Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Samsung has announced it will soon become possible to run actual proper Linux on its Note8, Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones – and even Linux desktops.

In its ongoing effort to improve browser security, school Microsoft on security, and retain its search audience, Google is today rolling out several Chrome for Windows fortifications.

Microsoft is facing questions again, this time from the Netherlands Data Protection Authority (DPA), over how the company collects user data from the Windows 10 operating system meant for PCs. The DPA suggests that Microsoft is breaching the Dutch data protection laws, by processing user data from computing devices they use. This is not the first time that Microsoft has been questioned over the fairly aggressive collection of user data and how that information is handled.

Microsoft’s October batch of security patches and bug fixes caused some corporate PCs to suffer blue-screen-of-death crashes when starting up this week. The Redmond software giant has fielded multiple complaints on its support forum from system administrators, who said the KB4041676 and 4041691 updates are making their machines go titsup.

Hundreds of millions are happy with Android smartphones and iPhones. But there are some users who want the maximum possible control over their smartphones. For those people, Purism now has the funding it needs for its free-software smartphone without a trace of proprietary code or firmware: The Purism Librem 5 smartphone.

Microsoft’s update servers are pushing out a new Photos Add-on app, with no explanation of what it does. Windows 10 users aren’t taking it well.

Attention anyone using Microsoft Outlook to encrypt emails. Researchers at security outfit SEC Consult have found a bug in Redmond’s software that causes encrypted messages to be sent out with their unencrypted versions attached.

Microsoft today released patches for more than 60 CVE-listed vulnerabilities in its software. Meanwhile, Adobe is skipping October’s Patch Tuesday altogether.

With its new, first-of-its-kind Linux-compatible multi-core CPU, SiFive is moving to pushing the open source RISC-V architecture into an expanded world of use cases, including machine learning and IoT.

Microsoft is silently patching security bugs in Windows 10, and not immediately rolling out the same updates to Windows 7 and 8, potentially leaving hundreds of millions of computers at risk of attack.