Plasma 5.14.1

Today KDE releases a Bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.14.1. Plasma 5.14 was released in October with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience. Also: KDE Plasma 5.14 Desktop Environment Gets First Point Release, Update Now

today's leftovers

• Update KB4468550 Fixes Audio Issues Caused In Windows 10 October Patch [Ed: Alternative (better) headline is, Microsoft admits breaking your machine]

  If your Windows is updated to the latest Windows 10 October 2018 update then there are chances that you might be facing audio problems , something along the lines of “No Audio Output Device is installed”. The October 2018 patch caused this issue on many machines running Windows 10 version 1803 or above. Many users tweeted about this problem almost instantly as it was happening on such a wide scale when they realized that they Windows has stopped giving them audio when they start playing games, or launch a video player all while the sounds on their browser as well as the system sounds were working perfectly fine.

• Linux v4.18: Performance Goodies

  Linux v4.18 has been out a two months now; making this post a bit late, but still in time before the next release. Also so much drama in the CoC to care about performance topics :P As always comes with a series of performance enhancements and optimizations across subsystems.

• Automotive Grade Linux Enables Telematics and Instrument Cluster Applications with Latest UCB 6.0 Release

   

  Developed through a joint effort by dozens of member companies, the AGL Unified Code Base (UCB) is an open source software platform that can serve as the de facto industry standard for infotainment, telematics and instrument cluster applications. Sharing a single software platform across the industry reduces fragmentation and accelerates time-to-market by encouraging the growth of a global ecosystem of developers and application providers that can build a product once and have it work for multiple automakers.

   

  [...]

   

  The AGL UCB 6.0 includes an operating system, middleware and application framework. Key features include: [...]

• Install, install, install! The dance of panic!

  3. PicarOS Diego. My daughter's desktop dual-boots Mageia and PicarOS Diego, a great MiniNo GalpON respin for children. Since the game she likes is neither running with WINE on Mageia 6.1 nor with Windows Vista, I tried to run it on WINE in PicarOS. The packages were old, so I updated the system. Big mistake! In the end, I was left with an up-to-date MiniNo that removed all the special tweaks for children and, to add insult to injury, the game would not run at all!

AMD Dual EPYC 7601 Benchmarks - 9-Way AMD EPYC / Intel Xeon Tests On Ubuntu 18.10 Server

Arriving earlier this month was a Dell PowerEdge R7425 server at Phoronix that was equipped with two AMD EPYC 7601 processors, 512GB of RAM, and 20 Samsung 860 EVO SSDs to make for a very interesting test platform and our first that is based on a dual EPYC design with our many other EPYC Linux benchmarks to date being 1P. Here is a look at the full performance capabilities of this 64-core / 128-thread server compared to a variety of other AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors while also doubling as an initial look at the performance of these server CPUs on Ubuntu 18.10.

OSS Leftovers

• New FIDO2 Security Key Will Be Open Source

  A new security key solution is poised to further extend the reach of the FIDO Alliance’s new FIDO2 authentication standard. Called “Solo”, the security key is currently in the works from San Francisco-based SoloKeys, which currently has a Kickstarter campaign underway to support the product. Like other prominent security key solutions, Solo is designed to plug into a computer or laptop’s USB port, allowing the user to confirm with an authenticating service that they are physically present at the device by pressing a button on the key.

• IOTA (MIOTA) – Biilabs launches GDPR compliant open-source implementation of TangleID

  The rise of IOTA as a top DLT continues. Earlier this year, the city of Taipei announced that they were using the IOTA tangle in implementing their smart city project. The project has largely been a success in implementing a decentralized digital identity system that runs on the IOTA tangle. That’s a major plus towards the growth of the IOTA ecosystem, and gives a huge intrinsic value to the IOTA coin. However, the best news is that this system is now open source. This means that it can be applied to any other city all across the world.

• Open Source Healthcare Journal Preview at the Connected Health Conference in Boston

  The debut issue of the Open Source Healthcare Journal, a magazine advocating innovative open-source solutions in health, will be available for preview by over 2,000 technology innovators and healthcare providers at the Connected Health Conference at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, October 17-19. The Open Source Healthcare Journal's forward-looking point of view is the perfect match for the industry-leading conference, known for provocative discussions on the future of tech-enabled health. The first issue of the journal — published by GoInvo, a healthcare design studio located in Arlington, Massachusetts — features a Q&A with digital health leader and best-selling author Eric Topol, MD as well as articles by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of HealthcareDIY and Juhan Sonin of MIT and GoInvo.

• Hedera Hashgraph releases open source SDK

  Hedera Hashgraph, the public distributed ledger that enables globally decentralized applications recently announced the public release of the Hedera SDK in Java. The SDK is open source under an Apache 2 license. With the SDK, developers can now begin to develop Hedera-based applications for use on the Hedera platform.

• 4 [free] open-source network monitoring tools

  Just as with commercial, for-pay monitoring software, there are open-source options that have varying features, and the goal of an enterprise is to find the best fit for its environment. That’s where this downloadable PDF package of reviews can help. It evaluates four popular free, open-source network-monitoring platforms – Icinga, Nagios, Observium and Zabbix – highlighting pros and cons and giving enough context that this bundle can serve as a guide for IT pros seeking advice.

• Open Source MANO Needs a Reality Check

  So what's next? Another ONAP update is due soon (in November, dubbed Dublin) but that will only cover up some of the cracks. But you know what -- that's OK! No one actually expects an open source development comprising millions of lines of code to be made useful in a blink of an eye, or even a few months. Iterative progress and a very clear indication of the state of documentation, exactly which modules might be ready to be either used by an operator's team or considered for "industrialization" by a vendor and even highlighting areas where more community activity would all be useful and not at all damaging: Promoting ONAP as "ready to deploy" currently invites suspicion, because that suggests 100% readiness and that's very far from reality.

• Is Open Source the Right Approach for NFV Orchestration?

  Once upon a time there was a maharaja who decided to raise a baby elephant as a pet (stick with me…). As the elephant grew, it became more and more expensive to feed and created such a mess that eventually the maharaja told his courtiers that he was gifting them the elephant out of the generosity of his heart. In return they would have to look after the elephant and bring it back to him when it was a bit more mature and stable enough for him to ride. Some might say that, in the context of NFV MANO (management and orchestration), the elephant is Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) and the maharaja is AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). But that would be unfair. In reality there are two maharajas -- AT&T and China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL) -- and two elephants that have been merged into a six-legged Loxodonta with two tails and three tusks. (See MANO Marriage: ECOMP, OPEN-O Converge as ONAP.)

• Nuclear Reactor Startup Transatomic Power going Open Source after Closure

  It seldom happens that certain circumstances do not allow one idea to prosper as planned. But Open Source can solve that issue, once the idea is shared with the world. Others can take on that work, build upon and keep improving it. This recently happened with Transatomic Power (founded by Mark Massie and Dr. Leslie Dewan in April 2011), a Nuclear Startup that introduced a brand new design of its own Nuclear Reactor that is a lot more efficient than conventional ones. As they haven’t been able to build it within their targeted timeframe, they announced suspending operations on September 25, 2018. But declaring their designs Open Source is certainly going to help change things for the better.

• Play Your Favorite Old Web Games Now, Chrome 71 May Break Them

  hen Google rolled out Chrome 66 earlier this May, it offered a tweak that pleased almost everyone by muting sites that would play sound automatically. Unfortunately, it also ended up breaking several projects’ audio. This meant that a variety of different media, from popular web games to some of Google’s own projects effectively had their audio broken beyond repair. Users were understandably upset, and in response to an overwhelming amount of backlash, Google retained the browser alteration that blocked autoplaying video and audio, but decided to push back the feature’s application for games and web apps to Chrome 71, which is set to debut in December.

• GCC Is Preparing To End Support For Solaris 10

  Solaris 10, what may will argue as the last "good" Solaris operating system release before Sun Microsystems fell under control of Oracle, may soon see its support deprecated by the GCC compiler stack. With upstream Solaris 10 soon reaching its end of life and an increasing number of failures/issues coming up when testing the GNU Compiler Collection on Solaris 10, the GNU toolchain developers are looking at obsoleting that support.