OpenStack Foundation Changes Name of the OpenStack Summit

The OpenStack Foundation has decided to change the name of the OpenStack Summit to Open Infrastructure Summit at the last OpenStack Summit in Berlin.

The name change was expected as the OpenStack Foundation was trying to position itself outside of the OpenStack world and as an organization to help manage their massive infrastructure.

During a press conference in Berlin, Mark Collier, COO of the OpenStack Foundation said, "The OpenStack Foundation brand is not a big deal, while Open Infrastructure Summit is to bring people together who may not be involved with OpenStack."

This is not the first time a major open source project has changed it name. The changing market dynamics also led the Linux Foundation to change the name of LinuxCon to Open Source Summit.

What's happening is that open source is becoming very pervasive and technologies are evolving fast, broadening their reach and scope. At times, names tied to specific projects limit its scope.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta

Red Hat, soon to be owned by IBM, has announced the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/11/15/red-hat-enterprise-linux-8-beta-is-here/). As the IT landscape is changing and the workload is moving from traditional data centers to the cloud, leveraging emerging technologies like blockchain and machine learning, the expectation from the operating system that runs these workloads is also changing.

To keep up with the changing times, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 maintains a fine balance between past and future.

"Today, we're offering a vision of a Linux foundation to power the innovations that can extend and transform business IT well into the future: Meet Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta," Red Hat said in a press release.

One of the most notable highlights of this beta is the introduction of the Application Streams concept to deliver userspace packages more simply and with greater flexibility.

"Userspace components can now update more quickly than core operating system packages and without having to wait for the next major version of the operating system," said Red Hat.

What it means is users don't have to worry about "RPM hell" or conflict of packages. "Multiple versions of the same package, for example, an interpreted language or a database, can also be made available for installation via an Application Stream," explained Red Hat.

It allows users to consume an agile and user-customized version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without impacting the underlying stability of the platform or specific deployments.

You can test the beta by downloading it from here: https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-enterprise-linux/beta.

System76 Announces a Line of US-Made PCs

System76, one of the few vendors that sells Linux PCs, is launching a series of computers that the company says is "made in the US." Although some of the elements within the system are imported, System76 says the Thelio desktop series (https://blog.system76.com/post/179592732883/system76-on-us-manufacturing-and-open-hardware) goes beyond mere assembly and that the system is actually manufactured on American soil.

"We've seen it argued that this isn't US manufacturing, because every part isn't made in the US. If we sourced every part externally, this would be called "assembled in the US." That's not what we're doing here. We're transforming raw materials into a final product," System76 said in a blog post.

There are three members of the Thelio family: The entry-level Thelio comes with Ryzen or Core CPUs, up to 32GB of RAM, and is priced at $1,099. Thelio Major is powered by Threadripper or Core-X CPUs, can pack up to 128GB of memory, and has a base price of $2,299. The biggest member of the family, Thelio Massive, is powered by dual Xeon CPUs, offers up to 768GB of ECC memory and up to 86TB of storage, and is priced at $2,899.

System76 has created its own Ubuntu-based operating system that runs on their hardware, Pop!_OS. By building their own operating system, System76 has optimized the performance.

System76 has designed their own chassis controller and hard drive backplane, called Thelio Io, which moves proprietary functionality from the mainboard to the open source Thelio Io "daughterboard."

"Moving chassis and thermal control to Thelio Io enables far more granular performance optimization. Motherboard data, fan speed, and GPU and OS data are used to coordinate optimal airflow," claimed System76.

Thelio Massive also includes an open source System76 designed SAS backplane for high performance 2.5" PCIe storage.

System76 has released its own work on the hardware and software parts into open source. Thelio hardware is certified by Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) and licensed under the GPLv3 and CC BY-SA.