• Release of Foundry (previously known as rlife) 0.2.0

  These past weeks, I’ve been working a lot on my side project and I’ve made a new release of it. First of all, the project has been renamed “Foundry” (instead of “rlife”). I wanted to find a better name for this project and as this project is now actually based on Vulkan (that was my primary objective when I started it), I thought it would be a good idea to give a name related to it. Plus, there was no crates already named “Foundry”.

• Ducktype parser extensions

  When designing Ducktype, I wanted people to be able to extend the syntax, but I wanted extensions to be declared and defined, so we don’t end up with something like the mess of Markdown flavors. So a Ducktype file can start with a @ducktype/ declaration that declares the version of the Ducktype syntax and any extensions in use. For example:

• AION Blockchain System Releases Desktop Wallets With Windows, Mac & Linux Compatibility

  AION has finally released its Desktop wallets; the product is Linux, Wndows and Mac compatible. The AION wallet underwent thorough tests and audits both internally and externally to have this milestone released for users. AION’s wallet is built for storing the AION altcoin as is the move by most of its peer competitors within the crypto space.

One of the strengths of Linux is the huge range of software. That is, after all, one of the reasons why users are attracted to Linux in the first place. Having the opportunity to select from a plethora of software and select the ones that meet an individual’s needs still makes good sense. Having hundreds of open source text editors, file managers, integrated development environments, backup tools, databases, web browsers, FTP clients increases the likelihood of applications existing that really do what a user wants. Further, even where a developer only reinvents the wheel by creating a very simple application, it is still a valuable learning experience, and from these little acorns, mighty oaks may grow.

Irrespective of the operating system used, the text editor is one of those quintessential applications for many users. A text editor is software used for editing plain text files. Text editors are used to write programming code, change configuration files, take notes, and more. For this feature, we wanted to select alternative text editors which are definitely worth trying but may have been missed given that they receive less coverage in Linux publications, and are not included or installed by default in many Linux distributions.

• Wine Announcement

  The Wine maintenance release 3.0.3 is now available.

• Wine 3.0.3 Ships With 50+ Bug Fixes

  If you are a user of the Wine stable releases rather than the bi-weekly Wine development releases or Wine-Staging (or now Proton too), Wine 3.0.3 is out today as the latest version.

• Wine's VKD3D Lands An Initial Vulkan Pipeline Cache

  The Wine project's Direct3D 12 to Vulkan API translation layer has implemented a basic Vulkan pipeline cache that may help with performance.

  Józef Kucia of CodeWeavers who has been leading much of the VKD3D development landed this initial pipeline cache. Earlier today he posted the initial patch series on the Wine mailing list and already has merged the patches laying out this inline caching implementation.

• Cool-Retro-Term is a great Mimic of old Command Lines, Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

  Cool-retro-term is a free terminal emulator developed by Filippo Scognamiglio, it mimics the look and feel of the old cathode tube screens. If you are tired of your current terminal than it comes in hand as eye-candy, it is customizable and reasonably lightweight terminal emulator. It uses the Konsole engine which is powerful and mature, it requires Qt 5.2 or higher to run terminal emulator.
  It has pre-configured templates so you can use them with just one click, profiles includes: Amber, Green, Scanlines, Pixelated, Apple ][, Vintage, IBM Dos, IBM 3287, and Transparent Green. Further more you can create your own profile and use it.
  It's preferences offers a lot of customization: you can adjust brightness, contrast, and opacity; font; font scaling and width; cool effects for terminal; and you can control FPS, texture quality, scanlines quality, and bloom quality. Further more you can dive into settings to change colors, shadows etc.

• Easily Format A USB Flash Drive On Ubuntu 18.04 Using USB Stick Formatter

  If you're looking for an easy, straightforward way of formatting an USB flash drive in Ubuntu or Debian, similar to the one available in Microsoft Windows, you can use the USB Stick Formatter utility.

• Fstransform – Optimus Tux

  File system conversion is not an everyday thing. For that matter, it’s not even an every year thing. But when you do need to convert from one format to another, the operation is usually long, tedious and sometimes destructive. Most often, you would copy files to a backup location, re-format the partition, then copy the data back. The notion of being able to do a seamless, live conversion sounds like a cool thing.

  Fstranform is a tool designed to offer in-place file system conversions without a need for a backup. This program does its magic by mounting several loopback devices and uses them to shuffle bytes to and fro while it restructures the file system layout. The advantages – if proven successful, of course – are in that you do not need to worry about backup devices (could be many terabytes), and you could potentially save time. Sold! Let’s see how it works.

• digest 0.6.17

  digest version 0.6.17 arrived on CRAN earlier today after a day of gestation in the bowels of CRAN, and should get uploaded to Debian in due course.

• Copyu – A Text Editor-Like Weekly Planner

  Copyu is a free, cross-platform, and open-source productivity app for planning all your weekly tasks using a sizeable app window.

  Copyu is as simple as a To-Do app can be and it is easy to set up and get straight to using. It combines your calendar app with a todo list and you are to make entries based on your weekly plans.

  Its modern, distraction-free main screen allows you to see the whole week’s agenda and to-do’s as it displays a single week per page.

  Tasks are in the form of bullet lists that have strike-through lines when completed. You can write notes next to tasks and you can interact with your lists using drag and drop.