linux

There have been attempts at making and selling source open source-friendly devices, from desktops to tablets to, of course, smartphones. There are even open source and privacy-oriented smart speakers. All that's missing is a smartwatch, one that's not just a smartwatch OS slapped in proprietary hardware. Rising to that challenge is Pine64, creators of a line of ARM-powered open source friendly computing products. While it says that PineTime smartwatch is just a side project, interest could catapult it to an actual product in the very near future.

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Ever since Huawei was put on the US' blacklist, the future of its products has been put into question. The company has more or less bragged about its self-sufficiency in terms of hardware components but software, especially mobile, is a different story. The company has been reportedly looking for alternative operating systems to put on its devices and it seems it may have settled on Linux for some of its laptops being sold in China.

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It seems that the dreams of an open source Linux phone are starting to pick up steam again. Purism has just announced its batched schedule of Librem 5 shipments and now the folks over at PINE64 also have some good news for Linux fans. Although a final product is far from ready, prototypes will be shipped to a limited number of Linux developers soon, not only proving that the PinePhone does exist but also to get the ball rolling towards a 2020 full product launch.

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Few phones can claim to be running a "full" version of Linux. Even fewer could boast of having reached the consumer market at all. That extremely short list includes the OpenMoko and the Nokia N900 and N9. By the end of the month, they will be joined by Purism's Librem 5 whose origins and development, not to mention the drama behind them, could fill pages. The journey isn't over yet, however, as the process to get those privacy-respecting phones into users' hands is going to be a story in itself, spread out across batches all the way to the second quarter of 2020.

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The Galaxy Note 10 has just broken cover and, just like its predecessors, it has something new for Samsung DeX users. To be fair, the convenience of being able to not just control your phone but access the "DeXtop" from any Windows or Mac computer is a major step forward, but it may have fallen short of what fans of the platform have been expecting or even requesting for a few months now. Samsung DeX definitely has a lot of potential but Samsung may have missed the boat on that one this year.

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Despite the growing number of evidence and cases of mobile software that blatantly violate user privacy, it's almost impossible to imagine life these days without a smartphone. While hardcore privacy advocates might be able to ditch their mobile device for good, there are some that try to promise the best of both mobile and privacy worlds. One of those is Purism who has finally finalized the specs and features of its crowdfunded privacy-respecting Librem 5 phone.

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The cat is out of the bag and Steve Ballmer’s worst nightmare has just come true. Microsoft, once the most outspoken enemy of Linux and open source software, not only loves it but may have just become dependent on it. Its cloud computing platform Azure has long offered customers the choice between Linux and Windows virtual machines.

Now a Microsoft engineer has just admitted that Azure customers have preferred using Linux instead of Windows servers. But what is a clear win for Linux in this market could also negatively affect other aspects of the operating system, most especially “The Linux Desktop” everyone loves talking about.

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Android has the lion's share of the smartphone market partly because of the wide variety of devices available and the wide range of prices they carry. There may also be one other factor influencing those numbers: early obsolescence of devices. Android phones are guaranteed two to three years of software updates and that is if they're lucky. If you have a five-year-old or older phone that's still working, you can only hope there's an Android ROM for that or, if you're more adventurous, support from Linux-based postmarketOS.

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Due in part to the feedback given to the group over the weekend and because of their connections with Valve, Canonical did an about-face today. They've suggested that feedback from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community led them to change their plan and will "build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS. Whether this will change Valve's future with Ubuntu Steam, we'll see.

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The majority of the time that Linux gets dragged in the spotlight is when there are high-profile security bugs that remind people how Linux practically runs the world behind the scenes. This time, however, the controversy is ironically around one of the operating system's weakest points: gaming. A Valve developer just "announced" on Twitter that the company will be dropping support for future releases of Ubuntu and, as expected, it has driven Linux users into a slight frenzied panic.

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With the focus given to Huawei's US ban, there has also been some discussion about Android, Google's hold on the platform, and truly free (as in freedom) alternatives to the world's biggest mobile OS. There has never been a shortage of alternative mobile platforms, many of them revolving around Linux, but there has been a dearth of companies making devices that run and support such platforms. Pine64 is one of those few and it is now sharing some development in its quest to make a privacy-respecting open source smartphone.

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Microsoft Windows is the most used operating system in the world, at least when talking about desktop and laptop computers. In addition to the usual consumer and enterprise customers, it is also used in government offices and computers. That may have been the status quo but more and more governments are looking to other solutions for one reason or another. The latest to start that journey is South Korea, whose government is planning to migrate its computers to the open source operating system Linux.

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