Podcast (all): Download (Duration: 53:53 — 37.1MB)
A new Fedora release and big news from red hat, Stallman throws his weight around, 32-bit is dying, Snap store malware SHOCKER, email encryption is knackered, and do small distros stand a chance of making it big?
News
Red Hat to integrate CoreOS into OpenShift
Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Budgie drop 32-bit
The other flavours could follow suit
Malware found in (and removed from) the Snap store
Admin
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Entroware
This episode of Late Night Linux is sponsored by Entroware. They are a UK-based company who sells computers with Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE preinstalled. They have configurable laptops, desktops and servers to suit a wide range of Linux users. Check them out and don’t forget to mention us at checkout if you buy one of their great machines.
Can there ever be another big distro?
With the seeming demise of Void Linux and Korora, we ask whether small distros have any chance of surviving in the long term without an eccentric billionaire backer.
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Just to clarify, Void Linux is not going away. The announcement about the co-founder going MIA was not a surprise to the community; it was just an official confirmation of what was already known for some time.
The important takeaway from the announcement is that the community has been maintaining and running the distribution for the greater part of a year already and thus has demonstrated its ability to continue without the original creator of the distribution. Moreover, it is now ready to move on from the current limbo and work towards a more sustainable and stable organization.
Yes, there are administrative issues about ownership of domains and GitHub access, etc., but the day-to-day operations and the actual process of updating and creating packages have continued even in the absence of the original creator. In fact, the current model is now more sustainable because Void Linux has many more contributors (rather than a single main developer) and thus can spread out the load more (one of the sticking points about the GitHub ownership issue is that Void cannot add new contributors to the repository, so frequent contributors are stuck simply doing pull requests rather than directly updating the package repository. Regaining control of the GitHub repository would allow Void to add new developers, which have been waiting for access for some time.)
Can boutique distros survive? I think so. It just requires an active community, which Void Linux has and some organizational structure, which Void Linux is now moving to rectify.
Disclaimer: I’ve been using Void Linux for > 2 years on all my machines (laptop, desktop, VPS, rpis) and am a contributor to some of the packages, but not an official developer.
In my comment on the last show, my goal was not to defend GNOME but to remark that I couldn’t understand why Joe thought it was terrible, a catastrophe, an abortion, etc. Neither in #36 nor #37 did he give an explanation for why he used such strong language. In his comment on #36 and in this episode, Joe implied that GNOME is actually fine and it just doesn’t suit his personal preferences, but calling something a catastrophe and terrible isn’t typical language for that sentiment. On this show and the Jupiter Broadcasting shows, there has been some discussion of architectural flaws in GNOME that might make it an inherently terrible choice for a DE compared to the other options, so I’m not saying Joe is wrong to make those statements, just that when you make statements like that without explanation it will draw feedback from people who misinterpret or disagree with the tone.
I feel the same way Joe does about snaps. One of the main reasons I use Linux is because it is open source and everything being installed on my computer can be reviewed if need be. Part of this is the fact that a distribution maintainer has reviewed each package and integrated it into the distribution as a whole. I like having a buffer between my computer and the developers of individual projects. Confinement and ease of deployment are nice benefits of snaps, but I don’t look forward to a day when the distro repository is a mish mash of open source and proprietary projects being pushed straight from a wide array of developers to my computer. I don’t know the technical details, but I imagine there are limits to what confinement can protect against as well. A lot of applications will want to access the network and the file system, and that is enough for siphon away personal data. I hope snaps lead to something like the Arch model where there is a large official repository with many of the most popular packages and then another large community repository where anyone can publish anything.
By the way, what is the “another” referring to in the question “Can there ever be another big distro?” If you are looking at large community led distros, isn’t Debian the only one?
I agree, GNOME3 sucks.
I agree with Joe on desktop environments. Even though he is blunt with his opinion, it is so frustrating that Gnome is the default for so many distributions. Maybe if they ditched it, Gnome would realise how shit it is.
XFCE is fantastic. I also use cinnamon and I think that is the best desktop environment available.
Purely speaking as an end user, and not from a code perspective, cinnamon is the right balance between modern without too much/little configuration.
I always WANT to like KDE, but it feels like I am working on a unstable environment because of all the tweaks/configuration you can do. And the design feels unprofessional. Alignment, too much UI junk.
On the other hand, GNOME looks well-designed visually but is just shit. It really frustrates me why they decided to take away features and decide that a user doesn’t need them because their way is more efficient.
But their idea of efficient is based controlling the workflow via keyboard.
How can a desktop environment not show application icons like taskbar/dock by default without having to press super or move mouse to topleft.
I find it just reduces my speed so much.
Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha Ha ha . I can’t stop laughing about the fact that an XFCE user thinks Gnome is shit. I mean, seriously, XFCE? the CDE alike. “Budgie, okay”, jeez Joe put your hand in your pocket and get some decent hardware or at least an SSD. Perhaps you could try ms windows too if you’ve not got the skillsets to do any scripted audio conversion. You are sounding more like a dick every episode Joe! Please bring back the sensible Irishman. There is nothing wrong with being opinionated as long as you can back it up with facts.
★★★★★ 5 star comment!