Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

Some governments might have fallen out of love with Linux, but South Korea appears ready to start a torrid affair. The country’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety has outlined plans to switch government computers from Windows to Linux due to both lower costs and a reduced dependency on a single operating system. The Ministry will trial Linux on its PCs and roll it out more broadly if there aren’t any major compatibility or security issues.

This week, Microsoft issued patches for 79 flaws across its platforms and products. One of them merits particular attention: a bug so bad that Microsoft released a fix for it on Windows XP, an operating system it officially abandoned five years ago.

Last year, when Microsoft executives were doing their due diligence ahead of paying $7.5 billion for GitHub, the software engineer marketplace, they might have been surprised by one unexpected data point: Nigeria had the fourth-fastest growing developer community on the platform the previous year.

Schools in Indian state of Kerala are expected to save ₹3000 crore (roughly $428 million) by choosing Linux as their choice of operating system for school computers under a state-wide project.

The year of Linux on the desktop is finally here! Windows 10 is getting a Linux kernel, and all new Chromebooks will run Linux applications. Most desktops purchased in the future will include a Linux kernel and run Linux software.

In case you’ve missed it, last year, Google started making it possible to run desktop Linux on Chrome OS. Since then, more Chromebook devices are able to run Linux. Going forward, all of them will be able to do so, too. Yes. All of them. ARM and Intel-based.

The Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL), which lets you run Linux programs on a Windows box, has seen some serious love from Microsoft as its engineers attempt to demonstrate their commitment to open source and Linux.

To not a lot of surprise compared to the world of proprietary graphics drivers on Windows where once the support is retired the driver releases stop, old open-source Linux OpenGL drivers are found to be better maintained.

Canonical’s real money comes from the cloud and Internet of Things, but AI and machine learning developers are demanding — and getting — Ubuntu Linux desktop with enterprise support.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10’s voracious appetite for storage remains undiminished in the upcoming May 2019 Update (1903). Noted by Pureinfotech, Microsoft has quietly updated the minimum storage requirements for the OS from 16GB for 32-bit versions and 20GB for 64-bit to 32GB. Notably, the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise storage requirements remain at 16GB and 20GB for 32 and 64-bit versions respectively.