VMware Announces OpenStack 5, Tesla Releases Some Source Code, KDE's Plasma 5.13 Beta and More

News briefs for May 21, 2018.

VMware today announced its new OpenStack 5. According to the press release, "VMware Integrated OpenStack 5 will be one of the first commercial OpenStack distributions to comply with the OpenStack Foundation's 2018.02 interoperability guidelines. An active member of the OpenStack community, VMware packages, tests, and supports all major components of the distribution, including the full open source OpenStack code in a multi-cloud architecture."

Tesla has released some of the source code for its in-car tech. Engadget reports that the company "has posted the source code for both the material that builds the Autopilot system image as well as the kernels for the Autopilot boards and the NVIDIA Tegra-based infotainment system used in the Model S and Model X."

KDE's Plasma team released Plasma 5.13 beta late last week: "We have spent the last four months optimising startup and minimising memory usage, yielding faster time-to-desktop, better runtime performance and less memory consumption. Basic features like panel popups were optimised to make sure they run smoothly even on the lowest-end hardware. Our design teams have not rested either, producing beautiful new integrated lock and login screen graphics."

The Linux 4.18 kernel will have the Steam Controller driver that will work without needing the Steam client or other third-party applications. Phoronix reports that "HID subsystem maintainer Jiri Kosina has now queued this Valve Steam Controller driver into his HID-next tree for Linux 4.18. This HID driver will expose the Steam Controller as a virtual mouse, virtual keyboard, and custom HID device(s). In turn this should allow the Steam Controller to work happily with any Linux application."

SoftMaker recently released SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018, the newest version of its free software. SoftMaker says "with FreeOffice 2018 you can not only open, but also save documents in the Microsoft file formats DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. Share files directly with Microsoft Office users, without having to export them first!" Note that although it is free to download and use, FreeOffice is not open source.

WordPress recently announced its latest release, 4.9.6, which is a privacy and maintenance release intended to help users be GDPR-compliant. The WordPress blog notes "We're committed to supporting site owners around the world in their work to comply with this important law. As part of that effort, we've added a number of new privacy features in this release."

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.

Load Disqus comments