Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

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
  • Slashdot

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. International Business Machines and the 1941 Watson Letter Which Refutes IBM Denials

    The letter revealed by Mr. Black (researcher and investigative author of these long-suppressed matters) shows that the co-founder of IBM knew what was going on and what he was profiting from (until it became a potential PR disaster for IBM as the Unites States entered the war)

  2. The Real 'Pee-gate' Was on External (Portable) Media of Bill Gates' Engineer, Arrested Over Pedophilia at the Gates Mansion

    We let readers use their imagination (we don’t have access to the files, just the filenames from the police report/FOIA) to figure out what was in “D:\Alexey&Garik_Pissing_004.jpg, D:\Ivan_Pissing_003.jpg, D:\Ivan_Pissing_006.jpg, D:\Raul_Pissing_003.jpg, D:\Raul_Pissing_005.jpg, D:\Yaroslav_Pissing_001.jpg” among other such files on other machines and drives (Case Reference: 14-22121 Item 6_CD label 2 in Seattle Police Department; this could be copied to any machine, anywhere, because it is external, portable media without journaling.)

  3. Links 14/8/2020: GNUnet 0.13.2, Mesa 20.2 RC2

    Links for the day

  4. OK, Melinda...

    Teaching children about sex at the age of seven may seem controversial to most people, but not the Gates family

  5. High-Level Criminals Associate Privacy With Crime Because They Want Privacy Only for Themselves (Control But No Accountability)

    Tyrannical tendencies from the non-scientist who tries to paint himself as Mr. “science” (Jeffrey Epstein tried to do exactly the same thing, which is why he and Gates paid universities) are bare naked for everybody to see

  6. It Was Mozilla -- Not Google (or Chrome) -- That Liberated the World Wide Web From MSIE Monoculture and O/S Vendor Lock-in, But Firefox is Likely Dying

    Mozilla's attitude towards software freedom, privacy, and the most widely used free/libre operating system (O/S) isn't helping the "protected media" (DRM) Fox because its biggest selling point is becoming outdated/irrelevant/neglected

  7. Ars Technica, ZDNet and Bleeping Nonsense Still Misreporting to Blame 'Linux' for Malware One Can Merely Add to Linux (Distracting From Systems With Back Doors, Such as Windows)

    A revised (spun) 'report' that we alluded to last night is spreading to more sites today or overnight; but it's totally distorting the situation to make "Linux" seem a lot more dangerous than it really is

  8. DistroTube Does a Richard Stallman

    A video published yesterday in various sites

  9. Reporting Facts is Never a Crime (It Must Not Become That Way)

    The two-party political system in the United States is racing towards bipartisan (transcending perceived 'wings') rejection of free press, which won't be on the ballot box except for "third" parties; it's a real problem because it's designed to weaken if not obliterate accountability

  10. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 13, 2020

    IRC logs for Thursday, August 13, 2020

  11. [Meme] Linux Foundation and ZDNet Openwashing Proprietary Mass Surveillance (for a Fee!)

    The Linux Foundation and ZDNet tell us that Facebook is “open” (because it pays for that openwashing); the Foundation’s love of mass surveillance and spin regarding such surveillance is reaching new heights for the Foundation, clearly misusing the “Linux” brand, is rapidly becoming a leading voice for malicious surveillance companies that need openwashing to merely seem or feel “ethical”

  12. [Meme] IBM and Its Shakeups (Shaking up of the Earth)

    The Linux Foundation helps IBM seed shallow press coverage [1-6] about how IBM supposedly ‘saves the world from earthquakes’ 75 years after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan (after IBM had helped develop these), causing earthquakes-like effects and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people

  13. Backup: KIRO Report About Arrest of Rick Allen Jones

    We're making a mirror of this report as the media never touches the topic anymore

  14. Promoting False Perspectives and Narratives About GNU/Linux to Let Microsoft Dominate/Control Everything (Sometimes Quite Cynically in the Name of 'Security' or 'Responsibility')

    Microsoft's "perception management" games are progressing and are finding their way into official blogs of supposed 'competitors' like Canonical and SUSE

  15. Links 13/8/2020: New LibreOffice 6.4.x, Linspire 9.0, Endless OS 3.8.5

    Links for the day

  16. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) Identified Some of the Children in the Pornographic 'Stash' of Bill Gates' Engineer

    Today we carefully and responsibly disclose just 9 pages (out of about 2700 pages) with slightly redacted samples and a handful of exemptions to show what Bill Gates' engineer was amassing, including identified kids (known to NCMEC)

  17. A Red Hat Response to Factual Information About Red Hat

    So far we've seen only Red Hat employees blasting our articles about Red Hat/IBM and the responses lack any substance, just name-calling (so we must be on the right track; there's no refutation so far)

  18. Always Look for Stories the Media is Suppressing and Hiding

    Based upon closer scrutiny of the Jones case (engineer of Bill Gates arrested for pedophilia at the Gates mansion), the sentence he received is incredibly negligible or close to nothing (for possession and sharing/dissemination of massive troves of child pornography, typically leading to many years in prison), so we’re closely examining if he’s still working and whether he still works for Bill and Melinda (more FOIA requests may be necessary)

  19. On Web Servers, Microsoft's Collapse Continues More Rapidly Under COVID (a Million Domains Lost in the Past Month)

    Even though the Microsoft-sponsored media repeatedly refuses (or strangely enough just 'fails') to report on it, the days of Microsoft's IIS are likely numbered; it won't be long before less than a million computers run it

  20. Canonical is Boosting Microsoft's Proprietary Software With Extensive Surveillance

    Canonical’s commitment to Free software barely exists; with so-called “Apps” and “Snaps” and “Stores” we’re seeing a gradual transition to — and acceptance of — blobs and DRM, including Microsoft lock-in inside Ubuntu

  21. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 12, 2020

    IRC logs for Wednesday, August 12, 2020

  22. Harfbuzz Joins LibFFI, Zlib1g in Dragging GNOME, All Free Software Towards Microsoft

    "...I don’t want to help them help Microsoft control my computing by proxy — by controlling the development platform itself"

  23. Links 12/8/2020: Go 1.15, LibreOffice 7.0 Downloaded About Half a Million Times, LibreELEC (Leia) 9.2.4

    Links for the day

  24. Mega Setup, Mini Budget

    For a sum total of under £800 (eight hundred British pounds are about USD/$1043) one can piece together a versatile working environment (my latest additions, as of 5 days ago, are the 4 plastic plants)

  25. Twitter Appears to Have Taken Vendor/Platform Lock-in up Another Notch, Having Become Almost as Malicious as Facebook

    Twitter jumped the shark

  26. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 11, 2020

    IRC logs for Tuesday, August 11, 2020

  27. Infographic by Marcia Wilbur: Where's My Refund?!

    Tweet by Marcia Wilbur:

  28. Links 12/8/2020: New GNU Emacs, GXml-0.20, WordPress 5.5, and Mozilla is Laying off 250 Staff

    Links for the day

  29. You Just Know Somebody is in a State of Retreat When the Strategy Becomes to Discredit One's Critics (or Collectively Paint Them All as Wrong/Crazy)

    A goulash of bullcrap from Bill Gates doesn't add up; it seems like his media strategy has warped (or fallen back) onto discrediting his critics as though they don't exist, don't know anything, or are simply jealous

  30. United States v IBM Archives/Resources

    As the massive case against IBM monopoly (United States v IBM; 104,400 pages of trial transcripts and 17,000 exhibits) predates the World Wide Web it's difficult to find comprehensive literature about it any longer (Wikipedia and more modern sites are instruments of revisionism and reputation laundering)

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