Distro Flashback: What happened to Cub Linux?

The operating system wasn’t always known as Cub Linux. In actuality, when it first got announced back in 2014, Chromixium OS was what it was called. After a year of its announcement, its first stable version hit the open-source world as a 32-bit live ISO. With that being said, this release didn’t go as smoothly as planned. There were several bugs reported by its users, which included slow menu generation and screen tearing. On the bright side, the developers soon got to solving these issues and released a service pack in addition to various updates. However, what really took Chromixium OS to the next level was the release of its 64-bit version in November 2015. All of this development hit a roadblock when the owner of Chromium and Chrome OS, Google, sent a request to the operating system’s developers to give up the name ‘Chromixium’ and other related social media presences websites. However, that couldn’t stop the head of this project, RichJack, as they soon addressed this issue and renamed their OS as Cub Linux. These events took place in late 2015 and ended on a positive note, but the project didn’t know what was approaching its way in 2016. When 2016 was nearing its end, Cub Linux users started noticing one big thing: the official website had been missing. This turned out to indicate the demise of a project that could have done wonders in the future. Even though their GitHub page is open to this very day, the development had stopped, and there was no point in keeping up with Cub Linux anymore. According to a developer, this project’s sudden end could be attributed to “private life restrictions,” which is as vague as a statement could get. With that being said, as far as the future of Cub Linux is concerned, many other developers got interested in this project and wanted to pick it up. Accordingly, the Feren OS developer announced in 2017 that he would give Cub Linux a major overhaul and “bring back Cub” with the name of Phoenix Linux. This might seem like good news to some, but honestly, the future of Phoenix Linux doesn’t seem too bright since the project hasn’t received another update since March 2018. If we’re really hopeful, we’ll get something as soon as 2021, but waiting any longer wouldn’t make much sense.

Python Programming

• Only Python: Friendly-traceback: work in progress

  It's been almost two months since my last blog post and I feel guilty of not haven't taken the time to write more regularly.  I should really tell you about how fantastic Will McGugan's Rich is, and how I have customized it for my projects. I should also tell you how Sylvain Desodt's DidYouMeanPython has been influencing Friendly-traceback latest developments. Also worthy of note is how Alex Hall's FutureCoder project is incorporating so many neat tools that it feels like a real honour that he has incorporated Friendly-traceback in it. Alas, while I have been busy making many changes and addition to the code, the documentation is hopelessly behind and no longer gives a correct picture of what Future-traceback is now capable of. So much to do, so little time. So, I will just end with a picture, and go back to coding, with a promise of writing more ... soon I hope.

• Python range() Function – Linux Hint

  Python is a modern, general-purpose, and high-level programming language that comes with powerful features. Python has many built-in modules to support diverse operations. The range() function is a built-in function used to perform specific tasks or actions for a definite number of times. In other words, the range() function is used to perform a task iteratively. This function is used in conjunction with the for loop and the while loop.

• Python Dictionaries – Linux Hint

  Python is an efficient and versatile programming language. It is one of the most frequently used high-level programming languages to perform data-related tasks due to its many supportive built-in modules and functions. To mention some of its many built-in data structures, it has arrays, lists, tuples, etc. Dictionaries are one of the built-in data structures in Python. It holds the data in the form of a key-value pair. The keys are the unique value that acts as a representative of data. The key is also called as “an index value”. Data structures are a very important aspect of any programming language. They are used to store and manipulate the data in a well-organized and efficient way. Therefore, Python dictionaries are more useful when we need to store the data in a form of key-value pair and to access the data faster. The Python dictionaries return the data faster because the key value for every data is unique, therefore the searching time for data is reduced, and we get the result faster. This article explicates the Python dictionaries in detail.

• Python Classes – Linux Hint

  Python is one of the multiuse high-level programming languages. It is an object-oriented programming language. The main difference between the procedural and object-oriented programming languages is that we cannot create the classes in procedural programming languages. The main focus of procedural languages is on creating functions, and variables for performing the task whereas, in object-oriented programming languages, our main concern is to create objects and use them for performing our tasks. A class is simply a blueprint that contains functions and variables. A class is like a real-life classroom of any institute. It contains some chairs, tables, desks, a projector, walls, etc. base on all these components; we build a classroom. All these components are the variables and functions in a class, and a classroom is an object. The Python classes and objects are explained in this article.

• FreeBSD process environ and resource limits

  New psutil 5.7.3 is out. This release adds support for 2 functionalities which were not available on BSD platforms: the ability to get the process environment (all BSD) and to get or set process resource limits (FreeBSD only), similarly to what can be done on Linux.  

Kernel: KVM, Btrfs and nosymfollow

• KVM For Linux 5.10 Brings New "TDP" MMU To Help VMs With Hundreds Of vCPUs, TBs of RAM - Phoronix

  The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is seeing plenty of improvements with the Linux 5.10 kernel. 

• Slashdot Asks: How Do You Feel About Btrfs? - Slashdot

  

• Linux 5.10 Adds "nosymfollow" Mount Option Security Defense - Phoronix

  FreeBSD has long supported a "nosymfollow" mount option to prevent following of symlinks on mounted file-systems while now the mainline Linux kernel is adding a similar security defense.  Driven along by Google's kernel engineers as their work on Chrome OS, they have upstreamed their nosymfollow implementation to the mainline kernel with Linux 5.10. The premise of this feature is to not follow symlinks when resolving paths within the kernel. Symlinks can still be created on the mounted file-system and readlink() will still function, thus not breaking user-space usage of symlinks, but this generic mount option is intended as a kernel defense. 

Japanese IME on PCLinuxOS 64 KDE5 Magnum 2020 1015

I recently saw that my install of PCLinuxOS was behaving funny after and update: the effects ceased working and web pages were loading slowly. Last time this happened to me, I had to install a new iso because I had been working with a very old one. This time, however, I had kept up with all the updates thanks to the convenient Simple Update Notifier, but something was not good. Anyway, I decided to install the new PCLinuxOS 64 KDE5 Magnum 2020 1015. The installation went well, but I was worried because I normally install the PCLinuxOS GRUB2 on the distro partition, not on the MBR, but it was not possible for me to do it this time, so I was predicting a mess trying to boot OpenMandriva, Mageia, MX Linux, and Elive.