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    An anonymous reader quotes a report from GamingOnLinux: After repeatedly suffering issues with scam apps making it onto the Snap Store, Canonical maker of Ubuntu Linux have now decided to manually look over submissions. I've covered the issues with the Snap Store a few times now like on March 19th when ten scam crypto apps appeared, got taken down and then reappeared under a different publisher. Also earlier back in February there was an issue where a user actually lost their wallet as a result of a fake app. Multiple fake apps were also put up back in October last year as well, so it was a repeating issue that really needed dealing with properly. So to try and do something about it, Canonical's Holly Hall has posted on their Discourse forum about how "The Store team and other engineering teams within Canonical have been continuously monitoring new snaps that are being registered, to detect potentially malicious actors" and that they will now do manual reviews whenever people try to register "a new snap name." On top of that soon they will also be releasing a new policy regarding "crypto-wallet and other sensitive snaps" with "guidelines for how to publish such a snap." Currently all of this is not supposed to be long-term, as it's an evolving situation.

    Read more of this story at Slashdot.

    Canonical Now Doing Manual Reviews For New Packages Due To Scam Apps
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      Ubuntu will manually review Snap Store after crypto wallet scams

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Yesterday - 18:23 · 1 minute

    Man holding a piggy bank at his desk, with the piggy wired up with strange circuits and hardware

    Enlarge / One thing you can say about this crypto wallet: You can't confuse it for any other. (credit: Getty Images)

    The Snap Store, where containerized Snap apps are distributed for Ubuntu's Linux distribution, has been attacked for months by fake crypto wallet uploads that seek to steal users' currencies. As a result, engineers at Ubuntu's parent firm are now manually reviewing apps uploaded to the store before they are available.

    The move follows weeks of reporting by Alan Pope, a former Canonical/Ubuntu staffer on the Snapcraft team, who is still very active in the ecosystem. In February, Pope blogged about how one bitcoin investor lost nine bitcoins (about $490,000 at the time) by using an "Exodus Wallet" app from the Snap store. Exodus is a known cryptocurrency wallet, but this wallet was not from that entity. As detailed by one user wondering what happened on the Snapcraft forums , the wallet immediately transferred his entire balance to an unknown address after a 12-word recovery phrase was entered (which Exodus tells you on support pages never to do).

    Pope takes pains to note that cryptocurrency is inherently fraught with loss risk. Still, Ubuntu's App Center, which presents the Snap Store for desktop users, tagged the "Exodus" app as "Safe," and the web version of the Snap Store describes Snaps as "safe to run." While Ubuntu is describing apps as "Safe" in the sense of being an auto-updating container with runtime confinement (or "sandboxed"), a green checkmark with "Safe" next to it could be misread, especially by a newcomer to Ubuntu, Snaps, and Linux generally.

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      pubsub.blastersklan.com / slashdot · Saturday, 9 March - 23:08 edit · 1 minute

    "2004 was already an eventful year for Linux," writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen. "As I reported at the time, SCO was trying to drive Linux out of business. Red Hat was abandoning Linux end-user fans for enterprise customers by closing down Red Hat Linux 9 and launching the business-friendly Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Oh, and South African tech millionaire and astronaut Mark Shuttleworth [also a Debian Linux developer] launched Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company. "Little did I — or anyone else — suspect that Canonical would become one of the world's major Linux companies." Mark Shuttleworth answered questions from Slashdot reader in 2005 and again in 2012. And this year, Canonical celebrates its 20th anniversary. ZDNet reports: Canonical's purpose, from the beginning, was to support and share free software and open-source software... Then, as now, Ubuntu was based on Debian Linux. Unlike Debian, which never met a delivery deadline it couldn't miss, Ubuntu was set to be updated to the latest desktop, kernel, and infrastructure with a new release every six months. Canonical has kept to that cadence — except for the Ubuntu 6.06 release — for 20 years now... Released in October 2004, Ubuntu Linux quickly became synonymous with ease of use, stability, and security, bridging the gap between the power of Linux and the usability demanded by end users. The early years of Canonical were marked by rapid innovation and community building. The Ubuntu community, a vibrant and passionate group of developers and users, became the heart and soul of the project. Forums, wikis, and IRC channels buzzed with activity as people from all over the world came together to contribute code, report bugs, write documentation, and support each other.... Canonical's influence extends beyond the desktop. Ubuntu Linux, for example, is the number one cloud operating system. Ubuntu started as a community desktop distribution, but it's become a major enterprise Linux power [also widely use as a server and Internet of Things operating system.] The article notes Canonical's 2011 creation of the Unity desktop. ("While Ubuntu Unity still lives on — open-source projects have nine lives — it's now a sideline. Ubuntu renewed its commitment to the GNOME desktop...") But the article also argues that "2016, on the other hand, saw the emergence of Ubuntu Snap, a containerized way to install software, which --along with its rival Red Hat's Flatpak — is helping Linux gain some desktop popularity."

    Read more of this story at Slashdot.

    'Canonical Turns 20: Shaping the Ubuntu Linux World'
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      Canonical wants better Snap support outside Ubuntu, based on latest hires

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 8 January - 22:25

    Snap icons from the Snap store

    Enlarge (credit: Canonical/Ubuntu)

    Snaps, the self-contained application packages that Ubuntu has long seen as a simpler app store and a potential solution to dependency hell , could be getting better support outside Ubuntu itself, based on one recent hire and potentially more.

    As spotted by the Phoronix blog , developer Zygmunt Krynicki , who worked at Ubuntu distributor Canonical from 2012 through 2020 , posted Friday on Mastodon that he was "returning as a snap developer later this month." His main focus would be "cross-distribution support," Krynicki wrote, and "unlike in the past this will be my full time job. I'm very excited for what is ahead for snaps." He also noted, in a later reply , that he was "not coming back alone."

    Krynicki, reached Monday on Mastodon, noted that he was at a very early stage in his work. But he intended to look at the state of support across distributions, determine which long-term and short-term work to focus on, and "work on the internals and get things progressively better, even if that is not flashy."

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      Linux distros are about to get a killer Windows feature: The Blue Screen of Death

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 7 December - 19:22 · 1 minute

    Linux distros are about to get a killer Windows feature: The Blue Screen of Death

    Enlarge (credit: hdaniel )

    Windows' infamous " Blue Screen of Death " is a bit of a punchline. People have made a hobby of spotting them out in the wild, and in some circles, they remain a byword for the supposed flakiness and instability of PCs. To this day, networked PCs in macOS are represented by beige CRT monitors displaying a BSOD.

    But the BSOD is supposed to be a diagnostic tool, an informational screen that technicians can use to begin homing in on the problem that caused the crash in the first place; that old Windows' BSOD error codes were often so broad and vague as to be useless doesn't make the idea a bad one. Today, version 255 of the Linux systemd project honors that original intent by adding a systemd-bsod component that generates a full-screen display of some error messages when a Linux system crashes.

    The systemd-bsod component is currently listed as "experimental" and "subject to change." But the functionality is simple: any logged error message that reaches the LOG_EMERG level will be displayed full-screen to allow people to take a photo or write it down. Phoronix reports that, as with BSODs in modern Windows, the Linux version will also generate a QR code to make it easier to look up information on your phone.

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      Making Ubuntu the Way I like It

      pubsub.slavino.sk / warlord0blog · Tuesday, 21 November - 17:32 edit

    I’m installing a couple of Ubuntu 22.04 systems for a friend. They want a simple, friendly Linux build, or they’ll go M$! My two preferred distros don’t fit the bill, Debian is tool stale for a desktop build, Manjaro is too dynamic and bleeding edge for a simple user. This leaves me wanting to give &ellipsisRead the full post »

    Značky: #ubuntu, #Linux, #gnome

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      Ubuntu 23.10 is a Minotaur that moves faster and takes up less space

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 12 October - 22:00 · 1 minute

    The Ubuntu 23.10 desktop, working just fine before you start messing with it.

    Enlarge / The Ubuntu 23.10 desktop, working just fine before you start messing with it.

    Ubuntu 23.10 , codenamed Mantic Minotaur, is the 39th Ubuntu release , and it's one of the three smaller interim releases Canonical puts out between long-term support (LTS) versions. This last interim before the next LTS doesn't stand out with bold features you can identify at a glance. But it does set up some useful options and upgrades that should persist in Ubuntu for some time.

    Your new installation options in Ubuntu 23.10. Neither of them is "Minimal," but that might be coming.

    Your new installation options in Ubuntu 23.10. Neither of them is "Minimal," but that might be coming.

    Slimmed down and Flutter-ed up

    Two of the biggest changes in Ubuntu 23.10 are in the installer. Ubuntu now defaults to a "Default installation," which is quite different from what the "default" was even just one release prior. "Default" is described as "Just the essentials, web browser, and basic utilities," while "Full" is "An offline-friendly selection of office tools, utilities, web browser, and games." "Default" is somewhat similar to what "Minimal" used to be in prior versions, while "Full" is intended for those who are offline or have slow connections or just want as many options as possible right away.

    At the moment, most people won't be saving much, assuming they install off an ISO file. The ISO for Ubuntu 23.10 is 4.6GB, which is smaller than the 4.9GB ISO of Ubuntu 23.04, but not drastically so. This may change, however; Ubuntu staffers note that they have bigger plans for provisioning and install options , which may make it into 24.04. For now, it's a way to avoid clutter in your app search, at least, if not your disk overall.

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