Plus, an update on Matrix and the recent upgrades we made to our server.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais and Joshua Strobl.

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• A Cloud Guru: By the end of this course, you will feel comfortable working with a large variety of networking tools and configurations to manage complex Linux networking implementations.
• Linode Cloud Hosting: A special offer for all Linux Unplugged Podcast listeners and new Linode customers, visit linode.com/unplugged, and receive $100 towards your new account.

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• Building an Alternative Ecosystem | Joshua Strobl — While we have been consistent in this vision, though certainly not without flaws in its execution, we have seen a significant shift from GNOME’s development efforts and vision being focused from their desktop experience, to a heavier focus on mobile-to-desktop application scalability and a more touch-oriented, almost iPadOS like user experience that does not (in our opinion) provide the most optimized experience for laptop and desktop users.
• The Truth they are not telling you about “Themes” – Rust in Peace — There seems to be some confusion when it comes to libadwaita’s stylesheet and coloring APIs.
• Red Hat’s Upstream Contributions Are Making For A Great Fedora Workstation 35 - Phoronix — Fedora Workstation 35 will hopefully be out at the end of October (currently the beta is running behind schedule) and when it does ship it's once again at the bleeding-edge of Linux features.
• GNOME 41 has new multitasking settings!
• SeaGL is coming up soon, and is virtual this year — November 5th & 6th, 2021
• This Week in Matrix
• Spaces: The next frontier — Using Spaces and Subspaces to build hierarchies effectively turns Matrix into a global decentralised filesystem for conversations and other real-time data!
• toger5/TheBoard — A collaborative Whiteboard powered by the [matrix] protocol and infrastucture.
• Matrix Live
• Compressing Synapse database | Levans’ workshop — Anyone running a federating instance of the Matrix homeserver Synapse will likely have seen this: synapse is database-hungry. It tends to take a lot of space. In this post, I'm documenting how I shrunk my homeserver database from 100GB to a little under 8GB, during a long maintenance cleanup.
• Pick: Wayfire — Wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.
• Garuda Wayfire Download

Plus Google moves to block GApps on “uncertified devices”, Red Hat turns 25, a new Wayland contender, a few app picks, and much more.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Visit linux.ting.com and get a $25 discount off a device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!
• DigitalOcean: Visit do.co/unplugged for a limited time special offer, or enter dounplugged after you create your account for a $10 credit. Promo Code: dounplugged
• Linux Academy: Visit linuxacademy.com/unplugged to support the show and sign up for a 7 day free trial.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• Red Hat at 25 — A lot has changed since 1993
• Red Hat Summit 2018 — The Grammy Award-winning band Weezer will be performing at this year’s Red Hat Summit party. Join us for a night of food, drinks, and music, at the San Francisco Armory at 7:00 p.m.
• Google now blocks GApps on uncertified devices, but lets custom ROM users be whitelisted — arlier this week, we received an anonymous tip from a person claiming to be within the industry. This person, who said they worked for an OEM/ODM, notified us that Google has started entirely locking out newly built firmware from accessing Gapps.
• Microsoft Open-Sources WSL Sample To Let More Linux Distributions Run On Windows — The WSL-DistroLauncher is what is now open-source and is a C++ code-base offering a launcher that can be customized for particular distributions for the steps to get to a log-in shell, running commands, and setting configuration values.
• Wayfire — 3D wayland compositor
• People Are Using Old Laptop Batteries to Build Their Own Versions of Tesla's Powerwall — Consumers have constructed their own powerwalls by utilizing old, recycled batteries from laptops.
• Rant launches Eric Raymond's next project: open-source the UPS — ESR opened up the work-in-progress on GitLab: the Upside project is currently defining requirements and developing a specification for a “high quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop”.
• Eric S. Raymond / upside · GitLab
• Hyper™ — JS/HTML/CSS Terminal
• Upterm — A terminal emulator for the 21st century.
• MP4Tools — MP4Tools is a collection of cross-platform free tools to manipulate MP4 files.
• Slax Linux — Despite its small size, Slax provides nice graphical user interface and the only two programs everyone really needs: a Web browser and a Terminal.
• Debian-Based Slax 9.4 Linux OS Adds Easier App Install Method, More Improvements — According to the developer, Slax will now show launchers for not-installed apps, which, when clicked, they will fetch and install the respective application from the official software repositories. The first such app installer are available for the VLC Media Player and VoteCoin anonymous cryptocurrency wallet.
• Slax 9.4 Released With Updated Debian Packages, One-Click-To-Install Launchers — Besides syncing against Debian stable, Slax 9.4 adds RFKILL support for toggling WiFi/Bluetooth connections