I’m a fan of productivity. It is not a coincidence that I’m the maintainer of Calendar and To Do. And even though I’m not a power user, I’m a heavy user of productivity applications.

For some time now, I’m finding the overall experience of GNOME To Do clumsy and far from ideal. Recently, I received a thank you email from a fellow user, and I asked they what they think that could be improved.

It was not a surprise when they said To Do’s interface is clumsy too.

• Courts Are Losing Patience for Gilstrap’s Unbridled Support of Patent Trolls
• Intellectual Ventures, GNU/Linux/Android/FOSS Patents, and the Ascent of European Patent Trolls
• Shelston IP Blames “Well-Organised and Appropriately-Connected Open Source Lobby” for Ban on Software Patents
• The EPO’s Latest Lies About the UPC and SMEs Unraveled, Long-Term Plan Described as Daunting
• In an Effort to Push the Unitary Patent (UPC), EPO and the Liar in Chief Spread the Famous Lie About SMEs
• Links 21/9/2017: Red Hat’s Open Source Patent Promise; Qt 5.6.3, Kali Linux 2017.2 Release

Endless OS is a free, easy-to-use operating system preloaded with over 100 apps, making it useful from the moment you turn it on. Endless takes Linux to a whole different dimension. It is intuitive and quite different. The developers have come out with a distro that targets mainly developing countries and also computers with no or limited internet access. So even without internet, you will have access to stuff like Wikipedia. The aim is to provide an operating system that comes with everything you will need. Intrigued? Let us take a look at what makes Endless OS different, intuitive, and so powerful in its own right. Endless OS uses OSTree to manage a read-only file system and uses Flatpaks for application delivery and updates.

• A different approach to kernel configuration

  The kernel's configuration system can be challenging to deal with; Linus Torvalds recently called it "one of the worst parts of the whole project". Thus, anything that might help users with the process of configuring a kernel build would be welcome. A talk by Junghwan Kang at the 2017 Open-Source Summit demonstrated an interesting approach, even if it's not quite ready for prime time yet.

  Kang is working on a Debian-based, cloud-oriented distribution; he wanted to tweak the kernel configuration to minimize the size of the kernel and, especially, to reduce its attack surface by removing features that were not needed. The problem is that the kernel is huge, and there are a lot of features that are controlled by configuration options. There are over 300 feature groups and over 20,000 configuration options in current kernels. Many of these options have complicated dependencies between them, adding to the challenge of configuring them properly.

• The first half of the 4.14 merge window

  September 8, 2017 As of this writing, just over 8,000 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline kernel repository for the 4.14 development cycle. In other words, it looks like the pace is not slowing down for this cycle either. The merge window is not yet done, but quite a few significant changes have been merged so far. Read on for a summary of the most interesting changes entering the mainline in the first half of this merge window.

• Running Android on a mainline graphics stack

  The Android system may be based on the Linux kernel, but its developers have famously gone their own way for many other parts of the system. That includes the graphics subsystem, which avoids user-space components like X or Wayland and has special (often binary-only) kernel drivers as well. But that picture may be about to change. As Robert Foss described in his Open Source Summit North America presentation, running Android on the mainline graphics subsystem is becoming possible and brings a number of potential benefits.
  He started the talk by addressing the question of why one might want to use mainline graphics with Android. The core of the answer was simple enough: we use open-source software because it's better, and running mainline graphics takes us toward a fully open system. With mainline graphics, there are no proprietary blobs to deal with. That, in turn, makes it easy to run current versions of the kernel and higher-level graphics software like Mesa.

Good morning! It's time to beautify your KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment, and we have just the perfect theme for that as it looks like the popular Adapta GTK theme was recently ported to Plasma 5.

I have been traveling for about two weeks now, spending 10 days camping in Iceland and now a few days on the ferry to get back. For this trip I brought along my Samsung N150 Plus (a very old netbook), loaded with openSUSE Linux 42.3.

• Red Hat’s automation solution spreading among APAC enterprises

  Red Hat recently shared revealed its agentless automation platform is spreading among enterprises in APAC countries like Australia, China, India and Singapore.

  The company asserts its Ansible Tower helps enterprises cut through the complexities of modern IT environments with powerful automation capabilities that improve productivity and reduce downtime.

  “Today’s business demands can mean even greater complexity for many organisations. Such dynamic environments can necessitate a new approach to automation that can improve speed, scale and stability across IT environments,” says head of APAC office of technology at Red Hat, Frank Feldmann.

• Red Hat broadens patent pledge to most open-source software

  Red Hat, the world's biggest open source company, has expanded its commitment on patents, which had originally been not to enforce its patents against free and open source software.

• Red Hat expands Patent Promise

  Open-source software provider Red Hat has revised its Patent Promise, which was initially intended to discourage patent aggression against free and open-source software.

  The expanded version of the defensive patent aggregation scheme extends the zone of non-enforcement to all of Red Hat’s patents and all software under “well-recognised” open-source licenses.

  In its original Patent Promise in 2002, Red Hat said software patents are “inconsistent with open-source and free software”.

• Red Hat Inc (RHT) AO Seeing a Consistent Downtrend

• Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) noted a price change of -0.14% and RingCentral, Inc. (RNG) closes with a move of -2.09%

MYIR released an add-on board for its Linux-driven, i.MX6 UL-based MYS-6ULX SBC that adds a second LAN port, plus CAN, RS485, camera, audio, and RTC.

In April, MYIR released a Linux-powered MYS-6ULX SBC, which was notable for being available in two different versions using NXP’s low power, Cortex-A7 i.MX6 UltraLite (UL) or the more affordable, and almost identical i.MX6 ULL SoC. Now, MYIR has released an “MYB-6ULX Expansion Board” designed to stack onto either model. The $21.20 accessory adds a second 10/100 Ethernet port to the MYS-6ULX, as well as new CAN, RS485, audio, micro-USB, RTC, and camera functions.

• Build a computer with this $25 board that's smaller than a credit card

• Raspberry Pi Zero-sized PocketBeagle: $25 open-source computer is tiny as a key fob

• Small in size & cost: Meet PocketBeagle®, the $25 development board for hobbyists, educators and professionals

• Purism Librem 5: the promise of a truly free, truly open phone

  Part of the appeal of Android is its openness, at least compared to iOS. But, let’s face it. Google isn’t running a charity and Android’s direction will always be aligned with Google’s business. There will always be a large hole to be filled as far as a truly open, truly free, truly secure, and truly private phone goes. And Purism, the people behind the more or less successful Librem laptops, is diving into that space with the Librem 5 phone, and it is taking open source communities along for the ride.

• Kaby Lake rugged box-PCs include Linux-ready beast with 9x GbE ports

  Aaeon unveiled two rugged embedded PCs that run Intel’s 6th or 7th Gen CPUs. The Linux-friendly “BOXER-6640M” stands out with 9x GbE and 8x USB 3.0 ports.

  Aaeon’s BOXER-6640M and Boxer-6640 build on the same fanless design, ruggedization features, and support for 6th Gen Skylake and 7th Gen Kaby Lake processors as its recent Boxer-6639. Here, we’ll focus primarily on the Linux-supported, networking oriented BOXER-6640M, which features nine Gigabit Ethernet ports. Farther below, we briefly cover the similar, but dual GbE, Boxer-6640, which is listed only with Windows support. Both computers measure 264.2 x 186.2 x 96.4mm.

Speak the word “mainframe” to many millennial techies, and the first things that likely come to mind are in the form of grainy sepia photos of floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall computers with big spinning tapes. But that’s far from the reality of the modern mainframe.

Imagine instead up to 240 10-core, 5.2ghz processors, 32TB of RAIM (redundant array of independent memory), hardware-based encryption, and fully hot-swappable hardware components. Those are the specs of the newly released IBM z14 – a single machine that could replace the computing resources of an average corporate data center with room to spare.

• Introducing The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Networking Days

  One of my primary goals at The Linux Foundation is to foster innovation across the entire open source networking ecosystem. This involves coordinating across multiple open source projects and initiatives and identifying key areas for collaboration to create an open source networking stack.

  We are working across the entire ecosystem with industry-leading partners — from developers to service providers to vendors — to unify various open source components and create solutions that will accelerate network transformation. As part of this journey, I am pleased to introduce Open Source Networking Days (OSN Days), a series of free events that are hosted and organized by local user groups and The Linux Foundation members, with support from our projects, including DPDK, FD.io, ONAP, OpenDaylight, OPNFV, PNDA, and others.

• Randa news, release update

  Last week, from wednesday to saturday I attended KDE’s annual Randa sprint organized by wonderful people. This was an occasion to work fulltime on Kdenlive.

• It’s Simple to Make Visual Studio Code Match Your Gtk Theme [Ed: Maybe OMG Ubuntu does not want Ubuntu but really just wants another Windows]

• Canonical builds a custom Ubuntu kernel for Microsoft Azure [Ed: And don't be surprised if this happens again]

• Canonical & Microsoft make Azure-tailored Linux kernel

• Canonical and Microsoft enable new Azure-tailored Ubuntu kernel

• Canonical builds a special Ubuntu kernel for Microsoft

• Database provider MongoDB has filed to go public

• Software company MongoDB seeks to raise $100 million in IPO

• MongoDB files for initial public offering

• Despite big losses and big competition, database firm MongoDB files for an IPO

• Heterogeneous Memory Management Made It For Linux 4.14

  Heterogeneous Memory Management is the long-time work-in-progress functionality by Jerome Glisse of Red Hat for allowing a process address space to be mirrored and for system memory to be transparently used by any device process.

• A Set Of BFQ Improvements Ready For Testing

  Recently I wrote about a BFQ regression fix that should take care of a problem spotted in our recent I/O scheduler Linux 4.13 benchmarks while now that work has yielded a set of four patches working to improve this recently-merged scheduler.

If writing is part of your job or your everyday routine, you might find the Nextcloud open source file sync and share application a very useful tool. First, it provides you with free, secure, and easily accessible cloud file storage.

Second, it's fully customizable, which means you can choose different writing tools, such as the four useful editorial apps described below, depending on the task you're trying to accomplish. You can find these and other useful add-ons on the Nextcloud app store.

Hi, fellow Linux user there! How is your social life going? This is how most of the time I think my friends ask me. They think that I am all the time messed with the terminal. Now how to explain to Windows users that Terminal does almost all my work from games to app installation. From email to personal messages. Leave them! Today I am here with an amazing terminal software call “FB Messenger CLI”.

• RUINER is reconfirmed for Linux once again

  After the stupidly confusing mixed messages about the Linux version of RUINER [Steam, Official Site], the developer has now reconfirmed that its coming to Linux.

• xoEl Empire, a puzzle game that's just utterly weird is on Linux

• Outlast Deluxe Edition is currently free on the Humble Store

• There's a trailer for the Albion Online 'Joseph' update, plus more Arena Mode information

  Albion Online is going to get a bit bigger next week, with the release of the Joseph expansion. We have a new trailer and more info!

• Auto Age: Standoff, a colourful car combat game may come to Linux

  Auto Age: Standoff [Steam] looks like a rather vibrant car combat game and it could see a Linux release with enough support from the community.

Java 9 (JDK 9) has finally reached general availability! Following setbacks, Java 9 is officially available as well as Java EE 8.

​A package file is an archive which contains the binaries and other resources that make software and the pre and post installation scripts. They also provide the information regarding dependencies and other packages required for the installation and running of the software.

With their lacklustre approach to free software, German public services remain behind other European member states, says the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). When asked, the current governing parties’ say they support free software, but their statements are contradicted by the lack of action, the advocacy group says.

In early September, the FSFE published its analysis of the free software policies put forward by the main political parties on the ballot, in preparation for Germany’s parliamentary elections on 24 September. This analysis (in German) is far more detailed than an earlier report generated by the Digital-O-Mat, a web portal set up to focus on political parties’ positions on 12 digital topics.

New release: ISA² interoperability test bed software v1.1.0