Linux / Unix

Opera 58 is the first new build of the year, but there are no big changes inside it. The new version comes with a warning when trying to close a window with multiple tabs open, as well as Yandex Zen news recommendation service integration into the start page for those using the browser in Russian.

The latest 11.6-inch Chromebook models from HP get a more rugged feel with rubber trims, Gorilla Glass and spill-resistant keyboards. In order to keep the prices at an affordable level for students, HP included Intel's Celeron N4000 / 4100 CPUs, up to 8 GB LPDDR4-2400 RAM and up to 64 GB eMMC storage.

The new Librem 13 / 15 models come equipped with the i7-7500U CPU coupled with up to 16 GB of DDR4-2133 RAM and up to 2 TB NVMe SSD + 4 TB SATA SSD storage combos. The security features from the previous versions are still there and the Linux-based PureOS got an upgrade as well. The 13-inch model still features an FHD display, while the 15-incher got a 4K upgrade.

While many people still think that Turing is trying to get some more money without delivering anything solid and the HubblePhone will turn out to be nothing else but vaporware, the company has just promised to compensate the customers who paid for a Turing Phone Dark Wyvern and have not been refunded yet.

Supporting both Purism's own PureOS Linux-based operating system and Ubuntu Touch, which is now being developed by the UBports team, the Librem 5 smartphone is supposed to hit first customers next year, in April. However, the first developer kits are already shipping to those who already placed orders.

War Thunder 1.85 "Supersonic" is a major update to Gaijin Entertainment's flagship product and — as its name suggests — it comes with supersonic aircraft. Other noticeable changes include the Italian ground vehicles tree, thermal guided air-to-air missiles, new ships, new locations, and many minor adjustments.

The current mobility GPUs from AMD are not really a match for Nvidia's lineup, but htat could change in a few months. Data mined from the latest macOS Mojave mentions a total of twelve unannounced Vega 20 and Vega 10 GPUs. Some of these could end up in Apple's upcoming MacBook models, so it looks like AMD might attempt a comeback in the mobility sector.

Less than eight years since its release, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been turned into a free to play title. However, the best part is that the favorite first-person shooter of millions has also received a battle royale mode named Danger Zone that brings together up to 16 players in a fight to the last.

Advertised as a multi-screen 5G smartphone with a professional camera and a mobile gaming console, the HubblePhone K3-XR Copernicus is supposed to arrive in about a year, but there are two more models — Cassini and Herschel — that should hit the market in 2020. The pre-orders (roughly 1850 to 4250 USD) can be paid using BC or USDT.

Launching for users in North America only for now, the Eurocom service promises to update your laptop software, BIOS, anti-virus, operating system, and more for a small fee. A "deep cleaning" of the fans, hinges, and motherboard is also an option even for difficult-to-service laptops.

Kodi 18 has been in development for two years, and the first release candidate (RC 1) is finally available. Although it is still technically a beta version, RC 1 will be reflective of the final release. There are several new features, including better Android TV support, a 64-bit version for Windows, and a new gaming section with support for emulators.

FSLogix is a next-gen app-provisioning platform that optimizes the ingredients — hardware resources, time, and human resources — needed to offer virtualization support when deploying and scaling Windows and Office on Azure. As usual, the financial details have been left out of the spotlight.

The $25 Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ is the latest single-board computer from the venerable Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Model A+ boasts the same CPU and wireless connectivity as its bigger brother, the Model B+, but shaves off some I/O for the sake of thinness. Notably missing are three out of four USB ports and the Ethernet jack.

Remember Samsung's DeX? While that program has so far been a failure, it had led to Linux on DeX, an exciting new feature for select Samsung Galaxy devices. Linux on DeX will allow users to load a full desktop Linux environment within an app container on their Android phone. After connecting their phone to an external monitor, users will be able to enjoy a full desktop Linux experience, all running off their Samsung Galaxy device.

Google’s first Chrome OS tablet is now up for pre-order following its unveiling early last month. The new Pixel Slate follows is the company’s latest attempt to crack the tablet computing market dominated by Apple’s iPad.

ProtonDB has announced that over 2,600 Windows games are now playable on Linux via Steam Play. These include games such as The Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Dishonored, and more. This increase in game compatibility ever since Steam Play launched with Proton last month is an indication of Valve's commitment to making Windows games easily accessible to Linux users.

In a deal valued at US $34 billion, IBM will acquire Red Hat, the organization behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and CentOS. IBM is buying Red Hat in order to compete in the cloud computing market against the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and others. IBM has stated that Red Hat will operate as an independent unit with IBM's Hybrid Cloud team and will continue Red Hat's commitment to open source software.

Less than a month after the release of the 2.0 major update, Vivaldi 2.1 arrives with noticeable improvements to the popular Quick Commands feature. Notes can be created directly in Quick Commands, Page and UI Zoom can both be adjusted via Quick Commands, the browser now supports the AV1 standard, and more.

Pine64, the team behind the US$99 Pinebook, has announced it will begin working on a cheap Linux-based smartphone. Dubbed the PinePhone, the handset will be built around Pine's low-spec, low-cost Pine A64 single-board computer. Designs haven't been finalized, but dev kits are set to be released on November 1 with a projected device release date of mid-2019. The PinePhone is estimated to sell for US$100.

War Thunder 1.83 "Masters of the Sea" introduces the British Royal Navy tech tree (in Closed Beta), but also brings in new German, Soviet, and American vessels. The naval forces of these three nations can now be played by everyone, but there is even more to this update, such as German helicopters, new planes, and new ground vehicles.

As previously announced, the Ubuntu 18.10 release comes with the GNOME 3.30 desktop and Yaru — the new default theme that has been developed by the community. The new kernel and updated graphics libraries now support the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B/B+, the AMD Vega M-powered Kaby Lake G series, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845.

The latest Google Chrome browser comes with a new setting that allows its users to have a better control over the sign-in and sync features, the AV1 video streaming codec, as well as a rather large number of minor tweaks, fixes, and improvements. Chrome 70 is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Introduced last week, Vivaldi 2.0 is a major update that delivers essential features like Sync, Resizable Tab Tiling, and Floating Web Panels to this niche browser, as well as a fresh look with window background images and Start Page backgrounds. Vivaldi is now available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

The latest version of the Opera browser is now available as "the best browser for multitaskers" and its list of changes includes volume control for the video pop-out player, a page zoom indicator in the address and search bar, an easier way to report bugs, and more. Opera 56 is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which is the basis for many cloud and enterprise services, is coming up on its end of life this April. Canonical will begin offering an Extended Security Maintenance service in April that will continue rolling out security patches. However, the service is designed primarily for enterprise customers.

Less than 24 hours after its launch, Nintendo's Switch Online service has already been hacked to allow gamers to load their own custom NES ROMs in to the NES library. The process, which seems to be simple, is possible because of Nintendo's use of common .nes ROM files, the same filetype used by ROM sites online.

The most comprehensive War Thunder update to launch this month — 1.81 "The Walkyries" — introduces a few new ground vehicles, locations, and a new aircraft. However, the most important change involves the attack helicopters that have been added to the US and Russian branches of vehicles. Sadly, they are not available for everyone yet.

With the release of Firefox 62, Mozilla also stops providing support to Firefox 52 ESR, which is the latest version for those still using this ancient operating system. Firefox 62 comes with support for CSS variable fonts and shapes, dark mode automatically enabled for macOS users, improved scrolling performance in Android, and more.

Purism's upcoming Linux phone, the Librem 5, has run into some development delays that have pushed its release back 3 months to April 2019. Due to a flaw in the phone's CPU, the battery drains in less than an hour. Purism is working with the distributor to fix the flaw. In the meantime, dev kits are still scheduled to ship out in October.

When Intel banned testing the performance of its newest microcode patch for security vulnerabilities, many tech enthusiasts spoke out against the company. Finally, Intel has listened to the backlash and will soon be revising the restrictions on testing performance.

Phoronix has done a performance comparison of the AMD Threadripper 2990WX in Windows 10 Pro and Linux and the results show Threadripper numbers significantly lower under Windows 10 Pro than in Linux. In some tests such as 7-Zip Compression, the Threadripper 2990WX posted almost 58% higher scores in Linux compared to Windows 10 Pro implying that Linux is a better OS of choice when testing high core count CPUs.

First announced in 2014, the crowdfunded Dragonbox Pyra handheld mini PC is finally close to commercial release. The German developers released the final specs, which now include a 5-inch 720p screen, a TI OMAP 5 dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU, 2 or 4 GB RAM and 32 GB eMMC storage. What sets apart this model is the ability to upgrade each hardware component.

The Intel Core i7-8550U-powered Dell XPS 13 9370 ultrabook is now available with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 onboard. The first XPS 13 Developer Edition arrived more than five years ago and back then it had Ubuntu 12.04 installed. The new XPS 13 Developer Edition is only available in the US for now, but Europe and Canada will follow soon.

The latest Bluetooth vulnerability may affect many more devices than last year's BlueBorne, because it can affect smartphones as well as laptops that integrate Apple, Google, Intel, Broadcom or Qualcomm hardware. Due to insufficient encryption validation during the pairing process. Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is not affected, but all the other companies are releasing fixes as soon as possible.

The new stable Steam Client for Windows, Linux, and Mac brings an all-new chat feature that is also available for web browsers, GPU acceleration in web views by default, support for the PlayStation 3 controller, 15 Xbox controllers, and more. In the near future, Windows XP and Vista will no longer be supported by the Steam Client.

Those who are still using Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" should now update to the version 18.04 (nicknamed "Bionic Beaver") of this popular Linux distribution. Ubuntu 17.10 arrived on October 19, 2017, and it only received 9 months of support — as it happens with all non-LTS Ubuntu Linux releases.

A problem that has been spotted in early March has resurfaced on Twitter this week, and Lenovo pointed the troubled customer to the official forum. Sadly, the 18-page discussion about the X1 Carbon's inability to use deep sleep on Linux also reveals that Lenovo's machines are unable to use LTE and the fingerprint reader when running this operating system.

The successor of the US$35 Renegade single-board PC by Libre Computer will hit Indiegogo in July and general availability is scheduled for August. This Raspberry Pi alternative uses a Rockchip RK3399 processor and features USB Type-C connectivity, 4 GB DDR4 memory, eMMC 5.x support, Gigabit Ethernet, and more.

In addition to the upcoming release on the Xbox One, this major update for Gaijin Entertainment's popular cross-platform vehicular combat MMO title also includes various "X items" like the Fritz-X guided bomb, the AMX-40 and XM-1 tanks, and more. War Thunder 1.79 is now rolling out to Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, and Shield Android TV.

A report has stated that Microsoft may be considering buying GitHub for US$5 billion. The hosting service was founded in 2008 and was valued at US$2 billion back in 2015, when the company confirmed it had raised US$250 million in funding. If Microsoft does acquire GitHub, it would be one of the Redmond-based firm’s largest acquisitions.

Scheduled to arrive in October, Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" will still use GNOME but will come with a new default theme called Communitheme, improved power saving options, a faster first-time startup for apps installed as snaps, DLNA media sharing, and more. Until then, version 18.04.1 is expected to drop in July with a few minor changes, as well as the usual tweaks and bug fixes.

Semantic Machines Inc. is a Californian company based in Berkeley that will join Microsoft for an undisclosed amount. However, it has been revealed that the Redmond giant will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley "to push forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces."

Windows 10 users who depend on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for development work will soon have an easy access to the Linux terminal thanks to a popular User Voice request. Upcoming Windows 10 'Redstone 5' builds will have the ability to directly open a Linux terminal from File Explorer similar to how one can invoke the Command Prompt.

AsteroidOS, best described as an open source alternative to watchOS and Wear OS, launched its first stable release yesterday. Designed by a small group of developers and open to the public, the OS can run on a few Wear OS-compatible smartwatches, including devices from LG, Asus, and Sony.

American computer manufacturer System76 has offered the company’s updated Oryx Pro for pre-order. For US$1,599, the buyer would receive a 15.6-inch, Ubuntu-based laptop sporting an i7-8750H processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, 8 GB RAM, and a 250 GB M.2 SSD. The official System76 website offers a generous amount of configurations for the Oryx Pro update.

Chromebooks may become the best Android development tools later this year. Google is planning to roll out native Linux support to the Chrome OS-powered machines later this year, allowing coders to build software for Chrome OS and Android natively on Chromebooks.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" is here and brings quite a few changes to the OS. Users upgrading from 16.04 LTS will notice quite a few aesthetic changes; 18.04 LTS brings the switch back to the GNOME desktop to the long-term support version of the most popular Linux distro. Some other tweaks under the hood bring support for modern hardware features as well.