One of the main reasons why we, at QBurst, use Ubuntu on 75% of our computers is the stability it provides. Canonical, the Ubuntu company, has always made sure that their users get updates every six months with a lot of changes.

The latest release 11.10, which was just released yesterday, October 13, 2011, brings major updates to its Unity Shell. The improvements include better polish and a new transparency effect in addition to the little icons at the bottom called Unity Lenses (Apps, Files, a new Music lens and Gwibber). The Ubuntu button is now on the launcher and there is also a new minimize/maximize/close button for Unity dash.

With Ubuntu Unity Shell, it is very easy to search and open an installed program. It also replaces the old task bar that was in the Ubuntu Classic theme. Close, minimize and maximize buttons are hidden by default and will be visible only when the user moves the cursor over the window.

The latest version also includes an updated version of the Ubuntu Software Center from where the user can install additional software with just one click. Installing an app has never been easier.

One of the main attractions of Ubuntu 11.10 is the redesigned Alt-Tab view. Ubuntu developers have given extra care to redesign the Alt-Tab view, which looks very attractive now.

Other than these visible design changes, Ubuntu 11.10 certainly has some cool under-the-hood updates. Ubuntu 11.10 uses the Linux Kernel 3 and many components from Gnome 3. The good news for Mozilla Thunderbird fans is that Ubuntu 11.10 now ships with Thunderbird as the default email application. Empathy is replaced with Thunderbird which will increase the email client users Ubuntu has. The GNOME login manager has also been replaced with the more flexible and Unity style LightDM. They have also updated the front-end of the social networking client application Gwibber.

With the release of Ubuntu 11.10, Canonical developers are now going to start working towards the future release 12.04. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that the codename for 12.04 will be Precise Pangolin which will also be a long-term support (LTS) release. LTS means that it will be supported with updates for five years on servers and three years on desktops.

At QBurst, we always use the latest stable versions. We are very excited about the release of this Debian based operating system and have already started upgrading our Linux based systems to 11.10.

For existing Ubuntu users, the update is available through the Ubuntu Update Manager, and for new users download is available on Ubuntu website.

During the fall of 2008, Nokia also acquired Qt that was initially developed by Troltech as a proprietary software. Nokia released the source code of Qt under LGPL after the acquisition. Nobody understood what Nokia was upto, because Qt ES (formerly known as Qtopia Core) wasn’t so popular at that point of time. Later, when Meamo development community created a support for Qt framework, it got clear that MeeGo applications can be developed with Qt! With Qt, it is possible to develop applications for a range of devices like netbooks, notebooks, palmtops, smart phones, PDAs, tablet PCs and other handhelds. Qt applications are very rich in GUI and have proved to be solid. Opera browser and Skype are popular examples. This makes MeeGo a serious competitor for Android and iPhone. MeeGo can be downloaded and byte-copied to a thumb drive for testing. It has got a pleasing appearance, vibrant colors and a nice interface and nice big icons designed for touch environment.

If we look at the new Windows mobiles, without skype they are rated ‘poor’ for user experiences. Skype has already announced its support to iPhone, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry and has ditched Microsoft again. In such circumstances, Microsoft is not left with many choices, they should either go open source with Windows Mobile or come up with their own hardware to compete with iPhone and android powered HTCs.

There is no clear winner in the battle of these premium touch phones, but the competition is getting tougher by the day.

Skipfish is an open source scanner written in C language used to detect vulnerabilities in web applications. Users can compile the code and execute it for installation. Skipfish crawls through the web application, detects the security probes and generates a report for security assessments.

Features

Skipfish overcomes some of the common issues associated with other web security scanners. It is designed for high performance. It can handle 7000+ requests per second against local instances, 2000+ for LAN/MAN networks and 500+ against Internet targets. Its usability extends even to websites with multi-frameworks and different filtering rules. It also chalks out tricky scenarios including stored XSS (path, parameters, headers), blind SQL and XML injection.

The main security checks performed by the scanner are categorized based on the risk levels and are listed in the Skipfish wiki. This tool is expected to support Linux, FreeBSD 7.0+, MacOS X, and Windows (Cygwin) environments.

Limitations

However, Skipfish is not found to satisfy some of the major requirements charted out in the WASC (Web Application Security Scanner Evaluation Criteria).

The Skipfish 1.29 beta version is currently available for download.

In its official blog, Google explains more about Chrome OS, which aims the Netbook market initially. Google Chrome OS is expected to hit the market by the second half of 2010.