prisoninmate writes: The current daily build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) remains based on the Linux 4.2 kernel packages of the stable Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system, while the latest and most advanced Linux 4.3 kernel is tracked on the master-next branch of the upcoming operating system. In the meantime, the Ubuntu Kernel Team announced plans for moving to Linux kernel 4.4 for the final release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

An anonymous reader writes: AMD Windows customers were greeted this week to the new "Crimson" Radeon Software that brought many bug fixes, performance improvements, and brand new control panel. While AMD also released this Crimson driver for Linux, it really doesn't change much. The control panel is unchanged except for replacing "Catalyst" strings with "Radeon" and there's been no performance changes but just some isolated slowdowns. The Crimson Linux release notes only mention two changes: a fix for glxgears stuttering and mouse cursor corruption.

The device is called the Turris Omnia, and its Indiegogo page says it's a "hi-performance & open-source router." Their fundraising goal is $100,000. So far, 1,191 backers have pledged $248,446 (as of the moment this was typed), with 49 days left to go. They've shipped 2,000 pieces so far but, says interviewee Ondej Filip, "95% of them are in the Czech Republic."

This is not only an open-source project, but non-profit as well. A big motive for it is heightened security, as the interview (and transcript) make clear. It's also apparent that the hardware here is overkill for a router; it can run a complete Linux distro, no problem, so it can function as a server, not just as a router. Interested? You might want to put a reservation in soon. This isn't the cheapest router (or even server) out there, but a lot of people obviously think a Turris Omnia, with its crypto security, automatic updates, and server functions would be nice to have.

jones_supa writes: Months after the smartphone company Jolla announced its split and intent to focus on Sailfish OS licensing, its financial situation has not improved. Jolla's latest financing round has been delayed and so they have had to file for debt restructuring in Finland. As part of that, the company is temporarily laying off a big part of its personnel (Google translation of Finnish original). Jolla co-founder Antti Saarnio said, "Our operating system Sailfish OS is in great shape currently and it is commercially ready. Unfortunately the development until this point has required quite a lot of time and money (PDF). To get out of this death valley we need to move from a development phase into a growth phase. At the same time we need to adapt our cost levels to the new situation. One of the main actions is to tailor the operating system to fit the needs of different clients. We have several major and smaller potential clients who are interested in using Sailfish OS in their projects."

An anonymous reader writes: Linux 4.4-rc1 has been released. New features of Linux 4.4 include a Raspberry Pi kernel mode-setting driver, support for 3D acceleration by QEMU guest virtual machines, AMD Stoney APU support, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 support, expanded eBPF virtual machine programs, new hardware peripheral support, file-system fixes, faster SHA crypto support on Intel hardware, and LightNVM / Open-Channel SSD support.

New submitter NotDrWho writes: As reported by Ars Technica: "With this week's official launch of Valve's Linux-based Steam Machine line (for non-pre-orders), we decided to see if the new OS could stand up to the established Windows standard when running games on the same hardware. Unfortunately for open source gaming supporters, it looks like SteamOS gaming comes with a significant performance hit on a number of benchmarks." They tested with two graphically intensive titles from 2014, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux. They say, "we got anywhere from 21- to 58-percent fewer frames per second, depending on the graphical settings. On our hardware running Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings and HD resolution, the OS change alone was the difference between a playable 34.5 fps average on Windows and a stuttering 14.6 fps mess on SteamOS." Even most of Valve's own games took big performance hits when running under SteamOS.

itwbennett writes: Last week a new piece of ransomware was discovered that targets Linux servers. Yesterday, researchers at Bitdefender discovered a critical flaw in how the ransomware (dubbed Linux.Encoder.1) operates while testing a sample in their lab and released a free tool that will automatically decrypt any files on a victim's system that were targeted.

Nigel Dessau has written a book titled Become a 21st Century Executive: Breaking Away from the Pack. One thing he mentions both in his book and in conversation is that you should harness conflict in the workplace rather than try to stop it. And the first name that came to mind was Linus Torvalds, and how kernel developer Sarah Sharp recently quit the kernel development team loudly and publicly because of Linus's 'Brutal' Communications Style. And now the Washington Post has put out an article under the headline, Net of Insecurity: The Kernel of the Argument, which is about Linus's management style and his recent conflicts with almost every Internet security maven within reach of his online writing. Meanwhile, at ZDNet, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols calls the Post article "re-bundled old FUD about Linux and the internet's security."

Nigel likes Linus (as do most people who've met him in person) and points out that Linus can get away with being somewhat prickly because he's a genius. The same could be said about the late Steve Jobs and a number of other interesting leaders in the computer business. And Nigel's book and this interview also talk about something that may be more important in the long run than this year's small spate of Linux publicity, namely mentoring and how it can help millennials become productive workers in knowledge fields -- which a whole bunch of them need to start doing PDQ because all the baby boomers everybody loves to hate are either retired already or will be retired before long.

An anonymous reader writes: A new piece of ransomware has been discovered that targets Linux servers, looking to encrypt only files that are related to Web hosting, Web servers, MySQL, Subversion, Git, and other technologies used in Web development and HTTP servers. Weirdly, despite targeting business environments, the ransomware only asks for 1 Bitcoin, a fairly low amount compared to other ransomware.

An anonymous reader writes: Today marks three years since Valve's Steam client went into beta on Linux. In that time over 1,600 games have become natively available for Linux. Going beyond having many new Linux games, Phoronix recaps, "we've seen Valve make significant investments into the open-source graphics stack and other areas of Linux (in part through their sponsorship of Collabora and LunarG). Valve developers are significantly pushing SDL2. We've seen more mainstream interest in Linux gaming, and Valve has been heavily involved in the creation of the Vulkan graphics API. They have given away their entire game collection to the Mesa/Ubuntu/Debian upstream developers, and much more." The three-year anniversary is coincidentally just days before the release of Steam Machines.

Rick Zeman writes: The Washington Post has a lengthy article on Linus Torvalds and his thoughts on Linux security. Quoting: "...while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven't been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. ...

His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"

Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."

MasterPatricko writes: In what they're calling the first "hybrid" distribution release, the openSUSE project have announced the availability of openSUSE Leap 42.1. Built on a core of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1 packages but including an up-to-date userspace (KDE Plasma 5.4.2, GNOME 3.16, and many other DEs), Leap aims to provide a stable middle ground between enterprise releases which are quickly out of date, and the sometimes unstable community distros. DVD/USB or Network Install ISOs are available for download now. For those who do prefer the bleeding edge, the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling-release distribution is also available.

An anonymous reader writes: Satya Nadella has made some interesting reforms to Microsoft. Today, Red Hat and Microsoft announced that they will partner to deliver Red Hat's product suite in Azure. Red Hat will also support .NET core in RHEL. Additionally, Red Hat's CloudForms product will now work with Hyper-V/Azure, RHEV, VMware, and AWS. Microsoft has certainly come a long way from the Halloween Memos. Here are Red Hat's blog post and Microsoft's blog post about the announcement

An anonymous reader writes: Today marks the release of Fedora 23 for all three main editions: Workstation, Cloud, and Server. This release brings GNOME 3.18, Libre Office 5.0, and Fedora Spins — alternate desktops that provide a different experience. Fedora 23 also includes a version optimized for running on ARM-based systems. You can read the full release notes on their website. "Fedora 23 also has important under-the-hood security improvements, with increased hardening for all compiled software and with insecure SSL3 and RC4 protocols disabled. We've also updated all of the software installed by default in Fedora Cloud Base Image and Fedora Workstation to use Python version 3, and the Mono .NET compatible framework is now at version 4. Perhaps most importantly, Unicode 8.0 support now enables the crucial U1F32D character."

WarJolt writes: The plug was pulled on the attempt to crowd-source an Arch Linux install after a botnet threatened to take over the process. Twitch Installs has been rebooted by the twitchintheshell community and Twitch Installs users managed to reinstall Arch only to be thwarted by the botnet. The botnet managed to partially install Gentoo. Users are currently in the process of reinstalling Arch.

An anonymous reader writes: The Linux 4.3 kernel was released as stable today. The Linux 4.3 kernel brings Intel Skylake support, reworked NVIDIA open-source graphics support, and many other changes with the code count hitting 20.6 million lines of code.

An anonymous reader writes: Early last year, an anonymous developer had the idea to try to crowd-source a game of Pokemon using Twitch.tv. 16 days of continuous play later, they were victorious, with an estimated 1.17 million people participating. A new experiment is now trying to ramp up the complexity: the goal is to install Arch Linux. "Every ten seconds, the most popular keystroke in Twitch chat will be entered into an Arch Linux virtual machine." The launch page recommends taking a look at the Arch Linux Wiki, beginner's guide, and a list of bash commands. People in the video stream chat are already discussing strategy.

DeviceGuru writes: The immensely popular Raspberry Pi will soon be offered in customized versions, through an exclusive arrangement between Raspberry Pi Trading and Element14. According to the companies' announcement, Element14 will provide design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create 'bespoke designs' based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform. That's weird U.K. English for saying that contracts for creating customized Raspberry Pi SBCs will entail substantial NRE fees and 3,000 to 5,000 unit orders, depending on the nature of the customization. The tweaked Pi's are likely to have revised board layouts, additional or alternative functions, interfaces, connectors, and memory configurations, and more. A handful of unsanctioned Raspberry Pi knock-offs have already appeared over the past couple of years, including various Orange Pi and Banana Pi flavors, which certainly didn't involve any 'bespeaking.' More info is at Element14's CustomPi page.

New submitter DebugN writes: When ARM introduced 64-bit support to its architecture, it aimed for Linux application compatibility with prior 32-bit software on its architecture. But for Linux programmers, there remain some significant differences that can affect code behavior. If you are a Linux programmer working with — or will soon be working with — 64-bit, you might want to know what those differences are, and this useful EDN article says it all.

An anonymous reader writes: A 22-way AMD Radeon vs. NVIDIA GeForce graphics card comparison on SteamOS 2.0 "Brewmaster" was carried out with one month to go until Steam Machines begin to ship. The article looks at the OpenGL performance of this Debian-based Linux distribution as well as the power/performance efficiency, thermal efficiency, and value of the entire line-up. The results make it pretty clear why the current range of Steam Machines with SteamOS all ship with NVIDIA graphics.