LWDW 294: An Epic Surprise

Epic Games enables EAC on Linux! Ubuntu 14.04 gets a life extension, OBS adds YouTube integration, and wicked-fast search for the Linux desktop.

Special thanks to:
Game_Mo_Tron

Listen:

Download:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
07:26 EAC comes to Linux
15:26 Ubuntu 14.04 life support
18:56 GPU Viewer
21:41 Btop
27:16 Fast desktop search
31:46 OBS gets YouTube integration
40:26 VGA for Arduboy
45:41 Copy & paste keyboard

Epic news
https://dev.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-online-services-launches-anti-cheat-support-for-linux-mac-and-steam-deck

Gotta talk about this here too, since if you were to search the interwebs for Linux News since thursday last week EAC is all you’d see.
Epic Games understands $$ and the power of the GabeNGear to go big.
- RL still works on Linux via steam / proton.
- We quit playing it out of principle.
It requires developers to click a checkbox.
Someone will have to go first and even then the only incentive to do so will be potential SteamDeck sales.
Seriously, instead of annoying developers about adding EAC, buy a SteamDeck and start playing games.
This is a numbers game.
B4B needs to get on that.
As I’ve said, Sweeny cares about ca$h.
I want to see the size of the cheque Valve cut for this
I’m looking forward to the revised “I would totes run Linux if ______” tweets.
Now, when does Epic offer their launcher for the GabeGear?
You know they want some of that cheddar.

Old Buntus LTS Support
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/09/canonical-extends-support-of-ubuntu-14-04-and-16-04-to-10-years

Wow, Canonical extended support of Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 to 10 years, from 5 years, like they did with the 18.04 and 20.04 LTSs.
And they were brought back from the dead, literally!
Ubuntu 14.04 had hit end of life back in 2019 and Ubuntu 16.04 ended earlier this year.
It turns out that lots of businesses are still using these older stale, yet stable, versions of Ubuntu LTSs on their servers.
So Ubuntu 14.04 is being supported until April 2024, and Ubuntu 16.04 is now supported until April 2026.
This revived support from Canonical is delivered through Extended Support Maintenance (ESM), not as regular repo updates.
ESM requires an active subscription to Ubuntu Advantage, but desktop home users can get a free account for up to three devices.
What company was the cause of this, I wonder.
14.04 of all releases…
What is the use case there?
- See above.

GPU viewer 1.35
https://github.com/arunsivaramanneo/GPU-Viewer/releases/tag/v1.35

Sweet, I love viewing all my GPU info in a nice gui, instead of having to look at them all individually in the command line.
And this release has fixed some bugs and cleaned up the code.
I like GPUviewer for 2 big reasons
- It’s tiny
- And it also gives you the VDPAU/VAAPI info.
So you can tell right away if hardware decoding is not enabled out of the box in your distro of choice.

B Top
https://github.com/aristocratos/btop

A third iteration of the popular Bashtop Linux terminal resource monitor is in the works, called btop++, but this one is written in C++.
btop++ for Linux version 1.0.0.
This revision is going to take some time to complete because all the system information has to be written from scratch.
The 2nd iteration, bpytop is written in Python and works quite well.
bpytop added mouse support, graphs for memory consumption and is a lot faster and uses less CPU than Bashtop.
In the works: The 1.3.0 version should have support for GPU monitoring.
It’s a bit flashy but handy if you need all the info at a glance.

Fsearch 0.1
https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch/releases/tag/v0.1

This release added a file extension column.
And FSearch now has multithreaded sorting, for faster sort speed.
First stable release.
Needs *.debs but it’s easy to build.
Even supports make uninstall.
Have to add anything outside of ~/ for indexing.
It’s fast and standalone.

OBS 27.1
https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/releases/tag/27.1.0

YouTube integration.
chat dock for public and unlisted broadcasts.
Bandwidth testing.
18-scene multiview.
Some Linux fixes and additions:
- Re-enabled drag & drop for scenes & sources on Linux.
- Added Ctrl+R on Linux to reload browser panels.
- More bug fixes for Wayland.
Proper Youtube Integration is very nice!
Especially since they forced the new studio on people which is beyond godawful.
There’s a few wayland fixes on this one!
This too is very welcome!

VGA Output For Arduboy
https://blog.tindie.com/2021/09/arduboy-vga-output-adapter/

That is awesome especially for people with bad vision.
That small screen on the Gameboy is the reason why I never play games on it.
Hacking devices for playing games is always a great way to get kids programming and learning, as well as adults alike :-)

Copy Pasta
https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/09/28/become-a-better-coder-with-this-one-weird-click/