LWDW 169: Install SEVEN Linux!

Microsoft installs a Linux kernel, Ubuntu closes shop, Pinebook Pro updates, and GUIX 1.0 is ready for public consumption.

Special thanks to:
Lutris.net
David


Timestamps:
03:20 Red Hat Enterprise 8
04:39 GNU GUIX 1.0
07:48 Pinebook Pro update
09:29 Keypass 2.42
11:39 KDE partition manager 4.0
15:25 Shuttleworth on desktop Linux
18:43 Ubuntu closes shop
20:51 Camoid
23:36 PulseAudio network sync
26:23 Windows Linux kernel
29:29 MS VScode remote
33:39 CRT Pi
36:35 Listener feedback


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Colour key – Venn Jill Pedro

RHEL 8 is out! (RTheren)

  • Last week Red Hat got a new logo, and yesterday at the Red Hat Summit in Boston they announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is now generally available and it comes with a lot of updates and innovations.
  • Jim Whitehurst President and CEO of Red Hat tweeted:  “Linux is where @RedHat started and it’s hard to believe we’re announcing #RHEL8! We’re bringing #RHEL to every enterprise, every workload and every cloud. Welcome to the future! #RHSummit”
  • Cockpit which is a web-based interface for a system admin to perform admin tasks is now available by default in RHEL repositories.  Cockpit is now compatible with mobile browsers.
  • Nginx 1.14 is available now in the core repository in RHEL 8.
  • RHEL 8 supports up to 4PB of physical memory.
  • 5 years of full support and further 5 of maintenance support.
  • You’ll also be able to get an extra 2 years of extended support if you need it
  • It’s the last pre-IBM Red Hat Linux Enterprise Linux.
  • We’ve come a long way since 2003 when Red Hat went from another Linux distro to an enterprise OS provider.
  • Red Hat 8 introduces Application Streams.
  • New RHEL web console.
  • Also includes Ansible DevOps baked in with RHEL System Roles.
    • This will help new kids adopt best Linux practices.

 

GUIX 1.0

  • GNU Guix not only has standard package management features, but supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management and per-user profiles.
  • For developers, guix environment allows you to spawn one-off software environments. I like this example from the Guix website:  “Suppose you’re a GIMP developer: running guix environment gimp spawns a shell with everything you need to hack on GIMP—much quicker than manually installing its many dependencies.”
  • They built a distro around their package manager!
    • It can be used as a standalone operating system distribution for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64 machines.
  • Guix is transactional, meaning that you can at any time roll back to a previous “generation” of your package set.

 

 

Pinebook update

  • Lots of us LInux users have been waiting for this one, a nicely specced $199 laptop that competes with similarly priced Chromebooks.
  • The Pinebook Pro supports hardware-accelerated 4K video and 3D graphics with Mali-T860 MP4 graphics, and has 4GB of RAM and more storage than the original Pinebook.
  • PCIe x4 M.2 connector, metal body, and USB type C port.
  • I kinda wanted a Pinebook already, this is not making it any easier not to get one.

 

KeePass 2.42

  • If you want to have a dedicated password manager on your PC, this is the one I’d recommend.
  • I used it for a long time, until I turned one of my android devices into a glorified security key.

 

KDE partition manager 4.0

  • KPM comes in two parts:
    • the core which can be used as a shared library
    • and the little GUI thing which exposes the core functionality
  • Standard stuff, right up until they mention the GUI can’t do everything and I wanted to shout “What’s wrong with you people?” at the screen
  • Still, KDE obscuring their own functionality is nothing new.
  • Just look at the first 12 Plasma 5 versions, missing more than two thirds of the functionality of KDE4.
  • In any case, KPM as a GUI gives people the same sort of functionality as GNOME Disks.
  • It now supports detection of macos APFS and Windows Bitlocker headers.
  • SMART lies to you and the library they ported the interpreting from is, by their own admission, unmaintained.
  • The big thing is they’re using sfdisk for the backend rather than libparted now.

 

Shuttleworth on desktop Linux

  • Last week we talked about Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote regarding dueling foundations at the Open Infrastructure Summit, but something else very important was revealed.  
  • There has been an increase in support contracts for Ubuntu desktop for AI development and engineering.
  • This doesn’t surprise me a bit.  I have been noticing a huge increase of usage of Ubuntu on the desktop, from Nvidia’s CES keynotes about their AI compute modules in autonomous vehicles to Disney’s animation presentations at SIGGRAPH.
  • TensorFlow is heavily used on the Ubuntu desktops and stored on Docker and Kubernetes images on Ubuntu servers.
  • Makes sense, Ubuntu is perfectly serviceable as a desktop OS.
  • Mix the ease of setup with LTS and you could have a new revenue stream from official support.

 

Ubuntu shop closed

  • I was surprised by this as well, and have bought Ubuntu merch over the years from the Ubuntu store.
  • As Alan Pope says they are working on a new partnership for official Ubuntu merchandise, which I assume will probably be a third party merch shop, which makes sense for Canonical and will save them money.
  • I was curious about that wireless mouse they had, for a bit.
  • Then eMpTy got one and he said it wasn’t so great.
  • That was the only thing I’ve ever even considered getting from there.
  • You don’t make money selling merch online.
  • Part of trimming the fat.

 

Camoid

  • Found this the other day, while looking for a guvcview AppImage.
  • AppImage for this works!
  • Can also do virtual video sinks.

 

PulseAudio network sync

  • This could be handy if you are afraid of Jack.
  • Low latency audio for Pulse that works with GUI tools.
  • It is used as a jitter buffer, recovery buffer, and for rate estimation.
  • One of the neat things here is that it deals with loss recovery unlike streaming with VLC or ffmpeg.
    • This is important because wifi.
  • This critter supports lossless encoding and encoding-independent packet loss recovery.
  • I wish them the best of luck trying to tame the RNG latency generator AKA pulseaudio.

 

Gimme an Embrace!  Gimme an Extend!

  • We knew this was coming to support their WSL and integration with their Linux based Azure Sphere OS and the like.
  • MS needs to beat AWS.
  • Like Google, they will leverage open source to do that.
  • Making it easy to run Linux code in Windows for users stuck on Windows machines at work.

 

VSCode, again

  • That was my first thought also Jordan when reading that!
  • Maybe I’m misreading, but outside of the implication Jordan mentions this actually seems like a good thing.
  • As long as you like VSCode, you can use it from any of its supported OSes and remotely develop on any other OS.
  • Why you’d want/need VSCode and an extension on top of it to do it is beyond me, but it’s an option!

Slice of Pi

CRT Pi

  • Now make the screen black and red only and we can call it the Virtual Monocle.
  • This is definitely a neat thing but I don’t really get it.

Feedback

Linux errors

  • Honestly, I don’t get the point of that article either.
  • But if to you that point is moot, why did you use it as an argument?

 

Editing in Linux

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