Clearly, Linux is everywhere. In this article, we not even touched on “fun” everyday uses such as smart TVs, Roku sticks, Nest thermostats, Kindle e-readers, and all the rest.

And even though we’ve only listed eight unusual uses, the wide variety of the examples will hopefully give you an appreciation for how widespread the operating system is.

• Point & click horror game 'Without Escape' to have Linux support, launching April 24th

  Feeling brave? Point and click horror game Without Escape might test that a little and it's heading to Linux.

  Without Escape is inspired by first-person adventure games like Myst which used pre-rendered backgrounds and full-motion video, only Without Escape is going down with the horror theme with an "oppressive atmosphere".

• Rise of the Tomb Raider for Linux to release tomorrow, April 19th

  The moment many have been waiting for, Feral Interactive have just announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider for Linux will release tomorrow, April 19th. As a reminder, this title will be using Vulkan.

• Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Launches on Linux on April 19

  UK-based video games publisher Feral Interactive announced on Wednesday that it plans to launch the Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration action-adventure video game on the Linux platform on April 19, 2018.

  Feral Interactive already released their macOS port of Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration on April 12, 2018, and it promised to launch the Linux port too in the coming weeks. Well, the wait is now almost over and Linux gamers will be able to play the famous video game on their favorite GNU/Linux distributions on April 19.

• Rise of the Tomb Raider Launching Tomorrow For Linux

  Feral Interactive has just announced they will be launching Rise of the Tomb Raider for Linux tomorrow, 19 April.

  Feral has tweeted that this Vulkan-powered Linux game port will be released on Thursday.

  System requirements have yet to be revealed, but of course we'll certainly be interested in seeing what they recommend and will certainly be delivering many Radeon/NVIDIA Linux gaming benchmarks of this game on launch day.

• Monster taming game 'Monster Crown' has smashed multiple stretch goals, Linux demo out for backers

  I'm pretty excited for Monster Crown, the new monster taming game with inspirations taken from Pokemon and other monster capturing related games. The Kickstarter has done very well and there's now a Linux demo for backers.

• Heckpoint is a side-scroller where literally everything can be destroyed, Linux port is planned

  I recently came across the side-scrolling action game Heckpoint [Official Site, Steam] and I fell a little in love, the good news is that it's coming to Linux. What's interesting about it, is that quite literally everything you see can be destroyed. It's like an even more insane version of Broforce and that makes me happy.

• Get your terminal ready to hack the planet in Off Grid with a new trailer, confirmed for same-day Linux release

  I haven't actually been following it closely, something I aim to fix as it seems like a game I would enjoy. The developer has been testing Linux early-on in the development of it too, with them sharing a shot of it running on Linux back in 2016. They've recently put up a new gameplay teaser and they re-confirmed to me that Linux will indeed be a same-day release—heck, their Tweet even has a "#linuxgames" tag in it.

• The Linux version of RUINER is now on GOG, with 50% off

  Those waiting for the awesome new Linux port of RUINER from GOG will be happy, as it just landed with a discount too. If you pick it up now you can get 50% off.

  Just be aware the current Linux build available on GOG is not their usual installer, but instead a rather large (14GB) tar.gz file. I understand that their normal installer package is coming as well.

Some people code HTML/CSS oldskool in software like Atom, Notepadqq, or even nano/vi, but others enjoy using what’s called a WYSIWYG editor, which stands for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.

KompoZer, is a free cross-platform WYSIWYG editor worth looking at despite the fact that it has not been updated for a very long time. Note though that KompoZer lacks support for features like HTML5 or CSS3 that were introduced after the last version of the HTML editor was released.

As is the case with a lot, but not all, of software in GNU/Linux systems that people use, KompoZer is technically multi-platform, but I would say that the GNU/Linux and MacOS user share dominate the Windows one, from my experience.

• Retro-inspired racer Horizon Chase Turbo announced with Linux support

  Aquiris Game Studio, developer of FPS Ballistic Overkill has announced their retro-inspired racing game Horizon Chase Turbo [Official Site].

  It's actually a revamp of an older title of their's named Horizon Chase World Tour, only this time it's not locked to mobile platforms and it will be getting a Linux version too! Honestly, it looks like a really fantastic attempt to bring out a classic-style racing game for a new generation of players.

• RUINER officially released for Linux on Steam, coming to GOG soon

  RUINER, the absolutely brutal and damn fun action game is now out of beta and officially available on Steam, with a GOG release to follow. I have it confirmed from my GOG contacts it will land soonish, but if you doubt my own word, the developer said so on the Steam forum as well.

  I already wrote some thoughts up on the game here, so I won't reiterate too much. As it stands, it's an excellent action game full of character customisation with tons of perks you can activate and deactivate any time, brutal take-downs and plenty of blood.

• Red Hat Summit 2018: Learn how other developers are producing cloud-native applications

  Want insights into how other organizations are building cloud-native applications and microservices? At Red Hat Summit 2018, developers from a number of different companies will be sharing their stories in break-out sessions, lightning talks, and birds-of-a-feather discussions. Learn how they solved real business problems using containers, microservices, API management, integration services, and other middleware.

• Analyst’s Trends to observe: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

• TeX Live 2018 for Debian

  TeX Live 2018 has hit Debian/unstable today. The packages are based on what will be (most likely, baring any late desasters) on the TeX Live DVD which is going to press this week. This brings the newest and shiniest version of TeX Live to Debian. There have

• alioth deprecation - next steps

  As you should be aware, alioth.debian.org will be decommissioned with the EOL of wheezy, which is at the end of May. The replacement for the main part of alioth, git, is alive and out of beta, you know it as salsa.debian.org. If you did not move your git repository yet, hurry up, time is running out.

• Linux-ready computer monitors condition of industrial equipment

  Adlink’s rugged, Ubuntu-friendly “MCM-100” is a condition monitoring system for industrial machines that offers an Intel Apollo Lake SoC and a 24-bit analog sampling input for up to 128kS/s frequencies.

• Gear Sport update brings new features with Tizen version 3.0.0.2

  Samsung want you to know that they are serious about their wearable devices, and one way of showing the “Love” is continued development and support. Support can come in many forms and one of the best for end-users software updates.

• Solaris 11.4 Beta Updated With Spectre V1 Mitigation, Systemd Bit To Make GNOME Happy

• Chrome 66 rolling out on Mac, Windows, Linux w/ media autoplay restrictions, password export

  Chrome 66 is rolling out today on Mac, Windows, and Linux with a number of user-facing features and policy changes that have been in development for the past several months. This includes new media autoplay behavior, blocking third-party software, and other security changes.

• Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 Launches With Secured Kubernetes

  After months of development effort, Kubernetes is now fully supported in the stable release of the Docker Enterprise Edition.

  Docker Inc. officially announced Docker EE 2.0 on April 17, adding features that have been in development in the Docker Community Edition (CE) as well as enhanced enterprise grade capabilities. Docker first announced its intention to support Kubernetes in October 2017. With Docker EE 2.0, Docker is providing a secured configuration of Kubernetes for container orchestration.

  "Docker EE 2.0 brings the promise of choice," Docker Chief Operating Officer Scott Johnston told eWEEK. "We have been investing heavily in security in the last few years, and you'll see that in our Kubernetes integration as well."

• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Cloud Billing [Ed: There’s no such thing as "cloud". In this particular context it just means server space rental.]

  Back in the mists of antiquity when I started reading Linux Journal, figuring out what an infrastructure was going to cost was (although still obnoxious in some ways) straightforward. You'd sign leases with colocation providers, buy hardware that you'd depreciate on a schedule and strike a deal in blood with a bandwidth provider, and you were more or less set until something significant happened to your scale.

• Making the Most Out of Microservices with Service Mesh

  In this article, we talk with Andrew Jenkins, Lead Architect at Aspen Mesh, about moving from monolithic apps to microservices and cut through some of the hype around service mesh for managing microservice architectures. For more on service mesh, consider attending KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, May 2-4, 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Cloud Foundry for Developers: Definitions

  In the first article in our series on the Cloud Foundry for Developers training course, we explained what Cloud Foundry is and how it's used. We continue our journey here with a look at some basic terms. Understanding the terminology is the key to not being in a constant state of bewilderment, so here are the most important terms and concepts to know for Cloud Foundry.

• What’s the Value of CI/CD?

• How to safely remove disk from LVM

• How To Browse Stack Overflow From Terminal

• How to Manage Services with Systemd

• Extending L4Re/Fiasco.OC to the Letux 400 Notebook Computer

• How to Install OroCRM with Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

• U.S. & U.K. Issue Joint Warning About Risks of Russian Cyberattacks

• Demonstrating Tamper Detection with Heads

  We are excited about the future of Heads on Librem laptops and the extra level of protection it can give customers. As a result we’ve both been writing about it a lot publicly and working on it a lot privately. What I’ve realized when I’ve talked to people about Heads and given demos, is that many people have never seen a tamper-evident boot process before. All of the concepts around tamper-evident boot are pretty abstract and it can be difficult to fully grasp how it protects you if you’ve never seen it work.

  We have created a short demo that walks through a normal Heads boot process and demonstrates tamper detection. In the interest of keeping the demo short I only briefly described what was happening. In this post I will elaborate on what you are seeing in the video.

• Stop Using Six Digit Numeric iPhone Passcodes Right Now

• Tuptime - Tool to Display Uptime History of Linux System

  The primary task of the system administrators is monitoring and examine Linux system and how long its been promenade. This article demonstrates use of Tuptime tool that help's System Administrators to analyse how long Linux machine is up and running.

  Tuptime tool counts accidental system restarts and not just only uptime of system. When tuptime is installed on system it registers first boot time after installation. Once the first boot time is registered from there onwards it checks for system tuptime and downtime and represents it in Percentage (%). Tuptime also registers current tuptime of system from last restart. Reports Largest Running system Time, Shortest Running System Time & Average of both.

• dutree – A CLI Tool to Analyze Disk Usage in Coloured Output

  dutree is a free open-source, fast command-line tool for analyzing disk usage, written in Rust programming language. It is developed from durep (disk usage reporter) and tree (list directory content in tree-like format) command line tools. dutree therefore reports disk usage in a tree-like format.

• gotop - A Tool to Monitor System Activity in Linux

  Every Linux administrator has it's own preferences on how to monitor processes in terminal. And you probably know about tools like top and htop. These are tools for process monitoring in terminal without any visualization. And you probably know about gtop and vtop which are also process monitoring terminal tools, but with visualization. In this article, we are going to install and use another terminal based graphical activity monitor called gotop. Unlike the two mentioned above, gotop is written in Go.

• Nginx 1.14 Web Server Released

  Nginx 1.14.0 is now available as the latest open-source stable release of this popular web server alternative to Apache.

• Cooking With Linux (without a net): A CMS Smorgasbord

  Today, I'm going to install four popular content management systems. These will be Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and Backdrop. If you're trying to decide on what your next CMS platform should be, this would be a great time to tune in. And yes, I'll do it all live, without a net, and with a high probability of falling flat on my face. Join me today, at 12 noon, Easter Time. Be part of the conversation.

• Amarok – A Powerful Cross Platform Music Player

  Amarok is a cross-platform, free, and Open Source music player written in Qt (C++). It was first released on June 23, 2003, and even though it is part of the KDE project, Amarok is released as a software independent of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle.

  It features a clean, responsive, and customizable User Interface along with Last.fm support, Jamendo service, Dynamic playlists, context view, PopUp dropper, bookmarking, file tracking, multi-language support, and smooth fade-out settings, among many other options.

• CMake 3.11 in FreeBSD

  The latest release of CMake has landed in FreeBSD. Prior to release we had good contact with KitWare via the bug tracker so there were few surprises left in the actual release. There were still a few last-minute fixes left, in KDE applications no less.

• KDE Connect: more album art & bluetooth coming soon

  Secondly, I've been working a bit on KDE Connect's bluetooth support. The code was mostly working already, but the remaining stuff is (of course) the hardest part! Nevertheless, more and more parts start working, so I assume it'll come your way in a couple of months. I'll post an update when it's ready for testing.

• New in Qt 3D 5.11: Generalized Ray Casting

  The 5.11 release of Qt 3D is mostly about speed and stability but it also introduces a number of new features.

  One of them is generalized ray casting which can be used to find objects intersecting a 3d ray.

• Qt 5.11 Bringing Generalized Ray Casting Support For 3D Module

  The Qt 3D ray-casting support is to be used for finding objects intersecting a 3D ray. This generalized ray-casting support is expected to be useful for applications making use of secondary controllers and VR environments among other possible use-cases where you would want to see what objects intersect with an arbitrary ray.

  For Qt developers wanting to learn more about this generalized ray-casting support coming to Qt 3D, the folks at the KDAB consulting firm have put out a lengthy blog post detailing this new feature for the upcoming Qt 5.11 release.

• 3.28 Release Party

  Last Saturday we celebrated the release of GNOME 3.28. It was a bit late, but happened nonetheless!

• GNOME 3.29.1 Released As The First Step Towards GNOME 3.30

  GNOME 3.29.1 was released this afternoon as the first step towards what will eventually become GNOME 3.30 in September.

• TicPods Free aim to be a $129 AirPods alternative for Android

• Amazon made an efficient Android browser called Internet, and it's now available in India

• Thousands of Android app improperly tracking kids' data, new study shows

• ZTE may lose Android licensing from Google, report says

• Google Launches Chrome 66 For Windows, Mac, Linux, Android And iOS

In about two weeks, Canonical will release its next LTS, 18.04 Bionic Beaver. What makes it special is that it's going to be running a Gnome 3 desktop instead of Unity, a sort of full-circle reversal of direction and strategy, and that means ... uncertainty. With Trusty Tahr being the only production Linux system in my setup, I am quite intrigued and concerned, because I need to choose my next LTS carefully.

So far, the prospect isn't encouraging, given the more-than-lukewarm performance by Aardvark. There's a lot of hope in the Plasma spin, given the stellar performance of the Plasma desktop recently, but that's still a big unknown, especially since Kubuntu 17.10 was a regression compared to the most magnificent and awesome Zesty Zapus. Therefore, I decided to check this beta, to see what gives ahead of the official release. Normally, I don't like testing unfinished products, but this be an extraordinary occasion. Let's do it.

It's beautiful, it's lovely, it's amusing, it's Ubuntu MATE 18.04 beta 2. It is an LTS version which will be supported for 3 years. It's more just-work now with a set of different appearances for Windows users ("Redmond"), for Mac OS X users ("Cupertino"), for Unity 7 users ("Mutiny"), and of course for long time Ubuntu MATE users themselves ("Traditional"). It comes with special Welcome program to introduce Ubuntu MATE for any new user, it comes with same experience like previous versions but latest applications (LibreOffice 6.0, Firefox 59, MATE Desktop 1.20) and enhancements, it needs only mid-level specs. with around 640MiB of RAM, and those all made Ubuntu MATE beta 2 really enjoyable. This short review will help you expecting what you will get on Ubuntu MATE final release later on April 26. Enjoy!

Linux is a free and open-source software operating systems built around the Linux kernel. It typically packaged in a form known as a Linux distribution for both desktop and server use. It is a great development environment for programmers and developers. However, without the development tools, that would be impossible. Fortunately, plenty of Linux tools are available. Here are the top 5 most useful Linux tools for programmers.

1 – Linux isn’t Windows. There is no magical company to go to,things will behave differently. If you expect a parity experience, you’re going to be disappointed. Software types, source of software or installing a new driver.

2 – Linux does what it’s told to. Something isn’t working? Odds are, it’s just not working as expected it means you need to adjust a configuration or rethink the tools used to interact with Linux. This includes hardware not appearing to work, audio and video.

3 – Linux applications may work differently than legacy applications. MS Word vs LibreOffice, Photoshop vs GIMP, exe installers vs repositories.

4 – Linux offers choice. Different distros, desktop environments and methods of application installation.

Also: EzeeLinux Show 18.16 | Facebook, Time Out & Finding Configuration Files

The team over at Netrunner have just announced the launch of Netrunner 18.03 Idolon for the Pinebook. This is the direct result of a year of collaboration between the Netrunner, Pine and KDE Communities in a effort to drive down memory consumption, fix glitches in the graphics stack and enabling accelerated video decode, all of which has resulted in a product that showcases the coming together of the amazing software from KDE and some brilliant hardware engineering from the folks over at Pine.

It’s been quite a journey for my colleagues and I at Blue Systems in putting together this product. We have had to delve into areas where we originally did not have the expertise to fix bugs and constantly push the boundaries of our abilities. This was especially challenging in the ARM world since there are parts of the stack that were proprietary, meaning we cannot debug those parts, leading to many frustrating evenings having been spent on trying to reverse engineer buggy behaviour.

• Google Play faces allegations of market abuse in South Korea

  Google Play is under investigation in South Korea for allegedly abusing its position in the market to pressure game developers into publish on its platform only.

  According to The Korea Herald, the South Korean Fair Trade Commission has begun surveying local mobile game companies to review whether the allegations have merit.

  The Korean FTC is also investigating whether game companies faced negative consequences if they did not agree to launch on Google Play only.

• Sony Xperia XZ2 Premium Features World’s Highest ISO Sensitivity Video Recording

• Android 8.1 Oreo Is Finally Rolling Out to OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5 Owners

• This Week in Programming: That’s How C Does It

  I had grand ambitions this week. I’d come across a smattering of articles delving into the history of programming languages, practices, and other Internet-based tidbits. I’d pondered a pithy title like “if !mistake(history) do repeat” and dug through my source materials for evidence, but came up a bit empty-handed. In the end, the line that really summed up this week’s theme was found at the closing of an interesting article asking why does “=” mean assignment?

• Intel Tremont CPU Support Added To LLVM's Clang Compiler

  Earlier this month Intel ISA documentation pointed to a new CPU micro-architecture codenamed "Tremont", we've seen a few kernel patches also referencing Intel Tremont, and now there is Tremont microarchitecture support for LLVM's Clang compiler.

• SAP okays Java EE being Eclipsed, six months after Oracle's announcement

  SAP has revealed its attitude to Oracle’s decision to let go of Java EE and have it tended by the Eclipse Foundation.

  SAP’s position is simple: it’s cool with it.

  “The announcement of Oracle to handover stewardship of Java EE to the Eclipse foundation is a forward-looking process targeting future releases of the technology stack,” says the company’s “”stance” on the matter.

Hot on the heels of the first release candidate, we’re happy to have a second RC ready! In the last 3 weeks since releasing GIMP 2.10.0-RC1, we’ve fixed 44 bugs and introduced important performance improvements.

As usual, for a complete list of changes please see NEWS.

Also: GIMP 2.10 RC2 Released With Multi-Threaded Painting, Rewritten Themes

• Detailing The Idle Loop Ordering Problem & The Power Improvement In Linux 4.17

  Of the many great features/changes for Linux 4.17, one of the most exciting to us is the idle power efficiency and performance-per-Watt improvements on some systems thanks to a rework to the kernel's idle loop handling. Rafael Wysocki and Thomas Ilsche as two of the developers working on this big code change presented on their work today for this CPU idle loop ordering problem and its resolution.

• Linux 4.17 development underway

  Linus Torvalds has started the development cycle of the Linux 4.17 kernel series, according to a report by Softpedia.

  The first Release Candidate build has been released, and comes two weeks after the launch of Linux 4.16.

  “Public testers can start downloading, compiling, and installing the upcoming Linux 4.17 kernel,” stated the report.

• Linux Foundation seeks to harmonise open source and standards development

  A year ago The Linux Foundation created its 'Harmonisation 1.0' initiative, focusing on collaboration between projects and with standards bodies. It brought together a set of open source projects, which together form the basis of the modern telecoms systems. Open source creates three values for telcos: speed to services, vendor collaboration, and cost reductions. The LF is also creating a framework between open source and standards communities; for example, this year it announced an agreement with the TM Forum, focused on the APIs that work between the two communities.

• Broadcom VC5 DRM Driver Might Soon Be On Its Way To The Mainline Linux Kernel

  Eric Anholt believes he is getting quite close to the stage of merging the Broadcom VC5 DRM driver into the mainline Linux kernel tree.

  As part of the VC5 open-source driver stack for supporting the next-gen Broadcom VideoCore 5 graphics hardware, there's been the VC5 Gallium3D driver that is already in mainline Mesa for OpenGL support and the VC5 DRM driver that has been outside of the kernel tree up until now. (There's also been the also out-of-tree experimental work on VC5 Vulkan support via BCMV, etc.)

• NVIDIA 396.18.02 Vulkan Linux Beta Brings Better Shader Performance

  Last week NVIDIA released their first 396 Linux driver beta that most notably introduces their new "NVVM" Vulkan SPIR-V compiler. Coming out today is a new Vulkan beta update with some continued enhancements.

• AMDVLK Driver Updated With Latest XGL/PAL Fixes

  AMD kicked off the start of a new week by doing fresh code drops of the PAL and XGL code-bases used to form the AMDVLK open-source Radeon Vulkan Linux driver.

  On the XGL side this latest code drop of around one thousand lines of code reduces the number of malloc/free calls, support for INT64 atomic operations within LLPC (the LLVM Pipeline Compiler), other tweaks to LLPC, more barriers in the render pass clear, adding FMASK shadow table support, and other changes.

• X.Org 2018 Elections Yield 54% Voter Turnout, Select Four New Board Members

  The 2018 X.Org Board of Directors elections are over with 49 of the 91 X.Org registered members having casted a ballot.

  The new X.Org Board of Directors members are Bryce Harrington (Samsung OSG, formerly Canonical), Eric Anholt (Broadcom, formerly Intel), Keith Packard (HPE / Valve, formerly Intel), and Harry Wentland (AMD).