Tag Archives: FOSS

64x64x16colours (Sweetie16) PixelArt with Pixelorama “β-karoten – We know whom will be eat”

β-karoten - We know whom will be eat

I participated to the LoveByte Battleground demoparty> that runned this week-end, by posting a drawing last week. Sadly/funnily , there was few mistake ^^:
* I made a 64×64 pixels picture instead of a 128×128 one. The palette for the competition was 16 colours Sweetie16 (the default one on FOSS, TIC-80 fantasy console (Source code)).
* My second mistake is I’ve uploaded a first version, and few hours later another one using (FOSS) source code) on Debian on (FOSH) RISC−V (Specifications, there are lot of free or not implementations) emulator of FOSS Qemu (Source code, Git instance), the first upload worked fine but the second one didn’t work (maybe because my installation of Netsurf doesn’t manage javascript)^^. I also performed in a livecoding match (256 bytes and 25 minutes limits). Result of my poor production, Commented Live coding session record.

This is made with FOSS Pixelorama (Source code), itself made on FOSS Godot game engine (Source code). I use FOSS Arch Linux OS. Also made a ArchLinux AUR package pixelorama-git after pixelorama package (for git version, I would like to use v0.9, still not out, only v0.8 was available). There are pixelorama package (last stable, compiling from source), and pixelorama-bin package (from developers binary tarball). Pixelorama is a Pixel art picture and animation editor. I believe I discovered Pixelorama thanks to blog Librearts.org.

The name is “β-karoten – We know whom will be eat”.

Screenshot of Pixelorama

Lua, TIC-80, LÖVE,etc: Introduction to particles systems and games

Version en français ici

A good language for easily developing games, interactive content and procedural art is Lua scripting language. This is a simple functional language with some limited oriented object language features. It is, due to its simplicity and bytecode compiling at start by default, one of the lightest and fastest script language. Some integrations like LÖVE media/games engine and API (very powerful), and TIC-80, that is more limited fantasy-computer inspired first by PICO-8 (also use Lua). They allow quick prototyping, for a final product in the same language or a later port in another language. Lua is also used as plug-in systems language, in lot of games, and tools, including desktop applications (like Blender), web application (like MediaWiki behind Wikimedia) or embedded world. In this domain, popular and open-source drone board control BetaFlight or Open-TX open source radio-command for commands like Taranis one. There is a complete online documentation of Lua on the official website. It is possible to embbed C libs/function in Lua programs with libffi. It as been created first for Python, CFFI, and there is FFI support for PHP too now. It also possible to embed Lua scripts in C program. I also just discovered when I wrote this article (thanks to the author of TIC-80, that there is also PicoC, a simple C language interpreter that so allow to control more finely/low level data structures. The binary size is about the same than Lua interpreter.

So, after few years of looking time to time this language and tools, I started to play a bit more in end of 2020, and in few month I can said I made lot of progress in real-time programming. Doing and even finishing light games. I Needed to study again basic trigonometry (follow link for a simple interactive explanation), basic vector algebra and few other mathematics fun things, that I personally consider like puzzles games.

I also wrote a short making-off article on itch.io in march, 2021, during a game jam competition (instead of coding ^^). All of this motive me to write more articles tutorials about real-time/vector and procedural generation programming. I will try to write a series explaining methods I used. I will try to keep it as simple as possible to everyone, but some basic knowledge in general programming and mathematics could help a lot in this field as in life in general.

So I start with a short introduction about what I use the most in my development, arrays of elements and some randomness:
* Tables and their common basic management related to animation logic
* Creating a table
* Procedural generation of the content of a table
* A simple example for cleaning a table
* Variation and cleaning of table depending on tests
* Compacting code a bit
* Procedural generation of the content of a table
* Simple graphic particle system example

Continue reading →

Android without Google and GNU/Linux with APK

Content

* GNU/Linux on your phone now
* GNU/Linux with Android APK compatibility layer
* Managing APK of a device
** Listing APK installed on the device
** Dumping an APK installed on the device
** Installing an APK onto the device from the computer
** Removing closed source spywares from your current Android system as a transition phase

Android will move from Linux kernel and open specs APK format to a more closed package format and to their closed source Fuschia kernel going away from Free Open Source software (FOSS) that make Google, Android, ChromeOS grow, but also that are used on most of the internet servers, on most of supercomputer in the world, on most spacecrafts, on most internet boxes, TVboxes, etc…

GNU/Linux on your phone now

At the same time GNU/Linux distributions for mobile grow a lot the 2 recent years, thanks to availability of PinePhone for developers for about 2 years. There are now at least 15 Linux distributions for phone and applications maturated a lot, including since few month MegaPixels hardware accelerted camera application, that use GL and other processor to accelerate rendering/computing of what camera receive.

PostMarketOS is a GNU/Linux distribution available for a bunch of available market phones, but not everything is managed an all devices.

GNU/Linux with Android APK compatibility layer

Just like there is Wine to run Windows application on GNU/Linux, there are also several systems allowing to run Android APK on your phone if needed. Jusr as Wine, beside the possibility of running Android in a qemu VM, you can also run these application inside your the standard GNU system.

AnBox allow to run APK/Android application inside a snap packaged container.

Google goes away from FOSS, afraid by the lost of market share, and they probably loose a lot from this, as Microsoft does by the past. Chinese company, thanks to Trump restrictions, embrace more FOSS.

Huawei the maker of the probably highest quality phones, that was going in first seller position just ahead Samsung, when Trump blocked it, already very active in Linux kernel and community for years, made HarmonyOS for their devices, a system, that continue tu uses Linux kernel for their power devices, and LiteOS for their low end/old devices. LiteOS is a FOSS embedded devices oriented light kernel. They keep the EMUI User Interface they used previously on Android, moving step by step away from it, and at the same time keep a compatibility layer with current APK open-source format.

Another Chinese company, JingOS, made high quality tablets, based on GNU/Linux distribution, that derivates from Ubuntu, with KDE tools and Android APK application compatibility using Anbox. And they are active with KDE and open source communities. Few demos here and here.

Managing APK of a device

For managing package of an Android device from a computer you need adb. This command is available on android-tools package on Arch Linux.

Listing APK installed on the device

List packages:

adb shell pm list packages

See which one are related to facebook:

adb shell pm list packages facebook

Dumping an APK installed on the device

You need first to find the path of the APK with the commande adb shell pm path :

adb shell pm path com.sec.android.app.myfiles
package:/system/app/SecTabletMyFiles.apk

Then you can use this path (remove the initial package:) to backup it on your file system with the adb pull command:

adb pull /system/app/SecTabletMyFiles.apk

Installing an APK onto the device from the computer

Simply type the command install with the path of the APK on y”zour disk:

adb install f-droid.apk

Removing closed source spywares from your current Android system as a transition phase

Beside long time F-droid Free software apk app repository (I use it for year as main source of APK).

You can remove Android pre-installed (memory+cpu+bandwidth thieves) applications, including NSA compliant one like Google, Amazon, FaceBook, Microsoft ones using from a computer with adb. This allowed me to have less bloated phone and to gain few more days of on-battery usage.

For easier copy paste and have only the package name without package: prefix

adb shell pm list packages | cut -d: -f 2

The corresponding application, can be checked by using in a web browser, this does not work for some system applications, for example, for com.google.android.videos:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.videos

Remove never at least first seen, never used application:

# FaceBook spyware

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.katana
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.system
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.facebook.appmanager

# Microsoft stuff
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.microsoft.office.excel
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.microsoft.office.onenote
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.microsoft.office.powerpoint
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.microsoft.office.word
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.microsoft.skydrive # data thief

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.docs # Google Drive (data thief)
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.photos # Google photos (data thief)
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox # Google Search box (behavior thief)
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.maps # Gaogle Maps (location/move/destination search thief)
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.gm # GMail
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.talk # Hangouts
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.music # Google Play Music
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.videos # Google Play Film & Series
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.youtube # Youtube application

To be checked

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.gms # Services Google Play