• The Beta of Zombie Panic! Source was updated recently, should work better on Linux

  Zombie Panic! Source is currently going through an overhaul, as part of this it's coming to Linux with a version now in beta and the latest update should make it a better experience.

  [...]

  I personally haven't been able to make any of the events yet, so I have no real thoughts on the game. Once it's out of beta and all servers are updated, I will be taking a proper look as it looks fun. No idea when this version will leave beta, might be a while yet.

• Dicey Dungeons, the new unique roguelike from Terry Cavanagh and co introduces quests

  We have a lot of roguelikes available on Linux (seriously, we do) yet Dicey Dungeons from Terry Cavanagh, Marlowe Dobbe, and Chipzel still remains fresh due to the rather unique game mechanics.

  I still can't get over how fun the dice mechanic is, as you slot dice into cards to perform actions. It's different, clever and works really well.

• Quake 2 now has real-time path tracing with Vulkan

  If you have one of the more recent NVIDIA RTX graphics cards, here's an interesting project for you to try. Q2VKPT from developer Christoph Schied implements some really quite advanced techniques.

• Steam Play versus Linux Version, a little performance comparison and more thoughts

  Now that Steam has the ability officially to override a Linux game and run it through Steam Play instead, let's take a quick look at some differences in performance.

  Before I begin, let's make something clear. I absolutely value the effort developers put into Linux games, I do think cross-platform development is incredibly important so we don't end up with more lock-in. However, let's be realistic for a moment. Technology moves on and it's not financially worth it to keep updating old games, they just don't sell as well as newer games (with exceptions of course). As the years go on, there will be more ways to run older games better and better, of that I've no doubt.

• Battle Motion, a really silly massive fantasy battle game will have Linux support

  Sometimes when looking around for new games I come across something that really catches my eye, Battle Motion is one such game as it looks completely silly.

• Ravva and the Cyclops Curse looks like a rather nice NES-inspired platformer

  Another lovely looking retro-inspired platformer! Ravva and the Cyclops Curse from developer Galope just released this week with Linux support.

• Become a fish inside a robot in Feudal Alloy, out now with Linux support

  We've seen plenty of robots and we've seen a fair amount of fish, but have you seen a fish controlling a robot with a sword? Say hello to Feudal Alloy.

I wrote some time ago on how platforms have a responsibility to respect the identity of applications, but now there’s some rumblings that Ubuntu’s community-built Yaru icon set (which is a derivative of the Suru icon set I maintain) intends to ignore this and infringe upon applications’ brands by modifying their icons...

[...]

For instance, the entire point of the GNOME icon refresh initiative is to address visual mismatches between third-party app icons and GNOME icons and we been have reaching out to developers to see about updating their icons to new design—this is the appropriate approach for a platform visual overhaul, by the way—which could always use more help on.

Now I don’t see this ever happening, but I have hopes that someday Ubuntu will fully embrace GNOME and promote it as its desktop solution—especially given the desktop is out of the scope of the Ubuntu business these days.

• Wine Announcement

  The Wine development release 4.0-rc7 is now available.The Wine development release 4.0-rc7 is now available.

• Juicy like the good stuff, Wine 4.0 RC7 is out with a delightful aroma

  No need to worry about a sour aftertaste here, we're of course talking about the wonderful software and not the tasty liquid.

  As usual, they're in bug-fix mode while they attempt to make the best version of Wine they can and so no super huge features made it in.

• Wine 4.0-RC7 Released With Fixes For Video Player Crashes, Game Performance Issues

  Wine 4.0 should be officially out soon, but this weekend the latest test release of it is Release Candidate 7 that brings more than one dozen fixes.

  Wine 4.0 remains in a feature freeze until its release, which will likely be within the next two weeks or so. Since last Friday's Wine 4.0-RC6, the RC7 release has 13 known bug fixes. Catching our interest are some game performance regressions being resolved, including for Hot Pursuit, Project CARS, Gas Guzzlers, and others. There are also video player crash fixes when opening audio or video files.

My first introduction to the command line was in the 80s when I first started learning about computers and, like many geeky kids of the time, wrote my first BASIC computer programs. But it wasn’t until my job starting Nupedia (and then Wikipedia) that I spent much time on the Bash command line.
(Let me explain. “Bash” means “Bourne-again shell,” a rewrite of the class Unix shell “sh.” A “shell” is a program for interacting with the computer by processing terse commands to do basic stuff like find and manipulate files; a terminal, or terminal emulator, is a program that runs a shell. The terminal is what shows you that command line, where you type your commands like “move this file there” and “download that file from this web address” and “inject this virus into that database”. The default terminal used by Linux Ubuntu, for example, is called Gnome Terminal–which runs Bash, the standard Linux shell.)
Even then (and in the following years when I got into programming again), I didn’t learn much beyond things like cd (switch directory) and ls (list directory contents).
It was then, around 2002, that I first decided to install Linux. Back then, maybe the biggest “distro” (flavor of Linux) was Red Hat Linux, so that’s what I installed. I remember making a partition (dividing the hard disk into parts, basically) and dual-booting (installing and making it possible to use both) Linux and Windows. It was OK, but it was also rather clunky and much rougher and much less user-friendly than the Windows of the day. So I didn’t use it much.

• Android-x86’s stable Android 8.1 Oreo image is now available

• Save $200 on Optoma's 4K Android-powered portable projector

• Redmi 6, Redmi 6A MIUI 10.2.2 update with December Android security patch, bug fixes rolled out

• How to See Recent Tweets First on Android

• OnePlus phones are discarding Android's battery optimization whitelist, a problem as more apps update to target Oreo

• HMD updates the update tracker for Nokia Android phones

• Get started with WTF, a dashboard for the terminal

• How to Install Microsoft PowerShell 6.1.1 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS [Ed: For the insane... or people who like to run malware (it's widely known that malware writers prefer this shell)]

• Tethered Camera Control & Capture ‘Entangle’ 2.0 Released (Howto Install)

• WebRender newsletter #36

  Hi everyone! This week’s highlight is Glenn’s picture caching work which almost landed about a week ago and landed again a few hours ago. Fingers crossed! If you don’t know what picture caching means and are interested, you can read about it in the introduction of this newsletter’s season 01 episode 28.

  On a more general note, the team continues focusing on the remaining list of blocker bugs which grows and shrinks depending on when you look, but the overall trend is looking good.

• Happy BMO Push Day!

• Understanding Debian: The Universal Operating System

  "And my final test as to whether or not Debian succeeded was: could the founder step away from the project and could the project keep going because that is the only point at which you know that the project has basically taken a life of its own." ~ Ian Murdock

• Week 5: Resolving the blocker

  This post is about my work on the subscription feature for Debian derivatives - first of the two main issues to be resolved within my internship. And this week’s topic from the organizers is “Think About Your Audience”, especially newcomers to the community and future Outreachy applicants. So I’ll try to write about the feature keeping the most important details but taking into account that the readers might be unfamiliar with some terms and concepts.

• Nouveau Open-Source Driver Will Now Work With NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti On Linux 5.0

  Among the many Linux 5.0 kernel features is initial open-source NVIDIA driver support for the latest-generation Turing graphics processors. Missed out on during the Linux 5.0 merge window was "TU102" support but now that is coming down as a fix for the 5.0 kernel.

  Back in December, Ben Skeggs of Red Hat posted the initial Turing support for Nouveau in the form of the TU104 (RTX 2080) and TU106 (RTX 2060/2070) but was lacking coverage of the TU102, which is for the flagship RTX 2080 Ti and TITAN RTX. He wasn't able to test the support at the time and thus left it out. Skeggs has now been able to verify the TU102 support is working and that patch is now on its way to the mainline kernel tree.

• Quake 2 Gets Real-Time Path Tracing Powered By NVIDIA RTX / VK_NV_ray_tracing

  For those Linux gamers with a NVIDIA RTX "Turing" graphics card, there's finally an interesting open-source workload to enjoy that makes use of the RTX hardware and NVIDIA's VK_NV_ray_tracing extension... A real-time path tracing port of the legendary Quake 2 game.

  While Quake II recently saw a Vulkan port, university students have now done an "RTX" port for Quake 2 with the new Q2VKPT project.

• KDE Plasma 5.15 Beta Wayland Run Through

  In this video, we look at KDE Plasma 5.15 Beta the Wayland Session. Please keep in mind that it is still in development and the Xorg session is perfect.

• Qt 5.13 Might Add QTelemetry For Opt-In Anonymous Data Collection

  The next release of the Qt5 tool-kit might introduce a potentially controversial module to facilitate anonymous data collection of Qt applications. 

  The addition of Qt Telemetry has been under code review since last September. There was some reviews taking place and code revisions happening but since November that review dried up. 

• Red Hat drops MongoDB over SSPL; MDB -3%

  Amazon responded by launching DocumentDB, a managed database that's compatible with existing MongoDB applications and tools. DocumentDB works with MongoDB version 3.6, which predates the SSPL license.

• Governance without rules: How the potential for forking helps projects

  The speed and agility of open source projects benefit from lightweight and flexible governance. Their ability to run with such efficient governance is supported by the potential for project forking. That potential provides a discipline that encourages participants to find ways forward in the face of unanticipated problems, changed agendas, or other sources of disagreement among participants. The potential for forking is a benefit that is available in open source projects because all open source licenses provide needed permissions.

  In contrast, standards development is typically constrained to remain in a particular forum. In other words, the ability to move the development of the standard elsewhere is not generally available as a disciplining governance force. Thus, forums for standards development typically require governance rules and procedures to maintain fairness among conflicting interests.

• Oracle exec: Open-source vendors locking down licences proves 'they were never really open'

• MoltenVK Sees Big Update To Jump-Start Vulkan On macOS In 2019

• Facebook 'Likes' (And Open Sources) Better Mobile Image Software

• Open source Spectrum library enables edge processing of images for faster performance

  Spectrum, an open source image processing library from Facebook, aims to give developers the ability to perform image transformation client-side, with predictable, repeatable results on different platforms. The library can be integrated into Android or iOS apps, and uses C/C++ code for higher performance with Java and Objective-C wrapper APIs for integration ease. Spectrum's API is declarative, allowing developers to define the target output characteristics, leaving the work of formulating settings to achieve that goal to the library itself.

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite written in C++, Java, and Python. It was first released in January 2011 by The Document Foundation and has since known to be the most reliable open source office suite.

Jose plans on continuing to push open source initiatives such as cloud and container infrastructures. He will also continue teaching advanced Unix systems administration. “I am now helping a new generation of Red Hat Certified Professionals seek their place in the world of open source. It is indeed a joy when a student mentions they have obtained their certification because of what they were exposed to in my class.” He also plans on spending some more time with his art again.

Carlos would like to write for Fedora Magazine and help bring the magazine to the Latin American community. “I would like to contribute to Fedora Magazine. If possible I would like to help with the magazine in Spanish.”

Akinsola wants to hold a Fedora a release part in 2019. “I want make many people aware of Fedora, make them aware they can be part of the release and it is easy to do.” He would also like to ensure that new Fedora users have an easy time of adapting to their new OS.

Kevin is planning is excited about 2019 being a time of great change for Fedora. “In 2019 I am looking forward to seeing what and how we retool things to allow for lifecycle changes and more self service deliverables. I think it’s going to be a ton of work, but I am hopeful we will come out of it with a much better structure to carry us forward to the next period of Fedora success.” Kevin also had some words of appreciation for everyone in the Fedora community. “I’d like to thank everyone in the Fedora community for all their hard work on Fedora, it wouldn’t exist without the vibrant community we have.”

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, early morning by cybre.space’s standards. Few have logged on to the microblogging social network, and it shows: A follower feed filled with more than 31 users updates at a snail’s pace. It’s much slower than one would expect on Twitter. But then again, cybre.space isn’t Twitter. It runs off a decentralized social media software called Mastodon, and is part of a much larger network of Mastodon communities.

Over on Twitter, users post jokes about President Donald Trump, this time of a fast food feast he prepared for the Clemson Tigers football team amid the ongoing government shutdown. But the words “Trump” and “shutdown” only appear once each on cybre.space’s “local timeline,” which shows posts on the site and any other connected “instances,” or Mastodon communities. It’s even more barren on this reporter’s home timeline: No one is talking about hamberders.

Posting works differently on cybre.space than Twitter. It’s much more like living in a queer house, one that prefers to talk about political theory over current events. Some users chat about democratic socialism and queer identity, while others talk about games, music, fandom, or their difficulties navigating trans healthcare. One user posts a message that reads “re: hrt” with a few lines about their hormone replacement regimen hidden underneath, accessible only via the “show more” content warning (CW) button next to it. Another boosts a post praising Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, calling it a “visceral experience.”

Cybre.space has just over 2,000 users. Over on Mastodon’s flagship community, Mastodon.social, there are over 300,000 users. But despite the larger userbase, discussions are even less political. On the community’s local timeline, one user troubleshoots installing a Linux distribution. Another shares a news story about a man who tried to turn his home into a restaurant. A third links to an article about Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford. Here, Trump is not the sun; tech, gaming, and the occasional NSFW post largely prevail. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist.

There are plenty of free, ad-supported email services available online. However, the majority of those email services are not exactly secure or privacy-minded. In this post-Snowden world, Tutanota offers a free, secure email service with a focus on privacy.

This new year has brought several updated packages to users of openSUSE’s rolling release Tumbleweed.

Three snapshots have been released in 2019 so far and among the packages updated in the snapshots are KDE’s Plasma, VIM, RE2, QEMU and curl.

The 20190112 snapshot brought a little more than a handful of packages. The new upstream Long-Term-Support version of nodejs10 10.15.0 addressed some timing vulnerabilities, updated a dependency with an upgrade to OpenSSL 1.1.0j and the versional also has a 40-seconds timeout that is now applied to servers receiving HTTP headers. The changelog listed several fixes for the highly configurable text editor with vim 8.1.0687, which should now be able to be built with Ruby 2.6.0 that was released at the end of December. Google’s re2 20190101 offered some performance tweaks and bug fixes. The fast real-time compression algorithm of zstd 1.3.8 has better decompression speed on large files. There was a change in the yast2-firewall package, which arrived in the the 20190110 snapshot, that allows new ‘forward_ports’, ‘rich_rules’ and ‘source_ports’ elements in zone entries with yast2-schema 4.1.0.

• Some Android GPS apps are just showing ads on top of Google Maps

• Google is working with Unity on an ‘Android Game SDK’

• Google acquires Fossil’s smartwatch tech and Wear OS team

• Nokia X5 Android Pie update in China brings system optimization, camera upgrade and more

• LG G7 Android 9 Pie update rolls out with a surprise

• Galaxy S9 Android 9 Pie update is here - how to get these new features on your phone now

• Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A9 (2018) also certified with Android Pie

• Mysterious Lenovo phone with Android Pie gets benchmarked

• Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A9 (2018) Android Pie update is already in testing

• New Samsung tablet SM-T515 with Android 9 Pie spotted on Geekbench

• Indians download most number of Android apps in the world: AppAnnie

• These malicious Android apps will only strike when you move your smartphone

• Top 10 Apple and Android smartphones you can buy for under $300

• SwiftKey on Android finally lets users remove the search bar with latest update

• Shinco set to launch a 65-inch Android-powered smart 4K LED TV in India for Rs 49,990

Being able to install Linux apps on Chrome OS opens up some fascinating new possibilities — particularly if you're an advanced user.

After all, while a Chromebook's standard combo of web apps, Chrome apps, and Android apps is more than sufficient for most folks' needs, some of us still require (or maybe just prefer) traditional local programs for certain specific purposes. The presence of Linux apps on Chrome OS means we can have our cake and eat it, too — by enjoying the speed, simplicity, and security of a Chromebook while also embracing the occasional heavy-duty desktop app.

Many of you are Windows 7 users. I get it. Windows 7 just works. But the clock is ticking for Windows 7. In less than a year, Windows 7's free support ends.

Come that day, you'll have a choice: You can either run it without being certain you'll get vital security patches (that would be really stupid), or you can pay for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESUs) on a per-device basis, with the price increasing each year. We don't know how much that will be, but I think we can safely assume it won't be cheap. Or, you can migrate to Windows 10. And, yes, for now, you can still update to Windows 10 for free from Windows 7.

Making the news rounds a few months back was "WLinux", which was the first Linux distribution designed for Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10. But is this pay-to-play Linux distribution any faster than the likes of Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Debian already available from the Microsoft Store? Here are some benchmarks of these different Linux distribution options with WSL.

WLinux is a Linux distribution derived from Debian that is focused on offering an optimal WSL experience. This distribution isn't spun by Microsoft but a startup called Whitewater Foundry. WLinux focuses on providing good defaults for WSL with the catering of its default package set while the Debian archive via APT is still accessible. There is also support for graphical applications when paired with a Windows-based X client. For this easy-setup, quick-to-get-going Linux distribution on WSL, it retails for $19.99 USD from the Microsoft Store though often sells for $9.99 USD.

However, in the name of opening your eyes to maybe something a bit different, I’m going to approach this a bit differently. I want to consider a list of possible distributions that are not only outstanding candidates but also easy to use, and that can serve many functions within your business. In some cases, my choices are drop-in replacements for other operating systems, whereas others require a bit of work to get them up to speed.

Some of my choices are community editions of enterprise-grade servers, which could be considered gateways to purchasing a much more powerful platform. You’ll even find one or two entries here to be duty-specific platforms. Most importantly, however, what you’ll find on this list isn’t the usual fare.

• Stable release: HardenedBSD-stable 11-STABLE v1100056.12

• EPYC Server Battle | BSD Now 281

  SCP client vulnerabilities, BSDs vs Linux benchmarks on a Tyan EPYC Server, fame for the Unix inventors, Die IPv4, GhostBSD 18.12 released, Unix in pictures, and more.

• mintCast 300.2 interview 2 Rothgar