Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Microsoft is no stranger to using Windows and other software to promote more of its own apps and services. The latest way the company is doing this is via Edge. Accusations of using its products as an advertising tool or as a means of forcing products onto users are nothing new for the Windows maker, and the company’s latest move with Edge does nothing to shake them off. The browser has been found to install Microsoft Office web apps without asking for permission.

Microsoft on Tuesday reminded customers that Office 2010 and Office 2016 for Mac have received their final security updates, as the suites have now dropped off the company’s support list. And as Microsoft has done before, the Redmond, Wash. company exploited the end of support to pitch customers on changing to the subscription-based Office 365.

Microsoft has released today its monthly batch of security updates known as Patch Tuesday, and this month the OS maker has patched 87 vulnerabilities across a wide range of Microsoft products. By far, the most dangerous bug patched this month is CVE-2020-16898. Described as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Windows TCP/IP stack, this bug can allow attackers to take over Windows systems by sending malicious ICMPv6 Router Advertisement packets to an unpatched computer via a network connection.

The Department of Labor has singled out the firm’s pledge to double the number of “black and African American” senior staff by 2025. Officials have warned the company the target appears “to imply that the employment action may be taken on the basis of race”.

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Beginning at about 2:15 PM Eastern time, Microsoft’s Office 365 services and Outlook started going down for users. Within minutes, users throughout the United States were unable to use their vital services.

Microsoft is rebranding its Bing search engine to Microsoft Bing today as part of a rebranding effort. While the vast majority of people are likely to still just call it Bing, Microsoft unveiled its shift toward Microsoft Bing in a blog post today. Microsoft doesn’t go into detail about why it added the company’s name to the Bing brand, other than it reflecting “the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family.”

It used to be really hard to find a Linux-powered laptop. You had to turn to small, specialty Linux-friendly PC vendors such as Purism, System76, or ZaReason. Now, Lenovo is releasing almost 30 Ubuntu Linux PCs and laptops. And, in days, Dell will release a new XPS 13 Developer Edition pre-loaded with Ubuntu 20.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Linux and a faster-than-ever 11th Gen Intel Core Tiger Lake processor.

Microsoft Corp said late Monday a recent change it introduced likely caused a major outage, affecting users’ access to multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook.com and Microsoft Teams.

It is just days since the CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) issued an emergency warning about a critical Windows vulnerability. Now Microsoft has issued a warning that the vulnerability is being actively exploited and the company is “actively tracking threat actor activity”.

In a surprising development, Lenovo announced today that it will offer Ubuntu Linux preinstalled on ThinkPad laptops and ThinkStation desktop PCs. Lenovo announced that it was bringing Linux to its workstation products in June, but this expansion brings the open-source platform to the firm’s mainstream business PCs. That said, Lenovo is targeting developers with this support, not traditional business users.