Android Leftovers

• 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

Watchdog: IRS botched Linux migration

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.

Graphics: Wayland's Weston, AMD, GitLab, NVIDIA

• 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.

OpenSUSE/SUSE: 2018-2019 Elections Underway, SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 4, and 'Making the Selection' (Storage)

• 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.