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

Sponsored By:

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

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

Sponsored By:

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

• Element suspended on Google Play Store — At 2021-01-29 at 21:35 UTC Google suspended Element from the Play Store without warning or notification
• Element sees fivefold increase in signups after Whatsapp privacy debacle — After Whatsapp’s announcement, rival app Telegram reported a 500% increase in users and Signal saw an 18-fold increase in download numbers, putting it on track to cross 1m new users each day.
• Element team waiting hours — Update: we’re still waiting for a response from Google to our explanatory mail sent ~8 hours ago. Thanks all for your patience while we get this sorted...
• New Linux SUDO flaw lets local users gain root privileges — The issue is a heap-based buffer overflow exploitable by any local user (normal users and system users, listed in the sudoers file or not), with attackers not being required to know the user's password to successfully exploit the flaw. The vulnerability was introduced in the Sudo program almost 9 years ago, in July 2011.
• 10-year-old Sudo bug lets Linux users gain root-level access
• Buffer overflow in command line unescaping
• Sudo vulnerability allows attackers to gain root privileges on Linux systems (CVE-2021-3156) - Help Net Security — "This vulnerability is perhaps the most significant sudo vulnerability in recent memory (both in terms of scope and impact) and has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 10 years."
• New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Patched in All Supported Ubuntu Releases
• Mitre - CVE-2020-28374
• Red Hat Customer Portal: CVE-2020-28374
• Debian: CVE-2020-28374
• Ubuntu: CVE-2020-28374
• The killing of CentOS Linux: ‘The CentOS board doesn’t get to decide what Red Hat engineering teams do’ — Brian Exelbierd, responsible for Red Hat liaison with the CentOS project and a board member of that project, has told The Register that CentOS Linux is ending because Red Hat simply refused to invest in it.
• Rocky Linux gets a new sponsor—Gregory Kurtzer’s startup, Ctrl IQ — Rocky Linux is to be a beneficiary of Ctrl IQ's revenue, not its source—the company describes itself in its announcement as the suppliers of a "full technology stack integrating key capabilities of enterprise, hyper-scale, cloud and high-performance computing."
• Linux maintainer says long-term support for 5.10 will stay at two years unless biz world steps up and actually uses it — Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has responded to complaints that the current promise of two years for 5.10 is not enough, explaining that support is not automatic but requires commercial help.
• Rust Game Server One-Click App Linode — A free-for-all battle in a harsh open-world environment.

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

Support Linux Action News

Links:

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