This New Year's Eve I finished up some benchmarks of the Linux 4.5 through Linux 4.10 Git kernels on a powerful Core i7 6800K "Broadwell-E" system. I found some improvements with 4.10 Git, but there are also some evident regressions.

I'll have more benchmark results in the New Year as time allows and the 4.10 development settling down, but from the tests I did so far on the Core i7 6800K system there is some concern over what appears to be some definite and noticeable regressions.

At the end of last year was an update on MARS Replication System Still Being Worked On For Upstream Linux Kernel and like clock work, the German web hosting provider has issued another update on the in-development MARS replication system and is still hoping to mainline it, maybe next year.

MARS' tag-line at the 1&1 web hosting company is "replicating petabytes over long distances" and "has replaced DRBD as the backbone of the 1&1 geo-redundancy feature as publicly advertised for 1&1 Shared Hosting Linux (ShaHoLin). MARS is also running on several other 1&1 clusters. Some other people over the world have also seemingly started to use it."

• Nintendo Switch to use Vulkan, System76 aids in NVIDIA bug fixing, and more gaming news

  In this bi-weekly open gaming roundup, we take a look at the upcoming Nintendo console, System76's joint effort with NVIDIA to fix driver bugs, and more.

• Whew, what a year!

  This is not the place to present an opinion on all the other things that have happened in 2016, but when it comes to Krita, 2016 was perhaps the most intense year ever for the project. Let’s step back for a moment and do a bit of review!

• BlackArch 2016.12.29 released

• Porteus 3.2.2 final released

• [Rosa] Happy New Year 2017

  We’re proud to wish you a good luck in new 2017 year.

  We’ll try our best to continue developing our linux distributions even much better in new 2017 year.

• Gentoo-Based Calculate Linux 17 Launches with KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS and MATE 1.16

  Today, December 30, 2016, Alexander Tratsevskiy had the great pleasure of announcing the release and general availability of Calculate Linux 17, a Russian desktop-oriented computer operating system based on Gentoo.

  Calculate Linux 17 comes seven months after the Calculate Linux 15.17 release and promises great new features, including the latest KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS, MATE 1.16, and Xfce 4.12 desktop environments, along with the long-term supported Linux 4.4.39 kernel.

• Scorching Hot Tech Stocks Tape: Symantec Corporation (SYMC), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

• 3 Notable Runners: Under Armour, Inc. (UA), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), TEGNA Inc. (TGNA)

• Fedora 25 Release Party: Novi Sad, Serbia

  Another awesome Fedora release, and another awesome Release Party in Novi Sad!

  The party took place, like last time, on the Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad in the Department of Mathematics and Informatics. To be even more precise, it’s about three minutes away from our Fedora-powered computer lab! About forty people (among who was a Fedora ambassador from Uruguay) attended! We had four talks about different topics regarding Fedora, security, and hackerspaces.

• Ubuntu 16.04 Unity 8 current state

  Ubuntu 16.04 Unity 8 current state
  qt5, gtk3 native on mir, snaps, ubuntu snap store, system settings etc

• 7 New Year’s Resolution Ideas for Open Source Project Developers

  It seems like only yesterday that 2016 begun and we were just about to see great changes happening with SourceForge. Now we’re at the end of it, readying ourselves for yet another year.

  As fond as we are of the year that was, now is not just a time for remembering “Auld Lang Syne”, but also a time to prepare for what comes next. For open source project developers that means not only reflecting upon decisions and actions made, but also coming up with new resolutions that will define the future of open source projects.

• Business model as a variable to consider when choosing Open Source software.

  Any analytic report about who writes the code in open and collaborative environments will reflect how corporations involvement is increasing in Open Source software development at every level. More and more companies are transitioning from becoming FLOSS consumers to producers and almost every new software company out there has Open Source as a core strategy or even as part of their DNA.

  But who is sustaining the development of that key piece of software that will be a core part of your future product? Who pays those developers? Why? How does the key stakeholders benefit from the outcome of the ecosystem and the software they produce? How much do they invest in the production of that software? For how long? How do they get their income? What is the relevance of the software produced by the ecosystem they feed in their business models?

  These and similar basic questions need to be fully understood before a specific software becomes part of your key product or business. Knowing the answers to the above questions might not prevent you from surprises in the future but at least can prepare you for the potential consequences. What it is clear to me is that these answers are becoming more complicated to find and understand over time, specially for those companies who do not have a strong background on Open Source.

  Choosing a specific piece of software based on purely technical variables or even present healthiness of the community around the project/organization, expectations of the number of contributors or impact in general might not be enough any more. A specific community or project will become "your provider" so the business model behind it is equally important.

• Open source down under: Linux.conf.au 2017

  It’s a new year and open source enthusiasts from around the globe are preparing to gather at the edge of the world for Linux.conf.au 2017. Among those preparing are Googlers, including some of us from the Open Source Programs Office.

• Firefox 52 Borrows One More Privacy Feature from the Tor Browser

  Mozilla engineers have added a mechanism to Firefox 52 that prevents websites from fingerprinting users using system fonts.

  The user privacy protection system was borrowed from the Tor Browser, where a similar mechanism blocks websites from identifying users based on the fonts installed on their computers.

  The feature has been active in the Tor Browser for some time and will become active in the stable branch of Firefox 52, scheduled for release on March 7, 2017.

  The font fingerprinting protection is already active in Firefox 52 Beta.

• 2017 TDF and LibreOffice calendar

  2017 is just around the corner, so here’s a shiny calendar from The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community. Print it out, hang it on your wall, and here’s to a great 12 months ahead!

• Hungary withdraws membership from Open Government Partnership

  Hungary has decided to withdraw its membership from the OGP, following a disagreement with the OGP Steering Committee on a report.

• Scotland published its first action plan as OGP “Pioneer“

  Scotland published its first Open Government National Action Plan since it has been selected by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) as one of the fifteen “Pioneer” governments in April 2016.

• Germany and Luxembourg joined OGP

  During the Paris OGP Summit 2017, Germany and Luxembourg were among the European countries that announced their intent to join the Open Government Partnership. Portugal said it will “soon” become a member of the institution.

• Contracting 5 initiative officially launched at Paris OGP Summit

• OGP countries shifting commitments from basics to innovations

  The countries participating in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) are shifting their attention from "getting the basics right" to innovative measures and reforms that translate into actions capable of generating real change. After 'public service delivery', the areas 'fiscal openness' and 'access to information' are the most prevailing in the commitments for 2015-2016.

• Paris Declaration to promote collective actions in open government

  The Paris Declaration, which was presented at the OGP Paris Summit in December, will encourage cooperation between countries and civil societies to promote open government on a global scale. The Declaration lists twenty-one collective actions in which governments can take part and share experiences. “Actions are concrete cooperation, output-orientated and will produce tangible results”, the text of the Declaration states.

• French to test Sirene data in a hackathon

  Etalab, the French agency in charge of Open Data in France, and INSEE (Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economiques) – the French national agency for statistics, organised in November a hackathon to test and use the data of the SIRENE (Système informatique pour le répertoire des entreprises et des établissements) database which will be published as open data in January.

• 'Open Source' Robo-Car in '17?

  The year 2016 opened the door to a new phase of highly automated driving, moving the discussion away from “wouldn’t it be nice-to-have-a-robo-car” to a more immediate “to-do list” with which regulators, car OEMs and technology companies must grapple if they hope to make self-driving cars commercially viable and safe.

  Gone are days of early-adapter giddiness over the Google car, or an “Autopilot” Tesla with over-the-air software upgrades.

  Reality sank in 2016. The industry is now aware Autopilot’s limitations. The automotive engineering community is taking a crash course in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that’s far beyond today’s computer vision. Engineers are taking note of challenges in machine learning (how do you certify the safety of AI-driven cars?). Many automakers are scrambling for a holistic approach toward cybersecurity.

  So, what’s in the auto industry 2017 agenda that could change the course of robotic car development?