Linux Action News 120

08/26/19 • 27 min

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.

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.

Support Linux Action News

Links:

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.

Previous Episode

Linux Action News 119

We go hands-on with the big Xfce release that took four years and five months to develop. Kubernetes gets an audit that might just set a precedent, and Google has a new feature for AMP that has us all worked up.

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Xfce 4.14 released — After 4 years and 5 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.14, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.12.
Xubuntu Daily
Open Sourcing the Kubernetes Security Audit — The group created an open request for proposals, taking responsibility for evaluating the submitted proposals and recommending the vendor best suited to complete a security assessment against Kubernetes, bearing in mind the high complexity and wide scope of the project.
wg-security-audit at master · kubernetes/community · GitHub
Someone audited the Kubernetes source
Server-side rendering for AMP — AMP now officially supports a technique called server-side rendering (SSR) which you can apply to your AMP pages to make them load even faster. Our tests show increases of up to a whopping 50% on the popular FCP metric.
OSdisc.com Has Closed — In just the past couple days, a very popular Linux OS supply site has closed.

Next Episode

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.