Mojolicious, PHP, grep update in Tumbleweed

Half a dozen openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots have been released since last week’s blog update for Geekos’ favorite rolling release. Six packages were updated in the most recent 20201202 snapshot. An updated keyring was signed and obsolete documentation macros were removed in the update of mtools 4.0.26, which is a collection of utilities to access MS-DOS disks from GNU and Unix without mounting them. The timing and password encrypting/decrypting package python-scrypt updated to version 0.8.17 and added additional test vectors from Request for Comments. Another PyPI package python-atpublic updated from version 1.0 to version 2.1.1; the package dropped Python 3.4 and 3.5 and added Python 3.8 and 3.9. Someone was excited because the package also fixed the doctests to run and pass, which was highlighted with an exclamation point in the changelog - congrats. The other packages to update in the snapshot were fcitx-qt5 1.2.5, libmodulemd 2.10.0 and perl-Types-Serialiser 1.01. The first snapshot to arrive this month was 20201201. Three YaST packages were updated; the update of yast2-installation 4.3.22 fixed the full media product selection during the setup. Fingerprint reader package fprintd provided proper hotplug support and authentication now requires a new print to enroll with the 1.90.4 version. Other packages to update in the snapshot were the gaming library for game controllers libmanette 0.2.6, libyui-qt-pkg 2.48.5 and the real-time web application framework perl-Mojolicious 8.66.

Games: Stadia, Unreal Engine, Tuxedo BOOK XP14 and Much More

• Stadia exclusives Outcasters and Submerged: Hidden Depths out now and free for Stadia Pro | GamingOnLinux

  Today, Stadia did a livestream on YouTube to show off gameplay of new titles and make some big announcements. Along with that two new Stadia exclusive titles are live. Plus, we round up all the other news. Firstly, Outcasters is a new Stadia exclusive title developed by Splash Damage with Stadia Games and Entertainment as publisher. It's out, right now, and it's free if you have the optional Stadia Pro subscription. You battle through colourful arenas in chaotic eight play shot-curving battles.

• Operation Broken Fang announced for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive | GamingOnLinux

  Valve have finally delivered on the next event for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with Operation Broken Fang. It's another big one, with plenty to go over and some sounds quite exciting for the ageing first-person shooter. Much like the last operation with Shattered Web, it's using the Battle Pass system where you pay for a pass and then do missions to unlock stars to progress through it. Across 16 weeks, as it runs until next April, you will get a new set of missions to complete each week for various game modes like Danger Zone, Guardian and there's two new modes!

• Unreal Engine 4.26 rolls out with lots of Linux improvements, drops OpenGL for Vulkan | GamingOnLinux

  Epic Games have rolled out the latest major upgrade to Unreal Engine 4 while work continues on Unreal Engine 5. This latest release with Unreal Engine 4.26 surprisingly has quite a lot of Linux issues sorted, along with dropping OpenGL in favour of Vulkan on the desktop now. It's a change that's not really surprising, with Vulkan being the future along with it being needed for Stadia which is quickly expanding its list of available titles.

• Unity acquires the open source MLAPI networking library | GamingOnLinux

  In the post Unity's Brandi House mentioned how they're trying to expand the Unity ecosystem with a "first-party multiplayer networking solution for GameObjects that is easy to set up and extend, scales to meet the needs of high-performance titles, and is seamlessly integrated into the Unity ecosystem" and after considering many they ultimately decided to pull in MLAPI along with its creator, Albin Corén. The good news is that it remains open source and will be developed in the open as expected, and they will not be changing the license which is currently as MIT. So now we have another open source solution for networking, fully backed by a big company - nice.

• Real-time grand strategy fantasy city-builder Songs of Syx arrives on GOG | GamingOnLinux

  Songs of Syx, a title currently in development and available as Early Access has now officially arrived on the DRM-free store GOG if that's where you prefer your games. A good remind of a nice up and coming title, as Songs of Syx is very promising. At its heart, it's a city-builder but it's on a grand scale. You start off tiny and gradually expand to a huge sprawling city full of hundreds of citizens. That's far from it though, it's also a strategy game that will have massive tactical battles with huge armies since you're also dealing with the politics of other kingdoms. Even though it's not finished and there's plenty missing, it's highly rated by users.

• Dead Cells has sold over 3.5 million copies, Fatal Falls DLC announced for early 2021 | GamingOnLinux

  Evil Empire and Motion Twin have announced that Dead Cells is getting a brand new DLC in early 2021 and it seems they have a lot more coming to Dead Cells. They've managed to sell over 3.5 million copies now, more than they ever expected and so they will continue supporting it. They mentioned with the previous DLC that they had at least 2 years worth of content coming and "that's still the plan". However, they indicate they probably have a lot more to come and we can expect to see more regular updates next year along with the Christmas Update 21 due "in a few weeks". Update 21 will have a new weapon, a new monster, a lore room, new skins, a new diet option and a few other bits. Something of a stocking filler until the DLC is ready.

• Smissmas 2020 is live for Team Fortress 2 with new maps | GamingOnLinux

  Along with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive seeing it's 10th operation with Operation Broken Fang, Valve's other popular free first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 is doing a new Smissmas 2020 event. Live until January 7th, 2021 - any player who logs in during the event will be gifted a Stuffed Stocking, which contains goodies for "good little Mercenaries". There's plenty more to entice you back into TF2 with 3 new community maps to play across: Pier, Snowfall, SnowVille, and Wutville.

• XMG Core 14 gaming laptop features Intel Tiger Lake and NVIDIA GPU

  The Tuxedo BOOK XP14 is basically an XMG Core 14 that ships with Linux rather than Windows. Tuxedo offers operating system options including Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and its own Ubuntu-based Tuxedo_OS.

Raspberry Pi OS has a big new release out switching to PulseAudio

Time to warm up your little board as the Raspberry Pi OS has a big new releasing up for those of you sticking with the official Debian Linux based system. Sounds like it's a pretty huge update with a lot of work that went into it, which is great as the Raspberry Pi is a wonderful device for all sorts of uses (and yes gaming too!). For starters, this finally brings with it a major update to Chromium with version 84. They mentioned it took longer than they wanted but getting video hardware acceleration integrated takes a lot of work. Thanks to that you should see smooth video playback in browser and they've also paid special attention to the likes of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom due to the pandemic. This is the last release they support Flash with too. One big background change is their move to the PulseAudio sound server. Since Linux audio can be a little…complicated, PulseAudio deals with most of the interfaces available and puts it under one roof. Most normal distributions use it by default and so with this change Bluetooth audio on the Raspberry Pi OS should now be easier too. They're also automating some of the Bluetooth stuff to make it simpler for users. They're also now including Printing support out of the box, along with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) and the system-config-printer UI to make it a smoother experience. Also: Diversity and inclusion in computing education — new research seminars