- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

RHEL Free Tier vs CentOS Stream vs Alma Linux vs Rocky Linux
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 01 Feb '23

01 Feb '23

They are all kind of the same. Competition is great. They are all, to some extent, parasites living off RHEL. Is that too many parasites? Too many in what sense?: - hurts Red Hat, but that isn't immoral - a free version allows the system to go more places. This should actually help Red Hat. - it sometimes causes Red Hat to take evasive actions that hurt the product + eg. chunking of kernel changes to make more work for Oracle + eg. buying CentOS and then repurposing it - causes duplicated cloning work Without sufficient research, I kind of like the smell of Alma best. How about you?

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war story: firefox performance rathole (matrix.io)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Jan '23

30 Jan '23

Note: no solution is reached, but it has been an adventure so far. I need to submit a declaration about the City of Toronto Vacant Home Tax. See <https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/property-taxes-utilities/vacant-ho…> I notice that this apparently simple page is taking a lot of resources according to FireFoxes "about:performance" page. Why? I try to find out the best place to ask this question. It seems to be on a channel on Mozilla's Matrix Server. ==== matrix client ==== I guess that I need a Matrix client. This will eventually turn out not to be the case, but lets proceed along this path anyway. Element and Fractal seem to be good choices for client. Both are distributed as flatpaks (grrr.). I try to load each of them from the Gnome "Software" GUI, and when that fails with a quite obscure message (that is not available for copying), I try the command line. Which also fails with an obscure message $ flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gnome.Fractal.flatpakref error: No entry for app/org.gnome.Fractal/x86_64/stable in remote 'flathub' summary flatpak cache I find that adding --user fixes that problem. But look at the tonnes of stuff it also installs! I don't even know where it puts them. $ flatpak install --user im.riot.Riot.flatpakref The remote 'flathub', referred to by 'im.riot.Riot' at location https://dl.flathub.org/repo/ contains additional applications. Should the remote be kept for future installations? [Y/n]: y Required runtime for im.riot.Riot/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/22.08) found in remote flathub Do you want to install it? [Y/n]: y im.riot.Riot permissions: ipc network pulseaudio wayland x11 devices file access [1] dbus access [2] bus ownership [3] [1] xdg-run/keyring, xdg-run/pipewire-0 [2] org.freedesktop.Notifications, org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver, org.freedesktop.portal.Fcitx, org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher [3] org.kde.* ID Branch Op Remote Download 1. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default 22.08 i flathub 135.5 MB / 135.7 MB 2. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default 22.08-extra i flathub 9.5 MB / 135.7 MB 3. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-470-161-03 1.4 i flathub 273.7 MB / 273.2 MB 4. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.Locale 22.08 i flathub 17.8 kB / 333.2 MB 5. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264 2.2.0 i flathub 887.1 kB / 944.3 kB 6. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform 22.08 i flathub 198.1 MB / 214.6 MB 7. [✓] im.riot.Riot stable i flathub 123.7 MB / 117.9 MB Installation complete. So many megabytes of stuff that duplicates what's already on my machine! No how do you run this thing? Seems to be $ flatpak run im.riot.Riot Seems pretty obscure and silly. ==== using matrix ==== I end up using a web version of Element. I first try Fedora's: matrix is federated so surely I can see mozilla's channels from Fedora's matrix. I cannot figure out how. Then I see that Mozilla runs its own web-based Element so you can use that as a client. <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix> ==== advice from #firefox ==== Turn on FireFox profiling and study the results. <https://profiler.firefox.com/> So far the results are opaque.

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War Story: RCS "blame" command
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jan '23

23 Jan '23

RCS is a source code control system (a precursor to GIT). History: SCCS, one of the first "source code control systems" was part of UNIX but it was owned by AT&T Bell Labs. There was a need for a similar system for BSD Unix. Walter Tichy created RCS. RCS was the basis for CVS. Whereas RCS (and SCCS) treated each source file as more-or-less independent, CVS dealt with a file tree. All of these have been replaced by Git, a much more powerful system. BUT... I use RCS for system config files because it is pretty reasonable for recording the evolution of a single file. Config files are often independent but in a common directory (eg. /etc) whereas git wishes to track a tree. Besides, I've been using RCS far longer than GIT has existed. Today's topic: blame git-blame is a very useful command. Blame prints each line of a file along with the revision number in which it was last changed. This is very useful when you are trying to figure out how this line came to be. CVS has "annotate". It does the same thing as git-blame. Of course it was created earlier. RCS didn't have a similar function. Someone created rcs-blame but it wasn't generally adopted. I wanted one today to understand a mistake that I made in a config file. rcs-blame was on Sourceforge, but it has disappeared. It is part of debian and Ubuntu, but not Fedora. I found a copy of the source here: <https://invisible-island.net/rcs-blame/rcs-blame.html>. That is Thomas E. Dickey's site and I trust him (he is/was the main maintainer of xterm). I followed the instructions in the tar file's README and it built easily. The upshot: I found which commit had the bug; I checked for similar bugs in that commit but found none.

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GTALUG General Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 08 Jan '23

08 Jan '23

The state of Mozilla <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2023-01/> with Mike Hoye <https://gtalug.org/> 10 January, 2023 at 07:30 PM Mike Hoye will be joining us to talk about where Firefox, Mozilla and the Web are today, and where they're going. We're going to use Big Blue Button for this meeting: *Time:* January 10, 2023 07:30 PM Eastern Time *Join Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl LocationVirtual - Big Blue Button *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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@gtalug@mastodon.social
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 08 Jan '23

08 Jan '23

I don't know much about mastodon but it certainly has come to the fore recently. GTALUG has an identity on Mastodon (See the Subject). You can look at it here: <https://mastodon.social/@gtalug> Our latest posting was from October 2021: a video of the previous talk by Mike Hoye. Evan says we'll have talks about Mastodon coming up. If anyone would like to manage this resource, do step forward.

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Is there a digest format for the GTALUG talk mailing list?
by sciguy 08 Jan '23

08 Jan '23

I went through the mailing list configuration page and while I found a ton of things that can be tweaked, there appeared to be nothing on getting a daily digest format of this mailing list. Is there such a thing for GTALUG? Paul King

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January Meeting: The State of Mozilla with Mike Hoye
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 08 Jan '23

08 Jan '23

10 January, 2023 at 07:30 PM Mike Hoye will be joining us to talk where Firefox, Mozilla and the Web are today, and where they're going. We're going to use Big Blue Button for this meeting: Join Big Blue Button: <https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl>

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GTALUG update
by Evan Leibovitch 06 Jan '23

06 Jan '23

Hi all, I just wanted to bring some news and issues to your attention. *1) Face-to-face meetings* We're looking to get back to having real meetings again, with eye contact and projectors and all that. The space we have had at TMU (formerly Ryerson) is still on offer, though now the facility requires a card pass to enter the building so someone will need to let non-students in for the meetings. Not an optimal situation. We are looking at alternatives; any ideas you may have are welcomed. *2) Topics for the next few months' meetings* While the January meeting this Tuesday will still be virtual, it will feature the latest (if postponed) annual talk by Mike Hoye of Mozilla. Further into the year we are planning no less than THREE meetings to talk about various components of Mastadon, the open source alternative to Twitter that many are joining and installing. The February, April and June meetings will be about the structure, technical issues and content issues about Mastadon. In March we will have presentations about graphics under Linux, and a few possibilities are being discussed for May. We don't often have six months of meeting topics known in advance. If you have any ideas or can contribute to any of these, please let us know. *3) Technical/software issues* In response to the discussion of GTALUG's online services, a number of people have stepped forward with offers of help. In the new year we'll be bringing this group together and I'm looking forward to its work. If you have any questions or comments, please reply here to the mailing list. Thanks and see you next week! - Evan

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rejuvinating an old machine: inexpensive SSD
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Jan '23

05 Jan '23

Old advice: If you are still using an old machine, one that uses an HDD to hold the OS, consider replacing the HDD with an SSD. Why do I bring it up now? Because SSDs are getting even cheaper. Some think that they will get cheaper still in the next little while. But this drive is cheap enough that it is hardly worth thinking about: <https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07LG1PJMH> Currently $33.99. You may have to add something worth $1.01 to your order to get free shipping. Here's some candy for $1.39: <https://www.amazon.ca/Maynards-Fuzzy-Peach-Candy-Grams/dp/B073DPJQDL/> Good: - cheap - 512GB is a comfortable size - TLC rather than QLC - 2.5" SATA so it easily replaces an HDD - if you don't have a bay for it, it is light enough that duct-taping it into your case is often good enough. So you might be able to add it to your system rather than replacing an HDD. Bad: - no DRAM - 2.5" SATA; NVMe is better (but if you have a a suitable M.2 socket you are probably already using it for an SSD - you might want a larger capacity

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Solved(?): No internet under Ubuntu 22.04 after booting into Windows 10
by sciguy 20 Dec '22

20 Dec '22

Well, rather than just simply power cycling the computer as I had done, I instead shut down the comptuer from Windows, then pulled the plug for 20-30 seconds. Then I re-inserted the plug and powered up. I am now writing this email from Linux. A power-down doesn't really cut the juice to the motherboard. Some lights inside the box will remain on, and I recall that the NIC is resident on the motherboard. -------- Original Message -------- As stated, I have a desktop PC that is dual-boot, and where the network operates under Windows 10 but not Linux. I have been referred to this mailing list from Ubuntu Studio, since this appears to be a more general kind of problem. I followed some suggestions given by previous responders in other lists, regarding net commands to help diagnose the system. It was of some interest that I found that my router is assigning a different IP to the Windows 10 hostname than for the Linux hostname. However, the listing below doesn't really show any IP. The commands run were: ip addr show ip link show dhclient -r eno1 sudo dhclient -v eno1 The typescript is below: Script started on 2022-12-17 17:03:12-05:00 $ ip addr show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eno1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000 link/ether d8:50:e6:4d:0c:da brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff altname enp0s25 inet6 fe80::e8e4:6dba:23d6:c035/64 scope link noprefixroute valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever $ ip link show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 2: eno1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000 link/ether d8:50:e6:4d:0c:da brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff altname enp0s25 $ dhclient -r eno1 $ sudo dhclient -v eno1 [sudo] password for paul: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.4.1 Copyright 2004-2018 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Listening on LPF/eno1/d8:50:e6:4d:0c:da Sending on LPF/eno1/d8:50:e6:4d:0c:da Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPDISCOVER on eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0x3a1ec029) DHCPDISCOVER on eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5 (xid=0x3a1ec029) DHCPDISCOVER on eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11 (xid=0x3a1ec029) DHCPDISCOVER on eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 18 (xid=0x3a1ec029) DHCPDISCOVER on eno1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13 (xid=0x3a1ec029) ^C $ exit Script done on 2022-12-17 17:04:57-05:00 [COMMAND_EXIT_CODE="130"] Thanks to anyone who can help or provide useful insight. Paul King

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