02.17.16

Links 17/2/2016: Vulkan 1.0, GNU C Library Vulnerability

Posted in News Roundup at 7:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What’s in the Box? Interrogate Your Linux Machine’s Hardware

    I recently had a problem trying to install the NVIDIA driver for my machine. It seemed the latest driver had stopped supporting my graphics card, and after updating my kernel, I was out of a driver. The question, obviously, was “which card did I have?” But, I didn’t remember. If you have to name the chipset of your motherboard, specify the CPU in your box or get any other kind of hardware-related information, Linux provides several utilities to help you. In my case, I quickly could get the full ID of my graphics card, confirm that it really was getting a bit long in the tooth and decide that a newer one wasn’t such a bad idea.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Endless and GNOME

        As you may have heard, Endless joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board last week. We appreciate all the kind words of welcome we have received and are looking forward to strengthening our ties with this community. This has been a coming for a bit, and I’m looking forward for us to contribute more over the coming year!

        [...]

        We can’t do this alone. We are looking for some great engineers to join our team. If this mission sounds great and you’re interested in working with us, let us know! We are looking for people who are passionate about bringing a great desktop to the rest of the world while developing some high-quality Free Software.

      • You Can Now Edit OpenStreetMap Info In GNOME Maps

        OpenStreetMap is a free, collaborative project to create an easily editable map of the world — the Wikipedia of maps, if you will.

        Version 3.20 of the desktop mapping tool will see other improvements too, including improved translation behaviour and support for custom geo-json map layers.

      • GNOME Maps 3.20 Now Available for Beta Testing with OpenStreetMap Editing

        The GNOME Project is about to come up with the first Beta build of the upcoming major release of the open source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, GNOME 3.20, so they’re updating most of the core apps and components.

  • Distributions

    • Four Linux Distributions For Chromebook Lovers

      Chromebooks have been generated quite some buzz in the last couple of years. The main advantage for Chromebooks is that these are inexpensive laptops with modest hardware and are good looking as well.

      Chromebooks are based on Google’s web-oriented Chrome OS. While Chrome OS itself is based on the Linux kernel, it is not really the same experience as full desktop Linux. There are ways to install Linux on Chromebook, but I am not going to talk about those today. Instead, I am going to list four Linux distributions which are either meant for Chromebooks or they imitate the looks of Chrome OS.

    • Lay down a beat with LMMS

      One thing that confuses some new Linux users is just how modular Linux can be, and on nearly every level. It turns out to be liberating in the end, but it can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s nice, sometimes, to come across a project that brings a bunch of modular technology and binds them together nice and neatly for users. In the world of digital audio workstations, the project that does this most profoundly is the Linux Multimedia Studio, better known as LMMS.

    • Reviews

      • Top 5 Best Security-Centric Linux Distributions Of 2016

        Staying anonymous on the Internet might not necessarily mean the same as surfing the web safely but rather keeping yourself safe from prying eyes that may otherwise take advantage of the vulnerability of your system thereby exposing you and your data for whomever might just be up for the grabbing – especially some hacker snooping around for sensitive data to hoard (particularly if you’re being targeted) and use for otherwise evil purposes that can have some serious effects on the violated individual.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS: the walking dead

        If you thought that this review would continue with the usual sections like keyboard setup, list of applications, network drive connectivity and so on, I must disappoint you.

        My time with PCLinuxOS KDE 2014.12 finished at that point. I see no reason to test a distribution that is so narrow-minded that it cannot allow users outside of the US to use it out of the box, and that does not bother with updating their core ISO image. There are plenty of distributions that work much better than PCLinuxOS.

      • PCLOS Rebuttal, Live Long and Game, TDF@4

        The big story today in Linux news was the release of the long awaited Vulkan graphics API. The news was carried by just about everyone. Elsewhere, blogger DarkDuck said PCLinuxOS is “the walking dead” and a critical vulnerability in glibc has experts warning to upgrade immediately. SUSE announced SUSECon today and Charles-H. Schulz blogged about the “unusual” LibreOffice 5.1 release on this The Document Foundation’s fourth birthday.

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Rackspace Adds Hosted Red Hat OpenStack to Cloud Services

        Rackspace has added a new OpenStack-as-a-Service option in partnership with Red Hat (RHT), whose enterprise Linux distribution powers the new cloud platform.

        Rackspace announced the platform Thursday. It’s pitching it as a key step in the “company’s strategy to deliver the most reliable and easy-to-use OpenStack private and hybrid clouds in the world.”

      • Tech Stocks to Focus: Intuit Inc. (INTU), Red Hat Inc (RHT)
      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Cut to “Hold” at TheStreet

        TheStreet lowered shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report report published on Thursday morning, Marketbeat reports.

      • What Analysts say about Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)?

      • Fedora

        • Neville Cross: How do you Fedora?

          Neville Cross is a Nicaraguan hotel manager who has a passion for technology. He has an Amateur Radio license, and was doing stuff with packet radio (ax.25 protocol) in 2008. That made him look for help in the local Linux community. As he used Red Hat Linux for a while in 2000, it was natural for him to take a look at Fedora. Instead of getting help, he got involved in the local FOSS community, especially in the Fedora local group. At that moment, others Linux distributions had strong support from the international community, but Fedora did not. So he took on the challenge to close the gap. That is how Cross originally showed up in Fedora landscape many years ago.

    • Debian Family

      • FOSSASIA 2016, pgDay Asia 2016 and MiniDebConf Singapore

        The FOSSASIA 2016 conference is taking place next month, 18-20 March at the Science Centre Singapore. The FOSSASIA community has also offered to host a MiniDebConf Singapore 2016 and pgDay Asia 2016. With sufficient interest from volunteers and participants, these events could do a lot to raise the profile of free software in the region.

      • Open Source Maru OS Promises Debian Linux for Smartphones and Tablets

        The open source ecosystem for mobile devices has grown larger with the announcement of a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones in the form of Maru OS, which is now open source.

        Maru is a Debian-based operating system that lets you run a complete desktop environment from a smartphone. By connecting it to an external display, you get what looks like a traditional, full-blown Debian GNU/Linux system, while still having access to your Android phone.

      • Emmabuntüs 8 Debian Based Beta Released

        Emmabuntüs is a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made specifically for refurbished computers destined for humanitarian organisationsand to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware and to reduce over consumption & waste in electronics. Emmabuntus 8 Beta is the first distro based on Debian in the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • FairPhone 2 with Ubuntu Touch Is Making Progress

            FairPhone 2 is just one of the phones that are betting on Ubuntu Touch community ports, and it looks like the project is coming along.

            The ability to port Ubuntu Touch for various devices has been promoted by Canonical ever since the start of the project, more than three years ago but little has come of it. The community tries to make this happen, but it’s not like making Android run on other devices. It’s a complex problem that usually revolves around device drivers.

            The main problem that developers face when trying to make Ubuntu Touch run on various devices is the lack of driver support. We’ve seen many popular phones running Ubuntu over the years, but most projects stop when having to implement GSM or Bluetooth support. For example, one of the first phones to get Ubuntu Touch was a Samsung Galaxy S3, but nothing came of it.

          • ZFS Will Be Baked Directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Supported by Canonical

            We are only a couple of months away from the next major release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and some of its neat new features are yet to be revealed.

            Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland writes today about one of the awesome things that will be implemented by default in the upcoming Linux-based distribution, ZFS, the robust file system that everyone talks about these days, which Canonical will bake directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-9.1 Hotfix Still in the Works, Dekko Might Come with OTA-10

            Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical informs us earlier about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch development team in preparation for the soon-to-be-released OTA software updates for Ubuntu-powered devices.

          • Canonical Patches Severe Glibc DNS Vulnerability in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

            If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may know that Google Security Team and Red Hat have disclosed a severe Glibc (GNU C Library) vulnerability, which could affect a huge number of devices and computers.

          • ConsenSys, BlockApps, Canonical partner to deliver biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu phones

            ConsenSys and BlockApps announced they have partnered with Canonical to deliver Nimbus uPort biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu mobile phones and tablets.

            Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the leading provider of support services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise.

          • Canonical’s ZFS Plans Are Lining Up For Ubuntu 16.04

            Ubuntu developers have been working on ZFS support for Ubuntu 16.04 and all of that file-system support is getting squared away.

          • [Older] New Ubuntu tablet claimed to serve as PC too

  • Devices/Embedded

    • How to build a $200 smart drone with the Pi Zero

      Erle Robotics, which I mentioned in last week’s piece about the increasingly important role of Linux in robotics, supplies cheap components for DIY Raspberry Pi projects. I got in touch with the makers at Erle this week to come up with a great tutorial for our readers.

    • Add a battery pack to your Raspberry Pi

      Your Raspberry Pi’s mobility is usually restricted by the length of the power lead. Rather than limiting it to your desk or living room, however, you can use it for mobile projects as diverse as launching it into near-Earth orbit or monitoring and automating your garden.

      Of course, to do this you will need batteries, but adding battery power to your Raspberry Pi is simpler than you might have imagined. All that is required are six rechargeable AA batteries (or single-charge alkaline), a battery box with space for the batteries and a UBEC. The latter is a Universal Battery Elimination Circuit, a voltage regulator that will regulate the power supply and prevent damage to the Raspberry Pi, and can be bought for under £10.

    • Reference platform simplifies wearable security camera designs

      Intrinsyc announced a reference design for wearable law enforcement and security cameras, featuring a Snapdragon 410 SoC running Android and a 13-MP camera.

    • Online dev tool adds DIY baseboard for RPi Compute Module

      Gumstix has added a Raspberry Pi Compute Module baseboard design to its online DIY board dev tool, and is selling working units based on the design for $49.

      Back in November, Gumstix opened up its Geppetto online DIY design tool and quick-turn prototype manufacturing service to the development of carrier boards for third-party SBCs and COMs based on TI Sitara AM335x SoCs. Supported non-Gumstix processor boards initially included BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleBone Black single-board computer, as well as Critical Link’s MitySOM-335x, and DAVE’s Diva AM335x computer-on-modules.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen smartphone sold 3 million units in 2015

          Samsung’s strategy of making its initial Tizen smartphones fall under the budget category seems to be working out quite well, as a recent report from market research agency Strategy Analytics claims that Samsung sold over 3 million Tizen smartphones in 2015! While the numbers may look huge, Samsung’s very own android devices from the J series proved to be a problem for the sales of Tizen based Z3 and Z1 launched in India.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

This post is also available in Gemini over at:

gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2016/02/17/gnu-c-library-vulnerability/

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag -- Part 14: The Notorious Revolving Door

    The Benoît Battistelli-António Campinos shuffle left some people in the EPO’s upper management better off; they’re being rewarded for complicity, so there’s no incentive to do the right thing but to do the wrong thing

  2. Links 11/4/2021: GnuPG 2.3.0, Linux 5.13 Additions

    Links for the day

  3. All EPO Articles Are Available Over Gemini Protocol

    For lighter and more privacy-preserving access to Techrights use the Gemini capsule instead of the Web site

  4. Judge and JURI

    The Committee on Legal Affairs, a.k.a JURI, meets the EPO tomorrow (in 24 hours); will abuses by António Campinos and Benoît Battistelli be brought up?

  5. EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag -- Part 13: The Failed Promise of a “Good Governance” Guru…

    Before becoming an absent-minded Vice-President of António Campinos Christoph Ernst was posing as the very opposite of what he would become

  6. Gemini Gateways for IPFS

    The World Wide Web is fine for a lot of things, but for controversial publications and publications that invoke the 'wrath' of corporations/states/plutocracy we must look beyond the traditional protocols, choosing decentralised means and self-hosted means of publication (instead or at the very least in conjunction)

  7. Challenging Times for EPO Management

    A discussion of the status quo at Europe's second-largest (but scarcely-understood) institution, subjected to a JURI hearing tomorrow afternoon

  8. “The Fighters of Freedom”

    Some anime fans have made this video about recent events

  9. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 10, 2021

    IRC logs for Saturday, April 10, 2021

  10. [Meme] Bundestagate Series Spoiler

    The chain of command/s at the EPO typically leads to major tragedy

  11. Breaking News: Campinos to Appear Before the Legals Affairs Committee of the European Parliament on Monday 12 April

    "Some MEPs have been briefed about ongoing governance deficits at the EPO, in particular the lack of GDPR compliance and the sell-out of "digital sovereignty" to Microsoft, but it remains to be seen whether or not they will dare to bring these issues up during the hearing."

  12. Pro-FSF Petition (“An Open Letter in Support of Richard Matthew Stallman Being Reinstated by the Free Software Foundation”) Tops 6,200 Signatures

    Monopolies and their media, along with their NGOs, have spoken and incited based on falsehoods; people now respond so the hate letter has a real crisis

  13. Links 10/4/2021: osbuild 28, KDE Frameworks 5.81.0

    Links for the day

  14. EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag -- Part 12: A Worthy Successor to His Mentor?

    We examine the role of Christoph Ernst in EPO management, both in the Benoît Battistelli era and the António Campinos era (plenty to hide)

  15. USPTO for Monopolies, Keeping GNU/Linux in the Dark

    Growing evidence of gross discrimination against GNU/Linux (or Free software, even BSD/UNIX) users at the USPTO is too hard to ignore; some people out there challenge the Office over this travesty

  16. Accessibility and Availability First

    To make Techrights more widely accessible and more difficult to block/censor we've been making further changes, including self-hosting where possible

  17. Self-Hosting Videos With Free Formats and Animated Previews, Watermarks/Logos and Translucency

    We examine the power of video editing with ffmpeg, chained with command-line scripting and HTML5 features

  18. Links 10/4/2021: Linux on M1, Wine 6.6, ClamAV 0.103.2

    Links for the day

  19. Lunduke: On Mob Justice in the Tech Industry

    A new video from the former Microsofter who fears the phenomenon that’s adopted by companies like IBM

  20. IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 09, 2021

    IRC logs for Friday, April 09, 2021

  21. EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag — Appendix (Benoît Battistelli's Vichy Syndrome): Georges Henri Léon Battistelli and Charles Robert Battistelli

    Local copies with evidence of or something concrete about Benoît Battistelli’s connection to unsavoury — and by today’s standards outright fascistic — politics

  22. IBM Doubles Down on Masters Being an Acceptable Word in the Context of Technology

    3 days after this post which disproves IBM's stance or shows its double standards it once again says “Masters” in its official blog (won’t that offend and alienate some people as they insist?)

  23. Hate Letter Against Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) Backfired So Spectacularly That Signers Asked to Revoke Their Own Signatures and the List Was Then Frozen Permanently (Updated)

    "An open letter in support of Richard Matthew Stallman being reinstated by the Free Software Foundation" tops 6,100 signatures (graph generated just moments ago)

  24. EPOLeaks on Misleading the Bundestag -- Part 11: The BMJV's Tweedledee: Dr Christoph Ernst

    The right-hand man of António Campinos plays a role similar to that of Herr Lutz before him

  25. Links 9/4/2021: Tanglet 1.6.0 and HPVM 1.0

    Links for the day

  26. The Libel Against Richard Stallman Did Not Age Well

    Almost 2 years down the line libel about the founder of the FSF remains online, uncorrected (in sites funded by Microsoft and IBM)

  27. The Letter in Support of the FSF and Richard Stallman is Backed by the International Community, Not American Monopolies and Nationalistic Elements

    Free software is for everybody to use, internationally, it is not the asset of a bunch of current and old monopolists (connected to the US military) that also control the media; the nature of the signatures says that out loud

  28. Gemini Over IPFS (Decentralised Web, Accessed Over Gemini Protocol)

    The Gemini protocol (gemini://) can already be used to fetch (at the back end) and present objects from a P2P-like network; we're currently exploring practical use cases and possibilities

  29. News Sites That Talk About Patents Have Become Shameless Self-Promotion 'Plugs' by Law Firms (and Sometimes Outright 'Spam' for Litigation)

    The sources of news about patent affairs have dried up; sites that actually used to investigate and report facts have since then shut down or defected to the Public Relations/marketing industry

  30. Links 9/4/2021: Kubernetes 1.21 and FFmpeg 4.4 Released

    Links for the day

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts