121: Linux 5.9, KDE Plasma 5.20, LibreOffice, Pine64 & More

On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got a monster of a show with so many great topics and even some potentially controversial stuff to talk about. We’re going to start off this episode with the namesake of the show, the Linux Kernel with version 5.9 being released. KDE announced the latest version of Plasma with version 5.20 and Pine64 made some really cool announcements of their own that I am so excited to share with you. LibreOffice published an Open Letter to Apache OpenOffice about what they think should happen with the future of OpenOffice. This one will be very interesting. We got a new release of Krita with version 4.4 this week. Later in the show we will talk about some Distro release related to 2 recovery distros: Redo Rescue 3.0 and Rescuezilla 2.0. Then we’ll round out the show with some Security News related to a Critical Bluetooth Vulnerability found nicknamed “BleedingTooth”. All that and much more comming up right now on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

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  1. Thanks, @MichaelTunnell, excellent show - as ever :slight_smile:

    I think Linux kernel development news is always exciting. The potential benefits of Btrfs support for Fedora’s adoption could be the start of a revolution, I’m guessing. If this works well I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more distros default to Btrfs in coming years. I personally get a little jittery about moving filesystems: if memory serves me correctly in the old days when I was mostly reliant on Windows, and they did the switch from FAT16 to FAT32 in the mid-to-late 90s, my heart was in my throat during the conversion process! I’m looking forward to continuing using Fedora in a VM though, and hopefully will find the Btrfs version works without problems.

    All of the upcoming changes in Plasma sound useful. As a user of Gnome who finds himself overwhelmed by settings in Plasma, perhaps they could use an approach where there’s an advanced button that gradually opens into the labyrinth of possibilities whereas the default are minimal options that most users are likely from wanting access to? Maybe they already have that? To be honest I’m too intimidated to click on Plasma menus/buttons unless I really have to because of the sensory overload that could result(!)

    I love the work being done by Pine64. When I was doing research in hardware/software codesign, I found it very hard to be excited by the hardware side, as software was my primary discipline up until Masters level. They’re the first company whose hardware excites me enough to want to look into it in far greater detail. I love that they’re supporting RISC-V - even if it’s in what we used to call a soldering iron in the old days - it’s a start!

    With the rescue discs, I’d also be interested in hearing feedback. I often tend to feel safest with the lowest common denominator, hence have relied on GParted and Clonezilla directly myself, for approaching a decade now. An established platform that isn’t as low-level but is completely dependable would be useful, I think.

    Edit:
    Good to see Debian and Ubuntu reporting Bluetooth problem fixed. I’m having trouble finding the security updates page for Fedora. Assistance appreciated if anyone knows where it is!

  2. Super good review! I solidly agree with the points pertaining to OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

    I can see how open letters tend to get a bad wrap for addressing issues, and I think the response from OpenOffice explains exactly WHY there still ‘technically’ remains an OpenOffice. :stuck_out_tongue:

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