Canonical's Snappy package manager is taking its first steps outside the
Ubuntu world. As of now, you can install it on Arch, Debian, Fedora
and several other popular distros.
OpenSwitch has joined the Linux Foundation's stable of networking projects.
This is a significant step. It means the network operating system's development will be driven
by community needs, instead of the needs of few private companies.
CentOS 6.8 was released this week. With a number of security and
performance updates, it provides a more stable and secure experience for CentOS
6 users.
As the release date for Linux Mint 18 approaches, project announcers have reported
that they are no longer shipping live CD images with embedded codecs. Furthermore,
they also are dropping support for OEM images with codecs.
The Mozilla Foundation and the FBI recently have clashed over security
weaknesses. The FBI is aware of a weakness in the Tor browser that
may affect Firefox—it's a weakness the FBI has exploited during
an investigation.
After two years in development, a beta release of the Devuan distro has
made it into the world (Devuan is a registered trademark of the Dyne.org foundation). Devuan is a very Debian-ish distro.
Microsoft recently made a big noise about its love and support of
the Open Source community (especially Linux), but while it's making
concrete steps toward improving its support for FOSS projects, its
motives may not be entirely altruistic.
As part of the "Second Open Government National Action Plan", the federal
government is planning to share the source code behind many of its
software projects.
Switching from Windows to Linux is easier than ever. There was a time
when running Linux required a lot of CLI know-how and confidence, but
today's graphical environments are extremely user-friendly and responsive.