• Ceph updates for 5.3-rc1

  Hi Linus,
  
  The following changes since commit 0ecfebd2b52404ae0c54a878c872bb93363ada36:
  
  Linux 5.2 (2019-07-07 15:41:56 -0700)
  
  are available in the Git repository at:
  
  https://github.com/ceph/ceph-client.git tags/ceph-for-5.3-rc1
  
  for you to fetch changes up to d31d07b97a5e76f41e00eb81dcca740e84aa7782:
  
  ceph: fix end offset in truncate_inode_pages_range call (2019-07-08 14:01:45 +0200)
  
  There is a trivial conflict caused by commit 9ffbe8ac05db
  ("locking/lockdep: Rename lockdep_assert_held_exclusive() ->
  lockdep_assert_held_write()"). I included the resolution in
  for-linus-merged.
  

• Ceph Sees "Lots Of Exciting Things" For Linux 5.3 Kernel

  Ceph for Linux 5.3 is bringing an addition to speed-up reads/discards/snap-diffs on sparse images, snapshot creation time is now exposed to support features like "restore previous versions", support for security xattrs (currently limited to SELinux), addressing a missing feature bit so the kernel client's Ceph features are now "luminous", better consistency with Ceph FUSE, and changing the time granularity from 1us to 1ns. There are also bug fixes and other work as part of the Ceph code for Linux 5.3. As maintainer Ilya Dryomov put it, "Lots of exciting things this time!"

• The NVMe Patches To Support Linux On Newer Apple Macs Are Under Review

  At the start of the month we reported on out-of-tree kernel work to support Linux on the newer Macs. Those patches were focused on supporting Apple's NVMe drive behavior by the Linux kernel driver. That work has been evolving nicely and is now under review on the kernel mailing list.

  Volleyed on Tuesday were a set of three patches to the Linux kernel's NVMe code for dealing with the Apple hardware of the past few years in order for Linux to deal with these drives.

  On Apple 2018 systems and newer, their I/O queue sizing/handling is odd and in other areas not properly following NVMe specifications. These patches take care of that while hopefully not regressing existing NVMe controller support.

• DragonFlyBSD Pulls In The Radeon Driver Code From Linux 4.4

  While the Linux 4.4 kernel is quite old (January 2016), DragonFlyBSD has now re-based its AMD Radeon kernel graphics driver against that release. It is at least a big improvement compared to its Radeon code having been derived previously from Linux 3.19.

  DragonFlyBSD developer François Tigeot continues doing a good job herding the open-source Linux graphics driver support to this BSD. With the code that landed on Monday, DragonFlyBSD's Radeon DRM is based upon the state found in the Linux 4.4.180 LTS tree.

• Destaging ION

  The Android system has shipped a couple of allocators for DMA buffers over the years; first came PMEM, then its replacement ION. The ION allocator has been in use since around 2012, but it remains stuck in the kernel's staging tree. The work to add ION to the mainline started in 2013; at that time, the allocator had multiple issues that made inclusion impossible. Recently, John Stultz posted a patch set introducing DMA-BUF heaps, an evolution of ION, that is designed to do exactly that — get the Android DMA-buffer allocator to the mainline Linux kernel.

  Applications interacting with devices often require a memory buffer that is shared with the device driver. Ideally, it would be memory mapped and physically contiguous, allowing direct DMA access and minimal overhead when accessing the data from both sides at the same time. ION's main goal is to support that use case; it implements a unified way of defining and sharing such memory buffers, while taking into account the constraints imposed by the devices and the platform.

• clone3(), fchmodat4(), and fsinfo()

  The kernel development community continues to propose new system calls at a high rate. Three ideas that are currently in circulation on the mailing lists are clone3(), fchmodat4(), and fsinfo(). In some cases, developers are just trying to make more flag bits available, but there is also some significant new functionality being discussed.
  clone3()

  The clone() system call creates a new process or thread; it is the actual machinery behind fork(). Unlike fork(), clone() accepts a flags argument to modify how it operates. Over time, quite a few flags have been added; most of these control what resources and namespaces are to be shared with the new child process. In fact, so many flags have been added that, when CLONE_PIDFD was merged for 5.2, the last available flag bit was taken. That puts an end to the extensibility of clone().

• Soft CPU affinity

  On NUMA systems with a lot of CPUs, it is common to assign parts of the workload to different subsets of the available processors. This partitioning can improve performance while reducing the ability of jobs to interfere with each other. The partitioning mechanisms available on current kernels might just do too good a job in some situations, though, leaving some CPUs idle while others are overutilized. The soft affinity patch set from Subhra Mazumdar is an attempt to improve performance by making that partitioning more porous.
  In current kernels, a process can be restricted to a specific set of CPUs with either the sched_setaffinity() system call or the cpuset mechanism. Either way, any process so restricted will only be able to run on the specified CPUs regardless of the state of the system as a whole. Even if the other CPUs in the system are idle, they will be unavailable to any process that has been restricted not to run on them. That is normally the behavior that is wanted; a system administrator who has partitioned a system in this way probably has some other use in mind for those CPUs.

  But what if the administrator would rather relax the partitioning in cases where the fenced-off CPUs are idle and going to waste? The only alternative currently is to not partition the system at all and let processes roam across all CPUs. One problem with that approach, beyond losing the isolation between jobs, is that NUMA locality can be lost, resulting in reduced performance even with more CPUs available. In theory the AutoNUMA balancing code in the kernel should address that problem by migrating processes and their memory to the same node, but Mazumdar notes that it doesn't seem to work properly when memory is spread out across the system. Its reaction time is also said to be too slow, and the cost of the page scanning required is high.

The current and future potential for Linux based systems is limitless. The system’s flexibility allows for the hardware that uses it to be endlessly updated. Functionality can, therefore, be maintained even as the technology around the devices change. This flexibility also means that the function of the hardware can be modified to suit an ever-changing workplace.

For example, because the INSYS icom OS has been specifically designed for use in routers, this has allowed it to be optimised to be lightweight and hardened to increase its security.

Multipurpose OS have large libraries of applications for a diverse range of purposes. Great for designing new uses, but these libraries can also be exploited by actors with malicious intent. Stripping down these libraries to just what is necessary through a hardening process can drastically improve security by reducing the attackable surfaces.

Overall, Windows may have won the desktop OS battle with only a minority of them using Linux OS. However, desktops are only a minute part of the computing world. Servers, mobile systems and embedded technology that make up the majority are predominately running Linux. Linux has gained this position by being more adaptable, lightweight and portable than its competitors.

• The third Operating-System-Directed Power-Management summit

  he third edition of the Operating-System-Directed Power-Management (OSPM) summit was held May 20-22 at the ReTiS Lab of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. The summit is organized to collaborate on ways to reduce the energy consumption of Linux systems, while still meeting performance and other goals. It is attended by scheduler, power-management, and other kernel developers, as well as academics, industry representatives, and others interested in the topics.

• The future of SCHED_DEADLINE and SCHED_RT for capacity-constrained and asymmetric-capacity systems

  The kernel's deadline scheduling class (SCHED_DEADLINE) enables realtime scheduling where every task is guaranteed to meet its deadlines. Unfortunately SCHED_DEADLINE's current view on CPU capacity is far too simple. It doesn't take dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), simultaneous multithreading (SMT), asymmetric CPU capacity, or any kind of performance capping (e.g. due to thermal constraints) into consideration.

  In particular, if we consider running deadline tasks in a system with performance capping, the question is "what level of guarantee should SCHED_DEADLINE provide?". An interesting discussion about the pro and cons of different approaches (weak, hard, or mixed guarantees) developed during this presentation. There were many different views but the discussion didn't really conclude and will have to be continued at the Linux Plumbers Conference later this year.

  The topic of guaranteed performance will become more important for mobile systems in the future as performance capping is likely to become more common. Defining hard guarantees is almost impossible on real systems since silicon behavior very much depends on environmental conditions. The main pushback on the existing scheme is that the guaranteed bandwidth budget might be too conservative. Hence SCHED_DEADLINE might not allow enough bandwidth to be reserved for use cases with higher bandwidth requirements that can tolerate bandwidth reservations not being honored.

• Scheduler behavioral testing

  Validating scheduler behavior is a tricky affair, as multiple subsystems both compete and cooperate with each other to produce the task placement we observe. Valentin Schneider from Arm described the approach taken by his team (the folks behind energy-aware scheduling — EAS) to tackle this problem.

• CFS wakeup path and Arm big.LITTLE/DynamIQ

  "One task per CPU" workloads, as emulated by multi-core Geekbench, can suffer on traditional two-cluster big.LITTLE systems due to the fact that tasks finish earlier on the big CPUs. Arm has introduced a more flexible DynamIQ architecture that can combine big and LITTLE CPUs into a single cluster; in this case, early products apply what's known as phantom scheduler domains (PDs). The concept of PDs is needed for DynamIQ so that the task scheduler can use the existing big.LITTLE extensions in the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) scheduler class.

  Multi-core Geekbench consists of several tests during which N CFS tasks perform an equal amount of work. The synchronization mechanism pthread_barrier_wait() (i.e. a futex) is used to wait for all tasks to finish their work in test T before starting the tasks again for test T+1.

  The problem for Geekbench on big.LITTLE is related to the grouping of big and LITTLE CPUs in separate scheduler (or CPU) groups of the so-called die-level scheduler domain. The two groups exists because the big CPUs share a last-level cache (LLC) and so do the LITTLE CPUs. This isn't true any more for DynamIQ, hence the use of the "phantom" notion here.

  The tasks of test T finish earlier on big CPUs and go to sleep at the barrier B. Load balancing then makes sure that the tasks on the LITTLE CPUs migrate to the big CPUs where they continue to run the rest of their work in T before they also go to sleep at B. At this moment, all the tasks in the wake queue have a big CPU as their previous CPU (p->prev_cpu). After the last task has entered pthread_barrier_wait() on a big CPU, all tasks on the wake queue are woken up.

• I-MECH: realtime virtualization for industrial automation

  The typical systems used in industrial automation (e.g. for axis control) consist of a "black box" executing a commercial realtime operating system (RTOS) plus a set of control design tools meant to be run on a different desktop machine. This approach, besides imposing expensive royalties on the system integrator, often does not offer the desired degree of flexibility for testing/implementing novel solutions (e.g., running both control code and design tools on the same platform).

• Virtual-machine scheduling and scheduling in virtual machines

  As is probably well known, a scheduler is the component of an operating system that decides which CPU the various tasks should run on and for how long they are allowed to do so. This happens when an OS runs on the bare hardware of a physical host and it is also the case when the OS runs inside a virtual machine. The only difference being that, in the latter case, the OS scheduler marshals tasks among virtual CPUs.

  And what are virtual CPUs? Well, in most platforms they are also a kind of special task and they want to run on some CPUs ... therefore we need a scheduler for that! This is usually called the "double-scheduling" property of systems employing virtualization because, well, there literally are two schedulers: one — let us call it the host scheduler, or the hypervisor scheduler — that schedules the virtual CPUs on the host physical CPUs; and another one — let us call it the guest scheduler — that schedules the guest OS's tasks on the guest's virtual CPUs.

  Now what are these two schedulers? That depends on the virtualization platform. They are always different, in the sense that it will never happen that, at runtime, a scheduler has to deal with scheduling virtual CPUs and also scheduling tasks that want to run on those same virtual CPUs (well, it can happen, but then you are not doing virtualization). They can be the same, in terms of code, or they can be completely different from that respect as well.

• Rock and a hard place: How hard it is to be a CPU idle-time governor

  In the opening session of OSPM 2019, Rafael Wysocki from Intel gave a talk about potential problems faced by the designers of CPU idle-time-management governors, which was inspired by his own experience from the timer-events oriented (TEO) governor work done last year.

  In the first place, he said, it should be noted that "CPU idleness" is defined at the level of logical CPUs, which may be CPU cores or simultaneous multithreading (SMT) threads, depending on the hardware configuration of the processor. In Linux, a logical CPU is idle when there are no runnable tasks in its queue, so it falls back to executing the idle task associated with it (there is one idle task for each logical CPU in the system, but they all share the same code, which is the idle loop). Therefore "CPU idleness" is an OS (not hardware) concept and if the idle loop is entered by a CPU, there is an opportunity to save some energy with a relatively small impact on performance (or even without any impact on performance at all) — if the hardware supports that.

  The idle loop runs on each idle CPU and it only takes this particular CPU into consideration. As a rule, two code modules are invoked in every iteration of it. The first one, referred to as the CPU idle-time-management governor, is responsible for deciding whether or not to stop the scheduler tick and what to tell the hardware to do; the second one, called the CPU idle-time-management driver, passes the governor's decisions down to the hardware, usually in an architecture- or platform-specific way. Then, presumably, the processor enters a special state in which the CPU in question stops fetching instructions (that is, it does literally nothing at all); that may allow the processor's power draw to be reduced and some energy to be saved as a result. If that happens, the processor needs to be woken up from that state by a hardware event after spending some time, referred to as the idle duration, in it. At that point, the governor is called again so it can save the idle-duration value for future use.

• An introduction to cloud-native CI/CD with Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines

  Red Hat OpenShift 4.1 offers a developer preview of OpenShift Pipelines, which enable the creation of cloud-native, Kubernetes-style continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines based on the Tekton project. In a recent article on the Red Hat OpenShift blog, I provided an introduction to Tekton and pipeline concepts and described the benefits and features of OpenShift Pipelines.
  OpenShift Pipelines builds upon the Tekton project to enable teams to build Kubernetes-style delivery pipelines that they can fully control and own the complete lifecycle of their microservices without having to rely on central teams to maintain and manage a CI server, plugins, and its configurations.

• IBM's New Open Source Kabanero Promises to Simplify Kubernetes for DevOps

  At OSCON, IBM unveiled a new open source platform that promises to make Kubernetes easier to manage for DevOps teams.

• MySQL for developers in Red Hat OpenShift

  As a software developer, it’s often necessary to access a relational database—or any type of database, for that matter. If you’ve been held back by that situation where you need to have someone in operations provision a database for you, then this article will set you free. I’ll show you how to spin up (and wipe out) a MySQL database in seconds using Red Hat OpenShift.

  Truth be told, there are several databases that can be hosted in OpenShift, including Microsoft SQL Server, Couchbase, MongoDB, and more. For this article, we’ll use MySQL. The concepts, however, will be the same for other databases. So, let’s get some knowledge and leverage it.

• What you need to know to be a sysadmin

  The system administrator of yesteryear jockeyed users and wrangled servers all day, in between mornings and evenings spent running hundreds of meters of hundreds of cables. This is still true today, with the added complexity of cloud computing, containers, and virtual machines.

  Looking in from the outside, it can be difficult to pinpoint what exactly a sysadmin does, because they play at least a small role in so many places. Nobody goes into a career already knowing everything they need for a job, but everyone needs a strong foundation. If you're looking to start down the path of system administration, here's what you should be concentrating on in your personal or formal training.

• Building blocks of syslog-ng

  Recently I gave a syslog-ng introductory workshop at Pass the SALT conference in Lille, France. I got a lot of positive feedback, so I decided to turn all that feedback into a blog post. Naturally, I shortened and simplified it, but still managed to get enough material for multiple blog posts.

• PHP version 7.2.21RC1 and 7.3.8RC1

  Release Candidate versions are available in testing repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests (for x86_64 only), and also as base packages.

  RPM of PHP version 7.387RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 30 or remi-php73-test repository for Fedora 28-29 and Enterprise Linux.

  RPM of PHP version 7.2.20RC1 are available as SCL in remi-test repository and as base packages in the remi-test repository for Fedora 28-29 or remi-php72-test repository for Enterprise Linux.

• QElectroTech version 0.70

  RPM of QElectroTech version 0.70, an application to design electric diagrams, are available in remi for Fedora and Enterprise Linux 7.

  A bit more than 1 year after the version 0.60 release, the project have just released a new major version of their electric diagrams editor.

Today we are looking at the first stable release of Endeavour OS. It is a project that started to continue the spirit of the recently discontinued Antergos. The developing team exists out of Antergos developers and community members.

As you can see in this first stable release, it is far from just a continuing of Antergos as we know it. The stable release is an offline Calamres installer and it just came with a customized XFCE desktop environment. They are planning to have an online installer again in the future, which will give a person an option to choose between 10 desktop environments, similar to Antergos.

It is based on Arch, Linux Kernel 5.2, XFCE 4.14 pre2 and it uses about 500mb of ram.

Direct/video: Endeavour OS 2019.07.15 Run Through

A file manager is the most used software in any digital platform. With the help of this software, you can access, manage, and decorate the files on your device. For the Linux system, this is also an important factor to have an effective and simple file manager. In this curated article, we are going to discuss a set of best Linux file manager tools which definitely help you to operate the system effectively.

I know you waited for this so long but believe me there were really good reasons. Check out the past articles concerning Latte git version and you can get a picture what major new features are introduced for v0.9. Of course this is an article for a beta release and as such I will not provide any fancy videos or screenshots; this is a goal for official stable release article.

Also: Latte Dock 0.9 Beta Brings Wayland Improvements, Smoother Experience

• Beautiful looking puzzle-platformer "Evan's Remains" with visual novel elements has been fully funded

  Thanks to the help of nearly a thousand backers on Kickstarter, the very sweet looking puzzle-platform that mixes in some visual novel elements is fully funded.

• Dinosaur survival game "Path of Titans" is already funded after only a few days

  This is quite exciting and very pleasing to see. Path of Titans from Alderon Games has hit the funding goal!

  After writing about the IndieGoGo campaign starting only a few days ago, Alderon Games added a PayPal backing option to their official website. Their initial goal was only $25,234 and with both campaigns together they've managed to pull in $32,704 and they have 28 days left to go so hopefully they will get more than enough to bring us another great Linux game.

• GIGABUSTER, the fast-paced and good looking action-platformer has been fully funded

  Three crowdfunding campaigns in one day? Yes! After Evan's Remains and Path of Titans getting funded, we also have the action-platformer "GIGABUSTER" which has also been fully funded and so it's coming to Linux.

  Inspired by the likes of both Mega Man Zero and Mega Man X, the developer said they wanted a more modern and balanced game that was similar, so they decided to create their own hoping it will scratch your itch as well as their own. After appearing on Kickstarter, GIGABUSTER managed to jump, dash and shoot its way to victory with $11,666 in funding.

• The voxel editor "SpriteStack" recently released on Steam with Linux support

  If you're a game developer or you just like making good-looking retro art you might want to take a look at SpriteStack.

Often, a kernel developer will try to reduce the size of an attack surface against Linux, even if it can't be closed entirely. It's generally a toss-up whether such a patch makes it into the kernel. Linus Torvalds always prefers security patches that really close a hole, rather than just give attackers a slightly harder time of it.

Matthew Garrett recognized that userspace applications might have secret data that might be sitting in RAM at any given time, and that those applications might want to wipe that data clean so no one could look at it.

There were various ways to do this already in the kernel, as Matthew pointed out. An application could use mlock() to prevent its memory contents from being pushed into swap, where it might be read more easily by attackers. An application also could use atexit() to cause its memory to be thoroughly overwritten when the application exited, thus leaving no secret data in the general pool of available RAM.

The problem, Matthew pointed out, came if an attacker was able to reboot the system at a critical moment—say, before the user's data could be safely overwritten. If attackers then booted into a different OS, they might be able to examine the data still stored in RAM, left over from the previously running Linux system.

As Matthew also noted, the existing way to prevent even that was to tell the UEFI firmware to wipe system memory before booting to another OS, but this would dramatically increase the amount of time it took to reboot. And if the good guys had won out over the attackers, forcing them to wait a long time for a reboot could be considered a denial of service attack—or at least downright annoying.

Learn the concept of hard links in Linux and its association with inodes in this tutorial.

• NHS admits Windows XP is still running on more than 2,000 systems

  However, in response to a written parliamentary question from shadow Cabinet Office minister Jo Platt, the government this week revealed that, despite being six months away from that target, 2,300 NHS computers are still running Windows XP.

• 3 ways to benefit from open source infrastructure

  Using open source infrastructure can reduce operating costs and streamline upgrades, but it's important to weigh the pros and cons before you jump on the bandwagon.

• System Boot and Security Microconference Accepted into 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference

  We are pleased to announce that the System Boot and Security Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Computer-system security is a topic that has gotten a lot of serious attention over the years, but there has not been anywhere near as much attention paid to the system firmware. But the firmware is also a target for those looking to wreak havoc on our systems. Firmware is now being developed with security in mind, but provides incomplete solutions. This microconference will focus on the security of the system especially from the time the system is powered on.

• This startup is giving away all its database software for free as open source, and it says it's not afraid of Oracle or Amazon

  Even though other companies have made defensive moves against Amazon to protect their business, the YugaByte co-founders explain why they're not worried about Amazon.

• Samsung Chromebook 3 - XE500C13-K04US

• Samsung Chromebook 3

  Today we are looking at the Samsung Chromebook 3 (XE501C13-K01US). It is an affordable computer for all your basic everyday needs for a great price and good quality from Samsung.

  It comes with a fanless Dual-Core Intel Celeron Processor N3060 CPU, an 11.6 inch, 1366x768, LED display, and non-touch screen. It has 2GB of RAM and a 16GB eMMC SSD.

  It has Android Apps (Google Play) but it does not have Linux Apps (crostini) support and it will receive auto-updates until June 2021.

• Acer Chromebook 11 7th Gen

  Today we are looking at the Acer Chromebook 11 7th Gen (CB3-132-C4VV / NX.G4XAA.002). It is a budget Chromebook, perfect for daily tasks like browsing the web, watching movies and writing documents.

  It comes with a fanless Dual-Core Intel Celeron Processor N3060 CPU, an 11.6 inch, 1366x768, IPS display, and non-touch screen. It has 4gb of RAM and a 16GB eMMC SSD.

• ASUS Chromebook Flip C434

  Today we are looking at the ASUS Chromebook Flip C434 - C434TA-DS384T. It is a 2 in 1 Chromebook, familiar laptop and tablet, and it comes with a sleek all-metal look and diamond-cut edges, makes it a perfect Chromebook for anyone who wants a stylish modern Chromebook!

• Samsung Chromebook 3 - XE500C13-K06US

  Today we are looking at the Samsung Chromebook 3 - XE500C13-K06US. It is an affordable, yet powerful, small and thin computer for all your basic everyday needs for a great price and good quality from Samsung.

• Samsung Chromebook Pro

• Valve releases a new update to the Steam Client, nice Linux fixes made it in again

  Valve have released a new stable version of the Steam Client today to add new features, improve existing features and catch some pesky bugs flying around.

  There's some better "client logic" to choose and connect to download servers, which should hopefully give better download speeds, better connection login in initializing the friends list, screenshots in SteamVR Home should be sorted, a fix for certain web page elements continuing to render in the Steam client when it is minimized or closed to the system tray, some "improved reliability of registry saving on Linux and macOS" and the SteamVR dashboard should no longer obscure transition overlays when launching a game.

• Fast-paced atmospheric arcade title "LOST ORBIT: Terminal Velocity" is out with Linux support

  You're going to need some quick reflexes for LOST ORBIT: Terminal Velocity, a game about being stranded in deep space. Note: Key provided by the developer.

  This is actually a revamp of the 2015 title LOST ORBIT. This new definitive edition includes a brand new 12 level epilogue and story, new abilities and ways to die, 15 new challenge levels, a reworking of the original levels with new cinematics and so on. If you owned the original, you should see this new edition in your Steam library free.

• Index: G 2/19 (Enlarged Board of Appeal, EPO)
• EPO Looney Tunes – Part 4: G 2/19 – Faites Vos Jeux…
• Media Not Interested in G 2/19, Which Demonstrates Patent Justice is Nowadays Impossible at the EPO
• Librethreat Database Updated
• A Look Back (and Forward) at Friendly Programming

• Google shows off its new emoji designs that will debut with Android Q

• Google shares all the new emoji coming to Android Q this fall

• Comcast now lets you use your own Android device on Xfinity Mobile

• Top 5 New Free Puzzle Games for Android & iPhone in 2019

• AirTV Mini Not The Savior Device Android TV Needs

• Samsung will introduce One UI 2.0 with Android Q update; while One UI 2.1 will come with Galaxy S11

• Kaspersky Internet Security for Android review: Top notch antivirus for mobile devices

• Android Q could offer to translate app previews in the Recents screen

• This beautiful Android R design could make me switch from iOS

• Chrome update for Android features improvements to password manager

• 15 tips and tricks for Google Chrome on Android (2019 edition)

• Xiaomi’s Mi A3 brings stock Android, OLED display for €249

• IPhone Users Are Switching To Samsung (And Android), Trade-In Data Shows

• Xiaomi Mi A3 brings 48MP camera, FoD sensor to Android One

• Stalking apps: Google deletes 7 Android trackers from the Play Store

• Free accounting software South Africa

  GnuCash is one of the best open source accounting software that is 100% free. It offers simplicity, flexibility, and amazing features such as handling multiple currencies and some payroll features. The application is available on Android, Linux, OpenBSD, Windows, GNU, and macOS devices. Some of the other features are managing accounts payable and receivable and managing employee expenses.

• Linux super-duper admin tools: health-check

  Health-check is a very useful, practical tool. It does not replace strace or netstat or perf, but it can sure help you get a very accurate multi-dimensional snapshot of whatever you're profiling. This is a very good first step that can point you in the right direction. You can then select a utility that specifically examines the relevant facet of the software run (maybe Wireshark for network or Valgrind for memory). In a way, this makes health-check into a Jack o' All Trades.

  You do need some understanding of how Linux systems work - and the application you're running. But even if you don't have that knowledge, health-check can be used for comparative studies and troubleshooting of performance bottlenecks. If you know something isn't running quite as well as it should, you can trace it once on a good system, once on a bad (affected) system, and then compare the two. The many types of data that health-check provides will greatly assist in solving the issue. And that brings us to the end of this tutorial. With some luck, you have learned something new, and it was an enjoyable ride, too. Take care.

• Xsnow – Snow on Your Desktop in Ubuntu 18.04 / Higher

  Xsnow, let it snow on your desktop, now is working on Gnome, KDE, FVWM desktop in Ubuntu 18.04 and higher.

  Xsnow is a handy command tool that brings Christmas to your desktop. However, it does not work properly in Ubuntu since Ubuntu 12.04 Precise.

  Now a brand new Xsnow based on the original xsnow-1.42 is available to work on many desktop environments, along with a simple graphical interface.

• Red Hat CTO Chris Wright to host online Q&A

  On Tuesday, July 23, 2019, Red Hat senior vice president and CTO Chris Wright will host an online forum to answer questions about what IBM's landmark acquisition of Red Hat means for the company and its work in open source projects.

• Announcing Fedora CoreOS preview

  On behalf of the Fedora CoreOS Working Group, I'm thrilled to announce the first preview release of Fedora CoreOS. Fedora CoreOS is built to be the secure and reliable host for your compute clusters. It's designed specifically for running containerized workloads without regular maintenance, automatically updating itself with the latest OS improvements, bug fixes, and security updates. The initial preview release of Fedora CoreOS runs on bare metal, QEMU, VMware, and AWS, on x86_64 only. It supports provisioning via Ignition spec 3.0.0 and the Fedora CoreOS Config Transpiler, automatic updates with Zincati and rpm-ostree, and running containers with Podman and Moby. In the coming months, we'll be adding more platforms, building out functionality, and creating documentation to get Fedora CoreOS ready for production use. For now, the Fedora CoreOS preview should not be used for production workloads, and it might change in incompatible ways before the stable release.

• Pivotal Brings the Magic of CF Push to Kubernetes

  Today, Pivotal released an alpha version of its flagship product, Pivotal Application Service, powered by Kubernetes. Access to the bits are invite-only; contact your account team or sign up via the form at the end of this post for access. The documentation is publicly available here.

  Kubernetes is the new IaaS. And that means we're embedding it into more parts of Pivotal technology. It also means that we're here to help you achieve terrific business outcomes on top of this foundation.

• Build cloud-native apps faster for Kubernetes with Kabanero, a new open source project from IBM

  As companies modernize their infrastructure and adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, they’re increasingly turning to Kubernetes and containers. Choosing the right technology for building cloud-native apps and gaining the knowledge you need to effectively adopt Kubernetes is difficult. On top of that, enabling architects, developers, and operations to work together easily, while having their individual requirements met, is an additional challenge when moving to cloud.
  To lower the barrier of entry for developers to use Kubernetes and to bring together different disciplines, IBM created new open source projects that make it faster and easier for you to develop and deploy applications for Kubernetes.

• Kubernetes VS PaaS

  If you asked me 3 years ago, I would probably define the professional part of myself as a “Rails developer”. Back then, most of my new projects started with a proof of concept deployed on a free Heroku account. The reason is simple, that was the fastest way to get my Ruby application live. At the same time it was the cheapest (free right?) so that was a no-brainer.
  The last 2.5 years, my work has been mostly on CloudFoundry and Kubernetes. CloudFoundry is an Open Source PaaS solution and Kubernetes is a Container orchestration platform. I work on a project that combines these two (SUSE CloudFoundry runs CloudFoundry on top of Kubernetes). There is an argument I’ve heard more than once regarding running a PaaS on top of Kubernetes and that is: “Why deploy CloudFoundry on top of Kubernetes and not use Kubernetes directly?”. Maybe it’s my science studies, maybe it’s Myth Busters, but I had to test this theory. Thankfully, 2 times a year we get a week to hack on anything we want at SUSE (Check it out) so I got the time I needed a couple of weeks ago.

• Issue #2019.07.22 – Kubeflow and Conferences, 2019

  Kubeflow at OSCON 2019 – Over 10 sessions! Covering security, pipelines, productivity, ML ops and more. Some of the sessions are led by end-users, which means you’ll get the real deal about using Kubeflow in your production solution

• How to earn a promotion as a sysadmin

  There’s plenty of general advice when it comes to career advancement, such as, “Work hard and you’ll get ahead.”

  General advice can start to feel a little pat—too simplistic to put into action, or too difficult to measure. Surely, it’s not as simple as, “Work hard and watch the promotions roll in.” Not to mention, how would you know if it’s the right promotion. Is it one that matches your goals?

  This question becomes particularly important in IT. What if you’re a sysadmin who’s not particularly interested in managing a team of people? Do you grin and bear it while others move up the food chain?

• Building a computer - part 2

• Manually trim SSD

• Trim disk image for best compression before distributing

• Move a Linux running process to a screen shell session

• Getting started with Ansible in Satellite

• Concept of Hard Links in Linux Explained

• 7 ways to set your hostname in Fedora, CentOS, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux

• Steps to install Docker CE on Ubuntu 18.04/19.04

• Checking Out Machine Check Exception (MCE) Errors in Linux

• Mastering user groups on Linux

• Start tinkering with the Circuit Playground Express

  I've been a gadget person as long as I can remember, so I was delighted when I discovered an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (CPX) in the swag bag I got at PyConUS in May. I became fascinated with these little devices last year, when Nina Zakharenko highlighted them in her All Things Open presentation, Five Things You Didn't Know Python Could Do, with Python-powered earrings.

  After finding one in my PyCon bag, I set out to learn more about these mesmerizing little devices. First, I attended a "how-to" session at one of the Open Spaces meetups at PyCon. But learning always requires hands-on practice, and that's what I did when I got home. I connected the CPX device to my Linux laptop with a USB-to-MicroUSB cable. The unit mounts just like any standard USB drive, listed as CIRCUITPY.

• Getting Started with Map

  While certainly less common, it's perfectly possible to write Python code in a functional style, and there are plenty of tools in the Python standard library to faciliate functional programming. One such tool is called map, and in this post we're look at what map is for, and how you might use it in your own code.

• Brandeis University and Open Source Initiative to Launch New Educational Partnership.

  Brandeis University’s Graduate Professional Studies division (GPS) will partner with The Open Source Initiative® (OSI) to provide new educational offerings for the open source community, the university announced at OSCON 2019.

  As more companies start leveraging Open Source Software to reduce costs, decrease time to deployment and foster innovation, the organizations that have realized success as open source consumers are now extending their participation within open source communities as collaborators and contributors. This shift can create new challenges to traditional business processes and models, requiring dedicated policies, programs and personnel to ensure that the investments in open source projects produce the desired benefits while still aligning with the values of the open source communities. The Brandeis GPS-OSI partnership will help address the growing demand for expertise within organizations seeking to authentically collaborate with, and productively manage, open source resources.

  “Understanding how to assess, engage, and contribute to open source communities while also delivering value to your company is the next generation skill set employers are looking for,” said Patrick Masson, general manager of the Open Source Initiative. “We're thrilled to work with Brandeis to help continue the incredible growth of open source software and projects.”

• New EvilGnome Backdoor Spies on Linux Users, Steals Their Files [Ed: “swapnilbhartiya” keeps pushing this Linux FUD and Microsoft promotion into the front page of LINUX dot com (byline "The source for Linux information"). You can write malware for just about any platform, but the hard part is actually getting users to install it, or to find open ports with ridiculous passwords. This is not a "Linux" issue, but FUD sites like Bleeping Computer are worse than tabloids. What you nowadays find in the front page of LINUX dot com: no negative stories about Microsoft, just Microsoft marketing and overt openwashing. But you find negative FUD about Linux and nothing about GNU/Linux desktop. How revealing? The Linux Foundation serves not Linux. LINUX dot com, a 'Linux' Foundation site, now acts exactly how you'd expect a site to behave when its sponsors are proprietary software companies looking to advertise themselves and push their lies (e.g. Microsoft as "open") while 'hiding' GNU/Linux as potent anywhere outside servers. The way things are going this past week, LINUX dot com can be deemed almost an anti-Linux site, run by people who don't even use Linux and instead serve sponsors who engage in entryism.]

• Fujitsu and GE Research Join LF Edge as Premier Members to Propel Open Source Innovation at the Edge

  LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced Fujitsu, a leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, and GE Research, GE’s innovation powerhouse where research meets reality, have joined LF Edge as Premier members.

  “We are pleased to welcome Fujitsu and GE Research as the newest Premier members of LF Edge,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. “Their expertise across technology sectors and experience in delivering leading products, solutions, and research at the forefront of the industry will be instrumental in helping the LF Edge community establish a common platform for edge computing.”

  Launched in January of this year, LF Edge is initially comprised of five projects – including Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, Home Edge, Open Glossary of Edge Computing, and Project EVE – that will support emerging edge applications across areas such as non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, and faster processing and mobility. By forming a software stack that brings the best of cloud, enterprise and telecom, LF Edge is helping to unify a fragmented edge market around a common, open vision for the future of the industry.

• Intel's Linux Driver To Load HuC Firmware By Default For Icelake+

  For several generations now of Intel graphics there have been the GuC/HuC firmware binaries while beginning with Icelake "Gen 11" graphics those binary blobs will be loaded by default. 

  Intel's GuC has been used for graphics workload scheduling while the HuC firmware provides some "media functions from the CPU to GPU" for different video codec functions and CPU-GPU synchronization among other abilities. 

• ZFS On Linux Has Figured Out A Way To Restore SIMD Support On Linux 5.0+

  Those running ZFS On Linux (ZoL) on post-5.0 (and pre-5.0 supported LTS releases) have seen big performance hits to the ZFS encryption performance in particular. That came due to upstream breaking an interface used by ZFS On Linux and admittedly not caring about ZoL due to it being an out-of-tree user. But now several kernel releases later, a workaround has been devised. 

  Some Linux distributions have resorted to reverting the kernel patch that stopped exporting the kernel FPU begin/restore functions used by ZoL for tapping vector-based (SSE/AVX) algorithms. But now ZFS On Linux itself has figured out a solution to restore said SIMD support on these recent kernel releases. 

• Many Vintage X.Org Modules Could Use Some Help If Wanting New Releases

  Longtime X.Org developer Alan Coopersmith who also maintains the X.Org stack for Oracle's Solaris has been trying to get out some updated X.Org modules with different code-bases having collected enough changes over the years to warrant new versions.

  While he has been releasing a number of X.Org module updates recently, he's left out many for varying reasons. Even for these modules accumulating enough changes, among those he has left out for releasing new versions include TWM, XKBCOMP, XKBUTILS, XRandR, Xrestop, XScope, xf86-input-keyboard, and xf86-video-dummy.

• Mesa 19.2 Is Just Six Patches Away From Seeing OpenGL 4.6 Support

  Later this month marks two years since the release of OpenGL 4.6 and just ahead of that date it looks like Mesa could finally land its complete GL 4.6 implementation, at least as far as the Intel open-source graphics driver support is concerned.

  Mesa is now just six patches away from OpenGL 4.6! Following recent SPIR-V patches being merged, there are just five patches left plus the sixth that updates the documentation and flips on OpenGL 4.6 for the i915 Mesa driver. The remaining patches are in regards to base vertex work.

Endeavour OS uses the familiar Calamares installer to automate the normally complex and command line-based Arch installation process. I gave it a quick spin inside a Virtual Machine and it couldn't be simpler, although the team does warn of some early issues with manual partitioning. Give that a read before you proceed!