Hello and welcome to episode 244 of Late Night Linux recorded on the 28th of August
2023. I'm Joe and with me are Phantom. How's it going?
Graham. Hello. And Will. Hello. You're back from your holiday then, Graham.
Yeah, had a wonderful time. I saw the sun. It was great.
Wow. We used to have that here once upon a time.
Bloody breaks it. Let's do some news then. Five years ago, valve release proton forever changing
Linux gaming. Can you believe it's been five years? It seems simultaneously yesterday and
forever ago. I don't really remember a lot about the days before proton now. It just,
it feels like it's just part of the furniture. It's so integrated into every conversation we have
about Linux gaming that it just feels like it's always been this way. And of course, it hasn't.
It's been a lot, lot, lot worse for a long, long, long time.
Well, this is from gaming on Linux and Liam points out in the article that
there be no steam deck without proton, which I think is a fair assertion.
Yes, absolutely. And I'd love to hear the story, you know, from Code Weaver's side, the people
that fund a lot of wine development and also used to be the only way of getting lots of games
running on Linux with their, they kind of gaming products. And they worked closely with valve to
helping to cooperate proton and feedback to proton. I don't know if anyone's ever published or
been in touch with them to ask them whether they could even say but it'd be wonderful to hear
their end of the story as well. I still can't believe it's just five years.
That doesn't seem right because that makes it only 2018. And that's when I bought this PC. So
did I start playing proton almost straight away? Weird.
Well, you only play flight care and isn't that native anyway?
I don't just play flight care. I play many, many games.
Did you play Roblox? I don't, but Liam does. And it's actually quite good news that that's
back on because I had to build a Windows install for him to dual boot for a couple other things as
well like rec room and stuff like that which is the new hotness. And it was a bit annoying
and I also haven't dual boot set up it yet because I haven't done that since I think around
1998 because I just did one or the other. So I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm sure to trash
both installs. So not looking forward to that really. So yeah, we'll have to see how that goes
but it's nice to see Roblox come back. And I know, yes, Graeme doesn't like it. And yeah,
I probably don't like it either, but when it's a case of use Linux or use Windows,
I'm offered that if they have to. Yeah, and I think I prefer Roblox off of over
endless hours in front of Snapchat. That is a very fair point, yes. Or TikTok.
Yeah, yeah. Or any of those things that the kids love. What's your beef with Roblox then?
Well, my daughter really likes Roblox. And in fact, I may reinstall it for now that we can get it
running back on her the next machine. But I think at the time, it does concern me that there's
doesn't seem very much moderation. And there are a lot of kids in there who kind of make one-to-one
relationships with who they hope, who we all hope are other kids. I mean, it's quite a powerful
position to be in with no oversight. So that's what worried me mostly about Roblox.
Oh, yeah. More generally, I have a concern about not only who my kids are speaking to online,
but also what those people are getting them to do. One of my kids is quite into modding games.
And he watches YouTube videos about it and tries to get me interested in it. And I have
ruled it out. I said, there's no way that I'm going to enable you to mod these games because,
you know, it will come back as either fixing the damage for me or him getting banned from various
games for modding. But the bigger consideration here is that he's doing all this on a Windows PC.
And if some guy that he's chatting to on Roblox, for example, says, oh, yeah, what you need to
do is download this from this URL and install it. There's potentially all sorts of malware and
bad shit going on that PC, which I may or may not have any view on. If they're running those games
on Linux, I can have a reasonable confidence that I'm not going to expose, or they're not going
to be exposed to a whole bunch of malware, partly because Linux isn't targeted as much in that way,
partly because of various security mechanisms that we have. So the opportunity to run the games
that kids care about, and this is things like Roblox on Linux, I think is really important. And
we shouldn't underestimate the value to parents. I think the only complaint to have with
Proton is I wish they would make it more contained in a way that it was secure. And the fact that the
is the extrav in the wine setup of each game actually just pointed back out to the root directory.
And it'd be nice if that didn't have to be there. If like you could really firewall stuff off
in their own containers. It reminds me of a poster. So I think I'll mess it on about someone
trying to get some Linux malware running. And it just wouldn't work because the libraries weren't
right. And just all sorts of problems. And he said in the end, he just gripped the file and got
the Bitcoin address and sent the person five dollars worth of Bitcoin out of pity. They should have
flat packs their malware. Red Hat redeploy is one of its main desktop developers. This is Bastion
LaSera who was responsible for quite a lot of the sort of lower level desktop stuff. And now he's
got this posted new responsibilities where he doesn't say what he's been redeployed to but it sounds
like more profitable shit. Let's just say. There's a whole bunch of stuff that he has been working on
or that he has listed has not been worked on as much anymore, which gives me cause for concern
such as desktop Bluetooth. Now this may be just like the client side of the Bluetooth stack. But
nevertheless, this is like critical stuff to the desktop, which is shared among many different
like desktop toolkits. And Fprint, which is the fingerprint library, which I remember back in
the Ubuntu days, we put quite a lot of effort into getting working because normally out of the
box, Dell machines and think paths and things just didn't work. So to see these, what I consider
to be important parts of the desktop stack being left behind, I think it's a bit of a warning
sign for things to come. Now, as we've talked about previously, Red Hat have sponsored an enormous
amount of GNOME specifically, but general desktop technologies, who is going to pick up that work
if indeed Red Hat are leaving it behind? I don't know. I think we will be hearing more about this
story in some years to come. And this will be the point at which things turned for the worse.
That's my concern. Keep it light, Will. I think you're right. I think that during the boom years
of free money, free debt and whatnot, the desktop had a lot of investment in it,
but it's never made a tremendous amount of money compared to the other parts of the Linux and
I'm source ecosystem. And as everyone tightens their belt, the desktop is just one of the first
victims. And that's not to say it's just going to crumble to shit immediately, but I think you're
right. Sort of managed decline almost, a bit like this country with the Tories. Oh, managed decline.
Mismanaged decline. I think you're both right, but also Red Hat has sponsored a lot of desktop
development. So it's kind of worth saying, you know, they have done a lot for the Linux desktop.
And it's not necessarily their direct responsibility after so many years. It's an opportunity
as well for other people to maybe try and take over custodian ship of these important things and
maybe do something new with the things that are maybe dropped if further things are dropped.
We've kind of benefited for free from all of that work for a long time. So I think it's,
you know, it has been a strong positive and it's just been taken away.
Maybe it's time for a more centralized approach in the fact that more sharing of resources
could be done. I mean, free desktop was kind of where that was supposed to happen and it didn't
really go so well. Maybe that could be brought back up. Maybe it could be funded from Linux
Foundation work. I don't know, but it'd be nice to see more community orientated or
lesser focus from one company alone sort of steering things like it was often the case where
not so much Sarah grapes, but people often say, oh, the only reason why no one does this is because
the guys in red hair paid to do a blah, blah, blah. And, you know, there was a bit of ton and cheek
sort of bad feeling about it, but maybe this is where a more fair playing field could be laid out.
Also, I can't see this happening at all. So yeah, just playing the sky.
Yeah, I think that is just pie in the sky feeling, but you never know. You never know.
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you can email show at latenightlinux.com. Firefox to drop support for old macOS and Windows versions.
So if you look at the system requirements for Firefox 1.16 versus 1.15, they have dropped
anything older than Windows 10. So Windows 7 and Windows 8 and 8.1. And also they were supporting
way back to macOS 10.12. And now it's only 10.15 onwards. And some people are outraged, obviously.
But we've got a thread from Gabrielle Svelto, and we're talking about why they're dropping
support. And I think it's pretty reasonable to be honest. I think you're probably right.
I wish they'd said how many users they had on those platforms.
Do they even know though? Well, maybe they can make it guess because
I don't know. I'm a bit conflicted. I think I totally understand reading about having to build
Firefox against dozens of different APIs. I can understand that must be horrendously complex
and difficult to maintain and stopping Firefox from doing other good work. But at the same time,
I'm so used to Microsoft and Apple stopping support for older RSS and I hate it when they do that.
I hate it when the browser when Chrome doesn't work, for example, because there's been some
update. I understand browsers need to be updated. But it completely breaks everything in some cases.
And I feel like Firefox has some responsibility to keep working on old machines and old hardware
and that kind of thing in a way that other people can't set away. I've scanned the thread. It's
quite long and there's a lot of detail in there. It doesn't talk about the ESR version, which is
like the equivalent of the long-term support version. I thought that that was supported for
some years to come. And so this problem may be in a way down the road for those users.
Well, no. The ESR gets about a year of support, I think, roughly. So that will somewhat
alleviate the issue, but not indefinitely and not even for that long, really.
Should we be recommending people use a woefully insecure, upright system that is now well-passed,
it's patching date, like only Windows 10 is supported. So do we really want to encourage people
to browse the web and give them a false sense of, oh, I'm using Firefox, everything's okay.
Well, they're getting owned in several other ways. I don't know. I can see they're going to keep
using it until it goes on fire, probably, but I don't know. It's a hard one.
No, I think I'm with you, Phelium, that if you are really determined to use old hardware,
then use an up-to-date operating system on it. And obviously, I'm going to recommend Zubuntu
for older hardware. Of course you. And new hardware, like, but even a Kabuntu or KDE Neon or whatever,
or even Arch, or one of the million other distros, even GNOME probably would be light enough for
a Windows 7 machine or even a Windows 8 machine. Well, these old Macs as well. The old Macs
can run on X-Gen really speaking. So really, I think that you're right in a way supporting Firefox
on those old systems that are not themselves supported. Probably isn't a great idea.
You know, I said they took that point to sort of maybe nudge people in the right direction about
the OS, but that's just not their remit, I guess, isn't it? Yeah. I would be expected too much from
to just keep maintaining the browser, let alone help open source in general. It's a good idea,
though, it would be nice to have a page, you know, if you're stuck on Windows 7 here at your options.
Yeah, I mean, like, nobody wants to see gear getting chucked in a landfill for no reason,
but just Redmond doesn't want to support the thing anymore.
Yeah, when you're up in Firefox, it should just say something like, have you got a minute to talk
about GNOME slash a little? We've tried to reach you on your operating systems extended,
I don't know, though, some people just refuse to move on and there's people using XP and all sorts.
I mean, that's perfect. What a use case for XFC. I mean, it's literally made for them.
I know, but if they just refuse to move off Windows 7, let's say, at least if the browser they're
using is up to date, most vulnerabilities are going to come via the browser. So there is an argument
that at least keep that up to date. It's not an easy one, but ultimately resources have decided
this and, you know, they've decided to spend their resources doing ridiculous shit and not stuff like
this. So close, so close. We were doing so well. Oh, well. The WordPress 100 year plan ensures that
your stories, achievements and memories are preserved for generations to come. One payment,
one hundred years of legacy, $38,000 for a WordPress.com website and domain for a hundred years.
Bargain. Sorry, is this the Patreon feed or are we on the...
I mean, like, what? This is a fucking joke. I mean, it got me the days when it used to be WordPress
as the world does survive one single update, let alone a hundred years worth of them.
They're obviously not using their own project to archive all this and they're obviously going to
archive under stone tablets. There's the funny thing in the blurb for the product. It says that
they will submit your site to the internet archive. Well, I will do that for you for only $37,000.
Wait, do you accept checks? Please take my money, Will. I kind of understand the goal here, which is
something that we've talked about on this show a few times, which is how do you ensure
that your digital records and, you know, your photos and recordings of your podcasts that you've
made and all of this kind of digital heritage that people will carry around with them? How do you
make sure that it's there so that when you die and your kids are going through your loft,
they find this stuff and kind of see something of the person you were and the life that you have
led. Like, I get it. This is a nice idea and a worthwhile endeavor. If I were to make a short
list of the people who I would trust to look after this, WordPress would not be on that list.
What version of real player would you need in stock to watch some of the videos? It's just
preposterous brilliantly on their website. There is a link that says, do not sell or share my personal
information and you click on that and it redirects you to the same page you're already on.
That's how seriously they take it. Well, they're crafting legacies one century at a time.
I mean, it is just ludicrous to think that WordPress as a technology will still be
popular in a hundred years, isn't it? I mean, it's already waning in popularity, certainly
among the tech elites. It's almost a joke now to have your website run on WordPress instead of
a static site generator like Hugo. So in 20 years, WordPress is going to see him old hat,
never mind a fucking hundred years. Yeah, but maybe this is an attempt to branch out from the
CMS. I think WordPress, I know that it's problems, but it's still a good platform for a lot of
people to create content on as long as they don't go crazy on installing stuff.
Well, our website runs on WordPress, for example, I'm trying to, or I'm certainly looking into
alternatives, let's just say, but for now, WordPress is doing the job. Yeah, it's the kind of thing
that as long as you don't go crazy, and I don't know if please feel free to correct me for
them, but it's an option for people to kind of self-host in a way that they can avoid all of those
pre-built site generation sites, which are worse, far worse. Well, I'm trying to get some
there to sponsor us, so let's not talk too much shit on them. But it's a good way of hosting
your own site without having to worry too much about all of the implementation details and
getting all the functionality of a modern site. But anyway, the thing that annoyed me about this
is the smug photo of Matt Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress.com and co-founder of WordPress. He's just
standing there saying whether it's giving a newborn the special gift of a domain or a lifetime
home on the web. Blah, blah, blah. It feels like an April 1st web page. It does, why not?
Just wait till they're defrosting Walt Disney's brain and they're asking if they've managed to get
the fucking CSS to straighten up the page properly on his WordPress page. If this is a drive
at a permanent archive for one's personal digital legacy, it is, as Alan Partridge would say,
disconcertingly vague. There's very little in the way of details about how they're going to do this.
What happens if you don't get your 100 years? What happens if it goes bust after 20 years? Are
you going to get your money back? Where does the data go? None of this information was available
to me clicking through this website this afternoon. So I don't know. It feels like it's a very early
days kind of put down the bomb and make the website plan. We will see where this goes, but I can't
see it's been successful. Can you imagine if somebody back in the late A.E. said like,
bot.u.usssr or whatever that communist top level domain was and then rush it imploded just at that
point. Where does that domain go for a hundred years? There's something very sort of meta-versi
about this to me. It just seems just fucking ludicrous, but we'll see. We'll see in a hundred years
if they're still got any of these sites up. If anyone, indeed, spends the 30-odd grand,
$38,000. That's about what, like a million pounds or something of these days, it's a lot of money.
Mucky JPEGs will do it for 10 quid. Yeah, we'll just submit you to the internet archive and let
them deal with it. All right, phanem. You have managed to sneak in a KDE corner and you've assured
me that this is 30 seconds. Sorry, you've got 30 seconds starting from now. It is literally 30 seconds
close about. So, Mercuro is a new frontend to contacts, calendars, and mails. It's not out to
immediately compete with contact, but it might go that way in the long run, but it is a newer
interface, newer technology, making it look nicer. I guess they're probably feeling a bit of the
thunderboard stealing the fame of late, so they want to get in the action too. So good to see,
it's not going to replace contact yet, though, if you're, you stole the higher features of that.
And also, one cool thing that happened was in the Qt6 porting work, by the end of September,
Qt6.6 will be out, and that will mean that QtApps will be able to survive a restart of the
Wayland Composer if it should crash, which is a good sign because that was one of the things that
was a bit of a fail with Wayland at the moment. So nice to see that come on. And that's it, see?
Well, I think you did bring that in in 30 seconds. Well done. Yes.
Stress. Right, well, we'd better get out of here then. We'll be back next week when we'll
have some discoveries and who knows what else. But until then, I've been John. I've been
Graham. And I'll be in well. See you later.