• Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, May 2017
• Debian Installer Stretch RC 5 release

  The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the fifth release candidate of the installer for Debian 9 "Stretch".

  This will be the last release candidate, and the next upload of the debian-installer package will be used for the final Debian 9.0 build, without a separate announcement for the installer.

• Debian Installer Stretch Hits Its Final RC

  In prepping for the Debian 9.0 release in a few days, developers have uploaded Debian Installer Stretch RC5 that also serves as the installer's final release candidate.

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• Patching u-boot for use in an Ubuntu Core gadget snap

  This is the second post in the series about building u-boot based gadget snaps, following Building u-boot gadget snap packages from source.

  If you have read the last post in this series, you have likely noticed that there is a uboot.patch file being applied to the board config before building the u-boot binaries. This post will take a closer look at this patch.

• Smarter Window Snapping is Coming to GNOME Shell

  GNOME 3.26 is shaping up to be one heck of a release, as a recent update from GNOME developer Georges Stavracas shows.

• GNOME 3.26 Getting Better Half-Tiling Support
• Ubuntu Reveal Results of GNOME Desktop Survey

  The Ubuntu desktop team has finally revealed the results of the recent GNOME desktop user survey. But if you were hoping to find some definitive decisions taken as a result of the results you’re in for disappointment.

• Ubuntu OpenStack Dev Summary – 12th June 2017

  This summary is intended to be a regular communication of activities and plans happening in and around Ubuntu OpenStack, covering but not limited to the distribution and deployment of OpenStack on Ubuntu.

• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 510
• Linux Mint 18.2 “Sonya” KDE – BETA Release

  Linux Mint 18.2 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

• Qt 5.9.1 soft branching started

  We have today started soft branching from '5.9' to '5.9.1'. That way we should be able to release Qt 5.9.1 still during June. So please use '5.9.1' for new changes targeted to Qt 5.9.1 release. We will do final downmerge from '5.9' to '5.9.1' this Friday (16.6) and after that '5.9' will be for Qt 5.9.2.

• Qt 5.9.1 Should Be Out This Month

  While there didn't end up being any point/patch releases to Qt 5.8, The Qt Company is making good on their word for improving the release flow with Qt 5.9 and maintaining it as an LTS release.

• A KDE Connect Bluetooth Backend Is In Development

  Regular readers of this site will know that we lurrve KDE Connect (and for some very good reasons)! But one thing we’ve heard a number of you ask each time we write about is whether KDE Connect works over Bluetooth. Right now, it doesn’t — but that’s about to change.

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• Andy Rubin’s Essential phone announces carrier availability and it’s… Sprint
• Google adds Recaptcha API to Android to block the bots
• Adhell is a Free, Open Source Ad Blocker with Package Disabler for Samsung Devices
• Pixel 2 leaks show Google still moving between OEMs to make its phones
• Play Store downloads show Google Pixel sales limited to 1 million units

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• How open is OpenForge

  The central theme of OpenForge is e-governance, so it requires that the hosted project be related to e-governance. This is not a place for private companies, communities, or individuals to host their private source code repository. Only government departments can have private repositories here. Private companies and individuals must have public repositories. These are the only two aspects that are verified while approving a project on OpenForge. On OpenForge, projects, their members, and activities are not regulated or controlled in any other way.

  The decision whether or not to use OpenForge (and to what degree) rests with the respective project owner or department. They can decide what project source code they want to share and how they want to leverage the community to improve the code base.

  [...]

  The Singapore government is using GitHub to collaborate on its Government Digital Services. There’s a considerable difference between the way Singapore and India provide access to and visualisation of the data.The USA has also listed some of the projects on GitHub. Country’s(US) open data portal doesn’t rank high in terms of its user-friendliness but their data visualisation platform seems to be making up for it. In addition, many governments in Europe and America have come up with a policy to adopt open-source software and to open up the source code of government applications. These activities are mainly on platforms like GitHub and SourceForge (e.g. the US government has a code repository called code.gov which aggregates federal projects, but the code is hosted on GitHub).

• LibreOffice 6.0 Is In Development

  LibreOffice 6.0 will be the version that succeeds this summer's release of LibreOffice 5.4.

• Microfluidics for the masses

  A new MIT-designed open-source website might well be the Pinterest of microfluidics. The site, Metafluidics.org, is a free repository of designs for lab-on-a-chip devices, submitted by all sorts of inventors, including trained scientists and engineers, hobbyists, students, and amateur makers. Users can browse the site for devices ranging from simple cell sorters and fluid mixers, to more complex chips that analyze ocular fluid and synthesize gene sequences.

• Open-source microfluidic design: MIT opens online repository

  Seen at Metafluidics.org, the site is built as a free repository of designs for lab-on-a-chip devices, submitted by all sorts of inventors, including trained scientists and engineers, hobbyists, students, and amateur makers. Users can browse the site for devices ranging from simple cell sorters and fluid mixers, to more complex chips with niche dedicated functionalities.

• German breeders develop ‘open source’ plant seeds

  There's open-source software, open-source pharma research, and open-source beer. Now, there are open-source seeds, too. Breeders from Göttingen University in Germany and Dottenfelderhof agricultural school in Bad Vilbel, Germany, have released tomato and wheat varieties under an open-source license. Their move follows similar schemes for sharing plant material in India and the United States, but is the first that provides legal protection for the open-source status of future descendants of plant varieties.

• Eve V Uses Open-Source Concepts to Take on Microsoft’s Surface Pro
• Going Open Source to Make Your Own Loupedeck Alternative

  There is an extremely talented landscape photographer called Thomas Heaton whose YouTube videos I find very instructive and entertaining. Recently he featured a new product he was sent to try out: the Loupedeck, a physical console that lets you control Lightroom (the main software I use to sort, catalog and edit my photographs).

  [...]

  So, I cancelled my Loupedeck order and found a very reasonable MIDI controller for $65 from Adorama and ordered it instead (my lovely daughter is going to pay for it for Father’s Day — it’s so nice she’s earning her own money), and downloaded the open source midi2lr software (midi to Lightroom, get it?).

• Some Thoughts on Python-Like Languages

  I am not fond of change for change’s sake, but new opportunities often bring new priorities and challenges with them. What then if Python as people insist on it today, with all the extra features added over the years to satisfy various petitioners and trends, is actually the weakness itself? What if the Python-like languages can adapt to these changes, and by having to confront their incompatibilities with hastily-written code from the 1990s and code employing “because it’s there” programming techniques, they can adapt to the changing environment while delivering much of what people like about Python in the first place? What if Python itself cannot?

  “Why don’t you go and use something else if you don’t like what Python is?” some might ask. Certainly, Free Software itself is far more important to me than any adherence to Python. But I can also choose to make that other language something that carries forward the things I like about Python, not something that looks and behaves completely differently. And in doing so, at least I might gain a deeper understanding of what matters to me in Python, even if others refuse the lessons and the opportunities such Python-like languages can provide.

• [Older] GCC Developers Potentially Deprecating Intel MPX

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• Chrome 60 Beta Rolls Out With VP9 Improvements, New Developer Features

  Chrome 60 Beta adds a Paint Timing API to provide more insight to developers about their "first paint" performance, CSS font-display support, improvements to the Credential Management API, the Payment Request API has been added to desktop Chrome, there's a new Web Budget API to allow sites using push notifications to send a limited number of push messages that will trigger background work, support for Web Push Encryption was added, and a range of other CSS/JavaScript features and APIs.

• The Best Firefox Ever

  On the Firefox team, one thing we always hear from our users is that they rely on the web for complex tasks like trip planning and shopping comparisons. That often means having many tabs open. And the sites and web apps running in those tabs often have lots of things going on– animations, videos, big pictures and more. Complex sites are more and more common. The average website today is nearly 2.5 megabytes – the same size as the original version of the game Doom, according to Wired. Up until now, a complex site in one Firefox tab could slow down all the others. That often meant a less than perfect browsing experience.

• Thunderbird Arc Theme Updated With Support for Arc Variants

  An update to the Arc Thunderbird theme add-on is now available for download, and brings support for the 3 Arc GTK theme variants.

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• Change that default RasPi password, unless you meant to be donating cryptocurrency
• Raspberry Pi Malware Turns the Mini-Computer Into Cryptocurrency Miner
• New Linux Trojan Discovery Unveils Cryptomining in Raspberry Pi and Identity Cloaking Efforts
• Security updates for Tuesday
• Confidential medical records from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital exposed online by vendor’s error
• Hospital Sends Legal Threats To Researcher, Then Asks For Her Help Identifying Breach Victims
• Former NSA Security Architect Fills in Encryption Gaps
• Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world: The key trends

  Elsewhere, in its rundown of the biggest cybersecurity incidents of 2016, Trend Micro named ransomware attackers the 'most persistent cybercriminals' and the Mirai malware, which recruits vulnerable IoT devices into 'botnets' that deliver DDoS attacks, as the 'worst all-round troublemaker'.

• Say hello to Dvmap: The first Android malware with code injection

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Parted Magic creator Patrick Verner announced today the release and immediate availability of the Parted Magic 2017_06_12 updated ISO image of the commercial GNU/Linux distribution designed for disk partitioning and maintenance tasks.

The developers of the Tails amnesic incognito live system, also known as the anonymous operating system, were proud to announce today the release and immediate availability of Tails 3.0.

Tails 3.0 is a major update that's based entirely on the repositories of the soon-to-be-released Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system. It's also the first version of the operating system to be launched approximately at the same time as a new major release of Debian GNU/Linux.

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With E10S, our new version of Firefox nails the “just right” balance between memory and speed On the Firefox team, one thing we always hear from our users is that ...

I see a lot of frustration aimed at PulseAudio and projects that switch to relying on it. Why do people dislike PulseAudio?

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• Alpha Offers Core i7 Centurion Laptop Running Linux for $429

  You'd be forgiven for not recognizing the name Alpha. The company first made a splash back in March when it launched the 14-inch Litebook laptop running Elementary OS on a quad-core Intel Celeron and 4GB of RAM for $249. Now Alpha is back with two more products, one of which is a Coe i7 laptop.

• Alpha Centurion High Powered Laptop Unveiled From $429

  As well as announcing their new Litebox mini PC, Alpha have also unveiled a high powered laptop equipped with a 15.6-inch display, powered by an Intel Core i7 processor supported by 8GB of RAM.

• Alpha Litebox Mini PC Unveiled From $249

  Hardware manufacturer Alpha has this week unveiled a new addition to their range of computer systems with the launch of a new mini PC in the form of the aptly named Litebox which is available to purchase price from $249.

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​Every month we select the top themes for Ubuntu. Many themes stay same and many change. Themes are one of the best ways to make our desktop beautiful and who doesn’t want to make his desktop beautiful? The themes mentioned below are paid and free too. Select as per your liking and install it right now.

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It’s a Linux world, and the rest of computing is just living in it – often literally, thanks to containerization. IoT, in all of its manifold forms, is no exception, and the Linux Foundation lists these seven projects as the key players in the march of connected open-source systems.

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Hi there all, about to begin college for computer science with the intent of going into Net-Sec. As such, I need to upgrade from my small HP Tablet for a more linux friendly notebook. I have my eyes on the thinkpad series, was looking at refurbished models specifically the X230 and the T44s

I have found an X230 with 16GB RAM and a i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60 GHz w/ 256GB SDD for under $400

And a T440s with 12GB RAM and a i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz w/240GB SDD for under $500

I have compared stats of the CPUs and RAM online but cannot find a definitive answer as to which computer is better in terms of overall performance, and was hoping someone has experience with these platforms could lend some knowledge. In everyone's personal opinion, which would be best for triple booting Windows 10, Ubuntu and Kali? (Or dual boot and Kali Live) and use for regular work/ legal pen-testing?

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Open-source pioneer Munich has been warned the city could face increased risk from hackers if it goes ahead with a planned return to Windows.

Munich spent nine years and millions of euros shifting some 15,000 staff to a Linux-based OS and other open-source software, but is now expected to swap Linux for Windows 10 by 2021.

However, Munich's Green Party says the recent WannaCry ransomware attacks on Windows machines worldwide highlight how much more of a target Microsoft's OS is for hackers than Linux-based operating systems.

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Additional web browser news this week is Mozilla's launch today of Firefox 54.

Firefox 54 is significant in that the work of the Electrolysis project is now enabled for everyone: this is the multi-process support in Firefox designed for a more efficient web browser particularly around utilizing multiple tabs and/or content heavy sites. Firefox 54 will make use of up to four processes for dealing with web content.

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It was nice to hear and see that this unique open source/open hardware motion picture camera system venture is really moving forward to the point where developers and early adopters alike can now already get their kit. Mind you, if you are an “end user” like me, then the camera is NOT YET ready for us as the enclosure and actual operating system of the camera are still under development. Without those, operating the camera can be a tedious work.

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As daunting as securing your Linux system might seem, one thing to remember is that every extra step makes a difference. It's almost always better to make a modest stride than let uncertainty keep you from starting.

Fortunately, there are a few basic techniques that greatly benefit users at all levels, and knowing how to securely wipe your hard drive in Linux is one of them. Because I adopted Linux primarily with security in mind, this is one of the first things I learned. Once you have absorbed this lesson, you will be able to part with your hard drives safely.

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