FOSS World News

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Linux Ending Support for the Floppy Drive, Unity 2019.2 Launches Today, Purism Unveils Final Librem 5 Smartphone Specs, First Kernel Security Update for Debian 10 "Buster" Is Out, and Twitter Is Switching from Mesos to Kubernetes

News briefs for July 30, 2019

Linux won't support the floppy drive much longer. ZDNet reports that Linus Torvalds has "declared the floppy drive project 'orphaned'". The article quotes Linus: "Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and while Willy was able to test this, I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint. The hardware that is still sold seems to be mainly USB-based, which doesn't use this legacy driver at all."

Unity 2019.2 launches today. From the Unity blog: "We have over 1000 developers dedicated to extending and improving Unity for you. In this release, you get more than 170 new features and enhancements for artists, designers, and programmers. We've updated ProBuilder, Shader Graph, 2D Animation, Burst Compiler, UI Elements, and many more." See this video for more details on all the new features, and go here to download.

Purism has unveiled the final specs for the Librem 5 Smartphone, which should begin shipping in Q3 2019 (Display: 5.7" IPS TFT screen @ 720x1440; Processor: i.MX8M Quad Core max. 1.5GHz; Memory: 3GB; Storage: 32GB eMMC internal storage—see the post for the rest). If you pre-order before July 31st, you'll get the early-bird discount price of $649.

The first kernel security update for Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster" is now available. According to Softpedia News, the update addresses security flaw CVE-2019-13272. Jann Horn of Google Project Zero "discovered that the ptrace subsystem in the Linux kernel mishandles the management of the credentials of a process that wants to create a ptrace relationship, allowing a local user to obtain root privileges under certain scenarios". The issue affects older versions of Debian as well, so all users should update now.

Twitter is switching from Mesos to Kubernetes. Zhang Lei, Senior Technical Expert on Alibaba Cloud Container Platform and Co-maintainer of Kubernetes Project, writes "with the popularity of cloud computing and the rise of cloud-based containerized infrastructure projects like Kubernetes, this traditional Internet infrastructure starts to show its age—being a much less efficient solution compared with that of Kubernetes". See Zhang's post for some background history and more details on the move.

from Linux Journal - The Original Magazine of the Linux Community https://ift.tt/2OsWvVo
via IFTTT

KDE Plasma 5.16.4 Desktop Environment Released with 18 Changes, Update Now

The KDE Project released today the fourth maintenance update to the latest KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment, a maintenance update that addresses various issues and regressions.

KDE Plasma 5.16.4 is now available three weeks after the KDE Plasma 5.16.3 update as yet another bugfix release in an attempt to keep the KDE Plasma 5.16 desktop environment as stable and reliable as possible. KDE Plasma 5.16.4 is not as big in changes as previous maintenance releases as it only includes a total of 18 bug fixes and improvements.

"Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.16.4. Plasma 5.16 was released in June with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience. This release adds three week's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are ty... (read more)

from Softpedia News / Linux https://ift.tt/2Kest2k
via IFTTT

LastPass Introduces New Products In Business Suite To Protect Enterprises

LastPass is a popular freemium password manager software available for different platforms, including Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. The software has now expanded its business suite by introducing three new products to offer all-round security to small and medium-sized businesses. LastPass has added the following three products to its business suite: 1. LastPass Enterprise LastPass […]

The post LastPass Introduces New Products In Business Suite To Protect Enterprises appeared first on Fossbytes.

from Fossbytes https://ift.tt/2Mq8BMk
via IFTTT

India Gets Its First Google-Powered Traffic Signals In Bengaluru

Bengaluru is one of the cities where traffic jams are a serious issue. To combat the issue, six modern traffic signals have been installed featuring Dynamic Signalling technology and will be powered by Google Maps. The traffic signals will use the technology to monitor the volume and speed of traffic to dynamically operate traffic signals. […]

The post India Gets Its First Google-Powered Traffic Signals In Bengaluru appeared first on Fossbytes.

from Fossbytes https://ift.tt/2GzHJWA
via IFTTT

Bash Shell Games: Let's Play Go Fish!

by Dave Taylor

How to begin developing a computer version of the popular card game.

Between the previous 163 columns I've written here in Linux Journal and the dozens of games I programmed and explored during the creation of my Wicked Cool Shell Scripts book, I've written a lot of Bash shell games. The challenge is to find one that's simple enough where a shell script will work, but isn't so simple that it ends up being only a half-dozen lines.

Magic 8-Ball is a perfect example. It turns out that the entire "predict the future" gizmo was really just a 20-sided die floating in dark purple fluid. So an array of 20 possible values and a random number selector and boom—you've got a magic 8-ball script:


#!/bin/sh

# magic 8 ball. Yup. Pick a random number, output message

# messages harvested from the Wikipedia entry

answers=("It is certain." "It is decidedly so."
  "Without a doubt." "Yes - definitely."
  "You may rely on it." "As I see it, yes." "Most likely."
  "Outlook good." "Yes." "Signs point to yes."
  "Reply hazy, try again." "Ask again later."
  "Better not tell you now." "Cannot predict now."
  "Concentrate and ask again." "Don't count on it."
  "My reply is no." "My sources say no."
  "Outlook not so good." "Very doubtful.")

echo "Oh! Magic 8 Ball, Please Tell Me True..." ; echo ""
/bin/echo -n "What is your question? "
read question

answer=$(( $RANDOM % 20 ))

echo ""
echo "I have looked into the future and I say: "
echo "     ${answers[$answer]}" ; echo ""

exit 0

Let's do a quick run to see if I'm the most popular LJ writer:


$ sh magic8.sh
Oh! Magic 8 Ball, Please Tell Me True...

What is your question? Am I the most popular LJ writer?

I have looked into the future and I say:
     My reply is no.

Ouch, that's harsh. I write the darn divination program, and it just drops a brick on my foot. Yeesh.

More seriously, Magic 8 Ball is too simple to make an interesting shell script. By contrast, Call of Duty is way too complex, even if I did a version with text output instead of gorgeously rendered 3D graphics.

Card Game Function Library

That's why card games prove to be good as programming challenges or exercises: the core mechanism of a 52-card random deck is pretty straightforward, so it's all about the actual cardplay.

Not only that, but as I've written before about card games as shell scripts, I already have a handy set of functions to create, shuffle and display cards out of a deck. If you want to rummage in the archives, I've tackled Acey-Deucey, Baccarat and some bits and pieces of Cribbage.

In order to jump right into the new game that I'm going to describe how to build, Go Fish!, let's steal the following functions from my earlier scripts:

Go to Full Article

from Linux Journal - The Original Magazine of the Linux Community https://ift.tt/2K6APJ2
via IFTTT

The 12 Best Gnome Shell Extensions

The GNOME Desktop Environment is among the most loved Linux Desktop Environments and with the right Linux tools you can turn it into the perfect one for you. One way of customizing the DE is by using any of the many extensions available for free – which, apart from taking you steps closer to having an ideal UI/UX, greatly […]

from FOSSMint: Everything About Linux and FOSS https://ift.tt/2KaRifq
via IFTTT

Move To iOS App Not Working? Here Is How To Fix It

I was pretty excited about my brand new iPhone XS (first iPhone to be precise). To switch from Android to iOS device, one of my friends suggested that I install Move to iOS app on the Android smartphone. So, I do what I have been told because everything needs to be perfect. This was not […]

The post Move To iOS App Not Working? Here Is How To Fix It appeared first on Fossbytes.

from Fossbytes https://ift.tt/2MqKpJJ
via IFTTT