2019 and the Strength of Open Source

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January 2, 2019

Now that the various challenges and successes of 2018 are behind us, let’s look back at some of the year’s highlights and see what’s in store for 2019 here on Linux.com.

Wins for 2018

2018 saw amazing growth for open source generally and for The Linux Foundation specifically, with huge tech acquisitions and widespread industry adoption stemming from more than 20 years of steady open source development and innovation.

At The Linux Foundation, this growth was reflected in the formation of many new projects, such as:

It was also reflected in record-breaking events, such as the sold-out KubeCon + CloudNativeCon; in the unprecedented number of new members joining The Linux Foundation last year; and in training milestones, such as surpassing the one million mark for the number of people enrolled in Linux Foundation training and certification courses on edX.

This interest in learning and training was seen on Linux.com as well, where tutorials were consistently the most popular articles on the website. For 2019, our goal is to feed that interest with articles that educate and inform and that provide a firm foundation from which to explore the array of tools, projects, and opportunities within the open source ecosystem. You can look forward to previews of the best Linux distributions, in-depth command-line tutorials, information on LF training courses, ebooks, and webinars, highlights from industry-leading events, and much more.

A word for 2019

I read an essay by Melinda Gates in which she said that, rather than making a list of resolutions, she picks a word for the year and uses to that word to inform her goals and shape her actions.

When pressed to choose a word for 2019, I choose strength. In doing so, I think about the various projects, teams, and individuals I work with and how we are more effective when we collaborate, learn from, and advocate for one another. I think about advances in terms of inclusion and acceptance and how diversity and civility can strengthen our community. I think about the opportunities we have to improve open source practices, expand them into new areas, and apply them to create solutions to new and existing problems.

Open source is a powerful catalyst; its strength lies in the bonds formed through open development and shared knowledge which combine to make a stronger and more resilient whole. Let’s carry that strength into 2019 and become stronger together.

Assessing Progress in Automation Technologies

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O'Reilly

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January 2, 2019

To assess the state of adoption of machine learning (ML) and AI, we recently conducted a survey that garnered more than 11,000 respondents. As I pointed out in previous posts, we learned many companies are still in the early stages of deploying machine learning:

Companies cite “lack of data” and “lack of skilled people” as the main factors holding back adoption. In many instances, “lack of data” is literally the state of affairs: companies have yet to collect and store the data needed to train the ML models they desire. The “skills gap” is real and persistent.

Tech Ethics New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Build Software You Will Regret

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The New Stack

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January 2, 2019

At The New Stack, we talk a lot about avoiding technical debt, but what about the ethical debt? Let’s begin by attempting to define just what ethical technical delivery even is. Black Pepper Software’s Sam Warner at the Good Tech Conf — a conference which focused on technology for social good — simplified this great university philosophy topic, saying ethical software:

causes no negative social impact
doesn’t make the world worse to live in

At Coed Ethics, another conference dedicated to tech ethics that The New Stack covered earlier this year, Doteveryone’s Sam Brown echoed Warner, saying “Responsible technology considers the social impact it creates and seeks to understand and minimalize its potential unintended consequences.” Doteveryone as an organization is dedicated to supporting responsible technology as a key business driver for positive and inclusive growth, innovation, and trust in technology.

But should those of us building the future’s code feel obligated to contribute something toward social good? Warner argues we should go even further than that and contribute to work that benefits the most amount of people in a significant way.

So, if this is our objective, where do we begin?

EU Offers Bug Bounties For 14 Open Source Projects

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Threat Post

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January 2, 2019

As the bug bounty programs begin to roll out in January, security experts worry that the programs miss the mark on truly securing open source projects.

The European Commission in January is funding 14 bug bounty programs in hopes of sniffing out vulnerabilities in the free open source projects that EU institutions rely on.

The bug bounty programs span 14 open source software projects and offers a total of almost $1 million for all bounties combined. The bug bounty programs have varying rewards, start and end dates, and platforms. The first bug bounty programs – for Filezilla, Apache Kafka, Notepad++, PuTTy, and VLC Media Player – begin next week on Jan. 7.

The initiative stems back to the Free and Open Source Software Audit project (FOSSA), first created by European Parliament member Julia Reda.

8 Tips to Help Non-Techies Move to Linux

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OpenSource.com

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January 1, 2019

While bringing them to the Linux side of the computing world, I learned a few things about helping non-techies move to Linux. If someone asks you to help them make the jump to Linux, these eight tips can help you.

1. Be honest about Linux.

Linux is great. It’s not perfect, though. It can be perplexing and sometimes frustrating for new users. It’s best to prepare the person you’re helping with a short pep talk.

What should you talk about? Briefly explain what Linux is and how it differs from other operating systems. Explain what you can and can’t do with it. Let them know some of the pain points they might encounter when using Linux daily.

If you take a bit of time to ease them into Linux and open source, the switch won’t be as jarring.

2. It’s not about you.

It’s easy to fall into what I call the power user fallacy: the idea that everyone uses technology the same way you do. That’s rarely, if ever, the case.

A Tour of elementary OS, Perhaps the Linux World’s Best Hope for the Mainstream

By

ArsTechnica

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January 1, 2019

elementary OS began life over a decade ago as a set of icons. (Yes, seriously.) If ever there was a group of developers who started at the bottom and worked their way up to the top, it’s Daniel Foré and the rest of today’s elementary OS team. From a set of icons designed to improve the look of Ubuntu’s then GNOME 2 desktop, the elementary project expanded to include some custom apps, including a fork of the default GNOME files app, Nautilus, called nautilus-elementary. As with most open source projects, the borrowing went both ways: Ubuntu’s Humanity theme was a fork of elementary OS’s icon set.

Over the years, the elementary project continued to grow and encompassed ever more apps and ever more customizations for the desktop. Eventually, things got to the point where it became more and more cumbersome for users to install everything. But there was enough momentum behind the project that Foré decided the logical thing to do was for the group to create their own distribution. The project took Ubuntu as a base and began layering in their custom apps, and the highly refined look and feel of elementary OS was born.

elementary OS 5 Juno

For a bit of logistics, elementary OS Juno should be version .5, following the previous release, .4 or Loki. However, since .5 implies incomplete and elementary OS is more or less complete (in terms of stability certainly) ,the project is calling this release elementary OS 5.

Whatever the version number may be, one thing is for sure: there’s ton of new stuff in Juno. Enough features, in fact, that the release notes, written by elementary OS’s Cassidy James Blaede, are an impressive John Sircusa-style essay of some 8,000 words. If you want to know everything that’s new, Blaede’s notes are worth a read. If you want to know what it’s like to actually use all that stuff, read on.

The Linux Kernel Ends 2018 With Almost 75k Commits This Year

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Phoronix

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January 1, 2019

As of this New Year’s Eve afternoon, the Linux kernel saw 74,974 commits this year that added 3,385,121 lines of code and removed 2,512,040 lines.

For as impressive as seeing almost 75k commits in a single year to an open-source project, it’s not actually a record high. Last year in fact saw 80,725 commits that added 3.9 million lines and removed 1.3 million lines…

Besides Linus Torvalds himself, those with the most commits this year to the Linux kernel included David S. Miller, Arnd Bergmann, Christoph Hellwig, Colin Ian King, and Chris Wilson. There were 4,208 different detected authors this year compared to 4,400 in 2017 but higher than the 4,043 recorded for 2016.

Linux Kernel 4.20: Crocodiles, STIBP, and Hugs

By

Paul Brown

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December 24, 2018

Linus Torvalds unleashed kernel 4.20, dubbed Shy Crocodile, on the world this past Sunday. There was speculation whether Torvalds would make the jump from 4.19 to 5.0, as he did when he skipped 3.20 and went with 4.0 instead. In the end, he stuck with 4.20, and 5.0 will probably be the number of the next kernel after this one.

Apart from all that, probably the largest will-he-won’t-he debate revolved around STIBP. STIBP stands for Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors, and that mouthful is a preventive measure against the Spectre/Meltdown bugs. When STIBP was tried out during the 4.19 cycle, developers ended up removing it because it was found to have a negative impact on system performance, slowing down execution of some processes up to 50%. The matter was the subject of a long discussion on the Linux Kernel mailing list, with some developers like Andi Kleen arguing that the patch should be reverted entirely. Torvalds, however, pointed out there was a mid-way solution: “[W]e default to something that doesn’t kill performance. Warn once about it, and let the crazy people say «I’d rather take a 50% performance hit than worry about a theoretical issue»“.

After much work, STIBP is back in 4.20, but with performance improvements and allowing processes to choose whether they need to use it or not, because, as it turns out, many don’t.

What the hug?

On what should be a lighter note, but will probably spark outrage anyway (because reasons), Jarkko Sakkinen has taken on himself the thankless job of writing a patch that will cleanse the source code comments of swear words. Instead of just nuking them, the patch changes f-bombs for “hugs”. Hence, expressions become “Get the hug out!”, which implies you have your own personal cache of hugs and you are required to extract and spend one; and “Hug off!”, which must be some kind of endurance event.

Before anybody gets all hot under the collar, it is worth noting that, (a) Sakkinen’s solution is hilarious; and (b) no more reasons should be necessary, but here’s one anyway: such colorful language probably shouldn’t be in code that is easily readable by everyone and that is deployed all over the world to millions of people and businesses. Better reserve cussing for audiences which are more appreciative of the genre, namely Twitter followers and such.

More things to look forward to in Linux 4.20

The open-source NVIDIA Nouveau driver has now got initial HDMI 2.0 support. HDMI 2.0 is what you are going to need to watch movies or play games on 4K displays at 60FPS, since it affords a much larger bandwidth than the currently more common HDMI 1.4 protocol.
Chinese sysadmins will be happy to know that Linux 4.20 supports Hygon Dhyana CPUs. These CPU’s are based on AMD’s Zen microarchitecture and are the result of an AMD-Chinese joint venture that aims to bring domestic x86 chips to data centers.
In more playful news, Linux 4.20 supports the Xbox’s S Controller’s rumbling (meaning it vibrates for added excitement (?) during game play), and there is a working driver for Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

As always, you can find more information about Linux 4.20 by going to the source announcement on the Linux Kernel mailing list, checking out the in-depth articles at Phoronix and by reading the Kernel Newbies report.

Nokia Presents OPNFV Gambia Plugfest and ONAP Dublin Developer Forum

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Nokia

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December 22, 2018

The new year will see more than 200 engineers from all over the world gather at our Paris-Saclay site for a Nokia hosted open source event – the jointly held OPNFV Gambia release Plugfest and ONAP Dublin release Developer Forum.

As a founder and active participant in both projects, Nokia is committed to their success and I’m looking forward to an event where the focus is on openness and collaboration. Based on the experience of hosting the ONAP Developer event little more than a year ago at the same site, I’m confident the event will be a success!

For ONAP, the Dublin release Developer Forum is a critical step in defining and agreeing the contents of the Dublin release, to be ready in mid-2019. Nokia has been a major contributor to ONAP, being especially active in expanding ONAP’s ability to manage and orchestrate not only virtualized but also physical network functions. Together with colleagues, we plan to continue this journey for the ONAP Dublin release and beyond.

Hybrid DevOps

By

The Linux Foundation

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December 21, 2018

DevOps is a framework that allows development, quality assurance, and operations to meet the needs of the business to align with customer demand. It contains capabilities related to:

Integrating development and operations teams to facilitate communication, collaboration, and integration to manage today’s rapidly changing business landscape
Enabling developers to provision, change and manage their development environments without operations involvement
Allowing developers to promote to production cloud-native applications without the need for operations involvement
Facilitating both conventional application development acceleration and cloud-native application development techniques

Benefits of DevOps

To align with the speed of business
To increase the speed of release of new applications
Higher quality applications released to production
Having a cloud architecture that both Operations and Development collaboratively define. Provides and alignment with business requirements and objectives as a catalyst to realizing greater opportunities to leverage cloud-native capabilities that are inherent in cloud technologies
As an enabler to operations to review features, provide feedback into the development process, and reduce production issues
Enables the ability to deliver infrastructure as code