Fedora 29 Officially Released, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 Launched, New Version of Linux Lite, Google AI Tracking Humpback Whale Songs, and Resin.io Announces openBalena and a Name Change

News briefs for October 31, 2018.

The Fedora Project Manager announced the official release of Fedora 29 yesterday. This release is the first to include the Fedora Modularity feature across all variants. Other changes include "GNOME 3.30 on the desktop, ZRAM for our ARM images, and a Vagrant image for Fedora Scientific". You can download it from here.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 launched yesterday with improved security. eWeek reports that the new release features "TPM 2.0 support for security authentication, as well as integrating the open source nftables firewall technology effort". eWeek quotes principal project manager Steve Almy: "The TPM 2.0 integration in 7.6 provides an additional level of security by tying the hands-off decryption to server hardware in addition to the network bound disk encryption (NBDE) capability, which operates across the hybrid cloud footprint from on-premise servers to public cloud deployments." Version 7.6 is the second major milestone release of 2018.

Linux Lite 4.2 Final is now available. Linux Lite creator Jerry Bezencon says the release is "a 'refinement' and not a 'major upgrade'. There are some new wallpapers thanks to @whateverthing and some minor tweaks here and there." One change with this version is the addition of Redshift, which "adjusts the color temperature according to the position of the sun".

Google and a group of cetologists have been using AI to listen to years of undersea recordings with the hope of creating "a machine learning model that can spot humpback whale calls". According to TechCrunch, the project is part of Google's AI for Social Good initiative.

Resin.io, a container-based server platform for Linux device management, has "changed its name to balena and released an open source version of its IoT fleet management platform for Linux devices called openBalena", Linux Gizmos reports. Founder and CEO of the company says the name change is due to "to trademark issues, to cannabis references, and to people mishearing it as 'raisin'". balenaOS is "an open source spinoff of the container-based device software that works with balenaCloud", and the new openBalena "is an open version of the balenaCloud server software. Customers can now choose between letting balena manage their fleet of devices or building their own openBalena based server platform that manages fleets of devices running balenaOS".

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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