Open-source News

Week in review: Uber hacked, QNAP NAS devices under attack, 5 Kali Linux books to read this year  Help Net Security

Open Video Downloader is a free app for Windows, Mac and Linux that downloads videos from YouTube and others thanks to youtube-dl  Gearrice

Proposed a few years ago was Kernel Address Space Isolation (KASI / ASI) for limiting data leaks with the growing number of speculative execution attacks on CPUs. Several organizations have been involved with Address Space Isolation efforts for the Linux kernel including IBM, Oracle, and Google with various approaches. Google engineers earlier this year posted a newer iteration of ASI focused on KVM use for the cloud / VMs. ASI still hasn't made it to the mainline kernel but Google engineers this week at LPC argued that it should be be the path forward for mainline in better dealing with these CPU security vulnerabilities...

Google Engineers Argue For Linux "ASI" To Better Deal With Speculative Execution Attacks  Phoronix

How to install non-Google Play Store apps on your Chromebook without switching to developer mode  Chrome Unboxed

Over the past year since launching Intel Alder Lake processors, Intel engineers have made a number of improvements to the Linux kernel for better dealing with the hybrid processor approach mixing P and E cores. While Alder Lake is running great with recent kernels and the P vs. E core selection for tasks on Linux is better than it was at launch, there still are areas for improvement as raised by Intel engineers this week...

Linux's Load Balancer Still Needs To Be Better Adapted For Intel Hybrid CPUs  Phoronix

CISA adds Stuxnet bug to Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog  Security Affairs

Pros and cons of Linux and how to deal with HP laptop battery issues  The Seattle Times

How to make Custom Grub Menu Backgrounds for Linux Boots  BollyInside

Longtime Linux kernel engineer Peter Zijlstra with Intel has sent out his latest "Call Depth Tracking" patches as a mitigiation for Retbleed that aims to be less costly on system performance than the current mitigation approach. With this latest patch series, he indicates he hopes to soon get this code mainlined...

Call Depth Tracking For Less Costly Retbleed Mitigation Hopes To Land Soon  Phoronix

In this article we will try to teach you how to Calculate Subnet Masks on Linux With ipcalc. Every device has a two-part IP address: the client or host  BollyInside

Hans de Goede of Red Hat has been involved with many great Linux desktop/laptop hardware improvements over the years for work that would have otherwise likely gone unaddressed. One of the initiatives he has been focusing on recently that has long been a sore point for Linux laptops has been the user-space backlight/brightness interface. This week at Linux Plumbers Conference was a presentation on this effort that has long been ripe for improvement...

Linux's Display Brightness/Backlight Interface Is Finally Being Overhauled  Phoronix

HarfBuzz is the text shaping library used by many open-source projects from UI toolkits to directly by desktops like GNOME and KDE and then over to other notable software like Java, Android, Firefox, Chrome, and many others. Out this weekend is HarfBuzz 5.2 and most notably adds support for Unicode 15...

While Plasma 5.26 beta released this week, KDE developers didn't kick back and relax but have pressed on with continuing to make improvements to this open-source desktop environment...

Humble has a whole lot of Total War Classics in this bundle  GamingOnLinux

What is OpenRAN? Stephan Avenwedde Sat, 09/17/2022 - 03:00

If you own and use a smartphone capable of connecting to arbitrary computers all over the world, then you are a user of Radio Access Networks (RAN). A RAN is provided by your cellular provider, and it handles wireless connections between your smartphone and your communication provider.

While your smartphone may be running an open source operating system (Android) and the server you try to access is probably running Linux, there's a lot of proprietary technology in between to make the connection happen. While you may have a basic understanding of how networking works locally, this knowledge stops when you plug a SIM card into your smartphone in order to make a connection with a cell tower possible. In fact, the majority of software and hardware components in and around a cell tower are still closed source, which of course has some drawbacks. This is where OpenRAN comes into play.

The OpenRAN initiative (shorthand for Open Radio Access Network) was started by the O-Ran Alliance, a worldwide community of mobile operators, vendors, and research and academic institutions. The initiative aims to define open standards between the various components of radio access networks. Interoperability between components of different manufacturers was not possible. Until now.

More on edge computing Understanding edge computing Why Linux is critical to edge computing eBook: Running Kubernetes on your Raspberry Pi Download now: The automated enterprise eBook eBook: A practical guide to home automation using open source tools eBook: 7 examples of automation on the edge The latest on edge Radio Access Network

But what exactly is a RAN? In a nutshell, a RAN establishes a wireless connection to devices (smartphones, for example) and connects them to the core network of the communication company. In the context of a RAN, devices are denoted as User Equipment (UE).

The tasks of a RAN can be summarized as follows:

• Authentication of UE
• The handover of UE to another RAN (if the UE is moving)
• Forwarding the data between the UE and the core network
• Provision of the data for accounting functions (billing of services or the transmitted data)
• Control of access to the various services

OpenRAN

RAN usually consists of proprietary components. OpenRAN defines functional units and interfaces between them:

• Radio Unit (RU): The RU is connected to the antenna and sends, receives, amplifies, and digitizes radio signals.
• Distributed Unit (DU): Handles the PHY, MAC and RLC layer.
• Centralised Unit (CU): Handles the RRC and PDCP layer.
• RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC): Control and optimization of RAN elements and resources.

Units are connected to each other by standardized, open interfaces. Furthermore, if the units can be virtualized and deployed in the cloud or on an edge device, then it's called a vRAN (virtual Radio Access Network). The basic principle of vRAN is to decouple the hardware from the software by using a software-based virtualization layer. Using a vRAN improves flexibility in terms of scalability and the underlying hardware.

OpenRAN for everyone

By the definition of functional units and the interfaces between them, OpenRAN enables interoperability of components from different manufacturers. This reduces the dependency for cellular providers of specific vendors and makes communication infrastructure more flexible and resilient. As a side-effect, using clearly defined functional units and interfaces drives innovation and competition. With vRAN, the use of standard hardware is possible. With all these advantages, OpenRAN is a prime example of how open source benefits everyone.

Open Radio Access Network defines open standards between the various components of radio access networks.

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Opensource.com

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