Kernel 5.2-rc2 Is Out, Ubuntu Security Team's New Podcast, the E Foundation's Refurbished Phones with /e/ OS Available Soon, Mozilla Announces Firefox 68 Beta 6 Test Day and PostgreSQL 12 Beta Released
News briefs for May 28, 2019.
Kernel 5.2-rc2 was released over the weekend. Linus Torvalds writes: "Hey, what's to say? Fairly normal rc2, no real highlights - I think most of the diff is the SPDX updates. Who am I kidding? The highlight of the week was clearly Finland winning the ice hockey world championships. So once you sober up from the celebration, go test".
The Ubuntu Security Team announces its new Ubuntu Security Podcast. The weekly podcast will cover "the various security updates that have been published across the Ubuntu releases, describing the technical details of both the security vulnerabilities as well as the fixes involved". The podcast is available from iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or RSS.
You can send the E Foundation your phone if you'd like a Google-free Android. FOSS Bytes reports that with the E Foundation's /e/ OS, "the main goal of /e/ is to take away Google's control over the device. It doesn't include any Google apps that you'd normally find on Android phones. Other than UI tweaks and pre-loading all the essential apps like Browser, Contacts, Calendar, Messaging, it even has an App Store of its own. You can also have an /e/ account, and take advantage of its cloud storage service, mail, and search." The E Foundation will soon be selling refurbished devices with the OS here, and according to Foss Bytes, you will be able to send them your phone, and they will install it for around $50. Or, you can flash your phone yourself and install the beta ROM, which you can download from here. It currently supports 81 devices from Google, Motorola, Huawei, Samsung and more.
Mozilla announces Friday, May 31, 2019, will be a test day for Firefox 68 Beta 6. The test will focus on Activity Stream and Pin Firefox shortcut to taskbar for Windows 10. If you're interested, see this etherpad for instructions. No experience with testing is needed, and you can join Mozilla at #qa on IRC.
PostgreSQL 12 Beta was released last week. This is the first beta release of version 12, and it includes previews of all the new features that will be available in the final version of PostgreSQL 12. The announcement notes that "In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 12 in your database systems to help us eliminate any bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 12 Beta 1 in your production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release." See the Beta Testing Page for more information.
Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.
Recent Articles
