Okay, as i mentioned earlier, I installed the new version of Ubuntu Linux, named Hardy Heron. I have been using this on my main desktop for a while, now, so I thought I might give it a review.
Given one sentence to describe it, I would say: “Stay Away.”
Having used Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon for a long time, and having seen reviews and articles about various other versions, I have come to the conclusion that this is the worst Ubuntu version to come out. Basically, just looking at it, there is no visible difference, except a slightly different wallpaper. My first point of contention was the graphics. It was a PAIN to get my Nvidia graphics card installed, I had to manually download and install the driver. In addition, the Screens And Grahpics manager that I had gotten so fond of no longer exists. I have yet to find a GUI that lets you manage your graphics cards and monitors. There is one simple window in which you can change your screen resolution and refresh rate, but that is all. To change my graphics properties, I have to boot into Recovery Mode. However, Recovery mode has been improved. When booting into it, a blue screen comes up with three options: Boot into normal mode, repair graphics, and boot into command line. This is a big bonus, whenever I had to repair the graphics via Recovery Mode in Gutsy, it was a PAIN, with my limited UNIX knowledge. However, as I mentioned earlier, I got Windows and Hardy Heron running simultaneously. However, this might also be possible on Gutsy, I do not know. Also, I have had some compatibility issues. VMware got trashed, and FF3b5 crashes more often. Also, that is another bone of contention. They installed a beta version of a browser in a full public release of the OS. No offense to them, but that is a …dumb… idea.
Other than that, I have not had any major problems, at least that I can think of. If you are a normal home user, looking for a more stable OS than Windows, you would not have a problem. However, for the more hardcore users, I would suggest you stick to Gutsy 7.10
Here is a link to Ubuntu, if you are interested in it, and do not yet use it (if that is possible).
I have recently discovered a flaw in FF3b5: It crashes on some Flash apps, especially the more demanding ones, such as Pandora Internet Radio, and such. Fortunately, since Firefox saves all of your tabs in the event of a crash such as that, it is not that big of a problem, I just open the program again, and, if I really need/want the troublesome flash app, and it crashes several more times, I will use FF2 to open the page. I use FF2 for Pandora, now.
“Comparisons between two mass Javascript injection attacks suggest they may be related, according to a security company. The latest attack has compromised various sites including one United Nations and several UK government sites with links to malicious servers.
On Tuesday Websense reported seeing distinct similarities between attacks staged earlier this month and over the weekend. Specifically, they cite the use of the same tool to execute the attack being resident on the malicious server. Last summer various groups used the MPACK toolkit to propagate a similar series of Javascript injections.
Javascript injections are browser attacks and require no more effort than appending a script tag to the end of the URL. If a legitimate site is vulnerable to script injection, an attacker can add a script tag to the Web-facing page of the site so that subsequent views will automatically download whatever content is within the script tag. Often the script tag contains calls out to a malicious server.
A user need only stumble upon a compromised site to become infected. In this case, when viewing a compromised site, the injected Javascript loads a file named 1,js. The file is located on a malicious server, which then attempts to execute eight different exploits targeting Microsoft applications.
As of Tuesday, two other files named McAfee.htm and Yahoo,php were no longer active.
A quick review by CNET News.com found that travel and academic sites continue to host the injected Javascript code.”
Yes, the virus was inserted through a vulnerability through the browser/site, and not Windows, but that is not the point I am trying to make here. The key phrase in this story is ” attempts to execute eight different exploits targeting Microsoft applications.” As I have mentioned before, one of the biggest reasons that viruses are less common on Linux systems, besides the fact that the OS itself is significantly more secure, is that pretty much all viruses designed these days are for Windows, and, recently for Macs. I use Ubuntu Linux, as you know if you have spent 2 minutes on this blog. I have never gotten a virus. Admittedly, I have not used Ubuntu that long, but In the amount of time that I have used Ubuntu, I would, at the rate I caught viruses on Windows, through AVG, have probably 7-10 on here by now. I feel much safer when browsing the internet, and take a lot more risks. I know that I can safely go onto any site I want, and not suffer any ill effects, because I am invulnerable to outside attack. I would like to point out though, just to prove that I am being fair here, that browser-specific viruses can still be caught, while on Linux. No matter what the Operating System, a virus designed for Firefox will still penetrate Firefox. However, there are still ways to circumvent this. Firefox is good, because the majority of the browser-specific viruses are targeted for IE6/7. Also, Opera is another alternative, although it might be vulnerable to some of the Firefox-specific viruses, since it uses the same plugins as it.
(Inspired by “Matt” of The Free Christian Blog. Credit for the idea of this post goes to him. The inspirational post can be found here.)
Imwithgenius is officially declaring Firefox as it’s browser! This blog was made while I was running Firefox, this blog will be designed with Firefox users in mind, if I have a choice of compatibility, I will choose the one that works better with Firefox. This blog will be continually written while in Firefox, and will continue to support it by referencing it whenever possible, and I will write reviews for Firefox Addons.
Why, might you ask, do I choose to support Firefox over other browsers, such as IE6/7/8, Opera, and Safari? Well, I would say, that is a good question. I am glad you asked.
1) It is FOSS. In case you do not know this term, it means “Free Open Source Software.” It is completely user-modifiable, and, for the technologically informed, is easily upgraded via source, to run faster. This means, if something goes wrong, I am not confined to one single source to get help. Also, anyone can modify it in any way, and it is completely legal, and they can share these mods online for anyone to use.
2) It is fast. It is significantly faster than IE, and, with some improvements, it can easily be as fast as Opera.
3) It is compatible. Firefox can run any popular browser add-on, such as Flash, Quick Time, ect. Also, with a certain add-on, you can view IE pages, making it compatible with any page (unfortunately, this add-on is not available for Linux).
4) It is customizable. With Firefox, you can install add-ons, and themes, giving you the ultimate user experience. Also, if you are really geeky, you can design your own add-ons and themes, and make it run and look like whatever you want.
5) It is universal. Firefox will run on any operating system, OS X, Windows, and Linux.
6) It is safe. Firefox is widely known as the safest browser, and most stable browser. Compared to IE, which constantly crashes, and Safari, which was recently hacked, to gain control of a Mac, in a recent contest.
7) It likes you. It does what you want it to do, not the other way around. IE constantly tries to regain it’s position as my default browser, and when I want to do something slightly abnormal with it, it will not let me. Firefox is not like that, it follows orders very submissively. Yesterday, Itunes told me it needed to update. I said it could, and then it told me it wanted to install Safari as part of the upgrade. Uhhh…. NO. I did not upgrade. Even though it was easily disabled as part of the upgrade, items like that, if you ignore them, generally come back to haunt you.
In conclusion, I would like to inform you that I have embedded a virus onto this post that infects anyone not running Firefox.
No, just kidding.
This will be saved as a Page, so it will be widely known that FIREFOX RULES!!!
Last night, as it was a Friday, and we are not having school next week, I did what i enjoy doing the most: I browsed the Internet for ways to speed up my internet/Firefox. Now, it you don’t use Firefox, then I have only one comment: WIWWY?!? (what is wrong with you)!!! In case you aren’t using it, download it here. It is a much better browser than IE, with the capability to install plug-ins that add functionality to it, visual themes/eye candy, and the ability to change it however you want.
Anyway, I ran across a few videos, most of which were pretty pathetic, but I managed to find one that was really popular, that explained a lot of things. I also got one or two of these from other videos.
Step 1) Open a new tab. in the URL section, type “about:config”
Step 2) You will see a list of stuff that you most likely cannot understand. Do not worry. Oh, and unless you know what you are doing, do not mess with any of the other options on there. It could ruin your browser. In the search bar at the top, type: “pipelining” You should see two or three options. I have three, and they are:
All you need are the top two, for this tutorial, so, if you do not have the third one, do not panic.
Step 3) Double-click the first option. It should now be bold, and say “user set” and “true. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Step 4) Double-click the second option. It should bring up an option window that has a number. I think the default is 4. Change it to anywhere between 20-100, I guess, it doesn’t really matter. From what I understand how it works, however, you should set it according to how strong your internet connection is. If it is stronger, set it higher. If it is lower, set it lower. This enables Firefox to load multiple packets from sites, simultaneously. Normally, it downloads one 1.5kb packet at a time, and then does the next, which, if you are just loading simple pages such as google, wikipedia, etc, then you will most likely not notice a difference. But, for pages loaded with images/flash objects/heavy HTML/Javascript, like Myspace, Facebook, news sites, game sites, stores, etc., this will enable them to load much faster.
Step 5) On the search bar, erase “pipelining” and replace it with “max-persistent”
This should show several options as well, depending on what addons you have installed. All you need is this one however:
Step 6) Double-click this, and raise it to whatever number you want, I would suggest the same as you set the last one to, simply because it depends on the connection strength, too, and because I do not entirely understand what it does, only that it works, and I do not want you to set it to something that will kill your browser.
Step 7) (note: this can cause a lag when going back in a page, so is probably not a good idea for people who use the internet primarily for sites like Google and Wikipedia. ) search for “browser.sessionhistory”, double click it, and set it to zero(”0″). This tells the browser to not keep the previous page(s) in memory, which enables it to load another page faster, since it does not have to store the current one somewhere else. Note: this should not disable your ability to go back a page, it will just disable your ability to back to the previous page instantly, not having to load it again. If you have a good internet connection, and already load pages fairly fast, then this is a good choice, but if you are reading this post on how to make it go faster because it is currently painfully slow, then I do not recommend this.
I do not know if you need to restart your browser/computer before these take effect, as I shut down my computer and went to bed after I was done, and I am noticing a big improvement today.
Note: you can always install eitherGoogle Web Accelerator(IE and Firefox), or the Firefox plugin called FasterFox. Do not install both. I recommend the first one, I do not use the second, but other people says it helps. Running both, though, will make it even slower than before. Also, FasterFox does not help on some computers/connections, according to reviewers.
Original video showing how to modify the about:config file included for the geeks who can understand the technobabble, and the people that have a stronger internet connection and like to watch videos.
