System76's Pop!_OS Linux to Get a Beta Release Next Week with HiDPI Improvements

System76 is getting ready to unleash the first Beta release of their upcoming Pop!_OS Linux distribution, which should be available to download next week based on the Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta. It appears that System76's development team recently dropped focus on the Pop!_OS Installer, which they develop in collaboration with the elementary OS team, to concentrate on fixing critical bugs and add the final touches to the Beta release. They still need to add some patches to fix backlight brightness issues on Nvidia GPUs.

Server: Red Hat, Security, Samba, Docker, Microsoft Canonical and MongoDB

• Technical Facts to Know Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) moves 55.88% away from One Year Low

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) is Under Analysts Radar

• Linux IoT botnet retooled to send spam email

  An IoT botnet has set its hooks in about 4,500 – 5,000 proxy devices to send spam emails which each device capable of sending 400 messages or a total of 1.8 million messages per day.

• Mini-Heartbleed info leak bug strikes Apache, airborne malware, NSA algo U-turn, and more

  As ever, it's been a doozy of a week for cybersecurity, or lack thereof. The Equifax saga just keeps giving, the SEC admitted it was thoroughly pwned, and Slack doesn't bother to sign its Linux versions. We do spoil you so, Reg readers. And that was only yesterday. Here's the rest of the week's shenanigans we didn't get round to.

• Samba 4.7.0 released

• Samba 4.7.0 Available for Download

• Hybrid datacenter is Docker’s latest open source goal

  Docker, Docker, Docker — everyone’s talking about Docker. A surprising fact is that Docker wasn’t on anyone’s roadmap in 2014, but was on everyone’s roadmap just a year later. A lot of people are calling it the most phenomenal, amazing, and speedy adoption of technology that they’ve witnessed during their careers. But this sudden rise to fame hasn’t been a lonely one. Docker has shared this amazing growth spurt with an entire ecosystem of tools and services.

• Microsoft and Canonical Increase Velocity with Azure Tailored Kernel

• MongoDB finally files to go public

• MongoDB Projects $100M from IPO

PocketBeagle and Android

• The PocketBeagle is the tiniest and most whimsically-named single-board computer on the market

• Register: Better In App Billing Testing on Android

  To get around these problems, we developed Register, an open-source library and companion app that allows seamless mocking of responses from Google Play’s In-app Billing.

• What does Google want with HTC's smartphone business?

  Google is acquiring a $1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone arm, including 2,000 employees and access to intellectual property [sic], as it bets big on hardware

• Should OEMs continue working with Google in light of HTC deal?

  Android fragmentation and Google’s “increasingly mute voice” are reasons why the latter company needs to “raise the stakes and engage with manufacturers”, according to Dr John Baptista.

Desktop: AKiTiO Node, Ubuntu Podcast, Vivaldi, Chromium and HUION PenTablet

• AKiTiO Node: Testing NVIDIA eGPU Support in Ubuntu 17.10

  Ever since the announcement of Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 technology there has been external graphics card (eGPU) support. Unfortunately for most of last year, including with Intel’s own Skull Canyon NUC, putting this solution to use was challenging at best. Most motherboards didn’t fully support the technology and those that did typically required a system that was far more expensive. For example, the Skull Canyon NUC at release was $700, unconfigured. Adding SSDs and RAM usually bumped that up well over $1000.

• Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo: S10E29 – Adamant Terrible Hammer

  It’s Season Ten Episode Twenty-Nine of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Martin Wimpress, Marius Quabeck, Max Kristen, Rudy and Tiago Carrondo are connected and speaking to your brain.

• Vivaldi 1.12 Web Browser Debuts with Highly Requested Features, Improvements

  Vivaldi, the Chromium-based web browser designed with the power user in mind, has been recently updated to version 1.12, a release that introduces highly requested features and a whole lot of under-the-hood improvements. There are three big new features implemented in Vivaldi 1.12. The first is a built-in Image Properties feature that works when you right-click on an image on the Web, showing you a bunch of useful information, such as camera model, depth of field, ISO sensitivity, focal length, exposure, histogram, time and date, and white balance.

• Chromium Will Soon Let You Browse the Web in VR with a Daydream View Headset

  Chromium evangelist François Beaufort posted today on his Google+ profile information regarding the VR (Virtual Reality) capabilities of the open-source web browser, which is the base of Chrome OS and Google Chrome. It would appear that the Chromium team is working on a set of new virtual reality features for the web browser, which means that more VR goodies are coming to popular Chromium-based web browsers like Opera, Vivaldi, and Google Chrome.

• libinput and the HUION PenTablet devices

  HUION PenTablet devices are graphics tablet devices aimed at artists. These tablets tend to aim for the lower end of the market, driver support is often somewhere between meh and disappointing. The DIGImend project used to take care of them, but with that out of the picture, the bugs bubble up to userspace more often.