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Linux is all grown up. It has nothing left to prove. There's never been a year of the Linux desktop and there probably never will be, but it runs on the majority of the world's servers. It never took over the desktop, it did an end-run around it: there are more Linux-based client devices accessing those servers than there are Windows boxes.Linux Foundation boss Jim Zemlin puts it this way: "It's in literally billions of devices. Linux is the native development platform for every SOC. Freescale, Qualcomm, Intel, MIPS: Linux is the immediate choice. It's the de facto platform. It's...

FOSS Force has learned that we shouldn’t write obituaries until we actually see a death certificate. SCO intends to file an appeal over the dismissal of its case against IBM. On Feburary 29, we told you that SCO was “undeniably and reliably dead” after the company signed off on Judge David Nuffer’s dismissal of what remained of its case against IBM. Guess what? We were wrong. The once upon a time Linux and Unix company, which developed and distributed the Caldera GNU/Linux distribution, evidently has not yet been pulled from life support. On Tuesday, the company filed notification that it...

Today at BUILD in the Day One keynote Kevin Gallo announced that you can now run "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows." This is a new developer feature included in a Windows 10 "Anniversary" update (coming soon). It lets you run native user-mode Linux shells and command-line tools unchanged, on Windows. This isn't Bash or Ubuntu running in a VM. This is a real native Bash Linux binary running on Windows itself. It's fast and lightweight and it's the real binaries. This is an genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I use like awk, sed,...

Short Bytes: Microsoft and Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, are partnering to allow you to use Ubuntu on Windows 10. The official announcement is expected to be made at Microsoft’s BUILD 2016 developer conference later today. This partnership is expected to integrate Windows and Linux on the developer desktop.

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week. Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region.

Browse the web with privacy and security with these best secure browsers. Protect your privacy online with the eight best secure browsers you can use in 2016.What does the idea of a secure browser mean in 2016? The world is now more complex than it was in 2010 when we last looked at the contenders. People are more oriented to mobile devices running under very different conditions while a range of security features such as URL filtering, download protection and do not track have transformed mainstream desktop browsers such as Chrome, IE and Firefox. In a sense all browsers could...

Microsoft has ported its SQL Server software to Linux and has promised to release it in full by next year. From today, the Windows giant, which once likened Linux to cancer, will show off to a lucky few a preview of its SQL database's core engine for the open-source operating system. The full SQL Server 2016 for Linux will be made available by mid-2017, we're told. Scott Guthrie, exec veep of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, said in a blog post on Monday that the Linux port "will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server...

Ok good linuxian folks, Here's what I'd like to do IF possible- Dual boot windows 10 and linux mint cinnamon BUT have windows 10 run again in linux under a virtual machine (yes I know it sounds redundant, but i have a reason for this setup if possible) I'm not sure if I coudl install windows 10 twice on one machine or not, but let's for now just assume i could- (windows 10 is 'free' and you can download the iso for it and use it without activating it legally- the iso is direct from MS- and while I don't...

Over the years, I've heard some people claim that Linux is finally ready for the masses. I would suggest that outside of a completely locked down OS such as ChromeOS (which is Linux powered), no OS is genuinely ready for the masses. Instead, it has been my experience that the masses should stick to tablets and Chromebooks. Smartphones make us dumb I can see how my view of most computer users would seem a bit harsh. But I'd also be the first to point out that using smartphones have made all of us "dumb" in the sense that our complacency...

Last night, the Linux Mint team announced that someone had hacked their servers and started pointing user downloads to malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition. Our Linux editor already covered the initial details of the attack, which we recommend reading before going forward with this article. Since then, in the last ten hours, the Linux and infosec communities have been working hard to investigate what happened and how the hackers operated. Linux Mint Team: They hacked us via our WordPress site The first to provide an answer was Clement Lefebvre, leader of the Linux Mint project,...

The Linux Foundation has launched the Zephyr Project, to foster an open source, small footprint, modular, scalable, connected, real-time OS for IoT devices. Normally we think of the Linux Foundation as being all about Linux. But as the organization has matured, it has expanding its scope to embrace an ever-wider range of open source standards and software. Despite the existence and widespread use of minimalistic Linux implementations including uClinux, OpenWrt, Brillo, and Ubuntu Core, the exponential proliferation of smart, connected devices -- such as light bulbs, thermostats, security cameras, sensors, and many others -- has fueled intense interest in minimizing...

In 2003 Sreenivasa Rao Vadalasetty helped write a report for the SANS Institute that was titled "Security Concerns in Using Open Source Software for Enterprise Requirements." To some that title today is almost laughable. The report stated:"Though the open source has potential to be more secure than its closed source counterpart, it should not be taken for granted that open source is more secure because there are some constraining factors. Despite the fact that the source code is available for everyone, several vulnerabilities in open source remain undiscovered ...." In a survey done by Black Duck Software last year, the...

My buddy David Gewirtz recently wrote about the question of whether you should move from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or a Mac. I have another suggestion: Linux. Specifically Linux Mint 17.3, Rosa, with the Cinnamon desktop. Linux Mint 17.3 is a great replacement for Windows 7. In fact, it's a great desktop operating system period. sjvn Yes, I'm serious. I use all the above desktops -- yes I'm a Windows 7 and 10 user as well as a Linux guy -- and for people I think Mint 17.3 makes a great desktop. I've been using Mint as my main...

With its engineers involved in more than 2,000 open source projects, you'd have to agree that open source has more than a foothold at Microsoft these days. Most recently, for example, the browser team made the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers both Edge and Internet Explorer open source, for a very practical reason. Node, the popular JavaScript runtime, currently works only with Google's V8 JavaScript engine. With Chakra now open source, Microsoft can take the fork of Node that it created to run on Chakra and contribute it back to the project -- which means developers who use Node will...

The flaw is said to affect "tens of millions" of Linux PCs and servers, and most modern devices running the latest Android KitKat 4.4 software and later. A new, previously undiscovered flaw that allows an attacker to escalate local user privileges to the highest "root" level is said to hit "tens of millions" of Linux PCs and servers. Because some of the code is shared, the zero-day flaw also affects more than two-thirds of all Android devices. Israeli security firm Perception Point disclosed the flaw in a blog post Tuesday, but it wasn't immediately clear if the bug had been...

Are there any Linux gurus here? I've looked around online and asked some questions in various forums, but I'm not getting anywhere. I've found explanations of how to set it up, but no examples. I have yet to get it working. I am trying to configure an environment with several Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 virtual machines. All of these machines need to be NTP clients of my NTP server. The NTP server uses MD5 authentication, and I need to have the Linux clients authenticate the NTP traffic. Can someone please post a working "ntp.conf" and "keys" file so that...

Security is something that is always on the minds of users these days, and that includes those who use Linux. TechWeek Europe has a disturbing article about a Linux trojan that captures audio and takes screenshots. It remains to be seen how widespread this Trojan is among Linux users and what the exact attack vector is for it. Steve McCaskill reports for TechWeek Europe: Security researchers have found a new Linux Trojan capable of taking screenshots of infected systems and even recording sound. Russian anti-virus firm Dr Web says that once the Linux.Ekoms.1 malware is launched it checks for two...

A zero-day vulnerability in the FFmpeg open-source multimedia framework, which is currently used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems and software applications, also for the Mac OS X and Windows platforms, was unveiled recently. The vulnerability was discovered on January 12, 2016, by Russian programmer Maxim Andreev in the current stable builds of the FFmpeg software, and it would appear that it allows anyone who has the necessary skills to hack a computer to read local files on a remote machine and send them over the network using a specially crafted video file. The vulnerability is limited to reading local...

Most of the top Linux distributions are of the "easier to use" variety. Some observers might dispute this, but the fact is that most people not working in IT or software development will gravitate toward the easiest experience when it comes to Linux.In this article, I'll share my top picks for best Linux distro for newcomers. These selections are chosen based on their ease of use, not their potential for "learning Linux." I hope to put to bed once and for all that myth that all who use Linux need to have a strong familiarity with how Linux works. After...

Linksys has just revealed at CES 2016 that all the WRT routers now have DD-WRT support, making this the first company of its type to fully embrace an open source solution.Linksys is one of the most important companies that builds networking hardware, and it's known for its quality hardware. In this case we're talking about routers in the WRT series, which are already very good. The company decided to partner up with DD-WRT in order to provide better support for their products.Many Linksys users were already installing DD-WRT and other similar products on their routers, so the company figured out...