• MIUI 10 based on Android Pie gets ported to the OnePlus 6 and OnePlus 6T

• Android Pie adds Keystore features to make phone safer, more secure

• Blu made a budget smartphone that runs Android Pie Go Edition

• Pocophone F1 gets Android 9 Pie stable update ahead of official launch in the country

• We Broke Into A Bunch Of Android Phones With A 3D-Printed Head

• Cinemo to Showcase Next Generation Android Automotive Based Infotainment Systems at CES® 2019 in Las Vegas

• 5 best remote desktop apps for Android!

• Dodgy Android app steals £1,000 from user’s PayPal account in SECONDS

• Panasonic Toughbook FZ-T1, Toughbook FZ-L1 Rugged Android Devices Launched in India

• Get These Android-Powered TV Box Models At A Hefty Discount: Includes Xiaomi Mi Box S, Beelink GT1 And More

• I'm a diehard iPhone user who switched to Android for a week — here's what I loved and hated about the Google Pixel 3 XL

Following the GeForce RTX 2080 Linux gaming benchmarks last week with now having that non-Ti variant, I carried out some fresh GPU compute benchmarks of the higher-end NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards. Here's a look at the OpenCL performance between the competing vendors plus some fresh CUDA benchmarks as well as NVIDIA GPU Cloud TensorFlow Docker benchmarks.

This article provides a fresh look at the Linux GPU compute performance for NVIDIA and AMD. On the AMD side was the Linux 4.19 kernel paired with the ROCm 1.9.1 binary packages for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. ROCm continues happily running well on the mainline kernel with the latest releases, compared to previously relying upon the out-of-tree/DKMS kernel modules for compute support on the discrete Radeon GPUS. ROCm 2.0 is still supposed to be released before year's end so there will be some fresh benchmarks coming up with that OpenCL 2.0+ implementation when the time comes. The Radeon CPUs tested were the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 as well as tossing in the R9 Fury for some historical context.

It's that time of the year again. Everyone is in a festive mood and excited about all the new things they're going to get. It's only natural, since it's the season of the last KDE Applications release for this year!

With more than 140 issues resolved and dozens of feature improvements, KDE Applications 18.12 are now on its way to your operating system of choice. We've highlighted some changes you can look forward to.

Also: KDE Applications 18.12 Released With File Manager Improvements, Konsole Emoji

Nvidia announced a lower-cost 4GB version of its Linux-driven Jetson TX2 module with half the RAM and eMMC and has begun shipping its next-gen Jetson AGX Xavier.

Nvidia will soon have three variants of its hexa-core Arm Jetson TX2 module: the original Jetson TX2, the more embedded, industrial temperature Jetson TX2i , and now a new Jetson TX2 4GB model. The chip designer also announced availability of its next-gen, robotics focused Jetson AGX Xavier module (see farther below).

• Linux 4.19.9

• Linux 4.14.88

• Linux 4.9.145

• Linux 4.4.167

• Linux 3.18.129

• Vivaldi 2.2 adds tweakable toolbars and Netflix for Linux

  UPSTART WEB BROWSER Vivaldi has released version 2.2, with a number of new features which continue its aim to differentiate itself from other Chromium browsers.

  The privacy passionate progeny of Opera co-founder Jon Von Tetzchner boasts improved tab management, support for pop-out video windows, configurable toolbars and updates to acccessibility.

  [...]

  "Customizing a browser as per your needs is not only a thing for pros and geeks. The key is to create something that works for you," says Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "Features are what draw people to Vivaldi and details are what keep them there. That's why we are always striving to fit every use case and giving our users different ways to browse."

• QEMU 3.1 Released For Advancing The Linux Open-Source Virtualization Stack

  The QEMU emulator that is widely used by the open-source Linux virtualization stack is out with its version 3.1 feature release. This is the QEMU update that is adding multi-threaded Tiny Code Generator support, display improvements, adds the Cortex-A72 model and other ARM improvements, and various other enhancements.

• What are Linux man pages?

  Have you ever sought help on a technical issue, only to be told RTFM? What is that acronym? In a safe-for-work translation, it means Read The Freaking Manual. That's all fine and good when you working with something that has a downloadable PDF file containing all the necessary information you need. But what about a Linux command? There are no manuals to be had. Or are there?

• JFrog Empowers Millions of Open Source Go Developers, Announces Community's First Public Go Repository

  JFrog, the Universal DevOps technology leader known for enabling liquid software via continuous software update flows, is announcing the coming availability of JFrog GoCenter, the first-ever central repository for software modules developed in the popular Go programming language. GoCenter is a free, open source and public service that will be provided for the broad Go community in early 2019, and is being showcased at KubeCon Seattle.

• Open Sesame

  Although it’s free for users, people invest time in making the technology better or creating it in the first place.

  [...]

  When a project is open-source, it means that the software, hardware or data are open for users to use, access, change or distribute for free. An open-source project can also make it easier to bring a team together to develop a project, Davis says.

• Fuchsia SDK and ‘device’ now included in Android Open Source Project

  Fuchsia, Google’s future OS project, is getting more connected to Android. The search giant has added two Fuchsia items to its Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code.

  A new commit posted to the AOSP Gerrit — an online code collaboration and management tool — added two Fuchsia ‘repos’ to the primary ‘manifest’ of AOSP.

  In other words, developers added two Fuchsia files to the instructions that tell Google’s download tool ‘Repo’ what to include when a user downloads AOSP. Further, for those unfamiliar with AOSP, it’s a compilation of Android made available for anyone to use.

• Fuchsia SDK & Test Device Appear In Android Open Source Project

  Google has taken substantial new steps toward the release of its long-awaited new operating system Fuchsia, based on recently noticed changes to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) codebase. Although AOSP is most often connected to Android OS and development on that platform, Fuchsia OS has now appeared as both an SDK and test device in the repository. According to comments on the commits, the OS's repositories being included in the Android master manifest equates to an added 760MB. The Gerrit UI also shows changes to approximately 977 files in total with the addition of the Fuchsia software development kit (SDK) and a related test device. Interestingly, the test device SDK seems to be based on or at least tested with the configuration for 'Walleye' -- Google's codename for one of the Pixel 2 handsets.

• ‘This is not a big boys club’: FINOS seeks to open up open source

  Attend an event about open source development and collaboration in financial technology, and you will see developers and executives from Capital One, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and perhaps a handful of other financial institutions, along with open-source-focused vendors like Red Hat (now part of IBM).

• The Autoware Foundation - An Open Alliance for Autonomous Driving Technology

• What is Open Source & Why Should You Care?

  The term ‘open source’ is used with excitement throughout multiple industries, yet folks are still asking a lot of questions, chief among them: What is open source & why should I care? Well, for industrial and process manufacturing, open source is rapidly becoming a fundamental for the digitalization of these industries. Industrial automation users, system integrators, machine builders, and automation suppliers that understand how to embrace and leverage open source are dramatically improving their odds of being effective competitors in their respective industries.

• QLC Chain to open source WinQ server router, focuses on multi-sig smart contracts
  

  QLC Chain has released its bi-weekly report, which highlights development progress of the public blockchain and VPN routers, adjustment of QLC Chain’s development plan, and updates to WinQ 2.0. Recently, an incentive program was announced for VPN operators and active community members to test the platform.

• Instaclustr Releases Three Open Source Projects That Facilitate Cassandra-Kubernetes Integration and LDAP/Kerberos Authentication

• Instaclustr Announces Three Open Source Projects That Facilitate Cassandra-Kubernetes Integration and LDAP/Kerberos Authentication

  Instaclustr, the leading provider of completely managed solutions for scalable open source technologies, today announced the availability of three open source projects purpose-built to expand developers’ capabilities using Apache Cassandra and address pain points. These projects include an open source Cassandra operator for more seamlessly running and operating Cassandra within Kubernetes, and open source LDAP and Kerberos authenticator plug-ins for Cassandra.

• Instaclustr expands Apache Cassandra with new open-source software

  Instaclustr Pty Ltd., which sells hosted and managed versions of popular open-source software Apache Cassandra, Spark and Kafka, is giving back to the community with three projects of its own.

  The company says it’s open-sourcing three “purpose-built” projects aimed at addressing pain points and expanding the capabilities of the Apache Cassandra database. Apache Cassandra is a distributed database that’s used to manage large amounts of structured data while providing continuous availability with no single point of failure.

• Kubernetes open-source project matures as commercialization accelerates

  This week, the annual KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 event taking place in Seattle will give the cloud computing industry a chance to take stock of how far Kubernetes has come.

  On the flip side, the show also will work through the issues that may be preventing this open-source container orchestration platform from achieving its full potential.

  Kubernetes has been a banner story in high tech throughout 2018, and the technology looks like it will continue its momentum toward ubiquitous adoption in coming years. The Kubernetes ecosystem has become amazingly vibrant, though that’s a double-edged sword.

• Kubernetes caretaker auditions for Hoarders; takes in another open source project

  At the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF) KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 meetup on Tuesday, the CNCF revealed it will adopt, shelter and nourish an itinerant jumble of letters known on the street as "etcd."

  Pronounced "et-cee-dee" among those who dare speak its name, etcd is a distributed key-value store. It hails from the Linux /etc/ directory, which lives in the root folder and stores configuration files and related subdirectories.

• Kubernetes and serverless are getting chummy in open source

  But the Cloud Native Computing Foundation — home to Kubernetes, the popular open-source container orchestration platform — wants everyone to know it’s not partial to either containers or serverless, and there’s room for both, and others, in next-generation enterprise technology.

  “We love serverless in CNCF,” said Chris Aniszczyk (pictured), chief technology officer and chief operating officer of CNCF. “We just view it as another kind of programmatic model that eventually runs on some type of containerized stack.”

• Atomist Announces Delivery to Kubernetes With Its Open Source SDM, adds GitLab Support

  Atomist, the software delivery automation company, today announced the ability for developers to now deliver to Kubernetes using the open source Software Delivery Machine (SDM) in local mode. SDM local is completely open source and now supports delivery to Kubernetes, whether a single-node cluster on a laptop using minikube or a fully-managed Kubernetes service.

• Why Kubernetes Is Successful and Boring

  Google has had a common message throughout 2018 about Kubernetes, and the message is simple: Kubernetes is boring.

  At the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2018 event here, Google engineer and conference co-chair Janet Kuo echoed comments made by her peer Aparna Sinha, group product manager at Google, at the Kubecon and CloudNativecon Europe 2018 keynotes in May, which is simply that Kubernetes is boring, and boring is good.

  Kuo said in the early days of Kubernetes the focus was on building fast and adding new features. By 2015, a focus was added to make it easier for users and administrators to build, deploy and use Kubernetes. At this point in the maturity cycle of Kubernetes, Kuo commented that adoption has moved from the early stage of adopters to more mainstream deployments.

  "Kubernetes is now getting so solid and so mature and so great, that it is very, very boring," Kuo said during her keynote. "Boring is good; it means that lots of companies are already using it, and it just works."

  Kuo added that being boring means organizations can just focus on delivering business value, rather than spending time on making Kubernetes usable.

• Kubernetes Federation Evolution

  Deploying applications to a kubernetes cluster is well defined and can in some cases be as simple as kubectl create -f app.yaml. The user’s story to deploy apps across multiple clusters has not been that simple. How should an app workload be distributed? Should the app resources be replicated into all clusters, or replicated into selected clusters or partitioned into clusters? How is the access to clusters managed? What happens if some of the resources, which user wants to distribute pre-exist in all or fewer clusters in some form.

  In SIG multicluster, our journey has revealed that there are multiple possible models to solve these problems and there probably is no single best fit all scenario solution. Federation however is the single biggest kubernetes open source sub project which has seen maximum interest and contribution from the community in this problem space. The project initially reused the k8s API to do away with any added usage complexity for an existing k8s user. This became non-viable because of problems best discussed in this community update.

• [Red Hat] Men: Step out of your bubble to champion gender diversity

  According to Catalyst Canada, men represent more than 95 per cent of the CEO positions in Canada’s 100 largest publicly traded companies. With such a big divide, those who are leaders must help define the role those with power and privilege play. Many men want to get more involved, but we must go about it the right way. We want to respect the successful work that has already been done, find the right fit for our skills and learn from our female leaders who have the deep knowledge of this issue. As Tanya van Biesen, executive director of Catalyst Canada, has said: “The path to gender equity is a journey. There is no silver bullet – only commitment and action.”

  As leaders, our self-worth is often measured by meeting hard targets and achieving financial goals. Stepping forward to become an advocate for gender diversity is uncharted territory for many of us. Yet, it is a business imperative with a body of evidence demonstrating a positive effect on the bottom line.

• IBM's $34 billion Red Hat acquisition came after deal talks with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, sources say

  When IBM announced its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat on October 28, the tech word was struck by the huge price tag, as well as its potential to revive IBM's struggling cloud business. But as it turns out, things could have gone a lot differently.

  Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all engaged in deal discussions with Red Hat and looked closely into an acquisition in the months and weeks before Red Hat struck a deal with IBM, according to sources familiar with the deal.

  As an open-source software company, Red Hat is strategic because of its popularity with developers. It's also is the largest commercial maker of the Linux operating system. IBM wanted the technology to enhance its hybrid-cloud project and to give its portfolio an edge.

  Red Hat indicated in a public filing on November 30 that three unnamed companies considered making bids in addition to IBM. CNBC reported in October that Google had looked into buying Red Hat. But Microsoft and Amazon's deal talks with Red Hat have not been previously reported.

• IBM goes hard in open source so enterprises can take it easy

  IBM’s investment in open source goes back years. Big Blue went all-in on Kubernetes, the popular open-source container orchestration platform about two years ago, according to Chris Rosen (pictured), program director, offering management, IBM Container Service and IBM Container Registry. The company contributes to the open-source Cloud Native Computing Foundation upstream and then simplifies the technology for end users.

• Arista EOS containers integrated with Red Hat, Tigera products

  Arista has integrated the containerized version of its network operating system with Red Hat and Tigera software to support containers running on public, private and hybrid clouds.

  Arista released this week a technology preview of the integration of containerized Arista EOS with Tigera Calico, the open source control plane the company developed to distribute security policy rules across containers and virtual machines running on cloud environments. Arista plans to make the integration generally available in 2019 within the Tigera Secure Enterprise Edition product.

• Contrail, Red Hat treat multicloud-network headache with Kubernetes

  A number of computing customers lately are asking for a smarter network. This might mean programmability, transparency, multiple lanes for prioritized web traffic, etc. The question is, will software developers and administrators need to get smarter in order to use such networks? Don’t they have their hands full already refactoring applications and managing distributed cloud environments?

  Developers these days simply want to consume the network in the same way they consume compute and storage. They don’t want the job of configuring it — at least not if that entails plunging deep below the application layer.

  “The app is the thing that’s going to consume these things, and the app developer doesn’t necessarily want to worry about IP address and port numbers and firewall rules and things like that,” said Scott Sneddon (pictured, left), senior director and chief evangelist of cloud at Juniper Networks Inc.

• Top 10 Open Source Licenses in 2018: Trends and Predictions [Ed: WhiteSource with connections to Microsoft continues to smear the GPL and copyleft; why does this always turn out to be Microsoft-funded/connected? They continue trying to tell people what to do based on what's perceived to be happening, even when they intentionally lie about what's happening (in an effort to alter the outcome, a self-fulfilling prophecy strategy).]

• Microsoft is telling awesome open source stories [Ed: Mac Asay is still looking for a job at Microsoft and he endlessly helps the company spread its lies]

• Pimcore Closes $3.5 Million in Series A to Expand Open-Source Data and Experience Management Platform Into the U.S.

• Pimcore expands Open-Source Data and Experience Management Platform Operations in India

• Pimcore closes 1st round of funding to expand open-source data and experience management platform operations in India

• NPR Releases Open Source Podcast Analytics Tech [Ed: openwashing of surveillance methods (for advertisers)]

• How NPR Aims to Bring Transparency to Podcast Metrics

• Bing releases Clarity, an open-source UX analytics tool [Ed: openwashing by Microsoft of surveillance tools]

• Verizon joins O-RAN Alliance board

  After announcing earlier this year that the xRAN Forum and C-RAN Alliance were merging, the O-RAN Alliance announced new board members—including Verizon—and a collaboration with the Linux Foundation on open source software.

  Verizon’s participation in the O-RAN Alliance isn’t a surprise given its work on Open RAN initiatives and its earlier involvement in the xRAN Forum—it was a contributor to the xRAN fronthaul specification that was released in April. That specification defines open interfaces between the remote radio unit/head (RRU/RRH) and the baseband unit (BBU) to simplify interoperability between suppliers.

  [...]

  O-RAN also said it has started collaboration arrangements with The Linux Foundation to establish an open source software community for the creation of open source RAN software. Collaboration with The Linux Foundation will enable the creation of open source software supporting the O-RAN architecture and interfaces.

• O-RAN Alliance and Linux to create an open source software community

  The O-RAN Alliance announced that Reliance Jio, TIM, and Verizon have joined the O-RAN board.

  AT&T CTO Andre Fuetsch says, “It’s encouraging to see the O-RAN Alliance off to such a strong start and gaining momentum as we welcome three new board members.

  “It’s important that the wireless industry continues to come together to drive forward O-RAN’s goals for open networking, software, and virtualisation in global wireless networks especially as 5G is closer than ever.”

• Hyperledger Onboards 12 New Members Including Alibaba Cloud, Deutsche Telekom and Citi

  Hyperledger has onboarded 12 new members, including such major firms as Alibaba Cloud, Citi, and Deutsche Telekom, according to an announcement published on Dec. 11.
  Launched in 2016, Hyperledger is an open source project created by the Linux Foundation and created to support the development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers.
  The new members were announced at the Hyperledger Global Forum in Basel, Switzerland. The latest general members that joined the initiative include Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant; financial services firm Citigroup, Deutsche Telekom, one of the largest telecoms providers in Europe; and European blockchain trading platform we.trade, among others.

• Open Source Compliance in the Enterprise

  Open Source Compliance in the Enterprise, 2nd edition, by Ibrahim Haddad outlines best practices for organizations to adopt and use open source code in products and services, as well as participate in open source communities in a legal and responsible way.

• Linux Foundation Brings the Year to a Close with 21 New Members Making the Commitment to Open Source

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced the addition of 18 Silver members and 3 Associate members. Linux Foundation members help support development of shared technology resources, while accelerating their own innovation through open source leadership and participation in some of the world’s most successful open source projects including Hyperledger, Kubernetes, Linux, Node.js and ONAP. Linux Foundation member contributions help provide the infrastructure and resources that enable the world’s largest open collaboration communities.

  Since the start of 2018, on average a new organization has joined The Linux Foundation every day.

• Linux.org Redirected to NSFW Page Spewing Racial Epithets [Ed: Trying hard to make it seem like a "Linux" issue when in fact it is purely a DNS issue]

• Campaign Drops Coinminer on Linux Boxes Using Old Elasticsearch Vulnerabilities [Ed: Not about GNU/Linux. Just as holes in iTunes aren't being blamed on "Microsoft" or "Windows".]

  A malware campaign scanning the Internet for exploitable Elasticsearch instances running on Linux machines has been recently observed by Trend Micro and by ISC, in both cases dropping a variant of the XMRig cryptocurrency miner.

  "The attack was deployed by taking advantage of known vulnerabilities CVE-2015-1427, a vulnerability in its Groovy scripting engine that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands through a crafted script, and CVE-2014-3120, a vulnerability in the default configuration of Elasticsearch," said Trend Micro.

• Cybersecurity books recommended by top security researchers

• Intel Announces Faster Processor Patched for Meltdown and Spectre [Ed: But the company refuses to patch (remove) the back doors]

• Automatically finding new cybersecurity threats with Open Source Intelligence

The Hackaday Superconference is over, which is a shame, but one of the great things about our conference is the people who manage to trek out to Pasadena every year to show us all the cool stuff they’re working on. One of those people was [Piotr Esden-Tempski], founder of 1 Bit Squared, and he brought some goodies that would soon be launched on a few crowdfunding platforms. The coolest of these was the iCEBreaker, an FPGA development kit that makes it easy to learn FPGAs with an Open Source toolchain.

• Android Pie Update Rolling Out to Motorola One and Moto X4

• Deal: Pick up the 8-inch Lenovo Smart Display for $99 ($101 off)

• With the McLaren edition, OnePlus gets closer to being Android’s iPhone!

• Skyworth G6 Android TV Review – What Smart TVs Are Supposed To Be Like

• Google rolls out Android features to iOS

• Google Chrome is set to treat Android fans with this handy new feature

• Android Headlines Awards - Best Camera Smartphone 2018

• Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 6 and Nokia 5 reportedly getting December Android Security update

Poor IT governance prevented the IRS from making progress on a long-term effort to migrate 141 legacy applications from proprietary vendor software to open source Linux operating systems, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

Under a migration plan developed in 2014, two-thirds of targeted applications and databases were supposed to have been successfully migrated by December 2016.

However, only eight of the 141 applications targeted have successfully transitioned to Linux as of February 2018. More than one third have not even started.

• Wayland's Weston Switching Over To The Meson Build System

  Complementing the Meson build system support for Wayland itself, the Weston reference compositor now has been Meson-ized.

  Pekka Paalanen and Daniel Stone, both of Collabora, have landed the Meson build system support for the Weston compositor. At this stage the new build system should be fully working and correct.

• AMDGPU DC Gets Polaris Corruption Fix, Some Code Refactoring

  AMD has published their latest batch of "DC" Display Core patches for the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver.

  This batch of 45 patches against this display code for the AMDGPU Direct Rendering Manager driver has some code cleanups and refactoring, changes some error messages to just warnings, and has a display corruption fix affecting some Polaris hardware.

• Investigating GitLab

  The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel subsystem is a fairly small part of the kernel, he said. It is also a fairly small part of the open-source graphics stack, which is under the X.Org umbrella. DRM sits in the middle between the two, so the project has learned development tools and workflows from both of the larger projects.

  The kernel brought DRM into the Git world in 2006, which was just a year after Git came about; it was a "rough ride" back then, Vetter said. With Git came "proper commit messages". Prior to that, the X.org commit messages might just be a single, unhelpful line; now those messages explain why the change is being made and what it does. The idea of iterating on a patch series on the mailing list came from the kernel side as did the "benevolent dictator" model of maintainership. DRM, the X server, Wayland, and others all followed that model along the way.

  From the X.Org side came things like the committer model; in Mesa, every contributor had commit rights. That model has swept through the graphics community, so now DRM, the X server, and Wayland are all run using that scheme. Testing and continuous integration (CI) is something that DRM has adopted from X.Org; the kernel also does this, but DRM has adopted the X.Org approach, tooling, and test suites. For historical reasons, "almost everything" is under the MIT license, which comes from X.Org projects as well.

  There has been a lot of movement of tools and development strategies in both directions via the DRM subsystem. He thinks that using GitLab may be "the next big wave of changes" coming from the user-space side to kernel graphics, and maybe to the kernel itself eventually. This won't happen this year or next year, Vetter predicted, but over the next few years we will see GitLab being used more extensively.

• AMDGPU For Linux 4.20 Gets The Final Radeon RX 590 Fix, Adds The New Vega PCI IDs

  With just over one week to go until the expected Linux 4.20 kernel release, Alex Deucher of AMD today sent in the latest batch of fixes to the DRM tree for landing at the end of this cycle.

  Notable about this latest set of "fixes" for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver are:

  - The final Radeon RX 590 fix so this newer Polaris GPU no longer hangs under load. So once this Linux 4.20 material is merged to mainline, this month-old Polaris graphics card should now be happily running on Linux -- assuming you also have the latest Polaris firmware files and a recent version of Mesa. See our Radeon RX 590 benchmarks article for more details.

• AMDVLK 2018.Q4.4 Driver Update Brings Performance Improvements, New Vulkan Bits

  AMD developers today outed their latest "AMDVLK" open-source Vulkan driver code drop dubbed AMDVLK 2018.Q4.4.

• NVIDIA 415.23 Driver Fixes Build Issues Against Linux 4.20 Kernel

  The NVIDIA 415.23 driver was issued just to fix a build issue against the near-final Linux 4.20 kernels. In particular, there has been a build failure around the vm_insert_pfn function that is now worked around when building the NVIDIA proprietary driver's shim against the Linux 4.20 release candidates.

• NVIDIA Now Shipping The Jetson AGX Xavier Module

  NVIDIA has been shipping the Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit the past few months while now they are beginning to ship the AGX Xavier Module intended for use in next-generation autonomous machines.

• 2018-2019 Elections Underway with Calls for Candidates and New Members

  Earlier this week, on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018, the Elections Committee posted the Schedule for the 2018-2019 openSUSE Board Elections, along with the announcement of a Membership Drive and a call for nominations and applications for Candidates to fill three vacant seats on the openSUSE Board.

  The annual Board Elections are normally expected to run in November and December, with ballots cast and results published in time for the newly-elected Board Members to take their seats on the Board at the beginning of January. However, some additional work needed to be completed for this election, and the elections were delayed in part to accommodate the additional work.

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 4 is Generally Available

  SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 4 is now generally available. Service Pack 4 marks the fourth generation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, a major code stream and product foundation with a lifecycle from 2014 to 2024 plus Long Term Support (10+3 years).
  This release consolidates all fixes and updates introduced since SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 3.

• Making the Selection

  You’ve likely read or heard a lot about today’s data explosion and how it’s affecting enterprises. After combing through all the overexcited rhetoric about how quickly data is multiplying or how

  many petabytes you’ll soon have to handle, one thing remains clear: You need to find a new way to store and manage your data or you’ll get left behind.

  While that mandate puts pressure on your organization to act quickly, it’s also the catalyst to a whole new world of exciting opportunities. More data can mean deeper, more accurate insights into your operations and customer needs, which empowers you to streamline processes and personalize experiences like never before. More data can also lead to greater innovation and new sources of revenue.

• One developer's road: Programming and mental illness

  The next year, I went to college and learned about SUSE Linux 6.1 and the Java SE 1.2 programming language. Another student introduced me to free software and the GNU GPL License and helped me install SuSE 7.1 on my new Compaq Evo N160c notebook.

  There was no more Microsoft software on my computer. The GNU/Linux operating system was exactly what I wanted, offering editors, compilers, and a command line that did auto-completion.

  Six months later, I installed Debian GNU/Linux. Since YaST2 was just a front end to configuration files, I had to use Debian Potato. My bootloader of choice was LILO, and the Second Extended File System was reliable—not buggy, like ReiserFS.

  In spring 2002, I read a book about the C programming language. I wanted to learn to do UIs like javax.swing, and a friend recommended Gtk+ 2.0, which was about to be released. At this point, I stopped using the KDE Desktop Environment. Gnome 2 was different and provided anti-aliased fonts with hinting. I used it to play Chromium B.S.U., and KNOPPIX did the magic.

• newt

  I've been helping teach robotics programming to students in grades 5 and 6 for a number of years. The class uses Lego models for the mechanical bits, and a variety of development environments, including Robolab and Lego Logo on both Apple ][ and older Macintosh systems. Those environments are quite good, but when the Apple ][ equipment died, I decided to try exposing the students to an Arduino environment so that they could get another view of programming languages.

  The Arduino environment has produced mixed results. The general nature of a full C++ compiler and the standard Arduino libraries means that building even simple robots requires a considerable typing, including a lot of punctuation and upper case letters. Further, the edit/compile/test process is quite long making fixing errors slow. On the positive side, many of the students have gone on to use Arduinos in science research projects for middle and upper school (grades 7-12).

  In other environments, I've seen Python used as an effective teaching language; the direct interactive nature invites exploration and provides rapid feedback for the students. It seems like a pretty good language to consider for early education -- "real" enough to be useful in other projects, but simpler than C++/Arduino has been. However, I haven't found a version of Python that seems suitable for the smaller microcontrollers I'm comfortable building hardware with.

• Preventing "Revenge of the Ancillaries" in DevOps

• Wing Python IDE Version 7 Early Access

• What's the future of the pandas library?

Manjaro is an Arch Linux-based Operating System developed in Austria, Germany, and France with a focus on providing a beautiful user-friendly OS with the full power of Arch Linux to beginner computer users and experts at the same time.

If you are not already familiar with Manjaro Linux then the developers have recently given more reasons for you to by dropping its latest release, Manjaro 18.0, codenamed “Illyria“. This update brings both major and minor updates to the OS and makes its overall experience more pleasant.

It is fulfilling to see how well an OS that began as a hobby project has come this far with several UI scripts, support for NVIDIA’s Optimus technology, etc. right out of the box – features that come together to enhance its user experience.

For an overview of its features, check out the 10 Reasons to Use Manjaro Linux.

• Keeping up with Kubernetes | TechSNAP 392

  A security vulnerability in Kubernetes causes a big stir, but we’ll break it all down and explain what went wrong.

  Plus the biggest stories out of Kubecon, and serverless gets serious.

• The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 787

• FLOSS Weekly 510: YottaDB

  A lifelong hacker and geek, K.S. Bhaskar has been programming for almost half a century, and as a consequence of the technology gap between India and the US when he was an undergraduate, has programmed computers designed in the 1950s. He spent many years in the electronic test and measurement, and scientific computing worlds before moving to databases and the predecessor of YottaDB. He led GT.M, the predecessor of YottaDB from 1995 to 2017, before founding YottaDB in 2017 to take that code base – which by then felt to him like one of his children – to new markets and applications.

  Christopher is a true geek, and from a young start always wondered how the world works. He knew from a young age the computer field is where he was going to wind up working due to the infinite ways they could be used and cool things they could be made to do. Christopher has spent time in the healthcare industry working with YottaDB/GT.M/M and applying modern software development techniques to it. He also is a maker with more Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, other development boards, along with a 3d printer to keep himself busy.

• Bounded loops in BPF programs

  The BPF verifier is charged with ensuring that any given BPF program is safe for the kernel to load and run. Programs that fail to terminate are clearly unsafe, as they present an opportunity for denial-of-service attacks. In current kernels, the verifier uses a heavy-handed technique to block such programs: it disallows any program containing loops. This works, but at the cost of disallowing a wide range of useful programs; if the verifier could determine whether any given loop would terminate within a bounded time, this restriction could be lifted. John Fastabend presented a plan for doing so during the BPF microconference at the 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference.

  Fastabend started by noting that the lack of loops hurts; BPF developers are doing "crazy things" to work around their absence. He is working to enable the use of simple loops that can be modeled by the verifier. There is academic work on ways to verify more complex loops, but that is a problem for later. For now, the objective is to detect simple loops and verify that they will terminate; naturally, it's important that the verifier, too, is able to terminate in a reasonable amount of time.

• Binary portability for BPF programs

  The BPF virtual machine is the same on all architectures where it is supported; architecture-specific code takes care of translating BPF to something the local processor can understand. So one might be tempted to think that BPF programs would be portable across architectures but, in many cases, that turns out not to be true. During the BPF microconference at the Linux Plumbers Conference, Alexei Starovoitov (assisted by Yonghong Song, who has done much of the work described) explained the problem and the work that has been done toward "compile once, run everywhere" BPF.

  Many BPF programs are indeed portable, in that they will load and execute properly on any type of processor. Packet-filtering programs, in particular, usually just work. But there is a significant class of exceptions in the form of tracing programs, which are one of the biggest growth areas for BPF. Most tracing tools have two components: a user-space program invoked by the user, and a BPF program that is loaded into the kernel to filter, acquire, and possibly boil down the needed data. Both programs are normally written in C.

• Taming STIBP

  The Spectre class of hardware vulnerabilities was apparently so-named because it can be expected to haunt us for some time. One aspect of that haunting can be seen in the fact that, nearly one year after Spectre was disclosed, the kernel is still unable to prevent one user-space process from attacking another in some situations. An attempt to provide that protection using a new x86 microcode feature called STIBP has run into trouble once its performance impact was understood; now a more nuanced approach may succeed in providing protection where it is needed without slowing down everybody else.

  The Spectre variant 2 vulnerability works by polluting the CPU's branch-prediction buffer (BPB), which is used during speculative execution to make a guess about which branch(es) the code will take; see this article for a refresher on the Spectre vulnerabilities if needed. Closing this hole requires changes at a number of levels, but a fundamental part of the problem is preventing any code that may be targeted from running with a BPB that has been trained by an attacker.

• The x32 subarchitecture may be removed

  The x32 subarchitecture is a software variant of x86-64; it runs the processor in the 64-bit mode, but uses 32-bit pointers and arithmetic. The idea is to get the advantages of x86-64 without the extra memory usage that goes along with it. It seems, though, that x32 is not much appreciated; few distributions support it and the number of users appears to be small.