LWDW: Give Me Something Functional

Arch Linux drops support for i686, Tor springs a leak, WINE comes to Chrome OS and old Skype is officially dead. All this plus your emails.

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Mr_Alert (new patreon)
Yishan (new patreon)
Phil (increased pledge)
Steve-O (USB hub from Wishlist)

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Colour key – Venn Pedro

News

ARRRCH
https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-announce/2017-November/000383.html

Lies, dang lies, and…
http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-the-linux-desktop-hasnt-jumped-in-popularity/

2018 will be the year of the Linux desktop, you heard it here first!
So we were wrong about it being ChromeOS.
“you probably think that NetMarketShare and StatCounter simply count user numbers. They don’t. Instead, each uses its own secret sauce to come up with operating system numbers.”
- And there we go ladies and gents.
- Their metrics are about as useful as Steams.

The theme of Audacity 2.2
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/11/install-audacity-2-2-0-on-ubuntu

You can now make Audacity pretty colours.
Four new UI themes
And the ability to customize theme support.
This release makes it possible to import and play MIDI files in Audacity directly.
198 bug fixes.

AMD and Intel join forces
https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/new-intel-core-processor-combine-high-performance-cpu-discrete-graphics-sleek-thin-devices/

I’m guessing we’ll see these chips sooner than later since this has been in the works for a long, long time.
2018 Macbooks.
Looks glued together.
- Yes it does.
I’m completely on board for this!
Give Nvidia Optimus a proper kick in the neck and collapse that stupid traquea.
Don’t really see the point in a desktop, unless you’re going for the budget of budgets.
The dream here is to have a Ultrabook that can double as a gaming rig.
Difficulty: AMD.

A Kernel of truth
https://www.xda-developers.com/linux-foundation-2017-kernel-report/

AMD made the top 10, very good.
If it weren’t for the fact that Vega was so bad Raja was asked to leave, they’d be on a roll.
Man, I remember back in the 90’s thinking kernel development was going at a breakneck pace but it will slow down in a few years.
Yeah, about that.

Reviving open projects
https://www.wired.com/story/giving-open-source-projects-life-after-a-developers-death/

Ah yes, counteracting the bus factor but not letting the raptors eat the corpse.
I’m all for keeping a project alive after the og dev handed in the cloak or just up and died.
The problem, which isn’t really a problem, is when this happens, different groups of people have different directions they want to take a certain project in.
Then, each get their ducks in a row and go their separate forks.
And then instead of one, we have two projects doing the same thing.
And we have people shouting “fragmentation!”
The article suggests getting people involved earlier. Ya don’t say!
Deathnote email.

Tor leak
https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/11/critical-tor-flaw-leaks-users-real-ip-address-update-now/

It’s all fun and games unless an alphabet agency owns the exit node.
TorMoil: “the operating system may directly connect to the remote host, bypassing Tor Browser,”

Crossing Chrome
https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/announce/?t=24;mhl=202152;msg=202152#msg202152

Interesting but a lot of lowend Chromebooks will have a hard time running apps.
Yeah, Chromebooks have slowly but surely taken the netbook market.
If an old 32 bit Atom could run WINE well enough to run office and a few games, I think this is even more value if you’re looking at a cheap laptop.

Linux loves Microsoft
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-40-percent-of-all-vms-in-azure-now-are-running-linux/

It’s an interesting evolution.
Azure started as a platform-as-a-service in 2008.
By 2012 it transitioned to a infrastructure-as-a-service model that supported Linux.
Moral of the story, MS is going the way of IBM.
Oh, Kali Linux images are now available.

It’s finally dead
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/forum/skype_linux-skype_startms-skype_installms/end-of-life-of-skype-for-linux-43/70fe7036-ddf3-4fa3-9c06-1bca3ec0226c