There is much greater performance potential out of RISC-V now with SiFive having announced the U8-Series. From results on OpenBenchmarking.org of SiFive’s HiFive Unleashed development board the results hadn’t been too impressive with the aging U54 SoC but the RISC-V focused firm has been working on ramping up the performance and have now introduced the U8-Series. (Source: Phoronix)
Apple Provides Scholarships for FoundationDB Summit
Apple will be providing sponsorships for the scholarships at FoundationDB Summit, happening on Day Zero of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon San Diego. Thanks to Apple, scholarship recipients will receive complimentary registration for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon and the FoundationDB Summit. Scholarships are awarded based on a combination of need and impact. The selection was made by a group of reviewers who evaluated each applicant’s requests. (Source: CNCF)
How Ubuntu Helped Make GNOME Shell Faster
The major performance improvements included in the recent Ubuntu 19.10 release weren’t the result of mere happenstance, but rather some serious technical sleuthing. Now, in a new forum post, Canonical Software Engineer Daniel Van Vugt provides us with a dash more detail on the detective work involved in tracking down and fixing GNOME Shell’s problem spots. (Source: OMG! Ubuntu)
Will Cooke Steps Down As Canonical’s Ubuntu Desktop Director
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)