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Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus!
Ubuntu 17.04, code named Zesty Zapus; Zesty, is an adjective for ‘great enthusiasm and energy’, while Zapus, is the genus name of a North-American mouse that is said to be the only mammal on Earth that has up to 18 teeth in total.
Zesty Zapus
Ubuntu 17.04 or Zesty Zapus final release is available from April 13, 2017 and let’s see what’s new in Zesty Zapus!
Updated Kernel
Ubuntu 17.04 Alpha 2 was released on the 26th of January and all the opt-in flavors are powered by an updated kernel, version 4.9.5.
The final Zesty Zapus includes the Linux kernel 4.10, which is known to enhance the performance of Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen systems.
Driverless Printing
We all know that printers are not that friendly with Linux. Vivaldi Snapshot 1.3.537.5 Brings Improved Proprietary Media Support on Zesty Zapus.
Ubuntu 17.04 is bringing the support for IPP Everywhere. It’s a new protocol that allows personal computers and mobile devices to find and print to networked and USB printers without using vendor-specific software.
Most of the printers sold these days already support IPP protocol. This means that you don’t need to install drivers for printer from XYZ manufacturer. You can search for it on the network and use it for printing.
Unity 8
Ubuntu users have been hearing a lot about Unity 8 for the last couple of years but so far Unity 8 is nowhere to be seen officially. Of course, there are ways you can run Unity 8 in Ubuntu releases already but the fact is that you should use them only if you are Linux-savvy.
Zesty Zapus does bring this experimental build of Unity 8. Though Unity 7 will still be the default desktop environment, you can select between Unity 7 and Unity 8 at the login screen.
Unity 8
Note: Unity 8 won’t be the default desktop on Ubuntu 17.04 or 17.10 or 18.04. Ubuntu Unity is dead and GNOME will be the default desktop environment starting Ubuntu 18.04.
Swap File Instead of Swap Partition
Canonical’s Dimitri John Ledkov announced that Ubuntu 17.04 will use Swap files by default on non-LVM installs.
He explains that, quite simply, the need for a separate swap partition that’s (at least) twice the RAM size “makes little sense” on systems where memory isn’t limited.
For a common, general, machine most of the time this swap will not be used at all. Or if said swap space is in use but is of inappropriate size, changing it in-place in retrospect is painful.
Ubuntu17.04 Zesty Zapus will use swap files by default. Sizing of swap files is different to the swap partitions and typically use no more than 5% of free disk space (or 2048MB of RAM), which is another potential benefit.
The change does not apply to those who install Ubuntu using the LVM (Logical Volume Manager) option.
What’s important here is that some form of swap is maintained, it doesn’t matter how the swap is implemented. Anyone who’s ever used or set-up a ‘no swap’ system only to then run out of memory will know it’s not a pretty experience!
More Snaps
Canonical’s Will Cooke said that “by 18.04 everything will be Snaps and Unity 8 all the way down” and Engineering director Kevin Gunn, added that, “Canonical has an aggressive internal goal to try to get a usable all-snaps based image for Unity 8 out by 17.04”. So, although Snaps wouldn’t be replacing apt anytime soon.
32-bit PowerPC Support is Dropped
You might not have realized but Ubuntu till now used to support the aging 32-bit PowerPC architecture. As Debian has decided to drop this support, naturally Ubuntu followed the suit and has decided to drop the support for 32-bit PowerPC too, starting from Ubuntu 17.04.
ubuntu 17.04
As you may have already noticed that most of these updates discussed above are found in Desktop version. So, in general, a common question automatically comes up, ‘isn’t there any changes for the new Ubuntu 17.04 server version?’ Well, of course Ubuntu released many updates for the Ubuntu 17.04 server version as well. Ubuntu Server 17.04 also comes with these following updates,
Qemu 2.8
Qemu has been updated to the 2.8 release.
Libvirt 2.5
Libvirt has been updated to version 2.5. For administrators worth to consider is that depending on the system setup and huge page size availability the specification of a page size for huge pages in a guest xml can now be mandatory.
LXD 2.12
LXD, now at version 2.12, introduces support for GPU passthrough, including NVidia CUDA. A new storage API has also been added, allowing for the creation of multiple storage pools which can then be used to host containers or independent storage volumes. And a number of new images have been added, including support for Ubuntu Core 16.
DPDK
Ubuntu 17.04 includes the latest release of DPDK, 16.11.1.
As a tech preview DPDK is now also available for ppc64el. This includes the latest improvements made in version 16.11.1 in general, but also further improvements to enable the i40e PMD and vfio-pci scanning on spapr platforms.
OpenStack Ocata
Ubuntu 17.04 includes the latest OpenStack release. OpenStack Ocata is also provided via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive for OpenStack Ocata for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users.
Cloud-Init
Cloud-init has been updated to be stricter when identifying the cloud platform that it is running on and searching for data sources.
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
One nice thing for home users is the availability of driverless printing. Driverless printing will allow users to install just about any modern IPP Everywhere or Apple AirPrint-compatible printer via USB or network without installing a printer-specific driver. This is a big plus to folks who don’t like going through the rigmarole of finding and setting up print drivers for CUPS.
Other updates to the 17.04 release include an upgrade to LibreOffice 5.3, and a week view in the calendar. Standard-issue desktop apps will also migrate to Gnome 3.24, with the exceptions to Terminal, Evolution (email client), the Nautilus file manager, and Software (app store).
If you want to roll with an updated kernel in 16.04 like the 4.10 kernel that was recently released, you can use the Linux-mainline PPA to get newer kernel packages. If you choose to go this route, do so with care and be sure to keep the kernel updated because Ubuntu doesn’t officially support kernels from the mainline PPA. Things can and will break by using an unsupported kernel.
Asif Raihan April 23rd, 2017
Posted In: Debian, Linux, New products, News, Open Source, Operating Systems, ubuntu
Tags: linux, New products, News, Open Source, OS, ubuntu
Specs for first Intel 3D XPoint SSD: so-so transfer speed, awesome random I/O | Ars Technica
UPDATE 3/25/17 JJW:
The M.2 Optane won’t be readily available until later this year or likely 2018 – but it’s a good space to watch, as in our experience the internal interconnect technology and architecture will surely improve, to catch up with the underlying 3D X-Point silicon technology.
j
joe February 10th, 2017
Posted In: Open Source, Technology
Tags: Open Source, Technology
A Sad Day – the Demise of Persona / BrowserID
A Sad Day – Mozille BrowserID / Persona Dies
It’s a sad day – the best of the federated Authentication Providers, without its own agenda or privacy issues, has shut down, due to the public’s apparent lack of interest and / or awareness.
Mozilla Persona, which started life several years ago as BrowserID, was the only one of the OpenAuth-based Authentication providers that didn’t insist on being logged in to a commercial site in order to be authenticated by proxy at the time – with all the privacy issues that entails.
Although it’s no secret that The Public is notorious for not caring about (or not even being aware of) privacy (or at least sacrificing it in favor of convenience), it’s unfortunate that the Mozilla Foundation has chosen not to spend the time, effort, and money to educate the public, as it has chosen to do with its other products.
Here are some relevant excerpts from the shutdown page:
FAQs
A website I use requires Persona for login, what should I do?
You will need to contact the site owner and ask about their plans for migrating away from Persona.
Mozilla staff can find more information about the progress of migrating internal sites on this mana page.
Why is persona.org being shut down?
Our metrics show that usage of persona.org is low, and has not grown over the last two years.
Hosting using vps hosting plans at the level of security and availability required for an authentication system is no small undertaking, and Mozilla can no longer justify dedicating limited resources to this project. We will do everything we can to shut it down in a graceful and responsible manner.
What will happen in the meantime?
Between now and November 30th, 2016, Mozilla will continue to support the Persona service at a maintenance level: Security issues will be resolved in a timely manner and the services will be kept online, but we do not expect to develop or deploy any new features. Support will continue to be available on the dev-identity mailing list and in the #services-dev IRC channel.
All websites that rely on Persona will need to migrate to another means of authentication during this time.
What happens after that?
On or after November 30th, 2016, the services hosted by Mozilla on persona.org will be taken offline. This includes the persona.org website, the javascript shim, the fallback IdP and identity bridges, and the hosted verifier.
Mozilla will retain control of the persona.org domain and will not transfer it to a third party. This is a security measure to protect websites that have not completed their migration away from the service.
All user data stored on the persona.org services will be destroyed, including registered email addresses and password hashes. Since the privacy of user data is of utmost importance to Mozilla, we will not transfer it to any third parties.
What about the code?
All of Persona’s code — core, bridges, shims, and more — is open source and remains available on github. Though this marks the end of Mozilla’s direct involvement in Persona, we encourage others to continue learning from and building upon our work.
Migration Suggestions and Guidelines
The following alternative login options are available for sites migrating away from Persona. We will continue to update this page throughout the year.
We intentionally designed Persona to expose email addresses rather than opaque identifiers, which should ease the transition to other systems that provide verified email addresses.
Mozilla-hosted sites may find additional, staff-login-specific migration options on the internal mana page.
Delegated Authentication Providers
Many large email and service providers offer delegated login for third-party applications, including Google, Facebook and GitHub. Indeed, we have found that many sites currently using Persona also offer login via one or more of these services. While these services do not offer equivalently-strong privacy guarantees to Persona, they are a convenient and secure choice for users since they avoid the creation of a site-specific password.
We plan to offer delegated authentication with Firefox Accounts some time in 2016. If you’re interested in adding Firefox Accounts as a login option to your site, please reach out to us on the dev-fxacct mailing list.
Site-Specific Accounts
Many web frameworks offer password-based user accounts functionality out-of-the-box. Although it requires users to create and remember yet another password, it can be a good choice for users who do not have (or do not wish to share) an account with a delegated authentication provider.
For existing users who previously authenticated with Persona, you could consider authenticating them through Persona again to confirm their email address, then prompting them to create a site-specific password.
Passwordless Email Login
As an alternative to setting a site-specific password, you can allow users to login directly via email link, as described in this article and implemented by libraries like passwordless. This can avoid the security implications of users having to create and manage another password, and may be a good fallback option when used in combination with delegated authentication providers.
Self-hosting Persona
Since the code for Persona is open-source, it would be possible for reliers to self-host an instance of the service that is dedicated to their own use.
This approach is not recommended most reliers. Persona has a large and complex codebase that has not seen significant development in several years, and Mozilla will not provide security or maintenance updates after 30th November 2016.
More?
We encourage affected reliers to document any alternative solutions here and to discuss them on the dev-identity mailing list, so that others can benefit from their experience.
- The Portier open source project attempts to replicate much of Persona’s user experience, while being easy to self-host, even on the free tier of PaaS providers like Heroku. Similar to Persona, Portier supports identity-bridging to Gmail. It falls back to passwordless-style login links for everyone else.
Taken from:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/Persona_Shutdown_Guidelines_for_Reliers
We at eRacks wil be looking into Portier for our own usage, as well.
j
joe January 9th, 2017
Posted In: authentication, News, Open Source
Tags: Firefox, Mozilla, Privacy, Software Freedom
8TB Western Digital Red and RedPro now available
8TB WD Red and RedPro drives are now available in the dropdowns on all eRacks NAS Systems, and are available on select other eRacks systems, and of course all eRacks systems by custom quote –
If you don’t see it on the system you want, just ask & we’ll quote you!
j
joe December 3rd, 2016
Posted In: Backups, NAS24, NAS36, NAS50, NAS72, servers
Docker says: “Available for both Windows and Mac” – WTF?
Docker, Please – “Available for both Windows and Mac” Are you kidding?
This reminds me of the legendary line from the Blues Brothers movie:
“We got BOTH kinds of music – Country AND Western!”
Sheesh.
Lame – it’s all based on Linux! And Open Source!
Docker runs natively on Linux – the only way to get it to run on Windows and/or Mac, is to run it inside a VM (Virtual Machine), running Linux. Ahem.
So apparently that’s what this does, although you couldn’t tell by the name, the marketing blurb, nor the description.
DOCKER TOOLBOX
The Docker Toolbox is an installer to quickly and easily install and setup a Docker environment on your computer.
Available for both Windows and Mac, the Toolbox installs Docker Client, Machine, Compose and Kitematic.
Source: Docker Toolbox | Docker
Sigh.
j
joe October 9th, 2016
Posted In: Linux, Open Source, Technology, Uncategorized
Tags: linux, Open Source, Technology