Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday – Unity No More

Canonical abandons Unity8! Xfce 4.13 learns how to OpenGL, Firefox gets a makeover, and Linux goes mainstream? All this, plus your feedback.

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Notes:
Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan

Mainstream
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3185829/linux/being-a-linux-user-isnt-weird-anymore.html

Don’t worry, being a Linux user is still considered weird
It only means more weird people go to Starbucks now
To top it off, add an extra layer of weirdness because Portland
“This may be anecdotal—and it may only really apply to my corner of the world—…”
- Okay, guess I don’t need to point it out.
Make Linux weird again!
Keep Linux weird!
I don’t think running into a single Linux user counts.

New Fox
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/31/firefox-photon-new-design-mockups-show-interface-and-more/?theme=ghacks

The last re-design doesn’t seem that old, Australis was released in 2014
Aside from a visual redesign Firefox 57 will also feature major changes for extensions by switching to WebExtensions.
Someone finally realized moving the home button to the right of the address bar wasn’t a good idea… Only took’em almost a decade!
Looks very similar to Chrome for Android.
- It’s damn near a clone of the original Chrome.

Windows plus
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/29/swan-better-linux-on-windows/

Basically the open source version of WSL
But if it uses Cygwin then is offers win32 binaries, not ELF binaries
If I *had* to run Windows (and thankfully, I don’t), I would go with WSL
If there’s one thing Windows users love is having package managers to handle their software, am I right?

SHOT 2.3
http://www.openshotvideo.com/2017/03/openshot-23-released-new-transform.html

They finally nailed GLX compositing… I’d throw some fireworks but they’re kind of highly regulated here in Portugal.
One thing to note: xfdashboard. This, by itself, can make me want to use XFCE.
They still haven’t fixed the 1px resize border issue, which they say is a theme issue but I know it’s not true: the problem is exclusive to XFCE.
- Really?
  - Ya really, it’s my biggest gripe with XFCE
And for that reason, I will stay on Gnome Shell.

Docking
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2017/04/first-stable-build-of-latte-dock.html

Next time I use KDE, I won’t have to install Plank or Docky
- Not that you’d need to, the default KDE Panel has all that functionality and more.
Of course, being a KDE program, it has *tons* of options.

Kernel
https://itsfoss.com/upgrade-linux-kernel-ubuntu/

Handy little tool is handy for new users.
Basically a GUI for the mainline kernels from Ubuntu
Very handy to have for people who have a current-gen laptop where running the lastest kernel is often a good idea.
I got nothing other than, if you’re running Ubuntu, updating kernels, unless you need them for a specific use case like what Strider mentioned, is not the best of ideas.
I remember enabling the HWE thing in the LTS and everything broke.
Don’t use this or install newer kernels unless you absolutely have to.

Oh Snap
https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/call-for-testing-snapd-2-23-on-fedora/127

Codeplex no more
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-down-codeplex/

Microsoft wants to move everything to Github
That move will either completely kill PCSX-R or revive it if they decide to move to Github as well
And no, I can’t think of another project hosted on CodePlex
Btw, I know that ugly fonts are the norm on Windows but how the hell did they manage to get ugly fonts halfway through the blog post?
Linus said if Microsoft ever made software for Linux he’d won, what does he call this when Microsoft is now ever more reliant on Linux based stuff?

Unity no more
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/

That was absolutely unexpected!
And I’m more than okay with this.
Each time I would see Unity 8 stuff, all I could think of was: this isn’t going anywhere and I might have to switch distros at some point
Well, not anymore, I’ll be using Ubuntu for the foreseeable future.
I can only assume this means the end of Mir as well
Of course this happened for a reason: to refocus the company on IoT and cloud technologies, an area where Ubuntu is already strong and doesn’t have to prove itself like it would have in the mobile world.
- This happened because Unity was a big steaming pile of NOPE.
- This happened because no one outside of the Ubuntu development team gave a damn about Unity.
- Why support a desktop environment on your own when you can simply not and use one that someone else is supporting?
Did anyone not see this coming?
Now, lets throw some more resources behind SNAP… a project that nobody will adopt.
Will they nuke Mir?
- If they don’t have a desktop environment which will in no way in hell ever support Wayland without a complete rewrite, I don’t see why they’d keep it.

Slice of Pi

EmuGL
http://linuxgizmos.com/opengl-accelerated-games-come-to-raspberry-pi/

It’s still proprietary and you still have to pay for it but now it has 3D acceleration!
Should be able to run any 3D game from the 90s
As a result, you can now run modern, 3D graphics games such as OpenArena (Quake 3) and Minecraft
- We have different definitions of Modern.

Feedback

Davinci
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?7uJ2MZN

I do use apt most if the time but it’s still a stripped down version of apt-get / apt-cache
If you don’t need apt-get build-dep / source or apt-cache policy / rdepends / showsrc good for you but a bunch of people do use them
Apt is good for the basic stuff but the underlying tools are here to stay.
But I agree: JUSTE SUDO APT INSTALL!!!!

Thunder
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?hnIs7MB