The Cube is headed to Plasma 6! Firefox 119 learns how to edit PDFs, how Ubuntu snuck into high-end Dell laptops, and the Raspberry Pi 5 begins to ship.
Listen:
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:00 All them ads
02:18 KDE Cube in Plasma 6
05:28 How Ubuntu snuck into DELL laptops
11:32 Firefox 119
14:15 Pi 5 begins to ship
15:35 Pi 5 scalping beings
19:30 Pi 5 vs Orange Pi 5
KDE Cube
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kdeplasma-addons/-/merge_requests/188
https://github.com/zzag/kwin-effects-cube
- So you remember the Compiz 3D Desktop Cube effect we could show off to our friends to demonstrate the power of Linux, and make Windows users jealous?
- Well, now it is available for KWin and the KDE Plasma desktop.
- To enable the Cube effect go to System Settings>Workspace Behavior>Desktop Effects and select it from the menu.
- And then it can be activated with the Meta+C keyboard shortcut.
- You will have to have at least 3 virtual desktops activated to enable the Cube effect.
- You rotate the cube by clicking the LMB and dragging with your mouse, and then hit LMB to switch to the desired virtual desktop.
- You can also use the left or right arrows to rotate the cube, and hit enter, space or return to switch virtual desktops.
- Some of the settings you can change are: Cube face displacement, Distance, a Background plain color, or you can add a Skybox.
- There are instructions for installing it on Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch on the GitHub page here in our show notes.
- This was merged into master two days ago.
- It will soon be a part of the default KDE experience.
Sneaky Ubuntu
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- Getting a laptop without Windows from a retailer was no small task back in 2012.
- Even today you’re going to end up searching for a “developer edition” or “Pro” if you want a Linux lappy from DELL>.
- But you can at least get one and not have to drop out of college.
- This is thanks to the work of Barton George and a small internal team that was at times two people and a dog.
- Barton rang up Ubuntu and they got all the drivers working on an XPS system that was launched for 10% off.
- They expected 300 orders but ended up with 6K.
- That was enough signal for DELL to move on the project and it went from skunkworks to product in 9 months.
- We have been talking about Barton George and his “Project Sputnik ” and its progress since I have been here on LWDW since 2018.
- It is amazing what he and his team has achieved.
- One of my favorite quotes from Barton George in the blog about the Dell Ubuntu developer laptop key to success:
- “We created a rough image that people could use on the XPS 13. Developers could download it and start working on it. We told people there were a lot of caveats, and it wasn’t an official release nor supported. But the key thing here is while you couldn’t do this with consumers, with developers — who knew it was a beta– then you’re okay. And, we had most of the bugs worked out.”
Firefox 119
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/firefox-119-lets-you-add-images-to-pdfs-import-chrome-extensions
- The Mozilla Firefox 119 web browser is now available to download, with some cool new features!
- So one of my favorite new features are the improvements to the Firefox View panel, which you select by hitting the Firefox icon in the top left corner of your tabs.
- Firefox View lets you access pages from other devices, such as your phone, or another computer that is turned on:
- It now shows recently closed tabs and browsing history, which you can organize by date or site.
- And it adds support for viewing all open tabs from all windows.
- And all the tabs from all synced devices.
- Firefox 119 lets you import your Chrome extensions, at least the ones that are available on the Firefox Add-ons site.
- This release also now allows the ability to edit PDFs by adding images, in addition to adding drawings and text.
Slice of Pi
Pi 5 Release & Bench Pi (RTheren)
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-available-now
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/benchmarking-raspberry-pi-5/
- 4 and 8Gb Pi’s will start showing up next week.
- Well, if you preordered.
- But what about speed?
- RasPi.com has taken the time to benchmark the Pi 5 against the Pi 4.
- Brace yourselves, it’s faster.
- There are links to a few other outlets that have benchmarked the Pi 5 as well.
- Pi 5 vs Orange 5 is good to look at.
- Depending on how availability shakes out the Pi 5 has a good price performance ratio.
- In the past four years companies like OrangePi and Rock Pi have caught up and taken the raw performance lead.
- It is interesting that the Raspi 5 Single-Core Score performance is better than the Orange Pi 5b’s, this is probably due to the higher clock speed of the RasPi 5 at 2.40 GHz vs the Orange Pi 5b’s 1.80 GHz.
- And Multi-Core Scores of the Orange Pi 5b being higher than the Raspi 5 doesn’t surprise me because the Orange Pi 5b has 8 threads, as opposed to the RasPi 5’s 4 threads.
- I have noticed a huge speed increase with my RasPi 5, just using the desktop and surfing web pages, compared to my Raspberry Pi 400 which I had overclocked from 1.8 GHz to 1.9 GHz when I got it back in 2020.
- By the end of the year, after all backorders are filled, you should be able to go to the nearest Micro Center and grab a RasPi 5!
- I was just at Micro Center a few weeks ago and the Raspberry Pi booth was pretty empty, but they were already putting up signs for the RasPi 5 in anticipation.
