Bits of Linux: 2015 #5

In this edition: Record breaking numbers in Linux kernel development, massive privacy breaches discovered, what people miss when away from Linux, an open source tool to navigate your shell history and more.

📰 Articles / Videos

Record Breaking Linux Kernel Development Cycle

The Linux Foundation released the latest edition of their Who Writes Linux kernel development report. The reporting period, which covers 8 kernel releases up until version 3.18 (December 7, 2014), has been very busy with many significant changes and seen a continued growth of the kernel developer and user communities.

Ars Technica highlighted some of the impressive record breaking numbers from the report:

1,963 first-time developers have contributed to Linux from versions 3.11 to 3.18.
On average 185 changes have been accepted into the kernel per day.
80% of all kernel development is done by paid developers.
Each Linux release includes more than 10,000 patches from more than 1,400 developers and more than 200 corporations.

It's good to see continued growth and also that a lot of the work is being compensated for. As pointed out in the previous Bits of Linux edition work on open source software needs funding to make it more stable, secure and fun to use.

Linux 4.0-rc1 Released

In related news the latest Linux kernel release changed the major version number to 4. Linus asked and the majority of respondents wanted this change rather than going high on 3.x releases. In his typical manner Linus smashed the semantic versioning counter argument:

So far, the arguments against it seem to have been "major numebr should go with a major new feature or breaking of compatibility", which just shows how little people know. We don't break compatibility, and we haven't done feature-based releases since basically forever.

Top Issues Facing Linux and Open Source

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, gave his State of Linux talk at the Collaboration Summit 2015. As usual Jim sums up the highlights of the past year and shares his thoughts on the major issues facing Linux and Open Source in general in the future. He gives Internet security special importance and calls for companies to invest in improving Open Source software. You can watch his full talk below.

Security / Privacy

Spyware Discovered in Hard Drive Firmware

Reuters reported that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has come up with a method to hide spyware in the firmware of computer hard drives. This was among other spying programs recently discovered by Russian researchers from the Kaspersky Lab.

The infographic below shows which countries were affected most (Iran, Russia, Pakistan) and in which sectors computers were infected.

Spyware in Hard Drive Firmware Infographic — Source: Reuters

Lenovo Shipped Laptops with Superfish Adware

Another huge privacy breach that came to light recently goes by the name of Superfish, an adware that came pre-installed on a lot of notebook models sold by Lenovo.

While this specific problem affects computers with a Windows OS, the fact that a big manufacturer like Lenovo sells computers that may expose private information to random attackers is a huge concern for every computer user and a massive violation of privacy.

I can only back the call to action by Redditor Katana__ to contact Lenovo on this issue and tell them what you think about this practice:

Please take the time to contact Lenovo and give them a piece of your mind on the behalf of those who just won't understand the implications of Lenovo's actions here.

Privacy Tools Essential for CITIZENFOUR

The Edward Snowden Documentary CITIZENFOUR received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars. To create a work like that under such hostile conditions the film makers relied, among others, on 7 essential privacy tools named by director Laura Poitras and introduced by Electronic Frontier Foundation here.

💬 Discussions / Q&A

What People Miss when away from Linux

maruwan asked on Reddit what features Linux users miss most when away from Linux, i. e. working with inferior operating systems. Among the features of top voted answers are:

Package management - a no-brainer if you know what dependency hell is like on systems without it.
No splash screens that tell you to wait while installing updates when booting Linux.
The ability to trust software that you are installing.
"Always on top" feature, for any window.
A decent filesystem.
And many more ...

Chromebooks vs. Low-cost Windows Laptops Build Quality

Redditor fearocracy asked a bit suggestively whether Chromebooks have better build quality in general than their Windows counterparts. As others I think it matters more who the OEM is and how much the device costs than what operating system the device is running.

The expectation that a Linux laptop would offer better hardware for the same price of a Windows laptop, because Linux is free is not met in reality. I don't think price is a strong argument when it comes to choosing an operating system. In the end, what is best for you depends on your requirements.

💻 Linux Devices

Newly added specs for the following Chromebook models:

With these additions a milestone of 50 Chromebook specs on this Website was reached. You can compare the Chromebooks here.

In other news Digitimes reported that Google plans to push a 2-in-1 Chromebook, i. e. a hybrid device where you can detach the screen and use it like a tablet where it runs Android and with the screen attached like a laptop running Chrome OS.

📖 Open Source Projects / Resources

HSTR - Shell History Suggest Box

Ctrl+R and !! are just 2 examples that make working in Bash a lot more convenient. Both of these commands look into your shell history as does the HSTR command line utility. HSTR aims to make Bash command completion easier, offers history management and bookmarking of your favorite command.

Chrome OS Filesystem SFTP App

The Chrome OS Filesystem SFTP App enables you to access SFTP servers directly from the Files app. If you're a Chromebook user who needs to access files on remote machines, this should be an interesting project.

Linux Kernel Changes

Kernelnewbies is a community of aspiring Linux kernel developers. One of the useful resources they offer is the Linux Changes page, where changes introduced in the latest stable kernel release are documented in accessible language. For previous versions go to the overview of changelogs.

😎 Fun Stuff

Source Code Disclosure of every possible project

Shpend K. reported Mozilla bug #949446 stating that:

Bascilly, by going to http://viewvc.svn.mozilla.org/vc/projects/ you can view the source code of every website and project of mozilla. Not sure if this is supposed to be like this, or this is a major information disclosure vulnerability?

Not sure whether Shpend was trolling or being serious, but unsurprisingly the status of this issue was set to RESOLVED WONTFIX.

Why I hate Chromebooks

Redditor BoredAatWork gave a short account on why he/she hates Chromebooks:

After being on the fence for a long time, I finally jumped in and got a Asus c300. There had been one thing that has bugged me extremely. About 4 months ago I spent over $1,000 building a desktop computer. Since I bought the chromebook, I haven't turned it on. $1,000 waisted..

For those still doubting that you can use Chromebooks to actually get things done, listen to what other people say about them and if you have a specific question about performance and similar things /r/chromeos is a good place to ask.

Bash Fork Bomb T-Shirt White Print

How to create a fork bomb to crash a computer system? Use this cryptic bash command:

:(){ :|:& };:

A t-shirt with the code for a Bash fork bomb printed in a white monospace font.

Bits of Linux is a bi-weekly round-up of interesting articles, discussions, Q&A, open source software projects, new Linux devices and reviews as well as a dose of fun stuff related to Linux, that have been published or I have discovered during the past 2 weeks. To not miss posts in this series, subscribe to the Bits of Linux RSS feed.

March 02, 2015

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