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postmarketOS: An Ultimate Linux Distro For Your Smartphones Is Coming

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 19th of September 2017 08:51:28 AM Filed under
OS
Linux

One of the key strengths of Linux-based operating systems is their ability to run on a variety of hardware, ranging from a decade old computers to the latest generation Intel chips. The kernel developers work day and night to keep our devices breathing running. In the past, we have also prepared a list of Linux distributions that are best suited for older computers with limited hardware requirements.

This brings us to the question — Why aren’t tons of Linux operating system options available for mobile devices? The mobile ecosystem is chiefly dominated by Android and iOS, with Android enjoying a presence on a wide range of devices. But, on the fronts of updates, even Android fails to deliver. Very often the top-of-the-line flagship devices are deprived of the latest updates just after 2-3 years. To solve this question, postmarketOS has appeared on the horizon.

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UNIX: Nintendo Switch, iPhone Debacle, SPARC/Solaris, Screencasting with OpenBSD and What’s So Bad About POSIX I/O

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 18th of September 2017 01:04:27 PM Filed under
OS
  • Every Nintendo Switch appears to contain a hidden copy of NES Golf [Ed: The Switch, some claim, runs FreeBSD]

    Turns out, this is somehow weirder. Your Nintendo Switch may already have a fully playable NES game just sitting inside of it.

  • How long should a $999 iPhone last?
  • [Older] R.I.P. SPARC and Solaris [iophk: "Larry doing favors for Bill at his own expense"]

    According to comments on thelayoff.com, “SPARC people are out.” “The entire SPARC core team has been let go as of Friday. It’s gone. No more SPARC. You can’t have a SPARC w/o a team to develop the core.”

  • [Old] Screencasting with OpenBSD
  • What’s So Bad About POSIX I/O?

    However, it is much less common to hear exactly why POSIX I/O is so detrimental to scalability and performance, and what needs to change to have a suitably high-performance, next-generation I/O model. To answer the question of why POSIX I/O is holding back I/O performance today and shed light on the design space for tomorrow’s extreme-scale I/O systems, it is best to take a critical look at what POSIX I/O really means.

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CentOS 7.4 Is Now Available for 64-Bit, ARM64, ARMhfp, POWER7 & POWER8 Machines

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 16th of September 2017 07:28:25 PM Filed under
OS
Red Hat

CentOS developers Karanbir Singh and Jim Perrin announced the release of the CentOS 7.4 operating system for supported architectures, a release that brings all the latest updates and security patches.

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Solus 3 Brings Maturity and Performance to Budgie

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Friday 15th of September 2017 05:59:54 PM Filed under
OS

Back in 2016, the Solus developers announced they were switching their operating system over to a rolling release. Solus 3 marks the third iteration since that announcement and, in such a short time, the Solus platform has come a long way. But for many, Solus 3 would be a first look into this particular take on the Linux operating system. With that in mind, I want to examine what Solus 3 offers that might entice the regular user away from their current operating system. You might be surprised when I say, “There’s plenty.”

This third release of Solus is an actual “release” and not a snapshot. What does that mean? The previous two releases of Solus were snapshots. Solus has actually moved away from the regular snapshot model found in rolling releases. With the standard rolling release, a new snapshot is posted at least every few days; from that snapshot an image can be created such that the difference between an installation and latest updates is never large. However, the developers have opted to use a hybrid approach to the rolling release. According to the Solus 3 release announcement, this offers “feature rich releases with explicit goals and technology enabling, along with the benefits of a curated rolling release operating system.”

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System76's Pop!_OS Linux Installer to Ship by Default with Ubuntu 18.04 Rebase

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 11th of September 2017 11:13:10 PM Filed under
OS

System76 devs continue to work on the first release of their Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS Linux distro, which is expected to land on the same day as Canonical's Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, on October 19, 2017.

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elementary OS Loki Users Get August's App Improvements and Security Updates

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 11th of September 2017 10:56:01 PM Filed under
OS

Daniel Foré, founder of the elementary OS project, an open-source initiative to provide a general use computer operating system based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distro, announced August's security and stability updates for Loki users.

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Zorin OS 12.2 Arrives as the Most Advanced Zorin Operating System Ever Released

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 11th of September 2017 10:48:39 PM Filed under
OS

The Zorin OS team announced the release and general availability of Zorin OS 12.2, the second maintenance update to the Zorin OS 12 series, and also the most advances Zorin OS version ever released.

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Chrome OS Will Soon Allow All Chromebook Owners to Rename USB Flash Drives

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Friday 8th of September 2017 01:05:24 AM Filed under
OS

Google's Chromium evangelist François Beaufort is back with more goodies for Chromebook owners, recently revealing the fact that future versions of Chrome OS will allow users to rename attached USB flash drives.

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Solaris to Linux Migration 2017 Amid Layoffs

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 6th of September 2017 08:30:59 AM Filed under
OS
Server
  • Solaris to Linux Migration 2017

    Many people have contacted me recently about switching from Solaris (or illumos) to Linux, especially since most of the Solaris kernel team were let go this year (including my former colleagues, I'm sorry to hear). This includes many great engineers who I'm sure will excel in whatever they choose to work on next. They have been asking me about Linux because I've worked for years on each platform: Solaris, illumos, and Linux, in all cases full time and as a subject matter expert. I've also done some work on BSD, which is another compelling choice, but I'll discuss that another time. The following is my opinion and not an official guide to any OS.

    Switching from Solaris to Linux has become much easier in the last two years, with Linux developments in ZFS, Zones, and DTrace. I've been contributing (out of necessity), including porting my DTraceToolkit tools to Linux, which also work on BSD. What follows are topics that may be of interest to anyone looking to migrate their systems and skillset: scan these to find topics that interest you.

  • Oracle staff report big layoffs across Solaris, SPARC teams
  • Sun set: Oracle closes down last Sun product lines

    None of this is a real surprise. Oracle had cut former Sun engineers and developers by a thousand employees in January. In Oracle's most recent SPARC/Solaris roadmap, the next generation Solaris 12 had been replaced by Solaris 11.next and SPARC next -- incremental upgrades.

    Former Sun executive Bryan Cantrill reported, based on his conversations with current Solaris team members, that Oracle's latest layoffs were, "So deep as to be fatal: The core Solaris engineering organization lost on the order of 90 percent of its people, including essentially all management." James Gosling, Java's creator, summed it up: "Solaris ... got a bullet in the head from Oracle on Friday."

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postmarketOS is a Touch-Optimized Linux Distro for Smartphones and Tablets

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 6th of September 2017 01:38:31 AM Filed under
OS
Linux

The same situation does not happen with old computers, though, mainly thanks to GNU/Linux distributions. You can actually take a 2007 computer and install a basic Linux distro on it, and it’ll run through most tasks (including web searching, multimedia playback, social networks and more) without a hitch. You will even get the latest security patches and most new features on your old computer. These distros also keep resource usage to a minimum, so while it definitely won’t be faster than a newer computer, it will work just fine for most of your casual needs. There is a small project hoping to bring that kind of support to Android phones and tablets, and that project is called postmarketOS

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More in Tux Machines

Oracle: New VirtualBox 5.2 Beta, SPARC M8 Processors Launched

  • VirtualBox 5.2 to Let Users Enable or Disable Audio Input and Output On-the-Fly
    Oracle announced new updates for its popular, cross-platform and open-source virtualization software, the third Beta of the upcoming VirtualBox 5.2 major release and VirtualBox 5.1.28 stable maintenance update. We'll start with the stable update, VirtualBox 5.1.28, as it's more important for our readers using Oracle VM VirtualBox for all of their virtualization needs. The VirtualBox 5.1 maintenance release 28 is here to improve audio support by fixing various issues with both the ALSA and OSS backends, as well as an accidental crash with AC'97.
  • SPARC M8 Processors Launched
    While Oracle recently let go of some of their SPARC team, today marks the launch of the SPARC M8. The initial SPARC M8 line-up includes the T8-1, T8-2, T8-4. M8-8, and SuperCluster M8-8 servers.

Wikileaks Releases Spy Files Russia, CCleaner Infected, Equifax Has a Dirty Little Secret

  • Spy Files Russia
    This publication continues WikiLeaks' Spy Files series with releases about surveillance contractors in Russia. While the surveillance of communication traffic is a global phenomena, the legal and technological framework of its operation is different for each country. Russia's laws - especially the new Yarovaya Law - make literally no distinction between Lawful Interception and mass surveillance by state intelligence authorities (SIAs) without court orders. Russian communication providers are required by Russian law to install the so-called SORM ( Система Оперативно-Розыскных Мероприятий) components for surveillance provided by the FSB at their own expense. The SORM infrastructure is developed and deployed in Russia with close cooperation between the FSB, the Interior Ministry of Russia and Russian surveillance contractors.
  • Malware-Infected CCleaner Installer Distributed to Users Via Official Servers for a Month
    Hackers have managed to embed malware into the installer of CCleaner, a popular Windows system optimization tool with over 2 billion downloads to date. The rogue package was distributed through official channels for almost a month. CCleaner is a utilities program that is used to delete temporary internet files such as cookies, empty the Recycling Bin, correct problems with the Windows Registry, among other tasks. First released in 2003, it has become hugely popular; up to 20 million people download it per month. Users who downloaded and installed CCleaner or CCleaner Cloud between Aug. 15 and Sept. 12 should scan their computers for malware and update their apps. The 32-bit versions of CCleaner v5.33.6162 and CCleaner Cloud v1.07.3191 were affected.
  • Equifax Suffered a Hack [sic] Almost Five Months Earlier Than the Date It Disclosed
  • This is why you shouldn’t use texts for two-factor authentication

    For a long time, security experts have warned that text messages are vulnerable to hijacking — and this morning, they showed what it looks like in practice.

Amazon Changes Rental ('Cloud') Model on GNU/Linux

Devices/Hardware: Embedded/Boards, CODESYS, and EPYC Linux Performance

  • Linux friendly IoT gateway runs on 3.5-inch Bay Trail SBC
    While the MB-80580 SBC lists SATA II, the gateway indicates SATA III. Also, the gateway datasheet notes that the RS232 ports can all be redirected to RS232/422/485. Software includes Windows IoT Core and Server, as well as Yocto, Ubuntu Snappy Core, and CentOS Linux distributions.
  • Rugged panel PC scales up to a 19-inch touchscreen
    The fanless, IP65-rated WinSystems “PPC65B-1x” panel PC runs Linux or Win 10 on a quad-core Atom E3845, and offers 10.4 to 19-inch resistive touchscreens.
  • CODESYS announces CODESYS-compatible SoftPLC for open Linux device platforms
  • EPYC Linux performance from AMD
    Phoronix have been hard at work testing out AMD's new server chip, specifically the 2.2/2.7/3.2GHz EPYC 7601 with 32 physical cores.  The frequency numbers now have a third member which is the top frequency all 32 cores can hit simultaneously, for this processor that would be 2.7GHz.  Benchmarking server processors is somewhat different from testing consumer CPUs, gaming performance is not as important as dealing with specific productivity applications.   Phoronix started their testing of EPYC, in both NUMA and non-NUMA configurations, comparing against several Xeon models and the performance delta is quite impressive, sometimes leaving even a system with dual Xeon Gold 6138's in the dust.  They also followed up with a look at how EPYC compares to Opteron, AMD's last server offerings.  The evolution is something to behold.
  • Opteron vs. EPYC Benchmarks & Performance-Per-Watt: How AMD Server Performance Evolved Over 10 Years
    By now you have likely seen our initial AMD EPYC 7601 Linux benchmarks. If you haven't, check them out, EPYC does really deliver on being competitive with current Intel hardware in the highly threaded space. If you have been curious to see some power numbers on EPYC, here they are from the Tyan Transport SX TN70A-B8026 2U server. Making things more interesting are some comparison benchmarks showing how the AMD EPYC performance compares to AMD Opteron processors from about ten years ago.

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