Qt-Powered Lumina Desktop 1.6 Released For BSD/Linux Systems

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February 3, 2020

Out this weekend is Lumina 1.6 as the latest release of this Qt-powered desktop environment originally developed by iXsystems as part of PC-BSD / TrueOS. While TrueOS has been forging a new direction for this iXsystems operating system derived from FreeBSD and ultimately is less desktop focused these days as a result, the Lumina desktop continues to be developed. In fact, Lumina founder Ken Moore of iXsystems continues to lead the releases on this Qt-based desktop environment seeing adoption on both BSDs and Linux distributions.

[Source: Phoronix]

Intro to the Linux command line

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

If you’re new to Linux or have simply never bothered to explore the command line, you may not understand why so many Linux enthusiasts get excited typing commands when they’re sitting at a comfortable desktop with plenty of tools and apps available to them. In this post, we’ll take a quick dive to explore the wonders of the command line and see if maybe we can get you hooked.

First, to use the command line, you have to open up a command tool (also referred to as a “command prompt”). How to do this will depend on which version of Linux you’re running. On RedHat, for example, you might see an Activities tab at the top of your screen which will open a list of options and a small window for entering a command (like “cmd” which will open the window for you).

[Source: Network World]

IBM’s big bet on cloud computing, AI and open source needs to pay off soon

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

And so, after eight years spent leading one of the world’s oldest and most famous technology businesses, IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty will step down in April. Stepping up to the CEO role is Arvind Krishna, who currently serves as the senior VP for the company’s cloud and cognitive software unit.

When the news came out on Thursday, IBM’s shares jumped as much as 5%. Fingers can easily be pointed at Rometty’s mixed legacy: during her tenure, the company’s stock price dropped over 25% and – while the company has been keen to trumpet its artificial intelligence work (in the form of IBM Watson), and its reinvention as a cloud company (thanks to Red Hat) – there is still plenty of work to do if IBM is to ever approach its former glories.

[Source: ZDNet]

CERN dumps Facebook Workplace for open source

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

In what appears to be part of its ongoing campaign to “take back control” of its computing activities, CERN, the Geneva, Switzerland-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has announced that it is dumping Facebook Workplace and replacing it with open source alternatives. This followed its announcement last year that it was moving away from Microsoft commercial software to open source as part of its ambitious Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt).

[Source: ITWeb]

When Open Source Software Costs Cities More

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

Over the past decade, I have served in various roles to deliver software for public agencies under government-funded contracts at MIT, UC Berkeley, and at transportation technology companies (the majority of that time as an academic). As transportation continues to rapidly change, and cities become increasingly reliant on software and data solutions that are hard to keep up with, I have been surprised by some common technical misconceptions that result in costly systems that are unable to adapt over time.

Several years ago, I noticed that many in the transportation space often used the terms “open standards” and “open source software” interchangeably, when they are actually quite different concepts. Open standards that are developed with a clear and transparent process are essential for ensuring flexibility and adaptability, and are almost always undeniably “good”. Whereas open source software, especially in the context of the public sector, has various pros, cons, and sometimes unexpected challenges.

[Source: Forbes]

Facebook open-sources Polygames- a new framework to train AI bots

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

Polygames is a new open source AI research framework for training agents to master strategy games through self-play, rather than by studying extensive examples of successful gameplay. Because it is more flexible and has more features than previous frameworks, Polygames can help researchers with advancing and benchmarking a broad range of zero learning (ZL) techniques that don’t require training data sets.

Polygames’ architecture makes it compatible with more kinds of games — including Breakthrough, Hex, Havannah, Minishogi, Connect6, Minesweeper, Mastermind, EinStein würfelt nicht!, Nogo, and Othello — than previous systems, such as AlphaZero and ELF OpenGo. In addition to building and evaluating ZL methods across a variety of games, Polygames allows researchers to study transfer learning, meaning the applicability of a model trained on one game to succeed at others. Polygames provides a library of included games, as well as a single-file API to implement your own game.

[Source: Analytics India Magazine]

Free Software Foundation Endorses First Product Of 2020: A $59~79 USD 802.11n WiFi Card

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

We’ve seen a lot of odd products pick up the Free Software Foundation’s “Respect Your Freedom” endorsement like a USB microphone, various re-branded motherboards, and even last year certified a USB to parallel printer cable. The latest product they are endorsing — and their first endorsement of 2020 — is a USD 802.11 a/b/g/n PCIe half-mini card starting out at $59 USD but going up to $79 for this outdated wireless adapter.

The Free Software Foundation announced today that the Libiquity Wi-Fri ND2H has been FSF-certified for respecting user freedoms. This WiFi card is the LiteOn WN6503AH that is then re-branded by Libiquity for their freedom-respecting products.

[Source: Phoronix]

6 Best Open Source Video Editor In 2020

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

When YouTube and other similar platforms are proliferating then need of the best video editor software is at its zenith and if we get something in free and opensource to edit our videos than it would be ‘icing on the cake’. Now, we are in 2020 and already the Open-source software has gained a good reputation in the IT sector. It is because of the source code which is available for everyone that is not the case with closed software thus also reduce the risk of having spies or other third party spy software.

However, we don’t have free and open-source video editing software range like paid and free programs but still whatever is there is enough to handle quite extensive editing tasks for Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and Linux operating systems, here are some of the best open source video editing programs.

[Source: H2S Media]

Google releases open-source 2FA security key platform called OpenSK

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

Two-factor security is a basic requirement these days if you want to take your digital responsibilities seriously, but some hardware lacks the sort of public documentation that some privacy advocates feel is truly necessary to provide ideal security. Open source enthusiasts will be glad to hear that Google has just announced the release of OpenSK, an open-source implementation for security keys, supporting both FIDO U2F and FIDO2.

This isn’t the sort of thing most of our readers will be able to appreciate immediately, you can’t zip out and buy a product running Google’s OpenSK just yet. This early, explicitly experimental release is only compatible with a single piece of reference hardware right now: the Nordic chip dongle (for which the project supplies a 3d-printable case).

[Source: Android Police]

Adobe, Open Source & Diversity: Joseph Sandoval

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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January 31, 2020

We sat down with Joseph Sandoval, SRE Manager of Cloud Platform at Adobe to talk about the work he is doing to help diversify the open source community. Despite the fact that Open Source lowers the barrier of entry and anyone can start contributing, open source is not as diverse as it should be. You still don’t see that many African American, Latinx or other minority groups. Why? We also talked about the open source work Adobe is doing.

[Source: TFiR YouTube]