LINUX Unplugged

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Episode 246: The Bionic Bet Apr 24, 2018

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We get the inside scope from the Ubuntu flavors prepping for the 18.04 release, and then we finally make good on a long running threat.

Plus the quiet shuttering of the Windows division inside Microsoft, and how they could help save Linux from Apple.

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A Modular and Open Source Router is Being Crowdfunded — A company from the Czech Republic is trying to raise money to bring a modular and open source router to the public. It has a number of features that can’t be found in the current line up of routers available for purchase.
Terminal app appears in Chrome OS Dev, hints at future Linux application support — More evidence of this feature has appeared in the Chrome OS Dev channel, as reported by several Reddit users. A new Terminal app has been added to the app drawer, and clicking it opens a dialog explaining the feature. T
Blloc | Back to the root — Blloc is a plain and minimalistic smartphone combining a power saving operating system with efficient hardware and an easy to use messaging platform, it’s built to be the perfect communication and productivity tool that you can rely on every day.
The state of Thunderbolt 3 in Fedora 28 — The GNOME shell bits to enable Thunderbolt 3 support were merged some time ago and made it into 3.28. This means that the GNOME shell will act as authorization agent and will automatically authorize new thunderbolt 3 devices — if the user has administrator rights, is currently logged in and the session is unlocked. I
Re-evaluating Ubuntu's Milestones — I do not believe there have been any -1s to this proposal from any flavor, nor from the Release Team, so I think it's time to move forward with it.
Microsoft is ready for a world beyond Windows - The Verge — The first big clue about the OS’s future is that Microsoft’s “Windows and Devices Group” is now “Experiences & Devices,” and it includes Windows, Office, and Surface. Microsoft’s Office chief, Rajesh Jha, is now in charge of this entire division, with Joe Belfiore delegated to lead the Windows experiences.
Microsoft reorg shakes up Windows group, Windows leader Terry Myerson departs | Ars Technica — The WDG is no more. The group is being split up.
Windows chief Terry Myerson is leaving as Microsoft reorganizes — platforms. Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Windows and devices group, is leaving the company.
Microsoft’s latest reorganization puts cloud over Windows | The Seattle Times — Microsoft's latest reorganization focuses on its cloud and productivity software technology.
The End of Windows – Stratechery by Ben Thompson — And so we reach last week’s announcements: the Windows division is no more. It is an incredibly meaningful milestone, yet anticlimactic at the same time, thanks to Nadella’s careful management. It is worth noting, though, that Nadella had one critical ally in this journey: Wall Street.
Satya Nadella email to employees: Embracing our future: Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge | Stories — Moving forward, Rajesh Jha will expand his existing responsibilities to lead a new team focused on Experiences & Devices.
The Infamous GNOME Shell Memory Leak – Georges Stavracas — It almost feels like there’s a wall between the community and the users of what this community produces. Which is weird. We are an open community, with open development, no barriers for new contributors – and yet, there is such a distance between the community of users and the community of developers/designers/outreachers/etc.
Progress on Plasma Wayland for 5.13 - subdiff — First of all support for screencasts had to be added to KWin and KWayland. This was done by Oleg Chernovskiy.
KDE - KBackup - Backup Program — KBackup is an application that lets you back up any folders or files in a tar archive to a local folder, e.g. a locally mounted device like a ZIP drive, USB stick, etc. or a remote URL.
Bionic Beaver - Kubuntu — The Plasma 5.12 LTS series is the default in this version of Kubuntu

Episode 245: Microsoft of Things Apr 17, 2018

Show notes

Azure Sphere is Microsoft making silicon as a service with Linux at its core. We’ve chatted with the folks behind Azure Sphere and breakdown this huge announcement.

Plus a bunch of community news, a string of app picks, and maybe even a concerned rant.

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Utopian - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
Linus Buzzkills 5.0 — But v5.0 will happen some day. And it should be meaningless. You have been warned.
gotop — A terminal based graphical activity monitor inspired by gtop and vtop
Clonezilla Live Disk Cloning OS Gets New Massive Deployment BitTorrent Mechanism — However, one of the most interesting feature of the Clonezilla Live 2.5.5-38 release is a new massive deployment mechanism based on the BitTorrent technology.
fontfinder — A Google font browser for your GTK desktop, written in Rust
Kdenlive in Paris — Our team will dedicate this time to discuss near and long term goals, review the application workflow with professional editors, work on the major 18.08 release and much more.
Microsoft's Next OS is Based on Linux, Not Windows — Microsoft is creating here is Azure Sphere OS, a new operating system aimed at tiny MCU-based IoT devices that is based on Linux.
Microsoft’s bid to secure the Internet of Things: Custom Linux, custom chips, Azure — Azure Sphere has three components. First is a new class of microcontrollers (MCUs) that supports seven critical hardware features that Microsoft says are a necessary foundation to build secure systems. These include support for unforgeable encryption keys protected by hardware, the ability to update system software, and hardware-enforced compartmentalization between software components.
Galen Hunt at Microsoft Research — I am part of the launch team for Microsoft Research New Experiences and Technologies organization (MSR NExT). I am manager of the Operating Systems Technologies Group.
The Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices — Our group has begun a research agenda to bring high-value security to low-cost devices.

Episode 244: Plasma Predicament Apr 10, 2018

Show notes

We have some Plasma problems this week, but we’re sticking with it and still putting it into production in our most ambitious event yet.

But we start with a bunch of important community news, including what looks like ZFS on Linux’s first major bug, the future of Elementary OS apps, and a proposal to revamp Ubuntu’s betas.

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LinuxFest Northwest 2018 — LinuxFest Northwest, an annual Open Source event co-produced by Bellingham Linux Users Group and the Information Technology department at BTC. LFNW features presentations and exhibits on free and open source topics, as well as Linux distributions & applications, InfoSec, and privacy; something for everyone from the novice to the professional!
Disappearing files ZFS On Linux Bug — Data loss when copying a directory with large-ish number of files. For example, cp -r SRC DST with 10000 files in SRC is likely to result in a couple of "cp: cannot create regular file `DST/XXX': No space left on device" error messages, and a few thousand files missing from the listing of the DST directory.
The offending commit — Trying to solve an issue for case insensitive filesystems They limited the attempts to expand the ZAP to 2, which is not enough.
Valve's Pipe Has Something Linux in it... — We also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet
NVIDIA will end 32-bit OS GeForce support this month — It will halt GeForce GPU driver support at the end of April, meaning users will lose access to new GeForce Experience features and game ready updates. Moreover, NVIDIA will end security updates by January 2019, so continuing to use your 32-bit OS with a GeForce card beyond that date could actually put it at risk.
The New HandBrake is Great! — The HandBrake Team is pleased to present HandBrake 1.1.0. This major release includes new features, as well as bug fixes and improvements for issues affecting previous HandBrake releases.
Plasma-Vault — Plasma applet and services for creating encrypted vaults
Offline Vaults for an extra layer of protection
Latte-Dock — Latte is a dock based on plasma frameworks that provides an elegant and intuitive experience for your tasks and plasmoids
Falkon — Cross-platform Qt Web Browser

Episode 243: The Stallman Directive Apr 03, 2018

Show notes

Richard Stallman has some practical steps society could take to roll back the rampant and expanding invasion of our privacy. But his suggestions leave us asking some larger questions.

Plus the latest on the march to Juno, some fun app picks, a quick look at Qubes OS 4.0, community news, and more.

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Valve has removed the Steam Machine section from Steam — In a move that's not exactly surprising, Valve has quietly removed the Steam Machine section from Steam.
Apple Is Looking For Linux Kernel Developers — For reasons unknown, Apple is looking to hire Linux kernel developers in both Texas and California.
Canonical's Snappy Now Supports Latest Nvidia Drivers on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS — Snapd 2.32.2 is now available to download and should be coming soon to the stable software repositories of your favorite, Snappy-enabled GNU/Linux distribution. What's exciting about this release is that it enables Snappy the use Nvidia's most recent proprietary graphics drivers in Snap apps on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) and similar operating systems.
lsof to graphviz — A small utility to convert Unix lsof output to a graph showing FIFO and UNIX interprocess communication.
Old CPUs losing support in Linux, cutting size by 500,000 lines of code — The architectures which will become deprecated are Blackfin, CRIS, FRV, M32R, Metag, MN10300, Score and Tile. Although not being deprecated, the Unicore32 and Hexagon architectures are also at risk but their maintainers are working on improving the situation so their support can be continued.
Juno Progress for March – elementary OS — You get more features, and you get more features, and you get more features!
GnuCash 3.0 Released — GTK3!
Qubes OS 4.0 has been released! — Version 4.0 includes several fundamental improvements to the security and functionality of Qubes OS
oragono — Oragono is a modern, experimental IRC server written in Go. It's designed to be simple to setup and use, and it includes features such as UTF-8 nicks / channel names, client accounts with SASL, and other assorted IRCv3 support.
A Radical Proposal to keep your personal data safe | Richard Stallman — The surveillance imposed on us today far exceeds that of the Soviet Union. For freedom and democracy’s sake, we need to eliminate most of it. There are so many ways to use data to hurt people that the only safe database is the one that was never collected. Thus, instead of the EU’s approach of mainly regulating how personal data may be used (in its General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), I propose a law to stop systems from collecting personal data.
Overview | FreedomBox Private Cloud Server

Episode 242: Debian on the Fly Mar 27, 2018

Show notes

A new version of Slax is out this week, and they might just be onto something really unique. We take this Debian powered, Fluxbox running, net bootin distro for a test drive.

Plus Google moves to block GApps on “uncertified devices”, Red Hat turns 25, a new Wayland contender, a few app picks, and much more.

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Red Hat at 25 — A lot has changed since 1993
Red Hat Summit 2018 — The Grammy Award-winning band Weezer will be performing at this year’s Red Hat Summit party. Join us for a night of food, drinks, and music, at the San Francisco Armory at 7:00 p.m.
Google now blocks GApps on uncertified devices, but lets custom ROM users be whitelisted — arlier this week, we received an anonymous tip from a person claiming to be within the industry. This person, who said they worked for an OEM/ODM, notified us that Google has started entirely locking out newly built firmware from accessing Gapps.
Microsoft Open-Sources WSL Sample To Let More Linux Distributions Run On Windows — The WSL-DistroLauncher is what is now open-source and is a C++ code-base offering a launcher that can be customized for particular distributions for the steps to get to a log-in shell, running commands, and setting configuration values.
Wayfire — 3D wayland compositor
People Are Using Old Laptop Batteries to Build Their Own Versions of Tesla's Powerwall — Consumers have constructed their own powerwalls by utilizing old, recycled batteries from laptops.
Rant launches Eric Raymond's next project: open-source the UPS — ESR opened up the work-in-progress on GitLab: the Upside project is currently defining requirements and developing a specification for a “high quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop”.
Eric S. Raymond / upside · GitLab
Hyper™ — JS/HTML/CSS Terminal
Upterm — A terminal emulator for the 21st century.
MP4Tools — MP4Tools is a collection of cross-platform free tools to manipulate MP4 files.
Slax Linux — Despite its small size, Slax provides nice graphical user interface and the only two programs everyone really needs: a Web browser and a Terminal.
Debian-Based Slax 9.4 Linux OS Adds Easier App Install Method, More Improvements — According to the developer, Slax will now show launchers for not-installed apps, which, when clicked, they will fetch and install the respective application from the official software repositories. The first such app installer are available for the VLC Media Player and VoteCoin anonymous cryptocurrency wallet.
Slax 9.4 Released With Updated Debian Packages, One-Click-To-Install Launchers — Besides syncing against Debian stable, Slax 9.4 adds RFKILL support for toggling WiFi/Bluetooth connections

Episode 241: Snitching on SCaLE Mar 20, 2018

Show notes

We’re playing just one interview from SCaLE this year, tons of community news, and two handy app picks.

Plus webOS returns, some fundamental Linux plumbing upgrades, and Private Internet Access goes Open Source.

Special Guest: Ilan Rabinovitch.

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LG Announces webOS Open-Source Edition — LG in cooperation with South Korea's NIPA government agency are working on making webOS suitable as a more open platform with open connectivity. They are still looking to commercialize it as an open-source platform, LG announced this morning.
GNOME 3.28 Release Notes — In total, the release incorporates 25832 changes, made by approximately 838 contributors.
Bolt Will Tackle Thunderbolt 3 Security on Linux — “[Bolt] provides a D-Bus API to list devices, enroll them (authorize and store them in the local database) and forget them again (remove previously enrolled devices). It also emits signals if new devices are connected (or removed). During enrollment devices can be set to be automatically authorized as soon as they are connected.”
GStreamer: news — The GStreamer team is proud to announce a new major feature release of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!
Firefox 59 released, these are the key changes — The built-in Firefox screenshot tool lets you copy an image to the clipboard, ready for you to paste elsehwhere.
Off-Main-Thread Painting – Mozilla Gfx Team Blog — I’m excited to announce Off-Main-Thread painting, our new Firefox graphics performance effort!
Off-Main-Thread Painting - For Linux — set “layers.omtp.enabled” to true.
Private Internet Access goes Open Source — As long-time supporters of the Free and Open Source Software community, we have started the process of open sourcing our software, and over the next six months we will be releasing the source code for all our client-side applications, as well as libraries and extensions.
OpenSnitch — OpenSnitch is a GNU/Linux port of the Little Snitch application firewall.
Spotifyd — An open source Spotify client running as a UNIX daemon. Spotifyd streams music just like the official client, but is more lightweight and supports more platforms. Spotifyd also supports the Spotify Connect protocol which makes it show up as a device that can be controlled from the official clients.
Ilan Rabinovitch — VP, Product & Technical Community at @datadoghq, recovering SysAdmin, SCALE Conference Chair, and other FL/OSS fun.

Episode 240: Why This Theme Won’t Work | LUP 240 Mar 14, 2018

Show notes

This week Noah fills in for Chris while he's on his return journey from SCaLE! The guys get down deep on a variety of topics from screen sharing in Plasma under Wayland to the status of the GTK 'CommuniTheme' for ubuntu 18.04 and more!

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Episode 239: Selling Out for Open Source | LUP 239 Mar 06, 2018

Show notes

We chip away at a larger meta topic this week, but before we get there we share a batch of community news, live technical feats & a random post show.

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Episode 238: It's All Wimpy's Fault | LUP 238 Feb 27, 2018

Show notes

Linux apps are coming to ChromeOS via containers, Fedora is going for better battery life & what is going on with Xfce?

Plus Ubuntu MATE’s cool new tick & we take a look at crankshaft: raspberry pi + android auto + free software + love.

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Episode 237: One Ping Only | LUP 237 Feb 20, 2018

Show notes

Canonical’s Ubuntu desktop head and their VP of Product Development join us to chat about the new proposed data collection system they want to build into Ubuntu 18.04 & Cassidy from System76 and Elementary OS join us to talk about their efforts to turn drive encryption on by default.

Plus a BIG announcement at the end of the show!

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