An early look at System76’s Rusty desktop, detecting malware with a Raspberry Pi, hardware accelerated GTK4, testing the MOTU M4 on Linux, and a new OS built from scratch.
Listen:
Download:
Subscribe Google Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
04:10 Klingon comes to LibreOFfice
07:30 Preview of System76’s Rusty desktop
12:00 EssenceOS
18:00 GTK4 accelerated DAW Zrythm
22:35 MOTU M4 on Linux
32:35 Detecting malware with Pi
Qapla’!
- You can say “Success”, or Qapla’!
- Yes, initial language support for Klingon and Interslavic is coming to LibreOffice!
- This shows the power and versatility of open source software.
- LibreOffice is available in over 100 languages, and The Document Foundation would like to expand that even further.
- This is wonderful for all us Star Trek fans!
- And for those who write documentation for Star Trek conventions, pros for Star Trek novels, for the script writers and actors of a Star Trek series, or for those who just want to write Klingonese!
- After all, thanks to The Klingon Dictionary, written by Star Trek’s linguist Marc Okrand that came out back in 1985, Klingonese is an official language.
- LibreOffice is available in over 100 languages.
- Now with 100% more Interslavic.
Rusty Cosmic (RTheren)
https://blog.edfloreshz.dev/articles/linux/system76/rust-based-desktop-environment/
- Not really up to snuff on Gnome so it took a second to figure out what was what on the first image comparison.
- It’s the one with the blue bits… I think.
- Always on search.
- Floating window app library.
- New compositor, but it’s not enabled ATM.
- And System76’s CEO and founder Carl Richell states:
- “The first Pop!_OS release with COSMIC DE will be in 2023. We call it Epoch 1. We’ll likely have alpha releases this summer.”
- Carl also said that the UX will remain similar to the current GNOME based Cosmic, but there will be unique aesthetic and functional differences.
- The Rusty Cosmic is still a work in progress.
Essence OS
https://nakst.gitlab.io/essence
- Here is a new desktop operating system built from scratch, open source, simple and respects the user. It is called Essence.
- Essence is built with a small size, is lean and fast, memory efficient, and built to run on low powered hardware.
- We have lost that with our bloated modern day distros and OSs of today.
- Essence can take less than 30MB of drive space, and boot with even less RAM.
- I downloaded the Essence.tar.xz and imported the .ova in VirtualBox, and it booted fast!
- You create a tab at the top of a window, that then launches a menu in the window for apps.
- Having a modern OS that can boot on a calculator is neat.
- Vector based UI.
- Support for Intel 8254x ethernet and BGA/SVGA graphics.
- Apps are a wee limited. File manager, Text editor, IRC, and system monitor.
- All it needs is a browser.
GTK4DAW
https://www.zrythm.org/en/index.html
- Moving to GTK4 to take advantage of built-in caching and hardware rendering capabilities.
- This should speed up the DAW on potato PCs.
- Native LV2 plugin support has been temporarily disabled.
- Installed the trial, it exploded into flames when launched.
- Guess GTK4 acceleration does not work with indirect rendering.
- New searchable preference dialog.
- This is still a work in progress, but was releasing early to encourage more testing of these latest changes.
MOTU M4
https://linuxgamecast.com/2022/01/interfacing-linux-motu-m4/
- Short & sweet.
- No drivers needed but kernel 5.14+ is a must.
- 60dB preamps & 2 line level inputs.
- MIDI.
- Gimmick meters = always on.
Slice of Pi
Scanning Pi
https://gizmodo.com/raspberry-pi-can-detect-malware-by-scanning-for-electro-1848339130
- This is amazing, a team of researchers at France’s Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems created an anti-malware system centered around a Raspberry Pi that scans devices for electromagnetic waves, with up to a 99.8% accuracy!
- “. . . the security device uses an oscilloscope (Picoscope 6407) and H-Field probe connected to a Raspberry Pi 2B to pick up abnormalities in specific electromagnetic waves emitted by computers that are under attack . . . The detection system then relies on Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) to determine whether the data gathered indicates the presence of a threat.”
- Using electromagnetic waves to scan for malware sounds like magic!
- And brings low overhead to the picture because it is not software based.
- Essentially, this is a physical way to detect “a disturbance in the force!”
