 Welcome to the first edition of Unfettered Freedom, your weekly GNU slash Linux news video podcast. Packing so much freedom into each episode, it ought to be illegal. On this week's episode, Linux 5.8, it's been released and it's a big release for the kernel team. It's a big release for GNU's Linux Libre team as well, although it takes a ton of work these days to maintain the Libre kernel. A Linux foundation, it aims to improve open source software security. Libre Office 7.0 has been released, lots of changes, lots of improvements. The NVIDIA's main developer, he's stepping away from the NVIDIA project and he's stepping away from open source development altogether. We're going to discuss that also. Freedom respecting social media sites. What are your options? And what exactly is the Fedaverse? So the first story is going to be the big release of Linux 5.8 and everyone seems to think this is a big deal. The kernel team says 5.8 is a big deal. The Linux community is touting this as quote, one of the biggest Linux releases ever. It features a lot of really cool stuff, such as Thunderbolt 4.0 support. It features a better arm 64 security, lots of security fixes, a lot of new features, a lot of new drivers. And one of the things about this particular release is that this series 5.8, they skipped one of the release candidates. Typically they do a eighth release candidate. This time they just skipped over RC8. They didn't need it. According to Linus Torvalds, it just wasn't worth waiting around that extra week when they really didn't see any big looming worries. So they just skipped the release candidate eight Linus Torvalds. He was also one of the ones that really touted this as one of the biggest releases ever in terms of the number of merge requests, the number of commits. Torvalds said it was quote, the biggest Linux release yet in terms of the number of commits, and he compared it to Linux 4.9. Kernel 5.8 does address some security concerns, some memory management concerns. Of course, you're going to get better hardware support. It's always, especially for those that buy the latest and greatest hardware, maybe you buy that video card that just came out like yesterday. Typically you want to be on a fresh kernel. You want to be on that newest kernel because it's going to have the support that you need. So when will Linux kernel 5.8 appear in your distributions repositories? Well, if you're on a rolling release, it may already be there for those of you running things like Arch and Gintu. You may already have 5.8 available for you to install. Those of you on static release distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, things like that, you're going to have to wait, of course, for the next release of those particular distributions to get that latest and greatest kernel. 5.8 should be available for Ubuntu 2010 when it's released later this year in October. Now, because Linux 5.8 was such a massive release in terms of updates and bug fixes and new features, this was also a huge release for the GNU Linux Libre team. They recently released Linux Libre 5.8. For those of you not familiar with Linux Libre, this is a free version of the kernel, free as in freedom. So the GNU project maintain a Linux kernel that is completely free. They strip out all the non-free modules and binary blobs and everything that really don't match the philosophy of the free software movement, and they maintain this Libre kernel. And this was a big deal for them. This 5.8 release, probably one of the biggest releases for the Linux Libre team as well. So one of the challenges that the GNU project has is with such a big release, the kernel version 5.8 saw so much new code added, new drivers, new firmware, things like that. But the Linux Libre team, they have to go in there and strip a lot of that stuff out because it's not free. It's not free as in freedom. A lot of that stuff does not match the philosophy of the free software movement. So you've got this massive new kernel release, and then you've got to go in there and strip so much of it away to maintain a Libre version of the kernel. And the Linux Libre kernel is very important because there are a lot of Linux distributions out there or GNU slash Linux distributions out there that run the Linux Libre kernel. All of the distributions that are free software foundation approved GNU slash Linux distributions, all of those run the Linux Libre kernel. That's basically how they can say that they are 100% free as in freedom is because they maintain that free kernel, the Libre kernel. The Linux Libre team is also wanting to move away from some of the scripting languages that they use because they have these scripts in place, these scripts they use that help purify the kernel, strip all the non free stuff out of it. And the scripting languages they are using are GNU and GNU said. And yes, you can actually script with GNU. All is a perfectly capable scripting language. It's almost fully complete as a scripting language. The problem is is speed. And they want to improve the speed of these scripts a little bit. And they want to transition to more appropriate scripting languages. So they want to rewrite all these scripts in Python and Perl. And our second story is the formation of a new foundation by the Linux foundation. Yes, you heard me right. The Linux foundation, they want to improve open source software security across the board and how they are going to achieve this. Well, they have announced the formation of the open source security foundation or the open SSF. This is going to be a cross industry collaboration that aims to bring leaders from various open source organizations and open source software companies. They want to bring all of these people together and hopefully get everybody targeted on the same goals as far as initiatives and best security practices. Since the announcement of the open SSF, we've already got several companies and organizations on board. So we have companies and organizations like GitHub, GitLab, Uber, VMware, Google, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft and Red Hat, just to name a few. I'm going to read a quote from Jim Zimlin, who is the executive director of the Linux foundation, quote, we believe open source is a public good. And across every industry, we have a responsibility to come together to improve and support the security of open source software we all depend on. Basically, what Jim is trying to say here is, it's not just your open source project that you need to worry about security, you know, we really all should be working on this stuff together. Now will the open SSF make a difference? I think so. I think the more people you have in a room together to discuss these sorts of things and all focus on one issue when you get everybody focused on one task such as security in our open source software, it can't help but improve. And our third story is going to be the big release of LibreOffice 7.0. This is a major release for the LibreOffice team that sees a ton of key changes, major improvements, bug fixes. Some of the key changes include visual changes. Those of you watching the video version of this podcast, you're going to see a screenshot of the new icon theme in LibreOffice. This icon theme is called Sukapura, and it is very similar to Mac OS' color palette. So it would fit right in those of you that want to run LibreOffice on Mac OS. Of course, the name of this podcast is Unfettered Freedom. And if you're listening to this podcast, I would assume you're using a free as in freedom operating system such as GNU slash Linux or maybe one of the BSDs. But I understand many of you guys do have to use proprietary garbage operating systems like Windows and Mac at work and at school. And if you have to use those operating systems and you also want to run LibreOffice within those operating systems, I think you're going to be impressed with this new icon set. Some of the other improvements include they've created a couple of new spreadsheet functions within LibreOffice calc, which are nonvolatile random number generator functions. They've also made some significant changes in LibreOffice writer, they've added support for padded numbering improvements to the auto correct feature support for transparent text, a semi transparent text, also within LibreOffice impress and LibreOffice draw, you also have support for the semi transparent text also draw now supports pages larger than 200 inches when exporting to a PDF. Also we see major accessibility improvements we see Vulkan support. So they have switched away from the Cairo library for rendering to the Skiah graphics library and that now has optional GPU based Vulkan acceleration support with this release you can now export to the new versions of ODF including ODF version 1.3. Also we have help page improvements and a ton of other small little improvements that overall make LibreOffice 7.0 one of the best releases of LibreOffice in recent memory. How do you get LibreOffice 7.0? Well depending on what GNU slash Linux distribution you're running, you may already have it in the repository you may not. Obviously if you're on a rolling release distribution like R charge into it should already be available to you. If it's not it should be available to you very soon. Those of you on static release distributions though may have to jump through some hoops to get the latest LibreOffice 7.0. Those of you on Ubuntu and on Ubuntu based distributions there is a PPA available that will update LibreOffice to the latest 7.0. Our fourth story is NVIDIAs and that would be NVIDEO.US but it really spells the word NVIDIAs. The main developer of that particular project is stepping away from that project and from open source altogether. For those of you not familiar with what NVIDIAs is, it's basically a free as in freedom kind of front end to YouTube. You can go watch a YouTube video without actually having to be on YouTube. Now obviously I'm sure YouTube has a big problem with NVIDIAs and sites like NVIDIAs so I don't want to dwell too much on this particular site but it is a big deal. A lot of people use the NVIDIAs site. Well starting on September 1st Omar Roth who is the main developer quote I'm shutting down the user facing portion of NVIDIAs and stepping away from development so the main website is at NVIDEO.US he is shutting that site down that's his site if people want to make other instances of NVIDIAs that's fine but he is no longer going to maintain that site and he is no longer going to be part of the development team for NVIDIAs. Roth goes on to write that the main NVIDIAs instance has roughly 35,000 users so not an insignificant amount of people use the NVIDIAs site and it is kind of a freedom respecting site that's the point of the NVIDIAs website is it's supposed to be a front end to YouTube without all the tracking and the evil stuff that Google and YouTube do to its users. Well I think this is a big deal losing the site and losing Mr. Roth. I understand why he's stepping away though he says he's completely burnout that this is such a massive job maintaining NVIDIAs that you know it's not worth it to him it's not fun and he just wants to get away from developing NVIDIAs and open source software development in general he basically says he's done so a lot of people often talk about things like burnout when it comes to software development or even things like content creation video content creation like on YouTube and library or podcasting or whatever it is eventually sometimes people just burn themselves out they work on something so hard because they are so passionate right it's it's their baby and it consumes you it consumes every thought that you have every minute of every day you're thinking about that one project that you work on all the time and that's kind of what happened to Omar and he says he's done he's throwing in the towel and I don't blame him for this you see this often with developers and for his sake and for health mental health physical health even I certainly understand why he needs to step away and I wish Omar the best now one thing I do want to touch on is there are other ways to watch YouTube videos without being on YouTube other than NVIDIAs there are many other projects out there websites out there applications out there programs that you can use to grab a YouTube video and watch that video without actually being on the YouTube platform I won't mention what those are because YouTube would not like that if I mentioned it here on camera because I will post this video on YouTube and it it could get me into some hot water but there's other things out there I think one of the best things you guys can do those of you that consume video content on YouTube is ask your favorite content creators on YouTube to please join library lbry.tv library it is free as in freedom it's free and open source software the platform is fantastic and it's getting better with each and every release of the software and of the website it is also exploding in popularity right now more and more content creators are on library every day we're seeing more and more viewers of video content showing up to library to actually watch the videos so right now library is definitely on a uptick and really anybody that has a YouTube channel should be on library they should go ahead and sync their content to library you don't have to leave YouTube completely you can still be on YouTube but there is a sync function you sign up for library it takes like two minutes to sign up and you sync all your content and it just pulls everything you have on YouTube down and every time you post something new on YouTube library pulls that down as well there's no extra work so really there's no reason for anybody that posts to YouTube not to also be on library and the fifth story tonight it's not really a story but because we dealt so much with various social media things with YouTube Nvidia's library I also wanted to dive a little deeper in the topic of freedom respecting social media sites because this is one of the most common questions people ask when they first start taking seriously free software movement the open source software movement and just being personally responsible for their digital rights their digital privacy their security and one of the things is how do I get off of things like Facebook and Twitter and you know all of that garbage and what can I replace those services with those social media sites what is out there for me that is freedom respecting in terms of a social network well there's a lot of options out there actually many of them are fediverse sites and when we talk about the fediverse usually people immediately ask what exactly is the fediverse well that's a portmanteau of two words federation and universe it's the fediverse it's a federated network of interconnected sites basically typically when we talk about the fediverse and a social network being federated we think of things like diaspora mastodon things like that where they have multiple instances so on mastodon there are thousands of mastodon instances out there that you could sign up to and join in many ways it's completely different than something like facebook or twitter where there's only one twitter to go and sign up to you have thousands of different mastodon instances that you could sign up to and join and they are all separate but at the same time they're also all kind of connected it's this loose cabal it's this loose network you know they're not really all doing the same thing but they're not all doing their own thing either typically with these federated social media sites things like mastodon even though you have an account on one instance a user from one mastodon instance can talk to a user or you know tweet or toot on mastodon to another user on another instance of mastodon you don't have to be on the same instance of mastodon to interact with somebody you can share information data or whatever it is you want to share with users across the entire mastodon network one of the benefits of having multiple instances of a social network so you have multiple instances of things like diaspora multiple instances of mastodon and each instance for example of mastodon has its own rules some instances of mastodon have strict rules you know nothing can be posted that's not safe for work you know no violent content no pornography nothing like that but then you have other instances of mastodon that are much more relaxed in their rules and say you join some instance of mastodon and they have a set of rules and for whatever reason you break them and they ban you well you can go sign up to a different instance of mastodon one that better reflects your worldview you can't do that with non federated social networks so something like facebook or twitter there's one facebook one twitter if you break their rules and they ban you you don't have any other twitter to go sign up to there's not another twitter there's only the one twitter it's completely different in the fediverse so how do the different instances of all these fediverse sites talk to each other well there are communication protocols used in the fediverse the most popular communication protocol in the fediverse is one called activity pub activity pub is used by many of the most popular federated sites out there mastodon being the most notable site other pieces of software and services that use activity pub include things like next cloud peer tube friendica pluroma so getting back to the fediverse if you're looking for alternatives to things like facebook and twitter and reddit and things like that there are a number of different options out there my favorite social media site as far as a federated social network is mastodon i've mentioned it several times throughout this segment and i have an account over at mastodon dot technology i have nearly 3000 followers on mastodon and it's a great community mastodon as far as free and open source the free and open source software community we have a very large presence over on mastodon for those of you looking for alternatives to something like facebook you have things like diaspora that you could take a look at diaspora is federated for those of you wanting a reddit alternative you could look at lemmy one of the things i've noticed about the alternative platforms especially the federated platforms is they are typically much friendlier than places like facebook and twitter you find far less toxic people on those platforms than you do on the more mainstream traditional platforms and that was the final story for this inaugural episode of unfettered freedom this will be a weekly ganu slash linux news video podcast i'm going to try to release unfettered freedom every thursday one thing i do want to do with this podcast is not just focus on ganu slash linux and free software and open source software although i do want to talk about the software i want to talk about ideology i want to talk about the movement ultimately the reason we're all here is because of the freedom aspect and that's why i chose the name unfettered freedom for the podcast i i didn't choose that name arbitrarily because freedom is the reason we're all here now before i go i need to thank a few special people i need to thank the producers of episode one of unfettered freedom i'm talking about michael gabe nate corbinian michael entropy uk john devon arch 5530 chris chuk dj donnie dylan george louis armory paul robert shawn tabias and willie these guys they are my highest tiered patrons over on patreon they are the producers of unfettered freedom episode one i also need to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen these are all my supporters over on patreon because this channel and this podcast is sponsored by you guys the community you guys support my work i don't have any corporate sponsors here at distro tube it's just me and you guys all right guys peace