today's howtos

• How To Install Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Flatpak is a package management and software deployment tool created to make the distribution of desktop applications on Linux easier. Flatpak is similar to Ubuntu’s Snapcraft. However, the snap technology is proprietary to Ubuntu. This is why many Linux distribution does not have support for a Snap but they have for Flatpak. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Flatpak on an Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

• NO_ZERO_IN_DATE with MySQL 5.7

  I’m going through some old notes and found this little gem that really confused me last time I was migrating MySQL databases.

• How to turn off login banner in Linux/Unix with .hushlogin - nixCraft

  Here is a quick tip that explains how to hide and turn off annoying banner in Linux or Unix by creating .hushlogin file.

• curl -G vs curl -X GET

  You normally use curl without explicitly saying which request method to use. If you just pass in a HTTP URL like curl http://example.com, curl will use GET. If you use -d or -F curl will use POST, -I will cause a HEAD and -T will make it a PUT. If for whatever reason you’re not happy with these default choices that curl does for you, you can override those request methods by specifying -X [WHATEVER]. This way you can for example send a DELETE by doing curl -X DELETE [URL]. It is thus pointless to do curl -X GET [URL] as GET would be used anyway. In the same vein it is pointless to do curl -X POST -d data [URL]... But you can make a fun and somewhat rare request that sends a request-body in a GET request with something like curl -X GET -d data [URL].

Ramblings about GNOME development

I still like the "C + GLib + GTK-Doc + Devhelp" combination for software development. But it's maybe because that's what I've practiced the most during the 2010's, and it's hard to change habits. What I don't really like, though, is creating lots of GObject subclasses, and writing GObject Introspection-friendly APIs (to take care of language bindings). It's a burden that GNOME library developers need to carry. I said in the previous section that I like a verbose syntax, but here when subclassing a GObject in C, it's a little too verbose (boilerplate code). It needs to be generated with a tool (here is the one that I wrote: gobject-boilerplate scripts). And it's not really malleable code. In the small glib-gtk-book that I wrote several years ago, I described in a chapter the "semi-OOP" C style used by GLib core (not GIO). So, having a kind of simple Object-Oriented style in C, without using GObject. It doesn't require a lot of code to write your own semi-OOP class in C. But then in later chapters I recommended to create GObject subclasses. Time to revisit my copy :-) ? [...] When we know well something, we also know well what are its benefits and drawbacks. We sometimes question ourself: is the grass greener elsewhere? It's nice to explore other worlds, see how things can be done differently. And then coming back to where we were, but with a changed look, new ideas, and, most importantly, a renewed motivation!

Pinebook Pro

I recently bought a Pinebook Pro. This was mainly out of general interest, but also because I wanted to have a spare portable computer. When I was recently having some difficulty with my laptop not charging, I realised that I am dependent on having access to Emacs, notmuch.el and my usual git repositories in the way that most people are dependent on their smartphones – all the info I need to get things done is in there, and it’s very disabling not to have it. So, good to have a spare. I decided to get the machine running the hard way, and have been working to add a facility to install the device-specific bootloader to Consfigurator. It has been good to learn about how ARM machines boot. The only really hard part turned out to be coming up with the right abstractions within Consfigurator, thanks to the hard work of the Debian U-Boot maintainers. This left me with a chroot and a corresponding disk image, properly partitioned and with the bootloader installed. It was only then that the difficulties began: getting a kernel and initrd combination which can output to the Pinebook Pro’s screen and take input from its keyboard is not really straightforward yet, but that’s required for inputting disk encryption passwords, which are required on portable devices. I don’t have the right hardware to make a serial connection to the machine, so all this took a lot of trial and error. I’ve ended up using Manjaro’s patched upstream kernel build for now, because that compiles in the right drivers, and debugging an initrd without a serial connection is far too inefficient.

Elive 3.8.20 beta released

The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 3.8.20