Dirty Home Directories

We reveal all and look at the mess that is our home directories. How we keep them clean, back them up, and organize our most important files.

Plus Gnome lands a long awaited feature, Firefox gets a bit more clever, and the big money being made on Open Source.

• systemd-nspawn - ArchWiki — systemd-nspawn may be used to run a command or OS in a light-weight namespace container.
• Transparently running binaries from any architecture in Linux with QEMU and binfmt_misc
• QemuUserEmulation - Debian Wiki — This page describes how to setup and use QEMU user emulation in a "transparent" fashion, allowing execution of non-native target executables just like native ones.
• Firefox 67: automatically unload unused tabs to improve memory — If things go as planned, Firefox 67 will introduce a new feature to unload unused tabs to improve memory. The initial bug report dates back eight years but work on the feature began in earnest just a short while ago.
• Chrome OS 74 dev channel brings Linux app improvements (Crostini) — There’s now support for audio playback when using Linux apps. Up until now if you wanted to use Linux software to watch videos, listen to music, or do anything else that requires sound, you were out of luck.
• GNOME 3.32 Lands Long-Awaited Fractional Scaling Support — Fractional scaling allows for greater control over the UI scaling than the previous integer based scaling of 2, 3, etc, to instead support fractions like 3/2 (1.5) increase in user-interfaces. Fractional scaling is primarily to improve the user experience with modern HiDPI displays.
• Systemd-Free Debian "Devuan" Planning Their First Developer Gathering This Spring — Taking place in Amsterdam from 5 to 7 April will be the first Devuan conference for "init freedom lovers".
• Canonical adds containerd to Ubuntu Kubernetes — Enabling Kubernetes to drive containerd directly reduces the number of moving parts, reduces latency in pod startup times, and improves CPU and memory usage on every node in the cluster.
• Jupiter Broadcasting Meetups
• Ubuntu Podcast Listener Get Together — We're having a Get Together in Reading, UK on Saturday March 16th. We'll meet at Breddog in Reading!
• Dotfile madness — To those of you reading this: I beg you. Avoid creating files or directories of any kind in your user's $HOME directory in order to store your configuration or data. This practice is bizarre at best and it is time to end it. I am sorry to say that many (if not most) programs are guilty of doing this while there are significantly better places that can be used for storing per-user program data.
• More home directory pollution — I looked in my home directory and now see (in addition to 26 dot-files) directories named go, snap and systems.
• Steve Reaver on Twitter — There is so much junk in my home dir I had to ls it in column format. I've just about given up using ~ because of all the crap that application put in there!
• “Please move the “$HOME/snap” directory to a less o...” : Ubuntu Bug #1575053
• Why do hidden files in Unix begin with a dot? — The answer is very simple, because it's extremely easy to test if a file is hidden or not by simply testing the first character of the filename.
• Yet Another Dotfiles Manager — When you live in a command line, configurations are a deeply personal thing. They are often crafted over years of experience, battles lost, lessons learned, advice followed, and ingenuity rewarded. When you are away from your own configurations, you are an orphaned refugee in unfamiliar and hostile surroundings. You feel clumsy and out of sorts. You are filled with a sense of longing to be back in a place you know. A place you built. A place where all the short-cuts have been worn bare by your own travels. A place you proudly call… $HOME.
• Lyft to spend $300 million on Amazon Web Services by 2022 — Notably, Lyft said that if its usage of Amazon's cloud doesn't hit or exceed that $300 million threshold, it'll have to pay the difference. Lyft committed to spending at least $80 million in each of the three years of the deal, with the stipulation that it will spend $300 million in aggregate overall
• MongoDB shares plunge on concerns that Lyft is moving to AWS
• Flowblade — Flowblade is a multitrack non-linear video editor released under GPL3 license. From beginners to masters, Flowblade helps make your vision a reality of image and sound.
• Shotcut — Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. Major features include support for a wide range of formats; no import required meaning native timeline editing; Blackmagic Design support for input and preview monitoring; and resolution support to 4k.