Oreboot Continues Advancing For Open-Source, Rust-Based Booting On RISC-V

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February 5, 2020

Oreboot is the effort that has been taking shape over the past year as an open-source focused, Rustlang-based downstream of Coreboot. Oreboot continues advancing in its own right concurrent to the wonderful Coreboot advancements.

Oreboot continues to pride itself on being as open-source as possible though acknowledging at least for now on x86 CPUs they need the likes of ME/FSP firmware. Oreboot is also still focused on using Rust code rather than C code in the name of better security and reliability.

[Source: Phoronix]

Nasty Linux, macOS sudo bug found and fixed

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 4, 2020

A vulnerability has been discovered in ‘Sudo,’ a powerful utility used in the Linux and macOS Terminal, one that could allow for users with restrictive privileges or malicious software to be able to run commands with administrative-level privileges, which could result in the loss or theft of user data in unpatched Macs. According to sudo developer Todd C. Miller, the bug can be observed “by passing a large input to sudo via a pipe when it prompts for a password.” As the attacker has “complete control of the data used to overflow the buffer,” this means there is a “high likelihood of exploitability.”

[Source: AppleInsider/ZDNet]

UBank releases open source accessibility kit on Github

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 4, 2020

UBank has released an open source accessibility kit on Github in a move to help iOS app developers and contributors improve the accessibility for users that experience issues such as low vision, cognitive impairment, or neurological impairment. UBank digital banking chief product officer Peter O’Malley said making the accessibility kit openly available for the first time is part of the bank’s mission of “making technology accessible to everyone”.

[Source: ZDNet]

Amazon Linux Users Win a Major Migration Reprieve

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 4, 2020

Are you running AWS on the original Amazon Linux AMI? Good news, you’ve won a major reprieve from plans to end support for the operating system this summer, with the cloud provider bowing to “customer feedback” and agreeing to extend end-of-life to December 31, 2020.

AWS had planned to phase out support by June, but push-back from customers has seen it extend that date by six months; and add a minimal three-year maintenance support period to June 30, 2023 for good measure. Maintenance will be limited: users of the 10-year-old AMI (Amazon Machine Image) will only get critical and important security updates for a reduced set of packages, with no guaranteed support for new AWS features.

[Source: Computer Business Review]

WireGuard comes to Linux

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 4, 2020

After years of development WireGuard, a revolutionary approach to Virtual Private Networks (VPN) was finally fast-tracked to the Linux kernel. Now, at long last, WireGuard is in Linus Torvald’s code tree. That means WireGuard should appear in the Linux kernel 5.6 release. This may be as early as April 2020.

This has the potential to change everything about VPNs — not just in Linux, but in the entire VPN world. That’s because essentially all VPN services run off Linux servers. Some VPN services, such as StrongVPN and Mullvad VPN, have already seen the writing on the wall and are moving their software stacks to WireGuard.

[Source: ZDNet]

HPE acquires identity management startup Scytale

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 4, 2020

HPE today announced that it’s acquired Scytale, a startup providing tools that help engineers build identity-driven and large-scale distributed software, for an undisclosed sum. According to HPE fellow and general manager Dave Husak, cofounders Sunil James, Emiliano Berenbaum, and Andrew Jessup will join HPE, where they’ll develop cryptographic-identity technology that offers customers the ability to design, deploy, and achieve IT operational goals regardless of supplier or location.

San Francisco-based Scytale — which raised $8 million in venture capital prior to the acquisition — was founded in 2017 by Jessup, Berenbaum, and James alongside a workforce hailing from cloud-native enterprises like Amazon Web Services, Duo Security, Google, Okta, PagerDuty, and Splunk.

[Source: VentureBeat]

Qt-Powered Lumina Desktop 1.6 Released For BSD/Linux Systems

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

Out this weekend is Lumina 1.6 as the latest release of this Qt-powered desktop environment originally developed by iXsystems as part of PC-BSD / TrueOS. While TrueOS has been forging a new direction for this iXsystems operating system derived from FreeBSD and ultimately is less desktop focused these days as a result, the Lumina desktop continues to be developed. In fact, Lumina founder Ken Moore of iXsystems continues to lead the releases on this Qt-based desktop environment seeing adoption on both BSDs and Linux distributions.

[Source: Phoronix]

Intro to the Linux command line

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

If you’re new to Linux or have simply never bothered to explore the command line, you may not understand why so many Linux enthusiasts get excited typing commands when they’re sitting at a comfortable desktop with plenty of tools and apps available to them. In this post, we’ll take a quick dive to explore the wonders of the command line and see if maybe we can get you hooked.

First, to use the command line, you have to open up a command tool (also referred to as a “command prompt”). How to do this will depend on which version of Linux you’re running. On RedHat, for example, you might see an Activities tab at the top of your screen which will open a list of options and a small window for entering a command (like “cmd” which will open the window for you).

[Source: Network World]

IBM’s big bet on cloud computing, AI and open source needs to pay off soon

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

And so, after eight years spent leading one of the world’s oldest and most famous technology businesses, IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty will step down in April. Stepping up to the CEO role is Arvind Krishna, who currently serves as the senior VP for the company’s cloud and cognitive software unit.

When the news came out on Thursday, IBM’s shares jumped as much as 5%. Fingers can easily be pointed at Rometty’s mixed legacy: during her tenure, the company’s stock price dropped over 25% and – while the company has been keen to trumpet its artificial intelligence work (in the form of IBM Watson), and its reinvention as a cloud company (thanks to Red Hat) – there is still plenty of work to do if IBM is to ever approach its former glories.

[Source: ZDNet]

CERN dumps Facebook Workplace for open source

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 3, 2020

In what appears to be part of its ongoing campaign to “take back control” of its computing activities, CERN, the Geneva, Switzerland-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has announced that it is dumping Facebook Workplace and replacing it with open source alternatives. This followed its announcement last year that it was moving away from Microsoft commercial software to open source as part of its ambitious Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt).

[Source: ITWeb]