Noobs will likely be best off sticking with one of the "major" distros. That is, distros with a large user base and a lot of developers working hard to improve them on a regular basis. Currently that means Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, OpenSuSE and perhaps, for those that want more of an adventure, plain Debian.While I suggest actually installing a big-name distro to start with, that doesn't mean you shouldn't feel free to experiment with distros of all shapes and sizes. In fact, just because you've settled on one distro for a while doesn't mean you can't jump ship whenever you want. Just install VirtualBox and try out any distro that catches your eye in a virtual machine. If you find one you like better than your current choice - install it. It's that simple.So how do you find the right distro for you? First off you need to figure out what's important to you. Do you want something where everything works out of the box or are you looking for something where you can customise every detail of the user interface? Do you want only free software or are you okay with proprietary drivers and non-free apps like Adobe Flash?
Figure out what your priorities are and then see how each distro addresses them.In my experience there are three good indicators of how well a distro will suit the Linux newcomer switching from Windows.The first is, how big and how active is the community around the distro? And I don't just mean the user forums on the distro's website, but the global community of users, bloggers, IRC chatters and so on. If you're new to Linux you're going to have questions. Sometimes the answers you need may be in the documentation, but more often than not you'll turn to Google for help and that's where popular distros with lots of users and dedicated sites can be a huge help. Want to know how you can customise Ubuntu? There are dozens of blogs out there that can walk you through the process. Need to know why Gnome Do isn't working quite the way you'd like in Mint? Again, dozens of sites that can help.When it comes to active, helpful communities, it's hard to beat Ubuntu and its cousin Mint. Fedora also has a rich community, though there don't seem to be quite as many Fedora blogs. OpenSuSE seems to be a distant third choice when it comes to community, though that may be because it has some of the best documentation you'll find in a Linux distro, which means there's less call for in depth tutorials elsewhere.
The second thing to look for in any prospective Linux distro is the software setup, namely: how good is the software manager and how big are the distro's software repositories?There are thousands and thousands of open-source applications waiting for you in Linux land, but that variety is worthless if you can't find the best app for your needs. To do that you need a software manager with powerful search features and preferably some extras like user ratings and ideally some screenshots.And of course you need access to a wide variety of apps. Adding new repositories to your list of software sources is not terribly difficult, but ideally you shouldn't need to do that when you're just starting out with Linux.Again you'll find that Mint and Ubuntu are the standouts here. Both come with a wide variety of the basic apps pre-installed, and offer easy access to all the multimedia codecs and proprietary drivers you might need. Both also have very easy-to-use software managers.
OpenSuSE likewise has a slick software center and offers a large selection of apps.Fedora doesn't rank quite as high in terms of the software installation interface, which lacks a powerful search function. Fedora does have a great selection of software available, but finding it and installing it can sometimes be a chore.Facebook has been hacked, but the company has found no evidence that user data was affected.Facebook's systems were "targeted in a sophisticated attack" in January after some of the company's developers visited a mobile-developer website that had been compromised, the company wrote on Friday afternoon.Malware was installed onto fully-patched Facebook laptops via a Java zero-day vulnerability – a vuln that Oracle patched on February 1."As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day," the company wrote.Facebook realized that the hack had occurred when its security team found a "suspicious" domain within the company's corporate DNS logs that was tracked back to a company laptop.
"Upon conducting a forensic examination of that laptop, we identified a malicious file, and then searched company-wide and flagged several other compromised employee laptops," Facebook reports.Other companies were targeted in this attack as well, though Facebook did not disclose who. It has formed a working group to share information among the affected parties.The company is working with law enforcement and other entities to prevent further attacks, it said, and encouraging people to submit security vulnerabilities affecting Facebook to the company's Bug Bounty Program. Feature It sounds like a solution looking for a problem. A technology that allows networked devices in the home connected by different network media to operate as if they were connected across a single medium. Surely TCP/IP already allows you to do that, routing packets from, say, network attached storage linked to a router over an Ethernet cord across to a TV that might be linked to the router wirelessly or over a powerline bridge?
IEEE 1905.1 may well be searching for a problem to solve, and it may, some observers argue, amount to little more than a standard designed to encourage consumers to buy more kit, but it has some big-name brands behind it and it’s coming to domestic networking hardware soon.At its most basic, 1905.1 specifies the capabilities of firmware that sits just above a network device’s MAC layer. It’s able to seek out other, compatible devices on the network to learn what connections they have available to them and what hosts they’re attached to. Data throughput sampling facilities allow 1905.1 devices to report on the quality of their active links.The notion is that, say, a TV connected via a router to an online content source will receive that content over whichever network medium it has that is most appropriate. “Packets can arrive and be transmitted over any interface, regardless of the upper protocol layers or underlying network technology,” is how the IEEE puts it. An example: the 1905.1 software in the router might choose to deliver the content - a streamed film, says - to the TV over a Wi-Fi link because that provides the best throughput. Should other wirelessly connected devices join the network and start drawing capacity away from the wireless link to TV, the router can seamlessly switch the television stream to an Ethernet connection instead. Likewise, if one link suddenly drops out, 1905.1 can switch the packets onto an alternative medium.
Purva Rajkotia, chair of the IEEE 1905.1 Working Group, claims this will happen in the order of “a few milliseconds” - not enough time for the viewer to notice the change, he says. Indeed, once the user has set up the TV to connect to the router by both Wi-Fi and Ethernet - whether directly over Cat 5 cable, or by way of a pair of powerline adaptors - he or she shouldn’t need to do anything more to maintain the system - the 1905.1 “convergence layer” does all the work.If the TV is only connected by Wi-Fi, 1905.1 can move other devices with access to other media off the WLAN. Even if all the networked devices operate only over wireless links, the IEEE standard’s end‐to‐end quality of service (QoS) provision can give bandwidth priority to the streaming packets bound for the television. Devices with multiple connections can aggregate those connections to boost data transfer speeds.According to Rajkotia, 1905.1 operates entirely independently from the application layer, so it makes no difference what software and protocols two devices are using to stream a video, play a song or transfer a file, 1905.1 works to route the data over the most appropriate network medium. It doesn’t affect the underlying transport mechanisms. “The P1905.1 layer does not require modification to the underlying home networking technologies and hence does not change the behavior or implementation of existing home networking technologies,” is how the IEEE describes it.
In its first version, 1905.1 supports four media: Ethernet; Wi-Fi; powerline based on the IEEE 1901 standard - HomePlug AV, essentially; and co-ax cabling using the Multimedia over Co-Ax (MoCA) specification. A “legacy mode” ensures 1905.1 capable boxes can operate harmoniously with existing network kit, something the service provider backers of the technology were particularly keen on, says Rajkotia, so they don’t need to implement it in one go. That’s also handy for punters putting their own network kit in place.And 1905.1 doesn’t even mandate the use of all four media in a given device - one is enough, though there’s clearly much less benefit to be gained from the specification’s dynamic media selection abilities if a host gadget doesn’t have at least two types of networking on board.Rajkotia suggests that future versions of the specification may well add other network media: 60GHz WiGig, soon to gain the Wi-Fi brand, is an obvious contender. Not so the alternative powerline technology to 1901, G.hn. Since the ITU-backed next-gen networking-over-mains-wiring standard is designed to interoperate with 1901, there’s no particular reason why it shouldn’t be supported. It’s un-interoperable specifications that are unlikely to make the grade, says Rajkotia. But with 1901 at the core of 1905.1 and strong support coming from the HomePlug Alliance, it doesn’t seem likely to be granted the chance. Indeed, the HPA is no mere supporter of 1905.1 - it’s the organisation that has been selected to oversee 1905.1 interoperability certification.