Sponsored By:

• Kolide: Kolide can help you nail third-party audits and internal compliance goals with endpoint security for your entire fleet.
• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Ubuntu Core as an immutable Linux Desktop base — In this blog post we discuss the architecture of immutable operating systems, their benefits and drawbacks, and the role of Ubuntu Core in the immutable Linux landscape.
• Red Hat To Stop Shipping LibreOffice In Future RHEL, Limiting Fedora LO Involvement — However, the "tradeoff" to focusing on that is they will be pivoting away from less desktop application work and "cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHE version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora."
• LibreOffice to be cut out of RHEL installs
• Asahi: Big Updates — Get your updater ready!
• OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux
• Wine comes to macOS: Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit powered by CrossOver source code — We are ecstatic that Apple chose to use CrossOver’s source code as their emulation solution for the Game Porting Toolkit.
• Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is Wine
• Apple Home Brew Repo — Using the game-porting-toolkit formula requires downloading the Game Porting Toolkit from developer.apple.com.
• Game Porting Toolkit — Game Porting Toolkit is Apple's new translation layer which combines Wine with Apple's own D3DMetal which supports DirectX 9-12. Games that use anti-cheat or aggressive DRM generally don't work. Games that require AVX CPUs also do not work e.g. Last of Us.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Kolide: Kolide can help you nail third-party audits and internal compliance goals with endpoint security for your entire fleet.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• CVE - CVE-2023-28410 — Improper restriction of operations within the bounds of a memory buffer in some Intel(R) i915 Graphics drivers for linux before kernel version 6.2.10 may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable escalation of privilege via local access.
• INTEL-SA-00886
• Intel Security Center
• New NetFilter flaw gives attackers root privileges — A new Linux NetFilter kernel flaw has been discovered, allowing unprivileged local users to escalate their privileges to root level, allowing complete control over a system.
• NVD - CVE-2023-32233
• Goodbye to Roblox on Linux — I’m sorry to be such a downer about this, but it’s the reality. We have to spend our time porting to and supporting the platforms that will grow our community.
• Proper support for the Linux platform - Feature Requests
• Ubuntu 23.04 Now Works on StarFive’s VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC — ”This partnership will provide users with a seamless development experience, allowing them to leverage the best of open source software and RISC-V through Ubuntu and VisionFive 2.”
• Canonical enables Ubuntu on StarFive’s VisionFive 2 RISC-V single board computer
• Open Source Summit North America — Open Source Summit is a conference umbrella, composed of a collection of events covering the most important technologies, topics, and issues affecting open source today.
• AWS open-sources snapshot fuzzing and policy authorization tools
• Schedule - Linux Foundation Events
• The Linux Foundation on Twitter

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Kolide: Kolide can help you nail third-party audits and internal compliance goals with endpoint security for your entire fleet.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• HDR hackfest wrap-up — People from various organizations were on-site: Red Hat, KDE, System76, AMD, Igalia, Collabora, Canonical, etc. Some more people from NVIDIA, Intel and Google joined us remotely (some of them waking up at 2 AM due to their timezone!).
• Fakespot is acquired by Mozilla — I have exciting news to share, Fakespot has been acquired by Mozilla! We are joining a company that develops one of the most popular browsers in the world in Firefox with a lineage that dates back to the origins of the internet.
• Apple removes Fakespot from App Store after Amazon complains
• More Rust Code Readied For Linux 6.4 — New Rust code for Linux 6.4 includes the introduction of the pin-init API, which is for dealing with safe pinned initialization and allows reducing the amount of "unsafe" Rust code within the kernel.
• Asahi Lina on Twitter: My Rust contributions for Linux 6.4 are finally merged upstream! 🦀🐧 — The next big challenge is going to be the DRM subsystem abstractions!
• India blocks 14 mobile apps used by terrorists in Pakistan to send information in J-K — As inputs received that these applications are being used to further terror propaganda and incite youths in Jammu and Kashmir, the Central government blocked them under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
• India removes ban on VLC media player after cybersecurity concerns addressed
• Text of the RESTRICT Act — To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes...
• Tell Congress: Don’t Outlaw Encrypted Applications

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Kolide: Kolide can help you nail third-party audits and internal compliance goals with endpoint security for your entire fleet.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Plasma 5.26 Released — Plasma 5.26 comes with new and tweaked widgets, improves the desktop experience leaps and bounds, and Plasma Big Screen's app family grows
• These weeks in KDE: Akademy and Plasma 5.26
• Google Reveals ‘First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming’ — Google says the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook all have refresh rates of at least 120Hz, displays with up to 1600p resolution, immersive audio and, critically for cloud gaming, WiFi 6 or 6E connectivity.
• Intel Arc Graphics - A750 and A770 GPUs Release — The Intel Arc A750 and A770 GPUs officially launch today, October 12th in select markets. Everyone at Intel is beyond thrilled to get graphics cards with modern features and extremely competitive performance-per-dollar into your hands.
• Intel Arc Graphics Running On Fully Open-Source Linux Driver
• Canonical Launches Free Ubuntu Pro Subscriptions for Everyone — Ubuntu Pro is available for every supported Ubuntu LTS version, starting with Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and up to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• Android leaks some traffic even when ‘Always-on VPN’ is enabled — The data being leaked outside VPN tunnels includes source IP addresses, DNS lookups, HTTPS traffic, and likely also NTP traffic.
• Incorrect VPN lockdown documentation [249990229] - Visible to Public - Issue Tracker
• Android leaks connectivity check traffic — As a closing note, we would like to recommend Google to adopt the ability to disable the connectivity checks, like on GrapheneOS, into stock Android.
• iOS VPN apps have another flaw: excluding many Apple apps — We confirm that iOS 16 does communicate with Apple services outside an active VPN tunnel. Worse, it leaks DNS requests. Apple services that escape the VPN connection include Health, Maps, and Wallet.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Kolide: Kolide can help you nail third-party audits and internal compliance goals with endpoint security for your entire fleet.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Microsoft changes its mind about open source monetization — Microsoft was trying to do the right thing, but it turns out doing nothing is better.
• Giorgio Sardo on Twitter — To clarify our intent, we removed the previous mention to open source pricing. We're committed to building an open Store and enabling dev choice and flexibility. If there are intellectual property concerns about an app, please report it.
• An Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Fix Is Coming For A Very Annoying & Serious APT Problem — "installing the package libudev1 results in a large number of critical packages being removed and rendering the system essentially unusable."
• Bug #1974196 “Installing libudev1 on a new Jammy installation"
• Draft: Mark broken reverse depends for upgrade (!248) · Merge requests
• Drop-in, drop-out chats with Video Rooms in Element — This has been a long time coming and, frankly, we’re really excited to be introducing Video Rooms to you. It’s a major step towards richer video (and soon voice) rooms!
• SCALE 19x — SCaLE 19x is coming up July 28th - the 31st at the LAX Hilton. Promo code LAS50
• M2 is here! July 2022 Release & Progress Report — Welcome to another long overdue progress report! As usual, things have been busier than expected… and we have some big news! We’ve just released a new Asahi Linux update with Mac Studio, Bluetooth, and M2 support!
• Asahi Linux Update Brings Experimental Apple M2 Support

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Fedora 37 Gets A Batch Of New Features Approved — Fedora 37 is working its way toward release before the end of October.
• The Performance Cost To A Proposed Fedora 37 CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS Change
• Fedora CoreOS Hopes To Become An Official Edition With Fedora 37
• Fedora 37 Looks To Ship With Stratis Storage 3.1 Support
• Fedora 37 Proposing To Allow Unrestricted Access To Flathub
• Fedora Magazine: Accessibility in Fedora Workstation — I am very happy to announce that Red Hat has just hired Lukas Tyrychtr, who is a blind software engineer, to lead our effort in making sure Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Workstation has excellent accessibility support!
• Firefox 102 Available With Transform Streams, Geoclue On Linux — Firefox 102.0 isn't the most exciting end-user update but does have some developer additions like Transform Streams support and support for Geoclue with Firefox Linux builds for geolocation.
• Thunderbird 102 Released With Big Improvements To This Leading Open-Source Mail Client — Thunderbird 102 introduces a new address book implementation, a new spaces toolbar, a new import/export wizard, a redesigned message header, and other "quality of life" updates. There are also some extras with Thunderbird 102 like adding Matrix chat support.
• Matrix.org Security release: Synapse 1.61.1 — Today we're exceptionally releasing Synapse 1.61.1, which comes as a security release. Server administrators are encouraged to update as soon as possible.
• Synapse Release v1.61.1
• Synapse Advisory — URL previews of unusual or maliciously-crafted pages can crash Synapse media repositories or Synapse monoliths.
• Valve More Than Doubles Steam Deck Production, Q3 Reservations Starting Soon — Valve just tweeted out some great news for SteamDeck fans, saying it has more than doubled the number of Steam Decks being produced every week. The company also says it just sent out the last batch of Q2 reservation emails and is prepared to start kicking off Q3 reservations on June 30th 2022.
• Check Your Steam Deck Order Status
• Vim 9.0 — The main goal of Vim9 script is to drastically improve performance. This is accomplished by compiling commands into instructions that can be efficiently executed. An increase in execution speed of 10 to 100 times can be expected.
• Vim 9.0 Released With New Vim9 Script For 10~100x Execution Speed
• Linode Security Digest — June 20-26, 2022
• Apple M2 Enablement For Linux Begins With Good Progress — Hector Martin on Monday began his Linux M2 bring-up effort, including with a livestream of this reverse engineering / debugging / kernel hacking effort. Hector confirmed NVMe, USB, and SMC functionality are working for the M2 on the first day of the effort.
• M2 Asahi Linux bring-up YouTube Stream

Sponsored By:

• Jupiter Network Membership: Support the entire network, and get access to every member's special feed for every show on the network. Promo Code: thesignal
• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4 Released - Switches To NVIDIA’s Open Kernel Driver — Notable with SLE 15 SP4, SUSE is already switching to using NVIDIA's open-source GPU kernel-mode driver that NVIDIA open-sourced last month
• openSUSE Leap 15.4 Released
• Element Call Beta 2 includes lots of exciting new updates! — In a walkie-talkie call, videos are disabled, and everyone is muted by default. To speak, press the ‘push-to-talk’ (PTT) button, either by pressing it on the screen or by holding the spacebar. The catch is that, just like a walkie-talkie or two-way radio, only one person can speak at a time. When someone else is speaking, your PTT button will be disabled, and if you try to push it you’ll hear a warning beep.
• Fedora and Ubuntu EOL announcements — If you are running Fedora 34, the time has come to move on; that distribution will reach the end of its support life on June 7. Users of Ubuntu 21.10 have a little longer, but that release loses support on July 14 and users should update to 22.04.
• Fedora 34 is going EOL in one week
• Ubuntu 21.10 reaches End of Life on July 14 2022
• HP Dev One Now Shipping — Unplug and work from any location. At 3.24 lbs, with up to 12 hours of battery life and an ultra-bright display, HP Dev One was made to perform on the go.
• Managed PostgreSQL and MongoDB are Here | Linode
• Apple will allow Linux VMs to run Intel apps with Rosetta in macOS Ventura — You can even use Rosetta with non-Apple Arm CPUs, though you probably shouldn't.
• Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta
• Hector Martin on Twitter — “Huh, so Rosetta is now a Linux app. Without Linux kernel patches this can’t use any special M1 features, so if this runs significantly better than FOSS offerings that should help dispel the myth that “the M1 has magic make-Rosetta-fast features”.
• Longhorn on Twitter — Well. Rosetta 2 needs a quite recent CPU (post v8.2) to work because of the instructions used. Does it work on non-Apple arm64 CPUs? 🤔 Yes. (allows to settle the argument once and for all that this needs anything Apple specific outside of TSO support*. Answer is a no.)

Plus, why we're worried Ubuntu is losing its charm for developers.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Plasma - 25th Anniversary Edition — Plasma - 25th Anniversary Edition brings new looks, features and enhancements to the classic free desktop.
• KDE Plasma 5.23 Released In Marking 25 Years Of KDE
• New Project: Kool Desktop Environment. Programmers wanted!
• Apple joins Blender Development Fund — The Blender Foundation, the organization behind the popular open source 3D creation tool “Blender”, today announced that Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member to support continued core development for Blender.
• Apple Pledges Support for 3D Graphics Tool Blender
• Why I have decided to step down from the AlmaLinux OS Foundation Board — When we created the concept of AlmaLinux back in December, shortly after Red Hat announced EOL for CentOS 8, the most important part for us was to make it community-owned, not just "community-controlled".
• AlmaLinuxFoundation chair Igor Seletskiy ste down
• Announcing AlmaLinux OS 8.5 Beta
• How to Use a Block Storage Volume with Plex Media Server — Plex is a media server that allows you to store your media on a remote server and stream it to your devices. This guide shows how to attach a Block Storage Volume to an existing Linode in order to meet the demands of a growing media library.
• Ubuntu 21.10 is Now Available to Download — This release — the 35th Ubuntu release for those keeping count — is backed by 9 months of security updates, critical fixes, and select software updates.
• Ubuntu 21.10 Official Flavors Released, Here’s What’s New
• SeaGL 2021 Schedule Published! — We’ll see you Friday November 5 & Saturday November 6 for SeaGL 2021, all virtual! As always, SeaGL is completely free to attend and no registration is required.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Linux 5.14 set to boost future enterprise application security — A particular area of interest for both enterprise and cloud users is always security and to that end, Linux 5.14 will help with several new capabilities. Mike McGrath, vice president, Linux Engineering at Red Hat told TechCrunch that the kernel update includes a feature known as core scheduling, which is intended to help mitigate processor-level vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown
• Linux 5.14 Features Aplenty With New AMD GPUs, SmartShift, More Alder Lake, Core Scheduling
• QEMU 6.1 Released With RISC-V Improvements, AMD Emulation Fixes — RISC-V on QEMU has updates around OpenTitan platform support, support for VirtIO VGA, and a variety of other architecture improvements.
• PipeWire 0.3.34 Released — Bluetooth battery status support for head-set profile and using Apple extensions. aptX-LL and FastStream codec support was added.
• CodeWeavers still hiring for a ‘General Wine Developer' — CodeWeavers announced recently they need a bit of help on finding more developers, with a spot still currently open for a 'General Wine Developer' who will work on Wine and Proton.
• Microsoft, Google partner on eBPF — Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the new eBPF Foundation, which was unveiled August 12, plans to expand eBPF and extend it beyond Linux.
• eBPF Summit 2021
• The State & Future of eBPF - Thomas Graf
• eBPF for Windows - Dave Thaler (Microsoft)
• Linux On The Apple M1 Can Now Boot To The GNOME Desktop — Alyssa Rosenweig, who has been working on reverse engineering the Apple M1 GPU since January, has now posted a screenshot of "GNOME Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal."
• ‘Not great, but usable’: GNOME desktop boots on Asahi Linux for Apple M1
• 30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat
• Linux turns 30: ​Linus Torvalds on his “just a hobby” operating system
• Happy birthday – 30 Years of Linux
• Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years
• 30th Anniversary of Linux - Linux Foundation
• Happy birthday, Linux: From a bedroom project to billions of devices in 30 years • The Register
• Linode Joins Jupiter Broadcasting In Denver - YouTube
• Chris remains on the road! Track is trip live: colonytracker.live

Plus Pwned Passwords goes open source, the public release of Fuchsia, and Valve's rumored Linux handheld.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• After staff revolt, Freenode management takes over hundreds of IRC channels for ‘policy violations’ — All told, it appears something like 700 Freenode channels have been seized and re-permissioned, supposedly because the channels mentioned Libera Chat in violation of Freenode's advertising policy.
• Freenode IRC staff resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s “crown prince”
• IRC Announcement - Fedora Magazine
• Ubuntu, Wikimedia jump ship to the Libera Chat IRC network after Freenode channel confiscations
• One week of Libera Chat — It’s been an exciting first week, and we’d like to say a massive thank you for your support, enthusiasm, and patience as we continue to work to bring Libera.Chat up to full capacity. In these first few days, we’ve been able to reach 16,500 simultaneous connections and 20,000 registered accounts.
• kline󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 on mastodon: “andrew lee just seized over 700 channels on freenode”
• PSA: Ubuntu’s IRC Channels Have Moved from Freenode to Libera Chat
• Gentoo Freenode channels have been hijacked — Today (2021-05-26) a large number of Gentoo channels have been hijacked by Freenode staff, including channels that were not yet migrated to Libera.chat. We cannot perceive this otherwise than as an open act of hostility and we have effectively left Freenode.
• Pwned Passwords, Open Source in the .NET Foundation and Working with the FBI
• Pwned Passwords is now open source!
• Troy Hunt on Twitter RE: the news
• The FBI will feed compromised passwords to Have I Been Pwned — As Hunt explained, the FBI is involved into all sorts of investigations into digital crimes, such as botnets, ransomware, online child sexual exploitation and terrorism. The compromised passwords they find are often being used by crime rings, so the passwords' quick addition to the HIBP database would be extremely helpful. That said, the website doesn't have a way for the feds to quickly feed passwords into its database yet.
• Google is releasing Fuchsia OS, starting w/ 1st-gen Nest Hub — Google’s long-in-development, from-scratch operating system, Fuchsia, is now running on real Made by Google devices, namely, the first-generation Nest Hub.
• Here’s an easier way to try Fuchsia OS on your computer
• Linux Action Show 431
• Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC — On Tuesday, SteamDB operator Pavel Djundik spotted the change in Steam's code, which pointed to a new device named "SteamPal".
• New Audacity Owners Want a CLA — For those not yet aware, we are introducing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), which contributors to Audacity will need to sign in order to contribute code to the project.
• Information About Our New Contributor License Agreement
• Nextcloud iOS app Open Sourced
• GitHub: nextcloud/ios/COPYING.iOS
• Nextcloud iOS app License Guidelines
• List of Open-Source iOS Apps
• Jami on the Mac App Store
• mediaU on the App Store
• Linux Game Development at Tesla? — Some of you might have heard, our dear technoking is bullish on games and making an awesome platform for all gamers in Tesla vehicles. The latest Model S on our website can give you a hint of what we're aiming for in terms of platform capability (sorry, can't divulge much more for now). The Tesla infotainment OS and platform software are based on a standard Linux, so of course, we're interested in helping the gaming community make Linux gaming excellent.

Plus the new Firefox security features in beta, great news for F-Droid, and Apple transfers CUPS to a new home.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Chrome OS’s Linux app support is leaving beta — Google announced at I/O that Linux on Chromebooks would finally be coming out of beta with the release of Chrome OS 91.
• Android 12 will finally let alternative app stores update apps on their own — In Google's official blog post announcing Android 12 the company confirmed that it’s "delivering on [its] promise to make third-party app stores easier to use on Android 12."
• Red Hat Is Hiring Even More Graphics Engineers — Red Hat is now hiring two more graphics engineers working on the Linux graphics drivers. This will be focusing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and upstream graphics drivers for the open-source code around Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA.
• Senior Software Engineer - GPU Hardware Enablement
• Software Engineer - GPU, Input and Multimedia
• Principal Engineer - Hardware Enablement for Infotainment/Automotive
• New opportunities in the Red Hat Desktop team — Christian F.K. Schaller — We also have flexibility for people who want to work remotely, so as long as there is a Red Hat office in your home country you can work remotely for us.
• OpenPrinting Now Developing Upstream CUPS, Apple Bows Out — Apple has decided not to pursue feature development further on CUPS and upstream feature development has been effectively transferred to the OpenPrinting project.
• Introducing Firefox’s new Site Isolation Security Architecture — Site Isolation builds upon a new security architecture that extends current protection mechanisms by separating (web) content and loading each site in its own operating system process.
• Linux 5.13 Reverts + Fixes The Problematic University of Minnesota Patches — Linux kernel developers have finally finished reviewing all UMN.edu patches to address problematic merges to the kernel and also cleaning up / fixing their questionable patches.
• Freenode IRC staff quit after new owner "seizes" control of network — Founded 26 years ago and home to some 80,000 users over 40,000 channels, the freenode is reportedly the largest IRC network and has enjoyed something of a rollercoaster history.
• Freenode Debacle Prompts Staff Exodus, New Network — Through a complex series of events which actually started several years ago, control of Freenode has been taken from the community and put into the hands of an enigmatic and wealthy entrepreneur who claims his ultimate goal is to revolutionize IRC and return it to the forefront of online communication.
• Upheaval at freenode — Evidently there has been a change of control within the volunteer-run organization that has led to the resignations of multiple different volunteers, at least in part due to a concern about the personal information of freenode users under the new management.
• Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new management
• Welcome to Libera Chat — We’re excited to announce the launch of Libera.Chat, and welcome you to a next-generation IRC network for free and open source software projects and similarly-spirited collaborative endeavours.
• [HN comments] Welcome to Libera Chat
• CentOS IRC channels moving to irc.libera.chat
• Freenode IRC and Gentoo
• Spaces: The next frontier — Spaces rethink groups in Element and Matrix, and today we’re launching public beta testing on Element Web, Desktop and Android (with iOS coming soon!).
• [FOSDEM 202] Building massive virtual communities in Matrix — In this talk, we'll explain all the features we've been adding to let Matrix scale to support massive virtual communities such as FOSDEM itself, Mozilla, KDE and others.
• JB Matrix Server

Plus the imminent problem KDE solved this week, and more.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Initial Apple M1 SoC Support Aims For Linux 5.13 Kernel — This initial Apple M1 Linux port gets the UART, interrupts, SMP, and DeviceTree bits in place for offering basic functionality.
• “Challenge accepted”
• Ars: Apple M1 hardware support merged into Linux 5.13
• Official support for Linux on the M1 Macs could come as soon as June
• [GIT PULL] Apple M1 SoC platform bring-up for 5.13
• Asahi Linux on Twitter — Initial M1 support has been merged into the Linux SoC tree and will be coming to Linux 5.13!
• SiFive FU740 PCIe Support Queued Ahead Of Linux 5.13 — The HiFive Unmatched has a FU740 RISC-V SoC that features four U74-MC cores and one S7 embedded core, 16GB of RAM, USB 3.2 Gen 1, one PCI Express x16 slot (operating at x8 speeds), an NVMe slot, and Gigabit Ethernet.
• How to Secure phpMyAdmin
• Firefox Is Making WebRender The Default Rendering Engine On Linux This Month And There Is A Facelift Coming In May — The Firefox web browser is finally making the long-anticipated WebRender rendering engine the default on GNU/Linux when Firefox 88 is released later this month.
• uBlock Origin works best on Firefox — The Firefox version of uBO makes use of WebAssembly code for core filtering code paths. This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers because this would require an extra permission in the extension manifest which could cause friction when publishing the extension in the Chrome Web Store.
• Wayland Is Driving Fragmentation Around EDID Parsing - A Call To Fix That — Currently there is no de facto EDID parsing library for Linux but many different choices and most Wayland compositors rolling their own. Rather than exposing all of the parsed information from the kernel, there is now a call to have a more unified Linux EDID parsing library.
• vgpu_unlock — Unlock vGPU functionality for consumer-grade GPUs.
• Hacker figures how to unlock vGPU functionality intentionally hidden from certain NVIDIA cards for marketing purposes
• Announcing KDE’s Qt 5 Patch Collection — As Qt 5 support is drawing to a close, and we shift to Qt 6, we need to ensure that KDE products are as reliable as ever. To this end, KDE will be maintaining a set of patches with security and functional fixes so that we can enjoy good KDE Software still based on Qt5 until our software is reliably based on Qt 6.
• Mars Helicopter Flight Delayed to No Earlier than April 14 — During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration.
• LUP 400 Beer Stein

Plus a major new feature coming to a Linux distro near you.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!
• Linode: Sign up using the link on this page and receive a $100 60-day credit towards your new account.
• The Coder: Look and feel comfortable, while kicking ass. Life is better in a robe.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars — This the first time we’ll be flying Linux on Mars. We’re actually running on a Linux operating system. The software framework that we’re using is one that we developed at JPL for cubesats and instruments, and we open-sourced it a few years ago.
• The Perseverance Mars rover just took Linux to another planet
• Ingenuity (Mars helicopter) on Wikipedia
• Mars Helicopter on YouTube
• Ingenuity helicopter phones home from Mars
• SparkFun Electronics
• Linaro Projects
• Linaro on Wikipedia
• Ivan Čukić on Twitter — Another @kdecommunity #KDE Mars landing a success!
• Linux 5.12 Git Seeing New Code Land Following Winter Storm — While the first week of a new merge window is often one of the busiest times for Linus Torvalds in overseeing the Linux kernel, until last night there was no actual Linux 5.12 code being pushed into the Linux Git repository. Linus was offline most of the week due to winter storms preventing him from pushing to the Git repository and interacting much with the mailing list.
• There Are Big Changes On The Horizon With Linux 5.12
• Btrfs With Linux 5.12 Gets More Performance Improvements, Working Zoned Mode
• XFS File-System With Linux 5.12 Has “A Lot Going On This Time”
• IDMAPPED Mounts Aim For Linux 5.12 - Many New Use-Cases From Containers To Systemd-Homed - Phoronix — This patch series introduces idmapped mounts which has been in the making for some time. Simply put, different mounts can expose the same file or directory with different ownership.
• NVIDIA continues tweaking their work for hardware accelerated Xwayland support — Performance should be fine in full-screen games, as long as the compositor supports the required zwp_linux_dmabuf_v1 interface.
• Experimental Wayland Support For Wine Now Sees More Functionality Working — With the new "request for comment" patches, there is now working support for copy/paste, drag-and-drop, and the ability to change the display mode.
• Apple M1 teaser — So OpenBSD boots multi-user on the new Apple M1 hardware. This still has some hacks in it that need to be fixed, so don't expect support for this in the tree right now. But a big thank you to those that contributed to the pool for getting us some hardware.

Plus why our long-term view for Mozilla took a turn for the worse this week, and two recent enterprise wins for Desktop Linux.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Save $25 off your first device, or $25 in service credit if you bring one!

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Google starts uploading the Android 11 source code to AOSP — Google has officially released the stable version of Android 11 for its range of Pixel smartphones going back to the Pixel 2.
• Android 11 Update Tracker
• Here are all the hidden changes in Android 11
• Google announces Android 11 Go Edition with support for 2GB RAM devices
• SoftBank set to sell UK’s Arm Holdings to Nvidia — SoftBank is set to sell the UK’s Arm Holdings to US chip company Nvidia for more than $40bn
• Introducing the Promoted Add-ons Pilot — This pilot program, which will run between the end of September and the end of November 2020, aims to expand the number of add-ons we can review and verify as compliant with Mozilla policies,
• Access Linux filesystems in Windows and WSL 2 — WSL 2 will be offering a new feature: wsl --mount. This new parameter allows a physical disk to be attached and mounted inside WSL 2,
• WSL Mount Limits
• Ubuntu 20.10 Adding Active Directory Support To The Installer — The "Ubiquity" installer used by the Ubuntu desktop is set to feature Active Directory (AD) integration with the upcoming Ubuntu 20.10 release.

Support Linux Action News

Plus Firefox's new DoH partner, and signs of life from the Atari VCS.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Firefox adds 2nd DoH partner — Program Committing to Data Retention and Transparency Requirements that Respect User Privacy
• Apple, Google, and Amazon are teaming up to develop an open-source smart home standard
• Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
• Ikea previews its improved 2020 smart home experience
• Z-Wave is making a huge change so it doesn’t get left behind in the smart home wars - The Verge — It’s turning into a fully open standard, according to Silicon Labs.
• Canonical Releases Multipass 1.0 As "A Mini-Cloud On Your Workstation" — "a mini-cloud on your workstation using native hypervisors of all the supported plaforms (Windows, macOS and Linux), it will give you an Ubuntu command line in just a click ("Open shell") or a simple multipass shell command, or even a keyboard shortcut."
• Krita Receives Epic MegaGrant — Epic, the makers of the Unreal game engine, have supported Krita with a $25,000 MegaGrant
• A Kubuntu-Powered Laptop Is Launching In 2020 For High-End KDE Computing — A Kubuntu laptop is launching soon that is aiming for a high-end Linux laptop experience atop the KDE flavor of Ubuntu.
• KDE Launch Video & Wallpaper Competitions with Linux PCs as Prizes
• Guidance for Atari VCS Content Developers — Initial procedures announced for more independent game and app developers to start creating and planning now for earning a place in the Atari VCS storefront.

Plus Facebook wants you to use their cryptocurrency, and CERN launches "The Microsoft Alternatives project".

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Mozilla says paid subscription service is coming to Firefox — The goal for Mozilla is to develop “diverse sources of revenue” so that it isn’t so heavily reliant on money it receives from search companies that pay to be featured in the browser.
• New Firefox branding — The “Firefox” you’ve always known as a browser is stretching to cover a family of products and services united by putting you and your privacy first.
• Apple joins the Cloud Native Computing Foundation — The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, the home of open-source projects like Kubernetes, today announced that Apple is joining as a top-level Platinum End User Member.
• MAlt project — The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases.
• Huawei's struggle in the US has led to it cancel a new MateBook — Huawei CEO Richard Yu has confirmed an indefinite hold on the release of a new MateBook laptop.
• Huawei may use Sailfish OS-based Aurora — Aurora OS is a Russian-made mobile operating system based on the open-source Sailfish OS Linux distribution developed by Finnish company Jolla.
• Huawei's operating system in pipeline on 1 million phones? — In a smartphone supply chain report that Huawei has allegedly shipped 1 million smartphones with its self-developed "HongMeng" operating system onboard for testing.
• Facebook’s cryptocurrency to debut next week backed by Visa, Mastercard, and others — Each will invest around $10 million to fund the development of the currency and will become part of the Libra Association, an independent consortium that will govern the digital coin independently of Facebook.

Plus there’s no avoiding how far off we were when it came to Bitcoin last year, but that didn’t stop us having a go again this year!

Support Linux Action News

Plus Canonical puts out a call for help, Munich votes to return to Windows, and Steam on Linux turns 5.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• SegWit2x Bitcoin fork called off — "Although we strongly believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is even more important: keeping the community together," Belshe said. "Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth."
• Eco friendly Bitcoin competitor announced — Cohen has just started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Essentially, Chia will harness cheap and abundant unused storage space on hard drives to verify its blockchain.
• More Linux On Galaxy details — Described as a “Concept Demo”, the vid has a couple of interesting moments.
• CrossOver enables Windows apps on ChromeOS — CodeWeavers has now announced the availability of their Wine-powered CrossOver software for Chrome OS.
• Canonical wants volunteers to create art for Ubuntu — A new theme based on Adwaita, the default GNOME GTK theme.
• Steam Linux client turns 5 — It was on 6 November 2012 when the Steam Linux beta roll-out began and gained more steam as the year came to a close.
• Munich votes to return to Windows — That means, that Munich will transition to Microsoft Windows 10 in a 2 year phase (till 2020) on 29,000 pcs. The cost for this transition is actually confidential, but is estimated to be more than 100 million euros (more than 116 million US dollars).
• Apple relicenses CUPS — The CUPS Common UNIX Printing System up to now had been developed under the GPLv2 license while now Apple will be switching it to the Apache 2.0 software license.