Hello everyone and welcome to a Week of Linux News for 26th February 2017.
I’ve nearly finished my latest round of renovating work on my house, so that will
just leave just two rooms to finish.
At least now I’ll have more time to get back on the computer and make some videos
Another old vulnerability has been dug up in the Linux kernel again, this time its vulnerability
with IPv6 implementation Datagram Congestion Control Protocol, or DCCP for short.
There is a long explanation of DCCP on wikipedia, but the basics of it are that it deals with
congestion control on the network interface.
The vulnerability has likely been around since Linux Kernel version 2.6.14 from October 2005
which was the first version to support DCCP.
This is a Local exploit only, and NOT exploitable over the Internet.
The vulnerability which has been designated the Common Vulnerability Exploits identifier
of CVE-2017-6074 can allow a local user to obtain root privileges or cause a denial of
service via an application that makes an IPV6_RECVPKTINFO setsockopt system call.
But Good News Everyone - The vulnerability has already been fixed, and it's likely your
distribution has provided you an updated kernel.
Just apply the updates at your convenience, there is no need to rush off now and get them
done.
What about the news regarding updates this month on that other Operating System, you
know that OS that really shouldn’t be discussed in this video?
Microsoft withheld monthly updates for February which would have patched vulnerabilities in
SMB network communication and bundled Flash updates for Internet explorer.
Both of those vulnerabilities are being actively exploited right now over remote attacks.
In comparison an old local vulnerability that sat around for years in the kernel without
anyone knowing about it doesn’t seem so bad.
Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus has reached the Beta 1 milestone.
I can’t see anything much in the Wiki as to what the main changes are with Ubuntu,
so I will actually have to install and take a look.
There is some information regarding the changes for the derivatives:
Kubuntu will be getting the Plasma 5.9 desktop with KDE Applications 16.12.1.
It looks like they are using Plasma 5.9.0 desktop?
Laugh KDE Neon and no doubt Arch, Gentoo, and any other rolling release KDE distros
are already on Plasma 5.9.2.
Maybe they will change nearer final release?
Ubuntu Gnome proudly features GNOME 3.24 Beta
GNOME 3.24 introduces Night Light which can automatically reduce the blue light emitted
by your computer screen at sunset or whenever you choose.
Huh ok I can’t say that's ever something I thought of as a problem with computers.
Ubuntu Budgie appears to still be progressing forward ready for their first formal release
as an official derivative of Ubuntu.
Lubuntu Softpedia report that Lubuntu once again have
delayed moving to the new LXQT desktop.
Having reviewed LXQT desktop in December I don’t blame them.
While the desktop itself is functional, not all the LXQT specific applications have been
completed, and they are falling back to using the older GTK based LXDE apps.
I suspect it could be easy enough for Lubuntu to move to LXQT, however the ISO file will
have to be made larger in order to handle the mixed GTK and QT dependencies.
Lubuntu developers announced on Twitter that things didn't go as initially planned, "We're
behind schedule on LXQt images for 17.04, therefore we will not release LXQt images
for 17.04."
LXQt version 0.11.1 is included in the Ubuntu repositories, and installing it is as easy
as "sudo apt install lxqt".
Once all the packages have been installed, log out of your current LXDE session, or whatever
desktop you're using, and choose LXQt from the login screen.
Be warned that Lubuntu and LXQT are in Beta stage of development, and are not necessarily
ready for a production system.
There have been two release updates for the KDE desktop recently, we have Plasma 5.9.2,
which is mostly a bug fix release.
A few noteable updates include: KWin: Avoid a crash on Kwin decoration KCM
teardown Discover software installer: Make sure we
don't show warnings unless it's absolutely necessary.
I like the sound of that commit, sit there and keep quiet Discover.
There are some improvements to look and feel of Oxygen Theme.
And also a few bug fixes on Plasma Desktop, Addons, and GTK Config.
There has also been an update to the Long Term support version of Plasma desktop 5.8.
My understanding of the 5.8 branch was that it's only receiving security fixes, as the
main focus of development is now on the 5.9 branch.
However, looking through the changelog there is a lot more than security fixes, we also
have translation updates, bug fixes, as well as security fixes.
I can’t really complain that the KDE developers are continuing to improve the usability of
an older desktop.
LibreElec version 8.0 (Krypton) has been released, and it uses the latest version of Kodi media
player version 17.
I’ve done a review of Kodi 17 which comes with a whole new look and feel compared to
previous versions.
I still haven’t moved to using Kodi 17 yet on my home theatre PC, due to lack of time.
LibreElec offers a full blown operating system for Kodi and is compatible with different
hardware from x86_64 down to Raspberry Pi and other ARM based systems.
It was originally forked from OpenElec, and it appears that they have beaten their predecessor
in moving to Kodi 17.
And finally some amusing news for the week A hacker calling themselves Pro_Mast3r managed
to deface a server associated with Trump's presidential campaign fundraising, The server,
secure2.donaldjtrump.com, is behind Cloudflare's content management and security platform,
and does not appear to be directly linked from the Trump Pence campaign home page.
But it does appear to be an actual Trump campaign server—its certificate is legitimate, but
a reference to an image on another site is insecure, prompting a warning on Chrome and
Firefox that the connection is not secure.
Better luck next time with that cyber security
That concludes the week of Linux news.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you all later.