LWDW 130: Das Boot

Opera goes Snap, Lenovo joins the LVFS, NASA open sources a rover and it’s the beginning of the end of WPA-2. All this plus your emails.

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Colour key – Venn Pedro Jill

DasBOOT 5Q
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/9571bb/das_keyboard_banning_users_from_the_5q_forums_for/
https://github.com/diefarbe/

Elementary
https://medium.com/@cassidyjames/a-new-chapter-af85f4e64179

Cassidy James Blaede, former UX Architect at System76 is now a full time UX Architect at Elementary OS thanks to a large private contribution.
System76 now needs a full-time UX Architect.
Apply below.

*glares at HP*
Neither the cheapo Lenovo B50-80 or the X240 seem to be supported.
Lenovo is the second company after Dell to join the Linux Vendor Firmware Service.
This saves you the hassle from using a USB drive to flash your firmware or the dreaded booting into Windows.

Thunder 60.0
https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2018/08/whats-new-in-thunderbird-60/

Thunderbird is Go! Or 60 ;-)
Has a fresh new “Photon” look like Firefox Quantum and ships with new light and dark themes.
Thunderbird now has a new “Photon” look. Tabs are square, the title bar can be toggled on and off.
New icon.
Various improvements to the calendar and attachment management.

Opera
https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/08/02/opera-launches-as-a-snap-for-linux-users

And now you can run Opera off of that completely stupid lowercase snap folder in your home directory.
Opera, the web browser that invented tabs and speed dial is one of my favs and now is available as an easy to install Snap!
Opera pioneered the mobile market and used to be the only web browser available for older feature phones and smartphones.
One of the reasons I like The Vivaldi browser so much is that the interface is a lot like Opera.
It’s not available on Flathub :(
sudo snap install opera makes /w the working.
So does sudo snap remove opera
I tried installing from snapcraft.io webzon but that did a whole lot of nothing.

Peer bounty
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor/issues/79#issuecomment-409748548

You know, having a centralized client with this kind of functionality for a decentralized video hosting service is only ever so slightly defeating the purpose.
I can see copyright lawyers all over foaming at the mouth and maybe even offering to chip in.
Viewing PeerTube videos in the YouTube player NewPipe Android App available on F-Droid would be a nice feature.
NewPipe the lightweight YouTube experience for Android.
250€ crypto bounty.

Out of process
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/08/02/firefox-63-linux-out-of-process-extensions/

Webextensions are what Mozilla call their browser agnostic way of implementing extensions.
Running these in a separate process is not only handy but also a necessity if you’re bringing an extension over from a different browser and you don’t know how it’s going to work.
What I don’t know how it’s going to work is integrating extensions like adblockers to ensure they retain their functionality while working on a different process.
I’m sure it’s not even an issue, I just happen to lack the knowledge to see how that’s going to fly.
This sandboxing should prevent crashes in WebExtensions (formerly known as “add ons” in Firefox) from crashing Firefox as a whole.
This functionality is finally coming to Linux with the release of Firefox 63 later this year.
Running Nightly? about:config?filter=extensions.webextensions.remote

Rendering
https://github.com/google/filament

*.md is how documentation is done.
C++ with Vulkan and has both a c++ and a Java API for access.
Filament is a lightweight physically based rendering game engine, or PBR, that was just open sourced by Google.
Filament is the game engine used in the application Sceneform, which is used for creating augmented reality content for Android.
And, of course, it uses Vulkan on the backend!
The documentation for Filament is extremely detailed and is one of the best explanations of how PBR (Physically Based Rendering) works and can be used as teaching material!
I could see Filament being used as a rendering engine for Blender :-D

Pak it in
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/installing-windows-apps-on-linux-is-about-to-get-a-lot-easier/
https://github.com/winepak/applications

Don’t like it but this is the future of WINE.
I say this as someone who has tangoed with that wacky recursive backronym for two decades.

Slice of Pi

Rove where you want to
https://opensourcerover.jpl.nasa.gov/#!/home
https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover

That is very neat and the interactive page took away far more of my time just steering the thing about than it should have!
- I legitimately believe this.
Powered by a Raspberry Pi! And can be controlled by a smartphone or Xbox controller.
Now you can make your own Rover out of found parts.
Many years ago I had installed the original software in Debian called Amigo that JPL used to control the Mars Rovers and had fun playing with it.
Eh, I could use a new butter robot.
DYI parts will run you about $2,500.
Rocker-Bogie suspension system
Differential Pivot
6-Wheel Ackerman Steering
Raspberry Pi is the brain of the critter.

WPA2Pi
https://medium.com/@billbuchanan_27654/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-wpa-2-cracking-wpa-2-just-got-a-whole-lot-easier-55d7775a7a5a

Welp, it had a good run.
Hmm, like I said last week, wardriving on a RasPi is still a thing thanks to Kali Linux and a WPA-2 hacker!
4-way handshake is a thing of the past.
WPA-Enterprise systems are still relatively safe because backend authentication #RADIUS.
As it stands home systems using weak passwords are easy targets.
Protip: There’s no need to go full-metal Chuck McGill.
Switch over to 5G and crank the power down.

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XFCE Progress
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?3s7lWxE