welcome to episode 178 of this weekend
linux recorded live on december 4th 2021
from the destination linux network i'm
Michael Tunnell if you're new the show
this is the podcast that will keep you
up to date with what's going on in the
linux world and i'll give you my take as
a year plus linux user this week's
episode is just slammed with new stuff
to talk about so let's just jump right
into it for your weekly source of linux
good news
[Music]
this episode of this week in linux is
sponsored by digitalocean and by bit
warden
before we get started this week i just
want to let you know that i published my
reaction video for part two of the linus
tech tips video and of course by
greatest of timings the part 3 video was
released today
right before the show so i've been able
to
react or watch that at all so i will be
creating a reaction video for that
latest video but it will have to wait a
bit so i can do this show
so speaking of which let's do this show
up first in the show this week we have a
giant release to talk about and that is
blender 3.0 has been officially released
this version has been in the works for
years and it most certainly did not
disappoint in fact there's a huge update
to this open source 3d modeling software
cycles x project for example has put in
a ton of work for better performance the
the rendering has improved by at least
two times performance and even eight
times faster in real world scenes uh
more responsive viewport due to the new
scheduling and display algorithms
they've also added
upgrades to the open image denoise tool
which is basically improving the
preservation of details inside of
different models and there's also a new
option to reduce shadow artifacts that
often happen with
low poly models and off offset rays from
like the flat surface to match where
they would be for a more smoother
approach like sometimes they previously
you'd have some like weird artifacting
shadows that shouldn't be there and this
improves that to reduce them also
they've done a lot of other stuff like
time-based rendering limit eliminate
kernel compilation weight for amd hip
separate presets for viewport and render
sampling improved adaptive sampling and
so much more the list of things that
they have done in this latest release is
so massive that there is no way for me
to actually cover everything so but i do
want to cover a few more highlights
because there are some huge things in
this latest version of blender for
example they've done a lot of
improvements to the geometry nodes and
the text nodes for the text nodes for
example this brings a big milestone for
the text nodes which will allow you to
create complex editable text that also
supports real-time effects which is
awesome they've also made a lot of
changes to the asset browser so you can
now define folders as asset libraries
and in your preferences so you can load
your favorite assets anytime from
anywhere and you also have a new pose
library which is able to manage
character poses and easily switch
between the two to test things out and
that is also inside of the asset browser
now blender 3.0 also offers a brand new
set of vr controller based functionality
including the ability to visualize
controllers inside of the scene and the
ability to navigate one's way through
the scene in vr using controller inputs
just very cool they even made a joke
about they're one step away from running
blender inside of blender
so they've also made a lot of
improvements to the uh the rendering
like in the loading and saving and comp
of the compressed uh blend files that
they now it's much like magnitudes
faster than it previously was and this
is thanks to the z standard algorithm
used instead of the gzip that they were
using and they've made a lot of changes
to the user interface and it looks much
nicer it improves the contrast it just
looks more modern and it's just overall
a giant
giant update for blender and if you are
at all interested in doing 3d modeling
animations or any of that kind of stuff
then definitely check out blender i'll
have links in the show notes
up next in the show is the latest
release of the distro endeavor os this
is the atlantis release and it's the
first version that has a code name to it
this has a lot of changes that i want to
talk about first of all it has the
5.15.5 lts linux kernel
mesa
21.2.5 for the graphics drivers and
they've also decided to change the
default for audio and video stream
management to pipe wire which is
fantastic because the more and more
distros that are using pipewire the
better it's going to be and it's already
pretty awesome so i'm happy to see that
they've also made some changes to the
calamari's installer so if you are
opting to use butter fs file system you
will and you will now be able to use the
z std or z standard transparent file
system compression on both ssds and hdds
or ssds and hard drives
and also they say that they are looking
ahead at maybe doing some more things
like adding some desktop environment
options like lxde or uk ui along with
possibly restoring the deepened desktop
as an option for the installer and
they've also are considering the
possibility of making a gaming edition
like a gaming focused edition they say
that it's currently being explored and
that would be pretty interesting to see
what that entails if they were to do
that now another thing about endeavor os
is that they have this new feature
called a hotfix feature and it's been
added to the iso so the developers can
immediately push an a bug fix to the iso
without creating a new one so the hotfix
feature will start automatically in the
welcome app uh checking and then
downloading fixes before calamari's has
started this feature is available for
the this current release and onwards so
it's an interesting approach to
basically not have to rebuild the isos
just in case something happens they can
do it where as soon as you start the
system it checks for a hotfix applies it
and then starts loading calamaris and
that's pretty cool for those who are not
familiar endeavor os is a really
interesting distribution it's kind of
like the successor to entire ghosts for
those who are aware of what antaregos is
and it's essentially a way to
install an arch-based distribution that
has uh different options where you can
choose from from the installer different
des and different configurations and all
sorts of stuff so it's a really
interesting distribution and if you are
curious about you know trying out a
arch-based distribution but don't want
to go all the way into arch this might
be something to check out but also keep
in mind
because it's made based on arch it's not
for everyone but if you want to use it
to kind of like ease into learning arch
then it could be a good way to do that
as well and they also have a really
great community for support and help
like that
so i think that if you want to do that
then it would be a good option to do so
up next in the show is centos stream or
more specifically centos stream 9 was
released this week and this is a
continuous delivery distribution that is
the upstream to red hat enterprise linux
or rail now a lot of people look at the
continuous delivery part of it and think
it's a rolling release but it's not a
rolling release it is effectively a
stable release it just does things
quicker than rail because it is an
upstream two rail and centos stream is a
downstream to fedora and fedora has
stable releases so the whole idea that
people had with centos stream becoming a
rolling release is just not accurate
because i mean fedora is a stable
release distribution they do updates
frequently which is great in my opinion
but it also is considered a stable
distro so inherently centos stream is as
well because it is based on fedora and
cintastream9 specifically is based on
fedora 34
and then rail 9 we based on centos
stream 9. so
that's how that works there's a but much
better diagram that explains how
everything works i'll have that linked
in the show notes below but basically
before a package is formally introduced
into cintastream it has to undergo a
battery of tests whether it's automated
and manual tests there's a bunch of
those kinds of things to make sure that
it meets the standards for inclusion
inside of red hat enterprise linux so
it's not people who are looking at it as
like a rolling release distribution it's
not that it's much
much more stable than you might have
than you might think in fact it is a
stable distro
now each major release of streams starts
from a stable release of fedora such as
in centaur stream nine that it begins
with fedora for door 34 and then this
will be the same code base for
rail nine and one of the cool things
about the switch between centos linux
and cintastream is that you can now
contribute to centos
now to be clear people looked at centos
linux as being
a community driven project and it was a
community accessible project but it
wasn't really driven by the community
because it was a rebuild of rail in
order to be a rebuild of rail it has to
follow everything that rail does whereas
in this case it the
community can now actually contribute
which is before they they couldn't so
they had a process of you know months
there could be weeks or months between
releases between rel and centos and now
you have access to contribute to improve
centos as it's being developed and
that's just overall fantastic in fact
fedora apple or the extra packages for
enterprise linux is a special interest
group for fedora that creates and
maintains a high quality set of
additional packages for enterprise linux
distributions not just red hat
enterprise linux but also scientific
linux and others and this is really cool
because this one is based on centos
stream and because centaur screen is so
close to rel the work on apple can now
start rather than waiting for rail to be
released like it used to be when rail is
released then apple can seamlessly
transition to be based on rail instead
which is
unheard of in the enterprise world to be
able to have this much inc community
intere and integration and it's all
thanks to the change with centos so this
is one of the reasons why i think this
decision by red hat was a good thing
even if it was rolled out in a little
chaotic way
but ultimately i think this is great and
centos stream 9 is a great example of
why if you'd like to learn more about
this i'll have links in the show notes
below
up next in the show is the latest
release of nixos 21.11
nixos 21.11 is code 9 porcupine and it
has a lot of changes we're going to talk
about a few of them for example they
switch from ip tables to nf tables and
for those unfamiliar nf tables is a
subsystem of the linux kernel that
provides filtering and classification of
network packets they've also made some
changes for the kde plasma edition of
nixos and that is it now fully works on
weyland which is fantastic and they also
have had
added better support for lxd and they've
added a new service for backing up
butterfs sub volumes uh btr bk which i'm
going to call butterback
and they've also done a lot more in this
latest release
interestingly though they decided to not
uh release the latest version of their
nix package manager with this particular
release and instead are going to hold it
back for a future release for those who
are not familiar with nyx os you might
be wondering
what is nixos
and it's a pretty complicated thing but
i'll give a kind of an overview of it
they say that nixos is designed for
devops developers and tinkerers
and nixos is an operating system where
everything from the kernel applications
system packages and configuration files
are built with their own package manager
called nics or nix packages
and this is really interesting is the
way they do it is unique to their
structure now there are other examples
that are similar but this is a you know
rather interesting way of going about it
because all packages are stored in
isolation from each other and now this
is kind of cool but also can create some
pain points for example scripts
containing absolute paths would have
some issues you have to go in and fix
those scripts and nixos allows you to
define a desired system in a single
configuration file what this means is
that it basically makes it so that you
can
version control and also easily port and
migrate your system settings uh between
different installs of nixos very easily
which is pretty cool nyx packages also
doesn't run it runs as a non-root
installation so
basically what it does is that it allows
you to install packages without having
to be a privileged user which is pretty
interesting because it means that you
can bypass any of the problems that
running sudo on a script that could
cause issues wouldn't have access to
sudo so wouldn't be able to run those
privileges privileged permissions inside
of your system so it's an interesting
approach in that sense as well so it's
kind of effectively sandbox there so
nixos is a really interesting
distribution now keep in mind it is not
meant for everyone they said
specifically it's designed for devops
developers and tinkerers so if you're
not any of those you might not want to
check it out but if you are interested
in a more
you know customizable and complex
distribution then check out nixos in the
show notes below
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in linux
up next in the show let's talk about the
open 3d engine because they've had their
first stable release so this summer
there was a surprise announcement of
amazon's lumberyard game engine being
open sourced and being developed as the
open 3d engine and by the newly created
open 3d foundation as a part of the
linux foundation and for those who are
not familiar amazon's lumberyard has its
roots in the cry engine with a heavily
modified fork of cryengine so this means
that the open 3d engine
has well it's been only around for a few
months as a project the effort in
building this engine has been going on
for much much longer and the open 3d
engine 21.11 is the first stable release
of this game engine so open3d foundation
and companies like adobe
amazon web services huawei intel and
niantic are all involved in the creation
of this and they've actually released
the source code as well as binary
installers for those wanting to get
started right away on game development
which is great so and also for those who
are curious about the differences
between like the open 3d engine versus
godot godot is a 2d based game game
engine so if you want 3d functionality
open 3d engine makes more sense for that
and
godot makes more sense for people who
want to do 2d game engines
or create 2d games and what's also
really cool is that because it's based
on amazon lumberyard which is also
founded on the base of cryengine there's
a lot of power that this engine already
has the ability to do so while it seems
like it's the first release
it also is a pretty solid engine for
people to get started with in terms of
creating open source 3d games or just 3d
games in general now there's also a lot
of features that were added to this
latest release of to the engine
including performance profiling
benchmarking tools experimental terrain
system uh script canvas integration for
multiplayer networking and so much more
if you'd like to learn more about the
open 3d engine or the open3d foundation
i'll have links in the show notes below
up next in the show the heroic games
launcher has hit a milestone of over 100
000 downloads of the launcher and for
those not familiar the epic games
launcher is a way to basically have the
epic game store on linux so epic games
has been a roller coaster when it comes
to linux in some ways they do good
things like giving a mega grant to sdl
that we've talked about on a previous
episode of twill and in other ways they
are very annoying such as not providing
access to the epic game store on linux
even though the support would arguably
be trivial
one of the best things about linux is
the community of developers though who
are told they can't do something and
respond with hold my keyboard
heroic games launchers is one of those
projects the heroic games launcher is a
native gui epic game store launcher for
linux it also works on windows and mac
but you know
i care more about the linux part the
project has now reached a pretty big
milestone like i said they have got over
100 000 downloads and i just wanted to
feature it on the show to give them a
round of applause because they are
providing a very valuable valuable
project to the community so if you use
the hero at games launcher and want to
help fund its development they also have
a patreon that you can join and if you'd
like to learn more about this particular
project if you've never used it and
you're interested in trying out stuff
from the epic game store on linux you
can check out the heroic games launcher
with links in the show notes below
up next in the show valve has released
some images for the design validation
units and the this is the last stage of
the prototyping for the steam deck and
it looks pretty good so there's been
some changes since the ev2 version of
the steam deck although valve hasn't
been forthcoming as to what exactly
those changes are just yet but they are
showing some previews of the packaging
as well and this is promising because it
shows just how much care is being put
into this product with all the testing
plus the case is form fitting and also
looks pretty solid so
i'm looking forward to getting my steam
deck whenever
that happens because they pushed it back
and
made me wait more
but still
i'm excited to get it because the steam
deck looks awesome and if you'd like to
see the full-size
photos of this the design validation
units i'll have links in the show notes
up next in the show is a really
interesting initiative from fedora for
live streaming compatibility so it's an
initiative to make sure that fedora
workstation has the best out of the box
experience for software and hardware
used for live streaming whether that's
gaming or maybe this show and stuff like
that for those who don't know we do this
show live every saturday at 1 p.m us
eastern so join us in the live chat to
discuss the show and in topics in
between different segments and that sort
of stuff so again go to dlnlive.com to
join there uh there's also a partnership
with they're working on trying to create
partnerships with industries entities
outside of fedora that have an interest
in both upstream and downstream
enablement i am very interested in
helping improve that so i have joined
the effort myself and they also say that
as an initial effort they're pr they
probably want to pick a single tool in
each category and figure out how to make
it work well with the rest of the tools
as well and once they have a golden
standard defined then the other tools
can can work to fit that standard so
this also real quick this is a very
early days initiative so there's there's
been talk about it in reddit and stuff
like that as as it's already kind of
happening but this is something that
they are working to start and create so
it's it's very early days now i'm
putting it on the show to see if if
anybody wants to get involved and help
do testing or give their opinion of
different hardware and that sort of
stuff then that you can i'll have a link
in the show notes below for that or if
you'd like to learn more i have a link
in the show notes
this episode of this week in linux is
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up next in the show is the latest
release of ventoy ventoy
1.0.62 has been released and for those
are not familiar ventoy is a multi-boot
usb creator and it adds a new u web ui
plug-in configuration tool for the
latest release so vintoy is a tool to
create bootable usb drives by simply
copying the iso to the usb drive which
is very cool and it has support for as
many isos as you want it even has
support well provided that your drive
has space for the isos and it even has
the support to be able to do mixed linux
and windows iso files which is pretty
cool
ventoy also includes many different
plugins such as the global control
plugin persistence mode auto mem disk
password theme image list auto
installation and much much more the
latest ventoy
1.0.62 has added a new web ui plugin
configuration tool called ventoy plugs
on i think that's what they're calling
it that makes it easy to configure its
plugins which until now required you to
manually edit the ventoy.json file to
make those changes you can now do it in
this web ui much much more easily
eventuay also is uh is already basically
a useful project but it's impressive to
see like how much they keep adding to
the to the project to make it even
better like it was already cool to have
a multi usb boot tool that you could
just drag isos on and at that point i'd
be happy and they just continue to add
more and more value with all these
different plugins and now this new web
ui so much cool stuff if you'd like to
learn more about this app then you'll
find a link to ryan aka dos geek's video
on ventoy in the show notes below and if
you want to learn more about this
particular release i'll have links to
the release notes as well in the show
notes
up next in the show is the latest
release of crossover 21.1
for those not familiar crossover is
created by codeweavers and is a way to
run windows apps and games on linux it's
similar to wine in fact it actually is
made by the same people who work on wine
and the same people who work on proton
we'll get to more on that in a second
but crossover 21.1 now has added support
for working with grand theft auto 5 as
well as gta online and this support
works both via the steam client or the
standalone rockstar games launcher
crossover 21.1 on linux also restores
support for being able to run microsoft
outlook 2016 and the office 365 version
crossover 21.1 also has various chrome
os specific fixes and other general
fixes helping the likes of like ubisoft
connect and quicken software and that
sort of stuff and if you would like to
support the codeweavers team and get
crossover it costs only 60 per year and
essentially it's a way to kind of
contribute to wine and
you get crossover by doing it but you
also contribute to wine because they
help make wine and proton because they
help make proton so even if you don't
need crossover you could use it as a way
to contribute to both of those projects
as well so if you're interested in a way
to contribute monetarily to those
projects this is a way to do that if you
want to learn more about crossover or
codeweavers in general i have links in
the show notes up next in the show is
sdl
2.0.18 has been released we talked about
this on a previous episode of the show
when epic games got um gave a mega grant
to
sdl project and this is great because
this latest release has a lot of new
features and new changes uh we're not
gonna be able to cover everything and
for those who are looking for more
details you'll find links in the show
notes for that but i wanted to cover
some of the stuff because one there it's
interesting that they add this and also
too it's kind of funny the reaction they
gave when they announced it for those
unfamiliar with sdl or the simple direct
media layer it is a cross-platform
development library designed to provide
low-level access to audio keyboard mouse
joystick and graphics hardware via
opengl and direct 3d it is used by video
playback software emulators and many
many games
in some way or another sdl is used by
most games whether it is for input
access audio access or something
and what's new in sdl 2.0.18
is that it is now able to render
triangles
now that might not seem very uh
important but i wanted to cover it
because it is adding a lot of
value to the to the the sdl project but
also because there was a quote that from
ryan gordon who says we have finally
reached feature parody with the original
3dfx voodoo cards but he also says you
have to understand despite the gentle
teasing i've fought for years to prevent
this addition he says that uh he once
described it as the most hyped up super
nintendo you've ever seen
so the reason is because he wants to
create it like make it to be an uh
intentionally basic of an api so that it
doesn't become bloated or too
complicated and that kind of thing and
use it with integrated with other things
and this is more of a because someone
else provided implementation that was so
good he didn't have a reason not to
include it he did and i thought that was
pretty funny if you want to check out
the full uh explanation of why it was
added in the full story i'll have that
linked in the show notes as well as
links to the latest release of sdl
2.0.18
up next in the show is the latest
release of the zen project for the zen
hypervisor with 4.16 so the zen project
ships version 4.16 with a focus on
improved performance uh and security as
well as hardware support
so zen project
is an open source hypervisor and it
delivers on various different
performance improvements with this
latest release of 4.16 and they've also
improved the support for the trusted
platform module in working towards uh
tpm 2.0 compatibility and this is
important for supporting windows 11 at
through the hypervisor
also import initial support has been
added for arm performance monitor
counters as well as continued efforts on
the risk 5 support and many other
security improvements if you'd like to
learn more about the zen project or this
latest release i'll have links in the
show notes
up next in the show is the latest
release of tesseract 5.0 has been
released so in addition to being one of
the infinity stones tester act is an
open source optical character
recognition or ocr engine that supports
more than 100 languages for those
unfamiliar with ocr it's essentially for
turning images of text into actual text
so this is incredibly useful for those
who have a lot of scanned documents and
want to convert them into searchable
text it's very useful for that tesseract
5.0 also comes with native support for
apple silicon api improvements for its
library better arm support and much more
one of the main things i want to talk
about as well is a big highlight is that
tesseract 5.0 provides faster
performance via fast floats to use
floats instead of doubles now for the
lstm model training and text recognition
what this means is that it should result
in much much faster training in ocr
performance while also using less system
memory which is always good to hear if
you'd like to learn more about the
tesseract 5.0 release i have links in
the show notes
up next in the show is the latest
release of neo-vim
0.6.0 has been released most of the work
done on this release is back-end related
like scripting editions and improvements
api editions bug fixes that sort of
thing but they've also added a new flag
for colon terminal for external command
support which is pretty interesting if
you like to learn more about the latest
release of neovam or just neovam in
general you'll find links in the show
notes
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if bill feel free to join us live next
week uh on saturday at 1 p.m u.s eastern
or 1800 utc to see what i'm talking
about because we do this show live
every week it's on saturdays at 1pm us
eastern and you can check it out by
going to
dlnlive.com you can also support the
show by ordering the linux and
everywhere t-shirt or the this week in
linux shirt at dlnstore.com plus
while you're there you can check out all
the other great stuff we have hats mugs
hoodies stickers backpacks and so much
more at
dlnstore.com and if you like some
more podcasting goodness from me then
while you're there you can check out the
other shows that i'm on like destination
linux or hardware addicts as i'm a
co-host of both of those shows on the
destination linux network as well as the
all the other great content on the
network and thanks again for watching
i'm Michael Tunnell with the destination
linux network and i'll see you next time
for another episode of your weekly
source for linux good news
[Music]
you