News Briefs

• Windows and Chrome are making 2019 the "year of the desktop". PCWorld writes, "After years of endless jokes, 2019 is truly, finally shaping up to be the year of Linux on the desktop. Laptops, too! But most people won't know it. That's because the bones of the open-source operating system kernel will soon be baked into Windows 10 and Chrome OS, as Microsoft and Google revealed at their respective developer conferences."
• Schools in the Indian state of Kerala have chosen Linux as their OS, which will save them roughly $428 million. According to It's FOSS, Kerala is "the first 100% literate Indian state". IT classes have been mandatory since 2003, and the schools started adopting free and open-source software a few years later, with the plan of getting rid of proprietary software in the schools. "As a result, the state claimed to save around $50 million per year in licensing costs in 2015. Further expanding their open source mission, Kerala is going to put Linux with open source educational software on over 200,000 school computers."
• Nextcloud announced a new partnership with Nitrokey, maker of highly secure, open-source encryption USB keys. From the press release: "The Nitrokey Pro 2 and Nitrokey Storage 2 devices have been verified to work easily with Nextcloud's one-time passwords for secure two-factor authentication (2FA). This protects users' accounts in the event of compromised passwords. Furthermore the USB keys feature a password manager, a cryptographic key store for email encryption and SSH administration. In addition the Nitrokey Storage 2 contains an encryption mass storage drive with the option of hidden volumes." Nextcloud and Nitrokey also will explore further collaboration "especially in the area of end-to-end encryption and secure storage of cryptographic keys". See the Nextcloud blog for more details.
• The Linux Foundation announced the formation of the Urban Computing Foundation "to accelerate open source software that improves mobility, safety, road infrastructure, traffic congestion and energy consumption in connected cities. Initial contributors include developers from Uber, Facebook, Google, HERE Technologies, IBM, Interline Technologies, Senseable City Labs, StreetCred Labs and University of California San Diego (UCSD)." The Foundation's first project is kepler.gl, "an open-source geospatial analysis tool created by Uber for building large-scale data sets".
• The Atomic Pi has recently hit retail channels after its successful Kickstarter campaign (although it was sold out at the time of this writing). Phoronix reports that the $35 Atomic Pi "offers an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad-core, 2GB DDR3L-1600 memory, 16GB eMMC, SD slot, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, 802.11ac WiFI, Bluetooth 4.0, and Gigabit Ethernet". The article also notes that "It's quite a board for the price and [will] compete with the likes of the Raspberry Pi." Go to Digital Loggers for more information.
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise is buying supercomputer-maker Cray. Bloomberg reports that the deal is "valued at about $1.4 billion as the firm works to become more competitive in high-end computing", and that "Cray investors will get $35 a share in cash".
• Researchers have discovered another Intel processor vulnerability called Zombieload. According to ZDNet, "The researchers have shown a Zombieload exploit that can look over your virtual shoulder to see the websites you're visiting in real-time. Their example showed someone spying on another someone using the privacy-protecting Tor Browser running inside a virtual machine (VM)." But there's some good news: "To defend yourself, your processor must be updated, your operating system must be patched, and for the most protection, Hyper-Threading disabled. When Meltdown and Spectre showed up, the Linux developers were left in the dark and scrambled to patch Linux. This time, they've been kept in the loop."
• The Antergos Linux distro is calling it quits. The developers of the Arch-based distro say they no longer have time to maintain it properly, and they are taking action now while the code is still working in case other developers want to start their own projects with it. From the Antergos blog: "For existing Antergos users: there is no need to worry about your installed systems as they will continue to receive updates directly from Arch. Soon, we will release an update that will remove the Antergos repos from your system along with any Antergos-specific packages that no longer serve a purpose due to the project ending. Once that is completed, any packages installed from the Antergos repo that are in the AUR will begin to receive updates from there."
• GitHub launched a new tool called Sponsors that lets you make payments to open-source developers. Tech Crunch reports that "Developers will be able to opt into having a 'Sponsor me' button on their GitHub repositories and open source projects will also be able to highlight their funding models, no matter whether that's individual contributions to developers or using Patreon, Tidelift, Ko-fi or Open Collective.
• Feral Interactive announced that Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is out on Linux and macOS (the same day as the Windows release). The game was developed by Creative Assembly and is the first in the Total War series to be set in ancient China. It's available now from the Feral Interactive Store for $59.99, and you can watch the trailer here.
• You can send the E Foundation your phone if you'd like a Google-free Android. FOSS Bytes reports that with the E Foundation's /e/ OS, "the main goal of /e/ is to take away Google's control over the device. It doesn't include any Google apps that you'd normally find on Android phones. Other than UI tweaks and pre-loading all the essential apps like Browser, Contacts, Calendar, Messaging, it even has an App Store of its own. You can also have an /e/ account, and take advantage of its cloud storage service, mail, and search." The E Foundation will soon be selling refurbished devices with the OS here, and according to Foss Bytes, you will be able to send them your phone, and they will install it for around $50. Or, you can flash your phone yourself and install the beta ROM, which you can download from here. It currently supports 81 devices from Google, Motorola, Huawei, Samsung and more.
• Raspberry Pi Camera Modules mounted on Raspberry Pi Zeros provide the images for the Penguin Watch project. The raspberrypi.org blog post calls the project "citizen science on a big scale", noting that "thousands of people from all over the world come together on the internet to...click on penguins. By counting the birds in their colonies, users help penguinologists measure changes in the birds' behaviour and habitat, and in the larger ecosystem, thus assisting in their conservation."
• System76 announced the rebirth of its Gazelle laptop line, offering the choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu as the OS. Beta News reports, "It comes with a 9th Gen Intel Core i7 by default, and you can choose between an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or 1660 Ti for graphics. There are two screen sizes available -- 15.3-inch and 17.3-inch. Regardless of the display you opt for, the resolution will be 1080p." See the full specs and sign up to be notified when the laptops are available (which should be sometime before this is published) here.
• Mozilla announced that the Firefox browser will now have Enhanced Tracking Protection on by default. From Chris Beard's blog post: "These protections work in the background, blocking third-parties from tracking your online activity while increasing the speed of the browser. We're offering privacy protections by default as you navigate the web because the business model of the web is broken, with more and more intrusive personal surveillance becoming the norm. While we hope that people's digital rights and freedoms will ultimately be guaranteed, we're here to help in the interim."