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FOSS Force

HPE Boosts SUSE, Rootkit Targets Linux & More…

Also included: Creative Commons wins in Austria, two new distro releases, a new version for Solus’s Budgie, KDE goes Wayland and Mageia supports DNF.

FOSS Week in Review

Damn if the days aren’t already getting too short for this old soul who no longer feels comfortable driving after dark. This is made worse by the fact I live way out in the country — miles from nowhere, as they say — meaning I’m pretty much stuck in the house at night. The good news is, this means that these days I’m getting a lot of writing done.

Now on to this weeks FOSS news…

Krita 3.01 Beta Released

Around since 2005, and with its Kiki the Cyber Squirrel mascot since 2012, Krita is a free and open source raster graphics editor designed to be a digital painting application similar to Corel Painter.

The Video Screening Room

The popular Krita painting program keeps getting even better. This new beta release of 3.01 includes features added from Google Summer of Code programmers. This screencast does a very good job explaining the new features, including new animation tools.

Christine Hall: FOSS Force’s Grandmama Frump

All we can say is watch this interview with Christine Hall and you’ll know what we have to put up with on a daily basis — equipment that’s not quite up to par and a boss who’s a refugee from The Addams Family.

The FOSS Force Video Interview

Yes, that Christine Hall. The one whose byline you often see on this very site. Recorded under lousy lighting with a 10-year-old (or older) webcam that was probably lousy new, this video is about information, not cinematography. So meet Christine Hall. Listen to what she says about looking for contributing writers. Does she mean you? It’s possible. If you have a story idea, please send it to her. We could see [YOUR NAME] in lights right here on FOSS Force!

Torvalds at LinuxCon Part III: Permissive Licenses and Org Charts

In the last of our three part series that began last week on Linus Torvalds’ keynote interview at this year’s LinuxCon, Linux’s lead developer talks about everything from up and coming operating systems in IoT to the development process.

“You mentioned the strength of the GPL,” Dirk Hohndel said, by now about twenty minutes into his interview of Linus Torvalds at LinuxCon 2016. “Many new kernels have shown up in the last couple of years, mostly geared towards really small devices, the IoT space: Zephyr by Intel, Fuchsia by Google and a bunch more.”

If you are who you work for now, Dirk Hohndel is VMware’s boy. But at the time of the interview, only a few weeks back, he’d been working as VMware’s chief open source officer for less than a month. For almost fifteen years before that — fourteen years nine months he’s careful to point-out on LinkedIn — he belonged to Intel, where he served as chief Linux and open source technologist. Before that he spent six years at SUSE, where he was CTO when he left in 2001, two years ahead of the Novell brouhaha.

“One of the interesting commonalities is they’re all under BSD or MIT,” he continued. “Do you think they’re interesting and do you think that one of them could grow up and become a competitor for Linux or replace Linux?”

Torvalds at LinuxCon Part II: Fragmentation and the GPL

This is the second of a three part series that began last Tuesday on Linux Torvalds’ keynote interview at this year’s LinuxCon. In today’s segment, Torvalds talks about how the GPL has helped prevent fragmentation.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Linus Torvalds said, “we still argue. We’re not all happy people, we don’t love each other.”

Linus Torvalds, Dirk Hohndel, LinuxCon 2016
Linus Torvalds being interviewed by VMware’s Dirk Hohndel on the last day of LinuxCon 2016.
He was talking about the Linux kernel community, completing his answer as to the “lowlights” of his years as Linux’s lead developer.

“I suspect a lot of developers really don’t like each other,” he continued, “but quite often, even if there’s not a lot of happy love feelings, I get the feeling there’s a lot of respect for the technical side and things are working very well — in ways that things have not always worked.”

Redesigning Tor, Goodbye OpenOffice & More…

Also included: Remembering Vernon Adams, Red Hat vs. VMware, a new distro release, openSUSE Leap and ransomware that deletes files.

FOSS Week in Review

The summer of ’16 is all but over. Good riddance. Here in my piece of the woods we’ve seen all of the 90 plus days with high humidity I can take. Time to get out the long sleeves and sweaters.

It’s also time to look at this week’s FOSS news.

David Beazley’s Keynote Talk at PyData Chicago 2016

One of the things we’ve noticed over the years is how enthusiastic people are about Python, which shows in this keynote address by David Beazley.

The Video Screening Room

This post-lunch screencast presentation by David Beazley is so entertaining, you can enjoy it without knowing any Python programming whatsoever. The aside comments alone are worth the price of admission. I won’t tell you the topic of the presentation. Suffice it to say — plenty funny.

Installing BlackArch Linux on a Raspberry Pi

Would you like to use a Raspberry Pi as a topflight security tool? Here’s how to install BlackArch Linux on a Pi to get you on your way.

The Raspberry Pi Report

Currently Kali Linux is the de facto OS for those looking to do security research or penetration testing, but that could be changing in the months and years to come. This month BlackArch Linux, another penetration testing OS, released new ISOs that could put it ahead of Kali. BlackArch now includes over 1,500 tools for penetration testing and security research as well as support for kernel 4.7.1. In the months to come, I’ll write about using select tools from BlackArch on the Raspberry Pi, but in order to get to that point, we first need to install it. Instead of taking any credit for the install steps or reproduce them over again, I’m simply going to provide links to the same steps that I found and followed which lead me to a successful install of both Arch Linux and BlackArch on my Raspberry Pi 3.

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