Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday – Thermal Sandwich

Ubuntu 17.10 ditches Unity, SGI’s IRIX Interactive Desktop returns from the dead, Microsoft is finally killing old Skype, and GitHub conducts a survey.

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Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan

Linux ebook bundle
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-book-bundle

There is enough reading material in there to get you a high paying devops jobs
If you’re not picky about your reading medium, this is $15 well spent.

So it begins
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/06/latest-ubuntu-17-10-update-ditches-unity-desktop-installs-gnome

I wonder if there is anything more than removing the ubuntu-gnome branding and renaming the ISO
If you’re already running the 17.10 dailies this won’t sack Unity but, if you install the new build from scratch, you’ll only get GNOME.
Who, cares?
Seriously, if you judge a distro by the default DM it ships with something has went horribly wrong in your life.

Canonical Kernel Livepatch
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/06/06/canonical-kernel-livepatch-service-now-available-for-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

This is good news for everyone on the 14.04.

RIP skype 4.3
https://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-linux/

Yeah, let’s pretend that the 5.x beta is ready and not a busted pile of nope.
Now the interesting but is the warning email sent out from MS never mentioned Linux.
I tried the new Skype and it was working
Life pro tip: spend 20 years listening to grindcore and black metal so you don’t have to hear the difference between Skype, Hangouts, Wire or Discord
- See, the good part about actually playing in a band was learning to wear earplugs early on.
That last bit was probably not true, otherwise I wouldn’t need M-Audio monitoring speakers.
I’m enjoying the fact that I can get rid of an old unmaintained 32bit piece of proprietary software, just as much as others enjoy getting rid of Flash.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get us to stop using Skype.
Hopefully Telegram will be a good replacement, remains to be seen whether or not the audio quality is up to snuff.
- Why do you have this bizarre idea that we will be using Telegram?
- Mostly because I haven’t tried it, yet.

AGC
https://nzeid.net/pulseaudio-disable-auto-volume

So, old Skype is dead and you are exploring the world of WebRTC A/V clients.
Lemme guess, you noticed over half of them auto-adjust your levels and there is no way to disable that because bad, BAD developer!
Unfortunately pulseaudio follows the Strider model of “if I don’t need it users don’t need it” development.
As a result there is STILL no simple way to lock audio channels to a set level.

I don’t have the slightest clue what this is about.
- That’s how we know you don’t know what even the smallest problem with new skype is.

IRIX
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/05/maxx_interactive_desktop_revives_sgi_irix_and_magic_desktop/
http://www.maxxinteractive.com/site/

Remember when I said that Linux had the best looking desktops ever made? Well someone heard that and took up the challenge to change that.
Well, it starts: http://i.imgur.com/9V9rhaM.png
I couldn’t open most of the stuff and Firefox was a smeary mess.
And there’s tearing. Just dragging a window across the screen was enough for my eyes to see it.
This is the desktop environment for people who think IceWM and Openbox have too many features.
I played around with what this is trying to emulate on my mums workstation back in the day, lawn.
Let’s not gloss over that this is designed to run on Fedora because you might as well pick up a fixie and a pack of American Spirits while you’re at it.

Open zoom zoom
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-tech-idUSKBN18R1CW

In the world of autonomous driving this is very much needed.
Seriously, I don’t want to be driven around by something controlled by a black box.
However, it’s only a good thing if they comply with the GPL.
I, for one, hope Automotive Grade Linux has a bright and long future.
Not the first time we’ve talked about Toyota on the show
This is a company that has a strong tendency to get things right, from their production system to their technology choices.

Error
https://errors.ubuntu.com/

Yes, those Apport dialogs you see when a program crashes are useful
It’s good to have those kind of metrics to know where to concentrate the efforts
Snap-install and gnome-software lead the charge in terms of bug reports.
- Taking up 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place over the past year, I’m not even kidding.
Thanks for pointing this out, Joel.

Obviously Controversial
http://opensourcesurvey.org/2017/

Github ran a survey and now they’re posting the results, along with their colorful commentary.
Suffice it to say, they managed to piss people off in every front.
There are also people suggesting the poll was pushed only to certain segments of Git users, etc., etc..
We all know how this song and dance goes, we’ll have to wait and see what happens over the coming weeks as more people look through the data and don’t just take this spiel at face value.
“Dismissive responses”
- That, that right there will stagnate a project with a quickness.

Slice of Pi

Up
https://liliputing.com/2017/06/core-quad-core-x86-mini-pc-thats-smaller-raspberry-pi-crowdfunding.html

It’s basically a netbook motherboard
And it’s x86, not ARM making this less than ideal for embedded systems.
You can stack components into a thermal sammich of nope.

Game boy
https://hackaday.com/2017/06/03/z80-based-raspberry-pi-look-alike/

Enough talk about hardware that is more powerful than a Pi. Let’s talk about hardware considerably less powerful!
What would be neat would be coupling this to a FPGA in order to recreate custom chips and recreate all kinds of old machines using a z80 (although the FPGA would probably be able to emulate the z80 itself)
This thing will have CP/M running on it by month’s end, mark my words.

Feedback

Aggressive
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?97LDmzG

Sounds like someone has a case of the Wednesdays
Okay. I’m nothing if not a shameless, self-indulgent, narcissistic, bastard, I’ll play along.
Let’s break that down:
- Passive-Aggressive? Me?! Son, I am the literal definition of aggressive. If I have an issue with something, I will say it right then and there. I don’t back away from an argument all that easy and I sure as hell don’t give a damn who’s feelings I hurt.
- I had to look up what a beta male was. Let’s break that down too!
  - Focused on doing what other’s want them to do
  - Too Nice
  - Always Searching for Perfection
  - Avoids Conflict and Confrontation
  - Resentful
  - Require Hand Holding
  - Passive aggressive
  - Sensitive and Emotional
  - Fake Nice
  - Seek approval from others
  - The list goes on.
- You either don’t know me, or you don’t know what a beta male is.
- If you want to label me with a greek letter, the one you’re looking for is Ωmega.
  - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=omega%20male
- “A face that begs to be punched repeatedly” – I used to get into a lot of fights until I spent a few hours in a police precinct because I broke the sergeant’s son arm. So you may have a point there!
- “Then there’s that voice…” – So, from a cast with Strider who talks like he wants to take Bob Ross’ place in soft soothing voice-land and Venn, who keeps making sweet love to his microphone the whole time, you’re complaining about my voice? Really?!
Next time you feel like sending some hate mail, do it for the Saturday show.