Linux Kernel 4.1 LTS released

Linux Kernel 4.1 LTS released

Linus has been busy working on Linux Kernel 4.1 LTS and now it has been released. This release includes support for Intel Skylake, improved Intel Atom processor support, and encryption for the EXT 4 file system.

Silviu Stahie reports for Softpedia:

Linus Torvalds announced just a few minutes ago the release of the Linux kernel 4.1. The development cycle for this branch of the Linux kernel is now complete, and we’ll soon move to the next one, probably 4.2.

Most Linux kernel cycles are calm, with a few exceptions. From time to time, something happens that warrants the attention of Linux Torvalds or of the people involved in some particular subsystem, but fortunately for us, it’s not the case with the latest version.

LTS stands for Long Term Support, which means that we’ll be seeing this branch of the kernel for a long time. Unlike distributions, the duration of the support for an LTS kernel is not known in advance, so we can’t tell you how long it will last, but we can tell you some of the features.

More at Softpedia

You can read the official announcement post by Linus:

So after a *very* quiet week after the 4.1-rc8 release, the final 4.1 release is now out.

I’m not sure if it was quiet because there really were no problems (knock wood), or if people decided to be considerate of my vacation, but whatever the reason, I appreciate it. It’s not like the 4.1 release cycle was particularly painful, and let’s hope that the extra week of letting it sit makes for a great release. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, considering that 4.1 will also be a LTS release.

Anyway, since rc8 we’ve had truly small changes, mainly some final driver fixups (HDA sound, drm, scsi target, crypto) and a couple of small misc fixes. The appended shortlog is probably one of the shortest ones ever. I’m not complaining.

And this obviously means that the merge window for 4.2 is open.

More at LKML

Mageia 5 released

Version five of the Mageia distribution has been released, and now it supports UEFI systems. You can download Mageia 5 right now.

The Mageia 5 blog has the official announcement:

After more than one year of development, the Mageia community is very proud to finally deliver this long-awaited release, Mageia 5. This release announcement is a big sigh of relief, an “At last!” that comes straight from the heart of the weary – tired as one can be after long days of hard but rewarding work.

The main spotlight of Mageia 5 is the support of UEFI systems. If you are not familiar with the term, feel free to check our detailed article about it. In a few words, let’s say that most systems with recent hardware (3 years old or newer) are equipped with UEFI, so in order for our users to be able to install Mageia 5 easily on recent hardware, UEFI support was a must.

Implementing support for UEFI boot and the partitioning changes that are inherent to this new technology meant making lots of changes in our installer. It was done incrementally, fixing bugs as they showed up, and discovering new and old issues along the way. We were lucky to have a very dedicated team of QA testers for this release, and they fiddled with the installer to try to find its shortcomings on the most exotic settings. All in all, those tests spawned many fixes and new features in our installer on top of the new UEFI support: RAID support, GRUB 2 integration, changes to the partitioner…

Of course this new release is not only about the installer changes; all packages have been updated, and we did a lot of work to ensure that all packages built fine against the new toolchain in Mageia 5.

More at Mageia Blog

The Mageia wiki has more detailed information in the official Mageia 5 release notes:

Major new features :

Installation on UEFI machines is now supported out of the box. grub2 (optional and not the default) should now work better out of the box, detect other installed operating systems and add them to grub2 boot menu. Lots of bug fixes in the installer and the control center, including bugs dating back from before the Mageia fork that the work on UEFI support made prominent. Btrfs is now supported as a primary filesystem, though ext4 remains the default – when selecting it for /boot (or / without a separate /boot partition) grub2 will be automatically chosen and configured. We now use the standard Adwaita theme instead of Oxygen-gtk, as the latter is broken with gtk+-3.14. Packaging: We now use the new standard for weak dependencies. Our packages’ spec files use the new standard for dependencies exclusion (making them more similar to Fedora/Suse/etc. packages).

More at Mageia Wiki

Can Android save the Blackberry?

It’s no secret that the Blackberry’s market share has been almost totally destroyed by the onslaught of Android and iOS devices. Can a switch to Android save the Blackberry? The topic was recently brought up on the XDA Developers site, and an interesting thread ensued.

Emil Kako asked about the Blackberry:

Once known as the king of smartphones, BlackBerry is now struggling to stay relevant in the mobile world. We heard reports early last week of BlackBerry working on an Android phone, but is this enough to redeem the falling company?

More at XDA Developers

XDA Developers responded:

Heathenasparagus: “Here is the cool thing about android – you get to compete every year as if nothing happened before. New contenders come in every year and we give them a fair shot. Same here.

Blackberry needs to provide a good Android device (which is actually not that difficult, just cut into the profit margin and copy a Nexus device). On top of that, do the things you do well:

-Enterprise services which they already have

-A good physical keyboard with good integration (the DesireZ had that, and some others as well)

-Deals with operators that provide free texting”

SBF: “Too little too late… The only saving grace for blackberry was it’s excellent keyboard which is not part of the package now.. And with countries like the UAE moving away from the encrypted BBM services takes away any remaining novelty… If they’re going to offer just another skin to Android.. With no element of prestige (which made it famous in the first place) then it’s fate is sealed…What a beautiful fall from grace…”

Jarod: “Over the years, i’ve seen Blackberry die a very slow death, I still believe that android can save them. They have the hardware, they have some software in the Blackberry OS that could be tied into android. I think it could work and they could really come back to being a serious competitor.”

Sachoosaini: “Well why not. As in android M google has start providing new features to nexus devices like on device hardware encryption from bootloader. Blackberry with its best in line security features could do wonders in android where corporate still not considering because of security issues. But being opensource you always get some issues no matter what you could do how hard you try. Hackers always remain issues there is nothing full proof against cyber threats. The moment you go online the moment you put your foot in the web’s vicious circle of unceratinities.”

Theatheistotaku: “If they can make a decently priced android phone with a nice physical keyboard, then yea. Start off low end, and once your back on your feet make a high end. Too this day the epic 4g is my favorite android phone, because of the slide out hardware keyboard.”

Lord Anubis: “I think Blackberry has excellent devices (hardware wise), there problem is the software, even if it is a very advance OS with no need for buttons and such, they lack the support of the software developers which tends to float between iOS and Android. If they make a decent hardware phone with a good price, which I think they can do since they already have a very good hardware, I would be one of the people to test it out as soon as I can.”

Chris Dopper: “Well, I guess The price is the biggest problem, I’d absolutely buy a Blackberry Q10, Passport or Classic, if it was cheaper. If it ran Android, it would be a nice thing on top, but the price is (for me) the reason for not buying a Blackberry Phone. But I think other companies should bring new physical-keyboard Smartphones, cause I would love to have one, if it’s worth its price.”

Steve Kraemer: “Lets see… Blackberry phones were known for their excellent battery life and secure messaging. However… Once Cyanogen starts to really roll out onto various Xiaomi and One Plus devices… THOSE will make Blackberry scramble for something new and attractive. Cyanogen is trying to deviate from Google, create their own apps packages, their own apps and encrypted software.Ten years ago, the bitchy old men at Blackberry (aka RIM) waited too long and completely messed up the company. Having Android on Blackberry devices might create an extremely tiny surge in sales, due to their software encryption. In the long run, it won’t fix Blackberry’s sales problems at all.”

Spriteboost: “If they brought the physical keyboard good specs and rootable/romable I’d buy it for sure I miss a true physical keyboard. Don’t get me wrong i like swype but a physical keyboard is just easier to do without looking at it since you can FEEL where you are on the keyboard. Samsung with the s6 has failed to me so they’d have to bring it out with a removable battery and micro-sd card. Would be a number one option for me with those features might even jump from note 3 in an instant for those features.”

More at XDA Developers

Did you miss a roundup? Check the Eye On Open home page to get caught up with the latest news about open source and Linux.