 votes
• Gertjan Lettink — 134 votes
• Neal Gompa — 131 votes
• Maurizio Galli — 103 votes
• Nathan Wolf — 59 votes

The "none of the above" option, which was offered for the first time in a regular board election, obtained five votes.

Therefore, Axel, Gertjan and Neal are elected to serve for a 2-year term on the openSUSE Board.

This is a follow-up to my previous post Configuring a Brother MFC-7460DN Laser Printer/Scanner on Fedora 23 (64-bit), as things have fortunately changed to the better in the meanwhile.

As described in this post, setting up this printer in CUPS on Fedora has become quite an ordeal, as Brother no longer updates the printer drivers for these old models and they don’t provide 64 bit binaries.

As I had to switch laptops a few weeks ago, I had to reinstall Linux from scratch and needed to reconfigure my printer settings as well. As I did not want to go through the same hoops again, I did some research and was happy to learn that Peter De Wachter has been working on an open source version of CUPS printer drivers for a wide range of Brother laser printers, which include the MFC-7460DN as well!

Sadly, the printer-driver-brlaser package is not part of the Fedora Linux distribution (yet), so I again had to go out and scour the usual places for a suitable RPM package. Luckily, an RPM package is available from the openSUSE Build Service! There’s no dedicated Fedora package, but downloading and installing the driver package for the openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution worked flawlessly.

To set up the printer, first download and install the RPM package directly from the build service repo:

$ sudo dnf install https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Printing/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/printer-driver-brlaser-6+git20200420.9d7ddda-21.4.x86_64.rpm

The actual URL may vary if the package version is updated, so check the download page for the latest version if the download fails.

Now you can set up the printer using the usual CUPS printer configuration tools. In the printer driver selection box, choose “Brother MFC-7460DN, using brlaser v6” and you’re all set!

BTW, this works on Ubuntu Linux as well, they actually include the driver in their core distribution. However, the MFC-7460DN model is not listed explicitly in the driver selection, but choosing any other brlaser device just works.

The election lasted for two weeks and it ended last night at 23h59 UTC. The results were published today at mid-day (for me).

The complete election results are:

• Axel Braun — 142 votes
• Gertjan Lettink — 134 votes
• Neal Gompa — 131 votes
• Maurizio Galli — 103 votes
• Nathan Wolf — 59 votes

Five votes were recorded for the "none of the above" option. Out of 518 eligible voters, 229 voters have cast their vote in this election, which represents a turnout of 44%. It's a low turnout compared to last year's board election which was 56%.

Axel, Gertjan and Neal are elected to serve for two years on the openSUSE Board.

it could already be read somewhere that 2021 will be the year of Linux on the desktop :-D

Fine with me. Just to support that, I did a little hackery over XMas to improve the support for ownClouds virtual file system on the Linux Desktop.

What are Virtual Files?

In professional usecases, users often have a huge amount of data stored in ownCloud. Syncing these completely to the desktop computer or laptop would be too much and costly in bandwidth and harddisk space. That is why most mature file sync solutions came up with the concept of virtual files. That means that users have the full structure with directories and files mirrored to their local machines, but have placeholder of the real files in the local file manager.
The files, however, are not on the disk. They get downloaded on demand.

That way, users see the full set of data virtually, but save time and space of files they never will need on the local system.

The ownCloud Experience

ownCloud has innovated on that topic a while ago, and meanwhile support virtual files mainly on Windows, because there is an elaborated system API to work with placeholder files. As we do not have this kind of API on Linux desktops yet, ownCloud desktop developers implemented the following solution for Linux: The virtual files are 1 byte sized files with the name of the original file, plus a suffix “.owncloud” to indicate that they are virtual.

That works, yet has one downside: Most file managers do not display these placeholder files nicely, because they loose the MIME type information. Also, downloading and also freeing up the space of downloaded files is not integrated. To summarize, there is a building block missing to make that useful on Linux.

Elokab-files-manager with ownCloud

I was wondering if it wasn’t possible to change an existing file manager to support the idea of virtual files. To start trying I found the Elokab-files-manager which is a very compact, yet feature rich file manager built on Qt. It is built with very few other dependencies. Perfect to start playing around with.

In my Github fork you can see the patches I came up with to make Elokab-fm understand ownCloud virtual files.

New Functionality

The screenshot shows the changes in the icon view of Elokab-fm.

Screenshot of patched Elokab-files-manager to support ownCloud Virtual Files.

To make that possible, Elokab-fm now pulls some information from the ownCloud Sync Client config file and connects to the sync client via local socket to share some information. That means, that the sync client needs to run to make that work.

Directories that are synced with ownCloud now show an cloud overlay in the center (1).

The placeholder files (2) which are not present on the local hard drive indicate that by showing a little cloud icon bottom right. However, other than before, they are displayed with their correct name and mime-type, which makes this already much more useful.

Files, which are on the local disk as the image (3) show their thumbnail as usual.

In the side panel (4) there are a few details added: The blue box on the bottom indicates that the file manager is connected to the sync client. For the selected virtual file (2), it shows an button that downloads the file if clicked which would turn it into a non virtual, local file. There is also an entry in the context menu to achieve that.

Status

This is just a proof of concept and a little XMas fun project. There are bugs, and the implementation is not complete. And maybe Jürgen’s idea of a FUSE layer to improve that is the better approach, but anyway. It just shows what is possible with virtual files also on Linux.

If you like that idea, please let us know or send a little PR if you like. We do not wanna fail providing our share on the year of the Linux Desktop, right? ;-)

Building it from my Github branch should be fairly easy, as it only depends on Qt.

For openSUSE users, I will provide some test packages in my home project on Open Build Service.

Two weeks ago, openSUSE Release Manager, Luboš Kocman, announced on the availability of the Alpha images for openSUSE Leap 15.3.

Leap 15.3 aims to become more binary compatible with SUSE Linux Enterprise. As such, Leap now aligns with SLE and its service packs to keep the system updated, stable and patched.

Alpha images of Leap 15.3 will be rolling until mid-February when it will transition in the Beta phase.

Users of openSUSE Leap 15.1 have until January of 2021 before it reaches its End of Live and users need to update to Leap 15.2. The Public Availability of Leap 15.3 is scheduled to be released in July, 2021, according to the releases roadmap Users of Leap 15.2 will need to update to the newer version within six months of the release of Leap 15.3.

The test releases can be downloaded from software.opensuse.org/distributions/testing.

The openSUSE Project is carrying an EoY survey to collect ideas and comments from the community. The survey carries 40 questions which aim to gain a better understanding of the issues and expectations of openSUSE users.

We encourage you to spend a few minutes to answer the questions and help in making openSUSE a better Linux distribution. 🙂

My Macbook Pro

I have a Macbook pro retina 15 inch, that I bought in 2016. A few days back, the battery started bulking up and the laptop has totally stopped working. It has grown so big now that I cannot keep the laptop in a flat surface; it almost rocks like a see-saw. The touchpad panel is also feeling the bulge. The Macbook pro is not even switching on now, presumably to safeguard against battery explosions.

I bought the laptop 4 years back, for about 200,000 INR (~2700 USD / 2200 EUR). Electronics are very costly in India :( This is the pre-touchbar Macbook pro. I did not like the new keyboard in the then new Macbooks (the first edition with the touchbar). Luckily, I did not purchase the touchbar version which probably is one of the worst electronic devices ever manufactured.

I took my macbookpro today to a nearby Apple service center and I was told that the battery replacement would cost about 40,000 INR (~550 USD / 450 EUR). For such a costly laptop, it has a terrible battery longevity. I have no interest in paying this much for just a battery for an old laptop which is anyway not fun anymore to work on. I could purchase a new laptop with this money. For this money I could even setup a private cloud of a few Rasperry PIs and even launch kubernetes in them for fun.

I thought that I could purchase a battery offline and replace the battery. But to replace the battery, you need to disassemble almost everything (Harddisk, Speakers, CPU, fans, etc.) in a macbook and use chemicals (acetone). Thankfully Apple is not yet making cars, otherwise, to change Engine oil, we may have to dissasemble the headlamps, engine, transmission, differential, etc. 

What is more evil is, The Macbook pro will not work without a battery even if it is plugged in an electric power supply. I do this for my old HP laptop (for parents+kids) whose battery is long gone. The magsafe charger of Macbook is another well-known disaster. I believe that Apple gets a lot of undeserving praise for their hardware. They have shiny aluminium body, a good screen and the best touchpad; But their Thermal management, Longevity, Repairability are all abysmally bad. I have replaced the charger three times in ~3 years because the plastic covering near the charging point goes bad in daily usage and the internal wire gets damaged. The wires also become very yellow and dirty in Indian climate, for some reason. Even people far more connected and influential than me, could not change Apple's behavior.

I personally, am never buying any apple device or Macbook pro ever again, for personal use. It's just because I do not like their greed and exploitation of vulnerable customers.

Thinkpads

The only reason I bought the Macbook pro in 2016 was because I had to do some iOS app development. Prior to that in my $DAYJOBs I have almost exclusively used Thinkpads right from the days they were owned by IBM (and had an extra-ordinary keyboard) until they were sold off to Lenovo (and have this chiclet non-sense). The old Thinkpads were a delight to have. We could replace the batteries, replace the fans, replace individual keys etc. We could also add RAM or Disk whenever we need, how much ever we need. All without needing anything more than a normal screwdriver set.

Good things are not meant to last. Just like how Macbooks have gone worse, Thinkpads too have gone worse. In my current $DAYJOB I use a Thinkpad E series (the cheapest version) and it is terrible. The management of Lenovo is either dumb and do not understand what its loyal customers want; or just plain evil (or capitalistic extremists) and embraced planned obsolesence.

The thinkpad now comes in many series L, T, X, P, E etc. and almost none of them have external batteries.  Almost all of them have the RAM soldered and cannot be replaced. If the soldered RAM goes wrong, we need to throw away the laptop. Thinkpads were supposed to be the most developer friendly laptops. But even in 2020, we cannot get a single 32GB RAM in any of the medium cost thinkpad ranges. If you want anything more than 32GB RAM, you must shell out a lot of money and go for a ridiculously high cost series with 4k screen or some such luxury that I do not want. And their fingerprint readers never seem to reliably work on Linux for some reason, despite most kernel developers using Thinkpads.

E Waste and Green Earth

When I was in school, I have lived in a house with no electricity. I have then grown up and lived in Indian towns where 8-12 hours power cut per day was not unheard of. Luckily I now live in a big Indian city where powercuts are just an occasional weekly-few-hours affair. If it were not for the powercuts, I would happily purchase a desktop instead of a laptop. Atleast until now, desktops (Not those integrated all-in-one pieces) age better than laptops. But powercuts are a part of life where I live and I need battery backup.

Mobile Phones

Laptops and desktops are only a small part of the story. Now, with mobile phones coming on, the amount of e waste getting generated is exploding (literally in some sense). Android is a bigger culprit than Apple here. Even Google (which does not have "Do no evil" as a motto anymore) is refusing to push updates for pixel phones that are just 3 years old.

Once electric cars become more available, it is going to be worse for third world nations which import e waste. Rich billionaires and millionaires will claim to be more green by switching to electric cars and will send off the batteries to electronic graveyards in the other side of the Earth.

By making it difficult to replace/recycle batteries in laptops, phones, OEMs are making the world generate a lot of e waste. The first world nations worry about e-waste polluting their water and land, so what do they do ? They simply dump it out to third world nations, like India, Vietnam etc. As if, us people of these nations, do not have enough things to worry about on our own, now we have to accomodate tonnes of these e-wastes, which spoil our water and pollute our air.

We cannot even protest against these e-waste processing units that import world's junk, because most of the third world nations do not even have healthy democracies where citizens can opine against the Government/rulers, unlike the west.

What to do ?

The European Union atleast is trying to do something, while rest of the world seem to be not bothered. The USA especially has a lot of responsibility, because most of the OEMs like Apple, HP, Dell, etc. are walking the evil path of denying repairability and increasing sales, only to please the wallstreet and their $SHARE_SYMBOLs in the American stock market. It is pointless to spend millions for green-earth initiatives, if you do not produce re-cyclable / repairable electronic gadgets.

What can we Engineers do to combat such planned obsolecence and promote right-to-repair and recycling ? 

Honestly, I do not have an answer. May be we could influence in our small circles of hardware purchase. When your $EMPLOYER is looking to update the company hardware and get laptops for everyone, insist them to get only hardware which can be easily repaired.

If you work for an e-commerce giant (like Amazon, Walmart, EBay, etc.) push your employer to provide "Repairability score" as a filter condition in the product pages (similar to 3*, 4*, 5* , etc.) of electronic devices. May be if enough companies/customers start demanding these, the OEMs will have a financial motivation to do the right thing.

Are there any other steps that you believe that we as individuals could do to bring a change ? If so, please comment. 

What laptops do you like using that have a good repairability score, even in 2020/2021.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk ;-)

PS: If you know any good third party battery (which wouldn't explode in hot Indian weather) for Macbook Pro please let me know. If you refer a mechanic/shop who does the Macbook battery replacement in Chennai/Bangalore, India, that would be even better.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

Xmas is upon us – at least in some areas of the world. This means quitea lot of people are away from their computers and the number of submissions is getting a bit lower. Tumbleweed is not stopping though – it just rolls at the pace contributors create submissions. For week 2020/52 this means a total of 3 snapshots that were published. Saddest of this all is that the new kernel 5.10 is not behaving very nicely when the iwlwifi module is being loaded. The three snapshots published were 1218, 1221 and 1223, containing those changes:

• KDE Applications 20.12.0
• Poppler 20.12.1
• Linux kernel 5.10.1: as noted in the intro, there is an issue with iwlwifi. Unfortunately i was informed about that too late. The earlier reported amdgpu issue had been fixed in time though. Upstream bug reference: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210733
• Systemd 246.9

The staging projects are still filled up and a few more snapshots are likely to be released this year. Some of the changes that might become ready include:

• Mozilla Firefox 84.0
• icu 68.1: breaks a few things like postgresql. Staging:I
• Ruby 3.0: final release is staged. It will be added short term as additional version, with the default, used by r.g YaST, pinned to version 2.7
• Multiple python 3 versions parallel installable. Adding to python 3.8, version 3.6 week be reintroduced. Python modules will be built for both versions.
• RPM 4.16: all build issues in Staging:A have been fixed, but on upgrades, rpm seems to segfault in some cases.
• brp-check-suse: a bug fix in how it detected dangling symlinks (it detected them, but did not fail as it was supposed to)
• permissions package: prepares for easier listing, while supporting a full /usr merge
• Rpmlint 2.0: experiments ongoing in Staging:M
• openssl 3: not much progress, Staging:O still showing a lot of errors.