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• Valve expect to make ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Steam Decks next month — The good news is though, production is quickly ramping up. Yang mentioned how "in production terms it'll ramp very quickly, in the first month very quickly we'll be in the tens of thousands, by the second month we'll be in the hundreds of thousands and beyond that it'll grow even quicker".
• Steam Deck gets an OS update to help solve stick drift
• Bungie rejects Steam Deck’s Linux, threatens to ban Destiny 2 players there
• Collabora talk briefly about their work with Valve on SteamOS, Steam Deck — With its new “A/B” design, there are now two operating system partitions, with two different versions of SteamOS. When upgrading, a new operating system image is written to whichever partition is not currently in use, before rebooting the system. A specialized bootloader module then automatically selects the newer operating system and boots into it.
• Portable Linux gaming with the Steam Deck
• Linux kernel edges closer to dropping ReiserFS — The problem was that ReiserFS code in the kernel used some API calls that nothing else did, preventing them from being changed or enhanced. For now, one of the other ReiserFS developers has contributed a patch that removes the issue.
• CentOS New “AutoSD” Distribution Announced For In-Vehicle Linux Distro — CentOS Automotive Stream Distribution is their binary distribution that will serve as a public, in-development preview of Red Hat's upcoming in-vehicle operating system. CentOS formed their Automotive SIG last year with Red Hat working on a RHEL-based in-vehicle Linux platform that is yet to be publicly released.
• Future Intel Systems To Reportedly Be Even Less Friendly For Open-Source Firmware
• Zaolin on Twitter — For everyone wondering what’s @IntelSoftware planning for the Firmware Support Package 3.0 #fsp and USF is basically going fully closed-source on the firmware side. This means Intel’s #fsp decides to drop #OSF open-source firmware. It’s really a shame…
• Why RISC-V Is Succeeding
• Intel’s software-defined silicon set to debut in Linux 5.18 — The existence of software-defined silicon (SDSI) emerged in October 2021 when Intel staffers posted to the Linux Kernel mailing list with hints about new functionality that would allow users to purchase licenses that turned on capabilities physically present in processors, but which are not available to use out of the box.

Plus, the new tech in SteamOS 3 that might make it a great desktop OS.

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• Raspberry Pi OS hits the bullseye — Raspberry Pi announced the release of a new version of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian), which advances to the Debian 11 “bullseye” release.
• What’s new in RHEL 8.5 — Customers running Microsoft SQL Server on RHEL will see a number of enhancements to help configure, manage and operate RHEL more efficiently.
• Major Changes in 8.5
• Red Hat 8.5 released with SQL Server and .NET 6
• AlmaLinux OS 8.5 Stable Now Available — AlmaLinux OS 8.5 includes features and improvements to container tools to reduce friction and make the build and deploy processes more flexible, support for OpenJDK 17, additional OpenSCAP profiles for hardening and security compliance, new system roles, and Network Time Security (NTS) for NTP, amongst other additions and enhancement.
• Canonical Makes It Easier to Run Ubuntu VMs on Apple M1 Macs with Multipass — Multipass promises to offer Apple M1 MacBook developers interesting in developing apps for the Linux/Ubuntu desktop the fastest way to run Linux cross-platform, running a Ubuntu VM in as little as 20 seconds.
• Hector Martin on Twitter — Say hi to an M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro running KDE Plasma 5 on Arch Linux ARM! Notch compatible! I made NVMe work today and decided it's time to properly install a distro ;)
• Hector Martin on Twitter: “It’s been running the glxgears demo (60% all-core CPU usage) all night, lid closed, no display sleep. It’s barely warm to the touch, and I can only hear the fan if I put my ear 15cm away from the vents. This is why I’m putting Linux on these machines :-) https://t.co/HPBDskirSf” / Twitter
• Big Btrfs Changes in the Works — I’m working on a large set of on-disk format changes to address some of the more painful parts of Btrfs’s design. There’s a lot of discrete changes here, but they’ll all go under the single umbrella of “extent-tree-v2.”
• On-Disk Format Changes Ahead To Improve “Painful” Parts Of Btrfs Design
• Steam Deck Release Pushed Back To February 2022 — For those that pre-ordered the Steam Deck your position in the queue remains, but is now all shifted back by approximately two months.
• Valve Shares New Steam Deck Details, Proton Update Available For Testing — Steam Deck will use an immutable root file-system, albeit can be changed for developers/enthusiasts wanting more control over the system state. The immutable root file-system approach is similar to the likes of Fedora Silverblue.
• Valve Says SteamOS 3.0 Will Be Available for Everyone to Download and Install
• Steam Deck Development Live Stream - YouTube
• Valve adds documentation for Steam Deck development, suggests Manjaro Linux for now

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• Nat Friedman quits as CEO of GitHub — GitHub CEO Nat Friedman announced today he's leaving the organization on November 15 and will be replaced by chief product officer Thomas Dohmke.
• GitHub gets a new CEO
• Google Will Now Pay $31,337 To $50,337 For New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities — Google is effectively tripling its previous reward amounts and promise to honor it for at least the next three months. They are hoping these $31,337 or $50,337 rewards will encourage more security researchers to explore the kernel and report their findings.
• Ubuntu is Building a New Firmware Updater App — This new GUI utility is being built using Flutter and Dart, further cementing Ubuntu’s commitment to go all in on Flutter for future desktop apps. The tool will be distributed as a Snap and provide a Ubuntu-style front-end to the fwupd tool and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service.
• canonical/firmware-updater
• Desktop Team Updates - Monday 1st November 2021 - Desktop / Team Updates
• Ubuntu Continues Work On Flutter+Dart Written Firmware-Updater Utility
• Asahi Linux Boots on M1 Pro — Linux on the M1 Pro status: boots to a shell with working USB ports Working: SMP, IRQs, IPIs, framebuffer console, DART, USB, USB-PD, I²C, GPIO. Next I'm looking at PCIe (WiFi & SD card reader).
• Apple M1 PCIe Driver Leads The PCI Changes For Linux 5.16
• WirePlumber in Fedora 35 — Today marks an exciting day as Fedora 35 has now been released, with WirePlumber as the default session manager for PipeWire!
• Master your PipeWire streams with WirePlumber | Linaro Virtual Connect Fall 2021
• LXQt 1.0.0 Desktop Environment Released After 8 Years of Development — The LXQt team proudly announced today the release and general availability of the LXQt 1.0.0 desktop environment as a major release bringing new features and improvements.
• LXQt 1.0 Released For Lightweight Qt5 Desktop
• Release 1.0.0 · lxqt/lxqt
• Red Hat to hire fewer senior engineers after budget frozen — Next year, IBM's Red Hat plans to cut back on hiring senior engineers in an effort largely aimed at controlling costs.
• Next year, IBM’s Red Hat plans to cut back on hiring senior engineers in an effort aimed largely at controlling costs. : linux
• The first fruits of CentOS Stream: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Beta
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Enters Beta with Exciting New Features and Many Improvements

Plus, the essential RISC-V code landing in the Linux kernel.

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• Asahi Linux On The Apple M1: “Usable As A Basic Linux Desktop” — With the progress made over the past month, "Asahi Linux is usable as a basic Linux desktop (without GPU acceleration)!"
• Progress Report: September 2021 - Asahi Linux
• Asahi Linux emits usable basic desktop on Apple’s M1
• Linux 5.16 KVM To Land RISC-V Hypervisor Support — Given that it's taken a while to freeze, there isn't yet any performant RISC-V processors out there actually implementing the complete extension and so for now and during development, it's been a function of running it on simulators.
• Canonical launches Ubuntu Frame, the foundation for embedded displays — Canonical announces the release of Ubuntu Frame, a solution that allows developers to easily build and deploy graphical applications for interactive kiosks, digital signage solutions, or any other products that require a graphical output.
• Ubuntu Frame is a secure display server for embedded systems
• Building graphical applications in embedded devices
• Software Engineer - Toolbox (containers / desktop / golang) — The Red Hat Desktop team is looking for a Software Engineer to join us. In this role, you will develop and maintain containerization technologies for software development like toolbox.
• SUSE Working on a CentOS Clone? — I like looking in dnf countme data to see the various distros requesting EPEL repos. There are often many weird distro names showing up in the single digits. But this one jumped out at me with 38 hits last week
• DNF Better Counting
• Index of /csv-reports/countme
• Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) — High-quality packages that have been developed, tested, and improved in Fedora available for RHEL and compatible derivatives such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.
• SUSE Has been Rebuilding RHEL Packages for Years
• Will Furnass on Twitter — “Interesting that CERN are proposing to adopt @CentOS Steam 8 for new systems"
• PowerPoint Presentation

Plus, why Western Digital might be to thank for your next ultimate Linux workstation.

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• Debian 11 “bullseye” Released — After 2 years, 1 month, and 9 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 11 (code name bullseye), which will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.
• Phoronix: Debian 11 “Bullseye” Released
• Debian Live install images
• Microsoft & Others Form The eBPF Foundation - Phoronix — For driving eBPF usage moving forward for these sandboxed programs within the Linux kernel, the eBPF Foundation has been formed with backing from The Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Google, and others.
• Linux Foundation Press Release
• eBPF - Introduction, Tutorials & Community Resources
• RISC-V Developers Continue Working On KVM Support — This KVM RISC-V support has been led by Western Digital who remains very active with various elements of RISC-V Linux support.
• Progress Report: August 2021 - Asahi Linux
• Restore/upgrade firmware of iOS devices
• Apple M1 PCIe Driver Under Review For The Linux Kernel
• Elementary OS 6 Odin released on a ‘pay what you want’ basis • The Register
• Pantheon-tweaks: A system settings panel for the Pantheon desktop environment.

Plus Edge is out for Linux, and PayPal gets bitcoin fever.

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• Ubuntu 20.10 Released, Now Available to Download — Ubuntu 20.10 rides atop the Linux 5.8 kernel, includes the GNOME 3.38 release, has new wallpapers, Active Directory integration (for enterprise users) in the installer, and carries a clutch of updated software, tools, and libraries.
• Ubuntu 20.10 Flavours Released
• Ubuntu 20.10 on Raspberry Pi delivers the full Linux desktop and micro clouds
• How to build a Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster using MicroK8s
• Build a Raspberry Pi Desktop with an Ubuntu heart
• Parallels Desktop for Chromebook Enterprise — It is the world’s first software that runs Windows directly on enterprise Chromebooks―enabling full-featured Windows apps including Microsoft Office and proprietary apps―even when there is not an Internet connection.
• youtube-dl removed from GitHub by RIAA takedown notice — Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies on matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, audiovisual works and images, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet.
• How the youTube-dl devs found out about DMCA takedown
• Microsoft Edge arrives in preview form for Linux — The release officially supports Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE. Sadly, there is no love for Pi fans at present; the team are apparently "looking at Arm", but no release has been forthcoming.
• We Go Hands on With Microsoft Edge for Linux
• PayPal Launches New Service Enabling Users to Buy, Hold and Sell Cryptocurrency — Today announced the launch of a new service enabling its customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal account, and signaled its plans to significantly increase cryptocurrency's utility by making it available as a funding source for purchases at its 26 million merchants worldwide.
• PayPal and Venmo will offer and accept cryptocurrency for all online payments

Plus, our thoughts on Apple's seeming abandoning of CUPS, the latest and greatest open source podcast player, and an important show update.

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• Plasma 5.20: One absolutely massive release — A massive release, containing improvements to dozens of components, widgets, and the desktop behavior in general.
• KDE Plasma 5.20 is Here – And It's an Epic Update
• LibreOffice rains on OpenOffice's 20th anniversary parade — To mark the 20th anniversary of Apache OpenOffice, the project's main rival, LibreOffice, published a letter asking OpenOffice to tell its users to switch
• Google and Intel warn of high-severity Bluetooth security bug in Linux — The flaw resides in BlueZ, the software stack that by default implements all Bluetooth core protocols and layers for Linux. Besides Linux laptops, it's used in many consumer or industrial Internet-of-things devices. It works with Linux versions 2.4.6 and later.
• Intel Blows the Coms Again
• Greg K-H on Twitter — "They are now claiming you need a 5.10 kernel or newer to solve this. 5.10 will be released at the end of December 2020. Intel knows better, and knows how to do this properly, this feels malicious at this point..."
• CUPS Printing System Open-Source Development Has Seemingly Dried Up — The open-source CUPS code-base is now at a stand-still. There was just one commit to the CUPS Git repository for all of 2020.
• Has Apple abandoned CUPS?
• LPC 2020 - Open Printing MC - YouTube
• OpenPrinting News - September 2020
• Antennapod 2.0 Released — AntennaPod version 2 released with a range of new features, bug fixes and improvements. Below you’ll find an extensive list of highlights, with each time the Pull Request ID.
• AntennaPod
• AntennaPod - Apps on Google Play
• AntennaPod | F-Droid

Plus Nvidia's Jetson Nano release and the freaky future of low-level AI, and our thoughts on Coinbase's recent news.

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• Nextcloud 20 Released — Nextcloud Hub 20 debuts Dashboard, unifies search and notifications, integrates with other technologies
• Nextcloud bridging chat services in Talk — This allows users to connect a Talk conversion to one or more external services, like IRC, Slack, MS Teams or more. The administrator has to have enabled this feature and users can then simply configure it from the right-hand sidebar in Talk.
• IBM to split into two companies by end of 2021 — As-yet unnamed “NewCo” will handle IBM’s “managed infrastructure services.”
• IBM Jettisons Legacy Services To Focus On Hybrid Cloud
• As IBM spins out legacy infrastructure management biz, CEO goes all in on the cloud
• IBM’s “Cloud” Business (or Lack Thereof)
• Nvidia unveils $59 Nvidia Jetson Nano 2GB mini — The Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit, announced this week, is a single-board computer – like the Raspberry Pi
• Firefox may soon display Sponsored Top Sites on the New Tab Page — A recently added bug to Mozilla's bug tracking site Bugzilla indicates that Firefox may soon display sponsored top sites on the New Tab page. The bug requests that a preference is added to Firefox to disable sponsored top sites.
• 1668473 - Add pref UI for disabling sponsored top sites
• A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
• Sixty Coinbase employees take buyout offer over “no politics” rule

Plus our take on DuckDuckGo's new fight.

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• Open-source devs drown in DigitalOcean's latest tsunami of pull-request spam that is Hacktoberfest — Rewarding pointless patches with free swag leads to 'DDoS' against projects
• One solution — @derekapp will close them for you automatically and mark them as invalid.
• Require PRs be in a repo with hacktoberfest topic and be accepted by MattIPv4
• Hacktoberfest presented by DigitalOcean — We’re making Hacktoberfest opt-in only for projects – which maintainers can do simply by adding the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic to a repository.
• What is Google TV and how is it different from Android TV? — Google TV is a new interface for Android TV that is powered by Google's machine learning, Google Assistant and the Google Knowledge Graph. It also reorganizes your content to help make it easier for you to find what you want to work.
• The new Chromecast with Google TV won’t officially support Stadia at launch
• WireGuard announces a big Android update with Android TV support — WireGuard now has a slew of announcements, with support for Android TV through their app, pre-built kernel modules for popular phones, a Kotlin rewrite of the UI, and much more.
• Unofficial LineageOS 17.1 brings Android 10 to NVIDIA SHIELD TVs — The unofficial LineageOS 17.1 build for NVIDIA Shield TVs allows users to run a heavily customizable, near-stock Android 10 experience on their Android TV boxes. I
• Listening to Developer Feedback to Improve Google Play — Our policies apply equally to all apps distributed on Google Play, including Google’s own apps. We use the same standards to decide which apps to promote on Google Play, whether they're third-party apps or our own apps.
• Android 12 will make it easier to install app stores — Google today announced it will make it easier to install and use third-party app stores with the release of Android 12 next year.
• Apple v. Epic hearing: Judge hints at July 2021 trial
• Google’s Search Preference Menu Eliminates DuckDuckGo — The Q4 2020 results of Google’s search preference menu auction have been released and, as we predicted, DuckDuckGo has been eliminated in most countries.
• Atari VCS Backer Units are On the Way! — This shipment includes the one-time-only, Indiegogo-exclusive Atari VCS 800 Collector’s Edition model. Inspired by and designed as an homage to the original Atari 2600, there will only be 6,000 numbered and authenticated versions of this model.
• Atari VCS backers on IndieGoGo might actually get their units soon

Plus, the latest Mozilla project being spun-out, and how Timescale might have a solution for a self-sustaining open-source business in the cloud era.

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• Lenovo expand enterprise desktop range preinstalled with Ubuntu — Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is certified across 30 of Lenovo’s ThinkPads and ThinkStations range
• The September release and EndeavourOS ARM arrived — Our ARM branch is fully based on Archlinux ARM.
• EndeavourOS ARM
• Microsoft’s Edge browser is arriving on Linux in beta next month — The Linux preview is part of a bigger push to get businesses on Edge
• Microsoft launches Chromium Edge release candidate — Microsoft is trying to position Edge and Bing as “the browser and search engine for business.”
• Microsoft Edge for Linux will Ship With These Features Missing
• Linux GUI apps are coming to Windows — GUI app support is still a work in progress, but Microsoft program manager Craig Loewen shared a GIF showing what it looks like when you launch an GUI application like the Nautilus file manager or GIMP image editor using a command in a Linux terminal window.
• Researchers Say Microsoft Edge's Telemetry Has the Worst Privacy of Any Major Browser — A research paper suggests the data Microsoft Edge sends to its back-end servers has a persistent hardware-based identifier which could be used to find a user's identity.
• Last phase of the desktop wars?
• An Important Update on Mozilla WebThings — We are writing to inform you that the WebThings project is being spun out of Mozilla as an independent open source project.
• Killed by Mozilla
• Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%
• Building a self-sustaining open-source business in the cloud era — We explain why we are making these changes, what this means for users, and why we think this is necessary for the open-source industry as a whole.

Plus, the major re-architecture work underway for Chrome OS with significant ramifications for Desktop Linux.

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• Introducing GNOME 3.38: “Orbis” — GNOME 3.38 is the latest version of GNOME 3, and is the result of 6 months’ hard work by the GNOME community. It contains major new features, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. In total, the release incorporates 27896 changes, made by approximately 901 contributors.
• LINUX Unplugged 370: PipeWire Progress
• New GNOME versioning scheme — The next version of GNOME, due to be released in March 2021, will be GNOME 40.
• GNOME Extensions Rebooted Initiative — Extensions Rebooted is a collaborative effort to address the issues around the GNOME Shell extension ecosystem.
• Wiki · extensions-rebooted · GitLab
• What is LaCrOS for Chromebooks and why does it matter? — Google is decoupling the Chrome browser from Chrome OS on Chromebooks. And it’s using Linux to do this.
• Update on Firefox Send and Firefox Notes — today we are announcing the end of life for two legacy services that grew out of the Firefox Test Pilot program: Firefox Send and Firefox Notes.
• Firefox for Android LAN-Based Intent Triggering — The SSDP engine in Firefox for Android (68.11.0 and below) can be tricked into triggering Android intent URIs with zero user interaction. This attack can be leveraged by attackers on the same WiFi network and manifests as applications on the target device suddenly launching, without the users' permission, and conducting activities allowed by the intent.
• Mozilla rolls out Firefox 81 on Android
• Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches for a 'complete virtualization stack' with Linux and Hyper-V — Linux on Azure might no longer need Windows
• All Jupiter Broadcasting Shows

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

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• 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.

Plus, the new PinePhone options coming soon, our thoughts on recent Mozilla news, lessons from the GNOME Patent Troll, and AWS Bottlerocket.

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• Lenovo begins rollout of Fedora Linux on their laptops, Ubuntu systems due soon — The first model appearing with Fedora as an option is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8. Not only has it rolled out with Fedora, it's right there on the store and you can't miss it as it shows up first, as it's also the cheapest option for this model available right now.
• HP Z series on Ubuntu — HP announced the launch of its Z series of laptops and workstations certified with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the latest additions to their popular professional workstation line.
• PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition — I am thrilled to announce that the next Community Edition (CE) of the PinePhone will feature Manjaro.
• Pinephone will ship with Manjaro next
• LineageOS 17.1 adds support for the Google Pixel 2, Pixel 3a, Pixel 4 — Over the last couple of months, the team has added support for devices like the ASUS ROG Phone II, Google Pixel 3 series, Samsung Galaxy A7 2016, Xiaomi Mi A1, Samsung Galaxy J7 2015, OnePlus One, Sony Xperia XZ2, and many more.
• Mozilla rolls out Firefox 80 for Android — Along with the changes mentioned above, Firefox 80 for Android also includes a bunch of security fixes.
• Update on extension support in the new Firefox for Android
• Lessons from the GNOME Patent Troll Incident — The key element Rothschild like trolls require is the presumption of validity of a granted patent.
• Announcing the General Availability of Bottlerocket, an open source Linux distribution built to run containers — Bottlerocket is a free and open-source Linux-based operating system meant for hosting containers.
• Bottlerocket on Github
• AWS unleashes a new homegrown Linux
• AWS introduces Bottlerocket: A Rust language-oriented Linux for containers — There's a new security-oriented Linux for containers in town from Amazon and its name is Bottlerocket. Instead of being built almost entirely in C, it includes many components written in Rust.

Plus the PinePhone UBports edition goes up for pre-order, and our reaction to Huawei joining the Open Invention Network.

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• Linux kernel 5.6 release announcement — This has a bit more changes than I'd like, but they are mostly from davem's networking fixes pulls, and David feels comfy with them. And I looked over the diff, and none of it looks scary. It's just slightly more than I'd have preferred at this stage - not doesn't really seem worth delaying a release over.
• The Best Features Of The Linux 5.6 Kernel
• WireGuard Christened As A Modern Secure VPN Alternative
• WireGuard VPN makes it to 1.0.0 — It's a good day for WireGuard users—DKMS builds will soon be behind us.
• WireGuard VPN review
• PinePhone UBports Community Edition Pre-orders — Today we're pleased to announce the first PinePhone 'Community Edition', which will ship with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed.
• PINEPHONE – “Community Edition: UBports” - PINE Store
• Ubuntu Touch Q&A 72 — We are very pleased to announce that we are now working together with German phone startup Volla. They are joining us as a sponsor and will have a place on our Advisory Board. We expect that UT will be available as a pre-installed option with the new Volla phone.
• Linux phones running postmarketOS can now run (some) Android apps — “Android in a Box” solution that basically installs Android in a container in a way that lets you run Android apps as if they were native apps.
• LineageOS 17.1 based on Android 10 is now officially available — The team has also decided to jump up on the subversion, going from 17.0 to 17.1
• Huawei signs non-aggression patent pact with membership of Open Invention Network — Chinese giant plays nice with open source
• Press Release Details - Open Invention Network
• Xbox co-creator Rob Wyatt sues Atari for failing to pay him for design of VCS console — Xbox co-creator Rob Wyatt has filed a lawsuit against Atari for failing to pay him for the design work he did in creating the Atari VCS console.
• Game over: Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months
• Atari VCS: Managing the Unexpected — We believe it would be unfair to use the balance to fulfill only a small number of Indiegogo orders, so Atari’s plan is to ship to all backers at the same time when enough VCS units and peripherals are available.

Plus we try out Plasma Bigscreen, cover Telegram's really bad news, and much more.

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• Try our latest Test Pilot, Firefox for a Better Web, offering privacy and faster access to great content — Today we are launching a new Test Pilot initiative called Firefox Better Web with Scroll.
• Scroll partners with Firefox to build a better internet
• Scroll - a better internet
• Firefox Better Web with Scroll
• Firefox is launching a new test pilot with Scroll to pay web publishers
• Plasma Bigscreen — Plasma BigScreen is a platform intended to use on smart TVs with big remote-friendly UI controls, and Voice activation. What technology did we use for it? Plasma (of course!) and Mycroft.
• Plasma Bigscreen Homepage
• Google Play’s malicious app problem infects 1.7 million more devices — Apps went undetected by Google and antivirus scanners.
• Google Enlists Outside Help to Clean Up Android's Malware Mess — The newly formed App Defense Alliance will try to solve a malware problem that has bedeviled the Play Store since inception.
• Chrome and Chrome OS release updates resume — Today we’re sharing an update as we’re now resuming releases with an adjusted schedule
• Microsoft goes into Windows lockdown for builds from May — Microsoft on Tuesday said it has decided to halt Windows preview releases in May due to health concerns arising from the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis.
• Federal court judge grants temporary injunction against Telegram — Judge sides with the SEC and says that Telegram's upcoming crypto is likely a security. It's barred from distributing Grams, the currency for its TON blockchain network, until trial.

Plus, why "Works with Chromebook" might be great for Linux, and using your GPU to fight the Coronavirus.

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• npm is joining GitHub — I’m excited to announce that GitHub has signed an agreement to acquire npm.
• The npm Blog — Next Phase Montage
• Microsoft's GitHub absorbs NPM into its code-hosting empire
• GitHub for mobile is now available
• LMDE 4 “Debbie” released! — LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for “Linux Mint Debian Edition”.
• Debian Project Leader Elections 2020 — Jonathan Carter Sruthi Chandran Brian Gupta
• Platform for Jonathan Carter
• Platform for Sruthi Chandran
• Works With Chromebook — You’ll begin to see the Works With Chromebook badge on certified accessories in the U.S., Canada and Japan.
• Chromebooks Accessories & Chargers
• Chrome OS to get native app for printing and scanning
• Upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases — Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, we are pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases.
• PAPPL Is A New Printer Application Framework Made By The Founder Of CUPS — Michael Sweet, the lead developer of CUPS who had been at Apple for more than a decade since they acquired it, is now developing PAPPL as a printer application framework in addition to his work on the new LPrint project.
• Crowdsourced supercomputing project sets sights on coronavirus — Folding@home targets COVID-19, number of volunteer ‘folders’ skyrockets
• Thousands of These Computers Were Mining Cryptocurrency. Now They're Working on Coronavirus Research
• Gamers... assemble. It's time to join forces with @NVIDIAGeForce and @OfficialPCMR
• NVIDIA GeForce on Twitter: PC Gamers, let’s put those GPUs to work.
• Firefox 74.0 Released — Firefox now provides better privacy for your web voice and video calls through support for mDNS ICE by cloaking your computer’s IP address with a random ID in certain WebRTC scenarios.

Plus Mozilla and KaiOS team up to bring the modern web to feature phones, and the surprising way Microsoft is shipping a Linux kernel.

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• Firefox 74 arrives with stricter add-on rules, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 disabled — Starting with Firefox 74, users will need to take explicit action to install the extensions they want, and will be able to remove previously sideloaded extensions when they want to.
• Introducing GNOME 3.36: “Gresik” — GNOME 3.36 is the latest version of GNOME 3, and is the result of 6 months’ hard work by the GNOME community. It contains major new features, such as new login and unlock experience, and a dedicated app for managing extensions.
• GNOME 3.36 Released with New Lock Screen, Better Performance — Six months of development later and the official GNOME 3.36 release is finally here, with source code available to download from the usual places.
• Announcing Bottlerocket — Bottlerocket comes with a single-step update mechanism and includes only the essential software to run containers. These properties enable customers to use container orchestrators to manage OS updates with minimal disruptions, enabling better uptime for containerized applications and lower operational cost.
• Docker: Helping You and Your Development Team Build and Ship Faster — How are we going to do this? By focusing on developer experience through Docker Desktop, partnering with the ecosystem, and making Docker Hub the nexus for all the integrations, configuration, and management of the application components which constitute your apps and microservices.
• VMware Announces Expanded Portfolio of Products and Services to Help Customers Modernize Applications and Infrastructure — Tanzu, first introduced at the VMworld event in August 2019, is a portfolio of products centered on K8s. Also announced was vSphere 7, newly rearchitected using Kubernetes, and optimized to run both modern container-based and traditional virtual machine-based workloads.
• KaiOS Technologies and Mozilla partner to enable a healthy mobile internet for everyone — This partnership bolsters the security and performance of KaiOS-enabled smart feature phones, as well as the platform’s developer tools, security, and available functions, including better Progressive Web App and WebAssembly support.
• Magisk may no longer be able to hide bootloader unlocking from apps — Users have noticed that their bootloader-unlocked devices are failing SafetyNet’s Basic Integrity check even though they used Magisk to patch the boot image. According to Magisk creator John Wu, this is because Google may have implemented hardware-level key attestation to verify that the boot image has not been tampered with.
• Kernels for WSL2 will come from Windows Update — WSL2 will soon be officially available as part of Windows 10, version 2004! As we get ready for general availability, we want to share one additional change: updating how the Linux kernel inside of WSL2 is installed and serviced on your machine.

Plus our concerns about Debian's future, and the unfixable Intel flaw announced this week.

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• Let’s Encrypt discovers CAA bug, must revoke customer certificates — On Leap Day, Let's Encrypt announced that it had discovered a bug in its CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) code.
• Let’s Encrypt changes course on certificate revocation — Administrators are getting a little more time to replace affected certificates.
• Check code loop blunder strikes
• Let's Encrypt Has Issued a Billion Certificates
• 2020.02.29 CAA Rechecking Bug
• Revoking certain certificates on March 4
• 5 years of Intel CPUs and chipsets have a concerning flaw that’s unfixable — Converged Security and Management Engine flaw may jeopardize Intel's root of trust.
• New AMD Side Channel Attacks Discovered, Impacts Zen Architecture
• Opposite of a Platform for DPL 2020 — I hope to be DPL again some year, but 2020 is the wrong year for me and for the project. So I will not nominate myself this year, but hope to do so some future year.
• DPL elections 2019, congratulations Sam Hartman! — The Debian Project Leader elections just finished and the winner is Sam Hartman!
• Bits from the DPL For December 2019
• systemd v245 released, with homed stuff — A small new service systemd-homed.service has been added, that may be used to securely manage home directories with built-in encryption.
• FreeNAS and TrueNAS are Unifying — With the 12.0 release coming in the latter half of the year, we will not only bring more features and improvements than any release that has come before it, we will also unify both products into a single software image and name!
• Facebook is shifting its Libra cryptocurrency plans — The Libra project will now support existing currencies in addition to the proposed Libra token
• Jailbreak your iPhone using a rooted Android phone and checkra1n — Checkra1n gained support for Linux, making it possible to jailbreak iOS 13 devices using a Linux computer.
• Install Android 10 on your Apple iPhone 7 — Project Sandcastle, allowing you to run Android on your Apple iPhone 7.

Plus a birthday gift to Raspberry Pi users, Collabora comes to mobile, and more.

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• Collabora brings smooth editing to Android and iOS — This release fully integrates the iOS and Android apps into our Collabora Office product family.
• The Story of Collabora Office for Phones
• Firefox continues push to bring DNS over HTTPS by default for US users — The rollout will continue over the next few weeks to confirm no major issues are discovered as this new protocol is enabled for Firefox’s US-based users.
• Firefox now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US netizens and some are dischuffed about this
• The Facts: Mozilla’s DNS over HTTPs
• Securing Firefox with WebAssembly — RLBox, a new sandboxing technology.
• Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me — I have joined a company called Inrupt that is working to bring Tim Berners-Lee's distributed data ownership model that is Solid into the mainstream.
• Building a World-Class Team at Inrupt
• Microsoft's Azure Sphere, its Linux-based microcontroller plus cloud service, hits general availability — Microsoft is making its Azure Sphere secure IoT service generally available after several years of testing and previews.
• A birthday gift: 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now only $35 — The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35.
• The Raspberry Pi 4 gets a RAM upgrade

Plus a new report about open source security, and more.

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• Microsoft: Linux Defender antivirus now in public preview — We're aiming to protect the modern workplace environment across everything that it is, being Microsoft or non-Microsoft.
• Microsoft Threat Protection stops attack sprawl and auto-heals enterprise
• Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint now live under one App
• Microsoft Works - Wikipedia
• Firefox releases an Android app for its VPN service — The Firefox Private Network VPN is powered by Mullvad VPN. Mullvad VPN claims that it won’t log and monitor user data, unlike many other VPN services.
• The Private Internet Access Android app is being open sourced
• IVPN applications are now open source
• Tom Scott video about VPNs
• Android 11 Developer Preview — All the changes we found from Android 10 so far.
• npm struggling to fund FOSS devs — Funding free software is 'still a very unsolved problem' says co-founder
• The Linux Foundation and Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science Release Census for Open Source Software Security — New analysis identifies most widely used software and uncovers critical questions for the future of securing one of the world’s greatest shared resources
• The Linux Foundation identifies most important open-source software components and their problems — In its latest study, the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative discovered just how prevalent open-source components are in all software and their shared problems and vulnerabilities.
• Most-used libraries revealed
• The Linux Foundation and Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science release census for open-source software security — Census II (run by Harvard) wanted to look at language-level packages. Their report discusses some of the challenges. One challenge of many is that the JavaScript environment strongly encourages tiny modules, with around 1/2 of all JavaScript packages having at most one function. As a result, when you start counting dependencies, there are *far* more dependencies in JavaScript (because each module does so little), and so JavaScript tends to dominate.

Plus an update from Essential, and NetBSD's first big ask in ten years.

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• KDE Plasma 5.18 Released
• KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS Released, This is What's New
• MATE 1.24 released
• OpenShot 2.5.0 Released — Perhaps one of the most exciting changes in OpenShot 2.5.0 is our experimental support for hardware acceleration.
• OpenShot Video Editor Just Got a Massive Update
• Firefox 73.0 Released — Today’s Firefox release includes two features that help users view and read website content more easily, quickly.
• Firefox ESR 68.5.0 Released
• Tor Browser 9.0.5 Released — This release updates Firefox to 68.5.0esr, NoScript to 11.0.13, and on desktop, Tor to 0.4.2.6. We also added a new default bridge and backported a few improvements from the alpha series.
• Tails 4.3 is out
• An Update from Essential — We have made the difficult decision to cease operations and shutdown Essential.
• Essential, Andy Rubin’s phone company, is shutting down
• Andy Rubin’s smartphone startup, Essential, is dead
• After just one phone, Essential Products ends
• NetBSD fundraiser — We are trying to raise $50,000 in 2020
• NetBSD 9.0 Released

Plus, a few community fundraisers.

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• End-of-life announcement for CoreOS Container Linux — We know this timeline is aggressive. We've tried to provide the longest possible migration period consistent with our ability to maintain the OS
• Glass Enterprise Edition 2 now available for developers
• Mycroft's Position on Patent Trolls — We are going to litigate every single patent suit to the fullest extent possible including appealing any adverse decisions all the way to the Supreme Court.
• GNU-FSF cooperation update — Our mutual aim is to work together as peers, while minimizing change in the practical aspects of this cooperation, so we can advance in our common free software mission.
• GNU-FSF cooperation update — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
• The draft GNU Social Contract — I have been working with several other GNU Maintainers and volunteers to draft a GNU Social Contract which explains the key commitments we want from the GNU Project.
• GNU Social Contract DRAFT
• Jean Louis - Re: A GNU “social contract”?
• Proposals for the new GNU/FSF relationship
• Memorial Fund for Mark Greaves, PeppermintOS CEO — This is a tribute to Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec), Husband, Father, Peppermint CEO and distributor.
• AppCenter for Everyone — This campaign will fund a one-week in-person development sprint to develop and deliver on these key areas.

Plus, our take on the FSF's Upcycle Windows 7 campaign, and the clever Chrome OS strategy upgrade for education in 2020.

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• Rocket League will drop support for Mac, Linux versions in March | Ars Technica — Change comes eight months after Epic Games acquired the game's creators.
• Update on Refunds for macOS and Linux Players
• Support for macOS and Linux (SteamOS) – Psyonix Support
• Psyonix are ending support for Rocket League on both Linux and macOS (updated)
• Thanks to Psyonix dropping Linux support, we're getting anti-Linux statements like this from game devs again
• Wine 5.0 Released — This release represents a year of development effort and over 7,400 individual changes.
• Wine Is Approaching Six Million Lines
• Canonical introduces Anbox Cloud — The service is designed to offload workloads from x86 or Arm-based devices to containers in the cloud.
• The latest Chrome OS education devices will get updates for eight years — Previously, most Chrome OS devices recieved six years of software support.
• Chromebooks will now get up to eight years of Chrome OS updates
• Improving 40 million Chromebooks for education
• Upcycle Windows 7 — We call on them to release it as free software, and give it to the community to study and improve.
• Open Source Licenses in 2020: Trends and Predictions

Plus, the sad loss of a community member, and more.

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• Peppermint project lead Mark Greaves has passed away. — His contributions to both Peppermint and to the desktop Linux world as a whole are incalculable and he will be sorely missed.
• Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue — Mozilla has a strong line of sight to future revenue generation, but we are taking a more conservative approach to our finances.
• Readying for the Future at Mozilla
• DigitalOcean is laying off staff, sources say 30-50 affected
• Nextcloud Hub Announced — New generation of leading content collaboration platform integrates office document editing and collaboration apps, introduces workflows, rich work spaces, file locking and more
• Nextcloud 18 Changelog
• Huawei pitches its alternative to Google Play Store — Huawei Mobile Services wants to make a big splash in Europe, with thousands of apps already signed up
• Huawei Quick Apps is Huawei's alternative to Google Instant Apps
• Exclusive: Google is working to bring official Steam support to Chrome OS — The Chrome team is working—very possibly in cooperation with Valve—to bring Steam to Chromebooks.

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• Amazon takes aim at MongoDB with launch of Mongo-compatible DocumentDB
• MongoDB "open-source" Server Side Public License rejected
• Redis Labs raises $60 million for its NoSQL database
• Redis Labs changes its open-source license — again
• Keeping Open Source Open – Open Distro for Elasticsearch
• Chef goes 100% open source
• Google jumps into gaming with Google Stadia streaming service
• Google Stadia will be missing many features for Monday’s launch
• Supporting choice and competition in Europe
• Presenting search app and browser options to Android users in Europe
• Android Developers Blog: Welcoming Android 10!
• Project Mainline is Google’s new way to speed up security updates in Android Q
• Adiantum: encryption for the low end
• All Chromebooks will also be Linux laptops going forward
• Google gives most Chromebooks an extra year of software support
• Google and fwupd sitting in a tree
• Phoenix joins the LVFS
• Please welcome HP to the LVFS
• LVFS Project Announcement
• Announcing the Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator
• Introducing Windows Terminal
• Microsoft Will Release Their Edge Web Browser For Linux
• Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux
• Announcing WSL 2
• Ubuntu 19.04 'Disco Dingo' Released with New Features
• Intel 32bit packages on Ubuntu from 19.10 onwards
• Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS
• Enhancing our ZFS support on Ubuntu 19.10
• Ubuntu 19.10 Released
• Will Cooke, the Director of Engineering for the Ubuntu desktop, has left Canonical
• Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for Amazon Web Services
• Red Hat Opens the Linux Experience to Every Enterprise, Every Cloud and Every Workload with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
• Red Hat crosses US$3b annual revenue for first time
• Announcing the release of Fedora 30
• IBM Closes Landmark Acquisition of Red Hat for $34 Billion; Defines Open, Hybrid Cloud Future
• Introducing Fedora CoreOS
• Presenting CentOS Stream
• Fedora 31 is officially here!

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

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• 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 why Ubuntu is taking the Windows Subsystem for Linux so seriously.

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• Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for Amazon Web Services — New premium Ubuntu images with extended security, kernel live patching and more
• Introducing the Ubuntu AWS Rolling Kernel
• Canonical Announces "Ubuntu Pro" For AWS
• Canonical makes Ubuntu for Windows SubSystem for Linux a priority
• Amazon Announces Graviton2 SoC Along With New 64-Core Arm Instances — The new Graviton2 SoC is a custom design by Amazon’s own in-house silicon design teams and is a successor to the first-generation Graviton chip. The new chip quadruples the core count from 16 cores to 64.
• Graviton pulse - Memory Alpha
• AWS Goes All In On Arm-Based Graviton2 Processors
• Firefox 71 Released — Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Firefox 71 Linux Performance Isn't Looking All That Great
• Firefox Private Network Beta
• Firefox VPN Sign Up
• Mozilla launches the next phase of its Firefox Private Network VPN beta
• Avast Online Security and Avast Secure Browser are spying on you
• Mozilla updates DeepSpeech with an English language model that runs 'faster than real time'

Also, our thoughts on the new Alexa Voice service coming to low-end IoT devices, and much more.

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• Contract for the Web officially launched — Inventor of web calls on governments and firms to safeguard it from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity
• Tim Berners-Lee launches Google and Facebook-backed plan to fix the web
• Mozilla and the Contract for the Web
• State of Mozilla 2018: Annual Report — This report details how Mozilla operates and includes details from our financial reports for 2018.
• Mozilla: Be Smart. Shop Safe. — How creepy is that smart speaker, that fitness tracker, those wireless headphones? We created this guide to help you shop for safe, secure connected products.
• Minimum Security Guidelines Explained — These three organizations proposed five minimum guidelines that companies making connected devices should reasonably be expected to satisfy.
• Introducing Alexa Voice Service Integration for AWS IoT Core, a cost-effective Alexa Voice on any type of connected device — VS for AWS IoT enables Alexa Built-in functionality on MCUs like ARM Cortex ‘M’ class with <1MB embedded RAM by offloading memory and compute tasks to a virtual Alexa Built-in device in the cloud
• Kali Linux 2019.4 released with Xfce by default — We are incredibly excited to announce our fourth and final release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.4, which is available immediately for download.

Plus our thoughts on LVFS for Chromebooks, and the recent Monero hack.

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• Updates to the Mozilla Web Security Bounty Program — To celebrate the 15 years of the 1.0 release of Firefox, we are making significant enhancements to the web bug bounty program.
• GitLab: We are increasing bounties in our bug bounty program — Since we opened our bug bounty program to the public in December 2018, our community of external security researchers submitted 1,282 reports and we paid out $515,899 in bounties.
• Expanding the Android Security Rewards Program
• Google will pay $1.5 million for the most severe Android exploits
• Google and fwupd sitting in a tree
• Google To Require "Designed For Chromebook" Devices Support Fwupd Firmware Updates
• Debian init systems - what, another GR ? — Sam Hartman, the Debian Project Leader, has proposed a General Resolution (a plebiscite of the whole project) about init systems. In this posting I am going to try to summarise the situation. This will necessarily be a personal view but I will try to be fair. Also, sorry that it's so long but there is a lot of ground to cover.
• General Resolution: Init systems and systemd
• Open Invention Network Teams with IBM, Linux Foundation and Microsoft to Further Protect Open Source from Patent Trolls — Open Invention Network announced today it is partnering with IBM, the Linux Foundation and Microsoft to further protect open source software (OSS) from Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) leveraging low quality patents, also called patent trolls.
• IBM, Microsoft and Linux Foundation link arms to fight patent trolls with 'multimillion' scheme
• Official Monero website is hacked to deliver currency-stealing malware — GetMonero.org delivers Linux and Windows binaries that steal users' funds.

Plus, our thoughts on the PinePhone BraveHeart limited edition, and Stadia's potentially rocky launch.

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• Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise — Mirantis, a prominent OpenStack and Kubernetes cloud company, has acquired Docker Enterprise product line, developers, and business. 
• What We Announced Today and Why it Matters
• Docker’s Next Chapter: Advancing Developer Workflows for Modern Apps
• Docker Restructures and Secures $35 Million
• Container upstart's enterprise wing sold to Mirantis, CEO out, Swarm support faces ax
• IPAS: NOVEMBER 2019 INTEL PLATFORM UPDATE (IPU) — “67 of the 77 vulnerabilities we are addressing were internally found by Intel”
• MDS Attacks: Microarchitectural Data Sampling
• Intel Fixes a Security Flaw It Said Was Repaired 6 Months Ago
• Intel Failed to Fix a Hackable Chip Flaw Despite a Year of Warnings
• PINEPHONE – “BraveHeart” Limited Edition Linux SmartPhone For Early Adaptor — The “BraveHeart” Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely for developer and early adopter. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience and an interest in Linux-on-phone.
• Brave browser comes out of beta — The Brave open source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience, while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards.
• Installing Brave on Linux
• Google Stadia will be missing many features for Monday’s launch — Among the missing: 4K on PC, Achievement UI, Google Assistant, Family Sharing
• The world is waiting for Google Stadia to flop
• Microsoft’s xCloud preview now has 50 new games
• Choose Linux 22: Finding Your Community — We talk about the best ways to get involved in open source communities, finding like-minded people, conference strategies, community hubs, and what happened to all the LUGs.

Plus Google Cardboard goes open source, and a neat machine-learning tool to pull songs apart.

Special Guest: Wes Payne.

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• Google gives most Chromebooks an extra year of software support — Seven Chromebooks from Lenovo recently had their support lifespan extended, and now Google has updated the EOL date for 135 more models from several manufacturers. Most models received another year of support, others only got another six months, and some now have two more years.
• What’s new in Chrome OS: Virtual Desks, simpler printing and more — Think of Virtual Desks as separate workspaces within your Chromebook. Use this feature to create helpful boundaries between projects or activities. If you’re working on multiple projects, you can dedicate a desk to each one. Open Overview and tap New Desk in the top right-hand corner of your screen to try out Virtual Desks.
• Google Enlists Outside Help to Clean Up Android's Malware Mess — Today Google is announcing a partnership with three antivirus firms—ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium—to create an App Defense Alliance.
• Open sourcing Google Cardboard — Today, we’re releasing the Cardboard open source project to let the developer community continue to build Cardboard experiences and add support to their apps for an ever increasing diversity of smartphone screen resolutions and configurations.
• Access ESM, now free to the community, via the updated Ubuntu Advantage client — Canonical is happy to announce that all community users are entitled to a free Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure account for access to Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) and Kernel Livepatch* for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) for up to three machines, and up to 50 machines for all official Ubuntu Members.
• Releasing Spleeter: Deezer Research source separation engine — We are releasing Spleeter to help the research community in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) leverage the power of a state-of-the-art source separation algorithm. It comes in the form of a Python Library based on Tensorflow, with pretrained models for 2, 4 and 5 stems separation.
• Microsoft Will Release Their Edge Web Browser For Linux — Microsoft announced at their Ignite conference in Seattle that their Edge web-browser will see a Linux release

Plus, Google's new dashboard for WordPress and ProtonMail's apps go open source.

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• Fedora 31 is officially here! — This release features GNOME 3.34, which brings significant performance enhancements which will be especially noticeable on lower-powered hardware. Fedora Server brings the latest in cutting-edge open source server software to systems administrators in an easy-to-deploy fashion.
• Fedora 31 Performance Is Still Sliding In The Wrong Direction
• Distributed Linux Testing Platform KernelCI Secures Funding and Long-Term Sustainability — "Testing is traditionally done only on the most common hardware. But because Linux runs on more hardware than any other operating system, it's important to also test it on all that hardware. The Linux Foundation's support is enabling us to expand the great work we started five years ago and sets us up for a bright future with a growing community,"
• Hackers can steal the contents of Horde webmail inboxes with one click — Horde is one of the most popular free and open-source web email systems available. It’s built and maintained by a core team of developers, with contributions from the wider open-source community. It’s used by universities, libraries and many web hosting providers as the default email client.
• Horde Webmail - XSS + CSRF to SQLi, RCE, Stealing Emails <= v5.2.22 — Horde Webmail - XSS + CSRF to SQLi, RCE, Stealing Emails <= v5.2.22
• ProtonMail iOS app is open source - ProtonMail Blog — As part of our commitment to security, we are putting all of our software through rigorous, independent third-party audits.
• Android App Soon
• Site Kit is now available for all WordPress sites — Site Kit is Google’s official WordPress plugin

Plus, the latest Firefox has a new dashboard, and it looks like Disney+ won't work on Linux.

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• GNOME files defense against patent troll — Agreeing to this would leave this patent live, and allow this to be used as a weapon against countless others. We will stand firm against this baseless attack, not just for GNOME and Shotwell, but for all free and open source software projects.
• Will Cooke, the Director of Engineering for the Ubuntu desktop, has left Canonical — That's all folks! Eoan was my last #Ubuntu release and I am handing over the reigns to the ever awesome @m_wimpress. Expect 20.04 LTS to be amazingly amazing! Excited for my new gig @InfluxDB
• Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center Letting You Track the Trackers — Today we’re introducing a new feature that offers you a free report outlining the number of third-party and social media trackers blocked automatically by the Firefox browser with Enhanced Tracking Protection.
• GitLab telemetry debacle — To make GitLab better faster, we need more data on how users are using GitLab.
• Announcing $268 million in Series E funding
• Google shows just how much Project Treble has improved OS Android adoption — Project Treble modularizes Android to make it easier for OEMs to update devices.
• It looks like Disney Plus won’t work on Linux — Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM, avoid  

Plus a big boost for ARM on Linux, and our thoughts on recent Red Hat news.

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• Ubuntu 19.10 Released — Ubuntu 19.10 “Eoan Ermine” boasts an upgraded Linux kernel along with faster boot times, updated themes, and experimental ZFS file system support. Whether or not you upgrade, Ermine shows what to expect from Ubuntu’s next LTS release, due April 2020.
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Codenamed The Focal Fossa, Arriving On 23 April
• Canonical Pulled In $99M While Still Operating At A Loss
• Ubuntu 19.10 Flavours Released
• Ubuntu 19.10's Kernel Ships With A DoS / Arbitrary Code Execution Bug In The IPv6 Code
• TechSNAP 414: Rooting for ZFS
• IBM Misses Estimates as Red Hat Fails to Offset Declines — Red Hat included in results for first time since 2018 purchase.
• Samsung ends Linux on DeX beta with Android 10 — Samsung will no longer provide support on future OS and device releases. The company also notes that users will not be able to perform a version rollback to Android 9 Pie once they have upgraded to Android 10.
• Bare Metal Arm-Based EC2 Instances — Just like for existing bare metal instances (M5, M5d, R5, R5d, z1d, and so forth), your operating system runs directly on the underlying hardware with direct access to the processor.
• Graboid: First-Ever Cryptojacking Worm Found in Images on Docker Hub — Unit 42 researchers identified a new cryptojacking worm we’ve named Graboid that’s spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts.
• Docker Containers Riddled with Graboid Crypto-Worm
• andOTP removed from Google Play Store — andOTP was recently removed from the Google Play Store for violating their payment terms. This is most likely due to the fact that we offer in-app donation links that DO NOT use Googles In-App billing, which is against their terms.
• andOTP - Android OTP Authenticator
• WireGuard removed from Google Play Store — They said it was because we're in violation of their "Payments Policy", presumably because we have a link inside the app that opens the user's web browser to wireguard.com/donations/.
• WireGuard commit reversed dev comments interesting
• WireGuard - Apps on Google Play
• WireGuard Restored In Android's Google Play Store

Plus OpenLibra aims to save us from Facebook but already has a miss, lousy news for Telegram, and enormous changes for AMP.

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• FSF and GNU — GNU decision-making has largely been in the hands of GNU leadership. Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU ("Chief GNUisance"), the FSF is now working with GNU leadership on a shared understanding of the relationship for the future.
• Joint statement on the GNU Project — Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to.
• No radical changes in GNU Project — As Chief GNUisance, I'd like to reassure the community that there won't be any radical changes in the GNU Project's goals, principles and policies.
• SUSE is dropping OpenStack and embracing Kubernetes — As we make these bold customer-driven investments and in order to maximize these opportunities, SUSE has carefully reviewed its business and has decided to cease production of new versions of SUSE OpenStack Cloud and to discontinue sales of SUSE OpenStack Cloud.
• AMP is joining the OpenJS Foundation incubation program — After considering many options for a foundation that meets all of AMP’s needs, the OpenJS Foundation stood out as an ideal home for AMP.
• Google Stadia will be “faster and more responsive” than local gaming hardware — Thanks to some precog trickery, Google believes its streaming system will be faster than the gaming systems of the near-future, no matter how powerful they may become.
• Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months — Retro console a mess, may never launch, sources allege
• Atari disputes reports that its retro-inspired console is doomed
• Open Libra — An open platform for financial inclusion. Not run by Facebook.
• 'Members' of OpenLibra Disavow Project Days After Its Devcon Unveiling
• Facebook’s Libra Association crumbling

Plus, Google finds an Android zero-day in the wild, and the Document Collective's new approach to earn revenue for LibreOffice.

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• Nextcloud 17 brings remote wipe, collaborative text editor — This release brings major new improvements, especially around security and team collaboration.
• Starting The Document Collective — In particular, selling branded versions of LibreOffice in the macOS and Windows app stores has not been something that TDF could tackle. The TDF board of directors is looking to change that with the creation of a new entity, The Document Collective (TDC)
• The Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones — Just make a Chinese website your device's remote administrator. It'll be fine!
• Google finds serious Android zero-day — Vulnerability was patched in older Android OS versions, but resurfaced in newer releases.
• Affecting devices from Samsung, Huawei, and Google itself
• Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore — “The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.
• Microsoft Graph
• Jupiter Extras: Reverse Proxy Basics

Plus the best bit of Android 10 Go, Microsoft gives serious thought to bringing Edge to Linux, and Stallman's role at GNU comes into question.

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• CentOS 8 Released — Hello and welcome to the first CentOS-8 release. The CentOS Linux distribution is a stable, predictable, manageable and reproducible platform derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
• Presenting CentOS Stream — CentOS Stream will be a rolling-release Linux distro that exists as a midstream between the upstream development in Fedora Linux and the downstream development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is a cleared-path to contributing into future minor releases of RHEL while interacting with Red Hat and other open source developers. This pairs nicely with the existing contribution path in Fedora for future major releases of RHEL.`
• Transforming the development experience within CentOS
• Fedora and CentOS Stream — There’s not really been a consistent flow between the projects and product at all.
• Docker is struggling financially — Docker CEO Rob Bearden sent an email to employees this week acknowledging challenges as the company tries to raise money.
• GNOME Foundation facing lawsuit — The GNOME Foundation has been made aware of a lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC over patent 9,936,086. Rothschild allege that Shotwell, a free and open source personal photo manager infringes this patent.
• Donate to GNOME
• QR Code Patent Troll Sues Dickey’s Barbecue
• Google announces Android 10 (Go edition) — Android 10 (Go edition) includes a new form of encryption, built by Google for entry-level smartphones, called Adiantum.
• Gallery Go by Google Photos - Apps on Google Play
• Android: Try OTA updates without committing — That’s why they unveiled Dynamic System Updates (DSU) in Android 10 to let developers try a barebones version of a new OS update without unlocking the bootloader or wiping data.
• Sean Larkin on Twitter — "🚨🔥We on the @MSEdgeDev team are fleshing out requirements to bring Edge to Linux, and we need your help w/ some assumptions!🚨🔥 If you're a dev who depends on Linux for dev, testing, personal browsing, _please_take a second to fill out this survey! 📝 https://t.co/PCerGONmCG" / Twitter
• Stallman intends to keep leading GNU — I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance), and I intend to continue as such.
• Stallman changes his mind and quits GNU leadership role? — I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately.
• Richard Stallman Reportedly Steps Down As Head Of The GNU Project

Plus what systemd-homed is, why Debian is reconsidering init diversity, and some good news for CentOS.

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• Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF
• Richard Stallman resigns from MIT — I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.
• A reflection on the departure of RMS - Thomas Bushnell — By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
• LINUX Unplugged 319: Positive in the Freedom Dimension
• Debian reconsiders init diversity — In some ways dropping Elogind is a bigger decision. If we ever want to try something different than Systemd, we'll need something like Elogind.
• Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In "Init System Diversity"
• systemd-homed: systemd Now Working To Improve Home Directory Handling — Among the goals are allowing more easily migratable home directories, ensuring all data for users is self-contained to the home directories, UID assignments being handled to the local system, unified user password and encryption key handling, better data encryption handling in general, and other modernization efforts.
• Lennart's Video: Reinventing Home Directories
• Huawei confirms the new Mate 30 Pro won’t come with Google’s Android apps — Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer products division, revealed onstage at a press event in Germany this morning that the company has been forced to drop Google’s Mobile Services (GMS) license on the Mate 30 series of devices.
• Huawei clarifies it has "no plans" to unlock the bootloader — Huawei has “no plans” to unlock the bootloader on Mate 30 series devices.
• Oracle announces Oracle Autonomous Linux — Oracle Autonomous Linux provisions itself, scales itself, tunes itself and patches itself while running.
• CentOS Linux 7 (1908) released — This release supersedes all previously released content for CentOS Linux 7

Plus Red Hat's new desktop strategy, and what we think Mozilla is getting right.

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• Welcoming Android 10! — Today we're releasing the Android 10 source code to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and making it available to the broader ecosystem. We’re also starting the official Android 10 rollout to all three generations of Pixel devices worldwide.
• Google Releases Android 10 With "Vulkan Everywhere", Privacy Improvements
• The Verge Android 10 Review
• Android 10 adds warnings for USB port contamination and overheating
• The PinePhone is real & shipping soon — I am hereby happy to announce that the first PinePhones have now entered production and will start shipping to developers this month.
• Firefox 69 released — As of today, Enhanced Tracking Protection will be turned on by default
• Tor Blog: Browser Fingerprinting - An Introduction and the Challenges Ahead
• Introducing Red Hat CodeReady Containers — CodeReady Containers brings a minimal, preconfigured OpenShift 4.1 or newer cluster to your local laptop or desktop computer for development and testing purposes.

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• Xfce 4.14 released — After 4 years and 5 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.14, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.12.
• Xubuntu Daily
• Open Sourcing the Kubernetes Security Audit — The group created an open request for proposals, taking responsibility for evaluating the submitted proposals and recommending the vendor best suited to complete a security assessment against Kubernetes, bearing in mind the high complexity and wide scope of the project.
• wg-security-audit at master · kubernetes/community · GitHub
• Someone audited the Kubernetes source
• Server-side rendering for AMP — AMP now officially supports a technique called server-side rendering (SSR) which you can apply to your AMP pages to make them load even faster. Our tests show increases of up to a whopping 50% on the popular FCP metric.
• OSdisc.com Has Closed — In just the past couple days, a very popular Linux OS supply site has closed.

Plus why you might actually want to use the new Dex, significant performance gains for a beloved project, and more.

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• NVIDIA Starts Publishing GPU Hardware Documentation To Help Open-Source Drivers — NVIDIA is releasing more GPU hardware documentation at long last.
• GitHub - NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc
• Enhancing our ZFS support on Ubuntu 19.10 — We are going to enhance ZFS on root support in the coming cycles. Ubuntu 19.10 is a first-round towards that goal. We want to support ZFS on root as an experimental installer option, initially for desktop, but keeping the layout extensible for server later on.
• Big performance improvements for LibreOffice — The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.3, a feature-rich major release of the LibreOffice 6 family with better performance, a large number of new and improved features, and enhanced interoperability with proprietary document formats:
• You might actually want to use the new DeX on the Galaxy Note 10 — Among the many new updates and features coming with the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus is a revamped take on DeX, Samsung’s desktop-like software that is powered by the phone.
• Huawei officially reveals Harmony OS — Harmony OS is microkernel-based, like Google’s in-development Fuchsia OS.
• Linux Journal Ceases Publication — On August 7, 2019, Linux Journal shut its doors for good. All staff were laid off and the company is left with no operating funds to continue in any capacity.
• Linux Format - Print or Digital

Plus Gnome and KDE come together at the Linux App Summit, Mozilla's update on DNS-over-HTTPS, and the case for the VR desktop.

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• Manjaro to ship FreeOffice by default — We will ship FreeOffice by default. This is possible since we partnered up with Softmaker. Enjoy the best compatibility to MS Office.
• Manjaro backtracks — Manjaro will not be installing FreeOffice by default.
• GNOME and KDE to co-host the Linux App Summit in November — The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. are proud to announce Linux App Summit 2019. The Linux App Summit will be held in Barcelona from November 12th to 15th, 2019.
• An update on Android for search providers in Europe — Next year, we'll introduce a new way for Android users to select a search provider to power a search box on their home screen and as the default in Chrome (if installed).
• Google will use a first-price sealed-bid auction
• DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) Update — We want to understand how often users of Firefox are subject to these network configurations.
• Contract for the Web is becoming a reality — Berners-Lee has called it many things since he announced it at the 2018 Web Summit: a contract, a “magna carta” and a Bill of Rights.
• Browser vendors win war with W3C over HTML and DOM standards
• Solid
• Moving the Linux desktop to another reality — Today, we are very excited to announce a new open source project which enables interaction with traditional desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE, in VR.

Plus why RetroArch coming to Steam is a bit controversial, ubuntu-wsl is a cold drink for Windows users, and gpodder needs a new maintainer.

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• EndeavourOS first stable release — We’re proud to present you our very first stable release of EndeavourOS.
• RetroArch coming to Steam — But will this "completely free" release run afoul of Steam Community Guidelines?
• Introducing ubuntu-wsl — “A collection of utilities for WSL” to let you create shortcuts on the Windows desktop with wslusc, start the default Windows browser with wslview, and do a few other things.
• WSL - Ubuntu Wiki
• EvilGnome: Rare Malware Spying on Desktop Users — We have named the implant EvilGnome, for its disguise as a Gnome extension. The malware is currently fully undetected across all major security solutions. EvilGnome is a rare type of malware due to its appetite for Linux desktop users.
• Macbook keyboard and trackpad support coming to Linux 5.3 — Linux up to now hasn't had mainline support for the keyboard and trackpad on recent years of MacBooks: from MacBook8,1 or later or MacBookPro13 and MacBookPro14 models. These IDs roughly correlate to the MacBook systems since the end of 2015.
• Maintainer for gpodder.net needed — Some effort is required to keep a website or web service running and up-to-date. I (the current maintainer) have enough time to keep the system up and running for now, but no time to do any improvements and other development.

Plus Microsoft makes it into linux-distros, the Raspberry Pi 4 charger issue, and more.

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• Server breach at Pale Moon project goes undetected for 18 months — Server breach at Pale Moon browser project goes undetected for 18 months.
• Data breach post-mortem
• Firefox addons outage post mortem — Sorry this took so long to get out; we’d hoped to have this out within a week, but obviously that didn’t happen. There was just a lot more digging to do than we expected. In any case, we’re now ready to share the results.
• ISPA withdraws Mozilla Internet Villain Nomination and Category — In the 21 years the event has been running it is probably fair to say that no other nomination has generated such strong opinion.
• Firefox 68 Released
• Microsoft admitted to linux-distros list — I see no valid reasons not to subscribe Microsoft (or part(s) of it, see below) to linux-distros. The only voiced reasons not to, such as in Georgi Guninski's posting and in comments on some technology news sites that covered Microsoft's request, are irrelevant per our currently specified membership criteria.
• On Microsoft request to access private linux bugs
• Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C issues confirmed — The Pi's co-creator Eben Upton says that not every USB-C cable will power the Pi.
• IBM Red Hat deal closes — IBM and Red Hat announced today that they have closed the transaction under which IBM acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total equity value of approximately $34 billion.
• Mathew Miller's comments
• Fedora to drop snap plugin in gnome-software — In Fedora 31 I'll be disabling the snap plugin from GNOME Software.
• Drop snap support (!253) · Merge Requests · GNOME
• Canonical’s Robert Ancell calls the merge request “premature”
• Remove GsAuth support. (!255) · Merge Requests — This used to be used in the Snap and Ubuntu Reviews plugins, but is now no longer required. The remaining usage in the Snap plugin is not a common case on desktop and not necessary to support anymore.

Plus why Fucshia OS might be the most significant future threat to Linux.

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• Debian 10 Buster released — We're happy to announce the release of Debian 10, codenamed buster.
• Debian 10 buster release details
• Debian and code names
• GalliumOS 3.0 released — GalliumOS can be installed in place of ChromeOS, or in a dual-boot configuration alongside ChromeOS.
• You Can Finally Read/Write To The SSDs On Newer Macs — This out-of-tree patch is against the current Linux 5.1 kernel and the write support should be considered particularly experimental, so be aware before trying to use this on a drive with any sensitive data.
• Mozilla teases $5-per-month ad-free news subscription — Mozilla has started teasing an ad-free news subscription service, which, for $5 per month, would offer ad-free browsing, audio readouts, and cross-platform syncing of news articles from a number of websites.
• Scroll
• ISPA calls Mozilla a villain — The Internet Services Providers’ Association is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2019 Internet Hero and Villain.
• ISPA doubles down
• How to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in Firefox
• Mozilla response in the register
• No plans to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default in the UK
• Fuchsia gets a website — A couple of days ago and without fanfare Google went live with Fuchsia.dev, a developer site for its new operating system, currently called the Fuchsia Project.
• Dr. Xu Zhongxing's speech: Fuchsia OS Introduction Complete Record and Slide Download — The world needs a new operating system. Linux only cares about the world of servers, like a boiler worker who specializes in working in a boiler room below the deck. In order to make up for the shortcomings of Linux, Android has a thick middle layer and is constantly making compromises.

Plus Mozilla's big plans Firefox on Android, and the future of Steam on Linux.

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• Raspberry Pi 4 Released — Raspberry Pi 4 is now on sale, starting at $35. This is a comprehensive upgrade, touching almost every element of the platform. For the first time we provide a PC-like level of performance for most users, while retaining the interfacing capabilities and hackability of the classic Raspberry Pi line.
• New version of Raspbian — We are actually releasing it slightly in advance of the official Debian release date. The reason for this is that one of the important new features of Raspberry Pi 4
• Slightly faster than Stretch version
• No USB boot yet
• Reinventing Firefox for Android — Today we’re very happy to announce a pilot of our new browser for Android devices that is available to early adopters for testing as of now.
• Firefox to get a random password generator
• Microsoft applies to join linux-distros mailing list — Windows giant cheered on by Linux Foundation as it seeks membership of private security-focused message board.
• Register's Coverage
• Introducing people.kernel.org — Ever since the demise of Google+, many developers have expressed a desire to have a service that would provide a way to create and manage content in a format that would be more rich and easier to access than email messages sent to LKML.
• Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS — We will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed.

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

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• 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.

As well as the new GParted release, the Unity Editor for Linux and the Browser vendors struggle with the W3C's latest twist.

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• HiddenWasp Linux malware — Fully developed HiddenWasp gives attackers full control of infected machines.
• Docker Bug Allows Root Access to Host File System — The weakness is the result of a race condition in the Docker software and while there’s a fix in the works, it has not yet been integrated.
• Contain yourself, Docker: Race-condition bug puts host machines at risk... sometimes
• GParted 1.0 Released — This release of GParted includes a significant undertaking to migrate the code base from gtkmm2 to gtkmm3 (our GTK3 port).
• GParted 1.0 Milestone After Almost 15 Years
• Announcing the Unity Editor for Linux — A growing number of developers using the experimental version, combined with the increasing demand of Unity users in the Film and Automotive, Transportation, and Manufacturing (ATM) industries means that we now plan to officially support the Unity Editor for Linux.
• Don't Be Famous: Securing a Kubernetes Cluster Study Group - YouTube

Plus the ghost of Firefox OS lives on in the well-financed KaiOS, GitHub launches sponsors, and obvious uses for the new Google Glass 2.

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• Latest Firefox Release is Faster than Ever — We applied many of the same principles of time management just like you might prioritize your own urgent needs.
• Firefox 67 - Dark Mode CSS, WebRender, and more
• Smooth video playback with AV1 decoder
• It's not all beer and skittles for Firefox 67
• openSUSE Leap 15.1 released — The release of Leap 15.1 improves YaST functionality and the installer.
• openSUSE considers governance options — The relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE community is currently under discussion as the community considers different options for how it wants to be organized and governed in the future.
• Antergos Linux Project Ends — We came to this decision because we believe that continuing to neglect the project would be a huge disservice to the community. Taking this action now, while the project’s code still works, provides an opportunity for interested developers to take what they find useful and start their own projects.
• Endeavour, Antergos community's next stage — We are proud to announce our project, code name Endeavour! This is going to be a distro with you, the community in mind.
• Manjaro claim >1M downloads so far this year
• Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 drops to $999 — Google is today ready to officially unveil Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, a followup with a faster processor, improved camera, and new Smith Optics frames.
• KaiOS raises $50M, hits 100M handsets — The funding takes the total raised by KaiOS — which has now shipped 100 million devices across 100 countries — to $72 million.
• Announcing GitHub Sponsors — We’re thrilled to announce the beta of GitHub Sponsors, a new way to financially support the developers who build the open source software you use every day.

Plus the impact of Google suspending business with Huawei, the recent ChromeOS feature silently dropped, and more.

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• ZombieLoad Attack — After Meltdown, Spectre, and Foreshadow, we discovered more critical vulnerabilities in modern processors. The ZombieLoad attack allows stealing sensitive data and keys while the computer accesses them.
• Understanding the MDS vulnerability: What it is, why it works and how to mitigate it
• Understanding Microarchitectural Data Sampling (aka MDS, ZombieLoad, RIDL & Fallout) from Red Hat - YouTube
• AMD Immune to Crippling MDS Vulnerabilities
• AMP to start hiding google from the URL — Signed-Exchange is something which can help you show your own domain in AMP page URLs, with all the AMP-Cache capabilities intact.
• A report from the AMP Advisory Committee Meeting
• Dual booting Windows on Chromebooks dead — Project Campfire turned up in the Chromium world this past August.
• Microsoft open-sources a crucial algorithm behind its Bing Search services — Microsoft today announced that it has open-sourced a key piece of what makes its Bing search services able to quickly return search results to its users
• Microsoft AI lab experiments
• South Korean government planning Linux migration as Windows 7 support ends — The Herald quotes the Interior Ministry as indicating that the transition to Linux, and the purchase of new PCs, would cost about 780 billion won ($655 million), but also anticipates long-term cost reductions with the adoption of Linux. The report doesn't mention a specific distro, instead "hopes to avoid building reliance on a single operating system."
• Windows dual booting no longer looking likely on Pixelbooks
• Google suspends business with Huawei — “Huawei will only be able to use the public version of Android and will not be able to get access to proprietary apps and services from Google,” the source said.
• Command Line Threat Hunting Video

Plus Alpine Linux Docker images shipped for 3 years with root accounts unlocked, and Google's new attempt to send updates directly to your phone.

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• RHEL 8 released — Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is the operating system redesigned for the hybrid cloud era and built to support the workloads and operations that stretch from enterprise datacenters to multiple public clouds.
• Considerations in adopting RHEL 8
• IBM's Red Hat acquisition moves forward — The Department of Justice has approved IBM's acquisition of Red Hat.
• WSL 2 using LTS source from Kernel.org
• Canonical announces support for Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
• WSL 2 deep dive - YouTube
• All new Chromebooks will run Linux apps — Google has announced that all new Chromebook devices will be Linux ready.
• Project Mainline is Google’s new attempt to send security updates directly to your phone — Google will start delivering some Android security updates through the Play Store
• Alpine Linux Docker Images Shipped for 3 Years with Root Accounts Unlocked — This vulnerability appears to be the result of a regression introduced in December of 2015.
• Alpine Linux's response to CVE-2019-5021
• Gartner says 90% of blockchain supply chain initiatives will go nowhere — Research firm Gartner is unimpressed.
• The Friday Stream

Plus the massive Firefox blunder, Canonical's new service, and a report from DockerCon.

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• Fedora 30 Released — Fedora Workstation features GNOME 3.32 — the latest release of this popular desktop environment.
• Purism launches Librem One — Librem One is a subscription service, using open standards and free software, and it is available for $7.99/mo, or $71.91/yr for the four services.
• Librem One Affected By Nasty Security Bug On Launch Day
• Todd attempts to save face — By putting services under a centralized brand, we make these decentralized services just as convenient to use as the big tech alternatives.
• Firefox addon cert blunder — Late on Friday May 3rd, we became aware of an issue with Firefox that prevented existing and new add-ons from running or being installed.
• Canonical consolidates open infrastructure support — Canonical today announced Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure, a consolidated enterprise security, compliance and support offering that covers the full range of open source infrastructure capabilities for up to 10 years.
• Plans and pricing - Ubuntu Advantage Infrastructure
• Ubuntu and Dell launch developer survey — Give us your feedback and help shape the Ubuntu desktop.
• Docker introduces Docker Enterprise 3.0 with desktop integration, launches Docker Applications — 451 Research anticipates the app container industry will be worth more than $4.3 billion by 2022, and the competition is fierce.
• Amazon Managed Blockchain hits general availability — Amazon told businesses that they “can quickly set up a blockchain network spanning multiple AWS accounts with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console,” doing away with what it describes as the typical cost and difficulty of creating a company network.
• Microsoft launches a fully managed blockchain service
• Facebook working on cryptocurrency-based payments platform

Also WebThings is launched and we think it might have a shot.

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• Ubuntu 19.04 'Disco Dingo' Released — Improved performance is what defines the ‘Disco Dingo’
• Open infrastructure, developers and IoT are 19.04's focus — Ubuntu 19.04 integrates recent innovations from key open infrastructure projects – like OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Ceph – with advanced life-cycle management for multi-cloud and on-prem operations – from bare metal, VMware and OpenStack to every major public cloud.
• Ubuntu 19.04 Flavours Available to Download
• Introducing Mozilla WebThings — Project Things is graduating from its early experimental phase and from now on will be known as Mozilla WebThings.
• WebThings Documentation
• Pyodide — Pyodide is an experimental project from Mozilla to create a full Python data science stack that runs entirely in the browser.
• OpenSSH 8.0 released — This release contains mitigation for a weakness in the scp(1) tool and protocol (CVE-2019-6111).
• Presenting search app and browser options to Android users in Europe — Following the changes we made to comply with the European Commission's ruling last year, we’ll start presenting new screens to Android users in Europe with an option to download search apps and browsers.  

Plus more good work by Mozilla, and the Chinese crackdown on Bitcoin mining.

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• The 6 most important announcements from Google Cloud Next 2019 — Anthos is the new name of the Google Cloud Services Platform, Google’s managed service for allowing enterprises to run applications in their private data center and in Google’s cloud.
• PowerShell growth fueled by Linux use — PowerShell Core usage has grown significantly in the last two years. In particular, the bulk of our growth has come from Linux usage
• Teaching machines to triage Firefox bugs
• Mozilla still on track to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default in Firefox
• Protections Against Fingerprinting and Cryptocurrency Mining Available in Firefox Nightly and Beta
• Matrix suffers security breach — An attacker gained access to the servers hosting Matrix.org. The intruder had access to the production databases, potentially giving them access to unencrypted message data, password hashes and access tokens.
• Archive of deleted GitHub Issues lodged by the hacker
• Chinese government proposes ban on bitcoin mining — A Chinese ban on cryptocurrency mining would be a huge deal for the global bitcoin community.

Plus good news for KDE Connect users, Intel begins work on next-generation open source video drivers, and much more.

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• Google launches game streaming service called Stadia — Google CEO: "We're building a game platform for everyone."
• Killed by Google - The Google Graveyard & Cemetery
• How OpenXR could glue virtual reality’s fragmenting market together — “OpenXR since the beginning has had a lot of positive energy and urgency," Trevett continued. “I think people kind of realize everyone can benefit. Obviously it's not going to be magic, but I think it can make a difference, because everyone wins."
• Intel Xe Graphics Being Part Of The First US Exascale Supercomputer Is Great For Linux — With Aurora expected to run Linux, this means the Linux driver support for Xe Graphics will have to be up to par by 2021.
• Albert Vaca Cintora on Twitter — "KDE Connect has been removed from @GooglePlay for violating their new policy on apps that access SMS [1]. The policy has an explicit exception for companion apps (like KDE Connect), but it was removed anyway and *there's no way to talk to Google*."
• Albert Vaca Cintora on Twitter — "To close this thread, I want to say that KDE Connect finally got approved, and SMS support is back in version 1.12.4, both on the Play Store and F-Droid! Thanks everyone who spread the voice (this thread got half a million impressions on Twitter!) and helped make it happen :D… https://t.co/OTLY5KJdI6"
• Android Developers Blog: Providing a safe and secure experience for our users
• Google forced into Android browser choice — Now we’ll also do more to ensure that Android phone owners know about the wide choice of browsers and search engines available to download to their phones. This will involve asking users of existing and new Android devices in Europe which browser and search apps they would like to use.
• Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion — Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising
• EC fines Google €1.49bn for abusing ad market dominance
• Google now pays more in EU fines than it does in taxes

Plus Android Q gets an official Desktop Mode, the story behind the new Open Distro for Elasticsearch, and more!

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• GNOME 3.32 Released — Version 3.32 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements, performance improvements and new features.
• Leaderless Debian — What would happen if Debian were to hold an election and no candidates stepped forward? The Debian project has just found itself in that situation and is trying to figure out what will happen next.
• Debian project leader candidates emerge
• Foundations galore — The merger is supported by 30 corporate and end user members including Google, Microsoft, IBM, PayPal, GoDaddy, and Joyent.
• New Red Team Project — The Linux Foundation has launched the Red Team Project, which incubates open source cybersecurity tools to support cyber range automation, containerized pentesting utilities, binary risk quantification, and standards validation and advancement.
• CommunityBridge — The Linux Foundation today announced CommunityBridge – a new platform created to empower open source developers – and the individuals and organizations who support them – to advance sustainability, security, and diversity in open source technology.
• Funded by Github
• Understanding LF's New “Community Bridge” - Conservancy Blog
• NGINX to be acquired — I’m incredibly excited that today we announced NGINX has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by F5.
• Open Distro for Elasticsearch — We have therefore decided to partner with others such as Expedia Group and Netflix to create a new open source distribution of Elasticsearch named “Open Distro for Elasticsearch.”
• Jeff Barr – Open Distro for Elasticsearch
• Android finally getting desktop mode — The AOSP Launcher has a new component that, when launched, brings up a new Android desktop interface.
• Here are the new Android Q features

Plus Microsoft open sources Windows Calculator, and a quick recap of SCaLE 17x.

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• Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 Released — OTA-8 is primarily a stability improvement release as we continue to work on using upstream technologies in Ubuntu Touch, increasing our project output.
• PureOS convergence — Purism’s PureOS showcasing adaptive convergent design
• Announcing Maru 0.6 Okinawa — In Maru 0.6 Okinawa, the game completely changes, laying the foundation to run Maru on nearly any Android device.
• Android app devs to get new monetisation method — Google Play is excited to announce rewarded products, a new product type now available in open beta in the Play Console.
• Google Glass’ second-gen enterprise model leaks — Google’s not-quite-there vision of the future is getting a second enterprise model
• Microsoft open-sources Windows Calculator — Today, we’re excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License.
• calc.exe is now open source

Plus we say goodbye to Koroa, find a reason to checkout GRUB nightlies, and how Android aims to kill passwords for good.

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• LineageOS 16.0 released — We feel that the 16.0 branch has reached feature parity with 15.1 and is ready for initial release. With 16.0 being the most recent and most actively-developed branch, on March 1st, 2019 it will begin receiving builds nightly and 15.1 will be moved to weekly builds.
• XDA Coverage of LineageOS 16.0
• KaiOS now with 85M feature phones shipped — With 85 million phones now shipped in more than 100 markets with handset brands like Nokia and India’s Jio, KaiOS now has an expanded partnership to put more Google
• KaiOS is doing well in US too
• RISC-V Support Added To The GRUB Bootloader — As working towards this year's GRUB 2.04 update, we've known they have been on the finishing stretch for merging RISC-V support and as of this morning that milestone has been crossed.
• RISC-V Support in the FreeRTOS Kernel
• Bringing energy efficiency to IoT architecture
• The Challenge Of RISC-V Compliance
• Thunderclap and Linux — The authors built a "fake" network card2 and performed various DMA attacks and were able to temper with memory regions that their network card should have no access to whatsoever.
• [announce] Struck by a Thunderbolt
• [official site] Thunderclap
• RIP Korora — "Our @kororaproject website has been redirected to @fedora as we do not have any new releases coming. Thank you for your support over the last 13 odd years."
• We saw this coming

And why KDE joining the Matrix, along with others might be establishing a new open source standard.

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• KDE is adding Matrix to its instant messaging infrastructure — KDE is adopting non-proprietary and decentralized instant messaging services and is now running its own community-managed instance of Matrix.
• Matrix the basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger app
• Interview with Matthew Hodgson: Matrix in the French State
• New Release: OnionShare 2 — OnionShare is an open source tool for securely and anonymously sending and receiving files using Tor onion services.
• Redis Labs changes its open-source license — again — “Some cloud providers have repeatedly taken advantage of successful opensource projects, without significant contributions to their communities.”
• Arm unveils new Neoverse chips for data centers — Arm claims that the design provides as much as 2.5 times more processing power for certain server workloads than the previous Cortex-A72 architecture.
• GCC 9 Compiler Support For The Arm Neoverse N1 + E1
• Linus' doubts
• Intel Confirms Apple Macs Will Switch to Arm CPUs by 2020, Says Report
• Wine Developers Release Hangover Alpha — Hangover 0.4 is the first (alpha) release from this project for running x86/x86_64 Windows programs now on 64-bit ARM Linux distributions.
• Linux Academy - Full Stack Ruby on Rails Developer (Remote)

Plus new disk encryption coming to Linux, Intel releases their open source encoder for future video on the web, and more.

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• Raspberry Pi opens IRL store — The store is located on the first floor in the Grand Arcade in the centre of Cambridge, UK.
• Security bug fixed in LibreOffice but not OpenOffice — Austrian researcher Alex Inführ publicly reported the vulnerability on Friday
• LibreOffice 6.2 has a new UI — LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar, a significant major release of the free office suite which features a radical new approach to the user interface
• Android PNG vulnerability — A maliciously crafted PNG image could execute code smuggled within the file, if an application views it.
• Adiantum: encryption for the low end — Low-end devices bound for developing countries, such as those running the Android Go edition, lack encryption support because the hardware doesn't provide any cryptographic acceleration.
• Google Adiantum announcement
• Intel Releases Open Source Encoder for Next-Gen AV1 Codec — SVT-AV1 requires Skylake-generation or newer Xeon processors with at least 112 threads and at least 48GB of RAM for 10-bit 4K video encoding.
• The AV1 Video Codec - YouTube Talk — This talk will discuss the road from specification to production, the current state of AV1 deployment, and our own efforts to write an AV1 encoder in Rust, rav1e. It is intended for a technical audience, but does not require previous signal processing experience.

Plus HP Joins LVFS, why you shouldn't expect a Raspberry Pi 4 in 2019, and more.

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• Firefox 65 released — We’re happy to announce a new set of redesigned controls for the Content Blocking
• Next version of Firefox might warn users of software that performs MitM attacks — The Firefox browser will soon come with a new security feature that will detect and then warn users when a third-party app is performing a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack by hijacking the user's HTTPS traffic.
• Mozilla halts Firefox 65 distribution on Windows — The organization released Firefox 65.0 for all supported operating systems a few days ago on January 29, 2019.
• CFR annoying some users
• HP joins LVFS — If you’ve got a Z2, Z6, Z8, Z440, Z640 or Z840 system then you might want to check for an update in the GNOME Software updates panel or using fwupdmgr update in the terminal.
• Pine64 to Launch $79 Linux Tablet, $199 PineBook Pro Laptop — Pine64, the company that gave us the $89 Pinebook Linux laptop, is branching out and is set to launch a Linux tablet this year for just $79. That's as well as a new Linux laptop, smartphone, camera, single board computers, and retro gaming kit.
• Pine64 forum announcement
• We won't see a Raspberry Pi 4 in 2019 — "I don’t have a route to do something this year," he told us. "I think we kind of understand what featureset we want [and] what would be involved in getting that featureset. I don’t think we have a  defined plan for turning that into a product yet."
• Kodi 18.0 Released — One of the big features of this release: support for gaming emulators, ROMs and controls.

Plus we announce a new Linux podcast, and run down the many ways to run Ubuntu on Windows.

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• Choose Linux - New JB Show — The show that captures the excitement of discovering Linux.
• Steam For Linux Now Lets You Play Windows Games From Other Stores — Users can now launch Windows games purchased on platforms outside of Steam from inside the Steam for Linux client.
• Looks like it’s still using Wine 3.16
• Wine 4.0 Released — This release represents a year of development effort and over 6,000 individual changes.
• Microsoft Employee Hints at Windows Core OS Open Source Components — The Security Program Manager then said that he "improved the security posture of Windows Open Source Components through initiatives that investigate vulnerabilities found and establish a process for remediation.”
• Multipass for Win10 public beta — Multipass, at its core, is a service to manage Linux (in this case, Ubuntu) virtual machines in Windows 10 without the overhead of faffing about with Hyper-V (although Hyper-V is most definitely required to make the thing work).
• Ubuntu Core 18 gets 10 years of support — Dell has been working closely with Canonical over the past three years to certify Ubuntu Core on all our Edge Gateway platforms.
• Debian releases new images with apt fix — This point release incorporates the recent security update for APT, in order to help ensure that new installations of stretch are not vulnerable. No other updates are included.
• It might be harder to block ads in Chromium — Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including ad blockers.
• Google poaches 14-year Mac veteran from Apple to bring Fuchsia to market — Stevenson started at Apple in 2004 as a Product Release Engineer for OS X. In this role, he “triaged and diagnosed” application and framework issues, while also working with third-party developers.

Plus our thoughts on the new Project Trident release, and Mozilla ending their Test Pilot program.

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• MongoDB removed from major distros — Red Hat won't use MongoDB in Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora thanks to MongoDB's new Server Side Public License.
• ZFS On Linux Landing Workaround For Linux 5.0 Kernel Support — There's no word yet on how this would affect ZFS Linux performance for end-users.
• First release of Project Trident — This version is based off the 18.12-stable branch of TrueOS (FreeBSD 13-CURRENT), using the new TrueOS distribution framework with several add-ons by Project Trident itself.
• Android-x86 8.1-r1 (Oreo-x86) released — Add Taskbar as an alternative launcher which puts a start menu and recent apps tray on top of your screen and support freeform window mode.
• 600 days of postmarketOS — postmarketOS is aiming for a ten year life-cycle for smartphones
• Mozilla kills Test Pilot Program — So today, we are announcing that we will be moving to a new structure that will demonstrate our ability to innovate in exciting ways and as a result we are closing the Test Pilot program as we’ve known it.
• Mozilla Kills Default Support for Adobe Flash in Firefox 69

Plus Homebrew comes to Linux, the recent Ethereum Classic attack, and more.

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• Chrome OS may soon let companies choose their own distro for Linux apps — Device administrators will be able to designate a URL for Chrome OS to download the Linux distro from a hash to ensure the download was successful.
• Github offers free private repos — Today we’re announcing two major updates to make GitHub more accessible to developers: unlimited free private repositories, and a simpler, unified Enterprise offering.
• Homebrew comes to Linux — The most significant changes since 1.8.0 are Linux support, (optional) automatic brew cleanup and providing bottles (binary packages) to more Homebrew users.
• Amazon launches Mongo-compatible DocumentDB — The launch of AWS DocumentDB – a fully managed document database service – comes just months after MongoDB announced a new licence
• Phoenix joins the LVFS — Just like AMI, Phoenix is a huge firmware vendor, providing the firmware for millions of machines.
• Ethereum Classic suffers 51-percent attack — Rollback attack let attackers spend 88,500 previously spent coins.
• Coinbase Suspends Ethereum Classic

Plus the BSDs rebase their ZFS on the Linux implementation, the EU has bug bounties, and Thunderbird gets set to fly!

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• Raspberry Pi joins RISC-V Foundation — We're excited to have joined the @risc_v Foundation as a silver member. Hoping to contribute to maturing the Linux kernel and @debian port for the world's leading free and open instruction set architecture.
• Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Driver Finally Being Mainlined — The Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen retails for about $60 USD and with the Linux 4.21 should be playing nicely with the mainline kernel.
• MIPS to be open sourced — The MIPS Open initiative will help greatly expand the existing MIPS ecosystem comprised of thousands of developers and over 100 academic institutions worldwide by offering new opportunities to create innovative solutions from third-party tool vendors, software developers and universities.
• Wave Computing takes funding over $200 million
• EU Offers Bug Bounties For 14 Open Source Projects — As the bug bounty programs begin to roll out in January, security experts worry that the programs miss the mark on truly securing open source projects.
• Mozilla "experimenting" with more ads in Firefox. — “This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner.”
• Thunderbird ready to fly into 2019 — Welcome to 2019, and in this blog post we’ll look at what we got accomplished in 2018 and look forward to what we’re going to be working on this year.
• FreeBSD admits that Linux is better (when it comes to ZFS) — In the past few years the vast majority of new development in ZFS has taken place in DelphixOS and zfsonlinux (ZoL). Earlier this year Delphix announced that they will be moving to ZoL. This shift means that there will be little to no net new development of Illumos.

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!

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

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• 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.

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

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• 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 the Kernel team's clever Spectre slowdown fix, Emby goes proprietary, Steam Link lives on, and more.

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• Microsoft Edge to move to a Chromium base — Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers.
• Mozilla not exactly thrilled about it — Microsoft is officially giving up on an independent shared platform for the internet.
• Chrome and Firefox to have native Arm builds on Win10 — Mozilla announced today it is working on bringing a native version of Firefox to Windows 10 on ARM. The organization is doing so in cooperation with Qualcomm.
• WordPress 5 Released — The new block-based editor won’t change the way any of your content looks to your visitors. What it will do is let you insert any type of multimedia in a snap and rearrange to your heart’s content.
• Emby becomes proprietary — we are modularizing and open sourcing as many standalone components as we possibly can.
• Spectre slowdown fix — Linux 4.20-rc5 addresses the performance issue by making the security defense optional.
• NVIDIA open sources PhysX — We’re doing this because physics simulation — long key to immersive games and entertainment — turns out to be more important than we ever thought.
• Steam Link lives on via the Raspberry Pi — The Steam Link app is now available in beta on the Raspberry Pi 3 and 3 B+ running Raspbian Stretch

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.

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• 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.

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• 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 our brief thoughts on the new Ubuntu release, its various flavors, an important milestone, and the larger Open Source story.

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• Samsung enable Linux on their phones — Linux desktops will become available if users plug their phones into the DeX Station, the device that lets a Galaxy 8 run a Samsung-created desktop-like environment when connected to the DeX and an external monitor
• Purism Now Shipping Their Laptops With Intel ME Disabled — Purism has announced today all laptops to be shipping from their company will now have the Intel Management Engine (ME) disabled.
• Purism partner with Nextcloud on end-to-end encrypted storage — Purism plans to include Nextcloud in the Librem 5 phone, as well as within PureOS for its Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptops. Additionally, Purism will be discussing with Nextcloud about a future Purism NAS that runs completely free software including Nextcloud and services.
• LVFS/fwupd need donations — At the moment the secure part of the LVFS is hosted in a dedicated Scaleway instance, so any additional donations would be spent on paying this small bill and perhaps more importantly buying some (2nd hand?) hardware to include as part of our release-time QA checks.
• Linux Kernel Community Enforcement Statement — It adopts the same termination provisions we are all familiar with from GPL-3.0 as an Additional Permission giving companies confidence that they will have time to come into compliance if a failure is identified. Their ability to rely on this Additional Permission will hopefully re-establish user confidence and help direct enforcement activity back to the original purpose we have all sought over the years – actual compliance.  
• Ubuntu 17.10 released — Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 4.13-based kernel, glibc 2.26, gcc 7.2, and much more. Ubuntu Desktop has had a major overhaul, with the switch from Unity as our default desktop to GNOME3 and gnome-shell.
• Happy 13th Birthday — Ubuntu 4.10 ‘Warty Warthog’ wasn’t the most glamorous looking release, but it offered open-source enthusiasts of the day a simple, straightforward install from a single CD. The distro was notable for trying to “detect as much hardware as possible, simplifying the X install.” GNOME 2.8, Firefox 0.9, Evolution 2.0 and OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 were among the software assembled for the formative release.
• Ubuntu MATE — After six months of tireless work we present Ubuntu MATE 17.10, by far the best release we’ve ever produced.
• Xubuntu — Accelerated video playback with Intel hardware should now work more reliably out of the box.

Plus some key project updates & more!

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• Solus pushing forward Steam with Snaps — That snap, as some people have already guessed as much, will be the linux-steam-integration project, using a strict-mode LSI intercept module. We can also make various tweaks on top of that runtime to enforce ABI compatibility where it might be missing.
• AAC will be supported in Fedora Workstation 27 — What we will be shipping in Fedora is a modified version of the AAC implementation released by Google, which was originally written by Frauenhoffer. On top of that we will of course be providing GStreamer plugins to enable full support for playing and creating AAC files for GStreamer applications.
• Plasma 5.11 released — Plasma 5.11 brings a redesigned settings app, improved notifications, a more powerful task manager. Plasma 5.11 is the first release to contain the new “Vault”, a system to allow the user to encrypt and open sets of documents in a secure and user-friendly way, making Plasma an excellent choice for people dealing with private and confidential information.
• 5.12 aims for Wayland improvements — If we all just use Wayland and report and fix the bugs we run into I'm sure that 5.12 will be an awesome release on Wayland. So please help to make it happen!
• KDE turns 21 — t was on 14 October 1996 that the "Kool Desktop Environment" was founded by Matthias Ettrich. At the time he wanted KDE to be a "consistent, nice looking free desktop-environment."
• Fwupd 1.0 Released — fwupd now supports 72 different kinds of hardware, support for another ~12 devices is currently being worked on, many vendors continue using or exploring fwupd, and around 165,000 devices each month get updated firmware using fwupd with LVFS.
• Oneplus collecting data in Oxygen OS — Moore discovered that some of the data being sent to OnePlus' servers included the phone's IMEI number, the phone number, MAC addresses, mobile network names and IMSI prefixes, Wi-Fi connection info, and the phone's serial number.
• Say they'll stop — By the end of October, “all OnePlus phones running OxygenOS will have a prompt in the setup wizard that asks users if they want to join our user experience program.” Not only that, but he also stated that OnePlus “will no longer be collecting telephone numbers, MAC Addresses and WiFi information.
• Librem 5 funded — 14 days early, we have crossed a historic milestone.
• Purism Collaborates with Cryptocurrency Monero — The Monero Project is a grassroots, community-driven initiative that advocates for privacy on a global scale by producing several free libre open source software projects, with the flagship offering being Monero, a fungible and decentralized cryptocurrency.

Plus how NGINX plans to make big money, Mozilla wants to reinvent online comments, and more.

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• Connnect Watch smartwatch with AsteroidOS crowdfunding campaign begins — First unveiled in late August, the team behind the Connect Watch have launched a campaign on European crowdfunding site Ulule in hopes of raising about $33,000.
• Sailfish meetup in Krakow — We are inviting you to a meetup with our CEO, Mr. Sami Pienimäki in the city of Kraków on Thursday, September 14th for a round or two of beer!
• What Project Treble Means for Future Custom ROM Development — Because of the way the lower layer of Android was modularized, all Treble devices in the market will be able to boot a generic stock, AOSP Android build. This takes away most of the hassle of porting custom ROMs to an older device since a single, generic Android build can run on many devices.
• Mozilla and the Washington Post Are Reinventing Online Comments — Talk is developed by The Coral Project, a Mozilla creation that builds open-source tools to make digital journalism more inclusive and more engaging
• Chinese government bans ICOs — The ruling comes from China’s central bank, which issued a statement criticizing ICOs for “disrupting” the country’s financial order. The regulator described initial coin offerings as “a form of unapproved illegal public financing” that “raises suspicions” of fraud and criminal activity
• Might shut down Bitcoin exchanges — China’s Bitcoin exchanges said on Saturday they are still awaiting clarification from the authorities on a media report that they will be shut down.
• WinBtrfs 1.0 Released For Supporting Btrfs On Windows — Harmstone's WinBtrfs driver is a "reimplementation from scratch" of Btrfs for Windows that supports all major functionality as well as basic RAID 0/1/10/5/6, caching, Btrfs partition discovery, ACLs, symlinks and hardlinks, free-space cache, LZO/ZLib compression, balancing, scrubbing, TRIM/DISCARD, and much more.
• A Breakdown of Operating Systems on Dockerhub — It is clear that Debian is the most popular, with Alpine taking second place, and then a number of others each taking a smaller share.
• NGINX releases application platform with new application server, centralized management tools — Today, NGINX launched its new NGINX Application Platform, a suite of products which together, form a solution made up of application delivery, an application server, and policy-driven monitoring and management.

Plus Chris' quick take on Android Oreo, Google goes for Microsoft's heart, while Microsoft gets cozier with Red Hat and SUSE pretends not to be upset about it.

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• Ubuntu Budgie machines — UK-based computer outfit Nimbusoft is gearing up to sell two laptops and an all-in-one desktop PC pre-loaded with the aforementioned nimble, GNOME-based Ubuntu spin.
• Librem 5 — The Librem 5 phone will be the world's first ever IP-native mobile handset, using end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication.
• Jolla wants to try and sell a development ROM for €50 — Today it’s our pleasure to announce all the details for Sailfish X, aka Sailfish OS for Sony Xperia X!
• Android Oreo — Android Oreo brings with it a host of new features and improvements over Android Nougat. While not all of them would be immediately visible to end users, they would surely contribute towards the end experience of a mature smartphone OS.
• Chrome OS enterprise edition — The paid service will allow companies to manage multiple devices running Chrome, and includes support for Microsoft Active Directory and VMware Workspace One, as well as managed or custom storefronts in the Play service.
• Microsoft and Red Hat expand alliance to containers — Red Hat and Microsoft have expanded an alliance which was first announced about two years ago, with plans to help organisations more easily adopt the use of containers.
• SUSE pretends not to be butthurt — Asked where SUSE stood in view of the fact that Red Hat, whose revenue dwarfs that of the Germany company, would obviously be a preferred partner for Microsoft, a company spokesman said, pointing to the announcement of the deal: "I don't see where it says Red Hat is 'preferred'. Perhaps I'm missing something."
• and holds firm on Btrfs — SUSE is committed to btrfs as the default filesystem for SUSE Linux Enterprise, and beyond.

Plus some thoughts on tiny Linux computers, the Linage survey and more.

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• GNOME turns 20 — There have been 33 stable releases since the initial release of GNOME 1.0 in 1999.
• Debian turns 24
• Raspbian Stretch has arrived for Raspberry Pi — PulseAudio is therefore no longer installed by default, and the volume plugin on the taskbar will no longer start and stop PulseAudio.
• Work on Debian for mobile devices continues — Work on Debian for mobile devices, i.e. telephones, tablets, and handheld computers, continues. During the recent DebConf17 in Montréal, Canada, more than 50 people had a meeting to reconsider opportunities and challenges for Debian on mobile devices.
• Lineage summer survey — The survey is really simple and we won’t collect any sensitive information.
• Solus 3 Released — On behalf of the Solus team and community, we’re extremely proud to announce the immediate availability of Solus 3. This is the third iteration of Solus since our move to become a rolling release operating system.
• ZFS On Linux Adds Encryption Support — This support allows creating and managing natively-encrypted datasets. There have been ZOL patches going back months for encryption
• Bitcoin Is Forking. Again. — Three months from now, there will likely be three different versions of bitcoin all attempting to prepare the currency for more traffic in different ways.
• Henry Brade Call for a Fight Against SegWit2x on Twitter — The SegWit2X hard fork scheduled for Nov is an attempted hostile corporate takeover of the #Bitcoin protocol.