The Linux Experiment

Just for fun, I decided to try and imagine what a Linux distro would look like if it got hit by the enshittification stick that seems to affect every digital product of service these days.

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Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 01:25 Big Tech Linux 02:48 Mandatory Account 03:41 Privacy Invasion 04:17 Ads are coming 05:38 Time for AI 06:39 Tiering up 08:54 Final steps 10:41 Parting Thoughts

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Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:42 Sponsor: Extend the life of CentOS 7 02:11 OpenSUSE Leap 16 will be immutable 04:34 Google pretty much gives up on Fuchsia 06:04 Steam Snap creates problems for Valve 07:23 Flathub wants better quality app listings 08:40 A proposal to make Ai content more identifiable 10:20 Online search is getting worse 12:19 Google will let the EU unlink data from their services 13:18 Gaming: Wine 9.0, the Hangover project 15:27 Sponsor: Tuxedo 16:35 Support the channel

#Linux #OpenSource #linuxdistro #Technews #linuxnews

OpenSUSE Leap 16 will be very different

https://linuxiac.com/opensuse-leap-15-6-to-be-the-last-in-its-current-form/

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/01/17/opensuse_confirms_leap_16/

Google pretty much gives up on Fuchsia

https://9to5google.com/2024/01/15/google-is-no-longer-bringing-the-full-chrome-browser-to-fuchsia/

Steam Snap creates problems for Valve

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/valve-dont-recommend-ubuntu-steam-snap

Flathub wants better quality apps

https://linuxiac.com/flathub-strategic-shift-to-highlight-high-quality-apps/

A proposal to make Ai content more identifiable

https://mindmatters.ai/2024/01/framework-for-ai-legislation/

Online search is getting worse

https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-research

Google will let the EU unlink data from their services

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/if-youre-in-the-eu-you-can-now-decide-how-much-data-to-share-with-google

Gaming: Wine 9.0, the Hangover project

https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/releases/wine-9.0

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Hangover-9.0-Released

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Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:33 Sponsor: SquareX 01:58 Ranking Criteria 02:44 Ubuntu 03:45 Linux Mint 04:31 Zorin OS 05:23 elementaryOS 05:58 Fedora 06:46 Debian Stable 07:45 OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 08:14 OpenSUSE Leap 08:50 Arch Linux 09:44 Manjaro 10:31 Tuxedo OS 11:40 Pop!_OS 12:32 Solus 13:19 Gentoo 13:51 KDE Neon 14:12 Asahi Linux / Fedora Asahi 14:46 NixOS 15:36 HoloISO 16:09 Nobara 16:39 Vanilla OS 17:06 ChromeOS Flex 17:41 Deepin 18:29 Sponsor: Tuxedo

#Linux #linuxdesktop #linuxdistro #distribution #tierlist

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#Linux #linux2024 #linuxdesktop #linuxdistro #opensource

Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:41 Sponsor: Squarespace 01:42 Goodbye X11 04:00 Open Source Nvidia for everyone 05:52 10% market share with ChromeOS added 07:33 Gaming: more Linux gaming devices 10:11 Packaging formats: still messy 11:37 Immutable distros: not mainstream 12:51 App support: no changes 13:57 Parting thoughts 15:27 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers 16:25 Support the channel

First, X.org will be even more abandoned. I'm not saying every distro will drop it entirely, but I'm expecting way more distributions and desktops to announce in 2024, that X.org won't be a supported platform anymore in 2025, or at the very least won't be the default session.

I would be surprised if, in 2024, Ubuntu didn't announce something similar for the following year.

The second thing I think we'll see is a fully open source stack for nvidia being available for Linux users. With the Linux kernel 6.7 bringing support for the GSP firmware, letting Nvidia GPUs be reclocked by the open source Nouveau drivers, and NVK now part of Mesa, and providing decent performance already, I'd say 2024 will be the year where Nvidia users can finally enjoy a good experience on Linux without anything extra to install.

In terms of market share, we've seen some healthy growth in 2023, ending the year on a potentially anomalous 3.8%, the highest the Linux desktop has ever been. In 2024, I'd expect this trend to continue: people don't seem to enjoy WIndows 11 that much, and they already didn't enjoy Windows 10 all that much either, and with Microsoft cramming more and more ads in their OS, and potentially moving to a subscription based model for Windows 12, I'd expect more people to give Linux a go, and mathematically, some of them will stick with it.

All in all, I don't think we'll jump to something like 8 or 10%, but I'd be surprised if the Linux desktop didn't reach 5 or 6% on its own, and about 10% combined with Chrome OS.

I would also expect 2024 to see a standalone release of SteamOS for any computer, and I'd say our market share will probably rise to about 3, maybe 3 and a half percent, but it won't be a major change, and the situation in terms of how many games we can play will be relatively stable, with major names still missing.

Now let's talk about the things I feel will stay exactly the same in 2024: starting with packaging formats. What we might see is more distros deciding to provide specific apps using the official snap or flatpak, like RHEL is doing with LibreOffice, because for some apps, it simply makes no sense to repackage them all the time, but that won't change the status quo.

Same thing for what we generally call Immutable distributions. I don't think they'll gain that much popularity in 2024, because they're often linked to using either flatpak or snap, or Nix packages, can't forget about Nix or I'll get comments again, and since we're not making these formats the only choice any time soon, I don't think this group of Linux distros will conquer the general Linux desktop audience either.

As per app support, that's another area where I feel we're not going to see much progress. And I'm talking big name apps, like Office, the Adobe Suite, Autocad, and the like. Even if my predictions for Linux market share come true, the potential revenue from supporting Linux is still low and will still be low, compared to the effort of porting the app, finding a packaging format that allows you to do everything you want, and then supporting that version.

Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton (Mail, Drive, VPN, Pass...) answered a lot of the questions you, the community, asked, in an interview that covers basically everything!

He discusses security, privacy, the origins of Proton, how they operate, Linux support, future projects, products and features, quantum computing, passkeys, and more!

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#vpn #privacy #proton #onlinesecurity #protonmail

Timecodes:

00:00 Intro 01:16 How did Proton start? 03:24 Why start with email? 06:03 What is Proton's business model? 08:34 Why set up in Switzerland? 11:33 What data do you have on customers? 14:39 How is encryption important? 18:20 Do you always need to use a VPN? 20:47 Why focus on building an ecosystem? 24:55 Is an Office Suite planned? 26:29 What differentiates Proton from competitors? 30:26 Is Proton a viable alternative to big tech services? 33:31 Why expand to more products instead of finishing existing ones? 37:19 Does the general public care about privacy? 38:45 What's next for Proton services? 40:08 What are the plans for native Linux clients? 46:03 Will ProtonVPN offer dedicated IPs to everyone? 47:46 What's the environmental impact of Proton? 49:27 Proton on F-Droid, without Google Play notifications? 52:03 Why are code repos all separated and hard to find? 53:12 Why are addresses ending in ".me" ? 54:57 When will all apps reach feature parity? 56:24 Will SMTP relay be supported? 57:47 Will Proton focus more on businesses in the future? 59:50 Why put all your eggs in one basket with just Proton services? 01:01:00 Will Proton support passkeys? 01:03:21 Does E2E matter is the recipient isn't using it? 01:04:49 Will Proton disable port forwarding in VPN? 01:06:41 Is encryption enough to make email private? 01:09:06 What protects users from a change in Proton's code licensing? 01:11:14 How does Proton protect its infrastructure? 01:13:14 Impacts of Quantum Computing on privacy and security? 01:14:24 What's the future of Proton Bridge? 01:16:25 When will Proton photos be a thing? 01:17:17 Plans for Proton Notes? 01:18:20 Will VPN support the Apple TV? 01:21:12 Support the channel

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews #Ubuntu

Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: 10% off your first ebsite with Squarespace 01:33 Linus Torvalds talks about the future of Linux 03:58 Ubuntu might drop older CPUs 06:57 LXQt working on Wayland as well 08:33 Cosmic gets more improvements 09:48 GNOME & KDE updates 11:45 Gaming: Linux beats Windows, No Fortnite on Linux 15:17 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:24 Support the channel

Linus Torvalds talks about the future of Linux

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-state-of-linux-today-and-how-ai-figures-in-its-future/

Ubuntu might drop older CPUs

https://ubuntu.com/blog/optimising-ubuntu-performance-on-amd64-architecture

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-24.04-LTS-Desktop-Plans

LXQt working on Wayland as well

https://lubuntu.me/noble-alpha-featureset/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Lubuntu-24.04-LTS-Plans

https://lubuntu.me/noble-alpha-featureset/

Cosmic gets more improvements

https://blog.system76.com/post/the-spirit-of-cosmic-december-updates

GNOME & KDE updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/12/15/this-week-in-kde-un-flashy-important-stability-work/

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/12/twig-126/

Gaming: Linux beats Windows, No Fortnite on Linux

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/12/fortnite-on-linux-steam-deck-not-until-tens-of-millions-of-users/

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/3860211327585452520

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-scores-dead-last-in-gaming-performance-tests-against-3-Linux-gaming-distros.778624.0.html

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Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 00:51 Sponsor: ProtonVPN 02:21 Standardization and cohesiveness 05:31 Packaging formats and app distribution 07:17 Display, Wayland, HDR, and scaling 09:27 Drivers, graphics and firmware 11:40 Gaming 13:06 App support 14:31 More challenges? 17:02 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 18:00 Support the channel

#Linux #desktop #operatingsystem #linuxdesktop #linuxdistro

Unified theming between desktops is pretty much abandoned as a thing that should be pursued, but we're also seeing an accent colors standard emerge. And that's complimented by the work being done on portals. With portals for settings, screenshots, remote desktops, printing, sending email, creating shortcuts or transferring files, there's now a solid abstraction layer between your desktop and the apps it runs.

But, for now, we're not there yet. These standards are progressing, but they're not all encompassing, and they're not implemented equally across all desktops. The big ones, like GNOME and KDE, sure, but other smaller options aren't there yet.

Packaging formats, at the end of 2023, are in a bad state. Linux packaging has never been messier. As neither flatpak nor snap are fully ready for 100% of applications, some stuff simply can't be packaged using these, and they still have drawbacks that some users don't want to deal with. Which means a lot of app developers still can't say "hey, this is what we should be using now".

The display situation is much better though. X11 is now clearly abandonware, and work on Wayland has been stellar in 2023. Mostly all desktops now have plans for Wayland, everyone is in agreement.

Added to that, work on supporting HDR has moved by leaps and bounds, and we'll see a fully working implementation in 2024. Fractional scaling is now properly implemented on Wayland as well, meaning we can finally do non blurry scaling, with different scaling per monitor, and different refresh rates per monitor as well.

As per drivers, we've seen some solid progress as well. AMD now has solid drivers on launch day for their GPUs, Intel has finished their Xe driver, Arc GPUs are now well supported, and nvidia drivers have progressed a lot. We're also seeing very strong efforts for open source nvidia drivers.

As per firmware, the linux firmware vendor system, or LVFS has also seen broad adoption, letting you apply firmware updates on the fly and easily. This already supplied 100 million firmware updates, and Google is even pushing manufacturers to support that for their own Linux based Chrome OS.

Gaming has been incredible in 2023. Not only did Linux pass macOS market share for Steam, but we've seen great support for the Steam Deck, which, in turn, means great support for Linux. Sure, it's all driven by Proton and Wine, it's not native Linux ports, but my opinion is that it doesn't matter: if you can click install, and then play, and run the game with the performance you'd expect, things are good.

Non steam gaming has also progressed immensely, with Heroic becoming a really fantastic launcher for Gog and EPic Games, and Lutris still handling most of the rest.

Now for app support, I'd say we haven't seen many improvements in 2023. Sure, our own open source apps have progressed this year, but the usual suspects are still missing, that would let a lot more people move to Linux. Still no Office, Adobe apps, a lot of content creation software, or CAD software are still missing, with no indication that it will change.

The big challenge I can see is AI integration in the desktop. It's a move Microsoft is making with Windows 12, adding AI powered search, and automations throughout the desktop. Whether we should chase that trend on Linux, I'll let you decide, but what's certain is that once users have had a few years to get used to one click buttons that save 30 minutes, it will be hard to go back.

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Timecodes: 00:00 Intro Sponsor: Start securing your CentOS 7 fleet now 02:06 Slimbook Hero 03:32 Design & Build Quality 04:45 Specs and options 07:02 Performance & Gaming 09:25 Display 10:06 Keyboard & Mouse 11:20 Software Experience 12:36 Linux gaming laptop? 14:10 Support the channel

#Laptop #Gaming #Linux

It's a 15 inch device, with a 1440p display that refreshes at 165 hertz, with an aluminium chassis, a 13th gen Intel i7 CPU, an RTX 4060 GPU, as much RAM as you could cram into a laptop, and very solid I/O.

So, this thing is chunky: it's not meant to be an ultrabook, it weighs 2.1 kilos, or 4.6 pounds, and it's pretty damn sturdy. Not much give or flex to this chassis, thanks to the aluminium.

The hinge is really solid as well, with minimal wobble when typing. It's a 16:9 form factor. Of course you can open the laptop, and access the 2 M.2 slots for SSDs, the 2 DDR5 RAM slots, and the battery, which is 62 Wh. You can also buy spare parts from Slimbook, including the bezel cover, touchpad, lid, battery, keyboard palm rest, display, and more.

Now, in terms of specs, this laptop is well equipped, with a core i7 13620H, and an Nvidia RTX 4060, with 8 gigs of VRAM.

You can spec the rest up to your liking, with up to 64 gigs of DDR 5 RAM, at 5200 Mhz, and up to 4TB of PCIE4 storage.

You can also choose to dispose with the gamer branding and use a more unified black keyboard instead of having the white accents on the WASD keys, and you can pick any keyboard language you want.

As per I/O, on the left, you get a kensington lock, a USB 2.0 port, probably for a mouse, a mic jack, and a headphone jack. On the back, you have a mindisplay port, USB C 3.2 gen 2 with dusplayport support, HDMI 2.1, a gigabit ethernet port and the barrel charger, since charging this thing over USB would be a challenge. And on the right, there's an SD card reader, and 2 type A USB 3.2 ports.

On top of all that, you get Bluetooth 5.2, Wifi 6, a basic webcam and onboard mic that won't blow your socks off, dual speakers that are pretty decent, and a backlit keyboard with RGB, because, gamer.

In terms of benchmarks, the CPU get a score of 2733 in single core and 11625 in multi core on Geekbench 6.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/3787232

Battery life is decent, with about 7h of generic office work with wifi on, 50% brightness, and using the silent mode.

In Horizon Zero Dawn, at the native 1440p resolution, without any upscaling, and at the ultra preset, the Slimbook Hero managed a super smooth 60 FPS.

For Shadow of the Tomb Raider, also at 1440p without upscaling, and the ultra preset, I got 99 FPS on average, sometimes going down to about 80, or up to 120.

The display is really solid, it covers 100% of SRGB, it has a refresh rate up to 165hz, and it's 1440p.

The keyboard is solid enough. The keys are very stable, and they have good travel. They're quite clicky, and the sound is pleasant, and they bounce back super fast, it's very nice to type on.

The touchpad is ok. It's smooth enough, and precise, although it's very off center, which I find annoying in day to day use.

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00:00 Intro 00:59 Sponsor: Proton 02:17 Data grabbing 05:07 Why this data matters 07:41 Laws make it worse 11:11 What you can do 14:04 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:07 Support the channel

Playlist on how to De-Google your life: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqmbcbI8U55EfYUVdZfjrfyJyNHD-Bly8

#Privacy #anonymity #private

Virtually everything online now collects data. And this data doesn't just stay at the company that collected it. This data is a giant repository for governments to use and track or monitor their citizens.

See, in a LOT of countries, governments have the right to ask a company to provide all the data they've collected on their users. Companies have no choice but to comply with these, which is also why using end to end, and zero access encrypted services is crucial.

For example, the US can request any company to give them data on a specific user, they've done so more than any other country in 2020. But other countries do the exact same: Germany, Denmark, South korea, France, virtually ever country does this.

If you want even more scary numbers, in 2022, Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp, got 827K requests for data. They complied with 76% of these requests.

https://www.globalsecuritymag.com/Meta-received-over-800k-user-data-requests-from-governments-in-2022.html

There are a lot of legal offensives being planned, or already implemented in various countries, so let's look at a few.

In Russia, recent laws from 2017 banned anonymous use of online messaging apps, and prohibits the use of tools that would circumvent government censorship. This means that while VPNs aren't exactly banned, if they let people access banned websites, then they'll also be banned. This has happened to at least 15 VPNs, including NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and OperaVPN.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/01/russia-new-legislation-attacks-internet-anonymity

In Australia, in 2021, a law was proposed to force people to attach their real name to their social media posts, apparently to fight online trolls, bullying and harrassment. Users would have had to provide an ID before opening any social media account, which would obviously open the door to surveillance, monitoring, and censorship.

https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2021/govt-wants-to-end-online-anonymity.html

In France, we have the recent SREN law. This thing would give the telecom watchdog powers to block websites, and require tools for age verification. On top of that, the law will give the government capabilities to demand web browsers and DNS providers block certain websites.

https://adguard.com/en/blog/france-web-browser-dns-blocking-law.html

in the UK, the Online Safety Bill of 2022 allows the regulatory agency Ofcom to force websites to collect people's personal data, and they'll be able to scan, restrict and remove content that is considered harmful. The bill also mandates online communication services to be moderated, which basically means end to end encryption can be enabled there anymore.

https://datainnovation.org/2022/05/the-uks-online-safety-bill-undermines-encryption-and-anonymity/

So, what can you do about this? For protecting your data, there are plenty of things you can do. First, stop using privacy invasive operating systems. If you can't move to something like Linux, try at least to disable all the telemetry you can in Windows or macOS, in Android and iOS. You can try using a degoogled, privacy focused Android ROM on your smartphone.

Leaving Chrome for a more private browser is also pretty much mandatory. Same goes for your online services: stop using Google as a search engine, Gmail, or stuff like Outlook, OneDrive, iCloud, and the like. Using a VPN is also a solid option to at least try and blur the lines.

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#Wayland #X11 #linux

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: 10% off your first website 01:36 X11 vs Wayland 04:47 What's missing from Wayland itself 06:22 Desktop Environment support 09:07 Wayland & GPUs 10:50 Gaming on Wayland 13:01 Apps & Wayland 14:52 Parting Thoughts 16:39 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 17:57 Support the channel

So, up until recently, all Linux desktops used the X Server, also called X.org or X11. It's a venerable piece of software, that predates even the first release of the Linux kernel, by almost a decade, and X11 is virtually unmaintained now.

And so that's why Wayland was started in 2008. In terms of advantages, it eliminates screen tearing, it lets you have multiple monitors with different refresh rates and different scaling factors, and it's more secure.

https://www.secjuice.com/wayland-vs-xorg/

The Wayland protocol still lacks network transparency: Wayland doesn't support running a program on a computer, and displaying it on another. Some stuff also isn't supported yet, on Wayland OR on X11, for example HDR.

Support for fractional scaling has just recently been added, and isn't fully supported by all major Linux desktops and toolkits just yet. Wayland also doesn't support global shortcuts by default, but it's fixed through a desktop portal.

And we need to look at desktop environments and window managers. GNOME is probably the one with the more robust Wayland support available right now: not the most feature complete, but the most robust.

On KDE, Wayland support is a bit less solid, in my experience, Plasma 6 should be THE release with good Wayland support.

As per other desktop environments: Cinnamon is just beginning, MATE hasn't started, but XFCE has published a roadmap of the things that already work, and the things that need to be worked on. Pantheon, the desktop for elementary OS, has an experiment wayland session that is, for now, not really usable, and Deepin doesn't seem to have any plans yet.

You can use Sway, which is basically i3 but made for Wayland, with support for i3 config files, you have hyprland, based on the wlroots implementation, that seems to be the fastest moving tiling window manager for Wayland.

If you use open source drivers, like the mesa drivers for Intel and AMD GPUs, or the Nouveau driver for nvidia, you're all good. These support everything you need, and work well with Wayland, just as well as on X.Org. But then, there are the proprietary nvidia drivers.

And to be fair, they do work with Wayland. it took a long while, but it works, I've been using them on hybrid graphics laptops on GNOME and KDE, and on a desktop running Fedora for a long while, and it works. But it's also not the best experience.

And since we're talking about GPUs, let's talk about gaming. Gaming on Wayland basically relies on X.org, with something called XWayland: it's and X11 server running inside of Wayland.

There is a small performance impact depending on the game. It's not huge, but it's there, so if you're struggling to keep a smooth 60FPS, Xorg will be better. This is notably true with Nvidia drivers, which don't handle XWayland very well.

For now, Wayland enforces Vsync everywhere, unless your monitor has adaptive sync, so stuff like Gsync of freesync. If you don't have that, then Vsync is, for now, mandatory.

And finally, we have application support. All the latest Kirigami apps for KDE, or QT 5 and Qt 6 apps, or Libadwaita apps will handle Wayland well, and all the portals they need to interact well with other apps, screen sharing, and the like. Electron apps using a recent version of electron will also support Wayland, but a lot of electron apps still use an old version that doesn't support it properly.

And older apps using GTK 2, or older versions of Qt also won't support Wayland. Some web browsers also don't run natively with Wayland.

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00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: Collabora Online 02:02 KDE tips and tricks 02:09 Fix bad icons in taskbar 03:37 Open anything with the Super key 04:28 Configure windows for specific apps 05:27 Resize windows easily 06:36 Zoom in and out 06:55 Clipboard management 07:14 Hidden app launcher 07:55 Drag and drop to sticky note 08:11 Favourite KDE Note taking app 09:43 Plasma Widgets 11:33 KDE Connect 12:52 Stamp PDFs 13:35 Drag and drop in Dolphin 14:14 Save Searches 14:37 Customize System Monitor 14:55 Parting Thoughts 15:45 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:52 Support the channel

Commands I showed in the video:

Set krunner to open with the Super key: kwriteconfig5 --file kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta "org.kde.krunner,/App,,toggleDisplay"

Apply the changes (needs dbus, ovbiously): qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure

List all the things you can trigger with a shortcut: qdbus org.kde.kglobalaccel /component/kwin org.kde.kglobalaccel.Component.shortcutNames

Set the thing you want to open with the Super key:

kwriteconfig5 --file ~/.config/kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta "org.kde.kglobalaccel,/component/kwin,org.kde.kglobalaccel.Component,invokeShortcut,NAME_OF_THE_THING_YOU_WANT_TO_OPEN"

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:46 Sponsor: Learn more about the risks of EOL distros 01:58 Ubuntu 23.10 broke graphical deb installs 04:00 New GNOME Director seems controversial 06:11 OpenSUSE working on a replacement to Yast installer 07:57 COSMIC and GNOME updates 09:51 Drivers and performance improvements 12:29 Gaming News: HDR, low latency & Lutris 15:12 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:19 Support the channel

Ubuntu 23.10 broke graphical deb installs

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error

New GNOME Director seems controversial

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-projects-unexpected-ceo-choice/

OpenSUSE working on a replacement to Yast installer

https://linuxiac.com/opensuse-agama-installer/

https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/PH7R3Q36KUBBBV4COQ5ZLDCTJNODHC6N/

COSMIC and GNOME updates

https://blog.system76.com/post/locked-and-loaded-with-new-cosmic-de-updates

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/10/twig-118/

Drivers and performance improvements

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-DRM-GPUVM-Relicensed

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVK-Vulkan-XDC-2023

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-Ray-Tracing-2023

Gaming News: HDR, low latency & Nvidia wayland

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/10/nvidia-looking-to-hook-up-reflex-support-in-proton/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/XDC-2023-AMD-Colors-HDR

https://github.com/lutris/lutris/releases/tag/v0.5.14

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#privacy #google #android

00:00 Intro 01:08 The Phone: Murena 2 02:36 Specifications 05:17 eOS on the Murena 2 10:46 Price and availability 13:03 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:08 Support the channel

This isn't the completely finalized design, so the back of the phone, and the protection that came in the box aren't completely final and might change a little.

The very point of the Murena 2 is to offer a privacy focused phone: it comes with /e/ OS, and it has a privacy switch to disconnect the cameras and microphone, and another switch to completely shut off any connectivity the phone has. The first switch, for the camera and mic is a physical one: it completely shuts off the connection to the camera and the mic.

The connectivity switch is purely software, and will just turn on airplane mode and will mute your phone, so it's more a "big do not disturb" mode than a privacy switch.

It comes with a mediatek CPU, with 4 performance cores at 2.1Ghz and 4 efficiency cores at 2 Ghz, it has 8 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, plus a micro SD slot. It supports dual SIM, and the OLED screen is 6.43 inches and a resolution of 1080x2400, plus a hole punch cut out for the selfie camera, which is 25 megapixels.

On the back, you get 3 camera lenses, one is the standard lens, at 64 megapixels, one is an ultrawide, at 13 MP and one is a telephoto lens at 5 Megapixels.

It has a 4000 milliamp hour battery, with support for high speed charging at 18W, it supports Wifi ac and bluetooth 4.2, and it's 4G, not 5G.

They also say they have a 6 out of 10 on repairability, and they'll offer spare parts and schematics for easy repair. They'll provide 5 years of support for the software at least.

On the Murena 2, /e/ OS runs OK. It's not perfectly smooth, animations can sometimes jitter a bit, but generally, the experience is what you'd expect from a mid range Android smartphone: it's not high refresh rate, buttery smoothness, but it's definitely not annoying. In some apps, you'll definitely notice stutters, like in the App Lounge when scrolling, but navigating the phone is good enough, and video playback and games run well.

Haptics don't seem to be perfectly configured yet, as typing on the keyboard provides a very tiny sort of clicky rattle instead of a nice vibration, and going back using gestures also doesn't feel super tactile, but that's probably because it's a pre production model.

The 2 privacy switches work perfectly, with the one on the right toggling airplane mode and do not disturb, and the one on the left shutting down the camera and the mic, both have a little LED as well to indicate that these switches are on, although handling of that could be improved, as launching the camera app with the privacy toggle on, will spit out an error, instead of a smoother message indicating your privacy toggle is on.

Testing the phone further, the screen is really nice and bright, with very vivid colors, it feels pretty damn nice to use, but that's probably because it's OLED.

The cameras are pretty basic, the telephoto had a very hard time focusing on anything for me, but the other 2 worked fine, although you won't find the same kind of post processing you'll get on most Android phones, so your pictures might not look as sharp or well balanced as on, say, a Pixel or even a Samsung A series phone. The front facing camera, though, is pretty solid, and produces nice pictures all things considered.

The speakers are decent enough for a phone, they won't blow you away or anything, but they get pretty loud without distorting too much or at all. They are bottom firing, there's no "stereo" speaker using the earpiece of the phone. The microphone isn't great though, your vocal messages and phone calls won't sound extremely crisp.

With the kickstarter, the phone is 399€, without it, it will be 499€.

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: Thunderbird 01:32 elementary OS 7.1 released 05:14 Malware lands in the snap store 06:33 France wants to ban VPNs 09:01 GNOME weekly app updates 10:26 Plasma 6 updates 12:08 Gaming News: Proton and Linux marketshare 14:02 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:07 Support the channel

elementary OS 7.1 released

https://blog.elementary.io/os-7-1-available-now/

Malware lands in the snap store

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Snap-Store-Malicious-Apps

France wants to ban VPNs

https://www.techradar.com/pro/vpn/france-vpns-might-be-banned-amid-sren-bills-new-unreasonable-amendments

https://adguard-vpn.com/en/blog/vpn-ban-france-new-law.html

GNOME weekly app updates

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/10/twig-116/

Plasma 6 updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/10/06/this-week-in-kde-re-organized-system-settings/

Gaming News: Proton and Linux marketshare

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/releases/tag/proton-8.0-4

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-September-2023

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#Linux #security #cybersecurity

00:00 Intro 00:56 Sponsor: Proton Mail 02:32 Software and updates 04:04 Services and SSH 06:38 User management 10:10 Physical Security 11:35 SELinux, AppArmor, and firewall 14:04 Parting Thoughts 15:15 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:30 Support the channel

Password complexity tips: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2726217/how-to-enforce-password-complexity-on-linux.html

Tips to secure SSH: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-bsd-openssh-server-best-practices.html

The more software you use, the larger the attack surface for your Linux install is. It's always good to take a look at all the installed applications, and libraries, and remove what you don't use anymore. You can also remove packages that aren't linked to anything else and aren't used by anything.

On Debian or Ubuntu, for example, you can find these by running sudo apt autoremove

And on a desktop, you probably already apply updates, or your distro has auto updates enabled. But on a server, it's easy to let things slide, and forget to log in regularly and make sure things are up to date. I'm guilty of that myself.

And just like with packages, libraries, and apps, you should also make sure you only run the services you actually use. You can list all services running with:

systemctl list-unit-files

To stop a service you don't need, you can run

systemctl stop SERVICE

To stop the service from starting with the system, you can run

systemctl disable SERVICE

If you're on a server, the general rule of thumb is also NOT to run a graphical desktop on it. It will often be much more secure to use SSH to log in to the server remotely.

But you might also need to secure SSH first. If you have multiple users, make sure only the ones who need it have SSH access. To do that, you can edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and type AllowUsers then the names of the users that will actually have access to SSH.

Now, something that might be useful in general, for a server or a desktop, is making sure all the users are correctly handled. The first thing will be to disable root login.

If you decide to disable the root account, make sure at least one user has admin privileges though, or you'll have a system without any way to access any task with sudo. Once you're certain everything is ok, you can use the following method:

Edit /etc/passwd, and change the first line, by replacing /bin/bash, or whatever other shell root currently logs into, by /sbin/nologin (or /usr/sbin/nologin depending on the distro)

If you prefer, you can simply disable root login through SSH, so the account is still there if you want it locally, but remote attackers won't be able to login as root. To do so, you can edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and uncomment the PermitRootLogin line, and then set its value to no. Restart SSH with sytemctl restart sshd, and you're done.

To remove the ability to use USB, Thunderbolt or Firewire, you can add the following lines to their respective files (create them if need be). To revert this, just remove the lines that have been added in the various files by the commands.

Add: install usb-storage /bin/true to /etc/modprobe.d/disable-usb-storage.conf Add blacklist firewire-core to /etc/modprobe.d/firewire.conf Add blacklist thunderbolt to /etc/modprobe.d/thunderbolt.conf

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#homelab #nas #linux

00:00 Intro 00:28 Sponsor: Join a free webinar on data center automation 01:20 My NAS 02:34 Virtual machines 04:02 Plex 05:11 VPN 06:34 Cloud Photo Storage 07:56 Drive & backups 09:10 Shared Storage 10:12 What I want to setup 12:41 Settings 14:02 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 15:01 Support the channel

The first thing I recently started doing on the NAS is virtual machines. I installed Virtual Machine manager, and it's pretty easy to use, you just create a VM, you select how many CPU cores and how much RAM you want, you create a virtual disk, and you select an ISO from the NAS storage, and you're good to go.

Another thing I run is Plex. It's a media server. I store movies and TV Shows in there, and I play these from my TV, with the Plex app. Plex was available as a one click install from the package center of Synology DiskStation manager.

I also use my NAS to run my own VPN. Of course, you do lose the access to a foreign IP, and some privacy, since, well the VPN gets your home Ip address, so the same that your computer might have had.

I use the VPN server app from the NAS's package manager, and I used OpenVPN. Setting things up was super easy, I just had to export the config file, and import it in GNOME's settings, after modifying the file to add the domain name that my NAS uses as the IP, and I also had to open the relevant port in my router's config, of course.

Another thing I use my NAS for is to stop paying for cloud photo and video storage. I use SYnology Photos here. It's a nice little app that you can run on your NAS and on your mobile devices. What it does is basically the same thing as Apple Photos, or GOogle Drive: you open the app, it backs everything up to your NAS, and you can access them from any web browser, manage albums

Now, for the most original use of a NAS: file storage and backups. To do that, I use the SYnology Drive client, which is available on Linux.

I use this app to create a backup of my /home directory, to my NAS storage. I also created a sync task to sync the photos that came from my phone, to my NAS, to my computer.

I also use my NAS as a file exchange thingy. When I record something on a test laptop for a video, I store all the recordings on the NAS, and I download them back from the computer I'll do the editing on.

All the storage is also accessible through Samba, so I can connect to it easily from my local network.

Now there are a few things I would like to try and setup here as well. The first one is Nextcloud. I'm planning to use the Container Manager app to use Docker and install Nextcloud with that, on the NAS.

Another thing I'd like to do is automating a download of the latest videos from my youtube subscription feed, and to create an RSS feed for that so I can use any podcast client or app to watch just these videos.

Another thing I'd like to try is to setup Kasm Workspaces: it's a self hostable solution to run desktops, operating systems, or apps remotely, and stream them to a web browser.

I'm pretty sure I can install that using Docker on the NAS, and replace the Virtual Machines manager that Synology offers with something open source. It probably won't change my workflow all that much, but open source solutions are just more my jam, and it's a fun project to try and tackle.

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#Linux #mac #macos14

00:00 Intro 00:28 Sponsor: Take control of your internet connection 01:25 Desktop Widgets 04:19 Accessibility and Typing 05:42 Gaming 08:34 Animated wallpapers & screensavers 09:24 Hardware support 11:16 Browser profiles and presenter mode 12:32 We can still learn a few things 13:09 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux

With Sonoma, Apple grafted their iOS widget system to macOS. Of course, widgets are something we’ve enjoyed for a long while on KDE, starting with Plasma 4. But Apple’s implementation IS better in some regards.

Widgets can auto align if you want them to: dragging a widget close to another one you’ve already placed displays a white outline that will make the new widget snap in place, so everything looks tidy.

Something that is very, very difficult to do in KDE. Most widgets don’t have a similar aspect ratio, or size, and resizing them tends to be a finicky operation. On top of that, Apple offers multiple preset sizes for their widgets, and these can be changed on the fly. But these widgets are also a lot less functional than the ones we have on KDE.

They’re not really interactive: you can just click on them to open the related app. That’s it. No note taking straight in the notes widget, no clicking on a specific day in the weather widget. And there’s also no “user contributed widget directory”.

One new feature in MacOS Sonoma is a better autocorrect and predictive text system. Autocorrect can be a bit annoying on a computer, but the predictive text can be a game-changer, especially for those with disabilities.

On Linux, we have something called iBus typing booster, which does pretty much the same thing, but it is hidden in the input sources settings, and not an easy one click toggle. The way it works is also pretty distracting, as it displays a complete pop-up with word suggestions that flickers in and out of existence with each character you type.

MacOS Sonoma brings 2 main improvements for gaming: the first one is game mode, which does exactly the same thing as its Linux equivalent: it gives CPU priority to the game that's currently running, and also reduces latency for bluetooth controllers and bluetooth headphones, something that we DO NOT have on Linux, and that's been an issue for a lot of people.

The second thing is their game porting toolkit, which lets developers test their games on Apple Silicon macs. And this toolkit basically converts DirectX12 games into Metal Games thanks to a translation layer. It shares a lot of DNA with Proton, since it's based on Wine, and the same kind of translation DXVK does. Performance is no good yet, though.

Sonoma lets you set some animated screensavers, that represent a bunch of landscapes, cityscapes, even underwater scenes and Earth views. When you unlock your mac, this animation will seamlessly transition into your wallpaper.

On Linux, we do have animated wallpapers. Screensavers aren’t really a thing on Linux anymore, you can add them back.

Now in terms of OS compatibility, there's an important “feature” in MacOS Sonoma that we need to spotlight. Unlike Linux's broad compatibility, which supports a diverse range of devices of all ages, MacOS Sonoma adopts a more restrictive approach, narrowing down its compatibility to Macs manufactured from 2018 onwards.

Now, Safari can boast,of profiles to separate for example your work and personal browsing. They also now support web apps that can be pinned to your dock.. A bunch of web browsers on Linux can do that already.

FaceTime now lets you overlay yourself on top of the slides or screen that you’re sharing with others. This already exists as “presenter mode” on Microsoft Teams, which is available on Linux as well. And of course, as long as Facetime doesn’t have an app for Windows, no one will use it in a professional context, so what’s the point?

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#Linux #OpenSource #technews

00:00 Intro 00:38 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your Linux or Gaming server 01:37 SUSE will create their own fork of RHEL 04:06 Thunderbird 115 is now live, and it's awesome 05:45 Linux passes 3% market share on the desktop 07:21 Desktop environment updates 09:13 China has its own from scratch Linux distro 10:51 Google sued for scraping user data and violating copyright 12:51 Gaming News: FidelityFX, Meta's graphics library 15:11 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 16:13 Support the channel

SUSE makes their own 1:1 RHEL compatible distro

https://almalinux.org/blog/future-of-almalinux/

https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/keep-linux-open-and-free-2023-07-10/

https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/

https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

Thunderbird 115 is now live, and it's awesome

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/whatsnew/

Linux passes 3% market share on the desktop

https://linuxiac.com/linux-hits-3-percent-market-share/

Desktop environment updates

https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-skies-of-a-colorado-july-2023

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/07/twig-104/

China has its own from scratch Linux distro

https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-releases-its-first-open-source-computer-operating-system-2023-07-06/

https://news.itsfoss.com/openkylin-linux-os/

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-07-05/OpenKylin-becomes-China-s-1st-open-source-desktop-operating-system-1lcms33vj7G/index.html

Google sued for scraping user data and violating copyright

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/11/tech/google-ai-lawsuit/index.html

Gaming News: FidelityFX, Meta's graphics library, Yuzu

https://www.winehq.org/announce/8.12

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/amd-opens-up-the-fidelityfx-sdk-and-its-now-on-github/

https://www.khronos.org/blog/meta-uses-khronos-open-standards-in-new-intermediate-graphics-library

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#framework #laptop #linux

00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: 10% off your first website with Squarespace 01:35 Who are they? 03:45 Customization Options 05:10 Comparison with Framework 07:07 Design & Build Quality 08:53 Specifications 10:35 Performance & Battery life 11:51 Display, inputs, speakers, mic & webcam 13:41 Should you buy one? 14:58 Support the channel

NovaCustom Website: https://configurelaptop.eu/

NovaCustom is from the Netherlands, and they're specialized in laptops, you won't find desktop PCs in here. They put the focus on customization of your laptop to your exact specifications, they ship Linux out of the box, and they use coreboot.

They offer 3 years of warranty, and they guarantee spare parts availability for your device up to 7 years after your purchase.

They have 14 inches, 15 inches and 17 inches, the cheapest they have is 749€, and the most expensive goes up to 3900 euros but that's with all the options ticked

Of course, you can change the specs, but you can also add you own logo, you can change the boot logo, you can engrave the palm rest, you can pick between Windows and Linux, or you can ask them to create a dual boot.

You can choose yo use your own keyboard layout, in ANSI or ISO, change the look of the super key, change keyboard illumination, ask to completely remove the mic and webcam...

Framework goes further, since you can even replace the entire motherboard and keep the whole chassis, keyboard, panel, webcam and ports. They don't have as many models and sizes though, and until the 16 inch model releases, you're not getting any dedicated GPU options, and you're limited to 13 inches.

Novacustom is more about customization, repairability, and allowing users access to their own hardware, where Framework is more about keeping the exact same device, and making it modular, and allowing complete upgrades.

In terms of price range, Framework will be a little bit more expensive than NovaCustom for the same configurations, but they do have better panels, and newer CPU options, plus Ryzen options that Novacustom don't currently offer.

My review unit is the NS51 series, their mid range laptop. In terms of build quality, it feels very rigid, the hinge is super solid. The whole thing is pretty heavy, 1.7 kilos, and it's quite sturdy.

The only real issue I can see is the position of the power button, next to a USB port

All the spare parts are accessible for up to 7 years after your purchase, and they give you a complete service manual.

My review unit came with a core i7 1260P. In terms of I/O, on the right, you get gigabit ethernet, the ill placed power button, one USB 2 port, a micro SD card reader, and on the right, you have your barrel charger, an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, and 1 thunderbolt 4 and 1 type C 3.1 Gen 2 port. You can charge the laptop using USB C.

This laptop came with coreboot, with Dasharo firmware.

In terms of performance, the CPU gets a more than honorable 2498 in single core, and 7450 in multi core. As per battery life, this chip is relatively power efficient, it lasts for about 7 hours at mid brightness, wifi on, watching youtube videos in a loop.

Now let's look at the various things this laptop comes with. The display is 15.6 inches, 1080p, 16:9, 300 nits of brightness. It covers 98% of SRGB.

As per input, the keyboard feels pretty good to type on. They keys have good travel, they bounce back well, it doesn't feel mushy for a membrane keyboard, and it sounds pretty good. It's a good keyboard.

The touchpad is decent, it doesn't feel like glass, but it's smooth enough, large enough, and it feels precise. It did wobble a little bit and you can feel that when just using tap to click.

Now, the webcam is the usual potato quality fare, it's 720p.

The microphone is the same, it will be suitable for short video conferences, but it makes you sound distant.

And finally, the speakers, they're your average fare.

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#internet #ads #marketingdigital

00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks 01:32 The ad-based internet 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us 11:43 Three possible outcomes 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads.

To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone.

Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company.

All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work.

Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient.

And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome.

I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them.

As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them.

And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options

First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue.

This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go.

Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium.

It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose.

Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly.

This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.

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#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

00:00 Intro 00:38 Sponsor: Regain control of your internet connection 01:35 Ubuntu's new app store favors snaps over debs 03:36 GNOME 45 alpha is out 05:09 Fedora plans to add telemetry 06:59 Canonical takes control of the Linux Container Daemon 08:13 Ubuntu will let you pick the apps you want at install 09:39 Solus 4.4 and Budgie 11 news 11:24 Gaming News: Steam Deck wins Linux gaming, Steam beta 12:44 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 13:43 Support the channel

Ubuntu's new app store favors snaps over debs

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/ubuntu-23-10-new-app-store-deb-support

GNOME 45 alpha is out

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-45-alpha-is-now-available-for-public-testing-heres-whats-new

Fedora plans to add telemetry

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/55H3DT5CCL73HLMQJ6DK63KCAHZWO7SX/

https://linuxiac.com/fedora-40-plans-to-use-telemetry/

https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2023/07/05/endless-oss-privacy-preserving-metrics-system/

Canonical takes control of the Linux Container Daemon

https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/canonical-takes-full-control-of-lxd

https://linuxiac.com/lxd-containers-project-goes-under-canonical-wing/

Ubuntu will let you pick the apps you want at install

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/ubuntu-new-unified-install-plans-sound-meh

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/rethinking-ubuntu-desktop-a-more-thoughtful-default-installation/36736

Solus 4.4 and Budgie 11 News

https://linuxiac.com/solus-os-4-4-released/

https://blog.buddiesofbudgie.org/wayland/

Gaming News: Steam Deck wins Linux gaming, Steam beta

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/3666541770799548342

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/nearly-40-of-linux-gamers-on-steam-are-on-steam-deck/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-CPU-Linux-Gaming-67p

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#Linux #linuxdistro #operatingsystem

00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop or app to any PC 01:29 The Classic Linux Distro Model 02:57 Why it's broken 04:25 Distros are moving away 05:52 The new model isn't perfect, but still better 08:31 All other OSes do this 09:22 Why distros package apps in the first place 10:14 Universal Packages 11:40 You don't have a choice 13:32 Sponsor: Get a PC made to run Linux 14:27 Support the channel

This video was inspired by the following blog post, which echoed my sentiment and ideas exactly: https://www.ypsidanger.com/the-distribution-model-is-changing/

The distro packages the software for their users. Not the developers of the software, the distro itself. So the distro has a decent amount of control over what they offer, but the users of the distro don't, and the developers of the apps also don't. And this model doesn't really work.

On the surface, for users, it does work. You get a lot of applications from a central repo, and the system is generally pretty stable, depending on the distro you pick. But in the background, you have the thousands of orphaned packages that are still in the repos but aren't maintained. The old apps that can't be packaged at all anymore. The maintainers spending a lot of time repackaging and recompiling software that has already been packaged.

One might not like Ubuntu's snap packages, or Flatpak, or AppImages, but it's undeniable that most distros are moving towards them.

When Ubuntu moves Firefox and Chromium from a deb package to a snap, it's a GOOD THING. For Ubuntu. Because instead of having to package each new version of Firefox or CHromium for all currently supported versions of Ubuntu, they only have to package them once.

Same thing when Red Hat drops the LibreOffice RPM in favor of the Flatpak. Not having to package that behemoth of an app will free up time for Red Hat developers to work on HDR, improving Wayland, and supporting color management.

And moving the packaging of an app from the distro to the app developer means less time spent debugging stuff, and more time spend on improving the app.

So why did Linux distros start packaging software instead of app developers?

It was because there were so many different systems using the same packaging formats, deb or RPM or whatever else, but different libraries, kernels, drivers, and everything else, that app developers simply did not have a way to distribute their own software to every distro.

But nowadays, we DO have formats that let you distribute applications everywhere with one single package.

They lack some features, especially due to the sandboxing they tend to use, that limits how they can interact with other apps. Thing is, these formats are still under heavy development.

But the real question is: do you prefer staying on the current model where we stagnate, duplicate work, and where developers and users have no control over which version of the software is used, or would you rather face a few teething issues, but let developers improve their apps, and the whole of the Linux software ecosystem?

I know what I choose, and it's not these old packages. And presumably, if you stick to mainstream distros, like Fedora, Ubuntu, or their main derivatives, chances are you're not going to have a choice either. Because whether you like it or not, we're moving to Flatpak or Snap on most distros.

It's more efficient, and their current problems can and will be fixed. The duplication of work that legacy packaging creates is unfixable, it's a structural problem.

And of course, if you hate these universal packaging formats, I'm sure you'll still be able to find a lot of distros that will not move to them even in the future. You'll just be running the non official version of an app, just like what you're doing right now when using a distro's package.

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00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your Linux and Gaming server 01:34 Kernel 6.4 brings big AMD improvements 03:36 FOSS NVK driver makes good progress 05:07 GNOME fixes Wayland gaming 07:05 KDE Weekly Updates 08:24 SFC thinks Red Hat skirts the line with the GPL 10:16 New Installer might debut in Fedora 39 11:37 Gaming News: AMD driver improvements, Valve hiring, and more 13:46 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 14:47 Support the channel

Linux Kernel 6.4 brings big AMD improvements

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-P-State-Guided-Auto

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/06/linux-kernel-6-4-features

https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-kernel-6-4/

FOSS NVK driver makes good progress

https://9to5linux.com/open-source-nvidia-vulkan-driver-nvk-now-supports-older-gpus-new-extensions

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/nvk-update-enabling-new-extensions-conformance-status-more.html

GNOME fixes Wayland gaming

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mutter-Wayland-Gaming-No-Block https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3080

https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2023/06/twig-102/

KDE weekly updates

https://pointieststick.com/2023/06/30/this-week-in-kde-plasma-6-development-continues/

The Software Freedom Conservancy thinks Red Hat skirts the line with the GPL

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/

New Installer might debut in Fedora 39

https://9to5linux.com/fedora-linux-39-workstation-to-ship-with-a-more-modern-installer

Gaming News: AMD driver improvements, Valve hiring, and more

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/amd-radv-gets-feature-to-help-emulation-and-translation-layers/

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/valve-pulls-in-another-graphics-driver-developer-for-linux-gaming/

https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/2944

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#linuxmint #linuxdistro #linux

00:00 Intro 00:30 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop, or app to your browser 01:24 Touchpad Gestures 03:43 Look & Feel 06:26 Desktop & Apps 10:12 Internals 11:00 XFCE and MATE variants 13:35 Parting Thoughts 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:30 Support the channel

If you got used to the super smooth 1:1 gestures for GNOME or Plasma on Wayland, or even elementary OS on X11, you'll be disappointed here. Mint still uses X11, and their gestures act like keyboard shortcuts. You perform the gesture on the touchpad, and once your fingers have moved enough, the animation happens all at once.

Gestures are disabled by default, you'll be able to enable them in the new Settings panel. They are very configurable though, contrary to GNOME or KDE.

Mint 21.2 also changes a few things in terms of how the distro looks, or can look. First, instead of the endless list of selectable themes, in their dark or light variant, and all their color variants, you now get Styles.

The Style defines the theme you're using, for example MintY, Adwaita, or the older Mint X. For each style, you can pick mixed mode, where apps can be light or dark at the same time, dark mode, where every app that supports the dark mode preference will use it, and light mode.

And on top of that, you have a choice of accent colors, if the theme supports it, for example, there are no accent colors for Adwaita, or the High COntrast theme.

Folder icons are now longer the same color as what WIndows uses, they'll now use your accent color instead, which is much better in my opinion.

On the desktop side of things, the login screen received a lot of improvements, with support for multiple keyboard layouts that you can switch between, and support for tap to click as well.

The onscreen keyboard is usable there, and you can also configure the layout for it, and you can now more easily navigate this login screen using the keyboard and the arrow keys.

Once you're logged in, you can now resize the main menu, by dragging its corner or its edge, and you can now disable notifications for connected devices that have a low battery level.

As per the apps, the file manager, Nemo, now generates thumbnails using multi threading, which means it should be way faster.

The software manager got a small UI refresh, with the search field inline in a headerbar, with the hamburger menu moving there as well. The app pages also got a small redesign, with buttons in the header to install, and to show the installation source.

Pix, the image viewer, got a lot of changes, mostly due to its rebase on a new version of GTHumb.

Finally, Warpinator, the PC to PC file transfer program, was reviewed by the openSUSE team, and some security issues were discovered and fixed.

All Linux Mint editions are still based on Ubuntu 22.04, and they're all LTS, supported until 2027. The next base change will be when Ubuntu 24.04 releases, which means that in the meantime, you get the Linux kernel 5.15, and older Mesa and Nvidia drivers.

Now, for the XFCE variant, you get the same improvements to the login screen, the apps and the software manager, plus the new colored folder icons, tooltips and notifications, and the symbolic icon changes. You're not getting the Styles manager and selector though, and you're not getting the touchpad gestures either.

Still, you do get XFCE 4.18, which is a solid update over 4.16 that Mint used in the previous release.

As per MATE, it gets the same stuff as XFCE, so no gestures or style manager, and it's still on MATE 1.26, same as the previous Linux Mint release.

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Red Hat, their goal is to make money. Nothing wrong about that. I run a company, my goal is to make money. How you make money is what matters to people: is it ethical, or not. Are you selling your soul, lying, selling your community out, or not.

And now, it's pretty clear that Red Hat IS doing that. They're enforcing the signature of a license agreement when you create the account that lets you access RHEL, and that agreement is definitely against the values of free software, as it prevents you from redistributing or building your own product based on it

By the way, the legality of this is not something I can discuss, I'm not a lawyer, but there's clearly a potential contradiction between the license of the code, and what the license of the developer portal lets you do, so I guess someone will look into that

Red Hat lied, and they disrespected the open source community by saying "we contribute a lot, our 1:1 rebuilds don't, so we're going to prevent them from easy access to our work". That's completely against the spirit of open source and free software, there's no 2 ways about it

You can't build your own distro on the backs of upstream's work, and then refuse to do the same with downstream. Even if you don't see any value in it, someone does, it's not up to you to decide that, or you have missed the point of open source entirely

That's what companies like Microsoft do, or what Apple does: they prevent competitors from even existing, or from being as good.

The truth is, I think Red Hat just has lost the plot. Like Canonical did when they basically abandoned the desktop and all the projects they were working on.

They're acting like a rational capitalist company, which is NOT what the open source community wants. We hold companies that work in our sphere to a higher standard, and these companies are now failing to meet them

And the real problem isn't really how Alma or Rocky will survive, they'll have more work to do, but they'll manage with the CentOS Stream code. The real issue is that acting like that will in the end, harm Red Hat's business.

Why? The advantage of Linux is that it's open source. In enterprise, you want to combine that freedom to customize and tweak, and have many resources accessible to do what you want, but you also want support from a company that knows what they're doing, and can help in case of a problem.

And Red Hat flat out lying about how they'll handle things in the future makes them utterly untrustworthy for businesses: are you going to base your business decision on what a company said today, when they already screwed you over twice? No.

And you're also probably not going to stay in the ecosystem around these distros, because with these kinds of moves, you don't know if Alma or Rocky will still exist as-is in 5 years.

So, you move to community-run distros, and you start getting used to Debian, or Nix, or whatever else for your own stuff, you want to use that at work as well, and if you're in a position to push that, you'll do so.

Except in the long run this also hurts Linux. Because if Red Hat starts making less money, they'll hire less people, and contribute less to the linux kernel, GNOME, systemd, and other various systems

And this makes the experience worse for everyone, not just Red hat and red hat clones users. Everyone.

So, Red Hat: stop acting like a capitalistic company. You're not that, you work in a very specific industry, with very specific expectations, and a very specific feedback loop where the community, contributors, users, hobbyists, enterprise and companies all depend on each other. If you break the link somewhere, you're breaking it for everyone, not just you.

Start acting responsibly. Make your code public again. We expect better from you.

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#steamdeck #steam #linuxgaming

00:00 Intro 00:45 Sponsor: Secure your internet connection 01:43 What I wanted from this SteamOS Console 02:48 Console in name only 04:39 The specs 06:03 SteamOS / HoloISO: not easy 11:40 Performance: top notch 14:10 Not worth it, but I love it! 15:51 Support the channel

Fix for AMD GPU bad performance https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=271286

I went for a Micro ATX PC, which means that, yes, it doesn't look like a console, but it was easy to install the GPU, it has ample room for cooling, and it sort of fits in my TV cabinet, so who cares. It's a Tuxedo Cube.

So here I have an intel core i7 12700,. I have 32Gigs of 3200Mhz RAM, I have a 1TB PCIE4 SSD, with a 750W modular power supply. For the GPU, I got a Radeon 6650XT off Amazon for 300 euros. The total cost is a bit less than 1400€, which isn't cheap.

On it, I installed HoloISO, which had issues: First, the default kernel they pick doesn't work with a lot of hardware, it lacks support for a bunch of things, so I had no Wifi and no Bluetooth support. Fortunately, they also ship with the holoiso kernel, which is more mainline, and does support a lot more things. You can select it during boot, with GRUB.

So I turned to the controversial Grub customizer, that's a graphical app that lets you tweak your grub boot options. HoloISO, like SteamOS, is based on Arch, but they don't really ship a correct pacman config with the correct repos, so I had to manually edit the pacman config to add the necessary repos to it, and then run a full system update, followed by the install of Grub Customizer.

And it flat out didn't work, it couldn't open the grub config file. That's because that file is preconfigured with conditions to boot with specific options on certain devices. I just commented all these conditions, and then Grub Customizer managed to open the file, and I could set the HoloISO kernel as the default boot option.

All games ran at 720P max. Of course, a simple web search gave me the answer, it's because SteamOS is meant for the steam deck, but you can change all that in the game's properties to select the max resolution you'll allow.

Then, the performance was horrible. I couldn't manage 1080p60 in Spiderman at medium details, Jedi Fallen Order had to run at 768p on medium to even get close to 60FPS, it was a mess, and this system should have been able to give me a lot more.

After a few hours of looking online, I found a solution: some AMD cards on Linux run in low power mode by default, and don't move to full power when you need them to.

But how's the performance then? Well, I can play virtually everything at least at 1440P, max settings at a smooth 60FPS.

I've completed a full playthrough of Spiderman, also running at 1440p high settings, upscaled to 4K through in game FSR. I've played about 13h of Cyberpunk at max details, 1440p upscaled to 4K through the in game FSR, with sharpness turned to the max, and it maintains 60FPS no problem, even when driving around in the city.

I played about a third of Red Dead Redemption 2, also running at 1440p, high settings, upscaled to 4K through HoloISO, at a smooth 60 fps as well. Everything can run at 4K High details, from 50 to 60 FPS.

And so this makes this console a better performer than a PS5, because PS5 rarely runs AAA games at 4K60, generally, if you want 4K high details, you're using quality mode, and you're running at 30FPS, not 60.

The performance mode on PS5 generally runs games at 1440p, and either medium or high details.

Cost wise, compared to a PS5, it's very expensive for a marginal visual improvement. And yet, I love it, and I plan to play everything I can on this and not on the PS5.

Because it runs Linux, and I love Linux. It also works with an Xbox controller, which I prefer to the dualsense 5. Also, my game library is mostly in Steam these days. I can also start a playthrough on my TV, and then pick up my Steam Deck, make sure my saves are synced, and go play on that outside, or in bed, or on holidays.

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#privacy #linux #webbrowser

00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: Proton Mail, the private and encrypted email service 01:51 What's Browser Privacy 03:03 Google Chrome 05:14 Mozilla Firefox & LibreWolf 07:11 Brave 09:14 Tor Browser 10:51 Microsoft Edge 11:57 Opera 12:56 Vivaldi 14:07 What should you use? 15:05 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel

So, Chrome is THE most used browser in the world, on mobile, and on desktop. Out of the box, it doesn't have an ad blocker, or a tracker blocker enabled. To use that browser to the fullest, you'll also need to use a Google Account, and thus everything you do in your browser will be collected unless you specifically disable it.

You can disable a lot of things in your Google account and the web browser settings, but you'll need to download extensions to block the most invasive trackers and limit fingerprinting. Chrome is also not open source.

On Privacy tests.org, we can also see that Chrome has weak fingerprinting resistance.

Firefox has a good reputation for privacy, but it's not the best choice either. By default, it collects telemetry data, including how many tabs you have open, how many windows, how many webpages you visit, the number and type of extensions, duration of your browsing sessions, and some technical data on your OS, the version of the browser, the language, and your IP address in their server logs. Firefox can also use this data to recommend extensions to you.

In terms of protections, Firefox doesn't block tracking scripts or pixels but it does block social media trackers, cross site cookies, cryptominers, plus all tracking when you're in incognito mode. Firefox is open source, so you can be reasonably sure that it doesn't collect more than what it tells you.

If you like Firefox but you don't want the telemetry, and you want improved fingerprinting protection, then there's Librewolf.

Brave offers a lot of what you'd be able to do in another browser with extensions, but it does so out of the box. They call them "shields", and they block ads, trackers, fingerprinters, and cross site cookies by default. They also auto redirect GOogle's AMP pages to the "real" website, and they redirect tracking URLs so you're not even visiting the tracking domain at all.

The ultimate private browser is probably Tor Browser, but it won't be for everyone. Tor Browser blocks everything that the website might want to learn about you, so there's no tracking at all, and no fingerprinting, but ads aren't blocked.

Edge is based on CHromium, the base for CHrome, but they remove everything Google related from it, to mostly replace it with Microsoft related things, like a Microsoft account.

Edge, by default, has an opt-out for telemetry. It will block trackers from third party sites, and some ad trackers as well. It also collects "required" diagnostic data that can't opt out of, and this data is used to personalize ads from microsoft. If you use a microsoft account, you'll also give MS a bunch of data in the process, including device information, usage data, browsing activity, bookmarks and more.

Opera is yet another chromium based browser, which gets the worst results on privacytests.org. It has a unique fingerprint, and doesn't block tracking scripts, or pixels, it doesn't resist fingerprinting, it doesn't remove tracking parameters, and it also doesn't block the major tracking cookies.

It doesn't send "do not track" signals by default either. Their privacy policy also states that they might share personal data with third parties, which can be worrying, as Opera has been bought by a chinese consortium in 2016.

Vivaldi is also a chromium based browser. At first start, it will ask you what you want to block.

Vivaldi doesn't collect any data, browsing history or anything else, even if you use a Vivaldi account, because everything is encrypted in there.

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#nixos #linux #linuxdistro

00:00 Intro 00:36 Sponsor: Kasm, the best remote desktop tool 01:22 What is NixOS? 04:20 Using the configuration file 08:58 Nix Package Manager 11:03 Updating and unstable channel 12:48 Nix is way more than that 14:53 Sponsor: get a PC made to run Linux 15:58 Support the channel

NixOS is a Linux distribution that is completely and entirely reproducible. Everything you use is defined in a configuration file that is used to build your system. All the services, packages, options, partition layout, hardware, everything, is in this config file.

If you're a developer, your eyes might be sparkling right now: that's right, one config file to exactly replicate your entire development environment.

You also can never get into dependency hell. Packages all declare exactly which versions of each library they need, and these versions are all installed side by side and kept, not erased by newer versions.

To create your configuration, there's a main configuration file in /etc/nixos, called configuration.nix.

This file uses its own specific syntax, that is entirely functional: it describes everything the system uses and with which options, from the hardware, the bootloader, the services, the packages, the apps, the users, everything.

This file is then used to build your operating system. Nix will read everything in there, and install, configure, and enable or disable everything, based on what the file contains. So, if you build a nixOS system with the same config file as someone else, you'll get exactly the same system.

Once you rebuild your system, there are now multiple entries in the boot loader: one for the new build, and one for the old one: you can always roll back to the previous configuration.

Of course, all of this requires root access to edit the main config of the system. But if you don't have root access, or if you don't want to add programs to your main reproducible config, but just test them out for now, you can also install packages as a regular user, using the nix package manager. Or you can add flatpak to your config file, or run appimages. But installing programs will be mainly done using the Nix package manager.

The Nix package manager works on any Linux distro, but also on macOS, WSL, and more. It's preverytty easy to use. If I want to install, for example, OBS, I'll just type

nix-env -iA nixos.obs-studio

The -i is the argument to install, and the capital A is to tell the package manager to install using the specific name of the package, instead of looking through the whole repo, which is way slower.

If I want to remove the package, I can use nix-env -e obs-studio, and it will be removed. Note that installing packages with nix-env doesn't add them to the config file.

NixOS works with channels. By default, you'll use the Stable channel, with tested packages that get security updates only, and major feature updates when there's a new release of NixOS, every 6 months.

To update, you can just run the command

sudo nix-channel --update

This will pull all the latest package versions from the channel your system uses.

Then you run the "nix-rebuild switch --upgrade" command, and your system will grab every new version of every package, and rebuild the system based on your configuration file.

Important to note, the new version of a package is installed alongside the old one. The new versions are the ones that will be used, thanks to a simple symbolic link system that always points to the newest version of a package, but you can rollback to an older one.

To get newer packages, at the risk of having a less stable system, you can switch to the unstable channel.

Quick post to recap the #Fediverse tools I use (in case you’re interested):

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That should be it!

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#Windows #Linux #apps

00:00 Intro 00:42 Sponsor: Take back control of your internet connection 01:39 Managing Devices 04:20 Managing Services 06:15 Firewall Configuration 07:18 Device Security 08:41 Backup and Versioning 09:45 Advanced Configuration 11:15 Command line: not enough 12:53 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 13:55 Support the channel

GNOME Dconf video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLsj8plxBn0&t=901s

Device manager lets you see all the components of your PC, and the devices plugged into it. It lets you check for drivers, fix various problems, set some options, and view some logs related to your devices.

On Linux, this thing has no equivalent. We do have a third party app called HardInfo, but it's not an actionable application. In KDE, you have the same thing, with the Info Center.

Device manager is an important tool on Windows, and it would have a LOT of uses on Linux as well. I wish we had something like that.

Linux runs services in the background, for printing, bluetooth, network, virtualization, the graphical server or compositor, and a lot more things, generally managed by systemd on most distros.

And almost no Linux desktop has a complete graphical user interface to manage these services, turn them on or off, enable one at startup or not, or view logs related to this service.

On GNOME, you have an extension called systemd-manager, but no way to configure them, or select options, or enable autostart. On KDE, you have a services page in the settings, but you can basically just start and stop them, no other action is available.

As far as I know, only OpenSUSE has a decent services manager, that is baked into YAST, their configuration tool.

On Windows, the services app might look like it's 20 years old, which it probably is, but it lets you start and stop services, select if you want to start them manually, or at boot, or completely disable them, and it lets you set policies for various services failures, like restarting the computer, restarting the service, or opening another program.

Another thing that is not entirely available in our desktop environments is a graphical tool to configure the firewall, and general system security.

KDE has a config module in their settings, so that's handled. And yet again, OpenSUSE has a firewall config tool in Yast, which works really well.

For GNOME, there are third party tools you can install, depending on the firewall the distro uses, like firewall-config for firewalld, but these are rarely provided by default.

Linux desktops also don't really have an equivalent to the Windows "security center". GNOME has the basics of such an implementation, with their device security page, but it's not actionable.

Anyway, we could add here some information depending on certain libraries, apps, and kernels we use, if vulnerabilities have been detected, we could have access to the firewall settings, apps that have incorrect permission...

And then we have backups. A lot of distros ships with a third party backup tool, like Déja Dup, or Timeshift, but they generally only ship one or the other. We sort of need a complete solution that works ideally for both.

What I'd want is to right click on a file in my file manager, and have a "versions" menu item. What I'd like is a system settings option, native to the desktop environment, that lets me configure a backup, and restore it.

The windows registry is a horrible, horrible thing. It's illegible, it's super messy, modifications can result in a horrendously broken system, and generally it's better left alone. But it does surface a LOT of options for applications and the system. And not all Linux desktops have an equivalent.

GNOME has dconf, which has a lot of various settings you can tweak. KDE doesn't have that. Yast has a bunch of additional configurations available graphically.

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00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website with Squarespace 01:34 France arrested people for being private and using Linux 03:53 Windows 11 is losing users 05:44 System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware 07:27 Debian 12 is now out 09:04 BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros 10:53 Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations 13:17 Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, Proton updates 15:03 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 16:07 Support the channel

#Linux #OpenSource #TechNews

France arrested people for being private and using Linux

https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembre-le-chiffrement-des-communications-assimile-a-un-comportement-terroriste/

Windows 11 is losing users

https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-11-lost-users-this-month-should-microsoft-be-worried

System76 announces big updates to their FOSS firmware

https://blog.system76.com/post/major-updates-for-system76-open-firmware-june-2023

Debian 12 is now out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfgPmUsirs

BlendOS 3 offers a new spin on immutable distros

https://blendos.co/blend-os-v3/

Other news: Thunderbird beta, extensions support donations, Ubuntu adds quarter tiling, and staged releases for snaps

https://ubuntu.com//blog/release-management-for-snaps-made-simpler

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/06/ubuntu-23-10-window-tiling-feature

https://linuxiac.com/gnome-extensions-now-supports-donation/

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0beta/releasenotes/#whatsnew

Gaming News: Apple uses Wine and VKD3D, & Proton updates

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/proton-experimental-fixes-up-halo-mcc-ubisoft-connect-creativerse/

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23752164/apple-mac-gaming-game-porting-toolkit-windows-games-macos

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#Debian #Linux #bookworm

00:00 Intro 00:38 Sponsor: Check out TuxCare's newsletter for news about Linux security 01:24 Debian 12 Stable 02:17 Not completely FOSS anymore 04:24 Desktops: not that outdated 09:16 Apps and packages 11:14 Who it's NOT for 13:02 Debian 12 is a great desktop 14:33 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 15:25 Support the channel

KDE Plasma 5.27 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onPUaAKoGIM GNOME 43 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wefK40cjz9s GNOME 44 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZIHvACggs

So, to begin with, Debian 12 moves away from its pure "FOSS" roots. Debian 12 now enables the non-free firmware repo by default IF Debian detects you'll need it on your computer. Just know it's possible to disable this during the boot process.

Debian 12 actually splits non free software into 2 different repos: non-free, which is for packages and apps that don't conform to Debian's guidelines on free and open source software, and non free firmware, which is the same thing, but specifically for drivers and firmware.

Debian isn't generally known for shipping the very latest and greatest desktop environments, but Debian 12 isn't far off. For Plasma users, you get the very latest, KDE 5.27, with all its bug fixes and updates, which means you're not missing out on anything.

If you were using Debian 11, you were using KDE 5.20, so you're jumping a full 7 versions ahead, which means your experience will be drastically better, whatever your use case.

If you're a GNOME user, you'll get GNOME 43, which isn't the latest, but GNOME 44 wasn't a huge update by any means. If you were using Debian 11, you were on GNOME 3.38, which means you'll get a whole 4 new versions worth of features, support, performance improvements.

Of course, Debian 12 also updates virtually every single package and app they ship. You get the LTS kernel version 6.1, and you get the Mesa drivers 22.3, and the nvidia drivers 525.

All in all, 67% of packages were updated from Debian 11, and the repos now include 11000 new packages as well, for a total of more than 64 000.

Of course, Debian 12 isn't a desktop for everyone. If your use case is "I like using the very latest thing", then obviously, it's not for you. If you want the most beginner friendly distro, while Debian isn't a bad choice; it's also not the easiest. If you want to game on Linux, Debian will also not be your first choice.

In the past, I would never have recommended Debian Stable as a desktop for most users. It was too old, too outdated, the older applications in its repos were just not a great experience, and Flatpak wasn't super well supported. Older desktop environments were also lackluster, as each new release brought some crucial improvements that you really couldn't do without.

With the maturity of formats like Flatpak, snaps or AppImages, you don't have to care about what versions of apps are in your repos. If you need something newer, you can get it, without adding a third party repo that might mess up your system's dependencies and shared libraries.

And desktop environments on Linux are now very mature, which means using a 6 month to 2 year old desktop isn't a dealbreaker anymore.

And of course, Debian stable won't be for everyone. Tinkerers, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and people who like to game won't find what they want in Debian 12. But for anyone who just wants a computer that works reliably, day after day, without failed updates or stuff that randomly breaks, Debian 12 is an obvious choice. In terms of combining stability, software availability, and now, hardware support, nothing comes close.

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00:00 Intro 00:37 Sponsor: 100$ free credit for your Linux or gaming server 01:37 Tux got fat 02:18 Minix Creator did NOT like Linux 03:07 Linux was first to implement crucial stuff 03:52 Linux wasn't always under the GPL 04:32 Linux is the biggest software project in the world 05:07 Linux was almost called something else 05:51 Why is Tux Tux? 06:36 Linux has terrible codenames 07:16 Torvalds almost lost the trademark 08:00 Linux isn't just a kernel 08:24 Torvalds could have abandoned Linux 09:06 The other project Torvalds created 09:54 Linux runs Hollywood 10:35 Linux runs space 11:17 No science without Linux 12:07 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 12:56 Support the channel

Linux is known for being relatively lean and not using too much disk space, but compared to its first version, it's positively bloated. The first Linux release used only 65kilobytes of disk space. Today, a compiled kernel uses 5 to 10 megabytes, which is about 153 times heavier than the original release.

Linux was initially created as a Minix clone. The creator of Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum said, a few years later, that Linux was obsolete, and that GNU Hurd would supplant it soon enough.

https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html

Linux has also been first to ever support the x86 64 bit architecture, and Linux was also the first to have USB 3.0 drivers added.

The Linux kernel was also initially released under a custom license created by Linus Torvalds, which imposed restrictions on commercial use of his project, and on redistributing it. Fortunately for all of use, this didn't last long, and with version 0.99 in 1992, the kernel moves to the GNU GPL.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070826212454/http://www.tlug.jp/docs/linus.html

The Linux kernel is also the biggest software project in the world, with the biggest number of contributors and companies involved in its development.

The first name Torvalds landed on was Freax, for Free Unix. But as things happened, hosting that Freax kernel was initially done by Ari Lemmke, a member of the staff for Helsinki's university, and this person created a directory called Linux, because that was Torvalds's working name.

In terms of mascot, and the name of that mascot is Tux, not because penguins wear tuxedos naturally, but because it stands for Torvalds Unix. Why a penguin, though? It's because Torvalds was bitten by a penguin.

But the linux kernel also has codenames. For example, version 3.14 was called "shuffling zombie juror", version 4.3 was "blurry fish butt", and version 6.0 is "hurr durr I'm a ninja sloth".

https://handwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names

But also, the Linux name was almost lost to a trademark dispute. In 1995, someone named William R. Della Croce Junior, the most evil sounding name I ever heard, filed for a trademark on Linux. He then proceeded to send letters to various Linux distributors asking for 10% royalties, as the ultimate one person patent troll.

Steve Jobs offered Torvalds a job around the year 2000, with a sizeable salary, and a good position in the organization. The pitch was "work on Unix for the biggest user base". The only condition was that he abandoned Linux and stopped working on it altogether.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/3/22/2893581/linus-torvalds-linux-founder-turned-down-steve-jobs-offer

But Torvalds isn't just the creator of the Linux kernel. He also created Git.

Linux is basically running the film industry and Hollywood. The first movie to use Linux was Titanic in 1997, rendered using OpenSUSE, but it didn't stop there. Avatar's effects were rendered on Linux server farms. lord of the Rings? Linux. I Robot? Linux.

Linux also runs the space industry. And also, in the supercomputer world, Linux is the ONLY option. Out of the fastest 500 supercomputers, Linux runs 100% of them, or at least it did in early 2023.

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#Linux #linuxdistro #vanillaos

00:00 Intro 00:28 Sponsor: ME! 00:55 What makes VanillaOS special? 02:59 Install and First Run: user friendly to the max 05:08 What are containers? 06:19 How do you install software? 10:11 How are updates applied?? 11:18 Issues with VanillaOS 12:54 Is it the end of distro hopping? 14:12 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly 15:07 Support the channel

It's one of the very few Ubuntu based distributions that is immutable, and atomic. Apart from that, VanillaOS uses GNOME, the most Vanilla GNOME they could ship on Ubuntu, and if you're looking for all the apps, you have access to containers that run other distros at native speeds, and give you access to all their packages.

The installer is something I had never seen before, it looks super good, just like a GNOME app, and will take you through the basic steps, and it even has a nice legible GUI to set up your disk layout.

After installing and rebooting, you're right into your user session, and you can pick between dark and light mode, if you want to enable support for Flatpak and AppImages, you also get to pick the apps you want to install: you have 3 sets of apps, the core ones, Office apps, and common utilities.

After that, you get the GNOME 43 desktop, which doesn't have any customization or extension.

Now the main point of VanillaOS is to offer the ability to run multiple distros on just one system, with distro containers, using Distrobox. And to manage that, you have the VanillaOS control center.

You can add an Arch subsystem to get access to the AUR, a Fedora subsystem with DNF as the package manager, you get an OpenSUSE container, plus a VOid Linux one, and one for Alpine. Or you can create your own with any other distro you want.

APX is VanillaOS all in one package manager. It lets you install applications for any source that you have access to, including all your distro containers.

The syntax is pretty easy: you just type apx install, followed by the package manager that will perform the actual install, and the package name.

For example, if I wanted to install davinci Resolve from the AUR, I could type:

apx install --aur davinci-resolve

And APX will automatically start my Arch container, and use the arch package manager to install Davinci Resolve from the AUR.

And on top of that, apps installed this way will still show up in your GNOME overview and app grid, just like if they were installed on the base system itself.

And, if you absolutely need to install something to the base system, you can, there's a preinstalled tool called ABRoot, that lets you execute a command, like running apt, since the system is Ubuntu based.

Now for updates, Vanilla OS is not a rolling release, it has fixed releases that follow the Ubuntu release convention.

Flatpaks you installed through GNOME software or the command line will be updated through the same methods. System updates are handled by VSO, for Vanilla System Operator.

This does mean you'll need more disk space: at least 50 gigs to install the system, and the root partition you don't use. Containers and applications installed in them can be updated by running apx update in a terminal.

But there are issues: as I mentioned, if you need more software from multiple sources, then you need multiple containers. This takes up a lot of space. And if your container dies, so do all your installed applications, and related user data.

The second problem is the disk space usage of the main system: sure having 2 root partitions is great for stability, but it also consumes a LOT of disk space you'll never use.

I also noticed that apps installed from containers sometimes don't show up in the GNOME app grid, and you have to run an APX command to actually add them.

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#Linux #Windows #ux

00:00 Intro 00:35 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet connection with Safing 01:35 The Start Menu 05:34 How the start menu affects Linux desktops 06:42 Disjointed User Interface 08:55 Program installs and storage 12:22 System Updates 14:17 Windows design matters to Linux 15:53 Sponsor: get a PC that supports Linux perfectly 16:46 Support the channel

This is going to be controversial, but the Windows menu, or really the whole start menu paradigm is bad. This menu is used to start and open things. It's not a multitasking experience. So having a menu that occupies a small corner of your screen is not great.

The reality of things is that people are now just used to it. In Windows 11, the centered menu is a disaster, and once it's open, it's just a bad launcher. Apps are sorted chronologically, so if you don't know the name of a program, you're out of luck, and you can't create any folder that you could build muscle memory upon. And there's the case of opening multiple apps in a row. With the windows menu, you need to open it as many times as the number of apps you want to launch. Not efficient.

The issue is, this bad menu design affects Linux desktops. Because many distributions or desktops don't want users to run away, they mostly moved to a windows like menu.

We all know about the mismatched UI of Windows.The real problem is that people are now completely used to it. And for Linux, it means that UX, or just UI is not often considered.

Next, let's look at how apps are installed on the system. On Windows, while the store is progressively getting better, the main way to install a program is still to head over to its website, download an executable, and run it, then click next a few times, pick a location, and let the program install itself.

The files are stored in a single folder usually, with all the libraries the program needs, and the program itself in its own directory structure, that varies from program to program.

And this is a bad design. First, for security reasons. Storing executables and libraries and data in a single folder is a surefire way to have badly set permissions on these files.

Second, it makes finding the files you're looking for difficult. You need to learn each program's directory structure, and look online to find where the data is stored.

And this bad design on Windows also influences Linux desktops negatively. Because to this day, I still get people telling me it's easier to install a program on Windows than on Linux. Seriously.

The reality is that a lot of people don't understand how to install programs on Linux. They're so used to downloading them manually that they try to replicate this, and get super confused.

And a lot of newcomers to Linux just don't understand where the files a program uses live, because they're used to having them lumped into a single directory. The better way to look at it is: what type of file am I looking to access? And then this tells you the folder where it's been stored.

It's no secret that system updates are dreaded by a lot of Windows users. Windows updates have always been problematic, super slow to install, they require a reboot in most cases, and they can make your system worse than it was, so it's no wonder that many users are wary of these.

App updates are also handled separately from system updates. And people that moved from Windows to Linux will keep this fear of updates, because it's been drilled into them again and again that updates or even worse, major version upgrades, aren't a good thing. But they ARE.

And that negatively affects Linux desktops, because you'll get plenty of people who don't apply their updates and then ask for help about a bug that's been fixed already, or who stick to insecure software that has patches available. It makes the work of maintainers and developers harder.

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#rss #socialmedia #linux

00:00 Intro 00:40 Sponsor: Learn about kernel livepatching with this free webinar 01:45 Why social media sucks for news 04:04 What is RSS 04:55 Advantages of RSS 06:49 What can you add to your RSS reader 10:13 Choosing an RSS Reader 13:02 Use RSS, not Social media for your News 13:45 Sponsor: get a PC that runs Linux perfectly with Tuxedo 14:29 Support the channel

The big, main reason social media sucks for news is that they were never designed for that. All the big social media platforms have one goal, and one goal only: to keep you there for as long as they can, so they can show ads, and make more money.

On top of that, things you are subscribed to might also never be shown to you.

You can't really go back to older things, search through what you archived, sort it in a specific way, create your own organization system.

RSS works with 2 components: an RSS Feed Reader, and RSS Feeds. Feeds are what you'll subscribe to: they're just a simple file a lot of websites have, that can be read by the Feed Reader, which will aggregate all these feeds in one place. And RSS has TONS of advantages!

First, you'll only ever get what you subscribed to. There is no algorithm, no recommendations, no ads in between posts. And you can add a LOT of sources: websites, video channels, podcasts, social media accounts, and even newsletters.

Second, all feed readers have organization capabilities.

Third, you can sort things. Fourth, you can go back and search through older articles. Fifth, you can navigate super easily from one article to the other. And finally, it's portable: all readers will let you export and import your feed list.

RSS is all about adding sources, or feeds to your reader.

A lot of websites will display a small orange square icon, which is the RSS logo. Clicking the icon will bring you to the feed, or give you a URL you can copy. That's what you want to add to your feed reader.

But some websites don't have an RSS feed, or an icon to access it. No matter, most RSS feed readers will let you add any website URL, and automatically create an RSS feed for you.

If you want to add videos from a youtube channel, let's say a bearded french Linux content creator, most feed readers will also just let you copy paste the channel's URL and add it as a feed. On Peertube, it's even easier, just click the subscribe button, and you get the ability to access the feed.

You can even add social media posts if you really want to. Using rss.app, you can just copy paste a social media profile in there, and it will spit out an RSS feed you can add to your reader. And you can also add podcasts.

If you're really into RSS, you can also add newsletters. Using the website kill-the-newsletter.com, you can generate an email address and a feed.

The first thing you'll need to pick is obviously an RSS Reader.

If you want a single device solution, it's very easy. On Linux, Newsflash is the one I use. A few web browsers will give you access to an RSS Feed reader built-in, like Opera or Vivaldi, and Thunderbird also has the ability to do that.

If you want the simplest multi-device solution, Feedly is a good bet. You can create a free account, add up to 100 different feeds, create a few folders, and if you want to go over that, they have paid plans. They have mobile apps, and a web interface on PC.

There's also Newsblur, which does the same thing, and is open source, but the free version limits you to 64 feeds.

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#Linux #laptop #review

00:00 Intro 00:27 Sponsor: 10% off your website with Squarespace 01:22 Form Factor & Build Quality 03:57 Specs and Configuration Options 05:38 Performance Benchmarks 07:53 Aquaris: external watercooling 09:42 Battery life 10:30 Mechanical keyboard 12:44 Display 13:28 Port selection 14:30 Mic, webcam and speakers 15:31 Price and conclusions 16:56 Support the channel

No 2 ways about it, this is a big device. It has a 17 inch screen, 16:10. It weighs 2.8 kilos, and it's 38 cm wide, 27 cm deep, and 2.7 cm thick.

The chassis is made of aluminium and has literally no flex, no bend, no creaking. It also resists fingerprints really well, thanks to a soft touch coating on the inside of the laptop.

You're free to open it, and you can access and replace the 2 M.2 SSD slots, the RAM, the wireless card, and the battery as well, which is screwed in and not glued.

The CPU is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX. All models come with at least 16 gigs of RAM, and an RTX 3070Ti with 8Gigs of vRAM. You also get 250 gigs of PCIe3 SSD, and Wifi 6 + BLuetooth 5.2.

It can go up to 64 Gigs of 4800 Mhz RAM, up to 4TB of PCIe 4 storage, and, either an RTX 3080, or a 3080Ti. And all cards run at their maximum Total Graphics Power allowed by Nvidia,. You also get a 99Wh battery.

On geekbench 6, it gave me scores of 2121 in single core, and 10219 in multi core.

I ran the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark, at high settings, at the native resolution of 2560x1600, and it got me an average of 101 FPS. When cranking all the settings to the max, still at the native resolution, it managed to reach 97 FPS. At 1080p highest details, the Stellaris 17 got 110FPS.

It also gave me an idea about thermals, at 75 °C under heavy load, which isn't bad at all.

With its 99Wh battery, running in Nvidia on demand mode, with the display at 50% brightness, wifi being used to play youtube videos in a loop in Firefox, the laptop lasted for 8 hours and 12 minutes.

The keyboard uses Cherry MX ultra low profile switches. The key travel is really good, at 1.8 mm, and the click happens at 0.8 mm. Some of the keys aren't using mechanical switches, notably the function keys and the whole numpad, they're using membrane switches instead.

The touchpad is humongous. It's also thankfully centered, and it's covered in glass, so it's really smooth. It feels very precise, and using it with tap to click feels great.

It's a diveboard mechanism, so obviously you can't click everywhere on it, it has to be in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the sound it makes is satisfying and doesn't rattle.

The dislay 16:10, 17 inches, and it goes up to 240hz refresh rate. It is G Sync compatible, to avoid any screen tearing issues. It's decently bright, at 380 nits, and it has full sRGB coverage.

In terms of ports, on the left, you get the usual Kensington Lock, a USB-A 3.2 Gen2x1 port, a microphone input, and a headphone jack. On the right, you get an SD card reader, and 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports. And on the back, you have a port for the Aquaris external watercooling solution, a USB-C 3.2 Gen2x1 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Gigabit ethernet port, and a barrel jack.

Let's finish with the mic, speakers and webcam. The microphone is decent, but nothing to write home about. You'll want to run it at about 25% volume. The speakers get really loud, but they don't distort or sound tinny at all, they have a good amount of bass.

As per the webcam, well it's 1080p, and it can produce good results with decent lighting, but it's still a bit grainy even in natural light. It's just a small notch above the usual potato cam.

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This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro 00:31 Sponsor: 100$ free credit on your Linux or Gaming server 01:31 What is Mastodon, really? 03:07 How to create a Mastodon account? 05:45 How to access Mastodon 07:07 How to use Mastodon 10:11 How to interact with people 12:48 Learn Mastodon Etiquette 14:24 Find people to follow 15:55 The Fediverse 16:35 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 17:34 Support the channel

Mastodon is a platform comparable to Twitter, but open source, and made of plenty of servers, that talk to each other to form a single social network

So, how do you join? Well the first step is to pick a server. You have a handy short list on joinmastodon.com/servers.

Let's look at the interface. The first thing is your profile. To edit and complete it, just tap your user photo, and click the edit button.

You can also add links to your various other socials, and you'll notice that's where you can be verified. This implies having your own website: you copy a link to your mastodon profile into the code of your website, and you add the link to your website in your mastodon profile, and it will show up in green with a checkmark.

By default, your timeline, in the "home" tab on the mobile app will show posts from everyone you follow. The "search tab" lets you look for people to follow.

Then you have your post button, the black button at the bottom.

Finally, you get your notifications tab.

n mastodon, you have 3 timelines: your home, where you'll only see posts from people or hashtags that you follow, you have the local timeline, which is your community, all the people on YOUR specific server, and you have the federated timeline, which is a giant dump of everything that everyone has posted everywhere. I never use the latter, personally, but you might have a use for it.

When looking at what someone has posted, you have a few options. You can reply, you can boost, which is exactly like a retweet on Twitter: you're posting to your followers the message you're boosting, as is, without any commentary. Then you can "favorite" a post, which is that little star button.

Now, if you want to write a post, then you just hit the "post button" on the mobile app, or you start writing on the left column on the desktop.

Posts have a character limit, that your server sets. By default, it's 500, but it can be more or less.

You can add hashtags like on Twitter, by just typing the hashtag symbol, and you can mention people by typing the @ symbol.

Of course, you can embed images, you can also add polls with up to 4 options, and you can add content warnings. These are basically a filter that will hide the content of your post behind blur and some text. People will only see the text you wrote in the content warning, and if they want to see the actual post, they can click on it.

Finally, you can also pick who will see your post, either only the people you mention, which is the only way to make a direct message on mastodon, all your followers, or everyone.

You can edit your posts.

When writing posts, if you add an image, use the description, and fill it in.

Second, use content warnings liberally. Third, use the "sensitive content" filter for images liberally as well.

If you had a Twitter account, use Movetodon: you login with your twitter account, then your mastodon account, and it will look at your Twitter follows, find the ones that are on mastodon, and offer you to follow them individually, or follow them all in one click.

You can also use the local timeline, using the "local" tab on the web, or in the Search, then Community tab on the mobile app.

Next is using hashtags: you can follow hashtags on mastodon. Click on the hashtag, and then on the follow button.

Fediverse Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5npl2KCt2ok

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#android #samsung #googlepixel

00:00 Intro 00:29 Sponsor: Save 10% on your website or domain name with Squarespace 01:49 Hardware: too many bad choices 04:41 Why NOT Samsung Phones? 06:30 Why NOT Google Pixels? 08:14 Software Issues: nothing fits 11:18 Alternative ROMS? 13:35 What to use, then? 15:27 Parting Thoughts 15:55 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly 16:49 Support the channel

My preferences are: relatively small phone, very close to 6 inches, a high refresh rate display, 90hz or more, a capable camera array, preferably with a video portrait mode, and, the hardest one, I don't want a phone sold by a chinese company.

Let's start with the size. Current phones are just way too big. If I can't reach the top left corner with my thumb without shifting my grip, it's too big. Period.

As per the provenance of the phone, Chinese manufacturers are a red flag for me. It's not paranoia, but every chinese company is legally required to hand over all information about their users to the chinese government: https://www.techradar.com/news/dell-wants-to-cut-out-chinese-made-chips

I used Samsung phones for a long while. I started on the Galaxy S8, then I had an S9+, an S10e, then an S21. I ran the default Samsung ROM on some of these, and I find Samsung phones great. I even miss the curved edges screen.

My problem with Samsung is more in terms of reliability. All phones I owned from them had the exact same issue: after about a year, they stop recognizing my SIM card. This happened to EVERY Samsung phone I ever owned, so I'm done with them.

So that leaves Google, the Pixels are highly rated by people who use them.

But first, and it's subjective, I find them horrendous to look at. Plus, they're very unreliable. The first gen had severe performance degradation, the second one had a bad OLED screen that burned in way too quickly, and an easy to break USB C connector. The third pixels were plagued by software issues. The fourth pixels had a bad screen again, and a very insecure face unlock mechanism.

The fifth pixels seemed to have huge manufacturing issues with the screen separating from the main body, and almost right after launch as well.

The 6th one has issues with the fingerprint sensor not working well, the assistant could ghost dial random contacts, there was a screen flicker issue, so basically no quality control on that phone.

And as per the pixel 7, it looks like the camera glass is spontaneously cracking.

I'm sure I could look hard and long enough and find something that I'd enjoy, but Android is just messy. Samsung's brand of Android, called oneUI was pretty good, with a great design flair, easy to use with one hand, with major controls at the bottom of the screen, good gesture navigation, and looks wise, it was pretty good.

BUT it's riddled with ads in a lot of the default applications, and it's a mess of applications you can't remove. It's bloatware central.

If you go with Vanilla Android from Google, then you get something that is way more trimmed down, with only Google apps and services, but the design is horrible, in my opinion.

Which leads us to alternate ROMS. Graphene OS works on Pixels, and as I explained, no way I'm buying one, not with that track record.

Then there's Lineage, or /e/, my favorite one, which goes even further than Lineage in terms of removing Google crap, and has a very nice simple aesthetic that I find super pleasing.

/e/ is what I would use, if I could find a phone I like to use it on. My Galaxy S21 is in a drawer, and I'd love to use that with /e/. But I can't, because they don't support it.

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🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nick_thelinuxexp/ Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick I'm also on ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@TheLinuxExperiment:e And on PEERTUBE: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos

This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

#mastodon #fediverse #socialmedia

00:00 Intro 00:39 Sponsor: Extend the life of your Python applications 01:30 The Fediverse: a network of social networks 04:57 ActivityPub: all your social networks can talk to each other 06:44 How Mastodon works 08:33 How PeerTube works 10:19 How PixelFed works 11:39 Parting thoughts 13:02 Sponsor: buy a device that runs Linux perfectly 14:11 Support the channel

Join Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/servers Join Peertube: https://joinpeertube.org/ Join PixelFed: https://pixelfed.org/servers

PixelFed App for iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/5HpHJD5l PixelFed App for Android: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pixeldroid.app/

List of Fediverse services: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/

Fediverse is a contraction of Federated Universe. It's basically a very large network of servers that form, well, a social network. But contrary to the ones you might be used to, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others, the Fediverse is composed of different services.

The more well known are Mastodon, a Twitter-like microblogging service, PeerTube, a youtube-like platform, or PixelFed, an Instagram-like social network, but there are a TON of others.

Each service is also decentralized, which means there is not one big server farm where everything is hosted: each service is split into instances, basically independent servers, with different goals.

ActivityPub is an open standard, that lets all services on the Fediverse talk to each other. How does that work? Well, in practice, it means you can use your Mastodon app to follow a Peertube channel, or someone that posts pictures on PixelFed, or see new articles from a Wordpress website.

And this goes a bit further: for example, if I comment on Mastodon on a post from Peertube, that comment will also appear on Peertube underneath the video.

Let's start with Mastodon. Mastodon is basically Twitter, but open source and decentralized. It lets you post messages with up to 500 characters, it supports images, videos, polls, content warnings, animated avatar pictures, emojis, links, mentions, hashtags, anything you're used to on Twitter. Mastodon has 1.5 million active users, which might seem small compared to Twitter, but it's more than enough to have interesting conversations with a lot of cool people.

To join Mastodon, all you need to do is pick a server, also called an instance. You can pick any server you like, and it will let you interact with everyone else on any other server.

And then, you can use Mastodon on the web, by typing the address of your instance in your browser, for example, for me, it's mastodon.social, or you can use a mobile app.

Now let's talk about PeerTube. It's a Youtube alternative, although it's much, much smaller. Peertube is also decentralized, being split into different servers, that are federated together, so you can follow people from different instances and still have a complete subscription feed. It also supports ActivityPub, which means you could subscribe to my peerTube channel from a mastodon account, and have a post in your timeline every time I publish a video.

And as a creator, it also lets you sync your youtube channel to it, so you can auto-publish all your videos to Peertube in a few clicks, which is also a great help.

To watch peertube, just type the address of your instance in your browser's URL, for me it's tilvids.com.

Another cool service on the Fediverse is PixelFed. It's basically Instagram, without all the crap they tacked on lately, like reels, or lives. It's just pictures and videos. It's free software, it also uses the ActivityPub standard, so you can follow PixelFed users on Mastodon, for example, and it's ad-free.

It also lets you add filters, just like Instagram, or crop, resize, adding alt text, and you can use hashtags, locations, or create collections, basically photo albums.