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Our Web browsers do everything these days, and they're also the #1 malware vector. Eric Geier reviews four excellent Web browsers for Linux, Mac, and Windows users that are safer, friendlier, and better than Internet Explorer. Just about all the mainstream web browsers today are available for download in Linux. Since most of your computing time is likely spent in front of the browser, you shouldn't just settle with the one that came preinstalled with your distribution. We'll review four different browsers you can use in Linux, where you can pick the one that's best for you.

Sponsored by openQRM Enterprise, the openQRM project has released a new Hybrid Cloud Computing plugin.

As anticipated, the 2.6.37 merge window closed yesterday and the first release candidate for the Linux 2.6.37 kernel is now available. Major changes that were pushed into the Linux 2.6.37 kernel include support for building the kernel without the Big Kernel Lock (BKL), many graphics DRM improvements, and more of the responsiveness patches.

Acquia, a company that sells products and services for popular open source content management system Drupal, has announced an $8.5 million round of funding led by by North Bridge Venture Partners.

The non-profit One Laptop Per Child has engineered laptops for the world's computerless masses. Given that billions of people don't have electricity, OLPC has designed laptops that can operate off-the-grid, perfect for Rwandan cities, aboriginal Canadian settlements -- and Amish colonies.

Hopefully this brief how-to will help others, this issue has been bugging me for years. I want the same capability in Fedora that exists in most recent versions of Windows -- disable the touchpad on my laptop if an external mouse is plugged in. Note that my how-to is a little hardware-specific regarding the actual disabling of the touchpad; I'll discuss that more at the end of the guide.

As Oracle's acquisition of Sun demonstrates, FOSS licenses alone aren't enough to protect developers. Luckily, there are other well-tested legal tools available. So why don't developers use them?

When Oracle sued Google over Android, many assumed the database giant would target code Google lifted from the Apache Foundation's open source Java incarnation, Project Harmony. But Oracle just pinpointed six pages of Google code, claiming they were "directly copied" from copyrighted Oracle material, and according to Apache, this code is not part of Harmony. "Recent reports on various blogs have attributed to the ASF a number of the source files identified by Oracle as ones that they believe infringe on their copyrights," the Foundation says in a Friday blog post. "Even though the code in question has an Apache license, it is not part of Harmony."

Despite Ubuntu being Boxee’s primary Linux target, Ubuntu 10.10 users have been disappointed to discover that the current Boxee beta won’t install on Maverick due to dependency conflicts.

LXer Feature: 31-Oct-2010

In this week's Roundup we have; What makes Linux compelling to use? Ubuntu moves away from GNOME, Learning Linux the hardcore way with Linux from scratch, Microsoft is a dying consumer brand, Why Unity in Ubuntu is good for the future and Ronald trip's response to why Unity is clouding up the desktop. Enjoy!

With the formation of the Document Foundation (TDF), we saw the arrival of another office suite based on OpenOffice -- it's called Libre Office. Recently there was some conflict between TDF and OpenOffice.org/Oracle teams. We approached TDF to understand the current situation and the future of Libre Office. Here is an interview with Italo Vignoli of The Document Foundation.

An analysis of the most critical part of the Android smartphone operating system has turned up programming errors, some of which could allow hackers or malicious applications to access users’ e-mail or other sensitive information. The study examined the publicly disclosed version of the Android kernel – heart of Google’s open-source software for phones – that shipped inside the HTC Droid Incredible phones. But the study says it is likely other Android phones have the same programming flaws.

2011 is the Year of the Linux Desktop Hah! Not really. I’ve been reading two posts, the first by Robert Strohmeyer, the second by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Both raise arguments about Linux on the Desktop and both point to mobile computing as being the future. Ever since Android has come out I have assumed the growth path of Linux (and the ultimate strategy of Google) will be Android on phones -> Android on desktops. My take on the Netbook episode is that, where customers returned Linux netbooks they returned them because they were unfamiliar. With Android now in everyone’s pocket they won’t bat an eyelid at Android powered tablets (which I doubt were in Google’s game plan, but given that Android is open, others are now able to fill that void), then Android netbooks and laptops and finally desktops. With penetration of Android will come mobile developers and with them will come a large application suite. Those applications will automatically run on an Android desktop.

Last week my mom forwarded an email to me and I started to laugh. The email was to warn me about a virus that is spreading and destroying peoples data.

This tutorial explains how to upgrade to Fedora14 from Fedora 13 &12. Your personal data is the most valuable thing in your computer, before to upgrade it is always a good idea to back up any data that you have on your systems.

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 10.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

Well, here's some interesting weekend news: there's a polarized discussion taking place right now among core KDE developers about merging the KDE libraries into upstream Qt. Cornelius Schumacher, a long-time German KDE developer and currently the KDE e.V. president, has come out yesterday saying, "Let's merge Qt and the KDE development platform. Let's put all KDE libraries, support libraries, platform modules into Qt, remove the redundancies in Qt, and polish it into one nice consistent set of APIs, providing both, the wonderful KDE integration, consistency and convenience, as well as the simplicity and portability of the Qt platform."

Do you remember SplashTop? It's the instant-on Linux environment that was originally embedded into select ASUS motherboards three years ago and from there worked its way to other motherboards and then onto notebooks and other devices from a variety of vendors. We effectively launched SplashTop for DeviceVM, the company behind this instant-on Linux distribution, when we got our hands on SplashTop early and were the first in the world to provide a detailed analysis of SplashTop. It was one of our most popular articles that year and of over the past six and a half years that Phoronix has been around.

This article describes a method how to use a USB memory device as an authentication token to log in into a Linux system instead of traditional password. This can be accomplished by use of Pluggable Authentication Modules ( PAM ) and some sort of USB storage device such as USB memory stick of Mobile phone with SD card attached.

Since the advent of the consumer digital camera, hard disks and memory devices have faced the burden of ever increasing amounts of images to store. This is, in part, due to digital photography being an inexpensive way of taking thousands of images without any image processing costs to bear, thereby encouraging the photographer to snap many pictures of the same thing. The only ongoing expense is recharging the batteries in the camera.