• There's Now a Windows 10 Installer for the Debian-Based Q4OS Linux Distribution

  The Q4OS development team is pleased to inform us today about the immediate availability for download of a Windows installer for their Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution, Q4OS, allowing users to create a dual-boot environment on their PCs.

  For those not familiar to Q4OS, it's an open-source and free Linux distro based on the popular Debian GNU/Linux operating system and built around the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE), which resembles the look and feel of the old-school KDE 3.5 desktop environment.

  Created with an emphasis on Windows users who want to migrate to a free, open-source, and more secure operating system, Q4OS now lets them install the distribution alongside Microsoft Windows in an easy manner, without having to do any modifications to your personal computer or install any other apps.

• Ubuntu Dock Now Has Dynamic Transparency

  Ubuntu devs have listened to our gripe on the jarring contrast between GNOME 3.26's transparent top bar and the Ubuntu Dock.

• Ubuntu Dock Features Adaptive Transparency on Ubuntu 17.10, Here's How It Works

  Ubuntu contributor Didier Roche continues his development on the look and feel of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, and today he announced that Ubuntu Dock is getting adaptive transparency.

  Canonical confirmed that Ubuntu 17.10 would come with the GNOME 3.26 desktop environment by default, though the default session has suffered numerous modifications compared to the vanilla one to make things easier for those using the Unity interface on Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

  Most probably, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users won't upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10, but we're sure Ubuntu 17.04 users will because it'll reach end of life in about four months from the moment of writing, sometime in January 2018. Therefore, Canonical wants to make their Unity to GNOME transition as painless as possible.

• LXD: Weekly Status #15

  This week has been pretty quiet as far as upstream changes since half the team was attending the Open Source Summity, the Linux Plumbers Conference and the Linux Security Summit in Los Angeles, California.

• Tails 3.2 release candidate has been released for testing

  The LiveUSB Linux distribution, Tails (the amnesic incognito live system), has received a new release candidate for the upcoming 3.2 update that’s due out on the 26th of this month. The update comes with some big under-the-hood changes to the system which should improve hardware support and the email experience.

  If you’ve ever decided to try Tails on newer hardware, you may have had some driver issues; with this release, Tails ships with the Linux 4.12.12 kernel which is one of the latest. With it, users will get a better hardware experience; for example, the NVIDIA Maxwell series of graphics cards are now supported.

• Debian Policy call for participation -- September 2017

• Mini-DebConf 2017 Debian Conference to Take Place November 23-26 in Cambridge UK

  Debian developer and leader of the debian-cd project Steve McIntyre announced the official dates and schedule of this year's Mini-DebConf conference for Debian developers and users.

  The Mini-DebConf 2017 conference will take place for four days, from Thursday, November 23 until Sunday, November 26, and it will be hosted at Arm's office in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Arm is Steve McIntyre's employer and the industry's leading supplier of microprocessors for embedded and IoT devices.

  "I'm organizing another mini-DebConf in Cambridge this year. Again, my employer Arm is going to host the conference for four days in November," said Steve McIntyre in the mailing list announcement. "I'm also hoping to find sponsors again to cover some other costs for the conference for things like food - please contact me if you can help!"

• Google Hangouts in Debian testing (Buster)

  Google offers a lot of software components packaged specifically for Debian and Debian-like Linux distributions. Examples are: Chrome, Earth and the Hangouts plugin. Also, there are many other Internet services doing the same: Spotify, Dropbox, etc. I’m really grateful for them, since this make our life easier.

  Problem is that our ecosystem is rather complex, with many distributions and many versions out there. I guess is not an easy task for them to keep such a big variety of support variations.

• RcppMsgPack 0.2.0

• RcppRedis 0.1.8

• devscripts needs YOU!

  Over the past 10 years, I've been a member of a dwindling team of people maintaining the devscripts package in Debian.

• My Free Software Activities in August 2017

  Here is my monthly report that covers what I have been doing for Debian.

Univention's Maren Abatielos is pleased to inform us about the availability of the second point release of the Debian-based Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.2 operating system for servers and the cloud.