GNOME 3.14 and Elementary OS Turning Heads, Bash Bashed
The release of GNOME 3.14 on September 24 has earned good marks and Elementary OS is still getting positive reviews. Gearhead Mark Gibbs introduces users to Debian GNU/Linux. We have Scott Dowdle and Christian Schaller on Fedora 21 Alpha and Phoronix is reporting Rahul Sundaram suggests using Dash instead of Bash. We have more on Shellshock and its fallout as well as some gaming news from GamingOnLinux.com. And finally today is an opinion on Mark Shuttleworth's September 30, 2014 post.
Several articles on the release of GNOME 3.14 have popped up in the last few days. First up is a slideshow from eWeek.com saying the emphasis with GNOME 3.14 was "on the refinement of features and function." It came with "28,859 changes" and eWeek demonstrates some of them.
PCWorld.com's Chris Hoffman said yesterday that GNOME 3.14 "is a release full of polish." After running down some of the improvements and new applications, Hoffman said, "If you haven’t tried it in a while, GNOME 3 has improved. Performance is now good." Then he concluded with, "GNOME is getting better and better."
But if hand-ons from the community is more your thing, then Erick Pérez Castellanos gives his thoughts saying, "I’m most happy with the improvements this cycle brought." He speaks a bit about the improvements to GNOME Shell before getting into the developer improvements. He says thanks to the updated GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, the whole interface including the applications are more uniform and consistent.
Relatedly, Christian Schaller talks about the progress of Fedora 21 Workstation, Wayland, and GNOME 3.14. He said a lot of work into GNOME 3.14 and its applications to make it meet Fedora Workstation standards (through the updated Human Interface Guidelines). Schaller highlights several key areas beyond GNOME 3.14, such as the new DNF, so check that out.
Scott Dowdle posted a few thoughts today on his experiences running Fedora 21 Alpha. He installed it on a few machines and said, "Fedora 21 pre-beta actually seems quite stable." After speaking a bit on the details, Dowdle concluded, "Overall everything I've tried works fine. I do really appreciate all of the work the Fedora developers put into each release." In related news, Phoronix.com is reporting that it has been suggested that Dash replace Bash in upcoming Fedora 22 due to security concerns.
Speaking of Bash security, Shellshock continued to receive evocative headlines the last few days. One exclaimed, "Nearly 1 Billion Attacks Targeting Shellshock Vulnerability." Others reported similar number of attacks and some used it as another opportunity to bash Open Source software. Fortunately, Matt Asay answers the nay-sayers saying that Linus' "Many Eyes" Law is every bit as valid now as it ever was and explains why.
In related news, today Sam Varghese took a look at how long it took Apple to patch their Bash implementation, nearly a week! Many Linux distributions had a patch the very day of the announcement and most had both fixes by the next day. Varghese said, "Even when Apple came up with its delayed patches, it showed nothing but contempt for its users. The patches were not available via the Software Update mechanism that is present on OS X; no, they had to be downloaded separately." Yikes, I'm glad I run Linux.
In other Linux news:
* Better Know an OS: Debian GNU/Linux
* Elementary OS 'Freya' Is Worth the Wait
* elementary OS: Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful
* Netrunner 2014.09.1 "Rolling" Review
* Shuttleworth Pronouncements, Proclamations, Palaver and Privacy Integration
In gaming new:
* Steam Now Has Over 700 Linux Games, What A Milestone!
* Survival Game Rust Now Using The Experimental Branch By Default
* An Everyday Linux User Review Of Play Linux