Debian 9 Review: Stable Like Ever, Better Than Most

Debian is one of the oldest and most famous Linux distributions of all time. Its development started back in 1993 by its founder Ian Murdock who passed away in 2015. It’s also known to be the mother-distribution of tens of other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu. Debian has a strict policy on software packages. It only ships free software by default. It doesn’t even ship non-free firmware and drivers. If you want, you can enable the non-free package repository later to install those packages. But you won’t find it there by default. Debian is well-known for its stability. They don’t ship new updates to users unless it was tested. Which is why you may notice some very old package versions when using Debian. It’s correct that they are old, but they are also tested and secure. Most discovered vulnerabilities get patched in Debian in a matter of hours or few days. Those users who would like to get latest and most updated software could switch to using the testing or unstable branch. Both contain more modern software according to a different policy. The effort which is being done by the Debian project for each release is huge. Currently, they offer 25000 source packages and 51000 binary packages. Getting all of those software from upstream projects, packaging them, testing them, debugging issues and fixing them is definitely not something you hear about everyday. Also: Upgrade to Debian Stretch - GlusterFS fails to mount New: VOYAGER 9 Debian Stretch

Liri – Loves me, loves me not … at all

What does the world of Linux need more? Desktop environments? Nope. Ah, well, you’d be surprised, because a fresh new challenger appears! Its name is Liri, and it is the presentation layer for the namesake operating system being baked in the forges of community creativity as we speak. Sounds potentially interesting, but then we must be wary. I’ve trawled through the obscure, uncharted waters of Budgie, Razor-Qt and more recently, and with much greater attention to detail, LXQt, and in all of these cases, I was left rather dissatisfied with the end product. Not enough cohesion, quality, future roadmap, and most importantly, the finesse that you expect from polished, professional products. Then again, building a desktop environment is a huge undertaking, probably even more complex than spinning a new distro, and so, it’s not a coincidence that there are few serious contenders in this space. But Liri comes with enticing artwork, a promise of Material Design for the desktop, and so here we are, trying to get the first feel of what it does.

Microsoft Breaches and Their Impact

• Discord: Rise Of The Bot Wars

  The problem is that the armies of spambots that were once reserved for the big servers are now so easy and so trivial to make that they're beginning to target smaller servers, servers that don't have the resources or the means to deal with that kind of large scale DDoS attack. So instead, I have to fight the growing swarm alone, armed with only a crippled, rate-limited bot of my own, and hope the dragons flying overhead don't notice.

• Kaspersky may be collateral damage in US-Russia stoush

  Kaspersky Lab may have been targeted by the US government as part of retaliatory measures taken by the Obama administration after it allegedly discovered that Russia had made plans to influence the 2016 US elections.

• Cyberattack Hits U.K. Parliament, Limits MPs' Email Access [Ed: they use Microsoft]

• Russian hackers {sic} are reportedly trading in UK MP's email addresses and passwords

  Mark James, security specialist for ESET has given this thought and decided that this could be a considerable problem for people who reuse passwords, which from here looks like everyone.

• Blackmail fears after Parliament hit by 'sustained and determined' cyber attack leaving MPs unable to access their emails remotely

  Parliamentary officials were forced to lock MPs out of their own email accounts as they scrambled to minimise the damage from the incident.

• Microsoft confirms some Windows 10 source code has leaked

  A portion of Microsoft’s Windows 10 source code has leaked online this week. Files related to Microsoft’s USB, storage, and Wi-Fi drivers in Windows 10 were posted to Beta Archive this week. Beta Archive is an enthusiast site that tracks Windows releases, and asks members to donate money or contribute something Windows-related if they access a free private FTP full of archived Windows builds. The leaked code was published to Beta Archive’s FTP, and is part of Microsoft's Shared Source Kit.

Essential Applications for GNU/Linux Users

So, you’ve made the switch from Windows or MacOSX to GNU/Linux, congratulations! There is a good chance that you’ve also installed a distribution like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, or perhaps Manjaro; and so you have a wide range of software already installed. However, There are a number of applications that don’t always ship by default, that I feel every user should have or at least be aware of, and some that people have by default but have not ventured to use; so I thought a list of essential applications was in order!