Linux Action News

Linux Action News

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Linux Action News episodes

  • Linux Action News 129

    GNOME decides to fight, Ubuntu's desktop director steps down, GitLab backs off its telemetry plans, and we've got the data on Google's Project Treble.

    Plus, the latest Firefox has a new dashboard, and it looks like Disney+ won't work on Linux.

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    • GNOME files defense against patent troll
    — Agreeing to this would leave this patent live, and allow this to be used as a weapon against countless others. We will stand firm against this baseless attack, not just for GNOME and Shotwell, but for all free and open source software projects.
  • Will Cooke, the Director of Engineering for the Ubuntu desktop, has left Canonical
    • — That's all folks! Eoan was my last #Ubuntu release and I am handing over the reigns to the ever awesome @m_wimpress. Expect 20.04 LTS to be amazingly amazing! Excited for my new gig @InfluxDB
  • Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center Letting You Track the Trackers
    • — Today we’re introducing a new feature that offers you a free report outlining the number of third-party and social media trackers blocked automatically by the Firefox browser with Enhanced Tracking Protection.
  • GitLab telemetry debacle
    • — To make GitLab better faster, we need more data on how users are using GitLab.
  • Announcing $268 million in Series E funding
  • Google shows just how much Project Treble has improved OS Android adoption
    • — Project Treble modularizes Android to make it easier for OEMs to update devices.
  • It looks like Disney Plus won’t work on Linux
    • — Disney+ streaming uses draconian DRM, avoid  
    43 min
  • Linux Action News 128

    A new Ubuntu has promise, Linux on Dex is dead, and our strong reaction to Google pulling two open-source apps from the Play Store.

    Plus a big boost for ARM on Linux, and our thoughts on recent Red Hat news.

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    • Ubuntu 19.10 Released
    — Ubuntu 19.10 “Eoan Ermine” boasts an upgraded Linux kernel along with faster boot times, updated themes, and experimental ZFS file system support. Whether or not you upgrade, Ermine shows what to expect from Ubuntu’s next LTS release, due April 2020.
  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Codenamed The Focal Fossa, Arriving On 23 April
  • Canonical Pulled In $99M While Still Operating At A Loss
  • Ubuntu 19.10 Flavours Released
  • Ubuntu 19.10's Kernel Ships With A DoS / Arbitrary Code Execution Bug In The IPv6 Code
  • TechSNAP 414: Rooting for ZFS
  • IBM Misses Estimates as Red Hat Fails to Offset Declines
    • — Red Hat included in results for first time since 2018 purchase.
  • Samsung ends Linux on DeX beta with Android 10
    • — Samsung will no longer provide support on future OS and device releases. The company also notes that users will not be able to perform a version rollback to Android 9 Pie once they have upgraded to Android 10.
  • Bare Metal Arm-Based EC2 Instances
    • — Just like for existing bare metal instances (M5, M5d, R5, R5d, z1d, and so forth), your operating system runs directly on the underlying hardware with direct access to the processor.
  • Graboid: First-Ever Cryptojacking Worm Found in Images on Docker Hub
    • — Unit 42 researchers identified a new cryptojacking worm we’ve named Graboid that’s spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts.
  • Docker Containers Riddled with Graboid Crypto-Worm
  • andOTP removed from Google Play Store
    • — andOTP was recently removed from the Google Play Store for violating their payment terms.
    This is most likely due to the fact that we offer in-app donation links that DO NOT use Googles In-App billing, which is against their terms.
  • andOTP - Android OTP Authenticator
  • WireGuard removed from Google Play Store
    • — They said it was because we're in violation of their "Payments Policy", presumably because we have a link inside the app that opens the user's web browser to wireguard.com/donations/.
  • WireGuard commit reversed dev comments interesting
  • WireGuard - Apps on Google Play
  • WireGuard Restored In Android's Google Play Store
    • 27 min
  • Linux Action News 127

    Richard Stallman's GNU leadership is challenged by an influential group of maintainers, SUSE drops OpenStack "for the customer," and Google claims Stadia will be faster than a gaming PC.

    Plus OpenLibra aims to save us from Facebook but already has a miss, lousy news for Telegram, and enormous changes for AMP.

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    • FSF and GNU
    — GNU decision-making has largely been in the hands of GNU leadership. Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU ("Chief GNUisance"), the FSF is now working with GNU leadership on a shared understanding of the relationship for the future.
  • Joint statement on the GNU Project
    • — Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to.
  • No radical changes in GNU Project
    • — As Chief GNUisance, I'd like to reassure the community
    that there won't be any radical changes in the GNU Project's goals, principles and policies.
  • SUSE is dropping OpenStack and embracing Kubernetes
    • — As we make these bold customer-driven investments and in order to maximize these opportunities, SUSE has carefully reviewed its business and has decided to cease production of new versions of SUSE OpenStack Cloud and to discontinue sales of SUSE OpenStack Cloud.
  • AMP is joining the OpenJS Foundation incubation program
    • — After considering many options for a foundation that meets all of AMP’s needs, the OpenJS Foundation stood out as an ideal home for AMP.
  • Google Stadia will be “faster and more responsive” than local gaming hardware
    • — Thanks to some precog trickery, Google believes its streaming system will be faster than the gaming systems of the near-future, no matter how powerful they may become.
  • Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months
    • — Retro console a mess, may never launch, sources allege
  • Atari disputes reports that its retro-inspired console is doomed
  • Open Libra
    • — An open platform for financial inclusion. Not run by Facebook.
  • 'Members' of OpenLibra Disavow Project Days After Its Devcon Unveiling
  • Facebook’s Libra Association crumbling
    • 28 min
  • Linux Action News 126

    Microsoft's CEO says Windows doesn't matter anymore, but do we buy it? Nextcloud 17 goes enterprise-grade and the Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones.

    Plus, Google finds an Android zero-day in the wild, and the Document Collective's new approach to earn revenue for LibreOffice.

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    • Nextcloud 17 brings remote wipe, collaborative text editor
    — This release brings major new improvements, especially around security and team collaboration.
  • Starting The Document Collective
    • — In particular, selling branded versions of LibreOffice in the macOS and Windows app stores has not been something that TDF could tackle. The TDF board of directors is looking to change that with the creation of a new entity, The Document Collective (TDC)
  • The Internet’s horrifying new method for installing Google apps on Huawei phones
    • — Just make a Chinese website your device's remote administrator. It'll be fine!
  • Google finds serious Android zero-day
    • — Vulnerability was patched in older Android OS versions, but resurfaced in newer releases.
  • Affecting devices from Samsung, Huawei, and Google itself
  • Microsoft doesn’t think Windows is important anymore
    • — “The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us,” was the message from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella yesterday.
  • Microsoft Graph
  • Jupiter Extras: Reverse Proxy Basics
    • 27 min
  • Linux Action News 125

    CentOS Stream and 8 have quite a bit for us to talk about, Docker's struggles go public, and the GNOME Foundation is facing a patent fight.

    Plus the best bit of Android 10 Go, Microsoft gives serious thought to bringing Edge to Linux, and Stallman's role at GNU comes into question.

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    • CentOS 8 Released
    — Hello and welcome to the first CentOS-8 release. The CentOS Linux distribution is a stable, predictable, manageable and reproducible platform derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
  • Presenting CentOS Stream
    • — CentOS Stream will be a rolling-release Linux distro that exists as a midstream between the upstream development in Fedora Linux and the downstream development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is a cleared-path to contributing into future minor releases of RHEL while interacting with Red Hat and other open source developers. This pairs nicely with the existing contribution path in Fedora for future major releases of RHEL.`
  • Transforming the development experience within CentOS
  • Fedora and CentOS Stream
    • — There’s not really been a consistent flow between the projects and product at all.
  • Docker is struggling financially
    • — Docker CEO Rob Bearden sent an email to employees this week acknowledging challenges as the company tries to raise money.
  • GNOME Foundation facing lawsuit
    • — The GNOME Foundation has been made aware of a lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC over patent 9,936,086. Rothschild allege that Shotwell, a free and open source personal photo manager infringes this patent.
  • Donate to GNOME
  • QR Code Patent Troll Sues Dickey’s Barbecue
  • Google announces Android 10 (Go edition)
    • — Android 10 (Go edition) includes a new form of encryption, built by Google for entry-level smartphones, called Adiantum.
  • Gallery Go by Google Photos - Apps on Google Play
  • Android: Try OTA updates without committing
    • — That’s why they unveiled Dynamic System Updates (DSU) in Android 10 to let developers try a barebones version of a new OS update without unlocking the bootloader or wiping data.
  • Sean Larkin on Twitter
    • — "🚨🔥We on the @MSEdgeDev team are fleshing out requirements to bring Edge to Linux, and we need your help w/ some assumptions!🚨🔥 If you're a dev who depends on Linux for dev, testing, personal browsing, _please_take a second to fill out this survey! 📝 https://t.co/PCerGONmCG" / Twitter
  • Stallman intends to keep leading GNU
    • — I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance),
    and I intend to continue as such.
  • Stallman changes his mind and quits GNU leadership role?
    • — I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately.
  • Richard Stallman Reportedly Steps Down As Head Of The GNU Project
    • 22 min
  • Linux Action News 124

    Richard Stallman resigns, we share our thoughts and discuss the future for RMS and the FSF.

    Plus what systemd-homed is, why Debian is reconsidering init diversity, and some good news for CentOS.

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    • Richard Stallman resigns from the FSF
  • Richard Stallman resigns from MIT
    • — I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.
  • A reflection on the departure of RMS - Thomas Bushnell
    • — By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
  • LINUX Unplugged 319: Positive in the Freedom Dimension
  • Debian reconsiders init diversity
    • — In some ways dropping Elogind is a bigger decision. If we ever want to try something different than Systemd, we'll need something like Elogind.
  • Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In "Init System Diversity"
  • systemd-homed: systemd Now Working To Improve Home Directory Handling
    • — Among the goals are allowing more easily migratable home directories, ensuring all data for users is self-contained to the home directories, UID assignments being handled to the local system, unified user password and encryption key handling, better data encryption handling in general, and other modernization efforts.
  • Lennart's Video: Reinventing Home Directories
  • Huawei confirms the new Mate 30 Pro won’t come with Google’s Android apps
    • — Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer products division, revealed onstage at a press event in Germany this morning that the company has been forced to drop Google’s Mobile Services (GMS) license on the Mate 30 series of devices.
  • Huawei clarifies it has "no plans" to unlock the bootloader
    • — Huawei has “no plans” to unlock the bootloader on Mate 30 series devices.
  • Oracle announces Oracle Autonomous Linux
    • — Oracle Autonomous Linux provisions itself, scales itself, tunes itself and patches itself while running.
  • CentOS Linux 7 (1908) released
    • — This release supersedes all previously released content for CentOS
    Linux 7
    32 min
  • Linux Action News 123

    Speed is the big story around GNOME 3.34, two new major Firefox security features start to roll out, and we explain the CentOS 8 delay.

    Plus our thoughts on the PineTime, and more.

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    • GNOME 3.34 Released
    — Version 3.34 contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many improvements, performance improvements and new features.
  • GNOME 3.34 Released with "Drastically Improved" Responsiveness
  • GNOME Firmware 3.34.0 Release
    • — With the new fwupd 1.3.1 you can now build just the libfwupd library, which makes it easy to build GNOME Firmware (old name: gnome-firmware-updater) in Flathub
  • Please welcome Acer to the LVFS
    • — Acer has now officialy joined the LVFS, promoting the Aspire A315 firmware to stable.
  • Firefox’s Test Pilot Program Returns with Firefox Private Network Beta
    • — It originally started as an Add-on before we relaunched it three years ago. Then in January, we announced that we were evolving our culture of experimentation, and as a result we closed the Test Pilot program to give us time to further explore what was next.
  • Mozilla to gradually enable DNS-over-HTTPS later this month
    • — Mozilla plans to enable support for the DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol by default inside the Firefox browser for a small number of US users starting later this month.
  • Google Unveils DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) Plan
  • Wherefore Art Thou CentOS 8?
    • — Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 was released on May 7th, 2019.
  • PineTime on Twitter
    • — "This is the #PineTime (actual photo) - a #Linux smartphone companion and a side-project of ours. Are you a @real_FreeRTOS or @ArmMbed developer with an interest in smartwatches? - let us know. https://t.co/j7ygDWNqbD" / Twitter
    26 min
  • Linux Action News 122

    Android 10 has a lot we like while the PinePhone is real and closer than we thought.

    Plus Red Hat's new desktop strategy, and what we think Mozilla is getting right.

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    • Welcoming Android 10!
    — Today we're releasing the Android 10 source code to Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and making it available to the broader ecosystem. We’re also starting the official Android 10 rollout to all three generations of Pixel devices worldwide.
  • Google Releases Android 10 With "Vulkan Everywhere", Privacy Improvements
  • The Verge Android 10 Review
  • Android 10 adds warnings for USB port contamination and overheating
  • The PinePhone is real & shipping soon
    • — I am hereby happy to announce that the first PinePhones have now entered production and will start shipping to developers this month.
  • Firefox 69 released
    • — As of today, Enhanced Tracking Protection will be turned on by default
  • Tor Blog: Browser Fingerprinting - An Introduction and the Challenges Ahead
  • Introducing Red Hat CodeReady Containers
    • — CodeReady Containers brings a minimal, preconfigured OpenShift 4.1 or newer cluster to your local laptop or desktop computer for development and testing purposes.
    25 min
  • Linux Action News 121

    Microsoft continues to prove how much it loves Linux while Google tries to eat their lunch, mixed news from Mozilla, and good stuff from GNOME.

    Plus Telegram's cryptocurrency is definitely happening. Honest.

    Special Guest: Wes Payne.

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    • exFAT in the Linux kernel? Yes!
    — It’s important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft’s technical specification for exFAT publicly available to facilitate development of conformant, interoperable implementations. We also support the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network’s Linux System Definition, where, once accepted, the code will benefit from the defensive patent commitments of OIN’s 3040+ members and licensees.
  • The Initial exFAT Driver Queued For Introduction With The Linux 5.4 Kernel
    • — Greg lived up to his talk and today committed the exFAT driver to staging-next. This nearly eleven thousand lines of new code did get the sign-off of Microsoft and with it being in the "-next" branch will be set for inclusion into the Linux 5.4 mainline code-base once Linux 5.3 is released.
  • Chris Beard to step down as Mozilla CEO
    • — This is a good place to recruit our next CEO and for me to take a meaningful break and recharge before considering what’s next for me. It may be a cliché — but I’ll embrace it — as I’m also looking forward to spending more time with my family after a particularly intense but gratifying tour of duty.
  • Thunderbird 68 released
    • — Thunderbird version 68.0 is only offered as direct download from thunderbird.net and not as upgrade from Thunderbird version 60 or earlier. A future version 68.1 will provide updates from earlier versions. Note that add-ons are only supported if add-on authors have adapted them.
  • What’s New in Thunderbird 68
    • — Thunderbird 68 focuses on polish and setting the stage for future releases. There was a lot of work that we had to do below the surface that has made Thunderbird more future-proof and has made it a solid base to continue to build upon. But we also managed to create some great features you can touch today.
  • Chrome OS gets first Chromebook Enterprise devices, faster Admin Console, and managed Linux environments
    • — Google today announced a slew of Chrome Enterprise updates, including a faster Google Admin console and managed Linux environments. The company also unveiled the first Chromebook Enterprise laptops: Dell’s Latitude 5300 for $819 and Latitude 5400 for $699.
  • GNOME Firmware Updater
    • — A few months ago, Dell asked if I’d like to co-mentor an intern over the summer. The task was to create a GTK “power user” application for managing firmware. The idea being that someone like Dell support could ask the user to run a little application and then read back firmware versions or downgrade to an older firmware version rather than getting them to use the command line.
  • GNOME Foundation launches Coding Education Challenge
    • — The GNOME Foundation, with support from Endless, has announced the Coding Education Challenge, a competition aimed to attract projects that offer educators and students new and innovative ideas to teach coding with free and open source software. The $500,000 in funding will support the prizes, which will be awarded to the teams who advance through the three stages of the competition. 
  • Telegram will launch its Gram cryptocurrency by October 31 or bust
    • — Telegram’s cryptocurrency— the Gram — may be going public after all. The encrypted messaging app company plans to deliver “the first batches” of the coin in the next two months, according to a report at The New York Times.
    21 min
  • Linux Action News 120

    More tools to keep your Linux box and cloud servers secure this week, OpenPOWER responds to Risc-V competition, and we ponder the year-long open-source supply chain attacks.

    Plus our reaction to Android dropping dessert names, the Confidential Computing consortium, and more.

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    • Today, 28 years ago Linus Torvalds announced Linux on comp.os.minix.
    — I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
  • System76 announce new firmware updater
    • — We’ve been working on the Firmware Manager project, which we will be shipping to all Pop!_OS users, and System76 hardware customers on other Debian-based distributions. It supports checking and updating firmware from LVFS and system76-firmware services, is Wayland-compatible, and provides both a GTK application and library.
  • The Next Step in the OpenPOWER Foundation Journey
    • — The OpenPOWER Foundation will now join projects and organizations like OpenBMC, CHIPS Alliance, OpenHPC and so many others within the Linux Foundation.
  • IBM is moving OpenPower Foundation to The Linux Foundation
  • Confidential Computing Consortium
    • — Confidential computing focuses on  securing data in use. Current approaches to securing data often  address data at rest (storage) and in transit (network)but encrypting data in use is  possibly the most challenging step to providing a fully encrypted lifecycle for sensitive data.
  • Confidential Computing Consortium Takes Shape
  • The year-long rash of supply chain attacks against open source is getting worse
    • — Backdoors snuck into 12 OSS packages were downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
  • Android to drop dessert names
    • — So, this next release of Android will simply use the version number and be called Android 10. We think this change helps make release names simpler and more intuitive for our global community. And while there were many tempting “Q” desserts out there, we think that at version 10 and 2.5 billion active devices, it was time to make this change. 
    28 min

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Weekly Linux news and analysis by Chris and Wes. The show every week we hope you'll go to when you want to hear an informed discussion about what’s happening.