Audiocasts/Shows: Open Source Security Podcast, GNU World Order, Brodie Robertson, and More

• Josh Bressers: Episode 329 – Signing (What is it good for)

  Josh and Kurt talk about what the actual purpose of signing artifacts is. This is one of those spaces where the chain of custody for signing content is a lot more complicated than it sometimes seems to be. Is delivering software over https just as good as using a detached signature? How did we end up here, what do we think the future looks like? This episode will have something for everyone to complain about!

• GNU World Order 466

  **kde-dev-scripts** , **kde-dev-utils** , **kde-gtk-config** , **kdebugsettings** , **kdeclarative** , and **kdeconnect**. from Slackware set **kde**.

• How to install Microsoft Edge on Pop!_OS 22.04 - Invidious [Ed: Edge is malware and a password stealer; don't even use it]

• Source Vs Binary Package Managers: What's The Best? - Invidious

  Most Linux distros at this point use a binary based package management solution but source based solutions still do exist, the question is which is better and why have source based distros all but disappeared.

Review: AlmaLinux OS 9.0

Looking back on my experiences with AlmaLinux, there was such a lot of ground covered in under a week and with such varied results. Getting started was a painful experience. The release announcement for AlmaLinux OS 9.0 talks about multiple editions which do not (at the time of writing) exist, cutting off avenues of testing live media and running the distribution on Raspberry Pi computers. The torrent I tried to download was incomplete and there are some key pieces of documentation missing that I had to find upstream. To make matters worse, Anaconda is one of the least friendly graphical installers I have used in recent years with awkwardly placed controls and overly complicated screens. Once I was up and running, there were several problems on the desktop side of things. GNOME on Wayland is relatively slow and had some problems compared to the GNOME on X11 session, automatic updates are slow and interrupt the flow of using the system. It feels like a functional step backwards to be using a Windows-like update system which is less convenient than virtually any other Linux distribution of the past two decades. To top it off, I couldn't get the Totem player to play videos (despite the software centre claiming I had the proper codecs) and VLC wouldn't play sound, though it works fine on other distributions on the same hardware. I'm sure some people will write to me to point out AlmaLinux is not primarily intended to be used as a workstation platform, its main duty is as a server distribution. I agree with this idea, but the project claims (inaccurately, it seems) to offer live desktop editions of AlmaLinux and the system installer has multiple workstation and "Server with GUI" roles we can select. Running as a desktop system might not be the distribution's primary role, but it is one which is advertised and encouraged. Running GNOME is even the default role selected by Anaconda, so it would be foolish to overlook how the distribution functions in this, its default role.

Linux 5.19-rc4

So we've had a couple of fairly small rc releases, and here we finally
start to see an uptick in commits in rc4. Not what I really want to
see in the middle of the release cycle, but not entirely surprising
considering how quiet it's been so far.

And while 5.19-rc4 is a bit larger than previous rc's, and is a bit
larger than we usually see at this point, it's by no means anywhere
near record size. So more of a "a bit bigger than usual" than a "Oh my
God, this thing is huge".

The changes are also spread out fairly widely, and nothing really
stands out. I think the individually biggest patches are the reverts
to the printk threading changes that people wanted to really think
about some more, since the changes had caused some issues. The rest of
the diffstat is _fairly_ flat, with perhaps the vc4 drm patches
standing out a bit.

So at least right now this all feels like "making up for a small rc3"
rather than anything really worrisome, and probably just a result of
timing some of the patches shifted into rc4. But let's see how this
develops over the next couple of weeks.

The full shortlog with all the details is below, and I don't think
there's any larger pattern here. We've got all the usual architecture
fixes, driver fixes all over the place, and filesystems, core
networking, and tooling (perf and selftests). A lot of the changes
here are one- and few-liners.

Please do go test. Thanks,
                  Linus

GNOME Devs Bring New List View to Nautilus File Manager

Switching from GtkTreeView (which remains available in GTK4) to this new version is said to offer a number of advantages, and offer ‘full feature parity’ with two (temporary) exceptions (that are being worked on in separate branches). But putting that to one side, what benefits does this switch provide (besides a codebase that’s more malleable and modern)? Well, say hello to rubber banding — at long last you can now select multiple files/folders in list view simply by dragging out with your mouse, just like you can in the icon view...