LWDW 377: Wayland Is (almost) Ready

Fedora KDE Plasma spin is dropping X11! 2 million Raspberry Pi’s prepare to ship, reverse-engineering IRIX, and building a ISA sound card with PicoGUS.


Listen:


Subscribe Google Podcasts | Spotify | Apple | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More


Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:08 Linux isn’t for everyone
05:51 Fedora KDE Plasma drops X11
14:35 Reverse-engineering IRIX
28:46 2 million Pi’s on the way
37:38 Homebrew ISA sound cards

Plasma 6 is Wayland only

https://linuxiac.com/fedora-plans-to-drop-x11-support-in-plasma-6/

https://pagure.io/fedora-kde/SIG/issue/347

  • Fedora plans to drop X11 and go all Wayland when Plasma 6 comes out in the Fedora KDE Plasma spin.
  • If the proposal is approved it won’t come out until the Fedora 40 KDE Plasma release, which will happen around late April 2024, along with the main Fedora 40 release.
  • One of the reasons for X11 being deprecated in the Fedora KDE Plasma 6 release is that the Xorg display server has been deprecated since the release of RHEL 9.0 in May 2022, and will most likely be removed in future major RHEL releases.
  • And Fedora being “upstream” of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  • Also, Wayland is now being actively updated, unlike X11, which developers have spent years working around X window system’s bugs and issues since the UNIX days in 1984.
  • Fedora has a great track record for spearheading technology forward in their distro, and has already been offering Wayland as default in GNOME, but you could always switch back to X11 when needed.
  • Also, Wayland was created by Kristian Høgsberg while he was working for Red Hat, but at that time Red Hat didn’t have the resources to replace X.

Zombie IRIX

https://tedium.co/2023/05/27/sgi-irix-revival-efforts/

  • IRIX has a special place in my heart because I learned Alias Wavefront 3D animation software, which is now Maya, on SGI machines.
  • Also, I still have my Silicon Graphics Octane and Indigo2 workstations with Alias on it that still work!
  • When I think of SGI, I think about the boot chimes. 
  • The Indy had the best one out of the box but there were 4 to choose from in the prom monitor. 
  • The 1600SW monitor was always something to lust after as well. 
  • Then there was the OS, IRIX. 
  • Some of the folks at Irixnet want to raise $6500 “going towards the goal of technical documentation.
  • This could be used as the basis of a new open-source IRIX-derivative kernel.
  • It’s going to require a clean room implementation since no code leaks have surfaced in the last fifteen years.  
  • If you want a taste of SGI check out MaXXdesktop

Plugs

 

Kyjorei/KyLinux sent me this mini, cute, great sounding and powerful penguin Bluetooth speaker from my Amazon wishlist! :-D

 

Kyjorei new patreon 

Slice of Pi

 

The end is Pi 

https://www.howtogeek.com/894161/the-great-raspberry-pi-shortage-might-be-coming-to-an-end/amp/

  • 2 million units are planned for the second quarter of 2023! 
  • Are you willing to pay MSRP for 4-year old hardware?
  • This is something we have been talking about a lot here on LWDW since the pandemic hit and hardware shortages abound, where are the Raspberry Pis?
  • As Ebon Upton said last year, the Raspberry Pi shortage may be coming to an end this year.
  • The Raspberry Pi company put together 750,000 Raspberry Pi units in the first quarter of the year.
  • And is on track for building 2 million units this second quarter, helping it fill backlogged orders and paving the way for “unconstrained” supply during the remaining half of the year.
  • But don’t expect to get your hands on a decent priced Raspberry Pi 4 until the end of the year.
  • The Raspberry Pi ecosystem and community is fantastic, and is setup great for schools and tinkeres, thanks to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
  • The chip shortage has been catastrophic for the Raspberry Pi company, and other manufacturers of alternative boards have been able to get product out despite the shortages.
  • People will be willing to pay MSRP for hardware that is older to remain in its ecosystem.
  • And we hopefully will get a Raspberry Pi 5 announcement soon, as they probably were working on one during the pandemic.

ISA Pi 

https://github.com/polpo/picogus

  • PicoGUS can emulate Gravis, Tandy, AdLib, and game blaster.  
  • Sound Blaster might be added at some point?
  • DMA support isn’t perfect but close. 
  • About $30 in parts + Pico. 
  • The original project used a Raspberry Pi 3/4/CM4. 
  • Toss a game port on it. 
  • This is awesome considering how much Gravis Ultrasound sound cards go on eBay these days, around $420 and up, and how expensive they used to be when they came out.
0 Comments

Leave Your Reply