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• The Coder Robe — Celebrate Coder 500! The Robe, the Tumbler, and the Sticker are available for a limited time.
• Git Vulnerabilities — Today, the Git project released new versions to address a pair of security vulnerabilities, (CVE-2023-22490 and CVE-2023-23946) that affect versions 2.39.1 and older.
• 10 Years of Steam — Feb 14, 2013–Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the release of its Steam for Linux client. In celebration of the release, over 50 Linux titles are now 50-75% off until Thursday, February 21st at 10 AM PST.
• Sabayon 9 Review | LAS | s22e08 - YouTube
• Opening the Valve | LAS | s22e09 - YouTube
• Ubuntu Gets Real — Canonical today announced the general availability of real-time Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• Canonical Promotes Ubuntu’s Real-Time “RT” Kernel To General Availability
• Here Comes GTK5 — Discussions around the GTK5 tool-kit also happened with some developers eager to begin work on that next major release in order to begin facilitating API breaks and removing deprecated code.
• Plasma 5.27 — Plasma 5.27 is out and brings massive improvements to the desktop and all its tools. Another work of love from the KDE devs and contributors.
• KDE Plasma 5.27 Released — Better Wayland Support, KWin Tiling, Multi-Monitor Overhaul
• Final Version of KDE Plasma 5 Released – This is What’s New — Notably, this is expected to be the final release in the KDE Plasma 5.x series, with the following stable release set to be KDE Plasma 6.0, due for release towards the end of the year.

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• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS End Of Life — Ubuntu 18.04 ‘Bionic Beaver’ is reaching End of Standard Support this April, also known sometimes as End Of Life (EOL).
• Ubuntu 22.04.2 Point Release Delayed by 2 Weeks — Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS was due for release on Thursday, February 9. However, the release has had to be delayed by two weeks, and is now scheduled to arrive on Thursday, February 23.
• Ubuntu Pro
• Ubuntu Extended Security Maintenance
• Wine 8.0 is out now with major compatibility improvements — One of the major changes here is the conversion to the PE format for various modules. This format is used by Windows, and an important milestone for Wine to increase compatibility with copy protection, 32-bit applications on 64-bit hosts, Windows debuggers and more.
• openSUSE Making It Easier To Install H.264 Codec Support — Inspired by the Fedora / Red Hat and Cisco collaboration around OpenH264 support, openSUSE/SUSE set out for a similar arrangement with Cicsco and its OpenH264 codecs.
• Linux 6.2-rc5 Released — Due to an uptick in activity this week and the downtime around Christmas / end-of-year holidays, Torvalds is planning on this cycle spanning through Linux 6.2-rc8 before going gold.
• Linux 6.3 To Remove Obsolete GPU Drivers: ATI Rage 128, 3Dfx, S3 Savage, i810 & More — Hitting the chopping block with the Linux 6.3 kernel are the following DRM drivers: i810, mga, r128, savage, sis, tdfx, and via.
• Kernel Security Korner — The issue involved in that compromise became known as CVE-2019-5736 and a complex workaround was implemented in runC to prevent similar vulnerabilities in the future.

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• Android 13 is in AOSP — Today we’re pushing the Android 13 source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and officially releasing the newest version of Android.
• Android 13 Sources Released To AOSP
• Glibc 2.36 Dropping DT_HASH Has Been Breaking Easy Anti Cheat Games — The breakage stems from the DT_HASH section being dropped in GNU C Library but EAC being among the few software still expecting that section rather than DT_GNU_HASH.
• Pierre-Loup Griffais on Twitter — Unfortunate that upstream glibc discussion on DT_HASH isn't coming out strongly in favor of prioritizing compatibility with pre-existing applications. Every such instance contributes to damaging the idea of desktop Linux as a viable target for third-party developers.
• Carlos O’Donell on Twitter — How far should Linux ELF follow the generic ELF standard (gABI)? We recently let distributions drop DT_HASH from glibc builds (mandatory under the gABI). This broke EPIC's Easy Anti-Cheat. We *should* ask the gABI for DT_HASH to be optional.
• GLIBC update broke EAC for most games that use it — Issue #6051 · ValveSoftware/Proton
• Should we make DT_HASH dynamic section for glibc?
• gapi discussion: Making DT_HASH optional?
• Linux 6.0 debuts, missing some Rusty bits — Emperor Penguin Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate for Linux 6.0, but doesn't mind what you call it.
• Linux 6.0 arrives with performance improvements and more Rust coming
• Linux 6.0-rc1 Released With Exciting Performance Optimizations
• Real-Time “PREEMPT_RT” Not in 6.0-rc1 — Of the 50 patches, it's not too bad either as there are five patches for example that are rather trivial for just enabling real-time (RT) support in the Kconfig files for ARM / ARM64 / POWER / x86 / x86_64. There are also a handful of patches each specific to POWER and the i915 graphics driver code.
• Debian turns 29! — Today is Debian's 29th anniversary. We recently wrote about some ideas to celebrate DebianDay, and several events have been planned in more than 14 locations.
• LocalGroups - Debian Wiki
• A New Jailbreak for John Deere Tractors Rides the Right-to-Repair Wave — An exploit that provides root access to two popular models of the company’s farm equipment.
• mu on Twitter — Sick Codes has jailbroken a John Deere, and this is just the beginning. Turns out our entire food system is built on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems.
• How a version of Doom running on a John Deere tractor champions the right-to-repair movement — Sick Codes achieved this by working with different tractor control touchscreen consoles, narrowing it down to a select few models, and finding a way to exploit these devices.
• Right to repair movement goes Deere hunting
• The debate over right to repair in 2022 | Successful Farming
• Deere Hit with Class Action Lawsuit Over Right to Repair
• Late Night Linux – Episode 190

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• Massive GitHub Malware Attack? — It was revealed by Stephen Lacy in his tweet, he shared his findings of a large-scale campaign targeting random GitHub repositories with project clones containing credential stealing malware and remote shell execution on top of the original code.
• Stephen Lacy on Twitter — “I am uncovering what seems to be a massive widespread malware attack on @github. - Currently over 35k repositories are infected - So far found in projects including: crypto, golang, python, js, bash, docker, k8s - It is added to npm scripts, docker images and install docs”
• Checkmarx on Twitter — “A recent tweet uncovered a widespread malware attack on @github. This turned out to be a false alarm of sorts, as the infected repositories are simply forks and clones of the original ones - which were mostly deleted by Github by now. Stay safe!"
• No, Linus Torvalds is not Bitcoin’s legendary creator Satoshi Nakamoto
• Steam Deck Client Update and SteamOS 3.3 — We have just shipped SteamOS 3.3 and an updated Steam Client to the Stable channel. This update includes all the changes and improvements that have been undergoing testing in the Beta and Preview channels.
• SteamOS 3.3 Now Available With Many Improvements For The Steam Deck
• Steam For Linux In July Shows A 1.23% Marketshare — AMD CPUs Now More Common Than Intel On Linux
• DXVK 1.10.3 Released With Shared Fences
• Chris’ Steam Deck Review LINUX Unplugged 467
• Lenovo Expects 30+ Platforms With Linux Support This Year, Both AMD & Intel Systems — Lenovo's Mark Pearson provided an update on Linux for their laptops/PCs, including 30+ platforms for 2022 with Linux support.
• Lenovo Linux 2022 - DebConf 22
• Fedora Pi Support Gets Real — The work around Raspberry Pi 4 has been on going for a number of years, but we've never officially supported it due to lack of accelerated graphics and other key features. With Fedora 37, Raspberry Pi 4 is now officially supported, including accelerated graphics using the V3D GPU.
• Fedora 37 To Offer Official Support On Raspberry Pi 4 Devices
• Linux 5.19 Released
• Some 5.19 development statistics
• Linux Kernel 5.19 Released with Major Networking Tweaks
• Rust Code For The Linux Kernel Updated With More Features
• Asahi Linux Confirms M2 MBA on Twitter — Linus is using an M2 MacBook Air, running ARM64 Fedora. He does his own kernel builds, of course, with our Asahi kernel branch merged in, and he's been building and testing kernels on it.
• Asahi Alternative Distros docs

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• Fedora 37 Gets A Batch Of New Features Approved — Fedora 37 is working its way toward release before the end of October.
• The Performance Cost To A Proposed Fedora 37 CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS Change
• Fedora CoreOS Hopes To Become An Official Edition With Fedora 37
• Fedora 37 Looks To Ship With Stratis Storage 3.1 Support
• Fedora 37 Proposing To Allow Unrestricted Access To Flathub
• Fedora Magazine: Accessibility in Fedora Workstation — I am very happy to announce that Red Hat has just hired Lukas Tyrychtr, who is a blind software engineer, to lead our effort in making sure Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Workstation has excellent accessibility support!
• Firefox 102 Available With Transform Streams, Geoclue On Linux — Firefox 102.0 isn't the most exciting end-user update but does have some developer additions like Transform Streams support and support for Geoclue with Firefox Linux builds for geolocation.
• Thunderbird 102 Released With Big Improvements To This Leading Open-Source Mail Client — Thunderbird 102 introduces a new address book implementation, a new spaces toolbar, a new import/export wizard, a redesigned message header, and other "quality of life" updates. There are also some extras with Thunderbird 102 like adding Matrix chat support.
• Matrix.org Security release: Synapse 1.61.1 — Today we're exceptionally releasing Synapse 1.61.1, which comes as a security release. Server administrators are encouraged to update as soon as possible.
• Synapse Release v1.61.1
• Synapse Advisory — URL previews of unusual or maliciously-crafted pages can crash Synapse media repositories or Synapse monoliths.
• Valve More Than Doubles Steam Deck Production, Q3 Reservations Starting Soon — Valve just tweeted out some great news for SteamDeck fans, saying it has more than doubled the number of Steam Decks being produced every week. The company also says it just sent out the last batch of Q2 reservation emails and is prepared to start kicking off Q3 reservations on June 30th 2022.
• Check Your Steam Deck Order Status
• Vim 9.0 — The main goal of Vim9 script is to drastically improve performance. This is accomplished by compiling commands into instructions that can be efficiently executed. An increase in execution speed of 10 to 100 times can be expected.
• Vim 9.0 Released With New Vim9 Script For 10~100x Execution Speed
• Linode Security Digest — June 20-26, 2022
• Apple M2 Enablement For Linux Begins With Good Progress — Hector Martin on Monday began his Linux M2 bring-up effort, including with a livestream of this reverse engineering / debugging / kernel hacking effort. Hector confirmed NVMe, USB, and SMC functionality are working for the M2 on the first day of the effort.
• M2 Asahi Linux bring-up YouTube Stream

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• Arch Linux turned 20 years old
• Steam for Chrome OS teased at Google for Games Developer Summit — Steam for Chrome OS was announced as being available "right now" at the Google for Games Developer Summit on March 15, 2022.
• Google Finally Announces Steam For Chrome OS
• Valve sent the developer of Lutris a Steam Deck to help development
• Steam Survey Results For February 2022 Put Linux Right Above 1.0%
• Roadtest Proposed As A New Driver Testing Framework For Linux — Roadtest is a device driver testing framework whereby drivers are tested under User-Mode Linux against mocked/modelled hardware.
• GNOME 42 News
• The Best New Features in GNOME 42
• Download Fedora 36 Beta
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) Daily Build
• Bump version to 42.0
• Mutter Bump version to 42.0

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• Proton 7.0 out with Easy Anti-Cheat improvements — Proton 7.0 pulls in Wine 7.0 which it's based upon along with: upgrades to DXVK 1.9.4 for DirectX 9 / 10 / 11, newer VKD3D-Proton for DirectX 12 to Vulkan
• Pierre-Loup Griffais on Twitter
• Proton 7.0-1: A Major Milestone for Linux Gaming
• Canonical Will Begin Certifying Gigabyte Servers For Ubuntu Linux — Moving forward Gigabyte's server platforms are expected to obtain Ubuntu Server certification.
• GIGABYTE Partners with Canonical to Certify Servers for Ubuntu
• Canonical at MWC 2022
• Bcachefs Might Be Ready For Upstreaming In Linux This Year — The Bcachefs file-system that was born out of the Linux kernel's block cache code has over the past few years matured greatly. Now in 2022 the core fundamentals of the file-system are "pretty close to done" and will hopefully be mainlined this calendar year into the Linux kernel.
• Linux On The Apple M1 Preparing Better Performance With In-Development CPUFreq Driver — Fortunately, a proper CPUFreq driver for the Apple M1 is in development for Linux and is allowing for a combination of enticing performance and good battery life for this community-driven, open-source support around the Apple Silicon.
• Get Chrome OS Flex for PC or Mac — Chrome OS Flex is a free and sustainable way to modernize devices you already own. It’s easy to deploy across your fleet or simply try it to see what a cloud-first OS has to offer.
• Google announces Chrome OS Flex for ordinary PCs, Macs • The Register
• Chrome OS Flex is an ideal off-ramp for millions of PCs that can’t run Windows 11
• Google’s free Chrome OS Flex could breathe new life into old PCs and Macs

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• Nvidia is reportedly preparing to abandon its $40 billion takeover of Arm — The deal has faced close scrutiny from regulators around the world, who worry it would give Nvidia an unfair advantage in the semiconductor industry.
• SiFive Shifting Production Focus To Next-Gen HiFive Development Board — "With such great ecosystem adoption, demand has exceeded our already high expectations, and we’re close to selling out our production inventory. Given the challenge of supply chain issues that we overcame for the first run of these boards (issues that we continue to face), we’ve decided to focus on the next generation SiFive HiFive development systems rather than trying to put together another build of the HiFive Unmatched platform in 2022."
• Linux system service bug gives root on all major distros, exploit released — Qualys has uncovered a truly dangerous memory corruption vulnerability in polkit's pkexec, CVE-2021-4034. Polkit, formerly known as PolicyKit, is a systemd SUID-root program.
• Major Linux PolicyKit Security Vulnerability Uncovered: Pwnkit
• KDE-Powering Qt’s New Framework Lets Developers Bring Ads Into Their Apps — Qt, the framework that powers the KDE desktop, is announcing support for ads in client-side applications.
• Qt Digital Advertising Platform
• Steam Deck launches February 25, weekly purchase invites planned — Valve has today officially announced their Steam Deck handheld will launch officially on February 25.
• Steam Dynamic Cloud Sync — Dynamic Cloud Sync is now live on Steam, and it's a first for any gaming platform currently in operation. It appears to be inspired by a specific use case: playing your favorite PC game on the go via the Steam Deck, then resuming that same game later on your home PC.
• Valve sponsors more work to improve Linux graphics drivers

Plus how the work to port Linux to the Apple M1 resulted in fixing a bug that impacted all Linux distros.

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• Log4j 2.15.0 and previously suggested mitigations may not be enough — It was discovered that version 2.15.0 would still be vulnerable when the configuration has a pattern layout containing a Context Lookup.
• Statement from CISA Director Easterly on “Log4j” Vulnerability
• PipeWire 0.3.41 Offers Improved Flatpak & JACK Compatibility, Apple AirPlay Streaming — PipeWire 0.3.41 also adds a new RAOP module (raop-sink and raop-discover) that can be used for streaming to Apple AirPlay devices.
• EXT4 Prepared To Switch To Linux’s New Mount API — Linux's new mount API is what came about in recent times as a set of system calls offering more flexibility than the long-standing mount syscall that is a one-shot effort while this new multi-step mounting procedure allows for more options.
• The End-Of-Year 2021 State Of Linux On Apple’s M1 SoC — The Asahi Linux project has published their October and November status update to provide an overview of where the Apple Silicon / Apple M1 open-source support is now at as we approach the end of 2021.
• Asahi Linux looks forward to exciting 2022 on Apple silicon
• Hector Martin on Twitter — Looks like Apple changed the requirements for Mach-O kernel files in 12.1, breaking our existing installation process... and they *also* added a raw image mode that will never break again and doesn't require Mach-Os. And people said they wouldn't help. This is intended for us.
• Podcastindex.org — The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.
• Linux Action News on Podcastindex.org

Plus, some good news for the Desktop and systemd-homed gets one step closer.

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• GNOME 42 To Finally Allow Input Events To Happen Full-Rate — Up to now GNOME Shell has been compressing pointer motion events so they are synchronized to the monitor refresh rate, which can be anywhere from around 30 to 144 events per second depending upon display.
• An Eventful Instant – GNOME Shell & Mutter
• Do not throttle input in wayland event delivery
• FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE Announcement — The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release of the stable/12 branch.
• systemd 250 Is Coming With A Boat Load Of New Features — systemd 250 is packing a rather large number of new features and changes across the board for this dominant Linux init system and service manager.
• Log4Shell — RCE 0-day exploit found in log4j2, a popular Java logging package
• Apache - The ASF on Twitter — “Did you know that Ingenuity, the Mars 2020 Helicopter mission, is powered by Apache Log4j? https://t.co/gV0uyE1ylk #Apache #OpenSource #innovation #community #logging #services
• Tom (^-^) on Twitter
• Kevin Beaumont on Twitter — “Starting a new thread for log4j security vulnerability and fallout. Spoiler: although this emerged as a Minecraft issue (lol) there is going to be impacts across a wide range of enterprise software for some time.”
• Log4jAttackSurface MEMES

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• Linux 5.14 set to boost future enterprise application security — A particular area of interest for both enterprise and cloud users is always security and to that end, Linux 5.14 will help with several new capabilities. Mike McGrath, vice president, Linux Engineering at Red Hat told TechCrunch that the kernel update includes a feature known as core scheduling, which is intended to help mitigate processor-level vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown
• Linux 5.14 Features Aplenty With New AMD GPUs, SmartShift, More Alder Lake, Core Scheduling
• QEMU 6.1 Released With RISC-V Improvements, AMD Emulation Fixes — RISC-V on QEMU has updates around OpenTitan platform support, support for VirtIO VGA, and a variety of other architecture improvements.
• PipeWire 0.3.34 Released — Bluetooth battery status support for head-set profile and using Apple extensions. aptX-LL and FastStream codec support was added.
• CodeWeavers still hiring for a ‘General Wine Developer' — CodeWeavers announced recently they need a bit of help on finding more developers, with a spot still currently open for a 'General Wine Developer' who will work on Wine and Proton.
• Microsoft, Google partner on eBPF — Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the new eBPF Foundation, which was unveiled August 12, plans to expand eBPF and extend it beyond Linux.
• eBPF Summit 2021
• The State & Future of eBPF - Thomas Graf
• eBPF for Windows - Dave Thaler (Microsoft)
• Linux On The Apple M1 Can Now Boot To The GNOME Desktop — Alyssa Rosenweig, who has been working on reverse engineering the Apple M1 GPU since January, has now posted a screenshot of "GNOME Shell on the Apple M1, bare metal."
• ‘Not great, but usable’: GNOME desktop boots on Asahi Linux for Apple M1
• 30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was licensed, says Red Hat
• Linux turns 30: ​Linus Torvalds on his “just a hobby” operating system
• Happy birthday – 30 Years of Linux
• Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years
• 30th Anniversary of Linux - Linux Foundation
• Happy birthday, Linux: From a bedroom project to billions of devices in 30 years • The Register
• Linode Joins Jupiter Broadcasting In Denver - YouTube
• Chris remains on the road! Track is trip live: colonytracker.live

Plus Pwned Passwords goes open source, the public release of Fuchsia, and Valve's rumored Linux handheld.

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• After staff revolt, Freenode management takes over hundreds of IRC channels for ‘policy violations’ — All told, it appears something like 700 Freenode channels have been seized and re-permissioned, supposedly because the channels mentioned Libera Chat in violation of Freenode's advertising policy.
• Freenode IRC staff resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s “crown prince”
• IRC Announcement - Fedora Magazine
• Ubuntu, Wikimedia jump ship to the Libera Chat IRC network after Freenode channel confiscations
• One week of Libera Chat — It’s been an exciting first week, and we’d like to say a massive thank you for your support, enthusiasm, and patience as we continue to work to bring Libera.Chat up to full capacity. In these first few days, we’ve been able to reach 16,500 simultaneous connections and 20,000 registered accounts.
• kline󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 on mastodon: “andrew lee just seized over 700 channels on freenode”
• PSA: Ubuntu’s IRC Channels Have Moved from Freenode to Libera Chat
• Gentoo Freenode channels have been hijacked — Today (2021-05-26) a large number of Gentoo channels have been hijacked by Freenode staff, including channels that were not yet migrated to Libera.chat. We cannot perceive this otherwise than as an open act of hostility and we have effectively left Freenode.
• Pwned Passwords, Open Source in the .NET Foundation and Working with the FBI
• Pwned Passwords is now open source!
• Troy Hunt on Twitter RE: the news
• The FBI will feed compromised passwords to Have I Been Pwned — As Hunt explained, the FBI is involved into all sorts of investigations into digital crimes, such as botnets, ransomware, online child sexual exploitation and terrorism. The compromised passwords they find are often being used by crime rings, so the passwords' quick addition to the HIBP database would be extremely helpful. That said, the website doesn't have a way for the feds to quickly feed passwords into its database yet.
• Google is releasing Fuchsia OS, starting w/ 1st-gen Nest Hub — Google’s long-in-development, from-scratch operating system, Fuchsia, is now running on real Made by Google devices, namely, the first-generation Nest Hub.
• Here’s an easier way to try Fuchsia OS on your computer
• Linux Action Show 431
• Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC — On Tuesday, SteamDB operator Pavel Djundik spotted the change in Steam's code, which pointed to a new device named "SteamPal".
• New Audacity Owners Want a CLA — For those not yet aware, we are introducing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), which contributors to Audacity will need to sign in order to contribute code to the project.
• Information About Our New Contributor License Agreement
• Nextcloud iOS app Open Sourced
• GitHub: nextcloud/ios/COPYING.iOS
• Nextcloud iOS app License Guidelines
• List of Open-Source iOS Apps
• Jami on the Mac App Store
• mediaU on the App Store
• Linux Game Development at Tesla? — Some of you might have heard, our dear technoking is bullish on games and making an awesome platform for all gamers in Tesla vehicles. The latest Model S on our website can give you a hint of what we're aiming for in terms of platform capability (sorry, can't divulge much more for now). The Tesla infotainment OS and platform software are based on a standard Linux, so of course, we're interested in helping the gaming community make Linux gaming excellent.

Plus new Matrix goodies, why AWS is investing in Blender, and more.

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• Google kills Android Things, its IoT OS, in January — Google announced it had basically given up on the project as a general-purpose IoT operating system in 2019, but now there's an official shutdown date thanks to a new FAQ page detailing the demise of the OS.
• Android Things Shutdown FAQ
• Ron Amadeo on Twitter — Oof, Google promised three years of updates when Android Things launched in May 2018, the actual support it delivered? One year, three months.
• Google, Qualcomm partner to bring 4 OS Android updates to new chipsets — The new plan is three years of major OS updates and four years of security updates.
• Qualcomm promises three years of Android updates for its entire SoC lineup
• Google acquires CloudReady OS to make PCs Chromebooks — Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS. While primarily aimed at schools and enterprises, a free “Home” edition for everyone is available. Google has now acquired Neverware and CloudReady with plans to integrate it with Chrome OS.
• Native Steam (Borealis) on Chrome OS likely arriving mid-2021
• GTK 4.0 Officially Released After More Than 4 Years of Development — The GTK development officially released today the next generation of the GTK toolkit, GTK 4.0, after being in development for more than four years.
• GTK 4.0 Toolkit Officially Released
• GTK 4.0 – GTK Development Blog
• Matrix.to: Reloaded — A challenge we regularly face is all the factors which make Matrix flexible and powerful as an open, secure decentralised protocol also increase the difficulty of getting started.
• Matrix.to — Create shareable links to Matrix rooms, users or messages without being tied to any app
• Introducing Cerulean — Alongside all the normal business-as-usual Matrix stuff, we’ve found some time to do a mad science experiment over the last few weeks - to test the question: "Is it possible to build a serious Twitter-style decentralised microblogging app using Matrix?"
• Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play — Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages technology, known as AMP among web publishers, took a beating this week as an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of Texas charged that the ad biz used AMP to hinder competition.
• I have resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee – Terence Eden’s Blog — I remain convinced that AMP is poorly implemented, hostile to the interests of both users and publishers, and a proprietary & unnecessary incursion into the open web.
• AWS joins the Blender Development Fund — AWS committed to a period of three years, specifically to support character animation tools development.

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

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

Plus 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 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 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.