Welcome to our news roundup where we serve interesting but week old compilation of news. So sit back and read our interesting picks.
Let’s start with Linus’s most favorite kernel release of the year, the big 5.8 release of the Linux Kernel a few days ago.
Omg Ubuntu summarized the release nicely and described new features : ”
- New AMD energy driver for Zen/Zen2 energy sensors
- AMD Renoir CPU temperature monitoring
- AMD Renoir ACP audio support
- AMDGPU Trusted Memory Zone Support
- Kernel Concurrency Sanitizer
- Boost support in the CPPC CPUFreq driver
- Open Source Adreno 405 / 640 / 650 GPU support
- Shadow Call Stack and Branch Target Identification for ARM64
- More exFAT driver improvements
- Thunderbolt ARM (i.e. USB 4.0) support
- Intel Atom camera driver
- Ability to swap fn and ctrl keys on Apple keyboards
- There is also also a swathe of some miscellaneous file systems, system architecture, memory, and performance improvements on offer. The kind of invisible meta-glue magic that holds your system together — now even better™.
A crop of ARM-based single-board computer and reference platforms gain support in this release, including the ODroid-C4, Mediatek MT8173 (used in various ARM-based Chromebooks), and the Renesas RZ/G1H.”
The Orange team has brought some LTS goodness
Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS has been released and now users of 18.04 can upgrade. A notification has been already issued and if you are currently using 18.04, you can upgrade to 20.04.1 LTS right now with the built-in updater.
This new released boosted many small additions on top of previous April release like
- Installer fixes
- Upgrade fixes
- Snap app update fixes
- Performance tweaks
- New fingerprint login flow
- OEM kernel support
- Wireguard support
This is nothing big, but lots of Desktop bug fixes have been issued, so upgrading is ideal for a smoother experience.
Although its a new release, Ubuntu did not add the latest 5.8 Kernel to the stack. Instead, you will be getting the same 5.4 version. It’s not gonna be a major issue, as the next release will have the latest kernel but I’m thinking what will happen if I install Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS on a new AMD 4000 series based laptop with Renoir GPU!
And on the other news, Linux Market share was dropped by few points. After a successful rise in the market share, it didn’t stay consistent.
Pinta got raised from the dead
Pinta is a simple program for drawing basic stuff, adding text, and icons on a picture. It’s like a Microsoft Pain alternative for Linux. But the development was stopped 5 years ago and it was mostly forgotten by the community. To be honest I never heard of Pinta until this year and I saw there is no update for so long. I never bothered for this reason.
But there you go, a Pinta update for the kids who want to draw rocket and baseballs in a paint program.
The UI is now tabbed, refreshed and you now have better layer options. There are some new tools like zoom and pan, smooth eraser, few bug fixes, and some new bugs. Yeah if you call that a feature. Overall I think it’s a nice piece of software for children and super basic users. I’ll try and see if it can help me create memes with it.
Libre office finally can be the long-awaited MS Office alternative
The release of Libre Office 7.0 came out with some major changes. This is a major release by the Libre office team and a great release for the fans. Thanks to AMD, Libre Office 7.0 now can utilize Vulkan and provide a better rendering of 2D graphics and charts with Skia.
Libre Office also comes with a new icon theme named Sukapura. But these are not anything big. The biggest change in Libre Office 7.0 is the new enhanced support for MS Office documents. In the previous versions, Libre Office used a compatibility layer for importing MS Office documents. Libre office now uses a native importer and its the fastest importer even used in Libre Office. Not only you can open and edit documents as you have done in MS Office, but now you have the ability to read files much faster and export documents with full support.
This means a lot for those who view and edit documents from MS Office or print them. Libre office does this by importing documents as a native 2010 / 2019 document rather than acting as Office 2007. Check the full changes here.
You can now use 1password native app on Linux (somewhat)
1password released its first development preview app for Linux desktops. You can install this read-only version right now. OMG Ubuntu summarized :
“1Password is a user-friendly (and rather popular) cross-platform password manager. It provides mobile apps and browser extensions for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox — and now a dedicated desktop app for Linux, too.
While this particular service is not free to use (beyond a trial period; plans start at $2.99/m) it has an attractive roster of features for its price, including unlimited password saves on an unlimited number of devices; 1GB document storage; item history (i.e. restore deleted passwords); and more.
The 1Password Linux app isn’t an Electron fudge either but a native app built in Rust. The app is said to “meet the security and performance expectations of Linux users” and includes full end-to-end encryption.
The client also boasts integration with the Linux desktop, including GTK dark mode setting, system tray, X11 clipboard sharing, and even biometric unlock.
- Dark Mode
- Network locations (FTP, SSH, SMB)
- Tiling window manager support and descriptive window titles
- Unlock with your Linux user account, including biometrics
- System tray icon for staying unlocked while closed
- X11 clipboard integration and clearing
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Data export
- Unlock multiple accounts with different passwords
- Create collections to organize data across accounts and vaults”
Someone made a MacOS 8 installation bundled with a VM for running inside current OS
Windows 98 and now the dev of it brought a new toy for the funlovers. You can now run MacOS 8 preloaded with file-sharing ability, Games, and some nostalgic apps in a single click-to-run bundle.
Wrapping up: What a wonderful week filled with new stuff and new changes. Some may be good, some may be bad, but hey. News is news. Here is what we discussed so far :
- Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS released
- Pinta got a new update
- Libre Office 7.0 released
- 1password for Linux native released
- And
- You can now run MacOS 8 inside your current system
Thanks for reading NixFAQ weekly news roundup, I hope you stay ready for the next week. Until then, stay safe, wear masks, and comment on what you think about this article.
