Windows Subsystem for Linux update will allow you to access Linux files from Windows 10

Microsoft yesterday announced in a blog post that Windows 10’s April 2019 Update will bring in some new features to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in version 1903. The changelog for build 18836 has also been updated to reflect the changes.

In the past, one couldn’t launch Windows applications from a Linux terminal. But now you can easily access all the files in your Linux distros from Windows. All you need to do is open your favorite distro, and type in explorer.exe. This will open a File Explorer window, located inside of your Linux distro.

“From here you can access whatever Linux files you would like, just like you would any other file through File Explorer. This includes operations such as: dragging files back and forth to other locations, copy and paste, and even interesting scenarios like using the context menu to open VSCode in a WSL directory!” reads the blogpost.

Currently, the path will look something like \\wsl$\<running_distro_name>\. Microsoft’s Craig Loewen says developers are “actively investigating ways to improve the discoverability of your Linux files inside of File Explorer” in the future.

Since this is a new feature, there are some known issues such as your Linux distro needs to be running for you to access the files. However, that may change in a future update. Further, Linux files is treated the same as accessing a network resource, which means any rules for accessing network resources will still apply. Lastly, Microsoft warns that you should not access your Linux files inside of the AppData folder.

Microsoft has also made some improvements to the command line by consolidating their commands to wsl.exe and adding more command line functionality. The tech giant has also added some new commands that will give you more functionality when using wsl.exe. You can now run commands as different users, terminate running distributions, and even export and import different distros!

You can read more about the latest changes to the WSL here.

This Open Source Project Allows To Run Linux On Windows 10 ARM Laptops

Back in December 2016, Microsoft had announced a partnership with Qualcomm to create Windows 10 on ARM, a new operating system that runs Windows 10 on ARM-based processors, that was later released in December 2017.

The Asus NovaGo convertible laptop, the HP Envy x2 2-in-1 tablet, and the Lenovo Miix 630 2-in-1 tablet were some of the first laptops that came with Windows 10 on ARM architecture running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip. Since their launch, these devices were greeted with mixed reviews for being slow, its poor performance and app incompatibilities around the ‘x86’ emulator.

Now, the folks behind the AArch64 Laptops have come up with a way to install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on ARM-running laptops. The open-source project page on GitHub mentions that the pre-built images are currently available for the Asus NovaGo, HP Envy x2, and Lenovo Mixx 630.

In order to run Ubuntu on the above-mentioned devices, the pre-built images need to be first downloaded on to an SD card via the supplied Flash Tool, then the SD card needs to be put into a computer to run Ubuntu instead of Windows. The current status of these AArch64 Linux images can be found here.

However, the project currently has certain limitations. For instance, in the case of Asus, Touchpad input is not yet functional, so one has to plug a mouse into a USB port and use that instead. Also, Wi-Fi isn’t working on all the devices under Linux. In addition, there are some problems related to hardware accelerated graphics support and inaccessibility to onboard storage.

Meanwhile, AArch64 Laptops project say upstream Linux kernel work could soon resolve Wi-Fi and other issues. Additionally, accelerated graphics could be taken care of by using the work of the Freedreno project, notes Linux benchmarking website Phoronix.

Once the said problems are resolved, Windows 10 on ARM laptops running on Linux could turn out to be great high-performance devices than on Windows.

Are you excited to see Windows 10 on ARM laptops run Linux? Do let us know your thoughts in the comments section mentioned below.

Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) Is Now Ready To Download

Canonical has released Ubuntu Linux 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish operating system, which is now finally available for download after a short Beta perio.

“Codenamed ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish,’ 18.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs,” says Adam Conrad, Software Engineer, Canonical.

Conrad further says, “The Ubuntu kernel has been updated to the 4.18 based Linux kernel, our default toolchain has moved to gcc 8.2 with glibc 2.28, and we’ve also updated to openssl 1.1.1 and gnutls 3.6.4 with TLS1.3 support. Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS brings a fresh look with the community-driven Yaru theme replacing our long-serving Ambiance and Radiance themes. We are shipping the latest GNOME 3.30, Firefox 63, LibreOffice 6.1.2, and many others.”

However, according to the release notes, there are some known issues that are given below.

• After installing Cosmic alongside Cosmic, the resized filesystem is corrupted (bug 1798562) It has not been reported to happen if the original operating system is something else than Cosmic.
• When Ubuntu is reinstalled with preserving existing data, an error message is displayed due to “Could not get lock /target/var/cache/apt/archives/lock” (bug 1798369). The packages installed originally are not reinstalled and must be reinstalled manually. Although the user data is preserved.
• The screen reader doesn’t read the installer when executed from a live session (bug 1797861), is not auto-enabled on first login even if it’s been enabled during installation (bug 1796275) and the pages of the first run wizard are not read properly (bug 1797868).
• When disconnecting from VPNs, DNS resolution may become broken requiring a restart of resolved. $ sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved.service Bug 1797415.
• In an OEM installation, during user setup, the language selected is not taken into account (bug 1798554).
• The gnome-initial-setup Quit option from the application menu in the top bar doesn’t quit the application. If you want to quit g-i-s use quit from the dock menu instead.

Canonical also released the newest Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu.

Currently, the following Cosmic Cuttlefish versions are available for users:

• Ubuntu (Download) (Release Notes)
• Kubuntu (Download) (Release Notes)
• Lubuntu (Download) (Release Notes)
• Ubuntu Budgie (Download) (Release Notes)
• Ubuntu MATE (Download)(Release Notes)
• Xubuntu (Download) (Release Notes)

Endless OS 3.4 Released With Phone Companion App, Linux 4.15 Kernel, And Smarter Updates

Endless Mobile, Inc., which develops the Linux-based operating system, Endless OS and reference platform hardware for it, has recently announced Endless OS 3.4, which is the company’s latest major release.

According to Endless OS’ community manager Michael Hall, Endless OS 3.4 is a “huge step forward in our journey to help you take advantage of an internet connection when you have it, and be respectful of your limited data plan if that’s what you are using to connect. Version 3.4 brings exciting new features to help you manage your data consumption and get updates in smarter ways.”

For those unaware, Endless OS is a free, easy-to-use, Linux-based operating system that provides a simplified and streamlined user experience using a customized desktop environment branched from GNOME 3.

“Endless OS 3.4 also brings many stability and performance improvements since we’ve updated our open source core. With all of these great new features and improvements, we hope that you will enjoy this new version of Endless OS as the best release to date,” Michael said in the announcement.

The new version brings low-level improvements to the system and the graphical interface based on GNOME (brought to version 3.26), which allows you to set system updates automatically or schedule them at certain times. This is especially useful if you have limited data access to the Internet. For instance, the system can be configured to not download app updates or any kind of content when a limited data connection is used. The distro is intelligently designed to know when and how it can depend on the Internet.

The App Center in Endless OS 3.4 has been updated to show users Endless OS updates for their apps. This will allow the users to manage all their updates in one place, and also provide more information about what is in the OS update before the user installs it.

Further, Endless OS 3.4 will ship with the Linux 4.15 kernel, which fixes a number of hardware bugs and increases support for various types of hardware. This release also gets updated Intel and AMD graphics drivers which should fix a number of graphical bugs that have been reported by Endless OS users’.

However, above all, it introduces the Companion App for Android that allows remote access to your PC. This is an application for sharing content, which will soon be in beta with all the instructions for use.

Lastly, other improvements in Endless OS 3.4 include the AdBlock Plus extension for Chromium and Google Chrome web browsers that automatically block unwanted banners, pop-ups, tracking, malware and more which in turn will enhance user experience when browsing the web. Further, Endless OS SDK was upgraded to version 4 with many improvements for those developers who want to write native apps.

Endless OS 3.4 is now available to download from the official website. However, for those who are running Endless OS 3.3.17 or earlier on their PC, will first be upgraded to 3.3.18 and then, after rebooting, the upgrade to 3.4 will become available.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS arrives with GNOME desktop, Kuberflow, Color Emojis

Ubuntu, which is one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions, has finally released the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu – version 18.04, after numerous alpha/beta releases over the past few months. It is now available for download for workstations, cloud, and IoT (Internet of Things).

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s CEO and Ubuntu’s founder, said, “Most public cloud instances — Azure, AWS, Oracle, and so on — are Ubuntu. To better support Ubuntu, 18.04 features improvements in network and storage and improved boot time optimization so that Ubuntu instances can ramp up faster with demand. In addition, Canonical has been working with NVIDIA to improve its public cloud General Purpose GPU (GPGPU) support.”

He further added, “Multi-cloud operations are the new normal. Boot-time and performance-optimized images of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on every major public cloud make it the fastest and most efficient OS for cloud computing, especially for storage and compute-intensive tasks like machine learning.”

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, also code-named “Bionic Beaver” features GNOME 3.28 as the default Ubuntu desktop environment instead of Unity and the GNOME apps have been updated to version 3.28. The kernel is based on Linux 4.15 and LibreOffice 6.0 is included by default. Further, on-premises and on-cloud AI (artificial intelligence) development within Ubuntu will be enhanced by the integration of Kubeflow and a range of CI/CD tools into Canonical Kubernetes. Kubeflow, the Google approach to TensorFlow on Kubernetes, is a machine learning (ML) library built on Kubernetes.

“Having an OS that is tuned for advanced workloads such as AI and ML is critical to a high-velocity team” said David Aronchick, Product Manager of Cloud AI at Google. “With the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Canonical’s collaborations to the Kubeflow project, Canonical has provided both a familiar and highly performant operating system that works everywhere. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, software engineers and data scientists can use tools they are already familiar with, such as Ubuntu, Kubernetes, and Kubeflow, and greatly accelerate their ability to deliver value for their customers.”

Other changes include the return of Xorg as the default display server in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which was exchanged for Wayland on Ubuntu 17.10. However, the company is likely to change the default display server back to Wayland in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Although, it is worth noting that Wayland is still available as an option, but is not the default anymore. Further, the Calculator, Characters, Logs, and System Monitor apps are now installed as snaps if a clean install is performed, and Emojis will display in color in most apps.

Another big change reduces the number of supported systems, which means Canonical will no longer provide 32-bit installer images. Starting with Ubuntu 18.04, Canonical will start collecting system usage data, which includes info about the device manufacturer, the CPU model, the desktop environment, the system time-zone and the installed packages. While the data collection option will be turned on by default, users will be able to opt-out of the data collection by turning off the option manually before connecting to the net, just like in Windows.

Further, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS has an option for a “minimal install,” which only installs a basic desktop environment, a web browser, and a few core utilities, removing many of the default apps that come with the full release.

Speaking about security, the company explains, “In Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, gcc is now set to default to compile applications as position independent executables (PIE) as well as with immediate binding, to make more effective use of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). All packages in main have been rebuilt to take advantage of this, with a few exceptions. Mitigations are in place to protect against Spectre and Meltdown.” Canonical is also continuing to support the OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud.

Sinc, Bionic Beaver is an LTS release, it means it offers an impressive five years of support. “The main archive of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April 2023. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core. Ubuntu Studio 18.04 will be supported for 9 months. All other flavors will be supported for 3 years,” says Canonical.

You can download the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ISO file right now from the download page or the release page.

10 Best Linux Distros For Desktop 2018

With every passing year, new Linux distributions enter the market with the hope of making it big in the league of the best of best Linux distros. The Linux open source operating system, or Linux OS, is a freely distributable, cross-platform operating system based on Unix that can be installed on PCs, laptops, netbooks, mobile and tablet devices, video game consoles, servers, supercomputers and more. Linux is used for networking, software development and web hosting.

A distro, or distribution, is technical lingo abbreviation for a Linux operating system (OS). Each Distro is differentiated by its default interface, i.e. the way it looks, the library of apps officially supported by the specific “brand” of Linux, catalog of stock applications and even repositories.

In this article, we bring to you the best 10 Linux distros for desktop that are readily available for installation.

1. Linux Mint

Linux Mint is a community-driven Linux distribution based on Debian and Ubuntu that strives to be a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use. Linux Mint takes a more standard approach to the desktop, but layers just enough eye candy and variation to make it stand out from the long-in-the-tooth desktop metaphor. Both its Cinnamon and MATE desktops are more traditional interfaces that will probably be a bit more familiar to users leaving Windows than Ubuntu would.

Linux Mint is also relentlessly dedicated on improving the desktop of today, while the Ubuntu project is working on a smartphone operating system, creating new software package formats, and entirely rewriting the Unity desktop for phone-PC convergence.

Linux Mint is install and go. It means that the pre-installed applications make Linux Mint usable instantly after the installation. The best part is the default desktop environment, Cinnamon, even though it also comes in two other flavours, XFCE and MATE. For those newer to Linux, these desktop environment change the look and layout of the basic Linux interface and its Start menu.

You can get started with Mint here.

2. elementary OS

elementary OS is one of the simplest Ubuntu-based distros available, and as such is a good starting point for beginners. It is the vehicle to introduce the Pantheon desktop environment, similar to how Linux Mint introduced the Cinnamon desktop environment before Cinnamon was available in other Linux distributions.

Elementary OS is quite strict about the holistic look and feel. The developers have created their own components, including the desktop environment. It provides excellent uniformity between all the stock application and an overall extremely clean design with simple animations.

Additionally, they choose only those applications that fit into the design paradigm. The menu is on the top left corner where you can search all the installed applications. One can find heavy influence of Mac OS X on elementary OS.

You can get started with elementary OS here.

3. Ubuntu

Ubuntu Linux has long reigned the king of user-friendly Linux. Out of the box, it’s a challenge to find a desktop (Unity) that is more engaging and easy to use even for those unfamiliar to the platform. The desktop layout, although different, is logical and intuitive. With the addition of one of the single most powerful search tools of any desktop environment, Ubuntu Unity should be considered a crowning achievement among the Linux faithful.

With installing Ubuntu, you also get a wide range of software that includes LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Transmission, and several lightweight games such as Sudoku and chess. It also installs Flash plug-in and various codecs. Also, there are loads of easy-to-understand alternative packages available right from the Ubuntu website. These include versions with the LXDE, MATE, XFCE and GNOME desktop environment skins as well as Ubuntu Studio for creative types.

You can get started with Ubuntu here.

4. CentOS

CentOS is the free version of Linux distro for beginners derived from non-free Enterprise version Red Hat Enterprise Linux [RHEL]. CentOS created in the idea to provide a free option for enterprises and other organizations seeking an operating system.

This distribution is the gold standard when it comes to community-based servers. Its focus is on stability rather than constant updates, which in turn greatly reduces the risk of crashes and errors. The support of releases is massive too, spanning 10 years from initial release, so you won’t have to worry about upgrading your system so often. CentOS is equipped with a wide array of impressive security features, including an incredibly powerful firewall and the SELinux policy mechanism.

You can get started with CentOS here.

5. Tails

Privacy has become a major issue in this age of mass surveillance and tracking by marketers (anonymous tracking for targeted content is acceptable). If you are someone who needs to keep the government and marketing agencies out of your business, you need an operating system that’s created — from the ground up — with privacy in mind.

And, nothing beats Tails for this purpose. It’s a Debian-based Linux distribution that offers privacy and anonymity by design. It’s a distro whose aim is solely to keep the identity of the user completely opaque. It routes its traffic through Tor, designed to avoid your outward-bound data from being intercepted and analysed. According to reports, Tails is so good that the NSA considers it a major threat to their hacking activities.

You can get started with Tails here.

6. Ubuntu Studio

Ubuntu Studio is probably the one-stop Linux OS shop for users with creative talents. It is the officially recognized flavor of Ubuntu Linux and has almost full range of multimedia content-creation applications for workflows involving audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing. Support for audio plug-ins and MIDI input is built in and a virtual patch bay comes preinstalled. With the Xfce desktop environment and low kernel latency, everything is geared towards multimedia production.

You can get started with Ubuntu Studio here.

7. Debian

Debian is one of the most widely used and popular Linux distributions that gives you easy access to application software without pre-installing them. It is a Unix-like computer operating system that is composed entirely of free software. It comes with over 30,000 free packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine).

You can get started with Debian here.

8. openSUSE

Previously known as SUSE Linux and later SuSE Linux Professional, openSUSE’s focus is to develop usable open-source tools for software developers and system administrators, while providing a user-friendly desktop and feature-rich server environment. The operating system is divided into two main distributions: openSUSE Leap and openSUSE Tumbleweed. Leap uses the source code from SUSE Linux Enterprise, which makes it much more stable and is perfect for business applications. Tumbleweed is based on Factory, which is openSUSE’s main development codebase. Tumbleweed contains the latest stable applications and is good for day-to-day use. openSUSE also now offers Tumbleweed rolling release distro.

You can get started with openSUSE here.

9. Deepin

Deepin (formerly known as Linux Deepin and Hiweed Linux) is Linux Distro based on Debian whose focus is on being a user-friendly desktop Linux distribution. It is fast, easy to use, secure and reliable operating system for laptops as well as desktops. It is designed to attract new Linux users with the stylish Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE).

It’s simple and intuitive with one of the best system setup panels. DMusic, DPlayer and DTalk are among the dedicated applications. Deepin also has an easy-to-use software center, superior to similar tools in other distributions.

You can get started with Deepin here.

10. Arch Linux

Arch Linux is an independently developed, x86-64 general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution that strives to provide the latest stable versions of most software by following a rolling-release model. Arch Linux is the perfect Linux Distro for those who appreciate simple, intuitive and well-documented software. It allows you to customize your build using the terminal to download and install packages. It also has a tailor-made package manager called “Pacman”, which makes it easy to build.

You can get started with Arch Linux here.

Conclusion
This was our compilation of the best Linux Distros of 2018 for Desktops. Which one did you like? or you find a better Linux Distro. Let us know via the comment box.

Linus Torvalds slammed a Google security expert about his approach to cyber security, saying some security professionals are ‘f*cking morons’

Linus Torvalds slammed a Google security expert about his approach to cyber security after a request to change the Linux kernel, saying some security professionals are ‘f*cking morons.’

Linus Torvalds, creator and principal developer of the Linux kernel, confessed that he doesn’t “trust security people to do sane things”, saying some security professionals are just “f*cking morons.” Torvalds ranted on the Linux developers forum that security professionals concentrated on process-killing rather than debugging.

This reaction came from Torvalds when Google Pixel security team developer, Kees Cook submitted a pull request for version 4.15 of the Linux Kernel. Cook said, “Please pull these hardened usercopy changes for v4.15-rc1.”

“This significantly narrows the areas of memory that can be copied to/from userspace in the face of usercopy bugs by adding explicit whitelisting for slab cache regions,” he explained. “This has lived in -next for quite some time without major problems, but there were some late-discovered missing whitelists, so a fallback mode was added just to make sure we don’t break anything. I expect to remove the fallback mode in a release or two.”

Torvalds reacted to this saying that these kinds of pull requests “can be very painful” as they touch core elements and time must be spent investigating them.

“When I pull 20+ other pull requests a day, I don’t have _time_ to spend time on them,” Torvalds added. “They are scary because: they touch core stuff, [and] I don’t trust security people to do sane things.”

When Torvalds raised doubts over the validity of the request, others supporting Cook urged him to “please do pull a subset, even after -rc1”.

This, in turn, prompted Cook to offer more information on the request, saying:

“This is why I introduced the fallback mode: with both kvm and sctp (ipv6) not noticed until late in the development cycle, I became much less satisfied it had gotten sufficient testing.

“With the fallback mode, missed whitelists generate a WARN and are allowed, so this series effectively only introduces tight controls on the places where a whitelist is specifically introduced. And I went to great lengths to document each whitelist usage in the commit logs.

“I would agree it would be nice to get at least a subset of this in, though. Linus, what would make you most comfortable?”

Torvalds then blasted on this by saying, “So honestly, this is the kind of completely unacceptable “security person” behavior that we had with the original user access hardening too, and made that much more painful than it ever should have been. IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE when security people set magical new rules, and then make the kernel panic when those new rules are violated.”

“That is pure and utter bullsh*t,” he added. “We’ve had more than a quarter century _without_ those rules, you don’t then suddenly waltz in and say “oh, everybody must do this, and if you haven’t, we will kill the kernel.”

“The fact that you ‘introduced the fallback mode’ late in that series just shows HOW INCREDIBLY BROKEN the series started out.”

Security people need to repeat a mantra namely that “security problems are just bugs” instead of changing the way kernel behaves.

“The important part about ‘just bugs’ is that you need to understand that the patches you then introduce for things like hardening are primarly [sic] for DEBUGGING,” Torvalds said.

“I’m not at all interested in killing processes. The only process I’m interested in is the _development_ process, where we find bugs and fix them.

“As long as you see your hardening efforts primarily as a ‘let me kill the machine/process on bad behavior’, I will stop taking those shit patches.

“Some security people have scoffed at me when I say that security problems are primarily ‘just bugs’.

“Those security people are f*cking morons….If you don’t see your job as “debugging first”, I’m simply not interested.”

He added that “I think the hardening project needs to really take a good look at itself in the mirror” and stop this “kill on sight, ask questions later” mentality in favor of the following approach:

Let’s warn about what looks dangerous, and maybe in a _year_ when we’ve warned for a long time, and we are confident that we’ve actually caught all the normal cases, _then_ we can start taking more drastic measures

Instead of responding in the same angry language, Cook said that “I think my main flaw in helping bring these defenses to the kernel has been thinking they can be fully tested during a single development cycle, and this mistake was made quite clear this cycle, which is why I adjusted the series like I did.”

He concluded by saying “I’d like to think I did learn something, since I fixed up this series _before_ you yelled at me. :)”

“I’ll make further adjustments and try again for v4.16.”

Source: The Register, ZDNet

Why Is Linux Faster Than Windows?

One question that comes up a lot in discussion is whether Linux is genuinely a faster OS when compared to Windows. Most of the questions direct us to the time it takes for the OSes to boot up and in that parameter, yes, Linux is noticeable faster than Windows. Why then, does it fail the speed test when compared along other parameters ?

Kernel

One big reason why Linux can boot up faster than Windows is the difference in the way their kernels are designed. The nucleus of an OS is very different in these 2 products. Linux has a monolithic kernel – meaning it holds every core functionality needed by the OS such as drivers ,memory management, task scheduler and the file system. Windows on the other hand contains a micro kernel which contains only the basic necessities and the remaining aspects are loaded separately thus making it a little bit slower when compared to Linux.

Backward Compatibility

This is one aspect wherein Windows suffers owing to the decades of software support it provides it’s users. While it may slow down the loading process, there’s no denying that a majority of the world’s computing needs require this compatibility. Linux on the other hand, being a minority shareholder in the computing world can afford to forgo backward compatibility.

While discussing this, we also need to note that Microsoft can afford for Windows to be slower for the simple reason that a potential user will not be dissuaded from purchasing a Windows license just because it works a little bit slower. Windows being a propriety OS has a limited number of developers and thus a finite number of man hours they can commit. Therefore, the development activities need to be market driven for Microsoft. Optimization is not as high a priority for Windows compared to other requirements.

Linux on the other hand outperforms Windows in many areas because it is essential for its existence.

Explanation From Tech-savvy Reddit user logicalkitten 

• One of the more hidden benefits to linux is that applications share files better than windows. So instead of DLLs like in windows, linux uses .so files, or “shared objects”. There are also .ko files, which are kernel objects, somewhat like drivers in windows.
• A Windows application might depend on a very specific version of a DLL. The person who writes the application doesn’t know what version of windows you will be installing it on and if that particular DLL will be present in your system. So the easiest solution is to just include the correct DLL with the application. Effect: installers are much larger, C drive is fuller, and more ram is used.
• Linux does it differently. When you ask to install Midori web browser for instance, apt-get (or the software center front end) checks the package for a list of dependencies. Instead of including all the files, Midori just says what it depends on.
• So apt-get checks the system and sees that fileX.so.1 is already installed, which is one of the dependencies, so it doesn’t need to fetch it from the central software repository. It then notices that Midori needs another file, which is not installed yet, so it checks the software repository for a version that matches, or one that is newer. It installs that. And so on. Once the dependencies are satisfied, it installs the application itself. Result: Software can be installed very quickly and doesn’t take up as much space or ram.
• The apt-get system also keeps track of how many applications need fileX.so.1, so that if you remove Midori, it doesn’t remove fileX.so.1, unless nobody else is using it. So Linux has pretty good house keeping skills.

How many of the ardent Linux supporters would stick around if the OS starts having problems ?

New Kali Linux 2017.1 Released, Download Now!!!

Since becoming a rolling distro, updated images have stopped being of much importance for Kali Linux. However, Kali Linux 2017.1 is apparently a major release for this distro with a host of new features and improvements made to this ethical hacking distro.

The official announcement reads as follows:

“As with all new releases, you have the common denominator of updated packages, an updated kernel that provides more and better hardware support, as well as a slew of updated tools – but this release has a few more surprises up its sleeve”

The devil’s in the details

Implementation of drivers for RTL8812AU wireless chipsets, bringing wireless injection attacks to the 802.11 AC standard – possibly the first for an ethical hacking OS – are the main additions in this release. For those who want to install the driver, the command is “sudo apt install realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms” .

Support for Nvidia’s CUDA GPU cracking has been streamlined with this release of Kali Linux. That means ethical hackers now having the ability to utilize the full potential of the Nvidia graphics card when using tools like Pyrit and Hashcat. CUDA GPU cracking also makes its way onto Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS with this release.

Azure and AWS images of Kali Linux have been created reportedly because Microsoft’s Azure NC-Series and Amazon’s AWS P2-Series appear to offer pass-through GPU support,owing to the cloud based instances’s usage trends for password cracking operations.

To top all of this, OpenVAS 9 open-source vulnerability scanner and manager seems to have been made available in the repos of Kali Linux. Users keen to install it, can do so with the command “sudo apt install openvas”. Kali Linux is now available for download.

Source:Softpedia

Running Android Apps on any Linux distro run PC/laptop is now possible with Anbox

UBports’ Marius Gripsgård has announced the availability of a new project titled Anbox – which will allow its users to run Android applications on top of their current Linux Distros.

Work in Progress

Anbox is described by its creator as a container based approach to boot a fully functional Android OS on top of a Linux Distro. Right now though, it is limited to Ubuntu. The project utilizes Linux Containers technology to achieve this. Alongside this, it also promises an integration of every Android app into the existing desktop environment of your Linux distro. Thus making them seem like any other application. Additionally, Linux namespaces are used to isolate the Android operating system from the host.

“Back in 2015 I started working on a prototype of what I call Anbox today. It was born out of the idea of putting Android into a simple container based on LXC and bridging relevant parts over to the host operating system while not allowing any access to real hardware or user data,” said Simon Fels in the announcement.

To provide OpenGL ES for those Android apps that depend on it, Anbox seems to be borrowing pieces of code from the official Android emulator,  which it uses to serialize the command stream that’s being sent over to the host machine to be mapped on existing OpenGL or OpenGL ES implementations.

Devices

Marius sent out a Google+ post as per which it appears, that Android apps will be implemented on various versions of the Ubuntu Phone devices maintained by UBPorts. The first device expected to get this support might be OnePlus One.

However, they did point out that the project is still in its developmental stage. And early development stages means bugs and crashes should be expected. You can download the project right now from this link. For more information on the project, check out the official website.

Source: Softpedia