Why I predict Chrome and Chrome OS will split with the roll out of version 94

We’ve been hearing more and more about LaCrOS in the past few weeks, and I think there’s a reason for that. You see, LaCrOS (Linux and Chrome OS, or a Linux version of Chrome running in Chrome OS) has been in the works for quite some time and even though we don’t have complete confirmation on what Google plans to do with it once completed, there are good reasons to think it is being developed with the idea that Chrome OS and the Chrome browser will cease to be a unified software moving forward. While we’ve posited that may be the case, it still hasn’t been 100% clear that Google will replace the existing Chrome browser on Chromebooks with a standalone, Linux-based version for all users. Instead, as we’ve considered, perhaps the plan is to put LaCrOS into play only when a device reaches the end of life. It’s a plausible scenario and one that could still happen, but I think a much more cohesive plan is in the works.

Shells virtual desktop cloud computers turn all your devices into Linux computers

Vim Which Key: Never Forget Your Key Binds

When you have a bunch of custom keybindings in Vim it's very easy to forget them, but what if we could see the bindings inside of the editor. We can do exactly that with a plugin called Vim Which Key, inspired by an Emacs plugin of the same name.

NVIDIA Proposes Mesa Patches To Support Alternative GBM Back-Ends - Phoronix

NVIDIA has proposed a merge request to Mesa that would lay the infrastructure for allowing alternative GBM (Generic Buffer Manager) back-ends to be loaded, such as for NVIDIA's proprietary driver should it presumably implement GBM in the future.

It looks like NVIDIA is finally taking the GBM route for supporting Wayland compositors with their proprietary driver... For years NVIDIA was against using GBM and instead proposed using EGLStreams. Some compositors like GNOME's Mutter implemented EGLStreams support but that has only been a mild success with Wayland compositors not liking that rather NVIDIA-specific solution while the open-source GPU drivers all support GBM. NVIDIA also was working on an EGLStreams back-end for KDE and more. The Generic Buffer Management interface is a means of allocating graphics buffers and can be used with EGL. Most Wayland compositors use GBM for their buffer handling given its an abstraction that works across GPU drivers.

Space station building sim Starmancer gets a Beta on March 31, pre-orders to stop

Ominux Games have announced their exciting upcoming space station building sim Starmancer is coming along nicely, and there's a Beta going up on March 31.

This Beta will be supported across Linux, macOS and Windows and will be available to people who pre-order before March 31 as that will be stopped after then, plus people who pledged for Beta access on Kickstarter also get access. The developer made it clear this is not a "fear-of-missing-out tactic", and to wait until the release if that's better for you. Likely it's just to cut down on the amount of reports to a manageable level.

Godot Engine - Editor improvements for Godot 4.0

If you are following me on Twitter (where I post my progress on different Godot features I work on), you might have noticed that I took a two month break from rendering to work on many long standing editor improvements and features.

While I am far from being the only contributor working on editor-related tasks, I put together a list of everything I have been working for the past two months!

Cameron Kaiser: The end of TenFourFox and what I've learned from it

I've been mulling TenFourFox's future for awhile now in light of certain feature needs that are far bigger than a single primary developer can reasonably embark upon, and recent unexpected changes to my employment, plus other demands on my time, have unfortunately accelerated this decision.

TenFourFox FPR32 will be the last official feature parity release of TenFourFox. (A beta will come out this week, stay tuned.) However, there are still many users of TenFourFox — the update server reports about 2,000 daily checkins on average — and while nothing has ever been owed or promised I also appreciate that many people depend on it, so there will be a formal transition period. After FPR32 is released TenFourFox will drop to security parity and the TenFourFox site will become a placeholder. Security parity means that the browser will only receive security updates plus certain critical fixes (as I define them, such as crash wallpaper, basic adblock and the font blacklist). I will guarantee security and stability patches through and including Firefox 93 (scheduled for September 7) to the best of my ability, which is also the point at which Firefox 78ESR will stop support, and I will continue to produce, generate and announce builds of TenFourFox with those security updates on the regular release schedule with chemspills as required. There will be no planned beta releases after FPR32 but Tenderapp will remain available to triage bugfixes for new changes only.

How one woman founder pivoted her company online while supporting small businesses

Eighteen years ago Susie Daly started Renegade Craft as a way to build a community of artists through in-person events. When COVID-19 and the corresponding shutdown put a stop to all in-person events, like art fairs, Susie had to quickly create a new strategy for her business. This plan involved seven virtual events, revamping an online shop for artists, cost-cutting measures, and selling a lot of face masks. Like most of us, Renegade Craft has been re-shaped permanently by the events of 2020. They will be continuing the digital efforts they pivoted to this year, but also hope to host their first in-person event in over 18 months later this year. Here’s how the business was able to move their community online, helping countless small businesses, when people needed it more than ever.

Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, and Ryzen SBCs run at -30 to 80°C with auto heat-up feature

DFI’s Coffee Lake based “CS551” 3.5-inch SBC features an auto heat-up function that enables a -30 to 80°C range. The feature also appears on new, Whiskey Lake based, 2.5-inch “WL051” and Ryzen-based, 3.5-inch “GH551” SBCs.

DFI has announced a 3.5-inch CS551 SBC built around Intel’s 8th and 9th Gen CPUs claimed to be the first Coffee Lake SBC with a -30 to 80°C operating range. The Linux-ready SBC is also claimed to be the first SBC of any kind with an automatic heat-up function.

The heat-up feature enables the -30°C minimum by automatically heating the CPU when it drops below the chip’s typical lower range of 0°C. On the high end, the systems supports up to 80°C instead of the usual 60°C in part by dynamically allocating computing resources between the CPU and GPU. On higher-TDP models, a fan option is required to achieve the range.

Design and Web team summary – 29 March 2021

The web team at Canonical run two-week iterations building and maintaining all of Canonical websites and product web interfaces. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work from this iteration.

Maybe will close down the EasyOS Forum

The fundamental problem for me is that EasyOS is a stop-start project. I go off onto other things, then do not watch over the forum as perhaps should happen. It may be that hiatuses will become longer duration in the future.

It is simpler to piggy-back on the Puppy Forum, as do all the *Dog distributions. It takes advantage of the guys such as 'rockedge' who maintain and safeguard the forum.

Another factor is that I visit the Puppy Forum regularly, and continue to find it to be a valuable resource for sharing of ideas within the extended "Puppy family". This cross-pollination is, I think, invaluable.

Counterterrorism Hackers Behind Large Hack Google Identified

We’re so conditioned to be wary of cybersecurity issues that we forget that white hat hackers and grey hat hackers exist. Even major tech companies like Google forget – or choose not to remember. The large hacking operation Google outed was actually being carried out by counterterrorism hackers.

[...]

China, North Korea, and Russia are often called out by hackers backed by U. S. rivals. Project Zero didn’t blame anyone when identifying the 11 zero-day attacks. However, because these originated from an ally, it caused some drama at Google.

Which ally was carrying out this attack has not been divulged, nor has the basis for the counterterrorism operation.

MIT Technology Review reported that Google might have left out those details intentionally. It’s not even clear whether the Project Zero researchers notified the hackers before they outed them in January.

Security updates for Monday

Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (awstats, busybox, dotnet-runtime, dotnet-runtime-3.1, dotnet-sdk, dotnet-sdk-3.1, gitlab, godot, groovy, libebml, mkinitcpio-busybox, openssl, python2, vivaldi, webkit2gtk, and wpewebkit), CentOS (firefox and thunderbird), Debian (pygments, spamassassin, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (CGAL, dotnet3.1, dotnet5.0, firefox, kernel, qt, and xen), Mageia (imagemagick, jackson-databind, openscad, redis, and unbound), openSUSE (evolution-data-server, go1.15, and zstd), Oracle (firefox, openssl, and thunderbird), Red Hat (flatpak), Slackware (xterm), and Ubuntu (squid, squid3 and webkit2gtk).