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GUI

KDE Plasma 5.3 Beta Brings Lot of Improvements 64

Posted by timothy from the gui-not-gooey dept.
jones_supa writes: The KDE project today announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.3 beta. It brings better power management, improved Bluetooth support, improved widgets, Wayland support, new media center, and nearly 350 bugfixes. The power management improvements include settings that can be independently configured per activity, there is a new energy usage monitor available in KInfoCenter, and a battery applet identifies applications that hog power. Bluetooth applet brings added support for blocking and unblocking devices. New touchpad module has been added as well. The combined window manager and compositor KWin is now able to start a nested XWayland server, which acts as a bridge between the old X11 and the new Wayland world.
Open Source

Linux Getting Extensive x86 Assembly Code Refresh 209

Posted by Soulskill from the code-run-through-de-spaghettifier dept.
jones_supa writes: A massive x86 assembly code spring cleaning has been done in a pull request that is to end up in Linux 4.1. The developers have tried testing the code on many different x86 boxes, but there's risk of regression when exposing the code to many more systems in the days and weeks ahead. That being said, the list of improvements is excellent. There are over 100 separate cleanups, restructuring changes, speedups and fixes in the x86 system call, IRQ, trap and other entry code, part of a heroic effort to deobfuscate a decade old spaghetti assembly code and its C code dependencies.
Linux

Linux 4.0 Kernel Released 172

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Linux 4.0 kernel has been released. Linux 4.0 brings many features including live patching, Radeon DisplayPort Audio, RadeonSI fan control improvements, new OverlayFS functionality, Intel Quark SoC support, and a heck of a lot more. Linus's release announcement reads in part: "So I decided to release 4.0 as per the normal schedule, because there really weren't any known issues, and while I'll be traveling during the end of the upcoming week due to a college visit, I'm hoping that won't affect the merge window very much. We'll see. Linux 4.0 was a pretty small release both in linux-next and in final size, although obviously 'small' is all relative. It's still over 10k non-merge commits. But we've definitely had bigger releases (and judging by linux-next v4.1 is going to be one of the bigger ones)."
Operating Systems

First Alpha of Public Sector Linux Deployment System 84

Posted by Soulskill from the nordic-tux dept.
New submitter mathiasfriman writes: SverigeLinux (SwedenLinux in Swedish) is a project financed by the Swedish Internet Fund that is developing a Linux deployment system for the public sector. It is based on DebianLAN and has just released its first public early alpha version. This 7 minute video shows how you can deploy up to 100 workstations with minimal Linux knowledge in under an hour, complete with DHCP, DNS and user data in LDAP, logins using Kerberos and centralized storage. The project has a home on GitHub and is looking for testers and developers. Don't worry, no Björgen Kjörgen; it's all in English.
Portables

1+ Year Running Arch Linux On a Lenovo Yoga 2 Chronicled 74

Posted by timothy from the not-yet-doing-corpse-position dept.
New submitter KeithCu writes with a lengthy explanation of the joys (and just a handful of glitches) he's had in running Arch Linux on his ultraportable, a Lenovo Yoga 2. Other than the hardware-specific issues, I've been amazed by how well Arch Linux works, given that it doesn't have release cycles, or a big team with a lot of money supporting and marketing it. I've heard only 30 developers maintain the core Arch packages, with most of them having a full-time job doing something else! At the same time, it shouldn't be a total surprise things work so well, because free software doesn't just fall off a turnip truck. Not many reviews feature pictures of a laptop charred from building LibreOffice.
Open Source

GCC 5.0 To Support OpenMP 4.0, Intel Cilk Plus, C++14 57

Posted by Soulskill from the onward-and-upward dept.
An anonymous reader writes: GCC 5 is coming up for release in the next few weeks and is presenting an extraordinary number of new features: C11 support by default, experimental C++14 support, full C++11 support in libstdc++, OpenMP 4.0 with Xeon Phi / GPU offloading, Intel Cilk Plus multi-threading, new ARM processor support, Intel AVX-512 handling, and much more. This is a big release, so those wishing to test it ahead of time can obtain the preliminary GCC 5 source code from GCC's snapshots mirror.
Open Source

10 Years of Git: An Interview With Linus Torvalds 203

Posted by samzenpus from the straight-from-the-horses-mouth dept.
LibbyMC writes Git will celebrate its 10-year anniversary tomorrow. To celebrate this milestone, Linus shares the behind-the-scenes story of Git and tells us what he thinks of the project and its impact on software development. From the article: "Ten years ago this week, the Linux kernel community faced a daunting challenge: They could no longer use their revision control system BitKeeper and no other Software Configuration Management (SCMs) met their needs for a distributed system. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, took the challenge into his own hands and disappeared over the weekend to emerge the following week with Git. Today Git is used for thousands of projects and has ushered in a new level of social coding among programmers."
Android

Visual Studio 2015 Can Target Linux; Android Apps Anywhere Chrome Can Run 96

Posted by timothy from the then-you-win-maybe dept.
jones_supa writes Phoronix has noticed that the Visual Studio 2015 product page mentions that the new IDE can target Linux out of the box. Specifically the page says "Build for iOS, Android, Windows devices, Windows Server or Linux". What this actually means is not completely certain at this point, but it certainly laces nicely with the company opening up the .NET Framework. And speaking of cross-platform software: new submitter mccrew writes Google has released a tool that lets Android apps run on any machine that can run its Chrome browser. Called Arc Welder, the tool acts as a wrapper around Android apps so they can run on Windows, OS X and Linux machines. The software expands the places that Android apps can run and might make it easier for developers to get code working on different machines.
Firefox

MP3 Backend of Firefox and Thunderbird Found Vulnerable 60

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
jones_supa writes A critical vulnerability has been found in the MPEG-1 Layer III playback backend of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Security researcher Aki Helin reported a use-after-free scenario when playing certain audio files on the web using the Fluendo MP3 plugin for GStreamer on Linux. This is due to a flaw in handling certain MP3 files by the plugin and its interaction with Mozilla code. A maliciously crafted MP3 file can lead to a potentially exploitable crash. Linux is the only affected platform, so Windows and OS X users are safe from this particular vulnerability.
GNOME

GNOME 3.16 Released 196

Posted by timothy from the gnome-3:16-signs-for-every-sporting-event dept.
kthreadd writes Version 3.16 of GNOME, the primary desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems has been released. Some major new features in this release include a overhauled notification system, an updated design of the calendar drop down and support for overlay scrollbars. Also, the grid view in Files has been improved with bigger thumbnail icons, making the appearance more attractive and the rows easier to read. A video is available which demonstrates the new version.
Open Source

How Device Drivers Are Reverse Engineered 27

Posted by Soulskill from the freeing-your-peripherals dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Linux Voice magazine has published a long article about how people go about reverse engineering drivers for hardware peripherals. They use Python and a USB radio-controlled car to demonstrate, walking us through the entire process. It's a cool, easy-to-follow insight into what often seems to be a rather opaque process.
Windows

OEMs Allowed To Lock Secure Boot In Windows 10 Computers 362

Posted by Soulskill from the feel-free-to-do-whatever-we-want-with-your-new-computer dept.
jones_supa writes: Hardware that sports the "Designed for Windows 8" logo requires machines to support UEFI Secure Boot. When the feature is enabled, the core software components used to boot the machine are verified for correct cryptographic signatures, or the system refuses to boot. This is a desirable security feature, because it protects from malware sneaking into the boot process. However, it has an issue for alternative operating systems, because it's likely they won't have a signature that Secure Boot will authorize. No worries, because Microsoft also mandated that every system must have a UEFI configuration setting to turn the protection off, allowing booting other operating systems. This situation may now change. At its WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen, China, Microsoft said the setting to allow Secure Boot to be turned off will become optional when Windows 10 arrives. Hardware can be "Designed for Windows 10," and offer no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down. The choice to provide the setting (or not) will be up to the original equipment manufacturer.
Portables

Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Laptop To Support Physics Research? 385

Posted by timothy from the budget-for-replacement-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes My daughter is in her third year of college as a physics major. She has an internship in Europe this summer, will graduate next year, and continue with graduate physics studies. Her area of research interest is in gravitational waves and particle physics. She currently has a laptop running Win7 and wants to buy a new laptop. She would like to use Linux on it, and plans to use it for C++ programming, data analysis and simulations (along with the usual email, surfing, music, pictures, etc). For all of the physics-savvy Slashdotters out there: what should she get? PC? Mac? What do you recommend for running Linux? For a C++ development environment? What laptop do you use and how is it configured to support your physics-related activities?
Caldera

Not Quite Dead: SCO Linux Suit Against IBM Stirs In Utah 170

Posted by timothy from the no-one-expects-the-mcbride-inquisition dept.
An anonymous reader points to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune which says that The nearly defunct Utah company SCO Group Inc. and IBM filed a joint report to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City saying that legal issues remain in the case, which was initiated in 2003 with SCO claiming damages of $5 billion against the technology giant, based in Armonk, N.Y. That likely means that U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, who now presides over the dispute, will start moving the lawsuit — largely dormant for about four years while a related suit against Novell Inc. was adjudicated — ahead. What kind of issues? In addition to its claims of IBM misappropriation of code, SCO alleges that IBM executives and lawyers directed the company's Linux programmers to destroy source code on their computers after SCO made its allegations. The company's other remaining claims are that IBM's actions amounted to unfair competition and interference with its contracts and business relations with other companies. IBM has remaining claims against SCO that allege the Utah company violated contracts, copied and distributed IBM code that had been placed in Linux and that SCO created a campaign of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" about IBM's products and services because of the dispute over Unix code.
Operating Systems

Linux Might Need To Claim Only ACPI 2.0 Support For BIOS 129

Posted by timothy from the and-you-can-taqiya-that-to-the-bank dept.
jones_supa writes Some of us remember the story of why Linux kernel responds "False" when ACPI BIOS asks if the operating system is Linux. We have found yet another case where mimicking the Windows behavior instead of writing to the spec is the right choice if you just want your machine to work properly. The ACPI spec defines the _REV object as evaluating to the revision of the ACPI specification that the OS implements. Linux returns 5 for this, because Linux actually tries to implement ACPI 5.0, but Windows returns 2 (ACPI 2.0), possibly due to legacy reasons. Linux kernel expert Matthew Garrett discovered that still a fair amount of brokenness appears when 5 is returned as the revision, including a Dell machine which left the sound hardware in a misconfigured state. He is proposing a kernel patch which simply reports _REV as 2 on all x86 hardware.
KDE

The Role of a Nonprofit In Open Source Development 49

Posted by timothy from the gentle-guidance dept.
jrepin writes KDE is among the biggest open source projects which continues to innovate and evolve with the changing times. Often we have seen this particular community create technologies ahead of its time which were later adopted by other projects. The Linux Foundation talked to Lydia Pintscher, the president of the KDE e.V., the nonprofit organization that oversees the legal and financial aspects of the KDE project, to understand the relationship between the community and the organization. We also discussed the challenge of recruiting more women to open source projects and women in the KDE community.
PC Games (Games)

Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available 192

Posted by Soulskill from the year-of-linux-on-the-console dept.
An anonymous reader writes: This week the Steam Linux client has crossed the threshold of having more than 1,000 native Linux games available while Steam in total has just under 5,000 games. This news comes while the reported Steam Linux market-share is just about 1.0%, but Valve continues brewing big plans for Linux gaming. Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?
Open Source

Linux Kernel Adopts 'Code of Conflict' 93

Posted by Soulskill from the be-excellent-to-each-other dept.
Motor was one of several readers to note that a small patch recently added to the Linux kernel contains guidelines for discourse and dispute resolution within the community. It's called the "Code of Conflict." Quoting: Your code and ideas behind it will be carefully reviewed, often resulting in critique and criticism. The review will almost always require improvements to the code before it can be included in the kernel. Know that this happens because everyone involved wants to see the best possible solution for the overall success of Linux. .... If however, anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable due to this process, that is not acceptable. ... As a reviewer of code, please strive to keep things civil and focused on the technical issues involved.
Encryption

Kali Linux On a Raspberry Pi (A/B+/2) With LUKS Disk Encryption 37

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes With the advent of smaller, faster ARM hardware such as the new Raspberry Pi 2 (which now has a Kali image built for it), we've been seeing more and more use of these small devices as 'throw-away computers'. While this might be a new and novel technology, there's one major drawback to this concept – and that is the confidentiality of the data stored on the device itself. Most of the setups do little to protect the sensitive information saved on the SD cards of these little computers.
Graphics

Google Introduces Freon, a Replacement For X11 On Chrome OS 166

Posted by timothy from the low-level-churn-at-a-high-level dept.
An anonymous reader writes With this week's release of Chrome OS M41, there is the new Freon graphics stack to replace X11 on some platforms. Freon is a very limited graphics stack to replace Chrome OS usage of X11/X.Org by having the Chrome browser communicate directly with the Linux kernel's KMS/DRM API and OpenGL ES interfaces for drawing. This design is much simpler and yields various power and performance improvements though it's not based on Wayland nor Mir (though Chrome plans to support these display server models).

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