The Guix package manager that's designed to be a purely-functional package manager for GNU with an emphasis on being dependable, hackable, and liberating is out with its latest release.

If you want to use Tor, then Tails is your best friend. Tails is a version of Linux that sends data through the Tor network.

All Internet traffic to/from Tails goes through Tor, making it resistant to end user mistakes. Tails is not normally installed on a computer, instead it's run from a bootable DVD, USB flash drive or flash memory card. Compared to the Tor Browser Bundle, Tails is unquestionably the way to go. Ed Snowden uses it.

Also related:

• Tails, the OS of Snowden, has security vulnerability

• Secure Linux Distribution Found To Contain A Privacy-Busting Flaw

  TAILS Linux, used by Edward Snowden to communicate with journalists, is patching holes in one of its network overlays

Elive 2.3.4 Beta, a complete operating system for your computer, built on top of Debian GNU/Linux and customized to meet the needs of any user while still offering the eye-candy with minimal hardware requirements, has been released and is now available for download and testing.

For long-suffering Linux users who have endured the dearth of high-quality action games on their open source desktops, the wait for better game developer support soon may be over.

New technology is making Linux more attractive to game makers. In fact, it may keep Linux under the hood, so players will have no clue Linux is inside.

Until now, game makers have relied primarily on Windows PCs and gaming consoles powered by proprietary alternatives to the Linux OS. However, Linux-based systems specially designed for gaming are on the rise.

For the better part of a year, the X.Org Foundation has been evaluating a possible merger with SPI. That work is still ongoing and could be put up for a vote in the weeks ahead.

At yesterday's X.Org Board of Directors' meeting (IRC log), an update was shared and comes down to Keith Packard working with the SPI on constructing a resolution to bring to the SPI board. However, first the X.Org board will need to review the draft, etc. Assuming the SPI board votes in favor of this resolution, the following step is then to take the revised X.Org Foundation member by-laws to a vote by all X.Org Foundation members.

GNU Octave is a project started by James Rawlings and John Ekerdt, but its main developer is John Eaton, with the name inspired by the chemist Octave Levenspiel.

Octave is able to solve many different problems using its native functionalities and can be extended using its programming language, the code being executed line-by-line every time you run an Octave program. Octave also features some handy plotting capabilities that we cover later in this tutorial, although it’s worth bearing in mind that Octave’s main purpose is for performing mathematical and numerical computations – it is not a replacement for general-purpose programming languages such as C, Objective-C or C++

First off, Happy SysAdmin Day. We think we have a pretty good SysAdmin surprise in store for you today as we are announcing the CoreOS stable release channel. Starting today, you can begin running CoreOS in production. This version is the most tested, secure and reliable version available for users wanting to run CoreOS. This is a huge milestone for us. Since our first alpha release in August 2013:

191 releases have been tagged
Tested on hundreds of thousands of servers on the alpha and beta channels
Supported on 10+ platforms, ranging from bare metal to being primary images on Rackspace and Google.

The Wine development release 1.7.23 is now available.

What's new in this release (see below for details):
- Better support for files drag & drop.
- Improvements to the HTTP cookie management.
- Initial support for 64-bit Android builds.
- Fixes to crypto certificates management.
- Various bug fixes.

Acer has seen booming sales of Chromebooks, including government procurement orders for educational purposes in many countries, and therefore has asked supply chains to increase production to reduce supply shortages, according to company CEO Jason Chen, adding that global Chromebook shipments in 2014 are expected to increase 70% on year.

GNOME Control Center 3.13.4, GNOME's main interface for the configuration of various aspects of your desktop, is now ready for download and testing.

As the second part of our Linux graphics testing this week after a Radeon R600/RadeonSI performance update with the Linux 3.16 kernel and Mesa 10.3-devel are some comparative numbers that include Intel's Haswell HD Graphics and various NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards on the Nouveau driver.

What we have for this article are the benchmarks of an assortment of AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs (and the integrated HD Graphics of the Core i7 Devil's Canyon processor used for testing all the hardware) with the latest open-source graphics drivers using Linux 3.16 and Mesa 10.3-devel. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS was running on the system with using the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA for the latest kernel and the Oibaf PPA for the updated graphics drivers.

Happy SysAdmin Day 2014! Over the past three weeks we've been profiling the Linux Foundation's heroic team of system administrators in honor of the amazing work they do behind the scenes to keep this organization and our collaborative projects humming. Here are some of their best quotes, which highlight just how talented, passionate and also fun-loving Linux SysAdmins really are.

Today is also the last day to nominate your system administrators for recognition here on Linux.com, as well as the chance to win free tickets to LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America taking place in Chicago August 20-22, 2014. Just email the Linux.com editors at editors@linux.com about why your SysAdmin should be recognized. Submissions are due by the end of the day today, July 25.

Aric Gardner is a Linux Foundation SysAdmin who works on the OpenDaylight collaborative project. Here he tells the story of how became a sysadmin, shares his specialty in scripting and automation, and describes a typical day at work, among other things.

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) provides boot- and
run-time services for x86 and other computers. For the x86 architecture
it replaces the legacy BIOS. This project will adapt the FreeBSD loader
and kernel boot process for compatibility with UEFI firmware, found on
contemporary servers, desktops, and laptops.

Ed and Nathan completed a number of integration tasks over the past
three months. Nathan added a first-stage loader, boot1.efi, to support
chain-loading the rest of the system from a UFS filesystem. This allows
the UEFI boot process to proceed in a similar fashion as with BIOS
boot. Nathan also added UEFI support to the FreeBSD installer and
release image creation script.

The EFI framebuffer requires the vt(4) system console -- a framebuffer
driver is not implemented for the legacy syscons(4) console. Ed added
automatic vt(4) selection to the UEFI boot path.

Snapshots are now built as dual-mode images, and should boot via both
BIOS and UEFI. Our plan is to merge the UEFI and vt(4) work to
stable/10 to appear in FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE.

This project is sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation.

GUADEC 2014 is almost upon us, and we are talking to the three keynote speakers who are lined up for this year’s conference. Nathan Wills – LWN editor, typeface designer and author – is one of these keynote speakers. His talk, titled Should We Teach The Robot To Kill, addresses issues relating to Free Software and the automative industry. We caught up with him to find out a bit more about this fascinating subject, as well as his views on Free Software conferences.

Nginx, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Nginx Web server, is out today with a new release of its Nginx Plus server. The Nginx Plus r4 release provides users with new security and load balancing features.

Karen Sandler is a veteran of the free and open source software world. Having completed an engineering degree, she has worked as a lawyer for the Software Freedom Law Center, was Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and recently accepted a position as Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. I interviewed Karen via email to ask her about her background and insight into various issues in the free and open source world.