The H Roundup - Old cut and paste tricks, Java updates and KDE light

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item. This week: NVIDIA's style of driver development, Java updates, security holes in heating systems, dangerous copy and paste tricks, a lightweight KDE version, and Cinnarch dropping Cinnamon.

Features

This week, Thorsten Leemhuis looks at drivers and networking in the third part of The H's Kernel Log on the upcoming Linux 3.9 and he also comments on the way NVIDIA develops its drivers for the kernel.

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.9 (Part 3) - Drivers and networking
• Kernel comment: Bad show, NVIDIA!

Top News

The last few days were busy from a security perspective with Java updates closing dozens of holes in the beleaguered browser plugin and Microsoft having to pull back one of their Patch Day fixes. Meanwhile, heating systems from German manufacturer Vaillant were found to be attackable from the internet and an old copy and paste trick reared its ugly head again – The H tells you how to defend against it on the Browsercheck.

• Java 7 Update 21 closes security holes and restricts applets
• Microsoft pulls security update for Windows and Windows Server
• Security hole can damage heating systems
• Old tricks are new again: Dangerous copy & paste

Developers from SUSE are working on a slimmed down KDE version and the Cinnarch distribution has decided to drop the Cinnamon desktop environment that gives the project half of its name.

• Development begins on a lightweight KDE version
• Cinnarch drops Cinnamon for GNOME

Mesa 3D and Linux have gained support for hardware accelerated 3D graphics on AMD Radeon chips, and Wayland, and its reference compositor Weston, can now work on systems without any 3D acceleration.

• Linux and Mesa 3D support for AMD's video accelerator
• Wayland and Weston 1.1 work without 3D drivers

Ex-hacker Peiter "Mudge" Zatko is moving from his job at DARPA to a similar role at Google subsidiary Motorola Mobile. The H's Developer Break brings you the latest notes from the developer world.

• Ex-hacker Mudge is "getting the band back together" at Google
• Developer Break: Go, PHP, jQuery, CouchDB, TIOBE and OASIS

Open Source Releases

Open source releases this week included a proof-of-concept collaboration service from Mozilla, a new version of Manjaro Linux, a new release of the openHAB home automation framework and a fresh distribution from the Pardus community.

• Mozilla parks TowTruck to help browsers collaborate
• Manjaro 0.8.5 introduces a graphical installer
• 30 bindings for openHAB 1.2
• Debian base for first Pardus Community Edition

Security Alerts

Oracle shipped important Java fixes and 128 patches across its complete product portfolio this week; all of these patches should be installed as soon as possible. And don't forget the Microsoft patch that has been pulled.

• Java 7 Update 21 closes security holes and restricts applets
• Oracle closes 128 holes across its product range
• Microsoft pulls security update for Windows and Windows Server

For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news. To keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

(fab)