Summary of "Untitled Linux Show 240"
High-level show format
- Casual, Linux-focused roundtable where hosts troubleshoot live audio/streaming issues and discuss hardware/software news and tips.
- Frequent practical discussion points:
- Swap behavior and swap tuning (vm.swappiness).
- Cautions around OBS and PipeWire.
- SSHFS causing UI hangs (file managers blocking on disconnected mounts).
- Memory/OOM behavior on laptops and browser OOM killing.
Hardware / devices / reviews
Argon One (OneUp) CM5 laptop shell — hands-on impressions
- Uses the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) with NVMe; can play fullscreen YouTube at ~60 fps (Pi5-class performance).
- Cooling: includes a metal heat spreader but the reviewer noted thermal pads were not included (ordered separately). A proper thermal interface is required to reach intended thermals.
- Expansion: breakout module exposes the 40‑pin header and additional USB‑C ports so Pi HATs can be attached externally.
- Peripherals and setup:
- Keyboard and trackpad are serviceable.
- Battery indicator and desktop battery icon require setup.
- Wi‑Fi antenna selection is fixed by running the included setup script.
- Conclusion: neat, portable Pi machine for browsing and tinkering, but not a desktop replacement.
Raspberry Pi Smart Display Module (SDM)
- CM5 built to the Intel “Smart Display Module” (SDM) spec — a slot-in compute module for displays/signage.
- Exposes USB, Ethernet, HDMI; intended for digital signage and commercial displays.
- Targeted primarily at commercial deployments but accessible to hobbyists; enables blade-style installations of many Pi modules.
CPUs & servers
- Phoronix (Michael Larabel) rebench: AMD EPYC 9755 vs Intel Granite Rapids using dual-socket test systems.
- Massive testbed: dual CPUs (each ~128 cores / 256 threads → ~256 cores / 512 threads total), Ubuntu 25.10, Linux 6.18.1, GCC 15.2, and 24×64GB DDR5 sticks.
- AMD EPYC generally led in raw performance, but power vs. performance tradeoffs matter (power cost and cooling at scale).
- The author ran 500+ benchmarks and provided an interactive summary page to filter by workload (audio encoding, compiles, linear algebra, Blender, ffmpeg, etc.), with metrics for performance, power efficiency, and value/performance.
- Price/context: parts and memory are expensive (EPYC ~ $10k; large memory configs can cost tens of thousands).
Desktop environments & UI
KDE
- Experimental KDE VR mode (PR): map windows into 3D space to create a floating multi-monitor VR workspace (developer work is unpaid/hobby).
- Plasma 6.6 / 6.7 notes: “Air” visuals returning, background blur via Wayland protocol, bug fixes, improved emoji/cursor previews, global shortcut to clear notifications, and more.
Cosmic desktop
- New releases add a frosted glass effect and polish animations/UX rough edges; positioning itself as a modern competitive desktop.
XFCE
- XFCE team is developing a Wayland compositor (new, written in Rust using Smithay-like building blocks). This is a rewrite rather than a straight port of xfwm4.
- Plan to reuse XFCE configuration dialogs; the project has received funding to support development.
Software releases, highlights & tutorials
Calibre 9.x
- New features/highlights:
- Bookshelf view (spine shelf), edit-book button in viewer for editable formats (EPUB/AZW3/KF8).
- Page-number jump in the viewer and momentum scrolling for touchpads.
- Various bug fixes (shutdown speed, SMIL warnings).
- GPU acceleration for Qt WebEngine disabled by default to reduce crashes on older systems.
- Calibre 9.1 followed soon after 9.0 as a bugfix release.
GParted / GParted Live 1.8.x
- Fixes and improvements in 1.8:
- Resolves crashes, improves filesystem operation safety (erases filesystem signatures before copies).
- FAT fixes (label handling).
- GParted Live built from Debian SID with Linux 6.18.5 for better hardware compatibility and blank-screen mitigations.
TigerVNC 1.16
- Adds a Wayland VNC server so Wayland sessions can be shared.
- New shortcuts (F8), updated platform support (RHEL 10 added; some older Ubuntu versions dropped).
- Hosted on SourceForge; includes multiple bug fixes.
Gaming & streaming
NVIDIA GeForce Now Flatpak (Linux beta)
- Flatpak available (beta) to run NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service on Linux.
- Codec/support notes:
- Requires hardware decoding support (H.264/H.265); AV1 for Vulkan video not yet supported on GeForce Now for Linux.
- Recommended for NVIDIA users: 580-series+ GPUs and Xorg.
- Intel/AMD users: Mesa 24.2+ and Wayland recommended.
- Service tiers: free (1-hour sessions, ads, ~2,000 games), mid ($9.99/mo) and premium ($19.99/mo) with longer sessions, higher priority, and better resolution.
Proton 10.0‑4
- Many fixes previously in experimental were promoted into the stable Proton release.
- Multiple games became playable again; regressions fixed; updates to Wine Mono, VKD3D, and Steamworks SDK.
- Good reason to retry games that previously failed.
Other tools, tips & utilities
- Pacman Easter egg: add
ILoveCandy(exact capitalization) andColorto /etc/pacman.conf to change the progress meter into a small Pac‑Man animation. - ASCII/color art library (referred to as kak / kaka in transcript): includes demo programs (kakafire, kakademo, kakaview) for colorful terminal visuals.
- ShellBeats: command-line music player that streams/downloads from YouTube via yt-dlp; promising but subject to yt-dlp/YouTube auth and 403 issues unless cookies/auth are used.
- Swap behavior anecdotes and tuning:
- Aggressive swapping observed even with abundant RAM — tune
vm.swappinessto change swap behavior. - Some UIs or kernels may OOM-kill browsers to keep overall system stability.
- SSHFS mounts to disconnected shares can hang file managers; reconnecting SSHFS resolved the example issue.
- Aggressive swapping observed even with abundant RAM — tune
Notable coverage improvements / usability themes
- Phoronix’s interactive summary page for large benchmark suites is useful for filtering by workload and comparing performance, power, and $/performance metrics.
- KDE VR and Wayland support expansions (TigerVNC, XFCE compositor) reflect the desktop ecosystem’s shift from X11 to Wayland and exploration of new display paradigms.
- Flatpak distribution of cloud services (GeForce Now) and ongoing Proton improvements show gaming on Linux gaining more mainstream integration and fixes.
Reviews / guides / tutorials mentioned (show-note links referenced)
- Argon One / OneUp CM5 laptop review / first impressions.
- Calibre 9.0 (and 9.1) release highlights and release notes.
- Phoronix Michael Larabel’s AMD vs Intel multi-benchmark comparison and interactive results tool.
- TigerVNC 1.16 release notes and Wayland VNC server setup hints.
- NVIDIA GeForce Now Flatpak beta: install instructions from NVIDIA site / Flathub and requirements.
- Proton 10.0‑4 changelog and game compatibility list.
- GParted (GParted Live 1.8.x) release notes and live image details.
- XFCE Wayland compositor announcement and high-level dev roadmap.
Notes about transcription & names
- Subtitles were auto-generated and contain transcription errors (examples corrected in this summary):
- “Garted” → GParted
- “Foronics” → Phoronix
- “Michael Larble/Larbel” → Michael Larabel
- “smith A / Smithy” → Smithay
- “kaka / kaka‑utils” may be spelled differently in repos
- The summary uses context to correct obvious product/project names; some speaker/developer names were spelled inconsistently in the transcript.
Main speakers / sources
- Hosts / primary speakers: Jonathan Bennett (host), Ken, Jeff.
- Articles / reporting cited: Bobby (?), Marcus Nester (Calibre, GParted, XFCE), Michael Larabel / Phoronix.
- Projects / vendors mentioned: Argon40 (OneUp), Raspberry Pi Foundation (CM5, SDM), AMD (EPYC), Intel (Granite Rapids/SDM spec), KDE, XFCE developers (Brian Terry referenced), Valve / Proton, NVIDIA, GParted, TigerVNC.
If you want, I can: - Produce a short one-page “action list” (links + install notes) for any of the items above (e.g., how to install GeForce Now Flatpak, how to tune swappiness, where to get Argon One setup scripts). - Extract specific release-note bullet points (Calibre 9.x, Proton 10.0‑4, TigerVNC 1.16, GParted 1.8) into copy-ready notes for show notes.
If you’d like one of those, tell me which items to prioritize.
Category
Technology
Share this summary
Is the summary off?
If you think the summary is inaccurate, you can reprocess it with the latest model.
Preparing reprocess...