News briefs for April 27, 2018.

News briefs for April 26, 2018.

News briefs for April 25, 2018. Purism has partnered with UBports to offer Ubuntu Touch on its Librem 5 smartphone. By default, the smartphone runs Purism's PureOS, which supports GNOME and KDE Plasma mobile interfaces. UBports is ensuring Ubuntu Touch will run on the phones as well, so the Librem 5 can "now offer users three fully free and open mobile operating system options".

News briefs for April 24, 2018. The Eclipse Foundation announced today a new open-source governance model and "a 'cloud native Java' path forward for Jakarta EE, the new community-led platform created from the contribution of Java EE." According to the press release, with this move to the community-driven open-source governance model, "Jakarta EE promises faster release and innovation cycles." See https://jakarta.ee for more details or to join the Jakarta EE Working Group.

News briefs for April 23, 2018.

News briefs April 20, 2018. Participate in Mozilla's open-source Common Voice Project, an initiative to help teach machines how real people speak: "Now you can donate your voice to help us build an open-source voice database that anyone can use to make innovative apps for devices and the web." For more about the Common Voice Project, see the story on opensource.com.

News briefs for April 19, 2018.

News briefs for April 18, 2018. Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration comes to Linux tomorrow! A minisite dedicated to Rise of the Tomb Raider is available now from Feral Interactive, and you also can view the trailer on Feral's YouTube channel.

News briefs for April 17, 2018. Microsoft yesterday introduced Azure Sphere, a Linux-based OS and cloud service for securing IoT devices. According to ZDNet, "Microsoft President Brad Smith introduced Azure Sphere saying, 'After 43 years, this is the first day that we are announcing, and will distribute, a custom Linux kernel.'"

News briefs for April 16, 2018.

News briefs for April 13, 2018. The Elisa music player, developed by the KDE community, debuted yesterday, with version 0.1. Elisa has good integration wtih the Plasma desktop and also supports other Linux desktop environments, as well as Windows and Android. In addition, the Elisa release announcement notes, "We are creating a reliable product that is a joy to use and respects our users' privacy. As such, we will prefer to support online services where users are in control of their data."

News briefs for April 12, 2018. Mozilla recently published its annual Internet Health Report. Its three major concerns are:

News briefs for April 11, 2018.

News briefs for April 10, 2018. Feral Interactive today released GameMode, an open-source tool that helps Linux users get the best performance out of their games. According to the press release, "GameMode instructs your CPU to automatically run in Performance Mode when playing games." Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is being released later this month, will be the first release to integrate this tool. GameMode is available now via GitHub.

News briefs for April 9, 2018. Feral Interactive confirms: "Lara Croft is returning to Linux in Rise of the Tomb Raider later this month, shortly after macOS. Specs will be announced closer to launch. In the meantime, gear up for adventure with our Linux livestream tomorrow at 6PM BST / 10AM PDT on Twitch."

News briefs for April 6, 2018. Linux kernel developer, free software activist and Google engineer Matthew Garrett discovered that Symantec is using a Linux distro based on the QCA Software Development Kit (QSDK) project: "This is a GPLv2-licensed, open-source platform built around the Linux-based OpenWrt Wi-Fi router operating system" (if true, this means Symantic needs to share the Norton Core Router's code). So, Garrett tweeted "Hi @NortonOnline the Norton Core is clearly running Linux and the license requires you to distribute the kernel source code so where can I get it?"

News briefs for April 5, 2018. Subutai recently announced that its Subutai Blockchain Router v2.0 is in production: "This broadband cloud router serves as a 'plug-and-play' cryptocurrency wallet and mining device with energy savings of 10x over traditional mining methods, and also allows users to share and rent their idle computer resources by registering their computers with the Subutai Bazaar."

News briefs for April 4, 2018. Richard Stallman writes "A radical proposal to keep personal data safe" in The Guardian: "The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place."

Mozilla announced Firefox Reality today, "Bringing the Immersive Web to Mixed Reality Headsets". Firefox Reality is the only open source browser for mixed reality and the first cross-platform browser for mixed reality. See The Mozilla Blog for more details.

News briefs for April 2, 2018. Linux 4.16 was released yesterday. Linus says "the take from final week of the 4.16 release looks a lot like rc7, in that about half of it is networking. If it wasn't for that, it would all be very small and calm."