• Best Linux-Centric File Managers for Chrome OS

  I recently covered how to install Linux on Chromebook and you can check it out here. Today, let’s divert our attention to the File Manager in Chrome OS.

  Chrome OS is a beautiful Operating System (as is expected of all Google products) and it houses a responsive file manager for navigating its file trees.

  While it works excellently on Chrome OS which it was designed for, navigating Linux directories with it doesn’t feel as “Linuxy” and it can be helpful to install a Linux-centric file manager to eliminate that need.

• Proposed Chrome OS 78 change will use the Files app to restore Linux containers on Chromebooks

  Chrome OS 74 brought the ability to backup and restore Linux containers on a Chromebook. It’s handy and it works. However, to use it, you have to go to the Linux settings in Chrome OS, which isn’t ideal.

• Lenovo's 2019 ThinkPad P Series Lineup: OLED, RTX Quadro, Ubuntu, and More

  All P Series mobile workstations can also be configured with either Windows (up to Windows 10 Pro) or Ubuntu, making these a powerful mobile option for Linux users.

• This Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankroll Firefox with paid-for premium extras

  Mozilla is planning to launch a suite of paid-for subscription services to complement its free and open-source Firefox browser in October.

  CEO Chris Beard elaborated on the plan, mentioned in the company's bug reporting system eleven months ago, to German technology site T3N last week. In an interview, he said Mozilla's premium service plan will include VPN bandwidth above what's available from Mozilla's ProtonMail VPN partnership.

  He suggested the arrangement will augment a free VPN tier. That would be a change from the current $10 per month ProtonMail VPN arrangement, one that resembles the free VPN offering from the competing Opera browser. He also suggested the service bundle will include an allotment of secure cloud storage, though it isn't yet clear how much storage will be included or whether "secure" means user-held encryption keys.

• Firefox 68 Beta 10 Testday, June 14th

  We are happy to let you know that Friday, June 14th we are organizing Firefox 68 Beta 10 Testday. We’ll be focusing our testing on: Sync & Firefox Account and Browser notifications & prompts.

  Check out the detailed instructions via this etherpad.

• Mozilla Open Design Blog: Firefox: The Evolution Of A Brand

  Consider the fox. It’s known for being quick, clever, and untamed — attributes easily applied to its mythical cousin, the “Firefox” of browser fame. Well, Firefox has another trait not found in earthly foxes: stretchiness. (Just look how it circumnavigates the globe.) That fabled flexibility now enables Firefox to adapt once again to a changing environment.

  The “Firefox” you’ve always known as a browser is stretching to cover a family of products and services united by putting you and your privacy first. Firefox is a browser AND an encrypted service to send huge files. It’s an easy way to protect your passwords on every device AND an early warning if your email has been part of a data breach. Safe, private, eye-opening. That’s just the beginning of the new Firefox family.

  Now Firefox has a new look to support its evolving product line. Today we’re introducing the Firefox parent brand — an icon representing the entire family of products. When you see it, it’s your invitation to join Firefox and gain access to everything we have to offer. That includes the famous Firefox Browser icon for desktop and mobile, and even that icon is getting an update to be rolled out this fall.

• Chromium-Based Browsers Will Ignore Google’s Ad-Blocking Ban

  Brave Opera and Vivaldi will not implement Google’s changes that will cripple ad-blockers.

  Commercial web browsers including Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi won’t be disabling ad blocker extensions as desired by Google. These browsers are based on the the same open source codebase that is used with Google Chrome. Google maintains an open source project called Chromium as the base of its Chrome browsers.

  According to ZDnet, “At the end of May, Google made a new announcement in which it said that the old technology that ad blockers were relying on would only be available for Chrome enterprise users, but not for regular users.”

Huawei registered “Ark OS” at the European trademark office, likely to be the name of its in-house operating system to replace Android for its future smartphones.

It emerged that Huawei has just registered a couple of trade marks with the European Union Intellectual Property Office. These include “Huawei Ark OS”, “Huawei Ark”, and “Huawei Ark Compiler”. It looks that “Ark” could be an overarching brand that covers both the OS and the compiler. It is possible that this would be the name of choice by Huawei for its in-house operating system to replace Android, as was reported earlier. Huawei declined Telecoms.com’s request for comment.

All the three trademarks filed belong to two classes on the “Nice Classification” of goods and services: Class 9 under “goods”, which the applicant explained specifically refers to “compiler software; operating systems for electronic devices”; and Class 42 under “services”, which the application specified includes “design and development of compiler software and operating systems for electronic devices; design and development of mobile phone applications featuring compiler software; Software as a Service (Saas) featuring compiler software.” The applications are “under examination” by the EU office.

Separately, the trademark office of China displayed that Huawei had filed applications for “Huawei Hongmeng” as the name of its operating system. The application was made in May 2018 and was published for opposition on 14 May 2019. In the Chinese myths, “Hongmeng” refers to the chaos before the world was created.

• Fuchsia Friday: Android, Linux apps, and Fuchsia’s close relationship w/ Chrome OS

  Following along with the development of Google’s Fuchsia OS, it has become clear that it will be capable of running both Linux and Android apps. Chrome OS can also do both of these things, and that’s no coincidence, as the Fuchsia team has opted to use some of Chrome OS’s developments for their own benefit.

• Golang Gets Cheaper Context Switching

  As good news considering how much longer it takes to perform a full context switch on Intel CPUs due to various vulnerability mitigations, the Go programming language run-time now has the ability for performing cheaper context switches.

  Landing in GCC 10 Git with the Golang code is a less involved context switching implementation for Linux x86_64 systems with the libgo run-time library.

• Build an XML sitemap of XML sitemaps

  Suppose that you have so many thousands of pages that you can't just create a single /sitemap.xml file that has all the URLs (aka ) listed. Then you need to make a /sitemaps.xml that points to the other sitemap files. And if you're in the thousands, you'll need to gzip these files.

  The blog post demonstrates how Song Search generates a sitemap file that points to 63 sitemap-{M}-{N}.xml.gz files which spans about 1,000,000 URLs. The context here is Python and the getting of the data is from Django. Python is pretty key here but if you have something other than Django, you can squint and mentally replace that with your own data mapper.

• Generate a random IP address in Python

  I have a commenting system where people can type in a comment and optionally their name and email if they like.
  In production, where things are real, the IP address that can be collected are all interestingly different. But when testing this manually on my laptop, since the server is running http://localhost:8000, the request.META.get('REMOTE_ADDR') always becomes 127.0.0.1 . Boring! So I fake it.