AMD brings the fight back in GPUs, New Ubuntu, Fedora and PopOS releases - Linux News October 2020
1,369Here are some interesting Linux, open source, and privacy news for the end of October 2020. This month, we have increased competition on GPUs, a lot of new distro releases with Ubuntu, Fedora, and PopOS, youtube-dl being taken down for alledged copyright infrigement. Oh and Google also get hit by a lawsuit for monopolistic practices.
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00:00 Intro
01:11 Linux News
03:58 Open Source News
06:56 Hardware News
07:48 Applications News
09:18 Gaming News
10:46 Privacy News
## Linux
A member of the KDE team has published a good article about the transition to Wayland, it's integration with Plasma, and the KwinFT fork that aims to better support wayland in KDE.
https://blogs.kde.org/2020/10/19/few-thoughts-plasmawayland-kwinft
Ubuntu 20.10 was released, bringing a fresh GNOME 3.38 desktop, with a bunch of changes: the ability to manually reorder icons in the app grid and in folders, better support for Fingerprint readers, better connection sharing through a QR Code, a new icon theme for LibreOffice to match the Yaru icons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxlsoVectDg
Pop OS 20.10 was also released, bringing the same enhancements as what Ubuntu 20.10 brought to the table, with a few specific tweaks of their own.
https://blog.system76.com/post/632781631953027072/whats-new-in-popos-2010
The flurry of distro releases continues, with Fedora 33, also based on GNOME 3.38, for which I have a dedicated video, check it out in the card up top, it has features that Ubuntu didn't use, so it warranted 2 separate videos.
https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-33/
## Open Source
A major piece of open source software is currently dormant: CUPS, the printing system used by most if not all Linux distributions seems dormant.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/15/apple_cups_develoment/
The Nvidia drivers seem broken with the Linux kernel 5.9, so if you're using an Nvidia card, you're better off waiting a bit before moving to the latest release.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/you-may-want-to-avoid-linux-kernel-59-if-you-want-fully-supported-nvidia-drivers
Youtube-dl, the super popular tool that allows people to download youtube videos, has been taken down for copyright infringement.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/23/the-riaa-is-coming-for-the-youtube-downloaders/
The Snap team is working on fixing one of the biggest annoyances of their software distribution method, and that's load times.
https://ubuntu.com//blog/snap-speed-improvements-with-new-compression-algorithm
## Hardware
System 76 released the THelio Mega, the most powerful installment of their THelio line of desktops. These things use AMD threadrippers, with GPUS ranging from RXT 2080 Tis to Quadro RTX 8000, with up to 256Gb of RAM, and 10-gig ethernet.
https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-mega
## Apps
Microsoft Edge has its first preview release on Linux, and OMG Ubuntu gave it a shot. The chromium based browser brings some small touches and features that aren't found in the base browser, like improved bookmarks capabilities.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/10/microsoft-edge-linux-first-look
Apart from Edge, Firefox also got a new release, version 82. This update blocks malicious downloads that you didn't ask for, and notifies you so you can allow the download if it seems legit, and performance has been improved, with flexbox layouts loading 20% faster, and restoring a session taking 17% less time.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/10/firefox-82-download-now
## Gaming
Wine 5.20 was released, bringing more work on cryptographic providers, some fixes for Richedit, and 36 bug fixes, including for Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord, Saints Row 2, Stellaris, The Sims Complete Collection, Metro Exodus, Alan Wake, Battlefield 3, Watch Dogs, or Sniper Elite V2 Remastered.
https://www.winehq.org/announce/5.20
AMD revealed their RDNA2 architecture, with the Radeon 6000 series in tow. The RX 6900 XT, 6800XT and 6800 are the new graphics cards based on that architecture.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/amd-radeon-rx-6000-rdna-2
Speaking of those, Nvidia released a new version of their Linux drivers, version 455.38.
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/166177/en-us
## Privacy
Google was hit by a lawsuit by the US department of justice for illegal monopoly in search and search ads.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/technology/google-antitrust.html