• AMD EPYC 7351P Linux Performance: 16 Core / 32 Thread Server CPU For ~$750

  Earlier this week we looked at the EPYC 7251 Linux performance as AMD's lowest-cost server CPU from this latest generation of Zen-based processors. That eight core / sixteen thread CPU packed a nice amount of performance considering its hitting the $500 price point, but if you are looking for a single socket system and have $750 USD to lay out on a CPU, the AMD EPYC 7351P packs in even more value.

• Xenomarine, the hardcore, sci-fi dungeon crawling roguelike releases on Steam this month

  On the look out for a new roguelike? Xenomarine [Official Site], a hardcore, sci-fi dungeon crawling roguelike is heading to Steam on October 25th with Linux support.

  Note: It's currently in-development, so it will be in Early Access.

• The Talos Principle VR is now live with a discount for owners of the original

• Crazy cyberpunk horror game 'observer' is coming to Linux on October 24th

  We've had it confirmed to us directly today from Aspyr Media that observer [Steam, Official Site] is going to release for Linux next week on October 24th.

• List of GNOME-related projects fundraisers

  I think it’s useful to have a list of projects fundraisers in GNOME or at least GNOME-related. Ideally it would be nice to have that list on the gnome.org website, it looks to me an obvious thing to do, but after a discussion on the GNOME foundation-list, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

  So I’ve created this wiki page in the meantime. It explains the difference with donations made to the GNOME Foundation, and provides a list of individual projects fundraisers.

• Price Alert: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Stock Nears Resistance -- Technicals Hit Strength

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Shares Bought by Janus Henderson Group PLC

• Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) EVP Delisa Alexander Sells 1,073 Shares

• Teaching metrics and contributor docs at Flock 2017

• Fleet Commander ready for takeoff!

• Fleet Commander: production ready!

• Beelink S1 Mini PC and Linux – Comedy Gold

  The Beelink S1 is a small, silent mini PC released in August 2017 retailing for around 300 dollars (250 euros). It’s produced by Shenzhen AZW Technology Co Ltd, a Chinese company that focuses on Android smart TV boxes, Intel mini PCs, and home cloud TV boxes.

  The S1 ships with an activated copy of Windows 10. But what makes this mini PC interesting? For starters, it purports to run Ubuntu. Combined with a quad core Celeron CPU, dual monitor support (HDMI and VGA), 4K video, expansion options, together with a raft of other features, the machine looks a mouthwatering prospect compared to many other mini PCs.

• Kaby Lake Pico-ITX SBC features dual M.2 slots

  Aaeon’s “PICO-KBU1” SBC is built on Intel 7th Gen U-series CPUs with up to 16GB DDR4, dual GbE ports, and M.2 B-key and E-Key expansion.

  The PICO-KBU1 SBC is equipped with Intel’s dual-core, 15W TDP 7th Gen U-series CPUs from the latest Kaby Lake generation. Other 100 x 72mm Pico-ITX boards that run Kaby Lake U-Series processors include Axiomtek’s PICO512. As usual with Aaeon, no OS support is listed.

• Kobo firmware 4.6.9995 mega update (KSM, nickel patch, ssh, fonts)

  It has been ages that I haven’t updated the MegaUpdate package for Kobo. Now that a new and seemingly rather bug-free and quick firmware release (4.6.9995) has been released, I finally took the time to update the whole package to the latest releases of all the included items. The update includes all my favorite patches and features: Kobo Start Menu, koreader, coolreader, pbchess, ssh access, custom dictionaries, and some side-loaded fonts.

• LEDE v17.01.4 service release

  Version 17.01.4 of the LEDE router distribution is available with a number of important fixes. "While this release includes fixes for the bugs in the WPA Protocol disclosed earlier this week, these fixes do not fix the problem on the client-side. You still need to update all your client devices. As some client devices might never receive an update, an optional AP-side workaround was introduced in hostapd to complicate these attacks, slowing them down."

• Samsung DeX's Expanding Ecosystem Pushes the Possibilities of the Smartphone

• Samsung DeX: Convergence & Traditional Linux Distributions On Galaxy Smartphones

  While Samsung Galaxy smartphones may not be as open or free spirited as the proposed Librem 5 smartphone, there is a new alternative for those wanting to run a traditional Linux distribution on their Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

  Samsung has announced through their DeX smartphone that they will begin supporting traditional GNU/Linux operating systems on Galaxy devices, complementing Android.

• Samsung is all talk about the IoT with Bixby 2.0 and SmartThings

  Samsung's annual developer conference at Moscone West in San Francisco doesn't always get a lot of public attention; in past years, it has often focused on things like Tizen app development. But at this year's conference, the company focused on launching a new platform for connected devices in the home, the car, and elsewhere—or, at least, a collection of previously existent platforms that are getting updated and combined into a new one.

• The ARTIK family is about to get bigger with “The New ARTIK™ secure systems-on-modules” and a new catch-them-all IoT platform

• Knock yourself out with these NEW Tizen games

• FOSDEM 2018 Real-Time Communications Call for Participation

• Top Bank, Legal and Software Industry Executives to Keynote at the Open Source Strategy Forum

• Copyleft is Dead. Long live Copyleft!

  As you may have noticed, we recently re-licensed mgmt from the AGPL (Affero General Public License) to the regular GPL. This is a post explaining the decision and which hopefully includes some insights at the intersection of technology and legal issues.

• Crowdsourcing the way to a more flexible strategic plan

  Trust the community. Opening a feedback platform to anyone on campus seems risky, but in hindsight I'd do it again in a heartbeat. The responses we received were very constructive; in fact, I rarely received negative and unproductive remarks. When people learned about our honest efforts at improving the community, they responded with kindness and support. By giving the community a voice—by really democratizing the effort—we achieved a surprising amount of campus-wide buy-in in a short period of time.

  Transparency is best. By keeping as many of our efforts as public as possible, we demonstrated that we were truly listening to our customers and understanding the effects of the outdated technology policies and decisions that were keeping them from doing their best work. I've always been a proponent of the idea that everyone is an agent of innovation; we just needed a tool that allowed everyone to make suggestions.

  Iterate, iterate, iterate. Crowdsourcing our first-year IT initiatives helped us create the most flexible and customer-centric plan we possibly could. The pressure to move quickly and lay down a comprehensive strategic plan is very real; however, by delaying that work and focusing on the evolving set of data flowing from our community, we were actually able to better demonstrate our commitment to our customers. That helped us build critical reputational capital, which paid off when we did eventually present a long-term strategic plan—because people already knew we could achieve results. It also helped us recruit strong allies and learn who we could trust to advance more complicated initiatives.

• Reform is a DIY, modular, portable computer (work in progress)

  Want a fully functional laptop that works out of the box? There are plenty to choose from. Want a model that you can upgrade? That’s a bit tougher to find: some modern laptops don’t even let you replace the RAM.

  Then there’s the Reform. It’s a new DIY, modular laptop that’s designed to be easy to upgrade and modify. The CAD designs will even be available if you want to 3D print your own parts rather than buying a kit.

  You can’t buy a Reform computer yet. But developer Lukas Hartmann and designer Ana Dantes have developed a prototype and are soliciting feedback on the concept.

• New neural network teaches itself Go, spanks the pros

  While artificial intelligence software has made huge strides recently, in many cases, it has only been automating things that humans already do well. If you want an AI to identify the Higgs boson in a spray of particles, for example, you have to train it on collisions that humans have already identified as containing a Higgs. If you want it to identify pictures of cats, you have to train it on a database of photos in which the cats have already been identified.

• Ubuntu Drops Unity for GNOME in Artful Aardvark Release

• Ubuntu 17.10 brings the biggest changes in years

  Canonical releases a new version of the popular Ubuntu operating system every six months. Quite frankly, most of those updates are kind of boring, with incremental changes from one build to the next. But Ubuntu 17.10 launches on October 19th, and it’s actually kind of a big deal.

• Finally, Ubuntu 17.10 All Flavors Download Links

• How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 From a Previous Release

• How to: Upgrade Ubuntu 17.04 to Ubuntu 17.10

• Kubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark is released

  Kubuntu 17.10 has been released, featuring the beautiful Plasma 5.10 desktop from KDE.

  Codenamed “Artful Aardvark”, Kubuntu 17.10 continues our proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.

  The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

• WPA vulnerability (KRACK Attack) fixed

• MAAS KVM Pods

  OpenStack is the dominant solution in the IaaS space, fueled by the need for reliable, scalable and interoperable private cloud infrastructure to accommodate cloud native applications. Through OpenStack’s open APIs, tenants can easily deploy elaborate virtual (overlay) networks, integrate with a variety of storage backends, even leverage modern hypervisor-like machine containers (LXD) for bare metal performance. Although the tooling allows a full fledged OpenStack deployment on just a single machine, the intrinsic efficiencies that OpenStack’s design promises, materialize at a certain scale — typically at least 12 servers.

• DevOps for NFV: OPNFV Infrastructure and Continuous Integration

  In this article series, we have been discussing the Understanding OPNFV book. Previously, we provided an introduction to network functions virtualization (NFV), discussed the role of OPNFV in network transformation, and looked at how OPNFV integrates and enhances upstream projects. We continue our series with in-depth insight into the OPNFV DevOps toolchain, hardware labs, continuous integration (CI) pipeline, and deployment tools (installers) from chapters 6 and 7 of the book.  

• A Chat with Chef about the DevOps Movement and Habitat Builder

  Last week at our annual user conference, Node.js Interactive, we announced several new members to the Node.js Foundation. One of the members that joined is Chef. Chef works with more than a thousand companies around the world to deliver their vision of digital transformation.

  We sat down with the team at Chef to talk about how Node.js fits within the DevOps movement, why they joined the Node.js Foundation, and also about a new offering from the group called Habitat Builder.

• Why Use Docker with R? A DevOps Perspective

  There have been several blog posts going around about why one would use Docker with R.
  In this post I’ll try to add a DevOps point of view and explain how containerizing
  R is used in the context of the OpenCPU system for building and deploying R servers.

• Docker on Docker at DockerCon EU 17

  Docker Inc. the company behind the open-source Docker container technology doesn't just build docker, it also used the same technology to power its own services.

• Introducing Narabu, part 1: Introduction

  Narabu is a new intraframe video codec, from the Japanese verb narabu, which means to line up or be parallel.

  Let me first state straight up that Narabu isn't where I hoped it would be at this stage; the encoder isn't fast enough, and I have to turn my attention to other projects for a while. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting as a research project in its own right, and I don't think it should stop me from trying to write up a small series.

• 3 Simple, Excellent Linux Network Monitors

• Mailutils Version 3.3 available

  Mailutils version 3.3 is available for download. See the NEWS file, for information about changes in this version.

• Now You Can Play Rubik’s Cube Puzzle In Terminal

  Rubik’s Cube game needs no introduction, right? It is a 3-D combination puzzle game invented by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, in 1974. It is one of the best puzzle game invented so far to enhance the problem-solving skills of the kids and adults. If you’re one Rubik’s Cube lover, you don’t need to buy it online or from a shop. You can play it right from the Terminal. A fellow Developer has created an utility called “NRubik”. It is an N-Curses based, virtual Rubik’s Cube written in Python. If you’re a hardcore CLI user who lives on Terminal all day, NRubik will certainly make your time useful.

• VirtualBox 5.2 Debuts Officially with Support for Exporting VMs to Oracle Cloud

  To everyone's surprise, Oracle announced today the final release of the VirtualBox 5.2 open-source and cross-platform virtualization software for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows, and Solaris.

  VirtualBox 5.2 is a massive update bringing a revamped and more modern graphical user interface (GUI) based on recent Qt5 technologies, as well as powerful new features that will help you with all of your virtualization tasks. One of these new features is the ability to finally export and store virtual machines into the cloud.

  Oracle has made it possible to export VMs to its Oracle Cloud (OPC) public cloud service, allowing users to easily deploy virtual machines across multiple VirtualBox installations. Imagine you no longer have to export a VM to an external drive to import it on another computer, just download it from the Oracle Cloud.

• MongoDB's IPO Gives New York Tech A Much-Needed Win As Shares Jump 25%

• MongoDB shares pop 25% in its public market debut

• MongoDB Prices High After Qudian's Strong Debut: How To Play New IPOs

• NoSQL Database Provider MongoDB Begins Trading on NASDAQ

• MongoDB’s shares will list for $24 each

• mesa 17.2.3

  Mesa 17.2.3 is now available.

  In this release we have:

  The Vulkan drivers ANV and RADV have multiple small fixes.

  The EGL code has improved handling of the new wl_dmabuf codepath.

  SWR no longer crashes when checking environment variables.

  Other gallium drivers have also seen updates - freedreno, nouveau and radeonsi. The gallivm module, used by llvmpipe et al. has gained little endian PPC64 fixes.

• Mesa 17.2.3 Offers Vulkan Fixes, Gallium3D Updates

  Mesa 17.2.3 is now available as the latest bi-weekly update for this current stable driver series.

• [ANNOUNCE] libinput 1.9.0

  libinput 1.9 is now available. As expected, not a lot of changes since the
  rc2: a few test fixes, a fix to stop excessive logging and an extra
  assert so we fail early in case of a bug.

• Libinput 1.9 Released With Input Improvements, Requires Meson

  Peter Hutterer has today released libinput 1.9.0 as the latest version of this library used by both Wayland and X11 systems for unified input handling.

• DRM Leasing Support To Land For Linux 4.15

• Intel OpenGL Shader Cache Revised Once More

  The long ongoing work to implement an OpenGL/GLSL shader cache for the Intel Mesa driver has been revised once more with 32 new patches hitting the mailing list today.

• Linux 4.13.8

• Linux 4.9.57

• Linux 4.4.93

• Linux 3.18.76

• Stable kernel updates

  Greg Kroah-Hartman has released stable kernels 4.13.8, 4.9.57, 4.4.93, and 3.18.76. All of them contain important fixes and users should upgrade.

• Kernel Team Summary – October 18th, 2017

  We intend to target a 4.13 kernel for the Ubuntu 17.10 release. A 4.13.4 based kernel is available for testing from the artful-proposed pocket of the Ubuntu archive.

• Focusing on Healthcare Open Source Security Awareness [Ed: More Flexera marketing in the form of scare-mongering]

• Adobe patches zero-day vulnerability used to plant gov't spying software

  Adobe has patched a zero-day vulnerability used by the BlackOasis APT to plant surveillance software developed by Gamma International.

  On Monday, researchers from Kaspersky Lab revealed the new, previously unknown vulnerability, which has been actively used in the wild by advanced persistent threat (APT) group BlackOasis.

• IoT Cybersecurity: What's Plan B?

  In August, four US Senators introduced a bill designed to improve Internet of Things (IoT) security. The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 is a modest piece of legislation. It doesn't regulate the IoT market. It doesn't single out any industries for particular attention, or force any companies to do anything. It doesn't even modify the liability laws for embedded software. Companies can continue to sell IoT devices with whatever lousy security they want.

• Security updates for Wednesday

• Security updates for Thursday

• Abuse of RESTEasy Default Providers in JBoss EAP

  Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) is a commonly used host for Restful webservices. A powerful but potentially dangerous feature of Restful webservices on JBoss EAP is the ability to accept any media type. If not configured to accept only a specific media type, JBoss EAP will dynamically process the request with the default provider matching the Content-Type HTTP Header which the client specifies. Some of the default providers where found to have vulnerabilities which have now been removed from JBoss EAP and it's upstream Restful webservice project, RESTEasy.

• “Security concerns” lead to LTE service shutdown on Chinese Apple Watches

• Getting started with Logstash

• How to run DOS programs in Linux

• How to Make File and Directory Undeletable, Even By Root in Linux

• How to Install and Configure GitLab CE on CentOS 7

• Update Tickets from the Command Line

• How to Get Started with the Linux Operating System

• How to install Node.js and npm on CentOS 7

• Do you Need More MegaPixels? – Camera Myth

• util-linux v2.31 -- what's new?

• Understanding RapidJson – Part 2

• Automatic LUKS volumes unlocking using a TPM2 chip

• extending Scuttlebutt with Annah

• CNI for LXC

• Deliberate Elevation of Privileges

• Analysing Debian packages with Neo4j

That’s been a tough pill for many fans of the prior Nexus phones to swallow, as they frequently offered a lot of specs and performance for a lot less money than other smartphones. You could realistically get a great Nexus phone for under $500 without having to give up the traits that make them great: clean software, fast performance, and timely updates.

Enter Motorola’s new Moto X4 Android One smartphone. While not technically a Nexus phone, it shares many of the same qualities that made the Nexus line so loved. Clean build of Android? Check. Promise of fast updates and years of software support? Check. Reasonable cost? Check.

The $399 X4 won’t appeal to everyone. It’s not meant to compete with the Pixel or other premium phone in terms of features or performance, and its biggest limitation is that it’s only available on Google’s own Project Fi network. (Though it comes unlocked and works with other networks, the only way to buy this flavor of X4 is to be a Fi customer.) But if you’ve been holding on to that aging Nexus 5X hoping something would come along and pick up its mantle, the Moto X4 Android One version is it.

The Xubuntu 17.10 operating system has been released today as part of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) release, bringing a refreshed Xfce desktop experience, up-to-date components, and many other improvements.

Also: Kubuntu 17.10 Switches to VLC as Default Media Player, Uses KDE Plasma 5.10.5

• The Spanish Supreme Court Rejects the EPO’s “Problem and Solution Approach” While Quality of European Patents Nosedives
• Europe is Being Robbed by Team Battistelli and the UPC/PPH Would Make Things Worse
• Team UPC Continues to Promote Illusion of UPC Progress Where There’s None
• António Campinos: A True EPO Reformer or More of the Same?
• Juve Has Confirmed That António Campinos is French
• The Darker Past of the Next President of the EPO – Part II: António Campinos at Banco Caixa Geral de Depósitos
• SUEPO to the Media, Regarding Campinos: “No Comment, It’s Too Dangerous”
• Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) Willing to Work With Campinos But Foresees Difficulties
• Links 18/10/2017: GTK+ 3.92, Microsoft Bug Doors Leaked

Ubuntu Budgie is a more recent officially recognized flavor of the popular and free Ubuntu operating system, and today it has been updated to version 17.10 as part of the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) release.

The “Voladd 3D Printer” features a Linux-driven BeagleBone SBC that connects to a cloud-based sharing site, plus a unique cartridge and cooling system.

San Sebastián, Spain based Voladd has won Kickstarter funding for a Voladd 3D printer that runs Debian Linux on a BeagleBone Black single board computer. Like several other Linux-based printers we’ve seen (see farther below) the Voladd connects to a cloud service, and does not require an attached computer. The printer stands out with its mobile app remote control, as well as a streamlined cloud interface that lets you download one of thousands of free designs in 25 categories and share designs and printer access with others. Kickstarter pricing starts with early bird packages of 499 Euros ($591), with shipments due in December.

Ubunt 17.10 has been released. Check out the new features in Ubuntu 17.10 and see how to upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10.

• Open Source Initiative Welcomes Cumulus Networks As Premium Sponsor

  The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the internationally recognized home of the open source software movement working to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, announced today the generous sponsorship of Cumulus Networks. Cumulus joins OSI's growing community of corporations that recognize the importance of not only investing in open source software projects and development, but also building a diverse ecosystem that promotes collaboration, enables innovation, and ensures quality.

  Cumulus Networks has a strong tradition of internally-driven development of original open source software, including most notably, contributions to the Linux kernel that complete the data center feature set for Linux such as Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF), MPLS, MLAG infrastructure, multicast routing features, etc. Cumulus' most recent open source effort is FRRouting, co-developed by a group of contributing companies in the open networking space, to enhance routing protocols. Cumulus Networks has also been a key driving member of the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) with contributions to the Open Compute Project, Prescriptive Topology Manager--which simplifies the deployment of large L3 networks--and ifupdown2, a rewrite of Debian's tool for configuring networks that greatly simplifies large, complicated networking configurations.

• Let's dig into how open source could KO the Silicon Valley chat silos

  There's never been a better opportunity for the world to start untangling itself from the giant Silicon Valley data harvesters than now. Last week, we revealed a plan to embed open-source chat into three quarters of the world's IMAP servers.

  And this may be an important development. Maybe.

  Google, Yahoo!, Apple and Microsoft handle around half the world's email, some 2.5 billion users, while open-source IMAP servers handle the rest, around 2.5-3 billion. Of these the Dovecot open-source server, part of the German business Open Xchange, is installed on 75 per cent of boxes. Quietly drop IM into the mix, and you've given the world a reason to leave WhatsApp.

• Open source, agility powering enterprise IT

  Looking back over the past decade, history has certainly demonstrated that trying to predict the pace and nature of technology development is a near impossible task, writes Quentin Barnard, lead architect at redPanda Software.
  While analysts, business leaders and policymakers have certainly made wise predictions, businesses and individuals have to remain agile, responsive and open-minded to a wide possibility of outcomes and developments. It is also helpful, however, to reflect on key trends that have emerged in recent times — and to use this information to prepare for the years ahead.
  For software developers and development houses, several prominent themes emerged in 2017.

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces Five Years of Apache® OpenOffice™ as a Top-Level Project

  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the five-year anniversary of Apache® OpenOfficeTM, the leading Open Source office document productivity suite.

• MakerBot Labs: new experimental 3D printing platform is MakerBot's olive branch to open source community

  New York 3D printing company MakerBot has launched MakerBot Labs, an experimental platform with open APIs, custom print modes, and an online resource-sharing site. The platform purportedly allows users to “push the limits” of 3D printing.

• MakerBot attempts to embrace the open-source community with its new Labs platform

  The topic of open source has been a touchy one for MakerBot over the past decade. The one-time 3D-printing darling was the subject of some serious smack talk among the maker community when it stopped disclosing machine design in 2012 — a departure from the company’s roots as in the open-source Rep-Rap community.

  Announced this week, MakerBot Labs doesn’t mark a full return to those roots, but it does find the company carving out a niche for the DIY community that was once a driving force in its rapid growth.

  “I understand the history,” CEO Nadav Goshen told TechCrunch during a phone call this week, “This is one step in the direction. It’s a step to understand that there are limitations to openness. Openness for us doesn’t mean we have to compromise on quality or ease of use. We’re trying to take responsibility for both.”