With Ubuntu 19.10 having successfully shipped last week and the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS cycle just getting off the ground, longtime Ubuntu Desktop Director Will Cooke announced he is leaving Canonical. Will Cooke has been the director of the Ubuntu Desktop for the past five years leading its road-map and strategy. Will led many of the efforts in recent years to get Ubuntu pre-loaded on more PCs, led the various desktop teams, and more. (Source: Phoronix)
AT&T sets a date to put DANOS into the Linux Foundation
AT&T has long promised to release its DANOS network operating system into the Linux Foundation. On Tuesday, the telco said it would do just that on Nov. 15 and it also named IP Infusion as the exclusive integrator and reseller of DANOS. The news that AT&T is putting DANOS into open source, and that it has named IP Infusion to sell and support it, is a game-changer for universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) deployments. While there are some network operating systems in play today, the industry will benefit from access to DANOS due to AT&T’s expertise and deployments. (Source: Fierce Telecom)
Tails 4.0 is out
The Tails project has announced the release of Tails 4.0, the first version of Tails based on Debian 10 (Buster). It brings new versions of most of the software included in Tails and some important usability and performance improvements. Tails 4.0 introduces more changes than any other version since years. (Source: Tails)
GNU Project Developers Debate A Restructuring As A “Bottom Up” Organization
GNU developers unhappy with Richard Stallman sticking around as head of the GNU Project and not planning to make any “radical” changes are now expressing their desire for the GNU to be restructured as a “bottom-up” organization whereby those active developers and volunteers involved could potentially have more say. (Source: Phoronix)
Linux kernel patch hints that Intel’s 10nm desktop CPUs are coming
The Linux kernel patch was spotted by chip info leaker @KOMANCHI_ENSAKA on Twitter, with the patch having been signed off by an Intel senior graphics software engineer Kan Liang. This is by no means conclusive evidence that 10nm desktop parts are on their way. However, it does suggest that rumours of Intel skipping the 10nm process node for its desktop CPUs to pursue a 7nm fabrication process instead are not accurate; in fact, an Intel spokesperson also told us that such rumours were piffle. (Source: The Inquirer)
GNOME’s patent-troll counterattack
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC filed a patent suit against the GNOME Foundation in September, asserting a violation in the Shotwell photo manager. GNOME has now gone on the counterattack, questioning the validity of the patent and whether it applies to Shotwell at all. There is also an unspecified counterclaim to strike back against Rothschild. “We want to send a message to all software patent trolls out there — we will fight your suit, we will win, and we will have your patent invalidated. To do this, we need your help.” (Source: LWN)
Firefox 70 is Here with New Logo, Secure Password Generator + More
The release, the latest stable update to the hugely popular open source web browser, features a number of notable improvements and privacy enhancements. Firefox 70 includes a new ‘securely generated password’ option that works in HTML password fields. Rounding out the security and privacy updates, there’s yet more enhanced tracking protection, plus integration with Firefox Lockwise (formerly Lockbox; requires a Firefox account). (Source: OMG! Ubuntu)
Ikey Doherty Launches Open-Source Focused Game/Software Development Company
Well known open-source figure Ikey Doherty who rose to prominence for his work on the Solus Linux distribution and then went on to work on Intel’s Clear Linux project is now having his hand at game engine development. Ikey shared with us that he left Intel back in May to begin his new adventure: Lispy Snake. Lispy Snake is a UK software development firm that at least initially is working on a game engine and games. Given Ikey’s experience, the firm is focused on leveraging open-source technologies. (Source: Phoronix)
Clear Linux Working On A New Software Store
Intel developers are still working on some interesting improvements to Clear Linux itself this quarter on top of keeping up to date with the latest upstream software it packages. For those users of this Intel-optimized rolling-release Linux distribution, Q4’2019 is set to bring more improvements to its installer, Python 2 should finally be cleared out, the user bundles / third-party support looks like it will be ready, and they are even working on a new alternative to GNOME Software that will be focused on their bundles packaging architecture. (Source: Phoronix)
Proper Linux Screen Sharing Coming to Chromium & Electron Apps like Discord
There’s some good news for multi-monitor Linux users fed up at not being able to share a specific screen in apps like Google Meet and Discord. A patch to add ‘screen enumeration’ to the Chromium browser is currently pending merge upstream. Once this fix is accepted Chromium and Chromium-based apps (like Discord) will finally support full screen sharing on Linux in a manner similar to that on Windows and macOS. Not being a multi-monitor user, or someone who shares their screen often, I wasn’t aware of this particular limitation until recently. (Source: OMG! Ubuntu)