ubuntu

Parasocial chat On Linux Matters we have a friendly and active, public Telegram channel linked on our Contact page, along with a Discord Channel. We also have links to Mastodon, Twitter (not that we use it that much) and email. At the time of writing there are roughly this ⬇️ number of people (plus bots, sockpuppets and duplicates) in or following each Linux Matters “official” presence: Channel Number Telegram 796 Discord 683 Mastodon 858 Twitter 9919 Preponderance of chat We chose to have a presence in lots of places, but primarily the talent presenters (Martin, Mark, and myself (and Joe)) only really hang out to chat on Telegram and Mastodon. [Read More]

Previously… Back in February, I blogged about a series of scam Bitcoin wallet apps that were published in the Canonical Snap store, including one which netted a scammer $490K of some poor rube’s coin. The snap was eventually removed, and some threads were started over on the Snapcraft forum Groundhog Day Nothing has changed it seems, because once again, ANOTHER TEN scam BitCoin wallet apps have been published in the Snap Store today. [Read More]

On Tuesday, I blogged about a series of Bitcoin scam apps published in the Canonical Snap store. Edit: This section updated on 2024-02-23 to include a Canonical response as two new forum posts from sabdfl (Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical). Two things! Three things! Zerothly, today we have a response from Canonical. There are actually two new posts from Mark. One in response to the thread asking whether crypto apps should be banned from the Snap store, and the other an acceptance that identity verification might need to be stronger on the Snap store. [Read More]

Edit: There’s a short follow-up to this post: Exodus Bitcoin Wallet: Follow up. tl;dr: A Bitcoin investor was recently scammed out of 9 Bitcoin (worth around $490K) in a fake “Exodus wallet” desktop application for Linux, published in the Canonical Snap Store. This isn’t the first time, and if nothing changes, it likely won’t be the last. This post turned out longer than I expected. So if you don’t have the time there’s a briefer summary at the bottom under “In summary (the tl;dr)” along with my suggestions on what Canonical should do now. [Read More]

Last week, I wrote about my somewhat last-minute plans to attend the 2023 Ubuntu Summit in Riga, Latvia. The event is now over, and I’m back home collating my thoughts about the weekend. The tl;dr: It was a great, well-organised and run event with interesting speakers. Here’s my “trip report”. Logistics The event was held at the Radisson Blu Latvija. Many of the Canonical staff stayed at the Raddison, while most (perhaps all) of the non-Canonical attendees were a short walk away at the Tallink Hotel. [Read More]

At the Ubuntu Summit in Latvia, Canonical have just announced their plans for the Ubuntu Core Desktop. I recently played with a preview of it, for fun. Here’s a nearby computer running it right now. Ubuntu Core is a “a secure, application-centric IoT OS for embedded devices”. It’s been around a while now, powering IoT devices, kiosks, routers, set-top-boxes and other appliances. Ubuntu Core Desktop is an immutable, secure and modular desktop operating system. [Read More]

Ubuntu Summit This weekend the Ubuntu Summit begins in Riga, Latvia. I originally had no plans to attend until a recent change in circumstance, and a late space became available. The Ubuntu Summit is “an event focused on the Linux and Open Source ecosystem, beyond Ubuntu itself. Representatives of outstanding projects will demonstrate how their work is changing the future of technology as we know it.”. Essentially it’s a conference-style event with multiple tracks hosting speakers talking about Ubuntu and Linux-adjunct topics. [Read More]

The other day I wrote about snapcraft metrics, a tool that enables publishers to extract application metrics from the snap store. Something I’ve noticed which I wanted to share, was how quickly automatic updates roll out to an application’s user base. So I took the metrics from an application that I published in the snap store and scrubbed the names and version numbers. I charted below the speed that devices roll over from one release to the next. [Read More]

tl;dr. The OBS Studio snap is now updated to the latest stable release, 29.1.3, after a “brief” hiatus. Another day, another updated snap, which had been languishing a bit. I wrote about updating Spot yesterday, and today, as per the title, it’s OBS Studio. As I mentioned previously, there’s a bunch of outdated snaps in the store, and I want to help fix that. Hopefully, with these blog posts, others might learn how, and be motivated to either publish new applications or step up and update existing ones. [Read More]

I recently lamented that there’s a bunch of broken and outdated snaps in the snap store. Well, some of them are my responsibility, so in the spirit of “be the change you want to see”, let’s get them fixed and updated. I thought I’d highlight one or two as I go through them, to highlight any important or interesting changes. Today I took a look at Spot, which is a very decent native GNOME Spotify client by Alexandre Trendel. [Read More]

I was a guest host on Late Night Linux podcast, episode 249 last week, filling in for Will. We each bring along a ‘discovery’, I brought snapcraft metrics to talk about. I thought I’d write up how I use them, for listeners of the show as it’s hard to articulate this very well verbally. My snaps I have about twenty snaps in the snap store. Some, like Bombsquad and ncspot have been published for years now. [Read More]

I wrote previously about debugging a broken x16emu snap. In short, something went wonky with ld. I started a thread on the snapcraft forum and Ken VanDine came to my assistance with an answer and a pull request. I grabbed that pr, and it did indeed build successfully.. $ snapcraft --use-lxd Launching instance... Executed: pull alsa-pulseaudio Executed: pull gnome/sdk Executed: pull x16-roms Executed: pull x16-emulator Executed: build alsa-pulseaudio Executed: build gnome/sdk Executed: build x16-roms Executed: skip pull x16-roms (already ran) Executed: skip build x16-roms (already ran) Executed: stage x16-roms (required to build 'x16-emulator') Executed: skip pull alsa-pulseaudio (already ran) Executed: skip build alsa-pulseaudio (already ran) Executed: stage alsa-pulseaudio (required to build 'x16-emulator') Executed: build x16-emulator Executed: skip stage alsa-pulseaudio (already ran) Executed: stage gnome/sdk Executed: skip stage x16-roms (already ran) Executed: stage x16-emulator Executed: prime alsa-pulseaudio Executed: prime gnome/sdk Executed: prime x16-roms Executed: prime x16-emulator Executed parts lifecycle Generated snap metadata Created snap package x16emu_b16509b_amd64. [Read More]

I thought I’d “live blog” (not live) my way through fixing a snap which I noticed was broken this morning. How did I notice? I happened to look at the build page for it. Maybe my spidey sense was tingling, because I wouldn’t ordinarily have zoned in on this particular snap. I could have some kind of alert that lets me know when this happens, but I currently don’t. I might use my new-found love of GitHub Actions, but that sounds like a future blog post! [Read More]

For the last six months, I’ve been a presenter on Linux Matters. Prior to that, I spent thirteen years presenting the now-defunct Ubuntu Podcast. Both shows have/had multiple presenters, We record every other week, and send our individual audio files to Joe. He does all the magic post-recording production including editing, audio processing and mastering. That file is then uploaded and eventually makes its way into the Patreon “all episodes” ad-free feed, then to our feed a day or so later. [Read More]

NextCloud Box I just stumbled on an old NextCloud Box in my loft. It’s a quiet Sunday in the house, so I thought I’d see if it still works, and if there’s any data on it. I’m pretty sure I did use it for a while, so there must be something on it. Here’s my NextCloud Box in a cardboard box labelled “NextCloud Box”. Here’s what the NextCloud box looks like once installed. [Read More]

Lies Neither of these are “App Stores” in the way average people know them. You can neither buy or sell products in these so-called ‘stores’… …yet. The wording on those two screenshots above is both hilarious and sad. It’s very reminiscent of People’s Front of Judea or Slim Shady. Anyway, here follows a bit of a moan about all this (the app stores, not Monty Python or Eminem). Background I have previously lamented on the following subject as a stream of tweets. [Read More]

SOMETIMES I PRESS THE CAPS LOCK KEY BY ACCIDENT, USUALLY WHILE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. I THEN FIND MYSELF UNABLE TO TYPE A PASSWORD OR I AM ACCUSED OF SHOUTING ONLINE. OVER COFFEE, MY FRIEND MARTIN EXPLAINED THAT IT’S POSSIBLE TO DISABLE THE CAPS LOCK KEY COMPLETELY IN LINUX. I’D NEVER CONSIDERED DOING THIS, MISTAKENLY THINKING THE ONLY OPTIONS WERE TO REMAP IT TO SOMETHING ELSE. IT TURNS OUT GNOME TWEAKS HAS AN OPTION. [Read More]

My work computer is a ThinkPad Z13. It’s on most of the time, including overnight and during the weekend. I’m one of those horrible people who like to just wiggle their mouse, unlock, and get working. I often leave a ton of windows open, so I quite like to sit down and start working without having to wait for boot up, and subsequent app launch. So when I arrive at my desk on a Monday and discover my GPU has crashed, that’s a poor start to the week. [Read More]

Earlier today I posted a poll on Mastodon. As I write this, there are fifteen hours left on the poll, and it looks like this with around a hundred votes: Most people seems to think I should wait for a month. That result may change overnight, of course, but I can’t wait! I’ve got a blog post to write, and time on my hands! So let’s upgrade now! Also, nobody seemed to spot that I got the releases round the wrong way. [Read More]

Canonical is planning an ‘All Snap’ desktop next year. It will likely be available side-by-side with the traditional deb-based installation we’ve been used to since 2004. If the “All Snap” or “immutable” platform is to be a success, Canonical needs to get a grip on the broken, uninstallable, insecure, and outdated snaps provided in the snap store. This is a long post, so feel free to skip to the ‘Solutions’ section for my positive thoughts. [Read More]