This week, major Linux distros made important announcements. A new version of the elementary OS has been released. elementary OS 7 “Horus” is coming with a lot of improvements all over the operating system. Also, developers of Linux Mint shared some important information about the upcoming release, 21.2 “Victoria”, which is expected to be released in June. Also this week, Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu Pro, which was released a few months ago.
elementary OS 7 “Horus” is released. What’s new?
After a long period of development, elementary OS 7 is available for download and use. elementary OS 7 rebases the operating system to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS version and it runs the Linux kernel 5.15 under the hood. It uses the Pantheon desktop environment, created by elementary OS developers. With its dock, desktop, and design language, it looks quite similar to macOS. Another new feature is the option to use double-clicking while navigating through Files.
OpenAI’s AI classifier tool can now detect AI-written text
OpenAI has released a tool to detect AI-written text. The tool is designed to help users identify whether the content was written by a human being or an AI. The software analyzes the language and style. The tool was refined using a dataset comparing human-written texts and artificial intelligence ones on the same topic. To reduce the false positive rates, the OpenAI team changed the confidence threshold which means that content is only identified as AI-written if the tool is very confident.
What’s new in Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria”?
The Linux Mint team shared some insights regarding the upcoming Mint release, version 21.2, codenamed “Victoria”. Linux Mint developers shared the progress and the upcoming features of Linux Mint 21.2 “Victoria”, which included bug fixes, improvements, and overall information about the upcoming release. The new release will fix two issues by updating Blueman to version 2.3.5, and patching Cinnamon 5.6 with multiple bug fixes including fixing the squashed alt-tab selector in multi-monitor mode and cropped/flashing shadows on dialog windows.
Gcore announces partnership with Super Protocol
Super Protocol and Gcore announced a new partnership to add new capabilities to the Super Protocol network of confidential computing providers. Gcore’s resources will be available on the Super Protocol marketplace as a part of the global confidential computing infrastructure. Recently, the team announced the test network launch Phase One, which is moving to a conclusion with a big developer competition.
Ubuntu Pro is now out
Ubuntu Pro is an uptime and security-focused version of Ubuntu that is designed for use in public clouds and by enterprises. It is a maintenance subscription that focuses more on security, stability, and uptime. Ubuntu Pro is designed for companies that need to keep their servers or desktops up and running at all times, whether for critical work or simply to avoid downtime. Ubuntu Pro currently offers a 10-year security coverage and covers all of the LTS versions of Ubuntu, starting from 16.04 LTS.
Dell to acquire Cloudify
Dell is acquiring Cloudify. Although the company didn’t make any official announcement, a document with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revealed the transaction. With the acquisition, Dell aims to improve its cloud services business, especially edge offerings for DevOps. The document didn’t reveal the transaction details but various sources claim that the total value of the acquisition is between $70 and $100 million.
GIMP developers pushing hard to release version 3.0 in 2023
According to the co-maintainer of GIMP’s annual report GIMP 3.0 could be released sometime in 2023. Jehan announces that to make the deadline work, he had to delay some elements out of the 3.0 roadmap such as extensions management and the paint select tool. Jehan says that to get a safe online infrastructure to handle extension search and download, they will be needing more time. For the Paint Select tool to be implemented, its creator Thomas Manni will be investigating alternative algorithms to achieve the expected performance.