Linux Action News 85

It’s been a huge year for Linux and FOSS news, and we take a look at some of the major stories that shaped the industry over the last 12 months.

Acquisitions, solid releases, a revolution for gaming, politics in the kernel community, Chrome OS coming of age, and more.

• IBM to Acquire Red Hat — Most significant tech acquisition of 2018 will unlock true value of cloud for business
• Red Hat to Acquire CoreOS — The world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CoreOS, Inc.
• Welcome to Fedora CoreOS — This new thing will be “Fedora CoreOS” and serve as the upstream to Red Hat CoreOS.
• Red Hat's Stratis Storage Project Reaches 1.0 — Stratis 1.0 was quietly released last week with the 1.0 version marking its initial stable release and where also the on-disk meta-data format has been stabilized.
• Microsoft to acquire GitHub — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub
• Microsoft joins OIN — Microsoft is joining the Open Invention Network (“OIN”), a community dedicated to protecting Linux and other open source software programs from patent risk.
• Microsoft’s Linux powered dev boards, Azure Sphere for sale — Azure Sphere is a solution for creating highly-secured, connected Microcontroller (MCU) devices, providing you with the confidence and the power to reimagine your business and create the future.
• Ubuntu 18.04 released — The 'main' archive of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April 2023.
• Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for 10 years — At OpenStack Summit in Berlin, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said in a keynote that Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support (LTS) support lifespan would be extended from five years to 10 years.
• Valve’s “Steam Play” uses Vulkan to bring more Windows games to Linux — Valve announced today a beta of Steam Play, a new compatibility layer for Linux, to provide compatibility with a wide range of Windows-only games.
• Steam Machines disappear from Valve's site — Valve is no longer highlighting Steam Machine hardware through the front page of its online Steam store, seemingly putting a final nail in the coffin of Valve's partnership with third-party PC builders.
• Steam Link box discontinued — According to Valve, the inventory of Steam Links has fully depleted, meaning this one’s apparently gone for good.
• Meltdown and Spectre — Meltdown and Spectre exploit critical vulnerabilities in modern processors. These hardware vulnerabilities allow programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer.
• Linus takes a break and a new CoC for kernel devs — The revamped Linux code of conduct encourages behaviors like accepting constructive criticism gracefully, using inclusive language, and being respectful of “differing viewpoints and experiences.”
• Linux apps on Chrome OS confirmed — Support for Linux will enable you to create, test and run Android and web app for phones, tablets and laptops all on one Chromebook. Run popular editors, code in your favorite language and launch projects to Google Cloud with the command-line. Everything works directly on a Chromebook.
• Chrome OS tablet launched — The Pixel Slate is a Chrome OS tablet with a detachable keyboard cover that turns it into something very closely resembling a laptop.
• Chrome OS 70 brings native network file share support — Mr. Beaufort points to a Chromium Gerrit commit that gives details of the feature that shows M70 of Chrome OS will have its NativeSmb flag to set to enabled by default.