OpenOffice Retirement, CPUs Will Linux, Kernel.org Hacker Arrested

A suspect has been arrested for hacking into kernel.org five years ago topping the Linux headlines on a busy news day. It caused a lot of headaches back then and a months downtime. In other news, reports of the latest AMD and Intel chips only supporting Windows 10 weren't exactly accurate and Apache is seriously considering throwing in the towel on OpenOffice. Neil Rickert posted a look at the latest Leap Beta and more details emerge on PC-BSD's move to TrueOS.

Donald Ryan Austin was arrested last week during a routine traffic stop on a warrant for hacking into http://kernel.org in 2011. He's charged with damaging four servers at the Linux Foundation while breaking in and installing rootkits and trojans. Apparently, he had stolen passwords for administrators to get in. If convicted, Austin could face 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Lots of sites covered this development, but I saw it first on www.computerworld.com. More details there and here.

Another widely covered story today was the proposed retirement of Apache OpenOffice. Apache took over OpenOffice after Oracle bored of it but has done little to maintain it. LibreOffice has left it in the dust and now Apache is considering giving up on it. It was suggested several times over the years that OpenOffice and LibreOffice re-merge, but LibreOffice has spent five years exorcising old OpenOffice code from its base. ArsTechnica.com today reported that there are very few developers left working on OpenOffice and project leads are worried about having the personnel to fix security issues - let alone introduce new modern features. The VP of AOO began a thread discussing the logistics of retiring the code saying, "retirement is a serious possibility." The code would be archived and remain available, but no further code changes would be made. Most infrastructure would shut down and volunteers let go as positions disappeared. The article cites the 160 million downloads, but I think those numbers were in dispute by some. It also states OpenOffice developers are generally not in favor of the shutdown. No final decision has been made as of yet.

Apparently, news that the latest processors from AMD and Intel would only support Windows 10 (excluding Linux and other systems) caused the sort of uproar that news would invoke - if it were true. The Register said they checked with an Intel spokesman who stated, "The Microsoft support change obviously doesn't impact other operating systems." This scare was provoked by a blog posting of a Microsoft executive who stated those cpus would only work with Windows 10 in reference to Windows products (i.e. Windows 7, Windows 8.1). It doesn't seem like much to worry about unless you want a new machine and to run an older Windows.

Last week we learned that PC-BSD was to be renamed TrueOS and the decision as to what to do with the rolling branch would come later. Well more news has emerged and it was decided that TrueOS will be a rolling release distribution based on FreeBSD-Current. There will only be one package repository to configure and packages will be updated weekly with new installation ISOs coming about as often. It will have a user data import so users can start fresh without losing settings and stuff and the Lumina desktop will remain the face. The first release of TrueOS Desktop is still in beta.

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