Plus, the new tech in SteamOS 3 that might make it a great desktop OS.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!
• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Raspberry Pi OS hits the bullseye — Raspberry Pi announced the release of a new version of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian), which advances to the Debian 11 “bullseye” release.
• What’s new in RHEL 8.5 — Customers running Microsoft SQL Server on RHEL will see a number of enhancements to help configure, manage and operate RHEL more efficiently.
• Major Changes in 8.5
• Red Hat 8.5 released with SQL Server and .NET 6
• AlmaLinux OS 8.5 Stable Now Available — AlmaLinux OS 8.5 includes features and improvements to container tools to reduce friction and make the build and deploy processes more flexible, support for OpenJDK 17, additional OpenSCAP profiles for hardening and security compliance, new system roles, and Network Time Security (NTS) for NTP, amongst other additions and enhancement.
• Canonical Makes It Easier to Run Ubuntu VMs on Apple M1 Macs with Multipass — Multipass promises to offer Apple M1 MacBook developers interesting in developing apps for the Linux/Ubuntu desktop the fastest way to run Linux cross-platform, running a Ubuntu VM in as little as 20 seconds.
• Hector Martin on Twitter — Say hi to an M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro running KDE Plasma 5 on Arch Linux ARM! Notch compatible! I made NVMe work today and decided it's time to properly install a distro ;)
• Hector Martin on Twitter: “It’s been running the glxgears demo (60% all-core CPU usage) all night, lid closed, no display sleep. It’s barely warm to the touch, and I can only hear the fan if I put my ear 15cm away from the vents. This is why I’m putting Linux on these machines :-) https://t.co/HPBDskirSf” / Twitter
• Big Btrfs Changes in the Works — I’m working on a large set of on-disk format changes to address some of the more painful parts of Btrfs’s design. There’s a lot of discrete changes here, but they’ll all go under the single umbrella of “extent-tree-v2.”
• On-Disk Format Changes Ahead To Improve “Painful” Parts Of Btrfs Design
• Steam Deck Release Pushed Back To February 2022 — For those that pre-ordered the Steam Deck your position in the queue remains, but is now all shifted back by approximately two months.
• Valve Shares New Steam Deck Details, Proton Update Available For Testing — Steam Deck will use an immutable root file-system, albeit can be changed for developers/enthusiasts wanting more control over the system state. The immutable root file-system approach is similar to the likes of Fedora Silverblue.
• Valve Says SteamOS 3.0 Will Be Available for Everyone to Download and Install
• Steam Deck Development Live Stream - YouTube
• Valve adds documentation for Steam Deck development, suggests Manjaro Linux for now

Plus Firefox's new DoH partner, and signs of life from the Atari VCS.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Firefox adds 2nd DoH partner — Program Committing to Data Retention and Transparency Requirements that Respect User Privacy
• Apple, Google, and Amazon are teaming up to develop an open-source smart home standard
• Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
• Ikea previews its improved 2020 smart home experience
• Z-Wave is making a huge change so it doesn’t get left behind in the smart home wars - The Verge — It’s turning into a fully open standard, according to Silicon Labs.
• Canonical Releases Multipass 1.0 As "A Mini-Cloud On Your Workstation" — "a mini-cloud on your workstation using native hypervisors of all the supported plaforms (Windows, macOS and Linux), it will give you an Ubuntu command line in just a click ("Open shell") or a simple multipass shell command, or even a keyboard shortcut."
• Krita Receives Epic MegaGrant — Epic, the makers of the Unreal game engine, have supported Krita with a $25,000 MegaGrant
• A Kubuntu-Powered Laptop Is Launching In 2020 For High-End KDE Computing — A Kubuntu laptop is launching soon that is aiming for a high-end Linux laptop experience atop the KDE flavor of Ubuntu.
• KDE Launch Video & Wallpaper Competitions with Linux PCs as Prizes
• Guidance for Atari VCS Content Developers — Initial procedures announced for more independent game and app developers to start creating and planning now for earning a place in the Atari VCS storefront.

Plus we announce a new Linux podcast, and run down the many ways to run Ubuntu on Windows.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Choose Linux - New JB Show — The show that captures the excitement of discovering Linux.
• Steam For Linux Now Lets You Play Windows Games From Other Stores — Users can now launch Windows games purchased on platforms outside of Steam from inside the Steam for Linux client.
• Looks like it’s still using Wine 3.16
• Wine 4.0 Released — This release represents a year of development effort and over 6,000 individual changes.
• Microsoft Employee Hints at Windows Core OS Open Source Components — The Security Program Manager then said that he "improved the security posture of Windows Open Source Components through initiatives that investigate vulnerabilities found and establish a process for remediation.”
• Multipass for Win10 public beta — Multipass, at its core, is a service to manage Linux (in this case, Ubuntu) virtual machines in Windows 10 without the overhead of faffing about with Hyper-V (although Hyper-V is most definitely required to make the thing work).
• Ubuntu Core 18 gets 10 years of support — Dell has been working closely with Canonical over the past three years to certify Ubuntu Core on all our Edge Gateway platforms.
• Debian releases new images with apt fix — This point release incorporates the recent security update for APT, in order to help ensure that new installations of stretch are not vulnerable. No other updates are included.
• It might be harder to block ads in Chromium — Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including ad blockers.
• Google poaches 14-year Mac veteran from Apple to bring Fuchsia to market — Stevenson started at Apple in 2004 as a Product Release Engineer for OS X. In this role, he “triaged and diagnosed” application and framework issues, while also working with third-party developers.