FOSS World News: August 2018

Friday, August 31, 2018

Gnome 3 & best extensions

Baby got Tux. I've written an article introducing several highly useful and practical extensions for the Gnome desktop environment, including desktop dock, clipboard, media indicator, weather, terminal, visual customization, and more. Take a look.

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Google Bought Mastercard Data To Track Your Offline Purchases For Ad-Targeting

Google has reportedly struck a secret deal with Mastership to track offline shopping details of credit card users. Apparently, it paid millions of dollars to Mastercard to access nearly two billion cardholders’ data. According to Bloomberg, this deal was finally brokered between the two companies after four years of negotiation. Neither Google nor Mastercard has […]

The post Google Bought Mastercard Data To Track Your Offline Purchases For Ad-Targeting appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Distribution Release: Linux Mint 3 "LMDE"

The Linux Mint team has published a new version of the distribution's Debian-based branch. The new version, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 3, is based on Debian 9 "Stretch" and features the Cinnamon desktop environment. "LMDE is a Linux Mint project and it stands for Linux Mint Debian....

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Firefox to Block Tracking by Default, ZeroPhone Project Coming Soon, Google Code-in 2018, OpenStack Releases Version 18 "Rocky" and Greg Kroah-Hartman on Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities

News briefs for August 31, 2018.

Mozilla yesterday announced a different approach to anti-tracking on the internet. Mozilla's new approach means that "in the near future, Firefox will—by default—protect users by blocking tracking while also offering a clear set of controls to give our users more choice over what information they share with sites." In order to accomplish this, Mozilla has three key initiatives: improve page load performance, remove cross-site tracking and mitigate harmful practices.

ZeroPhone, an "open-source Linux-powered $50 smartphone, is being launched on Crowd Supply. The project is coming soon, and according to its description, "It has no carrier locks, bloated apps, or data mining, and it doesn't depend on big companies." In addition, it's based on Raspberry Pi Zero, ESP8266 and Arduino.

Google announces its Google Code-in (GCI) 2018 contest. The contest begins October 23, 2018 and ends December 12, 2018, and "students ages 13–17 from around the world can learn about open source development by working on real open source projects, with mentorship from active developers." See the Google Code-in 2018 site for information for both students and mentoring organizations.

OpenStack released Rocky, version 18, of the open-source cloud infrastructure software yesterday. According to the release statement, the two main new features are "refinements to Ironic (the bare metal provisioning service) and fast forward upgrades". In addition, version 18 addresses "new user requirements for hardware accelerators, high availability configurations, serverless capabilities, and edge and internet of things (IoT) use cases".

Greg Kroah-Hartman warned attendees at the Open Source Summit North America about the "the severe impact the Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities could have on them, as well as detailed how Linux kernel developers are dealing with the flaws", eWeek reports. He also strongly criticized the way Intel initially handled the disclosure.

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Motorola Announces Android One Devices: Motorola One and Motorola One Power

After months of speculation and leaks, Motorola has finally announced its Android One devices — Motorola One and Motorola One Power. In a blog post, the company states that Motorola One series will be the first one to receive Android Pie, joining the Android One device queue which will be receiving the update later this fall. As […]

The post Motorola Announces Android One Devices: Motorola One and Motorola One Power appeared first on Fossbytes.

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FOSS Project Spotlight: Run Remote Tasks on Linux and Windows with Puppet Bolt

by John S. Tonello

Puppet, the company that makes automation software for managing systems and delivering software, has introduced Puppet Bolt, an open-source, agentless multiplatform tool for running commands, scripts, tasks and orchestrated workflows on remote Linux and Windows systems.

The tool, which is freely available as a Linux package, Ruby gem and macOS or Windows installer, is ideal for sysadmins and others who want to perform a wide range of automation tasks on remote bare-metal servers, VMs or cloud instances without the need for any prerequisites. Puppet Bolt doesn't require any previous Puppet know-how. Nor does it require a Puppet agent or Puppet master. It uses only SSH and WinRM (or can piggyback Puppet transports) to communicate and execute tasks on remote nodes.

Despite its simplicity, Puppet Bolt can execute all your existing scripts written in Bash, PowerShell, Python or any other language, stop and start Linux or Windows services, gather information about packages and system facts, or deploy procedural orchestrated workflows, otherwise known as plans. You can do all this right from your workstation or laptop.

For those already using open-source Puppet or Puppet Enterprise, Puppet Bolt enables you to take advantage of the more than 5,700 modules available in the Puppet Forge for everything from deploying database servers to setting up Docker or Kubernetes. You also can query PuppetDB directly with Puppet Bolt.

Install Puppet Bolt and Run Some Tasks

You also can install Puppet Bolt with apt or yum once you add the Puppet repositories:


$ sudo apt install puppet-bolt

You can install Puppet Bolt on Windows with the available .msi, or if you're running Bash on Windows 10, by using the Linux instructions for the flavor you installed. Follow the link in the Resources section to see detailed installation instructions for your favorite platform.

If you're running Ruby (and have gcc and make on your workstation), you can get Puppet Bolt up and running in moments with the simple command:


$ gem install bolt

In just a few minutes, you're now ready to start running one-off commands, tasks, scripts or plans. Puppet Bolt is perfect for troubleshooting or deploying quick changes, distributing scripts to run across your infrastructure, or automating changes that need to happen in a particular order as part of an application deployment. See the built-in Puppet Bolt commands by running:


$ bolt help

Figure 1. Built-in Puppet Bolt Commands

A typical Puppet Bolt command looks like this:

Go to Full Article

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Xiaomi Redmi 6, Redmi 6 Pro, and Redmi 6A To Debut In India On September 5

Following the Indian debut of Android One device – Mi A2 and the Xiaomi’s first under the Poco sub-brand – Poco F1, the company is making yet another massive launch for its MIUI fans in India. Xiaomi is all set to launch the Redmi 6 series – Redmi 6, Redmi 6 Pro and Redmi 6A, […]

The post Xiaomi Redmi 6, Redmi 6 Pro, and Redmi 6A To Debut In India On September 5 appeared first on Fossbytes.

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cloudHQ – Sync Google Apps and G Suite to Cloud Accounts for Free

cloudHQ is a free and secure software desktop client that enables you to back data up from your Google account apps e.g. Gmail and Google Drive to a variety of other Cloud service options including Amazon S3, Office 365, Egnyte, Evernote, Dropbox, and Google Drive. cloudHQ comes with a number of tools to improve user productivity […]

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Thursday, August 30, 2018

Android 9 Pie Safe From The WiFi Bug That Leaks Sensitive Data

Researchers have discovered a vulnerability in all Android versions except Android 9, which could allow attackers to capture WiFi broadcast data and even pinpoint geolocation of users — all of this without user’s consent. Nightwatch Cybersecurity posted a security advisory about the bug CVE-2018-9489, which states how the broadcasted information for installed Android apps can cause the device to […]

The post Android 9 Pie Safe From The WiFi Bug That Leaks Sensitive Data appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Honor Magic 2: Huawei’s Truly Bezel-Less Smartphone With A Slider

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor showed up at IFA 2018 with a surprise announcement: an early tease of its new Honor Magic 2 smartphone that’d come with almost 100 percent screen-to-body ratio. In the smartphone design world, full of notches and chins, Magic 2 dares to bring a truly bezel-less phone. However, it is isn’t the first one to […]

The post Honor Magic 2: Huawei’s Truly Bezel-Less Smartphone With A Slider appeared first on Fossbytes.

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How to Create a Slideshow of Photos in Ubuntu 18.04

Creating a slideshow of photos is a matter of a few clicks. Here's how to make a slideshow of pictures in Ubuntu 18.04 and other Linux distributions.

Source

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Firefox Browser Will Soon Block All Web Trackers By Default

There’s no denying the fact that data collection on the web is one of the fundamental ways how our Internet actually works. But then comes the practice of unchecked data collection, which brings along tons of negative impacts like performance impact and data breaches. It seems that Mozilla is planning to block all kinds of […]

The post Firefox Browser Will Soon Block All Web Trackers By Default appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 To Sport Bezel-Less Look With A Camera Slider

It seems like we are finally getting rid of the whole “notch trend.” Xiaomi President Lin Pin officially posted an image of the upcoming Mi Flagship – Mi Mix 3 — that comes without the notch! The new Xiaomi device image speaks for itself. But if you still didn’t get it, Mi Mix 3 will […]

The post Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 To Sport Bezel-Less Look With A Camera Slider appeared first on Fossbytes.

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iPhone XS And Apple Watch Series 4 Revealed in Accidental Leak

Soon after Apple announced the official release date of new iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad models, a massive leak allowed 9to5Mac to grab hold of images of the upcoming ‘iPhone XS’ and Apple Watch Series 4. The first look of the two models out of total three iPhone models that were expected to be announced […]

The post iPhone XS And Apple Watch Series 4 Revealed in Accidental Leak appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Ubuntu 18.10 Won’t Include Android Integration After All

connect android to ubuntu Always possibility, and now sadly confirmed: Ubuntu 18.10 won’t ship with Android phone integration out of the box. The feature, provided by the GSconnect GNOME Shell extension, a Qt-free implementation of the KDE Connect service, was proposed for inclusion in Ubuntu 18.10 early on in the development cycle by Ubuntu desktop manager Will Cooke. Like many, we […]

This post, Ubuntu 18.10 Won’t Include Android Integration After All, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

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Linux Kernel 4.17 Reaches End of Life, Users Are Urged to Upgrade to Linux 4.18

The Linux 4.17 kernel series has reached end of life earlier this week with the release of the nineteenth maintenance update (Linux 4.17.19) and it won't receive further updates.

Launched by Linus Torvalds on June 3, 2018, the Linux 4.17 kernel series introduced better hardware support thanks to the addition of support for Intel's Cannon Lake architecture, as well as support for the Nvidia Tegra Xavier processor.

It also added support for the Andes NDS32 RISC-like architecture and AMD's upcoming Radeon Vega 12 graphics processing units, and it deprecated several microarchitectures, including Blackfin, CRIS, FR-V, M32R, Metag, MN10300, SCORE, and TILE.

Linux kernel 4.17 also enabled Display Code (DC) support in the open-source AMDGPU driver for HDMI audio/sound, added support for Intel's High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) digital copy protection, and improved power management.

Linux kernel 4.17 reached end of life, upgrade to Linux kernel 4.1... (read more)

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New OpenStack cloud release embraces bare metal

The new open-source OpenStack cloud, Rocky, is easier ever both to upgrade and to deploy on bare metal.

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Confirmed: Apple Will Release New iPhones On September 12

With the onset of fall, Apple has announced the release date of its most anticipated event. The Cupertino-based company is set to unveil new editions of iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Macbook. The Apple event has been scheduled for September 12 this year, which is the same date on which the iPhone maker company organized […]

The post Confirmed: Apple Will Release New iPhones On September 12 appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Google Hands Off Kubernetes to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Kinetica Joins Automotive Grade Linux, NordVPN Releases NordVPN Linux App, Storj Labs Announces The Open Source Partner Program and Update on Librem 5 Phone

News briefs for August 30, 2018.

Google is handing over control of the Kubernetes project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. According to the TechCrunch post, Google is providing the foundation $9 million in Google Cloud credits to help cover the costs of building, testing and distributing the software.

Kinetica, "the insight engine for the Extreme Data Economy", is "taking steps to bring advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and its GPU engine to the global automotive industry" and becoming a silver member of The Linux Foundation and a bronze member of Automotive Grade Linux. Kinetica also has announced it is releasing Mapbox, its location data platform for mobile and web applications, to the Open Source community.

NordVPN recently released the NordVPN Linux app. This dedicated app for Linux makes it even easier to install the VPN on your machine. For more information and to download, visit the NordVPN for Linux download page.

Storj Labs, a decentralized cloud storage company, has announced The Open Source Partner Program, "a partnership that will enable open-source projects to generate revenue when their users store data in the cloud". According to ZDNet, Storj's executive chairman Ben Golub calls Storj Labs' decentralized storage technology "AirBnB for hard drives", and says that "the Storj network, unlike conventional cloud storage, will provide a sustaining revenue stream to open-source projects using the Storj network." It plans to give 60% of its gross revenue to the storage farmers and split the remaining 40% with open-source developers.

Purism yesterday provided an update on the development of its Chatty chat application for the Librem 5 phone. According to the post, "At the moment Chatty can perform some basic (and arguably most difficult task of) send and receive operations with SMS via ModemManager and a SIMCOM modem, as well as with XMPP/OMEMO messages via libpurple and the lurch plugin."

Automotive Grade Linux

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Supporting the NDS32 Architecture

by Zack Brown

Green Hu posted a patch to support the NDS32 architecture. He described the current status as, "It is able to boot to shell and passes most LTP-2017 testsuites in nds32 AE3XX platform."

Arnd Bergmann approved the patch, but Linus Torvalds wanted a little more of a description—an overview of the "uses, quirks, reasons for existing" for this chip, to include in the changelog.

Arnd replied:

The non-marketing description is that this is a fairly conventional (in a good way) low-end RISC architecture that is usually integrated into custom microcontroller and SoC designs, competing with the similar ARM32, ARC, MIPS32, RISC-V, Xtensa and (currently under review) C-Sky architectures that occupy the same space. The most interesting bit from my perspective is that Andestech are already selling a new generation of CPU cores that are based on 32-bit and 64-bit RISC-V, but are still supporting enough customers on the existing cores to invest in both.

And Green also said:

Andes nds32 architecture supports Linux for Andes's N10, D10, N13, N15, D15 processor cores.

Based on the patented 16/32-bit AndeStar RISC-like architecture, we designed the configurable AndesCore series of embedded processor families. AndesCores range from highly performance-efficient small-footprint cores for microcontrollers and deeply-embedded applications to 1GHz+ cores running Linux, covering general-purpose N-series cores for a wide range of computing needs; DSP-capable D-series cores for digital signal control; instruction-extensible E-series cores for application-specific acceleration; and secure S-series cores for best protection of the most valuable.

Our customers together have shipped over 2.5 billion SoCs with Andes processors embedded (including non-MMU IP cores). It will help our customers to get better Linux support if we are merged into mainline.

It looks like there's no controversy over this port, and it should fly into the main tree. One reason for the easy adoption is that it doesn't touch any other part of the kernel—if the patch breaks anything, it'll break only that one architecture, so there's very little risk in letting Green make his own choices about what to include and what to leave out. Linus's main threshold will probably be, does it compile? If yes, then it's okay to go in.