Linux Mint, Wine, COSMIC, PulseAudio, OpenSUSE, KDE & more Linux news

On this episode of TWIL (249), Linux Mint has released a new version of their distro. KDE & GNOME have announced updates to the next version of their desktop environments. A new version of Wine is out. openSUSE released a roadmap to the next iteration of Leap and System76 released a roadmap to an Alpha release of their new COSMIC desktop. All of this and more on this episode of This Week in Linux, Your Source for Linux GNews!
SHOW NOTES ►► thisweekinlinux.com/249
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Linux Mint 21.3 Released
02:46 Wine 9.0 Released
04:46 KDE Plasma 6 Update: Wallpaper & Release Candidate
07:10 GNOME 46 Alpha Released
08:27 GNOME Foundation Software Engineer Job Post
10:12 LINBIT
11:37 PulseAudio 17.0 Released
12:26 COSMIC: The Road to Alpha Release
14:17 OpenSUSE Leap 16 is coming
15:29 VLC Banned from Unity Store
18:40 XOrg Server and Xwayland Security Vulnerabilities
19:28 Framework Data Breach
23:29 Open-Source Community keeping Flash Player alive
24:27 Outro
SHOW NOTES ►► thisweekinlinux.com/249
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Other Videos:
17 KDE Plasma Features That You Didn't Know About: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJmzeqp8eJmkfNU
Gamify Your Life with Habitica, A To-Do List RPG To Get Things Done: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGSUf5iZg7mUiaM
5 Reasons Why I Use KDE Plasma: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mGGucml_qLRkg5o
7 Reasons Why Firefox Is My Favorite Web Browser: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHi3c3tvrtdrq9k
How To Use Firefox's Best Feature, Multi-Account Containers: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJexZn9rr6Z9i9E
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Thanks For Watching!
#Linux #TechNews #Podcast

[@act.13.41]

I was stunned at the number of great choices for the Plasma default wallpaper contest. I didn't know we had so much talent hanging around the place. My hat is off to everyone who put in an entry.

[@merthyr1831]

Honestly these competitions should be run for every quarterly version, and the top X non-winning entries should get a place in some wallpaper repo somewhere :)

[@act.13.41]

@@merthyr1831 I am not sure how many, but several of the runners up will be in the wallpapers folder. I know they limit the space taken up on the .iso, but still... I don't know how many followed my instruction and have uploaded their entries to the Discover Software Center. I hope many of them do. Hexworld, Supercute Community, etc. There are just so many that I don't want to see get lost in the forum.

[@humanBonsai]

The gnome job ad: its not a shift in culture, it’s because they have some money available. It’s amazing what some funding can do. If everyone in the Linux “community” just sent a dollar a month to a project they use there would be a lot more opportunities like this for developers.

[@michael_tunnell]

GNOME has had a lot of money available for over a decade. The GNOME Foundation has brought in over $200,000 USD every year since at least 2010. In more than one year they have brought in revenue of more than $500,000 USD in fact some years much much more than that. 2014 = over $870,000 2015 = over $640,000 2018 = over $1,000,000 2019 = over $900,000 2020 = over $925,000 2021 & 2022 were no where near as high but they had multiple years over $600,000 and 3 that were essentially $1 Million in income. I can not believe that they were only lacking funding

[@jfftck]

When Qualcomm announced the next generation of ARM chips that are high performance, I said that I believed that Linux will have better Windows compatibility on ARM than Windows will when the chips are released. With the WINE news, it looks like that might be the case. I can't wait for these chips and the outcome that will follow.

[@act.13.41]

I would like to see Cosmic on a Slowroll base. I don't know that I would leave Plasma for it, but I think Slowroll could be one of the best bases to put it on and develop from.

[@michael_tunnell]

That would be cool and certainly possible. System76 is making it agnostic to work on any distribution

[@fuseteam]

bug report: description: the viewport seems to randomly switch from side to front, seems quite random not sure what triggers it 🤔 will collect logs........:P

[@davey820051]

Yep, Wayland breaks everything😉

[@michael_tunnell]

LOL

[@aqua-bery]

I love having the latest gnews.

[@thundreturtle]

Ohhhh New camera angles :D NICE

[@michael_tunnell]

Thanks! We’re still working on it but I think it came out well. 😎

[@johanb.7869]

@@michael_tunnell You wanted to show us your good side😜

[@michael_tunnell]

@johanb every side is my good side so I would need a 360 camera for that :D

[@MegaManNeo]

The circumstances around Leap were so confusing for the longest time. I thought it was to be ditched and Slowroll to become its successor, which is what I have switched to onto my ThinkPad for work two weeks ago. I'm most interested in what COSMIC will be like, hopefully less of the mess that I consider GNOME3 is.

[@ari-mcbrown]

Not sure when you started with the camera angles, but it's a nice addition.

[@michael_tunnell]

this is the first episode with that new angle and thank you very much Ari! I plan to do some tweaks to it but so far I think it does add some extra dynamics to the show

[@johanb.7869]

He wanted to show his good side😋

[@vendetta.02]

ruffle is also written in rust, so security and privacy nerds rejoice!

[@lptimey]

I don’t know ruffle, so maybe it’s a privacy service/app but if it’s not what makes you think rust has anything to do with privacy?

[@homework8969]

@@lptimeymemory safety and null safety

[@vendetta.02]

@@lptimey rust is a very secure programming language, its also very fast, it has memory safety and null safety, its very modern ruffle is essentially an open source flash player clone written in rust, being written in rust, it is very secure and will have a lot less bugs in general than if it was written in another language (like C or C++)

[@lptimey]

@@homework8969 well yes that’s security, but that has nothing do with privacy. You can after all write secure and bugfree datakrakens. Rust isn’t stopping you from saving and uploading data

[@lptimey]

@@vendetta.02 1) again safety != privacy 2) ok that explains it

[@palanix3145]

Great video, I'll be subing to this channel! Do you have a PeerTube mirror? Also, pipewire doesn't sit on top of pulseaudio, it instead reimplements the pulseaudio interface but at it's core it's just pipewire.

[@michael_tunnell]

Thanks for subscribing! No I do not have a peertube instance because in my opinion peertube has issues. We do have Odysee channels for our stuff though. As for pipewire, I was explaining it in a 1,000 foot overview style and it doesn’t technically replace pulseaudio but explaining the nuance here would take too long. The creator of Pipewire is going to be joining us on my other podcast Destination Linux so we’ll get all the answers then 😎👍 destinationlinux.net

[@garynet20]

Nice video, thanks

[@BrianHellman]

Informative as always, thank you!

[@Your_Degenerate]

The second camera angle could make for a way to deliver joke punchlines, sarcasm and so on. A slight pause, switch to 2nd camera, turn to face it and follow through.

[@johanb.7869]

He wanted to show his good side😋

[@j.p.8248]

It's great that gnome is actually using the donated money for it's intended purpose, instead of misappropriating it like the Linux Foundation and Mozilla have been doing (see Bryan Lunduke's reporting for more info).

[@michael_tunnell]

First, GNOME has accepted donations for decades and this is the first instance I have ever heard of them using the funds for hiring a developer directly. This is not to say they are doing anything against the "intended purpose" previously but the GNOME Foundation has existed since 1997 and this is the first time I have seen them do this since I got involved in Linux in 1999. Also "intended purpose" is not quantifiable as people donate for a variety of intentions. Linux Foundation uses money to pay developers and they have been for decades, heck they pay Linus Torvalds, Greg KH, and others which are some prime and crucial examples of paying developers. Linux Foundation is not perfect by far but they also do a ton of good. The Mozilla claim doesn’t make sense to me. They have paid hundreds of developers over the years. Mozilla is also not perfect but really no one is and thus no company can be. No company or foundation has used funding perfectly . . . ever. Misappropriation is an illegal act of using an asset in a way that violates bylaws or authorization aka embezzlement for example. In some cases, funding can be misused or mistakenly used poorly but that does not constitute "misappropriation". Based on my research and fact checking of the source you mentioned, on multiple occasions over the years, I don't consider that source to be a credible one especially when terms like "misappropriation" are thrown around. Then there is the case of that individual crowdfunding money to join the W3C in an attempt to "fix it" but this campaign was based on false pretenses because an individual **can not** join the W3C, only a nominated representative of an member organization can be involved in the W3C. Plus the funding goal had no basis in reality because fees to join the W3C is different based on a wide variety of factors such as gross revenue of the organization, location of the organization and more. At best, this tactic of crowdfunding was disingenuous or lacked even the most basic level of research because a single Google search will show that an individual can not join the W3C within the first result.

[@michaeljaques77]

You don't eed to use "Edge" MINT, just change the kernel after install in the software manager, then View -> Kernels.

[@michael_tunnell]

There’s more to it than just changing the version, that’s why they made the edge iso to do the extra stuff

[@michaeljaques77]

@@michael_tunnell well edge is bleeding edge. But you can, much like Pop!_OS, run a reasonably stable OS with a modern kernel. That's all I'm pointing out. I'm running 6.5.x on LM 21.3

[@drakemallard6100]

​​@@michael_tunnellhmm, I am running both versions with kernel 6.5, haven't noticed any difference so far. Will read the docs what's the extra stuff.

[@michael_tunnell]

@michaeljaques77 yes a user could just change it to be somewhat newer but the average user looking at Linux Mint are usually not technical at all and would be scared to do such a thing. I think that’s one of the main reasons they made the Edge ISO. Also the Edge ISO is very far from “bleeding edge”. The Edge ISO is 6.5 and the current kernel is 6.7. In my opinion, the reason Edge uses 6.5 is because Canonical did the work to backport 6.5 to 22.04 LTS and Mint still relies heavily on Canonical for this sort of work.

[@xrafter]

Jokes in you michael, I knew Release candidates from minecraft.

[@guilherme5094]

👍

[@petar0402]

I'm not happy at all about double-click as the new default in Plasma 6. XFCE made enormous progress in last 10 years, now we have tabs in Thunar, for example.. and yet they kept defaults alone. IMHO, THAT'S GOOD WAY of progressing. Never change defaults!

[@michael_tunnell]

Double click was the default until it was changed 10 years ago. So in that sense it should have never been single click in the first place. But why is changing it to double click a problem in your opinion?

[@petar0402]

@@michael_tunnell didn't know that about KDE, tbh. I think that DE's should keep defaults because if you're customizing some DE it gets to be kind of a muscle memory, otherwise it's easy to skip some setting(s). Not a HUGE problem but it is annoying.

[@michael_tunnell]

I think it heavily depends on what is being changed and I dont think defaults are untouchable. I spent at least 7 years trying to convince KDE to make this change for default to be double click and the reasoning for that is because the vast majority of users coming to Linux for the first time are Windows users and the vast majority of the people who pick KDE are doing so because it looks a lot like Windows. This means that by having single click default they were creating a burden on the side of the beginner which causes confusion of things opening when they dont want it to and feeling super buggy. Double Click is the only practical option because it eliminates this confusion from the people who are least likely able to deal with something like that. Yes, this causes and issue for people who are already KDE users but they have already adjusted to the difference and know there is a difference so it would take them only a few seconds to see the change and turn it back to what they want . . . vs the beginner who would see it as a broken mess and give up on KDE and maybe even give up on Linux. Some defaults should not change, some UX paradigms should not be changed but there are certainly cases where something should change and in this case, I believe this to be the correct choice.

[@petar0402]

I agree. Tho' I'd like Plasma 6 to respect at least some of the settings from previously installed Plasma 5. That would be great.

[@merthyr1831]

I think it makes sense for KDE. They make a few odd changes to the UX considering the entire desktop is roughly similar to Windows. KDE is always going to give the option for people to move back, but it's nice as a more fresh Linux user to not have to change as many settings when i install on a new system!

[@johanb.7869]

First thing I do after I installed Plasma 6 is disabling the floating panel, because I just don't like it, and double click. Double click is not dope Michael😜

[@michael_tunnell]

Double click by default for beginners is dope 😎👍 I haven’t tried the floating panel yet but will in the next few days

[@johanb.7869]

@@michael_tunnell It's KDE so you can disable it😉

[@larrywatson3537]

audio at 18:40 got muddy

[@michael_tunnell]

it looks like the audio peaked accidentally at that point but then got better. I will look out for that next time, thanks

[@nicoloknapp8466]

5:23

[@blender_wiki]

Is so nice and relaxing have a good YT channel that give good news about Linux withou BS and misleading takes. Thanks 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

Sure Michael, you're going to love cosmic desktop so much you're going to leave KDE Plasma!🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 No you're not!!🤣

[@thundreturtle]

ahahahahahahahaha

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

@@thundreturtle I know you couldn't pry Plasma out of my hands without killing me first!🤬

[@michael_tunnell]

It’s possible, I like to try new things so you never know 😄

[@linuxviking]

👀KI Gold game cart

[@redguard128]

Software developer for up to 50.000 a year? Yeicks!

[@KemalALKIN]

I just discovered the channel and subscribed

[@michael_tunnell]

thank you for subscribing! much appreciated! I have a lot of plans for this channel in 2024 so good timing for subscribing :D

[@amigaworkbench720]

That KDE wallpaper looks like it's made with cheap outline filter. I guess laptop goes into "right" hands.

[@nowycwan]

Why you said pipewire does use pulseaudio? Pipewire was started as connection of Jack and Pu;seaudio due to limitation of both projects, so this is logically, it cannot use any of these.

[@michael_tunnell]

Pipewire basically sits on top of pulseaudio in some ways, just like Pulseaudio sits on top of ALSA. The creator of Pipewire is going to be a guest on our podcast Destination Linux pretty soon so we’ll talk about it

[@nowycwan]

@@michael_tunnell does it uses common source code, so pipewire is compiled from sources of pulseaudio, for example?

[@michael_tunnell]

no, it is not a fork. It is kind of like it uses pieces of it as a library of sorts. The developer will explain it much better than me so subscribe to Destination Linux :D @@nowycwan

[@nowycwan]

@@michael_tunnell Thanks. I'll wait. But, for clarify, I do not suggest it's a fork: rather I though It's like systemd-udev connection, when udev is compiled from this same sources as systemd. I wrote that these project could have common parts of code. But, as I wrote, I will be happy to watch interview.

[@act.13.41]

Wow! Flash is now open source. I can remember when it was not and was one of, if not THE most insecure pieces of software on the net. It finally got shut down so that achievement could go to Acrobat Reader. 🤣

[@michael_tunnell]

Flash is still not open source, this is an emulator that makes flash still work and that part is open source

[@act.13.41]

@@michael_tunnell Well, then I would still have nothing to do with it. I was a proponent of getting rid of it back in the day. It was just such a huge security flaw and target.

[@michael_tunnell]

I also was a proponent of getting rid of Flash. It should stay gone too. This is for people who dont want to lose old flash games they loved but also dont want to use something that is heavily flawed and is not maintained anymore. Ruffle is also not true Flash which is a good thing, instead it is written in Rust which adds many security benefits and uses WebAssembly too for similar reasons. This is a much better way to do it and it also lets people archive games they want to keep going. I dont get it but a lot of people liked flash games and didnt want them to die, this solves that.

[@JB-mn2gu]

Liked Linux Mint but could not get wifi working so had to abandon it

[@michael_tunnell]

What did you switch to?

[@gaiusbaltar7122]

I find this winning wallpaper very ugly...