- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Mozilla Thunderbird Outlines Plans For 2019: Addressing UI Lags, Performance Issues; Improved 3rd-Party Email Integration, Encryption Usability
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

'For years, Mozilla has largely neglected development of Thunderbird, an email client it owns. But the company, which grew its team to eight staff last year, says it plans to address most of the issues that users have complained about and add six more people to Thunderbird staff this year, it said in a blog post. In the blog post Wednesday, the company said: Our hires are already addressing technical debt and doing a fair bit of plumbing when it comes to Thunderbird's codebase. Our new hires will also be addressing UI-slowness and general performance issues across the application. This is an area where I think we will see some of the best improvements in Thunderbird for 2019, as we look into methods for testing and measuring slowness -- and then put our engineers on architecting solutions to these pain points. Beyond that, we will be looking into leveraging new, faster technologies in rewriting parts of Thunderbird as well as working toward a multi-process Thunderbird. [...] For instance, one area of usability that we are planning on addressing in 2019 is integration improvements in various areas. One of those in better Gmail support, as one of the biggest email providers it makes sense to focus some resources on this area. We are looking at addressing Gmail label support and ensuring that other features specific to the Gmail experience translate well into Thunderbird. We are looking at improving notifications in Thunderbird, by better integrating with each operating system's built-in notification system. By working on this feature Thunderbird will feel more "native" on each desktop and will make managing notifications from the app easier. The UX/UI around encryption and settings will get an overhaul in the coming year, whether or not all this work makes it into the next release is an open question â" but as we grow our team this will be a focus. It is our hope to make encrypting Email and ensuring your private communication easier in upcoming releases, we've even hired an engineer who will be focused primarily on security and privacy.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/01/02/165204 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

GIMP Developers Outline Plan For 2019
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

'The GIMP developers on Wednesday published a blog post in which they look back at the year 2018 (release of GIMP 2.10) and outline the things that they intend to get around this year. From the post: We expect to be shipping 2.10.x updates throughout 2019, starting with the version 2.10.10 currently expected in January/February. This version will feature faster layer groups rendering, smart colorization with the Bucket Fill tool, and various usability improvements. We are also planning the first unstable release of GIMP that will have version 2.99.2, eventually leading up to version 3.0. The prerequisite for releasing that version will be the completion of the space invasion. ZeMarmot project (which can be supported on Patreon or Tipeee) is also planning to focus a bit more on better canvas interactions, as well as animation support improvements, starting from merging existing work. On the GEGL and babl front, we expect to continue working towards better CMYK support and performance.' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/19/01/02/1655210 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

USB Type-C Authentication Program Launched
by Peter Reutemann 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

'With the arrival of USB-C a few years back, plugging into laptops, tablets and smartphones became even easier than before. But there are potential security risks. The USB Type-C Authentication Program launched today aims to address such issues. From a report: The new protocol from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) can be used to validate the authenticity of a cable, charger or hardware at the moment of connection, and stop attacks in their tracks. The USB-IF has chosen DigiCert to operate registrations and certificate authority services for the new specification, which makes use of 128-bit cryptographic-based authentication for certificate format, digital signing, hash and random number generation. "USB Type-C Authentication gives OEMs the opportunity to use certificates that enable host systems to confirm the authenticity of a USB device or USB charger, including such product aspects as the descriptors, capabilities and certification status," said DigiCert in a press release. "This protects against potential damage from non-compliant USB chargers and the risks from maliciously embedded hardware or software in devices attempting to exploit a USB connection."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/19/01/02/2025207 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

wget Command Stores Extended Attributes
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

Here’s something I didn’t know: the “wget” command saves the URL where it got a downloaded file as an extended attribute of the file. This behaviour isn’t mentioned anywhere in the man page or in the info file, that I can find. Unfortunately, this can lead to a security issue where the URL includes confidential password details. And it appears other apps, like Chrome, do a similar thing. <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/02/wget_bug_fix/>

1 0

Banana Pi 24-Core ARM Server Running Ubuntu Breaks Cover
by Peter Reutemann 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

'ARM-based server processors have threatened to take on Intel in the data center for some time but not much has materialized thus far in terms of significant deployments. However, a new breed of low cost ARM server implementations may be in the works with a many-core platform called Banana Pi. The latest Banana Pi device being teased is something very different in the form of a 24-core ARM server that speculation suggests might be sold as a Banana Pi server board or as a finished server product. A video has surfaced that reportedly shows a 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with 32GB of RAM, though the OS only sees 29.4GB of that RAM. The OS is Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS with MATE desktop. Unless the processor used in this device is something unannounced, and that seems unlikely, the chip itself would likely be a SocioNext SC2A11. The same processor is used in the Linaro Developer Box. The demo shows the server fully loaded at 100% CPU utilization building a Linux kernel and reportedly the system also supports NVMe storage as well as TensorFlow workloads for machine learning. Not much else is known about the system at this time but it's an interesting development in the Linux server space to be sure.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/27/0556243 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Requesting The Data You’ve Left Online
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Dec '18

26 Dec '18

Article from a correspondent for the Otago Daily Times <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12182555> about what he discovered when he asked Google, Facebook, the NZ Police, the NZSIS and various credit ratings companies what information they had on him. All except one responded with rather sobering amounts of personal detail.

1 0

LibreHunt: The Linux Distro Counsellor
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Dec '18

23 Dec '18

Here’s a site <https://www.librehunt.org/> which purports to suggest a suitable Linux distro for you, based on your answers to questions about your ability, needs etc. The selection is made from a “curated” list of just 44 distros, to simplify things.

1 0

Word For The Week: “Kaomoji”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

For those who might previously have gone “(＠_＠)” or “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” when they heard this word, here it is all explained: <http://kaomoji.ru/en/>. So now you can be all “\(^ヮ^)/” instead. Actually I came across that word in this article <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/windows-10-will-make-it-easier-to-%…>, which reports that Windows 10 will make it easier to enter these character sequences.

1 0

Bye bye Mongo, Hello Postgres
by Peter Reutemann 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

'In April the Guardian switched off the Mongo DB cluster used to store our content after completing a migration to PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS. This post covers why and how' -- source: https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/nov/30/bye-bye-mongo-hello-postgres Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Facebook Does Not “Sell” Your Data, But ...
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

... they sure as hell have been rather free and easy in sharing it with others <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181219/10370941268/facebooks-latest-pri…>. Seems a bunch of companies have had extra-privileged access to user data on Facebook, and they in turn supplied information about those users back to Facebook. This is how the “People You May Know” feature is able to make links like between different patients of the same psychiatrist, and other things equally dodgy ethically, if not downright illegal (or at least they should be). And this may be how Amazon was able to make a (spurious) association between a book reviewer and the book author, and disallow the review on that basis, just because the reviewer had previously followed the author on Facebook.

1 0

kflickr wants http/ssl
by Barry Marchant 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Hi all, When I try to start kflickr from cmd line I get a msg HTTP request to Flickr.com failed. (msg: SSL is required). Am I missing a pkg? or is there another problem? System is x86-64 running Mageia5 TIA Barry

3 2

How Computers Got Shockingly Good At Recognizing Images
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Some good background on the origins of all the current hubbub over automated image recognition: <https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/how-computers-got-shockingly-good-a…>. A key breakthrough came in 2012, when a team at the University of Toronto combined the “convolutional” neural network concept with a massive deployment of sheer computing power to leave its competitors in the dust in the “ImageNet” image-recognition competition that year. That team are now working at Google. Oh, and the recognition algorithms are now scoring better than many humans in some areas.

2 2

Windows 10 October 2018 Update Is Getting There
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 19 Dec '18

19 Dec '18

Microsoft seems to think its October update is now worth inflicting on “advanced” users <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/windows-10-october-2018-update-now-…>. The more general populace will have to wait a bit longer. I wonder when we’ll see the November update ...

1 0

You’ve Heard Of The Wayback Machine, Now Meet Archive Team
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

You probably already know about the Wayback machine <https://archive.org/>. You might think of them as the “respectable” side of trying to save snapshots of old websites: they respect robots.txt and takedown demands. Well, now meet the, um, more “wild and woolly” side with the same mission: Archive Team <https://archiveteam.org/>. They describe themselves as ... a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. Since 2009 this variant force of nature has caught wind of shutdowns, shutoffs, mergers, and plain old deletions - and done our best to save the history before it's lost forever. Along the way, we've gotten attention, resistance, press and discussion, but most importantly, we've gotten the message out: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I just heard about them because they were trying to save all the X-rated blogs on tumblr.com before these disappeared, on orders of new owner Verizon. The company tried to block them from achieving this mission, but they found a way around the block (NSFW language) <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181216/22420341242/as-final-fuck-you-to…>.

1 1

MIPS Goes Open Source
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

'Junko Yoshida, writing for EETimes: Without question, 2018 was the year RISC-V genuinely began to build momentum among chip architects hungry for open-source instruction sets. That was then. By 2019, RISC-V won't be the only game in town. Wave Computing (Campbell, Calif.) announced Monday (Dec. 17) that it is putting MIPS on open source, with MIPS Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and MIPS' latest core R6 available in the first quarter of 2019. Art Swift, hired by Wave this month as president of its MIPS licensing business, described the move as critical to accelerate the adoption of MIPS in an ecosystem. Going open source is "a big plan" that Wave CEO Derek Meyer, a MIPS veteran, has been quietly fostering since Wave acquired MIPS Technologies in June, explained Swift. Swift himself is a MIPS alumnus who worked at the company as a vice president of marketing and business development for four years. Wave, which styles itself as a tech startup poised to bring "AI and deep learning from the datacenter to the edge," sees MIPS as a key to advancing Wave's AI into a host of uses and applications. Included in MIPS instruction sets are extensions such as SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) and DSP. Swift promised that MIPS will bring to the open-source community "commercial-ready" instruction sets with "industrial-strength" architecture. "Chip designers will have opportunities to design their own cores based on proven and well tested instruction sets for any purposes," said Swift.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/17/1954247 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 2

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Comes To Windows 10 in the Form of WLinux Enterprise
by Peter Reutemann 18 Dec '18

18 Dec '18

'Mark Wilson writes: Earlier in the year open-source software startup Whitewater Foundry brought WLinux to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Not content with creating the first native Linux distribution for WSL, the company has now gone a step further, targeting enterprise users with WLinux Enterprise. Whitewater Foundry says that WLinux Enterprise is the first product to support the industry-standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Windows Sub' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/12/17/2041255 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '18

17 Dec '18

'With Microsoft's decision to end development of its own Web rendering engine and switch to Chromium, control over the Web has functionally been ceded to Google. That's a worrying turn of events, given the company's past behavior. Chrome itself has about 72 percent of the desktop-browser market share. Edge has about 4 percent. Opera, based on Chromium, has another 2 percent. The abandoned, no-longer-updated Internet Explorer has 5 percent, and Safari—only available on macOS—about 5 percent. When Microsoft's transition is complete, we're looking at a world where Chrome and Chrome-derivatives take about 80 percent of the market, with only Firefox, at 9 percent, actively maintained and available cross-platform. The mobile story has stronger representation from Safari, thanks to the iPhone, but overall tells a similar story. Chrome has 53 percent directly, plus another 6 percent from Samsung Internet, another 5 percent from Opera, and another 2 percent from Android browser. Safari has about 22 percent, with the Chinese UC Browser sitting at about 9 percent. That's two-thirds of the mobile market going to Chrome and Chrome derivatives. In terms of raw percentages, Google won't have quite as big a lock on the browser space as Microsoft did with Internet Explorer—Internet Explorer 6 peaked at around 80 percent, and all versions of Internet Explorer together may have reached as high as 95 percent. But Google's reach is, in practice, much greater: not only is the Web a substantially more important place today than it was in the early 2000s, but also there's a whole new mobile Web that operates in addition to the desktop Web.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-t… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1

Do Alternative Software Licenses Represent Open Source's 'Midlife Crisis'?
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'"it is clear to me that open source -- now several decades old and fully adult -- is going through its own midlife crisis," writes Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill. [O]pen source business models are really tough, selling software-as-a-service is one of the most natural of them, the cloud service providers are really good at it -- and their commercial appetites seem boundless. And, like a new cherry red two-seater sports car next to a minivan in a suburban driveway, some open source companies are dealing with this crisis exceptionally poorly: they are trying to restrict the way that their open source software can be used. These companies want it both ways: they want the advantages of open source -- the community, the positivity, the energy, the adoption, the downloads -- but they also want to enjoy the fruits of proprietary software companies in software lock-in and its concomitant monopolistic rents. If this were entirely transparent (that is, if some bits were merely being made explicitly proprietary), it would be fine: we could accept these companies as essentially proprietary software companies, albeit with an open source loss-leader. But instead, these companies are trying to license their way into this self-contradictory world: continuing to claim to be entirely open source, but perverting the license under which portions of that source are available. Most gallingly, they are doing this by hijacking open source nomenclature. Of these, the laughably named commons clause is the worst offender (it is plainly designed to be confused with the purely virtuous creative commons), but others...are little better... "[T]heir business model isn't their community's problem, and they should please stop trying to make it one," Cantrill writes, adding letter that "As we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I'm honestly not sure that that's a bad thing)..." He also points out that "Even though the VC that led the last round wants to puke into a trashcan whenever they hear it, business models like 'support', 'services' and 'training' are entirely viable!" Jay Kreps, Co-founder of @confluentinc, has posted a rebuttal on Medium. "How do you describe a license that lets you run, modify, fork, and redistribute the code and do virtually anything other than offer a competing SaaS offering of the product? I think Bryan's sentiment may be that it should be called the Evil Proprietary Corruption of Open Source License or something like that, but, well, we disagree."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/15/2221232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1

The Last Independent Mobile OS
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'The year was 2010 and the future of mobile computing was looking bright. The iPhone was barely three years old, Google's Android had yet to swallow the smartphone market whole, and half a dozen alternative mobile operating systems -- many of which were devoutly open source -- were preparing for launch. Eight years on, you probably haven't even heard of most of these alternative mobile operating systems, much less use them. Today, Android and iOS dominate the global smartphone market and account for 99.9 percent of mobile operating systems. Even Microsoft and Blackberry, longtime players in the mobile space with massive revenue streams, have all but left the space. Then there's Jolla, the small Finnish tech company behind Sailfish OS, which it bills as the "last independent alternative mobile operating system." Jolla has had to walk itself back from the edge of destruction several times over the course of its seven year existence, and each time it has emerged battered, but more determined than ever to carve out a spot in the world for a truly independent, open source mobile operating system. Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/12/16/0758215 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1

Tesla Model 3 Modded To Run Ubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

'CleanTechnica is reporting that someone hacked the infotainment system of a Tesla Model 3 and got root access and installed Linux distribution Ubuntu. Redditor trsohmers is able to show an Ubuntu command shell running alongside the Tesla OS. Since Tesla supports a browser that allows you to visit any site, could this be leveraged into remote hacks? It could also mean that if Tesla sells a long-range version of the Model 3, but limits it via software, people might try to remove the block. One could potentially get a 15-day trial of full self-driving for free and extend that 15-day window forever. At least he had some guts messing with $50,000 hardware that phones home all the time. Will Tesla brick his car to attempt to disprove the security issue?' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/15/0355250 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Evelyn Berezin Has Died
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

Among her many achievements: While IBM had been producing word processors of a sort for a few years when Berezin developed hers in 1968, she was the first to use semiconductor chips to make a true computing system for this purpose. IBM's solution used a typewriter and a magnetic tape drive and was much less efficient to use. <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/evelyn-berezin-creator-of-the-first…>

1 0

Automatically Generating Fake Photos
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

Look at the photo grid about halfway down this article <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/14/ai_created_photos/>: as I understand it, the main facial features are taken from the photos down the leftmost column; these are then resynthesized into a new orientation, expression and other embellishments (including hair colour/style, gender and apparent age!) to match the photos across the topmost row. Or something like that. Apparently, Nvidia is planning to publish its source code. Kids, you may not be able to afford the hardware to try this at home ...

1 0

Windows Server 2019 Officially Supports OpenSSH For the First Time
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '18

13 Dec '18

'Microsoft said in 2015 that it would build OpenSSH, a set of utilities that allow clients and servers to connect securely, into Windows, while also making contributions to its development. Neowin: Since then, the company has delivered on that promise in recent releases of Windows 10, being introduced as a feature-on-demand in version 1803. However, Windows Server hadn't received the feature until now, at least not in an officially supported way -- Windows Server version 1709 included it as a pre-release feature. But that's finally changed, as Microsoft this week revealed that Windows Server 2019, which was made available (again) in November, includes OpenSSH as a supported feature.' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/18/12/13/1947257 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

2 1

In a Test, 3D Model of a Head Was Able To Fool Facial Recognition System of Several Popular Android Smartphones
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '18

13 Dec '18

'Forbes magazine tested four of the most popular handsets running Google's operating systems and Apple's iPhone to see how easy it'd be to break into them with a 3D-printed head. All of the Android handsets opened with the fake. Apple's phone, however, was impenetrable. From the report: For our tests, we used my own real-life head to register for facial recognition across five phones. An iPhone X and four Android devices: an LG G7 Linq, a Samsung S9, a Samsung Note 8 and a OnePlus 6. I then held up my fake head to the devices to see if the device would unlock. For all four Android phones, the spoof face was able to open the phone, though with differing degrees of ease. The iPhone X was the only one to never be fooled. There were some disparities between the Android devices' security against the hack. For instance, when first turning on a brand new G7 Linq, LG actually warns the user against turning facial recognition on at all. No surprise then that, on initial testing, the 3D-printed head opened it straightaway. [...] The OnePlus 6 came with neither the warnings of the other Android phones nor the choice of slower but more secure recognition.' -- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/18/12/13/1438218 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

1 0

Linux Kernel Developers Discuss Dropping x32 Support
by Peter Reutemann 12 Dec '18

12 Dec '18

'It was just several years ago that the open-source ecosystem began supporting the x32 ABI, but already kernel developers are talking of potentially deprecating the support and for it to be ultimately removed.. [...] While the x32 support was plumbed through the Linux landscape, it really hasn't been used much. Kernel developers are now discussing the future of the x32 ABI due to the maintenance cost involved in still supporting this code but with minimal users. Linus Torvalds is in favor of sunsetting x32 and many other upstream contributors in favor of seeing it deprecated and removed.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/12/12/1336210 More information on x32 ABI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

3 2