LINUX Unplugged

A new version of Slax is out this week, and they might just be onto something really unique. We take this Debian powered, Fluxbox running, net bootin distro for a test drive.

Plus Google moves to block GApps on “uncertified devices”, Red Hat turns 25, a new Wayland contender, a few app picks, and much more.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Visit linux.ting.com and get a $25 discount off a device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!
• DigitalOcean: Visit do.co/unplugged for a limited time special offer, or enter dounplugged after you create your account for a $10 credit. Promo Code: dounplugged
• Linux Academy: Visit linuxacademy.com/unplugged to support the show and sign up for a 7 day free trial.

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Links:

• Red Hat at 25 — A lot has changed since 1993
• Red Hat Summit 2018 — The Grammy Award-winning band Weezer will be performing at this year’s Red Hat Summit party. Join us for a night of food, drinks, and music, at the San Francisco Armory at 7:00 p.m.
• Google now blocks GApps on uncertified devices, but lets custom ROM users be whitelisted — arlier this week, we received an anonymous tip from a person claiming to be within the industry. This person, who said they worked for an OEM/ODM, notified us that Google has started entirely locking out newly built firmware from accessing Gapps.
• Microsoft Open-Sources WSL Sample To Let More Linux Distributions Run On Windows — The WSL-DistroLauncher is what is now open-source and is a C++ code-base offering a launcher that can be customized for particular distributions for the steps to get to a log-in shell, running commands, and setting configuration values.
• Wayfire — 3D wayland compositor
• People Are Using Old Laptop Batteries to Build Their Own Versions of Tesla's Powerwall — Consumers have constructed their own powerwalls by utilizing old, recycled batteries from laptops.
• Rant launches Eric Raymond's next project: open-source the UPS — ESR opened up the work-in-progress on GitLab: the Upside project is currently defining requirements and developing a specification for a “high quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop”.
• Eric S. Raymond / upside · GitLab
• Hyper™ — JS/HTML/CSS Terminal
• Upterm — A terminal emulator for the 21st century.

We’re playing just one interview from SCaLE this year, tons of community news, and two handy app picks.

Plus webOS returns, some fundamental Linux plumbing upgrades, and Private Internet Access goes Open Source.

Special Guest: Ilan Rabinovitch.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Visit linux.ting.com and get a $25 discount off a device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!
• DigitalOcean: Visit do.co/unplugged for a limited time special offer, or enter dounplugged after you create your account for a $10 credit. Promo Code: dounplugged
• Linux Academy: Visit linuxacademy.com/unplugged to support the show and sign up for a 7 day free trial.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• LG Announces webOS Open-Source Edition — LG in cooperation with South Korea's NIPA government agency are working on making webOS suitable as a more open platform with open connectivity. They are still looking to commercialize it as an open-source platform, LG announced this morning.
• GNOME 3.28 Release Notes — In total, the release incorporates 25832 changes, made by approximately 838 contributors.
• Bolt Will Tackle Thunderbolt 3 Security on Linux — “[Bolt] provides a D-Bus API to list devices, enroll them (authorize and store them in the local database) and forget them again (remove previously enrolled devices). It also emits signals if new devices are connected (or removed). During enrollment devices can be set to be automatically authorized as soon as they are connected.”
• GStreamer: news — The GStreamer team is proud to announce a new major feature release of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!
• Firefox 59 released, these are the key changes — The built-in Firefox screenshot tool lets you copy an image to the clipboard, ready for you to paste elsehwhere.
• Off-Main-Thread Painting – Mozilla Gfx Team Blog — I’m excited to announce Off-Main-Thread painting, our new Firefox graphics performance effort!
• Off-Main-Thread Painting - For Linux — set “layers.omtp.enabled” to true.
• Private Internet Access goes Open Source — As long-time supporters of the Free and Open Source Software community, we have started the process of open sourcing our software, and over the next six months we will be releasing the source code for all our client-side applications, as well as libraries and extensions.
• OpenSnitch — OpenSnitch is a GNU/Linux port of the Little Snitch application firewall.
• Spotifyd — An open source Spotify client running as a UNIX daemon. Spotifyd streams music just like the official client, but is more lightweight and supports more platforms. Spotifyd also supports the Spotify Connect protocol which makes it show up as a device that can be controlled from the official clients.
• Ilan Rabinovitch — VP, Product & Technical Community at @datadoghq, recovering SysAdmin, SCALE Conference Chair, and other FL/OSS fun.

This week Noah fills in for Chris while he's on his return journey from SCaLE! The guys get down deep on a variety of topics from screen sharing in Plasma under Wayland to the status of the GTK 'CommuniTheme' for ubuntu 18.04 and more!

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We chip away at a larger meta topic this week, but before we get there we share a batch of community news, live technical feats & a random post show.

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Linux apps are coming to ChromeOS via containers, Fedora is going for better battery life & what is going on with Xfce?

Plus Ubuntu MATE’s cool new tick & we take a look at crankshaft: raspberry pi + android auto + free software + love.

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Canonical’s Ubuntu desktop head and their VP of Product Development join us to chat about the new proposed data collection system they want to build into Ubuntu 18.04 & Cassidy from System76 and Elementary OS join us to talk about their efforts to turn drive encryption on by default.

Plus a BIG announcement at the end of the show!

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Chris goes to Microsoft & gets the inside scoop on the awkward situation Microsoft finds themselves in with Windows & why they’ve been releasing more code as open source.

Plus we check in and & wrap up the Plasma Desktop challenge, Daniel Foré sets the record straight on the week’s Elementary OS news & more!

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We’re joined by two Project Atomic members from Red Hat to learn what it’s all about, how Fedora Atomic Workstation works & the problems it solves.

Plus we launch the biggest desktop Linux challenge in the history of this show & it’s going to have long lasting ramifications.

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How does a SNAP really get created & why would companies like Microsoft, JetBrains & Plex want to be involved? We’re live from Canonical’s Seattle Snapcraft Summit with the inside scoop of where things are going.

Plus the major concerns we have about the future of Gnome Shell, why the Client Side Decoration debate is hot again & how Wayland is putting pressure on all the things.

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Everyone’s Linux desktop is getting better this week, well… Almost everyone.

Plus why Linux users should be using Firefox, some Gnome and MATE news, communIty, why the Linux desktop isn't seeing as many native apps these days & more!

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