Untitled Linux Show 240

High-level show format

• Casual, Linux-focused roundtable where hosts troubleshoot live audio/streaming issues and discuss hardware/software news and tips.
• Frequent practical discussion points:
  • Swap behavior and swap tuning (vm.swappiness).
  • Cautions around OBS and PipeWire.
  • SSHFS causing UI hangs (file managers blocking on disconnected mounts).
  • Memory/OOM behavior on laptops and browser OOM killing.

Hardware / devices / reviews

Argon One (OneUp) CM5 laptop shell — hands-on impressions

• Uses the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) with NVMe; can play fullscreen YouTube at ~60 fps (Pi5-class performance).
• Cooling: includes a metal heat spreader but the reviewer noted thermal pads were not included (ordered separately). A proper thermal interface is required to reach intended thermals.
• Expansion: breakout module exposes the 40‑pin header and additional USB‑C ports so Pi HATs can be attached externally.
• Peripherals and setup:
  • Keyboard and trackpad are serviceable.
  • Battery indicator and desktop battery icon require setup.
  • Wi‑Fi antenna selection is fixed by running the included setup script.
• Conclusion: neat, portable Pi machine for browsing and tinkering, but not a desktop replacement.

Raspberry Pi Smart Display Module (SDM)

• CM5 built to the Intel “Smart Display Module” (SDM) spec — a slot-in compute module for displays/signage.
• Exposes USB, Ethernet, HDMI; intended for digital signage and commercial displays.
• Targeted primarily at commercial deployments but accessible to hobbyists; enables blade-style installations of many Pi modules.

CPUs & servers

• Phoronix (Michael Larabel) rebench: AMD EPYC 9755 vs Intel Granite Rapids using dual-socket test systems.
  • Massive testbed: dual CPUs (each ~128 cores / 256 threads → ~256 cores / 512 threads total), Ubuntu 25.10, Linux 6.18.1, GCC 15.2, and 24×64GB DDR5 sticks.
  • AMD EPYC generally led in raw performance, but power vs. performance tradeoffs matter (power cost and cooling at scale).
  • The author ran 500+ benchmarks and provided an interactive summary page to filter by workload (audio encoding, compiles, linear algebra, Blender, ffmpeg, etc.), with metrics for performance, power efficiency, and value/performance.
  • Price/context: parts and memory are expensive (EPYC ~ $10k; large memory configs can cost tens of thousands).

Desktop environments & UI

KDE

• Experimental KDE VR mode (PR): map windows into 3D space to create a floating multi-monitor VR workspace (developer work is unpaid/hobby).
• Plasma 6.6 / 6.7 notes: “Air” visuals returning, background blur via Wayland protocol, bug fixes, improved emoji/cursor previews, global shortcut to clear notifications, and more.

Cosmic desktop

• New releases add a frosted glass effect and polish animations/UX rough edges; positioning itself as a modern competitive desktop.

XFCE

• XFCE team is developing a Wayland compositor (new, written in Rust using Smithay-like building blocks). This is a rewrite rather than a straight port of xfwm4.
• Plan to reuse XFCE configuration dialogs; the project has received funding to support development.

Software releases, highlights & tutorials

Calibre 9.x

• New features/highlights:
  • Bookshelf view (spine shelf), edit-book button in viewer for editable formats (EPUB/AZW3/KF8).
  • Page-number jump in the viewer and momentum scrolling for touchpads.
  • Various bug fixes (shutdown speed, SMIL warnings).
  • GPU acceleration for Qt WebEngine disabled by default to reduce crashes on older systems.
• Calibre 9.1 followed soon after 9.0 as a bugfix release.

GParted / GParted Live 1.8.x

• Fixes and improvements in 1.8:
  • Resolves crashes, improves filesystem operation safety (erases filesystem signatures before copies).
  • FAT fixes (label handling).
  • GParted Live built from Debian SID with Linux 6.18.5 for better hardware compatibility and blank-screen mitigations.

TigerVNC 1.16

• Adds a Wayland VNC server so Wayland sessions can be shared.
• New shortcuts (F8), updated platform support (RHEL 10 added; some older Ubuntu versions dropped).
• Hosted on SourceForge; includes multiple bug fixes.

Gaming & streaming

NVIDIA GeForce Now Flatpak (Linux beta)

• Flatpak available (beta) to run NVIDIA’s cloud gaming service on Linux.
• Codec/support notes:
  • Requires hardware decoding support (H.264/H.265); AV1 for Vulkan video not yet supported on GeForce Now for Linux.
  • Recommended for NVIDIA users: 580-series+ GPUs and Xorg.
  • Intel/AMD users: Mesa 24.2+ and Wayland recommended.
• Service tiers: free (1-hour sessions, ads, ~2,000 games), mid ($9.99/mo) and premium ($19.99/mo) with longer sessions, higher priority, and better resolution.

Proton 10.0‑4

• Many fixes previously in experimental were promoted into the stable Proton release.
• Multiple games became playable again; regressions fixed; updates to Wine Mono, VKD3D, and Steamworks SDK.
• Good reason to retry games that previously failed.

Other tools, tips & utilities

• Pacman Easter egg: add ILoveCandy (exact capitalization) and Color to /etc/pacman.conf to change the progress meter into a small Pac‑Man animation.
• ASCII/color art library (referred to as kak / kaka in transcript): includes demo programs (kakafire, kakademo, kakaview) for colorful terminal visuals.
• ShellBeats: command-line music player that streams/downloads from YouTube via yt-dlp; promising but subject to yt-dlp/YouTube auth and 403 issues unless cookies/auth are used.
• Swap behavior anecdotes and tuning:
  • Aggressive swapping observed even with abundant RAM — tune vm.swappiness to change swap behavior.
  • Some UIs or kernels may OOM-kill browsers to keep overall system stability.
  • SSHFS mounts to disconnected shares can hang file managers; reconnecting SSHFS resolved the example issue.

Notable coverage improvements / usability themes

• Phoronix’s interactive summary page for large benchmark suites is useful for filtering by workload and comparing performance, power, and $/performance metrics.
• KDE VR and Wayland support expansions (TigerVNC, XFCE compositor) reflect the desktop ecosystem’s shift from X11 to Wayland and exploration of new display paradigms.
• Flatpak distribution of cloud services (GeForce Now) and ongoing Proton improvements show gaming on Linux gaining more mainstream integration and fixes.

Reviews / guides / tutorials mentioned (show-note links referenced)

• Argon One / OneUp CM5 laptop review / first impressions.
• Calibre 9.0 (and 9.1) release highlights and release notes.
• Phoronix Michael Larabel’s AMD vs Intel multi-benchmark comparison and interactive results tool.
• TigerVNC 1.16 release notes and Wayland VNC server setup hints.
• NVIDIA GeForce Now Flatpak beta: install instructions from NVIDIA site / Flathub and requirements.
• Proton 10.0‑4 changelog and game compatibility list.
• GParted (GParted Live 1.8.x) release notes and live image details.
• XFCE Wayland compositor announcement and high-level dev roadmap.

Notes about transcription & names

• Subtitles were auto-generated and contain transcription errors (examples corrected in this summary):
  • “Garted” → GParted
  • “Foronics” → Phoronix
  • “Michael Larble/Larbel” → Michael Larabel
  • “smith A / Smithy” → Smithay
  • “kaka / kaka‑utils” may be spelled differently in repos
• The summary uses context to correct obvious product/project names; some speaker/developer names were spelled inconsistently in the transcript.

Main speakers / sources

• Hosts / primary speakers: Jonathan Bennett (host), Ken, Jeff.
• Articles / reporting cited: Bobby (?), Marcus Nester (Calibre, GParted, XFCE), Michael Larabel / Phoronix.
• Projects / vendors mentioned: Argon40 (OneUp), Raspberry Pi Foundation (CM5, SDM), AMD (EPYC), Intel (Granite Rapids/SDM spec), KDE, XFCE developers (Brian Terry referenced), Valve / Proton, NVIDIA, GParted, TigerVNC.

If you want, I can: - Produce a short one-page “action list” (links + install notes) for any of the items above (e.g., how to install GeForce Now Flatpak, how to tune swappiness, where to get Argon One setup scripts). - Extract specific release-note bullet points (Calibre 9.x, Proton 10.0‑4, TigerVNC 1.16, GParted 1.8) into copy-ready notes for show notes.

If you’d like one of those, tell me which items to prioritize.