News briefs for July 10, 2018.
Canonical released its new Minimal Ubuntu yesterday. According to the Ubuntu blog[1], Minimal Ubuntu is "optimized for automated use at scale, with a tiny package set and minimal security cross-section. Speed, performance and stability are primary concerns for cloud developers and ops." The images are 50% smaller than the standard Ubuntu server images and they boot up to 40% faster. Minimal Ubuntu also is fully compatible with standard Ubuntu operations. You can download it here[2].
Mozilla launches two new Mobile Test Pilot Experiments[3]: Firefox Lockbox for iOS and Notes by Firefox for Android. Firefox Lockbox[4] allows iOS users to access Firefox-saved passwords saved in the browser to log in to any online account or app. With Notes by Firefox[5], users can "sync notes from any Firefox browser on any Android smartphone or tablet", and the notes are end-to-end encrypted as well. These projects are experimental, and Mozilla welcomes feedback here[6].
An Ubuntu bug that allows anyone with physical access to the computer to bypass the lockscreen by removing the hard drive has just been made public. According to the Neowin post[7], the bug was tested on Ubuntu 16.04.4, and it's not certain whether it affects other Ubuntu versions or distributions.
Google announced the release of Jib[8] yesterday, an open-source Java tool that allows developers to build containers. Jib is "a fast and simple container image builder that handles all the steps of packaging your application into a container image", and you don't need to write a Dockerfile or have docker installed to use it.
Wine 3.12 is now available[9]. This release contains many bug fixes, and other new features include Unicode data upgraded to Unicode 11.0.0, proxy configuration dialog in internet control panel, more glyphs in the