Android Leftovers

• Android Q will add Google Chrome integration into Digital Wellbeing

• Android Q update: No going back now!

• No Intel 5G modems until 2020, so iPhone might be a year behind Android

• Nokia shares stunning presumptive Nokia 9 PureView photo sample

• Oppo's 10x optical zoom camera is ready for smartphones, and we used it

• Paranoid Android gets new features on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro, Essential Phone, and several Sony phones

• These two Vivo smartphones will reportedly get Android Pie next month

• Here are some leaked Alcatel devices, one of which ships with Android Oreo

• 10 Best Android Phone Deals This Weekend (2019)

• The One Trick Every Snapchat User on Android Needs to Know

• Someone's Trying To Run Android On The Nintendo Switch

OpenSUSE Leap 15.1 Beta Is Running Well - Benchmarks On AMD EPYC Workstation

With openSUSE Leap 15.1 reaching beta this week I decided to take it for a quick spin of this Linux distribution derived from the same sources as SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP1. Here are some quick benchmarks compared to Leap 15.0 as well as the latest rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed. OpenSUSE Leap 15.1 remains under active development and is expected to be officially released in May. But given reaching the beta state and being curious how the performance has evolved compared to openSUSE Tumbleweed, I ran some initial benchmarks of this beta snapshot this week. This preliminary round of tests was done using an AMD EPYC 7351P workstation with ASRockRack EPYCD8-2T, 8 x 4GB DDR4-2666 memory, and 800GB Intel DC P3600 (SSDPE2ME800G4) NVMe solid-state drive. Tests on more hardware will come as the openSUSE Leap 15.1 stable release approaches.

Servers: Red Hat, Kubernetes, OpenShift, WriteFreely and WordPress

• Taking System Monitoring to the Next Level: an Interview with Scalyr CEO Steve Newman [Ed: Linux Journal back to the pre-PIA days of promoting proprietary software?]

• Time zone data (tzdata): 2018 data format changes and Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) needs time zone information in order for all applications in the operating system to correctly print local time. The GNU C Library (glibc) makes use of the tzdata package in order to make APIs such as strftime() work correctly, while applications such as /usr/bin/date make use of this information to print the local date. The tzdata package contains the data files documenting both current and historic transitions for various time zones around the world. This data represents changes required by local government bodies or by time zone boundary changes, as well as changes to UTC offsets and daylight saving time (DST).

• Upcoming Silicon Valley OpenShift Commons Gathering, March 11 on Operating at Scale with Speakers Google, Facebook, Uber, Red Hat and Rook

  The OpenShift Commons Gathering brings together experts from all over the world to discuss the container technologies, operators, the operator framework, best practices for cloud-native application developers and the open source software projects that underpin the OpenShift ecosystem to help take us all to the next level in cloud-native computing. This next gathering will feature 400+ developers, project leads, cloud architects, DevOps professionals, sysadmins, and cloud-native practitioners coming together to explore the next steps in making container technologies successful and secure at scale.

• 7 Key Considerations for Kubernetes in Production

  Today Enterprise IT does not question the value of containerized applications anymore. Given the move to adopting DevOps and cloud native architectures, it is critical to leverage container capabilities in order to enable digital transformation. Google’s Kubernetes (K8s), an open source container orchestration system, has become the de facto standard — and the key enabler — for cloud native applications, and the way they are architected, composed, deployed, and managed. Enterprises are using Kubernetes to create modern architectures composed of microservices and serverless functions which scale seamlessly. However, two years of working with Kubernetes for enterprise applications, and large-scale production deployments have taught us valuable real-world lessons about the challenges of Kubernetes in the enterprise, and what it REALLY takes in order to make it ready for prime time and enable organizations to safely bet on Kubernetes to power mission-critical enterprise application. Large and complex enterprises that have invested in container-based applications often struggle to realize the value of Kubernetes and container technology, due to operational or Day-two management challenges. In this post, we share seven fundamental capabilities large enterprises need to instrument around their Kubernetes investments in order to be able to effectively implement it and utilize it to drive their business.

• Kubernetes job interview questions: How to prepare

  As Kubernetes adoption grows, so does the need for IT pros with the skills and experience needed to run it in production. “There’s a strong correlation between the popularity of Kubernetes and the demand for engineers who have in-depth knowledge of the system,” says Leo Shemesh, CTO at Jackpocket. Signs suggest that demand for Kubernetes skills is pointing skyward. That creates a tricky proposition for IT executives and hiring managers. Don’t worry, we’re not here to moan and groan about another skills shortage. Actually, Shemesh notes that it’s relatively easy for IT pros to begin learning about Kubernetes, thanks to a wealth of articles and other resources available online, a vibrant open source community, and the commercial platforms and services that sit on top of the Kubernetes project. It’s also relatively simple to start running a single-node cluster on a local machine with Minikube, a good option for getting your hands messy.

• OpenShift platform seen as biggest IBM gain from Red Hat acquisition

  IBM's acquisition of open source company Red Hat means that Big Blue is betting that the future of cloud computing is hybrid and it has made the purchase to cover its flanks in this area, the technology analyst firm Gartner says.

• Four Startup Engineering Killers

  Startup engineering is different from any other type of software engineering. It demands short- and medium-term productivity, relative to the “right way” of building systems. It values people who are able to iterate quickly and are comfortable with hacky code. It rewards pragmatism in technology choices versus picking the most hyped — or most stable — technology.

• Phoronix Test Suite 8.6.1 Released For Open-Source, Cross-Platform Benchmarking

  Phoronix Test Suite 8.6.1 is now available as a minor update over Phoronix Test Suite 8.6-Spydeberg that shipped at the start of February.

• WriteFreely: Start a blog, build a community

  As more of our lives move online, we become dependent on large services with millions (or billions) of users to communicate with each other. Although we tend to notice problems only when these platforms change a policy, erect a paywall, or suffer a data breach, we can often feel how these mass-broadcast platforms don't always have our best interests in mind and often don't "connect" us in the ways they purport to. However, over the past few years, we've also seen a renaissance of small, close-knit online communities. New protocols for building federated social networks, like ActivityPub, are seeing more use, popularized by open source platforms like Mastodon. People still gather on forums to discuss their interests with like-minded people. And even on the large, centralized services, many people use "group" features to have more intimate conversations than they would by sending their latest status update to a wide swath of unrelated people. In the blogging world, we've also seen platforms like Medium and Tumblr become more popular, partially because of the networks they offer. With these large platforms, each blog is no longer an "island," but part of a huge community. Yet, like any other closed-source, centralized service, if they make a change that doesn't benefit their users, we're forced to find another platform. That's why I built WriteFreely.

• WordPress 5.1 Improves Security With Site Health Mechanism

  WordPress 5.1 became generally available on Feb. 21, providing users of the popular open-source blogging and content management system (CMS) with updates to improve site operations and site health. WordPress is one of the most widely deployed CMS technologies, powering over 30 percent of all websites on the internet. The new WordPress release follows the open-source project's tradition of naming releases after famous Jazz musicians by code-naming the 5.1 release Betty, after jazz vocalist Betty Carter. Among the key new features in the release is a check to warn users if they are running older, unsupported versions of the PHP programming language that is needed to operate WordPress. "Following WordPress 5.0 — a major release which introduced the new block editor — 5.1 focuses on polish, in particular by improving the overall performance of the editor," WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg wrote in a blog post. "In addition, this release paves the way for a better, faster, and more secure WordPress with some essential tools for site administrators and developers."