The Worst open-source innovations if the decade! Purism launches Librem Server, Google blocks Linux browsers, and a Pi powered virtual assistant.
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Timestamps:
04:39 Worst open-source innovations of the decade
09:19 Google blocks Linux browsers
12:14 Trinity desktop environment
14:44 Best KDE distro of 2019
18:39 10 years of Tails
21:54 fre:ac v1.1
25:09 Librem server
28:14 Shameless self promotion
31:49 Open-source voice assistant
34:04 Pi powered synthesizer
37:25 Emails
Colour key – Venn Jill Pedro
- Steam Machines were just too expensive and not advertised well.
- Ubuntu’s Unity desktop took a long time before it became performant.
- DeX failed because “convergence” has failed to become a thing in any meaningful way.
- Distributed social networks will never work.
- Steam Machines failed because the software to make them viable was not ready.
- Things like Vulkan, DXVK, and Proton.
- Canonical gonna Canonical.
- Only 6 of those 8 can actually be called Open Source.
- Yes, I realize how petty that is, but that’s what these vapid end of year lists elicit in me.
- I am sure this will be fixed soon.
- Google wants all users to be able to login to its services via any web browser and is usually browser agnostic.
- What if you change your user agent?
- It’s not like Konqueror or Falkon are actively maintained.
- Yeah, Konqueror’s last update was June of 2018, so a very slow release cycle.
- I think this is less about banning Linux browsers and more about google not wanting to deal with support for those two browsers in specific.
- The Trinity Desktop Environment maintains the old school look and feel of KDE 3, but with modern applications and drivers.
- I have always loved using KDE 3 and am so happy that the Trinity Desktop Environment stays true to its user experience.
- Konqueror, both as a file manager and web browser, I grew to love, and was impressed by its progressive dual workflow.
- This article is part of a special series of 24 days of Linux desktops.
- KDE 4.0 was a buggy mess!
- It wasn’t until they hit 4.9 that it got anywhere near usable.
- The KDE developers responsible for 4.0 release have only themselves to blame for the existence of Trinity.
- Much like GNOME 3 developers have only themselves to blame for MATE, and Cinnamon, and Budgie, and Pantheon… You get the picture.
- I personally am impressed with how slick Manjaro KDE is.
- KaOS is also a fast and lean KDE distro that is independent and has beautiful wallpapers.
- I’ve never been a fan of distro “spins” because they are (for the most part) unnecessary, add to the fragmentation myth, confuse new Linux users.
- Dedoimedo has compiled a list of his favorite KDE using distros and presented it as the “Best KDE Distros of 2019”
- Naming your subjective favorite as the “best” is almost me levels of arrogant!
- But he does bring up the major contenders.
- Many Linux users got their first start using the privacy focused VPN Tor services because of Tails.
- Much like all other distros with default amnesiac sessions, I try them on for size and say “neat”
- And then I go back to the commodity of my insecure OS of choice.
- Support for Linux & BSD.
- fre:ac v1.1 Beta 1, a free audio converter and CD ripper, has just been released on Linux!
- fre:ac supports many popular formats and encoders, including MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, WAV.
- I used to use this app on Windows to rip CDs in the early 2000s!
- So happy it is,available on Linux as a Snap, Flatpak or AppImage if you prefer.
- This is a huge release, and also comes with multi-threaded support for faster processing.
- Remember those pesky hidden tracks on CDs that were hard to make backups of? Fre:ac just added support for ripping hidden tracks (HTOA).
- And now that fre:ac is available on the ‘nixs, added support for reading and writing Vorbis files with .oga extension.
- Is this Tk widgets?
- The AppImage launches.
- Looks like Audacity with a bunch of extra steps thrown in.
- It’s an FFMPEG gui for audio transcoding
- FFMPEG has a better UI.
- This is one of those things you need to have and it needs to work, to get the win-peeps waddling like a penguin.
- Send me one, I’ll give you a t-shirt.
- This is a smart way for Purism to utilize their PureBoot technology and capitalize on it.
- That’s a supermicro case BTW.
- Custom firmware with a tamper-evident boot process don’t come cheap.
Slice of Pi
- Would you like the power of Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant but don’t want to feel like something is listening to your every word or collecting your data?
- Then building a Mycroft, open source security focused voice assistant on the Raspberry Pi is just the ticket!
- This is a project that I have been wanting to setup with one of my RasPi’s for quite some time.
- Does Mycroft reply if you shout “Hey, Popey”?
- You’re still dropping around £90 for those two Korg devices, if you want to use them, plus the Pi and cables.
- Still probably cheaper than most single unit synths.
- Floyd Steinberg, thank you for keeping the Berlin school of synth music alive, ala Tangerine Dream, using Linux and the Raspberry Pi!
Feedback
- Yeah, both Prime and Netflix seem to rely on the TPM chip in Intel systems and the Windows drivers to render at full 1080.
- There’s an extension for Firefox and Chrome called Netflix 1080p that’ll trick Netflix into showing 1080p on Linux, but I’m not aware of one for Prime.
