Minty PipeWire and KDE On Fedora

Linux Mint 22 succumbs to the Pipes, Fedora tries on KDE, playing audiobooks with a big red button, and a Linux mixer for RME interfaces.

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:52 Linux Mint 22
07:51 KDE on Fedora
12:36 RME Fireface mixer oscmix
16:45 BealgeY-AI
21:09 Simplicity Player

Mint Pipes & Kernels

So this is something I was really happy to hear, in June or July of this year the upcoming Linux Mint 22, code named “Wilma”, will be based on the Ubuntu 24.04 Long Term Support release due out this month.
Linux Mint 22 will be powered by the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Linux 6.8 kernel and use Pipewire as its default sound server.
The Linux Mint 21 series has been powered by the older Ubuntu 22.04 Linux kernel 5.15, which was released in April 2022.
So Linux Mint 22, starting with the newer Linux 6.8 kernel, will be much better for supporting newer hardware.
And a huge but welcome change for Linux Mint, Linux Mint 22 will allow users to upgrade to a new Linux kernel when an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS point release is made available, which wasn’t automatically available with older Linux Mint releases.
This is a really big deal for those of us that enjoy using Linux Mint, need the latest and greatest hardware drivers, and being able to recommend it to new users.
And this is important to me now, because I am building a dear friend a new gaming rig who specifically requested Linux Mint, as that is her favorite distro.
And I will make sure she upgrades that machine to Linux Mint 22!
Couple of quality of life additions with this version on Mint.
GNOME online accounts have moved over to GTK4 so the Mint team hacked up a frontend that works with GTK 3 and 4.
And Ubuntu swapped the Thunderbird deb for a snap so the Mint team is swapping that out for a deb.
The move to pipewire will be good for desktop users

Fedora GNOME to KDE

- And a bit of Linux news, and something real quick I noticed this week.
- Fedora is proposing to change their default desktop Workstation to KDE Plasma from GNOME.
- And then they would move the GNOME desktop to a separate Fedora Spin edition.
- They state:

“With the release of Plasma 6, KDE Plasma has developed into a high quality, well-regarded desktop experience… Plasma has been at the forefront of creating a cohesive desktop platform that empowers the user to have full ownership of their computing experience.”

I have been impressed with how well the KDE Plasma team has progressed Plasma, and how well they have worked with Valve on the Steam Deck to get the KDE desktop clean and stable.
And I am really not surprised about this proposal, because KDE Plasma is a polished, mature and beautiful desktop, and great for those users coming from Windows.

oscmix

https://github.com/michaelforney/oscmix

While plowing through github issues I ran across an interesting project.
Several audio interfaces have onboard DSP and mixing functionality.
Even my MOTU 828 MK3 from 2007 has a full set of mixing, Eq, comp and reverb effects.
As you might have guessed, access to these bits is not exactly class compliant so a wee lot of hacking must be done to get to them.
That’s what Michel has been up to with the RME Fireface UCX II.
He has teased out all the bits needed to access the onboard mixing,routing, and EQ.
But the neat part is the slick GUI that comes along with it.
Even has a web UI because that’s awesome.
I would love something like this for my RME AIO pro since that little PCIe card has all the DSP brains packed in it as well.

Open Pie

Beagle was developed by a small team of engineers as an educational board that could be used in universities to teach open source hardware and software.
Quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A53 SOC and 4GB RAM for $70.
Even had dual C7x digital signal processor DSPs that deliver 4 TOPS!
What can I actually do with 4 or 8 TOPS?
Not much, that’s last-gen smartphone territory but it’s okay for machine vision and robotics.
Want to build your own?
I am impressed with everything that is included on the BeagleY-AI Single Board Computer for only $70.
Including the machine vision coprocessor, which used to cost several hundred dollars as a Raspberry Pi Hat just a few years ago.

Simple Player

https://github.com/meteyou/SimplicityPlayer

You know what audiobooks need?
A big red button.
And maybe a LCD screen if you’re feeling fancy.
That’s what the Simplicity-Player aims to provide and for good reason.
It’s designed to simplify the playing of audiobooks for those with visual impairments.
It does this through the use of RFID cards to swap books and a big red button to pause and play.
Even has a web interface that allows for remote control and media management.
This is a wonderful device that solves a multitude of accessibility options for those with visual impairment, and who can’t read.
There are numerous text to speech apps on Linux, which I use myself, but not an easy way to listen to audio books, and the Simplicity Player does it by feel, brilliant.
To the developer Stefan Dej, you might want to consider making multiples of these devices and selling them.
Lower cost accessibility open source devices are so needed.