Android Leftovers

• Essential Phone's Android P Developer Preview updated with several fixes

• 14 Biggest New Android P Features

• Android's evolution through the years

• The 5 worst Android phone names of the last decade

• Must read: top 10 Android stories

• ANDROID WARNING - These phones come LOADED with malware out the box, are YOU affected?

• Why I use a Mac computer, but an Android phone

• Steam Link Now Available For Android, But Not Apple Devices

• RED Hydrogen One: What we know so far

• Google app v8.5 beta prepares to enable Continued Conversation mode, but possibly just for Google Home [APK Teardown]

• Google search data reveals weight loss searches have increased over time

Dell Precision 'Developer Edition' mobile workstations run Ubuntu Linux and are RHEL certified

While Dell is mostly known as a Windows PC manufacturer, the company is also a big proponent of Linux. Its "Developer Edition" models can be configured with Ubuntu, for instance. Of course, despite this branding, non-developers can buy them too. The XPS 13 "Developer Edition" in particular is a svelte machine that should make many home Linux users very happy. In addition to home users, Dell manufactures solid business-class mobile workstations, and the company recently announced four such Linux-powered models. These Precision "Developer Edition" laptops run Ubuntu and are RHEL certified. One of these notebooks, the Precision 3530, is available today, while the other three will be available soon.

Librem 13: A few problems

I bought my old Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (1st gen.) when I entered grad school for my Master's program, in 2012. And after six years, the Thinkpad still ran well, but it was getting old, so I figured it was time for a change. I went back and forth about what kind of system should replace my laptop. I don't travel that much, so I figured a desktop would be better. And I could get a bigger screen. After going back and forth on the decision, I decided to get a laptop. I don't often travel with a laptop, but when I do, I prefer to use my primary system so I don't have to keep things synced. Of course, I wanted my system to run Linux. Purism is aimed at the Linux laptop market, and I wanted to support that. So I bought a Librem 13. I've had it now for about a week, and I love it now. But I'll be honest, I didn't love it right out of the box. I'd like to note two issues for folks who are thinking about getting a Librem laptop, so you aren't surprised like I was.

Linux 4.17-rc7

So this week wasn't as calm as the previous weeks have been, but despite that I suspect this is the last rc. This week we had the whole "spectre v4" thing, and yes, the fallout from that shows up as part of the patch and commit log. But it's not actually dominant: the patch is pretty evenly one third arch updates, one third networking updates, and one third "rest". The arch updates are largely - although not exclusively - spectre v4. The networking stuff is mostly network drivers, but there's some core networking too. And "the rest" is just that - misc drivers (rdma, gpu, other), documentation, some vfs, vm, bpf, tooling.. The bulk of it is really pretty trivial one-liners, and nothing looks particularly scary. Let's see how next week looks, but if nothing really happens I suspect we can make do without an rc8. Shortlog appended as usual. Go out and test.