Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

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Gentoo eudev adopted by Eudev Project

September 15, 2021 / / 4 Comments

A recent LinuxQuestions thread discusses the depreciation of the eudev fork which was created by Gentoo a few years back in order to keep systemd at bay. This step by Gentoo sparks some serious doubts among LQ members about what Slackware should do – is the inclusion of systemd near, now that eudev is dead?

Short recap: In November 2015 Slackware replaced its no longer maintained original udev with this new eudev (a standalone extract of udev out of the systemd sources but modified so that every dependency on systemd is removed). This change was actually my chance to announce the liveslak project as a ‘celebration to say farewell to udev‘.
In November of 2020, a similar event happened when Slackware replaced ConsoleKit2 with elogind – a standalone copy of the logind code extracted from systemd and with all dependencies to systemd removed. Both events were meant to keep Slackware free of systemd, at least for a while… who can stem the flow of water.

But there is good news. Yesterday, a collaboration between Alpine, Devuan and Gentoo contributors has announced their adoption of eudev and a new repository has been created where the new project will further develop eudev: https://github.com/eudev-project/eudev/blob/master/README.md . Let’s give these folk our best wishes!

Eric

Windows 96, wtf?

September 15, 2021 / / 10 Comments

Tonight I played a bit with Windows 96.
Errrrr… Wait. There was nothing between 95 and 98, right? Right.

Mikesoft Windows 96 is a seriously fun effort to re-create classic MS Windows inside your browser. It’s actually a bunch of efficient JavaScript code making good use of your browser’s WebGL and WebAssembly capabilities. The project has a Wiki that explains the workings and gives more background if you are curious.

The web page loads fast and the Windows experience is uncanny. The Internet Exploder browser that’s included won’t load all pages I tried but at least it loads this blog 🙂

The desktop has a shortcut to connect to the project’s Discord server and also sports an application icon for MsgRoom – a chat application which connects you to an old-skool IRC-like server channel where other users of Windows 96 will show up once they start their own MsgRoom app. Cool!

The rudimentary package manager lets you install Wine, and even Shareware Doom, and it will play pretty damn well, including sound and smooth controls.

Give it a shot if you are wondering what to do tonight! Eric

Update your Chromium to 93.0.4577.82

September 15, 2021 / / 12 Comments

Today, I uploaded a set of Chromium 93.0.4577.82 packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current (32-bit as well as 64-bit).

According to yesterday’s official announcement on the Google blog, this release patches a number of vulnerabilites and two of them are zero-day vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited online.

The advice is to upgrade Chromium on your Slackware 14.2 and -current computers as soon as possible.

The ungoogled-chromium sources are lagging behind as usual, but I have hopes that a new source tarball will appear soon, now that we have a Chromium update which addresses multiple zero-days. Eloston, the project maintainer, seems AWOL but several contributors have a working patch set ready.

Stay safe! Eric

I am hiring (ASML Veldhoven Netherlands)

September 14, 2021 / / 3 Comments

As you may know, I am working at ASML since 2016, first in a technical IT role but nowadays as an IT Group Leader focusing on providing services and solutions in Virtual Product Development (VPD) and Engineering Simulation (simulation driven design) toward our internal customers (mechanical and optical engineering, and research).

ASML is an exciting company to work for, and the amount of work we do is rapidly expanding as a result of the pandemic and the resulting increase in demand for consumer electronics and computer chips. As a company we are at the forefront of lithography innovation with our EUV machines (Extreme Ultra Violet laser powered).
See this one-minute intro video for instance:

To keep up the pace with the ever increasing demands from our ASML Research and Engineering colleagues, I have been growing the IT teams that report to me. I hired quite a lot of people during the past two years that I have been in the manager seat, and I am now hiring again!
I am also posting here on my blog because it is becoming more challenging every year to find the right people within a reasonable time.

Specifically: I have a job opening for an “IT Infra Automation & Integration Expert“. This job is located at ASML HQ, Veldhoven, The Netherlands. Note that you’d have to move to the Netherlands if you are interested and want to apply.
We are looking for a new colleague in the “SIMS” team of our IT Agile Release Train “Engineering Simulation Services”. This IT ART delivers a Simulation Workplace to our internal customers who are in Mechanical and Optical Engineering as well as Research departments.
See the online profile for all the job details. Feel free to ask below in the comments section about further background info.

Hope this is of interest to someone!
Eric

liveslak-1.3.10 and new ISO images for Slackware Live Edition

September 10, 2021 / / 33 Comments

The previous batch of ISOs for Slackware Live Edition is already a few months old, so I decided to generate new images.
The ISO files are based on Slackware-current of “Wed Sep 8 18:07:38 UTC 2021” and using the liveslak-1.3.10 scripts, where passwordless login is a new feature.

Slackware-current has the label “15.0 Release Candidate 1” since August 16th but considering the amount of non-trivial updates since that date, I wonder whether the phrase “release candidate” has any relevance here. No sign that we are anywhere nearer to a final 15.0 release.

Let’s hope for the best, and in the meantime fresh ISOs for the Slackware Live Edition can be obtained at download.liveslak.org .

I refreshed he ‘bonus‘ section as well. There you find several squashfs modules you can use with your persistent liveslak USB stick. Copy these module into the ‘addons’ directory on the USB drive. They expand the functionality of the Live OS and allow me to keep the ISO file size within reasonable bounds.
Among these you’ll find the binary nvidia driver (already contained in the CINNAMON, DAW and MATE ISOs by the way); Wine 6.12, multilib, the DAW package collection, and a set from my own repository (chromium, libreoffice, veracrypt, vlc etc).

To end this post, I have a question for you regarding liveslak functionality.
At boot you can add any number of parameters to the kernel commandline, and some of these are used by the liveslak initialization. A subset of these parameters cause modifications of files in the live filesystem. For instance, “livepw=” will update /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd to update the password for the ‘live’ user. You can specify a domain name, custom hostname and a lot more which will cause modifications of files in the live filesystem.
Now the crux of the issue: if you have a persistent Live USB stick, do you want these parameters to make permanent changes to your Live filesystem? Or do you want them to be ignored if you are booting a persistent USB stick?
I can see good reasons for a limitation of the scope of these parameters, to just the non-persistent Slackware Live (i.e. when booting from a DVD). I also realize that it would be a functional change that can impact the way some of you work with a liveslak medium.

Let me know (in the comments section below) if you would like liveslak to ignore certain boot parameters if you boot a persistent medium.

Have fun! Eric

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