ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

[$] Fedora IoT becomes an edition

([Distributions] Aug 20, 2020 15:14 UTC (Thu) (corbet))

The Fedora 33 release is currently scheduled for late October; as part of the process of designing this release, the deadline for system-wide change proposals was set for June 30. This release already has [1]a substantial number of big changes in the works, so one might be forgiven for being surprised by [2]a system-wide change proposal that appeared on August 4, which looks to be pre-approved. Not only that, but this proposal expands the small set of official Fedora "editions" by adding the relatively obscure [3]Fedora Internet of Things Edition .



[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/824620/

[2] https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/CA+voJeVaxO2bQq+ph3eNJucRKyuabHYMkmdr-FiHB9Tskc3XYg@mail.gmail.com/

[3] https://iot.fedoraproject.org/

Exploring LibreOffice 7.0

([Development] Aug 19, 2020 20:40 UTC (Wed) (coogle))

[1]The Document Foundation (TDF) has [2] announced the release of LibreOffice 7.0. This major release is a significant upgrade from version 6.4.6, focusing on interoperability with Microsoft Office, general performance, and support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) version 1.3. A complete list of new features and bug fixes can be found in the [3]release notes .



[1] https://www.documentfoundation.org/

[2] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/08/05/announcement-of-libreoffice-7-0/

[3] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.0

Security updates for Monday

([Security] Aug 17, 2020 14:22 UTC (Mon) (ris))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (dovecot, htmlunit, jruby, libetpan, lucene-solr, net-snmp, and posgresql-9.6), Fedora (firefox, nss, qt, and thunderbird), Mageia (glib-networking, mumble, webkit2, and znc), openSUSE (balsa, chromium, firejail, hylafax+, libreoffice, libX11, perl-XML-Twig, thunderbird, wireshark, and xrdp), Red Hat (libvncserver), SUSE (libvirt and perl-PlRPC), and Ubuntu (dovecot and salt).

Kdenlive 20.08 released

([Development] Aug 17, 2020 14:06 UTC (Mon) (corbet))

[1]Version 20.08 of the Kdenlive video editor is available. " Kdenlive 20.08 is out with nifty features like Interface Layouts, Multiple Audio Stream support, Cached data management and Zoombars in the Clip Monitor and Effects Panel but one may argue that the highlights of this release are stability and interface improvements ".



[1] https://kdenlive.org/en/2020/08/kdenlive-20-08-is-out/

Kernel prepatch 5.9-rc1

([Kernel] Aug 16, 2020 21:24 UTC (Sun) (corbet))

Linux has [1]released the 5.9-rc1 kernel prepatch and closed the merge window for this development cycle. " This merge window felt a lot more normal than 5.8, and all the stats confirm that it seems to be the usual size. " In the end, 12,866 non-merge changesets were pulled for 5.9-rc1, as compared to 14,206 for 5.8-rc1.



[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/828894/

Security updates for Friday

([Security] Aug 14, 2020 18:14 UTC (Fri) (jake))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (squid3), Fedora (lilypond and python3), openSUSE (xen), SUSE (libreoffice, libvirt, webkit2gtk3, xen, and xerces-c), and Ubuntu (apache2).

[$] PHP Debugging using Xdebug

([Development] Aug 14, 2020 22:03 UTC (Fri) (coogle))

While PHP does not come with a full toolkit for debugging and profiling, an open-source project has existed almost as long as PHP to provide both: [1]Xdebug . Created and maintained by PHP core developer Derick Rethans, it offers remote debugging, stack traces, profiling, and more. It is a project that anyone doing PHP development would benefit from using.



[1] http://xdebug.org/

Voxel plotting with gnuplot 5.4

([Development] Aug 18, 2020 20:20 UTC (Tue) (leephillips))

In this followup to our [1]coverage of the release of [2]gnuplot 5.4, we look more deeply at one of the new features: voxel plots. We only briefly touched on these plots in that article, but they are the most conspicuous addition in this release of the free-software graphing tool. Voxel plotting provides multiple ways to visualize 3D data, so it is worth looking at this new plot type in more detail.



[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/826456/

[2] http://gnuplot.info

Holdgraf: Announcing the new Jupyter Book

([Development] Aug 13, 2020 15:19 UTC (Thu) (jake))

On the [1]Jupyter blog, Chris Holdgraf [2]announces a rewrite of the [3]Jupyter Book project . LWN [4]looked at Jupyter and its interactive notebooks for Python and other languages back in 2018; Jupyter Book extends the notebook idea. " Jupyter Book is an open source project for building beautiful, publication-quality books, websites, and documents from source material that contains computational content. With this post, we’re happy to announce that Jupyter Book has been re-written from the ground up, making it easier to install, faster to use, and able to create more complex publishing content in your books. It is now supported by the [5]Executable Book Project , an open community that builds open source tools for interactive and executable documents in the Jupyter ecosystem and beyond. "



[1] https://jupyter.org/

[2] https://blog.jupyter.org/announcing-the-new-jupyter-book-cbf7aa8bc72e

[3] https://github.com/executablebooks/jupyter-book

[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/746386/

[5] https://executablebooks.org/en/latest/

Walleij: How the ARM32 Linux kernel decompresses

([Kernel] Aug 13, 2020 14:00 UTC (Thu) (corbet))

For those who are into the details: here is [1]a step-by-step guide through the process of decompressing an Arm kernel and getting ready to boot from Linus Walleij. " Next the decompression code sets up a page table, if it is possible to fit one over the whole uncompressed+compressed kernel image. The page table is not for virtual memory, but for enabling cache, which is then turned on. The decompression will for natural reasons be much faster if we can use cache. "



[1] https://people.kernel.org/linusw/how-the-arm32-linux-kernel-decompresses

QEMU 5.1.0 released

([Development] Aug 13, 2020 13:57 UTC (Thu) (corbet))

[1]Version 5.1.0 of the QEMU processor emulator is out. " This release contains 2500+ commits from 235 authors. " Enhancements consist mostly of additional hardware emulation, of course, but it doesn't stop there; see [2]the changelog for lots of details.



[1] https://www.qemu.org/2020/08/11/qemu-5-1-0/

[2] https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/5.1

Searching code with Sourcegraph

([Development] Aug 17, 2020 20:37 UTC (Mon) (benhoyt))

[1]Sourcegraph is a tool for searching and navigating around large code bases. The tool has various search methods, including regular-expression search, and "structural search", which is a relatively new technique that is language-aware. The open-source core of the tool comes with code search, go-to-definition and other " [2]code intelligence " features, which provide ways for developers to make sense of multi-repository code bases. Sourcegraph's code-searching tools can show documentation for functions and methods on mouse hover and allow developers to quickly jump to definitions or to find all references to a particular identifier.



[1] https://about.sourcegraph.com/

[2] https://docs.sourcegraph.com/user/code_intelligence

Security updates for Thursday

([Security] Aug 13, 2020 12:49 UTC (Thu) (jake))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (linux-4.19, linux-latest-4.19, and openjdk-8) and Fedora (ark and hylafax+).

LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 20, 2020


[$] Theoretical vs. practical cryptography in the kernel

([Security] Aug 13, 2020 16:43 UTC (Thu) (corbet))

Shortly before the release of the 5.8 kernel, a [1]brief patch to a pseudo-random-number generator (PRNG) used by the networking stack was quietly applied to the kernel. As is the norm for such things, the changelog gave no indication that a security vulnerability had been fixed, but that turns out indeed to be the case. The resulting controversy had little to do with the original vulnerability, though, and everything to do with how cryptographic security is managed in the kernel. Figuring prominently in the discussion was the question of whether theoretical security can undermine security in the real world.



[1] https://git.kernel.org/linus/f227e3ec3b5c

Security updates for Wednesday

([Security] Aug 12, 2020 16:26 UTC (Wed) (coogle))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (dovecot and roundcube), Fedora (python36), Gentoo (chromium), openSUSE (ark, firefox, go1.13, java-11-openjdk, libX11, wireshark, and xen), Red Hat (bind and kernel), SUSE (libreoffice and python36), and Ubuntu (dovecot and software-properties).

Baker: Changing World, Changing Mozilla

([Briefs] Aug 11, 2020 18:54 UTC (Tue) (corbet))

Mitchell Baker [1]writes about changes at Mozilla , headlined by the laying-off of 250 people. " Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges. How can we lead towards business models that honor and protect people while creating opportunities for our business to thrive? How can we, or others who want a better internet, or those who feel like a different balance should exist between social and public benefit and private profit offer an alternative? "



[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-mozilla/

AgilBits announces 1Password for Linux [TechRadar]

([Security] Aug 11, 2020 17:52 UTC (Tue) (coogle))

TechRadar [1]reports that the popular password manager, [2]1Password , is coming to Linux. Currently available as a development preview, readers can check it out [3]here . In a [4]support forum post , 1Password founder David Teare said the release is " for testing and validation purposes only ", with an official release expected later this year.



[1] https://www.techradar.com/nz/news/top-password-manager-is-finally-coming-to-linux

[2] https://1password.com/

[3] https://support.1password.com/cs/getting-started-linux/

[4] https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/114964/1password-for-linux-development-preview

Security updates for Tuesday

([Security] Aug 11, 2020 17:43 UTC (Tue) (coogle))

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firmware-nonfree, golang-github-seccomp-libseccomp-golang, and ruby-kramdown), Fedora (kernel, libmetalink, and nodejs), openSUSE (go1.13, perl-XML-Twig, and thunderbird), Oracle (kernel, libvncserver, and thunderbird), Red Hat (kernel-rt and python-paunch and openstack-tripleo-heat-templates), SUSE (dpdk, google-compute-engine, libX11, webkit2gtk3, xen, and xorg-x11-libX11), and Ubuntu (nss and samba).

Stable kernels 5.8.1, 5.7.15, 5.4.58, and 4.19.139

([Kernel] Aug 11, 2020 17:35 UTC (Tue) (coogle))

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the [1]5.8.1 , [2]5.7.15 , [3]5.4.58 , and [4]4.19.139 stable kernels. As usual, these contain lots of important fixes throughout the tree; users should upgrade.



[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/828518

[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/828519

[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/828520

[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/828521
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Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain