A lot more work than I initially anticipated, I have decided to start a “podcast” but the term “podcast” seems to pretentious for me in the same way that “blog” does so these are nothing more than audio blatherings of what I have been noodling around.
CubicleNate Noodlings RSS Feed
In Tumbleweed News
Standout updates in the snapshots released in the last two weeks have been pretty plentiful. As part of the fun in running openSUSE Tumbleweed, you get a regular stream of well tested software updates.
Some of the most recent changes includes updates for Mesa 3D Graphics Library with version 19.1.3 that mostly provided fixes for drivers and backends. The Mesa-ACO drivers are now in staging so that will be available soon in Tumbleweed.
KDE’s Frameworks and Plasma have been updated. There have been multiple fixes for KTextEditor, KWayland, KIO and Baloo. Plasma 5.16.4 provides bug fixes and Airplane mode improvements.
The Kernel has been updated to 5.2.10, VLC version 3.0.8 to improve adaptive streaming and a fix for stuttering and low framerates. CVEs were addressed with apache2 where a malicioius client could perform a Denial of Serve attack.
HP Linux Imaging and Printing package, hplip is now at version 3.19.6 which adds support for new printers. MariaDB 10.3.17 is enjoying five new CVE fixes
Pending rating for snapshot 20190824 is trending at a moderately stable score of 87, 20190828 is trending at 86. Tumbleweed Snapshot ratings can be viewed at the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer.
Xfce 4.14 has arrived in openSUSE
After 4 years in the making and a few more days of baking in the openSUSE Build Service. Xfce has been run through the openSUSE gauntlet of openQA, the automated quality assurance system and has been built, ready for Tumbleweed and backported to Leap as well. I tested it on version 15.1 and it has the same pzazz and vigor you’d see on Tumbleweed. 1After 4 years in the making and a few more days of baking in the openSUSE Build Service. Xfce has been run through the openSUSE gauntlet of openQA, the automated quality assurance system and has been built, ready for Tumbleweed and backported to Leap as well. I tested it on version 15.1 and it has the same pzazz and vigor you’d see on Tumbleweed.
The installation on Leap is about 443 packages when selecting to the X11:Xfce repository. Keep in mind, this is not the official repository but what is considered “Experimental” so keep that in mind, for what it’s worth.
Some of the changes that I find particularly noteworthy is that all the core components are now using GTK3. You can enjoy, potentially, a flicker and screen tearing free experience due to fully gaining support for VSync. If you have a High DPI monitor, your life with that hardware will be much improved and there have been some GLX compositor improvements. For more information on the improvements.
Changing the Chair of the openSUSE Board
Richard Brown has stepped down as the Chairperson of the openSUSE Board. He has been at it for six years and decided to hang it up. He wrote a nice letter to the community as a public statement and announced his successor, Gerald Pfeifer.
I saw a few social media posts saying he will be missed but I don’t think that is the case at all. He is still at SUSE and will still be a contributor to the project. It’s just that his role has changed back to working primarily on the technology and keeping his life in proper balance.
All good things must come to an end, I suppose but, again, not really an end, just a passing of the baton and the project keeps rolling. I personally wish Mr Richard Brown well on his endeavors.
Kata Containers in the Official openSUSE Tumbleweed Repository
Kata is container runtime similar to runC but focuses on security. The idea of Kata is a focus on security with an ease of integration with exiting container ecosystems. Kata should be used when running container images whose source is not fully trusted or when allowing other users to run their containers on your platform.
It is most common to see containers share the same physical and operating systems resources with host process. Host specific kernel features, such as namespace, are used to provide an isolation layer between the host and container processes.
Kata Containers, instead, run in lightweight virtual machines for added isolation and security to further reduce the host attack surface and mitigate the consequences of container breakout. Kata accomplishes this using KVM hardware virtualization and is configured to use a minimalist virtual machine manager (VMM) like Firecracker.
Kata can be used as a standalone as it’s intended to use to serve as a runtime when integrated in as a container engine
Uyuni version 4.0.2 is Release
Uyuni is an open-source infrastructure management solution, tailored for software-defined infrastructure. This is a fork of the Spacewalk project to provide more operating systems support and better scalability capabilities and now the the upstream for SUSE Manager.
The new features of Uyuni are monitoring, content lifecycle management and virtual machine management. It is available for openSUSE Leap 15.1
Other Thoughts
I have been playing with the Open Build Service to get familiar with the packaging. There is a lot yet for me to learn. Maybe someday I can actually become useful with it. Currently I am struggling with grasping some of the specifics but in this process I have grown to be very grateful to anyone that helps to maintain any and all software in any Linux distribution, let alone openSUSE
Final Thoughts
This is the first Podcast I have put together, it is without music or any effects. If I waited to put together the “perfect product” my first time out of the gate, everything I would have to update all my noodlings.
Feel free to send complaints or condescending comments to YouSmellLikeARottingFruitSalad@CubicleNate.com , if they are clean and family friendly and give me a chuckle, I must may read them.
References
News.openSUSE.org
Xfce 4.14 Lands in Tumbleweed
Xfce Official Tour
Xfce, a Model GTK Based Desktop | Late Summer Blathering
Richard Brown’s Announcement to Step Down as Chairperson
Kata Container Announcement on News.openSUSE.org
Firecracker microVMs Site
Version 4.0.2 of Uyuni is Release from News.openSUSE.org
Mesa projec Page
KDE Project page
https://cubiclenate.podomatic.com/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Which start menu icon/theme you are using on the screenshot
I am using the “elementary Xfce dark” icons. I think they look pretty decent. I mean, it’s no Breeze Dark but it is a close second!