Tag: gnome

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

As this is being written, the rain has been pounding the pavement in spurts. One moment, it’s a calm flow of droplets. Then comes the rapid torrent.

This week’s roundup has been like that with its various ups and downs.

Unix

With Canonical’s announcement of switching back to GNOME for Ubuntu’s default desktop, the question of how they would go about it remains. OMG Ubuntu sheds some light on this and even links to a survey asking for input.

Developers are considering some tweaks to ease the transition.

There’s some good news for the GNU GPL for the time being. Though it wasn’t meant to be treated as a contract, the license agreement itself appears to be enforceable as one for the time being.

The case revolved around Hancom and its use of Ghostscript without adhering to the GNU Affero General Public License.

To end this portion of our weekly roundup, here’s an interesting story about immigration policies possibly impacting free and open source software development. On the one hand, recent policies could impact the ability of the U.S. to bring in intelligent individuals who can lead the way in innovation.

On the other hand, the idea of promoting from within has been brought up assuming interest in the field of software development exists.

Time will tell the tale on that one.

Overlooked Pop Culture

There’s a reason many are either captivated and/or aggravated by politics. Though campaigns may portray otherwise, things are rarely black and white. Nothing demonstrates this more than with the firing of James Comey by President Trump.

Though there has been suspicion as to the President’s actual motivations, Trevor Aaronson of The intercept reminds readers that Comey himself did some things during his tenure as the head of the FBI that were questionable at best.

The aggravating portion of the political arena is why people seek an escape, even if it’s a virtual arena. An old escape may have a chance at a revival if Billy Corgan has his way after buying the rights to the National Wrestling Alliance.

He will own the rights to the trademarks as well as the NWA Championship belt.

Though the classic name in professional wrestling has waned over the years, the plan is a long term move, so nothing will change right away. Could this WCW 3.0?

Speaking of retro, 8-big video game music has been making a comeback… on vinyl that is! The LA Times has a fascinating piece on how boutique record labels have been combining the two niches together.

That’s all for this week. See you next time.

Thomas Holbrook II | The *Nixed Report

This week has been an interesting one to say the least. Ubuntu continues to get noticed due to Canonical’s change in direction while other interesting developments in the land of make believe are on the horizon. Still, it’s time to get our nerd on.

Here’s this week’s Friday Roundup.

Unix

Canonical’s announcement of moving back to GNOME and no longer using Unity starting with the next LTS release has had some exploring their options. The conclusion of one blog post is that GNOME 3 can’t replace Unity and that there will definitely be a learning curve for those who aren’t used to it.

Luís de Sousa writes:

The take home message of this exercise is that Unity 7 and Gnome 3 are markedly different desktop environments, designed with different – sometimes almost antagonistic – goals. Gnome 3 is a low visual feedback environment, meant for a small number of workspaces and highly reliant on mouse input. In its turn, Unity 7 is far more open to keyboard interaction, embraces workspaces as a cornerstone of desktop interfacing and overall offers far more modes of interaction and features. Unity 7 comes across as a transparent environment, providing immediate visual feedback on what may be happening with each of the programmes it manages; by contrast Gnome 3 opts to hide many visual cues, preferring a clean desktop, focused entirely on the current foreground programme.

(Bolding added for emphasis)

With the switch to GNOME will come the obvious switch to Wayland as well. X11 is network oriented, while Wayland is focused on individual systems, thus cutting down on overhead and improving graphical performance.

Speaking of Ubuntu, System76 is now starting to move production and design in-house. Phase Three will be long term. Carl Richell writes:

We’re starting with desktops. There’s a lot to learn and the form factor is easiest to work with. Both design and CAD work are well along their way. We’re prototyping with acrylic and moving to metal soon. Our first in-house designed and manufactured desktops will ship next year. Laptops are more complex and will follow much later.

Last but not least by any means, Solus has a new release. In addition to the in house Budgie Desktop, MATE and GNOME editions are available. Their release notes are available here.

Overlooked Pop Culture

Apparently, there may be a mini version of the Nintendo Switch on the horizon, if analysts are correct. If true, one can only speculate what will happen to the DS line of portable consoles in the near future. In a surprising turn of events in WWE, Jinder Mahal has earned a number one contender spot for the WWE Champtionship.

Seeing as how the product is now less predictable, it may become more entertaining. Only time will tell.

In a piece that shows a lack of understanding, NBC is among the latest to pick up the story regarding Alex Jones and his performance artist defense. Jones is currently in a custody battle over his kids.

A note of correction: They claim he pushed that the moon landing was faked. That is not entirely true. There will be a future article regarding Jones and his custody battle to further explain this.

StarCraft fans have cause to celebrate this week as the original has been released for free in lieu of the Remastered Edition. Those who want to run into under Wine may be disappointed as it doesn’t work.

The good news is that the map editor still runs.

So if you’re a Windows or OS X user, you’ll be able to run this classic game and compete with your friends.

Cool Links of the Week

Lemonade is not your traditional renter’s insurance company. They operate to keep costs down and premiums low. Mozilla Thunderbird is also an amazing e-mail client, and they could use your help.

That wraps up this week’s interesting, weird, and cool news. We’ll see you next week.