firmware – Jupiter Broadcasting

Fun thing about the DMCA: it required Apple to state, under penalty of perjury, that the iBoot source code was legit: https://t.co/PKHZqcEe6h

— Karl (@supersat) February 8, 2018

Crucially, within the past day or so, someone decided to dump a copy of this secret sauce on popular developer hangout GitHub for all to find. Links to the files began circulating on Twitter in the past few hours.

Razer doesn’t care about Linux

I offered to upstream any example code they could share under a free license, or to write the code from scratch given enough specifications to do so. This is something I’ve done for other vendors, and doesn’t take long as most vendor firmware updaters all do the same kind of thing; there are only so many ways to send a few kb of data to USB devices.

KDE Slimbook II Plasma-Based Linux Ultrabook Laptop Is Cheaper, More Powerfu l

Meet KDE Slimbook II, the second-generation of the KDE Slimbook laptop that emphasizes the widely-used KDE Plasma open-source desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions. Build for running the KDE Neon Linux distro, the 1st-generation KDE Slimbook laptop was announced a year ago and offered some attractive features, including a 13.3-inch screen, faster SSDs, and latest Plasma desktop.

TING

**Ting – mobile that makes sense

Let’s talk about elementary OS 5.0 Juno

But we’re finally ready to start (cautiously!) talking about Juno, the next major release of elementary OS.

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Chris Goes to Microsoft

The third floor of one of the swankiest Microsoft offices I’ve ever been in #microsoft #opensourse #powershell

A post shared by Chris Fisher (@instachrislas) on Feb 12, 2018 at 10:10am PST

"Ambient Microsoft" interesting cross-cultural talk between @ChrisLAS and @jsnover that addresses the strategic (sea)change in Redmond [starts at 38:12]. cc:@maryjofoley @bdsams Hmm. All that's missing is an OS that runs all binary flavors… 😉 https://t.co/93Wqbj6mf5

— SpragueD (@SpragueD) February 13, 2018

KDE neon Developers Blog

With the new Plasma LTS came an update to KDE neon LTS Edition and lots of people asking which edition to use and what the difference is. This caused us to review the purpose of LTS and as a result we’ve just hidden LTS from the download page. The only difference with the LTS edition is that it stays on Plasma’s LTS release but apps and libraries still get updates. This doesn’t fit well with the main use cases of an LTS which is that it only gets bug fixes and no new features.

Until last week, you could pwn KDE Linux desktop with a USB stick

The CVE-2018-6791 vulnerability – unsurprisingly designated as high risk – was fixed on Thursday with an update to the Plasma Desktop.

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Plasma Challenge Check In
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The post Microsoft’s Big Secret | LINUX Unplugged 236 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Invest In Popcorn | LINUX Unplugged 230

chris — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 23:17:16 +0000

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Happy New Year- Welcome to Linux Journal 2.0!

Talk about a Happy New Year. The reason: it turns out we’re not dead. In fact, we’re more alive than ever, thanks to a rescue by readers—specifically, by the hackers who run Private Internet Access.

This is exactly what we had hoped for in recent years, but hardly expected. Really and truly, I waited to put up our farewell post until all hope was lost. But hey, it turns out you don’t have to believe in miracles to experience one, because that’s exactly what happened here.

Second, they’re eager to support us in building Linux Journal 2.0 around the substantial core of devoted readers we had through the many years of Linux Journal 1.x. And, this means we need to hear from you!

Google’s experimental Fuchsia OS can now run on the Pixelbook

Google’s in-development operating system, Fuchsia, has a new development device: The Google Pixelbook. Google’s $1,000 laptop usually runs Chrome OS, but with the latest Fuchsia builds, you can swap out the browser-based OS for Google’s experimental operating system.

Fuchsia is still incredibly difficult to get running. Along with the Pixelbook, Fuchsia only supports two other obscure pieces of hardware: an Acer Switch Alpha 12 laptop and old Intel NUCs from 2015.

The extreme difficulty in getting Fuchsia to run reinforces the fact that Fuchsia is currently a secret, deep-in-development operating system that Google isn’t really ready to talk about or encourage people to try just yet.

TING

Ting – mobile that makes sense

‘Kernel memory leaking’ Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

A fundamental design flaw in Intel’s processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.

Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we’re looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model.

Details of the vulnerability within Intel’s silicon are under wraps: an embargo on the specifics is due to lift early this month, perhaps in time for Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday next week. Indeed, patches for the Linux kernel are available for all to see but comments in the source code have been redacted to obfuscate the issue.

AMD processors are not subject to the types of attacks that the kernel page table isolation feature protects against.

The mysterious case of the Linux Page Table…

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An introduction to Joplin, an open source Evernote alternative

Joplin is an open source cross-platform note-taking and to-do application. It can handle a large number of notes, organized into notebooks, and can synchronize them across multiple devices.The notes can be edited in Markdown, either from within the app or with your own text editor, and each application has an option to render Markdown with formatting, images, URLs, and more.

As such, its synchronization is designed without any hard dependency to any particular service. Most of the synchronization process is done at an abstract level, and access to external services, such as OneDrive or Dropbox, is done via lightweight drivers.

Joplin was designed as a replacement for Evernote, so it can import complete Evernote notebooks, as well as notes, tags, resources (attached files), and note metadata (such as author, geolocation, etc.) via ENEX files.

Valve: Linux Catbot VAC ban claims were hoaxed by hackers to ‘sow distrust among anti-cheat systems’

initially wrote that Valve was banning Linux users with Linux usernames that included the word ‘catbot’, but Valve has said those claims were a “tactic employed by cheaters to try and sow discord and distrust among anticheat systems”.

“Linux historically hasn’t been a problem for cheating–the base rate of cheating is significantly lower on Linux than it is on Windows. Unfortunately, a ‘healthy’ community of cheaters grew up around catbot on linux and their impact on TF became large enough that they simply could no longer be ignored. Those banned users are very annoyed that VAC has dropped the hammer on them.”

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2017 Best Practices

Bad predictions and plans for maintenance

All the Annoying Tech Chores You Need to Do When You Have Time

Like your car, or your kitchen, your tech devices will run best when they’re maintained properly—and that means finding time to do all those low-level maintenance tasks that aren’t much fun, but can keep everything stable and smooth, and avoid problems in the future.

Update your Software
Go through old files and free up some space
Monitor for problems
Get Organized
Update router and other firmware
Move to the cloud?

Linux resolutions for 2018

It’s always a good idea to start a new year with renewed intentions to be even better users and administrators of our Linux systems.

Automate the boring stuff
Learn a new language
Try a new OS
Focus on Security
Restore those backups!
Document, Document, Document
Most importantly, have some fun!

The post Invest In Popcorn | LINUX Unplugged 230 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

firmware – Jupiter Broadcasting

One Cosmic Collaboration | LINUX Unplugged 462

Linux Action News 243

CPU as a Service | LINUX Unplugged 460

Linux Action News 240

Linux Action News 239

What Makes a Linux User? | LINUX Unplugged 423

Linux Action News 189

The Hidden Cost of Nextcloud | LINUX Unplugged 362

Chris’ Data Crisis | LINUX Unplugged 355

Storage Stories | TechSNAP 426

Self-Hosted: Fixing Brent’s WiFi | Jupiter Extras 45

Linux Action News 121

Wayland Buddies | LINUX Unplugged 315

The Big Three | BSD Now 300

Year of the Relevant Desktop | LINUX Unplugged 275

Alternate Desktop Universe | LINUX Unplugged 269

Updates from the Source | LINUX Unplugged 263

GNOME, GNOME on the Range | LINUX Unplugged 261

Microsoft’s Big Secret | LINUX Unplugged 236

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Follow Up / Catch Up

Chris Goes to Microsoft

Plasma Challenge Check In

Invest In Popcorn | LINUX Unplugged 230

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Show Notes:

2017 Best Practices