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Comment Re:4K waste of time (Score 1) 49

Isn't that the point... the ability to Switch screens? It's called that for a reason.

I've got a 65" TV. It would be nice to get real 4K output, even if it's not going to have 4K when playing in handheld mode. 15 years ago, people bitched about the Wii only doing 480p, and now you're here complaining about Nintendo doing 4K, even if they're late to the party.

Submission + - Interview with Fedora project leader Matthew Miller on 15 years of Fedora (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Fedora—as a Linux distribution—will celebrate the 15th anniversary of its first release in November, though its technical lineage is much older, as Fedora Core 1 was created following the discontinuation of Red Hat Linux 9 in favor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Five years after the start of Fedora.next, the distribution is on the right track—stability has improved, and work on minimizing hard dependencies in packages and containers, including more audio/video codecs by default, flicker-free boot, and lowering power consumption for notebooks, among other changes, have greatly improved the Fedora experience, while improvements in upstream projects such as GNOME and KDE have likewise improved the desktop experience.

In a wide-ranging interview with TechRepublic, Fedora project leader Matthew Miller discussed lessons learned from the past, popular adoption and competing standards for software containers, potential changes coming to Fedora, as well as hot-button topics, including systemd.

Submission + - npm CEO Bryan Bogensberger exits after eight months of turmoil (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Bryan Bogensberger's exit from npm, inc was quietly announced Friday afternoon in a press release stating that Bogensberger "resigned effective immediately to pursue new opportunities." This marked likely one of the few quiet actions in Bogensberger's tumultuous tenure as CEO of npm, the popular package manager of Node.js.

Bogensberger started as CEO on January 9 this year, as part of a move announced by original author and co-founder Isaac Z. Schlueter as part of a plan to commercialize the service. Bogensberger's involvement with the company started in mid-2018, although he was not formally named CEO until 2019 pending the resolution of visa requirements.

Submission + - USB-IF to continue confusing name scheme with USB4 Gen 3x2 (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: USB4 will be formally published at the USB Developer Days Seattle on September 17, and the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) is expected to continue the widely maligned naming scheme for USB speeds introduced in February for USB 3.2, an engineer familiar with the USB-IF's plans told TechRepublic.

As a quick recap, USB 3.1 Gen 2, increased the lane speed to 10 Gbps. A second 10 Gbps lane was added in the USB 3.2 standard, which the USB-IF calls "USB 3.2 Gen 2×2." USB4 (which is not written as "USB 4.0") will reach speeds of 40 Gbps, doubling the speeds again. USB4 was first previewed in March, when the USB Promoter Group announced that USB4 would be based on Intel's Thunderbolt 3 specification, though specific details are expected later this month.

Submission + - Microsoft Surface Pro 6 and Surface Book 2 are throttle locking to 400 MHz (zdnet.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Owners of Microsoft's Surface Pro 6 and Surface Book 2 systems are finding themselves stuck at Pentium 2 speeds, as numerous user complaints indicate that the ultra-portables are throttling the processor down to 400 MHz, a state that—in some instances—persists across reboots. While similar issues with Surface devices have occurred in the past, reports of issues have increased in frequency following a firmware update for the Surface Pro 6.

The throttle-lock appears to be caused by an Intel CPU flag called BD PROCHOT (bi-directional processor hot), which can be set by any peripheral, telling the processor to throttle down in order to decrease system temperature—a useful flag in cases where the CPU is operating within thermal limits, but other components tied to the CPU are running too hot, because of the demands placed on other components by processes on the CPU.

Submission + - Why Canonical views Snaps as a compelling distribution-agnostic solution (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: For roughly two decades, Linux distributions have been the first choice for servers. Hardware support for Linux on the desktop has historically been an encumbrance to widespread adoption, though support for modern hardware on modern distributions has progressed such that most hardware is detected and configured correctly upon installation.

With these advances in hardware support, the last significant challenge users face when switching from Windows or Mac to a Linux distribution is app distribution and installation. While distribution-provided repositories are useful for most open source software, the release model of distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora lock in users to a major version for programs for the duration of a particular release.

Because of differences in how they interact with the underlying system, certain configuration tasks are different between Snaps or Flatpaks than for directly-installed applications. Likewise, initial commits for the Snap and Flatpak formats were days apart—while the formats were developed essentially in parallel, the existence of two "universal" package formats has led to disagreement about competing standards.

TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Martin Wimpress, engineering manager for Snapcraft at Canonical, about Ubuntu's long term plans for Snaps, its adoption and support in other Linux distributions, Canonical's position as the operator of the Snap Store, and the benefits Snaps provide over Flatpak.

Submission + - It's 2019, and one third of businesses still have Windows XP deployments (techrepublic.com) 3

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: There is a relatively old—though still fundamentally true—adage about Windows: Microsoft's biggest competition is Microsoft, as a specific subset of users (and businesses) only upgrade to the latest version of Windows kicking and screaming. According to SpiceWorks' Future of Network and Endpoint Security report, published Tuesday, 32% of organizations still have at least one Windows XP device connected to their network, despite extended support for XP ending in 2014. (Notably, the last variant of XP, Windows POSReady 2009, reached end of life in April 2019.)

With the looming end of free support for Windows 7, this reticence of users and enterprises to upgrade to newer versions of Windows is likely to create significant security issues. Presently, 79% of organizations still have at least one Windows 7 system on their network, according to SpiceWorks, which also found that two thirds of businesses plan to migrate all of their machines off Windows 7 prior to the end of support on January 14, 2020, while a quarter will only migrate after that deadline.

Submission + - Interview with Desktop Engineering Director Will Cooke on future of Ubuntu (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Following Canonical's pivot away from its internally-developed Unity user interface and Mir display server, Ubuntu has enjoyed two relatively low-drama years, as the Linux Desktop market homogenized during its transition back to a customized GNOME desktop. In a review of the most recent release, TechRepublic's Jack Wallen declared that "Ubuntu 19.04 should seriously impress anyone looking for a fast and reliable Linux desktop platform."

Largely, it's been a slow-and-steady pace for Ubuntu since the pivot from Unity to GNOME, though the distribution made headlines for plans to end support for 32-bit support. This prompted Valve, operators of games marketplace Steam, to re-think its approach toward Ubuntu, which it previously characterized as "as the best-supported path for desktop users."

TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Will Cooke, director of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, about the distribution's long-term plans for legacy 32-bit support, shipping a desktop in a post-Unity-era Ubuntu, and why Linux should be the first choice for users migrating from Windows 7 prior to the end of support.

Submission + - Interview with PINE64 on the upcoming release of the PineBook Pro (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: One of the consequences of the explosive popularity of the Raspberry Pi is the flourishing of competing ecosystems of single-board computers (SBCs). Aside from the accessibility a $35 price tag offers, the foremost benefit of the Raspberry Pi is the community—the proliferation of projects and integrations that center around the Raspberry Pi, and the ease-of-use that creates, makes competing products that look better on spec sheets a disappointment when taken out of the box.

PINE64 has attempted to head this off by fostering an involved community; the PINE64 website explains their philosophy as "the community gets to actively shape the devices, as well as the social platform, of PINE64 from the ground up. The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of." The first-generation Pinebook was available in an 11.6" or 14" configuration, with a quad-core Allwinner A64, 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and 1366x768 display for $99, beating Nicolas Negroponte's OLPC XO-1, a decade after that project sputtered.

PINE64 is differentiating itself by building not just SBCs, but notebooks, tablets, and phones with community input and feedback. Ahead of the release of the Pinebook Pro this summer, a Rockchip RK3399-based ARM laptop with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB eMMC, and a 14" 1080p display, TechRepublic interviewed PINE64 community manager Lukasz Erecinski about the Pinebook Pro, and the PINE64 community philosophy.

Submission + - Windows XP dies final death as Embedded POSReady 2009 reaches end of life (techrepublic.com) 1

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: Extended support for Windows Embedded POSReady 2009—the last supported version of Windows based on Windows XP—ended on April 9, 2019, marking the final end of the Windows NT 5.1 product line after 17 years, 7 months, and 16 days. Counting this edition, Windows XP is the longest-lived version of Windows ever—a record which is unlikely to be beaten.

Despite the nominal end of support for Windows XP five years ago, the existence of POSReady 2009 allowed users to receive security updates on Windows XP Home and Professional SP3 through the use of a registry hack. Microsoft dissuaded users from doing this, stating that they "do not fully protect Windows XP customers," though no attempt was apparently made to prevent users from using this hack. With POSReady reaching the end of support, the flow of these security updates will likewise come to an end.

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