● 12.10.15

● Links 10/12/2015: Many New Kernels, Mesa 11.0.7, elementary OS 0.3.2, PINE 64

Posted in News Roundup at 10:29 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Kernel Space

• I’m announcing the release of the 4.3.1 kernel.

• All users of the 4.3 kernel series must upgrade.

• The updated 4.3.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.3.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

• http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

• thanks,

• greg k-h

• Gender gap is one of the hottest topics in the tech industry. To address this, many organizations in the open source world, including the Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and The Linux Foundation, organize programs to encourage female participation.

• The Linux Foundation’s Linux Training Scholarship Program offers free training to individuals. Vaishali Thakkar was one of the recipients this year under the Kernel Guru category. She lives in India and recently completed an Outreachy internship on project Coccinelle.

• I reached out to Vaishali to learn more about her experience with the Linux community, the atmosphere in India for Linux developers and much more.

Graphics Stack

• While Mesa 11.1 is right around the corner, Emil Velikov today announced the release of Mesa 11.0.7 as the latest collection of stable fixes.

• Intel is hooking their Beignet open-source OpenCL Linux implementation into the CMRT, the 01.org C for Media Runtime.

Benchmarks

• If looking for budget laptops right now, the Core i3 5010U and Core i5 5200U “Broadwell” processors tend to be very common, but how do they compare under Linux? Here are some benchmarks on Ubuntu 15.10 with the Linux 4.4 kernel to answer that question.

Applications

• It may be a relatively niche market, but not all video editing is done in post production. There are use cases for live, on-the-fly video editing and basic compositing. You’ve seen it done yourself, whether you realize it or not—news broadcasts, live webcasts, and live TV events usually use multiple-camera setups controlled by one central software suite.

• Open Broadcast Studio (formerly Open Broadcaster Software) is an open source central control room for live, realtime video editing. It features instant encoding using x264 (an open source h.264 encoder) and AAC and streams to services like YouTube, DailyMotion, Twitch, your own streaming server, or just to a file.

Proprietary

• Excel Software simplified QuickLicense protection and licensing of 32-Bit or 64-Bit application software with the release of two companion products, QuickLicenseRT Linux 2.0 and PluginXojoQLRT 2.0. QuickLicenseRT Linux includes 32 and 64-Bit runtime files. PluginXojoQLRT provides a Xojo plugin for 32 and 64-Bit apps on Mac or Windows.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• I’m going to be honest, I’ve never heard of Guy Lunardi until now. He went to New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG) to do a talk on SteamOS.

• I’m going to be honest, I had never heard of InSomnia, but it was sent in by a reader and I’m certainly interested now. An RPG set on a massive space station, with good looking graphics that’s now planned for a same-day Linux release!

• A viking with a gun you say? Okay, I’m interested. At the end of October Gunnheim released for Linux, and it looks quite fun.

• I actually really like the colourful and simple graphics, as it reminds me of Albion Online which I’ve been slaving away at.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The Calligra developers have been happy to announce the release and immediate availability for download of the tenth maintenance version in the Calligra 2.9 series.

• According to the release notes, which we’ve attached at the end of the article for reference, Calligra 2.9.10 is a yet another bugfix release that resolves several issues reported by users since the previous maintenance version, Calligra 2.9.9. Moreover, it addresses a single Kexi issue, and adds great improvements to the Krita 2.9.10 software, for which we already published a separate article the other day.

• KDE – desktop environment written in C++/Qt/QML and better for users which need more and love the powerful instruments. KDE can help you in everyday tasks like work with web, multimedia (photo, video, music), text and specific tasks: programming, video editing, education, games and many others. Many peoples say that KDE is very good for users with Windows experience, but I’m not sure. I highly recommend to try KDE: this desktop environment can give you many positive emotions.

• Tuesday, 8 December 2015. Today KDE releases a feature update to its desktop software, Plasma 5.5.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The Dell Edge Gateway will be available for purchase soon. When it goes on sale, firmware updates in Linux will work out-of-the-box. I’ve been told that Dell are considering expanding out the LVFS support to all new models supporting UEFI updates. In order to prioritize what models to work on first, I’ve been asked to share this anonymous survey on what Dell hardware people are using on Linux and to gauge if people actually care about being able to upgrade the firmware easily in Linux.

• While the GNOME developers have already released the third development milestone towards the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, it appears the some of its core components have not even gotten a release from the 3.19 devel branch.

Distributions

• Today in Linux news, Tecmint posted a look at the top 10 distributions of the year. Jim Zemlin said today that Linux Foundation and Microsoft’s partnership is off to a “great start.” KDE Plasma 5.5 was released yesterday “with beautiful new artwork” and The Linux Homefront Project gave it the once over. Elsewhere, Clement Lefebvre posted the 17.3 upgrade process and Chris Hoffman reviewed 17.3 for PCWorld.

• As the end of 2015 approaches, it is not only a time to start drafting your new year’s resolutions but also to check out what were the most popular Linux distributions in 2015. A brief comparison with 2014 will also help us whether those distros are actually experiencing sustained growth or not. Ready to start? Let’s begin.

New Releases

Screenshots/Screencasts

Arch Family

• Ringo de Kroon, the maintainer of the Manjaro Linux Cinnamon and Manjaro Linux MATE computer operating systems, has had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the first RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Manjaro Linux MATE 15.12 distribution.

Red Hat Family

• Cox Automotive sees all kinds of customers pouring into its online portals — from dealers in the auction lanes to potential buyers considering a vehicle purchase.

• Open source technology solutions provider Red Hat highlighted on Tuesday how Cox Automotive deployed three major tools — Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Gluster Storage and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization — to scale its internal cloud infrastructure to meet the increasing requests from its customer base.

• Jennison Associates cut its stake in Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) by 2.4% during the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The hedge fund owned 15,549,632 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after selling 386,599 shares during the period. Red Hat makes up approximately 1.1% of Jennison Associates’ holdings, making the stock its 22nd largest position. Jennison Associates owned 8.47% of Red Hat worth $1,117,708,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

• RBC Capital reiterated their buy rating on shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) in a research report report published on Wednesday, ARN reports.

• Channel partners need to become more innovative in their thinking and strive to improve the experience client’s get from as-a-service offerings, Red Hat director AppDev solutions APAC, Ben Henshall, said.

• One-time server foes Microsoft and Red Hat have come a step closer on the emerging platform of cloud.

• Red Hat has introduced CloudForms 4.0, and the cloud management platform can now manage cloud resources in Microsoft Azure and picks up container support.

• Both features are indispensable for any cloud-management system. The former is necessary because of Azure’s status as a top-tier cloud offering, and the latter because containers are involved in nearly every aspect of software use, especially cloud deployment.

• In many organizations the culture is not open; people know that if you want to get ahead you need to shut up and keep your head down. But, that’s a recipe for failure. And it’s more expensive, because (often) processes or products are much further developed before anyone detects problems with them.

• RBC Capital Markets have a $90.00 price target on the stock. The price target would suggest a potential upside of 11.77 % from Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)’s last stock close price. This rating was released in an analyst note on Tuesday, 8 December.

Fedora

• Saturday we arrived at Red Hat APAC office by around 9 AM. The MRT station locates just under AXA building so it did not take us much time there.

• As we are productive Saturday, we decide to start a little late today. So we arrived at the office by around 10 AM. Then we start by each ambassador introduce the community in their country. There is a outstanding problem is, reimbursement usually takes a long time. And some area have problems in receiving money by paypal. So we talked about having another credit card in APAC. And then we talks about DVD distribution in APAC. As of strict import/export laws in China, we are not able to take DVDs into China directly. So we still need to ask Red Hat guys to send DVDs into Red Hat Beijing by company way. And Sirko mentioned that someone need to raise request for combined media so that the engineer team will take into consideration. Otherwise they will not make any combined ISO.

Debian Family

• The recent transition of such mails from the PTS to Debian’s instance of Distro Tracker reminded me about this, and some info on how to transition current filtering may be useful for more than just me.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu Touch will receive a new OTA update before the end of the year, but it’s a small hotfix. From the looks of it, developers still have one more thing to implement, but some regressions spotted during Q&A are delaying the release.

• There are a lot of naive users and customers out there, and then there are companies and websites out there only to trick them. That’s why we can find an Ubuntu MATE 15.10 Flash Drive with just 8 GB of space selling for a huge price.

Flavours and Variants

• Now that the Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” Cinnamon and MATE flavors have been released, the users of the previous version have been given a green light for the upgrade.

• One such Linux-based operating system that puts a priority on design and user experience is the fabulous elementary OS. Luckily, it is not form over function, as its stability and usefulness matches the beauty on the surface, thanks to its Ubuntu base. Today, a new version of the popular distro, Freya 0.3.2, becomes available for download. Will you download it?

• The awesome guys from elementary announced a few minutes ago, December 10, 2015, the release and immediate availability for download of the elementary OS 0.3.2 “Freya” computer operating system.

• Linux is one of the best operating systems around and there are many distro’s which are popular among developers but what about the normal people like you and me. Well, there is a Linux distro just made for home users and desktop environment. Called elementary OS Freya, the version 0.3.0 of this Linux distro is now available for download.

• It is now possible to upgrade the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 17, 17.1 and 17.2 to version 17.3.

• If you’ve been waiting for this I’d like to thank you for your patience.

Devices/Embedded

• We introduced you guys to the PINE64 single-board computer (SBC) a couple of days ago, when we’ve stated that it is the world’s first $15 open source gaming machine that runs Android and Linux.

• As computers get smaller and more powerful, more options are starting to surface for palm sized computers which can be used for a number of DIY projects. The latest to be unveiled, the PINE64 and PINE64+, launches on Kickstarter today and promises a more simple, affordable, and expandable computing solution.

• We have just been informed by Dylan MCallahan about the immediate availability for download of the second build of his Chromium OS operating system for the Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computer (SBC).

Phones

• But perhaps these smaller companies like Jolla are content to keep their customer base little; after all, it’s hard to imagine any of their executives believing that their devices would soar into, say, the top 10 figures of sales around the world. Especially given how mammoth shipment figures are now for smartphones, and how mobile giants are lowering the costs of some of their devices to appeal to more markets. The intent for some of these open source companies has been more to provide alternative options for mobile users who can afford such products, while also steering customers away from juggernauts like Apple and Samsung. While Mozilla’s announcement is disheartening to some in the open source market, there are still several other entities who haven’t thrown in the towel.

Android

• Between August and October, the iPhone’s smartphone share in the US fell fell by 8.3 percentage points to 33.6 percent, compared with the same period in 2014, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reported on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the US share for phones with Google’s Android operating system jumped by 9.5 percentage points to 62.8 percent from the same period a year ago, Kantar reported.

• In this Ask A Dev, Android engineer Waylon Brown gives aspiring Android engineers a road map to getting their apps on the Google Play store.

• “All you need is some knowledge of Java, $30 for the developer account, and an app idea,” Waylon says, before getting more specific. In two minutes, you’ll be equipped with all the training guides, emulators and accounts you’ll need to become a full-fledged Android developer. Waylon finishes up with some helpful suggestions about how to market your app.

• You’re probably aware of most of these uses – checking social media, sending emails, even making phone calls and sending texts – but you might not have discovered all of the ways you can use your Android smartphone. Here are 10 superpowers your phone has that you can take advantage of.

• For specifications, the Oukitel K10000 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, and is a dual-SIM dual standby smartphone with 4G LTE functionality on both SIM card slots. The handset supports dual Micro-SIMs. The online retailer’s listing confirms that the handset supports Indian LTE bands as well.

Free Software/Open Source

• Do you think music software is only the domain of expensive proprietary software? Think again. There are literally hundreds of applications out there designed by, and for, those with a musical bent. Music projects, including many projects specifically for the Linux operating system, flourish in the open source community as musicians take to coding to produce tools to make their lives easier.

• The world’s fastest cracking tool Hashcat is now open source. The company has called it a very important step and listed out the reasons that inspired them to take this step.

• Steube said that many of these researchers can’t reveal the exact changes they would need to make due to non-disclosure agreements (NDA) so making the software open source allows them to make the changes themselves.

• Just over a year after being open sourced by creator eBay Inc., the Kylin project — a Big Data distributed analytics engine — has been advanced by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to top-level status.

• Apache Kylin is designed to provide a SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Apache Hadoop, with support for extremely large datasets.

• AMID the ongoing fallout over the software in some Volkswagen cars that was able to cheat emissions tests, the public may well be pondering a wider question: can we trust the software in the gadgets we use every day? If a car’s software can deceive, what might our devices be programmed to do that is not in our interests?

• Some TVs and fridges already stand accused of manipulating energy efficiency tests. But software can’t just be used to make beating such tests easier. It also makes it easier to lock consumers into proprietary systems and raises suspicions of planned obsolescence.

• Whenever devices go online, manufacturers (and others) gain the ability to invade privacy: recall Samsung’s TVs with voice recognition that also happened to gather private conversations.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Everything is connected around us. This revolution has already started and it will be bigger than previous technology revolutions, including the mobile smartphone revolution. Internet of Things, as many call it today, will fundamentally affect all of us.

• The Firefox OS smartphone has been discontinued by Mozilla. This comes as no real surprise, given the intense competition in the smartphone market and the domination of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android phones.

Databases

• The makers of ZeroDB, an end-to-end encrypted database, have open-sourced their application, making the code available on GitHub.

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• IBM has already put the Linux port of Apple’s Swift programming language to good use, releasing the IBM Swift Sandbox: A way to code in the cloud.

BSD

• My November 11, 2015 mug.org talk about SSH is now on YouTube. This is one way to lose 90 minutes.

Licensing

• Question two. From a GNU/Linux PC, I want the capability to connect to a USA cell phone network and make a voice call to an old-school 9600 bps landline audio modem, and have serial comms with this landline audio modem.

• The question is, is this an objection to copyleft, or is it an objection to code of conducts? I’ve seen objections raised to both that go along these lines. I think there’s little coincidence, since both of them are objections to added process which define (and provide enforcement mechanisms for) doing the right thing.

Openness/Sharing

Open Hardware

• Being open source all the design files for the Witbox 2 3D Printer can be found over on GitHub via the link below, if you are interested. For more details and specifications on the Witbox 2 Jumbo to the official website via the link below where it is also now available to purchase priced at €1,690.

Leftovers

Security

• SECURITY FIRM Symantec has warned that the hacker threat to Apple users has reached unprecedented levels.

• The firm reckons that Apple is a victim of its success, becoming a bigger target as its user base grows. To be fair to Apple most of the problem relates to jailbroken devices, which is not a thing that the firm recommends. We have seen incidents recently that make the most of this. The threat applies to mobile software and the desktop.

• According to the Telegraph newspaper, universities across the country have been hit by DoS attacks. This means in some cases no internet access, and that means students will have to study like it’s 1980 something.

• It was a summer morning, officer Paul Hastings recalls, when he arrived at a suspected hacker’s house in the northern English city of Hull. There, police had tracked one of the people who’d signed up online for a hacking service called Lizard Stresser that was used to attack companies including Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Sony at the end of 2014. This particularly fearsome cybervigilante was asleep when Hastings knocked, so his dad answered the door.

• The visit was one of about 50 U.K. police made this year to people they say used the Lizard Stresser site, many of them children. The Hull suspect, a teenager, couldn’t have done anything wrong, his dad told Hastings. He spent all his time upstairs, on his computer.

• [...]

• Teen hackers have been pop culture figures since Matthew Broderick starred in WarGames, and the U.K. has a long history with juvenile black hats. In 1994, when U.S. Air Force researchers found an unauthorized user on their systems downloading data, they tracked the hacker to a North London suburb. Working with London police, they found their culprit: a 16-year-old boy in an attic bedroom, as journalist Gordon Corera recounts in Intercept: The Secret History of Computers and Spies.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Isis now has support from 42 different international groups in countries ranging from the Philippines to Egypt, it has been revealed.

• The map, produced for The Independent by statistics agency Statista, shows the 30 groups to have pledged formal affiliation to the terrorist group and 12 more that have pledged their support, as identified in a Global Terrorism Index report.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• LE BOURGET, France—Monday began what’s supposed to be the final week of the climate talks, the one where top-level negotiators hammer out an accord to stop the deadly march of global warming. To troll this momentous event, the climate change deniers at the Heartland Institute came all the way from Chicago to stage a “counter-conference” at a central Paris venue called, seriously, the Hotel California.

• The recent fires in Indonesia were something of a lightbulb moment for Indonesia in the way it views its development model and the threats from climate change, a senior member of the country’s delegation to the Paris climate talks said on Tuesday.

• It also triggered a rethink of how the country should represent itself at the talks, said Mr Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, chairman of Indonesia’s Advisory Council for Climate Change, and a former environment minister.

• Indonesia has brought about 400 delegates to the talks, a large number by any measure.

• About 80 are directly paid for by the government. The delegation comprises business and opinion leaders, non-governmental organisations, members of local communities and interfaith networks, he told a press conference on the sidelines of the talks.

• As 190 nations grapple with the world’s future at the global climate summit in Paris, forest fires in Indonesia have been continuing to rage since July 2015.

• Emissions from this year’s fires have reached 1.62 billion metric tons of CO2, bumping Indonesia up from sixth largest to fourth largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the world, surpassing Russia in a matter of six weeks and the entire US economy in just 38 days. [1]

• Global Forest Watch Fires detected at least 127,000 fires across Indonesia this year, the worst since 1997. These fires were mostly caused by the clearing of forested peat lands to plant palms for oil.

• While the eyes of the world are on Paris, where nations are hammering out an agreement to do something about the reality of climate change, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness once again held a hearing on Tuesday to debate whether climate change is for real. Subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who is running for his party’s presidential nomination, convened the hearing titled “Data or dogma? Promoting open inquiry in the debate over the magnitude of human impact on Earth’s climate.”

Finance

• The love of money for money’s sake is the social disease of our time. We see it all around us: in the celebration of ill-gotten stock gains, public admiration for the heads of criminal banks, the words of Kanye West, in the commercialization of charity and even spirituality.

• This adoration of wealth isn’t a new thing, of course. When I was in elementary school I was sent to a school counselor for being moody, introspective – in other words, for being either a proto-goth or a writer in the making. I was asked to draw a picture of myself as a happy adult, and the resulting portrait showed a rich man standing beside a Rolls-Royce with an ascot around his neck.

• Poor people, right? Visit the “news of the weird” section of a major media site and you’ll find a gauntlet of undesirables engaging in such wacky antics as getting into drunk fistfights at McDonald’s and whatnot. And, in basically all of these cases, what you’re reading barely qualifies as news. It’s Internet rubbernecking and — as far as most news outlets are concerned — anyone below the poverty line is fair game as a source of national amusement (and it’s not unlike similar stunts the news pulls on Asian people and the youths).

Privacy

• Starting on January 1, the country of Kazakhstan has formally declared war on privacy, encryption, and a secure Internet. A new law takes effect in the new year that will require all citizens of the country to install a national, government-mandated security certificate allowing the interception of all encrypted citizen communications. In short, the country has decided that it would be a downright nifty idea to break HTTPS and SSL, essentially launching a “man in the middle” attack on every resident of the country.

• After the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, encryption has once again become a political target in Washington. Despite there still being no solid evidence the attackers benefited from or even used encryption (in at least one case, they coordinated via distinctly unencrypted text messages) law enforcement and national security hawks have used the tragedies to continue pressing tech companies to give the US government access to encrypted communications—even if that means rolling back security and changing the nature of their businesses.

• At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, FBI director James Comey went so far as to suggest that companies providing users with end-to-end encryption might need to simply, well, stop doing that.

• “It’s not a technical issue, it’s a business model question,” said Comey, referring to companies like Apple and WhatsApp which encrypt data so that it can’t be read by any third party, including the companies themselves. “Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so that judges’ orders can not be complied with, for reasons that I understand, I’m not questioning their motivations.”

• SNAP. You press the shutter icon on your phone and capture a photo of your baby daughter. With a couple of swipes, you attach it to an email in your Gmail app and fire it off to your mother-in-law.

• As personal data goes, it doesn’t get much more innocuous. But the truth is that spraying around any private information is risky. You might think that’s overblown. As long as you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

• It’s not that simple. Just look at this summer’s hack that exposed the data from Ashley Madison, a site catering for people looking for an affair, and imagine if the same happened with all your emails stored by Google, or your photos on Facebook. Even if you’ve done nothing illegal or immoral, faced with a database of every photograph and comment you’ve ever shared privately, friendships and business deals could dissolve the world over.

• Data-analysis company Palantir Technologies has raised $125 million in new funding, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The financing increased the size of the company’s current funding round to about $680 million.

• Palantir, a secretive company co-founded by investor Peter Thiel in 2004, builds software for searching through and analyzing reams of data. Banks, police departments, and intelligence agencies are among the Palo Alto, Calif., company’s customers.

• Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and chairman Maynard Webb appeared on CNBC today to explain why the company’s board of directors decided not to spin off its stake Alibaba.

• There is no liberty without privacy. As the culture of surveillance grows, liberty recedes. The New American has reported on many of the threats to privacy that are becoming more and more commonplace. Some Smart TVs are spying on users via their integrated cameras, microphones, and Internet connectivity and then reporting back to the manufacturers, who sell that data to advertisers. Other “Internet of Things” devices have surveillance capabilities that are marketed as features promising convenience to users. Facebook performs social/psychological experiments on its users and also harvests users’ data to sell to advertisers.

Civil Rights

• MSNBC host Chris Hayes called out Rep. Steve King (R-IA) for repeating a conspiracy theory that originated from an outrageous article out of Alex Jones’ far right Infowars site. The article claimed that an imam in Jerusalem encouraged followers to breed with Europeans in order to “conquer their countries.”

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• With less than a week to go before a trial, a class-action lawsuit over the copyright status of “Happy Birthday” has been resolved. Details of the settlement, including what kind of uses will be allowed going forward, are not clear.

• The European Commission has officially presented its plan to abolish geo-blocking and filtering restrictions across EU member states. The new proposal requires online services to allow users to access their accounts all across Europe, even in countries where it’s officially not available yet.

• [...]

• Ironically, the changes may not always be beneficial. In some cases people use a VPN to access a broader library of films and video in another EU country, which will no longer be possible under the new rules.

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