Linux Foundation Zephyr Project Attracts IoT Developers and Tech Giants

The Linux Foundation has always been committed to welcoming companies and organizations of all sizes as part of its heritage and ongoing vision for opening technology for all to experiment with and to build things. The Zephyr Project, an open source project to build a real-time operating system (RTOS) for the Internet of Things (IoT), announced last week they grew their community of contributors with support for more than 100 developer boards and the addition of six new members. These industry and academic leaders include Antmicro, DeviceTone, SiFive, the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) and Northeastern University.

GNU/Linux on Chromebooks

• How to install Linux apps on your Chromebook

  Chromebooks are great because they're simple: there's a lot you can get done with web services without exposing yourself to the troubles and security issues that plague more complex platforms. But if you need to do a bit more with your Chromebook, you have a few options. Most Chromebooks these days allow you to install apps from the Google Play Store, which should fill most productivity gaps. If not, you'll soon have one more option: installing Linux apps. To be clear, you've been able to install Linux apps on Chromebooks for years because Chrome OS is Linux. But, it's about to get much easier.

• Top 5 Features Still Missing From Chrome OS

  Google’s Chrome OS gets a lot of things right, and the platform has evolved considerably over the years. Not only does it offer an always up-to-date version of the Chrome browser, but there are also Android apps, stylus input, and even Linux support on some devices. However, Chrome OS is far from perfect. You have to make compromises if you choose to live with a Chromebook, but you shouldn’t have to make quite this many. Here are the top five things Google should fix.

• Walmart's selling an all-aluminum Chromebook with a comfy keyboard for just $220

  If you’re not considering a Chromebook when you're shopping for a notebook, you’re doing it wrong. Google's low-cost laptops are typically light, fast, secure, and have almost everything you need for remote work a.k.a. the Internet. Today, you can get in on the action for a great price. Walmart is selling the Acer Chromebook 14 (CB3-431-C6ZB) for $220. That’s about $30 to $40 cheaper than you’d usually pay for this laptop.

Microsoft Versus Linux

• AMD's New Threadripper 2990WX Much Faster On Linux Than Windows 10

• Microsoft Announces the General Availability of Linux on App Service Environment [Ed: Exactly the same company that is attacking GNU/Linux using patents and bribes officials to reject, dump GNU/Linux.]

• Windows 10 Build 17738 includes fix for WSLs ‘tar and curl’ commands [Ed: Some of these 'fixes' have involved Microsoft perturbing UNIX/Linux tools to become more like Windows. This is dangerous for reasons that were explained at the time.]

• Open Source Software Poses a Real Security Threat [Ed: Contrast Security attacks FOSS while ignoring, conveniently, back doors in proprietary software (hidden temporarily through secrecy). These are classic FUD tactics regarding security.]

OSCON 2018 Events Coverage by LWN

• Using AI on patents

  Software patents account for more than half of all utility patents granted in the US over the past few years. Clearly, many companies see these patents as a way to fortune and growth, even while software patents are hated by many people working in the free and open-source movements. The field of patenting has now joined the onward march of artificial intelligence. This was the topic of a talk at OSCON 2018 by Van Lindberg, an intellectual-property lawyer, board member and general counsel for the Python Software Foundation, and author of the book Intellectual Property and Open Source. The disruption presented by deep learning ranges from modest enhancements that have already been exploited—making searches for prior art easier—to harbingers of automatic patent generation in the future.

• Diverse technical topics from OSCON 2018

  The O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) returned to Portland, Oregon in July for its 20th meeting. Previously, we covered some retrospectives and community-management talks that were a big part of the conference. Of course, OSCON is also a technology conference, and there were lots of talks on various open-source software platforms and tools. An attendee who was coming back to OSCON after a decade would have been somewhat surprised by the themes of the general technical sessions, though. Early OSCONs had a program full of Perl, Python, and PHP developer talks, including the famous "State of The Onion" (Perl) keynote. Instead, this year's conference mostly limited the language-specific programming content to the tutorials. Most of the technical sessions in the main program were about platforms, administration, or other topics of general interest, some of which we will explore below.