Version 3.16.0 of Alpine Linux is out – one of the most significant of the many lightweight distros.

Version 3.16.0 is worth a look, especially if you want to broaden your skills.

Alpine is interesting because it's not just another me-too distro. It bucks a lot of the trends in modern Linux, and while it's not the easiest to set up, it's a great deal easier to get it working than it was a few releases ago.

The version number sounds like a small step, but its version numbering is a little different, too. Alpine Linux 3.0.0 came out way back in 2014, meaning that the number after the first decimal is a significant step. The project describes this as "the first in the 3.16 stable series", meaning that soon 3.16.1 will appear, then 3.16.2 and so on.

This version has better support for NVMe disks, and includes a new script to make it easier to install a desktop. The installation program, while remaining extremely minimal, now adds user accounts, including readable names, and can import SSH keys for them too.

As with most new distro versions, it also updates lots of core components, including a swath of current programming languages, and a choice of GNOME 42, KDE 5.24, or Xfce 4.16. This version also drops Python 2 and PHP 7.

Although systemd is growing and extending its reach into more of the Linux OS, Alpine is systemd-free: it uses OpenRC instead. Most of the major Linux distros use either RPM or DEB packages: Alpine has its own, APK. Almost every mainstream distro uses the GNU project's C library, glibc, but Alpine doesn't: it uses the lightweight musl instead. Most desktop distros use a common shell such as bash, but Alpine doesn't, favouring the simpler busybox, mostly seen in phones and routers. This betrays its distant origins as a fork of the Linux Embedded Appliance Framework, or LEAF, which started out in the 1990s as a single-floppy-diskette distro to turn an old 486 PC into a router.

This means that Alpine is very minimal: it uses less disk and less storage than most distros, and it installs quicker, too. It can be configured to boot and run entirely from RAM, so that after it's running, you can remove the boot medium. It can act as a Xen hypervisor host: Xen 4.16 is included, or KVM if you prefer.

This lightness and flexibility is why Docker chose Alpine Linux as its default. If you run Docker on a non-Linux host, for example in Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS, then your containers are probably running on Alpine Linux.

Native versions are available for 32- and 64-bit x86 and Arm, plus PPC64le and IBM s390x; MIPS64 was dropped in the last release.

Alpine Linux's Xfce desktop shows a few missing icons, but it works

If you wish, though, you can ignore all that stuff and install Alpine as a normal, full-function graphical desktop PC OS.

The Reg FOSS desk gave both the x86-32 and x86-64 versions quick whirls on VirtualBox and an elderly laptop. The installation process is ultra-minimal: the OS boots to a command prompt, you log in as root, and if you're using Wi-Fi, you then have to install and configure WLAN support manually.

Then you can run the setup-alpine tool, which will format the hard disk – no dual-booting out of the box here – and build a minimal bootable system. Fortunately, if you need optional extras such as Wi-Fi support, there is a 750MB "Extended ISO" available which contains such additional tools. The standard ISO is under 150MB, and doesn't contain much: you will need a working broadband connection, and we advise you to plug in an Ethernet cable.

Then, you reboot and continue setup, installing a desktop if you want one, and installing whatever tools and apps you need. Fortunately, the documentation is good, because it's not a trivial job.

A very convenient new feature in this version is a setup-desktop tool which will install one of three desktops (GNOME, KDE Plasma or Xfce) in a single step.

In Alpine 3.15 this was a multi-stage manual process, and to be honest, a few years ago, getting a GUI going at all defeated your correspondent completely. The new installer even installs Firefox 100 for you, which is handy: you will probably need it to Google what to do next. Such as, say, manually installing network-manager, or adding sound support, or installing LibreOffice.

Note that being based on a different C library means that many off-the-peg Linux binaries won't work. Alpine does include an optional dpkg tool for installing Debian and Ubuntu packages, but the problem is that proprietary Linux apps such as Google Chrome depend on glibc and a whole host of other bits of Debian which just aren't there on Alpine.

This is the first version of a new release, and we did encounter a few glitches. For example, the x86-64 ISO won't boot from a Ventoy USB key, although it installed fine into a VM. The x86-32 version worked perfectly. Once we installed Xfce, some submenus of the Applications menu were missing their icons, showing just a placeholder – which also affected a VM upgraded from Alpine 3.15.

The ordinary user account created during setup couldn't log in from a graphical session, because the setup program hadn't created a home directory.

If you know your way around Linux, these are mostly trivial details, but such niggles mean we wouldn't recommend Alpine to a Linux newbie.

We installed the 32-bit edition on one of the oldest machines we had to hand, a Thinkpad W500 with a Core 2 Duo CPU and a mere 100GB mechanical hard disk. Everything went fine, it installed in minutes, and for a 14-year-old laptop, the result was fast and responsive, and boots from cold in well under a minute.

It's quite impressive to see a 2022 distro turn this old box back into the powerful workstation it was at the start of the Credit Crunch.

Alpine is an unusual little distro in several ways, including being unusually small and simple, and once you learn how to configure what you need, it works as well as more conventional distros that need five to ten times more resources. This version is easier to install than ever before, but barely any bigger. We are impressed. ®

Researchers in the Netherlands have shown they can transmit quantum information via an intermediary node, a feature necessary to make the so-called quantum internet possible.

In recent years, scientists have argued that the quantum internet presents a more desirable network for transferring secure data, in addition to being necessary when connecting multiple quantum systems. All of this has been attracting investment from the US government, among others.

Despite the promise, there are still vital elements missing for the creation of a functional quantum internet.

Chinese academics have christened an ocean research vessel that has a twist: it will sail the seas with a complement of aerial and ocean-going drones and no human crew.

The Zhu Hai Yun, or Zhuhai Cloud, launched in Guangzhou after a year of construction. The 290-foot-long mothership can hit a top speed of 18 knots (about 20 miles per hour) and will carry 50 flying, surface, and submersible drones that launch and self-recover autonomously. 

According to this blurb from the shipbuilder behind its construction, the Cloud will also be equipped with a variety of additional observational instruments "which can be deployed in batches in the target sea area, and carry out task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional view of specific targets." Most of the ship is an open deck where flying drones can land and be stored. The ship is also equipped with launch and recovery equipment for its aquatic craft. 

In-brief Governments around the world should pass intellectual property laws that grant rights to AI systems, two academics at the University of New South Wales in Australia argued.

Alexandra George, and Toby Walsh, professors of law and AI, respectively, believe failing to recognize machines as inventors could have long-lasting impacts on economies and societies. 

"If courts and governments decide that AI-made inventions cannot be patented, the implications could be huge," they wrote in a comment article published in Nature. "Funders and businesses would be less incentivized to pursue useful research using AI inventors when a return on their investment could be limited. Society could miss out on the development of worthwhile and life-saving inventions."

More papers describing the orders and messages the US President can issue in the event of apocalyptic crises, such as a devastating nuclear attack, have been declassified and released for all to see.

These government files are part of a larger collection of records that discuss the nature, reach, and use of secret Presidential Emergency Action Documents: these are executive orders, announcements, and statements to Congress that are all ready to sign and send out as soon as a doomsday scenario occurs. PEADs are supposed to give America's commander-in-chief immediate extraordinary powers to overcome extraordinary events.

PEADs have never been declassified or revealed before. They remain hush-hush, and their exact details are not publicly known.

Russian crooks are selling network credentials and virtual private network access for a "multitude" of US universities and colleges on criminal marketplaces, according to the FBI.

According to a warning issued on Thursday, these stolen credentials sell for thousands of dollars on both dark web and public internet forums, and could lead to subsequent cyberattacks against individual employees or the schools themselves.

"The exposure of usernames and passwords can lead to brute force credential stuffing computer network attacks, whereby attackers attempt logins across various internet sites or exploit them for subsequent cyber attacks as criminal actors take advantage of users recycling the same credentials across multiple accounts, internet sites, and services," the Feds' alert [PDF] said.

Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft often support privacy in public statements, but behind the scenes they've been working through some common organizations to weaken or kill privacy legislation in US states.

That's according to a report this week from news non-profit The Markup, which said the corporations hire lobbyists from the same few groups and law firms to defang or drown state privacy bills.

The report examined 31 states when state legislatures were considering privacy legislation and identified 445 lobbyists and lobbying firms working on behalf of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, along with industry groups like TechNet and the State Privacy and Security Coalition.

America's financial watchdog is investigating whether Elon Musk adequately disclosed his purchase of Twitter shares last month, just as his bid to take over the social media company hangs in the balance. 

A letter [PDF] from the SEC addressed to the tech billionaire said he "[did] not appear" to have filed the proper form detailing his 9.2 percent stake in Twitter "required 10 days from the date of acquisition," and asked him to provide more information. Musk's shares made him one of Twitter's largest shareholders. The letter is dated April 4, and was shared this week by the regulator.

Musk quickly moved to try and buy the whole company outright in a deal initially worth over $44 billion. Musk sold a chunk of his shares in Tesla worth $8.4 billion and bagged another $7.14 billion from investors to help finance the $21 billion he promised to put forward for the deal. The remaining $25.5 billion bill was secured via debt financing by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and others. But the takeover is not going smoothly.

Cloud security company Lacework has laid off 20 percent of its employees, just months after two record-breaking funding rounds pushed its valuation to $8.3 billion.

A spokesperson wouldn't confirm the total number of employees affected, though told The Register that the "widely speculated number on Twitter is a significant overestimate."

The company, as of March, counted more than 1,000 employees, which would push the jobs lost above 200. And the widely reported number on Twitter is about 300 employees. The biz, based in Silicon Valley, was founded in 2015.

A researcher at Cisco's Talos threat intelligence team found eight vulnerabilities in the Open Automation Software (OAS) platform that, if exploited, could enable a bad actor to access a device and run code on a targeted system.

The OAS platform is widely used by a range of industrial enterprises, essentially facilitating the transfer of data within an IT environment between hardware and software and playing a central role in organizations' industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) efforts. It touches a range of devices, including PLCs and OPCs and IoT devices, as well as custom applications and APIs, databases and edge systems.

Companies like Volvo, General Dynamics, JBT Aerotech and wind-turbine maker AES are among the users of the OAS platform.

Nvidia is expecting a $500 million hit to its global datacenter and consumer business in the second quarter due to COVID lockdowns in China and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Despite those and other macroeconomic concerns, executives are still optimistic about future prospects.

"The full impact and duration of the war in Ukraine and COVID lockdowns in China is difficult to predict. However, the impact of our technology and our market opportunities remain unchanged," said Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO and co-founder, during the company's first-quarter earnings call.

Those two statements might sound a little contradictory, including to some investors, particularly following the stock selloff yesterday after concerns over Russia and China prompted Nvidia to issue lower-than-expected guidance for second-quarter revenue.

HPE is lifting the lid on a new AI supercomputer – the second this week – aimed at building and training larger machine learning models to underpin research.

Based at HPE's Center of Excellence in Grenoble, France, the new supercomputer is to be named Champollion after the French scholar who made advances in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 19th century. It was built in partnership with Nvidia using AMD-based Apollo computer nodes fitted with Nvidia's A100 GPUs.

Champollion brings together HPC and purpose-built AI technologies to train machine learning models at scale and unlock results faster, HPE said. HPE already provides HPC and AI resources from its Grenoble facilities for customers, and the broader research community to access, and said it plans to provide access to Champollion for scientists and engineers globally to accelerate testing of their AI models and research.

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