Linux | Steve Woods

Torvalds ignores AI hype

30/10/2024 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Linus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, has been speaking about Artificial Intelligence, according to The Register; and he’s not impressed by what he has witnessed to date.

Speaking at the Open Source Summit in Vienna last month, Torvalds was asked for his views on modern technologies, specifically Generative Artificial Intelligence, usually abbreviated to GenAI.

His reply included the following remarks:

“I think AI is really interesting and I think it is going to change the world and at the same time I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don’t want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it.

I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position and it’s 90 percent marketing and ten percent reality and in five years things will change and at that point we’ll see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads.

His remarks about the hype cycle are particularly relevant. Those with very long memories will remember the Dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early two thousands, while those with less of a broad sweep of time may recall the more recent episode of overwhelming enthusiasm generated by the marketing of so-called cloud computing, about which the FSFE was particularly blunt in its opinion (posts passim) – just other people’s computers.
New point release for LibreOffice 24.2

05/09/2024 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Privacy, Tech

The blog of The Document Foundation (TDF) has today announced the sixth point release of LibreOffice 24.2 for Linux MacOS and Windows, which it is describing as “the best choice for privacy-conscious users and digital sovereignty“.

This point release includes over 40 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 24.2.5 to improve the software’s stability, plus interoperability with legacy and proprietary document formats. LibreOffice 24.2.6 is aimed at mainstream users and business environments.

LibreOffice for business

For business use, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners with a range of dedicated value-added features, long-term support and other benefits such as SLAs.

Next week, power users and technology enthusiasts will be able to download LibreOffice 24.8.1, the first minor release of the recently announced new version with many bug and regression fixes.

As per usual, LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members are invited to support The Document Foundation with a donation.

Download LibreOffice 24.2.6. Please note that the minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Windows 7 SP1 and macOS 10.15.
LibreOffice 24.8 released

22/08/2024 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Privacy, Tech
Today the blog of The Document Foundation (TDF), the organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice suite. announced the release of LibreOffice 24.8, the second version of the software to be released under the new calendar-based (YY.MM) release numbering system, for immediate download for Linux, macOS (Apple and Intel) and Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM).

The release announcement lays heavy emphasis on the suite’s privacy features. LibreOffice is the only office suite, i.e. software that can create files containing personal or confidential information that respects user privacy – thus ensuring users themselves can decide if and with whom to share the content they have created. LibreOffice is thus the best option for the privacy-conscious office suite user and provides a feature set comparable to the ubiquitous MS Office. LibreOffice also offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to contemporary.

New features

There’s a handy little video that highlights the new features incorporated in LibreOffice 24.8.

Privacy
- If the option Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Security ▸ Options ▸ Remove personal information on saving is enabled, then personal information will not be exported (author names and timestamps, editing duration, printer name and configuration, document template, author and date for comments and tracked changes).
Writer
- UI: handling of formatting characters, width of comments panel, selection of bullets, new dialog for hyperlinks, new Find deck in the sidebar.
- Navigator: adding cross-references by drag-and-drop items, deleting footnotes and endnotes, indicating images with broken links.
- Hyphenation: exclude words from hyphenation with new contextual menu and visualisation, new hyphenation across columns, pages or spreads, hyphenation between constituents of a compound word.
Calc
- Addition of FILTER, LET, RANDARRAY, SEQUENCE, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, XLOOKUP and XMATCH functions.
- Improvement of threaded calculation performance, optimisation of redraw after a cell change by minimising the area that needs to be refreshed.
- Cell focus rectangle moved apart from cell content.
- Comments can be edited and deleted from the Navigator’s right-click menu.
Impress & Draw
- In Normal view, it is now possible to scroll between slides, and the Notes are available as a collapsible pane under the slide.
- By default, the running Slideshow is now immediately updated when applying changes in EditView or in PresenterConsole, even on different Screens.
Chart
- New chart types “Pie-of-Pie” and “Bar-of-Pie” break down a slice of a pie as a pie or bar sub-chart respectively (this also enables import of such charts from OOXML files created with Microsoft Office).
- Text inside chart’s titles, text boxes and shapes (and parts thereof) can now be formatted using the Character dialog.
Accessibility
- Several improvements to the management of formatting options, which can be now announced properly by screen readers.
Security
- New mode of password-based ODF encryption.
Interoperability
- Support importing and exporting OOXML pivot table (cell) format definitions.
- PPTX files with heavy use of custom shapes now open faster.
Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple MacOS 10.15.

To coincide with the new version release, the LibreOffice Getting Started guide has been updated and is also available for download.

As usual, users are encouraged to support the TDF’s work with a donation.
LibreOffice 24.2.4 now released

10/06/2024 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

Last week the blog of The Document Foundation (TDF) announced the release of LibreOffice 24.2.4, the latest point release of the office suite since its switch to the new version numbering system.

The updated release is available for immediate download for all major operating systems, GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows. It includes over 70 bug and regression fixes compared with LibreOffice 24.2.3 to improve the software’s stability.

LibreOffice is the only office suite with a feature set comparable to – if not better* than – the ubiquitous and overpriced Microsoft Office suite.. It also offers a range of interface options to suit all user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen form factors by optimising the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.
See the LibreOffice wiki for the bug fixes implemented in RC1 and RC2.
Finally, those who wish to support the work of The Document Foundation are invited to make a donation.

* = Like direct export in the epub e-book file format, for example.
Schleswig-Holstein moves towards digital sovereignty

04/04/2024 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech
The region of Schleswig-Holstein on the Jutland Peninsula is no stranger where matters of sovereignty are concerned.

In the nineteenth century there was the Schleswig-Holstein Question, was a complex set of diplomatic and other issues arising in the 19th century from the relations of two duchies, Schleswig (Sønderjylland/Slesvig) and Holstein (Holsten), to the Danish Crown, to the German Confederation, and to each other.

In the twenty-first century digital sovereignty has become a matter of political importance to the north German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

The blog of The Document Foundation reports today that, following a successful pilot project, the state has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used by the state government.

According to a statement by the Premier of Schleswig-Holstein, the components of its digitally sovereign workplaces are being based on a total of six project pillars:
- Switching from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice;
- Switching the operating system from Microsoft Windows to Linux;
- Collaboration within the state government and with third parties: use of the open source products Nextcloud, Open Xchange/Thunderbird in conjunction with the Univention AD connector to replace Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook;
- Design of an open source-based directory service to replace Microsoft Active Directory;
- Appraising specialist procedures with regard to compatibility and interoperability with LibreOffice and Linux; and
- Development of an open source-based solution to replace Telekom-Flexport.
The decision to switch office suites follows on from the finding by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) that the European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 breaches European data protection law.

According to Schleswig-Holstein’s Digitalisation Minister Dirk Schrödter, digital sovereignty is an integral part of the state government’s digital strategy and work programme. “This cannot be achieved with the current standard IT workstation products. We take digital sovereignty seriously and are moving forward: the decision to change office software is a milestone, but only the beginning of the change: the change to free software for the operating system, the collaboration platform, the directory service, specialist procedures and telephony will follow.”
LibreOffice 24.2 released

31/01/2024 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech
The blog of The Document Foundation (TDF), the German-based organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice suite of productivity software, has today announced the release of LibreOffice 24.2 Community for all major operating systems – Linux. MacOS (Apple and Intel processors) and Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM processors).

This is LibreOffice’s first use the new calendar-based numbering scheme (YY.M) for releases, which it hoped will help users in keeping their LibreOffice installations up to date.

New release highlights – general
- Save AutoRecovery information is enabled by default, and is always creating backup copies. This reduces the risk of losing content for first-time users who are unfamiliar with LibreOffice settings.
- Fixed various NotebookBar options, with many menu improvements, better print preview support, proper resetting of customised layout, and enhanced use of radio buttons. This improves the experience for users familiar with the Microsoft Office UI.
- The Insert Special Character drop-down list now displays a character description for the selected character (and in the tooltip when you hover over it).
Writer
- “Legal” ordered list numbering: make a given list level use Arabic numbering for all its numeric portions.
- Comments can now use styles, with the Comment paragraph style being the default. This makes it easier to change the formatting of all comments at once, or to visually categorise different types of comments.
- Improved various aspects of multi-page floating table support: overlap control, borders and footnotes, nesting, wrap on all pages, and related UI improvements.
Calc
- A new search field has been added to the Functions sidebar deck.
- The scientific number format is now supported and saved in ODF: embedded text (with number format like ###.000E0); lower case for exponent (with number format like ###.000e0); exponent with empty ‘?’ instead of ‘0’ (with number format like 0.00E+?0).
- Highlight the Row and Column corresponding to the active cell.
Draw
- The handling of small caps has been implemented for Impress.
- Moved Presenter Console and Remote control settings from Tools > Options > LibreOffice Impress to Slide Show > Slide Show Settings, with improved labelling and dialogue layout.
- Several improvements and fixes to templates: added and improved placement of various placeholders; fixed order of slides; made fonts and formatting consistent; fixed styles and their hierarchy; improved ODF compliance; made it easier to use templates in languages other than English; fixed use of wrong fonts for CJK and CTL.
Accessibility
- Several significant improvements to the handling of mouse positions and the presentation of dialogue boxes via the Accessibility APIs, allowing screen readers to present them correctly.
- Improved management of IAccessible2 roles and text/object attributes, allowing screen readers to present them correctly.
- Status bars in dialogue boxes are reported with the correct accessible role so that screen readers can find and report them appropriately, while checkboxes in dialogue boxes can be toggled using the space bar.
Security
- The Save with Password dialogue box now has a password strength meter. This uses zxcvbn-c to determine the password strength.
- New password-based ODF encryption that performs better, hides metadata better, and is more resistant to tampering and brute force.
- Clarification of the text in the options dialogue box around the macro security settings, so that it is clear exactly what is allowed and what is not.
A full description of all the new features can be found in the release notes.

Contributors to LibreOffice 24.2 Community

There are 166 contributors to the new features of LibreOffice 24.2 Community: 57% of code commits come from the 50 developers employed by three companies on the TDF Advisory Board – Collabora, allotropia and Red Hat – or other organisations, 20% from 8 developers at The Document Foundation; the remaining 23% originated from 108 individual volunteers.

An additional 159 volunteers have committed to localisation in 160 languages, representing hundreds of people providing translations. LibreOffice 24.2 Community is available in 120 languages, more than any other desktop software, making it available to over 5.5 billion people worldwide in their native language. In addition, over 2.4 billion people speak one of these 120 languages as a second language.

Interoperability with Microsoft Office

LibreOffice 24.2 offers a number of improvements and new features aimed at users who share documents with or migrate from MS Office A few of the most significant improvements are as follows:
- Writer: improved first page headers/footers OOXML import by using the first page property in the existing page style instead of creating a new page style just for the first page.
- Writer: templates optimised for Japanese text added to the Localisation category to improve interoperability with Microsoft Word for Japanese users.
- Writer: import of “drawing canvas” from DOCX documents, with connectors no longer imported as simple shapes but as true connectors, primitive shapes like ellipses imported as OOXML shapes (text inside the shape can now wrap), and multicolour gradients, theme colours and glow effects for shapes.
- OOXML: support for the SVG OOXML extension, which imports the SVG image (svgBlip element) instead of the fallback PNG, and exports the SVG image in addition to the fallback PNG image used when the svgBlip element is not supported (older MS Office versions).
Download LibreOffice 24.2.

Your ‘umble scribe is not using the latest official release, but an as-yet unreleased development version. If you would like to help out with LibreOffice testing and development, visit the pre-release versions server and download a development package for your particular operating system.
Mozilla release new version of Firefox, sets up Debian repository

29/01/2024 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Media, Open Source, Tech

Version 122 of the free and open source Firefox web browser was released last week and duly reported by the tech media, including The Register.

Furthermore, El Reg also notes that Mozilla, the organisation behind the browser, has set up its own deb package repository, the software package format for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and its derivatives such as the Ubuntu family and Linux Mint.

The installation instructions page on Mozilla’s website now contains specific instructions on how to access the Firefox deb repository, from downloading the repository’s OpenPGP keyring, to adding the repository to one’s own APT list of trusted sources from which to download software.

Also included are instructions for how to download the version specific to one’s own language, if that just happens not to be EN-US, as well as such vital stuff as importing one’s profile from an old installation to a new, shiny browser from the Mozilla repository.
LibreOffice 24.2 alpha released for testing

30/11/2023 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

According to the release plan, Libre Office 24.2*, the next version of the leading free and open source office suite, will be released at the start of February 2024, according to the LibreOffice QA blog.

This new version’s development started in the middle of June earlier this year. Since development of 24.2 began, Since then, 4271 commits have been submitted to the code repository and more than 787 bugs had been fixed, according to the release notes.

LibreOffice 24.2 Alpha1 can now be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Windows. In addition, it can be installed alongside the standard version. LibreOffice extensions, which increase the functionality of the suite, can also be installed in the new alpha. Your correspondent can report all his favourite extensions installed properly and are working as they should with the new alpha release.

The QA blog post advises users who find any bugs to report them in Bugzilla. The only requirement needed to file a bug report is legitimate email address account in order to create a new account.

As LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project all testing is appreciated. Your ‘umble scribe’s testing to date has been uneventful. 😀

* = The Document Foundation has changed the manner in which it numbers releases; 24.2 will be the first new release under the new year and month numbering system.
Free Software video now in 12 languages

10/10/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Tech

Over the last few weeks the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has been running a fundraising campaign to translate its “What is Free Software” video into more European languages. The FSFE’s Ana Galán writes: “Tanks to your contributions, it is now available in 12 languages! Albanian*, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish! You can find them all at https://media.fsfe.org/w/p/9gYSyoEYggsqBExLWjRejL“.

In the next few months these videos will help the FSFE’s volunteers to reach out to their local candidates for the European Parliament and advocate the adoption of free software, explaining them why it is important and making politicians aware of the benefits of Software Freedom for society.

* = To be released shortly
Happy birthday GNU!

26/09/2023 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Tech
Tomorrow, 27th September, marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the GNU Project, without which there would be no free software (which some also call open source. Ed.) and no GNU/Linux operating system, which is quite often abbreviated to just Linux.

Four decades ago, technology began to shape our lives: it was the early 1980s, computers did not yet fit into our pockets but filled large rooms, as they had done in the mid-1970s, when your ‘umble scribe took a module called Computer Appreciation as part of his polytechnic modern languages degree (no Molière and Goethe for us! Ed.). In 1982, the Time magazine named the computer as its “Person of the Year“. About this time, point, some people had already started pointing out the need to give users control over this technology. So in 1983 the GNU Project was announced by Richard Stallman. The project’s aim was to create an operating system consisting entirely of free software to allow people to use, understand, adapt and share software. Two years later the Free Software Foundation was established as the legal backbone for the GNU project.

Today the free software movement is a broad global movement encompassing small local companies, worldwide corporations, civil society organisations and thousands of professionals, who are working towards a world where the four freedoms are guaranteed:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0);
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this;
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2); and
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
These rights go hand in hand with other fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press and privacy.

In 1992, the essential components of the GNU operating system were complete, except for one, the kernel. When the Linux kernel was released under the GNU GPL in 1992, the combination of GNU and Linux formed a complete free operating system – GNU/Linux system as we know it today.

The GPL pioneered the concept of “copyleft” – as opposed to copyright. Stallman envisaged this as a means of preventing GNU from ever becoming proprietary software (like all those expensive Microsoft products. Ed.) This does not exclude free S#software from being sold, as long as the buyers are not restricted from exercising the above-mentioned four rights after purchase. Free Software can also be commercialised in other ways, e.g. by selling support, services or certification.

Today GNU/Linux forms the backbone of the Internet and powers millions of servers and desktops, as well embedded computing devices, whilst software has become an indispensable resource for the modern world

How did the name GNU come about? It’s an acronym for GNU’s not Unix, as the original idea was to create a clone of Unix – a proprietary operating system – but containing no proprietary code. That makes GNU a recursive acronym, i.e. an acronym that refers to itself.

Happy 40th birthday, GNU!