FOSS News #34 - Free and Open Source News Digest September 14-20, 2020
Hi all!
We continue to digest news and other materials about free and open source software and a bit about hardware. All the most important things about penguins and not only, in Russia and the world. About the direction of Linux development and problems with its development process, about tools for finding the best FOSS software, the pain of using the Google Cloud Platform and arguments about how much backwards compatibility should be maintained, videos about GNU / Linux distributions for beginners, about the KDE Akademy Awards and much more other.
What's new in the Linux kernel and in what direction is it developing?
An article has appeared on the HP Enterprise website discussing the future of Linux. The author, Vaughan-Nichols & Associates CEO Stephen Van Nichols, writes: “After all these years, Linux developers continue to innovate. New versions will be faster and more stable. Linux runs almost everywhere: all 500 of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world; most public clouds, even Microsoft Azure; and 74 percent smartphones. Indeed, thanks to Android, Linux is the most popular operating system for end users, outperforming Windows by 4% (39% vs. 35%). So what's next for Linux? I've talked about Linux for nearly all of its 29 years of history and have known just about everyone in Linux development circles, including Linus Torvalds, and I think I have a clue as to where Linux is heading.».
Why is there no handy tool to compare and select the best Open Source software?
An article appeared on Functionize describing an attempt to figure out how to choose the best FOSS software, the author writes: “The “wisdom of crowds” has inspired the creation of all sorts of online services where people share their opinions and guide others in making decisions. The online community has created many ways to do this, such as Amazon reviews, Glassdoor (where you can rate employers), and TripAdvisor and Yelp (for hotels, restaurants, and other service providers). You can also rate or recommend commercial software, such as in mobile app stores or on sites like Product Hunt. But if you're looking for advice to help you choose open source apps, the results are disappointing».
“Dear Google Cloud, not being backwards compatible is killing you.”
A translated article appeared on Habré describing the pain experienced by an author who has worked at Google for several years due to the approach used in the Google Cloud Platform, similar to “planned obsolescence” and forcing users to make significant changes to their code using this cloud provider every couple of years. The article describes, for contrast, solutions that have been supported for many years and where backwards compatibility is really taken care of (GNU Emacs, Java, Android, Chrome). The article will probably be of interest not only to GCP users, but also to software developers that should work for at least a few years. And since the article mentions many examples from the FOSS world, the article fit into the digest.
Linux development process: is it worth the candle?
Habré published a translated material from an author with solid development experience, where he talks about how the Linux kernel development process is now organized and criticizes it: “By now, Linux has been around for almost three decades. In the early days of this OS, Linus Torvalds managed the code himself, written by other programmers contributing to the development of Linux. There were no version control systems back then, everything was done manually. In modern conditions, the same problems are solved using git. True, all this time some things remained unchanged. Namely, the code is sent to a mailing list (or several lists), and there it is checked and discussed until it is considered ready for inclusion in the Linux kernel. But while this coding process has been used successfully for many years, it has been constantly criticized. … I believe that my position allows me to offer some ideas regarding the development of the Linux kernel».
On the YouTube channel of Alexei Samoilov, a popular video blogger who makes videos about Linux, a new video has appeared - “Choosing a Linux distribution for home (2020)”. In it, the author talks about the best, in his opinion, distributions for the home, updating his video 4 years ago. The distributions described in the video require little to no configuration after installation and are best suited for beginners. The video covers: ElementaryOS, KDE Neon, Linux Mint, Manjaro, Solus.
OpenNET writes:
« The last KDE Akademy 2020 conference has announced the winners of the KDE Akademy Awards, honoring the most outstanding members of the KDE community.
Bhushan Shah received the award for Best Application for the development of the Plasma Mobile platform. Last year, the award was given to Marco Martin for developing the Kirigami framework.
The Non-Application Contribution Award went to Carl Schwan for his work on modernizing the KDE sites. Last year, Nate Graham won the award for blogging about the progress of KDE development.
The Special Jury Prize was awarded to Ligi Toscano for their KDE localization efforts. Last year, Volker Krause received the award for his involvement in the development of various applications and frameworks, including KDE PIM and KDE Itinerary.
A special prize from KDE eV went to Kenny Coyle, Kenny Duffus, Allyson Alexandrou and Bhavisha Dhruve for their work on hosting the KDE Akademy conference
Zabbix online meetup and Q&A session with Alexey Vladyshev [→]
Opening code and data
LZHAM and Crunch compression libraries moved to public domain [→]
IBM discovers developments related to the A2O POWER processor [→]
Google Opens Code for Makani Wind Power Platform [→]
Comodo plans to open source its Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) product [→]
VPN provider TunnelBear is cracking down on censorship in Iran and is releasing some of their work open source, allowing ESNI support to be added to OkHttp [→ 1, 2]
News from FOSS organizations
Red Hat Develops New NVFS, Efficient for NVM Memory [→]
3 ways to protect yourself from the "imposter syndrome" (not directly related to FOSS, but published on a thematic resource and suddenly it will be useful to someone) [→ (en)]
Adding throwing mechanics to a Python game [→ (en)]
Setting up a Project Management Server with Wekan Kanban on GNU/Linux [→ (en)]
FuryBSD 2020-Q3 Release, FreeBSD Live Builds with KDE and Xfce Desktops [→]
System software
Release of NVIDIA driver 455.23.04 with support for GPU RTX 3080 (the driver is not FOSS, but for FOSS operating systems and is important, therefore it is included in the digest) [→]
I express my gratitude to the editors opennet, many news items and announcements about new releases are taken from their website.
If anyone is interested in compiling digests and has the time and opportunity to help, I will be glad, write to the contacts listed in my profile, or in private messages.