• Mudita Pure OS is going open source

  The company stated that MuditaOS operating system will be publicly available on the GitHub platform, under a GPL (GNU General Public License) license. In the initial phase, MuditaOS will be available as a Developer Preview, during which, Mudita will work with the growing community to fine-tune the documentation and deal with the first reported issues.

  [...]

  The Mudita phone has been delayed numerous times this year, it was supposed to have come out in April, and was slated for release in October and now has been pushed back until Spring of 2021. It will eventually come out, it is a vanity project of Michal Kicinski, who created the Witcher/Cyberpunk games.

• A Librem 5 Video Made on a Librem 5

  When it comes to making a video, there are a lot of workflows involved. From writing, planning, to local screen capture, all the way to editing raw 4k footage with proxy clips. Even with all that workflow complexity, the following video was made completely on the Librem 5 phone.

  [...]

  Ultimately the Librem 5 phone lets you take your regular workflow with you while also keeping you in contact with your friends and family.

• Specify Form-Factors in Your Librem 5 Apps

  While more and more applications are being redesigned to take smartphones like the Librem 5 into account, PureOS still offers lots of desktop applications which are not ready to run on such devices yet.

  As a user you want to know which applications are relevant to install, so PureOS Store will by default only present mobile-ready applications, while still letting you opt-into showing all applications to take full advantage of the Librem 5’s convergeant docked mode. As a user you also want to know which applications are relevant to run at a given time, so Phosh will let you run desktop-only applications only when the phone is docked.

  This requires the applications to provide some information on which form-factors they can handle, if you are an application developer and you want your applications to work as expected on the Librem 5, please provide the relevant information as shown below.

  To make your application appear in PureOS Store, add the following lines to your AppStream metainfo...

The need for device sharing has become increasingly important for our partners. And it’s easy to understand why: imagine a scenario where a mobile device is required for executing certain actions during a business process. Each workstation has a mobile device and when a work shift changes the previous shift logs out of it and the new shift logs in. In this case the mobile device is more of a shared resource than a personal device.

One of the major new features that we’re excited to have included in the latest 3.4 Pallas-Yllästunturi release is the ability to have multiple users on the same device that can be switched between in this way. For regular everyday use of Sailfish OS this doesn’t have any impact, the device owner (the primary user) works just as it used to. However, release 3.4 will have a new ‘defaultuser’ (devices flashed prior to 3.4.0 keep ‘nemo’ user, but it’s only the name that’s different). The new ‘defaultuser’ name is mostly visible behind the scenes for application developers; end users can ignore this detail.

Data recovery is the process of retrieving data from corrupted or damaged storage media when it cannot be accessed. The storage media in question will often be a hard disk, but it can also be removable media such as CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and USB keys. There are many different reasons why a system administrator may need to use data recovery tools.

At boot up, mainstream Linux distributions perform routine scans to identify and fix any inconsistencies in the file system. A damaged file system might be caused by the computer not shutting down in an orderly fashion, which can occur say in the event of a power cut. However, such routine scans will not detect hardware failure which might exist for a long period without being noticeable to users. Accesses to bad sectors on the media can make the situation worse, and with further usage as well as the passage of time, the media can eventually become unreadable.

This Commodore 64 retro computer case plus openSUSE Linux with a little mix of DIY is a perfect mixture of Linux and vintage tech enthusiasm with a dash of my almost unhealthy obsession of openSUSE Linux. It just all comes together here.

I have often heard from some people that standards aren’t fun or standards restrict too much. I think this idea is rather absurd as it is the “restriction” of standards that give us the framework to support the freedom to create new and interesting things. Everything from this “Modern” Commodore 64 case to house standard components is cost effective because of the standard interfaces. I think we can see evidence of this everywhere. This can be everything from programming languages to graphical widget toolkits. Not to say that standards need to be static but having a solid foundation from which to build allows for wonderful and interesting creations. The Commodore 64 Retro Case is just one example of it.