News briefs for January 28, 2019.

Raspberry Pi announces its Computer Module 3+ (CM3+) is now available for $25. The CM3+ is the "newest version of our flexible board for industrial applications offers over ten times the ARM performance, twice the RAM capacity, and up to eight times the Flash capacity of the original Compute Module." The company also has released a refreshed Compute Module Development kit. The CM3+ will be available until at least January 2026.

MakuluLinux Core is now live. This marks the first release for 2019, and the OS is designed for "extreme ease of use and comfort". With this version, "The Optional Gesture System will let users navigate their computers with barely even having to touch a keyboard if that is their wish. The more Traditional users don't have to enable gestures, they can simply use the operating system in much the same way they are used to navigating Linux. Core Also offers many 'Instant Access' features like a one click wallpaper changer or one click 3D option, easily control every aspect of your OS with a simply few clicks." Go here for download links and more details.

Nextcloud introduces a Virtual Drive in the Nextcloud Desktop Client. According to the press release, the virtual drive "replaces the traditional files in a locally synchronized folder with a virtual view on all files the user has, available on demand and with a smart caching strategy." At this time, the virtual drive is available as a tech preview and is not recommended for daily use. In addition, Nextcloud today announced "it more than doubled its customer base amidst massive growth of website visits and interest in compliance solutions to secure and control data during the course of 2018." It also is launching a new Customer Advisory Board, which will be kickstarting on March 12, 2019, on Enterprise Day in Stuttgart.

Linux 5.0-rc4 is out. Linus writes that "things look pretty normal, and nothing huge stands out." He also mentions that "Size-wise, rc4 has a bit more commits that the last few releases have had at this point, but it's not even remotely a new record size, and not all that much of an outlier anyway. I _do_ hope that things will start to calm down for rc5 onwards."

The LXQt team recently released LXQt 0.14.0, the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment. With this release working toward LXQt 1.0.0, new features include split view is added to pcmanfm-qt, the "Desktop can have icons like Computer, Network, User-Dir and Trash", "custom terminal margins and history-based tab switching are added to qterminal" and more. See the release notes for all the changes, and you can download it from download.lxqt.org or GitHub.