December 20, 2020

Linux Action News 168

31 minutes

Another Google project meets an untimely demise, but we find the silver lining.

Plus new Matrix goodies, why AWS is investing in Blender, and more.

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Google kills Android Things, its IoT OS, in January — Google announced it had basically given up on the project as a general-purpose IoT operating system in 2019, but now there's an official shutdown date thanks to a new FAQ page detailing the demise of the OS.
Android Things Shutdown FAQ
Ron Amadeo on Twitter — Oof, Google promised three years of updates when Android Things launched in May 2018, the actual support it delivered? One year, three months.
Google, Qualcomm partner to bring 4 OS Android updates to new chipsets — The new plan is three years of major OS updates and four years of security updates.

Qualcomm promises three years of Android updates for its entire SoC lineup

Google acquires CloudReady OS to make PCs Chromebooks — Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS. While primarily aimed at schools and enterprises, a free “Home” edition for everyone is available. Google has now acquired Neverware and CloudReady with plans to integrate it with Chrome OS.

Native Steam (Borealis) on Chrome OS likely arriving mid-2021

GTK 4.0 Officially Released After More Than 4 Years of Development — The GTK development officially released today the next generation of the GTK toolkit, GTK 4.0, after being in development for more than four years.

GTK 4.0 Toolkit Officially Released

GTK 4.0 – GTK Development Blog

Matrix.to: Reloaded — A challenge we regularly face is all the factors which make Matrix flexible and powerful as an open, secure decentralised protocol also increase the difficulty of getting started.

Introducing Cerulean — Alongside all the normal business-as-usual Matrix stuff, we’ve found some time to do a mad science experiment over the last few weeks - to test the question: "Is it possible to build a serious Twitter-style decentralised microblogging app using Matrix?"

Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play — Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages technology, known as AMP among web publishers, took a beating this week as an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of Texas charged that the ad biz used AMP to hinder competition.

I have resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee – Terence Eden’s Blog — I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web.

AWS joins the Blender Development Fund — AWS committed to a period of three years, specifically to support character animation tools development.

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