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A New Desktop Theme Is Coming For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

(C) Phoronix

With Ubuntu 20.04 to see installation on many desktops (and servers) given its Long-Term Support status, Canonical and the Yaru community team have begun working on a successor to the Yaru theme for this Linux distribution release due out in April.

Yaru has been the default Ubuntu theme since 18.10 but now a year and a half later is time for some refinements. The Yaru design team was recently at Canonical’s London offices to work on the new theme.

[Source: Phoronix]

Linux Developers Start Poaching Microsoft Users After Windows 7 End of Support

Windows 7 has officially reached the end of support, so users running it have three options to choose from: stick with Windows 7 and face the obvious security risks, upgrade to newer Windows, or migrate to a non-Windows platform. As far as the last option goes, Linux distro makers know how big this opportunity really is, so they started poaching Windows 7 users in an attempt to increase their install base.

After Canonical tried to lure Windows 7 users to install Ubuntu, a number of Korean companies developing their own custom Linux distros have launched similar campaigns specifically supposed to convince Microsoft customers to make the switch.

[Source: Softpedia]

Google open-sources tool to boost 2FA adoption in npm

Google has open-sourced an npm publishing tool for heightened security across organizations’ client libraries. The tool, Wombat Dressing Room, aims to reduce the security risks associated with the automation of npm publishing.

“On my team, a small number of developers manage over 75 Node.js libraries,” Benjamin Coe, developer engineer at Google, said in an announcement on Friday (January 10).

[Source: The Daily Swig]

Top Open Source Machine Learning Tools

Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and other tech giants including renowned developers have already taken a nimble step towards the Machine learning and Artificial intelligence to make the dream of human beings of creating a highly intelligent machine. And to armed others to partake in this journey of building a conscious machine for the future, there are quite a good number of open source tools avail by tech giants to integrate artificial intelligence into applications.

Yet, the artificial intelligence and machine learning are at very early stage, so don’t expect something like some sci-fi movie, however developers those are into AI and ML can use the open-source software we are going to discuss for writing apps for better speech recognition, Image recognization, Voice assistance, developing a neural network and more… Take a look at some of the most popular open-source solutions.

[Source: H2S Media]

Microsoft and IBM: Here’s why we back Google in Oracle Java API copyright case

IBM, Microsoft and other tech companies have filed court documents in support of Google ahead of the Supreme Court of the US hearing over whether copyright applies to software application programming interfaces.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the Google vs Oracle case in March, after the court last year agreed to reconsider a favorable decision towards Oracle by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2014. The court reversed a federal court jury decision that Google’s use of Java API packages in its Android operating system constituted “fair use”.

[Source: ZDNet]

Wind River acquires Star Lab to improve its Linux security

Once upon a time Wind River was best known as a leading embedded operating system (VxWorks) and Linux (Wind River Linux) company. It still is. But things have changed. Now its customers want their devices to work in the world of the Internet of Things (IoT) and that requires much better security. That’s one reason why Wind River just acquired the Linux security company Star Lab.

Star Lab brings its Titanium Security Suite to Wind River’s table. It uses a threat model that assumes an attacker will gain root (admin) access to your system, but makes it harder for them to do your system any harm.

[Source: ZDNet]

Why Should You Use Linux?

When people debate which operating system is the best-either MacOS or Windows-not many mention the third option: Linux. Why is that? See, Linux has its own niche in the tech industry, but that’s it. Yes, you can use Linux as your daily driver, but learning Linux can take a long time depending on which distro, Linux’s word for “version”, you have.

But I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Linux. In fact, if you’re into technology at all, I recommend using Linux for a month or two just to see how it works and the things you can do with Linux. But what if you’re not that into tech? Here are several reasons why you should use Linux, if only for a limited time!

[Source: Tech Times]

Fedora 32 Greenlit For Enabling FSTRIM Support By Default

Back in December was the proposal to finally enable FSTRIM by default for Fedora 32 in benefiting solid-state storage. Today the formal approval was given by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee to go ahead with this long overdue change.

The change is to enable the systemd fstrim.timer unit by default for running FSTRIM weekly on EXT4/XFS/Btrfs/F2FS file-systems running on flash-based storage devices. FSTRIM is used for notifying the underlying storage devices about unused blocks for wear leveling and more efficient handling.

[Source: Phoronix]

Google gives $1 million to UVM to advance open source research

The Google Open Source Programs Office, a division of Google that manages Google’s use and release of open source software and promotes open source programming, has provided the University of Vermont (UVM) Complex Systems Center a $1 million unrestricted gift to support open source research.

The goal of the UVM project is to deepen understanding of how people, teams and organizations thrive in technology-rich settings, especially in open-source projects and communities. The Google award will establish a collaboration between the Google Open Source team and UVM to begin building a community-oriented body of research focused on understanding how open source platforms are used and what makes technology-rich environments thrive.

[Source: Vermont Biz]

Linux Lite 4.8 Arrives as a Windows 7 Alternative, Based on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

Linux Lite creator Jerry Bezencon announced today the release and general availability of the Linux Lite 4.8 operating system as an alternative to the soon-to-be-deprecated Windows 7 OS.

Based on Canonical’s Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system, the final release of the Linux Lite 4.8 operating system ships with the Linux 4.15 kernel and updated apps, including Mozilla Firefox 71.0, Mozilla Thunderbird 68.2.2, LibreOffice 6.0.7, VLC 3.0.8, GIMP 2.10.14, and Timeshift 19.08.1.

[Source: Softpedia]