Containers and Kubernetes News

• Ruby in Containers

  Software changes environments from a development machine to a UAT (user acceptance testing) server environment or even from a test environment to production. It is required that the software runs consistently and reliably in these environments in the process. There was a time when deploying software was an event, a ceremony because of the difficulty that was required to keep this consistency. Teams spent a lot of time making the destination environments run the software as the source environment. They thereafter prayed that the gods kept the software running perfectly in production as in development. With containers, deployments are more frequent because we package our applications with their libraries as a unit making them portable thereby helping us maintain consistency and reliability when moving software between environments. For developers, this is improved productivity, portability and ease of scaling. Because of this portability, containers have become the universal language of the cloud allowing us to move software from one cloud to another without much trouble. In this article, I will discuss two major concepts to note while working with containers in Ruby. I will discuss how to create small container images and how to test them.

• Kubernetes co-founder on the container revolution and the future of VMs

  Containers have exploded in popularity in recent years. To help with the deploying, scaling, and managing of containerized applications, Brendan Burns co-founded Kubernetes - a production-grade container orchestration system. In this episode, Brendan shares how he and his co-founders came up with the idea, how they got started, and what containers mean for the future of Virtual Machines.

• FOSS Project Spotlight: BlueK8s

  Kubernetes (aka K8s) is now the de facto container orchestration framework. Like other popular open-source technologies, Kubernetes has amassed a considerable ecosystem of complementary tools to address everything from storage to security. And although it was first created for running stateless applications, more and more organizations are interested in using Kubernetes for stateful applications. However, while Kubernetes has advanced significantly in many areas during the past couple years, there still are considerable gaps when it comes to running complex stateful applications. It remains challenging to deploy and manage distributed stateful applications consisting of a multitude of co-operating services (such as for use cases with large-scale analytics and machine learning) with Kubernetes.

• How to choose the right storage solution for your containers

  We talk to many shops that are adopting, or have adopted, DevOps practices. For many companies, staying ahead of disruption means not only delivering new applications but also optimizing (or changing!) current processes and systems. They are moving to team-based cultures, working in smaller increments, and automating their environments to try to increase the velocity for software development and deployment. Having a common storage underpinning that is "self-service" for developers to provision and manage storage for their applications means teams have less friction in developing and shipping applications.

Microsoft's Vista 10 Disaster Returns, Privacy Violations, and Moving to GNU/Linux

• If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

  The 1809 build of Windows 10 and Windows Server is fast becoming infamous. Microsoft pulled it shortly after release when it started deleting people's files, and stumbling in other ways. Redmond reissued the software on Tuesday, and today it's clear you shouldn't rush into deploying it, if installing it at all, in its present state.

• Microsoft Just Crammed Ads Into Windows 10 Mail. When Will They Stop? [Ed: With Vista 10 the users are the product. The spies from Microsoft spy on them (sometimes illegally, but these people are above the law) and their real clients are advertisers.]

  Whether it’s pre-installing Candy Crush Saga, showing full-screen ads on your lock screen, or displaying banner ads in File Explorer, Microsoft has been shoehorning ads into every inch of Windows 10. The Mail app is getting them next. Update: Microsoft’s head of communications, Frank Shaw, just backpedaled on Twitter. He said “this is an experimental feature that was never intended to be tested broadly and is being turned off.” As Mehedi Hassan notes over at Thurrott, this is a strange claim because Microsoft has a detailed support page explaining these advertisements.

• Microsoft menaced with GDPR mega-fines in Europe for 'large scale and covert' gathering of people's info via Office

  Microsoft broke Euro privacy rules by carrying out the "large scale and covert" gathering of private data through its Office apps. That's according to a report out this month [PDF] that was commissioned by the Dutch government into how information handled by 300,000 of its workers was processed by Microsoft's Office ProPlus suite. This software is installed on PCs and connects to Office 365 servers. The dossier's authors found that the Windows goliath was collecting telemetry and other content from its Office applications, including email titles and sentences where translation or spellchecker was used, and secretly storing the data on systems in the United States. That's a no-no. Those actions break Europe's new GDPR privacy safeguards, it is claimed, and may put Microsoft on the hook for potentially tens of millions of dollars in fines. The Dutch authorities are working with the corporation to fix the situation, and are using the threat of a fine as a stick to make it happen.

• How old were you when you first started using Linux?

  Whether you switched from another operating system, or are one of the lucky few who knew no OS before it, all of us were beginners at some point. How old were you when you started using Linux? Do you remember that time clearly, or is it so far in the past that it's but a faint memory? Regardless of the answer, let us know when it was, and maybe, a bit about what that experience has meant to you.

Games: Serious Sam Fusion, Surviving Mars: Space Race, Total War: WARHAMMER II

• Serious Sam Fusion has the first update in some time

  Serious Sam Fusion, the game hub that allows you to play Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter, Serious Sam 3: BFE along with the VR version finally has an update. It's still in beta, but not classed as "Early Access" on Steam. If you pickup any of those games, it automatically gives you Fusion which is especially good for Linux gamers since some of their titles weren't officially available on Linux but are with Fusion. The Fusion hub also brings Vulkan support, so that's awesome.

• Surviving Mars: Space Race expansion and Gagarin free update have released, working well on Linux

  Haemimont Games along with Paradox Interactive have released the Surviving Mars: Space Race expansion today and it's great.

• Total War: WARHAMMER II will release for Linux on November 20th

  Feral Interactive have announced that Total War: WARHAMMER II for Linux is officially releasing on November 20th. Originally developed by Creative Assembly in partnership with Games Workshop and published by SEGA for Windows, this is the follow-up game to the original which was released for Linux in November of 2016.

• Total War: WARHAMMER II Launching For Linux Next Week

  Feral Interactive has just announced that Total War: WARHAMMER II will be released for Linux (and macOS) next week. On 20 November they will be releasing this latest native Linux game port following the Windows release a year ago. We've known it was slated for November and now it looks like they have the release all squared away for debut next Tuesday.

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