LWDW 216: Welcome KNOME

KDE and GNOME join forces to bring you KNOME! Kernel 5.6 nukes Intel wifi, a new app for controlling RGB on Linux, and a chat with Kim McMahon, Director of Marketing for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

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Timestamps:
04:47 Introducing KNOME.
07:22 Kernel 5.6 wifi issues.
12:12 Paragon exFAT FUD.
14:52 Linux antivirus.
17:32 OpenRGB.
22:02 Open source fonts.
25:42 Cheap Linux USB MIDI
29:02 Interview: Kim McMahon, Director of Marketing for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
36:27 Bigscreen Pi
40:37 Emails

KNOME

Yes, it’s K.
The nome is silent.
https://twitter.com/gnome/status/1245291449312088064?s=20
The flexibility and customization of GNOME paired with the stability of KDE.
With the combination of the expertise of both GNOME and KDE developers, they’ve managed to reduce the number of bugs to effectively 0.
Coming soon to mobile.
This was a fun April Fools joke to wake up to.
I like the DVD screensaver link :-D

Kernel 5.6

Linus is the “social distancing champ” who championed working at home and online.
Linux kernel 5.6 has been released, despite the world pandemic.
And as we had talked about in January, this release sees the inclusion of the loved Wireguard VPN.
And what Linux kernel update would be without more hardware support, including:
- Early support of USB4.
- Support for the MX Master 3 mouse and other wireless Logitech products.
- And more support for AMD GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, and the Intel Tiger Lake chipset.
- Also improvements in AMD Zen temperature/power reporting.
Hello kernel level exfat support.
btrfs now has -o discard=async, which groups together and schedules TRIM calls.
No more need for scheduled fstrim because you are using btrfs and it’s already knackered.
CH341 regression fix that reimplements line-speed handling for USB.
Intel wireless doesn’t work (at all?) on 5.6.
They dropped some bits to quell a security vulnerability and judging by the fix: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net.git/commit/?id=be8c827f50a0bcd56361b31ada11dc0a3c2fd240
It seems to affect only the iwlmvm driver, which to be fair does include a ton of cards:
- https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi?s%5b%5d=iwlmvm#firmware
- And it was Intel’s fault.
I’m running it right now on Jackbox because compiling a kernel is fun and easy!

Paragon exfat FUD

Oh nice, that’s some early 2000 era FUD.
“Please don’t use the open sauce one, buy our proprietary implementation instead!”

Linux viruses

Hahahaha, no.
When Red Hat and System 76 say “no, just follow good practices” and Symantec says “yes, buy our product”, I think that really does speak for itself.
Remember to always keep your systems updated and only run root when absolutely necessary.
Yes, IoT is an issue because they usually are running old and outdated software and kernels that are harder to update, or impossible because of proprietary blobs.
The biggest problem with IoT is people leaving the default credentials unchanged.

Open RGB

Looking forward to playing with this one driver to rule them all RGB customizer for all my keyboards and mice with bling bling!
I have used the OpenRazer driver on my older BlackWidow Chroma Keyboard with great success, but this one may work with many more models.
I like that this is being built for Windows, as well.
Hopefully, it will make RGB software less of a vector for spreading malware.
I’m not saying I’ve been asked about Razer’s RGB Chroma on a work laptop, but with people working from home a lot more, it may very well happen.

The tale of Fonts

Remember the days of buying font packs?
I love the title of this article, and it is so true: “Open Source Fonts Are Love Letters to the Design Community.”
You no longer have to spend $100s and even $1000s to buy font packs, like I have in the past.
As an animation and graphics teacher since the early 90’s, I have been tasked to find “freeware” fonts for my students to use, and now it is so much easier as those “freeware” fonts are now open sourced and more plentiful.
And a result of open sourcing the fonts, greater variety, flexibility and customization.
The Google Fonts were definitely the stimulus from the “freeware” to open source font paradym.
The Ubuntu font family was one of the first to be open sourced.
- https://design.ubuntu.com/font/
I liked Droid Sans.

Cheapest USB MIDI USB

When I came across the New USB IN-OUT MIDI Interface Cable Converter to PC Music Keyboard Adapter Cord I wanted to know one thing and one thing only.
Where did they source sparkly USB cables in 2020?
Sadly my search yielded nothing so I decided to order a set of these silver music noodles in hopes they could Linux.
Why yes they did, mostly.
Smurfbox review will be posted in the next few days for Patreons.

Cloud Native interview