Category: Computers, Science & Technology

I am downloading as I type! The Edgy Eft is official and out! Get it while it’s hot!

Ubuntu Website

“London – 26th October 2006 – Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, the world’s fastest growing Linux distribution, today announced its latest desktop and server version. Following months of development and user feedback, Ubuntu 6.10 offers a cleaner, sharper design, together with new and enhanced desktop applications and advances in security. Significantly faster boot up times and the best in leading edge free software technologies make the latest Ubuntu the first choice for many new and existing Linux users.

The desktop version introduces a host of new features, an improved interface and a wide variety of new applications and desktop tools making Ubuntu 6.10 flexible and user-friendly.

Enhancements include:

* Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool
* F-Spot, a photo management tool that enables tagging, photo editing and automatic uploading to on-line web management sites such as Flickr
* GNOME 2.16, which in addition to new features such as enhanced power management, makes the GNOME desktop more secure, faster and more stable
* Upstart, a replacement start-up manager offering a cleaner design, eye-catching effects and a substantially faster boot time
* The latest Firefox web browser, which offers inline spell check support in web forms, easy recovery of crashed sessions, built-in phishing detectors, enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support, and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
* Proactive security features, preventing many common security vulnerabilities even before they are discovered
* Evolution 2.8.0, which brings new features such as vertical message panes”

Then, here’s your homework! A required reading list for Linux newbies!

The Linux 101 Required Reading List

These are the books (and one website) that our buddy, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols recommends as a good intro to Linux:

And, that project is Minimo, a mini web browser for Windows Mobile 4.2 or 5.0 devices!

A small, simple, powerful, innovative, web browser for mobile devices

“The Minimo has been focused on code-size and runtime footprint reduction, small screen usablity, and porting to small consumer devices. We hope to make Minimo the browser of choice on small devices, or machines with limited system resources; taking advantage of Mozilla’s support for a broad and comprehensive set of standards and the variety of content on the web, proven security, international support, and cross platform capability.”

Check it out! Download and enjoy! Firefox 2.0 is official!

Mozilla Firefox 2.0!

Really! Get it now!

Here’s an interview with Chris Beard, Mozilla VP of Products:

Firefox 2 Launch: Interview With Chris Beard, Mozilla VP Products

Why call it Version 2.0? “It’s more sort of a natural evolution. It felt to us like a 2.0 product, particularly if we looked at it from what 1.0 was, to 2.0. It was like half steps, from 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0. It’s also a very stable and rock solid release – it’s really ready for the masses. So it really does feel like a 2, as opposed to a 1.x product. Firefox 2 has, we estimate, between 3-4 times the number of fixes than FF 1.5 did. And that doesn’t just include fixes and bugs, but all of the feature work as well as memory, stability and security issues. But there’s certainly a lot in it which makes it really solid.”

Is Ubuntu more popular than the Mac? According to The Linux Advocate and Google Trends it is!

Ubuntu now more popular than Mac OS X!

“I was just taking a look at Google Trends and I found out something interesting. Apparently Ubuntu Linux has not only surpassed its major competitor in Linux ( SuSE ) in popularity, as well as the distro it’s based off of (Debian) , but it seems to have also surpassed another major competitor. Yes, that’s right! Apple Computer’s very own Mac OS X has also been defeated in popularity by Ubuntu! Check it out for yourself. Here is a screenshot I took not 15 minutes ago. The blue line you see shooting up to the sky there is Ubuntu itself, while Mac OS, SuSE and Debian seem to all hang around the same general level of popularity. I’ve purposely left Windows out of this graph because if added, all of these OS’s crawl near the bottom of the graph in an almost flat line compared to Windows’ wild lead. Just thought this was pretty cool! Free software is definitely making some serious progress.”

With 73% of the MP3 player market, the iPod is “the big dog” of the MP3 player world! Happy Birthday to you! (Also, Happy Birthday to our buddy, Weird Al Yankovik, who is 47 today!) (It’s all about the Pentiums, Al!)

I have long held that ethanol burns cleaner, can be made from corn (or other products we can grow her at home), and let’s say, “Phooey!” to the A-rabs!

Adapter Lets Any Car Use Ethanol!

“Brazilian company ABC Esso will soon sell an adapter in the U.S. Abcesso that lets any gasoline vehicle burn up to 100 percent ethanol. The AutoFFV works with the vehicle’s existing sensors to detect the ethanol/gasoline ratio and instructs the engine to operate accordingly. The company has developed adapters for Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, Volvo and Toyota vehicles. The company claims there are no cold start problems when using E85. ABC Esso says some fuel pumps that are not so ethanol-tolerant may have to be replaced, and recommends that owners replace their fuel filters after the product is installed because the ethanol will scrub out impurities that will be caught in the filter. According to Vidar Lura, managing director of Abcesso, the product will sell for between $500 and $900, and the company is currently setting up distribution agreements in the U.S. He told me the product is used in Brazil, which primarily uses ethanol as a fuel. If this works as advertised (no endorsement implied) it could be a big hit here with hybrid owners and others who are concerned about the environment and prefer domestically produced fuel.”

The web server I am using to host this Blog has been upgraded! I built a 64-bit AMD Athlon server with a gig of DDR2 RAM and a 200 gig hard drive! And, I am running CentOS Linux x86_64 on it! Rock on! I have also installed the latest (stable) copy of the Zend Optimizer… so the site should fly! Oh yeah! Nothing like a home grown server that rocks to make a geek happy! Now to move some other sites around!

This is the day for big upgrade announcements, I guess! AVG Free is a GREAT antivirus! And, the new version is out, and free!

Grisoft’s AVG Free Antivirus

Just some of the improvements:

* Improved virus detection based on better heuristics and NTFS data streams scanning
* Smaller installation and update files
* Improved user interface
* Windows Vista ready
* and much more!