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.

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."

Enlarge / The Raspberry Pi 5 inside its official case. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

I bought an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 as soon as they went up for preorder, just like I have bought every full-size Pi model since the Pi 3 Model B launched back in 2016, including the Pi 3B+, with its better Wi-Fi and more efficient chip, and the Pi 4, with its substantial performance and RAM boost.

The difference is that I didn't really have anything in mind for the Pi 5 when I bought it. But years of Pi shortages made me worried about its scarcity, and I figured I'd buy first and ask questions later rather than want it later and be totally unable to get one. In the end, it will probably knock each of my other Pis down a level in my tech setup: the Pi 5 becomes the retro emulation box, the Pi 4 becomes the multi-use always-on light-duty server (currently running a combo of HomeBridge, WireGuard, and a dynamic DNS IP address updater), the Pi 3B+ joins the Pi 3B as either "test hardware for small one-off projects" or "the retro emulation box I lent to a friend which may or may not have been ruined when their basement flooded."

Before I did that, though, I wanted to take another crack at trying to use a Pi as an everyday general-purpose desktop computer. The Raspberry Pi's operating system has always included many of the tools you'd need to take a crack at this, including a lightweight desktop environment and a couple of web browser options, and the Pi 4-based Pi 400 variant has always been pitched specifically as a general-purpose computer.

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.

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.

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 of 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.