today's leftovers

• Google looks set to offer Linux on Chromebooks in the next few months

  If that wasn't enough, a new commit in the parent Chromium OS offers "new device policy to allow Linux VMs on Chrome OS." Which about seals it. Read the accompanying Gerrit documentation and you get further confirmation: "At this time, in order for Linux VMs to run, the Finch experiment also needs to be enabled. After this feature is fully launched, the Finch control logic will be removed."

• xorg-server 1.19.99.905

  More bugfixes, and streams support for Xwayland. This will almost certainly be the last RC.

• X.Org Server 1.20 RC5 Released, Adds EGLStreams To Let NVIDIA Work With XWayland

  Adam Jackson of Red Hat today announced the X.Org Server 1.20 Release Candidate 5, which he believes will be the last test release before going gold. Most excitingly about this new release candidate is the merged support for allowing the NVIDIA proprietary driver to work with XWayland.

• Darktable Receives Support for Fujifilm X-H1 and Sony Alpha A7 Mark III Cameras

  darktable, the open-source and cross-platform RAW image editor supporting GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems, has been updated today to version 2.4.3. darktable 2.4.3 is a maintenance update that brings support for new digital cameras, including the recently released Fujifilm X-H1 and Sony Alpha A7 Mark III (includes noise profiles and white balance presets), as well as the Kodak EOS DCS 3, Olympus PEN E-PL9, Panasonic Lumix DC-GX9, and Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R II cameras. The update also brings noise profiles for the Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III and Nikon D7500 digital cameras, and a bunch of new features like support for ratings and tags in the watermark module, a script to help users convert .dtyle files to the .xmp format, and support for building and installing noise tools.

 

• Compact action-RPG 'The Swords of Ditto' is out with day-1 Linux support

  The Swords of Ditto is the new compact action-RPG from developer onebitbeyond and publisher Devolver Digital and it just released, although it has a big flaw right now on Linux. Sadly, Devolver Digital didn't respond to our review request. Thankfully, the Linux heroes over at GOG sent over a copy for me.

• Q4OS Centaurus 3.2 - new testing release

  A new updated image of the Q4OS Centaurus testing live media has been just released, its core is based on the latest Debian Buster testing and Trinity Desktop 14.0.5 testing versions.

• Ubuntu Touch lives on in Purism's Librem 5 smartphone

  Not quite five years ago, Canonical tried to challenge Apple iOS and Google Android with Ubuntu Touch, an alternative smartphone Linux. Users, phone carriers, and the open-source community failed to support it, so Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth closed the door on Ubuntu Touch development. But, in open source, programs don't die until its last developer gives up on it. Purism and UBports have partnered to offer Ubuntu Touch on Purism's Librem 5 smartphone.

• Saying Something in April 2018

  Being able to bang on (that is to say, percussively test) Bionic Beaver has been a blast. I haven't done ISO testing this round. Instead, I've been using my Xubuntu desktop daily watching things break and have been watching apport file bugs. Doing so makes me realize that, frankly, I am not normal in terms of installed packages or workflow. I have quite a bit of LaTeX installed due to church work. I have many ham radio-related things installed. Audio production and video production packages are installed too. Yes, sometimes I break down and even use LibreOffice. I don't have the whole package archive installed but I have a visible chunk of it in place as I use many things in many ways.

• “Unpatchable” Nintendo Switch Bug Lets Hackers Fullfill Their Wild Dreams

• Spectral Monitoring for Drone Defense Applications

  The USRP Embedded Series platform uses the OpenEmbedded framework to create custom Linux distributions tailored to application specific needs. The default operating system is pre-installed with the UHD software API and a variety of third party development tools such as GNU Radio. Support for the RFNoC FPGA development framework enables deterministic computations for real-time and wideband signal processing.

• How To Make Your Phone Look Like Android P

• Friday Free Software Directory IRC meetup time: April 27th starting at 12:00 p.m. EDT/16:00 UTC

• PyRoMine uses NSA exploits to mine Monero and disable security features [Ed: NSA back doors in Microsoft Windows is a gift that keeps giving... to crackers]

  In an age where cryptomining software is beating out ransomware as the go-to for most hackers, a Python-based Monero miner is using stolen NSA exploits to gain an edge. In 2016 the Shadow Brokers leaked several hacking tools and zero-day exploits including ETERNALBLUE and ETERNALROMANCE  that targeted versions of Windows XP/Vista/8.1/7/10 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016 and took advantage of CVE-2017-0144 and CVE-2017-0145. Fortinet researchers spotted a malware dubbed “PyRoMine” which uses the ETERNALROMANCE exploit to spread to vulnerable Windows machines, according to an April 24 blog post. The malware isn't the first to mine cryptocurrency that uses previously leaked NSA exploits the malware is still a threat as it leaves machines vulnerable to future attacks because it starts RDP services and disables security services.

today's howtos

• Use Nginx Unit 1.0 with your Django project on Debian Stretch

• Blockchain, Part II: Configuring a Blockchain Network and Leveraging the Technology

• Using Ansible to manage RHEL 5 systems

• Istio Smart Canary Launch: Easing Into Production

OSS Conferences and Funding

• Request Travel Support for openSUSE Conference 2018

  The Travel Support Program (TSP) provides travel sponsorships to openSUSE community who want to attend the openSUSE conference and need financial assistance. The openSUSE conference 2018 will be in Prague, Czech Republic from May 25 to May 27. The goal of the TSP is to help everybody in and around openSUSE to be able to attend the openSUSE Conference!

• Open Source Summit Japan + Automotive Linux Summit Speakers and Agenda Announced [Ed: "Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft" so another Linux event... featuring Microsoft]

• Percona Delivers First, Free, Open Source Method of Centralized Key Management for MySQL

• Celebrate the WordPress 15th Anniversary on May 27

  May 27, 2018 is the 15th anniversary of the first WordPress release — and we can’t wait to celebrate!

• Outreachy Announces Summer 2018 Participants

  Following Google announcing their GSoC 2018 participants, the Outreachy program to help support women and other under-represented groups in tech announced their summer 2018 interns.

• The Most Interesting Google GSoC 2018 Projects: QEMU Vulkan, Virtual KMS, Nautilus GTK4

  Google has announced the accepted student projects for this year's Google Summer of Code. As usual, there is an interesting mix of open-source software projects across the hundreds (or rather thousands) of applicants. Here's a look at the most interesting initiatives we found when going through the list.

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