• Introducing The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Networking Days

  One of my primary goals at The Linux Foundation is to foster innovation across the entire open source networking ecosystem. This involves coordinating across multiple open source projects and initiatives and identifying key areas for collaboration to create an open source networking stack.

  We are working across the entire ecosystem with industry-leading partners — from developers to service providers to vendors — to unify various open source components and create solutions that will accelerate network transformation. As part of this journey, I am pleased to introduce Open Source Networking Days (OSN Days), a series of free events that are hosted and organized by local user groups and The Linux Foundation members, with support from our projects, including DPDK, FD.io, ONAP, OpenDaylight, OPNFV, PNDA, and others.

• Randa news, release update

  Last week, from wednesday to saturday I attended KDE’s annual Randa sprint organized by wonderful people. This was an occasion to work fulltime on Kdenlive.

• It’s Simple to Make Visual Studio Code Match Your Gtk Theme [Ed: Maybe OMG Ubuntu does not want Ubuntu but really just wants another Windows]

• Canonical builds a custom Ubuntu kernel for Microsoft Azure [Ed: And don't be surprised if this happens again]

• Canonical & Microsoft make Azure-tailored Linux kernel

• Canonical and Microsoft enable new Azure-tailored Ubuntu kernel

• Canonical builds a special Ubuntu kernel for Microsoft

• Database provider MongoDB has filed to go public

• Software company MongoDB seeks to raise $100 million in IPO

• MongoDB files for initial public offering

• Despite big losses and big competition, database firm MongoDB files for an IPO

• Heterogeneous Memory Management Made It For Linux 4.14

  Heterogeneous Memory Management is the long-time work-in-progress functionality by Jerome Glisse of Red Hat for allowing a process address space to be mirrored and for system memory to be transparently used by any device process.

• A Set Of BFQ Improvements Ready For Testing

  Recently I wrote about a BFQ regression fix that should take care of a problem spotted in our recent I/O scheduler Linux 4.13 benchmarks while now that work has yielded a set of four patches working to improve this recently-merged scheduler.

If writing is part of your job or your everyday routine, you might find the Nextcloud open source file sync and share application a very useful tool. First, it provides you with free, secure, and easily accessible cloud file storage.

Second, it's fully customizable, which means you can choose different writing tools, such as the four useful editorial apps described below, depending on the task you're trying to accomplish. You can find these and other useful add-ons on the Nextcloud app store.

Hi, fellow Linux user there! How is your social life going? This is how most of the time I think my friends ask me. They think that I am all the time messed with the terminal. Now how to explain to Windows users that Terminal does almost all my work from games to app installation. From email to personal messages. Leave them! Today I am here with an amazing terminal software call “FB Messenger CLI”.

• RUINER is reconfirmed for Linux once again

  After the stupidly confusing mixed messages about the Linux version of RUINER [Steam, Official Site], the developer has now reconfirmed that its coming to Linux.

• xoEl Empire, a puzzle game that's just utterly weird is on Linux

• Outlast Deluxe Edition is currently free on the Humble Store

• There's a trailer for the Albion Online 'Joseph' update, plus more Arena Mode information

  Albion Online is going to get a bit bigger next week, with the release of the Joseph expansion. We have a new trailer and more info!

• Auto Age: Standoff, a colourful car combat game may come to Linux

  Auto Age: Standoff [Steam] looks like a rather vibrant car combat game and it could see a Linux release with enough support from the community.

Java 9 (JDK 9) has finally reached general availability! Following setbacks, Java 9 is officially available as well as Java EE 8.

​A package file is an archive which contains the binaries and other resources that make software and the pre and post installation scripts. They also provide the information regarding dependencies and other packages required for the installation and running of the software.

With their lacklustre approach to free software, German public services remain behind other European member states, says the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). When asked, the current governing parties’ say they support free software, but their statements are contradicted by the lack of action, the advocacy group says.

In early September, the FSFE published its analysis of the free software policies put forward by the main political parties on the ballot, in preparation for Germany’s parliamentary elections on 24 September. This analysis (in German) is far more detailed than an earlier report generated by the Digital-O-Mat, a web portal set up to focus on political parties’ positions on 12 digital topics.

New release: ISA² interoperability test bed software v1.1.0

BeagleBoard.org has revealed its latest development board named PocketBeagle. It’s an ultra-tiny and open source USB-key-fob computer that’s crafted for DIYers, hobbyists, and educators.

PocketBeagle is based on Octavo Systems OSD3358-SM 21mm x 21mm system-in-package, which gives it 512MB DDR3 RAM, 1-GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, and 2x 200-MHz PRUs. It comes with integrated power/battery management as well.

• SEC discloses hackers [sic] penetrated EDGAR, profited in trading

  Hackers [sic] made their way into the Security and Exchange Commission's EDGAR electronic filing system last year, retrieving private data that appear to have resulted in "an illicit gain through trading," the agency reported Wednesday.

• US Securities and Exchange Commission confesses to hacker [sic] access

• Zone Walking (Zone Enumeration via DNSSEC NSEC Records)

  An important capability of DNSSEC is the ability to authoritatively assert that a given domain name does NOT exist, as per Authenticated Denial of Existence in the DNS.

• New FinFisher surveillance campaigns: Internet providers involved?

  New surveillance campaigns utilizing FinFisher, infamous spyware known also as FinSpy and sold to governments and their agencies worldwide, are in the wild. Besides featuring technical improvements, some of these variants have been using a cunning, previously-unseen infection vector with strong indicators of major internet service provider (ISP) involvement.

• FinFisher spyware variant returns with a vengeance

  A variant of the FinFisher spyware is being spread in seven countries through legitimate applications like WhatsApp, Skype, Avast, WinRAR and VLC Player, the security company ESET says.

• The CCleaner Malware Fiasco Targeted at Least 18 Specific Tech Firms

  Earlier this week, security firms Morphisec and Cisco revealed that CCleaner, a piece of security software distributed by Czech company Avast, had been hijacked by hackers and loaded with a backdoor that evaded the company's security checks. It wound up installed on more than 700,000 computers. On Wednesday, researchers at Cisco's Talos security division revealed that they've now analyzed the hackers' "command-and-control" server to which those malicious versions of CCleaner connected.

• CCleaner hacked [sic] with malware: What you need to know

  It seems that CCleaner, one of PCWorld’s recommendations for the best free software for new PCs, might not have been keeping your PC so clean after all. In an in-depth probe of the popular optimization and scrubbing software, Cisco Talos has discovered a malicious bit of code injected by hackers that could have affected more than 2 million users who downloaded the most recent update.

• Reminder: the CIA has been able to hack your WiFi router for years

• Sony launches the mid-range Xperia XA1 Plus in India

• The Inventor of Android On the Future of Smartphones and Beyond

• How Google-HTC Deal Will Pressure Samsung, Huawei In Android

• Android adds zero-touch provisioning for corporate devices

• Google's Android One Moto X4 is the first of its kind in the US

• Mobile Ad Fraud: Twice as High On Android As iOS

• Red Hat pledges patent protection for 99 per cent of FOSS-ware [Ed: And when Red Hat gets taken over (like Sun and Oracle) this promise will be worthless]

  Red Hat says it has amassed over 2,000 patents and won't enforce them if the technologies they describe are used in properly-licensed open source software.

  The company's made more or less the same offer since the year 2002, when it first made a “Patent Promise” in order to “to discourage patent aggression in free and open source software.” In 2002 the company didn't own many patents and claimed its non-enforcement promise covered per cent of open source software.

  The Promise was revised in order to reflect the company's growing patent trove and to spruce up the language it uses to make it more relevant.

  The revised promise “applies to all software meeting the free software or open source definitions of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) or the Open Source Initiative (OSI)”. That verbiage translates into any software licensed on terms the OSI approves on this list, or which meet the Initiative’s definition of open source offered here. Licenses listed by the Free Software Foundation as a free software license at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses also come under the Promise's purview, as do those here as of the date this edition of Our Promise is published.

• Red Hat Open Source Day rewards with proprietary hardware. For the fourth time

  The above is an excerpt of the 2017 event announcement. Which, as you can see below, will be at least the fourth consecutive one in which Red Hat Italia will award participants with some of the most proprietary devices around. Please note the absence of anything like, e.g. Matchstick, “100% Linux compatible laptop, with Linux preinstalled”, or a Fairphone, in the screenshots...

• Red Hat (RHT) to Report Q2 Earnings: Will it Beat Estimates?

  We expect Red Hat Inc. RHT to beat expectations when it reports fiscal second-quarter 2018 results on Sep 25.

• Needle Action Activity Spotted in Enbridge Inc (ENB) and Red Hat Inc (RHT)

• Fedora 27 Beta Hit By A Second Delay

  Last week it was decided to delay the Fedora 27 beta due to bugs while this week they've been forced to delay the release a second time.

  The first beta delay wasn't too bad as the F27 schedule already had a built-in "rain date", in acknowledging Fedora's frequent release delays. But today a second unplanned delay is pushing back F27 Beta by at least one more week. This will now also push back the Fedora 27 final release by at least one week.

• Fedora 27 Beta status is NO-GO

• News: The new Krita 3.3.0

• iOS 11 Muddies WiFi and Bluetooth Controls

  Turning WiFi and Bluetooth off is often viewed as a good security practice. Apple did not rationalize these changes in behavior.

• How To Hack A Turned-Off Computer, Or Running Unsigned Code In Intel Management Engine

  Intel Management Engine is a proprietary technology that consists of a microcontroller integrated into the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) microchip with a set of built-in peripherals. The PCH carries almost all communication between the processor and external devices; therefore Intel ME has access to almost all data on the computer, and the ability to execute third-party code allows compromising the platform completely. Researchers have been long interested in such "God mode" capabilities, but recently we have seen a surge of interest in Intel ME. One of the reasons is the transition of this subsystem to a new hardware (x86) and software (modified MINIX as an operating system) architecture. The x86 platform allows researchers to bring to bear all the power of binary code analysis tools.

• Optionsbleed: Don’t get your panties in a wad

  To be honest, this isn’t the first security concern you’ve run in to, and it isn’t the first security issue you’re vulnerable to, that will remain exploitable for quite some time, until after someone you rely on fixed the issue for you, meanwhile compromising your customers.

  [...]

  Is it a small part of the SSL public key? A small part of the web request response? A chunk of the path to the index.php? Or is it a chunk of the database password used? Nobody knows until you get enough data to analyse the results of all data. If you can’t appreciate the maths behind analysing multiple readings of 8 arbitrary bytes, choose another career. Not that I know what to do and how to do it, by the way.

• Puppet Acquires Distelli, Boosting Its Cloud Automation Offerings

  Puppet, the open source company that markets cloud-native software management tools, has acquired startup Distelli. Based in Seattle, Distelli offers a software as a service platform used by developers to build, test, and deploy code written in any language to any server, including cloud platforms. This is an obvious good match, as both platforms enable developers to manage infrastructure and applications across the entire software delivery process to make app development quicker.

  "Today, a company's success is predicated on how quickly and successfully it can deliver new experiences to customers through software," Puppet's CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, said in a statement. "Automation makes world-class application delivery straightforward for every enterprise, not just for companies born in the cloud. Together with Distelli, we are bringing a comprehensive solution for orchestrating and automating the entire software delivery lifecycle, from infrastructure, all the way up through containers."

• Mozilla Adds Tracking Protection to Firefox for iOS, Focus Gets Multitasking

  Mozilla released on Thursday new updates for its Firefox for iOS and Firefox Focus for Android apps adding new features like tracking protection and multi-tasking, along with various other improvements.

  Firefox for iOS has been updated today to version 9.0, a release that's available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices running iOS 10.3 or later. It comes with support for Apple's recently launched iOS 11 operating system, as well as tracking protection, which is enabled by default in the private browsing mode to automatically block third-party trackers in an attempt to increase browsing speed.

• 35 Top Open Source Companies [Ed: Easy to see that this list will be a 'scam' when the company listed in number one is Adobe. It has even listed Black Duck as "Open Source Company". It’s PROPRIETARY and ANTI-FOSS.]

• Open Source Summit in Los Angeles: Day 1 in 5 Minutes

  Open Source Summit North America in Los Angeles was packed with keynotes, technical sessions, and special presentations, including a conversation with Linux creator Linus Torvalds. In case you couldn't make it, CodePop.com's Gregg Pollack has put together some short videos recapping highlights of the event.

• How To Enable Fractional Scaling in GNOME 3.26

• Linux Fu: X Command

• Learn Linux System Auditing with Auditd Tool on CentOS/RHEL

• How To Find Vulnerable Packages In Arch Linux

• Systemd Truelite course

• Temps – A Smart Beautiful Weather App for GNU/Linux

  I’ve written on a couple of weather applications before, including Cumulus and Simple Weather Indicator and today I bring you yet another free and beautiful Linux app with thanks to the open source community. It’s reminiscent of Cumulus weather application and it goes by the name of Temps.

  Temps is a beautiful cross-platform weather application that lives in the menu bar of any desktop. Being true to the open source spirit, it uses code from several open source projects like Menubar, OpenWeatherMap, Electron, and Chart.js, to mention a few.

• [LabPlot] Short update on recent UX improvements

  One of the usual data visualization workflows supported by LabPlot involves the import of some external data into the application and the creation of plots.

• GNU Parallel 20170922 ('Mexico City') released

  GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

• gnURL 7.55.1-4 released

  Today gnURL has been released in version 7.55.1-4 as a patch release.

• Document Liberation Project: New releases

  LibreOffice’s native file format is the fully standardised OpenDocument Format. This is ideal for long-term storage of data, but many of us have to work with other file formats as well, including those generated by proprietary software.

• Mesa 17.1.10 release candidate

  The candidate for the Mesa 17.1.10 is now available. Currently we have:
  - 41 queued
  - 0 nominated (outstanding)
  - and 5 rejected patches

  This is the last release for the 17.1 series.

• Mesa 17.1.10 Is Being Prepped As The Final 17.1 Update

  J.A. Suarez Romero of Igalia is preparing Mesa 17.1.10 as the final point release for the Mesa 17.1 release stream.

  The release candidate is out today while Romero is planning to issue this final update to Mesa 17.1 by next week Monday, 25 September. Following that, users are encouraged to upgrade to the stable Mesa 17.2 series.

BeagleBoard.org’s $25 “PocketBeagle” USB key-fob BeagleBone clone is based on the Octavo OSD3358-SM SiP module, and offers micro-USB and microSD links.

BeagleBoard.org has released its smallest BeagleBone variant yet. The COM-like, 56 x 35 x 5mm PocketBeagle is a USB key-fob SBC built on the Octavo Systems OSD335x-SM System-In-Package (SiP) module that was announced earlier this week. Octavo’s 21 x 21mm SiP module, which packs a 1GHz Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 SoC and nearly all the functions of a BeagleBone Black SBC into a BGA form factor, is 40 percent smaller than the original 27 x 27mm OSD335x.