Category Archives: Linux

Offpunk 3.0 released

Posted on by

Version
3.0 of the Offpunk
offline-first, command-line web, Gemini, and
Gopher
browser has been released. Notable changes in this release include
integration of the unmerdify
library to “remove cruft” from web sites, the xkcdpunk
standalone tool for viewing xkcd
comics in the terminal, and a cookies command to enable
browsing web sites (such as LWN.net) while being logged in.

Something wonderful happened on the road leading to 3.0: Offpunk
became a true cooperative effort. Offpunk 3.0 is probably the first
release that contains code I didn’t review line-by-line. Unmerdify (by
Vincent Jousse), all the translation infrastructure (by the
always-present JMCS), and the community packaging effort are areas for
which I barely touched the code.

So, before anything else, I want to thank all the people involved
for sharing their energy and motivation. I’m very grateful for every
contribution the project received. I’m also really happy to see “old
names” replying from time to time on the mailing list. It makes me
feel like there’s an emerging Offpunk community where everybody can
contribute at their own pace.

There were a lot of changes between 2.8 and 3.0, which probably
means some new bugs and some regressions. We count on you, yes, you!,
to report them and make 3.1 a lot more stable. It’s as easy at typing
“bugreport” in offpunk!

See the “Installing
Offpunk” page to get started.

Debian’s tag2upload considered stable

Posted on by

Sean Whitton has announced
that Debian’s tag2upload
service is now out of beta and ready for use by Debian developers and
maintainers.

During the beta we encountered only a few significant bugs. Now that
we’ve fixed those, our rate of successful uploads is hovering around
95%. Failures are almost always due to packaging inconsistencies that
older workflows don’t detect, and therefore only need fixing once per
package.

We don’t think you need explicit approval from your co-maintainers
anymore. Your upload workflows can be different to your teammates.
They can be using dput, dgit or tag2upload.

LWN covered
tag2upload in July 2024.

GNU Linux-Libre 6.19 Deals With More Firmware Blobs In Intel Xe, IWLWIFI & NVIDIA Nova

Posted on by

Building off yesterday’s Linux 6.19 release is now the GNU Linux-libre 6.19-gnu downstream release that strips out support for open-source drivers dependent upon binary-only microcode/firmware and other elements deemed against free software standards, removing the ability to load non-open-source kernel modules, and similar restrictions in the name of software freedom…

Join our new study on AI and data-driven computing in UK primary classrooms

Posted on by

Are you a primary school teacher in England, Scotland or Wales interested in AI and data science and how students learn about AI and data in computing?

The Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre is starting an exciting new research project investigating how to teach about AI and data in the primary computing classroom, and we would like you to get involved.

The study will look at:

  • How AI and data-driven computing is currently taught (e.g. using Machine Learning for Kids, Google’s Teachable Machine)
  • What key ideas about AI and data that young people need to understand
  • How young people make sense of working with data in computing

The study involves attending a workshop in Cambridge, co-designing a unit of work, and then teaching it. Where necessary, we can reimburse you for reasonable expenses, such as supply cover, travel, and accommodation.

A teacher assisting a young person with a coding project.

Our aim for the study is to understand how primary school teachers approach teaching about data-driven technologies, and to find suitable methods for building young people’s confidence in working with data in computing lessons.

What is data-driven computing?

Research has suggested that new data-driven technologies such as AI and machine learning (or ML) require a different approach to teaching about problem-solving in the computing classroom. Instead of defining a set of rules (e.g. if-then-else statements, or a rule-based approach), learners must instead collect lots of data to train a model (a data-driven approach) such as using Google’s Teachable Machine to classify image data.

For educators and resource developers, we still lack a clear understanding of how to teach young people about how rule-based and data-driven systems differ, how we can talk about them, and how we develop young people’ mental models. We hope this study will help us to find practical ways for primary teachers to build young people’s understanding of AI data in the primary computing classroom.

What does the study involve?

If you teach at primary level (Years 4, 5 and 6 or P5–P7) in England, Scotland or Wales and are keen to shape how we teach young people about data-driven computing, we invite you to join our new study.

As part of the study, you will attend a workshop with us in Cambridge to co-design a series of data-driven computing lessons to teach in your classroom.

A young learners in the classroom

Following the workshop, you will teach the unit of work in your classroom and we will observe one of your lessons and interview you about your experiences.

How can I take part?

If you are interested in taking part, register your interest by clicking the link below:

If you have any questions about the project, you can email bobby.whyte@raspberrypi.org.

The post Join our new study on AI and data-driven computing in UK primary classrooms appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

The 6.19 kernel has been released

Posted on by

Linus has released the 6.19 kernel.
“No big surprises anywhere last week, so 6.19 is out as expected – just
as the US prepares to come to a complete standstill later today
watching the latest batch of televised commercials.”

The most significant changes in 6.19 include
initial support for Intel’s linear
address-space separation feature,
support for Arm
Memory system resource Partitioning And Monitoring,
the listns() system call,
a reworked restartable-sequences
implementation,
support for large block sizes in the ext4
filesystem,
some networking changes for improved
memory safety,
the live update orchestrator,
and much more. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the KernelNewbies 6.19 page for
details.