- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Ubuntu upgrade
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 12 Nov '24

12 Nov '24

I rarely use Ubuntu so I'm late to observing some things. I just updated a 20.04 LTS system to a 22.04 LTS system. I did it via a command line (through SSH). There were several warnings about SSH being dangerous because communications could be lost when problems arose. SSH is my normal way of communicating with headless machines so I thought that this was a bit unfortunate. It turned out that I didn't have a problem. The installer informed me that ThunderBird would be provided via SNAP and that there is no other form. I don't like SNAPs but I probably wouldn't even have noticed if the installer didn't tell me. I wonder how many other SNAPs are installed. I think that I can ask the system but I've got other fish to fry at the moment. The upgrade seems to have worked rather painlessly. I'm used to Fedora version updates where only updates of a year are promised to work. This Ubuntu update was a two year update: a nice technical achievement. When I log in now (via SSH) I get this announcement: 9 additional security updates can be applied with ESM Apps. Learn more about enabling ESM Apps service at https://ubuntu.com/esm It seems unethical to withhold security updates. This is one reason why I don't like Ubuntu / Canonical. Long before the update, my system failed to come up in a desktop environment. It just came up in a console. That console is almost unreadable: UltraHD in a 15.6" screen. The console has 135 rows and 480 columns! I never figured out why the system didn't come up in the desktop environment. I spent a little time at that but it didn't really a lot since I only used the Ubuntu installation once a year or so for a program that Fedora didn't have. The system upgrade was an attempt to bypass the bug. No such luck. I guess I'll put a little more effort in analysis.

4 3

Reminder of General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 11 Nov '24

11 Nov '24

As the WordPress Turns <https://new.gtalug.org/?p=115> with Ron Barnes and Evan Leibovitch What’s the line between using open source and exploiting it? WordPress is one of the world’s best-known open source applications, powers more than 40% of the world’s websites. But a recent drama between co-creator Matthew Mullenweg and CMS hosting outfit WP Engine has led to forced forks, strange code changes, acrimony and, of course, lawyers. We’ll be trying to make sense of this story, giving the history, and looking for clues that might prevent this from happening to other major open source projects. Date / Time: November 12th, 2024 19:30 EST Location: In Person: TMU George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street (just north of Dundas), Room 201 (See note below) Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i NOTE: The doors to the building are normally locked. There will be someone from GTALUG at the doors on the southeast corner of Church and Gould to let people in. If you come late or don’t see anyone at the door please SMS at 647 657 6575 for THIS NIGHT ONLY. Do not call. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

4 3

[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG Membership Dues
by Warren McPherson 11 Nov '24

11 Nov '24

With the AGM arriving, please remember to send in your dues. It is easy to do. In your bank's online app, select Interac e-Transfer. Send $20 to "membership(a)gtalug.org" Thank you! --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

1 0

video: Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systed" (fwd)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Nov '24

09 Nov '24

I posted this link to the list over five years ago. Look in the archives: there were a number of replies. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> To: Toronto Linux Users Group <talk(a)gtalug.org> Cc: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh(a)mimosa.com> Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2019 18:12:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [GTALUG] video: Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systed" Reply-To: D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh(a)mimosa.com>, GTALUG Talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> I think that this is pretty interesting: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo> --- Talk Mailing List talk(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

7 7

Re: [GTALUG] Manual vs Automatic transmission (was: summary, bottom line, my last word [...])
by Howard Gibson 08 Nov '24

08 Nov '24

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }On Tue 05/11/24 5:20 PM , William Park via talk talk(a)gtalug.org sent: On 2024-11-05 12:52, o1bigtenor via talk wrote: > Think the modern car with its automatic > transmission being driven in 6 to 8" of fresh snow and the temperature > is just under freezing - - - if you have to stop for some reason > - - - good luck getting going again - - - in a manual transmission - > - - piece of cake!!!) Can you explain in more detail? I was thinking about buying manual Kia Rio (cheapest new car on the market, now no longer sold). My automatic has 1, 2, 3, 4, D, N, R, and P. Why is manual different? Manual transmission driver here. I have just had to replace my old Honda Fit with a newer 2019 model with a six speed transmission. I love it. You get stuck in snow either because you are in or on top of a snow drift, or because you are sitting on very slippery ice. Manual transmissions work nicely at getting out unstuck in the snow, but I have extracted automatics. Rocking a car out of a snow drift is easy using the clutch of a manual transmission, and much more difficult with an automatic. I forget how I did it. Maybe I popped back and forth between drive and neutral. Outside of a snow drift, there is no difference between the two transmissions. I don't know how technical people are here. Your transmission is a torque multiplier, in most gears anyway, with first gear giving you maximum torque and minimum speed. Under civilized conditions, torque is good. More torque is better. Under winter conditions, the worst thing you can do is spin tires and generate glare ice. If the road is slippery, you need to use minimum torque. You do this by starting in second gear. Often, I roll my windows down so that I can hear my tires spin. Tires spinning is bad. Always remember that if it is difficult to get started, it will be difficult to stop. What has this to do with GNU/Linux? -- Howard Gibson hgibson(a)eol.ca http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson

1 0

soapbox, what I consider a GParted failure
by CAREY SCHUG 06 Nov '24

06 Nov '24

So winblows allows usb (and probably internal) disks to be formated EXFAT but without any partition table. WHAT POSSIBLE EXCUSE is there for gparted to not recognize this? Obviously wimblows can detect there is data, directories, etc on the device, why not GParted? --Carey

16 65

tip: creating compact PDFs from LibreOffice
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Nov '24

05 Nov '24

I have a document with pictures. I printed it to PDF from LibreOffice. The result was 20MB: too big to mail. I used a program called "shrinkpdf" to shrink the PDF. There are no options. The size was 128k. It was a bit fuzzy. Then I found out that LibreOffice's export to PDF lets you control the resolution and clarity of pictures. The default setting gave me 333k. It looked much better than the output of shrinkpdf. Conclusion: LibreOffice's export to pdf is usefully different from printing to PDF.

2 2

An Obituary to Enjoy...
by Colin McGregor 04 Nov '24

04 Nov '24

I would NEVER wish anyone dead, but there are some obituaries that can be enjoyed. Here is an example of the sort of obituary I mean, that of Darl Charles McBride : https://www.memorialutah.com/obituaries/darl-mcbride Who was Darl Charles McBride? At one point the man was THE most hated person in the Linux community, because as head of SCO he launched a series of anti-Linux lawsuits, details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darl_McBride#Leadership_of_The_SCO_Group

5 4

Chinese attackers accessed Canadian government networks – for five years
by Ron / BCLUG 31 Oct '24

31 Oct '24

A sobering report: > A report by Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) > revealed that state-backed actors have collected valuable information > from government networks for five years. > > The biennial National Cyber Threat Assessment described the People's > Republic of China's (PRC) cyber operations against Canada as "second > to none." Their purpose is to "serve high-level political and > commercial objectives, including espionage, intellectual property > (IP) theft, malign influence, and transnational repression." > > Over the past four years, at least 20 networks within Canadian > government agencies and departments were compromised by PRC cyber > threat actors. https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/31/canada_cybersec_threats/ https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/national-cyber-threat-assessment-2025-2… -- To subscribe, send an email to discuss-subscribe(a)lists.bclug.ca -- https://bclug.ca -- List Web site: https://lists.bclug.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss

1 0

a Firefox performance mystery
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Oct '24

30 Oct '24

Firefox performance problems are usually opaque to me. I always have too many tabs open. I don't like any alternatives that I've found. Bookmarks have only gotten worse. I can tell that Firefox is eating too much CPU when my computer's fan comes on (all performance problems on my desktop seem to be Firefox related). Finding the bad tab(s) isn't always easy. You can try to analyze what's going on with the URL <about:performance> It tells you the memory and CPU resource usage for each tab, except some things don't get assigned to tabs. That display seems to have gotten less useful over time. What prompted this message is yet another time this happened. I found that the bad tab was: <https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/finally-upgrading-fr…> This is a topic that I want to study. Later. I had had it open for more than a week. This tab was burning more than one core's worth of CPU. I deleted the tab. The fan became silent. Then I re-opened it and the load was much smaller. That's today's ad hoc solution. Quite unsatisfactory. Does anyone else have a recommendation for investigating and fixing some Firefox performance problems?

10 14