The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today it will conduct an internal investigation of the university’s role in the circumstances that led to the suicide Friday of Internet activist Aaron Swartz.
Swartz, 26, was arrested in July 2011 and accused of stealing 4 million documents from MIT and Jstor, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. Authorities claimed he broke into a restricted-access computer wiring closet at MIT and accessed that network without authorization.
Swartz, a Reddit cofounder who championed open access to documents on the Internet, faced $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison if convicted…Read more at CNET News
David Tavares has announced the release of Pear Linux 6.1, an Ubuntu remix with a simple but beautiful user interface (a customised GNOME 3) and out-of-the-box support for many popular multimedia codecs: “I am pleased to announce the release of Pear Linux 6.1. Pear Linux 6.1 builds on top of our popular previous release of Pear Linux 6 with newly updated software…Read more at DistroWatch
Oracle released an emergency software update today to fix a security vulnerability in its Java software that could allow attackers to break into computers.
The update, which is available on Oracle’s Web site, fixes a critical vulnerability in Oracle’s Java 7 that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code…Read more at CNET News
There are a lot of Linux experts in the community who have amazing stories and great depths of information to share, including Linux kernel developers, Linux Foundation’s Linux training instructors, Linux.com writers and many, many more people working on Linux every day.
We bring many of these people together to collaborate at our Linux events throughout the year and offer resources to increase knowledge about Linux with our Linux training courses. Beginning today we’ll be offering another way to connect with community members and gain easier access to experts to learn more about Linux online:
Live Linux Q&As on our social channels, starting next week, Wednesday, January 16, on Facebook.
These Live Linux Q&As will rotate throughout our social channels, from Facebook to Google+ and Twitter to LinkedIn, so you can connect when/where it makes the most sense for you. And, we’ll be sourcing experts from a variety of areas that include Linux.com, our Linux training instructors, the Linux kernel development community, Linux community projects, our members and more.
We’ll be starting with one of Linux.com’s freelance contributors Carla Schroder. Carla is part of an amazing team of freelance writers who are Linux experts and who write useful stories and Linux tutorials to share with the community every week. She is also a self-taught system and network administrator.
In the Live Linux Q&A on Facebook January 16, she’ll be answering questions from the community about how to get started with Linux. Carla will be online from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. PT Wednesday, January 16, answering your questions about getting started with Linux, about distros, downloading and installing Linux, and more. Seasoned users are invited to join as well and to share their knowledge with the “newbies.”
Just visit the event on our Facebook page to add it to your events online.
Carla shared with us a handful of articles from Linux.com that can help get you thinking about what you might want to ask her during the Live Q&A.
How to Get Paid to Work on Linux
Weekend Project: Linux for Beginners
Weekend Project: Become a Linux Contributor
The 2012 Top 7 Best Linux Distributions for You
The Six Best Linux Community Server Distributions
Here are some related upcoming Linux Training courses and a new tutorial as well:
Training: Introduction to Linux
Tutorial: How to Get Started Using Linux
Got a question but can’t be online at that time? Leave in the comment section and we’ll try to include in during the Q&A. And, you can read more about Carla here.
There is more interest in Linux than ever, and it’s not always obvious to new users where to get started. Using Linux is just like using Mac or Windows– with a pointy-clicky graphical interface. No big deal there, and Linux supplies the added bonus of an extremely powerful command-line interface, which is far more sophisticated and capable than the CLI in Max OS X and Microsoft Windows. You don’t have to use it, it’s there for anyone who wants it, and it isn’t a big deal to learn it.
There are hundreds of different Linux versions called distributions, because each one is a bundle of software packaged for easy distribution. Why so many? Because Linux is free/open source software, so it’s easy for anyone to modify and re-distribute it. There are Linux distributions specialized for all kinds of uses, from very tiny embedded devices to supercomputers and mainframes. There are many general-purpose distributions for laptops, desktops, and mid-range servers. So how do you know which one to try? That part is easy– I’ll recommend three.
So what’s all this stuff about free and open source? Free software and open source software are closely related. They are organizations: the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative. They are software licenses, and they are philosophies. “Free” means freedom, not free of cost, though most Linux software is free of cost. The basic concept is that source code for all software should be open and freely-available, in contrast to closed proprietary software, like most Windows and Apple software. With free/open source software there is nowhere to hide sneaky user-hostile code, and users are free to run the software for any purpose, study it, modify it, and share it. As Phil Hughes, the founder of Linux Journal famously said “Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?” Please visit the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Intitiative sites to learn more.
There are three ways to test-drive Linux:
The coolest thing about Linux is it’s easy. You don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it, there are no license keys (with a few exceptions), and Linux distributors don’t treat you like you’re a criminal.
Of all of the excellent Linux distributions, there are three that I think are good starters for beginners:
These three are popular, with a lot of community support and good documentation. They’re designed to be very user-friendly, have excellent hardware detection to minimize driver hassles, and have good streamlined installers.
You can download an installation image and copy it to a CD/DVD or USB stick, and run it from there. Install Ubuntu 12.10 has instructions that work for all Ubuntu variants, including Xubuntu. The Mageia Wiki has instructions for Mageia, and Linux Mint manuals are here.
If you’re not experienced with creating bootable media and just want something ready to use, The Linux Mint Store offers inexpensive live DVDs, USB sticks, and SD cards that have Mint installed.
When you have your live bootable media all you do is pop it into your computer and boot to it. Your computer’s BIOS may not be configured to boot to removable media, so you might need to enter the BIOS, or press a key at startup to open a boot selector menu. For example, on Thinkpads the boot selector is the F11 key. This varies on different machines, so check your system’s documentation. If you don’t have a manual, then visit the manufacturer’s Web site.
One of the best reasons to try bootable media first is to test hardware support. Linux supports more hardware than any other operating system, but both Apple and Microsoft are uninterested in making it easy to run other operating systems on “their” hardware (it is your hardware!), so there may be components that require drivers that are not available to Linux. Graphics cards are the biggest potential hassle; you’ll always have at least a basic level of operation, but advanced features like 3D acceleration may not be available to Linux users.
Linux is by far the easiest operating system to install. It is no small thing to install an operating system, and it is nearly-miraculous that Linux developers have made it as easy as they have. The easiest install is when you want to run Linux by itself, 
so it can take over your whole hard drive. It gets complicated when you want to dual-boot with another operating system, or preserve certain partitions on your existing system, like data partitions. So you’ll need to understand hard-drive partitioning. You’ll also need to know how to set up a network connection to your local network, though Linux is good at auto-detection and should find it automatically. All three of my recommend Linuxes have good installation instructions, so do please study the documentation.
The easiest and most sure-fire way to get a good working Linux system with no hassles is to buy one from one of the many excellent independent Linux vendors. You’ll get high-quality hardware, Linux working out of the box, and superior customer support. My two favorite independent Linux OEM vendors are System76 and ZaReason. They are true independent mom-and-pop shops that sell a nice range of high-quality desktops, servers, laptops, and specialized systems like media servers.
There is this odd myth that Mac and Windows are easy, and Linux is hard. This myth is inexplicably persistent even though the very atmosphere is tinged blue from the curses of frustrated Mac and Windows users every day, and Mac and Windows users have purchased millions of howto books. Personal computers are complex, multi-purpose machines, and there is always a learning curve. So expect to spend some time learning how to use them. Learn to search online for help, and don’t be shy about collecting a few howto books. Here are a few resources to get you started:
And of course hang out here on Linux.com. I’ll be following up on this in the weeks to come, so please share your questions and helpful ideas in the comments.
Nokia has admitted that the Nokia Xpress browser redirects even encrypted HTTPS traffic through Nokia servers – and that the data is temporarily decrypted in the process. Indian security researcher Gaurang Pandya noticed the network traffic on his Nokia Asha phone – which is equipped with the Symbian Series 40 user interface – and proceeded to examine the Xpress browser, Opera’s “Mini” browser and the browser traffic on an older Nokia device. In a response to Pandya’s research, Nokia pointed out that the server decryption is secure…Read more at The H
