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Switching to Linux From Windows: 5 Pros and 5 Cons You Need to Consider  How-To Geek

The Military Police of the State of São Paulo (PMESP) chose Android Enterprise to easily and quickly deploy and protect data for its 10,000 police vehicles. By adopting …

ArsTechnica: When graphic design platform-provider Canva bought the Affinity image-editing and publishing apps early last year, we had some major questions about how the companies' priorities and products would mesh. How would Canva serve the users who preferred Affinity's perpetually licensed apps to Adobe's subscription-only software suite? And how would Affinity's strong stance against generative AI be reconciled with Canva's embrace of those technologies. This week, Canva gave us definitive answers to all of those questions: a brand-new unified Affinity app that melds the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into a single piece of software called "Affinity by Canva" that is free to use with a Canva user account, but which gates generative AI features behind Canva's existing paid subscription plans ($120 a year for individuals). This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity's anti-AI stance: All three apps' core features are free to use, and the stuff you're being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don't want anyway. But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between "free" and "premium" features down the line. [...] There's now a dedicated page for the older versions of the Affinity apps, and an FAQ at the bottom of that page answers several questions about the fate of those apps. Affinity and Canva say they will continue to keep the activation servers and downloads for all Affinity v1 and v2 apps online for the foreseeable future, giving people who already own the existing apps a way to keep using the versions they're comfortable with. Users can opt to link their Serif Affinity store accounts to their new Canva accounts to access the old downloads without juggling multiple accounts. But those older versions of the apps "won't receive future updates" and won't be able to open files created in the new Canva-branded Affinity app.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SUSE Brings Agentic AI into its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16 Operating System  ChannelE2E

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company's latest big round of layoffs -- about 14,000 corporate jobs -- wasn't triggered by financial strain or AI replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble. From a report: Speaking with analysts on Amazon's quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered. "The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven -- not right now, at least," he said. "Really, it's culture." Jassy's comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people -- and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon's history. The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon's total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI. But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called "the technology transformation happening right now."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe brought together 10,000 marketers, filmmakers and content creators to its annual conference this week to persuade them that the company's software products are adapting to AI and remain the best tools for their work. But it's Adobe's investors, rather than its users, who are the most skeptical that generative AI technology won't disrupt the company's business as the top seller of software for creative professionals. Despite a strong strategy, Adobe is "at risk of structural AI-driven competitive and pricing pressure," wrote Tyler Radke, an analyst at Citigroup. The company's shares have lost about a quarter of their value this year as AI tools like Google's video-generating model Veo have gained steam. In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier this week, Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said the company is undervalued as the market is focused on semiconductors and the training of AI models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux users have no reason to worry about recent AMD GPU driver changes  GamingOnLinux

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs  BleepingComputer

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs  BleepingComputer

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs  BleepingComputer

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs  BleepingComputer

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs  BleepingComputer

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Australian scientists have developed roof coatings that can passively cool surfaces up to 6C below ambient temperature, as well as extract water from the atmosphere, which they say could reduce indoor temperatures during extreme heat events. One coating made from a porous film, which can be painted on to existing roofs, works by reflecting 96% of incoming solar radiation, rather than absorbing the sun's energy. It also has a high thermal emittance, meaning it effectively dissipates heat to outer space when the sky is clear. Its properties are known as passive radiative cooling. [...] In a study, published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers tested a prototype for six months on the roof of the Sydney Nanoscience Hub, pairing the cool paint with a UV-resistant topcoat that encouraged dew droplets to roll down into a receptacle. As much as 390 milliliters per sq meter per day could be collected for about a third of the year, the scientists found. Based on that water capture rate, an average Australian roof -- about 200 sq meters -- could provide up to 70 liters on days favorable for collecting dew, they estimate. [...] In well-insulated buildings, a 6C decrease in roof temperature "might result in a smaller fraction of that cooling being reflected in the top level of the house," [said the study's lead author, Prof Chiara Neto of the University of Sydney], but greater temperature reductions would be expected in most Australian houses, "where insulation is quite poor." She said the coating could also help reduce the urban heat island effect, in which hard surfaces absorb more heat than natural surfaces, resulting in urban centers being 1C to 13C warmer than rural areas. The researchers found that the prototype coating was comprised of poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropene), which is used in the building industry but was "not a scalable technology going forward" due to its environmental issues. However, they are now commercializing a water-based paint with similar performance that is affordable and environmentally safer, costing about the same as standard premium paints.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

3 Useful Linux Apps to Try This Weekend (Oct. 31 - Nov. 2)  How-To Geek

AMD Windows Driver Changes For RX 5000/6000 Series Won't Impact Linux Users  Phoronix

Linux vendors are getting into Ubuntu – and Snap  theregister.com

Linux 6.18-rc4 Fixes Another Performance Regression In The Power Management Code  Phoronix

Researchers Build Linux Rootkit That Evades Elastic Security EDR Detection  Cyber Press

AerynOS 2025.10 ISOs Released - GNOME 49, Switches Back To GNU libstdc++  Phoronix

I Found Everything Search Engine Alternative for Linux Users  It's FOSS