not all change is progress
October 16, 2016
Direct download links:
MP3 &
Ogg
00:06:51 News
00:54:57 KDE Plasma 5.8
01:15:47 Feedback
01:24:51 Phoenix OS
With Joe and Jesse positively gushing over Plasma 5.8, this is clearly not your great-grandfather’s KDE. And sticking with the desktop theme, we also span up Phoenix OS, a properly windowed Android for your PC or tablet.
00:06:51 News
Global PC Shipments Declined for the Eighth Consecutive
Quarter
Lenovo in talks to buy Fujitsu’s loss-making PC business
Running Ubuntu on Intel Bay Trail and Cherry Trail
Devices
GCC RISC-V Support Allegedly Held Up Due To University
Lawyers
Mobile developers now top 12 million, and they can’t get
enough of Android
Cyanogen OS goes modular: Offers phone makers option to
license specific features
Video: Fireside
Chat with David Rusling and Linus Torvalds
Video: Lennart
Poettering: State of the Union/Portable Services
Here’s Everything Google Announced Today
Google may just have silently snuffed the tablet
computer
Many Android 7.1 features are Pixel-exclusive, and Nexuses
can’t get it yet
Verizon will control Android updates for Google Pixel phones
it sells
Pixel and Pixel XL: Google Declares War on Samsung and
Apple
Samsung just bought a potential Siri-killer from the guys who
originally created Siri
Samsung
– Collision course
Google is demoting Hangouts to “optional” in the Google Apps
package for Android, to be replaced by Duo
Google will ‘increasingly focus’ Hangouts on business
customers
Disappearing
messages for Signal
Wire, the Encrypted Chat App, Is Now Available for Linux
Apple to Block WoSign Intermediate Certificates
WoSign
Incidents Report Update — 7th Oct 2016
Remediation Plan for WoSign and StartCom
StartSSL certs are
now valid for 3 years
Black
Lab Linux is
going commercial only
Tim Berners-Lee just gave us an opening to stop DRM in Web
standards
00:54:57 KDE Plasma 5.8
With Jesse back running KaOS, Joe took another look at the KDE Plasma desktop in the form of KDE neon. And he found much to like, in particular the KDEConnect mobile-to-desktop bridge.
01:15:47 Feedback
A huge thank you to Patrizio Bekerle, William Mason and Peter Jones for becoming our latest Monthly Supporters — thanks, guys!
As ever, our conversation with friend of the show Rob Landley went down well, with praise coming in from Patrizio Bekerle, LukeVideo, Bacon Zombie and CubicleNate; and Rob got involved in the comments, writing lengthy replies to Will and Campbell Barton. A suggestion that we hear from somebody on the other side of the GPL enforcement debate was made by Will, and all we can say is that we’d be very open to that — so if Bradley or Karen are listening, do get in touch.
Jesse apologised to Dr M Majid Saleem on behalf of us all for overlooking his email about a short blog series he wrote explaining why he thinks that GNOME is the best desktop to run on a touchscreen convertible device.
Hauke Laging wrote to chastise us for suggesting that listeners ought to look around for a local event tied in with the upcoming Linux Presentation Day, and pointed out that perhaps we should have recommended they organise their own. Fair point, Hauke, but perhaps a little optimistic. As, sadly, was CubicleNate’s suggestion that if some of the big names in the Linux space could set their differences aside, they could come together to take on iOS and Android in the mobile space. A lovely idea, but one likely never to be realised due to der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen.
Joe ended the feedback segment by mentioning our affiliate relationship with Digital Ocean. We wouldn’t recommend a service if we didn’t use it ourselves and rate it highly; we do, and they’re great! So if you are looking for a cost-effective box in the public cloud with a big fat pipe out to the rest of the world, do give them a try with a free $10 credit courtesy of your Luddites.
01:24:51 PhoenixOS
We’ve looked at several OSs that attempt to turn Android into a usable desktop, but it’s fair to say that none have worked quite as slickly as PhoenixOS. That’s not to say that the provenance of Phoenix didn’t cause us a few issues, and both its symbiotic relation with Windows and lack of clarity on licensing also raise some big red flags. But we thought you’d like a glimpse of the sort of future that Google may have planned for us all, so settle back and hear how we got on with this properly windowing desktop Android.
In the last episode we had the issue of those poor
corporations and how the GPL punishes them for being
stupid.
Corporations who use GPL or BSD code are basically
welfare corporations. They want something for
nothing.
Again, I have no sympathy for the ‘oligarchy’…
Then we have this episode covering cell phones again, not
covering why we have no BSD licensed cell phones,,,
I guess the GPL has some kind of locking on cell phones..
Oh wait, the Iphone was build from that BSD stuff,
but, well never mind.
Anyway, the though just came upon me that if the Luddites
were using Nexus 7’s,,, it would be a one man show,,,
but would Paddy suddenly develop a mistrust and lack of
caring for Corporate needs should that happen?
Even if Joe and Jesse weren’t eliminated, they’d be
refugee’s as there are many place which wouldn’t allow
them with their Nexus 7 terrorist weapons. Those GPL’d
bricks of terror.
No control over your life if you have a corporation do
everything for you with a brick. Where’s the hobby in
this?
Should we bitch about not having a BSD licensed terrorist
weapon???
Paddy also has a Nexus 7, but isn’t available for foolish ROM-ing like Joe’s and mine are and hence didn’t feature in the review. So if I’ve read your post correctly, it would be a no-man show!
Speaking of abandoned Google products, it’s a pity the Google Graveyard at http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html isn’t updated regularly. There are follow-up articles ala http://www.pcworld.com/article/3131623/phones/googles-graveyard-8-products-google-killed-in-2016.html but no central place collecting them like that that stays up to date.
Google will do what Google wants to do but I find it increasingly aggravating when you get used to an application or service and have it ripped out from under you. This has made me increasingly hesitant to try something new… maybe becoming a somewhat grumpy Luddite myself…
That said, I am real slow to accept anything that isn’t open source or something that I can’t “OWN” a copy of because of the case where the service goes away that backs it. I still buy DVDs and the occasional VHS from a thrift shop and I especially buy real books.
Excuse me while sit on my front porch and yell at kids to get off my lawn.
One of the best tips how to handle security issues in your own devices – test Chinese operating system in your mates pc.
Sudo Wrong Password Delays.
I think this is probably because authentication is
usually set up to try various network authentication
protocols in addition to /etc/passwd e.g. LDAP. So if you
mistype the password Linux tries to go off and
authenticate you against all the various remote options
that are configured. In effect you are waiting for
network timeout before authentication finally decides you
have typed the wrong password. See http://www.linuxgeek.net/documentation/authentication.phtml
for a few more details.
Joe praising KDE? What kind of sorcery is this?
No GCC on RISC-V probably means no GNU/Linux on RISC-V
for quite some time.
Well, more BSD software running on a BSD CPU ;P
And BTW, the RISC-V instructions set is supposed to scale
up quite nicely.
And for Big Iron there’s still OpenPOWER* if you need
something that scales better SMP/SMT-wise than x86 ;)
*) George Greve’s “The POWER is open” talk: https://conf.qtcon.org/en/qtcon/public/events/458
Article about POWER(9) at ®: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/open_power_summit_power9
(This one via misc@openbsd ;))
Yeah but http://j-core.org support just got into -rc2 (I’m told vanilla finally boots to shell prompt out of the box), and that’s BSD licensed VHDL that works in a $50 FPGA board. Compiler’s supported it upstream for a while, https://github.com/richfelker/musl-cross-make builds a toolchain that targets it just fine (kernel and userspace build and boot).
Rob
You may want to take a look at the `acme-client`(https://github.com/kristapsdz/acme-client) recently imported Ingo OpenBSD. Just needs libressl with compiles as easily on Linux like Debian oldstable as the client itself.
But I think Paddy would rather boicot SSL altogether :P
Thanks for covering Phoenix OS. It seems you came to many of the same conclusions as I when I tried it. I’ve had to move on to alternatives, given the absence of the Play Store, but if that was available I’d probably be using it.
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