• This $8,000 super computer can be yours for pennies

  With companies of all sizes looking to boost their computing power, the amount of competition to provide such services is keener than ever.

  20 years ago, the world’s most powerful computer was the Intel-powered ASCI Red. It had nearly 10,000 cores, a peak performance of 3.21 Tflops and had a cool price tag of $55 million.

  [...]

  Ubuntu 18.04 is included as the default operating system and you can upgrade it to WIndows Server 2019. As with all Ionos dedicated servers, there's also a 1Gbps unlimited data pipe, and you can choose the location of your server (either US or Europe).

• 9 steps to awesome with Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift

  Our first DevNation Live regional event was held in Bengaluru, India in July. This free technology event focused on open source innovations, with sessions presented by elite Red Hat technologists.

  Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for hybrid cloud portable application architecture, and in this session, Burr Sutter shows why Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift provide the ideal solution for deploying and managing microservices in your organization.

  This live hands-on session is for any developer who is interested in Linux containers and cloud-native application architecture. Our examples will primarily be in Java, as there is some special “care and feeding” related to Java in a container, but the lessons are applicable to any programming language.

• GNU World Order 13x38

  First up: all about mcookie, mesg, and namei from util-linux. Then, a discussion of how one might transition to running Linux exclusively. Do you have a story of how you switched to Linux full-time? Do you not run Linux and just run as much open source as possible?

• Interview with Julius Grels

  At one point I started to search for open source alternatives for the myriad number of programs I was using, and Krita was a recommendation somewhere to replace Photoshop, with high ratings from users.

• MINIX Unveils NEO T5 & NEO U22-XJ Amlogic S905X2 / S922XJ Android TV Media Hubs

  We’ve already seen MINIX showcased a fanless Gemini Lake mini PC at IFA 2019, but the company also had two upcoming Amlogic TV boxes on display at the event.

• QMO: Firefox 70 Beta 6 Testday Results

  Hello Mozillians!

  As you may already know, Friday, September 13th – we held a new Testday event, for Firefox 70 Beta 6.

  Thank you all for helping us make Mozilla a better place: Gabriela (gaby2300), Dan Caseley (Fishbowler) and Aishwarya Narasimhan!

  Result: Several test cases were executed for Protection Report and Privacy Panel UI Updates.

• LibreOffice Conference 2019: Photos from days 2 and 3

  Last week was the LibreOffice Conference 2019 in Almeria, Spain. It was an awesome event, and great to see so many community members – a big thanks to everyone who took part! We already posted some photos from the first day, along with the video of the opening session. Now we have some photos from the second and third days, starting with the special bus that took us to the conference location every day…

• LibOCon 2019 Almeria - How to debug the Online conveniently

• Warning Issued For Millions Of Microsoft Windows 10 Users

  The September KB4515384 update is already a menace. Introduced to fix CPU spiking, reports state it has broken Windows 10 search, the Start Menu, Action Centre, USB connections and caused audio problems. And now it is gunning for your Internet access.

  Windows Latest has spotted that users are reporting on Microsoft’s community forum, Windows 10’s Feedback Hub and social networks that network adapters have stopped working after applying this update. Impacted users primarily appear to have Intel chipsets (Asus, MSI and Gigabyte motherboards are mentioned) and both their Ethernet and WiFi connections are affected.

  “Cumulative update (KB4515384) causes the NIC to fail to enable with a code 10 error,” warns one user on the Windows 10 Feedback Hub. “Reinstalling network drivers from Intel or Windows Update sources does not resolve the issue. However removing the update through the ‘Programs & Software’ panel or using a recovery point set *before* the update fully resolves the issue.”

• How to freeze and lock your Linux system (and why you would want to)

• Enabling OpenShift 4 Clusters to Stop and Resume Cluster VMs

• How to get current date and time in Python?

  There are a number of ways you can take to get current date. We will use date class of the datetime module to accomplish this task.

• Mike Driscoll: PyDev of the Week: Veronica Hanus

  This week we welcome Veronica Hanus (@veronica_hanus) as our PyDev of the Week! Veronica is a regular tech speaker at Python and other tech conferences and meetups. You can see some of her talks and her schedule on her website. She has been active in the Python community for the past few years. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!

• Google's FS-VERITY File Authentication Called For Inclusion In Linux 5.4 Kernel

  Linux kernel engineer Eric Biggers of Google has sent in a pull request adding FS-VERITY support to the Linux 5.4 but it remains to be seen if Linus Torvalds is content with pulling the code at this stage.

  FS-VERITY is the code Google has been working on for a while now in the context of Android. The focus is on providing transparent integrity/authenticity support for read-only files on an otherwise writable file-system. See this presentation to learn more on this file-based authenticity protection.

• Linux 5.4 Brings Working Temperature Reporting For AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs

  Due to a combination of poor timing and an oversight at AMD, the CPU temperature reporting under Linux for the Ryzen 3000 series processors isn't in order until this new Linux 5.4 cycle. Back at the Ryzen 3000 series launch event I was told everything was "all good" from the Linux support perspective for thermal monitoring, after having been closely following the situation for past Zen CPUs and ended up myself adding the Linux CPU temperature monitoring support for Threadripper 2 among other hudles in the past. That all-good though just ended up meaning that there is no Tcontrol offset needed for these new CPUs, which is great news no longer needing the temperature offset by an arbitrary amount. But the oversight was the Family 17h Model 70h ID was never added to the AMD k10temp driver. As a result, temperature monitoring wasn't actually working and took an extra kernel cycle before this trivial addition landed.

• All about Reactive Foundation,The Linux Foundation's new baby

  The Linux Foundation has announced the launch of the Reactive Foundation, a community of leaders established to accelerate technologies for building the next generation of networked applications. The foundation is made up of Alibaba, Lightbend, Netifi and Pivotal as initial members and includes the successful open source RSocket specification, along with programming language implementations.

  The aim of reactive programming is to build applications that maintain a consistent user experience regardless of traffic on the network, infrastructure performance and different end-user devices (computers, tablets, smartphones). Reactive programming uses a message-driven approach to achieve the resiliency, scalability, and responsiveness that is required for today's networked cloud-native applications, independent of their underlying infrastructure. The Reactive Foundation establishes a formal open governance model and neutral ecosystem for supporting open source reactive programming projects.

  [...]

  The aim of reactive programming is to build applications that maintain a consistent user experience regardless of traffic on the network, infrastructure performance and different end-user devices (computers, tablets, smartphones). Reactive programming uses a message-driven approach to achieve the resiliency, scalability, and responsiveness that is required for today's networked cloud-native applications, independent of their underlying infrastructure. The Reactive Foundation establishes a formal open governance model and neutral ecosystem for supporting open source reactive programming projects.
  "From the beginning of our work on RSocket during my time at Netflix, our intent was to have an open system that encouraged broad adoption, which is essential for networking technology. We're thrilled to be hosted at the Linux Foundation with commitment from leaders and disruptors in the industry, and are excited to make progress enabling reactive programming," said Ryland Degnan, Co-Founder, and CTO at Netifi and Foundation community chair.

• Motorola is making Android TVs too

• Here’s what Google has planned for Android TV: Stadia support, ‘hero device’

• Lynket Browser update (v2.1) adds support for Android 10's bubbles

• Will my Galaxy smartphone or tablet get the Android 10 update?

• Handful of 'missing' Android 10 features appear in since-removed Google videos

• Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite hits Europe, more expensive than Mi 9T

• Is the Pixel 3a still worth buying?

It took me a few years to appreciate console-based software. Repairing a broken system using the ubiquitous vi text editor was a turning point in my Linux journey. Now I spend a lot of time at the terminal, and listening to music. Best combine the two!

When it comes to console-based music software, I really admire musikcube, a wonderful audio engine, library, player and server written in C++.

This review looks at an alternative to musikcube. It’s called cmus. It shares many similarities with musikcube. Both are designed to run on a text-only user interface, reducing the resources required to run the application.

cmus is written in C.

Also: Rclone Browser Fork With Fixes And Enhancements

• Hands-on with Assistant Ambient mode for Android devices [Video]

• Gmail has dark mode on your Android phone. Turn it on now

• Google shows off Android TV dongle, hybrid STB designs for operators

• Motorola launches its first-ever Android TVs in India (plus, the Moto E6S)

• Google Stadia is coming to Android TV in 2020, possibly with Android 11 R

• Universal Electronics Gains More Control of Android TV

• Here’s what Google has planned for Android TV: Stadia support, ‘hero device’

• MINIX Unveils NEO T5 & NEO U22-XJ Amlogic S905X2 / S922XJ Android TV Media Hubs

• Android app won't connect

• Best KLWP Themes for Android devices

• 5 things Android phones should borrow from the iPhone 11 Pro

• Moto E6s with 4 GB RAM, Android One launched in India at a price of Rs 7,999

• Asus ZenFone 6/5Z, OnePlus 6/6T, and LG G2 are the latest devices to get Android 10 custom ROMs

• A List Of All Android Phones That Are Running On Google's Android 10 Right Now

• Asus ROG Phone 2 and ZenFone 6 Android 10 eligibility officially confirmed

• iOS 13 vs. Android 10: How Apple and Google match up

• Android vs. iOS: Which OS Works Best for You?

• Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review: The best Android tablet ever

GNU Linux-libre 5.3-gnu sources and tarballs are now available at
<http://www.fsfla.org/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/5.3-gnu/>.
It didn't require any deblobbing changes since -rc7-gnu, the first
published rc-gnu.  Freesh binaries are already available!, thanks to
Jason Self; others are on the way.


Besides recognizing new false positives (sequences that our blob hunter
would report as suspicious, but that are neither blobs nor requests for
blobs), updating the deblobbing scripts for 5.3 required adjusting
cleaned up drivers for updated blob names, recognizing one new Free
piece of firmware with binary and corresponding sources embedded in the
kernel sources, and disabling blob loading introduced in a few drivers:
QCOM, DRM (HDCP), Allegro-DVT, and Meson-VDEC.

This last one was particularly disappointing: the firmware sources were
supposed to be available from LibreELEC, and though the link to the
alleged sources there is broken, I managed to find the "source" repo
containing them, only to find out the "source" was just a binary blob
encoded in C as an array of char, just like Linux used to do back when I
got involved with Linux-libre.  Oh well...  Request disabled...

If anyone can find Freely-licensed actual source code for that, or for
any other file whose loading we disable, please let us know, so that we
can refrain from disabling its loading.


For up-to-the-minute news, join us on #linux-libre of irc.gnu.org
(Freenode), or follow me (@lxoliva) on Twister <http://twister.net.co/>,
Secure Scuttlebutt, GNU social at social.libreplanet.org, Diaspora* at
pod.libreplanetbr.org or pump.io at identi.ca.  Check my web page (link
in the signature) for direct links.


Be Free! with GNU Linux-libre.

Also: GNU Linux-Libre 5.3 Kernel Arrives for Those Seeking 100% Freedom for Their PCs

GNU Linux-libre 5.3 Continues Deblobbing & Dealing With Firmware Trickery

WireGuard sadly isn't slated for the now-open Linux 5.4 merge window, but lead developer Jason Donenfeld has put out a new development snapshot of this open-source secure VPN tunnel.

Coming barely two weeks since the previous WireGuard snapshot, this newest development release isn't too heavy on the changes but the focus is on better portability/compatibility.

That's all for now. As always, I love how simple and beautiful GNOME release announcement was. After testing in 3 days, I immediately like this version more than the previous one for the speed improvement and I hope Ubuntu and other distros adopt it soon. Ah, I forgot, regarding Ubuntu, good news for us: next October's Ubuntu Eoan Ermine will feature 3.34! Regarding GNOME, I don't know if this is coincidence or what, but this year's KDE Plasma is faster and smoother and so is GNOME. I think next GNOME 3.36 will be faster and better as well. Finally I would love to say thank you GNOME developers! You all did well in last 6 month.

How do you think about 3.34? Let me know in the comment section!

Also: Internet Speed Indicator for GNOME 3.34

Released three months after the PulseAudio 12 series, PulseAudio 13 is here with support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, support for the SteelSeries Arctis 5 USB headset, improved initial card profile selection for ALSA cards, as well as S/PDIF improvements for CMEDIA USB2.0 High-Speed True HD Audio.

The PulseAudio 13 series also adds several new module arguments, including "max_latency_msec" for module-loopback, "stream_name" for module-rtp-send, and "avoid_resampling" for module-udev-detect and module-alsa-card, and no longer uses persistent Bluetooth card profile choices by default, recommending users to use A2DP by default.

Promising to make firmware updates easier to deploy, GNOME Firmware is a graphical application for power users that lets them check for new firmware for their devices, update or downgrade current firmware, as well as to install new firmware. GNOME Firmware is designed as an optional utility for GNOME users, as well as users of other desktop environments.

"GNOME Firmware is designed to be a not-installed-by-default power-user tool to investigate, upgrade, downgrade and re install firmware," said Richard Hughes in a blog post. "GNOME Software will continue to be used for updates as before. Vendor helpdesks can ask users to install GNOME Firmware rather than getting them to look at command line output."

Chuwi is likely not a brand familiar to many, though the Chinese firm has established its abilities in producing budget-focused notebooks and tablets—essentially, attempting to provide a full Windows experience at a price point of an average Chromebook. Chuwi's upmarket Chuwi Aerobook could be the right price for an Ultrabook form factor at a $500 price point.

Support for Linux on fundamentally consumer hardware has improved considerably over the last decade, largely preventing the need to perform extensive manual configuration. In 2019, minor compatibility issues—tiny papercut-like problems that are harder to actually solve—can pop up for specific hardware configurations. Depending on the return policies of your preferred marketplace, it might be impossible or cost-prohibitive to return a product like this if it doesn't work with Linux.

In my quest to improve the website of KDE, I updated the Plasma Desktop webpage. This is a huge improvement to the old website, which didn’t show any screenshots and didn’t list any Plasma features.

I already teased the improvements I made in the Plasma BoF in Milan to the Akademy.

The redesign got a lot of positive feedback by the Plasma team and after some small modifications the changes landed.

I have written several times already about the recently-released Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (see my first impressions, how-to setup, my hands-on experience, and my thoughts two months in). Now I'm going to look at one of the practical aspects that I think a lot of people have been wondering about - is it (finally) good enough to use as an every-day desktop system?

We've been through this several times before, when the original Raspberry Pi, the Pi 2 and the Pi 3 came out - and each time the answer was "only if you have enough patience". Although the amount of patience required decreased each time, it was still too slow on many everyday tasks, or too limited in configuration (primarily memory) for most people to be satisfied using it. So maybe this time it will make the grade?

• Linux 5.2.15

  I'm announcing the release of the 5.2.15 kernel.

  All users of the 5.2 kernel series must upgrade.

  The updated 5.2.y git tree can be found at:
  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.2.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...

• Linux 4.19.73

• Linux 4.14.144

• Linux 4.9.193

• Linux 4.4.193

If you don’t follow the fortunes of Linux distributions, you might think that the days of Debian’s dominance are long since gone. However, superficial appearances can be deceiving. Not only does Debian consistently appear in the top ten of Distrowatch’s page hit ranking, it’s used as the base of the majority of other distributions as well, far eclipsing rivals like Fedora and Red Hat or openSuse. In fact, Debian might be said to be the most influential distro ever.

That may seem an overstatement, but the figures are hard to argue with. For at least eight years, Debian has been by far the most dominant distribution. Some details of its dominance have changed, but the overall pattern has been constant. Without Debian, modern Linux would be vastly different.

• It Stares Back, an RTS with a really wild style will be coming to Linux

  Always on the lookout for my next strategy game fix, I recently came across It Stares Back after it pulled my in due to the wild visuals.

  Currently, it's only available for Windows in Early Access on Steam. However, the developer confirmed to me on the Steam forum that it's planned for Linux just like their last game, Castle Battles. The Linux version should come once the game is complete.

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

  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.

• Ocean exploration game Beyond Blue has a new story trailer and voice cast reveal

  Beyond Blue, the near-future ocean exploration game from E-Line Media (publisher of Never Alone) has a new story teaser.

  If you've not heard of it before, this is not some survival game like Subnautica. Instead, it's a game about exploring the depths of our oceans. Think of it like Blue Planet: The Game, that sums it up quite well especially since they've teamed up with BBC Studios (who did the Blue Planet documentary).

• NARWHAR Project Hornwhale, a really wacky shoot 'em up that reminds me of the Amiga days

  The developer of NARWHAR Project Hornwhale emailed in recently about their new arcade style shoot 'em up being released with Linux support. It's a bit wild.

  I'll admit the name, along with the setting of this thoroughly made me chuckle to no end. Space Narwhals that rule with an iron fist, with you playing as one of two Rays that shoot lasers? The damn Narwhals took away all the free milkshake, so naturally a rebellion happened. What's not to love about such a crazy setting?

• Buoyancy, a city-builder where you manage a floating city has a Linux test build up

  Sometimes when you ask if a game is coming to Linux it's a no, others say it's planned and when it's Buoyancy the developer just puts up a build soon after asking.

  Yep, that's what happened here. After asking about Linux support on Steam, developer replied to say "yes". When asking if they knew when, they went ahead and uploaded a build. If only it was always that easy…

• The latest Overcooked! 2 expansion sounds more crazy than ever with the Carnival of Chaos

  Overcooked! 2 is no doubt one of the best, most hilarious and most infuriating co-op experiences around all in one. It just got bigger again too, with another great sound DLC out now.

• Fantastic looking beat 'em up Shing! confirmed to be releasing for Linux

  One we completely missed from Gamescom is Shing!, a new beat 'em up from developer Mass Creation releasing next year and it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

  Curiously, it appeared recently in my Steam searching with a SteamOS/Linux icon but the store page only has Windows system requirements. When going to message the developer, I checked the Steam forum and as expected someone asked about Linux support. The reply from the developer was a very clear "Yes - Shing will be available on Linux.".

  They're saying it's so good, they've called it a "beat-em-up 2.0". With Shing! Mass Creation say they're mixing in classic arcade-style gameplay with modern graphics and an innovative control scheme. This is not going to be a button basher, instead you use the right stick of a gamepad to directly control your weapon. It sounds good on paper but does it look good? Sure does! Take a look at their recent gameplay reveal:

• Talking About Communities and ‘People Powered’ with Leo Laporte

  I have always had a bit of a soft spot for the TWiT team and more specifically Leo Laporte. Years ago I used to co-host FLOSS Weekly on their network and occasionally I pop over to the studio for a natter with Leo.

  With ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams‘ coming out, I thought it would be fun to hop over there. Leo graciously agreed and we recorded an episode of their show, Triangulation.

• Linux Action News 123

  Speed is the big story around GNOME 3.34, two new major Firefox security features start to roll out, and we explain the CentOS 8 delay.

  Plus our thoughts on the PineTime, and more.

• KaOS 19.09 Run Through

  In this video, we are looking at KaOS 19.09.

• Congress Is Investigating Apple's Repair Monopoly

  For years, the independent repair community has said that Apple has engaged in anticompetitive behavior by refusing to sell parts to repair shops who are not “authorized” by the company. The company has also lobbied heavily against so called right-to-repair legislation, which would require it and other electronics companies to sell parts and tools to the general public. It has sued independent repair companies for using aftermarket and refurbished parts and worked with the Department of Homeland Security to seize unauthorized repair parts from small businesses both at customs and from individual shops. And, as the committee's letter notes, Apple cut a deal with Amazon that restricted who is allowed to sell refurbished Apple devices on Amazon.

  Apple has made small strides toward opening up the repair ecosystem. Earlier this month, the company said it would begin to sell repair parts to certain independent repair shops, though it has not said how much they will cost or what parts will be available.

  The internal communications are due to the committee on October 14.

Now that the first beta of Qt 5.14 is getting closer, it is time to start talking about one of the big new features. We cannot possibly cover all the details around the graphics stack improvements and the road to Qt 6 in one post, so in part 1 and 2 we will describe the background and take a closer look at what 5.14 will ship with, and then dive into the technical details and future directions in another set of posts later on.

Also: Linux Drivers Entries Suggest two APU AMD Lines in 2020

• How to Install Postman on Debian 10

• freshclam[15552]: Can’t create temporary directory /var/lib/clamav/clamav-969944fd9a258fa7aff08976496d8541.tmp

• 30 Linux Permissions Exercises for Sysadmins

• How to Check Linux Mint Version Number & Codename

• Four semanage commands to keep SELinux in enforcing mode

• How to start developing with .NET [Ed: Red Hat has totally lost it. It promotes Microsoft.]

• Constraint programming by example

  There are many different ways to solve problems in computing. You might "brute force" your way to a solution by calculating as many possibilities as you can, or you might take a procedural approach and carefully establish the known factors that influence the correct answer. In constraint programming, a problem is viewed as a series of limitations on what could possibly be a valid solution. This paradigm can be applied to effectively solve a group of problems that can be translated to variables and constraints or represented as a mathematic equation. In this way, it is related to the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP).

  Using a declarative programming style, it describes a general model with certain properties. In contrast to the imperative style, it doesn't tell how to achieve something, but rather what to achieve. Instead of defining a set of instructions with only one obvious way to compute values, constraint programming declares relationships between variables within constraints. A final model makes it possible to compute the values of variables regardless of direction or changes. Thus, any change in the value of one variable affects the whole system (i.e., all other variables), and to satisfy defined constraints, it leads to recomputing the other values.

• Samuel Sutch: Why Python Has Become an Industry Favorite Among Programmers

  With the world stepping towards a new age of technology development, it isn’t hard to imagine a future that will be full of screens. And if so be the case then, demand for people with strong programming skills will definitely rise with more number of people required to develop and support the applications. Python Training is always a good idea for those wishes to be a part of this constantly developing industry. Python language is not only easy to grasp, but emphasizes less on syntax which is why a few mistakes here and there doesn’t give as much trouble as some other languages does.