LWDW 383: Thunderbird goes Supernova & segmenting RGBs!

Thunderbird is getting a fresh new look! OpenRGb learns to segment, why you should use video hardware acceleration on Linux, and Solus 4.4 drops MATE.

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:10 Jill plays with Threads
04:57 Red Hat soap opera
05:52 Oracle wants to keep Linux open
07:57 SUSE forks RHEL
10:20 Solus Linux 4.4
16:31 Thunderbird Supernova
25:17 OpenRGB adds support for segmenting RGB
33:44 Video hardware acceleration on Linux

Colour Key: Venn Jill

Solus 4.4

https://9to5linux.com/solus-4-4-harmony-released-with-secure-boot-support-linux-6-3-and-more

So guess what distro has a new release?
So after almost two years, Joshua Strobl announced the long-awaited Solus 4.4 ISO release of this independent, rolling-release Linux distribution featuring the Budgie, KDE Plasma, GNOME, and MATE desktops!
The Solus 4.4 Harmony release is powered by Linux Kernel 6.3 and now supports Secure Boot, Intel Arc GPUs, NVIDIA 40 Series GPUs, AMD Radeon RX 7600, 7900 XT, and 7900 XTX cards, enhanced support for various light sensors and accelerometers and so much more.
The flagship edition of Solus 4.4 is using the latest Budgie 10.7 desktop environment.
I downloaded Solus Budgie, and enjoyed playing with one of my favorite distros and desktop managers.
I was always impressed by how fast the Solus installation is, and how well designed and easy to navigate the installer is. This version seemed to install even faster.
I like that they went for a more traditional windows like layout for Budgie, with the application menu at the bottom left of the screen in the bottom panel. This, of course, can be changed.
There is dual-GPU support in the Budgie Menu, notification sounds, a new Budgie Screenshot app, and a new power dialog for session management.
One of Solus’s key features is the enhancements using Steam and playing games, despite it being a built from scratch distro.
All the necessary dependencies get installed as well as a Linux Steam Integration App where you can configure to force 32-bit mode for Steam or switch between the native runtime or the bundled Steam runtime and other settings.

Thunderbird Supernova

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew/

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/new-thunderbird-115-supernova

https://web.archive.org/web/20230614035125/https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap

Remember a few months back when I warned of the upcoming UI changes?
Well, here they are.
Thunderbird supernova sports many new goodies to play with.
Dynamic toolbar, density control, improved address book, and cards.
There still doesn’t appear to be a threaded email view.
Granted, I don’t think “classic” TB looks dated.
It looks functional.
The roadmap was edited yesterday and removed the content/screenshots for the original mockups.
I do like the sortable folders modes available in the folder pane.
So you can easily move folders up and down, or turn them off to hide them, or on to show them.
I do find myself doing this quite frequently in Gmail because I have so many categories of emails.
Although, Gmail calls the collections “Labels” instead of folders.
And the tags view in the folder pane is nice and handy.

OpenRGB 0.9

https://gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/OpenRGB/-/releases/release_0.9

OoenRGB 0.9 is out with lots of awesome software updates and supported hardware to make all your devices on Linux enjoy rainbow vomit!
Oh cool! Something I have been waiting for, RGB segment support.
Segments support allows you to split up addressable LED zones into multiple segments that can be handled independently.
This fine grain control is something that has been missing from OpenRGB, but has been available on the Windows proprietary RGB apps for a very long time.
This is useful to divide up daisy-chained ARGB devices, like fans and strips connected to the same header.
A new Keyboard Layout Manager.
The JSAUX Steam Deck dock now has RGB support.
New RGB support for additional GPUs added to existing GPU controllers, such as for:
- Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Nvidia, Palit, PNY
Cherry keyboard support.

MPV hardware acceleration

https://linuxgamecast.com/2023/07/mpv-hardware-acceleration-on-linux/

No matter what video player you use you probably don’t think about hardware acceleration.
If you do, you probably assume it’s enabled.
Modern CPUs have the grunt needed to chew through 4K content.
A few weeks ago when I needed to play a 4K video on a vintage i5-3470.
It could do it but the fans kicked into turbo mode so I did a little investigation.
By default MPv (and VLC) do not ship with GPU acceleration enabled.
Adding a single line dropped CPU usage by 30% and temps by 15-24 degrees.
Cool and quiet is always better than hot and shouty.