Post-Mortem: Events Table Overflow on May 18, 2022
MemberCombine Base Linux (CBL-Mariner) Kesako ?
Microsoft a plusieurs distributions Linux et CBL-Mariner est l’un d’entre-eux. La V 2.0 est sortie récemment et l’installation est destinée pour les geeks : https://github.com/microsoft/CBL-Mariner et le Cloud Azure pour le shell bash ou powerscript. CBL-Mariner s’installe très bien en VM, dont voici quelques copies d’écran. Un inconvinent de taille : pas de GUI… Previous …
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Forum des Assos 2022 10 sep à Rouen, Normandie
Retrouvez nous et toute la diversité du monde associatif rouennais et inscrivez-vous dans une association lors du Forum des Associations qui se tient samedi 10 septembre 2022 de 10h à 18h sur les quais bas rive gauche entre le pont Guillaume-le-Conquérant et le pont Jeanne-d’Arc. Au plaisir,
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Sortie de la RC de openSUSE 15.4
Le projet openSUSE est entré dans la phase (RC) Release Candidate pour la prochaine version mineure de la distribution openSUSE Leap. La prochaine version de Leap 15.4 est passée de sa phase bêta à la phase Release Candidate après que la Build 230.2 a réussi les tests d’assurance qualité openQA. « Les résultats des tests semblent …
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baltolkienEfecto de maximizar alternativo – Scripts de Kwin (IV)
Sigo con la nueva sección en el blog dedicado a los Scripts de Kwin, esas pequeñas modificaciones a Kwin que le confieren nuevas funcionalidades. Y aunque he cambiado el título por razones de accesibilidad voy a hablar de Maximize effect fade in o cómo tener un efecto de maximizar alternativo en Plasma.
Efecto de maximizar alternativo – Scripts de Kwin (IV)
Me encanta seguir encontrando nuevas funcionales no oficiales para KWin con los que seguir experimentando con nuestro escritorio, y más cuando éstas pueden ayudarme a ser más eficiente al utilizar mis ordenadores.
En el blog ya hemos hablado de algunas de ellas, como es el caso de KWin dynamic workspaces, de Mudeer, Windows Gaps, Always Open on Primary Screen o Autocomposer, scripts que mejoran el comportamiento de nuestro entorno de trabajo, pero últimamente están apareciendo tantos en la Store de KDE que no hay duda que se merecen desde hace un tiempo un hueco constante en el blog.
De esta forma, me complace presentaros Maximize effect fade in o cómo tener un efecto de maximizar alternativo en Plasma., una creación de koko2k que mejora un poco el efecto de maximizado de ventanas en plasma ya que espera algunos milisegundos para que la ventana que pronto será redimensionada disponga su nuevo contenido. Además, si el tamaño de destino es mucho mayor que el tamaño de origen, entonces realizará un fundido suave y cambiará el tamaño a la nueva ventana.
Por otra parte, y para completar las posibilidades, si el tamaño de destino es cercano al de origen, entonces simplemente realzará un redimensionamiento suave.
Y como siempre digo, si os gusta el script podéis “pagarlo” de muchas formas en la mutante página de KDE Store, que estoy seguro que el desarrollador lo agradecerá: puntúale positivamente, hazle un comentario en la página o realiza una donación. Ayudar al desarrollo del Software Libre también se hace simplemente dando las gracias, ayuda mucho más de lo que os podéis imaginar, recordad la campaña I love Free Software Day de la Free Software Foundation donde se nos recordaba esta forma tan sencilla de colaborar con el gran proyecto del Software Libre y que en el blog dedicamos un artículo.
La entrada Efecto de maximizar alternativo – Scripts de Kwin (IV) se publicó primero en KDE Blog.
Congreso esLibre 2022 en Vigo
Los próximos días 24 y 25 de junio de 2022 se celebrará una nueva edición del evento esLibre que se celebrará en la ciudad gallega de Vigo
Ya está todo ultimado para la celebración del evento esLibre 2022, que volverá a ser presencial y también se podrá seguir de manera virtual.
Ya puedes conocer los ponentes, las charlas, talleres y todo lo que se podrá disfrutar en esta nueva ocasión, en este evento que se celebrará en la ciudad de Vigo los días 24 y 25 de junio de 2022.
Una nueva edición del evento esLibre que con ayuda de los colectivos GALPon (Grupo de Ayuda de Linux de Pontevedra) y AGASOL (Asociación de Empresas Galegas de Software Libre) que se celebrarán en espacios como MARCO y MUTA en la ciudad viguesa.
La gente de GALPon ya realizó una gran tarea organizativa cuando Akdemy-es del que fui testigo haya por el 2019 que se celebró en Vigo hace unos años, así que este encuentro promete ser un nuevo éxito organizativo, por su experiencia y por las ganas que hay de reunirse a «frikear» de nuevo.
El evento es libre y gratuito para asistir, pero es necesario registrarse por cuestiones organizativas, así que si quieres asistir, visita este enlace.
En esLibre encontrarás charlas y talleres relacionados con el software libre y la cultura libre, dando a conocer alternativas éticas, libres y abiertas relacionadas con las tecnologías.
Hay una gran variedad de temas a tratar en las charlas que se han programado, seguro que encuentras algunas que te interesarán. Una muestra:
- Luis Falcon – La Federación GNU Health: Creando redes de salud e investigación con software libre
- Beatriz Padín Romero – Arduino en educación: sensores de bajo coste en el laboratorio de Física
- Evelio Sánchez Juncal – Software libre en el sector de la construcción
- Marelisa Blanco – Desarrolladores asalariados ¿de quién es la obra?
- Raster – Backups sencillos en GNU/Linux con Cronopete
- Lina Ceballos – REUSE: Indicar licencias y derechos de autor nunca fue tan sencillo
- y muuuuuchas más charlas interesantes!!
Si estás cerca o tienes tiempo libre te animo a que asistas y disfrutes en primera persona de esta vuelta a disfrutar de eventos en directo, seguro que disfrutarás, aprenderás y compartirás cosas buenas con las gentes que por allí recalen.
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Lanzado Inkscape 1.2, ahora multipágina
Hoy me congratula comentaros que ha sido lanzado Inkscape 1.2. De esta forma el magnífico editor de dibujos vectoriales sigue su evolución con jugosas novedades como la posibilidad de tener multippáginas en un solo documento, un gran avance en mi modesta opinión.
Lanzado Inkscape 1.2, ahora multipágina
Una de las aplicaciones que más me gustan cuando tengo de diseñar alguna cosa es Inkscape. Su potencia y versatibilidad la hacen maravillosa, y sus posibilidades simplemente están limitadas por tu imaginación y arte… los cuales son escasos en mi caso.
Pero eso no es impedimento para que este maravilloso proyecto siga adelante y nos acabe de presentar su versión 1.2, que según leemos en la página oficial de Inkscape, llega con las siguientes novedades:
- Los documentos de Inkscape ahora pueden contener múltiples páginas, que se gestionan con la nueva herramienta Página
- Marcadores editables y patrones de guiones
- Diálogo de capas y objetos fusionado
- Rediseño de la alineación en el lienzo y de los paráemetros de los ajustes
- Nuevo efecto «Tiling» Live Path
- Diálogo de exportación rediseñado con vista previa y capacidad para seleccionar objetos/capas/páginas e incluso múltiples formatos de archivo a los que exportar
- Importación de imágenes SVG desde Open Clipart, Wikimedia Commons y otras fuentes en línea
- Origen del objeto seleccionable para escalar y mover numéricamente
- Todas las opciones de alineación en un único cuadro de diálogo
- Edición de degradados en el cuadro de diálogo Relleno y Trazo
- Difuminación de degradados
- Actualización del editor de fuentes SVG
- Flujo de texto alrededor de las formas y relleno de texto
- Práctica operación booleana para dividir trazados
- Barra de herramientas configurable, escala de iconos continua y muchas más opciones de personalización nuevas
- Mejoras en el rendimiento de muchas partes de la interfaz y de muchas funciones diferentes
- Muchas mejoras en la interfaz de usuario
- Numerosas correcciones de fallos y errores en el programa principal de Inkscape y en las extensiones de stock
¿Qué es Inkscape?
Para quien no lo sepa, Inkscape es un editor de gráficos vectoriales de código abierto, similar a programas como Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand o Xara X. Lo que lo hace único es que usa como formato nativo el Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), un estándar abierto de W3C basado en XML.
En la actualidad, es perfectamente usable para todo tipos de ilustraciones y su potencia está más que demostrada, como podemos ver en este vídeo del Diseño de un logo con degradados, calados y reflejo de Ger Garpe.
La entrada Lanzado Inkscape 1.2, ahora multipágina se publicó primero en KDE Blog.
Disponible openSUSE Leap 15.4 RC
Cada vez más cerca la publicación final de la distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE Leap 15.4
La comunidad de openSUSE ha publicado la versión «Release Candidate» o RC de su distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE Leap 15.4, cuya versión final se publicará a principios de junio de 2022.
Después de que la versión en desarrollo de openSUSE Leap 15.4 pasara todos los tests automáticos de openQA que aseguran y comprueban varias facetas de estabilidad de la distribución de GNU/Linux, se ha publicado esta versión RC.
Esta nueva fase y versión también implica que hay una nueva versión de Leap Micro, un sistema operativo moderno y ligero, ideal para cargas de trabajo virtualizadas y de contenedor de host, que también pasa a su fase Release Candidate.
Esta versión RC de openSUSE Leap 15.4 marca la fecha para la congelación de los paquetes del software que se incluirá en la distribución, que podrás utilizar en servidores, estaciones de trabajo, escritorios y para virtualización y uso de contenedores.
El próximo hito, será la publicación de la versión «Golden Master» o GM de openSUSE Leap 15.4 que se publicará el 27 de mayo de 2022.
Durante la etapa de desarrollo de las versiones de Leap, los colaboradores, los empaquetadores y el equipo de lanzamiento utilizan un método de desarrollo continuo (similar a openSUSE TUmbleweed) que se clasifica en fases en lugar de un solo lanzamiento de hito.
Las snapshots se lanzan con actualizaciones de software de versiones menores una vez que pasan las pruebas automatizadas hasta el lanzamiento final del GM. En ese momento, la distribución cambia de un método de desarrollo continuo a un ciclo de publicaciones puntuales en el que recibe actualizaciones hasta el final de su vida útil (EOL).
Por tanto si ya tienes openSUSE Leap 15.4 probando en tu equipo, recuerda que el comando recomendado para actualizar a esta nueva versión es «zypper dup» hasta que se publique la versión final.
Tienes toda la información de fechas previstas de los próximos lanzamientos en este enlace:
Puedes leer el anuncio oficial:
Sin duda esta nueva versión de la distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE Leap 15.4, será otro buen ejemplo de estabilidad, ¡para disfrutar tu GNU/Linux sin sobresaltos! en tu portátil, tu servidor, tu máquina virtual, tu Raspberry Pi, …
Raptor CS: Fully Owner Controlled Computing using OpenPOWER
This week I am talking to Timothy Pearson of Raptor Engineering. He is behind the Talos II and Blackbird boards for IBM POWER9 CPUs. His major claim is creating the first fully owner controlled general purpose computer in a long while. My view of the Talos II and Blackbird systems is that these boards helped to revitalize the open source ecosystem around POWER more than any other efforts (See also: https://peter.czanik.hu/posts/cult-amiga-sgi-workstations-matter/). Most open source developers I talked to say that coding on a remote server is just work. Doing the same on your local workstation adds an important ingredient: passion. This is why the re-introduction of POWER workstations was a very important step: developers started to improve support for POWER also in their free time, not just in their regular working hours. I asked Tim how the idea of creating their POWER board was born, how Covid affected them and also a bit about their future plans.
Talos II mainboard
Raptor Engineering seems to focus on machine vision. How can a company that’s focused on other activities start to develop a mainboard for POWER CPUs?
So to start with, Raptor Engineering’s public facing website was always more of a way to market technologies we’d already developed for internal purposes to the general public. Raptor Engineering is, and always has been, more of a FPGA HDL/firmware/OS level design company focused on providing those services to those that need them. Sometimes we do engage in internal development projects to showcase certain technology capabilities publicly, and one of those was the open source machine vision system you allude to earlier.
More relevant to the current technology offerings, we’ve always had some degree of focus on security and what we now tend to call “owner control”. This was borne out of several long-running research and development projects, where significant investment was made in technologies that could be years, if not decades, from practical application. As a result of this longer term focus, it was realized early on that two issues had to be addressed: something we call “continuance” (the ability to seamlessly move from one generation of technology to another as needed, with no loss of data) and also the data security / privacy aspects of keeping internal R&D results private and out of the hands of potential competition.
Around 2008-2009 we realized that a fully owner controlled system would meet all of these objectives, specifically a system over which we had full control of the firmware, OS, and application layer, a system where we could modify any aspect of its operation independently as required to support the overall objectives. There’s a true story I like to tell, which dates from the early days of the coreboot port efforts on our side to support the AMD K8 systems in use at the time: the proprietary BIOS would not, for some infurating reason, allow a boot without a CMOS battery and a keyboard connected! When spread across supercomputer racks, this was a perfect opportunity to highlight just what owner control actually meant in terms of benefit for maintainance and overall scalability – the rather obvious resulting boot problem could have been solved with a single line of code, if only there had been code available.
Once we had a completely free stack for K8/Family 10h, we continued on with AMD systems until around 2013/2014, when it became clear that AMD would force the Platform Security Processor (an unauditable low-level AMD-controlled black box that presents a severe security risk) on all CPUs going forward. This kicked off a multi-year evaluation of anything and everything that might be able to replace the x86 systems we had in terms of owner control, overall performance, and ease of administration (ecosystem compatibility). Over those years we evaluated everything from ARM to RISC-V to MIPS, and eventually settled on the then-new OpenPOWER systems as the only solution to actually check all of the boxes. The rest, as they say, is history – the nascent computer ODM arm of Raptor Engineering was spun off as Raptor Computing Systems to allow it to grown into the role demanded of it with the Talos II systems it was bringing to market.
Six years ago I first learned about the Talos plans from the Raptor Engineering website. Now all POWER-related activity is on the Raptor Computing website. How are the two related?
As of right now I am involved with both companies, my role at Raptor Computing Systems being that of CTO. Basically I help ensure RCS brings new owner-controlled, blob-free devices to market, and keep fairly close tabs on available silicon and its limitations (mostly centering around blobs) as a result. On the Raptor Engineering side I still provide specialized consulting services at a low level (typically HDL / firmware), as an example you’ll see my name here and there on projects like OpenBMC, LibreSoC, and more recently the Xen hypervisor port for POWER systems that is just spinning up now.
What do you mean by “fully owner controlled”?
An owner-controlled device is best defined as a tool that answers only to its physical owner, i.e. its owner (and only its owner) has full control over every aspect of its operation. If something is mutable on that device, the owner must be able to make those changes to alter its operation without vendor approval or indeed any vendor involvement at all. This is in stark contrast with the standard PC model, where e.g. Intel or AMD are allowed to make changes on the device but the owner is expressly forbidden to change the device’s operation through various means (legal restrictions, lack of source code, vendor-locked cryptographic signing keys, etc.). In our opinion, such devices never really left the control of the vendor, yet somehow the owner is still legally responsible for the data stored on them – to me, this seems like a rather strange arrangement on which to build an entire modern digital economy and infrastructure.
What are the main differences between the Talos II and Blackbird boards?
The Talos II is a high end full EATX server mainboard, dual socket, designed for 24/7 use in a datacenter or workstation type environment. Blackbird is a much smaller uATX single CPU system with more standard consumer-type interfaces (e.g. audio, HDMI, SATA, etc.) available directly on the mainboard.
You mention that Blackbird is consumer focused. It has three Ethernet ports, and support for remote management. Did you also have servers / appliances in mind?
Yes, there is the ability to use the Blackbird for a home NAS or similar appliance. The remote management sort of comes “for free” due to the POWER9 processor being paired with the AST2500 BMC ASIC and OpenBMC, it is more of a baseline POWER9 feature than anything else.
I know that quite a few Linux distribution maintainers now use Talos II workstations. Who else are your typical users?
In general we see the same overall subset of people that would use Linux on x86, with a strong skew toward those concerned about privacy and security and a notable (expected) cutout of the normal “content consumer” market (gamers, streaming service consumers, etc.). This holds true both for individuals and organizations, though the skew is much less notable among organizations simply because organizations are not generally purchasing desktop / server systems for gaming and media consumption!
For quite a few years POWER9 was the best CPU to run syslog-ng. What are the typical software your users are running on your POWER workstations and servers?
For the most part, the standard software you would see on comparable x86 boxes. That’s always been one of our requirements, that using the POWER system be as close to using a standard PC as possible, except the POWER system isn’t putting digital handcuffs on its owner and potentially exposing their data for monetization (or, for that matter, to more nefarious actors).
Covid affected most families and businesses around the world. How Raptor was / is affected?
We were hit hard by the shutdowns and subsequent inflation, in common with most manufacturers across the world. We did have to cancel some of the more ambitions POWER9 systems under development (Condor) as well as take on increased ecosystem maintainance load. Some of that, along with the continuous rise in cost of parts and rolling shortages of components, is reflected in the price increases and long lead times that have occured over the past couple of years.
Could you explain how Condor compares to Talos II and Blackbird?
Condor was a pre-COVID development project to try to create a high end standard ATX (vs. EATX) desktop board with OpenCAPI brought out to the appropriate connector. With COVID shutdowns, industry adoption of CXL, and more importantly POWER10 requiring closed source binaries, we didn’t see a path to actually bring the product to market post-COVID. The completed designs are sitting in our archives, but no hardware was manufactured.
The latest x86 CPUs now beat POWER9 in many use cases. Which is no wonder, these CPUs are four years old now. Is there something where POWER9 still has an advantage?
Absolutely! POWER9 still does what we originally intended it to do – it gives reasonable performance on a stable, standardized ecosystem, in a familiar PC-style form factor, using standard PC components, while providing full owner control. As a secure computing platform, both on server and desktop, it simply cannot be beat – there is literally nothing else on the market that is both 100% blob free and can be used as a daily driver for basically every task that a Linux x86 machine can be used for.
For example, I’m responding to this interview using a POWER9 workstation with hundreds of Chromium tabs open, media running, Libreoffice in the background, and am even compiling some software. If you didn’t tell me it was a POWER system, I wouldn’t be able to easily tell just from using it, yet at the same time it’s not restricting what I can do with it, attempting to monetize my data, or otherwise waiting for commands from a potentially hostile (at least to my interests) third party.
The other major selling point is that the ISA is both open and standardized. The standardization means that I could migrate this system as-is – no reinstallation – to anything that is POWER ISA 3.0 compliant, which is a huge advantage only available for the “big three” architectures (x86, SBSA ARM, and OpenPOWER). That said, being an open ISA, anyone is also free to create a new compliant CPU if they want to or need to. This neatly avoids the entire problem with x86 and ARM, where various technologies (ME, PSP, TrustZone w/ bootloader locking) could be (and eventually were) unilaterally forced onto all users regardless of the grave issues they introduce for specific use cases.
Also interesting is how the OpenPOWER ISA is governed – a neutral entity (the OpenPOWER Foundation) controls the standards documents that implementations must adhere to, and anyone is free to propose an extension to the ISA. If accepted, it becomes part of the ISA compliance requirements for a future version, and the requisite IP rights are transferred to the Foundation such that anyone is still free to implement that instruction per the specification without needing to go back and license with the entity that proposed the extension. This is a great model in my mind, it should allow the best of both worlds going forward. The standardization and compliance requirements mean we should see the same level of binary support normally expected on x86, while the extension proposal mechanism allows the ISA to morph and adapt in a backward-compatibile way in response to external needs.
The POWER 10 CPUs from IBM are manufactured with the latest technologies allowing higher performance with lower power consumption. Do you have any plans to have a new board with POWER 10 support?
At this time we do not have plans to create a POWER10 system. The reasoning behind this is that somehow, during the COVID19 shutdowns and subsequent Global Foundries issues, IBM ended up placing two binary blobs into the POWER10 system. One is loaded onto the Microsemi OMI to DDR4 memory bridge chip, and the other is loaded into what appears to be a Synopsis IP block located on the POWER10 die itself. Combined, they mean that all data flowing into and out of the POWER10 cores over any kind of high speed interface is subject to inspection and/or modfication by a binary firmware component that is completely unauditable – basically a worst-case scenario that is strangely reminiscent of the Intel Management Engine / AMD Platorm Security Processor (both have a similar level of access to all data on the system, and both are required to use the processor). Our general position is that if IBM considered these components potentially unstable enough to require future firmware updates, the firmware must be open source so that entities and owners outside of IBM can also modify those components to fit their specific needs.
Were IBM to either open source the firmware or produce a device that did not require / allow mutable firmware components in those locations, we would likely reconsider this decision. For now, we continue to work in the background on potential pathways off of POWER9 that retain full compatibility with the existing POWER9 software ecosystem, so stay tuned!
Does “potential pathways off of POWER9” have something to do with the LibreSoc project?
We’re going to remain a bit coy on this, but LibreSoC is definitely one project that would fit that requirement for at least low-end devices. In fact, you can see some of my fingerprints in the LibreSoC GIT history…
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