Linux Action News Video

Google steps up support for older Chromebooks, Microsoft Edge is coming to Linux, and the App Defense Alliance teams up to fight Android malware.

Plus Google Cardboard goes open source, and a neat machine-learning tool to pull songs apart.

Special Guest: Wes Payne.

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• Google gives most Chromebooks an extra year of software support — Seven Chromebooks from Lenovo recently had their support lifespan extended, and now Google has updated the EOL date for 135 more models from several manufacturers. Most models received another year of support, others only got another six months, and some now have two more years.

Fedora arrives from the future, the big players line up behind KernelCI, and researchers claim significant vulnerabilities in Horde.

Plus, Google's new dashboard for WordPress and ProtonMail's apps go open source.

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• Fedora 31 is officially here! — This release features GNOME 3.34, which brings significant performance enhancements which will be especially noticeable on lower-powered hardware.

Fedora Server brings the latest in cutting-edge open source server software to systems administrators in an easy-to-deploy fashion.

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  

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.

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

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

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, pleasetake 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),

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

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.
• Welcome to the Future of Cloud Native Java | Eclipse Foundation — To say this a big deal is an understatement. With 18 different member organizations, over 160 new committers, 43 projects, and a codebase of over 61 million lines of code in 129 Git repositories, this was truly a massive undertaking.
• 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

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.