Roughing it, with Linux

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: Ansible Tower, Patent Promise, and Shares Declining

• 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%

Add-on board expands i.MX6 UL SBC

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.

Hardware: PocketBeagle, Purism Librem 5, Aaeon Embedded PCs

• 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.