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LXer Feature: 13-August-2013

Given the recent Hand of Thief-news, in which RSA's Limor Kessem explains how a Linux malware-kit is sold on Russian websites, I have been contemplating about Linux security again.

Not only that, after I switched to Ubuntu, I also noticed how easy it is to add new repositories for some cool new programs not in the official repository yet. Sure, while doing so you think "Hmm, there could always be a virus in it, but I think those people are trustworthy. If there's malware in it, other people might already have noticed it in the source code". At least, that's what I usually hope.

Besides, the OS is becoming more and more "unimportant" for crackers; nowadays the browser is taking over lots of roles from the OS. These days, it's all about Javascript, Adobe's Flash and - to a lesser degree - Java, all of them full of potential security shoot-through holes. Linux users are quite lucky Adobe's PDF reader is no common tool on Linux, besides Flash and Java waning in importance. It saves minor headaches, but the main ones remaining.

Throw into the mix some easily exploitable Linux routers, and Googles lax behaviour with Android security to make me reach for the paracetamol again.

It’s been a full 5 months since the release of Luna Beta 1 and we’ve been hard at work to bring you the next beta. elementary has received tons of positive feedback from happy users all over the world. We’ve also received a flood of testers and bug reports. We’re happy to announce that we’re ready to release our second beta with over 300 fixes!

In this tutorial we will discuss how to intergrate Linux Servers(Centos/RHEL) with Windows Active Directory for authentication purpose.In my scenario i have Centos 6 / RHEL 6 servers.

LinuxBSDos.com has a disheartening article about a developer that stopped using Linux, and moved over to OS X. He has, in effect, also given up control of his computing experience to Apple. In and of itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing if it works for you. But let's face it, Apple is not perfect, anymore than Microsoft is perfect.It raises an interesting question: How many people stop using Linux and go back to Windows or move to OS X?

Traditional relational databases like Microsoft (MSFT) SQL Server, Oracle (ORCL) and MySQL continue to gain popularity. But channel partners would be wise to check out NoSQL (Not only SQL) alternatives, which are catching on for big data, analytics and real-time cloud computing applications. Here's why.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker surprised even staunch Android supporters with the platform's growth. Android increased its domination of the market for smartphones in the second quarter of 2013, making up 80% of the total devices shipped globally. Apple, on the other hand, declined in market share, shipping only 13%.

Several vulnerabilities where discovered in PuTTY, a Telnet/SSH client for X. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following listed problems.

There are some 7-inch Android tablets that can be had for less than US$100, some for just US$70. And virtually all the ones I’ve seen in stores are crappy, from no-name manufacturers. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

While Canonical engineers keep raising discussions about swapping Mozilla Firefox for Google's Chromium as the default web-browser for Ubuntu Linux, the 13.10 release will continue using Firefox by default.

Because this issue's theme is programming, I thought I should cover some of the more-advanced features available in OpenMP. In scientific programming, the basics tend to be the limit of how people use OpenMP, but there is so much more available—and, these other features are useful for so much more than just scientific computing.

Internet research and security services firm Netcraft is now reporting that across the nearly 717 million Websites it has surveyed this month, Apache serves 46.96 percent of them. That is the first time that Apache's share has fallen below 50 percent since December of 2009. At its height—in November of 2005—Apache held a 71 percent market share.

In this roundup: ZTE says it will soon begin sales of an unlocked version of its Firefox OS-based ZTE Open handset on eBay US and UK for $80, following its launch in Spain, Venezuela, and Colombia. In related news, Samsung is once again rumored to be slowing Tizen OS development, and Mozilla released a new version of the Firefox for Android Beta with WebRTC real-time communications support.

Inverto (formerly "Gravitron") is a first person shooter-puzzler with physical puzzles and gravity manipulations. The game is the ideological successor of such games as "Prey" and "Portal" with platformer elements.

Linux containers (LXC) is a lightweight virtualization technology built into Linux kernel. Unlike other similar technologies, the virtual machines (VM) are driven without any overhead by the kernel already running on the computer. In VM you run only the processes you need, most of the time without even going through the regular SysV or Linux init. This means that memory is used very conservatively.

Is it really possible to build an entire OS from an icon set? The answer, it seems, is elementary

HandBrake is one of the most popular open-source video transcoder software. It is available on multiple platforms including MacOS, Windows and Linux. This tutorial talks about how to install HandBrake on different Linux distros.

Blackberry, the once great company, simply couldn't adapt to a changing market and competition from Android and iPhone. Today it formed a "special committee" that very likely marks the beginning of the end.

PCLinuxOS 2013.08 (Full Monty) was quietly released. PCLinuxOS is an English only live CD initially based on Mandrake Linux that runs entirely from a bootable CD. Data on the CD is decompressed on the fly, allowing up to 2GB of programs on one CD including a complete X server, KDE desktop, OpenOffice.org and many more applications all ready to use. In addition to the live CD, you can also install PCLinuxOS to your hard drive with an easy-to-use livecd-installer. Additional applications can be added or removed from your hard drive using a friendly apt-get front end via Synaptic.

Little escapes the notice of the all-knowing, all-seeing system administrator with Zabbix at his disposal. Zabbix' enterprise-class monitoring software provides distributed monitoring with a centralized web administration interface.

Samba began life as ‘a bit of a hack’ and became the route for taking free software into the enterprise. Richard Hillesley tells the story…