• Brutal local co-op platform brawler CHOP has released

  CHOP, a brutal local co-op platform brawler recently left Early Access on Steam. If you like fast-paced fighters with a great style and chaotic gameplay this is for you. There's multiple game modes, up to for players in the standard modes and there's bots as well if you don't have people over often.

  Speaking about the release, the developer told me they felt "many local multiplayer games fall into a major pitfall : they often lack impact and accuracy, they don't have this extra oomph that ensure players will really be into the game and hang their gamepad like their life depends on it." and that "CHOP stands out in this regard". I've actually quite enjoyed this one, the action in CHOP is really satisfying overall.

• Mystery adventure game Jenny LeClue - Detectivu is releasing this week

  Developer Mografi has confirmed that their adventure game Jenny LeClue - Detectivu is officially releasing on September 19th. The game was funded on Kickstarter way back in 2014 thanks to the help of almost four thousand backers raising over one hundred thousand dollars.

• Seafaring strategy game Nantucket just had a big patch and Masters of the Seven Seas DLC released

  Ahoy mateys! Are you ready top set sail? Anchors aweigh! Seafaring strategy game Nantucket is now full of even more content for you to play through.

  Picaresque Studio and Fish Eagle just released a big new patch adding in "100+" new events, events that can be triggered by entering a city, the Resuscitation command can now heal even if someone isn't dead during combat, the ability to rename crew to really make your play-through personal, minor quests give off better rewards and more. Quite a hefty free update!

• MOTHERGUNSHIP, a bullet-hell FPS where you craft your guns works great on Linux with Steam Play

  Need a fun new FPS to try? MOTHERGUNSHIP is absolutely nuts and it appears to run very nicely on Linux thanks to Steam Play.

  There's a few reasons why I picked this one to test recently: the developers have moved onto other games so it's not too likely it will suddenly break, there's not a lot of new and modern first-person shooters on Linux that I haven't finished and it was in the recent Humble Monthly.

Yesterday, the team behind the GNU project announced Parallel GCC, a research project aiming to parallelize a real-world compiler. Parallel GCC can be used in machines with many cores where GNU cannot provide enough parallelism. A parallel GCC can be also used to design a parallel compiler from scratch.

• 3 Ways to disable USB storage devices on Linux

• Fedora Community Blog: Fedocal and Nuancier are looking for new maintainers

  Recently the Community Platform Engineering (CPE) team announced that we need to focus on key areas and thus let some of our applications go. So we started Friday with Infra to find maintainers for some of those applications. Unfortunately the first few occurrences did not seem to raise as much interest as we had hoped. As a result we are still looking for new maintainers for Fedocal and Nuancier.

• Artificial Intelligence Confronts a 'Reproducibility' Crisis

  Lo and behold, the system began performing as advertised. The lucky break was a symptom of a troubling trend, according to Pineau. Neural networks, the technique that’s given us Go-mastering bots and text generators that craft classical Chinese poetry, are often called black boxes because of the mysteries of how they work. Getting them to perform well can be like an art, involving subtle tweaks that go unreported in publications. The networks also are growing larger and more complex, with huge data sets and massive computing arrays that make replicating and studying those models expensive, if not impossible for all but the best-funded labs.

  “Is that even research anymore?” asks Anna Rogers, a machine-learning researcher at the University of Massachusetts. “It’s not clear if you’re demonstrating the superiority of your model or your budget.”

• When Biology Becomes Software

  If this sounds to you a lot like software coding, you're right. As synthetic biology looks more like computer technology, the risks of the latter become the risks of the former. Code is code, but because we're dealing with molecules -- and sometimes actual forms of life -- the risks can be much greater.

  [...]

  Unlike computer software, there's no way so far to "patch" biological systems once released to the wild, although researchers are trying to develop one. Nor are there ways to "patch" the humans (or animals or crops) susceptible to such agents. Stringent biocontainment helps, but no containment system provides zero risk.

• Why you may have to wait longer to check out an e-book from your local library

  Gutierrez says the Seattle Public Library, which is one of the largest circulators of digital materials, loaned out around three million e-books and audiobooks last year and spent about $2.5 million to acquire those rights. “But that added 60,000 titles, about,” she said, “because the e-books cost so much more than their physical counterpart. The money doesn’t stretch nearly as far.”

• Libraries are fighting to preserve your right to borrow e-books

  Libraries don't just pay full price for e-books -- we pay more than full price. We don't just buy one book -- in most cases, we buy a lot of books, trying to keep hold lists down to reasonable numbers. We accept renewable purchasing agreements and limits on e-book lending, specifically because we understand that publishing is a business, and that there is value in authors and publishers getting paid for their work. At the same time, most of us are constrained by budgeting rules and high levels of reporting transparency about where your money goes. So, we want the terms to be fair, and we'd prefer a system that wasn't convoluted.

  With print materials, book economics are simple. Once a library buys a book, it can do whatever it wants with it: lend it, sell it, give it away, loan it to another library so they can lend it. We're much more restricted when it comes to e-books. To a patron, an e-book and a print book feel like similar things, just in different formats; to a library they're very different products. There's no inter-library loan for e-books. When an e-book is no longer circulating, we can't sell it at a book sale. When you're spending the public's money, these differences matter.

• Nintendo's ROM Site War Continues With Huge Lawsuit Against Site Despite Not Sending DMCA Notices

  Roughly a year ago, Nintendo launched a war between itself and ROM sites. Despite the insanely profitable NES Classic retro-console, the company decided that ROM sites, which until recently almost single-handedly preserved a great deal of console gaming history, need to be slayed. Nintendo extracted huge settlements out of some of the sites, which led to most others shutting down voluntarily. While this was probably always Nintendo's strategy, some sites decided to stare down the company's legal threats and continue on.

• The Grey Havens | Coder Radio 375

  We say goodbye to the show by taking a look back at a few of our favorite moments and reflect on how much has changed in the past seven years.

• 09/16/2019 | Linux Headlines

  A new Linux Kernel is out; we break down the new features, PulseAudio goes pro and the credential-stealing LastPass flaw.

  Plus the $100 million plan to rid the web of ads, and more.

• Powering Docker App: Next Steps for Cloud Native Application Bundles (CNAB)

  Last year at DockerCon and Microsoft Connect, we announced the Cloud Native Application Bundle (CNAB) specification in partnership with Microsoft, HashiCorp, and Bitnami. Since then the CNAB community has grown to include Pivotal, Intel, DataDog, and others, and we are all happy to announce that the CNAB core specification has reached 1.0.

  We are also announcing the formation of the CNAB project under the Joint Development Foundation, a part of the Linux Foundation that’s chartered with driving adoption of open source and standards. The CNAB specification is available at cnab.io. Docker is working hard with our partners and friends in the open source community to improve software development and operations for everyone.

• CNAB ready for prime time, says Docker

  Docker announced yesterday that CNAB, a specification for creating multi-container applications, has come of age. The spec has made it to version 1.0, and the Linux Foundation has officially accepted it into the Joint Development Foundation, which drives open-source development.

  The Cloud Native Application Bundle specification is a multi-company effort that defines how the different components of a distributed cloud-based application are bundled together. Docker announced it last December along with Microsoft, HashiCorp, and Bitnami. Since then, Intel has joined the party along with Pivotal and DataDog.

  It solves a problem that DevOps folks have long grappled with: how do you bolt all these containers and other services together in a standard way? It’s easy to create a Docker container with a Docker file, and you can pull lots of them together to form an application using Docker Compose. But if you want to package other kinds of container or cloud results into the application, such as Kubernetes YAML, Helm charts, or Azure Resource Manager templates, things become more difficult. That’s where CNAB comes in.

• Teracube is an affordable new mid-range Android phone with a 4-year warranty

• Gmail's dark mode is rolling out to Android phones. Turn it on now

• Docomo will not sell Huawei 5G phones over Android concerns

• How Android Has Revolutionized Fintech

• Motorola’s Android TV: Everything To Know

• Xiaomi unveils its Android-powered 65-inch Mi TV 4X at $766 in India

• OnePlus 7/7 Pro Android 10 HydrogenOS first public beta goes live

• LG Pushes Android Pie Update to Verizon LG V30

• Google rolling out SMS verification code autofill to Android

I like to list out popular GNU/Linux distros that already ship latest desktop environment. For GNOME 3.34 case, currently I found Desktop Live distros that include it built-in to be Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE. You can download them and immediately test GNOME. Other names worth mentioning but I don't present them here are Alpine GNU/Linux, Debian, and Mageia. I write this at 17 September so things might change by day later. By this article, I also want to introduce several special distros like GNOME:Next and a certain awesome community service like Repology for you. Enjoy GNOME 3.34!

Also: GNOME 3.34: Between Fedora Rawhide and openSUSE GNOME:Next

This post is part of a series on UX strategy. In my previous two posts, I described what I hope are the beginnings of a UX strategy for GNOME. In the first post, I described some background research and analysis. In the second post, I introduced what I think ought to be the high-level goals and principles for the UX strategy.

Now it’s time for the fun bit! For this instalment, I’m going to go over recent work that the GNOME design team has been doing. I’m doing this for two reasons. First: I want to show off some of the great work that the design team has been doing! Second, I want to show this design work fits into the strategic approach that I’ve previously described. A key element of that plan was to prioritise on areas which will have the biggest impact, and I’m going to be using the prioritisation word a lot in what follows.

We typically ship a major Firefox browser (Desktop and Android) release every 6 to 8 weeks. Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players. To optimize the process, and make it more reliable for all users, over the years we’ve developed a phased release strategy that includes ‘pre-release’ channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition. With this approach, we can test and stabilize new features before delivering them to the majority of Firefox users via general release.

And today we’re excited to announce that we’re moving to a four-week release cycle! We’re adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly. In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner. Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Considering these factors, it is time we changed our release cadence.

Starting Q1 2020, we plan to ship a major Firefox release every 4 weeks. Firefox ESR release cadence (Extended Support Release for the enterprise) will remain the same. In the years to come, we anticipate a major ESR release every 12 months with 3 months support overlap between new ESR and end-of-life of previous ESR. The next two major ESR releases will be ~June 2020 and ~June 2021.

Release for CentOS Linux 7 (1908) on the x86_64 Architecture

We are pleased to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 7
(1908) for the x86_64 architecture. Effectively immediately, this
is the current release for CentOS Linux 7 and is tagged as 1908, derived
from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 Source Code.

As always, read through the Release Notes at :
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7 - these notes
contain important information about the release and details about some
of the content inside the release from the CentOS QA team. These notes
are updated constantly to include issues and incorporate feedback from
the users.

Also: CentOS 7.7 Released As The Last Stop Before CentOS 8.0

Earlier this year Canonical announced they would be pulling 32-bit support from Ubuntu ahead of next year's 20.04 LTS. But following public backlash, they stepped back to provide 32-bit support for select packages. Today they announced the 199 32-bit packages that will continue to be supported through Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Based upon popularity when looking at i386 packages that are not x86_64 (AMD64) packaged as well as feedback from their customers/partners, they have come up with a list of the 32-bit packages they will continue to support. Their list is 52 packages but with dependencies comes out to about 199 packages in the i386 realm they will continue to support.

Also: Ubuntu Devs Detail Plan for 32-bit Support in Ubuntu 19.10

Last month we provided launch-day benchmarks of the AMD EPYC 7502 and 7742 under Linux in both 1P and 2P configurations for these exciting "Rome" Zen 2 server processors. For your viewing pleasure today is a fresh look at not only the EPYC 7502 and 7742 processors under the latest Linux 5.3 kernel but we've also expanded it to looking at the EPYC 7302 and EPYC 7402 processors as well with those processors recently being sent over by AMD. Under Ubuntu 19.04 with Linux 5.3, these four different AMD EPYC 7002 series SKUs were benchmarked along with some of the older AMD Naples processors and Intel Xeon Gold/Platinum processors for a fresh look at the Linux server performance.

• Examining AI’s Effect on Media and Truth

  Today, one of the biggest issues facing the internet — and society — is misinformation.

  It’s a complicated issue, but this much is certain: The artificial intelligence (AI) powering the internet is complicit. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook recommend and amplify content that will keep us clicking, even if it’s radical or flat out wrong.

  Earlier this year, Mozilla called for art and advocacy projects that illuminate the role AI plays in spreading misinformation. And today, we’re announcing the winners: Eight projects that highlight how AI like machine learning impacts our understanding of the truth.

• Mozilla Open Policy & Advocacy Blog: Governments should work to strengthen online security, not undermine it

  On Friday, Mozilla filed comments in a case brought by Privacy International in the European Court of Human Rights involving government “computer network exploitation” (“CNE”)—or, as it is more colloquially known, government hacking.

  While the case focuses on the direct privacy and freedom of expression implications of UK government hacking, Mozilla intervened in order to showcase the further, downstream risks to users and internet security inherent in state CNE. Our submission highlights the security and related privacy threats from government stockpiling and use of technology vulnerabilities and exploits.

  Government CNE relies on the secret discovery or introduction of vulnerabilities—i.e., bugs in software, computers, networks, or other systems that create security weaknesses. “Exploits” are then built on top of the vulnerabilities. These exploits are essentially tools that take advantage of vulnerabilities in order to overcome the security of the software, hardware, or system for purposes of information gathering or disruption.

  When such vulnerabilities are kept secret, they can’t be patched by companies, and the products containing the vulnerabilities continue to be distributed, leaving people at risk. The problem arises because no one—including government—can perfectly secure information about a vulnerability. Vulnerabilities can be and are independently discovered by third parties and inadvertently leaked or stolen from government.

• Time for some project updates

  I’m going to begin with some of the less-loved things I’ve been working on, partially in an attempt to motivate some forward-motion on things that I believe are rather important to Mozilla.

The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Fedora 31 Beta, the next step towards our planned Fedora 31 release at the end of October.

The newest release of the GNOME desktop environment is full of performance enhancements and improvements. The beta ships with a prerelease, and the full 3.34 release will be available as an update. For a full list of GNOME 3.34 highlights, see the release notes.

Also: Fedora 31 Beta Released With GNOME 3.34, Guts i686 Hardware Support

• Sm@rtDock 15 Touch is a 15″ 2-in-1 Laptop Dock for Samsung DeX Devices and Smartphones with a USB-C Port

  We’ve already covered several laptop docks for smartphones such as NexDock 2. AFAICR, all those modes would come with a full laptop body with non-touch display and keyboard.

• BalenaOS may be the First Fully Functional 64-bit OS for Raspberry Pi 4

  BalenaOS 64-Bit OS Balena just announced the release of a 64-bit OS for the Raspberry Pi 4, that latest release of the iconic SBC.

• Compact Kaby Lake embedded PC supports Linux

  Axiomtek’s fanless, rugged “eBOX100-51R-FL” embedded PC runs Linux or Win 10 on a 7th Gen U-series CPU and offers a pair each of GbE, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, and serial ports plus a DP++ port and M.2 slots for WiFi and SATA.

  Axiomtek announced a compact (142 x 87 x 58mm) embedded computer equipped with a power-efficient Intel 7th Gen “Kaby Lake U-series processor. Axiomtek calls the rugged eBOX100-51R-FL “the smallest embedded system with Intel Core ULT processor onboard.” Indeed, we have yet to see a smaller U-series based embedded PC. The system joins the larger Kaby Lake-U based Axiomtek ICO500-518.

• Intel launches fanless, Apollo Lake based NUC mini-PC and SBC

  Intel has posted specs for a previously tipped “NUC 8 Rugged” mini-PC and 3.5-inch baseboard. The fanless NUC runs Linux or Windows on an Apollo Lake Celeron with soldered 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC, M.2 for NVMe, and dual HDMI ports.

  Most of Intel’s NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini-PCs are fan-cooled models with Intel Core processors, such as last year’s 8th Gen “Coffee Lake” based Bean Canyon NUCs. Now, several vendors have opened pre-orders for as low as $248 for a fanless, 150 x 108 x 32mm Intel NUC 8 Rugged model aimed at embedded applications.

Oracle on Monday announced the release of Java SE 13 (JDK 13), saying it shows the tech titan's continued commitment to make innovation happen faster by sticking to a predictable six-month release cycle.

No evidence was provided to demonstrate that enterprise innovation is actually accelerating as a consequence of biannual platform revisions. Oracle at least deserves credit for its commitment to consistency.

Word of JDK 13 arrived on Monday as Oracle's co-located OpenWorld and Code One conferences got underway in San Francisco. The Code One keynote, preceded as in previous years with a disclaimer that investors shouldn't rely on anything said at the show, opened with an overview of quantum computing by Jessica Pointing, a doctoral student in quantum computing at Stanford University.

• To meet up or not to meetup

  I didn’t regret going to the meetup – quite the contrary – and I’ve since been to several, but it’s dreadful how low the turnout typically is. I’ve verified my numbers with some of the organizers of prior meetups: [...]

• A look at development environments with specific tooling for Apache Camel Language

  A growing set of editors and IDEs provides specific tooling for development of applications based on Apache Camel. Historically, there was only Eclipse Fuse Tooling, which was based on the Eclipse Desktop IDE. Then, an IntelliJ plugin was created. Both of these tools are tightly coupled to the specific IDE APIs. Consequently, they have the drawback of not easily sharing the development effort.

• mozregression update: python 3 edition

  For those who are still wondering, yup, I am still maintaining mozregression, though increasingly reluctantly. Given how important this project is to the development of Firefox (getting a regression window using mozregression is standard operating procedure whenever a new bug is reported in Firefox), it feels like this project is pretty vital, so I continue out of some sense of obligation — but really, someone more interested in Mozilla’a build, automation and testing systems would be better suited to this task: over the past few years, my interests/focus have shifted away from this area to building up Mozilla’s data storage and visualization platform.

  This post will describe some of the things that have happened in the last year and where I see the project going. My hope is to attract some new blood to add some needed features to the project and maybe take on some of the maintainership duties.

• @Autowire MicroProfile into Spring with Quarkus

  Eclipse MicroProfile and Spring Boot are often thought of as separate and distinct APIs when developing Java microservices. Developers default to their mental muscle memory by leveraging the APIs that they use on a daily basis. Learning new frameworks and runtimes can be a significant time investment. This article aims to ease the introduction to some popular MicroProfile APIs for Spring developers by enabling them to utilize the Spring APIs they already know while benefiting from significant new capabilities offered by Quarkus.

  More specifically, this article covers the scope and details of the Spring APIs supported by Quarkus so Spring developers have a grasp of the foundation they can build on with MicroProfile APIs. The article then covers MicroProfile APIs that Spring developers will find helpful in the development of microservices. Only a subset of MicroProfile is covered.

• Microsoft Makes Their C++ Standard Library Open-Source (STL)

  Microsoft has begun their next open-source expedition by open-sourcing an important piece of MSVC / Visual Studio... STL, their C++ standard library.

  In a surprising move, this week announced their C++ Standard Library used by their MSVC tool-chain and Visual Studio is now open-source. Microsoft's C++ Standard Library is available under an Apache 2.0 license and with the LLVM exception regarding linking, so all is well on that front.

• Top programming languages of 2019 [Ed: Too reliant on biased Microsoft data such as GitHub]

  The most popular languages according to the world’s largest organization for engineering and applied science.

  It can be hard to gauge which programming language to learn — should you go for the most widely used language, the language developers enjoy using, or maybe the highest paid language?

  There’s no one right answer, but luckily there are no shortage of top programming languages lists ranking languages according to different criteria.

  The latest is the The Top Programming Languages 2019 list from IEEE Spectrum, the magazine for the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences.

• Wi-Fi Certified 6 Program Available for Products based on Broadcom, Cypress, Intel, Marvell, and Qualcomm 802.11ax Chips

  Last year the WiFi alliance introduces a new naming scheme for WiFi using numbers instead of IEEE standards so that WiFI 4 is 802.11n, WiFi 5 is 802.11ac, and WiFi 6 is the latest 802.11ax standard...

• The Wi-Fi 6 Launches Officially for the Next Generation of Wi-Fi

  Wi-Fi Alliance announced today the availability of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program for vendors to provide customers with the latest and greatest Wi-Fi experience.

  Unveiled last year in October, Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax) launches officially today with up to 37 percent faster speeds than the previous Wi-Fi generation (802.11ac), increased bandwidth for greater performance with low latency, higher data rates for greater network capacity, as well as MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output) support for greater download performance on more devices at once.

• Setting up a mail server with OpenSMTPD, Dovecot and Rspamd

  I’ll say it again:

  I don’t think that either one of the Big Mailer Corps are are evil or bad, I use some of their services on a daily basis, and most of the people operating them are genuinely seeking the greater good… however they have grown too big and there needs to be a balance in power because who knows how they’ll evolve in the next ten years, who knows how the politics of their home country will evolve in the next ten years, and recent news doesn’t paint them as heading in the right direction.

  I’ll conclude by recommanding that you see this excellent presentation by Bert Hubert (@PowerDNS_Bert) from PowerDNS, about how a similar problem is starting to happen with DNS and the privacy and tracking concerns that arise from this. Many, many, many key points are also valid for mail services.

• #StopHindilmposition: Indian tweeps respond to Amit Shah's 'Hindi as national language' comment

  But, Twitter India doesn't agree. Why? India does not have a national language. Part XVII of the Indian Constitution designates Hindi as the 'official language' of the Union. And, English is used in official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own official language(s) through legislation. In addition to the official languages, the constitution recognises 22 regional languages, which includes Hindi but not English, as scheduled languages. The number of native Hindi speakers is about 25% of the total Indian population;

  The number of native Hindi speakers is only about 25 per cent of the total Indian population and 43 per cent of India’s population use Hindi as their first language. In some states, especially in the southern regions, Hindi is not used at all.

• Hindi spoken most, can unite country: Amit Shah

  According to the Official Languages Act, 1963, Hindi and English are the official languages for the Union government and Parliament.

  A total of 22 languages of the country are recognised under the Eight Schedule of the Constitution.

• Lifeograph is an encrypted journal application for Windows, Linux and Android
  

  Keeping a journal is a nice way to reflect upon oneself. It can help you become a better person, nurture good habits, can be used for research, making budgets, make health related notes, or jot down anything else that you may want to keep a record of.

  When it comes to a diary application on computers, there aren't a lot of options. RedNotebook is probably the best one I have used. I wanted something better and that's how I stumbled across Lifeograph.

• Chocolatey package for LabPlot available

  While we’re spending quite some time now finalizing the next release of LabPlot which will be announced soon, we continue getting feedback from our users and we try to incorporate as much as possible into the upcoming release.

  This feedback usually consists of different discussions around the existing features in LabPlot or features that need to be added in near future, around bugs, etc. Recently we’ve got a somewhat different feedback informing us about the availability of a Chocolatey package for LabPlot.

• LineStyle Extension for LibO

  I update the LineStyles for LibreOffice for the 6.4 release but in addition I made an Extension for all users how like to have > 20 different predefined LineStyles.

• BPMN Shapes for LibreOffice

  Two months ago I post my todo list for LibreOffice 6.4 and I my work is already available via LibreOffice extensions.

• Design and Web team summary – 17 September 2019

  This was a fairly busy two weeks for the Web & design team at Canonical. Here are some of the highlights of our completed work.

• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 596

  Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 596 for the week of September 8 – 14, 2019. The full version of this issue is available here.

• Introduction to MicroK8s – Part 1/2

  Every developer, systems admin and tech enthusiast is interested in learning Kubernetes. Kubernetes is a complex container orchestration tool that can be overwhelming for beginners. Kubernetes has been the buzzword in the tech industry and for good reason. If you’re itching to get started with Kubernetes and not looking forward to the complexities involved, this first blog of a series is for you. We’ll walk you through getting up and running in a jiffy with a Kubernetes deployment using MicroK8s. The following blogs will do a deeper dive into add-ons and usage.

• Linux 5.4 Adds Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, Supports Some Newer ARM Laptops

  The ARM SoC platform and driver changes landed on Monday during the first full day of the Linux 5.4 merge window. There is some exciting ARM hardware support improvements for this kernel while doing away with some older platforms.

• Linux 5.4 Continues Sound Open Firmware, Improvements For AMD/NVIDIA HDMI Audio

  Linux 5.4 will sound better. Well, at least provide audio support on more hardware with this next kernel release thanks to the latest batch of open-source sound improvements.

• Linux 5.4 Dropping Support For The Itanium IA64-Powered SGI Altix

  With Intel having ended the Itanium CPU family at the beginning of the year and much of the open-source/Linux software support for IA64 already having been on the decline for years, the Linux kernel is beginning to remove more IA64 bits. This comes following IA64 support being deprecated for GCC 10 and likely removed for the GCC 11 release in 2021. Once that IA64 support is gone from GCC, chances are the Linux kernel support for IA64 will be dropped entirely since there isn't any other compiler capable of building the Linux kernel and supporting IA64 as well as GCC.

• Linux 5.4 Scheduler Changes Bring Better AMD EPYC Load Balancing, Other Optimizations

  The Linux 5.4 scheduler changes are fairly exciting on multiple fronts.

  One of the Linux 5.4 scheduler changes we have been looking forward to is improved EPYC load balancing and that work is indeed part of today's pull request. The better EPYC load balancing is a scheduler topology improvement to better deal with load balancing across NUMA nodes on EPYC 2P servers. I'll be running some benchmarks of this EPYC-specific scheduler change in the days ahead.

Drobbins has announced the new release of Funtoo Linux 1.4 on Sep 11, 2019.

This release is based on a 21 June 2019 snapshot of Gentoo Linux with significant updates to key parts of the system, such as compiler and OpenGL subsystem.

This is the fourth release of the Funtoo Linux 1.x series, which may be the last update of this release, as the developer said he would start developing 2.0 a month later.