It’s been a few years since developer Lukas Hartmann and designer Ana Dantes unveiled their plans for a DIY, modular laptop designed to run free and open source software.

Since then, the folks behind the MNT Reform project created a small number of early prototypes, introduced new hardware with beefier specs and some other improvements, and have begun producing prototypes of version 2 of the laptop.

Once everything is up to snuff, the plan is to launch another crowdfunding campaign for folks interested in purchasing their own MNT Reform 2 laptop — but since the design files will be open source, there’s nothing stopping anyone from downloading the necessary files and assembling their own (if they also want to go through the trouble of sourcing all the components including a custom PCB).

• GNU Binutils 2.33.1 Released With Support For Newer Arm Cortex CPUs, SVE2/TME/MVE

  The GNU Binutils 2.33(.1) release brings BFloat16 support (BF16), many ARMv8 architecture updates, eBPF support for the GNU toolchain to complement the GCC 10 compiler support for this alternative now to using LLVM, support for the new CTF (Compact Type Format) debug format, and other work accumulated in recent months.

• GNU Binutils 2.33.1 has been released.

  Hello Everyone,
  
    We are pleased to announce that version 2.33.1 of the GNU Binutils project
    sources have been released and are now available for download at:
  
      https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils
      https://sourceware.org/pub/binutils/releases/
  
    The md5sum values are:
      
      56a3be5f8f8ee874417a4f19ef3f10c8  binutils-2.33.1.tar.bz2
      1a6b16bcc926e312633fcc3fae14ba0a  binutils-2.33.1.tar.gz
      f4e7e023664f087b3017fc42955ebb46  binutils-2.33.1.tar.lz
      9406231b7d9dd93731c2d06cefe8aaf1  binutils-2.33.1.tar.xz
  
  
    This release contains numerous bug fixes, and also the following new
    features:
  
      Assembler:
      
      * Adds support for the Arm Scalable Vector Extension version 2
        (SVE2) instructions, the Arm Transactional Memory Extension (TME)
        instructions and the Armv8.1-M Mainline and M-profile Vector
        Extension (MVE) instructions.
  
      * Adds support for the Arm Cortex-A76AE, Cortex-A77 and Cortex-M35P
        processors and the AArch64 Cortex-A34, Cortex-A65, Cortex-A65AE,
        Cortex-A76AE, and Cortex-A77 processors.
  
      * Adds a .float16 directive for both Arm and AArch64 to allow
        encoding of 16-bit floating point literals.
  
      * For MIPS, Add -m[no-]fix-loongson3-llsc option to fix (or not)
        Loongson3 LLSC Errata.  Add a --enable-mips-fix-loongson3-llsc=[yes|no]
        configure time option to set the default behavior. Set the default
        if the configure option is not used to "no".
  
      Linker:
  
      * The Cortex-A53 Erratum 843419 workaround now supports a choice of
        which workaround to use.  The option --fix-cortex-a53-843419 now
        takes an optional argument --fix-cortex-a53-843419[=full|adr|adrp]
        which can be used to force a particular workaround to be used.
        See --help for AArch64 for more details.
  
      * Add support for GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_BTI and
        GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_PAC  in ELF GNU program properties
        in the AArch64 ELF linker. 
  
      * Add -z force-bti for AArch64 to enable GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_BTI
        on output while warning about missing GNU_PROPERTY_AARCH64_FEATURE_1_BTI 
        on inputs and use PLTs protected with BTI.
  
      * Add -z pac-plt for AArch64 to pick PAC enabled PLTs.
  
      Utilities:
  
      * Add --source-comment[=] option to objdump which if present,
        provides a prefix to source code lines displayed in a disassembly.
  
      * Add --set-section-alignment =
        option to objcopy to allow the changing of section alignments.
  
      * Add --verilog-data-width option to objcopy for verilog targets to
        control width of data elements in verilog hex format.
  
      * The separate debug info file options of readelf (--debug-dump=links
        and --debug-dump=follow) and objdump (--dwarf=links and
        --dwarf=follow-links) will now display and/or follow multiple
        links if more than one are present in a file.  (This usually
        happens when gcc's -gsplit-dwarf option is used).
  
        In addition objdump's --dwarf=follow-links now also affects its
        other display options, so that for example, when combined with
        --syms it will cause the symbol tables in any linked debug info
        files to also be displayed.  In addition when combined with
        --disassemble the --dwarf= follow-links option will ensure that
        any symbol tables in the linked files are read and used when
        disassembling code in the main file.
  
      * Add support for dumping types encoded in the Compact Type Format
        to objdump and readelf.    
  
    Our thanks go out to all of the binutils contributors, past and
    present, for helping to make this release possible.
  
    Note in case you are wondering about what happened to the 2.33
    release, it is stuck pending the resolution of an issue with the keys
    used to sign the release.  Once this is resolved the 2.33 tarballs
    will be uploaded, even though they will now be slightly out of date.
  
  Cheers
    Nick Clifton
    Binutils Chief Maintainer.
  

• 1er GNUFEST 2019

  On October 26 I was present at the event 1 GNUFEST 2019 in the city of San Cristóbal, in this event I was representing Fedora giving the talk “What do people live in Free Software?“, Is the second time I give this talk the which was created at FudConf Panamá 2011, I like to give this talk since I usually give technical talks, in this I explain how someone can live from Free Software and that there is an entire economic ecosystem behind free software that allows it to be self-sustaining.

Thank you, O Great Chrome Web Store, for saving us from the clearly hazardous, manifestly unscrupulous, overtly duplicitous uBlock Origin. Because, doubtlessly, this open-source ad-block extension by its very existence and nature could never "have a single purpose that is clear to users." I mean, it's an ad-blocker. Those are bad.
Really, this is an incredible own goal on Google's part. Although I won't resist the opportunity to rag on them, I also grudgingly admit that this is probably incompetence rather than malice and likely yet another instance of something falling through the cracks in Google's all-powerful, rarely examined automatic algorithms (though there is circumstantial evidence to the contrary). Having a human examine these choices costs money in engineering time, and frankly when the automated systems are misjudging something that will probably cost Google's ad business money as well, there's just no incentive to do anything about it. But it's a bad look, especially with how two-faced the policy on Manifest V3 has turned out to be and its effect on ad-blocker options for Chrome.

It is important to note that this block is for Chrome rather than Chromium-based browsers (like Edge, Opera, Brave, etc.). That said, Chrome is clearly the one-ton gorilla, and Google doesn't like you sideloading extensions. While Mozilla reviews extensions too, and there have been controversial rejections on their part, speaking as an add-on author of over a decade there is at least a human on the other end even if once in a while the human is a butthead. (A volunteer butthead, to be sure, but still a butthead.) Plus, you can sideload with a little work, even unsigned add-ons. So far I think they've reached a reasonable compromise between safety and user choice even if sometimes the efforts don't scale. On the other hand, Google clearly hasn't by any metric.

• Plotting with PyQtGraph

  One of the major strengths of Python is in exploratory data science and visualization, using tools such as Pandas, numpy, sklearn for data analysis and matplotlib plotting. Buiding GUI applications with PyQt gives you access to all these Python tools directly from within your app, allowing you to build complex data-driven apps and interactive dashboards.

  While it is possible to embed matplotlib plots in PyQt the experience does not feel entirely native. For simple and highly interactive plots you may want to consider using PyQtGraph instead. PyQtGraph is built on top of PyQ5 native QGraphicsScene giving better drawing performance, particularly for live data, as well as providing interactivity and the ability to easily customize plots with Qt graphics widgets.

  In this tutorial we'll walk through the first steps of creating a plot widget with PyQtGraph and then demonstrate plot customization using line colours, line type, axis labels, background colour and plotting multiple lines.

• Python 3.5.8rc2

  Python 3.5 has now entered "security fixes only" mode, and as such the only changes since Python 3.5.4 are security fixes. Also, Python 3.5.8rc2 has only been released in source code form; no more official binary installers will be produced.

• Developers in 2020 need open source and want the ability to work remotely

  But at the same time I think participation in open source products, projects, is also a key aspect that people can bring to the table in terms of additional credibility and also just being able to showcase what they're able to do in terms of collaborations.

• Dirk Eddelbuettel: GitHub Streak: Round Six

• One Weird Law That Interferes With Security Research, Remix Culture, and Even Car Repair

  How can a single, ill-conceived law wreak havoc in so many ways? It prevents you from making remix videos. It blocks computer security research. It keeps those with print disabilities from reading ebooks. It makes it illegal to repair people's cars. It makes it harder to compete with tech companies by designing interoperable products. It's even been used in an attempt to block third-party ink cartridges for printers.

  It's hard to believe, but these are just some of the consequences of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives legal teeth to "access controls" (like DRM). Courts have mostly interpreted the law as abandoning the traditional limitations on copyright's scope, such as fair use, in favor of a strict regime that penalizes any bypassing of access controls (such as DRM) on a copyrighted work regardless of your noninfringing purpose, regardless of the fact that you own that copy of the work.  

• One Weird Law That Interferes With Security Research, Remix Culture, and Even Car Repair

• Spotify is Defective by Design

  I never used Spotify, since it contains DRM. Instead I still buy DRM-free CDs. Most of my audio collection is stored in free formats such as FLAC and Ogg Vorbis, or Red Book in the case of CDs, everything can be played by free players such as VLC or mpd.

  Spotify, which uses a central server, also spies on the listener. Everytime you listen a song, Spotify knows which song you have listened and when and where. By contrast free embedded operating systems such as Rockbox do not phone home. CDs can be baught anonymously and ripped using free software, there is no need for an internet commection.

• What have you been playing recently and what do you think about it?

  Having seen a number of great Linux releases lately, it's getting tough opening Steam and actually picking something to play. The very new release of Pine has certainly sucked away a lot of my time, something about the world Twirlbound created has seriously pulled me in. It's not without issues though. While forcing my CPU to stay in Performance mode has made it smoother, it definitely needs improving.

• Dota 2 matchmaking may be less terrible now for solo players and more difficult for toxic people

  Valve continue to do some pretty big tweaks to the matchmaking system in Dota 2, with another blog post and update talking about all the improvements they're implementing.

  This is following on from all the other changes recently like the ban waves and sounds like they're really pushing to make the Dota 2 community and gameplay better for everyone.

  Ever played a game of Dota 2 by yourself and get matched against an entire team of people? I have, it sucks. They're all forming a strategy, while half of your team are telling each other they're going to report them. It happened for a lot of others too and Valve have finally put a stop to it. In the latest blog post, Valve said that now a five-player team will only be matched up against other five-player teams. For Solo players, they will now only be matched up with a party maximum of two, so Solo players will either now be against an entire team of other Solo players or possibly three solo players and one party of two.

• Arizona Sunshine | Linux Gaming | Ubuntu 19.04 | Steam Play

  Arizona Sunshine VR running through Steam play.

• How to explain multi-cloud in plain English
  

• How to Install LAMP Stack on CentOS 8/RHEL 8

• How To Set Permanent DNS Nameservers in Ubuntu and Debian

• How To Install Pip on Debian 10 Buster

• How to Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on Debian 9

• How to play The Sims 3 on Linux

• How to install Lubuntu 19.10

Version 1.3 of the Open Document Format (ODF), an open standard for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, will be ratified by the OASIS standardisation organisation in December, according to the Document Foundation – the organisation supporting the development of LibreOffice. This update of the ODF standard has been made possible by financial contributions from the United Kingdom, the European Commission, and three office productivity software companies: US multinational Microsoft, UK-based Collabora, and German software maker CIB.

• Google Pixel 4 might be faster than Android fans could have ever imagined

• Gaming, photo apps in Google Play infect Android handsets with malware

• [Update: Pocket Cases, Shazam] Here are some 3rd-party apps w/ Android 10 dark theme support

• MIUI 11 to start rolling out globally on October 16

• How To Stream PS4 Games To Any Android Phone

It’s finally here! Mastodon 3.0 is live! The team has been hard at work on making sure that this release is one of our most user-friendly yet with some exciting new features! Here are just a few: [...]

• Openwashing Reports Are on Hold
• Support the GNU Project and Support Free Speech
• The Campinos Car Crash
• Software Patents (or Monopolies on Algorithms) Are Not ‘Property’ and They’re Not Even Legally Valid
• Today’s EPO is Working for Patent Trolls and the ‘Aye Pee’ (IP) ‘Industry’ Instead of Science
• The EPO’s Universal Patent Injustice Concealed With Polyglottic Tricks
• Microsoft Tweets in Linux Platforms
• IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 11, 2019
• Links 12/10/2019: Rspamd 2.0, Kdenlive 19.08.2, Plasma Mobile Progress, FreeBSD 12.1 RC1

Peek is a really nice creation. It's easy to use, it's robust, it works well, and it produces high-quality output. There's just the right balance of everything. I would like to complain, but there's nothing to fault. The only improvement that I can think of would be to auto-frame windows on mouse-click, so it saves some resizing. Other than that, there's nothing else here. In fact, it's very easy to enhance the feature set, but that might actually disrupt the finely tuned elegance and refreshment.

If you're a software tester, or you need to share mini-tutorials with family, friends or colleagues without going overboard with full video creation suites plus something like a Youtube account or alike, Peek is the tool for you. Within seconds, you can render tiny projects that looks clear and sharp, and should be small enough to email. Just what you need in an age of over-complicated abstractions. Well done, highly recommended.

• Android cofounder Andy Rubin should stop making smartphones

• Pinterest Lite Debuts for Android Users in 5 Countries

• Best new mobile games on iOS and Android - October 2019 round-up

• 15 of the best tower defense games available on Android in 2019

• Top 10 Ways to Fix Google Calendar Sync Error on Android

• Motorola One Zoom review: Ready for its closeup

• Breaking: Galaxy S10 Android 10 One UI 2.0 beta program is now live!

• Xiaomi is working on a 120Hz Android 10 smartphone

• Huawei Mate 20 Pro starts receiving Android 10

• Samsung opens Android 10-based One UI 2.0 beta program for the Galaxy S10 lineup

• Google Confirms Next Operating System Is Android 11, Mentions OS' Latest Features

• Google to Focus on Digital Wellbeing With Future Android Devices

• Google's Upcoming Pixel Watch Might Run A Version Of Android OS

We are excited to welcome the latest Ubuntu called Eoan Ermine that planned to be released this month at Thursday, 17 October 2019. This short overview shows several new things I found in this Ubuntu 19.04 development edition (as per 12 October 2019, frozen status, before official release). Thanks to the daily ISO, we know that Ubuntu Eoan has new features such as grouping apps on start menu, new icons for apps and disks, and latest version of GNOME 3.34 and LibreOffice 6.3. I once again divided the article into only 3 parts so you could enjoy this review easily. Okay, let's go!

To that suite of new takes on old products, Oracle added Autonomous Linux, announced at its recent OpenWorld. The product is a freebie. Many financial types might scoff at investing in and launching such a product, but it has legs -- and not simply as a game-changer for capturing market share.

Work with me on this. The future of information technology is the formation of a utility, similar to many of the utilities that bring us products and services that originated in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The list includes telephone, cable and electricity, of course, but also water, sanitary and natural gas services. Today numerous tech product and service companies act like overindulged children in need of Mary Poppins. It's a phase that industries go through on the way to becoming well-behaved members of utilities.

I have been using MX-Linux as the distro on my primary laptop for over a year now. That’s the longest I’ve ever primarily used a single distro. I’m proud of that accomplishment. It took me years to get here!

When I first started with Linux, I was a notorious distro hopper, habitually jumping from one distro to another for the pettiest of reasons. I dare say I switched distros more than I can recall once where I had three different primary distros in a single day!

I then discovered VirtualBox, which allowed me to install and test distros without having to wipe my entire primary distro first. This was a significant and much-appreciated improvement, but installation and configuration were time-consuming and often frustrating. Often during those turbulent early years with Linux, I would think to myself, “Someone should make it easy to test and try out new distros online even without downloading the ISO and all that jazz.”

At Akademy Lars presented the plans for Qt 6 in his keynote. With Qt 6 planned for November 2020 we have to look at KDE Frameworks 6 within a two year horizon as well. We therefore need to get started with this as well, so we can help to shape Qt 6, and so we ensure a smooth as possible transition.

• FPgM update: 2019-41

  Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora Program Management this week. The Go/No-Go meeting is next week. We are currently under the Final freeze.

  No office hours next week, but normally I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.

• 5 Best Magento Extensions That Can Boost On-page SEO

  Therefore, if online resellers want to get the most out of this multifunctional development platform Magento, it is very important to establish an effective expansion on the shopping page. This helps to expand various functionalities and offers users a wide experience of shopping online, as well as brings high profits and optimize Magento 2 Speed.

  Currently, there are many extensions available on the Internet, and it is necessary to choose the most useful ones. This task can be challenging for business owners. To help you choose the best extensions, we have prepared a list of excellent Magento plug-ins that you can install and improve the performance of your website and help you gain an edge over the competition.

• Intrinsyc Unveils Open-Q 845 µSOM and Snapdragon 845 Mini-ITX Development Kit

  Intrinsyc introduced the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 hardware development platform last year with its Open-Q 845 HDK designed for OEMs and device makers.

• Arduino MKR WAN 1310 LoRa Board Gets HW Security, Longer Battery Life and a 2MB SPI flash

  Two year ago Arduino launched MKR WAN 1300 board powered by Arduino Zero compatible Microchip Atmel SAMD21 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU and a Murata CMWZ1ZZABZ LoRa module based on Semtech SX1276...

• Open source hardware: The problems and promise

  Open source hardware projects have struggled to gain the mass audience that popular open source software projects have. This may not matter.

• Security updates for Friday

  Security updates have been issued by Debian (lucene-solr and ruby-openid), Fedora (krb5 and SDL2), openSUSE (kernel and libopenmpt), and Ubuntu (python2.7, python3.4).

• Chromium updated

  Here is yet another update for Chromium 77.

  The latest release fixes 8 vulnerabilities, several of them high-risk. You can read all about it in the Google announcement.

• October 12: International Day Against DRM 2019

  Digital Restrictions Management is the practice of imposing technological restrictions that control what users can do with digital media. When a program is designed to prevent you from copying or sharing a song, reading an ebook on another device, or playing a single-player game without an Internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM. In other words, DRM creates a damaged good; it prevents you from doing what would be possible without it. This concentrates control over production and distribution of media, giving DRM peddlers the power to carry out massive digital book burnings and conduct large scale surveillance over people’s media viewing habits.

  If we want to avoid a future in which our devices serve as an apparatus to monitor and control our interaction with digital media, we must fight to retain control of our media and software.

• Six extra videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2019

  Here’s the final set of presentations from the “Sala de Grados (Aulario IV)” room at the LibreOffice Conference 2019 in Almeria, Spain. We have many more videos from other rooms to come, of course! (Note: for better audio, use headphones.)

• Paul E. Mc Kenney: The Old Man and His Smartphone, Episode II

  At some point in the setup process, it was necessary to disable wifi. And I of course forgot to re-enable it. A number of apps insisted on downloading new versions. Eventually I realized my mistake, and re-enabled wifi, but am still wondering just how severe a case of sticker shock I am in for at the end of the month.

  [...]

  My new smartphone's virtual keyboard represents a definite improvement over the multipress nature of text messaging on my old flip phone, but it does not hold a candle to a full-sized keyboard. However, even this old man must confess that it is much faster to respond to the smartphone than to the laptop if both start in their respective sleeping states. There is probably an optimal strategy in there somewhere!

• openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2019/41

  Just like the previous week, we have again released 4 snapshots since last Friday (1003, 1004, 1007 and 1009). 3 more have been tested but have been discarded by openQA; two of them only due to OBS being ‘too fast’ and random failures marking a snapshot as failed; likely they would have been ok. Snapshot 1010, on the other hand, was declined by openQA as the yast software management was not usable due to an ABI break. This has since been fixed and snapshot 1011 is expected to be releasable again (currently building).

• Update on Oracle Certifications with SLES 15

  The latest versions of Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware and related products are available with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15. This provides flexibility to customers who are migrating from SLES 12 to 15, and for Oracle customers who are still running older versions of the database and middleware products.

• Build a simple chat app with Site.js

  This weekend, I released Site.js version 12.7.0 with improvements to its WebSocket interface. Today, I want to take you step-by-step through building and running a basic chat app using Site.js.

• Onboarding edge applications on the dev environment

• Kubernetes on Windows nodes hits GA in Rancher, Amazon EKS

  Rancher 2.3 and Amazon EKS were first to roll out support for Windows nodes in Kubernetes clusters this week, as well as mixed-mode clusters that encompass both Windows and Linux nodes. Most Kubernetes platforms already supported Windows containers but running on Linux host nodes; in all cases, including upstream Kubernetes, the Kubernetes master node still runs on Linux.

Ubuntu is the world’s most prominent Linux distribution. Ubuntu and its developer, Canonical, has caught a lot of flack over the years, but the Linux world is much better off thanks to both.

So let’s stop and take a moment to appreciate some of what Canonical and Ubuntu have given the Linux community.

The Serenity operating system turns 1 year old today. I'm counting from the first commit in the git repository, on October 10, 2018. Parts of the code had been around for a while before that, so this first commit was really about putting everything I was tinkering with into a shared repo.