Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 5.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml). This major release brings new support for AMD Navi GPUs, the umwait x86 instructions, and Intel speed select. Linux 5.3 also presents a new pidfd_open(2) system call and 16 millions new IPv4 addresses in the 0.0.0.0/8 range. There are also many new drivers and improvements in this release. (Packtpub)
Microsoft open-sources its C++ Standard Library (STL)
Last week, Microsoft open-sourced its implementation of the C++ Standard Library, also known as STL. The library is shipped along with MSVC (Microsoft Visual C++ compiler) toolset and the Visual Studio IDE. This announcement was made by MSVC team at the CppCon 2019 conference, two days ago. Users can use the C++ library repo for participating in the STL’s development by reporting issues and commenting on pull requests. (Packet Hub)
Linux malware masks illicit crypto mining with fake network traffic
A new cryptocurrency mining malware targeting Linux systems has demonstrated how complex this type of malware has become. Known as Skidmap, the malware is not only harder to detect, it also gives the attackers unfiltered access to the affected system. (Coin Geek)
Amazon open-sources its Topical Chat data set of over 4.7 million word
Way back in April, Amazon announced its intention to publish a data set — the Topical Chat data set — of crowdsourced human conversations to teams competing in the annual Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge competition. It finally made good on that promise today with the release on GitHub of more than 235,000 utterances containing over 4,700,000 words, which it asserts will support “high-quality” and “repeatable” dialogue systems research. (Venture Beat)
GitLab Inhales $268M Series E, Valuation Hits $2.75B
GitLab raised a substantial $268 million in a Series E funding round that was more than doubled what the firm had raised across all of its previous funding rounds and pushed its valuation to $2.75 billion. It also bolsters the company’s coffers as it battles in an increasingly competitive DevOps space. (SDX Central)
How Intel’s Clear Linux Team Cut The Kernel Boot Time From 3 Seconds To 300 ms
Intel engineer Feng Tang spoke at this week’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on how the Clear Linux team managed to boot their kernel faster. They started out with around a three second kernel boot time but cut it down to just 300 ms. (Phoronix)
Oracle Announces Autonomous Linux
Oracle on Monday announced Oracle Autonomous Linux, an autonomous operating that eases management of Linux by automating providing, patching, scaling and tuning without any downtime. Oracle has borrowed the ideas from the autonomous database to make its Linux offering More compelling than those offered by players like Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE. (Source: TFIR)
How the Worlds of Linux and Windows Programming Converged
Christopher Tozzi at IT Pro Today writes about how Windows and Linux worlds are coming closer. “Once upon a time, the world of developers was split into two halves: One half was composed of Windows developers, who created most of the productivity apps that powered PCs (and, occasionally, servers). The other half comprised Linux and Unix developers, whose work focused on server-side development. Today, however, as the worlds of Windows and Linux move ever closer together, the distinction between Windows and Linux developers is disappearing. Gone are the days when you had to specialize in one ecosystem or the other.”
The Pentagon Needs to Make More Software Open Source, Watchdog Says
The White House in 2016 required every agency to make at least 20 percent of its custom software available for reuse across the government, but the Pentagon isn’t even halfway there, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Defense Department is not abiding by a federal mandate to promote the use of open source software and make common code more readily available to other agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office. The department has also failed to fully implement a number of other open source software initiatives required by the OMB memo, such as creating an enterprisewide open source software policy and building inventories of custom code, auditors said. Additionally, officials never created performance metrics to measure the success of their open source software efforts. (Source: Next Gov)
Huawei selling MateBook laptops with Linux preinstalled
Despite the trade blacklisting of Huawei by the US government, the Chinese electronics giant’s notebook division is plugging along, despite reports of component order cancellations in June, prompting concern they could exit the PC OEM market. Huawei is now selling the Matebook 13, Matebook 14, and Matebook X Pro at VMALL, Huawei’s ecommerce marketplace in China, with Deepin Linux preinstalled. (Source: Tech Republic)