This Week in Linux 106: Linux 5.7, SpaceX, Plasma 5.19, Mint vs Snaps, PineTab, Lenovo, System76

Originally published at: 106: Linux 5.7, SpaceX, Plasma 5.19, Mint vs Snaps, PineTab, Lenovo, System76 - Podcasts - TuxDigital

On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got so much news it’s kind of ridiculous! We’ve got a new kernel release with Linux 5.7. SpaceX Used Linux to send NASA Astronauts into Orbit. KDE released the latest version of their Plasma desktop environment with Plasma 5.19. We’ve got a lot of hardware news…

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For some reason the YouTube video isn’t playing for me.

It started playing after about ten seconds or so. Not sure what’s going on. It wasn’t just the Chromium browser either. Good show.

Thanks, @MichaelTunnell - excellent, as ever :slight_smile: I’m particularly interested in the PineTab. Looking forward to hearing more about that. Also I’ve not had a good experience with Manjaro previously but now considering giving it a proper look for use with Pinebook Pro if vanilla Debian isn’t running on it by that stage, though if MXLinux is, I’d run that instead, being closer to what I know. I’ve been having a lot of laptop problems and PC repair shops have been closed, so unable to use some of my more functional kit until its fixed. When it is, I do want to resume my LFS build and start taking a serious look at the Ubuntu touch project as it seems the best candidate for PinePhone at the moment.

I think it’s only logical that Linux be used for mission-critical systems like space flight. I remember learning about redundant processors and code when. studying Computing at university. For the older hardware I definitely think C/C++ are the languages to go for, as they’re far closer to the hardware and can give greater control over the relatively limited resources. There are micro versions of Java, of course, but I think the JVM is probably less safe than tried-and-tested compilers for C/C++.

The Linux kernel and Plasma developments sound excellent too, though as a Debian user I’ll be waiting a year, at least, for the newer versions :slight_smile:

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