- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

new class of Windows Notebooks: "Copilot+ PC"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 26 May '24

26 May '24

These were just intruduced by Microsoft. As usual, a lot of smoke around this. - new ARM-based processor family from Qualcomm "Snapdragon X" - performance supposedly better than Apple's M series (for now) - like all new processors, it contains an NPU (for accelerating AI) - price seems to be Apple-like: <https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/copilot-pc/ci/40407> This is for pre-orders from a US discount store, in US dollars. - most models are from Microsoft so far. There is one Asus and one Lenovo. - my understanding is that they won't run Linux now. Linux support for the processor is being promised by Qualcomm but it isn't yet ready. It may be that the "Copilot+ PC" models lock out Linux anyway (my impression is that previous ARM-based Surfaces did that). - Microsoft is pushing these as being able to run LLMs locally and that the new version of Windows will delightfully exploit this. - A centrepiece of this is something called Recall that assists you in finding (computer) things that you used previously Summary: in six months or a year these might be interesting to Linux users. Right now they are too expensive and not compatible. Trivia: the least expensive models listed on BH Photo are US$999.99 These do not have enough resources to run Recall.

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Feature Highlight - Wayland Compositor Hand-Off
by Scott Sullivan 24 May '24

24 May '24

http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/qt6_wayland_robustness/ This is a robustness improvements that let Wayland clients (applications/programs) gracefully survive and reconnect with the Wayland Compositor after a crash / restart or even complete replacement with a different Wayland compositor. X11 Server, from what I understood in my old explorations, architecturally it would not have been possible to get there from within the limits of X11's design. As someone who daily drives KDE Plasam Wayland, I'm really looking forward to this coming down stream. I've at various time suffered the pain of loosing my whole session over crash bugs. A frustrating, but thankfully brief example was a combination of PrusaSlicer and the QT file dialog triggering a compositor crash. It really takes me back 15 years, when the same level of instability was in X11's ecosystem. But I switched to KDE's Wayland compositor because there are meaningful parts that are already surpassing the prior art, and competing with what the commercial OSes are putting out. -- Scott Sullivan

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Linux and the tPL.
by Karen Lewellen 23 May '24

23 May '24

Hi folks, Given if memory serves there are Linux certification classes provided via the Toronto Public Library..although the crash might have put this on hold, I am curious about a problem. Do they actually test site functions in command line Linux? Visited the site using one of the JavaScript compiled browsers Elinks, sought to access the tpl maps feature, only to reach a "block the terminal" image. I did not get a you need to use JavaScript error, but a request to download this image named block the terminal, no way to go forward. Thoughts? Karen

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[OT] Tonight's presentation on mailing lists requires a unique keyword
by Ron / BCLUG 14 May '24

14 May '24

For this evening's presentation on mailing lists, I need a message with a unique keyword. I'm sending a couple hours before presentation so there's a chance of this message being search index. Since I had a video by Moyun in my browser, I figured her name would work. Plus, the music's amazing, she's so talented and no one else does what she does, so I thought I'd share. Western or Japanese music on a traditional Chinese instrument - it actually works, and really well. > Burn It All Down - Worlds 2021 League of Legends(LoL) Guzheng Cover > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDWcs6kWVzE > il Vento d'oro > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPxeV0gks9Y > Hotel California > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf6v59c5yuY Her start as an online presence, at 14 years old, maybe her best cover: > Zenbon sakura > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpHFLzq7A8c A favourite of mine: > Only My Railgun > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5eZa-1h2YY Anyway, I got my keyword in a message, that was the main goal. If someone enjoys some music, that's a bonus. rb

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Reminder: GTALUG General Meeting - May 14 at 7:30pm
by Alan Heighway 12 May '24

12 May '24

Mailman 3, is it worth it? The trials and tribulations of upgrading, & do we really need mailing lists anymore? Discuss! <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2024-05/> with Ron Barnes <https://gtalug.org/> 14 May, 2024 at 07:30 PM We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* May 14th, 2024 19:30 AM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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gtalug.org had an outage from Friday through Monday
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 May '24

09 May '24

We had a bit of a rocky transition between DNS servers. Our domain names were not usefully resolved during that time so you could not email to the lists or accessed the web pages. All this gets extended by DNS caching. If you are still experiencing problems you should be able tell me by email to my personal address.

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Off-topic nostalgia: CorelDraw and WordPerect on sale
by Evan Leibovitch 08 May '24

08 May '24

Hi all. >From the and-you-thought-they-were-dead department: I've come across an offer at a site I watch that piqued my interest: A bundle of - The 2021 version of CorelDraw Essentials - A bunch of add-on brush patterns - Corel Painter 8 - Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 25 - WordPerfect Standard 2021 is going for CAD $41.23, with some proceeds going towards the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Windows only, unfortunately, digital download. https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essenti… The relevance to GTALUG is weak but exists. Once upon a time, Corel was a great Canadian software success story, and for what seems like a very short period of time was a massive supporter of Linux that actually produced its own distribution. Its only hardware offering was a Linux box called the Netwinder. At one time I thought the company was ready to offer a real across-the-board challenge to Microsoft, then had a change of management and lost all interest in that. Anyway, much time has passed since those days when I learned that working in vector graphics was more satisfying than pixels. I've long since moved from CorelDraw to Inkscape (which happily reads .cdr files). And WordPerfect? I'm just amazed that it still exists. I've kept all of the vector clipart that shipped with early CorelDraw versions and sometimes they come in handy.. Anyway... anyone who has an investment in Corel-specific skills that they want to maintain may find this a good deal. For some of the rest of us that can remember, https://www.humblebundle.com/software/corel-productivity-creativity-essenti…, perhaps, a flash of nostalgia. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Maximum-severity GitLab flaw allowing account hijacking under active exploitation
by Ron / BCLUG 02 May '24

02 May '24

This one looks fun: > A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab > accounts with no user interaction required is now under active > exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that > thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/0-click-gitlab-hijacking-flaw-unde… > The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating > of 10 out of 10. Make sure you're patched if you run GitLab! rb -- BCLUG.ca https://bclug.ca To subscribe, send an email to discuss-join(a)lists.bclug.ca List Web site: https://lists.bclug.ca/mailman/listinfo/discuss

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A dos port of the Linux program neofetch.
by Karen Lewellen 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

Hi folks, I may only end up using Linux via dos ssh into Linux shells, but boy am I happy when someone ports a Linux tool for DOS. https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2024/03/fetch4fd-system-info-program/ My goal was something comparative to MSD, and Poof! Cheers, Karen

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Windows mutates Linux bootable installation disks
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

To make a bootable Fedora installation disk, I just do a dd from the .iso file to the USB flash stick (not a filesystem on the USB device) These work well for system repairs as well as installation. When you boot from these sticks, they offer an integrity check: the whole image is checked against a know checksum. Unfortunately, if Windows sees one of these sticks, it mutate the contents. So future integrity checks will fail. I've suffered from this for years: if you are not fast enough during POST to hit the key that lets you specify the boot device, your system might boot into Windows. And then your bootable stick is ruined. I learned a few things from links in Villy Kuses' posting in <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/why-does-windows-corrupt-the-fedora-…> Basically, this stick has a FAT ESP and Windows adds a magic file and changes a timestamp. How rude. It turns out that the USB stick will boot. Just don't do an integrity check. I wish USB sticks had read-only mechanical switch.

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