LWDW 152: RGB Kernels

Hyundai joins AGL, XFCE 4.14 nears completion, GIMP talks GEGL, and rooting the Fire HD 10 for fun and profit.

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Colour key – Venn Jill Pedro

Free Vidia

Just in time for Linux 5.0-rc1 enabling freesync support.
It was nice to hear this news unveiled at CES.
Wow, now one of my 30” gaming monitors that is FreeSync compatible might actually work with G-Sync!
My 3840 monitor has Freesync, that would certainly be nice to see!
I do like NVidia’s approach of “Even if your monitor is not officially supported, you can still turn on the functionality and have at.”
Remains to be seen how long until their drivers can handle it on the Linux.
I’ve seen people experimenting with non-approved freesync monitors and it wasn’t pretty.
A lot of this has to do with Freesync being thrown on just about anything even if it’s only capable of 50-90.

Look out for Xfce 4.14, they’re so close!
Should see it no later than Q3 2137.
As much as the community (myself included) enjoy giving XFCE a good ribbing about their glacier pace, progress is indeed being made toward 4.14.
2018 was mostly about bug fixes and polish.
Stuff like that does not make for sexy headlines but is one of the reasons I use XFCE.
They don’t release half-baked junk with a bit of eye candy tacked on to impress the lowest common denominator.
Thunar still needs a bit more functionality.
- You want it to do more than manage files, don’t ya?
I’m not asking for much, just the ability to have different views per folder without having to keep changing that setting.
I have been really impressed with the recent cadence of updates that xfce has had in the last year, and that we have been able to cover them regularly on LWDW.
- A new display profiles menu in the XFCE Display Settings panel
- A new version of Catfish 1.4.6 was released, and not only is it used as the default file search app for Xfce but is now an Xfce Project!
- Lots of visual improvements, including updated icon themes and a cleaner and more modern looking UI.
- Lots of bug fixes.

That’s great but I’d like to direct these following words at distro maintainers.
Can we get gimp 2.10 by default now? Please?!
How are people supposed to provide feedback if they have to go out of their way to install it?
- Compile it from source, scrub.
To be fair, this is mostly directed at the ‘Buntus.
Pat David and his team have done an incredible job with the release of GIMP 2.10 last April and the many updates to GIMP this last year!
- Updated user interface, high bit depth support, multi-threading, GPU-side processing, linear color space workflow, revamped color management, new transformation tools, new interface themes, and a more streamlined file dialog filter just to name a few.
And in the coming year, these are a few of the updates that I am very excited about:
- GIMP 3.0 will be relying on GTK3.
- CMYK is now a first-class citizen in GEGL and will be more fully implemented in GIMP.
- A GIMP extension repository will be added in the future to easily install plugins and effects.
- More animation support improvements via the ZeMarmot project, which is working on the first feature-length 2D animation film fully produced with free software, including the GIMP, Blender, Ardour etc.
  - And if you donate via Patreon to the ZeMarmot movie project you get your name in the credits of the movie.
- Looking for contributors to help with Usability, User manual, User interface translations, Tutorials, and Programming.

Part 1 and 2 are already available.
Very nicely written, even if I do take issue with the use of the word canonical in its literal and literary sense in a Linux context.
My first reaction was to shout that Shuttleworth had nothing to do with this.
I am definitely going to give this link to Linux noobs, developers and my students!
Part 1 does a good job explaining what WINE is and like the adult beverage it comes in many flavours.
Part 2 covers acquiring & building the beast and part 3 will go into using WINE as a developer.
Proton even get a mention.

Turns out we got an even better New Year’s present from Linus Torvalds.
Linux Kernel 4.20 is now 5.0 because Linus “ran out of fingers and toes to count on.”
AMD has also seen some love in the form of tweaks to the handling of CPU microcode as well as the arrival of FreeSync.
Raspberry Pi Touch Display support, neat!
And a new terminal font that can be read at UHD.
Much like 3.20 before it, the major version number increased rather than having a 4.21.

Do we really need support for blinky RGB bullsh*t in the kernel?
There are a lot of RasPi projects for creating Holiday light displays, so this being a part of the Linux kernel will make that process much easier.
RGB drivers are also the brand spanking new attack vector for malware.
So I’m with Venn on this one!
May have to give it a shot on the Steambox, when the Fedora Vanilla Kernel repos have it.

Hyundai now joins the likes of Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan, Toyota, DENSO Corporation, Fujitsu, HARMAN, NVIDIA, Renesas, Samsung and Texas Instruments.
This announcement comes at the heels of the Automotive Grade Linux Linux Foundation convention in Las Vegas in conjunction with CES 2019!
- This makes sense because CES is the 5th largest auto tech show in the world.
That adds Hyundai to the list of possible car makers to buy from, when I can afford it.

Development kits are now available for the FLOSS phone.
The Necunos NC_1 has no operating system installed, but will work with Plasma Mobile, postmarketOS, Maemo Leste, Nemo Mobile, or even LuneOS of WebOS ports!
Necunos NC_1 is an engineering unit and does not have a cellular modem or SIM-card slot.
I’m not sure giving people complete freedom, even for the OS development is a good way to start.
Mostly seeing as how, when confronted by all the different possibilities of Linux, people just freeze up and go back to Windows.
Many of these developer editions are just going to end up running Android like this.
1K+ dev kits are a non-starter.
I get the whole top-down security pitch but a 5” mobile with no sim the requires the user to roll their own.
I don’t think there will be a large enough market for these but would like to be proven wrong.

Open a can of root and wash away the Amazon weirdness.
Well, some of it.
I put this together since most guides start with “install this windows application”
This only works on the 10, Fire 8 & 7 are their own little monsters.

Slice of Pi

Pi 2019

The VoCore2 made honorable mention. It is a coin-sized Linux computer that is totally open-source, and costs $20.
The BBC micro:bit I have been wanting to play with.
The OrangePi http://www.orangepi.org and BananaPi http://www.banana-pi.org didn’t make the list.
https://beagleboard.org BeagleBone series and PocketBeagle are a few of my favs as well.
I take issue with the inclusion of a $360 LattePanda board in this list.

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