Category: Linux, FreeBSD, and Unix types

It’s no secret that Linux is basically the operating system of containers, and containers are the future of the cloud, says James Bottomley, Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research and Linux kernel developer. Bottomley, who can often be seen at open source events in his signature bow tie, is focused these days on security systems like the Trusted Platform Module and the fundamentals of container technology.

With Open Source Summit happening this month in conjunction with Linux Security Summit — and Open Source Summit Europe coming up fast — we talked with Bottomley about these and other topics. …

The Linux Foundation: Who should attend Open Source Summit and why?

Bottomley: I think it’s no secret that Linux is basically the OS of containers and containers are the future of the cloud, so anyone who is interested in keeping up to date with what’s going on in the cloud because this would be the only place they can keep up with the leading edge of Linux.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Here’s a sneak peek at why you need to be at Open Networking Summit Europe in Amsterdam next month! But hurry – spots are going quickly. Secure your spot and register by September 1 to save $605.

Open Networking Summit, the premier open networking event in North America now in its 7th year, comes to Europe for the first time next month. This event is like no other, with content presented by your peers in the networking community, sessions carefully selected by networking specialists in the program committee, and plenty of networking and collaboration opportunities, this is an event you won’t want to miss.

Highlights include:

1. Learn About the Future & Lessons Learned in Open Networking: Hear about innovative ideas on the disruption and change of the landscape of networking and networking-enabled markets in the next 3-5 years across AI, ML, and deep learning applied to networking, SD-WAN, IIOT, data insights, business intelligence, blockchain & telecom, and more. Get an in-depth scoop on the lessons learned from today’s global deployments.
2. 100+ Sessions Covering Telecom, Enterprise, and Cloud Networking: With a blend of deep technical/developer sessions and business/architecture sessions, there are a plethora of learning opportunities for everyone. Plan your schedule now and choose from sessions, labs, tutorials, and lightning talks presented by Airbnb, Deutsche Telekom AG, Thomas Reuters, Huawei, General Motors, Türk Telekom, China Mobile, and many more.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Diversity and inclusion are hot topics as projects compete to attract more talent to power development efforts now as well as build their ranks to carry the projects into the future. The Diversity Empowerment Summit co-located with Open Source Summit coming up in Vancouver August 29-31, will offer key insights to help your project succeed in these endeavors.

Although adoption of diversity and inclusion policies is generally seen as simply the right thing to do, finding good paths to building and implementing such policies within existing community cultures continues to be challenging. The Diversity Empowerment Summit, however, provides hard insights, new ideas, and proven examples to help open source professionals navigate this journey.

Nithya Ruff,  Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast, and member of the Board of Directors for The Linux Foundation, says “the mission of open source communities to attract and retain diverse contributors with unique talent and perspectives has gathered momentum, but we cannot tackle these issues without the support of allies and advocates.” Ruff will be moderating a panel discussion at the conference examining the role of allies in diversity and inclusion and exploring solid strategies for success.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Linus Torvalds published the 4.18 kernel on Sunday, one week later than expected. This has a been a rocky release… and it’s all Android’s fault (more or less).

You see, Android systems lack tmpfs, the temporary file systems you usually see hanging off your /tmp directory. In regular Linux systems, a tmpfs is stored in memory and holds data that applications may need to retrieve at short notice or share with other programs. Instead, Android allocates a chunk of memory (called ashmem) that does the same thing. However, a change introduced to ashmem in 4.18-rc7 made the open source version of Android crash. Unfortunately, all this came to light the week before the final release of 4.18 was due. Nine patches later and the problem was still not totally resolved, so Linus decided to roll back the whole thing and wait another week for the things to calm down.

In other news, the kernel is becoming slimmer and more toned. 4.18 is actually 100 thousand lines lighter over its predecessor, 4.17. It is worth remembering that 4.17 had already shed over half a million lines of code and was the lightest in the 4.x series. As more obsolete code gets ditched, the kernel should take up less memory, run more efficiently and be less vulnerable to attacks that takes advantage of crufty old code.

Forward-thinking developers have also been working on a new __kernel_timespec structure. This will help avoid the 2038 problem hitting 32-bit systems. If you haven’t heard of this, it is similar to the year 2000 bug in that, at 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038, unpatched machines will think we are back in the 1900s. Airplanes will fall from the sky, power stations will explode, and in a surprise snap referendum that nobody called for, the UK will rejoin the EU. Nonetheless, work continues apace.

Other things to look forward to in kernel 4.18:

• The 32-bit ARM architecture has gained fixes for Spectre variants 1 and 2, thus protecting a wider variety of devices from being attacked.
• The Steam Controller HID driver was merged into the kernel. This allows using Valve’s Steam Controller as a HID input device without needing to rely upon Steam or the user-space SC-Controller.
• Finally, something that Linus himself is looking forward to is seeing WireGuard included in the kernel. “Can I just state my love for it and hope it gets merged soon?” gushed Linus, while talking to David Miller, main maintainer of the networking subsystem. WireGuard is a VPN, similar to OpenVPN or IPSec, but much more efficient, according to Linus. In his words, WireGuard is “a work of art,” but, unfortunately, it has not made it into the main trunk of this time around. It does remain available as a module, notwithstanding.

You can find out more about kernel 4.18 by reading the release notes themselves, visiting Phoronix or checking the Kernel Newbies report when it becomes available.

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Elementary OS has been my distribution of choice for some time now. I find it a perfect blend of usability, elegance, and stability. Out of the box, Elementary doesn’t include a lot of apps, but it does offer plenty of style and all the apps you could want are an AppCenter away. And with the upcoming release, the numbering scheme changes. Named Juno, the next iteration will skip the .5 number and go directly to 5.0. Why? Because Elementary OS is far from a pre-release operating system and the development teams wanted to do away with any possible confusion.

Elementary, 0.4 (aka Loki) is about as stable a Linux operating system as I have ever used. And although Elementary OS 5.0 does promise to be a very natural evolution from .4, it is still very much in beta, but ready for testing. Because Juno is based on Ubuntu 18.04, it enjoys a rock-solid base, so the foundation of the OS will already be incredibly stable.

With that in mind, I downloaded 5.0 and spun it up in VirtualBox. The results are as impressive as I assumed they’d be. Let’s get this open source operating system installed and see what it has to offer.

Installation

I’m not going to spend much time on explaining the installation of Elementary OS. Why? If you’ve installed any flavor or Linux (or any operating system at all), then you can walk through the installation of this distribution in your sleep. There’s a rumor that Elementary OS is working in conjunction with System76 on a new installer. As of the current release of Juno, however, there is no sign of such an installer, so you’ll find the same method of installation seen in previous iterations of the platform.

You can run Elementary OS live or install it immediately. Burn the ISO image onto a CD/DVD or USB flash drive and boot it on your machine (or use the ISO image to create a virtual machine). The installer will have you configure your language, keyboard, select the installation type (Figure 1), select if you want to download updates immediately and install third-party media codecs, and then create a user.

Once the installation completes, reboot the machine and log in. Shortly after logging in, you should be prompted that updates are available. I highly recommend running the updates before using the desktop (since this is still in beta, the updates will come often). Now that we’re installed and updated, let’s take a look at some of those new features.

The AppCenter

The Elementary OS AppCenter has been given a slight facelift. Although the previous version was quite serviceable, it seems the designers have taken a nod from GNOME Software (which is a good thing) and added recommendations under the featured titles (Figure 2).

Another upcoming feature to the AppCenter is the ability to pay developers “what you want” for apps. The Elementary OS developers are taking a unique approach to apps. Elementary OS first released the AppCenter in May 2017 and by February 2018 they’d processed $1,700.00 worth of payments from just over 750 charges. That means the average paid price for an app, purchased from the AppCenter was $2.30. To make things a bit more lucrative for developers (and to try an interesting experiment), Elementary OS will include a HumbleButton for paid apps that allow users to pay what they will. Another change will be that paid apps won’t automatically update (if you click the Update All button in the AppCenter). Instead, to update the app, you’ll have to donate to the app (starting with $0.00 to $10.00 or a custom amount). Hopefully, that change will translate into more developers getting paid for their work.

Aesthetics

You won’t find too much in the way of aesthetic improvements in Juno. You’ll find no complaint here (as Elementary OS .4 Loki was already quite elegant). The designers did officially decide upon an official color palette. The full palette can be viewed here (along with all logo and font information).

Along with the new palette, Juno brings:

• A Night Light feature (to make late night staring at the screen a bit less harsh on the eyes).

• Latest GTK+ features (which includes some animated panel icons).

• Very slight changes to the default theme (icons are a bit brighter and colorful).

App Changes

Because there are so few apps shipped out of the box, you won’t find much in the way of change here. The developers have rebranded the default text editor, Scratch, as Code and even rolled in some basic code editor features. Outside of that, the standard default Elementary apps remain intact:

• Mail — for your email needs.

• Music — to play your tunes.

• Files — serves as your file manager.

• Videos — plays all of your videos.

• Calendar — schedule your day.

• Photos — manage your photos.

Epiphany

At one point, I would have said having Epiphany as the default browser was a big miss. However, Epiphany has come a long way. Case in point: The version of Epiphany shipping with Juno includes the ability to log into your Firefox Account, so it can now sync and share data (Figure 3).

Another really nifty feature with newer releases of Epiphany is the ability to install a site as a Web Application. What this does is save a site as a launcher in the Elementary OS menu, such that you only need to click the launcher to open the site. When the site opens as an installed app, you will notice the browser window missing a few components (such as the bookmarks and configuration buttons, as well as the tab button/feature). It’s a handy way to gain quick access to specific sites you use frequently. 

To install a site as a web application, follow these steps:

1. Open Epiphany.

2. Navigate to the web site in question.

3. Click the Epiphany menu button (gear icon in the upper right corner).

4. Click Install Site as Web Application (Figure 4).

5. In the resulting popup, give the application a name and click Create.

A bit of clean up and a conclusion

Outside of the above features (and a few more minor details), the rest of the change comes by way of old code cleanup and closing out issues. Thanks to that codebase cleanup, you’ll find a bit of a performance and stability increase over previous releases.

All in all, Elementary OS continues to be my top-rated distribution for new Linux users. It’s incredibly clean, elegant, and user-friendly. Thankfully, the design and development team understand they have something special on their hands and, instead of bringing about new features and radical changes, are set on offering only slight changes and improvements to an already rock solid Linux distribution. So, if you’re looking for something magical and radical in the shift from .4 to 5.0, you might be disappointed. If, however, what you want is nothing more than an improved (and very familiar) experience with Elementary OS, Juno will not disappoint.

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Google’s recent announcement that it had ported its open source TensorFlow machine intelligence (ML) library for neural networking to the Raspberry Pi was the latest in a series of chess moves from Google and its chief AI rival Nvidia to win the hearts and keyboards of embedded Linux developers. The competition is a part of a wider battle with Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, and others to bring cloud analytics to the edge in IoT networks to reduce latency, increase reliability, and improve security.

Thanks to a collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the latest TensorFlow 1.9 release can now be installed on Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 SBCs from pre-built binaries using Python’s pip package system. Raspbian 9 users can install it with two simple commands.

Integrating TensorFlow models into an embedded project offers further challenges. Yet, as Google has shown with its AIY Projects kits for the Raspberry Pi, you can add a bit of ML smarts in Raspberry Pi based robots, vision systems, and other embedded gear without a huge learning curve.

The TensorFlow port should be particularly welcome in the Raspberry Pi educational community. As the RPi Foundation’s Eben Upton wrote in a congratulatory tweet about the “massive news,” the TensorFlow port will enable “cool machine-learning educational content.”

TensorFlow was essentially born to run on Linux, but on servers or desktops, not on a modest SBC like the Raspberry Pi. It now runs on all major server and desktop platforms and has been ported to Android and iOS. Yet, the Raspberry Pi was a particularly gnarly challenge, writes Google TensorFlow developer Pete Warden in the announcement. It wasn’t even possible until the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 came along with faster quad-core processors.

A year ago, Warden and his team managed to cross-compile TensorFlow on the RPi 3, but it was a slow, complicated, crash-prone process. The new ability to install from pre-built binaries now makes it feasible for a much wider group of developers to join the party.

While Google’s AIY Projects was attempting to squeeze a cloud-based platform onto a simple hacker board, its team started with low-cost cardboard constructed kits with add-on boards for connecting with Google Cloud related embedded technologies. These include the AIY Vision Kit for the Raspberry Pi Zero W and WH, which performs TensorFlow-based vision recognition. It incorporates a “VisionBonnet” board with an Intel Myriad 2 neural network accelerator chip. AIY Projects also launched an AIY Voice Kit with the same RPi Zero WH target that lets you build a voice-controlled speaker with Google Assistant support.

As noted in this Hackster.io post about the port from Alasdair Allan, the AIY Vision Kit has struggled to perform well when operating locally. The Voice Kit has done better due to its greater reliance on Google Cloud.

Google’s Edge TPU accelerator

According to a Warden tweet following the announcement, TensorFlow is not currently tapping the potential ML powers of Broadcom’s VideoCore graphical processing unit, as Nvidia does with its more powerful Pascal GPU. He goes on to suggest that there might be potential for developing a special GPU-related port for the single-core Raspberry Pi Zero boardlets, but for now there’s sufficient power on the Pi’s four CPU cores. Speaking of potential hooks to the GPU, he writes: “With quad-core CPUs and Neon on the latest Pi’s, there’s not as big an advantage, though it’s still interesting on Pi Zeroes.”

Another interpretation is that Google is skipping the GPU because it expects Raspberry Pi users and other embedded developers to tap its recently announced, Linux-friendly Edge TPU ML accelerator chip for TensorFlow. The Edge TPU will be offered this fall along with an NXP i.MX8M based Linux development kit and an Edge TPU Accelerator USB dongle that can fit into any Linux computer including the Pi.

The Edge TPU is a lightweight, embedded version of its enterprise focused Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (Cloud TPU) AI co-processor. In conjunction with a new Cloud IoT Edge stack, the chip is designed to run TensorFlow Lite ML models on Arm Linux- or Android Things based IoT gateways connected to Google Cloud services.

Nvidia launches industrial TX2i and octa-core Xavier Jetson modules

Nvidia is farther along in its attempt to bring its Pascal/CUDA-related AI technologies to embedded Linux developers. Its Jetson TX1 and TX2 computer-on-modules have found widespread adoption in embedded Linux projects for ML applications. The Jetson TX2 recently appeared in devices including Axiomtek’s eBOX560-900-FL box computer, as well as an upcoming, FPGA-equipped AIR-T Mini-ITX board for AI-enabled SDR applications.

In recent months, Nvidia has begun shipping a Jetson TX2i spin on the TX2 aimed at industrial applications. The TX2i adds -40 to 85°C support, vibration resistance, and a wider humidity range. There’s also support for ECC RAM, a 10-year operating supply lifecycle, and a 3-year warranty.

Like the Jetson TX2, the TX2i provides dual high-end Denver 2 Arm cores, a quad-core, Cortex-A57 block, and a 256-core Pascal GPU with CUDA libraries for running AI and ML algorithms. Like the TX2, the module also supplies 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 32GB of eMMC 5.1, and 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth. 

Existing Jetson carrier boards work with the TX2i. Aetina just announced an ACE-N310 carrier for all the Jetson modules that matches the TX2i’s industrial temperature support and supports six simultaneous HD cameras.

The Jetson TX2 was recently joined by a more powerful new Jetson Xavier module. The Xavier core, which has already been used in Nvidia’s Drive PX Pegasus autonomous car computer board, features 8x ARMv8.2 cores and a high-end, 512-core Nvidia Volta GPU with tensor cores. It also provides 2x NVDLA deep learning engines and a 7-way VLIW vision chip. The Xavier ships with 16GB 256-bit LPDDR4 and 32GB eMMC 5.1.

Google and Nvidia are not alone in their campaigns to bring cloud AI analytics to the edge. For example, Intel’s Movidius 2 neural network accelerator chip is finding widespread adoption. Presumably, however, any future AIY Projects kits will replace the Movidius 2 with the Edge TPU.
Although Amazon has yet to reveal a neural accelerator of its own, it is perhaps still the leader in the larger race for IoT edge analytics due to the popularity of its AWS IoT stack and its AWS Greengrass software for local processing of cloud analytics software on Linux devices. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also targeting the IoT space with its Arm Linux based Azure Sphere distribution and IoT framework. Azure Sphere will initially target lower-power applications running on Cortex-A7 chips. Future versions, however, may be more robust and may include a homegrown AI component.

Join us at Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Edinburgh, UK on October 22-24, 2018, for 100+ sessions on Linux, Cloud, Containers, AI, Community, and more.

When it comes to running and managing open source in the enterprise, experience-driven advice counts for a lot. It is very likely that your organization already runs open source, but many organizations make the mistake of reacting to the open source ecosystem instead of adopting a proactive strategy that is optimized for success. That’s where the free Enterprise Open Source ebook comes in.

This new 45-page ebook from The Linux Foundation provides a practical approach to establishing an open source strategy by outlining the actions your enterprise can take to accelerate its open source efforts. The information is based on more than two decades of professional, enterprise open source usage and development and will be most beneficial to software engineering executives, development managers, compliance experts, and senior engineers involved in enterprise open source activities.

“The availability of enterprise grade open source software is changing the way organizations develop and deliver products,” the book notes. “The combination of a transparent development community and access to public source code enables organizations to think differently about how they procure, implement, test, deploy, and maintain software. This has the potential to offer a wealth of benefits, including reduced development costs, faster product development, higher code quality standards, and more.”

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Companies today can’t get away with not using open source, says Guy Martin, Director, Open@Autodesk, who recently sat down with us for a deep dive into Autodesk’s engagement with and contributions to the open source community.

“Like any company… we consume a lot of open source,” said Martin, “I was brought in to help Autodesk’s open source strategy in terms of how we contribute back more effectively to open source, how we open source code within our environment, which we want to be a standard — code which is non-differentiating and not strategic IP.”

But it’s not easy for a large company like Autodesk to engage with the open source community. Because they also have industry-leading proprietary solutions, they need to be extra careful with consuming and contributing to open source. They need to understand various licenses to avoid legal complexity, and they must be aware that releasing some code may also expose company IP.  These are areas where all companies must tread carefully, and developers need to be fully confident that they can use code efficiently without dealing with a heavyweight process to get permissions for using or contributing.

“There needs to be a process around what we are going to open source which involves legal at a very early stage,” Martin said.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Announcing the first round of keynote speakers for Open Source Summit and Embedded Linux Conference + OpenIoT Summit Europe!

Keynotes include:

• Patrick Ball, Director of Research, Human Rights Data Analysis Group
• Eric Berlow, Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer, Vibrant Data Inc.
• Linus Torvalds, Creator of Linux & Git, in conversation with Dirk Hohndel, Vice President & Chief Open Source Officer, VMware
• Ed Cable, President & Chief Executive Officer, Mifos Initiative
• Jonathan Corbet, Author, Kernel Developer and Executive Editor, LWN.net
• Johanna Koester, Program Director of Developer Technology and Advocacy, IBM
• Dr. Alexander Nitz, Gravitational-wave Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
• Brenda Romero, Award-Winning Game Designer, Fulbright Scholar & Entrepreneur
• Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation

The conference schedule will be released on August 14, with additional keynote announcements to follow.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

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