Mozilla publishes a roadmap packed with feature goodness! Canonical’s releases Ubuntu server for the $48 RISC powered Milk-V, finding an open-source Android keyboard with swipe, and Microsoft Copilot+ PCs like to take a bunch of screenshots.
Listen:
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:41 Attempted capping
03:49 Mozilla Firefox roadmap
08:19 An open-source Android keyboard with swipe
14:08 Microsoft AI PCs privacy nightmare
21:01 Ubuntu on Milk-V
Firefox roadmap
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/05/mozilla-shares-firefox-roadmap
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re-working-on-in-firefox/td-p/57694
- So two weeks ago we talked about Firefox doing search data collection that me and Venn were not fans of, but now, we have Mozilla Firefox focusing on what they do best…on the web browser experience.
- Mozilla released their future roadmap for the coming year of our favorite open source web browser, Firefox!
- My favorite line that Jon the Community Manager wrote in the Mozilla roadmap blog: “Continuous work on Speed, Performance, and Compatibility.”
- And Jon also says, “More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker.”
- There will be lots of new features, like Tab grouping and Vertical Tabs for greater productivity,
- And, one of my favorites, a sidebar for organizing Tabs.
- Also a new profile management system for keeping things organized, new tab wallpapers, and privacy settings made easier to use.
- Some of these features you will be able to test in the Firefox nightlies, or can be turned on in about:config.
- They talk about adding Intuitive privacy settings.
- If you’re serious about doing that Mozilla, make it an off button.
- That said, stick to this.
- The most important thing Mozilla can do right now is regain browser market share.
Open-Source keyboard
https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard
- Gboard has turned into a resource hog and that’s something a keyboard should never be.
- Problem is, most open-source keyboards don’t know how to swipe.
- This one does, kinda.
- Based on AOSP, HeliBoard is a 100% offline keyboard with spell check, themes, layouts, and the ability to learn words.
- If you want the one missing feature, glide typing, you will need to download swypelibs and load it manually.
- Yeah, I guess there are no open-source swipe packages?
- It’s crazy lightweight and I have been using it for a week on my daily driver.
- Nice Venn! I had seen the HeliBoard keyboard on F-Droid and wanted to give it a try.
- It has a nice emoji search feature which I require from any Android keyboard, and clipboard history which is essential for me to do my social media posts each day.
Total Wincall
- The tech community has been all abuzz about the latest announcement by Microsoft.
- Microsoft announced their Copilot+ PC, which is a computer designed to run AI tools.
- This article states:
- “The first of these new Copilot+ devices will arrive in the form of the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7, each making use of powerful Neural Processing Units (NPU) housed inside Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipsets.”
- But it is not this announcement of the new Microsoft AI computers that has the tech community rolling their eyes, even though, yes, they are sweet hardware devices, but it is the AI software that is running locally on these machines.
- Which includes a feature called Windows Recall, which is explained in this quote from a laptopmag.com post:
- It’s this ability to run on-device tools as often as needed that allows Windows Recall to work as it does, building a log of every action you perform through a constant stream of screenshots that can be ‘recalled’ through user searches.
- This is essentially spyware, and a security and privacy nightmare that can be easily manipulated! LOL
- Microsoft says that Recall won’t be seen by cloud services, but will only be locally stored, I have my doubts.
- And it is “on” by default, and you have to opt out of it, which a lot of Windows users don’t have the know-how to do.
- So once again, the best operating system for the Copilot+ PC, will be Linux.
- And as we talked about here on LWDW #423 two weeks ago, when the latest Linux Kernel, Linux Kernel 6.9 was announced, Linus now has a more powerful ARM64 based machine to build kernels on, and this will go a long way for Qualcomm upping their support of the latest Snapdragon X Elite on Linux.
- All of this kicks in after I’ve consented… right…. right guys!?
- But does that matter? How many times have you told Microsoft NO only to have the same prompt popup over and over again.
- AI, telemetry, forced online accounts, full recording and Microsoft owning an ad business.
- That’s not me hating on MS, it’s what you have to deal with, plain and simple.
- For enterprise customers, admins will need to go to the “turn off saving snapshots for Windows” policy.
Slice of Pi
MilkBuntu
https://canonical.com/blog/canonical-enables-ubuntu-on-milk-v-mars
- The $48 perpetually out of stock Milk-V has a new OS option.
- Ubuntu 24.04 server.
- Not a complete shock since Canonical has been releasing RISC-V images since 2021.
- Server is the sticking point since the GPU bits are nonexistent.
- Don’t go looking for a Desktop release anytime soon.
- PCIe support kinda works with nvme drivers and wifi but no love for external GPUs.
- And the USB 2 port isn’t supported in kernel 6.8.
- Low cost RISC-V boards make me happy in the world of $80 ARM SBCs.
- This collaboration with Canonical and MilkV Technology will help accelerate Linux adoption and development on RISC-V systems, and get us one step closer to having Linux fully working, and the flagship OS on this fast and power efficient ISA.
