Last semester I founded the AG Open Source at our university. We are organizing workshops and hackathons in cooperation with open source projects/ companies. Our students should learn more about open source development and how to contribute. The difference to the Friedrich-Alexander-University and their professorship in open source development is that we want to learn the real practice by professionals.

After 3 months we had a reputation. The AG Open Source should be open for other faculties, too. EFI (electronic – fine mechanics – information technology) has been interested for our events. So students in Computer Science and Electronics are receiving basic courses in Linux and using git. In addition, we create a program which is different every semester. Last semester we had topics like security and the ownCloud hackathon. This semester our focus is on monitoring and docker.

I am the Lead of the AG Open Source. I am educating other students in the student council for different positions in the AG. We need an additional lead. So I have one student as a Junior Lead who is being taught in organization, email writing and publishing by me. Two other students want to become Linux Trainers. They  have to know all about the cooperation with other  AGs in the student council and their processes, too.

Last semester I was the Linux Trainer in all Linux workshops. One (advanced) student supported me with running through the lines and looking for different students. Other students in my semester are interested for this job this semester, too. Last week we received the request for a Linux course for advanced Linux users parallel to the Linux course for beginners. So I am teaching one student to pick up my course for beginners. Next semester we’ll use 2 rooms for this event. I’m planning the course for Advanced Linux Users.

 

Since this week we are responsible for a new task at our university: Linux

support for students

A EFI student stood in the door of our student council for Computer Science and said: „I’m not from this faculty, but I need Linux support by the AG Open Source. Nobody else can help me. I was in the data center. They want to support only Windows. I can’t find anybody at our faculty, too.“

The data center has reconfigured eduroam. That’s the Wifi for students and professors. We need additional entries for Linux systems and a new certificate now. I configured his Wifi and I know: I have to educate Linux Supporters for our AG. On our internal homepage openSUSE and Android are listed as supported operating systems (Linux) by the data center, but our Sysadmins don’t know what to do there. All students are coming to the student council for Computer Science now, because they are receiving Linux workshops by us.

Our AG Open Source is growing, but our responsibilities are growing, too!

 

 

The post AG Open Source and our responsibilities first appeared on Sarah Julia Kriesch.

If you are travelling to Prague to ELCE, and have Nokia N900, N9 or N950, or spare parts for them, please take them with you. I may help you install postmarket os there (https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Main_Page), can probably charge N900 that does not charge, and spare parts would be useful for me. I have a talk about cameras, and will be around... https://osseu17.sched.com/event/ByYH/cheap-complex-cameras-pavel-machek-denx-software-engineering-gmbh .

Ok, so I have various machines here. It seems only about half of them has working RTC. That are the boring ones.

And even the boring ones have pretty imprecise RTCs... For example Nokia N9. I only power it up from time to time, I believe it drifts something like minute per month... For normal use with SIM card, it can probably correct from GSM network if you happen to have a cell phone signal, but...

More interesting machines... Old thinkpad is running without CMOS battery. ARM OLPC has _three_ RTCs, but not a single working one. N900 has working RTC but no or dead backup battery. On these, RTC driver probably knows time is not valid, but feeds the garbage into the system time, anyway. Ouch. Neither Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 nor C-3000 had battery backup on RTC...

Even in new end-user machines, time quality varies a lot. "First boot, please enter time" is only accurate to seconds, if the user is careful. RTC is usually not very accurate, either... and noone uses adjtime these days. GSM time and ntpdate are probably accurate to miliseconds, GPS can provide time down to picoseconds... And broken systems are so common "swclock" is available in init system to store time in file, so it at least does not go backwards.

https (and other crypto) depends on time... so it is important to know approximate month we are in.

Is it time we handle it better?

Could we return both time and log2(expected error) from system calls?

That way we could hide the clock in GUI if time is not available or not precise to minutes, ignore certificate dates when time is not precise to months, and you would not have to send me a "Pavel, are you time traveling, again?" message next time my mailer sends email dated to 1970.

By Greg Kroah-Hartman, Chris Mason, Rik van Riel, Shuah Khan, and Grant Likely

The Linux kernel ecosystem of developers, companies and users has been wildly successful by any measure over the last couple decades. Even today, 26 years after the initial creation of the Linux kernel, the kernel developer community continues to grow, with more than 500 different companies and over 4,000 different developers getting changes merged into the tree during the past year. As Greg always says every year, the kernel continues to change faster this year than the last, this year we were running around 8.5 changes an hour, with 10,000 lines of code added, 2,000 modified, and 2,500 lines removed every hour of every day.

Based on the recent Linux Kernel Community Enforcement Statement and the article describing the background and what it means , here are some Questions/Answers to help clear things up. These are based on questions that came up when the statement was discussed among the initial round of over 200 different kernel developers.

Q: Is this changing the license of the kernel?

A: No.

Q: Seriously? It really looks like a change to the license.

SailfishOS should need no introduction, but just in case someone doesn’t know about it, it’s the successor of MeeGo developed by Nokia and Intel so to speak, i.e. it’s a proper GNU/Linux system, with a cool and efficient swipe based interface built on Qt, it uses a few SUSE technologies such as libzypp and Open Build Service and it sports an Android runtime, that lets you run most Android apps. In short: SailfishOS is made of awesome.

Until now SailfishOS has only been available on sub-par hardware, and sometimes devices haven’t really been available for purchase at all. But since yesterday you can buy a SailfishOS image for the Sony Xperia X (single SIM model, F5121).

I installed it yesterday and so far it’s an amazing experience to run SailfishOS on pretty decent hardware, and the standby battery time appears to be through the roof.

The instructions for unlocking the bootloader and installing SailfishOS are a bit lengthy and technical and for the time being it requires access to a Microsoft Windows PC, but I managed without much hassle, and so can you!

UPDATE: Official installation instructions for Linux were published now.

In other news the Librem 5 crowdfunding reached it’s minimum goal, so overall it’s been a great couple of days for GNU/Linux on mobile devices.

In the past days, the campaign to crowd-fund a privacy-focused smartphone built on top of Free software and in collaboration with its community reached its funding goal of 1.5 million US dollars. While many people doubted that the crowdfunding campaign would succeed, it is actually hardly surprising if we look what the librem 5 promises to bring to the table.

1. Unique Privacy Features: Kill-switches and auditable code

Neither Apple nor Android have convincing stories when it comes to privacy. Ultimately, they’re both under the thumbs of a restrictive government, which, to put it mildly doesn’t give a shit about privacy and has created the most intrusive global spying system in the history of mankind. Thanks to the U.S., we now live in the dystopian future of Orwell’s 1984. It’s time to put an end to this with hardware kill switches that cut off power to the radio, microphone and camera, so phones can’t be hacked into anymore to listen in on your conversations, take photos you never know were taken and send them to people you definitely would never voluntarily share them with. All that comes with auditable code, which is something that we as citizens should demand from our government. With a product on the market supplying these features, it becomes very hard for your government to argue that they really need their staff to use iphones or Android devices. We can and we should demand this level of privacy from those who govern us and handle with our data. It’s a matter of trust.
Companies will find this out first, since they’re driven by the same challenges but usually much quicker to adopt technology.

2. Hackable software means choice

The librem 5 will run a mostly standard Debian system with a kernel that you can actually upgrade. The system will be fully hackable, so it will be easy for others to create modified phone systems based on the librem. This is so far unparalleled and brings the freedom the Free software world has long waited for, it will enable friendly competition and collaboration. All this leads to choice for the users.

3. Support promise

Can a small company such as Purism actually guarantee support for a whole mobile software stack for years into the future? Perhaps. The point is, even in case they fail (and I don’t see why they would!), the device isn’t unsupported. With the librem, you’re not locked into a single vendor’s eco system, but you buy into the support from the whole Free software community. This means that there is a very credible support story, as device doesn’t have to come from a single vendor, and the workload is relatively limited in the first place. Debian (which is the base for PureOS) will be maintained anyway, and so will Plasma as tens of millions of users already rely on it. The relatively small part of the code that is unique to Plasma Mobile (and thus isn’t used on the desktop) is not that hard to maintain, so support is manageable, even for a small team of developers. (And if you’re not happy with it, and think it can be done better, you can even take part.)

4. It builds and enables a new ecosystem

The Free software community has long waited for this hackable device. Many developers just love to see a platform they can build software for that follows their goals, that allows development with a proven stack. Moreover, convergence allows users to blur the lines between their devices, and advancing that goal hasn’t been on the agenda with the current duopoly.
The librem 5 will put Matrix on the map as a serious contender for communication. Matrix has rallied quite a bit of momentum to bring more modern mobile-friendly communication, chat and voice to the Free software eco-system.
Overall, I expect the librem 5 to make Free software (not just open-source-licensed, but openly developed Free software) a serious player also on mobile devices. The Free software world needs such a device, and now is the time to create it. With this huge success comes the next big challenge, actually creating the device and software.

The unique selling points of the librem 5 definitely strike a chord with a number of target groups. If you’re doubtful that its first version can fully replace your current smart phone, that may be justified, but don’t forget that there’s a large number of people and organisations that can live with a more limited feature set just fine, given the huge advantages that private communication and knowing-what’s-going-on in your device brings with it.
The librem 5 really brings something very compelling to the table and those are the reasons why it got funded. It is going to be a viable alternative to Android and iOS devices that allows users to enjoy their digital life privately. To switch off tracking, and to sleep comfortably.
Are you convinced this is a good idea? Don’t hesitate to support the campaign and help us reach its stretch goals!