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FOSS News No. 10 - review of free and open source news for March 30 - April 5, 2020



Hello everyone!

We continue to review the news of free and open source software and hardware (and a bit of coronavirus). All the most important thing about penguins and not only in Russia and the world. We continue to cover the role of Open Source developers in the fight against COVID-19, pleased Huawei three times, there were two news about Linux smartphone releases, Google and IEEE are improving the infrastructure of their projects, tips on how the FOSS project can succeed and other news. And at the end, a small appeal to readers.

The full list of topics of the issue No. 10 for March 30 - April 5, 2020:

  1. Mozilla Launches COVID-19 Fund
  2. Linux 5.6 released and Linus Torvalds recommends putting health above release requirements
  3. IEEE Launches Collaboration Platform
  4. Developers respond to COVID-19 Open Source threat with projects and hackathons
  5. The program for searching like-minded VKontakte
  6. 5G Linux smartphone in the form factor of a miniature laptop raised funds through crowdfunding
  7. PinePhone smartphone supplied with UBports is available for order
  8. How open source software succeeds
  9. GNU / Linux is now more open than ever for gamers
  10. Available VPN WireGuard 1.0.0
  11. Rambox - instant messenger
  12. GitLab Opens 18 Functions to Support the Program Life Cycle
  13. Eclipse Theia 1.0 Release, Alternatives to Visual Studio Code Editor
  14. OpenMediaVault 5
  15. 5 GNU/Linux
  16. 17 Raspberry Pi
  17. AUR Arch Manjaro Linux?
  18. Canonical Open Source
  19. Huawei Linux
  20. Huawei MindSpore
  21. Google
  22. 5G
  23. ViennaNET: backend’
  24. Huawei NEW IP,
  25. Ansible bash
  26. Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6
  27. Google Chrome 80 Cookie
  28. ProtonMail Bridge,
  29. GNU/Linux at
  30. screen
  31. pipeplot – pipe
  33. Kubernetes 7
  34. Unix

Mozilla COVID-19




On March 31, Mozilla announced on its blog the creation of the COVID-19 Solution Fund as part of the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (Mozilla's open source support program, MOSS). Through this fund, the company intends to allocate funds of up to $ 50,000 to Open Source to technological projects struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund will accept applications from developers of iron (such as ventilators) and software (such as a browser plugin that fights against fake news).

Details

Linux 5.6 released and Linus Torvalds recommends putting health above release requirements




“ In fact, I did not see any real signs that the whole coronavirus situation affects the development of the nucleus - I suspect that many of us work at home even in normal mode”, Torvalds wrote, dubbed The Register“ the champion of remote work. ” According to OpenNET, after 7 months of development, the new version of the Linux kernel 5.6 has 13702 patches from 1810 developers, the patch size is 40 MB (the changes affected 11577 files, 610012 lines of code were added, 294828 lines were deleted). About 45% of all the changes presented in 5.6 are related to device drivers, about 15% of changes are related to updating the code specific to hardware architectures, 12% are connected to the network stack, 4% to file systems and 3% to internal kernel subsystems. Major innovations included network and disk subsystems, virtualization and security, memory and system services, hardware architectures, and hardware support.

Details ( [1] , [2] )

IEEE Launches Collaboration Platform




The world leader in the development of standards for radio electronics, electrical engineering and hardware for computing systems and networks, IEEE announced the launch of the Open Source collaboration platform IEEE SA Open, according to It's FOSS. Technically, the platform is a standalone installation of GitLab in combination with Mattermost (an alternative to Slack) and GitLab Pages. The organization’s official blog says, “The platform allows independent software developers, startups, industry, academic institutions and others to create, test, manage and deploy innovative projects in a safe and reliable environment for collaboration.” The key attractive difference for this platform will be the IEEE network of members, technical expertise and resources.

Details

Developers respond to COVID-19 Open Source threat with projects and hackathons




SD Times writes that in the past few weeks, the United States has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and in the foreseeable future this disease will continue to have a huge impact on the whole world. But even in the midst of panic and insecurity, communities come together to do what they can. The open source projects related to COVID-19 cover a wide range of areas, from the dashboard to DIY design. Here are just a few examples of projects aimed at combating COVID-19:

  1. An interactive dashboard that tracks the number of cases, deaths, and recoveries - www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 .
  2. Folding @ Home GPU , , – foldingathome.org.
  3. – github.com/jcl5m1/ventilator.
  4. -, – github.com/BustByte/coronastatus.
  5. – github.com/gcreddy42/hiring2020.
  6. We Are Still Open, -, , COVID-19 – wearestillopen.com.
  7. COVID-Net, , , COVID-19 – medium.com/@sheldon.fernandez/covid-net-an-open-source-neural-network-for-covid-19-detection-48b8a55e6d44.

This year, Call for Code will be another opportunity for developers to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. Call for Code 2020 was originally dedicated to projects that would help combat climate change, but the organization has recently expanded the rules by adding a second pandemic focus. Let me remind you that CfC is an initiative to develop global problems software with the support of IBM.

To overcome COVID-19, hackathons are also held. Currently, with the support of the World Health Organization and major technology companies such as AWS, Facebook, Microsoft and Slack, the global hackathon COVID-19 is being held . Debian has also connected to this topic.

Details ( [1] , [2] )

The program for searching like-minded VKontakte




The user Habr told about his Open Source project for the search for like-minded VKontakte, based on the analysis of subscriptions, with a convenient interface and automation tools. Written in Qt, binaries are available for Windows and GNU / Linux.

Details

5G Linux smartphone in the form factor of a miniature laptop raised funds through crowdfunding




The world of Linux phones will soon be replenished with a new entrant, as Planet Computers is working on a new device that has now fully funded through crowdfunding, says Habra. The new phone is called Astro Slide and looks like a PDA, but despite this, the device is a 5G smartphone that can work like a laptop thanks to a small physical keyboard. The smartphone comes with an 8-core processor, 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of memory, which can be expanded with a microSD card, and will cost from $ 799 to $ 999, according to the Indiegogo page. Right now you can get it for $ 546.

Details

PinePhone smartphone supplied with UBports is available for order




According to OpenNET, the Pine64 community has announced the launch of pre-orders for the PinePhone smartphone, equipped with firmware with the UBports mobile platform, which continues the development of the Ubuntu Touch project after Canonical has pulled away from it. The cost of the smartphone is $ 149.99. The firmware with UBports is in beta testing, but it is claimed that the basic functionality is fully functional. An interesting feature is that the PinePhone hardware is designed to use replaceable components - most of the modules are not soldered, but connected via detachable loops, which allows, for example, if you wish, you can replace the default mediocre camera with a better one.

Details

How open source software succeeds




At the San Diego Open Source Summit last summer, Chris Anishchik, a spokesman for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, enthusiastically announced that open source software is entering a golden age. A review of successful Open Source solutions and an analysis of the reasons for success and possible reasons for failure is devoted to an article on Silicon Angle.

Details

GNU / Linux is now more open than ever for gamers




The author of PCGamer writes about how, in his opinion, Linux has changed a lot over the years, and how outdated the idea of ​​Linux is as an OS designed exclusively for techies. Not only does switching from Windows become relatively painless, but games are becoming more accessible. The article deals with hardware support, available software, and the remaining "irregularities."

Details

Available VPN WireGuard 1.0.0




According to OpenNET, the landmark VPN WireGuard 1.0.0 release is presented, which marked the delivery of WireGuard components in the core Linux kernel kernel and development stabilization. The code included in the Linux kernel passed an additional security audit performed by an independent company specializing in such checks. The audit did not reveal any problems. The publication reminds that WireGuard is implemented on the basis of modern encryption methods, provides very high performance, is easy to use, devoid of complications and has proven itself in a number of large deployments that handle large volumes of traffic.

Details

Rambox - instant messenger




It's FOSS talking about Rambox - this is one of the best ways to manage multiple services for communication through one installed application. You can use several messaging services such as Facebook Messenger, Gmail, AOL, Discord, Google Duo, Viber chats and much more from one interface. Thus, you do not need to install separate applications or constantly open them in a browser. Rambox offers a free version for the open source community. The paid professional version gives you access to 600+ applications, while the community has more than 99 applications. The Pro version has additional features such as themes, hibernation, ad unit, spell checking and advanced support. However, according to the publication, the open source version is very useful and so,and you may not even need these professional features.

Details

GitLab Opens 18 Functions to Support the Program Life Cycle




Sid Sidbrandi, co-founder and CEO of GitLab Inc., announced that 18 features of Gitlab will be ported to the open source version of Core / Free, writes JaxEnter. Requests for inclusion were created to move each function, and the development community is invited to participate in this process. Some functions belonging to different parts of the DevOps life cycle, as shown in the figure above, are now moving to open source: planning, creating, verifying, packaging, releasing, configuring and protecting.

Details and a full list of features

Eclipse Theia 1.0 Release, Alternatives to Visual Studio Code Editor




The Eclipse Foundation has published the first stable release of the Eclipse Theia 1.0 code editor, designed to provide a truly open alternative to the Visual Studio Code project. The editor initially develops with an eye to full use both in the form of a desktop application and for launching in the cloud with access via a web browser. The code is written in TypeScript and distributed under the free EPLv2 license (Eclipse Public License). The project is being developed with the participation of IBM, Red Hat, Google, ARM, Ericsson, SAP and Arduino. The key differences from Visual Studio Code are: a more modular architecture that provides more options for modification; initial orientation to launch not only on the local system, but also in the cloud; development on a neutral site.

Details

OpenMediaVault 5 Network Storage Distribution Available




After almost two years since the formation of the last significant branch, the OpenMediaVault 5 distribution kit was launched, aimed at the rapid deployment of network storage (NAS, Network-Attached Storage). OpenMediaVault considers the development of support for embedded devices and the creation of a flexible system for installing add-ons as development priorities. OpenMediaVault's web-based management interface is written in PHP using the ExtJS JavaScript framework. Among the services related to the organization of work of the repository of basic services, one can note: SSH / SFTP, FTP, SMB / CIFS, DAAP client, RSync, BitTorrent client, NFS and TFTP. You can use EXT3, EXT4, XFS, and JFS as the file system.

Details

Top 5 GNU / Linux Distributions for General Use




Not the first and not the last such review, this time from TechRepublic. If you are just choosing a GNU / Linux distribution for yourself, or are considering a change, check out this article. Dismantled:

  1. elementary OS
  2. Ubuntu
  3. Pop! _OS
  4. Deepin
  5. Manjaro

Details

The 17 best operating systems for various purposes for Raspberry Pi




A more specialized review than the previous one is published by It's FOSS. Consider distributions for the single-board Raspberry Pi. Given how useful the Raspberry Pi is, it’s important to choose the right operating system for it. Of course, you can do a lot with Linux, but a correctly selected distribution kit or another OS, specially configured for a specific purpose, can save you a lot of time and effort, the author writes and gives a brief explanation of the following list (most are based on Linux):

  1. Raspbian OS
  2. Ubuntu MATE
  3. Ubuntu Server
  4. LibreELEC;
  5. OSMC
  6. RISC OS
  7. Mozilla WebThings Gateway;
  8. Ubuntu Core
  9. DietPi;
  10. Lakka Linux
  11. RetroPie
  12. Kali Linux
  13. OpenMediaVault
  14. ROKOS;
  15. Alpine Linux
  16. Kano OS
  17. KDE Plasma Bigscreen.

Details

What is AUR and how to use it on Arch or Manjaro Linux?




If you used Arch or Manjaro Linux, you probably know what AUR is. But if this is not the case, or if you use another distribution kit or OS at all, you will probably be interested in what Arch User Repository is. About this, as well as about what risks AUR bears and how to use it, an article was published on It's FOSS.

Details

Canonical makes managing open source cloud products easier




SdxCentral talks about Juju, an open source Ubuntu application and service modeling tool that helps you deploy, manage, and scale your applications in any cloud. Stefan Fabel, Canonical Product Director, says: “ Your application interface will be the same no matter where this application is running ... Some of your applications can be run on Amazon Web Services, some can be on VMware, some can be on Kubernetes, and others may be bare metal. Juju's teams for deployment, management, integration, and monitoring will look the same . ”

Details

Huawei Joins Linux Patent Complaint Initiative




Huawei is among the licensees and members of the Open Invention Network (OIN), a company that protects the Linux ecosystem from patent claims, OpenNET said. OIN members include over 3,200 companies, communities, and organizations that have signed a patent-sharing license agreement. Among the key OIN contributors to the Linux-protecting patent pool are companies such as Google, IBM, Toyota, Red Hat, Alibaba, HP, AT&T, Facebook, Sony, and Microsoft. Companies that sign the agreement gain access to the patents held by OIN, in exchange for the obligation not to file legal claims for the use of technologies used in the Linux ecosystem.

Details

Huawei Opens MindSpore AI Framework




Huawei announced this week that MindSpore, an AI application development framework that the company described in detail in August 2019, is now available open source on GitHub and Gitee, VentureBeat writes. The lightweight package is similar to TensorFlow from Google and PyTorch from Facebook, according to developers, it lowers the barrier to entry for developers who want to fill applications with artificial intelligence. MindSpore, supported by partners like Edinburgh University, Peking University, Imperial College London and the Milvus robotic startup, reduces code lines by 20% compared to leading environments when working with typical natural language processing models, and, according to Huawei, provide a 50% increase in efficiency on average.

Details

Google introduced a search and navigation system for its open source code




Google has introduced a new search service cs.opensource.google , designed to search by code in git-repositories of open projects developed by Google, OpenNET reports. Of the indexed projects, Angular, Bazel, Dart, ExoPlayer, Firebase SDK, Flutter, Go, gVisor, Kythe, Nomulus, Outline and Tensorflow are noted.

Details

Technology giants join forces to launch open source 5G infrastructure management tool




CBR reports that HPE and Intel are working with Open Source partners, such as Red Hat, to create a 5G distributed infrastructure management tool that could potentially help telecommunications companies overcome the difficulties of installing a 5G system in locations that host multiple vendor infrastructure . The project will be transferred to the Linux Foundation, the release is scheduled for the second quarter of 2020.

Details ( [1] , [2] )

ViennaNET: a set of libraries for the backend




Raiffeisenbank specialists report in their blog on Habré about the discovery of the source code for a set of infrastructure libraries on .NET Core to quickly create backend microservices with a single ecosystem. The main goal, according to the developers, was to create a unified approach that describes how to interact with databases, buses and other services. They tried to make integration quick and painless, and developers could concentrate on writing business logic rather than infrastructure - it is ready.

Details

Huawei Develops New IP Protocol for Future Networking




Huawei, together with researchers from University College London, is developing the NEW IP network protocol, which takes into account the development trends of telecommunications devices of the future and the widespread distribution of Internet of things, augmented reality systems and holographic communications.
The benefits of the new protocol are:

  1. solving the problem of information exchange between heterogeneous networks;
  2. adding the ability to identify virtual objects, such as content and services, in addition to physical ones as before;
  3. Fine quality service management.

Details

Ansible is not for you bash




On Habré the decoding of the report of 2019 of Sergey Pechenko "Ansible is not for you bash!" Is published. The report talks about the internal structure of the Ansible project, connection settings, the correct and incorrect way to write playbooks, the use of modules and plug-ins, examples of modules and plug-ins are given, and examples of tasks are described.

Details

Oracle Releases Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 Core




OpenNET announces that Oracle has unveiled the first stable release of Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 (UEK R6), an extended assembly of the Linux kernel positioned for use in the Oracle Linux distribution as an alternative to the regular Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel package. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 6 package is based on the Linux 5.4 kernel (UEK R5 was based on the 4.14 kernel), which is supplemented with new features, optimizations and fixes, as well as tested for compatibility with most applications running in RHEL and specially optimized for working with industrial software and Oracle hardware.

Details and a complete list of innovations

Google cancels third-party cookie hardening proposed in Chrome 80




Google announced the cancellation of the change associated with the transition to more stringent restrictions on the transfer of cookies between sites that do not use HTTPS, according to OpenNET. Starting in February, this change was gradually brought to users of Chrome 80. It is noted that despite the fact that most sites were adapted for this restriction, Google decided to postpone the application of new restrictions that could potentially slow down the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic. affect the stability of working with sites that provide key services, such as banking services, online products, government services and medical services.

Details

With ProtonMail Bridge, you can use encrypted emails with any desktop client




With ProtonMail Bridge, you can now use encrypted email with any email client on your computer, It's FOSS reports. ProtonMail Bridge is NOT a new, standalone email client for PC. Instead, ProtonMail Bridge is an application that integrates ProtonMail with desktop clients such as Thunderbird, Outlook, and other similar programs that support IMAP / SMTP. Proton Bridge combines ProtonMail's powerful privacy and security features, such as zero-access encryption and end-to-end encryption, with a regular desktop email client such as Thunderbird. True only for Premium users. ProtonMail, based in Switzerland, is one of the best secure email services for users,related to privacy, with an emphasis on providing an open source solution, complements It's FOSS.

Details

GNU / Linux task scheduling with the at command




If you want commands or scripts to be executed at a specific time, you don’t need to sit with your fingers hovering over the keyboard, waiting for you to press the enter key or even at the table at the right time. Instead, you can configure the execution of the task through the at command , writes Network World and considers how tasks are planned using at , how you can precisely select the time when you want your process to run, and how to see what is planned to be launched using at . A comparison of at with cron is also provided .

Details

How to use screen command




Surely you have already heard about the screen command, but if you aren’t using it or you are uncertain, the How to Geek article is for you. Using the screen command on GNU / Linux, you can put running terminal applications in the background and plug them back in whenever you want to see them. It also supports split screens and works through SSH connections, even after you disconnect and reconnect. In my opinion, the must know team for all IT professionals working with GNU / Linux is unique.

Details

pipeplot - interactive visualization of the data stream from pipe in the console




An article was published on Habr about the possibility of drawing a graph of data passing through a pipe directly in the GNU / Linux console. That's all, examples are on the link .

Where do open source fonts come from?





Over the past decade, companies from startups such as IT company Datto to giants like Intel and IBM have commissioned professional font manufacturers to create the fonts that these companies open. Even Adobe, which sells licenses for some of its font families for hundreds of dollars, has released an “open source” super font family. It's easy to see why web designers need free, quality fonts. But why should an independent font designer open their work? As with open source software, the reasons may be different; Wired parses them.

Details

Kubernetes free evening school kicks off April 7th




From April 7 to July 21, the Slerm training center will conduct a free theoretical course on the free Kubernetes container orchestration platform, OpenNET reports. Lessons will provide administrators with an understanding of the basics sufficient to integrate into multi-functional DevOps teams using Kubernetes to organize work of highly loaded projects. The course will help developers to gain knowledge about the capabilities and limitations of Kubernetes that affect the application architecture, as well as provide an opportunity to learn how to deploy applications themselves, configure monitoring and create environments.

Details and lesson schedule

How Unix pipelines are implemented




In the blog of the Mail.ru company on Habré, a translation of an article about the implementation of pipelines is known, probably known to everyone who at least once worked on the UNIX command line. The author of the original article plunges into the architecture of this solution, discusses usefulness, gives a retrospective on the implementation of pipelines in different versions of UNIX and Linux. The article is perhaps only for programmers.

Details

Distribution of a spherical horse in a vacuum throughout the Russian Federation




In the trend of discussion of the topic of the COVID-19 pandemic, an article from the ODS community on modeling the spread of an abstract epidemic using the dataset of the passenger flow of the Russian Federation from tutu.ru was published on Habré. The authors write that they were interested in analyzing this topic from the point of view of mathematical methods and working with an interesting data set. Demonstrated models for different levels of infection and different reactions of the authorities.

Details


That's it, until next Sunday!

Thanks to Linux.com for their work, a selection of English sources for my review is taken from there.

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PS: This is the 10th in numbering and the 11th edition of FOSS News. For more than two months now, every week I spend about 7 hours preparing these news reviews and thought it would be nice to find someone to help, because I'm not sure that I can work for such a long time in such a constant mode. The companions from PermLUG help me with proofreading and sometimes with the selection of material, but I would like help in writing the review, in writing a brief introduction to the news, for example. Who is interested and has the time and opportunity - I will be glad, write to the contacts listed in my profile , we will discuss. Peace for everyone!

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