LWDW 211: Discord Discord

Firefox Private Network enters closed beta! Pipewire learns how to Jack, GIMP transforms 3D, and the Raspberry Pi 4 pulls a sneaky.


Listen:


Download:


Timestamps:
03:40 Mozilla VPN
06:40 eXtern OS
12:40 Discord discord
18:20 Pipewire 0.3.0
23:20 GIMP 2.10.18
28:00 Shameless self promotion
32:46 Pi loads
36:21 New Pi 4
37:26 Emails


Colour key – Venn Jordan Pedro

Mozilla Android VPN

  • Mozilla has just launched a standalone VPN app for Android.
  • The Firefox Private Network VPN app in the Google Play Store for Android is available for a limited time beta price of $5 a month.
  • This news comes just after the Mozilla layoffs we talked about in January, and Mozilla is hoping this will increase their revenue.
  • I look forward to trying a Linux desktop client of Firefox VPN.
  • Heck! I’d be okay with them not releasing a dedicated client for Linux but at least a script to set it up with Network Manager, like PIA does for non-Ubuntus.
  • US only, currently.

 

ExternOS

  • eXtern is an Operating System that offers a unique user interface and user experiences compared to traditional systems. 
  • It enables a new way of writing applications with all Web technologies.
  • Something something Node.js. 
  • Version 2.2.2 Beta has a gang of new keyboard shortcuts for the video player. 
  • Multiple instance support for the terminal. 
  • And a fix for the file managers scrollbar. 
  • “I’ll upload as much of the source code as I can on my GitHub once I get my laptop back and have time to do some cleanup of my code.”
    • Not open source yet, then. Gotcha!
  • Also not sure if I trust it.
  • Having a dedicated OS focused on Node.js and app and web development is quite nice.
  • I tested the live USB, and EXtern OS has a slick and custom UI that was created with NW.js, and looks a lot like Windows 10.
  • Transparency all the things!!
  • And it’s nice to have another unique experience based on web technologies, like that of the Jade desktop environment on the Manjaro WebDad distro we talked about last July.

 

Discord on Discord

  • I’m going to go out on a limb and say gatekeeping is a larger threat. 
  • If you care about privacy above all else, Discord is not for you.
  • But if you are looking for people with time on their hands that may be able to help, it’s a pretty good place to meet like minded individuals.
  • These issues are the same across the most popular social networking apps and services, including Google, Facebook, Twitter . . . 
  • And you can’t use the Tor browser to access most of them either.

 

Pipewire 0.3.0

  • The PipeWire devs would love for people to test the latest version and give them feedback.
  • Jack support is making progress but it’s still very much early days. 
  • The ALSA backend is stable but Pulse needs work as well. 
  • I really want to live in the world where one system handles all the backend nonsense and if Wesley Pipes delivers it will be happy days. 
  • I hope it will be the one sound framework to unify them all!
  • But I’mma need functionality on par with pavucontrol for managing sound sinks, if it hopes to have any kind of a chance.
  • Still relying on GStreamer for some bits… I thought the point was to shed the need for GStreamer.

 

Gimp 2.10.18

  • Gimp 2.10.18 has been released, and it has something I have been wanting for a long time, a new 3D transform tool!
  • This allows you to rotate and move 2D layers on the X,Y,Z axis.
  • It’s what we call 2.5D, and is a part of all industry standard graphics and animation apps, including Adobe’s.
  • The toolbox is more consolidated and organized and similar tools are now grouped together.
  • The toolbox is also highly customizable, unlike Photoshop ;-)
  • Better support for Photoshop .psd files.
  • More functionality in GIMP is always welcome.

Slice of Pi

Pi load 

  • High quality and commercial power supply testers can be quite expensive, and if you have the know how, this is a great way to save money and challenge yourself.
  • The power supply for this setup gets up to 75C, that’s pretty toasty!
  • Especially in a PETG case.
  • Unlike some other devices this one seems, trusty.

 

Updated Pi 4

  • Guess it took a while to do the tooling on this one!
  • This revision was pushed out nice and quietly so people wouldn’t stop buying the old one with absolutely nothing wrong with them. 
  • The previous one works, if you use the official power supply.

Feedback

Free beer

0 Comments

Leave Your Reply