With this weekend's release of Vulkan 1.1.88 stealing the show was the Vulkan transform feedback capability to allow projects like DXVK to support Direct3D's Stream Output functionality. But besides VK_EXT_transform_feedback, there are other extensions also being worked on for Mesa ANV / RADV Vulkan driver coverage...

One of the more difficult aspects of the Spectre hardware vulnerability is finding all of the locations in the code that might be exploitable. There are many locations that look vulnerable that aren't, and others that are exploitable without being obvious. It has long been clear that finding all of the exploitable spots is a long-term task, and keeping new ones from being introduced will not be easy. But there may be a simple technique that can block a large subset of the possible exploits with a minimal cost.

Purism has shared the latest details on their efforts to deliver the open-source Linux Librem 5 smartphone to market in 2019...

The Qualcomm/Atheros "Ath10k" Linux driver coming up in the Linux 4.20~5.0 kernel merge window is picking up two prominent features...

AMD's GPUOpen group today released CodeXL 2.6 as the newest version of their GPU developer suite...

• Android Pie update for OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 3 series will take some time: Pete Lau
• BetterBatteryStats updated with Android Pie support
• Samsung's Android Pie beta program may go live soon as support pages appear
• Over 75 percent of Pixel users are on Android Pie
• The Best Free Offline Music Player Apps for Android
• Google Assistant can now play Netflix on Android TV devices

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After months of user testing in developer and beta channels, the Crostini project at Google finally delivered the goods, Linux apps for most users of Chromebooks in the stable channel—definitely worth the wait. While this still is aimed primarily at developers using Chromebooks, I think there's a good chance these Linux apps will be used and enjoyed by the general public using Chromebooks as well. There's still a bit of a learning curve to overcome before that possibility is realized, but if you already are a user of any Linux distro, it will feel very familiar. Here's an overview of how to install it and what to expect afterward.

After getting the update to version 69, go to Settings and scroll down a bit, and you'll see the option to turn on Linux apps. Figure 1 shows this first step. Note that this isn't available on all Chromebooks; if you're using an older one, you'll have to wait a while before this function is available. If you don't see the option to turn on Linux apps, your Chromebook currently lacks that functionality. But, if you have a Chromebook produced in the past two years, you probably will see the option.

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FUSE file-systems in user-space are set to be running faster with the upcoming Linux 4.20~5.0 kernel thanks to several performance optimizations...

It's almost been a half-year already since the release of the long delayed X.Org Server 1.20, but with no signs of X.Org Server 1.21 releasing soon, xorg-server 1.20.2 was announced today as the latest stable point release...

FreeDesktop.org is already effectively part of X.Org given the loose structure of FreeDesktop.org, the key members/administrators being part of both projects, and FreeDesktop.org long being the de facto hosting platform from the X.Org Server to Mesa and much more. But now they may be officially joining forces...

• Mounting And Optimizing A Linux Gamer Computer

  We have had a lot of news about games in the Linux world coming out in recent weeks. We already have an interesting performance for games like Grand Theft Auto V, and the trend is for the compatibility level to improve every day, with Valve's recent announcement of Proton as announced here! This even was the head behind the development of DXVK which brought a new step in the compatibility of Windows games on Linux.

• Stranded Deep adds a new experimental couch co-op mode to survive together

  To go along with this new feature, they also added a Player Ragdoll for when you're knocked out or dead. You partner can help you up with bandages before you bleed out and bodies can be dragged as well for maximum fun. It's good to see them add more from their roadmap, with plenty more still to come before it leaves Early Access.

  They also added a Raft Passenger Seat, fixed a bunch of bugs and updated Unity to "2017.4.13f1". Also the shark music won't play until you're actually attacked so no more early warnings for you.

• .Age (dot Age) is a turn-based village builder showing off the harsh reality of the Dark Ages

  .Age (dot Age) seems like it could be a very interesting game. A harsh turn-based village builder that will throw events at you like candy, don't be fooled by the cute and colourful style as this is a menacing game.

  Developed by CKC Games, it's due out sometime next year. When spotted on Twitter, we spoke to the developer who confirmed "I've had a linux build for years" so it's coming to Linux at release.

• inXile confirm the Linux version of The Bard's Tale IV is being worked on

  For those waiting on the native Linux version of The Bard's Tale IV, fear not, as inXile Entertainment have confirmed they're working on it.

• AI combat arena 'Gladiabots' has enabled Linux support on Steam

  No longer hidden behind a beta of Steam, AI combat arena Gladiabots from GFX47 is now officially supported on Steam for Linux. Do note, the game is still in Early Access.

  If you love strategy games and feel like you want a little more control over unit AI, this might be the game for you. In Gladiabots you assemble a team of robots, design their AI with a handy drag and drop interface and attempt to beat another AI in battle. There's decent tutorials, a campaign, cross-platform online play that doesn't require you to be online at the same time and it's really quite clever.

• Dungeon crawler 'The 7th Circle' adds Linux support, looks pretty good

  For those who love their first-person dungeon crawlers, The 7th Circle actually looks pretty good and they recently added Linux support.

  It's not going to win any awards for originality here, but 68k Studios seem to have created a reasonably good retro-inspired dungeon crawler. With traditional turn-based combat, more than 60 spells to wield, a crafting and upgrades system and so on it's pretty full on features.

• Action-RPG 'Moonlighter' has a juicy free Adventure Update, now live on Linux

  It's time to close up shop and go on another run through the dungeons as Moonlighter has a free update now out. This update originally released last week, with the Linux version only seeing the update today.

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As the latest of our benchmarks using the newly re-released Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 Update, here are benchmarks of this latest Windows 10 build against seven different Linux distributions on the same hardware for checking out the current performance of these operating systems.

For this latest Linux OS benchmarking comparison against Windows, the following platforms were tested:

- The Windows 10 April 2018 release as the previous major milestone of Windows 10.

- The newest Windows 10 October 2018 build as the latest Windows 10 build from Microsoft.

- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed as the openSUSE rolling-release distribution that as of testing was on the Linux 4.18.12 kernel, KDE Plasma 5.14, Mesa 18.1.7, and GCC 8.2.1 atop an XFS home file-system with Btrfs root file-system (the default partitioning scheme).

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• OnePlus 6T release date, price and specs: Geekbench listing confirms 8GB RAM, Android Pie
• Smartphone Operating System Battle: Android P vs iOS 12 [Infographic]
• Android warning for users over 'extremely powerful' FAKE Google Play Store scam
• Here is a list of every device compatible with Lineage OS
• Nokia 5.1 Plus to get Android Pie by the end of 2018
• Google Maps receives a fresh new look and Android fans will be very happy
• Sony Xperia fans receive good news as Android 9 Pie updates arrive for these smartphones
• Poco F1's Poco Launcher Comes Out of Beta, Now Available to All Android Users
• ASUS ZenFone 4 Max updated to Android 8.1 Oreo with ZenUI 5.0
• Palm is a 3.3-inch Android sidekick that won't replace your phone

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As the latest of our benchmarks using the newly re-released Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 Update, here are benchmarks of this latest Windows 10 build against seven different Linux distributions on the same hardware for checking out the current performance of these operating systems.

KDE Frameworks are 70 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the Frameworks 5.0 release announcement.

This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

Also: KDE Frameworks 5.51 Released

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As mentioned last week, here's a -rc8 release as it seems needed.

There were a lot of "little" pull requests this week, semi-normal for
this late in the cycle, but a lot of them were "fix up the previous fix
I just sent" which implies that people are having a few issues still.

I also know of at least one "bad" bug that finally has a proposed fix,
so that should hopefully get merged this week. And there are some
outstanding USB fixes I know of that have not yet landed in the tree (I
blame me for that...)

Anyway, the full shortlog is below, lots of tiny things all over the
tree. Please go and test and ensure that all works well for you.
Hopefully this should be the last -rc release.

Also: Linux 4.19-rc8 Released With A Lot Of "Tiny Things"

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I recently saw the announcement for Kali Linux on Vagrant. I have been a huge fan of Kali Linux for a very long time, and I am interested in virtualization (and currently using VirtualBox in an educational environment), so this was a very interesting combination to me. I have now installed it on a few of my systems, and so far I am quite impressed with it.

The logical place to start is with a brief overview of Vagrant itself. What is Vagrant? According to their web page:

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow

What Vagrant actually does is provide a way of automating the building of virtualized development environments using a variety of the most popular providers, such as VirtualBox, VMware, AWS and others. It not only handles the initial setup of the virtual machine, it can also provision the virtual machine based on your specifications, so it provides a consistent environment which can be shared and distributed to others.

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Security updates have been issued by Arch Linux (wireshark-cli), Debian (imagemagick, otrs2, tomcat7, and wireshark), Fedora (ca-certificates, dislocker, dolphin-emu, kernel-headers, kernel-tools, libgit2, mbedtls, mingw-openjpeg2, nekovm, openjpeg2, patch, strongswan, and thunderbird), Mageia (firefox, git, nextcloud, and texlive), Oracle (kernel and openssl), Scientific Linux (spamassassin), SUSE (libtirpc), and Ubuntu (requests).

Existing Intel graphics hardware already supports SIMD32 fragment shaders and the Intel open-source Linux graphics driver has supported this mode for months, but it hasn't been enabled. That though is in the process of changing...

As expected, the 4.19 development cycle has gone to 4.19-rc8. "Please go and test and ensure that all works well for you. Hopefully this should be the last -rc release."