Smallest RK3399 hacker board yet ships at $129 with 4GB DDR4

FriendlyElec has launched a 100 x 64mm, $129 “NanoPC-T4” SBC that runs Android or Linux on a Rockchip RK3399 with 4G DDR4, native GbE, WiFi-ac, DP, HDMI 2.0, 0 to 80℃ support, and M.2 and 40-pin expansion. FriendlyElec has released its most powerful and priciest hacker board to date, which it promotes as being the smallest RK3399-based SBC on the market. The 100 x 64mm NanoPC-T4 opens with a $129 discount price with the default 4GB DDR4 and 16GB eMMC. Although that will likely rise in the coming months, it’s still priced in the middle range of open spec RK3399 SBCs.

today's leftovers

• How to dual-boot Linux and Windows

  Even though Linux is a great operating system with widespread hardware and software support, the reality is that sometimes you have to use Windows, perhaps due to key apps that won't run under Linux. Thankfully, dual-booting Windows and Linux is very straightforward—and I'll show you how to set it up, with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04, in this article. Before you get started, make sure you've backed up your computer. Although the dual-boot setup process is not very involved, accidents can still happen. So take the time to back up your important files in case chaos theory comes into play. In addition to backing up your files, consider taking an image backup of the disk as well, though that's not required and can be a more advanced process.

• Weather Forecasting Gets A Big Lift In Japan

  This is a lot more compute capacity than JMA has had available to do generic weather forecasting as well as do predictions for typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions – the weather forecasting alone is predicted to run 10X faster, according to Cray.

• Bitwarden Password Manager Adds Command Line Vault

  Bitwarden, the secure, open source password manager we talked about recently, added a command line tool to its list of apps you can use to access your passwords. Bitwarden CLI is currently in public beta testing, and according to its documentation, it includes all the features available in other Bitwarden client applications, like the desktop or browser extension.

• GSoC’18 Week 1

  The first week of the coding period was great and I got to learn a lot of new things. My mentors help me on every stage and the work is going on as planne [...] Improvement in the overall UI is still in progress. Other than this, I have been working on refactoring the current code for this activity and breaking the whole code into various elements. For the next week, my main task is to complete the overall UI of this activity and add more geometries for drawing.

• Time to Test Plasma 5.13 Beta

  The forthcoming new release of Plasma 5.13 will have some lovely new features such as rewritten System Settings pages and Plasma Browser Integration. But we need testers. Incase you missed it the Plasma 5.13 release announce has a rundown of the main features. If you are an auditory learner you can listen to the Late Night Linux Extra podcast where Jonathan “great communicator” Riddell talks about the recent sprint and the release.

• GSoC students are already hacking!

  We always enjoy that new people join openSUSE community and help them in their first steps. Because of that, openSUSE participates again in GSoC, an international program in which stipends are awarded to students who hack on open source projects during the summer. We are really excited to announce that this year four students will learn about open source development while hacking on openSUSE projects. The coding period started last week, so our students are already busy hacking and they have written some nice articles about their projects. ;)

• CryptoFest a openSUSE Conference již tento víkend v Praze

• openSUSE Conference a CryptoFest 2018

• Aaeon reveals two rugged, Linux-ready embedded PCs

  Aaeon unveiled two Linux-friendly embedded systems: an “AIOT-IP6801” gateway equipped with an Apollo Lake-based UP Squared SBC with WiFi and LoRa, and a “Boxer-8120AI” mini-PC with an Nvidia Jetson TX2 module and 4x GbE ports. Aaeon announced that three of its Linux-ready embedded systems have won Computex d&j awards, including two previously unannounced models: an Intel Apollo Lake based AIOT-IP6801 gateway based on Aaeon’s community-backed UP Squared board, as well as a Boxer-8120AI embedded computer built around an Arm-based Jetson TX2 module.

• Last Call for Purism's Librem 5 Dev Kits, Git Protocol Version 2 Released, LXQt Version 0.13.0 Now Available and More

  Purism announces last call for its Librem 5 dev kits. If you're interested in the hardware that will be the platform for the Librem 5 privacy-focused phones, place your order by June 1, 2018. The dev kit is $399, and it includes "screen, touchscreen, development mainboard, cabling, power supply and various sensors (free worldwide shipping)".

Programming: GNU Parallel, Rust, Go

• GNU Parallel 20180522 ('Great March of Return') released

  GNU Parallel 20180522 ('Great March of Return') has been released.

• This Week in Rust 235

  Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but didn't know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

• Creating random, secure passwords in Go

OSS Leftovers

• Openlab: what it is and why it matters

  Six months on from its announcement at Openstack Summit Sydney in late 2017, community testing project OpenLab is in full swing. OpenLab was initially formed by Intel, Huawei and the OpenStack foundation as a community-led project for improving SDK support and also introducing other platforms like Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry to the Openstack environment. Ultimately the idea is to improve usability in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Melvin Hillsman sits on the governance board along with Dr Yih Leong Sun of Intel and Chris Hoge from the Foundation. Hillsman moved from Rackspace to Huawei to work specifically on the project. "The reason we think Openlab is important is, basically, Openstack for some time has been very specific about testing and integration for Openstack services, focusing only on the projects started at Openstack," Hillsman tellsComputerworld UK at the Openstack Vancouver Summit. "It's been working very well, it's a robust system. But for me as a person in the user community - my getting involved in Openstack was more on the operator-user side.

• Open source innovation tips for the customer-driven economy

  New technologies, ranging from big data and blockchain to 3D printing, are giving rise to new opportunities and challenges for companies today. To stay competitive, organizations need to become more intelligent, customer-centric, and increasingly agile to cope with changing business demands. The worry for many companies which are trying to innovate is that while the speed and scope of applications are expanding rapidly, the variety and complexity of technology is increasing simultaneously, putting pressure on their IT infrastructure. Speaking at the SUSE Expert Days 2018 held in Singapore recently, Dr Gerald Pfeifer, VP of Products and Technology Program, SUSE, told attendees that these prevailing trends have come together to make Open Source the primary engine for business innovation.

• Qualcomm is able to release the Snapdragon 845 source code in 6 weeks

  Qualcomm‘s latest high-end system-on-chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, was announced at the Snapdragon Tech Summit back in December. The chipset offers 4 Kryo 385 (A75 “performance”) and 4 Kryo 385 (A55 “efficiency”) CPU cores, the latest Adreno 630 GPU, the Spectra 280 ISP, the Hexagon 685 DSP, the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, and a new Secure Processing Unit (SPU). The Snapdragon 845 SoC is a powerhouse in benchmarks and it is already available in devices like the Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, and the OnePlus 6. Developers on our forums have been itching to get their hands on a device with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest, but there’s just one thing that has made some developers worry about the future of development on the platform: The lack of publicly available source code for the kernel, HALs, framework branches, and more on the CodeAurora Forums.

• Kata Containers 1.0 Released, Formerly Intel Clear Containers

  Back in December was the announcement of Intel's Clear Containers being spun into a new project called Kata Containers in collaboration with other organizations. Kata Containers has now reached their version 1.0 milestone. Kata Containers 1.0 is now available for this container technology designed for offering a secure and scalable container experience built atop Intel VT technology.

• What's new in OpenStack?

  As OpenStack Foundation Chief Operating Officer Mark Collier referenced in his opening keynote, the uses which OpenStack is seeing today expand far beyond what most who were involved in the early days of the project could have ever imagined. While OpenStack started out primarily in the traditional data center and found many large-scale users, particularly in the telecommunications industry, who were using it to manage huge installations of traditional x86 server hardware, the flexibility of OpenStack has today allowed it to thrive in many other environments and use cases. Today, we see OpenStack powering everything from academic and research projects to media and gaming services, from online retail and e-commerce to manufacturing and industrial applications, and from finance to healthcare. OpenStack is found in all of these different places not just because it is cheaper than using the public cloud, not just because it makes compliance with various regulations easier, but because its open source code makes it flexible to all sort of different situations.

• Should Red Hat Buy or Build a Database?

  For a decade, at least, observers of the company have speculated about whether Red Hat would or should enter the database market. The primary argument, one made in this space eight years ago, has historically been that Red Hat is de facto leaving potential dollars on the table by limiting itself to operating platform and immediately adjacent markets. In a more recent piece, analyst Krishnan Subramanian adds that Red Hat is at risk because databases represent a control point, one that the company is effectively ceding to competitors such as AWS or Microsoft.

• Tidelift Raises $15M Series A From General Catalyst, Foundry, & Others

  This morning Tidelift, a startup focused on helping developers work with open source technology, announced that it has closed a $15 million Series A round of funding co-led by General Catalyst, Foundry, and Matthew Szulik, the former CEO of Red Hat, a public open source-centered technology company. The subscription-powered startup has an interesting business model which we’ll dive into shortly, but it’s worth noting that the open source space as a whole is quite active. It’s something that Crunchbase News covered last year, describing how startups working with open source software have enjoyed a dramatic rise in investor interest. That puts Tidelift in the midst of a trend.

• Tidelift lands $15M to deliver professional open-source support

  Tidelift Inc. is raising $15 million as it looks to boost its unique open-source software model that sees companies pay for professional support of their favorite projects, allowing those that maintain them to get compensated too. The Series A round was led by the investment firms General Catalyst and Foundry Group, as well as former Red Hat Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Matthew Szulik. The company was able to attract the investment after coming up with a novel idea for maintaining the most popular open-source software projects in a way that benefits both the users and those who help to create them. It works like this: Companies pay a subscription fee that entitles them to professional-grade support, similar to the kind of commercial subscriptions offered by firms such as Red Hat, Cloudera Inc. and Docker Inc. A part of these fees are then used to pay the developers who maintain the software. The net result, at least in theory, is that everyone is happy, as companies enjoy the benefits of professional support at lower rates than they might expect from an established firm, and the developers of the software are finally rewarded for their efforts.