ODROID-XU4: Much Better Performance Than The Raspberry Pi Plus USB3 & Gigabit Ethernet @ $60

Hardkernel recently sent over the ODROUD-XU4 for benchmarking. This ARM SBC that just measures in at about 82 x 58 x 22 mm offers much better performance than many of the sub-$100 ARM SBCs while also featuring dual USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, eMMC storage, and is software compatible with the older XU3 ARM SBCs. Here's a look at the performance of the ODROID-XU4 compared to a variety of other single board computers. This ~$60+ ARM single board computer is built around a Samsung Exynos5422 SoC that features four Cortex-A15 cores at 2.0GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores at 1.3GHz while the graphics are provided by a Mali-T628.

Six-port network appliance runs Linux on Atom C3558

Acrosser’s compact “AND-DNV3N2” networking appliance runs Linux on a quad-core, 2.2GHz Atom C3558 and offers a SATA-III bay, 2x mini-PCIe and USB 3.0 ports, and 6x GbE ports, two of which can be outfitted as fiber SFP ports. Acrosser, which says it is now an Intel IoT Solutions Alliance partner, announced a desktop network appliance available with 6x copper Gigabit Ethernet ports or 4x GbE and 2x fiber-optic SFP ports. Like Advantech’s 6x port FWA-1012VC appliance, the AND-DNV3N2 Micro Box Networking Appliance runs on a quad-core, 2.2GHz Atom C3558 “Denverton” server SoC. (The Advantech model also sells an 8-port variant with an octa-core C3758.)

today's leftovers

• Director v1.6.0 is available

  Icinga Director v1.6.0 has been released with Multi-Instance Support, Configuration Baskets and improved Health Checks. We’re excited to announce new features that will help you to work more efficiently.

• Fedora Looks To Build Firefox With Clang For Better Performance & Compilation Speed

  Following the move by upstream Mozilla in switching their Linux builds of Firefox from being compiled by GCC to LLVM Clang, Fedora is planning the same transition of compilers in the name of compilation speed and resulting performance. FESCo Ticket 2020 laid out the case, "Mozilla upstream switches from gcc to clang and we're going to follow upstream here due to clang performance, maintenance costs and compilation speed. Tom Stellard (clang maintainer) has asked me to file this ticket to comply with Fedora processes."

• Work in progress: PHP stack for EL-8

• Sandwich-style SBC offers four 10GbE SFP+ ports

  SolidRun’s “ClearFog CX 8K” SBC is built around a “CEx7 A8040” COM Express Type 7 module that runs Linux on a quad -A72 Armada A8040. Features include 4x 10GbE SFP+ ports and mini-PCIe, M.2, and SATA expansion. In August, SolidRun updated its ClearFog line of Linux-driven router boards with a high-end ClearFog GT 8K SBC with the same 2GHz, quad-core, Cortex-A72 Marvell Armada A8040 SoC found on its MacchiatoBIN Double Shot Mini-ITX board. Now, the company has returned to the headless (no graphics) Armada A8040 with the ClearFog CX 8K. [..] It’s rare to see an Arm-based Type 7 module.

• Watch Out: Clicking “Check for Updates” Still Installs Unstable Updates on Windows 10

  Microsoft hasn’t learned its lesson. If you click the “Check for Updates” button in the Settings app, Microsoft still considers you a “seeker” and will give you “preview” updates that haven’t gone through the normal testing process. This problem came to everyone’s attention with the release of the October 2018 Update. It was pulled for deleting people’s files, but anyone who clicked “Check for Updates” in the first few days effectively signed up as a tester and got the buggy update. The “Check for Updates” button apparently means “Please install potentially updates that haven’t gone through a normal testing process.”

OSS Leftovers

• DAV1D v0.1 AV1 Video Decoder Released

  Out today is DAV1D as the first official (v0.1) release of this leading open-source AV1 video decoder. This release was decided since its quality is good enough for use, covers all AV1 specs and features, and is quite fast on desktop class hardware and improving for mobile SoCs.

• PikcioChain plans for open-source MainNet in roadmap update

  France-based PikcioChain, a platform designed to handle and monetize personal data, has announced changes to its development roadmap as it looks towards the launch of its standalone MainNet and block explorer in the first quarter of 2019.

• New Blockstream Bitcoin Block Explorer Announces The Release Of Its Open Source Code Esplora

  Blockstream has just announced a release of Esplora, its open source software. This is the software that keeps the website and network running. This new release follows on the heels of its block explorer that was released in November to the public. The company released the block explorer, and after making sure it was successful, released the code behind that block explorer. This way, developers can easily create their block explorers, build add-ons and extensions as well as contribute to Blockstream.info.

• Will Concerns Break Open Source Containers?

  Open source containers, which isolate applications from the host system, appear to be gaining traction with IT professionals in the U.S. defense community. But for all their benefits, security remains a notable Achilles’ heel for a couple of reasons. First, containers are still fairly nascent, and many administrators are not yet completely familiar with their capabilities. It’s difficult to secure something you don’t completely understand. Second, containers are designed in a way that hampers visibility. This lack of visibility can make securing containers extremely taxing.

• Huawei, RoboSense join group pushing open-source autonomous driving technology

  Telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies, its semiconductor subsidiary HiSilicon and RoboSense, a maker of lidar sensors used in driverless cars, have become the first Chinese companies to help establish an international non-profit group that supports open-source autonomous driving projects. The three firms are among the more than 20 founding members of the Autoware Foundation, which aims to promote collaboration between corporate and academic research efforts in autonomous driving technology, according to a statement from the group on Monday. The foundation is an outgrowth of Autoware.AI, an open-source autonomous driving platform that was started by Nagoya University associate professor Shinpei Kato in 2015.

• 40 top Linux and open source conferences in 2019

  Every year Opensource.com editors, writers, and readers attend open source-related conference and events hosted around the world. As we started planning our 2019 schedules, we rounded up a few top picks for the year. Which conferences do you plan to attend in 2019? If you don't see your conference on this list, be sure to tell us about it in the comments and add it to our community conference calendar. (And for more events to attend, check out The Enterprisers Project list of business leadership conferences worth exploring in 2019.)

• Adding graphics to the Windows System for Linux [Ed: CBS is still employing loads of Microsoft boosters like Simon Bisson, to whom "Linux" is just something for Microsoft to swallow]/

• Kong launches its fully managed API platform [Ed: Typical openwashing of APIs, even using the term "open source" where it clearly does not belong]g

• How Shared, Open Data Can Help Us Better Overcome Disasters

  WHEN A MASSIVE earthquake and tsunami hit the eastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant failed, leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere and water. People around the country as well as others with family and friends in Japan were, understandably, concerned about radiation levels—but there was no easy way for them to get that information. I was part of a small group of volunteers who came together to start a nonprofit organization, Safecast, to design, build, and deploy Geiger counters and a website that would eventually make more than 100 million measurements of radiation levels available to the public. We started in Japan, of course, but eventually people around the world joined the movement, creating an open global data set. The key to success was the mobile, easy to operate, high-quality but lower-cost kit that the Safecast team developed, which people could buy and build to collect data that they might then share on the Safecast website.