Linux / Unix

As reported last week, sales of the Raspberry Pi are current going gangbusters due to COVID-19. One cool and simple project that you can set up with your new found time and your new Raspberry Pi 4, Pi 3 or other compatible SBC is join the fight against COVID-19 by joining the Fold for Covid project using balenaEtcher, a balena OS image and a microSD card.

Lenovo and the Fedora Project have teamed up to deliver a run of Fedora ThinkPads. Pre-installed with Fedora 32 Workstation, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 2, ThinkPad P53 and ThinkPad X1 Gen 8 will be available to purchase globally.

Ubuntu 20.04 "Focal Fossa" is now available for download. The latest version of the most popular Linux distribution brings a bevy of updates, including a built-in VPN, support for ExFat and ZFS, and more.

A new operating system for the Raspberry Pi is available. This should trigger nostalgic feelings among numerous users and is visually reminiscent of Windows XP and also supports old software with various emulators.

The Tor Project has announced that it has had to let go 13 employees, which counts for one-third of its core workforce. Entirely funded by donations, the team has been forced to make the layoffs due to the effects of COVID-19.

There have been a lot of unexpected side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and we can add another to the list. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has revealed that March saw its second highest number of sales since it launched in 2012.

Intel has witnessed a surprising reversal of fortune in Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey for March in terms of processor usage. While the chipmaker has been losing share against AMD consistently month after month, the latest data from Steam shows that Team Blue has now actually regained a significant amount of ground.

This year's April 1st special takes Gaijin's game to space, but also come with a special event that can end up with a very rare piece of military hardware, namely the Object 279 heavy tank. Back in 2016 and 2017, these special events involved ships and modern tanks, which were both added to the game since then.

Planet Computers has only just announced the Astro Slide 5G smartphone and pocket computer hybrid on Twitter and its Indiegogo campaign has already received more backing than the original goal. The Astro Slide is brimming with attractive features, including its transforming ability, super-fast MediaTek Dimensity 1000 chipset, full backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 6 capability, and 48 MP main camera.

The Acer Chromebook 715 is a well-crafted Chromebook that offers one of the best Chrome OS experiences on the market. In addition to an excellent case, the Chromebook also flaunts the new features of Chrome OS. Linux and Android integration are smooth and easy on the machine. However, a high price tag ultimately holds the machine back from a recommendation.

Purism has launched its Librem Mini small form-factor mini PC, with preorders for the device now being taken. The tiny computer comes with a Whiskey Lake Intel Core i7-8565U processor and can be configured with up to 64 GB RAM. PureOS is offered as the operating system, with PureBoot and Librem Key support included for extra privacy and security.

The GHF51 from DFI is a new single-board computer powered by a Ryzen Embedded R1000 APU. Boasting a 12 Watt TDP and integrated Vega graphics, the GHF51 will likely be scores more powerful than the similarly-sized Raspberry Pi. All that power will likely come at a cost, though.

Released earlier today, War Thunder 1.97 "Viking Fury" is the game's first major update of the year and comes with a full Swedish ground forces tech tree, over 20 new ships, ground vehicles, helos and aircraft for other nations, two new locations, as well as multiple bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements.

Released yesterday, Firefox 74.0 can block Facebook from tracking its users and no longer allows third-party apps to install add-ons, but it also features DNS-over-HTTPS provided by Cloudflare (with NextDNS as an option). This update is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux/Unix users.

This might have passed under the radar of many people, but the fact that the volunteer computing part of the 21-year-old SETI@home project will go into hibernation is quite big news, especially since this amazing effort did not manage to deliver any solid result. However, SETI@home might be reactivated one day.

AMD has continued to make gains in processor usage according to Steam’s latest hardware and software survey. Team Red increased its share in systems using Windows and Linux, although Intel still has the lion’s portion of the overall share. However, AMD has consistently worn down Intel’s grip over this particular market, with Zen 2 based chips being especially successful.

Billed as a simpler way to image your microSD card with Raspbian, the Raspberry Pi Imager is the Pi Foundation's new imaging utility. The Raspberry Pi Imager is available to download now for free on macOS, Windows and Ubuntu.

Standford’s Folding@home project has been running for a number of years using the donated idle hours of computers to help undertake complex calculations for researchers. With the advent of the novel coronavirus, researchers are now putting out a call to help develop potential treatments for COVID-19, the infectious disease it causes in humans.

Although many of those who loved it until the legendary version 12 consider it to be a dead horse nowadays, Opera 67 might be a step in the right direction. The latest release of this troubled web browser — available for Windows, Linux, and macOS — comes with Workspaces, tab cycling, a Sidebar setup panel, and more.

Blender 2.82 was released on February 14th, bringing with it several new features. Among the most prominent are the inclusion of Mantaflow (a fluids system simulator), UDIM for texture mapping, and support for Pixar's USD file format.

Adafruit has announced the Adafruit Clue, a new developer board that has a built-in display, along with several sensors. The board supports Bluetooth LE too, along with 2 MB of internal flash storage.

No, Microsoft has not released a new or slimmed-down operating system. Instead, Windows 12 Lite is a Linux distribution that, according to its developers, is superior to Windows 10 "in every respect". Someone is even selling physical install discs of the dodgy Linux distribution, too.

Vivaldi 2.11.1811.33 is this year's first desktop update and comes with "a new and improved" Pop-out video mode, Themes update to match the OS dark/light mode, the ability to shift focus between different UI areas using the keyboard, upgraded developer tools, and improved full-screen tab casting.

System76 has added the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X in the list of configurable options for its Thelio Major desktop. The computer operates on either Ubuntu or Pop!_OS, and it’s possible to fit up to two graphics cards inside it, with choices ranging from AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT to Nvidia’s RTX Titan. System76 also shows how the 3990X will shame your current CPU in some handy tests.

With the HardROCK64, Pine64 has brought a new single-board computer (SBC) to the table to take on the Raspberry Pi. The new SBC features a 6-core processor, numerous connections, up to 4 GB of RAM and all for the princely sum of US$35.

The version labeled 5.0 of the popular open-source software compatibility layer known as Wine has just surfaced as both source code and binary for multiple operating systems, including Android, macOS, and various Linux distros. The list of major changes includes Vulkan 1.1 and multi-monitor support, built-in modules in PE format, and more.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" will finally kill the pre-installed Amazon Web App. The move comes in the wake of Canonical's eliminations of the Ubuntu web launcher dependency. Many users hated the Amazon Web App, which was introduced as a pre-installed link in Ubuntu 12.10.

With the arrival of the source code on Gitee, Huawei's CentOS-based openEuler Linux distro is taking one step forward. However, this notable effort by the Chinese tech giant is currently sabotaged by its unfinished website and documentation, as well as the apparently non-bootable ISO available for download.

Surnamed "Northern Wind," this year's last major update to War Thunder comes with a full aircraft tech tree and two premium tanks for Sweden alongside two new naval maps, a few solid graphics engine upgrades — including Ray Traced Global Illumination and HDR support, as well as over a dozen of new ships, aircraft, and vehicles for other nations.

The 8-inch Raspberry Pi and Raspbian tablet is almost ready for mass production, according to its creators. The CutiePi project has not only finalised the board design, giving it a massive overhaul from initial designs, but also has published design files for the tablet should you wish to build the tablet yourself.

Magewell is a company that makes the components that connect video and audio output with the applicable software. Its latest M.2 video capture card is of its 'Eco' line-up, and is capable of single-channel operation at up to 4096x2160 at 60 frames per second over 12G-SDI. It will be launched in 2020 at the ISE exhibition.

The LattePanda is now available to purchase worldwide. The powerful single-board computer (SBC) incorporates an Intel Celeron N4100 processor, 4 GB of LPDRR4 RAM and 32 GB of eMMC 5.0 flash storage. The SBC supports USB Power Delivery via Type-C, has two M.2 PCIe slots and has an Arduino co-processor on board, along with two 50-pin headers and three USB 3.0 ports. The LattePanda Delta 432 is compatible with Windows, Linux and other OSes and retails for US$188.00.

The Rock Pi S has finally made it to market, after being announced this summer. The miniature SBC is underpinned by a Rockchip RK3308 quad-core SoC, either 256 or 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of NAND flash storage. The board has a microSD card slot too, Wi-Fi connectivity and a 26-pin GPIO header among other features. The Rock Pi S measures just 3.8 x 3.8 cm and starts at US$9.90. Orders will begin shipping globally from November 12.

Pine64 started planning for a smartphone running on Linux last year and it looks like its vision is finally being realized. The PinePhone is nearly here and early adopters can put down some case on pre-orders from next week with the device shipping in late December through to January.

The latest update, labeled 2.9.1705.31, is now available with multiple enhancements to the Vivaldi Menu, the ability to set global default preferences for requests based on sound, geolocation, camera, microphone, motion sensors, Bluetooth devices, and pop-ups, as well as multiple tweaks and fixes.

In addition to the iconic Kamov Ka-50 single-seat attack helicopter — surnamed "Black Shark" — War Thunder 1.93 comes with the first three Swedish planes, a new Abrams tank, the first Italian helicopter, a new location, the first rank V ship in the game, as well as the usual pack of minor tweaks and fixes.

A Linux user has discovered that Disney+, Disney's new streaming service, doesn't work on his Fedora machine. The problem lies with the DRM used by Disney, which implements the highest possible security level. However, Disney has stated that the streaming service will work with Android devices and Chromebooks, both of which are built upon Linux.

September’s Steam Hardware and Software Survey has seemingly delivered more good news for AMD. The survey has measured data in regard to PC processor usage by manufacturer, which yet again has been thoroughly dominated by Intel. However, the red team has enjoyed another month of considerable growth, which could be down to its Ryzen 3000 generation of chips.

DeX is Samsung's proprietary facility that converts one of its Galaxy flagships into a desktop PC on connection to a monitor. One environment supported by the mode in Android 9.0 (Pie) is GNU/Linux. Unfortunately, its beta program will come to an end with the roll-out of Android 10.

A new hands-on video of the upcoming Librem 5 shows off how much work Purism has done on the Linux handset. While there's still a lot of wrinkles to iron out, Purism has made substantial progress considering the Librem 5 is built from scratch.

Both the 14-inch Galago Pro and the 15.6-inch Darter pro models can be equipped with up to a Comet Lake Core i7-10510U quad-core CPU coupled with up to 32 GB of RAM and up to 2 TB of storage (6 TB for the 14-incher). Standard features include a Thunderbolt 3 connector and 1080p matte display.

Fedora 31, due for release on October 29th, will no longer be available as a 32-bit install. Rather, Fedora 30 is officially the last version of Fedora to support 32-bit hardware. Users on legacy hardware can expect full lifecycle support for Fedora 30 until May or June of 2020, at which time they will need to upgrade their hardware for continued official support.

Atari and Antstream Arcade for an exclusive app that will deliver over 2,000 officially licensed retro video game titles to the forthcoming console. The Antstream Arcade app for the Atari VCS will also include 50 original Atari titles in original or enhanced versions.

Recent Lenovo ThinkPad laptops have a throttling problem when users are running Linux-based operating systems on their devices. Lenovo has now admitted to the problem – and announced that it will be fixed. Newer ThinkPads like the X1 Carbon Gen 7 or ThinkPad T490 are affected.

Vivaldi 2.8.1664.35 arrives less than three weeks since the release of the 2.7 update, but it only features various tweaks and fixes that aim to provide "a smoother browsing experience" alongside images toggle via keyboard and a few new bookmark customization options. Those who missed the news should know that a beta for Android handsets is also available.

The PineTime is the latest side project of PINE64, the company behind the PineBook Pro and PinePhone. The smartwatch will integrate a Nordic nF52832 SoC and will support Bluetooth 5, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, ANT and NFC. The device will include a heart rate monitor too, along with multi-day battery life and a zinc alloy and plastic chassis. The PineTime will cost US$25, with PINE64 encouraging ARM Mbed and FreeRTOS developers to join the project too.

Huawei has added the MateBook 13 for Linux, MateBook X Pro for Linux, and the MateBook 14 for Linux onto Vmall, the Chinese shopping site for Huawei and Honor products. The OEM has selected Deepin for the operating system, which has allowed the Chinese manufacturer to make modifications due to the nature of its open source software.

The NanoPi M4V2, as its name suggests, is a new revision of the NanoPi M4, which FriendlyElec launched last year. The Rockchip RK3399 powered single-board computer (SBC) includes 4 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one USB 2.0 Type-C ports and a 40-pin GPIO header. The board also supports Gigabit Ethernet and up to 802.11 ac Wi-Fi. The M4V2 includes power and recovery buttons too. The NanoPi M4V2 is available to order now for US$70.00 from FriendlyARM, which ships worldwide.