Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday – POWERRR!

KDE gets medieval! Lunduke takes on humanity, Let’s Encrypt counts to three, and CP/M on my Raspberry Pi?

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Notes:
Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan

News

Yakkety yakkety yakkety
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/download-ubuntu-16-10-new-features

Outside of the Unity 8 and Mir “preview” there’s really nothing to see here.
- And there’s nothing wrong with that.
- Updated Kernel and GTK version, bugfixes in Unity and I’m good with that
- I know it won’t break
It’s the first time in years where I haven’t updated before the release (and I still haven’t)

I’m lazy, someone needs to make a ppa for this.
Some people actually like fonts that look that way
- I will never understand them
It looks pretty good compared to Windows 9
The codebase stood the test of time but they simply wouldn’t deal with autotools anymore

Vive le libre!
https://github.com/collabora/OSVR-Vive-Libre

This is a big deal since it’s coming from Collabora (which are also active developers in LibreOffice, the Linux Kernel, Wayland, GStreamer and a lot of other major Linux projects)
__empty__ will have some homework this week
“OSVR Vive Libre is available on the Arch User Repository.”
- And thus my already fading interest was obliterated entirely

Electron story of the week?
- Atom is the OG Electron app, Atom is the father of Electron!
They need to update their deb files (and possibly rpms), it’s still 1.7.4!
But you can get a deb for the 1.12 beta!
It’s a very good editor, just add a vim emulation plugin and you’re good to go!
You might want to disable that Ctrl+Q shortcut

New chat protocol of the week
https://matrix.org/

True decentralization is having as many protocol as users so no one can communicate with each other!
I think they are aware of it since the relevant “15 competing standards” XKCD is one click away from the homepage (Riot link)
This seem to stand out from the usual chat protocols as it aims to be an IRC / Slack remplacement rather than a Skype replacement.
But speaking of IRC…

An update to the IRC protocol would be really appreciated, it hasn’t evolved in ages and is starting to fall behind other (often proprietary) protocols such as Slack
This update would provide better security, easier user registration and better history handling
All the big names of IRC are involved with the project: Freenode, Weechat, Hexchat, ZNC… so this project is likely to become a reality (but no mIRC)

Linux against humanity
https://github.com/BryanLunduke/LinuxAgainstHumanity

*throws beard*
Yeah, you definitely need at least the original set of CAH to make this even remotely funny.
This should be added to the online version Pretend you’re Xyzzy for some LGCW after show.

I am still 100% ok with this.
Anything that’ll give money grubbing cert authorities a reason to step up or give up is good imnsho.
I believe there’s enough room for both Let’s Encrypt and traditional CAs. Initially CAs didn’t target small, individual websites but mostly large entities which explains their ridiculously overpriced certificates.
Now, smaller entities do understand the need for encryption and that’s why Let’s Encrypt is such a good initiative.
Large entities that have traditionally used paid certificates have no reason to switch to Let’s Encrypt so the 2 markets barely overlap.
If they did, the traditional CAs would be much more aggressive against LetsEncrypt.
According to the EFF’s article here, Let’sEncrypt is only third in the sense that larger websites generate more traffic therefore, without having several big hitters under their certificates, they will always score lower.
On the other hand, if we’re just looking at the raw number of certificates, which in many cases may include duplicate or inactive certificates, Let’s Encrypt is in fact in the lead.

Powa 8
https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation

Don’t needs it… but we wants it.
No proprietary software or firmware blobs.
You think the migration from X86 to X86_64 was rough.
$4k for a board which is aiming to be the rebirth of PPC?
I hate Intel’s Market dominance as much as the next guy but wouldn’t it be better to pay AMD for the x86_64 license and do something to compete on the same ground?
- I don’t think AMD has any CPU capable of competing with the POWER8 architecture (starting with the fact that x86_64 is not a RISC architecture)
- An AMD CPU from October 2011 can run this entire setup, I bet that POWER8 can’t.
Funny that they mention running AAA games because I can’t think of any game that would run on that architecture (but they could make a PS3 emulator pretty easily)
A goal of almost $4M for a very exotic motherboard? I wish them luck but I doubt they will crowdfund this.
And they’ve unwittingly made my point:
- https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/risc-v-and-the-history-of-power
I was going to back the project until I noted the default Desktop was KDE.
WHO is this targeted at? $7,500 for a desktop is a hard sell.
I spent over a year suffering from Sun madness running all the Linux on the SPARC.
It was miserable.

That’s GR8
https://getchip.com/pages/chippro

Golang and Drive
https://kuplevatsky.com/2016/05/16/google-drive-for-linux-is-here-unofficially/

Needs a GUI for ARCH!11! users
- That GUI is called InSync and I managed to grab it for free a few months ago (it’s $25 now)
Thunar integration or GTFO!
- Don’t know about Thunar but InSync has Nautilus integration
Doesn’t seem maintained anymore (last commit early 2015)
Would be handy for automating some simple backups.

Slice of Pi

CP/M Pi
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/12/raspberry-pi-boots-cpm/

This would fall into the “why would you want to do that?” category but give me the same thing to boot an Amiga and I’m sold.

Modules
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/compute-module-nec-display-near-you/

Can I go home now
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/spirit-rover-robot-kit/

Now they can cut $20 off the (relatively pricey) $189 price tag by replacing the Pi with a Chip Pro! (Unless you want to plug your robot to the TV to play on RetroPi)

Feedback

Republic
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?RTTt85w