Ubuntu 16.10: Convergence is in a holding pattern; consistency’s here instead

Enlarge / Rumor has it staffer Megan Geuss is now considering Ubuntu 16.10 solely based on codename . (credit: itsfoss.com / YouTube ) There’s plenty in Ubuntu 16.10 that makes it worth the upgrade, though nothing about Canonical’s latest release is groundbreaking. This less experimental but worthwhile update continues to refine and bug-fix what at this point has become the fastest, stablest, least-likely-to-completely-change-between-point releases of the three major “modern” Linux desktops. Still, while the Unity 7.5 desktop offers stability and speed today, it’s not long for this world. Ubuntu 16.10 is the seventh release since the fabled Unity 8 and its accompanying Mir display server were announced. Yet in Ubuntu 16.10, there’s still no Unity 8 nor Mir. Read 32 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ubuntu 16.10: Convergence is in a holding pattern; consistency’s here instead

Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

“Linux distributions and silly names go together like peanut butter and jelly, ” notes BetaNews. BrianFagioli writes: One of the most well-known Linux distributions to use funny names is Ubuntu. It famously uses the convention of an adjective and a lesser-known animal, each starting with the same letter… For example, Ubuntu 16.10 uses the letter “Y” — “Yakkety Yak”. The next version of the operating system will use the letter “Z” [and] Canonical has chosen “Zesty Zapus”… It is apparently a type of jumping mouse… “As we come to the end of the alphabet, I want to thank everyone who makes this fun. Your passion and focus and intellect, and occasionally your sharp differences, all make it a privilege to be part of this body incorporate. Right now, Ubuntu is moving even faster to the centre of the cloud and edge operations. From AWS to the zaniest new devices, Ubuntu helps people get things done faster, cleaner, and more efficiently, thanks to you…”, says Mark Shuttleworth, CEO, Canonical… “we are a tiny band in a market of giants, but our focus on delivering free software freely together with enterprise support, services and solutions appears to be opening doors, and minds, everywhere. So, in honour of the valiantly tiny leaping long-tailed over the obstacles of life, our next release which will be Ubuntu 17.04, is hereby code named the Zesty Zapus”. My favorite was Xenial Xerus. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

‘Cultlike’ Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit

mattydread23 writes: Great story about the Open Compute Project from Business Insider’s Julie Bort here, including this fun tidbit: “‘OCP has a cultlike following, ‘ one person with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider. ‘The whole industry, internet companies, vendors, and enterprises are monitoring OCP.’ OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system did for software: make it ‘open source’ so anyone can take the designs for free and modify them, with contract manufacturers standing by to build them. In its six years, OCP has grown into a global entity, with board members from Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and Microsoft. In fact, there’s a well-known story among OCP insiders that demonstrates this cultlike phenom. It involves Apple’s networking team. This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely — never. Building a 100% reliable network to meet Apple’s exacting standards was no easy task. So, instead of going it alone under Apple’s secrecy, the Apple networking team wanted to participate in the revolution, contributing and receiving help. But when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said ‘no.’ ‘The whole team quit the same week, ‘ this person told us.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘Cultlike’ Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit

Apple To Obsolete iPhone 4 and Late 2010 MacBook Air On October 31

Apple will make all iPhone 4 models, the late 2010 13-inch MacBook Air, third-generation AirPort Extreme, and mid-2009 AirPort Time Capsule obsolete come October 31, MacRumor claims, citing a different report. From the report: Apple products on the vintage and obsolete list are no longer eligible for hardware service, beyond a few exceptions. Apple defines vintage products as those that have not been manufactured for more than five years but less than seven years ago, while obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago. Each of the products added were released between 2009 and 2010. The report specifically pertains to Apple’s vintage and obsolete products list in Japan, but the new additions will more than likely extend to the United States, Australia, Canada, and the rest of the Asia-Pacific and Europe regions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple To Obsolete iPhone 4 and Late 2010 MacBook Air On October 31

Spotify ads briefly served malware to your PC

Some Spotify listeners got more than just free music with their ad-supported software. Multiple users report that the streaming service was serving malware-laden ads that would pop up your default web browser in a bid to compromise your system. Reportedly, some of these didn’t even require your input to do damage. And they weren’t specific to any one platform, either — Linux, Mac and Windows users all saw the same behavior, although it’s not clear that the hostile code could damage all three platforms. In response, Spotify tells us that this was the result of an “isolated issue” with an ad, and that it has since “shut it down.” Only a “small number of users” ran into the malware, it says. You can read the full statement below. With that said, it’s bound to be slightly embarrassing when the company ran into a similar issue in 2011. It’s also a reminder of one of the smaller perks of paying for a subscription service: when you don’t get ads in the first place, you’re not at risk of receiving rogue ads. “A small number of users have experienced a problem with questionable website pop ups in their default browsers as a result of an isolated issue with an ad on our free tier. We have now identified the source of the problem and have shut it down. We will continue to monitor the situation.” PSA: uninstall Spotify free, their ads are plagued with malware right now. pic.twitter.com/DUOqDrnDUZ — Volp (@VolpRS) October 5, 2016 Via: The Next Web , 9to5Mac Source: Spotify Community , Volp (Twitter)

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Spotify ads briefly served malware to your PC

Ubuntu 16.04 Available in Latest Insider Update To Windows 10

The latest Windows 10 Insider preview — build 14936 — features Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. When a user enables the ‘Bash on Ubuntu on Windows’ feature for the first time, OMGUbuntu reports, Windows 10 now installs an Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) image instead of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr). From the report: The updated version of Ubuntu in the WSL only affects new instances, i.e., those created by running lxrun.exe /install or on the very first run of the bash.exe setup. It is possible to upgrade WSL instances from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04 manually by running the do-release-upgrade command. Other changes in the WSL in Build 14936 include support for chroot system call, epoll support for /dev/null and the ability for bash -c to redirect to a file. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu 16.04 Available in Latest Insider Update To Windows 10

Linus Torvalds Officially Announces the Release of Linux Kernel 4.8

Slashdot reader prisoninmate brings news from Softpedia: Today, Linus Torvalds proudly announced the release and availability for download of the Linux 4.8 kernel branch, which is now the latest stable and most advanced one. Linux kernel 4.8 has been in development for the past two months, during which it received no less than eight Release Candidate testing versions that early adopters were able to compile and install on their GNU/Linux operating system to test various hardware components or simply report bugs… A lot of things have been fixed since last week’s RC8 milestone, among which we can mention lots of updated drivers, in particular for GPU, networking, and Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Module (NVDIMM), a bunch of improvements to the ARM, MIPS, SPARC, and x86 hardware architectures, updates to the networking stack, as well as to a few filesystem, and some minor changes to cgroup and vm. The kernel now supports the Raspberry Pi 3 SoC as well as the Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linus Torvalds Officially Announces the Release of Linux Kernel 4.8

Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

An anonymous reader writes: System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with one command. “After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system.” According to the bug report, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are among the distros susceptible to various levels of resource exhaustion. The bug, which has existed for more than two years, does not require root access to exploit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

Run Android 6.0 Marshmallow on Your PC With Android-x86 6.0

This week saw the first stable release of Android-x86 6.0 (marshmallow-x86) — and a new version of Remix OS for PC, a PC-optimized version of Android. Slashdot reader prisoninmate quotes Softpedia: Android-x86 6.0 has been in the works since early this year, and it received a total of two RC (Release Candidate) builds during its entire development cycle, one in June and another in August. After joining the Remix OS team, Chih-Wei Huang now has all the reasons to update and improve its Android-x86 system for the latest Android releases. Therefore, as you might have guessed already, Android-x86 6.0 is the first stable version of the project to be based on Google’s Linux kernel-based Android 6.0 Marshmallow mobile operating system, and includes the most recent AOSP (Android Open Source Project) security updates too. Under the hood, Android-x86 6.0 is using the long-term supported Linux 4.4.20 kernel with an updated graphics stack based on Mesa 12.0.2 3D Graphics Library, and offers support for Samsung’s F2FS file system for SSD drives, better Wi-Fi support after resume and suspend, and initial HDMI audio support. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Run Android 6.0 Marshmallow on Your PC With Android-x86 6.0