Google Won't Allow DRM in an Open-Source Project, Collabora Announces the SPURV Project, WPS Office for Linux Version 11 Released, PyCharm 2019.1.1 Now Available, and KDE Plasma 5.15.4 Brings Many Bug Fixes and Improvements
News briefs for April 4, 2019.
Google won't allow DRM in an open-source project. Samuel Maddock is building a browser called Metastream, an "Electron-based (Chromium derived), MIT-licensed browser hosted on GitHub. Its main feature is the ability to playback videos on the web, synchronized with other peers. Each client runs its own instance of the Metastream browser and transmits playback information to keep them in sync—no audio or video content is sent." He sent a request to Google for a license to implement Widevine in his browser, and received this reply, "I'm sorry but we're not supporting an open source solution like this", four months later. See also "After years of insisting that DRM in HTML wouldn't block open source implementations, Google says it won't support open source implementations" by Cory Doctorow for more on the story.
Collabora recently announced a new project called SPURV, which allows you to "run Android applications in the same graphical environment as regular Wayland Linux applications with full 3D acceleration." The announcement also notes that "For current non-Android systems, this work enables a path forward to running Android applications in the same graphical environment as traditional non-Android applications are run." Full build instructions are available on GitLab.
WPS Office for Linux version 11 (2019) was released recently. Linux Uprising reports that the new version of the office suite includes "support for high resolution screens, skin support, and interface updates." See the WPS Community site to download the Linux version.
PyCharm 2019.1.1 is now available. From the announcement: "PyCharm is the first JetBrains IDE to ship with the new JDK 11. This brings us improved performance and better rendering for our Jupyter Notebooks. Unfortunately, it also means that we ran into a couple of teething issues with the new JDK."
KDE Plasma 5.15.4 was released this week with more than three dozen bug fixes and improvements. According to Softpedia News, highlights of this release include "improvements to the Flatpak and Fwupd (firmware update) backends in the Plasma Discover package manager, better support for the latest Nvidia graphics drivers in the KWin window and composite manager, along with proper support for restoring the current desktop from session." See also the release announcement at KDE.org for more information and links to live images and downloads.
Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.
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