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

0:16

with the release of Vadora thirty seven.

0:18

with Genome forty three, and now

0:21

official support for the raspberry

0:23

pi 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

graph So with V3D

0:40

now upstream and included Infidore

0:43

thirty seven, that problem

0:45

has been solved. So I gave it a go

0:47

recently on my Pie four hundred. And

0:49

that's the one that's a raspberry pie built into

0:51

the keyboard. And even though I was using

0:53

a USB thumb drive, so I know, load times

0:56

for some applications aside. I

0:58

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

1:11

has really delivered here. This

1:14

release of fedona is also shipping

1:16

enhancements to wired networking on

1:18

the CM4 And as

1:20

you said, Chris, accelerated graphics

1:23

using the V3D GPU for

1:25

both open GLES and Volcan.

1:28

which is probably making the biggest impact

1:30

on the performance that 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 Pi four hundred.

1:58

Another thing to be aware

1:59

of that also bites us

2:02

only the official CM4 io

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 cloud

2:57

is back. Yeah. Okay.

2:59

So fedora core OS, that probably rings

3:01

a bell. That's a successor to what

3:03

you might even remember as host

3:05

perhaps. And as you've probably

3:07

guessed, it provides automatic

3:10

atomic updates with rollbacks and

3:12

it's really focused at container based

3:14

workloads. And the cloud edition will that

3:16

provides a fedora based run-in public or

3:18

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, our 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 free

3:57

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, Sapling 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 server

4:57

and a virtual file system we hope to

4:59

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.

5:14

I can't believe it, but

5:16

it's apparently already that time

5:18

of the year. Google

5:20

has 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

5:41

in the project lengths instead of a

5:43

set twelve weeks for everyone.

5:46

They're now going to allow a ten to

5:48

twenty two week range. They

5:50

also have more options for the project's

5:52

time commitments, and and

5:54

another big change. expanding beyond

5:57

students and making the program available

5:59

to anyone new to open

6:01

source development.

6:03

That

6:04

seems like a big deal. And

6:06

a great addition to the Google

6:08

Summer 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

The next obvious question is,

6:33

when should we expect complete support?

6:36

Well,

6:37

this past Thursday, Miguel Lietta,

6:39

leading the Rust for Linux effort. sent out a

6:41

set of twenty eight patches.

6:44

Miguel writes in the patch notes, quote,

6:46

this patch series is the

6:48

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,

6:59

could mean seeing full raw

7:01

support ready for the

7:03

six point two merge window next

7:05

month? Though, I don't

7:07

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 subsystem

10:24

for Linux. Now, to be

10:26

clear, this is the one point

10:28

zero of WSL two

10:30

point zero. So it's two point

10:32

o's, one point o. What's confusing

10:34

about that?

10:35

Absolutely nothing at all.

10:38

That's just par for the course from Microsoft.

10:40

But here's

10:41

a quick little timeline of the

10:43

history of WSL.

10:46

Six years ago, WayMac on

10:48

August second twenty sixteen.

10:51

WSL saw its initial release.

10:53

Now, this was WSL version

10:55

one. Let's relied on

10:57

some fancy Windows kernel translation

11:00

layers to emulate the Linux

11:02

kernel API. That worked

11:04

pretty well, but there were some problems

11:06

that the translation player approach just

11:08

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 dot o's one dot o is not really a

11:41

big significant release in terms of

11:43

features. The release log

11:45

includes three relatively minor

11:48

changes I suppose you could say, one

11:50

of which is literally just the removal

11:52

of the preview label. But

11:54

in doing so and hitting this miles

11:56

zone. It means that WSL is now

11:59

generally available to all Windows

12:01

store users. That's a

12:03

pretty big change for the public.

12:05

If you weren't already nerdy, you're curious

12:08

enough to go poking around and enable

12:10

extra settings to get access to it. It it

12:12

means now that WSL is just

12:14

generally available to a

12:16

whole bunch more Windows

12:18

users. I gotta think

12:20

that's kind of a good thing. Looking

12:23

at the heart of WSL, powered

12:25

by Linux kernel five fifteen.

12:28

But with Linux six point

12:30

one now in the late RC stage, and

12:32

six point one be insulated 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 point

12:41

one sometime next

12:43

year. Yeah. That is a little bit

12:45

of a wait. But, you know, I

12:47

think something like WSL Yeah.

12:51

Ideally, the one point zero release is not some

12:53

big earth shattering release. It should

12:55

be safe and stable. That's what a one point

12:57

zero should be. And if you look back at the

12:59

development cycle, it does seem like a lot

13:01

of the last really big

13:03

changes to WSL. They

13:05

landed in like the zero dot seven

13:07

release cycle. And since then, with

13:09

all of the subsequent releases to this

13:11

point, it seems that Microsoft's really just been

13:13

trying to work out the kings and smooth

13:15

things out. And, you know,

13:18

on the kernel, something

13:20

tells me that WSL users

13:22

probably don't care that much about the

13:24

specific kernel version. as long as

13:26

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

13:35

usable 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 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 we

14:11

both tried it both Windows

14:13

eleven and WL 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.

14:24

That's gonna be a point of pride, you know,

14:26

midway into next year when they're still on five

14:28

fifteen. And we've got, like,

14:30

rust and all of that kind of good goodness in our

14:32

kernels on our monitoring systems. We'll be like, well,

14:34

if you weren't done WSL, I

14:38

actually kinda have the sense that this one dot o for

14:40

two dot o is not the only

14:42

WSL news maybe even this

14:44

week? I'm not sure. It seems that

14:46

Microsoft has some more in store, one of the

14:48

Microsoft program managers for

14:50

WSL. Craig Loewen. He tweeted right

14:52

around when we started recording that they

14:54

have some, quote, other exciting

14:56

news coming very soon in regards

14:58

to the Windows

15:00

subsystem for Linux. So we'll keep

15:02

an eye on that and everything else going

15:04

on in the world of Linux and

15:06

open source news So the best thing you can

15:08

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15:32

Thanks for joining us and that's

15:34

all the news for this

15:36

week.