LWDW: 20 Years Of Source

Skype goes Snap! O-Droid releases the N1, MATE gets HiDPI and open source turns twenty. All this plus your emails.

Special thanks:
Sharon (new)
Zoey (new)
Jack (new)
Todd (new)

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Colour key – Venn Pedro

News

Snapy skype
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/install-skype-linux-ubuntu/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Has to run in –classic mode.
Does not detect audio or video.
Skype *.deb installed without issue.
I will question the usefulness of snaps until something useful comes out for it.
A bunch of electron apps which already work everywhere Chromium would don’t really qualify.

Unofficial Grams
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/tdlib-build-unofficial-telegram-apps

TDLib is the right way to go about things.
Don’t like the official app? Try one of the many full-featured alternatives.
Anything is better than electron flavoured lockin.
The unofficial telegrams could be anything from a difference in branding to something designed from the ground up to fill whatever functionality niche you or your company have.
It’s open sauce, it’s got a decent enough API to allow for better functionality with other applications.
This is just a good idea.
Heck! If someone makes one of these which allows for multiple instances and has better sound quality than Wire…

MATE 1.20
https://mate-desktop.org/blog/2018-02-07-mate-1-20-released/

In my day we said proud as punch, just saying.
Dynamic detection for HiDPI displays.
Marco now supports DRI3 and XPresent, if available.
MATE Terminal now supports background images because that was a real showstopper.
Alright, give me a ppa and I will take the Pepsi challenge.
See if it can handle 5 SCREENS OF FURRY.
I’m going to wait for the unofficial 16.04 PPA to be updated as well.

6 Libre
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2018/01/31/libreoffice-6/

New filters for exporting Writer documents to ePub and importing QuarkXPress files have also been added
OOXML interoperability has been improved
OpenPGP keys can be used to sign ODF documents on all desktop operating systems, with experimental support for OpenPGP-based encryption.
The upcoming release of LibreOffice Viewer for Android will be able to create new documents, will offer a tab-based toolbar with formatting options, and will let users add pictures either from the camera or from a file stored locally or in the cloud.
They do kind of hint at not deploying this in the enterprise.
There’s also the “Notebook bar”, aka LibreOffice’s Ribbon for those MS Office users out there who actually like that monstrosity.

Didn’t even read the article because if you are using Flash in 2018 you deserve what you get, period.
What? There is one site you simply must use because they only support Flash?
Well, ask yourself this.
Why do you support a site that clearly does not care about your security?
“But muh anime waifu!”
- Your anime waifu is going to give you more than an STD if you keep using flash.

Bears repeating
https://chrisdown.name/2018/01/02/in-defence-of-swap.html

Some people simply refuse to accept this.
Heck, most people don’t understand what swap is.
If you use swap in the spirit intended, though – as a method of increasing equality of reclamation – you’ll find that it’s a useful tool instead of a hindrance.
Disabling swap does not prevent disk I/O from becoming a problem under memory contention
The kernel wants swap.

Riscy
https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/

Secure
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/linux/lkrg-linux-to-get-a-loadable-kernel-module-for-runtime-integrity-checking/

LKRG? Really?
That sounds like an organization that might come disappear you during the night.
A loadable kernel module that will perform runtime integrity checking of the Linux kernel.
Its purpose is to detect exploitation attempts for known and unknown security vulnerabilities against the Linux kernel and attempt to block attacks.
So, does it detect PSP and IME?
You can expect a “Pro” ver$ion.
Current LKRG version adds a 6.5% penalty.

20 years a sauce
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/3025934/open-source-turns-20-this-weekend
https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/03/20-years-of-open-source-software/

Slice of Pi

Pi Things
http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozillas-raspberry-pi-gateway-gives-your-smart-things-their-own-url/

Oh Droid
https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/02/06/hardkernel-unveils-odroid-n1-board-with-rockchip-rk3399-processor-4gb-ram-dual-sata-and-more/