“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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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
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
Mint 18 review: “Just works” Linux doesn’t get any better than this
We tested the latest Mint on this beauty: Dell’s XPS 13 Developer’s Edition (2016). (credit: Scott Gilbertson) The newly released Mint 18 is a major upgrade. Not only has the Linux Mint project improved Mint’s dueling desktops (Cinnamon and MATE), but the group’s latest work impacts all underlying systems. With Mint 18, Linux Mint has finally moved its base software system from Ubuntu 14.04 to the new Ubuntu 16.04 . Upgrading to the latest long-term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu means, as with the Mint 17.x series, the Mint 18.x release cycle is now locked to its base for two years. Rather than tracking alongside Ubuntu, Mint 18 and all subsequent releases will stick with Ubuntu 16.04. Mint won’t necessarily get as out of date as Ubuntu LTS releases tend to by the end of their two-year cycle, but this setup does mean nothing major is going to change for quite a while. If the Mint 17.x release series is anything to judge by, that’s a good thing. Stability allows Mint to focus on its own projects rather than spending development time creating patches for every Ubuntu update. That should be especially good news for the 18.x series since Ubuntu plans to make some major changes in the next two years: moving to a new display server (Mir) and updating its own Unity desktop to Unity 8 are chief among the priorities. Many of those initiatives will impact components that affect downstream users like Mint. Read 40 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Mint 18 review: “Just works” Linux doesn’t get any better than this
Windows 10’s Anniversary Update arrives this summer
Just because Microsoft is less focused on monolithic Windows releases doesn’t mean it’s forgetting to deliver big upgrades. The company has used Build 2016 to announce an Anniversary Update for Windows 10 that brings some hefty improvements. For one, it brings Windows Hello’s biometric authentication to all kinds of apps, including the Edge browser — you can sign into a website with your fingerprint. Pen support also gets its due with a sticky note app, a sketchpad and virtual drawing tools like a ruler and a stencil. The upgrade brings more advanced gestures and pen input, too, such as erasing words by striking them out. The Anniversary Update arrives this summer, so it shouldn’t be too long before you can give its features a try. Get all the news from today’s Microsoft Build keynote right here , and follow along with our liveblog ! Free for everyone running #Windows10 : the Anniversary Update arrives this summer. #Build2016 pic.twitter.com/pTbtutRNvy — Windows (@Windows) March 30, 2016
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Windows 10’s Anniversary Update arrives this summer
Toyota will make automatic braking near-standard by 2017
Worried that you might not stop your Camry in time to avoid a nasty collision? Toyota is determined to prevent that from happening going forward. The Japanese car maker has announced that its automatic braking systems will be standard on 25 out of 30 Toyota and Lexus models, at nearly every trim level, by the end of 2017. It’ll only be non-standard on the 4Runner, 86 (formerly the Scion FR-S), Mirai , Lexus GX and Scion iA. Just what you’ll get will vary: while Lexus only has one braking system (based on a camera and millimeter wave radar), Toyota has both laser- and millimeter wave-based variants. Whatever you get, though, it’s a big step forward for safety and semi-autonomous driving in one of the world’s biggest vehicle brands. You probably won’t have to fork over extra just to minimize the chances of a crash, whether you’re driving a frugal Yaris or a decked-out Lexus LX. Via: TechCrunch Source: Toyota
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Toyota will make automatic braking near-standard by 2017
Daytona 500 will be broadcast in VR
Fancy seeing the Daytona 500 from the perspective of the pit crew? Now you can, thanks to a new five-year deal signed between Fox Sports and NextVR . The pair are planning to broadcast a series of major sporting events in VR , with the deal kicking off at this year’s edition of the great American race. If you own a GearVR headset and a compatible phone, you’ll be able to watch the race from the stands, starting line, middle of the infield and the aforementioned pit lane. In addition, the VR stream will have dedicated audio commentary and pop-up graphics telling you who’s in pole position. It’s not the first time that the two companies have teamed up to share a sporting event, having previously shown a professional boxing event in the format. This deal, however, makes a big step forward for NextVR, which is quickly cementing itself as the premier VR streaming service for all of the events you want to see. After all, it was this firm that brought users the first NBA games in VR as well as the republican and democratic presidential debates . As before, the Daytona 500 will be free-to-view and will kick off at 1pm ET on Sunday, February 21st. Now, it’s not clear yet if NextVR is going to produce 360-degree footage for the event, or if it’ll stick to 180-degree video. When it broadcast the Warriors/Pelicans game at the start of the season, it didn’t bother to film the action from the stands behind you. We’ve contacted the company to find out what the situation is this time, and will let you know when they’ve told us.
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Daytona 500 will be broadcast in VR
OpenGL’s successor is ready to improve gaming graphics
Games on devices of all kinds could soon be running better because Vulkan , the successor to OpenGL, has finally been released officially. The new standard gives developers low-level access to discrete and on-chip graphics, helping them avoid the layers of hardware overhead that normally slow things down. Khronos, the open-source group behind the standard, says it also reduces CPU overhead and improves multi-threaded performance. Delayed for several months, the version 1.0 driver is based on AMD’s proprietary Mantle standard. Similar technology is used in the Xbox One and PS4 consoles to help them make the most of their relatively modest specs. On the PC side, Vulkan will support Linux and Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. So far, official drivers are available for Intel graphics and NVIDIA products. AMD has beta drivers but still hasn’t released a final conforming version, ironically. The low-level hardware support in Vulkan makes it similar to DirectX 12 , which Microsoft released in 2014. DirectX 12 will still be popular with Windows 10 game developers, but Vulkan has the advantage of working with older Windows systems. As the successor to OpenGL, it could also attract developers like Adobe, which uses OpenGL for Photoshop and other apps. For apps that don’t need maximum performance, Khronos will still support and update OpenGL. On mobile, today Qualcomm is announcing that its flagship Snapdragon 820 processor will be the first to play nice with Vulkan. More specifically, the Adreno 530 GPU inside will support both the graphics framework and compute, which means that applications that require additional processing power can tap into the GPU. The company is also pledging to add drivers for other Adrenos in the 4xx and 5xx range, and we imagine more chip-makers — not least Intel and Nvidia — will offer support soon. Apple was initially a part of the Khronos working group, but stepped away from it to develop its Metal API (it’s still a member of the Khronos consortium). Both Macs and mobile iOS devices use Metal, which offers developers a mix of low- and high-level graphics access. That said, Imagination, which designs the PowerVR cores inside the iPhone and iPad, is part of the Khronos group, so support for the standard could come at some point. The Vulkan standard is also important to Valve, who wants it to bring big performance improvements to the modest hardware in its Steam Machines . However, so far there are no Vulkan games that use Valve’s Source 2 engine, nor are there any on Unity or Unreal Engine. For now, the only Vulkan-based game to officially launch is The Talos Principal (pictured above) which should be available soon on Steam. Source: Khronos
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OpenGL’s successor is ready to improve gaming graphics
The Performance of Ubuntu Linux Over the Past 10 Years
An anonymous reader writes: Tests were carried out at Phoronix of all Ubuntu Long-Term Support releases from the 6.06 “Dapper Drake” release to 16.04 “Xenial Xerus, ” looking at the long-term performance of (Ubuntu) Linux using a dual-socket AMD Opteron server. Their benchmarks of Ubuntu’s LTS releases over 10 years found that the Radeon graphics performance improved substantially, the disk performance was similar while taking into account the switch from EXT3 to EXT4, and that the CPU performance had overall improved for many workloads thanks to the continued evolution of the GCC compiler. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The Performance of Ubuntu Linux Over the Past 10 Years
Linux 4.5 Adds Raspberry Pi 2 Support, AMD GPU Re-Clocking, Intel Kaby Lake
The Linux 4.5 merge window has been open for the last two weeks; that means that the 4.5-rc1 kernel is expected to emerge, with the official kernel following in about eight weeks. An anonymous reader writes with this top-level list of changes to look for, from Phoronix: Linux 4.5 is set to bring many new features across the kernel’s 20 million line code-base. Among the new/improved features are Raspberry Pi 2 support, open-source Raspberry Pi 3D support, NVIDIA Tegra X1 / Jetson TX1 support, an open-source Vivante graphics driver, AMDGPU PowerPlay/re-clocking support, Intel Kaby Lake enablement, a Logitech racing wheel driver, improvements for handling suspended USB devices, new F2FS file-system features, and better Xbox One controller handling. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux 4.5 Adds Raspberry Pi 2 Support, AMD GPU Re-Clocking, Intel Kaby Lake