Software Libero

TOTP on Windows

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Recently I had to suggest a 2 factor authentication applicative for Windows. Of course I searched on alternativeto.net for a free-as-in-freedom program running on Windows founding this:

2fast (acronym for two factor authenticator supporting TOTP) is a free, open source, two factor authenticator for Windows and other platforms. 2fast has the ability to store the encrypted data at a place of your choice instead of a 3rd party cloud location.

They tried it and I can say it is well designed

Let’s hope that their IT departement will never enable TOTP for log in their desktops, otherwise they may be locked out. I suggested to save the QR-Code seed elsewhere.

SpaceFM

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Many years ago I tried PCManFM the grand-father of SpaceFM. I think I will try it.

sudo apt install spacefm and sudo apt -t testing install spacefm and sudo apt -t unstable install spacefm keep telling me that 

159 upgraded, 51 newly installed, 773 to remove and 887 not upgraded.
Need to get 597 MB/597 MB of archives.
After this operation, 6382 MB disk space will be freed.

Also installing from source would break many other things as the dependency libffmpegthumbnailer-dev that seems to be unanavoidable is broken on my system. Well, I’ll wait

How to wirelessly send docs and e-books to your Kobo

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

As we are a family of avid readers, having the luck of having a public library very near our house, we also ended up having several Kobo ebook readers.

I’m a life-long user of free-as-in-freedom software and I like to meddle with “low level” thingies but I can’t ask my daughters and wife to do the same even if they are quite smart themselves (we do not have Windows or MacOS or iOS running here, just Gnu-Linux and Android), so today I asked on the Fediverse

“How to Wirelessly Send Docs and E-Books to Your #Kindle“
Is it possible with #Kobo?

See https://mastodon.uno/@paoloredaelli/112506334973250537

György Paksi kindly and quickly answered me to look at send.djazz.se 1that now seems to be offline which in turn uses https://github.com/daniel-j/send2ereader and https://github.com/pgaskin/kepubify. I shiftly copied that git repositories, now I “only” have to find some time to set it up.

Recently, I’ve been interested in the DuckDB project (like a SQLite geared towards data applications). And one of the amazing features is that it has many data importers included without requiring extra dependencies. This means it can natively read and parse JSON as a database table, among many other formats.

I work extensively with JSON day to day, and I often reach for jq when exploring documents. I love jq, but I find it hard to use. The syntax is super powerful, but I have to study the docs anytime I want to do anything beyond just selecting fields.

Once I learned DuckDB could read JSON files directly into memory, I realized that I could use it for many of the things where I’m currently using jq. In contrast to the complicated and custom jq syntax, I’m very familiar with SQL and use it almost daily.

Source: DuckDB as the New jq

Loselesscut or Video trimmer?

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Recently I needed to cut several videos for a little presentation I gave in a school about earthquakes and buildings.

So I started using LosslessCut, a free and open-source video trimming and cutting tool (that you can easily install from https://flathub.org/apps/no.mifi.losslesscut).

Then I moved on my laptop and accomplice to my fallacious hamster memory I just opened Gnome software, and typing “video cut” I found Video Trimmer. Well, actually I haven’t even had to finish typing as after writing “video” I was already propose it (among other).

“Too much grace Saint Anthony!” we use to say in Italy.

Video Trimmer. is very, very simple, allowing a simple cut. And it could suffice. LosslessCut is a little more complex but allows for much fancier cutting operations.

Quickemu

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

This quickemu could easily dislodge VirtualBox as my favorite desktop virtualization solution:

Quickly create and run highly optimized desktop virtual machines for Linux, macOS and Windows; …

Quickemu now also includes comprehensive support for macOS and Windows.

Features

  • macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave & High Sierra
  • Windows 10 and 11 including TPM 2.0
  • Ubuntu and all the official Ubuntu flavours
  • Over 360 operating system editions are supported!
  • Full SPICE support including host/guest clipboard sharing
  • VirtIO-webdavd file sharing for Linux and Windows guests
  • VirtIO-9p file sharing for Linux and macOS guests
  • QEMU Guest Agent support; provides access to a system-level agent via standard QMP commands
  • Samba file sharing for Linux, macOS and Windows guests (if smbd is installed on the host)
  • VirGL acceleration
  • USB device pass-through
  • Smartcard pass-through
  • Automatic SSH port forwarding to guests
  • Network port forwarding
  • Full duplex audio
  • Braille support
  • EFI (with or without SecureBoot) and Legacy BIOS boot
  • Graphical user interfaces available

Cestinato

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Uno legge il titolo “5 alternative a Nextcloud: un confronto” e pensa “beh, posso imparare qualcosa di interessante!”. Infatti parla di

Poi esordisce con

Nextcloud è una soluzione cloud priva di licenza che include archiviazione cloud e strumenti di lavoro di gruppo o groupware. È adatto sia a scopi privati che aziendali.

Nextcloud è rilasciato sotto AGPLv3only, acciderboli!

Questo mi basta per cassare istantaneamente questo articolo. Per inciso, elencano ownCloud, Seafile, Syncthing e SparkleShare occhiocroce li conosco già anche sen on li ho mai provati. L’ultimo, FileCloud lo nomino solo per dirvi che è software proprietario, quindi per sconsigliarlo.