LWDW 259: Hairy Hairy Hippos

Ubuntu invites you to play with their hairy hippo, Google make Chromium less useful, Android on RISC-V is now a thing, and System76 has a battery powered Dart.

Special thanks to:
Benjamin (new patron)

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
06:50 Rocky Linux community update
09:55 System 76 Darter
13:48 Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo
16:25 Google plugs Chromium
21:50 Brave enables IPFS
25:00 Android on RISC-V
28:15 Second monitor with Deskreen
32:05 OBS looking for Appimage testers
36:05 Out of shout and shameless self-promotion
38:35 Raspberry Pi Pico
43:55 Sprinkler Pi


Rocky January

  • Backend stuffs should be ready by month’s end, which is amazing!
  • The teams need people interested in helping out with debranding and audits. 
  • Help with documentation and end-product testing is something you can help out with as well. 
  • Everything including the needed skills can be found in this forum post
  • They already even have merch at the official Rocky Linux store, and are looking for ideas for merch from the community.

 

System76 New Darter

  • System76 has just released a new model of their light, sleek and portable Darter Pro laptop.
  • 9 hours of battery life!
  • 3.84 pounds
  • System76 Open Firmware
  • Starting at $1,099
  • 11Gen Core i5 or i7, up to 64GB DDR4 RAM
  • Until they start packing those 3nm i3’s Intel is paying TSMC for, I really don’t care for intel laptops anymore.

 

‘Hirsute Hippo’ (RTheren)

  • Ubuntu is getting ready to release a “Harry Hippo” LOL ;-)
  • Ubuntu 21.04 ‘Hirsute Hippo’ is scheduled to release on April 22, 2021, with a few changes to look forward to, and a few things that will be missing.
  • And as we have talked about before, this short-term release will not include GNOME 40.
  • The Ubuntu devs need more time.
  • No GTK4.
  • Ubuntu 21.04 makes the home folder private by default now and no longer ‘world readable’ for unencrypted home folders.
  • The nightlies are available for download right now if you want to kick the proverbial tires.

 

Chromium pulls the plug

  • Ok, Google killing a project is not surprising, but reducing the abilities of the open source Chromium Browser from which Chrome is based on, what!
  • At least the Chromium based Vivaldi and Brave web browsers have their own sync protocols so they shouldn’t be affected.
  • Use Chrome or Chrome beta if you need the sync or better yet, Firefox. 
  • Google said it completed an audit, and was restricting the open source version of Chrome from accessing those APIs “that are only intended for Google’s use”.
  • This is a preemptive action by the Fedora team. 
  • Google gave builders the API keys needed for this back in 2013.
  • This is not closing a security hole it’s Google being Google. 
  • Sync service will nope officially on March 15. 
  • I’m glad I haven’t been using Chromium lately except for Jitsi.
  • Until they disable WebRTC in the open source version I can’t see that changing for me.
  • If however you were using Chromium, I’m guessing this includes ChromiumOS, you will want to look at using Chrome proper and Project Croissant respectively.

 

Brave IPFS

  • The idea of a completely decentralized interweb will need stuff like this to be feasible.
  • I’m still not touching Brave with a 10-foot pole, but it’s good to know it’s there.
  • This is the first step in adoption of the decentralized web of the future, and making it available to the average user.
  • The social networking Fediverse of Matrix, Mastodon and PeerTube is starting to become more popular.
  • But a way to surf decentralized is truly going to launch the platform.

 

Android on RISC-V

  • Android on RISC-V, now that the chips are cheaper, I saw this coming.
  • I want that dev board or something like it. 
  • To carry around as my daily driver. 
  • Running android opens a long long list of software that’ll basically run as is.
  • And it gives less tech savvy developers something common to target.

 

Deskreen

  • This is an inexpensive, or free,  way to make any screen in your house, whether it be a smartphone a tablet or a TV, a second monitor.
  • Electron and WebRTC to the rescue. 
  • Think of this as a in home jitsi instance 
  • They are working on simplifying things at the moment. 
  • Appimage, deb, and rpm. 
  • There are several ways to set up a second screen so this is going to boil down to performance and ease of use. 
  • If you want a completely separate “screen”, rather than a mirror of one, you need to use a Dummy plug for now.
  • They’re asking for people with the chops to help them get around that 

 

OBS Looking for Appimage Testers

  •  Looking for testers on Fedora, Gentoo, CentOS, and any Debian based OS.
  • Give it a try and report back if you have a chance. 

Slice of Pi

PicoPie (RTheren)

  • The Raspberry Pi Pico has been released and is available for only $4!
  • It’s the Raspberry Pi Foundations first microcontroller for your projects.
  • It uses the new RP2040 microcontroller chip and has a Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor with a flexible clock running up to 133 MHz.
  • 264KB of SRAM
  • And has 26 multifunction GPIO pins, including 3 analogue inputs.
  • You use Pico Python or C/C++ SDK to program and control the Pico.
  • I very much look forward to the inevitable handheld gaming system powered by this.
  • Keep it under £30 and I’ll even buy one.

 

Water Pie

  • Don’t blame the dog for pooping wherever they happen to be, blame the human who doesn’t pick up after their pet.
  • This is exactly what this is aimed at, making the human deal with the smell of wet dog to hopefully stop their pet from pooping in your yard.
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