LWDW 129: Kaleidoscope Nightmare

Bionic Beaver gains a point, India’s first RISC-V based chip boots Linux, Krita tangos with Microsoft and Vim gets ported to WebAssembly.

Special thanks to:
The Real Pedro Mateous (latest patreon)
Stein Erik Svendheim (latest patreon)

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Colour key – Venn Pedro Jill

The Wait is Over
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/07/ubuntu-18-04-1-lts-release

Now you can upgrade from 14.04 and 16.04 LTS without worrying because all the bugs have been worked out since the April release of 18.04 LTS.
Most of the work here is for kernel level hardware support, upgrade fixes, and and gang of GNOME desktop bits.
Upgraded to 18.04.1 on a VM and on the T42 install of Lubuntu.
And if you’re new to this and already running 18.04 don’t worry, you already have .1.

DARPA POSH
https://www.linux.com/blog/2018/7/darpa-drops-35-million-posh-open-source-hardware-project

Government and businesses have finally realized that open hardware, just like open software, can lead to a quicker turnover rate and reduce development time and costs.
The creator of my beloved Chumby, bunnie Huang, is linked in the article because he was ahead of his time in creating open source hardware solutions on a budget.
$35m wet stinkies is a lot of cash.

ShaktiProcessors
http://www.geekdave.in/2018/07/indias-first-risc-v-is-here-linux-boots.html
https://twitter.com/ShaktiProcessor/status/1022384131064430593

It’s still early days but it’s good seeing upstarts getting their feet wet.
This is the advantage of open hardware.
Places like India with low per capita earnings but booming in terms of technology adoption can make an open architecture establish itself.
Granted, it’s going to be pretty hard to break out of one such country and into the mainstream.
Still I think, if it makes a big enough splash, it can get someone with some spare monies to invest to bring it over.
Its a low power 400MHz prototype.
And it booted with Linux on the first try!

NCSCbuntu
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/07/ubuntu-18-04-security-tips

Enable secure boot? Seriously?
Something about telling Microsoft about my boot habits doesn’t really gel with the idea of security in my mind.
“Prevent execution of binary files from the home partition”
- ‘Ey?
Sandboxing and only allowing Snaps to install from the Ubuntu Snap store?
- We have talked about standardization on LWDW before and the detrimental effects it has on open source.
- Although this is government, so I expect nothing less.
- A malicious package was found in the Ubuntu Snap Store last May, so no, this may not always be the most secure way to install a Snap.
These are recommendations and guidance by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and not a set of mandatory instructions.
Disable networking and hot glue the USB holes, problem solved.

XPS Linux, as it should
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-xps-13-now-ships-with-ubuntu-18-04-linux/

Stable Linux… on Linux
https://www.xda-developers.com/stable-linux-apps-chrome-os-69/

Might as well start paying attention since Googs is making it clear ChromeOS, not android is the future for anything over 7”.
No GPU acceleration for crostini apps, yet.
According to the XDA predictions it won’t be ready by the time it hits stable.
It’ll also be up to OEMs to validate this before Chromebooks, like mine, support these Linux apps. Regardless of whether it is in the stable channel or not.
Google wants to containerize all the things, so the future of Chromebooks is the ability to cloud sync and backup a virtual machine from Google Drive.

Browser VIM (SteveO)
https://github.com/rhysd/vim.wasm

Up next, Visual Studio.
Far easier to Electron, now.
Having a self contained Vim editor in a browser is nice and beats having to boot a full Linux distro in a browser just to use Vim.

DebConf18
https://debconf18.debconf.org/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7SbfAPZf8SMvAxp8t51qtQ/videos

DebConf18 presentation videos are making their way to the tubes.
I enjoy watching these videos every year, and keeping up to date with the world of Debian and Linux.

Mozilla Open Design
https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/evolving-the-firefox-brand/

For me, as an artist, I prefer the System 2 Firefox icon and general-purpose browser Icon set, because they are crisper, have a nice use of negative space, and read better at a distance.
Also, the System 1 Firefox icon looks very similar to the GitLab icon.
For the singularly focused browser icons I prefer System 1, because they are harmonious in color and design with the System 2 Firefox icon and general-purpose browser icons.
Which icons do you like better? Mozilla wants your feedback. Comment in the blog post below . . .
The GIMPshoop on that t-shirt is bad.
As a Venn I have already replaced the icon with something monochrome and flat.

MS Krita
https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-the-windows-store-an-update/

Microsoft <3 Linux.
So… Why is Microsoft so desperate to get people off the store?
I get that they want the exclusivity. If you take gaming console mentality, exclusivity drives sales.
But I don’t think bullying people on a dead platform will work so well in the long run.
Though, idealism aside, the Krita dev did cave in and removed the mention because he needs the money.
I want someone with money and a good lawyer to take Microsoft to court over their EULAs.
I find it ironic that Microsoft asked Krita to put there app in the Microsoft Store in the first place because it was bare and didn’t contain quality content!

MS DaaaaaS
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3293429/microsoft-windows/with-daas-windows-coming-say-goodbye-to-your-pc-as-you-know-it.html

Most of us sniffed this out years ago but if it’s not crystal clear to you by now Microsoft is transitioning into a services company.
Microsoft Managed Desktop is, “desktop as a service.” It will provide customers the ability to lease a Windows 10 device and have the operating system kept up-to-date for a single monthly fee.
And don’t think seeing Ubuntu Desktop as a service is entirely out of the question.
Microsoft is going the way of Adobe’s Creative Cloud . . .
Yes, I see a disturbance in the force, and our penguin army is growing :-D

Slice of Pi

HackerPi
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/install-kali-linux-raspberry-pi/

Installing Kali on a RasPi gains you, like, 20 hacker points.
You could just install Metasploit on Raspbian, but that would take all the fun out of it!
Kali comes pre-loaded with all the pentesting tools you would ever need.

SynthPi
https://jtoda.one/works/synesthiser.html

One giant areola to control a synthesiser.
I would love to be able to use this with my hearing impaired students so they could learn how to edit sound with their animations and understand how a sound wave works.
- I have a teaching technique and demonstration I use with them but this would be far superior!