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:

• Previous Predictions: Linux Action News 169
• Year in Review: How we’re curating the web with you and our top Pocket features
• Mozilla expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year
• Pocket and Slate Podcast Partnership Announcement
• Asahi Linux

Plus the Linux tech Greg KH is most excited about, and more.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Ubuntu fixes bugs that standard users could use to become root — A handful of commands was all it took for untrusted users to become all-powerful.
• Now-patched Ubuntu desktop vulnerability allows privilege escalation
• How to get root on Ubuntu 20.04 by pretending nobody’s /home
• Meet Proxmox Backup Server, a Debian-Based Open Source Enterprise Backup Solution — Proxmox launched today Proxmox Backup Server as a new edition of its Debian-based Linux distribution engineered to act as an enterprise solution for backing up and restoring physical hosts, virtual machines and containers.
• Proxmox Roadmap
• Proxmox Backup Server
• Proxmox Backup Git Repo
• PayPal's crypto trading goes live in the US — Customers will be able to trade up to $20,000 a week, rather than the originally announced $10,000.
• Systemd catches up with bind events — Perhaps the real lesson here is that the community would be better served by closer relations between the kernel project and projects managing low-level utilities like systemd.
• eBPF - The Future of Networking & Security — Cilium is an open source project that has been designed on top of eBPF to address the networking, security, and visibility requirements of container workloads. It provides a high-level abstraction on top of eBPF. Cilium is to eBPF what Kubernetes and container runtimes are to Linux kernel namespaces, cgroups, and seccomp
• Linux App Summit 2020

Support Linux Action News

Plus we react to Facebook's Libra confirmation and the end of Google tablets.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Ubuntu to drop i386 architecture — he Ubuntu engineering team has reviewed the facts before us and concluded that we should not continue to carry i386 forward as an architecture. Consequently, i386 will not be included as an architecture for the 19.10 release, and we will shortly begin the process of disabling it for the eoan series across Ubuntu infrastructure.
• Proposal: Let's drop i386 May 9th 2018
• Proposal: Let's drop i386 May 14th 2018
• Wine devs worried — "I think not building packages for Ubuntu 19.10 would be the only practical option. It would probably be good to have a small explanation on the download page though. As I understand it, it would still be possible to run 32-bit executables on the Ubuntu 19.10 kernel, but we'd have to build and ship all our dependencies ourselves. I don't think we want to go there just yet."
• At least some games not working without 32-bit — Further to the recent announcement and subsequent discussion, I did a little testing over lunch on eoan 19.10 with all i386 packages removed and the i386 part of the repo disabled.
• Ubuntu NOT “dropping support for i386 applications” — What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions. But there is every intention to ensure that there is a clear story for how i386 applications (including games) can be run on versions of Ubuntu later than 19.10.
• Petition · Dont remove 32 bit support in the next version of Ubuntu
• Test and run multiple instances of snaps
• OpenMandriva also dropping 32-bit
• New vulnerabilities may let hackers remotely SACK Linux and FreeBSD systems — Netflix researchers discovered 4 flaws that could wreak havoc in data centers.
• Linux devices vulnerable to ping of death attack
• Red Hat's take on TCP SACK PANIC
• Mattermost raises $50M — The capital infusion follows a $20 million series A in February and a $3.5 million seed round in February 2017 and brings the Palo Alto, California-based company’s total raised to roughly $70 million.
• Google says it’s done making tablets — The Pixel Slate won’t get a sequel, but the Pixelbook will
• Facebook's Libra confirmed — Facebook is planning to launch a cryptocurrency it hopes will “transform the global economy.”

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 the new Red Hat Enterprise beta has modularity, why Canonical might be ready for investors, and the bad week for cryptocurrencies.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• New mid-range Raspberry Pi launched — TL;DR: you can now get the 1.4GHz clock speed, 5GHz wireless networking and improved thermals of Raspberry Pi 3B+ in a smaller form factor, and at the smaller price of $25.
• Raspbian updated — Today we’re releasing a new update for Raspbian, including a multimedia player, updated Thonny, and more.
• Kodak's new 3D printer has a Raspberry Pi inside
• Android prepares for folding screens — The multi-resume feature now makes it possible for multiple apps to be open and actually be running at the same time. Google is now allowing manufacturers to keep all apps resumed/active when in multi-window.
• Essential launches $149 clip-on headphone jack — It’s the $149 magnetic headphone jack adapter Essential promised way back in September 2017. The company first announced in June that the accessory would start shipping in the summer, but it apparently missed that deadline.
• Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for 10 years — "I'm delighted to announce that Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for a full 10 years," said Shuttleworth
• Ubuntu Advantage — $2,500 cart minimum applies.
• Canonical looking for investors — Shuttleworth likens this program of getting the company ready to IPO to getting fit. “There’s no point in saying: I haven’t done any exercise in the last 10 years but I’m going to sign up for tomorrow’s marathon,” he said.
• RHEL 8 beta released — Allows updating user space without breaking everything.
• Cryptocurrency market tanks — Within one brutal hour yesterday, Bitcoin’s price plummeted by around $800. The coin is trading under $5,800 for the first time since its October 2017 boom
• Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale is happening now! Transform your cloud skills here at Linux Academy. Take your career to the next level with hands-on cloud and Linux training.

Plus we follow up on the lawsuit that could split the community, and then we eat some Bitcoin humble pie.

Sponsored By:

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• UBports release OTA 3 — This update brings some new features and bug fixes atop the Ubuntu Touch 15.04 base. New features include some new packages requested by the community, the default start page and search provider was changed over to DuckDuckGo, and not displaying the keyboard when working with multiple windows. This over-the-air update has also removed the Ubuntu Store from the App Scope.
• Ubuntu Touch working on Android app support — “Project Anbox”. Anbox - a shorted form of ‘Android-in-a-Box” - is a community effort which allows Android apps to execute in a container in a more native way rather than the more common approach of using an Android emulator,
• LEDE and OpenWrt merge — The merged project will use the code base of the former LEDE project.
• Fuchsia available for the Pixelbook — Fuchsia—which only started development in 2016—is Google's third operating system after Chrome OS and Android.
• 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. While programs are typically not permitted to read data from other programs, a malicious program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to get hold of secrets stored in the memory of other running programs. This might include your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents.
• Law Center and Conservancy updates — Because the SFLC has amended its trademark cancellation petition with a fraud claim, the SFC's motion to toss the complaint must be refiled after the fraud issue been considered.

Plus we put hard numbers on the highs and lows of Bitcoin during 2018.

Support Linux Action News

Plus the Intel ME situation that's much worse than previously known.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Mozilla Files Cross-Complaint Against Yahoo Holdings and Oath — Yahoo Holdings and Oath filed a complaint against Mozilla on December 1, 2017, claiming that we improperly terminated the agreement between Mozilla and Yahoo. Today, in response, Mozilla filed a cross-complaint against Yahoo Holdings and Oath for breach of contract.
• Mozilla tackles fake news — The boundaries between truth and fiction are becoming harder to define, in part because of the proliferation of fake news and other forms of misinformation. Mozilla wants to shed light on this by sponsoring public demonstrations, using mixed reality and other art media that make the power of misinformation and its potential impacts visible and visceral.
• Classic Shell abandoned as open source — The source code is available at SourceForge, and the Classic Shell forum will remain online until the end of 2018 for folks that want to continue discussing the project.
• UK and EU plan Bitcoin crackdown — The Treasury plans to regulate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to bring them in line with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financial legislation. Traders will be forced to disclose their identities, ending the anonymity that has made the currency attractive for drug dealing and other illegal activities.
• Android Go released to OEMs — Google’s stripped-down version of Android is ready for OEMs.
• Mediatek announce Go optimized SoCs — MediaTek’s MT6739, MT6737, and MT6580 SoCs, among others, now have board support packages available to run Android Oreo (Go edition). This marks one of the first times that entry-level SoCs are ready to be used shortly after the latest version of Android.
• Pwning Intel ME — The duo say they found a locally exploitable stack buffer overflow that allows the execution of unsigned code on any device with Intel ME 11, even if the device is turned off or protected by security software.

Plus Jolla gets in on the blockchain hype, and we clarify the Linux LTS situation.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Bitcoin surges past $10k — Bitcoin has spiked 933 percent since the beginning of the year, when it traded at $968.23
• Big companies join the compliance-first approach to GPLv2 — To provide greater predictability to users of open source software, Red Hat, Facebook, Google and IBM today each committed to extending the GPLv3 approach for license compliance errors to the software code that each licenses under GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 and v2.
• LTS kernel support window clarified — Just because +Greg Kroah-Hartman​ is doing it for 4.4 does not mean that all LTS kernels from now on are going to be maintained for that long.
• New x86 version of Raspbian Released — Today, we are launching the first Debian Stretch release of the Raspberry Pi Desktop for PCs and Macs, and we’re also releasing the latest version of Raspbian Stretch for your Pi.
• LOL
• Mozilla’s Open Source Speech Recognition Model and Voice Dataset — I’m excited to announce the initial release of Mozilla’s open source speech recognition model that has an accuracy approaching what humans can perceive when listening to the same recordings. We are also releasing the world’s second largest publicly available voice dataset, which was contributed to by nearly 20,000 people globally.
• Mozilla still loaded — The State of Mozilla 2016 is our annual report. This report highlights activities for 2016 and is accompanied by detailed financials.
• Jolla update — Sailfish X has been now out for six weeks

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.

Plus a new report claims every Bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as your house in a week, and two legal matters that may have long-term impacts on the Linux community.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Plasma Mobile Roadmap — Our development strategy is to build a basic system and platform around our core values first and then extend this.
• Librem 5 progressing with Plasma Mobile — In general, Plasma Mobile already provides a usable (albeit alpha-quality) mobile interface today. The Qt Quick/QML based Kirigami component library and interface guidelines also provide a nice framework for mobile application developers
• Firefox to remove canvas fingerprinting — The Mozilla Foundation is boosting privacy in an upcoming version of its Firefox browser by removing the snooping capability called canvas fingerprinting, a method of tracking users across multiple websites.
• Tor flaw: TorMoil — TorMoil threatens Mac and Linux versions of Tor browser; Windows and Tails not affected.
• Canonical joins GNOME Foundation Advisory Board — The GNOME Foundation is pleased to announce that Canonical, creator of the Ubuntu operating system, has joined the GNOME Foundation advisory board.
• SCO vs. IBM Lives on — As Groklaw records, this case kicked off in 2003. The dispute centres on “Project Monterey” a joint effort by SCO and IBM to build a unified UNIX capable of running on several different microprocessor architectures. SCO – at that time known as the Santa Cruz Operation – sold versions of UNIX and tossed some of its source code into the Project Monterey mix, as did IBM. The parties signed a “joint development agreement” (JDA) to formalise the deal.
• SFLC files a suit against Conservancy — This trademark action is in its early stages. SFLC filed a petition on September 22. Yesterday, we provided an answer that lists defenses that we plan to use.

Sponsored By:

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Mint to add Flatpak support — The project says the upcoming release of Linux Mint 18.3 will come with “full support” for Flatpak out of the box. This will include integration with the Linux Mint Software Manager.
• Drop KDE edition — The Linux Mint crew has confirmed today they will be discontinuing future releases of their KDE spin following next month's Linux Mint 18.3 release.
• Oracle Could Still Make ZFS A First-Class Upstream Linux File-System — Mark wants to see ZFS become a core part of Linux. He wants it to become "the file-system of Linux" and "that could happen" for "core Linux." He later said, "it's a possibility... but I can't say how strong of a possibility," that includes talking with Oracle lawyers about the code license of both ZFS and Solaris.
• Open ZFS File-System Running On Windows
• Google Play Protect isn't very good at spotting malware — When exposed to recent Android malware samples, six of the 20 software suites sampled correctly flagged every single one as evil and prevented them from running. Eight more managed a 99 per cent or higher hit rate. Google's own system, Play Protect, only detected 65.8 per cent of threats.
• Mozilla helps out TOR and so can you — Today we’re launching our end-of-year crowdfunding campaign, “Powering Digital Resistance,” highlighting Tor’s work protecting essential human rights around the world. As part of this end-of-year campaign, Mozilla is matching donations up to a total of $500,000 -- so your donation to the Tor Project will go twice as far!
• Solus looking for help with aesthetics for Solus 4 — If you wanna help us improve the default experience for the next ISO, or you've some mad creative skills, let us know!
• Steam VR Marketshare Already Larger Than Steam Linux Marketshare — Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais‏ who is heavily involved in their Linux efforts as well as those around virtual reality has commented the VR market-share is already larger than the entire Steam Linux market-share.
• Putin Will Require Cryptocurrency Miners to Register With the Government — After months of conflicting statements, Russia has finally outlined its plan for cryptocurrencies.

Plus why Bitcoin Gold is the people's coin, Oracle advises the White House against FOSS, and ChromeOS gets a grownup Linux feature.

Sponsored By:

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Google Announce new Hardware — Google announced the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL; an interesting new camera called Google Clips; a new Google Home Mini and Max; a Pixelbook, and an updated Google Daydream.
• Chrome OS gets a lot more interesting — This component, known as crosvm, runs untrusted operating systems along with virtualized devices. No actual hardware is emulated. This only runs VMs through the Linux's KVM interface.
• Sailfish X becomes a reality — Jolla have released the Sailfish X product page and the Jolla shop (which at the moment is dedicated to the selling of Sailfish X).
• First 64-bit RISC-V SOC released — The processor is intended for AI, machine learning, networking, gateways and smart IoT devices.
• Oracle advises White House against FOSS — Silicon Valley is comprised of IT vendors most of which fail. The USG is not a technology vendor nor is it a start-up. Under no circumstance should the USG attempt to become a technology vendor
• Munich starts move back to Microsoft products — "The city will use MS Exchange. It will be used for mail and calendar, so Kolab will not be used anymore," said the source, adding that the switch will take place in November.
• Bitcoin Gold — The fork mainly seems to be a reaction to widespread ire directed at one Bitcoin mining giant in particular, China-based Bitmain. Bitmain was an important player in the Bitcoin Cash fork.