InfoWorld reports that "While still the industry's leading Java distribution, Oracle Java's popularity is half what it was just two years ago, according to a report from application monitoring company New Relic." (With the usual caveat that data from New Relic's report "was drawn entirely from applications reporting to New Relic in January 2022 and does not provide a global picture of Java usage,") The finding was included the company's 2022 State of the Java Ecosystem report, released April 26, which is based on data culled from millions of applications providing performance data to New Relic. Among Java Development Kit (JDK) distributions, Oracle had roughly 75% of the market in 2020, but just 34.48% in 2022, New Relic reported. Not far behind was Amazon, at 22.04%, up from 2.18% in 2020.

New Relic said its numbers show movement away from Oracle binaries after the company's "more restrictive licensing" of its JDK 11 distribution before returning to a more open stance with JDK 17, released in September 2021. Behind Oracle and Amazon were Eclipse Adoptium (11.48%), Azul Systems (8.17%), Red Hat (6.05%), IcedTea (5.38%), Ubuntu (2.91%), and BellSoft (2.5%).

The Register noted this week that two "unofficial" Ubuntu remixes "came out on the same day as the official flavors."

- Ubuntu Cinnamon (Linux Mint's flagship desktop environment)

- Ubuntu Unity, a revival of what used to be the official Ubuntu desktop by Ubuntu team member Rudra B. Saraswat (described the Register as "a 12-year-old wunderkind") Ubuntu Cinnamon is the older of the two and first appeared in 2019, while Ubuntu Unity came out in May 2020, soon after the release of Ubuntu 20.04.

Ubuntu Unity....has the macOS-like desktop that was Ubuntu's standard offering from 2011 until the company pensioned it off in 2017.... Ubuntu Unity is as free as Ubuntu itself, and the new remix continues to evolve. In 22.04, most of the GNOME-based accessory apps have been replaced with the MATE equivalents, such as the Pluma text editor and Atril document viewer. (A handful remain, such as the GNOME system monitor rather than the MATE one, but the differences are trivial.) The System Settings app is the original Unity one, and the Unity Tweaks app comes pre-installed.... The new "Jammy Jellyfish" version of Ubuntu Unity also adds support for Flatpak packages alongside Ubuntu's native Snap packages. To do this, it replaces Ubuntu's Software Store with version 41.5 of GNOME Software. Interestingly, this also supports Snap packages, so sometimes, when you search for a package, you might get multiple results: one for the OS-native DEB package, possibly one for a Flatpak, and maybe a Snap version too....

[I]f you dislike both the Unity and GNOME desktops and want something more Windows-like, but you don't mind GNOME's CSD windows, then Joshua Peisach's Ubuntu Cinnamon remix may appeal. Cinnamon is the default desktop of both Ubuntu-based Linux Mint and its Debian variant. Ubuntu Cinnamon combines the latest upstream version of Mint's Cinnamon desktop, 5.2.7, with the standard app selection of upstream Ubuntu. This means most of its apps lack menu bars, except for the Nemo file manager and LibreOffice. For these classic-style apps, the Ubuntu Cinnamon distro has tweaked the GNOME title-bar layout to be more Windows-like: minimize/maximize/close buttons at top right, and a window-management menu at top left....

Cinnamon's roots as a fork of GNOME 3 do offer a significant potential feature that MATE, Xfce and indeed Unity cannot do: fractional scaling. This is clearly labelled as an experimental feature, and in testing, we couldn't get it to work, so for now, this remains a theoretical advantage.... These caveats aside, though, Ubuntu Cinnamon is maturing nicely in the new version. While Ubuntu and Ubuntu Unity are now purple-toned, Ubuntu Cinnamon has switched to a restrained theme in shades of dark orange and brown, which reminded us of the tasteful earth-toned Ubuntu of the old GNOME 2 days...

Both these desktops are X.11-based, so there's not a trace of Wayland in either distro. Both also benefit from having working 3D acceleration.
Both remixes "are aiming for inclusion as official Ubuntu flavors," the article points out.

But then again, "There are dozens of Ubuntu remixes and flavors out there. The official Ubuntu Derivatives page links to 30, and DistroWatch has more than five times as many, including many which are no longer maintained."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The saga of Ubuntu-maker Canonical's IPO efforts now stretches back quite a few years. I think the first time I talked to the company's founder Mark Shuttleworth about going public was in 2018, though there had already been some chatter about it in previous years. But the timing never quite worked out for Canonical. In a press briefing ahead of today's launch of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Shuttleworth noted he now expects it to go public next year. "We are on track to float the business. And now I'm pretty confident that we will do that in 2023," said Shuttleworth, who was calling in from an undisclosed island off the coast of West Africa. "And so we're taking active steps at the board level and in our finance operation -- various other parts of the business -- to be prepared for that. We're now effectively on a very clear program to a flotation of the business next year."

He stressed that Canonical is not in a situation where it has to raise outside money and that going public for him is not about fundraising. He noted that Canonical's revenue last year was $175 million and that the company's biggest challenge right now is that demand is bigger that the company's ability to service it, in large part because there isn't enough talent on the market for the company to hire.

The Volla Phone 22, a new smartphone available for preorder via a Kickstarter campaign, is unlike any other smartphone on the market today in that it ships with a choice of the Android-based Volla OS or the Ubuntu Touch mobile Linux distribution. "It also supports multi-boot functionality, allowing you to install more than one operating system and choose which to run at startup," writes Liliputing's Brad Linder. Some of the hardware specs include a 6.3-inch FHD+ display, a MediaTek Helio G85 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB storage, 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card reader. There's also a 48-megapixel main camera sensor and replaceable 4,500mAh battery. From the report: While Volla works with the folks at UBPorts to ensure its phones are compatible with Ubuntu Touch, the company develops the Android-based Volla OS in-house. It's based on Google's Android Open Source Project code, but includes a custom launcher, user interface, and set of apps with an emphasis on privacy. The Google Play Store is not included, as this is a phone aimed at folks who want to minimize tracking from big tech companies. Other Google apps and services like the Chrome web browser, Google Maps, Google Drive, and Gmail are also omitted. The upshot is that no user data is collected or stored by Volla, Google, or other companies unless you decide to install apps that track your data. Of course, that could make using the phone a little less convenient if you've come to rely on those apps, so the Volla Phone might not be the best choice for everyone.

Volla OS also has a built-in user-customizable firewall, an App Locker feature for disabling and hiding apps, and optional support for using the Hide.me VPN for anonymous internet usage. The source code for Volla OS is also available for anyone that wants to inspect the code. The operating system also has a custom user interface including a Springboard that allows you to quickly launch frequently-used apps by pressing a red dot for a list, or by starting to type in a search box for automatic suggestions such as placing a phone call, sending a text message, or opening a web page. You can also create notes or calendar events from the Springboard or send an encrypted message with Signal. The phone is expected to ship in June at an early bird price of about $408.

Last week 69-year-old Richard Stallman gave a 92-minute presentation on the state of the free software movement. Stallman covered numerous topics, but also added as an aside at one point: Ubuntu of course is a non-free distro, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone use it. Some important packages are now distributed only through their non-freedom-respecting package system, and not as Debian packages. So it's even harder than before to get any freedom out of an Ubuntu installation.
But Stallman also sees a larger issue: Another area where we have problems is there are several languages which come with a package library -- basically people post packages in them. And that might be fine if they had a good criterion for the licensing of the libraries people upload into those sites -- but they're not developed by free software activists, and they don't have such a criterion. There are non-free packages in those libraries too.

Now, some of them make it possible to find out whether a library is free. Some of them, it's difficult. Sometimes -- yeah, you could probably look at the source code and see what licenses are in it, and then you could look up those licenses in GNU.org/licenses/license-list.html and see if all those licenses are free... The problem is, they don't help you. At the very least they should make it easy to say, "Show me only the free packages." And then, "Show me only the GPL-compatible packages, because I'm writing a GPL-covered program, and I can't use the libraries that are not GPL compatible. And I certainly won't ever think of using a non-free library."

They're not interested in helping people move forward in freedom. And so we need people to write front-ends for those package archives, which will show only the freely-licensed packages, and which can be asked to show which ones are GPL-compatible, or show only those. This way they will be usable easily by the free software community. If you like one of the languages that has this problem, please show your appreciation for that language by reconciling its use with maintaining freedom.
And this leads Stallman to a related setback for the free software movement: the containers themselves that are packaging some programs with the libraries they need: The old way of doing this was you would make sure that your program said which versions of libraries it was compiled to work with, and in the source code you'd use something like Autoconf so that it could work with the various library versions. And this way you could build the program for a wide variety of free operating systems and versions of them.

Well, that's some work, so some developers, they release a free program -- not all of them release free programs, but some of them do release free programs -- using containers. And the container has one set of libraries in it. And how do you really know what's in there? It's not straightforward to verify that all the libraries in the container are free, and a lot of people won't realize that they should even think about it. So the use of containers, as they are implemented nowadays by people who are not free software activists and are not particularly concerned with this question, is an obstacle to verifying that you're installing free software.

Well, maybe some of these container systems could be improved, or maybe another one could be designed to solve these problems. If a container packaging system were designed by people who care about freedom, they might find good ways to satisfy this goal, as well as others. So it's something you could possibly work on.

A headline at Hot Hardware calls it "a sexy Linux laptop with deep learning chops... being pitched as the world's most powerful laptop for machine learning workloads."

And here's how Ars Technica describes the Razer x Lambda Tensorbook (announced Tuesday): Made in collaboration with Lambda, the Linux-based clamshell focuses on deep-learning development. Lambda, which has been around since 2012, is a deep-learning infrastructure provider used by the US Department of Defense and "97 percent of the top research universities in the US," according to the company's announcement. Lambda's offerings include GPU clusters, servers, workstations, and cloud instances that train neural networks for various use cases, including self-driving cars, cancer detection, and drug discovery.

Dubbed "The Deep Learning Laptop," the Tensorbook has an Nvidia RTX 3080 Max-Q (16GB) and targets machine-learning engineers, especially those who lack a laptop with a discrete GPU and thus have to share a remote machine's resources, which negatively affects development.... "When you're stuck SSHing into a remote server, you don't have any of your local data or code and even have a hard time demoing your model to colleagues," Lambda co-founder and CEO Stephen Balaban said in a statement, noting that the laptop comes with PyTorch and TensorFlow for quickly training and demoing models from a local GUI interface without SSH. Lambda isn't a laptop maker, so it recruited Razer to build the machine....

While there are more powerful laptops available, the Tensorbook stands out because of its software package and Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS.
The Verge writes: While Razer currently offers faster CPU, GPU and screens in today's Blade lineup, it's not necessarily a bad deal if you love the design, considering how pricey Razer's laptops can be. But we've generally found that Razer's thin machines run quite hot in our reviews, and the Blade in question was no exception even with a quarter of the memory and a less powerful RTX 3060 GPU. Lambda's FAQ page does not address heat as of today.

Lambda is clearly aiming this one at prospective MacBook Pro buyers, and I don't just say that because of the silver tones. The primary hardware comparison the company touts is a 4x speedup over Apple's M1 Max in a 16-inch MacBook Pro when running TensorFlow.
Specifically, Lambda's web site claims the new laptop "delivers model training performance up to 4x faster than Apple's M1 Max, and up to 10x faster than Google Colab instances." And it credits this to the laptop's use of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q 16GB GPU, adding that NVIDIA GPUs "are the industry standard for parallel processing, ensuring leading performance and compatibility with all machine learning frameworks and tools."

"It looks like a fine package and machine, but pricing starts at $3,499," notes Hot Hardware, adding "There's a $500 up-charge to have it configured to dual-boot Windows 10."

The Verge speculates on what this might portend for the future. "Perhaps the recently renewed interest in Linux gaming, driven by the Steam Deck, will push Razer to consider Linux for its own core products as well."

"Rolling Rhino is a tool long ago created by Martin Wimpress, who until recently was part of the Canonical team," one Linux blog pointed out recently. "What it does is basically change the repositories of the DailyLive developers...."

Neowin sees it as a competitive advantage. After more than 17 years, there's a way to get a Ubuntu distro offering the same "rolling" release cycles that helped popularize Arch Linux: While there are many positive qualities that would draw a user into the world of Arch, its headlining feature would be the one that remains the most relevant in today's world of continuous integration and delivery and that's its rolling release strategy. While I don't think Judd Vinet could have predicted the proliferation of DevOps or the massive shift to cloud computing, it must be interesting to see that the entire industry is following the Arch strategy in all sorts of different places. One could even argue that Microsoft Windows has become a rolling release.

While many of Arch's contemporaries have joined the fray, one notable open-source giant has yet to make the leap.

Rolling Rhino looks to change that by converting Ubuntu into a rolling release.
Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for submitting the story...

Slashdot reader mmanciop reminded us that Ubuntu released a new version of its "circle of friends" logo this week (which its designer says gives it "a more contemporary look and feel.")

From the Ubuntu blog: We proudly present to you the transformation of the Circle of Friends logo for Ubuntu. The new logo isn't a revolution; rather, it's an evolution of the Circle of Friends. As you can see at the top of the post, the classic white-on-orange colour scheme hasn't changed. But the new version sports sleek lines which bind the Circle of Friends even more closely together.

While it is important to have a respectful continuity with the previous Circle of Friends, the updated version is leaner, more focused, more sophisticated. It also makes a little more sense that the heads are now inside the circle, facing each other and connecting more directly. The rectangular orange tag is a break from the conventional square or circle, as it allows for the boldness of the orange to express itself and provides a recognisable colourful mark across media. Finally, the logo moves from a tiny superscript to a large, dynamic and leading presence.

Some might wonder why we had to touch the Ubuntu logo at all. As one can imagine, it is a daunting honour to work on something so many of us have such a strong connection to. But in the end, a logo should match what it represents. Similar to how Ubuntu continues to evolve and adapt to new uses in technology, its logo should follow suit to encapsulate and reflect such ongoing change.
For comparison, here's the original logo.

Share your reactions in the comments. (For example, how do you think it compares to other logos?) Do you like it more or less than, say, the logo for Raku?

Sophos threat researcher Nick Gregory discovered a hole in Linux's netfilter firewall program that's "exploitable to achieve kernel code execution (via ROP [return-oriented programming]), giving full local privilege escalation, container escape, whatever you want." ZDNet reports: Behind almost all Linux firewalls tools such as iptables; its newer version, nftables; firewalld; and ufw, is netfilter, which controls access to and from Linux's network stack. It's an essential Linux security program, so when a security hole is found in it, it's a big deal. [...] This problem exists because netfilter doesn't handle its hardware offload feature correctly. A local, unprivileged attacker can use this to cause a denial-of-service (DoS), execute arbitrary code, and cause general mayhem. Adding insult to injury, this works even if the hardware being attacked doesn't have offload functionality! That's because, as Gregory wrote to a security list, "Despite being in code dealing with hardware offload, this is reachable when targeting network devices that don't have offload functionality (e.g. lo) as the bug is triggered before the rule creation fails."

This vulnerability is present in the Linux kernel versions 5.4 through 5.6.10. It's listed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-2022-25636), and with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8), this is a real badie. How bad? In its advisory, Red Hat said, "This flaw allows a local attacker with a user account on the system to gain access to out-of-bounds memory, leading to a system crash or a privilege escalation threat." So, yes, this is bad. Worse still, it affects recent major distribution releases such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x; Debian Bullseye; Ubuntu Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15.3. While the Linux kernel netfilter patch has been made, the patch isn't available yet in all distribution releases.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Setting up a Raspberry Pi board has always required a second computer, which is used to flash your operating system of choice to an SD card so your Pi can boot. But the Pi Foundation is working on a new version of its bootloader that could connect an OS-less Pi board directly to the Internet, allowing it to download and install the official Raspberry Pi OS to a blank SD card without requiring another computer. To test the networked booting feature, you'll need to use the Pi Imager on a separate computer to copy an updater for the bootloader over to an SD card -- Pi firmware updates are normally installed along with new OS updates rather than separately, but since this is still in testing, it requires extra steps.

Once it's installed, there are a number of conditions that have to be met for network booting to work. It only works on Pi 4 boards (and Pi 4-derived devices, like the Pi 400 computer) that have both a keyboard and an Ethernet cable connected. If you already have an SD card or USB drive with a bootable OS connected, the Pi will boot from those as it normally does so it doesn't slow down the regular boot process. And you'll be limited to the OS image selection in the official Pi imager, though this covers a wide range of popular distributions, including Ubuntu, LibreELEC, a couple of retro-gaming emulation OSes, and Homebridge. For other OSes, downloading the image on a separate PC and installing it to an SD card manually is still the best way to go. To learn more about installing the bootloader or download the Pi OS over a network, you can view the Raspberry Pi Foundation's documentation here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: [S]ecurity company Qualys has uncovered a truly dangerous memory corruption vulnerability in polkit's pkexec, CVE-2021-4034. Polkit, formerly known as PolicyKit, is a systemd SUID-root program. It's installed by default in every major Linux distribution. This vulnerability is easy to exploit. And, with it, any ordinary user can gain full root privileges on a vulnerable computer by exploiting this vulnerability in its default configuration. As Qualsys wrote in its brief description of the problem: "This vulnerability is an attacker's dream come true." Why is it so bad? Let us count the ways:

- Pkexec is installed by default on all major Linux distributions.
- Qualsys has exploited Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS in their tests, and they're sure other distributions are also exploitable.
- Pkexec has been vulnerable since its creation in May 2009 (commit c8c3d83, "Add a pkexec(1) command").
- An unprivileged local user can exploit this vulnerability to get full root privileges.
- Although this vulnerability is technically a memory corruption, it is exploitable instantly and reliably in an architecture-independent way.
- And, last but not least, it's exploitable even if the polkit daemon itself is not running.

Red Hat rates the PwnKit as having a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8. This is high. [...] This vulnerability, which has been hiding in plain sight for 12+ years, is a problem with how pkexec reads environmental variables. The short version, according to Qualsys, is: "If our PATH is "PATH=name=.", and if the directory "name=." exists and contains an executable file named "value", then a pointer to the string "name=./value" is written out-of-bounds to envp[0]." While Qualsys won't be releasing a demonstration exploit, the company is sure it won't take long for exploits to be available. Frankly, it's not that hard to create a PwnKit attack. It's recommended that you obtain and apply a patch ASAP to protect yourself from this vulnerability.

"If no patches are available for your operating system, you can remove the SUID-bit from pkexec as a temporary mitigation," adds ZDNet. "For example, this root-powered shell command will stop attacks: # chmod 0755 /usr/bin/pkexec."

The Linux Foundation has released three new training courses on the edX platform: Open Source Software Development: Linux for Developers (LFD107x), Linux Tools for Software Development (LFD108x), and Git for Distributed Software Development (LFD109x). The three courses can be taken individually or combined to earn a Professional Certificate in Open Source Software Development, Linux, and Git. ZDNet reports: The first class, Open Source Software Development: Linux for Developers (LFD107x) explores the key concepts of developing open-source software and how to work productively in Linux. You don't need to know Linux before starting this class, as it's an introduction to Linux designed for developers. In it, you'll learn how to install Linux and programs, how to use desktop environments, text editors, important commands and utilities, command shells and scripts, filesystems, and compilers. For this class, the Foundation recommends you use a computer installed with a current Linux distribution. I'd go further and recommend you use one with one of the professional Linux distributions. In particular, you should focus on one of the three main enterprise Linux families: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), and Ubuntu. There are hundreds of other distros, but these are the ones that matter to companies looking for Linux developers.

The next course, Linux Tools for Software Development (LFD108x) examines the tools necessary to do everyday work in Linux development environments and beyond. It is designed for developers with experience working on any operating system who want to understand the basics of open-source development. Upon completion, participants will be familiar with essential shell tools, so they can work comfortably and productively in Linux environments. In addition, I recommend you come to this class with a working knowledge of the C programming language.

Finally, Git for Distributed Software Development (LFD109x) provides a thorough introduction to Git. Git is Linux Torvalds' other great accomplishment. This source control system was first used by the Linux kernel community to enable developers from around the world to operate efficiently. In addition, thanks to such sites as GitHub and GitLab, Git has become the lingua franca of all software development. Everyone uses Git today. With this class, you'll learn to use Git to create new repositories or clone existing ones, commit new changes, review revision histories, examine differences with older versions, work with different branches, merge repositories, and work with a distributed development team. Whether or not you end up programming in Linux, knowing how to use Git is essential for the modern programmer. As ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols notes, you can take the three courses through edX in audit mode for no cost. However, you'll need to earn the professional certificate so employers will know you're capable of open-source programming.

"To do this, you must enroll in the program, complete all three courses, and pay a verified certificate fee of $149 per course."

"Qt, the framework that powers the KDE desktop, is announcing support for ads in client-side applications," reports Neowin: This means that application developers will now be able to serve ads in traditional desktop applications.... Windows users have been dealing with this in Metro UI apps since Windows 8 and it's something that's never gone over well on the desktop.

While it's doubtful you'll see ads in KDE's core applications, it would be possible for distributions that wish to further monetize their work to fork these applications, placing ads in them.... According to the documentation, the advertising plugin supports a variety of platforms. They are as follows:

- Windows 10
- Ubuntu 20.04
- Raspbian Buster
- macOS
- Android 7.0
— iOS

"Our offering aims to disrupt the IoT industry," explains Qt's press release, "enabling new business models and business cases that before were not possible."

Reactions have been mixed. Comments on Phoronix ranged from calling it "a great way for boost development on KDE" to "Not sure if I like this."

Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story

Brian Fagioli, reporting for BetaNews: The developers of the Ubuntu-based operating system have agreed to accept an undisclosed amount of money from Mozilla in exchange for making significant changes to Linux Mint. This includes removal of modifications to Firefox and a big change for search. The devs share the upcoming changes to Firefox in Linux Mint 19 and higher.
The default start page no longer points to https://www.linuxmint.com/start/
The default search engines no longer include Linux Mint search partners (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo...) but Mozilla search partners (Google, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ebay...)
The default configuration switches from Mint defaults to Mozilla defaults.
Firefox no longer includes code changes or patches from Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu.

A year after releasing the first preview build of its Chromium-based Edge browser for Linux, Microsoft is announcing its general availability. From a report: The new release supports a variety of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE. Microsoft announced Linux on Edge's availability milestone during the first day of its Ignite IT Pro conference. As of the release of Edge for Linux to the "stable" (mainstream user) channel, Edge is now available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux. As it did when introducing the new Edge on macOS, Microsoft has been positioning Edge on Linux as more of an offering for IT pros and developers who want to test web sites than as a browser for "normal" users on those platforms. However, any user on any supported platform can use the new Edge.

Phoronix ran some fun performance tests this week. "Now that Windows 11 has been out as stable and the initial round of updates coming out, I've been running fresh Windows 11 vs. Linux benchmarks for seeing how Microsoft's latest operating system release compares to the fresh batch of Linux distributions." First up is the fresh look at the Windows 11 vs. Linux performance on an Intel Core i9 11900K Rocket Lake system... The Windows 11 performance was being compared to all of the latest prominent Linux distributions, including:

- Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
- Ubuntu 21.10
- Arch Linux (latest rolling)
- Fedora Workstation 35
- Clear Linux 35150

[...] Each operating system was cleanly installed and then run at its OS default settings for seeing how the out-of-the-box OS performance compares for these five Linux distributions to Microsoft Windows 11 Pro...

The geometric mean for all 44 tests showed Linux clearly in front of Windows 11 for this current-generation Intel platform. Ubuntu / Arch / Fedora were about 11% faster overall than Windows 11 Pro on this system. Meanwhile, Clear Linux was about 18% faster than Windows 11 and enjoyed about 5% better performance overall than the other Linux distributions.
Out of 44 tests, here's a breakdown of how many first-place wins were scored by each OS:

• Clear Linux: 33 (75%)
• Fedora Workstation 35: 4 (9.1%)
• Windows 11 Pro: 3 (6.8%)
• Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS: 2 (4.5%)
• Arch Linux: 1 (2.3%)
• Ubuntu 21.10: 1 (2.3%)

Phoronix: Now that Windows 11 has been out as stable and the initial round of updates coming out, I've been running fresh Windows 11 vs. Linux benchmarks for seeing how Microsoft's latest operating system release compares to the fresh batch of Linux distributions. First up is the fresh look at the Windows 11 vs. Linux performance on an Intel Core i9 11900K Rocket Lake system. Microsoft Windows 11 Pro with all stable updates as of 18 October was used for this round of benchmarking on Intel Rocket Lake. The Windows 11 performance was being compared to all of the latest prominent Linux distributions, including: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS, Ubuntu 21.10, Arch Linux (latest rolling), Fedora Workstation 35, Clear Linux 35150. All the testing was done on the same Intel Core i9 11900K test system at stock speeds (any frequency differences reported in the system table come down to how the information is exposed by the OS, i.e. base or turbo reporting) with 2 x 16GB DDR4-3200 memory, 2TB Corsair Force MP600 NVMe solid-state drive, and an AMD Radeon VII graphics card.

Each operating system was cleanly installed and then run at its OS default settings for seeing how the out-of-the-box OS performance compares for these five Linux distributions to Microsoft Windows 11 Pro. But for the TLDR version... Out of 44 tests run across all six operating systems, Windows 11 had just three wins on this Core i9 11900K system. Meanwhile Intel's own Clear Linux platform easily dominated with coming in first place 75% of the time followed by Fedora Workstation 35 in second place with first place finishes 9% of the time. The geometric mean for all 44 tests showed Linux clearly in front of Windows 11 for this current-generation Intel platform. Ubuntu / Arch / Fedora were about 11% faster overall than Windows 11 Pro on this system. Meanwhile, Clear Linux was about 18% faster than Windows 11 and enjoyed about 5% better performance overall than the other Linux distributions.

Pine64 today announced its latest Linux-powered device, the PinePhone Pro, an update to the original PinePhone which sees a more powerful device running mainline Linux (Manjaro in this case) on a mobile device that works as a cellphone and a desktop computer. Tom's Hardware reports: This combination of hardware and software makes the still slightly futuristic idea of confluence between mobile and desktop devices seem a step closer. Carry it around with you, and it's a phone. Plug it into a monitor, and it's a desktop PC. The KDE Plasma Mobile front-end adapts to the circumstances. Inside, it's much like any other phone, with a Rockchip RK3399S six-core SoC operating at 1.5GHz, 4GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB of internal eMMC flash storage. It features a 13MP main camera sensor and a 5MP front-facing camera. There's a Micro-SD slot for expanded storage, and a six-inch 1440 x 720 IPS touchscreen. The PinePhone Pro is not a typical cell phone, rather the concept of convergence, the ability to use your phone as a computer is intriguing. Plug your PinePhone Pro into an external display and use it as a low-power desktop computer is something that has been attempted by a number of companies, including Canonical's attempt with Ubuntu Edge.

PinePhone Pro offers something that is missing from the majority of phones, privacy. A series of hardware DIP-switches, hidden under a rear cover, cut off access to the cameras, microphone, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.1 chips, headphone jack, and LTE modem (including GPS) should you ever need to. The layout and Pogo Pins of the new phone are identical to the original PinePhone, so all existing accessories should work. Retailing at $399, the PinePhone Pro's makers are realistic about the challenges of putting desktop Linux on a mobile device, especially in an ecosystem dominated by iOS and Android.

Following a brief beta-testing period, Ubuntu 21.10 has finally become available to download in the "final" stable form. BetaNews: Code-named "Impish Indri," this version of Ubuntu is not a Long Term Support (LTS) version, so it is only supported for nine months. Ubuntu 21.10 features Linux kernel 5.13 and a Snap variant of the Mozilla Firefox browser. "Ubuntu 21.10 brings the all-new PHP 8 and GCC 11 including full support for static analysis, greatly improving everyday developer security awareness in low-level programming. With Gnome 40 desktop users gain dynamic workspaces and touchpad gestures. The new Firefox snap, published by Mozilla, improves security and guarantees access to both the latest and the extended support release versions of the browser. The exact same versions of the browser are available on multiple different versions of Ubuntu, simplifying enterprise developer platform management," says Canonical.

The best part of Windows 11 is Linux, argues Ars Technica: For years now, Windows 10's Windows Subsystem for Linux has been making life easier for developers, sysadmins, and hobbyists who have one foot in the Windows world and one foot in the Linux world. But WSL, handy as it is, has been hobbled by several things it could not do. Installing WSL has never been as easy as it should be — and getting graphical apps to work has historically been possible but also a pain in the butt that required some fairly obscure third-party software. Windows 11 finally fixes both of those problems. The Windows Subsystem for Linux isn't perfect on Windows 11, but it's a huge improvement over what came before.

Microsoft has traditionally made installing WSL more of a hassle than it should be, but the company finally got the process right in Windows 10 build 2004. Just open an elevated Command prompt (start --> type cmd --> click Run as Administrator), type wsl --install at the prompt, and you're good to go. Windows 11, thankfully, carries this process forward unchanged. A simple wsl --install with no further arguments gets you Hyper-V and the other underpinnings of WSL, along with the current version of Ubuntu. If you aren't an Ubuntu fan, you can see what other easily installable distributions are available with the command wsl --list --online. If you decide you'd prefer a different distro, you can install it instead with — for example — wsl --install -d openSUSE-42. If you're not sure which distribution you prefer, don't fret. You can install as many as you like, simply by repeating wsl --list --online to enumerate your options and wsl --install -d distroname to install whichever you like. Installing a second distribution doesn't uninstall the first; it creates a separate environment, independent of any others. You can run as many of these installed environments as you like simultaneously, without fear of one messing up another.

In addition to easy installation, WSL on Windows 11 brings support for both graphics and audio in WSL apps. This isn't exactly a first — Microsoft debuted WSLg in April, with Windows 10 Insider Build 21364. But Windows 11 is the first production Windows build with WSLg support. If this is your first time hearing of WSLg, the short version is simple: you can install GUI apps — for example, Firefox — from your Ubuntu (or other distro) command line, and they'll work as expected, including sound. When I installed WSLg on Windows 11 on the Framework laptop, running firefox from the Ubuntu terminal popped up the iconic browser automatically. Heading to YouTube in it worked perfectly, too, with neither frame drops in the video nor glitches in the audio....

[T]here is one obvious "killer app" for WSLg that has us excited — and that's virt-manager, the RedHat-originated virtualization management tool. virt-manager is a simple tool that streamlines the creation, management, and operation of virtual machines using the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine... virt-manager never got a Windows port and seems unlikely to. But it runs under WSLg like a champ.
They reported a few problems, like when running GNOME's Software Center app (and the GNOME shell desktop environment).

But "If you're already a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) user, Windows 11 offers an enormously improved experience compared to what you're accustomed to from Windows 10. It installs more easily, makes more functionality available, and offers better desktop integration than older workarounds such as running MobaXTerm's X11 server."