Yes, that's right, another place plans to ditch Microsoft and go to Linux and OpenOffice

An Intel flaw that has been sitting hidden for a decade has finally surfaced.

Being on the chip rather than the OS, it doesn’t affect a single OS – with Linux, Windows and MacOS being mentioned in this article.

www.linuxinsider.com/story/850…

Not often I quote from a publication from Ireland, but this was quite an intriguing read. Someone who went from Windows to Mac to Linux (Mint)

Linux is everywhere – and will free your computer from corporate clutches

It was 2002, I was up against a deadline and a bullying software bubble popped up in Windows every few minutes. Unless I paid to upgrade my virus scanner – now! – terrible things would happen.

We’ve all had that right?

In a moment of clarity I realised that the virus scanner – and its developer’s aggressive business model – was more of a pest than any virus I’d encountered. Microsoft’s operating system was full of this kind of nonsense, so, ignoring snorts of derision from tech friends, I switched to the Apple universe.

It was a great choice: a system that just worked, designed by a team that clearly put a lot of thought into stability and usability. Eventually the iPhone came along, and I was sucked in farther, marvelling at the simple elegance of life on Planet Apple and giving little thought to the consequences.

Then the dream developed cracks. My MacBook is 10 years old and technically fine, particularly since I replaced my knackered old hard drive with a fast new solid-state drive. So why the hourly demands to update my Apple operating system, an insistence that reminded of the Windows virus scanner of old?

Apple is no different to Microsoft it seems.

I don’t want to upgrade. My machine isn’t up to it, and I’m just fine as I am. But, like Microsoft, Apple has ways of making you upgrade. Why? Because, as a listed company, it has quarterly sales targets to meet. And users of older MacBooks like me are fair game.

I looked at the price of a replacement MacBook but laughed at the idea of a midrange laptop giving me small change from €1,200. Two years after I de-Googled my life(iti.ms/2ASlrdY) I began my Apple prison break.

He eventually went for Linux Mint, which for a casual user is fine. I use Fedora and Ubuntu (and a really old version of Ubuntu since my workplace VPN doesn’t seem to work properly with anything above Ubuntu 14 - their way of forcing me onto either a Windows or Mac machine)

Source: www.irishtimes.com/business/…

The malware backdoor in this story is quite intriguing. They are targeting specific companies (Samsung, Akamai, Cisco, Microsoft amongst them) and only attempting the second level attack if they are detecting they are being installed there.

The advice mentioned in the article is that anyone who installed the software on their system should REFORMAT THEIR DRIVE. Quite an extreme recommendation. My suggestion - stop using Windows.

Source: CCleaner malware outbreak is much worse than it first appeared | Ars Technica

I am actually not that surprised with Microsoft’s behaviour on this. Forcing an upgrade onto people without consent. In fact, it was using malware-like tactics to make you (or persuade you) to upgrade.

Some other references:

• [www.pcworld.com/article/3...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3014238/windows/get-windows-10-prompt-adopts-malware-like-tactics-to-trick-you-into-upgrading.html)
• [www.pcworld.com/article/3...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3073457/windows/how-microsofts-nasty-new-windows-10-pop-up-tricks-you-into-upgrading.html)
• [www.computerworld.com/article/2...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2993851/windows-pcs/microsoft-antagonizes-users-with-intrusive-new-windows-10-upgrade-tactics.html)
• [www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/1...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/17/microsoft_windows_10_upgrade_gwx_vs_humanity/) <-- this one I like for its breakdown.

Meet the new BSoD – the Blue Screen of Despair

Source: Microsoft’s Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push • The Register

Related articles

• No means no: Windows 10 nagware's red X will stop update - Microsoft
• Microsoft tweaks activation rules
• Microsoft backtracks: Clicking "X" will now stop Windows 10 updates
• Microsoft to pay $10,000 after unwanted Windows 10 upgrade
• I urge everyone to fight back' - woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

Ready to give up on Windows? You’re probably not alone

Source: 5 reasons to ditch Windows for Linux | TheINQUIRER

With the roll out of a new version of Chrome, Google is saying goodbye to a few old favorites. Maybe “favorites” isn’t the right word. The browser will no longer be updated to support Windows XP, Vista, and OS X 10.8. Goodnight, sweet Vista, and your glossy menus.

RIP XP. Finally. Although I say finally, but I’m pretty sure some places are still using XP because they can’t/won’t recode applications to support Windows 2000

Source: Remains of the Day: Google Chrome Drops Support for Windows XP

AND I HATED IT.

It won’t boot ISOs unless you hdiutil it, which is an Apple propriety tool, or the ISO has been EFI enabled already, and since it’s not open source, I can’t even do that beforehand.

The Macbook won’t work with a known good HDMI cable (which I use with a Desktop PC), unless it’s Apple branded - which Apple being Apple, isn’t the least bit surprising…

I’ve tripped over their power supply more than once, and putting it at the plug end make it bulky and ugly.

My first course of action with regards to the setup? Trash MacOS and install Ubuntu. Of course, Apple make things endlessly difficult – I had to hdiutil the Ubuntu ISO to make it bootable, then install Ubuntu. After which, the Macbook wouldn’t boot.

Thanks to the install guide at Linux Mint:

community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/…

I found out I had to fiddle with the efibootmgr tool to change the boot order, and it works fine now. But then I had to figure out how to right-click on a no-button mouse touchpad. The hack is found on the Debian site (look at the mouseeemu post at the bottom). So now I have a clickable touchpad, with right-click being “ctrl+click”

wiki.debian.org/MacBook

Now on Steam. Looking forward to giving this a go. The hi-ougis are pretty neat too

www.youtube.com/watch

And combos are intriguing

www.youtube.com/watch

store.steampowered.com/app/35197…

Looking forward to trying Tales of Symphonia when it is released.

When the world's biggest technology companies start playing rough with each other, it's normally consumers who wind up suffering. This time out, it's Windows users who are feeling the pain after Google publicly posted the details of a Windows 8.1 flaw before Microsoft could fix it. In a public response to the disclosure, Microsoft's security chief Chris Betz says that Google's decision to publish and be damned before his company's scheduled patch was less about "principles" and more about getting one over on its rival.

Microsoft says ‘no fair’ after Google exposes Windows flaw early.

With my new laptop up and running, I am happily playing several Steam-based games:

Dust (I am pretty impressed by this. It is a platformer, side-scrolling game with really nice visuals, voice-acting and insane combo options) Dungeon Defenders (yet to start this under Steam, but played it extensively under Android) Dota (downloading) Wakfu (played on my old 32-bit box, but Steam refuses to start the game if you are running 32-bit arch. With a 64-bit arch, it will start)

I also have some extra games that I’m not playing or stopped playing: Bastion (tried it and it is interesting, but I’m finding it really difficult to get into Dungeon Hearts (slow and laggy) Ravensword: Shadowlands (an interesting 3D, but very little customisation options) Toribash (Appeal wore off very quickly)

I am also playing two non-Steam-based games

World of Warcraft League of Legends

Although, I have them tied into the Steam framework so I can start them up via Steam and grab screenshots, etc.

I have also looked at Fraps and Kazam – two screen recorders (Fraps for Windows, Kazam for Linux) and both perform pretty well. Fraps performs great, I got smooth high-quality video out of WoW. Kazam, I am tweaking settings. It also generates good-quality video, but I need to play with the framerate and encoding settings. Look out for some uploads at some point in the future.

Could this be a sign of an exodus away from Windows-based environments? The cost of having to upgrade many machines to Windows 7 or Windows 8, not to mention support and licensing, or the premium support cost required to continue supporting Windows XP would not go down well at any sensible company’s finance/accounting department.

Linux is free, open-sourced (see this link for a video explanation of what the term “open-sourced” means), and if a user doesn’t like how it works, they can add/remove or tweak it completely to their liking. They can even build their own kernel to handle bespoke hardware if they wished.

It should be noted that HP teamed up with Bell Labs in the past (who developed the original UNIX OS, on which Linux was inspired from), and built HP-UX (source here), so it isn’t like HP haven’t got some *nix-like environment already under the hood. In fact, WebOS  (now looked after by LG, but originally developed by Palm, which was then acquired by HP, then sold to LG) was Linux-based (source here).

HP, which was actually one of Microsoft's key partners in the last decade, is trying to move away from Windows in a move that would clearly turn the company into a direct competitor for the Redmond-based software giant.

HP Stabs Microsoft in the Back: Dumps Windows, Prepares Linux-Based Operating System.

Related articles

• Has Microsoft opened the door to the Linux desktop?

A quick snippet for syncing your date and time via NTP. I have noticed that Windows and Linux do not follow the same convention by standard, and are always an hour out from each other, even though both claim to follow the same time zone. So, what I am having to do is sync via NTP each time I dual boot.

In Linux, this can be done using cron jobs or using the NTP daemon, but that does not do it frequently enough for my liking. So here is a bash snippet for it:

sudo service ntp stop sudo ntpdate 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com sudo service ntp start

The first line stops the NTP daemon, since the ntpdate command does not like it when it is running (port in use). The second command uses a server in the selected list to sync with. The final line restarts the NTP daemon.

The Windows (Windows 7) equivalent is very similar. Like with linux, it has an in-built sync facility, but it again does not sync often enough for my liking. Like with the bash script, the commands must be run with elevated rights, so you must “Run as Administrator”, or run from an elevated rights command prompt, which you do as follows:

1. Click Start, type "cmd" into the command window (do NOT use Windows+R)
2. Hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then press ENTER
3. You will be prompted (if you have UAC active), OK it and you will get a command prompt with "Administrator" in the title.

net stop “Windows Time” net start “Windows Time” w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:“0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com” /syncfromflags:ALL /update w32tm /resync

This code starts/restarts the Windows Time service then configures it with a pool of NTP servers, before asking the service to update itself and then resync. The resync action is what adjusts the time.

And why are you still using Windows?

A flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer which leaves users vulnerable to hackers has not been fixed, despite its discoverer giving the company six months grace to do so before publishing details.

The IE flaw that Microsoft refuses to patch - Telegraph.

China believes that Windows 8 poses enough of a future security risk that it's banning government agencies from installing the operating system on any of its new computers. 

China bans the installation of Windows 8 on government computers.

I’ve just finished work on a dual-boot setup guide with Linux and Windows 7. It covers setting up Dual Boot with Windows installed first or second, and with Linux installed first and second, and covers Linux distros that default to using LVM, such as Fedora, and those which don’t default to using LVM, such as Debian.

Link here:

http://wp.me/P3jVlp-Dz

Something I’ve been saying for a LONG time…

It’s Monday. But cheer up, it could be worse…

Had a very eventful weekend, and my entire Sunday was taking up trying to figure out a weird symptom on my linux installation.

In the weeks leading up to today, I used to get strange behaviour from my Fedora box. The behaviour resulting in an error being detected by the ABRT tool, regarding a null reference. Sunday, my laptop conked out and refused to startup. I tried reinstalling Fedora, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, and even OpenMandriva – none of them could complete the installation. They either failed with error part way through, or hung completely.

I decided to try installing Windows XP over everything. That failed with an IRQ LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO blue screen. Then I tried Windows 7. That installation succeeded, and I started running updates. Then it blue screened me again. This time MEMORY_MANAGEMENT was the message. Hmmm. So, could it be that one of my memory chips was dodgy? That would account for why it was intermittent. I have 2x 2GB chips in my laptop, so I took both out and rebooted. No splash screen. Good. That’s expected.

Put in one of the chips. Booted, BIOS showed 2GB. Good, that’s OK.

Took it out and put in the other 2GB. No splash screen. Looks like that’s the dodgy one. I dug out my 1GB from when I got my laptop originally, and put that back into the other slot, so I get a 3GB installation. Checked boot. Splash screen displayed. Good. So I then ran a BIOS memory check, and all 3GB passed.

So then I decided, maybe I should try doing a restore, in case the dodgy memory was the cause of my failure to restore previously. It worked fine, so now I’m back up with my previous setup. :D

Cause: Faulty 2GB memory

In between my running, I am now going to start seeking profession certification in linux. It’ll give me something to get a leg up back into the software world, plus let me use something I care about, rather than the very frustrating (and annoying) Windows 7.

Whilst primarily for Windows 7, there’s plenty of tricks hidden under the Aero hood.

11 Hidden Windows Secrets and Tricks.

A snippet to download and run the latest build of the Chromium browser. Meant for Cygwin/Windows but can be adapted if needed.

If you need to use a proxy, set your http_proxy and https_proxy variables before using this.

Now updated to kill running Chrome/Chromium processes before running the installer (in case of locking issues). Also created a Bitbucket repo here for this script

if [ -f ./mini_installer.exe ]; then
  echo "WARNING: Previous script run did not clean up"
  rm ./mini_installer.exe
fi

if [ ! -f prev ]; then
  echo "No previous build logged"
  echo "-1" >prev
fi

if [[ `wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O-` == `cat prev` ]]; then
  echo "No build change (`wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O-` = `cat prev`)"
  exit 1
else
  echo "New build (previous: `cat prev`, new: `wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O-`)"
fi
echo Downloading [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)`wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O-`/mini_installer.exe
wget [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/`wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O-`/mini_installer.exe

if [[ `ps -W | grep chrome | wc -l` != 0 ]]; then
  echo "`ps -W | grep chrome | wc -l` Chrome Processes Running. Attempting to Kill"
  for a in `ps -W | grep chrome | awk '{ print $1}'`
    do
      echo Killing PID $a
      /bin/kill -f $a #This is the cygwin kill, not the bash kill
    done
else
  echo "No Chrome Processes Running"
fiecho "Running installer"
chmod +x ./mini_installer.exe
./mini_installer.exe
echo Done
wget -q [commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...]([commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-...](http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/)Win/LAST_CHANGE) -O prev
echo "New build recorded (`cat prev`)"
rm ./mini_installer.exe