Most secure Linux distros in 2018

Think of a Linux distribution as a bundle of software delivered together, based on the Linux kernel - a kernel being the core of a system that connects software to hardware and vice versa – with a GNU operating system and a desktop environment, giving the user a visual way to operate the system via a graphical user interface. Linux has a reputation as being more secure than Windows and Mac OS due to a combination of factors – not all of them about the software. Firstly, although desktop Linux users are on the up, Linux environments are far less common in the grand scheme of things than Windows devices on personal computers. The Linux community also tends to be more technical. There are technical reasons too, including fundamental differences in the way the distribution architecture tends to be structured. Nevertheless over the last decade security-focused distributions started to appear, which will appeal to the privacy-conscious user who wants to avoid the worldwide state-sanctioned internet spying that the west has pioneered and where it continues to innovate. Of course, none of these will guarantee your privacy, but they're a good start. Here we list some of them. It is worth noting that security best practices are often about process rather than the technology, avoiding careless mistakes like missing patches and updates, and using your common sense about which websites you visit, what you download, and what you plug into your computer.

Red Hat and Fedora News

• Red Hat OpenStack Platform fast forward upgrades: A step-by-step overview

  New in Red Hat®️ OpenStack®️ Platform 13, the fast forward upgrade feature lets you easily move between long-life releases, without the need to upgrade to each in-between release. Fast forward upgrades fully containerize Red Hat OpenStack Platform deployment to simplify and speed the upgrade process while reducing interruptions and eliminating the need for additional hardware. Today, we’ll take a look at what the fast forward upgrade process from Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 to Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13 looks like in practice.

• DesOps – The Next Wave in Design

  Today, design as a discipline is getting more and more recognition across the entrepreneur world and many industry efforts, such as IBM‘s Enterprise Design Thinking framework, RedHat‘s Open Studio and similar ones, are at a large scale, trying to create a synergy between the Agile approach to the software development lifecycle and the Design Thinking.  It is an interesting crossroad where the next big thing in product delivery is to bring scalability as well as automation to the creative process.

• Red Hat Unveils Cloud-Native BPM Platform

  Red Hat this week extended its business process management (BPM) suite to run natively on a Red Hat OpenShift platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment. Phil Simpson, product marketing manager for JBoss at Red Hat, says Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7 will make it simpler for members of a line of business (LOB) organization to collaboratively build applications using low-code application development tools in collaboration with professional developers relying on the same core OpenShift platform. The latest version of the Red Hat BPM platform is now more portable because of the cloud-native capabilities enabled by a Red Hat OpenShift platform that is tightly integrated with open source Kubernetes container orchestration software, says Simpson.

• Supermicro, Red Hat and Solarflare Set Record on Financial Applications Benchmark

  Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, networking solutions and green computing technology, along with Red Hat and Solarflare today announced a new world record for lowest latency on the well-known STAC-N1 benchmark from STAC (the Securities Technology Analysis Center) for the world’s leading financial institutions.

• PHP version 7.1.19 and 7.2.7

• Fedora Atomic Host to Become Fedora CoreOS After Red Hat's Acquisition of CoreOS

  The Fedora Project's leader Matthew Miller and Red Hat's Atomic OpenShift Engineer Dusty Mabe announced Fedora CoreOS, an upcoming operating system designed to replace Fedora Atomic Host. In January 2018, Red Hat Inc., which is currently world's leading provider of open source solutions, announced that it acquired the CoreOS Inc. company for US $250 million. Some of you many know CoreOS as the CoreOS Linux operating system that later changed its name to Container Linux by CoreOS.

• Is Red Hat Stock a Falling Machete That’s Actually Worth Catching?

• Red Hat is getting slammed after giving disappointing guidance

• BTIG Downgrades Red Hat (RHT) to Neutral

• Red Hat stock plummets after analysts discuss disappointing forecast

• Splunk, Salesforce among cloud software stocks trading lower after Red Hat earnings

• Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) CEO James Whitehurst on Q1 2019 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

• Tech Today: Red Hat Plunges, Cheers for Micron, Apple Loves to Fight Patents

• Software Stocks Down; Red Hat, Electronic Arts, And BofI In Focus

• Red Hat (RHT) PT Lowered to $165 at Cowen

• Analysts: What Red Hat's stock drop means

• Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Red Hat Falls On Weak Forecast; Tandem Diabetes Care Shares Climb

• Why Red Hat, Inc. Shares Crashed Today

• Red Hat Stock Triggers Sell Signal As Outlook Raises Business Concerns

• Exxon Mobil and CarMax jump; Red Hat and Tesla tumble

• Red Hat CEO on earnings-led stock drop: 'I would encourage investors to look long term'

4MLinux 26.0 BETA released.

4MLinux 26.0 BETA is ready for testing. Basically, at this stage of development, 4MLinux BETA has the same features as 4MLinux STABLE, but it provides a huge number of updated packages, including major changes in the core of the system, which now uses the GNU C Library 2.27 and the GNU Compiler Collection 7.3.0.

Games and DXVK

• The Atari VCS team aren't doing themselves any favours by accusing The Register of being professional trolls

  It seems the Atari VCS team are burning bridges before they're even built, as they accused the well respected tech news site The Register of professional trolling. A user on Facebook sent Atari a link to this article by El Reg that basically savaged the Atari VCS. I'm surprised I missed that article, so I've done a little catching up this morning reading everything through.

• There's a new Linux beta of 'Black Mesa' that fixes it running on Linux, Xen levels nearly finished

  For those who've been wanting to play Black Mesa, the fan-made recreation of Half-Life you're in luck as Crowbar Collective put up a Beta for Linux users. For me, previously, the game just wouldn't launch since one of their recent updates. If you now opt into the "public-beta" on Steam, it should work once more. Really great to see Crowbar Collective get serious about fixing issues in their Linux build!

• Build your base and raid enemies in 'Scrunk' coming to Linux next month, also has a Battle Royale mode

  Scrunk is a game I discovered today that instantly captured my interest for the interesting team-based build and survive mode. Arriving on Steam in Early Access on July 12th with Linux support, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. The main mode has teams build and fortify their base, surviving world-events like blast-zones, mech units and so on.

• Visual novel 'Higurashi When They Cry Hou' part 6 is now out

  Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.6 Tsumihoroboshi recently released as the sixth chapter in the series and they all have Linux support. From what I understand, they're slight remasters over the original versions. They include both English and Japanese text as well as the option to choose the original or the updated character sprites. The series has been popular with both users and critics, to the point that it has both Manga and Anime adaptions. So to have the games on Linux is quite a treat it seems!

• Basemark GPU is a new benchmark tool that supports Linux and many different APIs

  A few days ago, Basemark officially announced and have now released Basemark GPU, their latest benchmarking tool and it has Linux support. Officially, it seems they're only supporting Debian/Ubuntu (see the note at the bottom about that though…).

• Looks like miniLAW: Ministry of Law is heading to Linux, get ready to be an arm of the law

• In Monster Prom I was rejected even after letting a princess ride me

  Monster Prom is a game I honestly completely ignored when it released. I will hold my hands up to that and tell you how much of an idiot I was for doing so. Note: Key provided for me.

• DXVK 0.60 Released With Support For 64-Bit Floating Point Instructions, Optimizations

  DXVK 0.60 is now available as the newest feature release for this translation layer that allows Direct3D 11 games running on Wine to be mapped to Vulkan rather than Wine's default OpenGL translation layer. With DXVK 0.60 there are more performance optimizations and other feature additions. New features to DXVK 0.60 are support for 64-bit floating point instructions and improved context flush behavior for games utilizing queues incorrectly. There are also optimizations around Vulkan pipeline barriers and Vulkan descriptor sets, leading to higher GPU throughput and reducing CPU overhead, respectively.

• DXVK for Direct3D 11 over Vulkan in Wine has a new 0.60 release

  Summer heat got you parched? Why not wet your whistle with some Wine as DXVK has a fresh release out today.