NEWS
NEWS
SUSE Goes for the Fork After Red Hat's RHEL Announcement; Solus 4.4; Ubuntu Will Show APT News in the Software Updater App; Nitrux 2.9.0; Ubuntu 22.10 EOL; Nobara Project Releases New Version of Its Modified Fedora Distribution; English Translation of Children's Book Ada & Zangemann; and Steam Client Features Hardware Acceleration on Linux.
SUSE Goes for the Fork After Red Hat's RHEL Announcement
SUSE, the company behind Rancher and SUSE Enterprise Linux, has announced it will invest $10 million to fork publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and develop a RHEL-compatible distribution.
Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, CEO of SUSE, says, "For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open source community. We have a responsibility to defend these values."
He then speaks to the investment SUSE has committed to this effort by saying, "This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensures that customers and community alike are not subjected to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice tomorrow as well as today."
This all started when Red Hat declared that CentOS Stream would be the sole repository for public RHEL source code. However, with CentOS Stream being a rolling release distribution, it's not exactly suitable for business needs.
Gregory Kurtzer, the original creator of CentOS and the man behind the RHEL clone, Rocky Linux, had this to say, "SUSE has embodied the core principles and spirit of open source; CIQ is thrilled to collaborate with SUSE on advancing an open enterprise Linux standard."
There has been no mention of a release date for this fork, as it will take considerable time and effort to pull off.
It might take a few years to see the fruits of SUSE's labor, but with a 10 million dollar investment, you can be sure this is happening.
Solus 4.4 Now Ready for Prime Time
Solus 4.4, aka Harmony, is here and it has plenty to offer users. There are four different versions to choose from (Budgie, Gnome, MATE, and KDE Plasma). Each version includes all the updates that come along with the more recent versions of the desktops (Budgie 10.7.2, Gnome 43.5, MATE 1.27, and KDE Plasma 5.27.5). Although not bleeding edge releases, each of these desktops is stable and filled with new features to enjoy.
One welcome change is that, with KDE Plasma, the Wayland session now works out of the box. However, for MATE users, let it be known that the Solus development team plan on sunsetting this version (because the MATE desktop isn't keeping up with Wayland development). In fact, version 4.4 will be the last to include the MATE option.
As far as software, you'll find Firefox 114.0.1, LibreOffice 7.5.3.2, Thunderbird 102.12.0, Mesa 23.0.3, and Linux kernel 6.3.8 (which supplies an even wider range of hardware support). With the new kernel, there's new and/or improved support for AMD Radeon and Intel Arc, and zram is enabled out of the box for much-improved performance.
You can read more about the Harmony iteration of Solus in the official release notes (https://getsol.us/2023/07/08/solus-4-4-released/) and download an ISO for installation from the official Solus download page (https://getsol.us/download/).
Ubuntu Will Show APT News in the Software Updater App
If you use Ubuntu version 18.04 LTS or newer, you'll soon be seeing APT News in the Software Updater GUI.
If you've not experienced APT News, the idea behind it (according to Canonical) is to give users as much information as possible about recent updates, so they can decide if those updates should be applied or not. Essentially, APT News is an unobtrusive feature that presents timely news, related to installed packages.
The APT News portion of the Software Updater will be presented near the top of the GUI window and can be expanded to read; otherwise, it will default to unexpanded.
The information presented will include things like significant security updates, features, and/or services. This news section also will inform you when regular support has ended for a release, which should be considered a very handy bit of information to know to help users understand it's time to upgrade to a supported release.
For those who would rather not see this news, Canonical has made it possible to disable with the command pro config set apt-news=false
. Otherwise, APT News will be presented in both the terminal and the Software Updater GUI.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you'll get more information if you sign up for Ubuntu Pro, which is free for personal use.
At this time, there is no definitive date when the APT News feature will land in the Software Updater, but I'd expect it sooner, rather than later.
This story was originally reported on OMG! Ubuntu! (https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/07/ubuntu-now-shows-apt-news-in-software-updater).
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Latest Cinnamon Desktop Releases with a Bold New Look
Just in time for the holidays, the developer of the Cinnamon desktop has shipped a new release to help spice up your eggnog with new features and a new look.
-
Armbian 24.11 Released with Expanded Hardware Support
If you've been waiting for Armbian to support OrangePi 5 Max and Radxa ROCK 5B+, the wait is over.
-
SUSE Renames Several Products for Better Name Recognition
SUSE has been a very powerful player in the European market, but it knows it must branch out to gain serious traction. Will a name change do the trick?
-
ESET Discovers New Linux Malware
WolfsBane is an all-in-one malware that has hit the Linux operating system and includes a dropper, a launcher, and a backdoor.
-
New Linux Kernel Patch Allows Forcing a CPU Mitigation
Even when CPU mitigations can consume precious CPU cycles, it might not be a bad idea to allow users to enable them, even if your machine isn't vulnerable.
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 Released
Notify your friends, loved ones, and colleagues that the latest version of RHEL is available with plenty of enhancements.
-
Linux Sees Massive Performance Increase from a Single Line of Code
With one line of code, Intel was able to increase the performance of the Linux kernel by 4,000 percent.
-
Fedora KDE Approved as an Official Spin
If you prefer the Plasma desktop environment and the Fedora distribution, you're in luck because there's now an official spin that is listed on the same level as the Fedora Workstation edition.
-
New Steam Client Ups the Ante for Linux
The latest release from Steam has some pretty cool tricks up its sleeve.
-
Gnome OS Transitioning Toward a General-Purpose Distro
If you're looking for the perfectly vanilla take on the Gnome desktop, Gnome OS might be for you.