Hello and welcome to Linux This Month. Happy new year! It's 2022 and I'm excited about the
year ahead. Here are my predictions for Linux in 2022. Now I don't have a crystal ball and
I have a lot of things I'd like to see, but here's what I'm predicting we'll see in 2022.
Gaming in Linux is going to become more popular this year. Linux is stable and performant,
which is great for gaming. PC gaming has always been on Windows because it's widely used. And
software like DirectX and video drivers written specifically for Windows meant there was really
only option. But Steam for Linux has made amazing strides recently. And of course you have the Steam
Deck, which runs Arch Linux. So the software in Linux is catching up. This means more options
for PC gamers to take advantage of what developers have known about Linux for years. I predict we'll
see significant growth in Linux users in Steam in the coming year. Now I mentioned Arch Linux on the
Steam Deck earlier. I predict a rise in Arch-based Linux distributions in 2022. Arch is one of my
favorite distributions personally, because it's stable, powerful, and very configurable. It's a
great way to get a rock solid Linux system exactly how you want it. Plus it's a rolling distribution,
meaning you always get the latest and greatest software patched in whenever you update.
No big upgrade procedures needed. However, it's not always easy to install and configure. It can
be quite painful. There are distributions based on Arch that take away that pain, like Manjaro.
Manjaro is easy to install and use, plus it has all the benefits of having Arch Linux underneath.
It's been gaining popularity very quickly as an easy to use, powerful system. Distributions like
Garuda and EndeavorOS are also based on Arch, and they're gaining in popularity. It's the best of
both worlds, easy to use and performant. We'll see a lot of growth with Arch-based distros in 2022.
I predict flatpaks are going to win the year in 2022.
If you've ever tried to install something like Zoom or Skype or something similar,
you know there's a lot of configuration involved. Installation systems like flatpak and snap,
make it an easy install, which is why they're becoming so popular. But snaps have had a lot of
issues. The flatpak system seems far more reliable and less problematic. This helps new Linux users a
lot. And with Linux becoming more popular, I see flatpaks rising as the standard in 2022 or 2023.
Now Wayland will win. The writing is on the wall with this one.
Wayland is getting better and better every day. And in 2022,
I think it will continue to be the desktop of choice. There are many great benefits to Wayland,
such as smoother graphics and hardware acceleration, and it's constantly improving.
Again, new users love it, and I predict it's going to rise in popularity big time in 2022.
I predict more developers will be using Linux in 2022. Now you're probably rolling your eyes right
now because Linux exists because of developers. And it's been a top choice for decades, right?
But there's a twist. The developers I'm thinking of are using Windows. That's right,
WSL or Windows Subsystem for Linux is making great strides. You can have a full real Linux
system running inside of Windows. It's not a VM or an emulator, but a true Linux system in a console.
So all of those things that people love to do in Linux like containers,
image processing, machine learning, all that stuff can now be done from a Windows desktop.
So all these Windows developers out there now have a great way to leverage the power of Linux
from within their desktop and they love it. I predict we'll see more developers
using Linux within WSL in 2022. And that will naturally bring more folks into the Linux world.
These are my predictions for 2022. Let me know what you think in the comments.
If you’re curious about the cloud, we have a free plan option that gives you access to different
ACG courses and quizzes each month, plus learning paths and original series content.
And you don’t need a credit card to sign up. You could try out our free course for
January - Hands-on with Podman Containers on Linux, or our always free course - Linux
Operating System Fundamentals. I’ve included the links to these below.
There's new malware on the wild, and it affects Linux systems. Now this is big news
because usually when you hear about malware attacks, it only affects Windows systems,
but not this one. It's out there and spreading. And it collects personal information,
SSHD credentials, and loads back doors into the system. Security researchers haven't yet
figured out how the malware gets into systems, but they do know that it extracts credentials
and creates a custom SSHD that acts as a proxy to gather even more information.
We'll keep you updated on it and you can get more information in the link below.
Nubo has released Linux Remote Desktop 0.9. It's an open source VDI solution so you can easily set
up remote desktop for your Linux system. Now, if you've ever set remote desktop using XRDP or VNC,
you know it can be a pretty tricky configuration to get it going.
Nubo promises an install with a shell script, so there's no more xwindow configuration editing
and manually installing a bunch of separate applications to make remote desktop work.
Pop!_OS, the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution from System76,
has released version 21.10. There are some UI changes that come with this new release,
including a new application library. Instead of a single full screen application window
with a bunch of icons, it's now smaller and organized alphabetically. And with folders
to organize your applications. System76 has changed their software repositories as well.
They're now hosting their own repos from their own infrastructure for a more stable experience for
their users. Pop ships with kernel 5.15.5 and the latest NVidia drivers. In fact, it has a special
NVidia version of Pop that you can download if you have an NVidia card. This enables the NVidia
drivers by default, and it allows you to offload rendering and other intensive tasks to your GPU.
Manjaro, an Arch Linux-based system, has released their 21.2 Qonos edition. Manjaro comes with three
different standard desktops, Gnome, Plasma and XFCE. The Gnome edition received the most
updates with a 41.2 version, and their default layout has been reworked to feature more Gnome
upstream adjustments. You can also switch back to that legacy layout that matches the previous
Gnome layouts. They've also enabled a ton of smaller updates to the Plasma and XFCE editions
to make them faster and more stable. This release is using the kernel 5.15 LTS.
Kdenlive is a free video editor for Linux that's gaining in popularity.
They've recently released Kdenlive 21.12, which includes multi cam editing and slip trimming mode,
which can actually really help with your workflow. It also has a new deep learning base tracking
algorithm and a new noise reduction filter. They've also included several small enhancements
to the editor, which you could read more about in the link that I've added in the description.
Now there aren't many video editors in the native Linux environment. Kdenlive is not only native to
Linux, it's also a very mature video editor. So it's nice to see that Kdenlive is really taking
off and continually improving. That's it for this month's Linux This Month. If you liked the show,
be sure to give this episode a big thumbs up. Have a question? Add it into the comments. May your
source code remain open and your code compile. See you next time. Subscribe to stay
up to date, and keep being awesome Cloud Gurus.