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When a new version of a product comes out — especially when that product is something I use every day — there are two things that go through my mind.

1) Yay! New toy!

2) What’s new?!?

Now, I’ll admit that the first one is a bit childish, but despite 20+ years working in IT, I still find myself a bit giddy at the thought of new software, new tools or a new operating system version. I want to know what it does that the previous version didn’t, or what has been made better that wasn’t my favorite feature last time I purchased it.

If it’s a new OS — something that I’ll be using every day in a variety of ways — I want to know what I’m doing. I need to know how it installs, what it’s primary functions are, and how to use it in the many diverse roles that an operating system plays in enterprise IT.

So, let me give you an example: SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 (SLE 15), our latest release. If you’re reading this blog post, you probably have some experience with SUSE Linux Enterprise, or SLE. Perhaps you’ve been using SUSE products since the ’90s and are just looking for the list of changes. Maybe you are new to SUSE Linux and want to learn the basics. But maybe it goes a bit deeper than that. Perhaps you want to talk with someone that has explored the product, read the documentation and is ready to lead a discussion into what makes the operating system different and useful.

Available Training for SUSE Linux Enterprise 15

That’s where SUSE Training comes in. We’ve been working alongside the development of SLE 15 to ensure you know what you’re doing with our latest release. If you want to discuss what’s new and how to move to SLE 15, you might be interested in our Transitioning to SLE 15 course. In this course, we walk through the new installer, the change in vision for SLE 15, and what makes multimodal IT something everyone in IT should understand. We also highlight the differences to the developer tools, the core OS changes, and how your infrastructure may change as a result of SLE 15. There are hands-on labs to ensure you understand those core changes, as well as how to install or upgrade to SLE 15.

But what if Linux is a foreign language to you? We have something to help with that, too. Our SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Administration course will get you going the right direction. We introduce Linux, it’s various SUSE flavors, and give you labs to practice what you learn. The command line (shell) is explained, making it less intimidating than it may seem.

SUSE Training for Other Products

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is more than just your traditional IT OS, however, and SUSE Training can help you understand why it’s different than it’s monolithic past. You can deploy a software define storage solution, an OpenStack cloud implementation, or your own container platform. We’ve built training for those products, too: SUSE Enterprise Storage Training SUSE OpenStack Cloud Training SUSE Containers as a Service Platform Training

Of course, there are more than those offerings available. We have a catalog of training content to help with most aspects of a SUSE Linux deployment.

We also train on using SLES for SAP, and we have a variety of certification paths to hone and validate your IT skills.

Whatever your interest is in SUSE, we’ve got a way to make you shine in IT. With courses from SUSE, you can get the training you need to make sure you know what you’re doing in SLE 15.

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On Tuesday, The Linux Foundation announced that Facebook’s GraphQL project has been moved to a newly-established GraphQL Foundation, which will be hosted by the non-profit Linux Foundation. This foundation will be dedicated to enable widespread adoption and help accelerate the development of GraphQL and the surrounding ecosystem.

GraphQL was developed by Facebook in 2012 and was later open-sourced in 2015. It has been adopted by many companies in production including Airbnb, Atlassian, Audi, CNBC, GitHub, Major League Soccer, Netflix, Shopify, The New York Times, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yelp.

Why GraphhQL Foundation has been created?

The foundation will provide a neutral home for the community to collaborate and encourage more participation and contribution. The community will be able to spread responsibilities and costs for infrastructure which will help in increasing the overall investment. This neutral governance will also ensure equal treatment in the community.

The co-creator of GraphQL, Lee Byron said:

“As one of GraphQL’s co-creators, I’ve been amazed and proud to see it grow in adoption since its open sourcing. Through the formation of the GraphQL Foundation, I hope to see GraphQL become industry standard by encouraging contributions from a broader group and creating a shared investment in vendor-neutral events, documentation, tools, and support.”

The foundation will also provide more resources for the GraphQL community which will benefit all contributors. It will help in organizing events and working groups, formalizing governance structures, providing marketing support to the project, and handling IP and other legal issues as they arise.

The Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin believes that this new foundation will ensure the long-term support for GraphQL:

“We are thrilled to welcome the GraphQL Foundation into the Linux Foundation. This advancement is important because it allows for long-term support and accelerated growth of this essential and groundbreaking technology that is changing the approach to API design for cloud-connected applications in any language.”

In the next few months, The Linux Foundation with Facebook and the GraphQL community will be finalizing the founding members of the GraphQL Foundation.

Read the full announcement on The Linux Foundation’s website and also check out the GraphQL Foundation’s website.

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Fedora KDE Live is an open source and free distribution of Linux, a special Live edition of the well known Fedora operating system, built around the KDE SC desktop environment. It is designed from the ground up to be used for previewing and installing the Fedora OS on high-end machines.

Availability, boot options, supported platforms

The distribution is available for download as two Live DVD ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware platforms (64-bit and 32-bit), which allow users to test the operating system without installing anything on their computers.

There are only two options on the boot prompt. While the first one will start the live environment with default options, the second one give users access to more advanced options, such as the ability to run a memory diagnostic test, boot an operating system that is installed on the first disk, or start the live session in safe graphics mode (only if your graphics card is not recognized by the default entry).

Pure KDE desktop environment with top-notch apps

As mentioned, the graphical session of this Fedora Live CD edition is powered by the well known KDE Plasma Workspace and Applications project, which has been untouched. It’s comprised of a single taskbar located on the bottom edge of the screen, as well as a desktop widget.

The main menu can be accessed from the taskbar, allowing users to open applications. In addition, the taskbar can be used for interacting with running programs or the system tray area. Various widgets can be added with a single mouse click.

Default applications include the Konqueror web browser, Akregator feed reader, KGet download manager, KTorrent torrent downloader, Okular document viewer, Gwenview image viewer, Amarok audio player, K3b CD/DVD/BD burning software, Dragon Player video player, and KMail email client.

Bottom line

In conclusion, no matter if you want to try the KDE SC desktop environment on the Fedora platform or you just want to install the latest Fedora distribution with KDE on your mid-range or high-end computer, you should download the Fedora KDE Live CD.

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I’ve been a writer for more than 20 years. I’ve written thousands of articles and how-tos on various technical topics and have penned more than 40 works of fiction. So, the written word is not only important to me, it’s familiar to the point of being second nature. And through those two decades (and counting) I’ve done nearly all my work on the Linux platform. I must confess, during those early years it wasn’t always easy. Formats didn’t always mesh with what an editor required and, in some cases, the open source platform simply didn’t have the necessary tools required to get the job done.

That was then, this is now.

A perfect storm of Linux evolution and web-based tools have made it such that any writer can get the job done (and done well) on Linux. But what tools will you need? You might be surprised to find out that, in some instances, the job cannot be efficiently done with 100% open source tools. Even with that caveat, the job can be done. Let’s take a look at the tools I’ve been using as both a tech writer and author of fiction. I’m going to outline this by way of my writing process for both nonfiction and fiction (as the process is different and requires specific tools).

A word of warning to seriously hard-core Linux users. A long time ago, I gave up on using tools like LaTeX and DocBook for my writing. Why? Because, for me, the focus must be on the content, not the process. When you’re facing deadlines, efficiency must take precedent.

Nonfiction

We’ll start with nonfiction, as that process is the simpler of the two. For writing technical how-tos, I collaborate with different editors and, in some cases, have to copy/paste content into a CMS. But like with my fiction, the process always starts with Google Drive. This is the point at which many open source purists will check out. Fear not, you can always opt to either keep all of your files locally, or use a more open-friendly cloud service (such as Zoho or nextCloud).

Why start on the cloud? Over the years, I’ve found I need to be able to access that content from anywhere at any time. The simplest solution was to migrate the cloud. I’ve also become paranoid about losing work. To that end, I make use of a tool like Insync to keep my Google Drive in sync with my desktop. With that desktop sync in place, I know there’s always a backup of my work, in case something should go awry with Google Drive.

For those clients with whom I must enter content into a Content Management System (CMS), the process ends there. I can copy/paste directly from a Google Doc into the CMS and be done with it. Of course, with technical content, there are always screenshots involved. For that, I use Gimp, which makes taking screenshots simple:

1. Open Gimp.
2. Click File > Create > Screenshot.
3. Select from a single window, the entire screen, or a region to grab.
4. Click Snap.

The majority of my clients tend to prefer I work with Google Docs, because I can share folders so that they have reliable access to the content. There are a few clients I have that do not work with Google Docs, and so I must download the files into a format that can be used. What I do for this is download in .odt format, open the document in LibreOffice , format as needed, save in a format required by the client, and send the document on.

And that, is the end of the line for nonfiction.

Fiction

This is where it gets a bit more complicated. The beginning steps are the same, as I always write every first draft of a novel in Google Docs. Once that is complete, I then download the file to my Linux desktop, open the file in LibreOffice, format as necessary, and then save as a file type supported by my editor (unfortunately, that means .docx).

The next step in the process gets a bit dicey. My editor prefers to use comments over track changes (as it makes it easier for both of us to read the document as we make changes). Because of this, a 60k word doc can include hundreds upon hundreds of comments, which slows LibreOffice to a useless crawl. Once upon a time, you could up the memory used for documents, but as of LibreOffice 6, that is no longer possible. This means any larger, novel-length, document with numerous comments will become unusable. Because of that, I’ve had to take drastic measures and use WPS Office (Figure 3). Although this isn’t an open source solution, WPS Office does a fine job with numerous comments in a document, so there’s no need to deal with the frustration that is LibreOffice (when working with these large files with hundreds of comments).

Once my editor and I finish up the edits for the book (and all comments have been removed), I can then open the file in LibreOffice for final formatting. When the formatting is complete, I save the file in .html format and then open the file in Calibre for exporting the file to .mobi and .epub formats.

Calibre is a must-have for anyone looking to publish on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, or other platforms. One thing Calibre does better than other, similar, solutions is enable you to directly edit the .epub files (Figure 4). For the likes of Smashword, this is an absolute necessity (as the export process will add elements not accepted on the Smashwords conversion tool).

After the writing process is over (or sometimes while waiting for an editor to complete a pass), I’ll start working on the cover for the book. That task is handled completely in Gimp (Figure 5).

And that finishes up the process of creating a work of fiction on the Linux platform. Because of the length of the documents, and how some editors work, it can get a bit more complicated than the process of creating nonfiction, but it’s far from challenging. In fact, creating fiction on Linux is just as simple (and more reliable) than other platforms.

HTH

I hope this helps aspiring writers to have the confidence to write on the Linux platform. There are plenty of other tools available to use, but the ones I have listed here have served me quite well over the years. And although I do make use of a couple of proprietary tools, as long as they keep working well on Linux, I’m okay with that.

Learn more about Linux in the Introduction to Open Source Development, Git, and Linux (LFD201) training course from The Linux Foundation, and sign up now to start your open source journey.

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Posted in Deception, Microsoft, Patents at 7:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: New statements from Microsoft’s management (Andersen) serve to show that Microsoft hasn’t really changed; it’s just trying to sell “Azure IP Advantage”, hoping that enough patent trolls with their dubious software patents will blackmail GNU/Linux users into adopting Azure for ‘protection’

THIS morning we wrote four articles about the European Patent Office (EPO), but we haven’t lost sight of American matters, which we typically cover in the weekend due to lack of time. Yesterday we wrote about the aggressive past (arguably patent trolling) of the new Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This past of hers has been mentioned in IPPro Patents coverage that yesterday noted “Peter was also previously vice president and general counsel of Immersion Corporation, where, among other legal roles, she led its IP portfolio.”

Immersion Corporation is a patent aggressor that many out there have also dubbed “patent troll”. Peter’s boss/superior is another person who comes from a questionable background and was likely appointed because of nepotism. So what on Earth is going on? It’s not hard to see who benefits (cui bono).

The Microsoft-friendly and Microsoft-sponsored IAM (it is also sponsored by Microsoft’s patent trolls) has just quoted/paraphrased Microsoft’s patent chief Andersen as saying: “more valuable for us to essentially license our patents through Open Invention And LOT Networks than to try to license them on our own…”

What on Earth does that even mean? Can that be interpreted as Microsoft using OIN to just tax/cross-license with software patents? Remember that Microsoft staff was forbidden from commenting on it. That can only mean that Microsoft is hiding something.

Microsoft, morever, supports the terrible Director who supports patent trolls. Quoting IAM’s tweet: “Andersen on PTO Director Iancu – I’m a fan, he’s doing a super job. One of things we’ve told him is importance of getting certainty back particularly post-Alice. PTO has a role to play in giving us more clarity and I think he’s taken that to heart…”

That doesn’t inspire a positive view of Microsoft’s ‘new’ policy or strategy, which also involves selling ‘protection’ from its patent trolls through Azure Source

Nov 09, 2018, 14:00

Derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, the Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 Update 6 release ships with Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) Release 5 version 4.14.35-1818.3.3 for both 64-bit (x86_64) and ARM architectures, and the Red Hat Compatible Kernel 3.10.0-957, which is only available for 64-bit systems. Besides updated kernels, the Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 Update 6 release comes with numerous new features and improvements, including support for managing path, mount, and timer systemd unit files in the Pacemaker component, as well as the ability to track package installations and upgrades using audit events.

Complete Story

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UPDATE: The developer provided some clarifications here. I think the key point to take away is this “Last but not least, we are shelving the Linux port, not outright killing it. This doesn’t mean we won’t do it after the launch.”

ORIGINAL: Book of Demons [Steam], a dungeon crawling hack and slash with deck-building will no longer get a native Linux port. Steam Play is part of the reason.

It won’t be the last game to do this I’m sure. At least in this case, they aren’t pulling support for an already released game like Human: Fall Flat as Book of Demons didn’t have a public Linux version. Anyway, writing on the Steam forum the developer noted a few vague issues they were having.

Things like “We had as many different issues with the build as testers. With each flavor of Linux came different issues.” along with “Right now everything indicates that Linux port would be very high maintenance.”. I always find these types of statements highly unhelpful, unless they actually say why that is. Let’s be clear on this again too, you do not need to support all Linux distributions, support the most popular.

They went on to mention the issue of users only getting a single choice between Native or Proton, since Steam has no built-in way of picking between Steam Play or a Native build. An issue that seems to be mentioned more lately by gamers and developers. So, they said they will “focus our efforts on supporting Steam Play and Proton.”.;

This does bring up some interesting thoughts. To be clear, I’m very open minded about Steam Play especially since sales will still show up as Linux and that I do like.

However, there’s a lot that’s unclear right now. When developers say they will support Steam Play/Proton, how will they do that? It would at the very least, require them to test every single patch they do on a Linux system through Steam Play to ensure they haven’t broken it. Anything less than that and I wouldn’t say they were actually supporting it. If it is broken, finding out why might end up being a hassle and hold them back and end up causing more issues. They can’t really guarantee any degree of support since it is Valve and co handling it for them, the way I see it is that the game developer is not really doing anything.

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IBM’s deal to acquire Red Hat caught everyone by surprise when it was announced less than two weeks ago. While concerns spread quickly about what it would mean for the largest enterprise Linux platform, IBM and Red Hat executives assured employees and customers that Red Hat would continue to operate independently — at least for now.

Intel made a similar acquisition of Wind River, the leader in embedded operating systems, in 2009. In a similar manner, that deal could have been viewed negatively by other chip and embedded systems vendors because of their competition with Intel.

However, Intel successfully operated Wind River as an independent entity for many years. That helped preserve Wind River’s business, but it also made employees feel like they were immune from Intel’s culture and oversight.

With any acquisition, the overall value must equal more than the two entities alone, which means integration of the company culture, as well as its the products and services, is needed. For various reasons, Intel never did realize the full value of Wind River, and it sold the group for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.

Change Without Fear

For IBM and its customers, the acquisition of Red Hat is a great move. It combines IBM’s platforms and services with the largest enterprise Linux platform and container solution. Services and solutions from the two companies complement each other very well, especially for private and hybrid cloud implementations.

The combination also makes IBM more competitive with vendors like Amazon, Google and Microsoft — all of which have a large customer base leveraging Red Hat.

The acquisition comes with significant hurdles, however.

The challenge is convincing existing Red Hat customers and partners, including IBM’s competitors, that the change will not impact them, while offering a solution that combines the technology and expertise of the two entities into something greater.

Meshing Open Source, Corporate Cultures

The first objective can be achieved by operating Red Hat independently, but that would not advance the financial or strategic goals of the acquisition. Strategically, it would be better to integrate the two over a reasonable time.

Whether the integration begins immediately or in the near future, it is necessary for the success of the combined company.

Additionally, the acquisition will spark competitors to seek alternative solutions — so, the clock is ticking for IBM to reassure and secure existing customers. Going forward, however, IBM has the opportunity to expand into new market segments with new customers.

An even greater challenge is the difference in culture. While IBM has been a strong supporter of the open source community, it is faced with the challenge of integrating an open source mentality into a more formal corporate culture. This means either adapting to the new culture or risk losing some of the talent and prospects for a group that currently is growing rapidly.

The acquisition of Red Hat will be a good move by IBM, but challenges lie ahead, and the company should address them quickly to ensure that its US$34 billion was well spent and helps enhance IBM’s position as leading cloud services provider.

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With Mesa 18.3 feature development having wrapped up at the end of October, here are some benchmarks showing how the updated RadeonSI and RADV drivers are performing for this code that is now under a feature freeze before its official release around the end of November. AMD Radeon Vega and Polaris graphics cards were tested with a slew of NVIDIA graphics cards also tested on their respective driver to show where the Linux gaming GPU performance is at as we head into the 2018 holiday shopping season.

 

 

These tests were done on Ubuntu 18.10 but with switching to Linux 4.19 stable and Mesa 18.3-devel built against LLVM 8.0 SVN for showing the current open-source RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan performance potential for Polaris/Vega GPUs. The Radeon cards tested were the RX 560, RX 580, RX Vega 56, and RX Vega 64 graphics cards.

For putting the current Radeon Mesa performance into perspective, the NVIDIA 410.73 driver was benchmarked with the GTX 980 Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2070, and RTX 2080 Ti based on the newer graphics cards I had available for benchmarking.

Tests were done form the Intel Core i9 9900K box with Ubuntu 18.10 while running a variety of OpenGL and Vulkan gaming benchmarks, including the few Steam Play capable game benchmarks so far. All of these benchmarks were handled by our open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.

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• Samsung has launched the Linux on DeX beta trial, bringing Linux to select devices.
• The beta program currently includes the Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy Tab S4.
• Registration closes on December 14, so you still have more than a month to sign up.

Samsung DeX is a pretty handy bit of software in theory, giving users a computer-style experience when hooked up to the big screen. The company announced it was bringing Linux to DeX last year, and it’s finally launched the beta program this week.

The Korean firm sent an email to users who had previously pre-registered their interest in Linux on DeX, notifying them of the beta program’s launch. Once you’ve registered via the email (or the Linux on DeX website), Samsung will send users a confirmation email and a follow-up message with instructions to download the Linux on DeX app. Then again, I haven’t received the latter email just yet, so don’t expect to be up and running within minutes.

In any event, the beta is a private affair at this point, and supports the Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy Tab S4 right now. Samsung hasn’t clarified whether other devices, such as the Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, and Galaxy S8 will eventually receive the app.

 

Best Android phones (November 2018): Our picks, plus a giveaway

With Android thoroughly dominating the mobile industry, picking the best Android phones is almost synonymous with choosing the best smartphones, period. While Android phones have few real opponents on other platforms, internal competition is incredibly …

The Linux on DeX app supports the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS distribution, and requires at least 8GB of storage space and 4GB of RAM. The latter figure suggests that older flagships might be supported yet. Programs also need to be built for the ARM 64-bit architecture, so it seems like you won’t be able to run any old Linux program.

The registration page is accessible via the button below. You’ll need a Google account to sign up and a Samsung account to actually use the service. Sign-ups end on December 14, 2018, so you’ve still got over a month to spare.

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