Free Republic

Your PC without this CPU feature won’t boot Windows 11 24H2 KEY TAKEAWAYS Windows 11 24H2 update requires the POPCNT CPU feature, making it impossible to run on super-old PCs. Modern CPUs support POPCNT, so if you recently bought a new PC, you won't have any issues. PCs older than fifteen years will be affected by this change and won't be able to boot Windows 11 without POPCNT support. Windows 11 24H2 is the next big update that Microsoft will roll out later this year, and it might finally put an end to the practice of running Windows unofficially on...

Ubuntu has once again sparked debate among Linux users by implementing a very controversial approach – using the most often used shell command, notably the software update tool, to advertise its service.But first, let me explain what this is all about.Ubuntu Pro Ad in Command ShellCanonical has recently launched a fantastic initiative – a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription for up to five machines. In other words, they opened up its previously paid-for Ubuntu Pro update service free of charge.So far, so good. The news flooded the Internet, well received by all users. And everything would have been perfect if...

U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have introduced bipartisan legislation to help protect federal and critical infrastructure systems by strengthening the security of open source software. The legislation comes after a hearing convened by Peters and Portman on the Log4j incident earlier this year, and would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to help ensure that open source software is used safely and securely by the federal government, critical infrastructure, and others. A vulnerability discovered in Log4j – which is widely used open...

I am not sure what happened, but starting yesterday morning on Winblows7, I can NOT connect to Free Republic with Firefox or Internet Explorer, If I use Brave it connects as Unsecure but it won't let me log in, it times out, I can scroll and read only. Firefox will only connect if I point it to the IP address and allow the cert exception, but it Won't let me Log in either. NO Problem with Any Other websites?? It is a dual boot machine, so I am using Ubuntu right now and everything works like it is supposed to????...

My computer was running like a tired old man. This Dell laptop is my surfing computer with nothing involving money or business. Windows 10 by default installs Defender firewall in real-time mode and I finally decided to get rid of it to see if the computer would act like a young person again.

IntroductionUbuntu and Fedora are both among the top desktop Linux distributions, but they are very different. Fedora is Redhat's testing ground, and it's geared more towards developers and system administrators. On the other hand, Ubuntu is Canonical's primary product, and it tries to please everyone. LineageBoth Ubuntu and Fedora descend from titans in the Linux world. Ubuntu is the child of Debian, and Fedora is a clone of Redhat Linux, which evolved into Redhat Enterprise Linux(RHEL). Both distributions still carry many of the hallmarks of their family trees. They both have their respective families' package managers, package formats, repository formats,...

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,...

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...

In a press call to journalists, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth (accompanied at times by a rather excitable Labrador) explained that shortly after the Snap release several Linux developers, particularly from Arch and Gentoo, approached Canonical with an idea to make Snap a more universal system. Snap, originally developed for Ubuntu's mobile flavor of Linux, is a way of packaging an application with all the dependencies it needs to run in isolation. This means it's easier to run on any device, and the main operating system doesn't risk suffering a Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (TITSUP) if an application gets...

The release of Ubuntu 16.04 last week is good news for computer users who are upset over the recent development of Microsoft turning Windows into an operating system that is essentially spyware. As an open-source Linux distribution, Ubuntu is a great operating system for users concerned about privacy.This marks the 24th release of the Ubuntu operating system, which has become perhaps the most popular Linux distribution in the world. Ubuntu 16.04 — codenamed Xenial Xerus — is also the sixth Long Term Support (LTS) release, meaning it will receive free security updates and support for five years. Canonical — the...

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.

... After publishing details about the availability of new kernel packages for the Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS computer operating systems, Canonical now reports that the Linux kernel for Raspberry Pi 2 was updated for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf). According to the Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2843-3, four kernel vulnerabilities discovered by various developers in the upstream Linux kernel 4.2 branch, which is now officially maintained by Canonical's Ubuntu Kernel Team, as we reported a couple of days ago, were patched for the Raspberry Pi 2 port of Ubuntu 15.10. The first security flaw was...

As sales of tablets and phones continue to outstrip demand for PCs, the technology industry is preparing for a shift in how people use computers. In this transition, phones and tablets are expected to begin to be used as desktop PCs, a change that will force a fundamental redesign of software. Instead of operating systems and applications having a single interface, apps will alter their look and controls to reflect how they are being used. For example, a UI that favours large, easily-tappable buttons on a touchscreen tablet might switch to tightly-packed icons when the tablet is used with a...

An Ubuntu-powered smartphone is coming to the market a year and a half after a previous attempt to launch a model via crowdfunding failed.The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu edition relies on a card-like user interface that is not focused on apps. Unlike the original proposal, the handset does not become a desktop PC when plugged into a monitor. It is initially being targeted at "early adopters", who developers hope will become advocates for the platform. The British company Canonical, which developed the Linux-based operating system, said it hoped to emulate the success of Chinese companies including Xiaomi with its launch...

A serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic library has been discovered that allows attackers to steal information unnoticed. Known as the Heartbleed bug, the vulnerability allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of systems that run vulnerable versions of OpenSSL, revealing the secret authentication and encryption keys to protect the traffic. User names, passwords and the actual content of the communications can also be read. ... OpenSSL recommends that uses immediately upgrade to version 1.0.1g. If that's not possible, users should recompile OpenSSL with the -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS flag to remove the the heartbeat handshake. The 1.0.2 version of...

I got an older Compaq Presario Laptop and I've been toying with the idea of putting Ubuntu on it. I was wondering if I would need to totally wipe the HD to get Ubuntu to run properly or can I install it while leaving Windows 7 on and it will still run OK. I am going to get a new laptop eventually but am in no hurry so it would be nice to still keep windows But I can manage for now without it being I use my Entertainment System Computer most of the time. Thanks in advance for any...

I came into work today and fired up Google Chrome, like on any other day. My Google home page usually displays the eight most frequently visited websites in icon/link form. The icon and link for Free Republic has always occupied the number one or two spot, depending on my frequency of visits. But today Chrome looked different. It wasn't just the new seasonal header image but that some of my frequently visited icon images have been replaced by some infrequently visited icon/links. I clicked on 'Do Not Show on This Page' option for these newbies and it replaced them with...

Bloomberg has become the first major corporate backer of the Ubuntu Edge, pledging $80,000 towards the project to build a crowdfunded smartphone, but this is unlikely to be enough to help Canonical reach its ambitious funding goal of $32 million (£20.8m). Canonical says the pledge is a huge boost for the company and other backers who want to get their hands on the world’s first “truly converged computing device”, but at the time of writing, the Ubuntu Edge has achieved just $8,544,097 of its target with just 14 days of fund raising left. Bloomberg has signed up for the ‘Enterprise...

Tor users visiting secret sites hosted by Freedom Hosting early Sunday morning weren’t able to reach their desired destinations. Instead they were met with a “Down for Maintenance” notice and, if they had javascript enabled, malware that could effectively identify Tor users. The Internet is wild with speculation that malware was planted by the FBI. And that isn’t as paranoid as you might think. Eric Eoin Marques, the man believed to be behind Freedom Hosting, was arrested in Ireland Thursday and is currently awaiting extradition to the U.S. on child pornography charges. While Freedom Hosting was the largest hosting service...