Plus the pending removal of the x32 sub-architecture from Linux, why Uber is joining up with the Linux Foundation, and more.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Intel Working On Open-Sourcing The FSP — Firmware support package (FSP) for initializing the Intel silicon - the CPU, memory controller, chipset.
• Intel introduces the deep learning reference stack — The Deep Learning Reference Stack is highly-tuned and built for cloud native environments.
• Uber brings Horovod project for distributed deep learning to Linux Foundation — Uber has used Horovod to support self-driving vehicles, fraud detection, and trip forecasting. Contributors to the project include Amazon, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia.
• The x32 subarchitecture may be removed — The x32 subarchitecture is a software variant of x86-64; it runs the processor in the 64-bit mode, but uses 32-bit pointers and arithmetic.
• Android Open Source Project now includes the Fuchsia SDK and a Fuchsia ‘device’ — This means that everyone who downloads AOSP, going forward, will download these two Fuchsia related repos.
• FreeBSD 12.0 released — The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE. This is the first release of the stable/12 branch.
• Ho, Ho, Ho - 12.0 | BSD Now 276

Plus AMP's new governance model kicks in, and the Necuno Mobile Plasma tease.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Clear Linux now easier to try and to install — The addition of the desktop-live image itself is also certainly a welcome addition for those planning a desktop install rather than first having to install the basic Clear Linux without any desktop environment, especially if you first want to verify your system's hardware support/compatibility before proceeding with the installation. From their downloads area the new images are the "live-desktop-beta" images.
• Fedora 31 Will Likely Be Cancelled Or Significantly Delayed — Following the release of Fedora 30 in May, there might not be another major Fedora Linux release for about one year's time.
• Fedora may move to annual releases — Not formally drafted besides a mailing list thread, there is a new proposal about moving Fedora to an annual platform release following Fedora 30. This was suggested by Red Hat's RHEL development coordinator, Brendan Conoboy.
• AMP Project’s new governance model now in effect — Two key features of AMP’s new governance model are the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and the Advisory Committee (AC).  We have endeavored to ensure that these committees consist of people who bring a wide variety of perspectives, with representatives from different AMP constituencies.  
• Necuno Mobile: An open phone with Plasma Mobile — With a focus on openness, security and privacy, the Necuno Mobile is built around an ARM® Cortex®-A9 NXP i.MX6 Quad and a Vivante GPU. According to Necuno, none of the closed firmware has access to the memory.
• Linux Foundation and RISC-V Foundation Announce Joint Collaboration — This partnership with the Linux Foundation will enable the RISC-V Foundation to grow the RISC-V ecosystem with improved support for the development of new applications and architectures across all computing platforms.
• Firecracker mini VMs tipped to the next big thing — Firecracker can launch user space or application code in less than 125ms and microVMs at a rate of 150 per second per host. It churns out fairly compact microVMs too, with each requiring less than 5MiB of memory overhead, so thousands can co-exist on a single server.