0:02

Hello, and welcome to Linux Action News.

0:05

Episode two hundred and sixty seven recorded

0:07

on November sixteenth twenty twenty two.

0:09

I'm Chris, and I'm was.

0:12

Hello, s? Let's do the news.

0:13

Let me start this week

0:15

with the release of fedora thirty seven.

0:18

with Genome forty three, and now

0:21

official support for the raspberry

0:23

pie four. And you

0:25

know that caught my attention. The

0:28

work to officially get fedora on

0:30

the Pie four has been going on for

0:32

a number of years. And I think one of the main

0:34

issues was the lack of accelerated

0:37

graphics. So with

0:39

V3D now upstream and

0:41

included Infidore thirty seven,

0:44

that problem has been solved. So

0:46

I gave it a go recently on my Pie four

0:48

hundred. And that's the one that's a raspberry

0:51

pie built into the keyboard. And even though

0:53

I was using a USB thumb drive, so I

0:55

load times for some applications aside.

0:58

I still was seeing some of the best performance on

1:01

a pie yet. The GTK

1:03

interface just really felt like I was

1:05

on a standard desktop. The elements when you click

1:07

them the way the windows draw really

1:09

snappy. I think the fedora project has

1:12

really delivered here. This release

1:14

of fedona is also shipping enhancements

1:17

to wired networking on the CM4

1:19

And as you said, Chris, accelerated

1:22

graphics using the V3D GPU

1:24

for both open GLES and

1:27

Volcan. which is probably making

1:29

the biggest impact on the performance that

1:31

you're seeing there.

1:32

Now there

1:34

are a few caveats that should

1:36

be aware of. Yeah. The biggest

1:38

one for me was WiFi on

1:41

the Pie four hundred is still

1:43

considered, quote, out of

1:45

scope for thirty seven's release.

1:47

It is waiting on firmware to be

1:49

upstreamed from the vendor, which at

1:51

this point is really kind of an unknown. So

1:54

you'll have to use the Ethernet

1:56

port on the Pie four hundred. Another

1:59

thing to be aware

1:59

of that also bites us

2:02

only the official CM4I0

2:05

board is supported right now. Other

2:07

carrier boards should work. that's

2:10

gonna depend on the particular vendor's

2:12

implementation.

2:14

And to keep things in the theme with the broader

2:17

thirty seven release hardware based media

2:19

decoding for h two sixty four is

2:22

out of scope for this release. So just

2:24

gotta keep those caveats in mind when picking

2:26

an OS for your pie four. But

2:29

with those aside, I think this already

2:31

makes a pretty compelling development workstation

2:34

for anyone working on an IoT platform

2:36

or developers that are targeting

2:39

ARM servers. And

2:41

if some of the dependencies land upstream,

2:43

you could really see that list of caveats getting

2:45

smaller pretty quickly. The

2:48

thirty seven release also saw the project

2:50

officially add two new

2:52

additions, fedora Core

2:54

OS, and fedora

2:56

cloud is back. Yeah.

2:59

Okay. So fedora core OS, that probably

3:01

rings a bell. That's a successor to

3:03

what you might even remember as acomic

3:05

host perhaps. And as you've

3:07

probably guessed, it provides automatic,

3:10

automatic updates with rollbacks and

3:12

it's really focused at container based

3:14

workloads. And the cloud edition will

3:16

that provides a fedora based run-in public

3:18

or private clouds In fact, AMIs

3:20

will be available in the AWS marketplace

3:23

later this week, and the community channels

3:25

are available now. On

3:27

the desktop side of things, an art workstation

3:30

chip's Genome forty three with the latest

3:32

and greatest version of the GTK Toolkit.

3:35

And Firefox's language packs, well,

3:37

they've finally been split into sub

3:40

packages, keeping things

3:42

leaner and meaner. If

3:45

you'd like more, well, don't worry. We

3:47

did a complete review in Linux unplugged

3:49

484

3:55

Well, nothing makes us feel more awkward in the

3:57

free software community than talking about

3:59

the great work. over at Facebook

4:01

slash meta. And this

4:03

week, they're finally announcing SAPIEN, a

4:06

new get compatible source control

4:08

client. In the announcement, they acknowledge

4:10

how critical kits and other distributed

4:13

version control systems have become

4:15

to modern development workflows. In

4:17

fact, sampling started life as

4:19

an extension to the Mercurial Virgin

4:21

Control System before eventually

4:23

growing into what Meta describes as

4:26

a scalable user friendly tool

4:28

over the past ten years.

4:31

Here's

4:31

where they kind of zero in on the goods in the announcement.

4:34

They say, quote, Zaplane is a

4:36

source control system used at meta that

4:38

emphasizes usability and

4:40

scalability. Git and material

4:42

users will find that many of the basic

4:44

concepts familiar and that workflows

4:47

like understanding your repository, working

4:50

with stacks of commits, and recovering

4:52

from mistakes are substantially easier

4:55

When used with our sapling compatible

4:57

server and a virtual file system we hope

4:59

to open source in the future, sapling

5:01

can serve Meta's internal repository.

5:04

with tens of millions of files and

5:06

tens of millions of commits and

5:08

tens of millions of branches.

5:10

I

5:15

can't believe it, but it's

5:17

apparently already that time of

5:19

the year. Google has

5:21

kicked off the twenty twenty three

5:23

summer of code program. Since

5:25

the nineteenth consecutive year of funding

5:28

open source development,

5:29

over the summer.

5:31

And

5:31

Google says they've reviewed the feedback from

5:33

the twenty twenty two program and

5:35

they're gonna make some tweaks for

5:37

next year. seems like up

5:39

first is increased flexibility

5:42

in the project lengths instead of a

5:44

set twelve weeks for everyone. They're

5:46

now going to allow a ten to twenty

5:48

two week range. They also

5:50

have more options for the project's time

5:53

commitments, and and another big

5:55

change, expanding beyond

5:57

students and making the program available

5:59

to anyone new to open

6:01

source development. That

6:03

seems

6:04

like a big deal and

6:06

a great addition to the Google Summer

6:08

of Go program. It could potentially open

6:11

this up to many more open

6:13

source projects. So if you're

6:15

interested in applying for the program, we'll

6:17

put a link in the show notes.

6:22

Checking in on the progress of rust

6:24

landing in the Linux kernel.

6:26

With the initial Rust infrastructure support

6:29

landing in Linux six point one,

6:31

next obvious question is, when should

6:33

we expect complete support?

6:36

Well, this

6:37

past Thursday, Miguel Lietta, leading

6:39

the Rust for Linux effort. send out

6:41

a set of twenty eight patches.

6:44

Miguel writes in the patch notes, quote,

6:46

this patch series is

6:48

the first batch of changes. to upstream

6:51

the rest of the rest support.

6:55

That, combined with everything else already

6:57

in Linux next, well, could

7:00

mean seen full raw support

7:02

ready for the six point two merge

7:04

window next month. Though,

7:07

I don't know if I bet my stats on that.

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Today as we record, Microsoft

10:20

has released version one dot

10:22

o of the Windows

10:24

subsystem for Linux. Now, to be

10:26

clear, this is the one

10:28

point zero of WSL two

10:30

point zero. So it's two point

10:32

zero's one point zero. What's

10:34

confusing about that? Absolutely

10:35

nothing at all. That's

10:37

just par for the course from Microsoft. But

10:41

here's

10:41

a quick little timeline of the history

10:44

of WSL.

10:46

Six years ago, way back on

10:48

August second twenty sixteen,

10:51

WSL saw its initial release.

10:53

Now, this was WSL version

10:56

one, which relied on some fancy

10:58

Windows kernel translation layers

11:00

to emulate the Linux

11:02

kernel API. That worked

11:04

pretty well, but there were some problems

11:06

that the translation layer approach

11:08

just couldn't really resolve. So

11:10

then three years later, June

11:12

twelve, twenty nineteen. The

11:14

first version of WSL two

11:17

was released. This was transitioned

11:19

from running that translation layer to

11:21

instead running a full blown

11:23

real

11:24

Linux kernel in

11:26

a hypervisor.

11:27

And that is what got us

11:30

to today, November sixteenth

11:32

twenty twenty two, and

11:33

the one point zero release of

11:35

WSL two point

11:37

zero. Yeah. And, you know,

11:39

two point o's, one point o is not

11:41

really a big significant release in terms

11:43

of features. The release log

11:45

includes three relatively minor

11:48

changes I suppose you could say,

11:50

one of which is literally just the

11:52

removal of the preview label. But

11:54

in doing so and hitting this

11:56

milestone, it means that WSL is

11:58

now generally available to

12:00

all Windows store users.

12:03

that's a pretty big change for the

12:05

public. If you weren't already

12:07

nerdy or curious enough to go poking

12:09

around and enable extra settings to get access

12:11

to it, It it means now that

12:13

WSL is just generally available

12:15

to a whole bunch more

12:17

windows users. I gotta

12:19

think that's kind of a good thing.

12:22

Looking at the heart of WSL

12:24

powered by Linux kernel five

12:26

fifteen. but

12:28

with the next six point one now in the

12:30

late RC stage and

12:32

six point one being slated to be the next

12:34

LTS release. Well,

12:36

one

12:36

can likely surmise that WSL

12:39

two will be rebased on six

12:41

point one sometime

12:43

next year. Yeah. That is a

12:45

little bit of a wait. But, you

12:47

know, I think something like WSL.

12:49

You know, ideally,

12:51

the one point o release is not some big earth

12:53

shattering release. It should be safe

12:55

and stable. That's what a one point zero should

12:57

be. And if you look back at the development

12:59

cycle, it does seem like a lot of the last

13:02

really big changes to WSL.

13:04

They landed in like the zero

13:06

dot seven release cycle. And

13:08

since then, with all of the subsequent

13:10

releases to this point, it seems that

13:12

Microsoft's really just been trying to work out the

13:14

kings and smooth things out.

13:16

And, you know, On the kernel,

13:19

something tells me that WSL

13:21

users probably don't care that much

13:23

about the specific kernel version.

13:25

as long as the functionality to make their WSL

13:28

work and whatever app that they need to do

13:30

work is there. I think they're probably happy.

13:33

but it does have me wondering how usable

13:35

it all is now. Kinda makes me

13:37

think that maybe you and

13:39

I should give Windows eleven an honest try.

13:41

you know, put WSL2 dot o on there,

13:43

two dot o one dot o, of course. Get the

13:45

new terminal. Maybe the audience could

13:48

recommend a package manager really

13:50

anything the audience could recommend to make it

13:52

a usable experience, but you and I load it up

13:54

and see if we can't make it a workstation

13:56

that meets our requirements as

13:59

Linux users. A

14:00

little hesitant for

14:01

what I'm about to agree to.

14:04

But

14:04

yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, it

14:07

probably would be a good idea to get an

14:09

update on on what that experience is like. I know

14:11

we both tried it both Windows

14:13

eleven and W cell two, but I haven't used

14:15

either of them in ages, let alone together.

14:17

I do

14:18

need to clarify though. i for

14:20

one? I

14:21

do care what version my kernel

14:23

is. Yeah. That's gonna be a point

14:25

of pride, you know, midway into next year

14:27

when they're still on five fifteen. And

14:30

we've got, like, rust and all of that kind

14:32

of good goodness in our kernels on our monitoring systems.

14:34

We'll be like, well, if you weren't done WSL,

14:36

I actually kinda have the

14:38

sense that this one dot o for two dot o

14:41

is not the only WSL news, maybe

14:43

even this week? I'm not sure. It

14:45

seems that Microsoft has some more in

14:47

store, one of the Microsoft program managers

14:49

for WSL. Craig Loewen. He

14:51

tweeted right around when we started recording

14:53

that they have some, quote, other

14:55

exciting news coming very

14:57

soon in regards to the

15:00

Windows subsystem for Linux. So

15:02

we'll keep an eye on that and everything

15:04

else going on in the world of Linux

15:06

and open source news So the best thing you

15:08

can do is go to lennoxaction News dot com

15:10

slash subscribe for all the ways to get our

15:12

new episodes. And lennoxaction News

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Did we miss a story this week? Boost in with a

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we're back next week with our

15:29

take on the latest Linux and

15:31

open source news. Thanks

15:33

for joining us and that's all the news.

15:35

for this

15:36

week.