• WebExtensions in Firefox 48

• Mozilla's WebExtensions API Is In Good Shape For Firefox 48

  Mozilla has announced that for Firefox 48 their WebExtensions API is considered to be in a stable state. They encourage developers looking to develop browser add-ons to begin using this new API.

  WebExtensions is an API for implementing new browser add-ons/extensions that makes it easier to port to/from other browsers, is compatible with Firefox's Electroloysis, and should be easier to work with than the current APIs. In particular, Google designed portions of the WebExtensions API around Google's Blink extension API.

• Mozilla a Step Closer to Thunderbird Decision

  The good news is that the folks at Mozilla seem to be determined to find Thunderbird a good home where it will be able to grow and find newfound success. This isn’t surprising. As Surman pointed out in his post, the project is quite popular among those associated with the foundation — but that popularity is also contributing to the problem Mozilla has with keeping the project in-house.

Here are some extra Linux distribution benchmarks for your viewing pleasure this weekend.

Following the release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS last week, I was running another fresh performance comparison of various Linux distributions on my powerful Xeon E3-1270 v5 Skylake system. I made it a few Linux distributions in before the motherboard faced an untimely death. Not sure of the cause yet, but the motherboard is kaput and thus the testing was ended prematurely.

• Ubuntu-based Smartphones And Tablets Sound Good, On Paper, But...Do They Make Any Sense?

  As I previously stated in a recent article, I'm a huge fan of Ubuntu as a desktop operating system. It's friendly, reliable, consumes little resources and is largely virus-free.

• Elementary OS 0.4 ‘Loki’ expected to be based on Ubuntu 16.04

  Elementary OS 0.4 ‘Loki’ coming soon, to be based on Ubuntu 16.04 and have plenty of new features

• BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition tablet - The heat is on

  Some investments are financial. Some are emotional. When it comes to Linux on tablets, my motives are mostly of the latter kind. I was super-excited to learn BQ was launching a tablet with Ubuntu, something that I have been waiting for a good solid three years now. We had the phone released last spring, and now there's a tablet. The cycle is almost complete.

  Now, as you know, I was only mildly pleased with the Ubuntu phone. It is a very neat product, but it is not yet as good as the competitors, across all shades of the usability spectrum. But this tablet promises a lot. Full HD, desktop-touch continuum, seamless usage model, and more. Let us have a look.

• Kubuntu-16.04 — a review

  The kubuntu implementation of Plasma 5 seems to work quite well. It’s close to what I am seeing in other implementations. It includes the Libre Office software, rather than the KDE office suite. But most users will prefer that anyway.

  I’m not a big fan of the default menu. But the menu can easily be switched to one of the alternative forms. I’ve already done that, and am preferring the “launcher based on cascading popup menus”. If you are trying kubuntu, I suggest you experiment with the alternative formats to see which you prefer.

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Review: Very Stable & Improved, Buggy Software Center, Though

  In almost all the occasions that I tested Ubuntu LTS releases, quite rightly so, they’ve always worked better than the non-LTS releases. And this Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the 6th of such release is no exception. This one actually is even more impressive than the others because it has addressed some security related issues and even although not critical, subtle issues that I mentioned in the review.

  As far as the performance was concerned, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS was only largely outperformed by the memory usage where there is a large increase in memory usage. Other than that, those numbers look pretty good to me. That ‘.deb’ file issues with the Software Center is the only major concern that I can come up with. But I’m sure it’ll be fixed very soon.

dear Init Freedom Lovers,

once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you.

As promised two years ago with the first declaration of Exodus from
Debian, today we can proudly state: we do not go gentle into that good
night.

Now has come the time to announce the Beta release of Devuan.

Debian GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd, on its way to
become much more than that. This Beta release marks an important
milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as
an universal base distribution.

Also: Beta Released Of Devuan, The Systemd-Free Version Of Debian