Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday – Final Flashdown

Adobe updates Flash! OpenShot 2.2 is out, video comes to Nextcloud, and we talk Ryzen with Josh Walrath from PC Perspective.

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Notes:
Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan

News

Final FlashDown
https://www.ghacks.net/2016/12/18/after-ignoring-linux-for-years-adobe-releases-flash-24-for-linux/

  • Remember, it’s not about whether Flash is still “a thing”, it’s about Adobe supporting one of their software on Linux with their latest version.
  • But with missing features such as 3D acceleration or video playback with DRM, I can’t really call that support, nice try Adobe.
  • I don’t care what you think it’s about Strider, flash needs to die.
  • Not just because it is one of the very few viable remote attack vectors to Linux, but because there are simply better alternatives to everything it offers.
  • Let it die!
  • Oh, but it is dying, don’t worry about that.
  • Going from dying to dead might take a while though
  • It’s almost 2017, the only version match you should have /w Flash is uninstalled.

 

NextCloud
https://github.com/nextcloud/spreed#spreed-video-calls

  • Now that WebRTC is a thing, everyone makes their own video chat web app
    • Imagine what would happen if all of them pooled their resources and made a good one.
      • Software development doesn’t work that way
  • That’s the true power of decentralization right here, use a different service than everyone else so no one bothers you!
  • When you really really need video conferencing built into your home brew cloud solution.
  • It does integrate with Nexcloud apps, kinda. Right now it only supports Contacts and users.

 

Called it
https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#vulkan

  • Wasn’t Nintendo part of the Kronos group for a while?
  • Anyway, that’s good news, that will lead to more Vulkan developers and potentially more Linux games
  • But don’t expect any game from the Switch library to be ported to Linux, that’s just ridiculous.
  • Considering how protective Nintendo is of their IP, no. There will be no Switch games making it to Linux.
  • But like Strider said, making more developers aware of Vulkan and getting to realize that if they make a game with it porting it from Windows to the Switch or Linux, that is most definitely a good thing.

 

The New Non-Portable Switch
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/12/19/this-is-very-probably-nvidias-2017-refresh-of-the-shield-android-tv-which-may-come-in-two-sizes/

  • Looks like someone sent the low-poly version of the controller model and they pushed that to production
    • Well it is a poorly done 3D render.
  • Seriously, what the hell is up with that controller?
  • A little bit of educated guessing probably puts a Tegra X2 (the Pascal one) in the box, even if the outside still looks very much the same.
  • Did they really sell enough of the original units to justify a refresh?

 

Down with the swap partitions
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/12/ubuntu-17-04-drops-swaps-swap-partitions-swap-files

  • Hi, you may know me as the guy who hates partitions and I’m pleased to announce that the Ubuntu installer will go for swap files by default!
  • I used not to have any swap at all but then, VMWare complained about it. It took me 2 minutes to create a swap file. That’s the kind of flexibility using swap files gives you.
    • They’re called pagefiles over in Windows-land and they were always the first thing I nuked when space was a premium.
    • And space still is a premium in the days of fast but small SSDs.
    • So replacing a partition with a file doesn’t really strike me as the kind of “innovation” that sets Ubuntu apart from the rest of the distros or even other non-Linux operating systems.
    • That’s exactly what’s so good about them. Want to get rid of a swap file? Bam, done. Want to do the same with a swap partition? Good luck…
  • For a common, general, machine most of the time this swap will not be used at all.”
    • Then you play a game with a horrid memory leak and your box locks.
  • I like the idea, however.

 

Bellard strikes again
http://bellard.org/riscvemu/

  • You may already know Fabrice Bellard as he’s the creator of FFmpeg and QEMU (and also that Linux VM running in Javascript)
  • He now strikes again by releasing a Risc V emulator capable of addressing 128 bit integers and floating points!

 

Pimp your shell
https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k/
https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal-fonts

 

OpenShot 2.2 Released
http://www.openshotvideo.com/2016/12/openshot-22-released-4k-video-editing.html

  • New 2.5k and 4k profiles added
  • Broken Ubuntu 16.10 PPA fixed
  • Moved to Github because S3 is the expensive.
  • I will give it the Pepsi challenge this evening and report back.
  • My guess, it’s still a hot busted mess.
  • It ships as an AppImage so that’s good.

 

Anything that moves

https://medium.com/@tomac/installing-ubuntu-mint-linux-on-onda-820w-tablet-727747a376b#.w2qgdmd3n

  • That’s going through a lot of trouble considering that no Linux desktop is very touch friendly
    • Unity?
      • No, Unity is very keyboard driven. Oh you mean Unity 8 with Mir? HA!
  • For some reason, people want to believe that Gnome Shell and Unity are made for tablets, I think people are crazy
    • Gnome very clearly is, even the lock screen has you dragging up to unlock. Yeah, that’s totally meant for a mouse, isn’t it?
  • My real question is: why does that device still ship with Android 4.4‽
  • 32bit UEFI in 64bit SoCs, good job OEMs.

Slice of Pi

Pixel
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pixel-pc-mac/

  • Might be worth installing on old netbooks

Feedback

JACK
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?cDYMvXe
https://plus.google.com/+TheAtomicAss/posts/SwNjSnXHXsE

  • I think it’s time for Atomic to release a video tutorial

 

SNAP
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?D4yVuMA

  • Thank you.
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