FOSS World News: Collabora Announces xrdesktop, Blender 2.8 Released, Arduino Selects Auth0 as Its Identity Management Platform of Choice, Microway Showcasing Its Data Science WhisperStation at PEARC19 and KDE Plasma Maintenance Update

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Collabora Announces xrdesktop, Blender 2.8 Released, Arduino Selects Auth0 as Its Identity Management Platform of Choice, Microway Showcasing Its Data Science WhisperStation at PEARC19 and KDE Plasma Maintenance Update

News briefs for July 31, 2019.

Collabora yesterday announced xrdesktop. This new open-source project "enables interaction with traditional desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE, in VR. Sponsored by Valve, xrdesktop makes window managers aware of VR and is able to use VR runtimes to render desktop windows in 3D space, with the ability of manipulating them with VR controllers and generating mouse and keyboard input from VR." See the wiki for instructions on how to install xrdesktop.

Blender 2.80 has been released. This new version "features a redesigned user interface that puts the focus on the artwork that you create. A new dark theme and modern icon set were introduced. Keyboard, mouse and tablet interaction got a refresh with left click select as the new default. Quick Favorites menus provide rapid access to often-used tools." See the Release Notes for details.

Auth0 announces Arduino has selected Auth0 as its identity management platform of choice. Auth0 will be replacing Arduino's own Single Sign On solution for all of its public-facing web properties. From the announcment: "Arduino discovered its homegrown authentication solution would not scale to meet the rapidly developing needs of its growing global community, and reached out to Auth0. In addition to Single Sign On, Arduino will take advantage of Auth0's new Universal Login, which enables developers to completely customise their branded authentication experiences quickly, and Device Flow for browserless or input-constrained devices."

Microway is showcasing its Data Science WhisperStation, a Unique Ultra-Quiet NVIDIA Data Science Workstation, at PEARC19 in Chicago this week (ending on August 1st). From the press release: "Up to 10 times faster than CPU solutions from data preparation to result, the Data Science WhisperStation helps data scientists, analysts, and engineers transform massive datasets into insights in less time." You can learn more about PEARC here, and more about the Data Science WhispterStation here.

KDE released the fourth maintenance update to the latest KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment. The release adds three weeks' worth of new translations and a few bug fixes, which are small but important. See the full changelog for details.