Qubes Version 4.0 Released, Purism Laptops Shipping Quickly, New Rust Version 1.25.0 and More

News briefs for March 29, 2018.

The Qubes security-oriented OS has released version 4.0. Major changes in this version include "fully virtualized VMs for enhanced security", "a powerful new VM volume manager that makes it easy to keep VMs on external drives", "more secure backups with scrypt for stronger key derivation and enforced encryption" and "rewritten command-line tools with new options. See the release notes for more information, and download Qubes here.

Purism announces that its Librem laptop orders are now shipping within a week—in other words, on average, the company now can fulfill orders within five business days. See the Purism blog for more information on this milestone.

The Alliance for Open Media yesterday announced the public release of the AV1 (AOMedia Video Codec) specification, "which delivers cross-platform, 4K UHD or higher online video, royalty-free—all while lowering data usage."

The Rust team announces a new version of Rust, 1.25.0: "The last few releases have been relatively minor, but Rust 1.25 contains a bunch of stuff! The first one is straightforward: we've upgraded to LLVM 6 from LLVM 4. This has a number of effects, a major one being a step closer to AVR support." For details on all the updates, see the release notes.

Facebook is removing a major data source that helps advertisers target users. According to a TechCrunch report, Facebook is ending its Partner Categories feature, and the company has confirmed that the change is a permanent one.

Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.

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