Linux Weekly Daily Wednesday: Electron-Wrapped Nope

Ubuntu 17.10 Beta 2 goes full Wayland, Linux gets a new digital painting tool, Microsoft puts a ring on it, and googling tips for hipsters.

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Colour key – Venn Pedro

The following Unity desktop features are no longer available in Ubuntu 17.10:

Global Menu
HUD
Dash or Scopes
Unity Quicklists
Sound Menu
GNOME 3.26, login and lock screen, LightDM and the Unity Greeter are no longer included.
Ubuntu 17.10 uses Wayland
17.10 still includes a X.org session by default and for anyone playing games this will be known as Step 1.

Skype keeps on trying
https://blogs.skype.com/news/2017/09/29/introducing-a-preview-of-the-next-generation-of-skype-for-linux/
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/collaboration/7077/microsoft-unveils-preview-of-skype-for-linux

Thins brings screen sharing, group chat and “cloud technology”
You lot have been trying to make electron Skype workable for over a year.
Original link is dead. Googling will find you the download page.
- Still works on this end.
This is the version of Skype microsoft unveiled to Windows and Mac users in August before pushing out the Linux version.
The general consensus is that everyone seems to hate it.
Business as usual for Skype since Microsoft bought it, then!
I still maintain that this project is only staffed with disliked interns.
Seriously, Disord (another electron bit-o-nope-) is actually usable and provides audio that rivals OG Skype.

Microsoft wants to help
https://opensource.org/node/901?imm_mid=0f6cbd&cmp=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20170930

MS is now a Premium Sponsor.
Can we finally forgive them for allying with SCO and buying a “UNIX” license back in 06?
They released .NET in 2014
And Visual Studio Code and Typescript as of late.

Beta 387.12
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1024719/unix-graphics-announcements-and-news/linux-solaris-and-freebsd-driver-387-12-beta-/

Looks like they are trying to sort Alt+Tab funkyness with vulkan.
DP connected monitors should finally reliably resume from sleep.
I installed it and it works.
I always disable sleep on my desktop, because if it’s on I want it to stay on.
Haven’t really seen any other issues, so as far as I can tell should be safe to update.
But some people in the forums have reported issues with not being able to see power output with nvidia-smi and external monitor misbehaving on an Optimus laptop.

Gmail gets a fixie
https://medium.com/@stessyco/gmail-from-the-command-line-with-mutt-mac-os-x-92d047bcd74f

The stupid but neat section came early this week.
However this is reinventing the wheel since setting up Gmail in Alpine take a whole 2 seconds.

But wait, there’s more
https://github.com/jarun/googler/releases/tag/v3.4

Now this project will save your sanity if you deal with a bunch of headless boxes.
Google Search, Google Site Search, Google News from the terminal.
Ever googled with Lynx? Don’t.
Use this.

We are the 4.83%
https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=0
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/10/02/linuxs-market-share-really-doubled-two-months/?amp=1

According to NetMarketShare, Linux peaked at 6.91% share in September
Come end of October, if these numbers hold up, Linux will have surpassed Windows 8 and is quickly encroaching on Mac.
Back to school Chromebooks.
Were done here people, hit the lights on the way out.

Up to this point most distros didn’t included S3TC support by default in their version of mesa because of the patent.
But that’s expired now so, and as this patch seems to be designed for it, Mesa will include it by default going forward.
Barring any weirdness, of course.

My Hangouts solution
https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts

Bit of a hack to get the OATH but aside from that it’s legit.
Yes, I’m still bitter about Google pulling Hangouts from G+
Yes I know about the browser plugin, it’s rubbish.
There are 2 browser plugins and one is crap, yes.
The other I use because it does keep Hangouts in the tray with new message notifications.

VPaint
https://www.patreon.com/borisdalstein
https://www.vpaint.org/

“Ex-Pixar dev creates graphic design and 2D animation software, puts it on Patreon (RTheren)”
It works on 16.04 as they say it should: https://i.imgur.com/bd5pvTM.png

Slice of Pi

UnidirectionalPi
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/adafruits-read-only/