Free Republic

Do you want to learn about Linux? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Not sure what Linux is? To a purist, Linux refers to an open source kernel – the program at the heart of the operating system. But it’s easiest to think of Linux as a family of free and open source software operating systems built around that kernel. More importantly, it’s a genuine contender to the Windows family of operating systems, surpassing it in many areas.Linux differs in so many ways to Windows. You might be well versed with Windows. But if you’re keen to explore and...

Is Intel really planning on making this shit architectural? Has anybody talked to them and told them they are f*cking insane? They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense. That makes all your [i.e. Woodhouse’s] arguments questionable and suspicious. The patches do things that are not sane. …So somebody isn’t telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons. Sorry for having to point that out. ...Intel, for its part, offered the following statement: “We take the feedback of industry partners seriously. We are actively engaging with the Linux community, including Linus,...

Microsoft has given the world new versions of PowerShell that bring the popular automation and scripting tool to MacOS and Linux.PowerShell Core 6.0’s both an upgrade and a replacement for its predecessors.It’s a replacement because Microsoft is no longer actively developing its predecessor, “Windows PowerShell”. That tool will be kept secure in future updates to Windows Server and Windows.Those of you looking for future fun, by way of enhancements, need to adopt PowerShell Core. That moniker reflects the fact it runs with the .Net Core, rather than the Windows-only .NET framework.The change has been made because Microsoft wants sysadmins to...

All 500 machines on the TOP500 supercomputer list run Linux. Here’s how the little OS that could, did.After years of pushing toward total domination, Linux finally did it. It is running on all 500 of the TOP500 supercomputers in the world, and who knows how many more after that. That’s even more impressive than Intel’s domination of the list, with 92 percent of the processors in the top 500. So, how did Linux get here? How did this upstart operating system created by a college student from Finland 26 years ago steamroll Unix, a creation of Bell Labs and supported...

I saw elsewhere on the net, that Linux Journal is ceasing publication. From their homepage: Linux Journal Ceases Publication EOF It looks like we’re at the end, folks. If all goes according to a plan we’d rather not have, the November issue of Linux Journal was our last.

Never go full Windows Munich city council's administrative and personnel committee has decided to move any remaining Linux systems to Windows 10 in 2020.A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted (PDF, in Deutsche, natürlich) for the Windows migration on Wednesday, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hübner told The Register.Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised – mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange – and in February the...

"KDE Edition In continuation with what’s been done in the past, Linux Mint 18.3 will feature a KDE edition, but it will be the last release to do so."

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a security concept designed to allow remote users to connect to a particular local network to the internet via a secure tunnel. In simpler terms, a VPN is an encrypted connection between two (or more) remote computers.  The main two applications of this technology are either employee who are working remotely yet require access to their company’s network resources, or privacy-minded home users who wish to keep their web traffic protected from any prying eyes that may be watching. VPNs are very commonplace in today’s always-online world, and most (if not all) operating...

TAG Samsung DeX, SDC, SDC2017 Multimedia Download At Samsung, we continuously ask ourselves what else is possible, and what else we can do to bring a better experience for our users. Samsung DeX was literally drawn on a piece of paper after asking these simple but important questions and became what it is today, bringing a desktop-like experience to your smartphone.We brought this desktop-like experience to our users, realizing that they want the convenience of their mobile device but also sometimes need the tried-and-true desktop computing environment, especially when it comes to interacting with productivity tools and entertainment contents...

Full Title: Will Microsoft love Linux to death? Shuttleworth and Stallman on whether Windows 10 is free software's friend If you believe Satya Nadella, then Microsoft loves Linux. Under Nadella's leadership, Microsoft has a discovered a new enthusiasm for open-source software, leading it to join the Linux Foundation and build support for GNU/Linux directly into Windows 10. Yet, in some quarters, there is skepticism that a company whose former CEO described Linux as a cancer could be reborn as a true believer. The greatest suspicion is reserved for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which allows Windows 10 to run...

Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux Is Microsoft “the only [company] doing serious innovating with Linux?” That’s Jessie Frazelle’s contention. Frazelle, who rose to prominence in the developer community with Docker and later Google Cloud, made the bold claim to justify her departure to Microsoft. On its face it seems silly, an over-exuberant claim to justify a career move. And yet it does suggest a very possible future where Microsoft doesn’t merely accept a peaceful coexistence with Linux, but instead...

While many people welcomed the arrival of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in Windows 10, it has been found to be a potential security issue. A new technique known as a Bashware has been discovered by security researchers that makes it possible for malware to use the Linux shell to bypass security software. While administrator access is needed to execute a Bashware attack, this is fairly easily obtained, and the technique can be used to disguise malicious operations from antivirus software and other security tools. Researchers from Check Point Research point out that the danger stems from the fact that...

Microsoft has announced that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is coming to Windows Server.Microsoft's adding it to Windows Server for the same reasons it added it to Windows: it wants developers to have whatever tools they prefer at their disposal.Sysadmins are also on Redmond's mind, it says. “If you’re a server engineer that needs to run node.js, Ruby, Python, Perl, Bash scripts or other tools that expect Linux behaviors, environment or filesystem-layout, the ability to install and run Linux with WSL expands the tools at your disposal on Windows Server.”Redmond snuck WSL into Windows Server Insider Build 16237 without including...

Microsoft's long, gentle embrace of Linux continues with the first release candidate of SQL Server 2017.Microsoft said the early release would land in the middle of this year. Arguably, since this is only the RC1-level release, Microsoft's SQL-Server-on-Linux is running late.There's not much detail on what's in the box, with this Technet blog post only saying: SQL Server 2017 support for Linux includes the same high availability solutions on Linux as Windows Server, including Always On availability groups integrated with Linux native clustering solutions like Pacemaker. There's also Active Directory authentication, so domain-joined Windows or Linux clients can use their...

Debian developers have issued an advisory to disable hyper-threading with Intel and Skylake- Kaby Lake generation processors. The CPUs can cause problems under certain conditions, in fact on all operating systems.They advside you to turn it off in the BIOS, and thus forfeit the extra performance you gain. It seems there is s defect for the CPUs in question that can cause compiler- and application crashes, unexpected behavior of programs and incorrect output software: This warning advisory is relevant for users of systems with the Intelprocessors code-named "Skylake" and "Kaby Lake". These are: the 6th and7th generation Intel Core processors (desktop,...

Note from dayglored: This article is about a flaw in the *IX systems -- Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris. It does NOT apply to Windows, nor as far as I can tell, to OS X (even though OS X is based on FreeBSD). What is the Stack Clash? The Stack Clash is a vulnerability in the memory management of several operating systems. It affects Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris, on i386 and amd64. It can be exploited by attackers to corrupt memory and execute arbitrary code.Qualys researchers discovered this vulnerability and developed seven exploits and seven proofs of concept...

Windows 10 S and Linux will not mix, according to Microsoft senior program manager Rich Turner. Just because Linux distributions are coming to the Windows Store, it doesn't mean they will work on laptops running Microsoft's streamlined Windows 10 S.Microsoft wants to clear up any confusion over two recent announcements. At the beginning of May it unveiled Windows 10 S, a fast-booting, locked-down version of Windows 10 that can only install apps from the Windows Store and is restricted to Microsoft's Edge browser. Windows 10 S ships with Microsoft's $1,000 Surface Laptop, as well as with forthcoming third-party Windows laptops...

A brand new stable release of Wine, the Windows compatibility programme, is now available to download.Wine 2.0 — yes, 2.0 — follows more than a year of development effort and marks the start of a new timed-based release cadence.Various miscellaneous changes make up Wine 2.0, ranging from support for Unicode 9.0; better HiDPI scaling; improved clipboard behaviour; an updated Gecko engine; and adjustments to joystick button mapping and force feedback effects.For gamers Wine 2.0 implements, fixes and polishes a slew of Direct3D 10/11 features, including more shader instructions, sRGB read/write support, array textures and so on, plus there are tweaks to DirectX support.On the audio side...

Analysis: Here are SemiAccurate’s thoughts TLDR; There is a remote control mechanism in hardware that cannot be fully disabled and you cannot get Intel hardware without it.  So while this patch may fix the current vulnerability this situation points to the urgent need for hardware diversity.Monday SemiAccurate brought you news of a critical remote exploit in all 2008+ Intel CPU’s. Today we will walk you through a chain of thought based on further investigation on how it could be exploited.Confidence Levels:While this is only analysis we will note that we believe this is in the wild right now. We would like to...

I am currently in the process of ditching Dish satellite cable and switching to all online. Part of my motivation is to defund CNN et al. and part because it is really expensive. My Dish DVR has a lot of movies on it I would like to save. They are (apparently) in Linux format. I can transfer the movies to a flash drive OK, but then I cannot read the flash drive on any other computer (all Windows).Can anyone tell me how I can save these movies so I can watch them in the future? My online search only talked...