Linux Magazine January 2020

Dear Reader, We in Linux publishing have spent a lot of time holding Microsoft accountable for all the FUD and monkey business they have subjected us to through the years, so it is only fair to acknowledge them when they take a positive step. Microsoft has actually been doing better recently – I have written about Redmond’s newfound support for Linux and their open sourcing of core development tools. This month the big news is the announcement that Microsoft will “honor California’s new privacy rights throughout the United States.” A little over a year ago, the State of California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which will take effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA is a landmark bill that takes on the pertinent and perplexing issue of data…

TWO TERRIFIC DISTROS DOUBLE-SIDED DVD! Ubuntu 19.10 “Eoan Ermine” The latest Ubuntu release includes an updated Linux 5.3 kernel, with faster boot times, updated themes, and new ZFS filesystem support. The Gnome 3.34 desktop offers better performance and many application updates. This Ubuntu 19.10 short-term release version is supported until July 2019. Fedora 31 Workstation The community-based (and Red-Hat-sponsored) Fedora project tries to stay current and is often one of the first distros to implement new applications and updates. The latest Fedora Workstation release includes Gnome 3.34, improvements to the audio system, expanded Flatpak features, and more. Defective discs will be replaced. Please send an email to subs@linux-magazine.com. Although this Linux Magazine disc has been tested and is to the best of our knowledge free of malicious software and defects,…

For the longest time, any Linux user needing to work with a Microsoft browser had few options. There was always IEs4Linux, but that option tended to install out-ofdate, buggy versions of the software. Users could also run a version of Windows within a virtual machine, but that meant actually running Windows. All of that changes in 2020, when Microsoft Edge comes to Linux. In the "State of the Browser: Microsoft Edge" session at Ignite 2019, it was finally announced that Microsoft was, in fact, bringing their new browser to Linux (https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/79341?source=sessions). The new Microsoft browser is built around the open source Chromium browser (https://www.chromium.org), but this won’t simply be a rebuild and rebrand. Microsoft plans on being actively involved as a contributor to Chromium’s open source development. That means any…

The Gnome Project was recently sued by a company called Rothschild Patent Imaging for a patent related to the Shotwell photo manager. The Gnome community has just announced that it is counter-suing Rothschild, which they refer to as a patent troll (https://www.gnome.org/news/2019/10/gnome-files-defense-against-patent-troll/). Keith Bergelt, OIN’s CEO, said (https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-invention-network- comes-to-gnomes-aid-in-patent-troll-fight/) in his keynote at Open Source Summit, Europe, “Rothschild is a bad company. This is an entity that’s antithetical to the goals of innovation. It will sue foundations. It will sue not for profits. It will sue individuals. It will sue corporations. Their playbook is to establish a pattern of wins through relatively modest settlements,” which can get other businesses to pay up without a fight. Gnome turned down the offer to settle for a fivefigure sum in order to sue…

The Red-Hat-sponsored Fedora community has announced the release of Fedora 31, the latest version of Red Hat’s community distribution (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/fedora-31-now-generally-available). Fedora comes in many different editions – each targeting a different workload. Fedora Workstation and Fedora Server are aimed at developers using Fedora for development and then testing their apps on servers. Other editions include Fedora CoreOS, Fedora IoT and Fedora Silverblue. Fedora Workstation is among the most popular distributions and is reportedly the preferred distro of Linus Torvalds. Fedora 31 Workstation comes with Gnome 3.34 and many tools and features for general users as well as developers. Gnome 3.34 brings significant performance enhancements, which will be especially noticeable on lower-powered hardware. Fedora 31 Workstation also expands the default uses of the Wayland graphics system, including allowing Firefox to run…

As Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is becoming a critical piece of Microsoft’s cloud and data-center audience, openSUSE is working on technologies that help developers use distributions of their choice for WSL. Users can run the same WSL distribution that they run in the cloud or on their servers. The core piece of openSUSE’s WSL offering is the WSL appx files, which are basically zip files that contain a tarball of a Linux system (like a container) and a Windows exe file, the so called launcher. An openSUSE blog explains (https://lizards.opensuse.org/2019/10/09/opensuse-wsl-images-in-obs/) that “building a container is something SUSE’s Open Build Service (OBS) can already do fully automatic by means of Kiwi. The launcher as well as the final appx however is typically built on a Windows machine using Visual Studio…