Linux and open-source rules: 2019’s five biggest stories show why

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December 31, 2019

Let’s take a look at 2019’s biggest Linux and open stories…

1. IBM buys Red Hat for $34-Billion

Exhibit number one is IBM acquiring Red Hat in the biggest software company acquisition ever. True, IBM was one of Linux’s earliest supporters and, as I predicted, rather than IBM consuming Red Hat, Red Hat has remained an independent barony in Big Blue’s corporate kingdom. But, the bottom line remains: The world’s leading Linux company now belongs to the company number 34 on the Fortune 500.

Read on for more…

[Source: ZDNet]

Zcoin’s Receiver Address Privacy (RAP) To Go Live Soon

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 31, 2019

Zcoin, an open-source, decentralized privacy coin, has released Receiver Address Privacy (RAP) on a desktop wallet. According to Zcoin, RAP is an implementation of Reusable Payment Codes (BIP47) originally proposed by Justus Ranvier, which enables users to share a single permanent address publicly without leakage of privacy. It is said to work together with Zcoin’s Sigma privacy protocol to offer a complete solution for both sender and receiver privacy.

RAP is fully implemented and undergoing code review. It will go live on Zcoin’s network by the end of January next year.

[Source: TFiR]

The best free and open-source alternatives to Google Calendar on Android

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 31, 2019

If you’re looking for something more privacy-conscious, or if you just want to see what independent Android app developers are up to, we’ve compiled some of the best open-source calendar apps for Android right here. When I asked social media for open-source alternatives to Google apps, the Simple Mobile Tools series of applications was brought up by many. Primarily developed by Slovakian-based Tibor Kaputa, Simple Mobile Tools is a suite of productivity apps that mirrors the ecosystems you get from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

[Source: Android Police]

One Of The Reasons Why Linux 5.5 Can Be Running Slower

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 31, 2019

Going back to the start of December with the Linux 5.5 merge window we have encountered several significant performance regressions. Over the weeks since we’ve reproduced the behavior on both Intel and AMD systems along with large and small CPUs. Following some holiday weekend bisecting fun, here is the cause at least partially for the Linux 5.5 slowdowns.

On a number of different systems this month we’ve seen several regressions in real-world workloads like NPB and Parboil, PostgreSQL, Memcached, RocksDB, and also synthetic tests like the Hackbench scheduler benchmark. Worth noting, as to be explained, all these systems were running Ubuntu Linux.

[Source: Phoronix]

DragonBox Pyra prototypes begin shipping

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 30, 2019

The DragonBox Pyra is a handheld computer with a 5 inch display, a QWERTY keyboard and a built-in gamepad. It’s designed to run free and open source software, and it’s been under development for more than six years… and after all that time, project leader Michael Mzorek (EvilDragon) has finally begun shipping prototypes to customers who placed pre-orders for pre-production hardware.

Pyra-handheld forum member Grench ordered one of the first prototypes almost three years ago. He received it last week. Read on to know initial impressions…

[Source: Liliputing]

There’s Money To Be Made In Taming Open Source Software Code

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 30, 2019

“We’re trying to create order out of chaos,” CEO Wayne Jackson of Sonatype told Forbes. By chaos, Jackson is referring to the avalanche of open source software code out there that’s used anonymously for some very important projects. GitHub.com alone hosts some 40 million developers, he pointed out.

“We are building the world’s critical infrastructure on software somebody else wrote, a stranger with unknown skills, motivations and desires, but the desire to innovate is so high, we’re willing to accept the risk of using some random person’s software invention,” Jackson said.

[Source: Forbes]

36C3: Open Source Is Insufficient To Solve Trust Problems In Hardware

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 30, 2019

With open source software, we’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of trust that whatever we are running on our computers is what we expect it to actually be. Thanks to hashing and public key signatures in various parts in the development and deployment cycle, it’s hard for a third party to modify source code or executables without us being easily able to spot it, even if it travels through untrustworthy channels.

On his talk this year at the 36C3, [bunnie] showed a detailed insight of several attack vectors we could face during manufacturing. Skipping the obvious ones like adding or substituting components, he’s focusing on highly ambitious and hard to detect modifications inside an IC’s package with wirebonded or through-silicon via (TSV) implants, down to modifying the netlist or mask of the integrated circuit itself.

[Source: Hackaday]

WireGuard Issues New Module Release, 1.0 Coming With Linux 5.6

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 27, 2019

WireGuard is to be merged for Linux 5.6 and is already staged in the net-next tree while for those on pre-5.6 kernels going as far back as Linux 3.10, a new out-of-tree module release is now available.

Jason Donenfeld today released wireguard-linux-compat v0.0.20191226 as the newest release of the WireGuard kernel module that can be built on Linux 3.10 through Linux 5.5 kernels. This snapshot follows a rework to their repository configuration in better aligning now towards an upstream Linux mainline kernel workflow.

[Source: Phoronix]

Linux Kernel 5.3 Reached End of Life, Users Urged to Upgrade to Linux Kernel 5.4

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 27, 2019

The Linux 5.3 kernel series has reached end of life and it will no longer receive maintenance updates that fix critical security issues or bugs. Renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced last week the release of the 18th maintenance update to the Linux 5.3 kernel series, version 5.3.18, which changes a total of 59 files, with 369 insertions and 329 deletions. However, the developer also noted the fact that this will be the last update for the Linux kernel 5.3 series, which now reached end of life.

[Source: Softpedia]

Open-Source Analytical Balance Pits Gravity Against Electromagnetism

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 27, 2019

As the open-source movement has brought its influence to more and more fields, we’ve seen an astonishing variety of things once only available at significant expense become accessible to anyone with access to the tools required to create them. One such arena is that of scientific instrumentation, and though we have seen many interesting developments there has been one which has so far evaded us.

An analytical balance, a very specialised weighing machine designed to measure the tiniest of masses, remains available only as a new unit costing a fortune, or as a second-hand one with uncertain history and possible contamination. Fortunately, friend of Hackaday [Zach Fredin] is on the case, and as part of one of his MIT courses he chose to create an open-source analytical balance.

[Source: Hackaday]