Fedora goes Atomic, COSMIC is Coming, Linux Kernel Security, Mozilla Refocusing & more Linux news

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On this episode of TWIL (253), Fedora has announced a new branch of their distro for immutable operating systems, called Fedora Atomic Desktops. System76 says we are getting close to an Alpha version of the COSMIC desktop. Then we're going to talk about Linux kernel security. Mozilla is refocusing on the Firefox browser while also doing some weird stuff too. Plus we have some potentially good news regarding AI and Patents. All of this and more on this episode of This Week in Linux, Your Source for Linux GNews!
SHOW NOTES ►► thisweekinlinux.com/253
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:48 Fedora Atomic Desktops
03:41 Mozilla's New CEO, Refocusing on Firefox & more
09:51 Getting Close to COSMIC Alpha
11:40 Sponsored by LINBIT
13:04 CVEs & CNAs for Linux Kernel
15:49 ONLYOFFICE 8 Released
17:13 LibreOffice 24.2 Released
19:21 Ubuntu Touch to change their Release Model
21:29 LineageOS 21 Released
22:56 "SandBox Mode" Proposed For The Linux Kernel
24:11 USPTO says AI models can’t hold patents
26:33 Outro
SHOW NOTES ►► thisweekinlinux.com/253
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Other Videos:
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Gamify Your Life with Habitica, A To-Do List RPG To Get Things Done: • Video
5 Reasons Why I Use KDE Plasma: • 5 Reasons Why KDE Plas...
7 Reasons Why Firefox Is My Favorite Web Browser: • 7 Reasons Why Firefox ...
How To Use Firefox's Best Feature, Multi-Account Containers: • Firefox Container Tabs...
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Thanks For Watching!
#Linux #TechNews #Podcast

[@thingsiplay]

The should rename Silverblue and Kinoite too, to: * Fedora Silverblue Atomic * Fedora Kinoite Atomic ... to have a consistency with the other Atomic names, while still retaining their identity.

[@michael_tunnell]

I think keeping our changing would be fine but if they change it then they might as well use GNOME and KDE in the names for better clarity

[@darsparx]

​@michael_tunnell yea some form of it would be great. I can partially understand why not but it's still confusing if you don't know it's part of that family under fedora. They definitely should've changed it 😅

[@Problematist]

At least on the website it says in big letters "The GNOME/KDE desktop experience you know and love in an atomic fashion." I think they will change it once the Atomic name catches on for the others so they won't have to change it twice.

[@thingsiplay]

@@Problematist If they want to change it, then now is the best right time for. The only people who would get confused are those who already know and use it. And they can adapt to it. But for new users, its a really bad decision to stay Silverblue and Kinoite. I even had to scroll up to see if I typed the names right. The website could still use the term "formerly known as Silverblue" in example. And I don't even understand why they don't add the term "Atomic" to them... Fedora team has really the worst namings, even when there is a chance to make it right!

[@michaeljaques77]

As a 2-year+ Pop!_OS user without distro hopping, I'm excited for Cosmic DE. But I know it'll be crunchy around the edges when it launches. I'm realistic that that'll it all will be ironed out eventually, and as long as there are no bugs in Wayland that make using NVIDIA GPU based systems worse than an X11 back-end it's a good thing. And yes, I'm well aware of the goings on, and NVIDIA fixing a bunch of Wayland bugs recently and that other distros already use Wayland by default, but the only thing that makes X11 any better is the years of cludgery that has made low-level graphics a smoother experience under X11 for games, and other GPU accelerated things. Wayland has less years of "cludge-polish" to make that experience smooth. Neither X11 nor Wayland is perfect, and X11 needs to die, but there will be pains as S76 pushes it's modern desktop experience forward.

[@daimarstein]

1:01 oh hey it's always nice to see the artwork I made around the interwebs ❤

[@michael_tunnell]

Usually I don’t use graphics from news topics because they aren’t typically very good but this was really good! In fact I used it in the thumbnail of this episode as well 😎👍

[@MRKRRNZ]

Pay the man his royalties!

[@kemzops]

I am really happy that KZbin suggested your channel, thank you for the amazing content.

[@michael_tunnell]

Glad you enjoy it! Welcome to the community!

[@AlejAndro-zg7bz]

MultiAccount Conteiners sould be already inside Mozilla Firefox , I agree

[@mestadtler]

Hey, nice post. I'd love a CVE primer that I could share with people. Also, totally agree everything you said about Mozilla You'd have thought that a real competitor for gsuite/workspace would be a no brainer.

[@obadonke]

+1 for video/talk about CNA and CVE system.

[@backhdlp]

Imagine Mozilla and Proton collab.

[@Little-bird-told-me]

*System76 is going to the most exiting event this quarter*

[@mx338]

Linux becoming a CVE numbering authority, is not so important because people falsely submitted CVEs, but more so because developers often submitted security critical fixes to the kernel, without submitting a CVE, so this will be much easier for them in the future.

[@michael_tunnell]

Thanks for the comment. You’re probably right, I was just trying to give an example of a reason why that could be understood by as many as possible.

[@zxuiji]

6:24, I know the name they should use, Mozilla Mascots, flexible enough to account for the Thunderbird vs Firefox and encourages using more funky animal based names for their products. I'll give an example if I think of one... and manage to find this comment again.

[@nadtz]

Cosmic let's go!

[@fuseteam]

fedora: I am atomic

[@oscs4556]

OpenSuse kalpa is still the best atomic desktop for me.

[@zeta_eclipse]

as someone who doesn't know anything about atomic distros, can you tell me how so?

[@oscs4556]

@@zeta_eclipse I setup my base image once and use mainly flatpaks for gui software. It’s pretty much maintenance free after that.I just use the laptop/desktop like an appliance

[@MithunKalan]

you think moz is going figure out a way to update without forcing restart of the browser?

[@michael_tunnell]

This is not really possible because a browser has so many moving parts and has to do a ton of things in order to work properly so I suspect restarts will always be needed for all browsers and probably forever

[@FrozenFlames243]

"sericea" sound's like some off brand pain killers also first to comment

[@acubley]

Do not use if allergic. Side effects include bleeding from left eye, stigmata, belief that you are the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, levitation, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

[@richardbennett4365]

I wouldn't say Atomic Desktops by fedora is a new family of spins. It's just as you later correct yourself, a rebranding by the Marketing team of the immutable spins that have already existed for some years now. There are even more made by the community, but onyx, silverblue, kinoiite, and sericea are fedora's official immutable spins.

[@richardbennett4365]

And what's more, this Marketing team still didn't get it consistent. Why say fedora sway atomic, but still hang in to fedora kinoiite, which as you remarked doesn't tell one anything about what it is, namely a kde flavor. It is still a mess. In fact, it's even more confusing with kinoiite and silverblue. Why aren't they called fedora gnome atomic and fedora kde atomic, respectively? ??? 😮😢😢

[@michael_tunnell]

The first sentence of the announcement post states it is a new family: "We are happy to announce the creation of a new family of Fedora Linux spins". They had these editions before but they didnt consider them a collected effort of immutable editions before. The new family is correct because it is now a collection that they are officially recognizing as a purposeful effort. I agree that Silverblue and Kinoite should not keep their name. I understand their reasoning for keeping it because they are well established but I also dont think its much value to keep them. I think it is much more logical to just rename them all to be consistent and clear for what they are.

[@pekahon]

I don't believe anymore these linux major distro announcements. Usually new distros have new icon and desktop backround image. The rest is m8stly same crap than before. X and so on... nothing that cannot be installed existing distro.

[@daneberryman]

Mozilla is starting its death spiral

[@yavener]

Hope Mozilla will not go down! This fk*** 1-day CEO's came and start to declare their vision and ideas and leave to another place as CEO or board member. True leader must be with company at good and especially bad times, not like that. This stupid policies especially in EU cannot trigger progress, only reflection.

[@AyaWetts]

I don't really like it being called atomic... all that keeps popping in mind is, at least its thread safe... How really does being an immutable distro have anything to do with being atomic? NOt really an expert on immutable distros and why the term would fit

[@ianakotey]

Since updates are a single image, they either succeed, or nothing gets done. That's what makes them atomic In order to me atomic, some "immutablility" of the base system keeps things nice and stable, but the disteos are not really immutable

[@AyaWetts]

@@ianakotey That makes sense, thanks!

[@jamesvandamme7786]

What do you think about Brian Lunduke's latest rant, "Linux Sucks 2024"? Specifically, that the Linux press etc. hasn't covered lots of embarrassing topics of 2023?

[@michael_tunnell]

I have not watched his content in a very long time and I do not plan on watching his latest update of a series he claimed he would never do again. His "Linux Sucks" series is worse for Linux than anything he says in it. He brags about how many views he got on it, while ignoring that people use him as an example to never use Linux because he is supposed to be an advocate who says it sucks. His series is doing the opposite of what he claimed it was for and every year without fail even after he claimed he would stop, he continues to make them.

[@zawiasfx]

7:50 id argue, Brave is better ;)

[@BarafuAlbino]

I moved from Brave to FF-based Floorp. Brave is too secure for its own good. It logs you out of the pages that you haven't visited for a few days, or a few months. The delay depends only on the way the page stores the login data, so the user has no control over it. And the flag to turn off that feature does not work. Also, buggy vertical tabs.

[@michael_tunnell]

I like brave but that’s why I said “best for me” so I can’t be wrong lol

[@zordanxxx]

I lost faith in Firefox a long time ago.

[@michael_tunnell]

what do you use now?

[@thingsiplay]

If its really that long ago, Firefox has changed and got good. I use it since version 1 and saw its ups and downs. It's basically the only free browser that is not based on Chromium. I don't count Safari.

[@rigierish3807]

Because there is any other browser on this planet in which you can put your "faith" in? Chrome spies a hell of a lot on you and is Google. Edge same, and they're really pushy with its adoption, especially on Windows (thankfully I don't use it anymore). Vivaldi is ok but too little customization and privacy focus, and it's a fork of Chromium, which isn't very great for addons. Opera? Come on, it's a giant chinese spyware (the CEO is a multibillionaire chinese). Let's be serious for a sec. Safari has the advantage of not being based on Chromium, but it's exclusively on Apple OSs and when I was able to test it in a MacOS VM once, I quickly realized I had to give up any form or customization or addon. So straight up into the MacOS trash can. Brave is the only rival that could stand next to Firefox, because it has very good built-in ad blocker, fingerprint randomizer and JS blocker, but isn't very customizable (especially for the JS). Some people criticize it for its crypto and NFT which a lot of people don't like. But the main problem is that it's still a chromium-based browser. Firefox (with its forks) is the only browser that isn't based on or straight up chromium, isn't a giant spyware, is actually privacy focused, has decent performance and has more than enough freedom to have wonderful extensions. What could you ask more for?

[@FOSSuser]

Would prefer a Debian focused pop, enjoy using pop with Ubuntu. I just would like to get away from Ubuntu.

[@michael_tunnell]

Why is that?

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

I had an atomic desktop once! It was great until it went into meltdown and vaporized my monitor! I had the worse sunburn in my life!

[@acubley]

Extreme exfoliation...

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

@@acubley First I was like😐then I was like🥵

[@acubley]

@@Bob-of-Zoid I was thinking the face melting scene in Raiders myself... 😱

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

@@acubley Now that was one cheesy movie! The whole series is silly, but that's a good scene.

[@zxuiji]

9:06, It's still an addon because there's people like me who don't buy into all this cloud bs and stick to having a backup copy of stuff on an external hdd/ssd (realistically it's normally the ssd). What exactly was wrong with just keeping device based preferences separate? You're not gonna want the same preferences on your mobile vs your desktop because your not an idiot... or are you?

[@michael_tunnell]

First, if something is included by default does not mean you have to use it so it’s irrelevant if it was there by default. Not including it by default means a lot of people will not know about it and it is by far good enough to be included. Secondly, multi account containers has absolutely nothing to do with data storage, in the cloud or otherwise. So your argument is not valid or related. This is about being able to be logged into the same website with multiple accounts at the same time. It also has a bonus feature of being able to lock down some websites to not be able to track you as easily such as the Facebook Container forces all Meta owned websites into one container so they can only track you on their own stuff. This is dope. Third, just because someone might want something to work differently than you do, does not make them an idiot. I don’t understand why an insult needs to be thrown just because of difference of computing preferences.

[@zxuiji]

@@michael_tunnell Putting aside my mis-understanding about it being for the cloud (of which I'm grateful for the correction, plan to go install it soon), why would you want the same settings on your phone as your desktop? Sure SOME settings are nice to sync but as far as I'm aware it's always set to sync every setting which is what I was getting at people being an idiot for wanting synced. For example font sizes and DPI settings, I always find the same size font on a mobile is much tinier than on a desktop screen. That's very much a setting no sane person should want synced. That's the kind of reason to not want cloud support for settings if the cloud support is only going to make the experience WORSE than just doing it the old fashioned way, manually configuring the settings.

[@michael_tunnell]

For me it depends on the application as to what all I want sync'd. I might not want my browser to have things sync'd that much but with other apps I may want more sync'd. For example, my note-taking app is completely sync'd as much as possible so all the plugins and stuff I used on desktop is available on mobile as well. As for Firefox, I dont sync anything at all, not even my bookmarks. It's all a personal preference and I don't think personal preferences should be judged as idiotic or otherwise. In my opinion, there is no way to be wrong on personal configuration. There are ways to be wrong on some computing things like having bad passwords but what configuration a user wants to have is up to the user. Defaults are important and should be carefully considered but personal preferences are whatever the user wants and no matter what they want as their choice, it's their choice and that's fine.