LWDW 151: Desktop Linux In 2019

Mozilla revives Mozilla Labs! Chrome OS tests GPU support for apps, 24-core bananas, and what does 2019 have in store for the Linux desktop.

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Kim O
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Colour key – Venn Jill Pedro

State of Desktop Linux 2019

Can 2019 be the year of realizing the desktop as a whole is a dying beast?
I know you don’t want to hear that but it’s true.
This is a very thoughtful and insightful article written by Bryan Lunduke, and he did a very good job in asking some of the key questions pondering Linux today to the leaders of Debian, Fedora and Elementary OS.
- What do you see as the single biggest challenge currently facing both your specific project—and desktop Linux in general?
- Is there value in the major distributions standardizing on package management systems? Should that be done? Can that be done?
Decided lack of Canonical in the article.
Love or hate they are 500lb gorilla of Desktop Linux.

That’s a bold claim there, Cotton!
Though considering how neither Mac or Windows let you customize the desktop in any easy fashion, I can certainly see that side of the argument.
Though, making the claim that this limited an environment is Linux’s best hope for mainstream, is taking a pretty big dump from atop your ivory tower on what a great deal of people like about Linux.
Still, if Chrome’s adoption and subsequent success is anything to go by, maybe that is what people want.
Though given the choice of current DEs, I’d probably vote for the deepin desktop enviroment or Budgie, if they dropped the b0rked mess that is mutter as a compositor.
Elementary OS has gotten a lot of good press lately and has been introduced to a lot of new Linux users because of Jason Evangelho’s well written Forbes articles on Linux.
Elementary OS is very easy to use, and uses its own Pantheon DM which is loved for its Mac like interface.

Good!
I’d like to try some Steam games on my Acer R11.
GPU support for containerized Linux apps in Chrome OS is so needed to increase speed and productivity.
The Chrome OS VM needs to catch up to Wine in terms of GPU support.
This is to help with rendering, not gaming.
Another upcoming feature is blocking the USB ports on locked Chromebooks.

After the Snowden leaks the internet is not only justified to distrust the NSA, we’re right to do so.
Someone hand me a tinfoil hat but, as someone who lives in the UK, the threat of an overbearing government authority is very much real.
What’s wrong with encryption designed by NSA that the NSA refuses to answer questions about?
Support for the Pine64 LTS and a bunch of Banana and Orange Pi boards are a very welcome sight.
HDMI 2.0 support in nouveau is interesting, but good luck driving 4K at 60FerPS with the opensauce NVidia drivers.
We got a Holiday present from Linus. Linux Kernel 4.20 has been released with lots of new updates!
Support for the latest AMD Picasso and Raven 2 APUs.
Yeah! Support for more sound cards including the higher end Creative Sound Blaster ZxR and AE-5 sound cards.
- Now you can use an LED lit sound card on Linux for more bling!

Very good news for skilled people in need of some extra monies!
PuTTY and DRUPAL swinging in with bounties up to $90k and $89k, respectively.
Keep an eye on Intigriti and HackerOne for the results.
EU to fund bug bounties for open source projects including PuTTY, Notepad++, KeePass, Filezilla and VLC, ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 per bug!
Its part of their Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA) project.
As we talked about last week, in big business environments where the utmost security is needed, small independent developer code should not be used unless it is vetted and supported.
This is a great solution to the problem, and encourages the community to help fix open source bugs and create “vetted” software.

Back from the dead, with a new domain.
Projects focusing on virtual reality, speech and voice, and the Internet of Things.
Moz labs will continue to focus on all things not browser.
Like Google X but with actual products.
The Firefox Reality virtual reality web browser is under the Mozilla Labs umbrella.
One of my favourite discontinued Mozilla Labs projects that I was following was the Gladius 3D game engine, written entirely in JavaScript, and designed to run in the browser.
- The CubicVR game engine is the basis for Gladius and Mozilla Labs WebGL projects.

You know what I don’t see and it still irks me to no end?
A change from that stupid lowercase folder snaps put in the root of your $HOME directory.
- Yes, having /snap in my home directory has caused me countless hours of anger and confusion.
Also, Notepad++? WAT?!
Have people not heard of geany?
Or nano with syntax highlighting?
- These are the type of people who get software from a snap repo.
The Shortcut video editor snap is really quite nice and updated regularly.
Xonotic, cool!
I love the fact that Alan Pope and Martin Wimpress have been working on linux gaming snaps.
- And Wine emulated apps and game snaps, such as TrackMania Nations Forever!
18.04 don’t know how to Snap.

You can pay an extra $10 for “advanced features”
If you want to try it in Solus, here’s a link with the dep list: https://dev.getsol.us/T7001
- Install the dev packages for all those if you want to build it from sauce.
Polo has a very clean and modern user interface, and reminds me a bit of well, almost every other modern file manager available, such as Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar, Caja etc.
The support for cloud storage via Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Drive etc. is a nice feature and easy to setup.
The paid version includes the ability to write ISOs to flash drives, image optimization and adjustment tools, PDF editing tools and video downloading via youtube-dl.
- All of which I already do with external applications which I link to in the file managers I already use, like emelFM2, PCManFM, Thunar etc.

Slice of Pi

24 banana

24-core Arm Cortex A53 processor with 32GB RAM (29.4GB seen by the OS) running Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS with MATE desktop.
SATA ports and support for NVME.
Priced in the “if you have to ask” category.
Tested TensorFlow and Nextcloud under Docker, Raspbian and The Robot Operating System (ROS) framework Melodic Morenia.
I am curious as to how big a hole one of these would punch in one’s wallet!

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