FreeBSD 13.0 – Full Desktop Experience

With the release of FreeBSD 13.0 on the horizon, I wanted to see how it shapes up on my Lenovo T450 laptop. Previous major releases on this laptop, using it as a workstation, felt very rough around the edges but with 13, it feels like the developers got it right. I like to keep things simple when it comes to a desktop operating system so the description below is how I went from a fresh install of FreeBSD 13.0RC1 to a working environment that is based on using the XFCE4 desktop experience. The FreeBSD install process is simple and well documented in other official locations, so I am not going to repeat that here. However, some of the configuration items that I did select was to use ZFS on Root, encrypted swap and disabled all services (this is a workstation, not a server). Once the machine had been rebooted, we need to set it up so that suspend/resume works correctly (and tests as such) and enable power management. The main issue that people have getting the resume part of the suspend/resume to work is not having the drm or xf86 drivers loaded that are applicable to the onboard graphics.

Nuvola Player 4.21 Brings Official Support for Linux Mint, Anghami Support, and More

Nuvola Player 4.21 looks to be a major update to this overlooked media player that gives you instant access to a wide range of popular media streaming services like Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, Jamendo, Tidal, BBC iPlayer, DI.FM, SoundCloud, ownCloud Music, SiriusXM, and many others. Two major changes are implemented in this update, the first being official support for the Linux Mint distribution in the way that the player will no longer give you errors during installation and it better integrates with both the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments, and the second is support for the Anghami Arabic music streaming service.

Desktop/Laptop: Lenovo, Decline of Microsoft, and GNU/Linux on Laptops

• Lenovo M93 Ultra Small Desktop PC- OBS Studio – Week 6

  This is a weekly blog looking at the Lenovo M93 Ultra Small Desktop PC running Linux. This week’s blog looks at video recording on the Lenovo M93. When it comes to software, Linux offers a fantastic array of free and open source programs. In the vast majority of areas there’s a wide range of programs to choose from. Sometimes the amount of high quality open source software is bamboozling. But there’s still a few areas which are dominated by a single program. In the case of video recording and streaming, the stand out open source program is OBS Studio. Modern graphic cards perform a variety of tasks. They aren’t just designed for gaming. Many cards help offload video encoding and decoding from the CPU. This helps to lower power consumption and free up resources for the rest of the system. In the case of OBS Studio, this program relies heavily on the GPU. But the Lenovo M93 doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card. This ultra small PC uses the Intel HD Graphics 4600, a mobile integrated graphics solution by Intel launched in May 2013. Performance of the graphics unit is widely reported as in the low-end segment.

• How Google is continuing to chip away at Microsoft's productivity dominance [Ed: Even the Microsoft boosters admit Microsoft is in trouble...]

  The paths of the digital advertising giants may just be beginning to diverge. While Google will remain dependent on advertising revenue for years to come, the company's levelheaded approach regarding threats to that business may be indicative of a broader shift that could have the future of the company looking a lot more like Microsoft than Facebook. As we were recently reminded when Microsoft executive Brad Smith testified regarding Google's dominance, the two companies have a long-running rivalry. It has included Microsoft chasing Google in online search and mobile phone operating systems and Google chasing Microsoft in cloud computing, productivity suites, and PC operating systems. The startup display of the Surface Duo, which shows the Microsoft logo on one screen and the Android logo on the other, is a great metaphor for the companies' relationship -- separated by a divide designed to bend but not break.

• [Older] 13 Places to Buy Linux Laptops in 2021

  Almost all the non-Apple computers sold these days come with Windows preinstalled on them. The standard procedure for Linux users is to buy such a computer and then either remove Windows and install Linux, or dual boot Linux with Windows.