Today, Kubernetes 1.23 release candidate was made available upstream for testing and experimentation. General availability is planned for December 7th, so now is the time to report back any issues or bugs. Developers, DevOps and open source software enthusiasts can try out the latest features using MicroK8s.

MicroK8s is a lightweight, CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution with a streamlined UX. It can run from a local workstation to the cloud and is ideal to build edge clusters as it includes all Kubernetes services and useful addons in a single light package. MicroK8s tracks all upstream releases, and allows users to select between stable versions for production, beta, or release candidate versions for testing.

• AWS commits to update its own Linux every other year • The Register

  Amazon Web Services has announced that it will release an updated version of its own Linux every two years, starting with Amazon Linux 2022, which it is previewing now.

  The cloud colossus launched its first Linux distro in 2010, and seven … years … later … delivered a successor.

  In the name of speeding things up a bit, Jeff Bezos's computer rental service has promised a new release every other year, each of which will be supported for five years and receive quarterly tweaks.

  AL2022 uses the Fedora project as its upstream, but AWS may add or replace specific packages from other non-Fedora upstreams. The preview of AL2022 is based on Fedora34, while the full release will move up to Fedora 35 (which was released on 2 November).

  The SELinux security module is enabled and enforced by default in AL2022, but EC2 instances running the OS won't automatically implement patches or security updates. Users can instead choose to automate installation of packages, or patches, or both.

• Announcing preview of Amazon Linux 2022

  Today, we are announcing the public preview of Amazon Linux 2022 (AL2022), Amazon's new general purpose Linux for AWS that is designed to provide a secure, stable, and high-performance execution environment to develop and run your cloud applications. Starting with AL2022, a new Amazon Linux major version will be available every two years and each version will be supported for five years. Customers will also be able to take advantage of quarterly updates via minor releases and use the latest software for their applications. Finally, AL2022 provides the ability to lock to a specific version of the Amazon Linux package repository giving customers control over how and when they absorb updates.

  Customers use a variety of Linux based distributions on AWS, including Amazon Linux 1 (AL1) and Amazon Linux 2 (AL2). These have become the preferred Linux choice for AWS customers because of no license costs, tight integration with AWS-specific tools and capabilities, immediate access to new AWS innovations, and a single-vendor support experience. AL2022 combines the benefits of our current Amazon Linux products with a predictable, two year release cycle, so customers can plan for operating system upgrades as part of their product lifecycles. The two year major release cycle provides customers the opportunity to keep their software current while the five year support commitment for each major release gives customers the stability they need to manage long project lifecycles.

• Amazon Linux 2022 Released - Based On Fedora With Changes - Phoronix

  Amazon Web Services has made Amazon Linux 2022 now publicly available in preview form as the newest version of their Linux distribution.

  Amazon Linux / Amazon Linux 2 had been based on a combination of RHEL and Fedora packages while in today's Amazon Linux 2022 release they note it's explicitly based on Fedora. Besides apparently being more Fedora oriented now than RHEL, with Amazon Linux 2022 they are transitioning to a formal two year release cadence between their releases while having quarterly point releases.

  AWS intends to provide major Amazon Linux updates every two years while each major release will see five years of support and quarterly minor release updates.

• OpenHPC Announces Release of OpenHPC 2.4

  This is an update release for the OHPC 2.x branch targeting support for RHEL8 variants and OpenSUSE Leap 15. In addition to a number of component version updates, this release updates previous CentOS8-based recipes to leverage Rocky8.

• Docker really did change the world | InfoWorld

  In 2013, Docker was the “it” company. Docker made headlines for the critical role it played in bringing containers to the mainstream, and in many ways displaced PaaS as the hotness of the time (Heroku anyone?). Now, the company is back in the press with the introduction of a new model for Docker Desktop that requires larger organizations to buy a paid subscription for the tools. There’s been a vocal reaction to this announcement, one that reminds me of the important role Docker played in popularizing a model we know, love, and now use on a mainstream basis: containers.

  [...]

  By 2009, the value of using virtualization was well understood and it was widely deployed. Most organizations had already garnered the benefits of virtualization or had a roadmap to get there. The marketing machine was tired of virtualization. People were hungry for the next innovation in IT and software development. It came in the form of Heroku. In fact, PaaS in general and Heroku specifically became wildly popular. So much so that it looked like PaaS was going to take over the world.

  At that time, Heroku was huge. You just go out to this portal and develop your apps and deliver them as a service? What’s not to like? Why wouldn’t you develop apps on Heroku?

  As it turned out, there were a couple of good reasons not to use Heroku and PaaS platforms of its ilk. For example, applications built on Heroku were not portable; they were available only within Heroku. Developers had to work remotely on the PaaS platform if they wanted to collaborate. Unlike Netflix, it turns out, developers love to develop locally. If a developer wanted to work on their local box, they were still left to manually build the environment themselves.

  In addition, although the Heroku model was extremely powerful if you used what was provided out of the box, it was complex behind the scenes. As soon as your team built something more complex than a simple web app, or they needed to customize the infrastructure for security or performance reasons, it became a difficult, very “real” engineering problem.

• SD Times news digest: Databricks launched Partner Connect; OpenAI’s API now available with no waitlist; Logz.io unveils observability updates - SD Times

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit enabling innovation through open source, and The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, have announced that the Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) exam, originally announced last month, is now generally available for enrollment and scheduling.

  In addition, a new online training course, Kubernetes and Cloud Native Essentials, has been released to both prepare individuals for entry level cloud roles and to sit for the KCNA exam. KCNA is made up of a multiple-choice certification exam designed to test entry-level knowledge and skills in Kubernetes as well as the wider cloud native ecosystem.

  The KCNA exam is broken up into different sections, including Kubernetes fundamentals, container orchestration, cloud native architecture, cloud native observability, and cloud native application delivery.

• NCSC on rise in ransomware attacks [Ed: A Windows problem]

  Over the past 12 months the UK official National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has responded to a rise in ransomware attacks, and a range of services have been provided to businesses over the year to help protect them from ransomware. That’s according to the NCSC’s annual report on its fifth year of working, to August 2021.

• Open-source leaders seek to fill the gaps in software supply chain security [Ed: These are proprietary software issues]

  Security of the software supply chain has gained significant attention over the past year. Two major cybersecurity attacks — SolarWinds and Kaseya — proved sharp reminders to reexamine every component of software development and deployment, including what they are and where they came from.

  The first signs of major supply chain vulnerability actually showed up over four years ago when the malware wiper NotPetya was launched against Ukraine in 2017. NotPetya attackers, believed to be threat actors in the Russian military, allegedly injected malicious code into accounting software owned by a Ukrainian company. The result was an estimated $10 billion in damages that impacted organizations across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Wyrcan is a bootloader that boots into a container. That’s all it does.