The Greatest Asset to Open Source is Community

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April 10, 2020

Open source at its core is a reaction to the drawbacks of closed source, according to Kelsey Hightower, staff developer advocate at Google. Hightower shared his take on the open source culture during a fireside chat with D2iQ Founder and CPO Ben Hindman as part of the “Cloud Native Virtual Summit featuring Kubernetes” last week.

It is safe to say that behind any successful open source project or product there is a passionate and tight-knit community collaborating under the virtue of transparency to develop services that break from tradition. Culture is one of the bedrock components driving the industry to evolve and transition in terms of getting organizations to adopt open source. Even as the massive ecosystem of vendors, partners, and providers grows around Kubernetes and open source projects, Hightower said the key to new technologies and methodologies is a broad group of people collaborating and communicating; fundamentally making openness a pretty good tool when used to build software.

[Source: SDxCentral]

Windows 10 is getting Linux files integration in File Explorer

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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April 10, 2020

Microsoft previously revealed its plans to ship a full Linux kernel in Windows 10, and now the company is planning to fully integrate Linux file access into the built-in File Explorer. A new Linux icon will be available in the left-hand navigation pane in File Explorer, providing access to the root file system for any distros that are installed in Windows 10.

The icon that will appear in File Explorer is the famous Tux, the penguin mascot for the Linux kernel. Microsoft is testing the Linux File Explorer integration in a new build of Windows 10 that’s available for testers today. Previously, Windows 10 users would have to manually navigate to a UNC path to get access to Linux files from the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

[Source: The Verge]

Chrome OS 81 gets tablet-friendly gestures

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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April 10, 2020

Google’s new Chrome OS 81 update for Chromebooks is set with new navigation gestures for easier use in tablet mode. With more Chromebooks featuring touchscreens and keyboardless options such as Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet, the update introduces Android 10 and iPadOS-like gestures when they’re used as tablets.

With the new set of gestures, you can go to the home screen with a full swipe up from the bottom of the display. You can also swipe up and hold to switch apps, swipe left to go the previous page and a short swipe up to open Quick shelf. Google’s redesigned Quick shelf allows you to access your pinned apps while saving screen space. You’ll also be able to manage Chrome tabs with a touch-friendly tab strip while in tablet mode.

[Source: CNET]

Samsung Releases exFAT-Utils To Format File-System, Fsck

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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April 10, 2020

With the new exFAT file-system merged for Linux 5.7, Samsung engineers responsible for this open-source native Linux kernel driver for Microsoft’s exFAT file-system support have now issued their first official release of exfat-utils.

The exfat-utils 1.0.1 release out this morning is their first official release of these user-space utilities for exFAT on Linux. The exFAT-utils package allows creating an exFAT file-system with mkfs.exfat as well as adjusting the cluster size and setting a volume label. There is also fsck.exfat for consistency checking of an exFAT file-system on Linux.

This initial version of the user-space exFAT utilities was announced on the kernel mailing list. Samsung is maintaining exfat-utils over on GitHub.

[Source: Phoronix]

Open-source AI tool aims to help identify coronavirus infections

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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April 10, 2020

Find a hospital taking in coronavirus cases, and you’ll most likely find departments often in need of more staff and without enough testing kits. Now one Canadian AI startup is hoping to develop tools that will automatically detect COVID-19 infections from X-rays, and help guide medical professionals on how seriously the infection has taken hold.

DarwinAI, which spun out of work at the University of Waterloo, normally works on AI explainability. The company makes a tool that can show why deep-learning modules make the decisions they do, enabling users to correct the inputs that lead to wrong decisions, and fix the architecture or retrain the system to prevent the same mistakes in future. The idea is that, by getting an insight into why AI does what it does, companies can speed up the development of their AI products.

[Source: ZDNet]

How to use Jitsi Meet, an open source Zoom alternative

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Linux.com Editorial Staff

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April 10, 2020

So you’re sick of Zoom. Maybe it’s the privacy issues, the security issues, or just the whole misrepresenting its encryption thing. Regardless of the specific reason, you know that there has to be a better video-conferencing tool out there, and you’re determined to find it. Enter Jitsi Meet.

[Source: Mashable]

Microsoft announces IPE, a new code integrity feature for Linux

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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April 8, 2020

Microsoft published this week details about a new project the company has been working for the Linux kernel. Named Integrity Policy Enforcement — or IPE — the project is a Linux security module (LSM). LSMs are optional add-ons for the Linux kernel that enable additional security features.

According to a documentation page published on Monday, IPE is Microsoft’s attempt to solve the code integrity problem for Linux — an operating system the company broadly uses in its Azure cloud service.

On Linux systems where IPE is enabled, system administrators can create a list of binaries that are allowed to execute and then add the verification attributes the kernel needs to check for each binary before allowing it to run. If binaries have been altered by an attacker, IPE can block the execution of the malicious code.

[Source: ZDNet]

How to install and configure WireGuard VPN on Linux

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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April 8, 2020

When the Linux kernel 5.6 is released, the Wireguard VPN will be built in. Distributions like Ubuntu 20.04 will be adding this service into their platform even earlier (with kernel 5.4). If you’re looking to get a head start on the WireGuard experience, I want to walk you through the process of getting it up and running.

I’ll be demonstrating on Ubuntu 20.04 daily. As of this writing, WireGuard has yet to make it into the daily release. Fortunately, the developers have made WireGuard available to the standard Universe repository, so installation is simple.

[Source: TechRepublic]

Linux Foundation To Support seL4 Foundation

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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April 8, 2020

The Linux Foundation will be hosting seL4 Foundation, the nonprofit organization established by Data61 (the digital specialist arm for Australia’s national science agency CSIRO). The seL4 microkernel is designed to ensure the security, safety and reliability of real-world critical computer systems.

The new Foundation aims to accelerate the commercial development of seL4 and related technologies, and under the Linux Foundation will provide a global, independent and neutral organization for funding and steering the future evolution of seL4. Founding members include Data61, UNSW Sydney, HENSOLDT Cyber GmbH, Ghost Locomotion Inc, Cog Systems, Inc, and DornerWorks Ltd.

[Source: TFiR]

Quarter of DevOps Suffer Open Source Component Breaches

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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April 8, 2020

A quarter of organizations have suffered a breach related to their application development process over the past year, with most of these coming via open source components, according to Sonatype. The DevOps automation firm’s 2020 DevSecOps Community Survey is based on responses from 5045 software professionals around the world.

It revealed that 21% of the 24% of responding organizations that reported a breach over the past 12 months linked it to use of third-party components. These are incredibly popular among DevOps practitioners as they help to speed the release of new products, although they can also contain vulnerabilities and sometimes malware.

[Source: Infosecurity Magazine]