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Security updates have been issued by Fedora (bashtop and python39), openSUSE (openexr), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk), and Scientific Linux (thunderbird).

Flutter is Google's open-source toolkit to build cross-device (and cross-platform) applications. Based on the Dart programming language released by the company in 2013, Flutter promises developers the ability to write and maintain a single application that runs on all of a user's devices. Flutter applications support deployment on Android, iOS, Web browsers via JavaScript, macOS, and now Canonical and Google have teamed up to support Flutter applications in Linux. Promises of native speed, rapid development, and a growing community make it an interesting technology to take a look at.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 5.7.9, 5.4.52, and 4.19.133 stable kernels. As usual, these contain lots of important fixes throughout the tree; users should upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (evolution-data-server and webkit2gtk), Fedora (kernel, snapd, and xen), openSUSE (thunderbird and xen), Oracle (dbus and thunderbird), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, jbig2dec, sane-backends, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (kernel), SUSE (cairo, containerd, docker, docker-runc, golang-github-docker-libnetwork, google-compute-engine, mailman, mercurial, openconnect, openexr, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (libvpx and snapd).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 16, 2020 is available.

LWN recently covered the effort within the LibreOffice project to find ways to support the companies doing the bulk of the development work. The project has now posted a revised marketing plan [PDF] with a number of changes, including the removal of the "personal edition" name. Regarding LibreOffice Online: "Following our normal development process, the Ecosystem will release their own versions in their own timing, allowing some features to reach their Enterprise versions before they are subsequently shipped in TDF builds (this allows the Ecosystem to positively differentiate by contributing new features & functionality)".

The OMG! Ubuntu! site reports that the Debian "popularity contest" application is being removed from Ubuntu. "But with Snaps, Flatpaks, PPAs and other avenues giving developers more direct ways to market to users (not to mention more accurate numbers on how many people use their software) the relative merits of 'what's popular in the repos' is …Well, a touch moot."

Lua version 5.4 was released at the end of June; it is the fifteenth major version of the lightweight scripting language since its creation in 1993. New in 5.4 is a generational mode for the garbage collector, which performs better for programs with lots of short-lived allocations. The language now supports "attributes" on local variables, allowing developers to mark variables as constant (const) or resources as closeable (close). There were also significant performance improvements over 5.3 along with a host of minor changes.

The openSUSE board troubles that LWN reported on in March have continued to simmer, and the promised election for an empty seat has not yet been held. During this time, instead, the project has voted on a petition to declare a lack of confidence in the board as a whole, a result that would have forced the election of an entirely new board. In the end, the number of votes fell far short of the number required, and the existing board will move forward with the election plan.

Security updates have been issued by CentOS (dbus), Debian (python3.5), Fedora (podofo and roundcubemail), Oracle (dbus, dovecot, jbig2dec, kernel, nodejs:10, nodejs:12, sane-backends, and thunderbird), Red Hat (.NET Core and kernel), SUSE (ansible, ansible1, ardana-ansible, ardana-cluster, ardana-freezer, ardana-input-model, ardana-logging, ardana-mq, ardana-neutron, ardana-octavia, ardana-osconfig, caasp-openstack-heat-templates, crowbar-core, crowbar-openstack, documentation-suse-openstack-cloud, grafana, kibana, openstack-dashboard, openstack-dashboard-theme-HPE, openstack-heat-templates, openstack-keystone, openstack-monasca-agent, openstack-monasca-installer, openstack-neutron, openstack-octavia-amphora-image, python-Django, python-Flask, python-GitPython, python-Pillow, python-amqp, python-apicapi, python-keystoneauth1, python-oslo.messaging, python-psutil, python-pyroute2, python-pysaml2, python-tooz, python-waitress, storm, bind, jasper, java-1_8_0-openjdk, LibVNCServer, libxml2, python-ipaddress, rubygem-bundler, rubygem-puma, samba, slirp4netns, xen, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (firefox and webkit2gtk).

The io_uring subsystem is not much over one year old, having been merged for the 5.1 kernel in May 2019. It was initially added as a better way to perform asynchronous I/O from user space; over time it has gained numerous features and support for functionality beyond just moving bits around. What it has not yet gained is any sort of security mechanism beyond what the kernel already provides for the underlying system calls. That may be about to change, though, as the result of this patch set from Stefano Garzarella adding a set of user-configurable restrictions to io_uring.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (mingw-podofo and python-rsa), openSUSE (LibVNCServer, mozilla-nss, nasm, openldap2, and permissions), Red Hat (dovecot, sane-backends, and thunderbird), Scientific Linux (dbus), and SUSE (firefox and thunderbird).

In an earlier article, guest author Martin Michlmayr reviewed the todo.txt and Taskwarrior task managers. This article continues the process of examining task managers by looking at tools for Org mode, which is a system originally created for Emacs, as well as at tools that make use of the iCalendar standard. It is time to find out whether he can find a system that meets his needs.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, mailman, openjpeg2, ruby-rack, squid3, tomcat8, and xen), Fedora (botan2, kernel, LibRaw, mingw-OpenEXR, mingw-podofo, podofo, seamonkey, squid, and webkit2gtk3), Mageia (ffmpeg, mbedtls, mediawiki, and xpdf), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (bind, dbus, jbig2dec, and rh-nodejs12-nodejs), and SUSE (graphviz and xen).

The 5.8-rc5 kernel prepatch is out for testing; it's a relatively large set of changes. "Maybe I'm in denial, but I still think we might hit the usual release schedule. A few more weeks to go before I need to make that decision, so it won't be keeping me up at night."

For years, Windows PHP users have enjoyed builds provided directly by Microsoft. The company has contributed to the PHP project in many ways, with the binaries made available on windows.php.net being the most visible. Recently Microsoft Project Manager Dale Hirt announced that, beginning with PHP 8.0, Microsoft support for PHP on Windows would end.

Connecting one source of data to another isn't always easy because of different standards, data formats, and APIs to contend with, among the many challenges. One of the groups that is trying to help with the challenge of data interoperability is the Linux Foundation's Open Data Platform initiative (ODPi). At the 2020 Open Source Summit North America virtual event on July 2, ODPi Technical Steering Committee chairperson Mandy Chessell outlined the goals of ODPi and the projects that are part of it. She also described how ODPi is taking an open-source development approach to make data more easily accessible.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (curl, LibRaw, python-pillow, and python36), Mageia (coturn, samba, and vino), openSUSE (opera), and Ubuntu (openssl).