• Announcing new product updates of CDK 3.4, DevStudio 11.3, DevSuite 2.3

  We’re extremely pleased to announce additions and updates to our suite of Red Hat Developers desktop tooling products, including Container Development Kit 3.4, JBoss Developer Studio 11.3, and our DevSuite 2.3 installer. These updates are a continuation of our efforts to increase developer usability, while adding new features that matter most for users of Red Hat platforms and technologies.

• Announcing Developer Studio 11.3.0.GA, JBoss Tools 4.5.3 for Eclipse Oxygen.3a

• Red Hat introduces JDK 10

  Java™ 10 is now supported with Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio 11.3.

  Please note that Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio does not run on a Java™ 9/10 virtual machine, but allows for managing and building of Java™ 9/10 projects and artifacts. So, you must first define in your workspace a Java™ 9/10 JDK if you want to manage and build Java™ 9/10 projects.

• Give the gift of revealing your insecurities

  A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a fellow manager on my team. This person reports to someone who reports to me, generally has a different set of concerns than I do, and therefore holds a unique perspective on the challenges we face. I'd been digressing on a hypothetical course of action when the manager interrupted me to say, "Excuse me, I just want to say that I'm not comfortable with the direction this is going in." I immediately stopped talking and thought about what I'd been saying. I tried to explain what I meant, to give more context, and to go at it from a different angle. The manager also shared some context and perspective, which helped me understand the discomfort.

• A (Belated) Happy 25th to Red Hat: So, What Does the Future Hold?

  Better late than never: last month Red Hat celebrated 25 years. (The cake and candles may seem like ancient history to Jim Whitehurst, CEO of the open source pioneer, but we believe in prolonging anything involving icing.) Jim spoke with Computer Business Review; looking both back on 25 years of Red Hat and to the future.

• Top Badgers of 2017: Carl George

• Eclipse Foundation Unveils New Cloud Native Java Future with Jakarta EE

  The Eclipse Foundation, the platform for open collaboration and innovation, today unveiled the new open source governance model and a “cloud native Java” path forward for Jakarta EE, the new community-led platform created from the contribution of Java EE. In September 2017, Oracle announced that it was transferring the future of Java EE technologies to the Eclipse Foundation, to make the process of evolving its standards “more agile, flexible and open.”

• Eclipse Foundation Pursuing "Cloud Native" Java With Jakarta EE

  Following Oracle offloading Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation and then renaming the project to Jakarta EE, we now know more about the future of this Java Enterprise Edition.

• Eclipse Foundation's New Open-Source Governance Model for Jakarta EE, Turris MOX Modular Router Campaign and More

  The Eclipse Foundation announced today a new open-source governance model and "a 'cloud native Java' path forward for Jakarta EE, the new community-led platform created from the contribution of Java EE." According to the press release, with this move to the community-driven open-source governance model, "Jakarta EE promises faster release and innovation cycles." See https://jakarta.ee for more details or to join the Jakarta EE Working Group.

• Ora as a snap: ensuring users are benefiting from the latest version

  Ora is a user-friendly task management service with integrated time-tracking, reports, list view, git integrations and many other features. Often referred to by users as ‘the sweet spot between Trello and Jira’, Ora provides almost a complete match of Jira’s feature set but in a new and more accessible way.

  Last month, Ora launched their application as a snap and thereby broadening out their reach across the Linux user base. We spoke to Nikolay Mihaylov, co-founder at Ora, who told us more about their reasons to publish a snap and how it will help Ora move forward.

• Welcome To The (Ubuntu) Bionic Age: Behind communitheme: interviewing Merlijn

  As discussed last week when unveiling the communitheme snap for ubuntu 18.04 LTS, here is a suite of interview this week on some members of the core contributor team shaping this entirely community-driven theme.

  Today is the turn of Merlijn, merlijn-sebrechts on the community hub.

• LXD weekly status #44

  Another week of bugfixes for us as more and more people update to the 3.0 releases!

  Quite a bit of work went into improving the handling of the two database in LXD 3.0, making it easier for us to debug issues and provide fixes to our users when something goes wrong. Work is also continuing on the new backup/restore API for LXD with it hopefully landing later this week.

  We’re also excited to see LXD debuts on the Chromebooks through the new Crostini feature. This also led to a minor change to LXD to allow restricting users to unprivileged containers as was needed for those users.

AV Linux, the open-source GNU/Linux distribution designed for multimedia content creation, has been updated recently to version 2018.4.2, a release that adds Meltdown mitigations, updated components, and various other enhancements.

Probably the most important change in the AV Linux 2018.4.2 release is the implementation of the KPTI (Kernel page-table isolation) patch to protect users against the Meltdown security vulnerability, but only for 64-bit installations. The distribution is now powered by the long-term supported Linux 4.9.76 kernel, and users can disable the KPTI patch at boot.

• Wipeout-inspired racer BallisticNG now has Linux support

  For those who remember Wipeout, the fast-paced futuristic racer you will probably want to take a close look at BallisticNG [Official Site] now it has Linux support. Released alongside update 0.9.4 that also added SteamVR support, which is the last Early Access version of the game.

  BallisticNG features 17 tracks set in unique locations, with a bunch of them being reversible, 13 different teams each with their own different racer, in-game pickups like mines, 6 different game modes, a single-player campaign as well as split-screen support.

• Sci-fi arena twin-stick shooter 'DEATHPIT 3000' just added Linux support

  Arriving on Linux yesterday, this single-player and co-op shooter sees you and up to four friends take on a sci-fi game-show survival arena and it's actually not bad at all. You can either play by yourself which is quite challenging, but fun or you can do LAN play with up to four people and even two player online support. The developer said the game has been inspired by the likes of Left 4 Dead and Alien Swarm.

• Fire balls in the air using mines in Super Inefficient Golf, stupidly fun

  Super Inefficient Golf is what you get when you combine Golf with many explosions and it's out with Linux support.

• Mr. Friendly is a new nonviolent Doom mod where you help the monsters recover

  Doom, the classic first-person shooter has a huge modding community and it's incredible to see what people make. The latest I came across is a nonviolent mod named Mr. Friendly.

• The final Dungeons 3 DLC is out named Lord of the Kings

• High-speed co-op racer Trailblazers to release on May 8th, with cross-platform multiplayer

  Trailblazers, the unique co-op racer where you paint a racing line on the course is now releasing on May 8th with Linux support.

Earlier this year hackers started to show evidence of an exploit that allowed you to load custom software on a Nintendo Switch game console. Theoretically that opens the door for homebrew applications, modified games, or even running an alternate operating system such as a GNU/Linux distribution on Nintendo’s latest game system. It could also make it possible to run pirated games, which is why console makers usually don’t encourage this sort of thing.

But now a team of hackers called ReSwitched have described a bootrom vulnerability called Fusée Gelée that makes it possible for anyone to hack a Nintendo Switch… assuming you’re willing to do a little hardware hacking too.

• The Moto G6 exposes the identity crisis plaguing Android's top-end

• Mingis on Tech: The lowdown on Android security

• Mingis on Tech: All about Android security

• How to connect your Android phone or tablet to your HDTV

• Android Auto Can Finally See Your Full Contact List

• The 10 Best Android Phones You Can Find in 2018

• Android app allows Amazon to deliver packages to your (compatible) unattended car

• Fortnite mobile: when is the Android release date, what are compatible devices and how do you sign up?

With last week's initial launch-day Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 2600X / Ryzen 7 2700X some found the Linux performance to be lower than Windows. While the root cause is undetermined, a BIOS/AGESA update does appear to help the Linux performance significantly at least with the motherboard where I've been doing most of my tests with the Ryzen 7 2700X. Here are the latest benchmark numbers.

Lead by talented Linux developer Marius Gripsgard, the UBports Foundation keeps the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS developed by Canonical, the company behind the widely-used Ubuntu Linux operating system, alive for various popular smartphones, including Fairphone 2, Nexus 5, OnePlus One, as well as the BQ Aquaris M10 FHD tablet that was designed to run Ubuntu Touch in the first place.

Now, Purism and UBports are partnering to offer the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system on the upcoming Librem 5 Linux phone, which raised more than $2 million last fall​, promising to be the privacy and security-focused smartphone you've been expecting for a long time. While not the default OS, users will be able to easily run Ubuntu Touch on the Librem 5 phone.

also: UBPorts Ubuntu Touch To Be Supported By The Purism Librem 5

Based on the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system, the ExTiX 18.4 Deepin Edition is now available and it ships updated components, including the latest Deepin 15.5 Desktop, the Calamares 3.1.12 universal installer framework, and a custom Linux 4.16.2 kernel with extra hardware support.

"I’ve made a new extra version of ExTiX with Deepin 15.5 Desktop (made in China!)," said Arne Exton in the release announcement. "Only a minimum of packages is installed in ExTiX Deepin. You can, of course, install all the packages you want, even while running ExTiX Deepin live, i.e. from a DVD or USB stick."

• Linux 4.16.4

• Linux 4.14.36

• Linux 4.9.96

• Linux 4.4.129

• Linux 3.18.106

This article answers frequently asked questions about Ubuntu 18.04 and thus informing you of the important things you should know about Ubuntu 18.04.

• Discovery of Terminal app for Chrome OS suggests future support for Linux software

  Chrome OS is a fairly flexible operating system, and its support for Android apps via the Google Play Store opens up a world of software. It has been thought -- and hoped -- for some time that Linux support might be on its way, and this is looking increasingly likely.

  A Terminal app has appeared in the Chrome OS dev channel, strongly suggesting that support for Linux applications could well be on the horizon -- something which will give Chromebooks a new appeal.

• Put Wind into your Deployments with Kubernetes and Helm

  I’m a Software Engineer. Every day, I come into work and write code. That’s what I’m paid to do. As I write my code, I need to be confident that it’s of the highest quality. I can test it locally, but anyone who’s ever heard the words, “...but it works on my machine,” knows that’s not enough. There are huge differences between my local environment and my company’s production systems, both in terms of scale and integration with other components. Back in the day, production systems were complex, and setting them up required a deep knowledge of the underlying systems and infrastructure. To get a production-like environment to test my code, I would have to open a ticket with my IT department and wait for them to get to it and provision a new server (whether physical or virtual). This was a process that took a few days at best. That used to be OK when release cycles were several months apart. Today, it’s completely unacceptable.

• KDE Plasma 5.13 Desktop Environment Promises Much Better Wayland Support

  The adoption of the next-generation Wayland display server amongst Linux-based operating systems is slowly, but surely, changing the Linux world for better.

  While most of the popular GNU/Linux distributions out there are shy on adopting Wayland by default, major Linux desktop environments like GNOME and KDE continue to offer improved Wayland support with each new major release.

  KDE Plasma 5.13 is being worked on these days, and KDE developer Roman Gilg reported over the weekend on the progress, so far, on the Plasma Wayland component for the next major release, which looks to be pretty promising.

  One of the most significant changes implemented in Plasma Wayland for KDE Plasma 5.13 is the ability to run more Linux apps on the Wayland display manager, either as native Wayland clients or as Xwayland clients.

• [Mageia] Weekly Roundup 2018 – Week 16

  Work on the LXQt packages is still ongoing; watch this space for Great Plasma Update news.

• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 524

• Is English Wikipedia’s ‘rise and decline’ typical?

  The figure comes from “The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System,” a well-known 2013 paper that argued that Wikipedia’s transition from rapid growth to slow decline in 2007 was driven by an increase in quality control systems. Although many people have treated the paper’s finding as representative of broader patterns in online communities, Wikipedia is a very unusual community in many respects. Do other online communities follow Wikipedia’s pattern of rise and decline? Does increased use of quality control systems coincide with community decline elsewhere?

• Two DMV Startups Are Updating an Open Source Security System to Prevent Data Hacks

• Comprehensive Android Binary Scans Find Known Security Vulnerabilities in 1 Out of Every 5 of the 700 Most Popular Apps on Google Play Store [Ed: Insignary is again badmouthing FOSS platforms as a form of marketing that's basically disguised as 'research' or 'study']

• Ryzen Stability Issues Are Still Affecting Some FreeBSD Users

  While in recent months there have been some improvements to FreeBSD that have helped yield greater reliability in running AMD Ryzen processors on this BSD operating system, some users are still reporting hard to diagnose stability problems on FreeBSD.

  For some, FreeBSD on Ryzen is still leading to lock-ups, even while the system may be idle. Also making it hard to debug, for some they can trigger a lock-up within an hour of booting their system while for others they may be able to make it a week or two before hitting any stability problem.

• 6 DevOps trends to watch in 2018

  Here at Loggly, we live and breathe logs and uncovering underlying data. It probably comes as no surprise that we’re passionate about the future of log analysis and metric monitoring. Communicating with key subject matter experts in the DevOps space plays an important role in helping us understand where the industry is headed.

• Trouble in techno hippie paradise

  Another interesting point: while the number of people addicted to nicotine has been going down globally lately, the number of network addicts has outnumbered those by far now. And yet the long term effects of being online almost 24/365 have not yet been researched at all. The cigarette companies claimed that most doctors smoke. The IT industry claims it's normal to be online. What's your wakeup2smartphone time? Do you check email every day?

• Join us in San Francisco at the 2018 Red Hat Summit

• What’s Happening To These Stocks? – Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

• April Fedora Infrastructure Hackfest

  Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend the 2018 Fedora Infrastructure Hackfest. It’s always a treat to hang out with some of the people who really make Fedora tick. Sinny Kumari and I were there to help represent the Atomic Working Group, and also get some face time with each other to learn and hack on a few things related to the Atomic Working group.

  The Hackfest was held in Paul Frield’s hometown of Fredricksburg, VA. Since I live in Raleigh, NC I decided it would be nice to take the train since I don’t often get to take the train in the southeast. As can be expected the train was a little late, but got us there without a problem and was a pretty good experience.

• Fedora Infrastructure Meeting Change to Thursdays 1400 UTC

• Bodhi 3.6.1 released

• Open source movement to disrupt NFV and SDN marketplace

  According to Technology Business Research’s 1Q18 NFV/SDN Telecom Market Landscape report, open-source groups will spur NFV and SDN adoption by establishing industry standards that foster interoperability among a broader range of solution providers.

• First look at Google Chrome's UI design refresh

  Users of Google Chrome Canary, the cutting edge version of Google's web browser, have a chance to get a sneak peek of a user interface design refresh that Google may plan to launch in all versions of Chrome eventually.

  The feature is hidden behind a flag currently but that is a common practice by Google; the company uses flags to hide future features from the general population. While there is no guarantee that features will land in Chrome one day, it is often the case that Google uses experimental flags to prepare the wider release.

• Mozilla Thunderbird: Thunderbird April News Update: GSoC, 60 Beta 4, New Thunderbird Council

  Due to lots of news coming out of the Thunderbird project, I’ve decided to combine three different blog posts I was working on into one news update that gives people an idea of what has been happening in the Thunderbird community this month.

• New Mozilla Poll: Support for Net Neutrality Grows, Trust in ISPs Dips

  “Today marks the ostensible effective date for the FCC’s net neutrality repeal order, but it does not mark the end of net neutrality,” says Denelle Dixon, Mozilla COO. “And not just because some procedural steps remain before the official overturning of the rules — but because Mozilla and other supporters of net neutrality are fighting to protect it in the courts and in Congress.”

  Also today: Mozilla is publishing results from a nationwide poll that reveals where Americans stand on the issue. Our survey reinforces what grassroots action has already demonstrated: The repeal contradicts most Americans’ wishes. The nation wants strong net neutrality rules.

• Another Summer of Code with Smack

  I’m very happy to announce that once again I will participate in the Summer of Code. Last year I worked on OMEMO encrypted Jingle Filetransfer for the XMPP client library Smack. This year, I will once again contribute to the Smack project. A big thanks goes out to Daniel Gultsch and Conversations.im, who act as an umbrella organization.

• NOAA’s Mission Toward Open Data Sharing

  The goal of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is to put all of its data — data about weather, climate, ocean coasts, fisheries, and ecosystems – into the hands of the people who need it most. The trick is translating the hard data and making it useful to people who aren’t necessarily subject matter experts, said Edward Kearns, the NOAA’s first ever data officer, speaking at the recent Open Source Leadership Summit (OSLS).  

  NOAA’s mission is similar to NASA’s in that it is science based, but “our mission is operations; to get the quality information to the American people that they need to run their businesses, to protect their lives and property, to manage their water resources, to manage their ocean resources,” said Kearns, during his talk titled “Realizing the Full Potential of NOAA’s Open Data.”

  He said that NOAA was doing Big Data long before the term was coined and that the agency has way too much of it – to the tune of 30 petabytes in its archives with another 200 petabytes of data in a working data store. Not surprisingly, NOAA officials have a hard time moving it around and managing it, Kearns said.

• Document Freedom Day Singapore 2018

  On the 28 March 2018, Fedora Ambassadors organized Document Freedom Day in Singapore. Document Freedom Day is a day which like-minded folks who care about libre document formats gather to discuss and raise awareness of libre document formats. Libre document formats help reduce restrictions and vendor lock-ins. They are also an important tool that enables our right to read freely.

Want to run Android apps on Linux? How about play Android games? Several options are available, but the one that works the best is Anbox, a useful tool that runs your favorite Android apps on Linux without emulation.

Here’s how to get it up and running on your Linux PC today.

Also: 8 Best Android Apps For Kids To Help Children Learn With Fun | 2018 Edition

• Krita, Linux Kernel, KDEConnect Get Updated in Tumbleweed

  There have been a few openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots released in the past two weeks that brought some new features and fixes to users.

  This blog will go over the past two snapshots.

  The last snapshot, 20180416, had several packages updated. The adobe-sourceserifpro-fonts package updated to version 2.000; with the change, the fonts were refined to make the Semibold and Bold heavier. Both dbus-1 and dbus-1-x11 were updated to 1.12.6, which fixed some regreations introduced in version 1.10.18 and 1.11.0. The gtk-vnc 0.7.2 package deprecated the manual python2 binding, which will be deleted in the next release, in favor of GObject introspection. Notifications that caused a crash were fixed in kdeconnect-kde 1.3.0. The 4.16.2 Linux Kernel made ip_tunnel, ipv6, ip6_gre, ip6_tunnel and vti6 better to validate user provided tunnel names. Due to a build system failure, not all 4.16.2 binaries were built correctly; this will be resolved in the 20180417 snapshot, which will be released shortly. Krita 4.0.1 had multiple fixes from its major version upgrade. The visual diff and merge tool meld 3.19.0 added new features like a new per-pane status bar with selectors for syntax highlighting and text encoding. Python Imaging Library python-Pillow 5.1.0 removed the freetype-2.9.patch and YaST had several packages with a version bump.

• SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing in the SLE 15 Beta Program!

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Prepares HPC Module

  The upcoming release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is offering an HPC (High Performance Computing) module for development, control, and compute nodes. Today that SLE15-HPC module is now available in beta.

For more than 3 years now, OPNsense is driving innovation through modularising and hardening the code base, quick and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as clear and stable 2-Clause BSD licensing.

A company from the Czech Republic is trying to raise money to bring a modular and open source router to the public. It has a number of features that can’t be found in the current line up of routers available for purchase.

• The Several Faces of Intel Compilers [Ed: It says that this so-called 'article' is "sponsored", so IDG is now running ads as 'articles'. Not even pretense about whether it's journalism or not.]

• FoundationDB Goes Open Source [Ed: "FoundationDB gave Apple a foothold in the crowded NoSQL database sector," it says and this is what this openwashing is all about. It's helping Apple in spreading its proprietary frameworks and surveillance 'clouds'.]

• Linux Everywhere (Premium) [Ed: "Linux Everywhere," says longtime Microsoft propagandist, in service (IMHO) of the latest EEE strategy. Don't forget who's still in charge.]