Everyone already knows that Pi 4 is obviously more powerful than Pi 3 but we would like to see how fast it is. Therefore we are expecting that Kali Linux can boot faster on Pi 4. Young Youtube channel CyberJunkie would like to challenge both single-board computers with Kali Linux booting. Before seeing results it would be great to see a comparison between Pi 3 and Pi 4.

Which one is the quickest? As we can see on the image Pi 4 executed the booting faster than its prequel. Around extra 3 seconds needed for Pi 3 to catch up with the opponent. Again the sequel proves its superiority.

• Xiaomi Mi 9T reportedly confirmed to get Android 10 in October

• How to block spam notifications and rogue ads on Android

• How Google's Android Maintains A Stable Linux Kernel ABI

• Android alert - Popular Google Play Store apps have a terrifying secret, are you affected?

• The 5 best and worst things about the Samsung Galaxy Note10

• The best browsers for Android

• AirDroid for Android: What it is, what it is for and how it is used

• This week in Android: More Pixel 4 leaks and underwhelming new iPhones

• All the Android games and phones that support high frame rates (90/120FPS)

Last month I did some fresh benchmarks of Intel's new open-source OpenGL Linux driver with Mesa 19.2 and those results were looking good as tested with a Core i9 9900K. Since then, more Intel Gallium3D driver improvements have landed for what will become Mesa 19.3 next quarter. In taking another look at their former/current and new OpenGL drivers, here are fresh benchmarks of the latest code using a Core i7 8700K desktop as well as a Core i7 8550U Dell XPS laptop.

This month so far Intel's new Gallium3D OpenGL driver has seen OpenGL 4.6 support added, an optimization to help the Java OpenGL performance (one of the deficiencies noted by our earlier rounds of benchmarks), and other performance work.

For some weekend benchmarking fun I tested the Core i7 8700K desktop and Dell XPS 13 laptop with Core i7 8550U graphics while comparing the OpenGL driver options. The driver state for both the i965 and Iris Gallium3D drivers were of Mesa 19.3-devel Git as of this week and also running with the near-final Linux 5.3 kernel.

See, I told you I’d continue to blog about the cool things that have happened in KDE-land.

• How to install & work with Xournal on Ubuntu to annotate and sign PDFs

• How to use Wireshark Basics

• Installing NextCloud on Debian 10

• How to Install Kodi on Debian 10

• How to Run Alias as Sudo in Linux

• How to Configure SFTP Server with Chroot in Debian 10

• Cron Jobs and Crontab on Linux Explained

• MariaDB opens US headquarters in California

  MariaDB Corporation, the database company born as a result of forking the well-known open-source MySQL database...

• ScyllaDB takes on Amazon with new DynamoDB migration tool

  There are a lot of open-source databases out there, and ScyllaDB, a NoSQL variety, is looking to differentiate itself by attracting none other than Amazon users. Today, it announced a DynamoDB migration tool to help Amazon customers move to its product.

• ScyllaDB Announces Alternator, an Open Source Amazon DynamoDB-Compatible API

  ScyllaDB today announced the Alternator project, open-source software that will enable application- and API-level compatibility between Scylla and Amazon’s NoSQL cloud database, Amazon DynamoDB. Scylla’s DynamoDB-compatible API will be available for use with Scylla Open Source, supporting the majority of DynamoDB use cases and features.

• ScyllaDB Secures $25 Million to Open Source Amazon DynamoDB-compatible API

  Fast-growing NoSQL database company raises funds to extend operations and bring new deployment flexibility to users of Amazon DynamoDB.

• ScyllaDB Announces Alternator, an Open Source Amazon DynamoDB-Compatible API

  ScyllaDB today announced the Alternator project, open-source software that will enable application- and API-level compatibility between Scylla and Amazon’s NoSQL cloud database, Amazon DynamoDB. Scylla’s DynamoDB-compatible API will be available for use with Scylla Open Source, supporting the majority of DynamoDB use cases and features.

• ScyllaDB powers up Alternator: an open Amazon DynamoDB API

  Companies normally keep things pretty quiet in the run up to their annual user conferences, so they can pepper the press with a bag of announcements designed to show how much market momentum and traction that have going.

  Not so with ScyllaDB, the company has been dropping updates in advance of its Scylla Summit event in what is perhaps an unusually vocal kind of way.

  [...]

  Scylla itself is a real-time big data database that is fully compatible with Apache Cassandra and is known for its ‘shared-nothing’ approach (a distributed-computing architecture in which each update request is satisfied by a single node –processor/memory/storage unit to increase throughput and storage capacity.

• Percona Announces Full Conference Schedule for Percona Live Open Source Database Conference Europe 2019

  The Percona Live Open Source Database Conference Europe 2019 is the premier open source database event. Percona Live conferences provide the open source database community with an opportunity to discover and discuss the latest open source trends, technologies and innovations. The conference includes the best and brightest innovators and influencers in the open source database industry.

• Thwarting Digital Ad Fraud at Scale: An Open Source Experiment with Anomaly Detection

  Our experiment assembles Kafka, Cassandra, and our anomaly detection application in a Lambda architecture, in which Kafka and our streaming data pipeline are the speed layer, and Cassandra acts as the batch and serving layer. In this configuration, Kafka makes it possible to ingest streaming digital ad data in a fast and scalable manner, while taking a “store and forward” approach so that Kafka can serve as a buffer to protect the Cassandra database from being overwhelmed by major data surges. Cassandra’s strength is in storing high-velocity streams of ad metric data in its linearly scalable, write-optimized database. In order to handle automation for provisioning, deploying, and scaling the application, the anomaly detection experiment relies on Kubernetes on AWS EKS.

• Openwashing Report on Open Networking Foundation (ONF): When Open Source Means Collaboration Among Giant Spying Companies
• ‘Open Source’ You Cannot Run Without Renting or ‘Licensing’ Windows From Microsoft
• All About Control: Microsoft is Not Open Source But an Open Source Censor/Spy and GitHub/LinkedIn/Skype Are Its Proprietary Censorship/Surveillance Tools
• The Sad State of GNU/Linux News Sites
• EPO President Along With Bristows, Managing IP and Other Team UPC Boosters Are Lobbying for Software Patents in Clear and Direct Violation of the EPC
• Links 15/9/2019: Radeon ROCm 2.7.2, KDE Frameworks 5.62.0, PineTime and Bison 3.4.2

• Workarea Commerce Goes Open-source

  The enterprise commerce platform – Workarea is releasing its software to the open-source community. In case you don’t already know, Workarea was built to unify commerce, content management, merchant insights, and search. It was developed upon open-source technologies since its inception like Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Ruby on Rails. Workarea aims to provide unparalleled services in terms of scalability and flexibility in modern cloud environments. Its platform source code and demo instructions are available on GitHub here.

• Wyoming CV Pilot develops open-source RSU monitoring system

  The team working on the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment Program in Wyoming have developed open-source applications for the operation and maintenance of Roadside Units (RSUs) that can be viewed by all stakeholders.

  The Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) Connected Vehicle Pilot implementation includes the deployment of 75 RSUs along 400 miles (644km) of I-80. With long drive times and tough winters in the state, WYDOT needed an efficient way to monitor the performance of and manage and update these units to maintain peak performance. With no suitable product readily available, the WYDOT Connected Vehicle team developed an open-source application that allows authorized transportation management center (TMC) operators to monitor and manage each RSU at the roadside. The WYDOT team found that the application can also be used as a public-facing tool that shows a high-level status report of the pilot’s equipment.

  [...]

  For other state or local agencies and departments of transportation (DOTs) wishing to deploy a similar capability to monitor and manage RSUs, the application code has been made available on the USDOT’s Open Source Application Development Portal (OSADP). The code is downloadable and can be used and customized by other agencies free of charge. WYDOT developed this capability using USDOT funds under the CV Pilot program as open-source software and associated documentation. The application represents one of six that the program will be providing during its three phases.

• You Too Can Make These Fun Games (No Experience Necessary)

  Making a videogame remained a bucket list item until I stumbled on an incredibly simple open source web app called Bitsy. I started playing around with it, just to see how it worked. Before I knew it, I had something playable. I made my game in a couple of hours.

• From maverick to mainstream: why open source software is now indispensable for modern business

  Free and open source software has a long and intriguing history. Some of its roots go all the way back to the 1980s when Richard Stallman first launched the GNU project.

• Analyst Watch: Is open source the great equalizer?

  If you had told me 25 years ago that open source would be the predominant force in software development, I would’ve laughed.

  Back then, at my industrial software gig, we were encouraged to patent as much IP as possible, even processes that seemed like common-sense business practices, or generally useful capabilities for any software developer.

  If you didn’t, your nearest competitor would surely come out with their own patent claims, or inevitable patent trolls would show up demanding fees for any uncovered bit of code.

  We did have this one developer who was constantly talking about fiddling with his Linux kernel at home, on his personal time. Interesting hobby.

• Scientists Create World’s First Open Source Tool for 3D Analysis of Advanced Biomaterials

  Materials scientists and programmers from the Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia and Germany's Karlsuhe Institute of Technology have created the world’s first open source software for the 2D and 3D visualization and analysis of biomaterials used for research into tissue regeneration.

  [...]

  Scientists have already tested the software on a variety of X-ray tomography data.

  “The results have shown that the software we’ve created can help other scientists conducting similar studies in the analysis of the fibrous structure of any polymer scaffolds, including hybrid ones,” Surmenev emphasised.

• Making Collaborative Data Projects Easier: Our New Tool, Collaborate, Is Here

  On Wednesday, we’re launching a beta test of a new software tool. It’s called Collaborate, and it makes it possible for multiple newsrooms to work together on data projects.

  Collaborations are a major part of ProPublica’s approach to journalism, and in the past few years we’ve run several large-scale collaborative projects, including Electionland and Documenting Hate. Along the way, we’ve created software to manage and share the large pools of data used by our hundreds of newsrooms partners. As part of a Google News Initiative grant this year, we’ve beefed up that software and made it open source so that anybody can use it.

• Should open-source software be the gold standard for nonprofits?

  Prior to its relaunch, nonprofit organization Cadasta had become so focused on the technology side of its work that it distracted from the needs of partners in the field.

  “When you’re building out a new platform, it really is all consuming,” said Cadasta CEO Amy Coughenour, reflecting on some of the decisions that were made prior to her joining the team in 2018.

• Artificial intelligence: an open source future

  At the same time, we’re seeing an increasing number of technology companies invest in AI development. However, what’s really interesting is that these companies - including the likes of Microsoft, Salesforce and Uber - are open sourcing their AI research. This move is already enabling developers worldwide to create and improve AI & Machine Learning (ML) algorithms faster. As such, open source software has become a fundamental part of enabling fast, reliable, and also secure development in the AI space. So, why all the hype around open source AI? Why are businesses of all sizes, from industry behemoths to startups, embracing open source? And where does the future lie for AI and ML as a result?

• How open source is accelerating innovation in AI

  By eradicating barriers like high licensing fees and talent scarcity, open source is accelerating the pace of AI innovation, writes Carmine Rimi

  No other technology has captured the world’s imagination quite like AI, and there is perhaps no other that has been so disruptive. AI has already transformed the lives of people and businesses and will continue to do so in endless ways as more startups uncover its potential. According to a recent study, venture capital funding for AI startups in the UK increased by more than 200 percent last year, while a Stanford University study observed a 14-times increase in the number of AI startups worldwide in the last two years.

• Adam Jacob Advocates for Building Healthy OSS Communities in “The War for the Soul of Open Source”

  Chef co-founder and former CTO Adam Jacob gave a short presentation at O’Reilly Open Source Software Conference (OSCON) 2019 titled “The War for the Soul of Open Source.” In his search for meaning in open source software today, Jacob confronts the notion of open source business models.

  “We often talk about open source business models,” he said. “There isn’t an open source business model. That’s not a thing and the reason is open source is a channel. Open source is a way that you, in a business sense, get the software out to the people, the people use the software, and then they become a channel, which [companies] eventually try to turn into money.”

  [...]

  In December 2018, Jacob launched the Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities (SFOSC) project to advocate for these ideas. Instead of focusing on protecting revenue models of OSS companies, the project’s contributors work together to collaborate on writing core principles, social contracts, and business models as guidelines for healthy OSS communities.

• New Open Source Startups Emerge After Acquisition, IPO Flurry

  After a flurry of mega-acquisitions and initial public offerings of open source companies, a new batch of entrepreneurs are trying their hands at startups based on free software projects.

• TC9 selected by NIST to develop Open Source Software for Transactive Energy Markets

  TC9, Inc. was selected by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop open source software for Transactive Energy Bilateral Markets based on the NIST Common Transactive Services.

  Under the contract, TC9 will develop open source software (OSS) for agents for a transactive energy market. The software will be used to model the use of transactive energy to manage power distribution within a neighborhood. Transactive Energy is a means to balance volatile supply and consumption in real time. Experts anticipate the use of Transactive Energy to support wide deployment of distributed energy resources (DER) across the power grid.

• Open Source Software Allows Auterion to Move Drone Workflows into the Cloud

  “Until today, customizing operations in the MAVLink protocol required a deep understanding of complex subjects such as embedded systems, drone dynamics, and the C++ programming language,” said Kevin Sartori, co-founder of Auterion. “With MAVSDK, any qualified mobile developer can write high-level code for complex operations, meaning more developers will be able to build custom applications and contribute to the community.”

• ApacheCon 2019 Keynote: James Gosling's Journey to Open Source

  At the recent ApacheCon North America 2019 in Las Vegas, James Gosling delivered a keynote talk on his personal journey to open-source. Gosling's main takeaways were: open source allows programmers to learn by reading source code, developers must pay attention to intellectual property rights to prevent abuse, and projects can take on a life of their own.

• 20 Years of the Apache Software Foundation: ApacheCon 2019 Opening Keynote

  At the recent ApacheCon North America 2019 in Las Vegas, the opening keynote session celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), with key themes being: the history of the ASF, a strong commitment to community and collaboration, and efforts to increase contributions from the public. The session also featured a talk by astrophysicist David Brin on the potential dangers of AI.

• Delta X open source delta robot kit hits Kickstarter from €179

  After previously being unveiled earlier this month the Delta X open source delta robot kit has now launched via Kickstarter offering open source hardware, firmware and software for the community. Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the Arduino powered 3D printed open source robot kit which is now available from €179.

  The Delta X offers both a complete desktop robot and a modular kit and can be combined with a range of end effectors to complete a wide variety of different applications, offering increased speed and flexibility when compared to other robotic arm kits on the market.

• AXIS open source 3D printer from $125

  An affordable 3D printer has launched via Kickstarter this week in the form of the AXIS 3D Printer which is priced from just £99, $125 or €115. Complete with dual 3D printing head the 3D printer is based on open source technology with “tried and tested industry standard components designed to work right, first time” say it’s creators.

• Freemelt raises $1.6 million in investment round for open-source EBM 3D printer

• 3D printing stethoscopes, tourniquets and crucial dialysis-machine parts in Gaza

  Tarek Loubani is a Palestinian-Canadian doctor who works with the Glia Project, a group that creates open-source designs for 3D-printable medical hardware. Their goal is to let local populations manufacture their own medical wares at prices considerably lower than in the marketplace, and in situations where -- because of distance or war -- it may not even be possible to ship in equipment at any price. Some of their early work has been in blockaded Gaza, for example.

  So far, Glia has designed a stethoscope that can be made for about $2.83, and a tourniquet that costs about $7 to make.

• GameShell Kit – Open Source Portable Game Console

  This portable console has a GNU/LINUX embedded operating system that lets you play all kinds of retro games from Atari, GB, GBA, NES, MAME, MD, PS1, and more. You can even create your own games if you want. Get one for yourself or build it together with your kids. Check out more details by clicking the link above.

• Play classic games on an open-source console with GameShell: $143 (Orig. $199)

• Shimmer announces open source initiative for wearable sensor algorithms

• Shimmer announces launch of healthcare industry open source initiative for wearable sensor algorithms

  Shimmer Research, a global leader in wearable technology for research applications, today announced the launch of a healthcare industry open source initiative for wearable sensor algorithms. The initiative is being co-founded by Shimmer, Dr. Vincent van Hees, author of the GGIR software and algorithms for movement sensor calibration, sensor wear detection, and signal aggregation, and Nextbridge Health, which is developing the Nextbridge Exchange, an online marketplace and discovery platform for the clinical research community.

• 'One big happy family': How Pivotal will fit back into VMware

  In August, VMware announced that it had reached a definitive agreement to acquire its fellow Dell EMC family member Pivotal, the platform-as-a-service vendor it helped spin out back in 2012.

  The deal would value Pivotal – which helps clients adopt modern and streamlined software development practices – at $2.7 billion. Pivotal is best known for its commercial version of the open source platform-as-a-service Cloud Foundry, which essentially enables Java, Ruby, Node.js, .NET Core, Python, PHP, and Go developers to make their existing applications cloud-native.

• CipherTrace Unveils Trustworthy Open Source Solution for FATF Travel Rule Compliance

• CipherTrace Launches Open Source Solution For FATF Travel Rule Compliance

• CipherTrace unveils open source solution for crypto Travel Rule compliance 'TRISA'

• Explainer: How Hong Kong’s ‘self-learning, open source’ protest movement decides what to do next

• Exclusive Research from Sumo Logic Reveals Multi-Cloud on the Rise and Open Source Technologies like Kubernetes is Disrupting the Modern Application Stack

• Sumo Logic eyes open source disruption (in 4 of 6 stack levels)

• Multicloud is the fastest growing modern infrastructure

• HeleCloud acquires open source specialist OlinData

• Kong open sources universal service mesh Kuma

• Kong announces Kuma, an open-source project to overcome the limitations of first-generation service mesh technologies

• Open-Source Kuma Tackles Service Mesh Limits

• Kong Open Sources Kuma: The Universal Service Mesh

• Mirantis Aligns With Facebook to Advance CNFs

• Glanbia Ireland And Teagasc Unveil Open Source Future Farm Programme

• New Open Source Future Farm Programme unveiled

• EdX Appoints New Managers; JP Beaudry Will Lead the Open Source Operations

• Exploring the Motivations for the Inaugural Open Core Summit: Q&A with Founder Joseph Jacks

• Open Robotica launches, aims to ease robotics software development

• Open Source Leader SalesAgility Launches New Analytics Tool Using an Open Source BI Platform

• Color Open-Sources Playbook for Population Genomics Programs

  By open-sourcing this playbook, Color is supporting global efforts to make genetics and precision health programs accessible, convenient, and cost effective, while offering responsible clinical grade return of results to all participants.

  Despite rapidly decreasing sequencing costs and growing interest in population-scale genomics, many programs have struggled to launch and scale as expected for two primary reasons.

  First, many programs have been rebuilding critical components of the architecture from the ground up, including lab infrastructure, bioinformatics, clinical interpretation & reporting, as well as secure and flexible data management systems. This process often dramatically extends timelines and forces programs to incur unnecessary costs and implementation risks.

• GAO: DoD Not Fully Implementing Open-Source Mandates

  The Department of Defense has not fully implemented mandates from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to increase its use of open-source software and release code, according to a September 10 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

  The report notes that the 2018 NDAA mandated DoD establish a pilot program on open source and a report on the program’s implementation. It also says that OMB’s M-16-21 memorandum requires all agencies to release at least 20 percent of custom-developed code as open-source, with a metric for calculating program performance.

  However, DoD has released less than 10 percent of its custom code, and had not developed a measure to calculate the performance of the pilot program. In comments to GAO, the DoD CIO’s office said there has been difficulty inventorying all of its custom source code across the department, and disagreement on how to assess the success for a performance measure. While the department worked to partially implement OMB’s policy, the department had not yet issued a policy.

• Pentagon moves slowly on open-source software mandate amid security concerns

  The Defense Department has been slow to meet a government-wide mandate to release more open-source software code, as DOD officials have concerns about cybersecurity risks and are struggling to implement such a program across the department, according to a new audit.

• DOD struggles to implement open source software pilots

  The Department of Defense’s congressionally mandated efforts to create an open source software program aren’t going so well.

  DOD must release at least 20 percent of its custom software as open source through a pilot required by a 2016 Office of Management and Budget directive and the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Open source software, OMB says, can encourage collaboration, “reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information.”

• DOD drags feet with open-source software program due to security, implementation concerns

  The Defense Department has been slow to meet a government-wide mandate to release more open-source software code, as DOD officials have concerns about cybersecurity risks and are struggling to implement such a program across the department, according to a new audit. Since 2016, DOD has been required by law to implement an open-source software pilot program in accordance with policy established by the Office of Management and Budget.

• DOD pushes back on open source

• DOD pushes back on open source

• CONNECT Interoperability Project Shifting to the Private Sector

  The CONNECT project, an open source project that aims to increase interoperability among organizations, is transitioning from federal stewardship to the private sector and will soon be available to everyone.

  Developed ten years ago by a group of federal agencies in the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), CONNECT was a response to ONC’s original approach to a health information network. The agencies decided to build a joint health interoperability solution instead of having each agency develop its own custom solution, and they chose to make the project open source.

• You need to delete these 24 malware-infested Android apps right now

• 5 Android apps you shouldn't miss this week! - Android Apps Weekly

• [Update: Back in stable] Spotify will officially bring back its Android widget

• Samsung Galaxy Note10 Review: Switching From Apple iOS To Android

• iOS 13 vs. Android 10: Where Apple and Google are now

• Samsung Galaxy S10+ vs. iPhone 11 Pro: Which should you buy?

• Chromecast support now available for Apple Music beta on Android

• Color OS vs MIUI: Which Android Skin Is Better for You

• How to fix Chrome OS 76 bug that blocks Android apps from internet access

• Android 9 Pie lands on Verizon LG V30

• Verizon's LG V30 starts receiving Android Pie update

• Samsung Galaxy S8 Active gets Android 9 Pie on T-Mobile

• How Nokia smartphones keep getting better with pure Android

• Lexus brings Android Auto to its cars, following Toyota's footsteps

• Twitter's darker Dark mode for Android is delayed

• Huawei Nova 5T hands-on: Android flagship for less (Yes, Android)

• 1500 days of OxygenOS: Talking to OnePlus about custom ROMs, Open Ears, Android 10, and more

Since most VR Headsets support Windows platforms today, there are very few options for Linux users. Despite its support, many people have faced troubles setting up and running their Headsets on Linux. However, not anymore. The VR gaming experience is now getting better!

The all-new Xrdesktop is an open-source development that lets you work with various desktop environments like GNOME and KDE. Since this project is under progress right now, we can hope for more features like Steam, Valve and other platforms for gaming and Virtual Reality experience.

In addition, the Xrdesktop will also offer integration with Windows as well. Once completed, it will be a great step towards traditional Linux desktop environments. The program is available for installation in both packages for Ubuntu Linux and Arch Linux.

I waited a long time for Mageia 7 and for OpenMandriva Lx 4. When both distros arrived, I was very happy.

But new distros bring changes, and sometimes it is not easy to adapt. Mageia 7 has been rock-solid: it is doing a great job in my laptop and both in my daughter's desktop and in mine. There is one thing, though. I have been avoiding a strange mesa update that wants to remove Steam.

OpenMandriva is also fantastic, but this new release provided options like rock, release, and rolling. When I first installed the distro, I chose rock because I was shying away from the rolling flavor. Eventually, I had to move to rolling because that was the only way in which I could manage to install Steam in both my laptop and desktop machines.

• Clear Linux Is Being Used Within Some Automobiles

  Intel's speedy Clear Linux distribution could be running under the hood of your car.

  While we're fascinated by the performance of Intel's open-source Clear Linux distribution that it offers meaningful performance advantages over other distributions while still focused on security and offering a diverse package set, we often see it asked... who uses Clear Linux? Some argue that Clear Linux is just a toy or technology demo, but it's actually more.

• Radeon ROCm 2.7.2 Released

  Radeon ROCm 2.7.2 is now available as the newest update to AMD's open-source GPU compute stack for Linux systems.

  ROCm 2.7.2 is a small release that just fixes the upgrade path when moving from older ROCm releases, v2.7.2 should now be running correctly. This release comes after the recent ROCm 2.7.1 point release that had corrected some components from properly loading the ROC tracer library.

• How To Install Webmin on Debian 10 Linux

• GNOME Shell + Mutter Patches Pending For Wayland Fullscreen Compositing Bypass

  There's an exciting patch set to GNOME Shell and Mutter now pending for finally wiring up the full-screen unredirected display / full-screen bypass compositing for helping the performance of full-screen games in particular on Wayland.

  GNOME on X11 has long supported the full-screen compositing bypass so the window manager / compositor gets out of the way when running full-screen games/applications. That support under Wayland hasn't been in place and thus there is a performance hit for full-screen Wayland-native software. But now thanks to Red Hat's Jonas Ådahl, that infrastructure now appears to be ready.

• Xabber Server v.0.9 alpha is released

  After almost three years of research, planning and development we're proud to present the first public version of Xabber Server. Server is licensed under GNU AGPL v3 license, source code is available on GitHub. It is a fork of superb open source source XMPP server ejabberd by ProcessOne, with many custom protocol improvements an an all-new management panel.

• September Edition of Plasma5 for Slackware

  After a summer hiatus during which I only released new packages for KDE Frameworks because they addressed a serious security hole, I am now back in business and just released KDE-5_19.09 for Slackware-current.

  The packages for KDE-5_19.09 are available for download from my ‘ktown‘ repository. As always, these packages are meant to be installed on a full installation of Slackware-current which has had its KDE4 removed first. These packages will not work on Slackware 14.2. On my laptop with slackware64-current, this new release of Plasma5 runs smooth.

• Pen-testing duo cuffed for breaking into courthouse that hired them

  Later, the County official discovered that the two men were in fact, hired by the state court administration to try to "access" court records through "various means" to find out potential security vulnerabilities of the electronic court records.

  The state court administration acknowledged that the two men had been hired, but said they were not supposed to physically break into the courthouse.

• Satellite, GNU Radio and SDR talks released

  Mark M5BOP reports the complete set of amateur radio technical talks from this year's Martlesham Microwave Round Table is now available to watch on YouTube

  Videos of these MMRT 2019 talks are available:
  • Practical GNUradio - Heather Lomond M0HMO

• Destination Linux 138 - GNOME 3.34, Firefox 69, Librem 5, Chromebooks, Signal Messenger & more

  On DL 138 Gnome 3.34 Drops This Week, Super Grub2 Disk 2.04s1 Released, Firefox 69 Released, Purism Librem 5 Shipping, Chromebooks Targeting The Enterprise, Phantom 3D Coming To Linux

• Agile project management: 10 reasons to use it

  On the road to change, you’ll encounter fear and loathing. People will undoubtedly cling to old ways of working. Successfully making it to the other side will require commitment, passionate change agents, and unwavering leadership. You might wonder – is it really worth it?

  Leaders who have made the switch to agile project management say that it has delivered benefits both large and small to their organizations, from the rituals that bring their team together – like daily stand-ups – to the results that make their business stronger – like better end products and happier customers.

• Improve memset

  
  since the merge window is closing in and y'all are on a conference, I
  thought I should take another stab at it. It being something which Ingo,
  Linus and Peter have suggested in the past at least once.
  

• An Improved Linux MEMSET Is Being Tackled For Possibly Better Performance

  Borislav Petkov has taken to improve the Linux kernel's memset function with it being an area previously criticzed by Linus Torvalds and other prominent developers.

  Petkov this week published his initial patch for better optimizing the memset function that is used for filling memory with a constant byte.

• Kernel Address Space Isolation Still Baking To Limit Data Leaks From Foreshadow & Co

  In addition to the work being led by DigitalOcean on core scheduling to make Hyper Threading safer in light of security vulnerabilities, IBM and Oracle engineers continue working on Kernel Address Space Isolation to help prevent data leaks during attacks.

  Complementing the "Core Scheduling" work, Kernel Address Space Isolation was also talked about at this week's Linux Plumbers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The address space isolation work for the kernel was RFC'ed a few months ago as a feature to prevent leaking sensitive data during attacks like L1 Terminal Fault and MDS. The focus on this Kernel ASI is for pairing with hypervisors like KVM as well as being a generic address space isolation framework.

• The Linux Kernel Is Preparing To Enable 5-Level Paging By Default

  While Intel CPUs aren't shipping with 5-level paging support, they are expected to be soon and distribution kernels are preparing to enable the kernel's functionality for this feature to extend the addressable memory supported. With that, the mainline kernel is also looking at flipping on 5-level paging by default for its default kernel configuration.

  Intel's Linux developers have been working for several years on the 5-level paging support for increasing the virtual/physical address space for supporting large servers with vast amounts of RAM. The 5-level paging increases the virtual address space from 256 TiB to 128 PiB and the physical address space from 64 TiB to 4 PiB. Intel's 5-level paging works by extending the size of virtual addresses to 57 bits from 48 bits.

• Interview with the Cloud Foundry Foundation CTO

  In this interview, Chip Childers, the CTO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation talks about some hot topics.

• Research Shows Open Source Program Offices Improve Software Practices

  Using open source software is commonplace, with only a minority of companies preferring a proprietary-first software policy. Proponents of free and open source software (FOSS) have moved to the next phases of open source adoption, widening FOSS usage within the enterprise as well as gaining the “digital transformation” benefits associated with open source and cloud native best practices.

  Companies, as well as FOSS advocates, are determining the best ways to promote these business goals, while at the same time keeping alive the spirit and ethos of the non-commercial communities that have embodied the open source movement for years.

• Linux Foundation Survey Proves Open-Source Offices Work Better

New school year has started again and next version of Slax is here too this time it is 9.11.0. This release includes all bug fixes and security updates from Debian 9.11 (code name Jessie), and adds a boot parameter to disable console blanking (console blanking is disabled by default).

You can get the newest version at the project's home page, there are options to purchase Slax on DVD or USB device, as well as links for free download.

Surprisingly for me we skipped 9.10, I am not sure why

I also experimented with the newly released series of Debian 10 (code name Buster) and noticed several differences which need addressing, so Slax based on Debian 10 is in progress, but not ready yet. Considering my current workload and other circumstances, it will take some more time to get it ready, few weeks at least.

Also: Slax 9.11 Released While Re-Base To Debian 10 Is In Development

• How to install the VNote markdown editor on Linux

• How to Install Netbeans on Debian 10

• Wine 4.16 Released! How to Install it in Ubuntu 19.04

• How to send links to connected devices from Chrome

• Python Heapq (With Examples)

• KDE Frameworks 5.62.0

  KDE Frameworks are over 70 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks web page.

  This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

• KDE Frameworks 5.62 Released With KWayland Additions & Other Improvements

  KDE Frameworks 5.62 is out today as the latest monthly update to this collection of KDE libraries complementing the Qt5 tool-kit offerings.

• Back from Akademy 2019 in Milan

  The last week I was in Milan with my wife Aiswarya to attend Akademy 2019, the yearly event of the KDE community. Once again it was a great experience, with lots of interesting conferences and productive BoF sessions (“Birds of a Feather”, a common name for a project meeting during a conference).

  On Sunday, we presented our talk “GCompris in Kerala, part 2”. First, Aiswarya told some bits of Free-Software history in Kerala, gave examples of how GCompris is used there, and explained her work to localize the new version of GCompris in Malayalam (the language of this Indian state). Then I made a quick report of what happened in GCompris the last 2 years, and talked about the things to come for our next release.

• Akademy was a blast!

  I attended my first ever Akademy! The event was held at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy this year. And the experience was splendid. During the 2 day conference, I had the opportunity to talk at the Student Showcase, where all of the SoC students presented their work to the community. There were about 8 students, and everyone gave a good briefing on their project.

  My project this summer was with Kdenlive, the open source non linear professional video editor. I proposed to revamp one of the frequently used tools in the editor, called the Titler tool, which is used to create title clips. Title clips are video clips that contain text and/or images that are composited or appended to your video (eg: subtitles). The problem with the titler tool as it is, is that it uses QGraphicsView to describe a title clip and QGraphicsView was deprecated since the release of Qt5. This obviously leads to problems - upstream bugs crawling affecting the functionality of the tool and an overall degradation in the ease of maintenance of the codebase. Moreover, adding new features to the existing code base was no easy task and therefore, a complete revamp was something in sights of the developer community in Kdenlive for a long time now. I proposed to rework on the backend for the period of GSoC replacing the use of XML with QML and use a new rendering backend with QQuickRenderControl, along with a new MLT module to handle the QML frames. I was able to cover most of the proposed work, I seek to continue working on it and finish evolving the titler tool.

• Kind Words, a pretty sweet experience about sending and receiving anonymous letters

  Developer Popcannibal (Make Sail, Girls Like Robots) just released an updated version of the Humble Original Kind Words with Linux support. Originally released in July's Humble Monthly as an original game, Popcannibal did some tweaks and released it this week on Steam.

• Dead Rising 4 | Linux Gaming | Ubuntu 18.04 | Steam Play

  Dead Rising 4 running through Steam play.

• Steam Play Proton 4.11-4 has been released into the wild

  Get ready for another weekend full of testing games, as Valve and CodeWeavers have put out a fresh official build of Steam Play Proton for your pleasure.

• Village building sim with god powers Rise to Ruins to leave Early Access next month

  Developer Raymond Doerr has announced their village building sim Rise to Ruins will leave Early Access on October 14th.

  A game regular GamingOnLinux readers will most likely be familiar with, since I've written about it quite a few times when checking up on development. The progress on it and how it's grown has been astonishing. Coming from such a basic village builder into a highly engrossing mix of village building, god sim and tower defense all in one it's great. The current trailer is a little old but it gives you a reasonable idea:

• Weekend Deals: grab DiRT Rally completely free to keep and more not to miss

  Just a quick one really on some excellent deals going on right now, including two games you can grab completely free to keep.

  On Steam you can currently pick up DiRT Rally with 100% off, so if you don't own it you can add it to your Steam Library and keep it forever. It's really challenging but also incredibly fun, give it a go! Additionally, the THE GREAT GEOMETRIC MULTIVERSE TOUR, an indie FPS is also 100% off on Steam. Both deals should end on Monday, 16th at 5PM UTC.

  Also a reminder about Deep Rock Galactic, it's fantastic in Steam Play and it's having a free weekend with a big sale.