Solus 1.2 “Shannon” Released With New Features — One Of The Fastest Booting Linux Distros

Solus OS is often pegged as one of the fastest booting Linux distributions. It’s an operating system that’s designed for modern desktop PC experience.

The latest release of the operating system i.e. Solus 1.2 “Shannon”, has now arrived and it’s immediately available for download.

Solus 1.2 is built upon the groundwork laid by previous releases with improvements being made to Budgie and other software optimizations. Solus 1.2 also focuses on bringing a better gaming experience.

This release is the part of Solus 1.x series of the operating system that offers something different from other Linux distributions. Apart from its speed and lightweight nature, its desktop environment Budgie makes Solus different.

It’s created from the scratch by Solus Project with simplicity and elegance in mind. Budgie Desktop in Solus 1.2 is polished and refined with new features. By tightly integrating the GNOME stack, Solus provides a pleasant desktop experience.

New changes and features in Solus 1.2

Solus 1.2 brings the out-of-the-box support for 32-bit applications. This also means that one can now install apps like Steam, Skype, Teamviewer, and Wine on Solus operating system.

To make gaming a smoother experience, Solus Project has brought a new tool called Linux Steam Integration. It’s an open source project that everybody can access on its GitHub page. 

The Software Center in Solus 1.2 has been revamped, making it easier for the users to explore and install new programs. Now one will be able to install a particular set of third party software, like Chrome, right from the software center.  

By making improvements to Solus OS installer, the process of getting your system ready has been made hassle free. Now, the process of choosing a language and keyboard has been made more fluid. The installer offers certain strategies–Dual-boot, Full-disk, Manual, Replace OS–for configuring a system.

Other general improvements to the OS cover as much as 150 bug fixes pertaining to Budgie, software availability, and other areas.

The major open source software that ship out-of-the-box with Solus 1.2 include:

• Firefox 47
• Nautilus 3.18.5
• Rhythmbox 3.3.1
• Thunderbird 45.1.0
• VLC 2.2.4

If you are running Solus 1.1, upgrading to the latest Shannon release is just a few clicks away using the default package manager. If you are new to the world of Solus, you can go ahead and grab the download via their website.

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KickassTorrents Becomes One Of The World’s Most Popular Websites

The world of torrent websites is full of constant ups and downs, thanks to the copyright advocates and court rulings. The websites that rule the pirate world a decade ago have been knocked off the charts by newer players.

A decade ago, back in 2007, torrent search engine Mininova and IsoHunt were ruling the charts and The Pirate Bay was at the third place. The next year, The Pirate Bay earned the #1 crown and continued to rule the charts till 2011 with an Alexa rank of 76.

In this period, KickassTorrents, a newer torrent index was gaining popularity and strengthening its #4 position.

In the later years, due to multiple domain switches and court orders, The Pirate Bay lost its top spot and KickassTorrents became the world’s most popular torrent website.

Right from then, KickassTorrents has continued to gain spots on Alexa ranking charts.

Continuing its exponential rise, KickassTorrents entered the Alexa top 70 — a feat that was achieved by Mininova in 2007.

Apart from the legal troubles of The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents also gained from its own impressive uptime, a large library of torrents, and an effective sorting feature.

KickassTorrents is also very easy to navigate with lesser sketchy re-directs as compared to other torrent websites.

KickassTorrents is also empowered by its community who is willing to contribute and help each other — a habit that is fuelled by special ‘unlocked’ achievements.

In other KickassTorrents news, the website recently entered the dark web and got an official .onion TOR domain name. This has given the website owners and users a safe backup option.

So, what do you think? Why KickassTorrents continues to kick ass and rule the world of piracy? Share your views in the comments below.

China Makes World’s Fastest Supercomputer With 10 Million Cores And 93 Petaflops Speed

The top 500 ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was introduced 23 years ago. For the first time in history, China has toppled the US to become the country with the most entries on the list. Now, China has 167 machines on the list, compared to the U.S.’s 165.

The new Chinese supercomputer has beaten another Chinese machine that ruled this list for the past three years. Called TaihuLight, this supercomputer is about three times more powerful than the previous record-holder. Compared to the fastest U.S. supercomputer Cray XK7, that ranks 3rd, TaihuLight is five times faster.

The latest supercomputer rankings were released today at International Supercomputer Conference in Frankfurt.

Another important thing about TaihuLight is the use of homegrown Chinese chips. After the U.S. banned the export of Intel chips last year, China decided to use its superconductor technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer was developed at the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC). TaihuLight features the Made In China SW26010 processors that are said to be similar to the Digital Alpha chip.

TaihuLight has more than 40,000 chips with 10.65 million processor cores stacked in 40 cabinets. Compared to this, the fastest supercomputer of the U.S. has just 560,000 cores.

This beast showed a capacity of 93 petaflops per second on benchmark tests, which is about three times faster than past record-holder Tianhe-2.

If you think that the U.S. is simply sitting and watching these developments, read the next sentence. The American government has already granted a $200 million contract to Intel and NVIDIA to build a 150 petaflop machine.

Microsoft Shows Why Chrome And Firefox Are Bad For Your Laptop’s Battery

Poor power efficiency is one of the most troubling problems a laptop user faces. Combine it with some RAM-hogging web browser and you’ve prepared a perfect disaster recipe. According to Microsoft’s latest video advertisements, you can go an extra mile while using its Edge web browser.

As a part of a new campaign to tell the people about plus points of its Edge web browser and Windows 10, Microsoft has released a new video that shows why using Chrome and Firefox on your laptop might be a bad idea.

Microsoft says that it has compared the leading web browsers–Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera–and measured the power consumption in a controlled environment.

Thanks to its power-saving improvements like fewer CPU cycles, lesser memory, minimizing background processes, Edge is made to maximise your hardware’s potential and battery life — according to Microsoft.

The company conducted these tests on four identical Surface Books and automated the web browsers to perform same activities.

The test results show that Microsoft Edge is a more energy efficient option on Windows 10, giving you up to 36%-53% extra juice. In the video, RAM-killer Google Chrome just lasts 4 hours and 19 minutes and Edge streamed the same content for 7 hours and 22 minutes.

Watch the video below:

Microsoft is using its Edge web browsers as one of the major selling points of Windows 10. Microsoft is continuously making improvements to this Internet Explorer-replacement with every new Windows 10 Insider Build.

New Chip Makes Parallel Programming Much Easier, Needs Lesser Lines Of Code

Before telling you about an important advancement that could make parallel programming a less tedious job, I would like to tell the beginners about its basics. Parallel programming is a method of performing multiple computations simultaneously. This operates on the principle that a large problem can be divided into smaller fragments, which are then solved together using 2 or more processors.

If you apply your theoretical knowledge, you might think that a multicore machine–let’s say n-core–will be n times faster than a single core machine. However, as a large chunk of computer programs are sequential, breaking them to use parallel computing concept is a tiresome process.

However, the latest developments made at the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) can change this scenario.

The researchers have created a new chip design named Swarm, which lets them make parallel programs easier to write and operate with more efficiency.

In their tests, the researchers compared the existing parallel programming models with their Swarm versions. They found that Swarm versions were about 18 times faster. Surprisingly, the newly engineered model needed just 10% of the code.

Also, Swarm design was able to speed up one program–that computer scientists had previously failed to parallelise–by a factor of 75.

Explaining how multicore systems are harder to program, Daniel Sanchez, an MIT assistant professor says:

You have to explicitly divide the work that you’re doing into tasks, then you need to enforce some synchronisation between tasks accessing shared data. What this architecture does, essentially, is to remove all sorts of explicit synchronisation to make parallel programming easier.

Compared to the usual multicore chips, Swarm features extra circuits to handle prioritization. The work is performed according to priority and the task with the highest priority gets executed first. These high priority tasks have their low priority task–something that’s automatically slotted into the queue by Swarm.

Writing a program with Swarm functionality is equally easier. When a programmer defines a function, he/she just needs to add a line of code that loads that function into Swarm’s queue.

With inputs from ScienceDaily

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Linux Lexicon: Linux Man Pages And Their Navigation

Linux possesses such a great bevy of commands that it is practically nigh to impossible for anyone to remember all the commands. On top of that, each command comes with a host of options that add even more functionality to the command. Trying to learn all of those too, can be quite a burden! Right?

In order to resolve this dilemma, Linux has provided the man command at your disposal. Each Linux command line program comes with its own documentation, known as the ‘manual pages’ or ‘man pages’ in short.

Like the name suggests, it is sort of like a help manual that you can refer to when you are stuck somewhere and have no idea on how to proceed further. In order to access the man pages, we type in the word ‘man’ followed by the name of the command, utility, or program about which you want to find something out.

Man pages are meant to be quick reference material and can’t exactly be termed as being tutorials. They are mostly written by the same people who designed the program themselves. Using the man command efficiently can go a long way in improving your Linux experience and is a great reference tool to have by your side.

Let’s try out the man command. Open the terminal and type:

man ls

Navigation of Man Pages

First up is the navigation of man pages and how to move around. Here is a concise version of what you can do:

Enter – Move down one line
Space – Move down one page
g – Move to the top of the page
G – Move to the bottom of the page
q – Quit

In order to seek help for the man command, just type in the letter h while viewing a man page. Doing so will prompt you with a screen like this:

Although you will be able to do just fine with the concise version that I just gave you, but go through this in order to learn more upon how to navigate in detail.

Contents of Man Pages

Now, let’s discuss the output of the man command as shown in the output above.

The number in the parenthesis against the name of the command like “ls(1)” tells you about which ‘SECTION’ of the man page you are viewing. The various man pages sections are:
1. Executable programs or shell commands
2. System calls (functions provided by the kernel)
3. Library calls (functions within program libraries)
4. Special files
5. File formats and conventions
6. Games
7. Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions)
8. System administration commands (usually only for root)
9. Kernel routines

Following it is the NAME section which gives the name of the command itself, followed by a short description of what the command does. eg: “ls – list directory contents”

The SYNOPSIS gives you the basic outline and tells you how to execute the command. It is generally of the form: <command name> [OPTIONS]… [FILE]…

When things are placed inside the “[“ ,”]” then it means that their usage is optional and the command may function with or without them as well. The “…” indicates that you have multiple options.

The DESCRIPTION provides you with a detailed definition of the command and includes the OPTIONS available for each command. OPTIONS, sort of add an extra functionality to the command and are generally used to tailor the output of the command according to your needs.

Besides the NAME, SYNOPSIS and the DESCRIPTION section, one can also find the AUTHORS section which tells you about the people who wrote the command or assisted in its creation, the EXAMPLES section which contains a demonstration of how to use the command, the REPORTING BUGS section which tells you about the site where you can report any bugs that you found within the command, or the COPYRIGHT section which usually contains a disclaimer along with the name of the person/organization that holds the copyright to the information provided. Along with all of this, a SEE ALSO section is also provided which mentions other commands that are related to this command or any other documentation related to the command used.

Armed with this knowledge, you should hardly face any trouble while using the man pages. I would advise you to start looking around, checking out the man pages of various commands and trying them out for yourselves.

Fedora 24 Released With New Features, Download ISO Files Here

Today, the Red Hat-sponsored Fedora community finally announced the general availability of Fedora 24 Linux distribution. Fedora is one of the most loved open source operating systems out there and the Fedora Project is busy making the experience of the end users ever better.

As expected, the latest Fedora 24 release continues to provide a cutting edge desktop experience by bringing improvements to desktop, cloud, and server. Fedora is a fully open source project whose new release paves a path for the next generation of Linux distributions.

Fedora–favorite Linux distribution of Linus Torvalds–is also the base of widely popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This release Fedora 24 brings some latest features for developers and sysadmins.

Just like the past releases, Fedora 24 constitutes a certain set of base packages that are used to make 3 distinct versions of the OS — Fedora Cloud, Fedora Server, and Fedora Workstation.

Changes and new features in Fedora 24:

Fedora 24 marks the inclusion of glibc 2.23 and GNU Compiler Collection 6. This will result in better stability and code optimization of each version.

Fedora 24 Workstation:

We all know that Fedora plays a vital role in GNOME development and its majority apps are GNOME apps. The Fedora 24 Workstation–the version for desktop users–features GNOME 3.20 that brings along changes like a polished search interface, easier music controls, shortcut windows features, better photo editing, and other little improvements.

GNOME 3.20 also brings a preview version of Wayland, the next-generation input and display technology in GNU/Linux. We should expect that Wayland will be shipped as default in Fedora 25.

The Software app too has got new features that allow you to upgrade to a new Fedora release easily.

Fedora 24 Server:

Fedora Server is the version that comes with applications and packages suitable for running servers.

The latest Fedora 24 Server version is a more streamlined release, with more focus on modularity. As a result, useless packages were removed, making the final installer lighter.

Talking about the major features of the Server release, FreeIPA 4.3 comes as an excellent security information manager.

Fedora 24 Cloud:

Fedora Cloud is a minimal Linux distribution that comes with core cloud technologies and acts as a great platform for running containerized applications.

Fedora 24 Cloud release features OpenShift Origin–a Kubernetes package that makes application development and deployment an easier process.

Fedora 24 Spins, Labs, and ARM: 

Alongside these three major versions, Fedora also comes in multiple variants which are built on the same Fedora base. Fedora 24 Spins offers different desktop environments — KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXDE, Mate-Compiz, and Cinnamon.

Fedora 24 Labs comes with software packages for different purposes like Robotics, Games etc.

Fedora Project also releases ARM images for your ARM boards that are now available for download.

Fedora 24 Download Links:

You can download different Fedora 24 versions from the links given below:

• Fedora 24 Workstation
• Fedora 24 Server
• Fedora 24 Cloud
• Fedora 24 Spins
• Fedora 24 Labs
• Fedora 24 ARM

TOR Project And Security Experts Making A “Hardened” Version Of TOR To Defeat FBI

The tussle between TOR and the FBI dates way back to this privacy suite’s initial days. TOR might be a solid pal in keeping your online life private, but the FBI has managed to breach this security layer from time-to-time. The FBI is known to be involved in a fair share of efforts made to uncover TOR’s privacy layers.

Such developments have been made public in recent time, thanks to numerous court cases that tell us about FBI’s hacking tools like Network Investigative Technique (NIT). Another similar set of allegations were made by the TOR Director who accused the FBI of spending $1 Million on TOR-hacking researchbeing carried out at the Carnegie Mellon University.

According to a new paper, TOR is working closely with security researchers to develop a new version of the TOR browser. This new and “hardened” version of TOR will come with new techniques to defeat hacking attempts by the FBI and other government agencies.

Called “Selfrando“, the researchers are using a technique to avert the web browser exploits being used by the FBI. This new method will fight the FBI’s “Code Reuse” exploits. It’s a way to utilize the memory leak and make use of code libraries that are already present in the browser.

In simpler words, Code Reuse develops malware inside a software’s memory by rearranging stuff and avoids the tougher task of injecting new notorious code.

To fight this technique, Selfrando creates a random address space for application’s codes and makes the exploit tougher. This technique aims to replace Firefox’s standard address space layout randomization (ASLR) techniques.

This means that after this development and a new version of Selfrando-equipped TOR, it would be difficult for the law enforcement agencies to hack into a TOR-enabled system.

It’s pleasing to see that the researcher community is partnering with the TOR Project to make our web a safer place.

In case you think that TOR isn’t enough to take care of your privacy, then we’ve got you covered. Here are some good alternatives to TOR Browser.

Did you find this article interesting? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

Sony Killed Linux OS On PS3 In 2010, And Now It Has To Pay Millions To Gamers

Back in the early April of 2010, Sony rolled out a new software upgrade for its PlayStation 3 gaming console. This update deprived the users of their ability to install an alternate OS, like Linux, on the console.

However, during the launch of the product, Sony advertised the “Install Other OS” feature of the product. Thus, an opposite step from Sony attracted a lawsuit that demanded compensation. The suit was brought on behalf of millions of nationwide Americans who bought the console in a given time window.

After six years of a continuous wrangle, last week, Sony agreed to pay up.

This decision was made last Friday, ruling that anyone who used Linux on their PS3 consoles can claim $55–given the judge agrees with the terms proposed by Sony.

Also, the people who specifically bought a PlayStation 3 because of its ability to run Linux, can claim an extra $9.

The other terms of this deal make those eligible who purchased a launch model of PS3 “in the United States between November 1, 2006, and April 1, 2010″.

Here are some other eligibility criteria:

The person must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality.

While going through this much trouble for such an old purchase might sound like a tiresome idea, the deal has turned out to be a goldmine for the lawyers who brought this lawsuit. They are getting a hefty sum of $2.25 million in attorneys’ fees.

The terms of this proposed deal will be heard on July 19 in a US District Court in California.

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What Are The Different Types Of Application Layer Attacks?

One of the easiest ways to hack into a system is to exploit a software by launching an application layer attacks.

A person with even a little bit of programming knowledge can use these techniques to hack into a system or software. Here are some of the ways which are well known for the application layer attacks:

Exploiting a weakness in the software:

One of the most common methods of launching application layer attacks is to exploit the software-level weaknesses commonly found on servers. Some of these weaknesses are pertaining to Sendmail, PostScript, and FTP.

Once you have exploited these weaknesses, you can easily get access to a computer with the account-level permissions running the application.

Trojan Horse — Application layer attacks:

Trojan horses are nothing but the fake programs which pretend to be the original programs. Since they can replicate most of the application level behavior of an application, a trojan horse is one of the of the most famous styles to launch application layer attacks. You can read our dedicated article on differences between virus, trojan, malware etc.

Besides providing the functionalities of a normal application, a trojan horse also contains other features which work in the background such as monitoring login to capture password and other sensitive data information like credit card details etc.

In the background, a trojan horse keeps sending the sensitive information to the attacker. If you want, you can also modify application functionality to exploit more such as applying a bcc to all e-mails etc.

Exploiting HTML, HTTP, and web browser technology:

These forms of application layer attacks are the newest ones. These attacks basically exploit the overt nature of the new technologies such as HTMP, web browsers, HTTP etc.

These application layer attacks mostly include Java applets and ActiveX controls. A powerful harmful program is passed in the network and loaded in the user’s browser.

6 New Programming Languages You Need To Learn In 2016

Even though languages like HTML, Java, JavaScript, C++ etc. remain the backbone of today’s IT development, there is no dearth of new programming languages getting created every other day. Some of them are even weird and absurd like TrumpScript, others are ‘happy’ like Emojicode.

In the recent years, many important languages have appeared and left an impact on the technology world. Due to their simplicity and user-friendliness, they have managed to surpass the more established languages.

From time-to-time, we keep bringing to you the lists of the most popular languages. However, apart from mastering a popular programming language, programmers need to learn new skills to keep themselves in demand.

So, in this article, I’m going to tell you about some new programming languages that you’ll find interesting. These languages are rising rapidly in the popularity charts and gaining impressive reviews.

Go ahead, take a look at these new programming languages that you need to learn in 2016:

1. Go

We’ll be starting our list of the new programming languages with Go. Also known as Golang, Go is an open source programming language that was created by 3 Google employees and launched in 2009.

Go is derived from popular programming languages like C and Java, It offers a concise notation and aims to keep the code simpler and readable. The language designers, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, have said that the complexity of C++ was their primary motivation.

This simple programming language accomplishes its most tasks with just the standard library. Combining the speed of dynamic languages like Python and reliability of C/C++, Go is the perfect tool for building high volume distributed systems.

2. Swift

Apple launched Swift programming language at 2014 WWDC as a replacement of Objective-C. Designed to be simple in nature, Swift focuses on speed and safety.

Later in December 2015, Apple made Swift open source under the Apache license. Since its launch, Swift has enjoyed an exponential growth and it has become one of the hottest programming languages out there.

Learning Swift ensures you a bright future as it gives you the power to code apps for Apple’s vast iOS ecosystem.

3. Rust

Created by Mozilla in 2014, in the StackOverflow’s 2016 developer survey, Rust was voted the most loved programming language.

Rust was developed as an alternative to C++ by Mozilla, who called a new language which focuses on “performance, parallelisation, and memory safety”.

Rust has been created from scratch and it employs a modern programming language design. The language is well supported by a larger number of developers and libraries.

4. Julia

Julia programming language was designed to help mathematicians and data scientists. It calls itself a complete high-level and dynamic programming solution for technical computing.

Julia is slowly gaining more userbase and its growth rate is doubling every nine months. In the upcoming times, Julia is being seen as one of the highest paying skills in the finance industry.

5. Hack

Hack is another new programming language that was created by another tech giant Facebook in 2014.

The social networking giant is deploying Hack at Facebook and calls it a great success. The company is also migrating its entire PHP codebase to hack.

Facebook has also released an open source version of the programming language as a part of its HHVM runtime platform.

6. Scala

Scala is a relatively older programming language as compared to the others on this list. While one could find this language relatively harder to learn, but the time you’ll invest in Scala won’t go in vain.

Its complex features allow you to write better and performance-oriented code. This object-oriented and functional programming language allows one to write scalable code. Created with an aim to design a “better Java”, Scala is becoming an in-demand language at large companies.

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