LWDW: Grandpa Proof Linux

Intel done goofed, Chrome OS 64 adds parallel tasks, MVP travels to Vulkan and System76 accepts Bitcoin? All this plus your emails!

Special thanks:
Luke W (new patreon)

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Colour key – Venn Pedro

News

Why does this exist?
https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/85018.html?rss=1

Just run Wordperfect like a normal person.
“SoftMaker Office could be a first-class professional-strength replacement for Microsoft Office on the Linux desktop.”
- That is a completely pointless sentence and it means nothing.
$70 for the base license, that’s a bit steep.
Fully compatible or 100% guaranteed compatible?
Alright, I downloaded the free beta and it wants a registration key.
Yeah, I think I will stick with the literal dozens of free non DRM encumbered alternatives.

ChromeOS multitasks
https://chromeunboxed.com/news/android-parallel-tasks-incoming-chrome-os-64/

APK from CLI
https://github.com/matlink/gplaycli

This is real handy if you have your own F-droid server.
The main goal was to be able to run this script with a cronjob, in order to automatically update an F-Droid server instance.

Now with Vulkan support
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases/tag/v0.28.0

Don’t know why you would need a Vulkan output but i’m glad we got it.
From my testing MPV seems to be the only player able to play 720p videos on my T42 at the actual video framerate.
Bringing Vulkan support seems geared to make it more appealing to people on high end hardware as well as the low end.

I honestly cannot recommend OpenShot 2.X series to anyone at this point.
It’s still a hot crashy mess and that makes me sad.
Linux needs a simple, easy to use My First Video Editor and OpenShot 1.X really fit that bill.
2.X wants to be somewhere between Windows movie maker and KDENlive.
A niche that simply does not exists.
Plans for 2018 include Stability, UI Improvements, additional effects, and 32-bit Windows Builds.

No root for you
https://iwf1.com/kde-dropping-run-as-root-feature-stumbles-backlash-from-the-community

Remember when VLC did this?
Outside of ARRRCH users, who does this really effect?
Like most people I found myself installing gedit and geany to do my root text editing.

Https is now a thing
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/12/tipping-scales-https

Easy to forget that at the beginning of 2017 you didn’t expect EVERY webzone to support https.
Now, as 2017 comes to a close, an average of 66% of page loads on Firefox are encrypted, and Chrome shows even higher numbers.
Let’s Encrypt’s total issuance volume has exceeded 177 million certificates.
With both Chrome and Firefox putting exclamation marks and red strikes above the left corner of the URL bar if your site doesn’t do https, a lot of people decided to take LetsEncrypt up on their free certificates.

OggaBooga!
http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/169166980422/the-mysterious-case-of-the-linux-page-table/amp?

This is some FSM damn interesting stuff.
Potential Intel Hardware bug could result in 30-35% performance hit when fixed.
“AMD processors are not subject to the types of attacks that the kernel page table isolation feature protects against”
- Intel tried to cripple all X86 processors but the dude from AMD told him their products weren’t vulnerable.
- ^ From a PMTS Software Engineer at AMD.
Kernel 4.14.11 is out with patches for Intel cpu mem leak.
Seems the problem lies in Intel’s implementation of branch prediction.
These haven’t been a good few months for Intel.
First AMD releases a competitive CPU, then Coffee Lake rumors of it being just a more expensive Kaby Lake, the management engine issue, now loss of performance to fix a security bug.
And it’s not just Linux, this seemingly affects every operating system which uses any type of memory predictions between processes and the kernel.

This is just neat
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/source-code-for-apples-historic-lisa-os-to-be-made-available-in-2018/

I look forward to running it in a browser exactly once, saying “neat” and never touching it again.
You mean the one Steve Jobs lifted wholesale from Xerox?
- In all fairness Xerox was just sitting on it with no plans for development.

Slice of Pi

Boxes of Pi
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3244253/computers/best-raspberry-pi-kits.html

I might pick up a few of those Pi for dummies for my local nonprofit.
PiTop looks neat… but that price don’t.
The retro gaming kit seems to have far too agreeable a price for this sorta thing.

Edge Pi
http://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-sized-sbc-runs-linux-on-single-core-cortex-a53-soc/