Mozilla is making Firefox FAST! Yoinking Google fonts right from the desktop, NVMe and TPM 2.0 for your Raspberry Pi, open-source Airplay 2 receivers, and the thrilling conclusion to the 3DFX saga.
Listen:
Download:
Subscribe Spotify | Pandora | TuneIn | RSS | More
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
07:05 3DFX saga conclusion
09:20 Firefox performance
13:00 Open-source MACos clone
16:55 Google font downloader
20:20 Airplay 2 Receiver
25:35 Russian Arm SoC
34:15 RasPi power NVMe blades
37:15 Roasting coffee with Pi
40:50 Emails
3DFX is still dead
https://twitter.com/VennStone/status/1423431103667490816
- It was just a prank, bro.
- I love Sandy’s comment on Twitter: “ Wow. They must have seen LWDW.”
- I’m glad it’s over.
- Last week I was made to feel inadequate due to my lack of Voodoo, who do what you don’t dare do, people.
Speedy Fox
https://blog.mozilla.org/performance/2021/08/05/performance-in-progress/
- This is good.
- Compared to Chromium based browsers Firefox runs, poorly.
- That delay in the window showing up is very noticeable when compared to Chrome in older hardware.
- The “Something is running slow” dialogue has had the fat trimmed and it actually says which of the tabs is hung, instead of the generic message it used to have.
- I think all of us at one time have clicked the Firefox icon several times thinking that it wasn’t launching, and then multiple instances pop up.
- I have noticed a huge speed increase since the launch of Firefox 89.
ReMacOS
- Aims to provide a similar experience and compatibility with macOS® on x86-64 sytems.
- Good idea in theory.
- They have a cocoa sample app running on BSD using KDE with some Elementary fonts.
- Babby steps.
- I had heard of the Airyx project and I am hoping that it does become a reality, because having an open source alternative to a closed source OS is always a good thing.
- If you would like to get involved check out #airyx on the Libera IRC network.
- I support the idea of an open source MacOS alternative for people who became captive to Apple’s UI.
- But yeah, not being able to run that MacOS software is going to be a problem for adoption.
Google font yoinker
https://github.com/GustavoPeredo/font-downloader
- Browse, preview, and download Google fonts from the desktop.
- Ya know, like a browser.
- Have you ever wanted an easy way to search the whole Google Font catalog and install them easily on Linux, then Font Downloader is the perfect application for you!
- Font Downloader is very easy to use, has a nice Google font searcher and a typing test for the selected font.
- Then you can just click install and it will install the font in your default fonts folder, or you can specify a different folder in settings.
- In settings you can also search for a specific font type, like Serif, San Serif, Handwriting.
- After installing the Ballet font, I tested it in abiword, and it looks beautiful.
- I guess the advantage of a focused application is that you get a direct preview of the font without having to google for it first and then clicking a font to see the example image.
- This lets you look through the fonts and even preview your own text directly from the thing without having to go through the whole process of installing first.
Airplay 2 Receiver
https://github.com/openairplay/goplay2
- Someone didn’t get the memo.
- You’re supposed to write everything in RUST.
- A working Airplay 2 Speaker implementation largely inspired by airplay2-receiver.
- Accuracy is around 1ms for multiroom.
- Does not support Windows builds.
- Works on a Pi.
- Their goal is to have an Opinionated implementation, with only some features but working very well.
- Opinionated =’s sassy.
- As an opinionated jerk on the interwebs, I like me some opinionated software.
- I guess it’s more the picking and choosing of specific features rather than attempting to blanket support all of them.
- And being able to focus on those specific ones means they’ll probably end up working better.
- Bringing some proto-UNIX philosophy back into Apple Technology.
- In the future the developers want to improve multi-room support with audio sync, support Spotify RTP over UDP and the Apple Lossless Audio Codec.
Союз нерушимый
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/baikall_iru_arm_pcs/
- Desktop ARM and MIPS manufacturer Baikal brings Astra Linux PCs to Russia
- Russia may have a great deal many problems but I do support the break away from Intel/AMD/Microsoft dominance for desktop PCs.
- I really wish more countries and companies would actually try and make this a thing.
- Lacking that, I’ll keep an eye on what the Pine folks are doing.
- Just mind the NZ phones.
- Russia has for years experimented with its own computer hardware and software, so I hope this one sticks!
Slice of Pi
Pi Blades
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/uptime-labs-cm4-blade-adds-nvme-tpm-20-raspberry-pi
- OMG, these are so sweet! Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 blade servers with a mini rack to boot!
- The blades use native NVMe storage, without the need of an adapter card.
- They are not available yet, but a Kickstarter campaign is expected to start soon.
- And one of the blades has a DeLorean car silk screened on the circuit board, and another one the Vulcan salute, and another one Grogu ;-D
Roasty Pi
- The little wood panel with the buttons and the tiny LCD panel looks very hipstery rustic.
- If you prefer the reads:
Feedback
Librem