You might be a beginner looking to explore Linux and you are at a loss of what Apps you should essentially be using. So what are the best essential Apps for Linux? In this guide, we have put together a list of what we would consider as the most necessary applications that you should have in your Linux system to have a wholesome experience.

• 09/18/2019 | Linux Headlines

  Google's Stadia good news, VM encryption comes to an OpenStack near you, and details on Ubuntu 19.10's 32-bit support.

  Plus significant changes for Chef's certification program, and more.

• mintCast 317.5 – Peer into the Void

  This week, in our Innards section, we interview Toyam Cox, maintainer for Void Linux.

• Linux 5.3, GNOME 3.34, Manjaro, Destination Linux Network, Mumble, Telegram | This Week in Linux 81

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we got the 5.3 release of the Linux Kernel. GNOME recently released their latest version of the GNOME Shell with GNOME 3.34. Manjaro is leveling up by creating a new business around their distro.

• Positive in the Freedom Dimension | LINUX Unplugged 319

  Richard Stallman has resigned as president and director of the Free Software Foundation, and that's just one of the major shifts this week.

  Also what makes Manjaro unique? We chat with one of the founders and find out why it's much more than a desktop environment.

  Special Guests: Alex Kretzschmar, Bernhard Landauer, Brent Gervais, and Neal Gompa.

• Linux 5.4 Power Management Updates Sent In But Without AMD CPPC Changes

  The Linux 5.4 power management changes have been submitted for this next version of the Linux kernel.

  This time around the power management work isn't particularly exciting with no breakthroughs for the Intel P-State driver, no major changes to the other prominent CPUFreq drivers/governors, and no AMD CPPC support for their new processors.

• Linux 5.4 Preps For Intel Tiger Lake, Elkhart Lake & Lightning Mountain + Killing MPX

  The Linux 5.4 x86/cpu changes are as busy as always on the Intel side.

  The Linux 5.4 x86/cpu code changes include cleaning up the Intel CPU naming conventions within definitions in the code. The changes now provide a standardized convention for dealing with Intel CPU core names and their variations within the kernel code rather than the naming convention mess that had come about over the years. This doesn't impact end-users, but cleans up the kernel code to be less confusing.

• Microsoft exFAT File-System Mailed In For Linux 5.4 Along With Promoted EROFS & Greybus

  Greg Kroah-Hartman began volleying his Linux 5.4 kernel pull requests today of the subsystems he oversees. The most significant of this morning's pull requests are the staging area changes that include the Microsoft exFAT file-system support.

  As we've been expecting, Linux 5.4 is bringing exFAT support after last month's surprise announcement by Microsoft publishing the exFAT specification and giving it an open-source blessing for integrating the file-system support at long last into the Linux kernel.

• Improved Fscrypt Sent In For Linux 5.4 To Offer Better Native File Encryption Handling

  In addition to submitting the FS-VERITY file authentication code for Linux 5.4, Google's Eric Biggers has sent out his big update to the fscrypt file encryption framework for this next kernel revision.

  Fscrypt as a reminder is a kernel framework providing native file encryption support to file-systems. Currently Fscrypt is used by EXT4, F2FS, and UBIFS while being used by Google for at least new Android use-cases. Fscrypt has been around for several kernel cycles now but for Linux 5.4 is seeing its first big update.

At KDAB we invest a significant amount of efforts in research and development. We are always looking for new tooling, libraries and utilities that can make our job easier and improve the C++ and Qt ecosystems. Ultimately, the gained knowledge and skills make our customers happier.

As part of this process we develop lots of code, usually starting as small experiments and/or proof-of-concept. Some of those experiments mature and become fully fledged solutions, such as our famous GammaRay, the introspection tool for Qt applications; hotspot, the GUI to Linux perf; and heaptrack, a heap memory profiler.

Canonical announces full enterprise support for Kubernetes 1.16, with support covering Charmed Kubernetes, MicroK8s and kubeadm.

MicroK8s will be updated with Kubernetes 1.16 enabling users access to the latest upstream release with a single-line command in under 60 seconds. In addition, MicroK8s gets new add-ons with one line installs of Helm and Cilium as well as enhancements, upgrades and bug fixes. Cilium adds enhanced networking features including Kubernetes Network Policy support. With MicroK8s 1.16, users can develop and deploy enterprise grade Kubernetes on any Linux desktop, server or VM across 42 Linux distros.

Canonical’s Charmed Kubernetes 1.16 will come with exciting changes like support for Kata Containers, AWS IAM, SSL passthrough and more. Using Kata Containers, insecure or untrusted pods can be run safely in isolation without disrupting trusted pods in deployments. Identity Access Management on AWS can be used to login to your Charmed Kubernetes cluster. Users get more control over their deployments while benefitting from reduced complexity due to improved LXD support and enhanced Prometheus and OpenStack integration.

“At Canonical, we enable enterprises by reducing the complexity of their Kubernetes deployments. We are actively involved in the Kubernetes community to ensure we listen to, and support our users’ and partners’ needs. Staying on top of security flaws, community issues and features to improve Kubernetes is critical to us. We keep the Ubuntu ecosystem updated with the latest Kubernetes, as soon as it becomes available upstream,” commented Ammar Naqvi, Product Manager at Canonical.

There are currently nearly 300 active Linux distributions, which makes choosing just one somewhat difficult, especially if you would rather make your own informed decision instead of relying on the recommendation of someone else. The good news is that the number of major Linux distributions, which stand out in a significant way and are more than simple reskins of existing distributions, is much smaller.
If we were to represent the world of Linux distribution as a map, the 10 distributions listed in this article would be the continents of the world, while other distributions would be islands of various sizes. Just like there is no “best” continent in the real world, the same holds true in the world of Linux distributions.

Each Linux distribution is designed with a different use case in mind, and the same distribution can be perfect for one user and unusable for another one. That’s why the distributions in this article aren’t listed in any particular order and are numbered just for the sake of convenience.

• How to customize the Linux top command

• How to recover deleted files with foremost on Linux

• How to mount file systems as read-only on Linux

• How to Setup MySQL Master-Slave Replication on RHEL 8

• How to Install Google Earth on Debian 10

• How to Install a Raspberry Pi Camera Module

• How to enable a play/pause button on the Chrome toolbar

• How to Make Scrollbar Always Visible in Ubuntu 18.04

• How to Install Bolt CMS with Nginx and Let's Encrypt on FreeBSD 12

• How to Add Custom Search Engines in Thunderbird

• How Coil and Web Monetization works compared to Flattr

• The delightfully weird adventure Little Misfortune has released

  From the creator of Fran Bow and sharing the same world comes another strange creepy adventure with Little Misfortune, out today with Linux support.

• Steam Play's Proton 4.11-5 Released With Fixes & Optimizations

  Barely a week since the release of Proton 4.11-4, Valve's stellar Linux crew in cooperation with CodeWeavers have issued Proton 4.11-5 as the latest update to this Wine 4.11 downstream that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.

  Fixes in Proton 4.11-5 include a crash with certain input devices and a regression of the previous release and a fix for games running in virtual desktops as well as for games with semi-transparent windows.

• Steam Play gets a small update with Proton 4.11-5 now available

  CodeWeavers and Valve have updated Steam Play once again, this time it's quite a small release to fix up some issues.

Axiomtek’s “IPC974-519-FL” industrial PC for AI edge applications runs on Xeon E3 or 6th or 7th Gen Core CPUs and offers 4x PCIe/PCI slots for up to 300W Nvidia graphics plus 2x SATA, 2x GbE, and modular I/O expansion.

Axiomtek announced the latest member in its line of IPC (industrial PC) computers with full-sized PCIe/PCI expansion slots. The new IPC974-519-FL computer is very similar to the IPC962-511-FL we reported on last February, which similarly supports Intel Xeon E3 or 6th Gen (Skylake) or 7th Gen (Kaby Lake) Core CPUs. However, the new model has four PCIe/PCI expansion slots instead of two.

• How to install the Google Play Store on an Android phone or tablet that doesn't have it

• How to Make Android 10's Dark Mode Turn on Automatically at Night — No Root Needed

• Android 10-based Oxygen OS Open Beta 2 now rolling out for OnePlus 7 Pro

• Samsung Android 10 beta to go out to Galaxy Note10 and S10 in October

• Black Shark 1 finally gets Android Pie update

• Google Trusted Contacts is the Android alternative to Find My Friends

• Сache that is Very Difficult to Clean was Found in Android Chrome

• The definitive guide to watching NFL games on Android TV or Chromecast

Marked by the Red Hat Product Security team as having a security impact of "Important," the new Linux kernel security update is here to patch a memory corruption (CVE-2018-9568) that occurred due to incorrect socket cloning and a NULL pointer dereference (CVE-2019-11810) discovered in drivers/scsi/megaraid/megaraid_sas_base.c, which could lead to a denial of service.

Also fixed in this update are two bugs affecting the performance of the Linux kernel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and CentOS Linux 6 systems, namely a fragmented packets timing out issue and the backport TCP follow-up for small buffers. These two bugs can be corrected if you install the new kernel versions for your operating system.

Copperhill’s third-gen, $65 “PiCAN3” HAT features Raspberry Pi 4 support and a SocketCAN-ready CAN-Bus 2.0B port. The HAT has an RTC and is powered by a 3A, 6-20V Switch Mode Power Supply that can also power the Pi.

Copperhill Technologies has launched a CAN-Bus HAT for the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B designed for industrial and automotive applications. Like the PiCAN2. which we briefly covered last year as part of our report on Network Sorcery’s UCAN software for CAN-equipped Raspberry Pi boards, the HAT is equipped with a Microchip MCP2515 CAN controller and MCP2551 CAN transceiver.

• How to take screenshots with iPhone and Android phones

• Looks like the Redmi K20 Pro will get an upgrade

• OnePlus 7, OnePlus 7 Pro reportedly get their second Android 10 beta updates

• Android 10 will reach some Samsung in beta at the end of September

• Android 10: Evaluating performance on Pixel XL, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3 XL, and Pixel 3a XL

• OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro get second Android 10 open beta

• LG’s vision for Android 10 revealed in leaked V50 screenshots [Gallery]

• ADV Screen Recorder adds internal audio capture on Android 10 thanks to new API

• Android TV gets its Android 10 update this year w/ ADT-3, new hardware in 2020

• Google releases four new features for Android TV

• Android to finally overtake iOS as the dominant mobile gaming platform by revenue in 2019

• 2019 Prophet Brand Relevance Index® Finds Apple, Spotify and Android as the Most Relevant Brands to US Consumers

• Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro August security update based on Android 9 Pie arrives

• How Much Is an Android Phone Worth Without Google?—Data Sheet

• How to Enable Google Drive's Dark Mode on Any Android Phone

• Fleksy keyboard for Android can now play videos because why not

• Lenovo K10 key specs and image revealed through Android Enterprise listing

• Fossil hybrid smartwatch leaks online with 2-week battery life

For those wondering how well FreeBSD and DragonFlyBSD are handling AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors, here are some benchmarks on a Ryzen 7 3700X with MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE where both of these popular BSD operating systems were working out-of-the-box. For some fun mid-week benchmarking, here are those results of FreeBSD 12.0 and DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 up against openSUSE Tumbleweed and Ubuntu 19.04.

Back in July I looked at FreeBSD 12 on the Ryzen 9 3900X but at that time at least DragonFlyBSD had troubles booting on that system. When trying out the Ryzen 7 3700X + MSI GODLIKE X570 motherboard on the latest BIOS, everything "just worked" without any compatibility issues for either of these BSDs.

A pair of newly disclosed security flaws could allow malicious virtual machine guests to break out of their hypervisor's walled gardens and execute malicious code on the host box.

Both CVE-2019-14835 and CVE-2019-5049 are not particularly easy to exploit as they require specific types of hardware or events to occur. However, if successful, either could allow a miscreant to run malware on the host from a VM instance.

CVE-2019-14835 was discovered and reported by Peter Pi, a member of the Tencent Blade Team. It is found in the Linux kernel versions 2.6.34 up to version 5.3, where it is patched.

Boardcon’s “Idea3399” SBC integrates a CM3399 module with 4GB LPDDR4 that runs Android 7.1.2 on a Rockchip RK3399. The SBC offers optional M.2-based NVMe and mini-PCIe-based 4G. Boardcon also recently unveiled a MediaTek-based CM-MT6737 module.

Boardcon announced a compute module and an SBC based on it equipped with a hexa-core Rockchip RK3399 SoC. As noted by the CNXSoft story that picked up the announcement from Embedded Computing Design, the Idea3399 is the company’s second sandwich-style implementation of the RK3399, following its EM3399 from 2017.

Today I’m starting to talk about my new project - Kanidm. Kanidm is an IDM project designed to be correct, simple and scalable. As an IDM project we should be able to store the identities and groups of people, authenticate them securely to various other infrastructure components and services, and much more.

You can find the source for kanidm on github.

For more details about what the project is planning to achieve, and what we have already implemented please see the github.

Canonical released today a new Linux kernel security update for all supported Ubuntu releases to address three vulnerabilities across all supported architectures.

The new Linux kernel security update addresses three vulnerabilities affecting the Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo), Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), Ubuntu 14.04 ESM (Trusty Tahr), and Ubuntu 12.04 ESM (Precise Pangolin) operating systems.

The first security issue addressed in this update is a a buffer overflow (CVE-2019-14835) discovered by Peter Pi in Linux kernel's virtio network backend (vhost_net) implementation, which could allow an attacker in the guest system to either execute arbitrary code in the host OS or crash the host operating system by causing a denial of service.

• AMD Linux Driver's LRU Bulk Moves Can Be A Big Help For Demanding Linux Games

  Sadly not currently queued as a fix for the Linux 5.4 kernel, re-enabling the LRU bulk moves functionality can be a significant boost for helping with the Radeon graphics driver performance for Linux gaming.

  As written about last week, there's been some signs of soon re-enabling the performance-boosting "bulk moves" functionality. The LRU bulk moves functionality was disabled in the AMDGPU driver back during Linux 4.20 but since Linux 5.1 it's believed all the bugs have been ironed out for this functionality to migrate PD/PT buffers to the least recently used list in a bulk operation.

• This Is the Police spin-off strategy game Rebel Cops has released with Linux support

  Focusing exclusively on the turn-based combat found in This Is the Police 2, the new spin-off game Rebel Cops is officially out now with Linux support. Note: Copy provided by GOG.

  A new criminal power which has set foot in town and the community leaders, politicians and local police have basically surrendered and so it seemed like all hope was lost. That was, until you and you crew stepped in. You lead a rough and ready group of renegade cops who refuse to give in.

• The latest update to the city-builder god game The Universim adds riots, Twitch integration and some automation

  Crytivo continue expanding their city-builder The Universim, with the Pitchfork Patch now out and it's quite a big one.

  Added in this patch is a new Riots feature. If you fail them, they will respond. So if global happiness drops too low or there's too much crime you might see your nuggets run around rioting. Fires might be caused, damage to structures and more. They can be dealt with a few ways like letting them burn out, arresting them or using some god powers.

  The Stone Age Town Hall has been added in, allowing a little more automation. This building allows Elders to sort out the essential needs of your nuggets (like food and water), it will also auto-assign workers to buildings and more allowing you to sit back and appreciate watching everything grow.

• A95X Max Plus S922X TV Box Targets Gaming with Wii-like Motion Sensing Remote & Bluetooth Gamepad

  Unless a new processor is out, we don’t cover most TV boxes as they mostly provide the same features with little differentiation between products.

• Area 86, an amusing physics-based escape room puzzler is coming to Linux

  Area 86 takes the idea of an escape room game and turns it into a physics-based puzzler and it's coming to Linux next month.

  Linux support is already in and live, as the developer actually sent a preview copy to our GamingOnLinux Curator on Steam. Inspired by the likes of Human: Fall Flat, Overcooked and Portal it tasks you with helping a little robot escape a series of rooms and it's actually quite amusing.

• Prison Architect updated with more free content, needs a fix for it running on Linux

  Now that Paradox own the rights to Prison Architect and Double Eleven are in charge of development, they're continuing the free updates.

  The Slammer update was released yesterday and one of the major changes is an overhaul to Deployment. The presentation of visuals of the interface were improved so you can see your prison, you can assign Armed Guards and Dog Handlers to patrols and zones, you can have 2 different intersecting patrol routes plus routes and zones can be prioritized.

• Paradox have released a big free update for Europa Universalis IV, fix included for Linux

  Paradox Development Studio have released another big free content update to the empire building game Europa Universalis IV.

• Receiver, the experimental FPS from Wolfire Games had a big update recently (updated)

  Receiver is a name I've not heard in a long time, the indie FPS released back in 2013 by Wolfire Games and it's just seen a big update.

  There's no new enemies or levels in this update, instead Wolfire focused on the tech that runs the game. In this case it's the Unity game engine and they gave it quite a big update. It also adds in some graphical prettiness and other bits like that.

• Backspace Bouken, the dungeon crawler that needs you to type out encounters has a fresh demo out

  RNG Party Games recently put out a freshly baked demo version of the typing dungeon crawler Backspace Bouken. It's a really sweet idea and thoroughly flips classic dungeon crawling on its head.

• Might and Delight just announced Book of Travels, a unique new RPG that will support Linux

  Might and Delight (Meadow, Shelter) announced something very interesting just recently called Book of Travels. It's what they say is a TMO (Tiny Multiplayer Online) game and it looks pretty awesome.

  It sounds like nothing else, this could be one of the most unique RPGs I've seen in a very long time. With an art style that looks like it has been painted, with a land that's inspired by old-world fairytales, Eastern mythologies and early industrial eras. I'm most curious to see how they're handling the online side though. Their current explanation doesn't help much, just that "other players are few, but your paths will cross - it’s up to you to choose to travel together or go it alone". There's no Guilds or other social stuff, to make "your temporary fellowships unique and memorable".

• Beautiful sci-fi point and click adventure ENCODYA is fully funded and heading to Linux

  ENCODYA is a very impressive sci-fi point and click adventure with a fantastic style and the good news is the recent Kickstarter campaign was very much a success.

  Ending yesterday with €46,543 from 603 backers. Curiously, for that amount of funding that's quite a small amount of supporters. Looking at the tiers, they had three people sign up to the €5,000 level to be classed as a "co-producer" giving them a few bonuses like a logo during the start and end screen. Pretty amazing really to see a few people give such a huge amount of support to an indie game.

• The return of startx(1) for non-root users [with some caveats]

  Mark Kettenis (kettenis@) has recently committed changes which restore a certain amount of startx(1)/xinit(1) functionality for non-root users.

• Talking to machines: Lisp and the origins of AI

  The Command Line Heroes podcast explores the invention of Lisp and the rise of thinking computers powered by open source software.

• 09/17/2019 | Linux Headlines

  Richard Stallman resigns from the board of the Free Software Foundation and his position at MIT.

  Plus Microsoft's latest open source project, Oracle's new Linux distribution, and a release date for CentOS 8.

• The new Steam Library Beta is officially out for you to try

  The day has finally arrived, Valve have now put out a Beta for the massive overhaul to the Steam Library so you can try it yourself. A huge amount has changed but likely some rough edges to be found since it's not quite finished. Promising though, a lot better in many ways than the old and stale interface that Steam has currently.

• No hammer or nails needed for the Humble Builder Bundle now live

  The Humble Builder Bundle just went live with a couple of nice Linux games included, another chance to get a good deal.

• New Debian Developers and Maintainers (July and August 2019)

  The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

  Keng-Yu Lin (kengyu)
  Judit Foglszinger (urbec)

  The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

  Hans van Kranenburg
  Scarlett Moore

  Congratulations!

• A recap of the Linux Plumbers Conference 2019

  This year’s Linux Plumbers Conference concluded on the 11th of September 2019. This invitation-only conference for Linux top kernel developers was held in Lisbon, Portugal this year. The conference brings developers working on the plumbing of Linux – kernel subsystems, core libraries, windowing systems, etc. to think about core design problems.

  Unlike most tech conferences that generally discuss the future of the Linux operating system, the Linux Plumbers Conference has a distinct motive behind it. In an interview with ZDNet, Linus Torvalds, the Linux creator said, “The maintainer summit is really different because it doesn’t even talk about technical issues. It’s all about the process of creating and maintaining the Linux kernel.” In short, the developers attending the conference know confidential and intimate details about some of the Linux kernel subsystems, and maybe this is why the conference has the word ‘Plumbers’ in it.

• OpenForum Academy Workshop - Exploring Modern Dimensions of Openness

  The OpenForum Academy held its second 2019 workshop in Brussels this week. OpenForum Academy is a European-based independent think tank which explains the merits of openness in computing to policy makers, industry and communities across Europe. This workshop series aims at being a forum for practitioners, academics and policy makers to collaborate on various topics of openness and freedom. It is organized by OpenForum Europe, enabling it to bridge between the abstract academic world and policy discussions at the European Commissions. We set out to explore focus topics to answer current challenges to openness that the academy will develop insights and recommendations for. These topics will shape the work of OpenForum Academy for the near future.

  The workshop was opened by a series of input presentations. One of those was on “Addressing lock-in challenges through the use of open source software projects” by Björn Lundell, a fellow of the academy and professor at the University of Skövde in Sweden. He explained for example the need for open source solutions to read and write data formats of digital assets of long-term importance.

• Mozilla first reveals, then conceals, paid support plan for Firefox

  In return for the fee, Mozilla said on the now-absent Firefox enterprise site - still visible through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine - customers would be able to privately report bugs via a new web portal and receive fixes on a timeline dependent on the impact and urgency of the problem. Customers would also be able to file requests for help with Firefox's installation and deployment, management policies, functionality and customization.

• Trabant Calculator - a Data Visualization of TreeHerder Jobs Durations

  Its goal is to give a better sense on how much computations are going on in Mozilla automation. Current TreeHerder UI surfaces job durations, but only per job. To get a sense on how much we stress our automation, we have to click on each individual job and do the sum manually. This tool is doing this sum for you. Well, it also tries to rank the jobs by their durations. I would like to open minds about the possible impact on the environment we may have here. For that, I am translating these durations into something fun that doesn’t necessarily make any sense.

• FOSSA scores $8.5 million Series A to help enterprise manage open-source licenses

• First Digital-Only Bank in China Joins Linux Foundation

  The Linux Foundation today announced that WeBank is joining at the Gold level. It joins Alibaba, Dell, Facebook, Toyota, Uber and Verizon among other Linux Foundation members at this level.

• First Digital-Only Bank in China Joins Linux Foundation

  WeBank is both the first privately-owned bank and the first digital-only bank in China. It was built with technology at its core and is committed to promoting innovative technologies. It recently led the transfer of the FATE (Federated AI Technology Enabler) to the Linux Foundation. FATE is a federated learning framework that fosters collaboration across companies and institutes to perform AI model training and inference in accordance with user privacy, data confidentiality and government regulations.