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LinuxReviews News Archive

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• The Web is back to One Standard.. sort of
  
  
  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wrote the original HTML and DOM standards and has been setting web standards ever since. A group unhappy with the W3C branced of to become the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) in 2004. The two groups have kind-of been fighting for web standard dominance ever since. They've finally come to terms with each other.
• Fourth release candidate for Mesa 19.1.0 released and the Blockers Remain Open
  
  
  There's been two blocker bugs in all the release candidates for the upcoming version 19.1.0 of the Linux graphics stack and they aren't fixed in the fourth and, hopefully, last one either. There were two fixes for radeonsi and two for vulkan in rc4, at least that's something.
• The fight for contant blockers in Chrome (and Chromium) is far from over
  
  
  Google appeared to back down from removing the webRequest API which is used by the most efficient advertising and annoyance fixing extensions who make the modern web usable from Chromium and Chrome. It only appear that way and a new update to their Manifest v3 doc shows that their plans to force you to view advertisements when you browse web are very much on track.
• Tracklist for WJSN's upcoming album "For The Summer" revealed
  
  
  WJSN's new mini-album will be released on the 4th of June. The title track will be named "Boogie Up" and it is composed by "Wonderkid". It is followed by "눈부셔", "My Type", "우리끼리" and Sugar Pop. Only the fourth track "My Type" is composed by one of their regularly used composers so this album could be a bit unique compared to most of WJSNs previous albums.
• Krita 4.2.0 released with over 1000+ bugfixes and many new functions
  
  
  The new major version of the popular graphics editing and painting program Krita is out and it's a big update. Better brush performance and a Python animation API are among the high-lights for Linux users.
• WebKitGTK 2.25.1 released!
  
  
  A new development release of the WebKit GTK port used by the popular light-weight web browser Midori for Linux and Android is now available. Sub-process sandboxing and better handling of dark GTK themes are among this milestone towards a stable 2.26-series.
• Linux Kernel 5.2-rc2 released
  
  
  This kernel includes the fix for TRIM commands writing beyond the allowed range when discarding blocks on device-mapped volumes on SSDs. There's also fixes for kvm, the Intel i915 GPU driver, the vmwgfx virtual GPU driver for VMware, nvme devices and the btrfs filesystem.
• New WJSN album "For The Summer" coming in 7 days
  
  
  Poplar pop-group WJSN (우주소녀) will be releasing a new album named "For The Summer" just a week from now. We can hardly wait.
• GNOME 3.33.2 released
  
  
  A second release-candidate for what will eventually become the stable 3.34 release is out. Gnome-Contacts, Gnome-Calendar and Gnnome-Maps were disabled after changes in evolution-data-server broke those applications.
• Linux 5.1.5 released with IMPORTANT Fix for Users of Encrypted LVM volumes on SSDs
  
  
  It could appear that Linux 5.1 got a bit too eager when it comes to file-system trimming after a simplification of the code which decides what to discard. This could lead to data-loss on certain setups. Linux 5.1.5 has a patch which makes fstrim obey max_io_len_target_boundary again.
• Intel's back on top
  Intel's far from being bankrupt and finished after the parade of security issues with their CPUs. They were the worlds biggest chip-maker in Q1 of 2019 and they held that position throughout Q2. Samsung was #1 in 2018. Intel's expected to be #1 for 2019 as a whole.
• BlackArch Linux 2019.06.01 brought Back From the Future is Now Available
  
  
  Version 2019.06.01 of the Arch Linux based Live ISO penetration testing distribution is now available with 150 new security tools, kernel version 5.1.4 and updated packages across the board.
• GNOME Developers have Made Their Moves against Themes
  
  
  The GNOME community has been debating removing theme support to secure a "consistent GNOME experience" for quite some time. A hand-full of developers of some GNOME apps have now published an "open letter" to "the community" asking distributions to not include custom themes.
• KDE's Kate text editor has too many bugs, developers call for help
  
  
  There's currently over 200 open bugs in Kate and the KTextEditor code used to implement it and other KDE editors like KWrite and KDevelop.
• Microsoft GitHub launches "Sponsors" feature allowing users to Pay Open Source Developers
  
  
  Microsoft has added a "Sponsors" function to GitHub which will make it possible to fund free software developers either once or monthly the same way services like Patreon work online Entertainers.
• K-Pop group Pristin has disbanded
  
  
  Pledis Entertainment has ended their contracts with the individual members of Pristin after just two years. It's over, there will be no more Wee Woo from Pristin.
• Will Huawei laptop improvements get accepted into the Linux kernel?
  
  
  The US trade-war against China is currently raging in the technology sector with a US ban of Chinese telecoms gigant Huawei. Companies ranging from Google to Microsoft to ARM are cutting ties with Huawei. How this affects the Linux kernel and open source projects in general will be telling as to how much influence the US empire has over free software projects.
• Total War: THREE KINGDOMS from Feral Interactive now available
  
  
  The game publisher Feral Interactive continued it's recently started tradition of releasing new games on Linux, macOS and Windows at the same time. It can be yours from their website or Steam for $60 or 60€ depending on where you are.
• Indian state reportedly Saved 430 Million USD by using to their own Ubuntu-based Linux distribution in Schools
  
  
  The Indian state of Kerala, with a population of 33 million, is using Linux on about 200,000 computers in schools and the cost-savings are adding up. And the advantages of using entirely free software their education system don't stop there.
• GNU Parallel Akihito released
  
  
  The GNU project is proud to announce a new version of the command-line utility Parallel which is now nearly 10 years old. The new version supports grouping jobs and there is quite a few bug fixes.
• Version 0.4.0 of the KDE-focused Music Player Elisa Released
  
  
  A new version of the potentially really nice and user-friendly music player Elisa is released. The use of libvlc as a back-end and a context view is new to this release. There are glaring usability-problems and oversights in v0.4.0 and all earlier versions of this player released and we do not recommend that anyone waste time trying to use it as of now. It does have great potential.
• OpenSUSE Leap 15.1 released
  
  
  A new version of the "Community" editon of the Swedish-owned German Linux distribution SUSE Linux Enterprise is now available with back-ports of newer graphics drivers and improved network management in their custom YaST configuration tool.
• Third Mesa 19.1.0 release candidate and new stable version available
  
  
  Mesa 19.0.5 and 19.1.0-rc3 are released with smaller fixes for both the stable version and the upcoming Mesa 19.1 which is expected to be released in two weeks time. The two blocker-bugs in 19.1.0-rc2 which must be solved for a final release remain unfixed.
• End Of The Read for Arch Linux fork Antergos
  
  
  The developers of the the seven year old Arch Linux fork Antergos have announced that they are closing the project. It's over, Antergos is finished. Users of Antergos do not need to worry too much though, the distribution was not more than plain Arch Linux with some extra packages and distribution repositories on top. It will keep on working without the extra Antergos-bits.
• Kernel 5.2-rc1 is Released with A Lot of Changes and Potential Performance Improvements
  
  
  Kernel 5.2 is shaping up to be a really big big release compared to 5.0 and 5.1. The amount of changes in this version is unusually high. On the graphics side there's now support for Intel Icelake and Elkhart Lake graphics, AMDGPU FreeSync improvements, support for the GeForce GTK 1650 in Nouveau and fixes for Valve's Index VR headset. And that's just scratching the surface.
• Firefox 67 Released with Promises of Faster Startup Time and other Performance Improvements
  
  
  Firefox 67 adds the ability to choose which extensions should be used for "private" tabs. It also adds support for cryptminers and fingerprinting in it's "Content Blocking" preferences. The AV1 video decider has been switched to dav1d.
• Linux compilation benchmark on Ryzen 2600 with and without Red LED fan
  
  
  We all know Red LEDs make computers faster while blue LEDs make them run cooler. Just how much of a performance-bump do you get by using a red LED on your CPU cooler? We have done the benchmarks and found the answer.
• GNU Guix version 1.0.1 released
  
  
  The GNU project is "pleased" to announce a new release of GNU Guix just two weeks after the release of v1.0. It is primarily a bug-fix release which addresses a rather embarrassing bug in the graphical installer, among other things. There has been 706 new commits by 40 people since the release of version 1.0.
• Web browser showdown: Chrome 74 vs Chromium 73 vs Firefox 66
  
  
  Which web browser has the performance advantage on GNU/Linux? Here are some benchmarks of Firefox 66.0.5, Chromium 73.0.3683 and Chrome 74.0.3729 on two Intel-based laptops and a AMD desktop which will help you choose which one is better for you.
• The Combined Performance Penalty of Intel CPU bugs Zombieload, Meltdown, Spectre and L1TF
  
  
  'Zombieload is just the latest of a torrent of security holes in Intel CPUs found the last year. Each has required mitigations both at the firmware and kernel level and the sum of these is adding up. Some workloads are barely affected, others have a very real, measurable and noticeable slowdown.

LinuxReviews News Archive

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