A "Disco Dingo" themed wallpaper was already there. But the latest update bring a bunch of new wallpapers as system defaults on Ubuntu 19.04.

Pretty right? Here's the older one for comparison.

The newer wallpaper is definitely cleaner, more professional looking with better colors. I won't bother tinkering with wallpapers anymore, the new default on Ubuntu 19.04 is just perfect.

Too funky for my taste. But I'm sure there will be many who will prefer this darker, edgier, wallpaper over the others. As we said earlier, the new "disco dingo" mascot calls for infinite wallpaper variations.


Apart from theme and artwork updates, Ubuntu 19.04 has the latest Linux Kernel version 5.0 (5.0.0.8 to be precise). You can read more about Ubuntu 19.04 features and updates here.

Ubuntu 19.04 hit beta a few days ago. Though it is a pretty stable release already for a beta, I'd recommend to wait for another 15 days or so until the final release. If all you care are the wallpapers, you can download the new Ubuntu 19.04 wallpapers here. It's a DEB file, just do a double click post download.

Unless you live under a rock, you must've been inundated with nonstop news about Google's high-octane launch ceremony yesterday where they unveiled the much hyped game streaming platform called Stadia.

Stadia, or Project Stream as it was earlier called, is a cloud gaming service where the games themselves are hosted on Google's servers, while the visual feedback from the game is streamed to the player's device through Google Chrome. If this technology catches on, and if it works just as good as showed in the demos, Stadia could be what the future of gaming might look like.

Stadia, Powered by Linux

It is a fairly common knowledge that Google data centers use Linux rather extensively. So it is not really surprising that Google would use Linux to power its cloud based Stadia gaming service. 

Stadia's architecture is built on Google data center network which has extensive presence across the planet. With Google Stadia, Google is offering a virtual platform where processing resources can be scaled up to match your gaming needs without the end user ever spending a dime more on hardware.


And since Google data centers mostly runs on Linux, the games on Stadia will run on Linux too, through the Vulkan API. This is great news for gaming on Linux. Even if Stadia doesn't directly result in more games on Linux, it could potentially make gaming a platform agnostic cloud based service, like Netflix.

With Stadia, "the data center is your platform," claims Majd Bakar, head of engineering at Stadia. Stadia is not constrained by limitations of traditional console systems, he adds. Stadia is a "truly flexible, scalable, and modern platform" that takes into account the future requirements of the gaming ecosystem. When launched later this year, Stadia will be able to stream at 4K HDR and 60fps with surround sound.

Watch the full presentation here. Tell us what you think about Stadia in the comments.

The hype around "convergence" just won't die it seems. We have heard it from Ubuntu a lot, KDE, even from Google and Apple in fact. But the dream of true convergence, a uniform OS experience across platforms, never really materialised. Even behemoths like Apple and Googled failed to pull it off with their Android/iOS duopoly. Purism's Debian based PureOS wants to change all that for good.

Purism, PureOS, and the future of Convergence

Purism, a computer technology company based out of California, shot to fame for its Librem series of privacy and security focused laptops and smartphones. Purism raised over half a million dollars through a Crowd Supply crowdfunding campaign for its laptop hardware back in 2015. And unlike many crowdfunding megahits which later turned out to be duds, Purism delivered on its promises big time.


Later in 2017, Purism surprised everyone again with their successful crowdfunding campaign for its Linux based opensource smartphone, dubbed Librem 5. The campaign raised over $2.6 million and surpassed its 1.5 million crowdfunding goal in just in two weeks. Purism's Librem 5 smartphones will start shipping late 2019.

Librem, which loosely refers to free and opensource software, was the brand name chosen by Purism for its laptops/smartphones. One of the biggest USPs of Purism devices is the hardware kill switches that it comes loaded with, which physically disconnects phone's camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, and mobile broadband modem.

Meet PureOS, Purism's Debian Based Linux OS

PureOS is a free and opensource, Debian based Linux distribution which runs on all Librem hardware including its smartphones. PureOS is endorsed by Free Software Foundation. 

The term convergence in computer speak, refers to applications that can work seamlessly across platforms, and bring a consistent look and feel and similar functionality on your smartphone and your computer. 

"Purism is beating the duopoly to that dream, with PureOS: we are now announcing that Purism’s PureOS is convergent, and has laid the foundation for all future applications to run on both the Librem 5 phone and Librem laptops, from the same PureOS release", announced Jeremiah Foster, the PureOS director at Purism (by duopoly, he was referring to Android/iOS platforms that dominate smartphone OS ecosystem).

Ideally, convergence should be able to help app developers and users all at the same time. App developers should be able to write their app once, testing it once and running it everywhere. And users should be able to seamlessly use, connect and sync apps across devices and platforms.

Easier said than done though. As Jeremiah Foster himself explains:

"it turns out that this is really hard to do unless you have complete control of software source code and access to hardware itself. Even then, there is a catch; you need to compile software for both the phone’s CPU and the laptop CPU which are usually different architectures. This is a complex process that often reveals assumptions made in software development but it shows that to build a truly convergent device you need to design for convergence from the beginning."

How PureOS is achieving convergence?

PureOS have had a distinct advantage when it comes to convergence. Purism is a hardware maker that also designs its platforms and software. From its inception, Purism has been working on a "universal operating system" that can run on different CPU architectures.

"By basing PureOS on a solid, foundational operating system – one that has been solving this performance and run-everywhere problem for years – means there is a large set of packaged software that 'just works' on many different types of CPUs."

The second big factor is "adaptive design", software apps that can adapt for desktop or mobile easily, just like a modern website with responsive deisgn.


"Purism is hard at work on creating adaptive GNOME apps – and the community is joining this effort as well – apps that look great, and work great, both on a phone and on a laptop".

Purism has also developed an adaptive presentation library for GTK+ and GNOME, called libhandy, which the third party app developers can use to contribute to Purism's convergence ecosystem. Still under active development, libhandy is already packaged into PureOS and Debian.

Apellix is a Florida based startup that specialises in aerial robotics. They intend to create safer work environments by replacing workers with its task-specific drones to complete high-risk jobs at dangerous/elevated work sites.

Robotics with an Ubuntu Twist

Ubuntu is expanding its reach into robotics and IoT in a big way. A few years ago at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, UAVIA unveiled a new generation of its one hundred percent remotely operable drones (an industry first, they claimed), which were built with Ubuntu under the hood. Then there were other like Erle Robotics (recently renamed to Acutronic Robotics) which made big strides in drone technology using Ubuntu at its core.

Apellix is the only aerial robotics company with drones "capable of making contact with structures through fully computer-controlled flight", claims Robert Dahlstrom, Founder and CEO of Apellix.

"At height, a human pilot cannot accurately gauge distance. At 45m off the ground, they can’t tell if they are 8cm or 80cm away from the structure. With our solutions, an engineer simply positions the drone near the inspection site, then the on-board computer takes over and automates the delicate docking process." He adds.

Apellix considered many popular Linux distributions before zeroing in on Ubuntu for its stability, reliability, and large developer ecosystem. Ubuntu's versatility also enabled Apellix to use the same underlying OS platform and software packages across development and production.

The team is currently developing on Ubuntu Server with the intent to migrate to Ubuntu Core. The company is also making extensive use of Ubuntu Server, both on-board its robotic systems and its cloud operations, according to a case study by Ubuntu's parent company, Canonical Foundation. 

"With our aircraft, an error of 2.5 cm could be the difference between a successful flight and a crash," comments Dahlstrom. "Software is core to avoiding those errors and allowing us to do what we do - so we knew that placing the right OS at the heart of our solutions was essential." 

"RIOT powers the Internet of Things like Linux powers the Internet." RIOT is a small, free and opensource operating system for the memory constrained, low power wireless IoT devices.

RIOT OS: A tiny OS for embedded systems

Initially developed by Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin), INRIA institute and HAW Hamburg, Riot OS has evolved over the years into a very competent alternative to TinyOS, Contiki etc. and now supports application programming with programming languages such as C and C++, and provides full multithreading and real-time capabilities. RIOT can run on 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit ARM Cortex processors.


RIOT is opensource, has its source code published on GitHub, and is based on a microkernel architecture (the bare minimum software required to implement an operating system). RIOT OS vs competition:

More information on RIOT OS can be found here. RIOT summits are held annually in major cities of Europe, if you are interested pin this up. Thank you for reading.

The $34 billion all cash deal to purchase opensource pioneer Red Hat is IBM's biggest ever acquisition by far. The deal will give IBM a major foothold in fast-growing cloud computing market and the combined entity could give stiff competition to Amazon's cloud computing platform, AWS. But what about Red Hat and its future?

Another Oracle - Sun Micorsystems deal in the making? 
The alarmists among us might be quick to compare the IBM - Red Hat deal with the decade old deal between Oracle Corporation and Sun Microsystems, which was then a major player in opensource software scene.

But fear not. Unlike Oracle (which killed off Sun's OpenSolaris OS almost immediately after acquisition and even started a patent war against Android using Sun's Java patents), IBM is already a major contributor to opensource software including the mighty Linux Kernel. In fact, IBM was the 6th biggest contributor to Linux kernel in 2017.

What's in it for IBM?
With the acquisition of Red Hat, IBM becomes the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, "offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses", according to Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and CEO. She adds:

“Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs. The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales.”

The Future of Red Hat
The Red Hat story is almost as old as Linux itself. Founded in 1993, RedHat's growth was phenomenal. Over the next two decades Red Hat went on to establish itself as the premier Linux company, and Red Hat OS was the enterprise Linux operating system of choice. It set the benchmark for others like Ubuntu, openSUSE and CentOS to follow. Red Hat is currently the second largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel after Intel (Intel really stepped-up its Linux Kernel contributions post-2013).

Regular users might be more familiar with Fedora Project, a more user-friendly operating system maintained by Red Hat that competes with mainstream, non-enterprise operating systems like Ubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint or even Windows 10 for that matter. Will Red Hat be able to stay independent post acquisition?

According to the official press release, "IBM will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network." Well, that's a huge relief.

In fact, IBM and Red Hat has been partnering each other for over 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux. And as IBM CEO mentioned, the acquisition is more of an evolution of the long-standing partnership between the two companies.

"Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation."

Predicting the future can be tricky. A lot of things can go wrong. But one thing is sure, the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM is nothing like the Oracle - Sun deal. Between them, IBM and Red Hat must have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.

A real private mode in Firefox? A Tor integrated Firefox could just be that. Tor Project is currently working with Mozilla to integrate Tor into Firefox.

Over the years, and more so since Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mozilla has taken a progressively tougher stance on user privacy. Firefox's Facebook Container extension, for example, makes it much harder for Facebook to  collect data from your browsing activities (yep, that's a thing. Facebook is tracking your every move on the web). The extension now includes Facebook Messenger and Instagram as well.

Firefox with Tor Integration

For starters, Tor is a free software and an open network for anonymous communication over the web. "Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location."

And don't confuse this project with Tor Browser, which is web browser with Tor's elements built on top of Firefox stable builds. Tor Browser in its current form has many limitations. Since it is based on Firefox ESR, it takes a lot of time and effort to rebase the browser with new features from Firefox's stable builds every year or so.

Enter 'Project Fusion'

Now that Mozilla has officially taken over the works of integrating Tor into Firefox through Project Fusion, things could change for the better. With the intention of creating a 'super-private' mode in Firefox that supports First Party Isolation (which prevents cookies from tracking you across domains), Fingerprinting Resistance (which blocks user tracking through canvas elements), and Tor proxy, 'Project Fusion' is aiming big. To put it together, the goals of 'Project Fusion' can be condescend into four points.

• Implementing fingerprinting resistance, make more user friendly and reduce web breakage.
• Implement proxy bypass framework.
• Figure out the best way to integrate Tor proxy into Firefox.
• Real private browsing mode in Firefox, with First Party Isolation, Fingerprinting Resistance, and Tor proxy.

As good as it sounds, Project Fusion could still be years away or may not happen at all given the complexity of the work. According to a Tor Project Developer at Mozilla:

"Our ultimate goal is a long way away because of the amount of work to do and the necessity to match the safety of Tor Browser in Firefox when providing a Tor mode. There's no guarantee this will happen, but I hope it will and we will keep working towards it."

As If you want to help, Firefox bugs tagged 'fingerprinting' in the whiteboard are a good place to start. Further reading at TOR 'Project Fusion' page.

In another major win in a span of weeks for the proponents of open source solutions in EU, Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is pushing ahead with its plans to adopt open source tools as its software of choice for all its public schools. If all goes well, some 10,000 students in Switzerland schools could soon start getting their training using an IT infrastructure that is largely open source.

Over 10,000 Students to Benefit

Switzerland's largest open-source deal introduces a brand new IT infrastructure for the public schools of its capital city. The package includes Colabora Cloud Office, an online version of LibreOffice which is to be hosted in the City of Bern's data center, as its core component. Nextcloud, Kolab, Moodle, and Mahara are the other prominent open source tools included in the package. The contract is worth CHF 13.7 million over 6 years.

In an interview given to 'Der Bund', one of Switzerland's oldest news publications, open-source advocate Matthias Stürmer, EPP city council and IT expert, told that this is probably the largest ever open-source deal in Switzerland.

Many European countries are clamoring to adopt open source solutions for their cities and schools. From the recent German Federal Information Technology Centre's (ITZBund) selection of Nexcloud as their cloud solutions partner, to city of Turin's adoption of Ubuntu, to Italian Military's LibreOffice migration, Europe's recognition of open source solutions as a legitimate alternative is gaining ground.

Ironically enough, most of these software will run on proprietary iOS platform, as the clients given to students will be all Apple iPads. But hey, it had to start somewhere. When Europe's richest countries adopt open source, others will surely take notice. Stay tuned for updates. [via inside-channels.ch]

Germany's Federal Information Technology Centre (ITZBund) opts for an on-premise cloud solution which unlike those fancy Public cloud solutions, is completely private and under its direct control.

Germany's Open Source Migration

Given the recent privacy mishaps at some of biggest public cloud solution providers on the planet, it is only natural that government agencies across the world are opting for solutions that could provide users with more privacy and security. If the recent Facebook - Cambridge Analytica debacle is any indication, data vulnerability has become a serious national security concern for all countries. 

In light of these developments, government of Germany's IT service provider, ITZBund, has chosen Nextcloud as their cloud solutions partner. Nextcloud is a free and open source cloud solutions company based out of Europe that lets you to install and run its software on your private server. ITZBund has been running a pilot since 2016 with some 5000 users on Nextcloud's platform.

"Nextcloud is pleased to announce that the German Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund) has chosen Nextcloud as their solution for efficient and secure file sharing and collaboration in a public tender. Nextcloud is operated by the ITZBund, the central IT service provider of the federal government, and made available to around 300,000 users. ITZBund uses a Nextcloud Enterprise Subscription to gain access to operational, scaling and security expertise of Nextcloud GmbH as well as long-term support of the software."

ITZBund employs about 2,700 people that include IT specialists, engineers and network and security professionals. After the successful completion of the pilot, a public tender was floated by ITZBund which eventually selected Nextcloud as their preferred partner. Nextcloud scored high on security requirements and scalability, which it addressed through its unique Apps concept.

Remember Automotive Grade Linux that we discussed earlier in detail? Well, Amazon.com is trying to make sure its speech-recognition/voice-assistant tech, Alexa, is compatible with AGL.

Amazon wants its Alexa Voice Assistant Compatible with AGL
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is a project hosted by Linux foundation which aims to build a truly open, Linux based platform and framework for automotive applications. Currently, the market is utterly dominated by Android Auto and Apple Car Play. AGL, when it debuts in 2018 Toyota Camry, will be a more neutral, open, and inter-operable alternative to Android Auto and iOS CarPlay.

Amazon on the other hand is working with Nuance Communications Inc. and Voicebox Technologies Corp. to write code that makes AGL's in-vehicle apps compatible with several voice-assistant technologies (and not just Amazon's Alexa), eliminating the need for developers to make multiple versions. Given the fact that most automakers are also trying to diversify away from Google and Apple's restrictive eco-systems, this could eventually turn into a major win for all parties involved, including consumers.

Currently, Automotive Grade Linux has wide backing from major tech companies and auto giants such as Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Suzuki, Mercedes-Benz, Mazda, Subaru and the likes. Toyota is a platinum sponsor and has already unveiled solid plans for using Automotive Grade Linux's platform in its cars starting with hugely popular Toyota Camry model in 2018. 

"With Alexa integrated into AGL, the process of building voice experiences is dramatically simplified for developers," John Scumniotales, director of products at Amazon Alexa Automotive, said in an email to Bloomberg. "This would ultimately speed the rollout of voice services into cars. AGL has an opportunity to scale voice experiences across the automotive industry." Read more on this here.

Not many must have heard about the existence of something called Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a project hosted by Linux foundation to build a Linux based platform and framework for automotive applications. The project got kick-started back in 2012 and the founding members included marque automotive players such as Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, and Toyota, along with tech giants such as Fujitsu, HARMAN, NVIDIA, Renesas, Samsung and Texas Instruments (TI). Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) platform will debut in 2018 Toyota Camry.

Toyota's AGL Adoption in 2018 Toyota Camry

Automotive Grade Linux or AGL is a Linux based open source car infotainment platform that has been in the works for the last several years. As a Linux Foundation backed project, AGL now boasts broad based support from auto majors across the world. Along with the founding members like JLR and Toyota, car manufacturing giants like Daimler AG, Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi Motors, Subaru etc. are also paying members of the AGL project today.

The 2018 Toyota Camry will be the first car to utilize AGL. According to Dan Cauchy of AGL, "Toyota is an early adopter of Linux and open-source and has been an active member and contributor to AGL for several years. They have been a driving force behind the development of the AGL infotainment platform, and we are excited to see the traction that it’s gaining across the industry."

Auto makers have generally been clumsy when it comes to integrating and updating the latest/fastest tech to their in-house infotainment systems. And more and more players are going the easier route by simple giving customers the choice of Android Auto or Apple CarPlay or both. AGL can prove be a good compromise package by which the auto makers doesn't have to cede completely to Silicon Valley giants.

"The flexibility of the AGL platform allows us to quickly roll-out Toyota’s infotainment system across our vehicle line-up, providing customers with greater connectivity and new functionalities at a pace that is more consistent with consumer technology," said Keiji Yamamoto, Executive Vice President, Connected Company of Toyota Motor Corporation, in a press release. "Adopting an open source development approach has enabled us to focus resources on developing innovative new features and bringing them to market faster."

On a related note, here are two other obscure open source projects you've probably never heard about: 1. lowRISC: Open source, Linux capable SoC, 2. Udacity: An open source self-driving car project.

The launch of Steam platform for Linux in 2012 was a watershed moment for Linux desktop market. For gamers struggling with their dual boot setups, this was as good as it gets, or so we thought. Not even the biggest optimists amongst us expected such a huge turn around with Valve releasing games at an unprecedented rate (more than 100 games per month) on its Steam for Linux platform since its first release. But Valve is not ready to slowdown with its Linux ambitions as yet. Valve has just opened its SteamVR platform for Linux! Developers will now be able to create Linux content for HTC Vive VR headset and other VR hardware.

SteamVR Support for Linux Launched

Valve has just launched its SteamVR for Linux platform and developers can now start creating content for the same. The program is still in beta, meaning developers must use NVIDIA developer beta driver built on "Vulcan", dubbed as the "next generation OpenGL initiative". As a developer, you are also limited to access only "direct" mode which means you cannot display images on the headset and the display at the same time. There is also limited support for AMD based cards but Intel graphics card isn't supported.

We're now live with a developer build of SteamVR for Linux! https://t.co/UbsEC01eDh

— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) February 21, 2017

The importance of Linux platform in Valve's scheme of things was pretty evident when Gabe Newell himself clarified that Valve builds and runs all of its source code, animation and assets on Linux. With the latest addition of SteamVR support, Valve is doubling down on its commitment towards its Linux based SteamOS platform. 

"Red Hat is now our backbone. Our business cannot run if Red Hat is not there." That is India's biggest stock exchange's CEO talking. Established in 1875, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) is considered to be Asia’s earliest established stock exchange with an overall market capitalization of $1.43 Trillion in 2016 making it the world's 11th largest. Open Source have had many major wins last year, and this has to be one of the biggest.

India's BSE joins the Linux bandwagon

After struggling with inefficient and costly proprietary technologies for over two decades, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) built a new trading system using open source technology from Red Hat. "As a result, BSE has expanded from 10 million to 400 million orders per day, achieved the fastest trading speed in the world, and reduced its total cost of ownership (TCO) by 90%." This also enabled the stock exchange to venture into the currency markets which it didn't had any presence earlier, and now represents about 50% of that market in India.

Since its switch-over to Linux and open source based solutions, the Indian stock exchange has increased trading volume from 10 million orders per day to 400 million per day. With a median trade speed of just 6 microseconds, the trading platform now claims to be the world's fastest of its kind. There were even bigger wins to be made on the cost front. The shift has enabled the Bombay Stock Exchange to reduce its hardware expenses by 66% and lowered total cost of ownership by 90%!

Apparently, the transition to the new system was seamless, with zero downtime, claims Red Hat. The high-ranking BSE officials had only high-praise for the Red Hat support team. BSE also won the prestigious Red Hat Innovation Awards for 2016. You can find a more detailed case study on BSE's success using Red Hat here.

It's now official. Linux ports of two blockbuster titles, Hitman and Civilization VI, will arrive on Feb 16th and Feb 9th respectively via Steam for Linux. The Civilization VI is also coming with a special limited time launch price of $47.99 for the base game. 

Sid Meier's Civilization VI is a turn based strategy game developed by Firaxis Games originally released for Microsoft Windows platform late last year. It went on to become the fastest selling game in the Civilization series, more than a million copies were sold in the first few weeks of its release. There were rumors about potential Linux ports from day one. All speculations were laid to rest with the official announcement from Aspyr Media about the imminent arrival of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI for Linux. [Steam]

Minimum System Requirements:
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04 / SteamOS
CPU Processor: Intel Core i3 530 or AMD A8-3870
CPU Speed: 2.93 GHz
Memory: 6 GB
Hard Disk Space: 15 GB
Video Card (NVIDIA): GeForce 650
Video Card (ATI): Not Supported
Video Card (Intel): Not Supported
Video Memory (VRam): 1 GB

Hitman is a third-person stealth video game in which the player takes-up the role of a genetically enhanced assassin, travelling to international locations and eliminating contracted targets. Linux port of Hitman: The Complete First Season will arrive on Feb 16th, again via Steam platform. Hitman: The Complete First Season was released on 31 January 2017 for other platforms. [Get it on Steam]

Enterprise Ubuntu users have more reasons to cheer about. Canonical has partnered with Docker Inc. to provide professional grade support of Docker software to Ubuntu's Enterprise customers. Docker is a premier software container solution renowned for its ease of use and scalability. Docker Inc. already has similar contracts signed with major vendors such as Microsoft and HP.

What is Docker?

Docker is an open-source software that automates the deployment of various Linux applications inside software containers. Docker Inc. is generally considered as the company that brought software containers to the mainstream. Docker makes it easy to run a far greater number of apps on the same old servers without compromising on usability or security.

Unlike VM hypervisors, software containers are very lean on system requirements since they use shared operating systems. Instead of virtualizing entire hardware, containers sit on top of a single Linux instance, for example. As a result, you can have as many as four-to-six times the number of server application instances on the same hardware. Here's a really good article about Docker and software containers in general if you are interested.

The Announcement:

A week ago, Docker and Canonical announced an integrated Commercially Supported (CS) Docker Engine offering on Ubuntu, providing Canonical customers with a single path for support of the Ubuntu operating system and CS Docker Engine in enterprise Docker operations. Apparently, there is a "large, positive overlap" of enterprise users that use Ubuntu and Docker together.

As per the contract, Docker Inc. will provide Ubuntu users with stable, up-to-date Docker releases using Ubuntu's snap packages technology and Canonical in return will provide a two-tier technical support for Docker engine. Ubuntu is already one of the most popular Cloud Linux platforms out there and is now the first among Linux vendors to provide direct, official Docker support.

"Through our partnership, we provide users with more choice by bringing the agility, portability, and security benefits of the Docker CS engine to the larger Ubuntu community," said Nick Stinemates, Vice President, Business Development & Technical Alliances at Docker. "Additionally, Ubuntu customers will be able to take advantage of official Docker support -- a service that is not available from most Linux distributions. Together, we have aligned to make it even easier for organizations to create new efficiencies across the entire software supply chain."

Open Source is not alien to self-driving car technology. We know for fact that Google's self-driving cars are using 'lightly customised Ubuntu' at its core, and we have spotted Ubuntu on Mercedes-Benz driverless research car. But what Sebastian Thrun and Udacity is proposing is something radically different.

Not many here must have heard about Udacity. They are a for-profit online education startup who recently created a self-driving car engineering Nanodegree program to cater the burgeoning autonomous car industry. The company is partnering with Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Didi, Otto, and Nvidia on this nanodegree program for self-driving cars.

During the TechCrunch Disrupt event, Udacity co-founder, Sebastian Thrun revealed that the company intends to build its own self-driving car as part of its self-driving car engineering Nanodegree program, and that it also intends to open source the technology that results, so that "anyone" can try to build their own self-driving vehicle.

Consulting firm BCG believes the market for partially and fully autonomous vehicles will be at $22 billion by 2025. And Udacity intends to fill some of that gap for skilled engineers with its new Nanodegree program. The open-sourcing of resulting tech could help the eco-system grow even faster. The crowdsourced autonomous vehicle plans will ultimately be created in service of the school, rather than as an end-product. More on Udacity's attempts to create the first fully open-source self-driving car here.

As we reported exactly an year ago, Italian Military's plans to migrate its entire fleet of desktop PCs to LibreOffice is well underway and has reached its first milestone. Since the project got started about an year ago, the Italian military have switched over 8000 PC workstations to LibreOffice.

Italian Military's LibreOffice Migration Well Underway

As they say, well begun is half done. Italian Military's long drawn out plans for migrating its computers from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice is well under way. In the first phase of the project, over 8000 of its PC workstations has been successfully migrated to LibreOffice. And over the next 4 years, LibreDifesa project (as it is officially known) aims to migrate Italian Military's entire 100,000+ systems to LibreOffice. This would make it the largest free software transition involving desktop PCs by a European public administration.

LibreItalia, an an open source advocacy group based out of Italy, is helping Italian Military in this massive endeavour. LibreItalia volunteers are working with the military, training the trainers and the support staff. They also introduce LibreOffice to top officials, and help prepare the communication that explain the motive for the switch. The LibreDifesa project is expected to save EUR 26 to 29 million for the exchequer.

But saving money isn't just the only concern for the Military. According to open source observatory, "the main motives for the switch include interoperability and long-term accessibility of documents and information. The military are standardising on the Open Document Format (ODF) and are urging its users to use free fonts."

"The switch to LibreOffice is so far posing no real problems for the users", said Sonia Montegiove, who is also the president of the LibreItalia open source advocacy group. She presented the LibreDifesa project last Friday at the FSFE Summit in Berlin.

Apparently, the military is also contemplating the use of Linux for their desktop workstations, and are piloting the Zimbra email, calendaring and collaboration suite. And it's not just the Italian Military. Only recently we learned that big MNCs like Daimler AG has been migrating its critical servers to SUSE Linux. Even cities as large as Toulouse in France and Turin in Italy have opted for Ubuntu and other open solutions thereby saving millions of Euros.

[Via Open source observatory; Also read Sonia Montegiove's presentation (PDF) at FSFE Summit, Berlin]

For some unknown reason, Paramount Pictures has decided that the freely distributed Ubuntu OS torrents are "infringing" their copyrights on Transformers movie! Paramount Pictures recently sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google, accusing Ubuntu OS of infringing their copyrights.

Paramount Pictures Sends Takedown Notices to "Infringing" Ubuntu Torrents

Just when you thought the copyright infringement drama can't get any sillier, Paramount Pictures decides to send takedown notice to Google, accusing Ubuntu OS torrents of "infringing" their copyrights over 'Transformers: Age of Extinction' movie. According to torrentfreak, copyright holders sent millions of takedown requests to Google every week and "it’s no surprise that errors are made". But their latest "error" seems rather odd. 

As you can see, the torrent URL or the destination doesn't contain any references of this particular movie. Yet, a notice sent out by the movie studio's anti-piracy partner a few days ago, and Google was asked to remove the Ubuntu torrent download page on ExtraTorrent, a popular torrent download website.

What's even more interesting is the fact that, instead of any fact-checking, Google went ahead and took down the "infringing" URL. May be its just the standard practice given the sheer volume of takedown requests Google receives every other day (some three million requests per day, as per some reports). But here is the thing.

"Paramount's mistake may be relatively harmless, but it shows once again how much can go wrong with these automated DMCA notices. Whether these errors can be rooted out is doubtful as there is very little incentive for copyright holders to improve their accuracy."

Read the detailed report and discussions at TorrentFreak

SUSE technologies are helping Daimler AG, the German automotive behemoth, to migrate a large proportion of its mission-critical servers from proprietary UNIX operating systems to 'the open and flexible Linux platform'.

Daimler AG: Automotive Giant Latest to Adopt Linux

Daimler AG joins a long list of companies and even cities that have joined the open source bandwagon. SUSE technologies, being one of the earliest providers of Enterprise Linux solutions, helped Daimler AG to migrate a large proportion of its mission-critical servers from proprietary systems to Linux platform, specifically to SUSE Linux. This is a major win for the proponents of enterprise level solutions based on Linux and open-source.

Historically, Daimler AG used a number of proprietary UNIX distributions for the task. But managing multiple environments increased costs and required the company to maintain different skill sets to accomplish very similar tasks on different platforms. This is where SUSE technologies pitched in with their Linux Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

"A key target for the new project was to migrate away from UNIX on proprietary hardware towards Linux on commodity x86 servers. The objective was to standardize on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a single distribution of Linux wherever practical. The openness and ease of customization of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, as well as its closeness to UNIX, made it the ideal starting point for this virtual platform concept."

Initially, the company deployed SUSE Manager with 28 distributed SUSE Manager proxy servers for comprehensive Linux lifecycle management. As part of the migration process, SUSE Manager builds a tailored image with the requested packages and features. These operating system images may include SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions with 24x7 Priority Support, a disaster-recovery tool, the SUSE Manager client and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications with the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Manager eventually helped Daimler AG to successfully migrate a large proportion of its mission-critical workloads from proprietary UNIX platforms to Linux. The company has cut the number of UNIX instances by 40 percent, as it moves crucial applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

"The success of the transition to the SUSE platform is reflected in the growth of the company’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server landscape. In the last few years, the number of Linux instances has increased by a factor of four. This considerable expansion demonstrates both the successful ongoing project to migrate UNIX applications to Linux and the organic growth in the company’s web applications where SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has become the preferred platform."

[You can download the full PDF report here]

Ars is reporting that, OpenOffice might be shutting down its operations soon. For long, OpenOffice reigned as the premier Office suite, giving the open-source community a robust alternative to Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice could shutdown operations soon, reports say

OpenOffice was Linux's showcase app for long. It started its journey as an open-sourced version of the StarOffice, which Sun Microsystems acquired in 1999 for a whopping US$59.5 million. Apparently, Sun bought it for internal use as it was costlier to license Microsoft Office for its entire staff. 

Sun open-sourced the software in July 2000 and pitched it as an "open" alternative to Microsoft Office. Over the years, OpenOffice became a massively popular Office suite which found its way into many Linux distros as the default choice. It even achieved 14% penetration in the large enterprise market by 2004. OpenOffice played an important part in attracting new users to Linux. 

But everything changed in 2010 when Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle. Though Oracle 'reiterated' its commitment for the continued development of OpenOffice, it pretty much abandoned the project in practice. Not much long after, majority of outside contributors left and formed The Document Foundation. They released the OpenOffice fork named LibreOffice in Jan 2011, which become widely successful. As many speculated before the acquisition, Oracle completely stopped OpenOffice development in April 2011 and fired the development team. Oracle contributed the trademarks and Oracle-owned code to the Apache Software Foundation for re-licensing under Apache License. This formed the basis for Apache OpenOffice project which we see today.

End of the Road for Apache OpenOffice? Not so Fast

The speculation started when a thread titled "What would OpenOffice retirement involve?" was started by Dennis Hamilton, vice president of Apache OpenOffice, in openoffice-dev mailing list.

"It is my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together," Hamilton wrote. No decisions have been made yet, but Project heads are particularly worried about their ability to fix security problems. And hence the Project's 'retirement remains a serious possibility'. Read the complete story at arstechnica.