• Battle Royale game 'The Culling' goes free to play, a Linux version is available but it has issues

  Honestly, I'm extremely surprised at this. The Battle Royale game The Culling [Steam] has today gone free to play and the Linux version once again works to an extent.

• Caution: Playing 'Overwatch' On Linux May Get You Banned [Updated] [Ed: a bit misleading (the headline)]

• Frozen Synapse 2 should be on Linux by the end of the month

  Frozen Synapse 2 from Mode 7 released yesterday for Windows, the good news is the developer is getting the Linux version out soon.

  Speaking on Twitter earlier, one of the developers said "We're aiming for Frozen Synapse 2 Mac and Linux versions plus Skirmish mode at the end of this month". Going by the roadmap they posted on Steam, looks like Sept 28th could be the date. Really great to know we won't be waiting long, as it does look great.

• DXVK 0.72 is out, bringing more configuration options and game fixes

  DXVK [GitHub] 0.72 just got released and this version brings along some handy extra configuration options as well as some specific game fixes.

• DXVK 0.72 Brings New D3D11 Tunables, Various Game Fixes

  Just in time for the weekend Linux gamers, DXVK 0.72 has been released as the newest version of this Direct3D 10/11 to Vulkan API translation layer that is used by Wine and also now by Steam Play / Proton.

  DXVK 0.72 brings new options for adjusting the maximum tessellation factor, toggle anisotropic filtering, overriding the number of swap-chain back-buffers, and toggling Vsync.

• Wine Announcement

  The Wine development release 3.16 is now available.

• Another glass please, Wine 3.16 is out, fixes issues in multiple games like Overwatch and Warframe

  Another treat for the weekend is a new Wine [Official Site] development release with Wine 3.16 now available with a few features and bug fixes.

• Wine 3.16 Brings OPC Services Support, Various Other Fixes & Improvements

  Wine 3.16 also has support for rendering buttons via an ImageList, better support for CSS properties within MSHTML, namespace fixes for the XML writer, and a total of 43 known bug fixes. The bugs fixed range from fixing issues with Call of Duty 2 to Resident Evil 7 to Atmel Studio 6 to Just Dance 2017.

• What is My DNS Server? Know 4 Methods to Check IP Address

• Convert files at the command line with Pandoc

• Avoiding large immediate values

• Autobuilding Debian packages on salsa with Gitlab CI

• A day in the life of a log message

• Linux pgrep Command Tutorial for Beginners (10 Examples)

• How to Install Skype on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• How to upgrade your data center Ubuntu servers

• How to Install and Configure GitLab on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• How to Pass SafetyNet on OnePlus 6 Android Pie Open Beta

• Four Ways to Empty the Trash/Recycle Bin in Ubuntu

• Nginx - print all optional modules before compilation

• Print the 16 most recent RPM packages installed in newest to oldest order

• Unlock VMs in Proxmox

• urlencoding with one pure BASH builtin

• Change UI theme in Google Chrome 69

  Say what you will about Chrome, but over the years, it has maintained a rather consistent look & feel. The changes are mostly done under the hood and they do not interfere with how the user interacts with the browser. But occasionally, mostly guided by their wider influence in the OS space, especially the mobile world, Google has made some stylistic changes. Most notably, they introduced Material Design to the Chrome UI, and now, there's another facelift.

  I noticed the new looks in the freshly updated Chrome 69 in Kubuntu Beaver, and I wasn't too happy. The font is gray and pale, ergo contrast isn't as good as it should be, and the new round design feels odd. So I decided to change this back to the older style. Let me show you how you can do this.

  [...]

  There you go. If you don't like the aesthetically pleasing but ergonomically dubious change to the Chrome's UI look in version 69 onwards, then you can change (we don't know for how long) the layout back to what it was, or try one of the several available themes. The goal is to retain maximum visual clarity and efficiency. The old looks offer that. The new ones hamper that.

  I am quite alarmed by this trend. The only solace I get is the knowledge that a few Google shares in me possession are generating profit, which I shall use to heal my soul of all this sub-IQ100 touch-led destruction of the desktop and fast productivity, a crusade that started worldwide around 2011 or so.

• Chrome 70 beta: shape detection, web authentication, and more

  Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome Beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. View a complete list of the features in Chrome 70 on ChromeStatus.com. Chrome 70 is beta as of September 13, 2018.

• Chrome 70 In Beta With TLS 1.3, Opus Support In MP4 & AV1 Decode

  Following last week's Chrome 69 release, Chrome 70 is now in beta as the latest feature-update to Google's browser.

One of the notable additions to the Linux 4.19 kernel is the initial VKMS driver for "virtual kernel mode-setting" that in the long run should be significant for headless Wayland/X.Org systems. The driver is still in its early stages but continuing to be improved.

The VKMS DRM driver came around this summer thanks to GSoC and Outreachy students working on this virtual KMS driver. The driver isn't feature complete yet, but Haneen Mohammed of Outreachy has landed some more of her patches that will come during the next kernel merge window.

• Python Programming Language Ditches 'Master-Slave' Terms, Pissing Off Some

  A quiet debate has been brewing in the coding community for years that’s forced programmers to ask if using the terms “master” and “slave” are insensitive. Now, Python, one of the most popular high-level programming languages in the world, has ditched the terminology—and not everyone is happy about it.

  Master/Slave is generally used in hardware, architecture, and coding to refer to one device, database, or process controlling another. For more than a decade, there’s been some concern that the terms are offensive because of their relationship to the institution of slavery. Last week, a developer named Victo Stinner published four pull requests asking the Python community to consider changing the Master/Slave terms to something like Parent/Worker. “For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid ‘master’ and ‘slave’ terminology which can be associated to slavery,” he wrote to explain his thinking.

• EuroPython 2018

  In July I took the train up to beautiful Edinburgh to attend the EuroPython 2018 conference. Despite using Python professionally for almost 8 years, this was my first experience of a Python conference. The schedule was packed, and it was challenging deciding what talks to attend, but I had a great time and enjoyed the strong community feeling of the event. We even went for a group run around Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat, which I hope is included in the schedule for future years.

  Now that the videos of the talks have all been published, I wanted to share my personal highlights, and list the talks I saw during and since the conference. I still haven’t caught up on everything I wanted to see, so I’ve also included my watch list.

Last week SiFive published their HiFive Unleashed open-source boot-loader code for this first RISC-V SoC on their Linux-friendly development board. This code being open-sourced has already helped improve the support for the FU540 SoC within Coreboot.

The code open-sourced last week by SiFive allows for a fully open-source boot process after this first RISC-V developer board received some criticism for some of its initialization code being closed-source, namely around the SDRAM start-up code.

Also: Intel Releases New BSD-Licensed Open-Source Firmware Implementation

Freshly migrated from its self-managed services to GitLab, this week’s highlighted open-source project is freedesktop.org (f.do), the umbrella project encompassing many open-source software packages for running Linux on desktop.

In development since 2000, fd.o is designed to provide developers of desktop Linux distributions easy-to-access packages for getting their desktop environment up and running quickly and completely.

freedesktop.org project administrator Daniel Stone described the project’s goal in a Q&A with GitLab about the migration as “providing a database of available applications and preferred MIME type handlers, network device management, inter-process communication, a PDF renderer; in general, all the things we can do well in one place, to enable people who want to write desktop environments to focus on the thing that matters to them: building the actual desktop!”

In looking to code smarter, faster and more efficiently, developers across the globe and industries are turning to open-source components that allow them to add powerful features to their work without having to write everything from scratch themselves. One of the latest groups to embrace the Open Source movement is the entertainment industry.

Similar to many other initiatives that have come together in recent years to support the sharing of code between companies, a number of key players under the umbrella of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have teamed up with The Linux Foundation to establish the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF). Members include companies like Disney, Google, Dreamworks, Epic Games and Intel, just to name a few.

Also Linux Foundation: Open Source Networking Days Returning This Fall

• ACEINNA Launches the First Open Source IMU Development Kit for Drones, Robots and AGVs

  ACEINNA Integrated Hardware and Software Can Slash Development Time and Costs by Up to 80%

• Open source IMU dev kit slashes design costs

  The OpenIMU is what Aceinna presents as the first professionally supported, open-source GPS/GNSS-aided inertial navigation software stack for low-cost precise navigation applications.

• Open-source software stack for INS/GPS algorithm development

  Whether you are developing autonomously guided vehicles for industrial applications, autonomous cars, factory or industrial robots, drones, ROVs, any kind of smart machine which needs to move – fast or slow, on land, in the air, or in water, integrating an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) based sensor network will greatly improve its navigation and self-location capabilities.

  “Our breakthrough open-source Software for INS/GPS algorithm development is the first professional grade open-source navigation stack running on a low-cost IMU,” says Mike Horton, CTO of ACEINNA. “Not only will this kit save developers time and money, it is simple to use and does not require a PhD.”

A pair of powerful new Linux PCs have gone on sale from Spanish company Slimbook, including a high-end liquid-cooled illuminated rig.

Best known for its range of Linux laptops, like the KDE-branded KDE Slimbook, the new The Slimbook Kymera is the first proper desktop Linux PC line the company has offered – assuming we discount its curved-screen all-in-one PC and low-power Intel NUC offerings as not being proper desktop PCs which, oops, we just did.

And to celebrate they’ve really gone to town, making not one but two distinct versions: the versatile Slimbook Kymera Ventus and the awesome Slimbook Kymera Aqua.

• RADV Vulkan Driver Finally Picking Up 16-Bit Integer Support In Shaders

  Samuel Pitoiset working for Valve's Linux GPU driver team has now sent out shaderInt16 support for the RADV driver.

  Following 9 patches hitting the Mesa mailing list on Friday, Samuel wired up shaderInt16 support for this Mesa-based open-source Radeon Vulkan driver. The shaderInt16 capability indicates whether 16-bit signed/unsigned integers are supported in the shader code for the Vulkan driver.

• AMD Sends Out Initial Vega 20 Support For AMDKFD Compute Kernel Driver

  While AMD has been sending out Linux enablement patches for the yet-to-be-released Vega 20 for months now, what didn't see any work until today was for the AMDKFD driver support so this expected 7nm Vega GPU can work with their ROCm/OpenCL compute stack.

• AMDGPU X.Org 18.1 Driver Released With RandR Leasing, Updates For DC Functionality

  AMD has issued rare updates today to their xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-amdgpu DDX drivers for use with the X.Org Server.

  These DDX drivers see seldom updates due to all of the interesting work these days happening in kernel space (DRM) or Mesa and friends, plus a lot of users running the generic xf86-video-modesetting DDX.

One of the strengths of Linux is the huge range of software. That is, after all, one of the reasons why users are attracted to Linux in the first place. Having the opportunity to select from a plethora of software and select the ones that meet an individual’s needs still makes good sense. Having hundreds of open source text editors, file managers, integrated development environments, backup tools, databases, web browsers, FTP clients increases the likelihood of applications existing that really do what a user wants. Further, even where a developer only reinvents the wheel by creating a very simple application, it is still a valuable learning experience, and from these little acorns, mighty oaks may grow.

Irrespective of the operating system used, the text editor is one of those quintessential applications for many users. A text editor is software used for editing plain text files. Text editors are used to write programming code, change configuration files, take notes, and more. For this feature, we wanted to select alternative text editors which are definitely worth trying but may have been missed given that they receive less coverage in Linux publications, and are not included or installed by default in many Linux distributions.

Since the last openSUSE Tumbleweed update, three snapshots have been released and the latest snapshot has brought two new major versions of both Flatpak and qemu.

On the heels of the Libre Application Summit last week, which is a conference focusing on sandboxing and application distribution, a new major version of Flatpak was released in Snapshot 20180911. Flatpak 1.0 marks a significant improvement in performance and reliability, and includes a big collection of bug fixes with a collection of new features. Naturally, libostree 2018.8 was updated with Flatpak and added a new feature that provides an auto-update-summary config option for repositories. Full-system emulation with qemu 3.0.0 isn’t necessarily significant. The changelog states not to “read anything into the major version number update. It’s been decided to increase the major version number each year.” Yet there is improved support for nested Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) guests running on Hyper-V. The project did emphasized that ongoing feature deprecation is tracked at both http://wiki.qemu-project.org/Features/LegacyRemoval and in Appendix B of the qemu-doc.* files installed with the qemu package. Mesa 18.1.7 had a handful of fixes and once again added wayland to egl_platforms. The Linux Kernel 4.18.7 added support for Intel Ice Lake microarchitecture in the snapshot. There were several other minor updates in the snapshot, but the nodejs10 update to version 10.9.0 brought a few Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) fixes and upgraded dependencies to OpenSSL 1.0.2.

Fedora Silverblue is a new variant of Fedora Workstation with rpm-ostree at its core to provide fully atomic upgrades. Furthermore, Fedora Silverblue is immutable and upgrades as a whole, providing easy rollbacks from updates if something goes wrong. Fedora Silverblue is great for developers using Fedora with good support for container-focused workflows.

Additionally, Fedora Silverblue delivers desktop applications as Flatpaks. This provides better isolation / sandboxing of applications, and streamlines updating applications — Flatpaks can be safely updated without reboot.

The Fedora Workstation team is running a Test Day for Silverblue next week, so if you want to try it out, and help out the development effort at the same time, keep reading.

• Gaming: Rise of the Tomb Raider

  Over the last weekend I have finally finished The Rise of the Tomb Raider. As I wrote exactly 4 month ago when I started the game, I am a complete newby to these kind of games, and was blown away by the visual quality and great gameplay.

• Competition: Win a Steam key for Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor

  Someone told me people like to win Steam keys? Is that right? Well, you're in for a chance to win a Steam key for Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor before it enters Early Access next month.

• Airmen is an online shooter where you build your own airship with friends, we have keys to give away

  What's that, more Steam keys to give away? You got that right. This time it's a little different, as the steampunk airship first-person shooter Airmen [Steam] has a hidden Linux version on Steam.

• Jet-combat game Hyperspace Dogfights has a free content update that's now out

  Hyperspace Dogfights is a really intense and rather good jet-combat game available on Linux, it just had a juicy content update today.

  The "Realspace" update adds in quite a lot including: 6 new active item, 11 new weapons and 30 new passive items, gamepad support, item tooltips, the ability to change the color of your jet's reticle and a few more other quality of life updates to improve the game.

• The rather good downhill freeriding game Descenders is getting a replay mode and more tricks soon

  For those who like your extreme sports, Descenders is a pretty good Early Access game that's due to expand again soon with some more updates.

  The first, due next week on September 18th, is going to add in a replay mode for all those times you end up bailing-out and think it was so hilarious that you wish to watch it again.

• Puzzle horror game COLINA: Legacy now available on Linux

  COLINA: Legacy [Official Site] from Chance6 Studios is a surprisingly well put together horror experience that's now available on Linux.

• Dark Turn-based RPG 'Deep Sky Derelicts' releasing September 26th, Linux version will be available then

  Deep Sky Derelicts is a pretty great looking dark turn-based RPG from Snowhound Games and 1C Company. They've announced that it's going to leave Early Access on September 26th, which is when the Linux version will also become available.

• We Were Here Together announced with Linux support, best have a partner ready for it

  We Were Here is a series of games that forces players in co-op with walkie-talkies to work together in separate locations, each describing something to the other to help them progress. The third game, We Were Here Together has been announced.

• Security updates for Friday

• OPINION: Latest Research Shows Your Android Apps Aren’t As Secure As You Think [Ed: One wonders why Steve Pociask, aka "American Consumer Institute", is so eager to make Android look bad and attribute holes in PROPRIETARY software to "open source".]

• Dem introduces bill to create federal cybersecurity apprenticeship program

  Under the bill, the programs would be required to offer certain cybersecurity certifications and help connect participants with local businesses or other entities for apprenticeships in hopes to boost the number of qualified workers for federal cyber jobs.

• The Overlooked Weak Link in Election Security

  More than one-third of counties that are overseeing elections in some of the most contested congressional races this November run email systems that could make it easy for hackers to log in and steal potentially sensitive information.

  A ProPublica survey found that official email accounts used by 11 county election offices, which are in charge of tallying votes in 12 key U.S. House of Representatives races from California to Ohio, could be breached with only a user name and password — potentially allowing hackers to vacuum up confidential communications or impersonate election administrators. Cybersecurity experts recommend having a second means of verifying a user’s identity, such as typing in an additional code from a smartphone or card, to thwart intruders who have gained someone’s login credentials through trickery or theft. This system, known as two-factor verification, is available on many commercial email services.

  “Humans are horrific at creating passwords, which is why ‘password’ is the most commonly used password,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., who has pushed for security fixes in the voting process. This means increasingly we need something other than passwords to secure access to our accounts, especially email, which tends to undergird all our other accounts.”

  The email vulnerabilities emerged in ProPublica’s survey of election security in 27 counties encompassing all or part of roughly 40 congressional districts that the Cook Political Report has said are toss-ups. These contests could determine if Democrats take control the U.S. House of Representatives, where the party needs to pick up about two dozen seats to flip the current Republican majority. Of the 12 districts in counties with less protected email systems, Republicans are seeking re-election in 10. The other two are open seats where incumbents are stepping down.

• How to tell if an Android App is safe to install | Avast

• Google rolled out a battery saving feature by mistake for some Android Pie users

• Amlogic Achieves Android 9 Pie Ready With Its Set-Top Box Platform

• New Android Botnet Pops Up on Malware-as-a-Service Market

• Gboard for Android Finally Gets 'Minis' Selfie Stickers

• Google adds fingerprint support to Chrome on Android and Mac in latest beta

• This week's best Android games to play while avoiding your colleagues at lunch

Quick. Click on your Linux desktop menu and scan through the list of installed software. How much of that software is strictly open source? To make matters a bit more complicated, have you installed closed source media codecs (to play the likes of MP3 files perhaps)? Is everything fully open, or do you have a mixture of open and closed source tools?

If you’re a purist, you probably strive to only use open source tools on your desktop. But how do you know, for certain, that your distribution only includes open source software? Fortunately, a few distributions go out of their way to only include applications that are 100% open. One such distro is Freespire.

Does that name sound familiar? It should, as it is closely related to Linspire. Now we’re talking familiarity. Remember back in the early 2000s, when Walmart sold Linux desktop computers? Those computers were powered by the Linspire operating system. Linspire went above and beyond to create an experience that would be similar to that of Windows—even including the tools to install Windows apps on Linux. That experiment failed, mostly because consumers thought they were getting a Windows desktop machine for a dirt cheap price. After that debacle, Linspire went away for a while. It’s now back, thanks to PC/OpenSystems LLC. Their goal isn’t to recreate the past but to offer two different flavors of Linux...

• Containers key for Hortonworks alliance on big data hybrid

  Hortonworks is joining with Red Hat and IBM to work together on a hybrid big data architecture format that will run using containers both on the cloud and on premises.

• Hortonworks, IBM and Red Hat Announce Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative

• Hortonworks, IBM and Red Hat Team Up for Hybrid Containerized Big Data

• New Initiative Reimagines Data Architectures with Hybrid Model

• IBM expands data science’s reach

  As companies accumulate data, they need new ways to store it, manage it, innovate off it, and scale services based on it. Earlier this year, IBM announced the IBM Cloud Private (ICP) for Data solution, and today the company is expanding it to provide new ways to uncover hidden insights from data.

  The company has revealed it is collaborating with Red Hat to certify the AI-focused data platform to run on Red Hat’s open source container application platform OpenShift.

• Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Dips 3.32% for September 13