GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 04, 2025

• Liam Proven ☛ On becoming living history

  It is one of the oddest things in computing that stuff to me, as a big kid of heading for 60 years old but who still feels quite young and enjoys learning and exploring, that the early history of GNU/Linux – a development that came along mid-career for me – and indeed Unix, which was taking shape when I was a child, is mysterious lost ancient history now to those working in the field.

• Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

  • University of Toronto ☛ These days, Linux audio seems to just work (at least for me)

    For a long time, the common perception was that 'Linux audio' was the punchline for a not particularly funny joke. I sort of shared that belief; although audio had basically worked for me for a long time, I had a simple configuration and dreaded having to make more complex audio work in my unusual desktop environment. But these days, audio seems to just work for me, even in systems that have somewhat complex audio options.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME ☛ Steven Deobald: The Everyone Environment

      Welcome! In classic new-blog tradition, I felt it was a good idea to explain the title given to this little corner of blogs.gnome.org — and provide fair warning as to what sort of thoughts I’ll post here.

      GNOME is the Computer

      I’ve spent a lot of time lately answering the question “what is GNOME?” This question usually comes from my friends outside the tech industry. They work on film sets and fishing boats.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • BSD

    • MWL ☛ BSDCan Travel Fund Auction in honor of Mike Karels

      Mike Karels has been around the BSD community since the last century, and was integral to our projects. How integral? If your name is on the definitive book on the topic, you’re integral. On his way home from BSDCan 2024, Mike passed away.

  • OpenMandriva Family

    • Happy Belated 15th Anniversary!

      Wow!  Another year flew by! 

      Yes, I have not been very active posting on this blog for some time now.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Quentin Santos ☛ Linux always toggles DTR & RTS

      In my previous article, I explained how Arduino makes the life of its users easier by automatically resetting the board when the UART pin DTR (or RTS) transitions from electrically high to low. This exploits the fact that this transition happens automatically when someone or something opens the serial device on the host. That is, opening a file whose name looks like: [...]

• Security

  • Hacker News ☛ Malicious Go Modules Deliver Disk-Wiping Linux Malware in Advanced Supply Chain Attack [Ed: Blaming GitHub et al transmitting malware to users' PCs/servers on "go" and "Linux". Don't blame Microsoft, blame its victims?]

    Malware-laced packages targeting cryptocurrency wallets have also been discovered in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository – web3x and herewalletbot – with capabilities to siphon mnemonic seed phrases. These packages have been collectively downloaded more than 6,800 times since getting published in 2024.

    [...]

    To mitigate the risk posed by such supply chain threats, developers are advised to verify package authenticity by checking publisher history and GitHub repository links; audit dependencies regularly; and enforce strict access controls on private keys.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Android Police ☛ Why Android users should care more about monthly security updates

      We store a massive amount of personal data on our phones. Whether you have a flagship or midrange device, your email, personal photos, credit cards, banking info, and more are accessible from your pocket. While most people take care of their phones physically, they may not pay the same care to keeping their phones updated. A notification letting you know there's an update may go ignored because it takes too much time or gets in the way of what you're doing.