Ricoh’s compact “Theta V” 360° camera runs Android on a Snapdragon 625, and offers WiFi, Bluetooth, and 4K imaging and live streaming.

Ricoh opened preorders for its Theta V 360° camera for $429, with shipments due in September. This update to the $349 Theta S has a similar 130.6 x 45.2 x 22.9mm footprint and 121-gram weight, but offers far greater image quality. The camera leverages an improved imaging algorithm, as well as dual 12-megapixel 1/ 2.3-inch sensors, to produce 3840 x 1920 (4K) resolution @ 30fps videos or stills, up from the 1920 x 960 pixels on the Theta S. Onboard WiFi and Bluetooth enables live, up to 4K streaming, as well as remote shooting.

• 1st code donation is complete

  Hi all, The 1st NetBeans code donation from Oracle to Apache is complete and http://bits.netbeans.org/download/apache-donation/ApacheNetBeansDonation1.zip is the first code drop. Everyone is welcome to look at the code, which will be imported into the Apache NetBeans repository. The 1st code donation, i.e., the NetBeans Platform + the Java SE tooling, which includes the new Jigsaw and JShell features, comprises around 45,000 files (around 4 million lines of code) to be transferred from Oracle to Apache. Hereby we are at step 5 of the process outlined below. Mentors, can you create the official Apache NetBeans repository so that we can import the code into it. Many thanks, Geertjan

• The Sounds Of More Oracle Layoffs, SPARC Execution Could Be Near

  America this weekend by reportedly doing a fresh round of layoffs and it's sounding like it could affect a number of heads.

  Thelayoff.com/Oracle is once again a vibrant discussion board today with word that massive layoffs are set for Friday, 1 September, and sound squarely aimed at their hardware division, SPARC. There are many reported Oracle employees stating notification of a FedEx shipment tomorrow from Oracle headquarters, widely expected to be their termination papers, etc.

• KDE Plasma 5.10.5 Is Now Available on Kubuntu 17.04

  The latest KDE Plasma 5.10.5 is available for Kubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" at 24 August 2017. It's available via Kubuntu Backports PPA. For your information, the latest Plasma itself released at 22 August. Now, if you're a Kubuntu 17.04 user, you can upgrade your Plasma either fully or just partially for some components you like! Read the simple instructions below.

• Great Web Browsing Coming Back to KDE with Falkon, New Packaging Formats Coming to KDE with Snap

• Polkit Support in KIO - Final Status

  In this post I intend report the final status of my GSoC project (obviously). My goal for this summer was to add Polkit support in KIO and integrate the upgraded library in dolphin. And well, I have accomplished most (not all ) of my goals.

• KTorrent 5.1

  KF5 port is now more complete than in KTorrent 5.0:
  Multimedia, search, scanfolder, ipfilter, stats, scripting, syndication (rss) plugins
  are now ported to Qt5. The only missing bits are webinterface plugin and plasmoid.

• SDDM v0.15.0

  SDDM is a Qt based Display Manager used by multiple desktops, but most importantly (certainly for the PlanetKDE crowd), KDE.

• SDDM 0.15 Qt Display Manager Adds Elogind Support, Themed Default Cursor

  It's been a while since last having anything to report on the Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) but that changed with today's v0.15 release of this Qt5-powered log-in/display manager.

• 0.15.0 Release Announcement

• Employers Seek Open Source Expertise -- But You Should Already Know That

  The latest insight about demand for open source expertise among employers comes from the 2017 Open Source Jobs Report, which was sponsored by the Linux Foundation. Most previous iterations of the report were called the Linux Jobs Report, but they focused on the same themes.

• Kolab for Open Power

  Among a variety of deliberations concerning the security and transparency of a little Kolab thing running anywhere — at home, rented space or hybrid cloud — this post is about the transparency of the hardware layer, and our ongoing efforts to make that so.

  We have said what, why and how on LWN, at events like FOSDEM (with a supplemental interview), at FSFE Summits, various other occasions, and perhaps your next opportunity to get acquainted with the message is at the OpenPOWER Summit in Barcelona — when I say “we”, I mean one of our most widely respected and prominent people, Georg Greve.

• Ocado Technology's Kubermesh

  Instead of relying on servers concentrated in one large data center, the new Kubermesh is designed to simplify data-center architectures for smart factories by elegantly and cost effectively leveraging a distributed network of computing nodes spread across the enterprise. Developed by Ocado Technology, a division of Ocado (the world's largest online-only supermarket), the Kubermesh package uses container-based technology and the Kubernetes system to implement an on-premises private cloud architecture in which desktop computers can be configured as nodes supporting the compute or storage functionality typically delivered by high-performance servers in a data center.

• DH2i Embraces Linux Containers as Enterprise Market Evolves
  

  DH2i is adding support for Linux-based containers to its traditionally Windows-centric container management platform, citing increased demand from enterprise customers.

  The company’s software is basically a container-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that now includes support for a broader range of container hosts. That expanded platform uses a unified interface to support various Linux-based permutations along with Microsoft container services.

• Power Use, RAM + Boot Times With Unity, Xfce, GNOME, LXDE, Budgie & KDE Plasma

  One of the first follow-on requests from this morning's Razer Blade Stealth Linux testing was for on top of all the other data-sets shared in that article to also look at the RAM usage, battery power draw, and boot times for the different desktop options on Ubuntu 17.04. As the request came in from a Phoronix Premium supporter, I jumped on that and here are some of those numbers.

• And Now for Something Completely Different: Broforce

• F1 2017 reviewed: Weeks of fun for the racing fan

• Linux Lite 3.6 Lightweight Distro Released With New Features — Download Now

  Linux Lite is often cited as one of the favorite newcomers in the overcrowded world of Linux distributions. It’s known to deliver a lightweight Linux desktop experience, coupled with a beginner-friendly working environment.

  Earlier this year in April, developers shipped Linux Lite 3.4 with Ubuntu 16.04.2 base and Linux kernel 4.4. Now, after five months of development work, Linux Lite 3.6 has been released.