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 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.

Steam Machines were pronounced dead and then alive this week, we'll try and clear things up, and Mozilla has a new project.

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• Linux kernel to remove several old CPU architectures — The architectures which will become deprecated are Blackfin, CRIS, FRV, M32R, Metag, MN10300, Score and Tile. Although not being deprecated, the Unicore32 and Hexagon architectures are also at risk but their maintainers are working on improving the situation so their support can be continued.
• RISC-V Support Continues Maturing Within The Mainline Linux Kernel — Linux 4.17 kernel include support for dynamic ftrace, clean-ups to their atomic and locking code, module loading support is now enabled by default, and other fixes.
• Save money using RISC-V rather than Arm — According to a report published last week by The Information, more than 80 tech goliaths including Nvidia, Google, Qualcomm, Samsung and Tesla are working to adopt RISC-V technology. The main reason behind the push to adopt RISC-V is said to be the processor's open-source design, which will facilitate "a much cheaper way to build chips for new technologies like autonomous vehicles," says the source.
• Debian now supports RISC-V — We've been working in the last few weeks to do a (second) boostrap of Debian for RISC-V, and after a few weeks of hard work it is now bootstrapped and has been imported into the Debian infrastructure,
• Linux-Libre prioritises freedom over security — One of their new changes on top of this deblobbed kernel is dropping error messages that suggest users update their CPU micrcode.
• Steam Machines disappear from Valve's site — Steam Machines no longer show up under the drop-down menu for "Hardware" on the main Steam store page. Promotional language and images for Steam Machines were also previously featured prominently on a hardware-focused landing page on the store (archived version), but that page now redirects to a simple search results page for the store's "hardware" category.
• Steam Machines aren't dead yet — We've taken a lot of feedback and have been heads-down on addressing the shortcomings we observed.
• TOR Messenger discontinued — “The adoption of Tor Messenger was low and the real need is for metadata-free alternatives"
• Mozilla Brings Firefox to Augmented and Virtual Reality — We believe that the future of the web will be heavily intertwined with virtual and augmented reality, and that future will live through browsers. That’s why we’re building Firefox Reality, a new kind of web browser that has been designed from the ground up to work on stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets.

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• LG releases webOS Open Source Edition, looks to expand webOS usage — LG wants to expand the adoption of webOS and the company is working with the South Korean government to solicit business proposals from other companies interested in using webOS.
• The Linux Foundation Announces an Open Source Reference Hypervisor Project Designed for IoT Device Development — ACRN is comprised of two main components: the hypervisor and its device model
• Linux Foundation backs new ‘ACRN’ hypervisor for embedded and IoT
• GNOME Shell memory leak — A number of Ubuntu users have reported that GNOME Shell 3.26.2, the version used in Ubuntu 17.10, has a “sneaky leak” that causes GNOME Shell’s memory usage to increase every minute following a Shell animation
• A GNOME performance bug fixed — So, how can something as simple as updating the displayed time cause such a large increase in the time required to draw a frame?
• Firefox Master Password System Has Been Poorly Secured for the Past 9 Years — For at past nine years, Mozilla has been using an insufficiently strong encryption mechanism for the "master password" feature.
• Questionable changes coming to Firefox DNS queries — Nightly build fans' hostname lookups piped to Cloudflare in limited security feature trial
• Firefox plan to start blocking ads — Mozilla intends to add basic ad filtering capabilities to its Firefox browser later this year, according to its recently updated roadmap.
• Bitcoin blockchain contains more than transaction data — Boffins warn of legal risks from arbitrary data distribution
• CryptoGraffiti - Bitcoin Blockchain Messages as Text

Plus Let's Encrypt rolls out wildcard certs, Firefox 59's new Linux feature, and why Wil Wheaton switched to Debian.

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• GNOME 3.28 Released — One major new feature for this release is automatic downloading of operating systems in Boxes, which takes the work out of creating and running virtual machines – just pick the operating system that you want to create a virtual machine of, and Boxes will now download and install it for you.
• GNOME 3.28 Release Notes
• Firefox 59 released — We launched an entirely new engine in November, made significant improvements to graphics rendering in January, and are continuing to post performance gains and add features with this release. On Firefox for desktop, we’ve improved page load times, added tools to annotate and crop your Firefox Screenshots, and made it easier to arrange your Top Sites on the Firefox Home page. On Firefox for Android, we’ve added support for sites that stream video using the HLS protocol.
• Firefox is a Snap
• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ — Alongside a 200MHz increase in peak CPU clock frequency, we have roughly three times the wired and wireless network throughput, and the ability to sustain high performance for much longer periods.
• US city bans new Bitcoin mining — Plattsburgh, New York has imposed an 18-month moratorium on Bitcoin mining to prevent miners from using all the city’s cheap electricity.
• Let’s Encrypt rolls out wildcard certs — Free "wildcard" certificates to enable secure HTTP connections for entire domains. In addition to a new version of the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol, an interface that can be used by a variety of client software packages to automate verification of certificate requests.
• TechSNAP Episode 359
• Eric Raymond's open source UPS — Last week, ESR opened up the work-in-progress on GitLab: the Upside project is currently defining requirements and developing a specification for a “high quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop”.
• Wil Wheaton runs Linux — But about a week ago, something went wrong. Everything started slowing down like crazy, Chrome just quit working entirely, and even Firefox ran so slow, I felt like I was using a 386.

Debian and Kali land on Windows 10's Linux Subsystem, and Noah joins Chris from SCaLE16x

Special Guest: Noah J. Chelliah.

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• OpenWatch — Modular smartphone and smartwatch devices may be a niche idea, but it’s one that has a lot of passionate people behind it. The process of having to buy a brand new device just to upgrade or replace a single component feels very archaic. Unless you’re willing to pry apart a device yourself (or pay someone to do it), you’re forced to purchase a brand new device when something inside of it breaks.
• Fedora IoT Edition — So what will be happening over the coming weeks (and months)? We’ll be getting the working group in place, getting an initial monthly release process in place so that people can start to have something to kick the tires with and provide feedback and drive discussion.
• More AMP tyranny from Google — Google’s goal is to extend support in features like the Top Stories carousel to AMP-like content that (1) meets a set of performance and user experience criteria and (2) implements a set of new web standards. Some of the proposed standards in the critical path are Feature Policy, Web Packaging, iframe promotion, Performance Timeline, and Paint Timing.
• ​GitHub makes open-source project licensing easier with an open-source program | ZDNet — GitHub has open sourced Licensed, an internal tool they've used to automate some of GitHub's open-source projects licensing process.
• Debian & Kali Linux Are Now On Windows Subsystem for Linux — Joining Kali, Ubuntu, SUSE, and openSUSE on Windows WSL now is also Debian Linux.
• SCALE 16x Report — SCaLE 16X – the 16th annual Southern California Linux Expo. Pasadena Convention Center.

Plus Ubuntu's plans to collect user metrics, the Linux on Galaxy survey, and Plasma desktop on a Nintendo Switch.

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• dtrace relicensed as GPLv2 — This changeset integrates DTrace module sources into the main kernel source tree under the GPLv2 license. Sources have been moved to appropriate locations in the kernel tree.
• Firefox adding sponsored stories to the new tab page — What’s next? We recently started testing personalized recommendations, and we will soon experiment with showing an occasional sponsored story within the Pocket Recommendations section in New Tab Page in Firefox Beta. This will be shown to a small portion of U.S. users as we start to test.
• AMP Stories and AMP for email — Starting with the Gmail Developer Preview of AMP for Email today, the new feature will allow users to perform simple tasks such as booking calendar appointments and checking into flights directly within the layout of the email.
• Related
• Ubuntu plans metrics collection — "We want to be able to focus our engineering efforts on the things that matter most to our users, and in order to do that we need to get some more data about sort of setups our users have and which software they are running on it," explained Will Cooke, the director of Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical.
• Ubuntu adds 'Minimal Install' option 18.04 — The new “minimal install” option appears in section of the installer that asks whether you want to install restricted codecs to enable multimedia playback alongside the main desktop.
• Linux on Galaxy Survey — “In order to determine how to best design the product to meet your needs, we ask for a moment of your time to complete this Linux on Galaxy Survey.”
• Plasma running on a Switch — Code execution is all the rage these days, but can your Switch do *this*?

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

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

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

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• Arch Drops 32 bit — The decision means that February ISO will be the last that allows to install 32 bit Arch Linux. The next 9 months are deprecation period, during which i686 will be still receiving upgraded packages. Starting from November 2017, packaging and repository tools will no longer require that from maintainers, effectively making i686 unsupported.
• Tails 3.0 will require a 64-bit processor — We have waited for years until we felt it was the right time to do this switch. Still, this was a hard decision for us to make.
• Ubuntu 17.10 Will Drop The 32-bit Desktop ISO — There will no longer be any "ubuntu-desktop-i386.iso" produced. There is no longer any effective QA or testing being done on the Ubuntu i386 desktop image on actual 32-bit-only hardware.
• Munich voted to return to Windows — Munich city council's administrative and personnel committee has decided to move any remaining Linux systems to Windows 10 in 2020.
• WSL added new distros and became easier to install — At its Build 2017 developer conference today, Microsoft announced that Ubuntu has arrived in the Windows Store
• Bitcoin Forked — It was created by Bitcoin supporters worried about growing congestion in the mainstream bitcoin network that has led to slow payment processing and high fees. Bitcoin Cash removes an important technical obstacle that has hampered the growth of the mainline Bitcoin network. In principle, that could allow Bitcoin Cash to become more widely used—and hence more valuable—in the long run.
• And Forked Again — The trouble began earlier this year when a group of cryptocurrency upstarts cloned Bitcoin to create their own version, called Bitcoin Cash. The split, called a "hard fork," came after a long and acrimonious disagreement about how to get Bitcoin to handle more traffic failed to resolve amicably. Now, another group of Bitcoiners wants to create yet another version of the world's most popular digital money on October 25. They're calling it Bitcoin Gold.
• And jumped around 20x in value this year — Bitcoin is now worth over $10,000. The cryptocurrency, which crossed the milestone for the first time since its creation in 2008, surged past $10,000 on Tuesday evening as it climbs toward $11,000, according to research site CoinDesk. Bitcoin has spiked 933 percent since the beginning of the year, when it traded at $968.23, reports the Wall Street Journal.
• The Ubuntu announcement that dominated the year — This has been, personally, a very difficult decision, because of the force of my conviction in the convergence future, and my personal engagement with the people and the product, both of which are amazing. We feel like a family, but this choice is shaped by commercial constraints, and those two are hard to reconcile.
• Cyanogenmod became Lineage OS — A new fork of CyanogenMod called Lineage OS is taking up the mantle, and it will keep most of what you loved about CyanogenMod.
• Sailfish carried on — Today it’s our pleasure to announce all the details for Sailfish X, aka Sailfish OS for Sony Xperia X!
• Android took a step towards solving the updates problem — With Android O, we've been working very closely with device makers and silicon manufacturers to take steps toward solving this problem, and we're excited to give you a sneak peek at Project Treble, the biggest change to the low-level system architecture of Android to date.
• Librem 5 funded — This Monday, 14 days early, we have crossed a historic milestone.
• Firefox OS officially died — Mozilla is shutting down its “connected devices” group, which was responsible for the failed smartphone operating system Firefox OS and, more recently, attempts to build the OS into devices like routers, streaming boxes, and even basic computers.
• Mozilla acquired Pocket — Pocket will join Mozilla’s product portfolio as a new product line alongside the Firefox web browsers with a focus on promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content.
• Launched Firefox Focus — Firefox Focus allows you to browse the web without being followed by tracking ads which are notoriously known for slowing down your mobile experience.
• Project Common Voice — Voice is natural, voice is human. That’s why we’re fascinated with creating usable voice technology for our machines. But to create voice systems, an extremely large amount of voice data is required.
• Firefox Quantum — It’s by far the biggest update we’ve had since we launched Firefox 1.0 in 2004
• Faced a lawsuit over their Yahoo deal — We recently exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo based on a number of factors including doing what’s best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users.

Plus an update on the Conservancy's fight with the Software Freedom Law Center and more.

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• Introducing Amazon Linux 2 — Amazon Linux 2 provides a modern execution environment with LTS Kernel (4.9) tuned for optimal performance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), systemd support, and newer tooling (gcc 7.2.1, glibc 2.25, binutils 2.27).
• Amazon Linux 2 Benchmarks — With Amazon AWS this week having released Amazon Linux 2 LTS I was excited to put this updated cloud-focused operating system through some performance tests to see how it stacks up with the more well known Linux distributions.
• OpenSSH coming to Windows 10 — The software giant is now adding a native OpenSSH client to Windows 10. It’s available immediately as a beta option in the Fall Creators Update for Windows 10, and it’s easy to enable.
• Not just the client — we also shipped OpenSSH's sshd server, but it's a little tricky to configure right now. Expect a blog post this week. * This is not production-ready in the current version of Windows 10 (hence the "(Beta)" in the label), but we hope to be soon.
• Mozilla faces blowback after slipping Mr Robot plugin into Firefox — Firefox users noticed a strange new plug-in popping up in their browsers. A new plug-in called Looking Glass found its way into each instance of the new Firefox Quantum browser. It was disabled by default, but users were still alarmed to see a plugin they hadn’t installed.
• Steve Klabnik on Twitter — I am pretty upset with my employer, @mozilla, today
• Carol Nichols, Rus Dev on Twitter — "Mozilla wasn't paid for the Mr. Robot tie-in"
• Intel to slap hardware lock on Management Engine code to thwart downgrade attacks — From version 12 onward, ME-equipped chips will defend against patch rollbacks.
• Conservancy update on fight with Law Center — Today, Conservancy filed for summary judgment in SFLC's trademark cancellation action. As I understand from our lawyers, summary judgment is a mechanism to ask a Court to expediently handle a matter where the facts are straightforward and, as a matter of law, there is no plausible way that the party filing for summary judgment won't prevail.
• TechSNAP reboot — Systems, Network, and Administration Podcast. Every week TechSNAP covers the stories that impact those of us in the tech industry, and all of us that follow it. Every episode we dedicate a portion of the show to answer audience questions, discuss best practices, and solving your problems.

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

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

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

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

Plus a big moment for the Kernel, Red Hat goes ARM, and OpenPlus has a backdoor with a twist.

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• Fedora 27 released — The Workstation edition of Fedora 27 features GNOME 3.26. In the new release, both the Display and Network configuration panels have been updated, along with the overall Settings panel appearance improvement.
• Firefox 57 arrives — It’s by far the biggest update we’ve had since we launched Firefox 1.0 in 2004
• There's an option for people who don't like change — a fork of the Mozilla code-base pre-Servo/Rust... Basically for those not liking the direction of Firefox with v57 rolling out the Quantum changes, etc.
• Ubuntu Unity 7 flavour might be on the horizon — A proposal to create a new community Ubuntu flavor which uses the Unity 7 desktop by default is gathering support within the Ubuntu community.
• LTS kernel 4.14 released — Anyway, go out and test the new 4.14 release, that is slated to be the next LTS kernel - and start sending me pull request for the 4.15 merge window.
• RISC-V support may be coming to 4.15 — RISC-V is hoping to see mainline with Linux 4.15. We've known for a while now about their mainline ambitions for 4.15 and a pull request was sent today, but it remains to be seen yet if Linus Torvalds will pull it for this merge window.
• Red Hat announces ARM version of RHEL — Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 for ARM, the first commercial release for this architecture.
• Oneplus backdoor — OnePlus accidentally left in place a diagnostic testing application made by Qualcomm. After decompiling this application, he discovered that it can be exploited to grant root access—effectively acting as a backdoor.

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

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

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

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

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

Plus why we're not too worried about BlueBourne, the fight for public money to fund public code, and a new power tool for Firefox users.

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• GNOME 3.26 — The GNOME Project is excited to announce the release of version 3.26, the latest version of GNOME 3. The new version is the result of six months’ hard work by the GNOME community, and comes packed with improvements and new features.
• GNOME 3.26 Release Notes — GNOME 3.26 no longer shows status icons in the bottom-left of the screen. This prevents the status icon tray from getting in the way and is expected to provide a better overall experience.
• Purism and KDE to Work Together — Having full access to Purism's hardware platform is a dream for the KDE community.
• Relevant Email 1 — One of the open questions for the phone is still which UX we will use, and Plasma Mobile would obviously be a perfect fit for this kind of project, since KDE and Purism share the same values, the UI is already done in large parts, and nothing would have to be developed from scratch (especially the Kirigami controls are great!).
• Relevant Email 2 — To make clear our standpoint - both GNOME and KDE *will* be first class citizen on Librem5. So there is no favorite between two, but both are equal in this challenge.
• BlueBorne — The attack does not require the targeted device to be paired to the attacker’s device, or even to be set on discoverable mode.
• Public Money, Public Code — We want legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence. If it is public money, it should be public code as well.
• Multi-Account Containers extension for Firefox — The Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension lets you carve out a separate box for each of your online lives

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.

Plus more good news for Firefox users, and why Google's "streaming OS updates" could be great for the Android ROM community.

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• Snaps in Solus — Occurs to me that I likely have to make some kind of statement or whathaveyou about the whole "Solus adopting snaps" thing.
• Ubuntu Community Hub Proposal — I propose we replace the Community Portal with a dynamic and collaboratively maintained site. The site would raise the profile of conversations and content, to improve our onboarding and communication issues.
• Ubuntu Artful Desktop Fit and Finish Sprint — First up is the Desktop Fit & Finish Sprint on August 24th and 25th.
• 50% CPU savings w/Hardware Accelerated Video Playback — We’re testing some patches to Chromium 60 in Artful to enable video acceleration and we’re seeing roughly a 50% saving in CPU overhead when using VA API.
• Nextcloud push into education — Today we are very proud to officially announce the Nextcloud Education Edition, developed in collaboration with Moodle, DeiC, regio iT, the TU Berlin and Univention.
• Firefox 55 — Performance changes include significantly faster startup times when restoring lots of tabs and settings that let users take greater control of our new multi-process architecture. We’ve also upgraded the address bar to make finding what you want easier, with search suggestions and the integration of our one-click search feature, and safer, by prioritizing the secure - https - version of sites when possible.
• Firefox 55 Advanced Performance Features — Firefox 55 introduces several new low-level capabilities that help improve the performance of demanding web applications
• Epiphany gets Firefox Sync — You can sync bookmarks, history, passwords, and open tabs with other Epiphany instances and as well as both desktop and mobile Firefox.
• Photon UI — Version 57 of Firefox is slated to be released sometime in November and the biggest user facing change is its new user interface.
• Android 8.0’s “streaming OS updates” will work even if your phone is full | Ars Technica — Starting with Android 8.0, the A/B system partition setup is being upgraded with a "streaming updates" feature. Update data will arrive from the Internet directly to the offline system partition, written block by block, in a ready-to-boot state.

Plus Amazon accuses BLU of spying on Android users, and more!

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• Krita Foundation in Trouble — This means that the tax authorities see the Foundation is as partly a company, partly as not a company.
• The Krita community came to the rescue — We didn’t expect the incredible response from all of you! A day later, over 500 awesome people have donated a total of €9562 (at the time of writing, check the fancy progress bar we’ve finally managed to create!). Fourteen people have joined the development fund, too!
• More details about the GNOME experience in Ubuntu 17.10 — e will implement thus our modifications as a GNOME Shell mode
• Some BLU phones still phoning home to China — BLU released a software update to address the issue, but Kryptowire researchers told CNET recently that some BLU phones still are still running the offending software… and Amazon has responded by suspending sales of all BLU phone models until the issue is resolved
• Or are They? — The reason data is being sent to a Chines server is because BLU is using an over-the-air update service called Adups, which is based in China, and which allows some phone makers to request a lot of personal data from users’ phones. But after a related report from Kryptowire in 2016, BLU decided to start using Google’s OTA update service on newer devices.
• Bitcoin Cash split — It was created by Bitcoin supporters worried about growing congestion in the mainstream bitcoin network that has led to slow payment processing and high fees.
• Firefox Send — Send files through a safe, private, and encrypted link that automatically expires to ensure your stuff does not remain online forever.
• Firefox Test Pilot — Try out the latest experimental features
• Red Hat gives up on Btrfs? — The Btrfs file system has been in Technology Preview state since the initial release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Red Hat will not be moving Btrfs to a fully supported feature and it will be removed in a future major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Red Hat acquires Permabit — Permabit offers data de-duplication and compression software and recently cooked ready-to-run Linux kernel modules of its wares after previously focusing on sales to OEMs.

Plus our take on the pending death of Flash, some great work by the Debian project & Mozilla updates us on Project Common Voice.

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• Ubuntu MATE 17.10 Alpha 2 — We’re not happy, proud, pleased or ambivalent to announce this alpha. No, not us. The is our most “Super” alpha ever and we’re ecstatic to present this fine release for your distro delectation. Ubuntu MATE 17.10 is brimming with new toys to play with.
• Uptake of Fedora 26 is really strong — It's already surpassed F24 and those of you still on F23.
• Boltron preview — Fedora’s Modularity Working Group (and others) have been working for a while on a Fedora Objective.
• openSUSE Leap 42.3 — “By avoiding major version updates in the base system as well as the desktops, the upgrade to Leap 42.3 is a rather unadventurous matter,” said Ludwig Nussel, openSUSE Leap release manager.
• The death of Flash — Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.
• Some people don’t want it to die — Open sourcing Flash spec would be a good solution to keep Flash projects alive safely for archive reasons.
• Update on Debian Reproducible Builds Project — At the start of 2015 it was safe to say that Debian was fairly alone in the quest for reproducible builds, and a relevant number of developers were unconvinced by the effort's goals. Thankfully, this is not true anymore.
• More on Mozilla’s Project Common Voice — Today’s speech recognition technologies are largely tied up in a few companies that have invested heavily in them.

Plus a quick look at Phoenix OS & the Ubuntu 18.04 survey!

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• Android-Based Remix OS To Be Discontinued — Remix OS, the Android-x86 derived operating system for x86/ARM to run Android applications on PCs, is now being discontinued in its current form.
• Phoenix OS Lives on — Phoenix OS 2.1 includes a number of bug fixes and improvements including better hardware compatibility, an updated keyboard mapping feature, and the ability to remember window resizing settings after you reboot.
• Google Glass gets a second chance in factories, where it’s likely to remain — The major upgrades between the original Glass and the enterprise version are a better camera (with resolution upgraded from 5 megapixels to 8), extended battery life, faster Wi-Fi and processor, and a new red light that turns on when recording video. The electronics of Glass have also been made modular in the shape of a so-called Glass Pod, which can be detached and reattached to Glass-compatible frames, which can include things like safety goggles and prescription glasses.
• Firefox marketshare revisited — Based on this data, 22% fewer Firefox Desktop installations are active today than a year ago. This is a loss of 16 million Firefox installs in a year.
• Ubuntu Artful Desktop July Shakedown — Now is a great time to start exercising the new GNOME goodness that’s landed on our recent daily images! Please download the ISO, test it out on your own hardware, and file bugs where appropriate.
• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Desktop Default Application Survey — Along with the switch from Unity to GNOME, we’re also reviewing some of the desktop applications we package and ship in Ubuntu. We’re looking to crowdsource input on your favorite Linux applications across a broad set of classic desktop functionality.

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• Endless OS 3.2 Released, Rebases From GNOME Shell 3.8 To 3.22 — On the UI side, there are big updates to its desktop with the re-basing process from GNOME Shell 3.8 to GNOME Shell 3.22. Moving forward, they intend to re-base their desktop changes much more often to allow for a smoother transition to using the newer GNOME code in their operating system.
• Tuxedo Announces Its Own Ubuntu Flavor — “What we have done is [deliver a] desktop that is strongly adapted to the needs of our users. With [our] own theme, own icons, own boot logo and […] the latest firmware, the latest NVIDIA drivers (if necessary) and Linux kernel 4.11 preinstalled! Not to mention our configuration adjustments on the GRUB and optimizations to other system-relevant files.”
• 2017 Linux Laptop Survey Results — There are 30,171 responses, a lot of data to now sift through while in this article is an overview of the initial findings.
• These Videos of Mycroft Are Just Too Funny — As an intended open-source alternative to Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Home, the humble Mycroft AI has an awful lot of hype to live up to.
• Youyota Sailfish OS 2-in-1 Tablet — The Youyota Tablet packs Quad-Core Intel chipsets, and runs on Sailfish OS.
• Mozilla launches Project Things IoT framework on Raspberry Pi — Mozilla has now announced its own Project Things framework designed to pull together existing Web of Things specifications and code under a global framework comprised of device, gateway, and cloud components. As a starting point, it released a prototype version of a Things Gateway stack that runs on a Raspberry Pi.

Plus Debian warns of Hyper Threading issues; and of course a bit more.

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• OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise hit the Windows Store — Now OpenSUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and OpenSUSE Leap 42 are available for installation from the Windows Store.
• System76 Announce Their Own Linux Distribution called Pop!_OS — System76 say their ‘operating system’ — they don’t call it a distribution — will be built and tailored to meet the needs to “professionals and makers that use their computers to create.”
• Canonical Promises Smooth and Easy Unity 7 to GNOME Shell Migration for Users — Probably the most important thing that the Ubuntu developers have worked on lately is a smooth and easy migration process from Unity 7 to GNOME Shell
• Mir 1.0 Now Aiming To Support Wayland Clients Directly — Mir 0.27 also will feature a new set of APIs to develop a "Mir platform" outside of Mir itself, which can be used for developing Mir-Wayland platform support without having to fork Mir itself.
• MATE Developers Are Considering Mir-Over-Wayland — MATE developer Martin Wimpress has shared that they are talking to Mir developers about how Mir could be used as a Wayland compositor.
• Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs — Intel Skylake and Kabylake (6th and 7th gen CPUs) could "dangerously misbehave" when Hyper Threading is enabled.

Plus we discuss the 2017 Linux Laptop Survey, the really fancy new trick Opus has pulled off in the latest release & more!

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• Ubuntu Desktop Weekly Update: June 23, 2017 — We’ve got hardware accelerated video decoding working in a Proof-Of-Concept using a GStreamer and VA-API pipeline. The result is 3% CPU usage to play an h264 4K 60FPS video on Haswell. 4K h265 HEVC is also playable but requires a Skylake or later processor.
• 2017 Linux Laptop Survey — So we've established this Linux Laptop Survey in conjunction with Linux stakeholders to hopefully gather more feedback that will be useful to many different parties -- this survey isn't just for our own benefit and enjoyment at Phoronix.
• Jolla Summer 2017: CEO's Update — It has been a while since our last update about the remaining Jolla Tablet refunds – we are committed to it and we will be progressing on it in a pace our financial situation permits us to do. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
• Mozilla launches Firefox Focus for Android — Like the iPhone and iPad version, the Android app is free of tabs and other visual clutter, and erasing your sessions is as easy as a simple tap.  
• Firefox Focus uses the default Android WebView — Firefox Focus uses the default Android WebView. Barbara Bermes, product manager for Firefox Mobile at Mozilla, told eWEEK.
• Project Common Voice — Project Common Voice, a project to help make voice recognition open to everyone. Now you can donate your voice to help us build an open-source voice recognition engine that anyone can use to make innovative apps for devices and the web.
• Opus 1.2 — Speech quality improvements especially in the 12-20 kbit/s range + Improved VBR encoding for hybrid mode + More aggressive use of wider speech bandwidth, including fullband speech starting at 14 kbit/s + Music quality improvements in the 32-48 kb/s range + Generic and SSE CELT optimizations + Support for directly encoding packets up to 120 ms + DTX support for CELT mode + SILK CBR improvements + Support for all of the fixes in draft-ietf-codec-opus-update-06 (the mono downmix and the folding fixes need --enable-update-draft) + Many bug fixes, including integer wrap-arounds discovered through fuzzing (no security implications)
• Comparison between Opus versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 — Here's a comparison between Opus versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 so you can hear for yourself how the quality has improved and how Opus now sounds in general. As an anchor (OK, and also to make us look good!), we've also included MP3 samples.

Welcome to Linux Action News's debut episode. It’s our goal to build the show you go to when you want to hear an informed discussion about what’s happening.

We kick things off with a busy news week.

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• Canonical starts IPO path — At OpenStack Summit, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth revealed in an interview that the recent changes in the Linux and cloud power were to ready Canonical for an IPO.
• Microsoft is bringing Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora to the Windows Store — With the new Fall Creators Update, users will be able to install Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora as apps on their device, allowing them to run Windows and Linux applications side-by-side without dual-booting.
• OpenWRT and LEDE agree on Linux-for-routers peace plan • The Register — The terms will see LEDE fold back into OpenWRT. Persisting with the latter name was deemed non-negotiable by the OpenWRT faction. The agreement also proposes closing the LEDE GitHub repo, rebuilding LEDE's web site so it ha OpenWRT branding and basically burying the LEDE brand. LEDE code will live on as OpenWRT will be required to keep forked trees available.
• Here comes Treble: A modular base for Android | Android Developers Blog — With Android O, we've been working very closely with device makers and silicon manufacturers to take steps toward solving this problem, and we're excited to give you a sneak peek at Project Treble, the biggest change to the low-level system architecture of Android to date.
• Google’s “Project Treble” solves one of Android’s many update roadblocks | Ars Technica — Project Treble" is a plan to modularize the Android OS, separating the OS framework code from "vendor specific" hardware code. In theory, this change would allow for a new Android update to be flashed on a device without any involvement from the silicon vendor. 
• Google’s “Fuchsia” smartphone OS dumps Linux, has a wild new UI | Ars Technica — Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0.