1. Download Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) CD ISO / DVD Images
Ubuntu Linux (a GNU/Linux-based computer operating system) version 11.10 has been released and available for download. The new release includes some enhancements to make your experience even more enjoyable. The Default user interface is set to unity shell on top of GNOME 3.x. However, you will get a 2D version of Unity as a fallback for systems that lack the hardware resources for the 3D version. The good news is you will be able to install the entire GNOME 3 desktop along with GNOME Shell directly from the Ubuntu repos.
2. Mozilla releases Firefox 9 -- get it now!
Ubuntu Linux (a GNU/Linux-based computer operating system) version 11.10 has been released and available for download. The new release includes some enhancements to make your experience even more enjoyable. The Default user interface is set to unity shell on top of GNOME 3.x. However, you will get a 2D version of Unity as a fallback for systems that lack the hardware resources for the 3D version. The good news is you will be able to install the entire GNOME 3 desktop along with GNOME Shell directly from the Ubuntu repos.
2. Mozilla releases Firefox 9 -- get it now!
It has been a momentous year for Mozilla and its Firefox and Thunderbird products. Last March, Mozilla released Firefox 4 as part of a new rapid-release cycle, adding Thunderbird to the same cycle shortly thereafter, which ensured a brand new version number would appear every six weeks or so.
Consequently, it will come as little surprise, that practically six weeks to the day since Firefox 8 made an appearance, Mozilla released Firefox 9 Final . Those looking for a slew of new features will be disappointed, but it does contain one major performance fillip that makes upgrading worthwhile.
The big news with Firefox 9: added support for “type inference” for Javascript code. Put simply, this technology speeds up any website that uses Javascript. Mozilla claims that the new technology has led to major benchmarks like Kraken and V8 by over 30 per cent, and will lead to noticeable performance gains on Javascript-heavy sites.
Other changes are more minor, although OS X Lion users -- who saw major improvements in compatibility with version 8 -benefit again, this time with added support for two-finger swipe navigation and improved theme support.
Other changes simply involve adding and improving support for web standards, including CSS3 and HTML5, building on previous releases. There are also a number of stability bug fixes.
A busy year
With this sixth major release of Firefox under the new rapid release schedule coinciding with the end of the year, it’s worth taking a moment to look back and see how far Mozilla’s open-source browser has come in the past eight months or so.
Firefox 4 was, of course, a major release, having been a long time in development. It debuted a new, stripped down interface that was designed to improve performance as much as it updated the Firefox look. Other new features included moving the Add-Ons Manager to its own tab as well as support for emerging standards including HTML5.
The rapid-release cycle was then put into action, but we had to wait 12 weeks for the first build to appear under this new release schedule. Firefox 5 provided a more representative view of how Firefox would change going forward: tiny, barely noticeable feature tweaks, plus a number of performance improvements.
Firefox 6 introduced the new Permissions Manager, giving users the ability to set privacy controls on a per-site basis. Again, under-the-hood improvements and tiny interface tweaks (domain names were now highlighted in the Address Bar) were the order of the day, although developers got to play with a Javascript Scratchpad for the first time.
Firefox 7 introduced a long-awaited fix for the browser’s notorious memory leaks, meaning the app no longer eats up huge amounts of memory while idling in the background. Again, other changes were more minor, with http://” disappearing from the Address Bar one of the more noticeable ones.
Firefox 8 debuted the Add-ons Compatibility Assistant, plus introduced a new option for speeding up startup on multi-tabbed setups. It also integrated the Downloads history into the History tab, while OS X Lion users got a form of full-screen support, although users have complained it’s not actually the same as OS X Lion’s native tool.
And now Firefox 9 is here, to take Firefox that little bit further forward. So where do we go from here? The answers will be revealed later this week, then the Beta, Aurora, Nightly and UX channels get updated – keep an eye on Softwarecrew for our regular, updated look into the future of Firefox.
Firefox 9 Final is a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Look out for updated versions of Waterfox, a 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows, and Pale Moon, another Windows-only build designed to offer a faster, more efficient version of Firefox, following hot on its heels.
3. Linux: 20 Iptables Examples For New SysAdmins
Linux comes with a host based firewall called Netfilter. According to the official project site:netfilter is a set of hooks inside the Linux kernel that allows kernel modules to register callback functions with the network stack. A registered callback function is then called back for every packet that traverses the respective hook within the network stack.This Linux based firewall is controlled by the program called iptables to handles filtering for IPv4, and ip6tables handles filtering for IPv6. I strongly recommend that you first read our quick tutorial that explains how to configure a host-based firewall called Netfilter (iptables) under CentOS / RHEL / Fedora / Redhat Enterprise Linux. This post list most common iptables solutions required by a new Linux user to secure his or her Linux operating system from intruders.
4. Google May Want an Android Tablet of Its Own
Google may be planning to enter the tablet market in the medium term -- and not just as a partner in an OEM relationship. Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, told an Italian newspaper that "in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality." Certainly Google's Android has powered more than its fair share of tablets that have come on the market over the past year or so. Most notably, Amazon's Kindle Fire is based on Android. However, the remark suggests that it will be Google's own tablet that the company will be marketing.
5. 2011's Most Momentous Moments for Apple
2011 was a big year for Apple fans. Maybe not as big as the introduction of the iPhone or iPad, but a lot of amazing things happened, and the company gathered an astounding amount of momentum. Of course, 2011 was also the year Apple CEO Steve Jobs died. Many Apple fans knew he was sick. Some saw photos of his frail frame and worried. I did. And it's hard not to worry that his little dent in the universe might get pounded back out and glossed over. But 2011, wow. There's momentum there, for sure, even as Jobs took a medical leave in January. Momentum.
6. Kepler team spots Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like star
Just two weeks after the confirmation of a planet that's within the habitable zone of a distant star, the Kepler team is back with the discovery of two Earth-sized planets orbiting in what is now a five-planet system (three other planets orbiting the star, Kepler-20, had been spotted earlier). Although these planets are much too hot to support liquid water, one of them (Kepler-20e) is the smallest exoplanet yet detected.
Kepler-20 was already a busy star system, with three small planets orbiting close in to the star: Kepler-20b is about twice the size of Earth and orbits once every 3.7 days; Kepler-20c is three times Earth's radius and orbits every 11 days; and Kepler-20d is 2.75 Earth radii with an orbit of 77.6 days. If that seems somewhat tightly packed, the new finds actually jam a couple more planets within the orbit of Kepler-20d. Kepler-20e has an orbit of six days, while Kepler-20f takes 19.6 days to orbit its host star.
7. The Most Popular Featured Desktops and Home Screens of 2011 [Best Of Lifehacker 2011]
Every week, we feature desktops and home screens submitted by readers that we find elegant, informative, attractive, and in most cases, a great use of the customization tools and UI tweaks available for both desktop and mobile operating systems. This was a great year for desktops and home screens, with more submissions than we could ever possibly highlight. Here are the most popular featured desktops and home screens of 2011. More »
Consequently, it will come as little surprise, that practically six weeks to the day since Firefox 8 made an appearance, Mozilla released Firefox 9 Final . Those looking for a slew of new features will be disappointed, but it does contain one major performance fillip that makes upgrading worthwhile.
The big news with Firefox 9: added support for “type inference” for Javascript code. Put simply, this technology speeds up any website that uses Javascript. Mozilla claims that the new technology has led to major benchmarks like Kraken and V8 by over 30 per cent, and will lead to noticeable performance gains on Javascript-heavy sites.
Other changes are more minor, although OS X Lion users -- who saw major improvements in compatibility with version 8 -benefit again, this time with added support for two-finger swipe navigation and improved theme support.
Other changes simply involve adding and improving support for web standards, including CSS3 and HTML5, building on previous releases. There are also a number of stability bug fixes.
A busy year
With this sixth major release of Firefox under the new rapid release schedule coinciding with the end of the year, it’s worth taking a moment to look back and see how far Mozilla’s open-source browser has come in the past eight months or so.
Firefox 4 was, of course, a major release, having been a long time in development. It debuted a new, stripped down interface that was designed to improve performance as much as it updated the Firefox look. Other new features included moving the Add-Ons Manager to its own tab as well as support for emerging standards including HTML5.
The rapid-release cycle was then put into action, but we had to wait 12 weeks for the first build to appear under this new release schedule. Firefox 5 provided a more representative view of how Firefox would change going forward: tiny, barely noticeable feature tweaks, plus a number of performance improvements.
Firefox 6 introduced the new Permissions Manager, giving users the ability to set privacy controls on a per-site basis. Again, under-the-hood improvements and tiny interface tweaks (domain names were now highlighted in the Address Bar) were the order of the day, although developers got to play with a Javascript Scratchpad for the first time.
Firefox 7 introduced a long-awaited fix for the browser’s notorious memory leaks, meaning the app no longer eats up huge amounts of memory while idling in the background. Again, other changes were more minor, with http://” disappearing from the Address Bar one of the more noticeable ones.
Firefox 8 debuted the Add-ons Compatibility Assistant, plus introduced a new option for speeding up startup on multi-tabbed setups. It also integrated the Downloads history into the History tab, while OS X Lion users got a form of full-screen support, although users have complained it’s not actually the same as OS X Lion’s native tool.
And now Firefox 9 is here, to take Firefox that little bit further forward. So where do we go from here? The answers will be revealed later this week, then the Beta, Aurora, Nightly and UX channels get updated – keep an eye on Softwarecrew for our regular, updated look into the future of Firefox.
Firefox 9 Final is a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. Look out for updated versions of Waterfox, a 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows, and Pale Moon, another Windows-only build designed to offer a faster, more efficient version of Firefox, following hot on its heels.
3. Linux: 20 Iptables Examples For New SysAdmins
Linux comes with a host based firewall called Netfilter. According to the official project site:netfilter is a set of hooks inside the Linux kernel that allows kernel modules to register callback functions with the network stack. A registered callback function is then called back for every packet that traverses the respective hook within the network stack.This Linux based firewall is controlled by the program called iptables to handles filtering for IPv4, and ip6tables handles filtering for IPv6. I strongly recommend that you first read our quick tutorial that explains how to configure a host-based firewall called Netfilter (iptables) under CentOS / RHEL / Fedora / Redhat Enterprise Linux. This post list most common iptables solutions required by a new Linux user to secure his or her Linux operating system from intruders.
4. Google May Want an Android Tablet of Its Own
Google may be planning to enter the tablet market in the medium term -- and not just as a partner in an OEM relationship. Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, told an Italian newspaper that "in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality." Certainly Google's Android has powered more than its fair share of tablets that have come on the market over the past year or so. Most notably, Amazon's Kindle Fire is based on Android. However, the remark suggests that it will be Google's own tablet that the company will be marketing.
5. 2011's Most Momentous Moments for Apple
2011 was a big year for Apple fans. Maybe not as big as the introduction of the iPhone or iPad, but a lot of amazing things happened, and the company gathered an astounding amount of momentum. Of course, 2011 was also the year Apple CEO Steve Jobs died. Many Apple fans knew he was sick. Some saw photos of his frail frame and worried. I did. And it's hard not to worry that his little dent in the universe might get pounded back out and glossed over. But 2011, wow. There's momentum there, for sure, even as Jobs took a medical leave in January. Momentum.
6. Kepler team spots Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like star
Just two weeks after the confirmation of a planet that's within the habitable zone of a distant star, the Kepler team is back with the discovery of two Earth-sized planets orbiting in what is now a five-planet system (three other planets orbiting the star, Kepler-20, had been spotted earlier). Although these planets are much too hot to support liquid water, one of them (Kepler-20e) is the smallest exoplanet yet detected.
Kepler-20 was already a busy star system, with three small planets orbiting close in to the star: Kepler-20b is about twice the size of Earth and orbits once every 3.7 days; Kepler-20c is three times Earth's radius and orbits every 11 days; and Kepler-20d is 2.75 Earth radii with an orbit of 77.6 days. If that seems somewhat tightly packed, the new finds actually jam a couple more planets within the orbit of Kepler-20d. Kepler-20e has an orbit of six days, while Kepler-20f takes 19.6 days to orbit its host star.
7. The Most Popular Featured Desktops and Home Screens of 2011 [Best Of Lifehacker 2011]
Every week, we feature desktops and home screens submitted by readers that we find elegant, informative, attractive, and in most cases, a great use of the customization tools and UI tweaks available for both desktop and mobile operating systems. This was a great year for desktops and home screens, with more submissions than we could ever possibly highlight. Here are the most popular featured desktops and home screens of 2011. More »
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