Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software
KDE Partition Manager 4
Full disk encryption (or SSD encryption) has become an essential component in many of our Linux installations and for a vital reason. With so much of our lives now conducted from our computers, we can no longer afford to risk the data on our portable devices falling into the wrong hands. Encryption helps mitigate this risk by protecting your data should the worst happen, and you lose your laptop or it gets stolen. But it has the disadvantage of adding another layer of complexity to filesystems and partitions and to the assumed knowledge users already require to run the systems. This puts people off encrypting their drives and, ultimately, puts them at greater risk. Which is why we need great partitioning and formatting tools, such as GParted and this excellent new release of KDE's Partition Manager.
KDE Partition Manager v4 is the result of 18 months of development. Apart from the work done to isolate authentication from the app itself, which is something that helps KDE run on Wayland, a big emphasis has been placed on working with encrypted partitions. In particular, there's now better support for LUKS2, and most encrypted partitions can now be resized much like any other partition. Similarly, if you dual boot your Linux machine, Partition Manager can now navigate its processes around both Apple's APFS encryption container and Microsoft's BitLocker. This is important because, especially with APFS, partition tables get lost among these new container paradigms, sometimes even blocking the update of macOS without a complete reformat. It then becomes essential to use a partition manager that understands what these partitions are and what they contain, even if they can't manipulate them. And that's exactly what this release does, helping more people encrypt their drives and confidently work with their data, even on Apple or Microsoft hardware.
Project Website
https://invent.kde.org/kde/partitionmanager
macOS compatibility
Darling
It's understandable why we've long needed Windows compatibility on Linux. Windows was always the most popular desktop operating system and ran many of the proprietary applications desperately needed by Linux users. It also helped that Windows mostly used the same hardware architecture as Linux, and all this commonality led to Wine, which lets you run Windows executables. It had humble beginnings, starting off with a few utilities, applications, games, and developer tools, but it currently helps to run Proton and a huge Steam library of Windows games, complete with DirectX to Vulkan conversion and hardware acceleration.
But Macs, and macOS, have never enjoyed the same attention. There was little reason when Macs were built on PowerPC CPUs. But that time is long gone, and modern Macs are virtually indistinguishable from their PC cousins inside, even with the many modifications and standards variations that Apple likes to make, as many Hackintosh users have discovered. As well as being a portmanteau for Darwin (the open source core of macOS) and Linux, Darling is a project that feels very much like those early Wine prototypes. Like Wine, it's a translation layer to help bring macOS applications and tools to our favorite operating system. The project has been on and off over the last couple of years and takes some considerable compiling effort to get working, mainly because you're building kernel modules, but Darling still lets you run simple macOS binaries. You can open a simple shell, for example, and use the pkg
command line to install simple commands. There's also a build of Midnight Commander that will work. All of this is of course a long way from being able to run Final Cut Pro or Ableton Live, but it's still important work that validates Apple's open source releases and builds a foundation for macOS compatibility for future Linux desktops.
Project Website
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