Rosy Red Hat, GNOME 3.22, MS/Lenovo Barricading
Red Hat, Inc. released the financial results for the second quarter ending August 31, 2016 in a press release today. Red Hat stock seems to be going in the right direction for them as well even as insiders sell off their shares. The top story today must have been the skirmish resulting from reports of Linux being blocked from certain Lenovo laptops under orders from Microsoft. Elsewhere, GNOME 3.22 was released as a new age rating system is planned for 3.23. And finally, The Document Foundation reported the results of its 2016 Membership Committee elections.
It was widely reported today that Lenovo laptops featuring Windows 10 lock the hard drive with proprietary code that Linux can not read - so in essence, blocking users from installing Linux. A user asking in a Lenovo support forum was told by an employee that Linux was blocked due to an agreement with Microsoft. The news traveled around the Intertubes with lightening speed making headlines at every tech site in existence. So, Lenovo and Microsoft jumped into damage control saying it was due to proprietary RAID software. Former kernel contributor Matthew Garrett addressed the issue on his blog today saying the sensational headlines are distracting from a real issue here. He said this is probably because "recent Intel hardware needs special setup for good power management and Microsoft could be insisting that Signature Edition systems ship in "RAID" mode in order to ensure that. Or it could be a misunderstanding regarding UEFI Secure Boot." He said it all boils down to Intel doing "very little to ensure that free operating systems work well on their consumer hardware." In any case, two major contributors to the Linux kernel and open source really couldn't care less about either. Today's sensational headlines might not be accurate, but they do point to a real problem, among many others.
The GNOME 3.22 release today was covered by a lot of sites and blogs. Allan Day on behalf of The GNOME Foundation announced it saying, "The Future is Now." Flatpak support was the first feature touted followed by new features in the file manager, "a new Photo sharing feature, redesigned keyboard settings, NickServ integration in Polari (GNOME’s IRC application), enhanced support for the Wayland display server, and a much improved Software application." The release notes go into more detail, but today was an exciting day for GNOMErs. Top GNOME contributor Matthias Clasen is among the top GTK+ 3.22 contributors as well. In related news, Richard Hughes today announced software age ratings support in future GNOME releases.
Red Hat released their second quarter 2017 report today, again beating estimates. Their 18% growth came from revenue of $600 million, up 19% year-over-year, subscription revenue of $531 million up 20%, with a total deferred balance of $1.68 billion up 19%. Their expectations for the next quarter is more growth. Shares of Red Hat stock rose $1.26 today after closing yesterday at $75.78 on the good report and climbed to 82.11 in after hours bidding.
And finally, The Document Foundation today announced the results of their 2016 Membership Committee elections. Congratulations to the new committee members.