LWDW 193: GNOME Strikes Back

Ubuntu 19.10 is out! GNOME takes a patent troll to court, Disney+ doesn’t know how to Linux, and a simple tool for calibrating your monitor.


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Timestamps:
02:36 GNOME vs patent troll
06:51 AWS credits for open source
09:51 Screen time monitor
12:21 Ubuntu 19.10
17:26 DeX drops Linux support
20:14 Colour calibration on Linux
26:56 Davinci Resolve 16.1
30:46 Disney+ will not support Linux
40:26 PWNAGOTCHI
44:10 Compiling a CPU


Colour key – Venn Jill Pedro

Shotwell fired 

  • They will be fighting the good fight here. 
  • The easy option was to pay the trolls a comparatively small sum and be done with it. 
  • That’s the business model of patent trolls since it will always cost more to take them to court. 
  • It seems silly to go and try to extort money from GNOME over Shotwell.
  • But it would have been a good benchmark to see if they could get away with it.
  • Something tells me the copyright trolls are going to fight to get it dismissed as quickly as possible.
  • Please help support the GNOME Foundation in fighting this patent troll and help send a message to patent trolls everywhere that they should never target free software!
  • I just donated!
  • If you are not able to donate monetarily, spread the word on social media.

 

AWS promotional credits 

  • If nothing else, Microsoft’s move on Github and how they’ve handled it thus far has had a bit of an impact.
  • Even Amazon felt the pressure to do something.
  • Amazon is now offering AWS promotional credits to open source projects which will help with the cost involved in using the AWS cloud and free up resources for open source projects to further expand and innovate in their communities.
  • Amazon is being a good steward in the community, and at the same time knows that this will increase their revenue because these are open source projects used, developed and tested on their platform, and they are growing.
  • The Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation which includes Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy open source projects are receiving AWS cloud promotional credits.
  • The Rust language and the Julia language designed for high performance computing are recipients also.

 

Screen time monitor for Linux 

  • I don’t need an app to shame me. 
  • Pretty sure Steam is the one that wins on this box.
  • I have it set to autostart and it only goes down while the box is on to update.
  • On my broadcasting rig, it is probably a tie with Discord, Steam, pavucontrol, Vivaldi, Chromium, xterm because I launch them as soon as I boot the computer.

 

Ubuntu 19.10

  • 15 years of the Ubuntu, wow. 
  • In the latest hotness you get Kernel 5.3, WPA3 Wi-Fi security, GNOME 3.34, and the ability to run select 32-bit apps. 
  • I think it includes XFCE 4.14 as well. 
  • It does not ship with support for the RX 5700 OOTB. 
    • That will need Mesa 19.3 which is not out in the stable branch yet.
  • Though, rc1 is due to come out at the end of the month and the final candidate is planned for the 20th of November.
  • And as we talked about last week, this release includes the ability to use the ZFS file system.
  • Also, I have been playing with Ubuntu Studio 19.10 in the last few days, and not only noticed the inclusion of our loved OBS Studio, but that it works from the live USB as well!
  • 15 years ago, when first using Ubuntu, I enjoy the tail tail drums used at system startup and the “Linux for Human Beings” wallpapers.
  • But, most importantly, Ubuntu brought an easy to install and use Debian derivative to Linux users and new users alike.
  • Congratulations to Martin Wimpress who is the new Ubuntu Desktop Director at Canonical!
  • I know Wimpy will do an awesome job, and am sure he will bring all those progressive updates from Ubuntu Mate to the main Ubuntu.

 

No Linux support for DeX on Android 10 (RTheren)

  • Now I don’t have any reason to even consider a Samsung phone.
  • Thanks for that!
  • It also makes sense, since Android 10 is reportedly bringing a desktop mode for devices docked to an external display.
  • Samsung is stopping its Linux support for DeX on Android 10, which has been in beta for quite some time.
  • DeX allows you to turn your Samsung phone into a PC.
  • I know a lot of people in our Linux community who will be sad about this, including linuxgnuru in our chat.
  • And of course you can run Ubuntu Touch by UBports on several devices that you can buy inexpensively from Ebay or Amazon, including a OnePlus One that I have it installed on or a Nexus 5.
  • Thank you RTheren for this story. 

 

Colour calibration in Linux 

  • It’s so easy these days but nobody does it. 
  • Not having colour matched screens would drive me up the wall. 
  • You don’t need anything wicked-expensive. 
  • My old Spyder 3 pro works just fine and you can yoink one for $30 $40.
  • On Debian, the only thing you need to install is wxpython.
  • I have been doing this since the 80’s as a computer graphics and animation artist and instructor.
  • And for multi-monitor setups it is crucial to have them matched, for doing artwork, editing, animation, video podcasting and playing games, especially when I play games spanning 3 monitors!
  • I have an old Spyder 2, but have used the higher end Klein ones that we have at my work.

 

Resolve 16.1

  • Support for clipping indicator for main buses on the Fairlight mixer
  • Support for a Clean Feed viewer mode on an additional display on DaVinci Resolve Studio.
    • This is handy if you don’t have a BM output device or you do and have to use it for return video. 
  • Improved performance when decoding H.264 and H.265 clips using GPU acceleration on AMD graphics cards.
    • So happy this was fixed!  
    • I sometimes would have issues with the H.2** codec read speed and performance on my AMD Firepro on one of my rendering rigs.
    • If you are using a Firepro you should be generating optimized media. 
  • There was an update to the Boring detector but I’m afraid to use it on any of our shows. 
  • Still waiting on support for UTvideo.
  • And this is a feature that was missing from Davinci that I use heavily in Adobe Premiere:  The Ability to copy and paste transitions across multiple edit points in the timeline.
  • And keyboard shortcuts for showing or hiding individual panels increases speed of your workflow.

 

Disney+ on Linux

  • Didn’t we already know this?
  • If not, I think we all expected it. 
  • In all fairness I never planned on watching it on the PC. 
  • It seems a bit hypocritical of Disney and several other companies who pull this kind of BS.
  • They all rely on Linux and other open source projects to make their hundreds of billions of moneys, but when the time comes to deliver on those platforms they’re nowhere to be seen.
  • The Disney+video streaming service does not work on Linux devices, and gives “error code 83” in the Firefox and Chrome browsers.
  • It seems that Disney uses the DRM solution Widevine to protect its streams from unauthorized activity and it is tuned to to strong of security level, unlike Netflix or Amazon Prime which work fine on Linux.
  • Disney, how do you expect your Linux animators, developers and sysadmins to watch your streamed products in house?  
  • I guess they just tell them to use their Disney+ app on their tablets or phones!
  • Hulu has had similar issues with this as well.

Slice of Pi

PWNAGOTCHI

  • Using AI to crack WPA. 
  • Powered by bettercap running on the Zero W. 
  • Pwnagotchi tunes its own parameters over time to get better at pwning WiFi things in the environments you expose it to.
  • It will even tell you when it gets bored. 
  • Basically, it decides on what to do based on the packets that it sniffs.
  • Very clever, very likely to not get spotted if you were to make a phone like case for it.
  • My first reaction:  A wardriving Tamagotchi digital pet on steroids!
  • It’s not only a fun hacking project, but so cute!

 

Compiling a SPARC LEON

  • I had flashbacks to the final assignment of the Operating Systems course I had in second year of university.
  • It made me crave cigarettes!
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