Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my ongoing Linux journey.
I admit I really am not using Linux as much as I used to. I have had one minor glitch with the i7 desktop where for some reason Cairo Dock threw a wobble and appeared as a black box but still worked. So I was about to install some other form of Arch (maybe Garuda) when either the Nvidia driver or Mesa was an updated by EndeavourOS and Cairo Dock is now working fine.
I think it was an Open GLX issue with Mesa as Cairo Dock uses acceleration to work and its resolved the issue so my machine is all running fine. Pamac is being temperamental since it moved to version 10 (Thanks Manjaro for screwing that up) but yay works fine so I can use that to update which is fine by me.
Mangosteen (my AMD Turion 64 laptop) is still running Xubuntu and although I have ran several software updates it seems to be running fine with 20.10 LTS.
It will never be the fastest thing out of the blocks but it can do basic stuff like web browsing and word processing so it’s a fine enough machine for that purpose.
In the Linux world obviously there has been some interesting shifts with the likes of Fedora 34 which is moving towards Gnome 40 and Wayland as its primary driver and PipeWire becoming the standard over PulseAudio or Jack.
I must admit I don't have a system that is set up to run Fedora so I can't really comment on whether it is good or not. I can't stand Gnome as it's not my preference. So it's very unlikely I will be using or playing with Fedora 34 or any of its spins any time soon.
Ubuntu have released their 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) versions in it’s many flavours. This also has a movement towards Wayland but has also support for Active Directory Services this is because Canonical the guys behind Ubuntu have been working with Microsoft to make Ubuntu the choice install for WSL2.
However there has been several people admitting if you do not fresh install 21.04. on systems and just try and update existing 20.x systems it is currently breaking them. So delay 21.0.4 unless you really need to or just stick with the LTS kernel for now.
That is if you update your systems at all. Linux Mint have ben complaining that many of their customers are not doing essential updates to their kernel so they are compromising the security of the machines.
With me using Arch (EndeavourOS) I am constantly updating but obviously if you use Mint, Debian, Ubuntu or any other of the static systems, Updates may be put our every 6 months or so but many have not bothered with major kernel updates. Which is entirely up to the user.
However Linux Mint have realised this means many of their users could be easily compromised due to failure to update key kernel security issues. They are recommending updating key kernel features but obviously it is being met with resistance by many Mint users who work by the principle if it isn't broken don't upgrade.
Which may be true but due to newer exploits found. Just because it works fine doesn't mean it is secure.
They are not forcing people to upgrade but are heavily recommending that they do. This has caused a bit of controversy in the Linux community by those who feel they are being manipulated to upgrade.
Well I think that’s enough waffle for this episode ... So until next time ... Take care