Android Leftovers

• Force: This one's for the butterfingered Android lovers

• Motorola's new Beta Experiences program will let you test new Moto features before they're public

• 9 Android settings that'll strengthen your security

• Moto G6 Plus and G6 Play photos and details pop up on Carphone Warehouse's site

ExTiX, the Ultimate Linux Operating System, Is Now Based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

ExTiX is dubbed the "Ultimate Linux System," and it's been updated earlier today by developer Arne Exton to version 18.4, based on Canonical's upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system. However, ExTiX is using the lightweight and modern LXQt 0.12.0 as default desktop environment instead of GNOME, and it's powered by the latest Linux 4.16.2 kernel. "After removing GNOME I have installed LXQt 0.12.0," said Arne Exton in today's announcement. "Programs won’t crash or anything like that. And I haven’t discovered any bugs to report. While running ExTiX LXQt 18.4 live or from the hard drive you can use Refracta tools (pre-installed) to create your own live installable Ubuntu system. A ten-year child can do it."

20-Way NVIDIA GeForce / AMD Radeon GPU Comparison For Rise of The Tomb Raider On Vulkan/Linux

Today Feral Interactive released their much anticipated Linux port of Rise of the Tomb Raider, the game that was released for Windows in January of 2016 and then released for macOS last week. Feral's Mac port was relying upon the Apple Metal API while the Linux port is now their second game (after F1 2017) exclusively relying upon the Vulkan graphics/compute API rather than OpenGL. This morning I posted the initial Radeon results using the RADV driver while here is the NVIDIA GeForce vs. AMD Radeon graphics card comparison on Ubuntu Linux using twenty different graphics cards.

Nix This Innovative OS for Its Uninviting Complexity

I had to keep reminding myself that I was not dealing with an extreme case of Arch Linux instead of GNU/Linux. NixOS is more demanding and definitely not a distro for users with anything less than advanced skills. To say NixOS comes with a steep learning curve and lots of hands-on overhead is putting it mildly. If you are a typical Linux user who lacks sysadmin training, avoid NixOS like a malware attack hiding in plain sight.