Large and Dangerous Volcano Awakes in Iceland

Katla eruption in 1918

Article first published as Large and Dangerous Volcano Awakes in Iceland on Technorati.

Airlines are nervously watching for another volcanic eruption in Iceland which could dwarf last years' eruption of closely related Eyjafjallajokull. In 2010, ash grounded planes and caused the most widespread interruption of air travel since World War II.  Katla, a much larger and potentially more dangerous volcano is showing signs of a possible imminent eruption.

Nearby Eyjafjallajokull erupted last year, disrupting air traffic over Europe, costing airlines almost 2 billion dollars and stranding passengers in airports all over the world. These neighbors appear to influence activity in the other and eruptions at Eyjafjallajokull have historically been shortly followed by eruptions at Katla.

The magma chamber inside Katla may be ten times as big as Eyjafjallajokull and in addition to spewing tons of gritty ash, it sits beneath the Myrdalsjökull ice sheet which has caused devastating flooding in previous eruptions. Earthquakes under Katla have been growing in strength, with a magnitude 4 quake recorded last week.

Katla has historically erupted approximately every 50 years, but it has been nearly a century since the last eruption in 1918. At that time, the eruption lasted over a month, blocked out the sun, killed off crops and livestock and sent a huge torrent of water over nearby farms.

An eruption of Laki in 1783 released plumes of toxic smog which rode the jet stream and killed thousands in the British Isles. Ash blocked sunlight causing temperatures to drop by 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit across Europe. North America shivered under one of the coldest winters on record in 1784, with reports of the Mississippi River freezing in New Orleans.

Iceland's history is one of fire and ice. It is home to more than 22 volcanoes, seven of which are active. Ice sheets and glaciers cover approximately 11,260 square miles or about 11% of the land.

Evacuation plans have been drafted and emergency housing for the displaced have been set aside, but officials are concerned that there may be very little warning, perhaps less than an hour, to evacuate the population if Katla blows.

How Do Viruses Sneak Into Your Computer?

 Article first published as How Do Viruses Sneak Into Your Computer? on Technorati.

contreraspcrepair.com - CC

When was the last time you updated Java, Adobe Reader, Flash or Internet Explorer? These four programs are responsible for 95% of malware infections on Windows computers.

Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies  have monitored over a half million infections over the past three months, utilizing 50 different exploits distributed by 44 different servers. Most malware attempted several different exploitation techniques, searching for known bugs in unpatched software.

The results showed that the vast majority of vulnerabilities in Windows computers were in out-of-date third-party software. The worst offenders were Java, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Internet Explorer.

More disturbing is a whopping 85% of infections were the result of 'drive-by' downloads. These slip into the machine by simply visiting a compromised website or viewing infected .pdf or flash files.

Unsurprisingly, Internet Explorer exploits continue to be common intrusion methods, accounting for 10% of infections, and two-thirds of other infections occurred while using IE.

But don't think your safe just because you are using Firefox, Chrome or Safari. One third of intrusions occurred while using one of these other popular browsers.
Windows XP users accounted for 41% of malware infections, with Vista not far behind at 38%. Windows 7 is better, but still accounts for 16% of exploited machines.

Using a secure browser can help, but the real vulnerabilities exist in add-on programs. Worst is unpatched Java, accounting for 37% of infections. Out-of-date Adobe Reader is not far behind at 32% and old versions of Flash are responsible for about 16%.

Fewer, but still significant numbers of users have been exploited through Quicktime (2%) and disturbingly, Windows Help & Support HCP (3%).

The most important statistic in the study was that almost all exploits (95%) were the result of running out of date versions of one of four specific  programs: Java, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash or Internet Explorer.

So when was the last time you updated these commonly used browsers or plugins? If your not sure, here are links to their update sites:

Java
Adobe Flash
Adobe Reader
Internet Explorer

UPDATE THESE NOW!

Is Bank of America's Website Under Attack?

10/05/11 Screenshot of B of A website

Article first published as Is Bank of America's Website Under Attack? on Technorati.

For nearly a week now, the Bank of America website has been experiencing 'problems' and the homepage warns of possible slow page loads,  "We value your business and appreciate your continued patience. Most of our site is working normally, but you may experience occasional delays."

Bank of America has denied they are being targeted in a coordinated attack but the timing is certainly suspicious.

Speculation is rampant that B of A is being targeted by a distributed denial of service' (DDoS) attack, where an army of compromised computers simultaneously and repeatedly flood a website with bogus page requests until it slows to a crawl or crashes completely. DDoS is a low-level attack, not actually a security breach. It simply overwhelms a website with traffic making it inaccessible.

The problems started soon after B of A came under heavy criticism for their new policy to charge debit card users a five dollar monthly fee. This has produced a strong reaction from users and throughout the blogosphere.

There is also the growing 'Take Back Wall Street' protest, which has spread from NY City, across the country. It expresses the frustration many feel toward the banking systems' roll in the financial crisis.

A prominent hacker group, 'Anonymous' has pledged to support the protesters by attacking NYSE on Oct 10 in retaliation for the arrests of hundreds of protesters.
Historically, computer malware has been used to steal credit card numbers and passwords, but recently, hackers have turned their bot-net army toward websites to make a political statement.

There is even a downloadable program circulating online to voluntarily join a botnet and participate in DDoS attacks against perceived hacker and free speech foes.

Pay-Pal and Mastercard were targeted after they refused to process donations for Wikileaks editor and Internet whistle-blower, Julian Assange.

Other prominent targets of politically motivated dDos attacks include the Music Recording and Motion Picture Industry websites and the US Copyright Office.
Bank of America's lack of transparency about the problem has fueled speculation and concern.  If this is a simple DDoS attack against B of A, and not an actual server compromise, you may have trouble accessing the website, but customers' data should still be safe.

Breakthrough Drug May Kill All Viruses

Article first published as Breakthrough Drug May Kill All Viruses on Technorati.

Influenza Virus - cdc.gov

Researchers at MIT have made a remarkable breakthrough. They have developed a new anti-viral drug that appears to kill every virus they have tried it against, without harming healthy cells or the patient.

They have successfully tested it against a wide range of viral ailments including the common cold, polio and Ebola.

The new drug is called DRACO (Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Activated Caspase Oligomerizer) and works by inducing infected cells to kill themselves before the virus can spread.

When viruses invade cells they produce long strands of dsRNA (double strand RNA) which are not normally produced in people or animals. These unusual dsRNA strands are only found in virus-infected cells.

MIT researcher Todd Rider had the novel idea to combine two drugs: One identifies and attaches itself to these distinctive dsRNA strands and the other tricks the cell to 'commit suicide' (apoptosis). This is a normally occurring bodily defense against damaged cells which prevents cancers, auto immune and inflammatory diseases. In fact the average adult body destroys more than 50 billion damaged cells each day.

This combination of therapies, identifying infected cells and inducing them to kill themselves has produced a highly effective and wide spectrum drug that should, theoretically, work against all viruses.

So far it has been effective against all fifteen different viruses they have tried it on. Testing on mice showed DRACO totally cleared the H1N1 virus, cause of the 'swine flu' outbreak in 2009.

Rapid deployment of effective anti-viral drugs, even for newly discovered viruses, can be the difference between a catastrophic pandemic, like the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak that killed 50 million worldwide and a minor outbreak, quickly  contained and extinguished.

There are a few anti-viral drugs available today. They tend to be targeted to very specific viruses and are vulnerable to resistance through rapid generic mutations, common in viruses.

Viruses have been linked to serious and chronic medical conditions such as Type 1 diabetes and atherosclerosis, a leading cause of heart attacks.

DRACO may revolutionize medical treatment for viral infections, much as antibiotics led to treatment of routine bacterial infections which were often fatal a century ago. In fact, life expectancy increased by eight years between 1944 and 1972, largely due to the availability of antibiotics.

Finally, real hope exists for the victims of viral infections, from the common cold to AIDS.

Press Announcement is here and technical details can be found here.

How Can You Contribute to Open Source?

Open source software is a group effort and requires the participation of everyone in the community including you.  How can you give back to your favorite project if you are not a programmer? There are many ways you can help including participation in the online community, writing and translating, donations or just spreading the word.

Open source projects depend on you. They count on users to help test the packages on a large variety of hardware configurations and software combinations. They rely on your feedback to help the project grow and mature. They depend on your participation in forums and IRC channels to aid end users. They need your expertise to create useful documentation and translations. They depend on your donations to cover the costs of hardware and hosting.

Previously we took a close look at Apport, the bug reporting program included with Ubuntu. It works with Launchpad to coordinate bug tracking and fixes and makes it relatively simple to perform this most basic and vital task to contribute to the community.

Besides bug reports, there are many ways of giving back to the open source causes. Participation in the projects  online community is a good way to start. You don't have to be an expert to visit the projects' forums  or IRC channel and offer suggestions on topics you are familiar with. There is almost always someone newer than you that will appreciate your advice.

Documentation is an on-going chore for developers and assistance is always appreciated. Contact the project maintainer and offer to write readmes or help articles for specific tasks. Create how-tos and tutorials and post them on your blog or youtube. Contribute to the projects' wiki page. Look here for some tips on writing software documentation.

Translators are needed to make software and documentation available in other languages. Contact the project maintainer and offer to help translate the interface or help files. Check out 'Open Source Tools For Translators' to help you get started.

Donating money to worthy open source projects is always welcome. Most developers receive very little compensation for all their hard work. Most supply their own hardware and bandwidth. Many pay for hosting project websites where they interact with end users via forums or message boards. Even small donations help keep the project running.

Here are a few worthy causes to get you started. There are many more:

Debian project

Ubuntu

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Free Software Foundation

GIMP Project

Libre Office 

Finally, advocacy is a powerful tool and just being able to share information about Linux or your favorite software package when the opportunity arises is perhaps the most important contribution you can make. Talk to your friends,  family and coworkers. Post comments in forums and social media.

Burn a few live CDs of a newbie-friendly distro such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint.. Keep them in your car with your music CDs. The next time someone complains about how their computer won't boot or is running so slowly it is barely usable, just pull out one of the live CDs and show them how it works.

Explain that it wont change anything on their computer and comes with a complete collection of software for common tasks. Show them how it can give them a secure, perfectly usable system until they can get Windows fixed, or if they choose to keep Linux, you will help to install it on their machine.

Even if you can't write a line of code, open source depends on you. They need your bug reports, community involvement and donations. They depend on you to spread the word through personal contact and social media. Contributing your time and skills to these projects will benefit you as the user and the open source ecosystem as a whole.

This article was originally published on UbuntuManual.org

Discarded Computers Reveal Your Secrets

Article first published as Discarded Computers Reveal Your Secrets on Technorati.

Your old computer's hard drive is worth hundreds of dollars to criminals seeking your personal and financial information.

Discarded hard drives often contain valuable data, including credit card and banking information, medical records and passwords. The data is being harvested for identity theft, fraud and even blackmail.

Old computer parts, including hard drives with data intact, are shipped overseas and dumped in cash-strapped developing  countries with lenient or non-existent environmental laws.

Criminal organizations will pay up to $200 USD for old disks with data intact from workers who scour landfills brimming with dumped e waste from the US and other prosperous countries.

According to David Brown, manager of Tech Guys Computer Service in California, most people don't consider what happens to their data after the computer becomes obsolete. "We remove confidential information from donated machines every day," he said.

How can you be sure your private information is safe when you retire your old computer?

If you plan to donate the computer intact you should use a wiping program like the free 'Dariks Boot And Nuke'. DBAN is a Linux based system which boots off a floppy, cd or usb. It overwrites the old bits and bytes with random numbers several times over, assuring complete destruction of data.

If you don't plan to reuse the computer, pull out the hard drive (its usually just two screws) and physically destroy it. Perhaps the easiest way is to beat it with a hammer, or even a rock. You can drive a few nails through it for extra satisfaction.

Always ask for your old hard drive back when you take your computer to the shop for an upgrade. Donate your used machine to a reputable e-recycling shop which has earned a certification through the EPA for safely recycling and managing used electronics.

You can find a list of companies who have received this EPA approval by visiting the websites of 'R2 Solutions' or 'e-stewards'.

Protecting your personal information involves more than just using an anti-virus program and choosing secure passwords. You need to ensure it is safe from prying eyes even after the computer has been retired and has passed out of your control.

Tizen Consortium Takes On Android and iPhone

In a joint announcement on Sept 28, The LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation reported they are developing a new mobile operating system called 'Tizen'. It is a combination of the LiMo and MeeGo Linux-based mobile operating systems and will compete directly with Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and Blackberry from RIM. According to the announcement on their website:

 "LiMo Foundation is pleased to give its full endorsement of the Tizen initiative as an important step forward for the mobile industry. LiMo is confident that Tizen brings together the necessary critical mass of market and technology leadership so as to enable the establishment of a single, open and independent Linux-based platform for mobile devices."

Hosted by The Linux Foundation, Tizen is being developed by a consortium of major technology companies led by Intel and Samsung. They have worked to create an open, cross-architecture and standards based mobile platform. Tizen will  power smart phones, tablets, netbooks, smart TVs and vehicle entertainment systems.

LiMo brought together industry leaders including Motorola, NEC, Samsung, McAfee and others to help increase the adoption of Linux in mobile platforms. The Linux Foundation members include industry heavyweights such as Intel, IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Oracle and Qualcomm.

Founded in 2007, the goal of LiMo was to create an Operating System which could unify the mobile industry and prevent continued fragmentation. It would provide a common computing platform which would simplify creation of third party applications by developers by using HTML5 and WAC API implementations and toolkits.

MeeGo was launched in February of 2010 and is also a Linux-based mobile platform. It is backed by Intel, Nokia and Novell. MeeGo was decended from Moblin, developed by Intel and Maemo from Nokia.

According to Morgan Gillis, Executive Director of the LiMo Foundation:

 "The most important thing about mobile Linux it that it's not owned by any one industry party, and therefore it can be adopted without any difficult business model conflicts."

Tizen holds to four basic goals: first, to use HTML5 and web standards for application development. Second, build a truly open software ecosystem. The third guarantees partners the opportunity to customize and individualize the system and finally, participation and support by many of the biggest players in the technology field.

Tizen is due to be released in early 2012 and the first Tizen-powered devices should be available to the public soon after.

Article first published as Tizen Consortium Takes on Android and iPhone on Technorati.

Using Apport to Report Bugs in Ubuntu

Open Source projects depend on an active community of users and developers to contribute their time and skills to improve individual projects and the open source ecosystem in general. All users can contribute to Ubuntu by using Apport to report bugs for fixing.

Ubuntu uses Launchpad for bug tracking and Apport for bug reports. It is designed to be easy for the user as it collects info about the OS, running processes and hardware during crashes. You don't need to be able to reproduce the bug to provide useful information for the developers.

Generally Apport supports two types of bug reports:

1) Launched when you experience a crash. Automatically opens apport and walks you through the reporting process.

2) Initiated by the user when bug is noticed during use of a program but does not cause a crash, for example an application option that does not work as expected or a problem with the user interface.

When a crash occurs Apport creates a persistent and detailed crash report in /var/crash which can be used to determine the problem, even for bugs which are difficult to reproduce. This report contains detailed information about system state and installed software. Apport uses package hooks to collect additional information from log and configuration files.

Sometimes crashes can be hard to attribute to a specific program or service so Apport uses the apport-symptoms package symptom based bug reporting. The UI guides the user through selection of symptoms and uses question and answer scripts to locate the offending package and determine what data to collect.

Bugs which affect large number of users may have already be reported many times and this can cause unnecessary work for developers and users. Apport uses 'Bug Patterns' to recognize specific recurring errors and instead of filing a new report, takes the user to the Launchpad bug page where they can review previous reports and determine if this a new or known bug.

Bugs in X drivers, sound and the kernel should always open a new bug report to be sure your hardware is included in any fix.

Following a program crash, a message will appear offering to help you report the problem. If you were entering confidential information when the crash occurred you should click 'Cancel'.

Most of the time crashes occur when you are performing routine tasks and these should be reported. Click 'Report Problem...' to begin collecting information about what your computer was doing when the crash occurred.

Apport will ask to 'Send problem report to the developers?' Click 'Content of the report' to view the data apport has collected or you can open the plain text document in /var/crash. If you would like to file the report later, you can navigate to this report and double click on it. Apport-gtk will open allowing you to file the bug report.

Click 'Send Report' to upload the report to Launchpad's bug tracking system. Your browser will launch and you will be directed to Launchpad to login or create an account. You are then taken to the packages' bug filing page.

Look over the list of 'hot bugs' and see if your bug is listed there. If the problem has been previously reported, click on 'Mark as Duplicate'. If it is a new bug, click 'Report Bug'.

Briefly describe the the problem and what caused it, if known. Launchpad will search for similar bug reports. If none are found to match your problem, you will be asked for further information. Be sure to include what you were trying to do, what actually occurred and the steps to reproduce the problem, if known.

If the bug is a security risk, click the box 'This bug is a security vulnerability.'

Click 'Extra Options' to add tags to this report, attach files such as logs or screen shots or even submit a patch for the bug.

When finished, click 'Submit Bug Report'.

Apport is launched automatically when a crash occurs as a result of segmentation violation, bus error, floating point exception, etc, but sometimes bugs occur in more minor ways that will not trigger apport. For example perhaps you find a menu item which does not work as expected or problems with the interface. These may not crash the program but need to be reported so they can be fixed.

First go here and check if a specific bug has already been reported for your version of Ubuntu.

Use Alt+F2 to open the 'Run Application' window and type ubuntu-bug <package name> or for a running application, open your System Monitor (System > Administration > System Monitor) and note the process ID number. Enter the process ID into Run Applications instead of the package name for example, 'ubuntu-bug 1664'.

When should you not report a bug? Bug reports are not for support or feature requests or non-Ubuntu packages.

Even small bugs can make software seem unfinished and immature. Each bug squashed contributes to the overall quality of all open source software and enhances its' credibility with the public.

Filing bug reports is an important part of being an involved member of the Linux community. Apport makes it simple to do your part.



This article was originally published in UbuntuManual.org on Sept. 30, 2011

The Electric Sheep Project: The Collaborative Dreams of Thousands of Computers

What do computers dream about when they sleep? With Electric Sheep, you can view the beautifully rendered collective dreams of thousands of computers. This constantly evolving and changing collection of fractal art is created using the mathematics of the Flame Fractal algorithm and the processing power of an army of client computers worldwide.

Electric Sheep is a distributed computing program for Linux, Mac and Windows (download it here). It was built using the Flame Fractal, created by Scott Draves in 1992 and may be the first example of open source visual art. It uses an algorithm that creates beautiful and ever changing videos rendered by the computing power of nearly a half million idle computers world wide. These videos are displayed as screen savers or stand alone apps on client machines.

The name 'Electric Sheep' is an allusion to the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Phillip K. Dicks. The program renders flame fractals, called sheep, which are uploaded to the server, where a 'flock' of about 100 are stored, combined and evolve. These are distributed to client machines and displayed as a screensaver 'dream' when the computer sleeps.

According to 'The Flame Algorithm and its Open Source Culture' by Scott Draves and Isabel Walcott Draves:

"The algorithm treats every pixel as a variable in an equation with thousands of parameters. The parameters specify a collection of functions from the plane to the plane, and the algorithm visualizes the interference pattern between them. This is the origin of the Flame algorithm, a combination of fractals with a particle system [Draves and Reckase 2003]. The results are distinctive, recognizable, and extremely diverse."

Originally only static images were produced, each one taking hours to render. Scott Draves wanted to animate the images but it would require a super computer to accomplish this huge task.

In 1999, taking inspiration from the Seti@Home project, Scott Draves spent a week coding a new distributed computing program. It harnessed the cpu cycles of inactive computers to collectively render and animate portions of these complex visual algorithms, then upload them to the server where they are compiled into stunning animations.

This 'Sheep' lineage shown below left

The flock evolves through voting by users for the best 'sheep' which are 'bred' to produce offspring by combining the fractal codes to produce changes, called mutations. Just as in biological life, these children are each unique creations while retaining some features of the parents. (Unfortunately, the feature to vote on sheep is not available for Linux users.)

Lineage of 'sheep' shown above right

You can browse the Electric Sheep server and view the current 'flock', where you can view family lineages, frame sets, genomes and more.

Electric Sheep uses standard HTTP protocol over Port 80 to download and collaborate on sheep creation. No personal information is shared with the servers. The only data which is sent are your votes (if any) and the rendered frames contributed by your cpu cycles. Security cautious users can monitor the network traffic with the following domain and IP addresses:

74.207.242.239     *.sheepserver.net

207.241.*.*            *.us.archive.org

You can create and submit your own flame fractals (sheep) to the gene pool using Qosmic for Linux. Look for flam3 in the software center or repositories.

Linux users can launch Electric Sheep via the terminal with the command 'electricsheep' or access basic configuration settings by typing 'electricsheep-preferences'. Options  include choosing a nickname for credit on the server, selecting your video driver, setting frame rates and cache size.

Install Electric sheep through your distros Software Manager or by typing the following command  in a terminal.

sudo apt-get install electricsheep

Would you like to help this project? According to this page,  Linux maintainers are needed for patches and bug fixes.  According to this forum posting:

"the main requirements are you be dedicated, trustworthy, and good with programming and linux, including the automake stuff and packaging. most of the work is done in the platform independent code by cd81, so what we need is just someone who will 1) make the fixes discussed here so it compiles and runs cleanly and 2) keep it that way.

please send me email and we'll talk about it. include a link to your home page or resume or something so i know who you are."

What does your computer dream about when it sleeps? With Electric Sheep we can peek into this collective dream, a mathematical formula which produces the vibrant colors and swirling shapes of this ever-evolving and original open source art project.

This article was originally published in UbuntuManual.org on Sept 27, 2011

Hands On With Xubuntu 11.10 Beta

Xubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 Desktop

On September 2, Canonical released beta versions of Oneiric Ocelot for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu.  This is the third article in a series looking at these newest releases. Today we focus on Xubuntu, the lightweight Ubuntu, designed for older computers or those that just want a fast distro with a comprehensive software collection that is easy on system resources.

I downloaded the .iso from here. You can pick between Desktop and Alternate Install CDs, with choices for x86 PCs and 64 bit PC (AMD 64) versions.

Using UNetbootin, I loaded the image to my flash drive and booted into the Xubuntu desktop.

This version uses XFCE 4.8.3 with the Thunar file manager which now supports remote shares browsing and an eject button for removable devices.

The panel has had numerous improvements, including positioning, transparency, an item editor and the ability to create launchers with drag and drop.

The new desktop uses these panel upgrades to create a customized bottom panel which resembles Docky or Cairo Dock in appearance but without the animations or advanced options.

The top panel is similar to the one used in Ubuntu, but sports a small icon on the left which opens the main menu for applications and system settings.

Software Center

Xubuntu comes loaded with a complete software library for most common computing tasks. The included applications and utilities are generally lighter with fewer options than the software included in Ubuntu or Kubuntu but all alternatives are available in the repositories.

Synaptic Package Manager is included along with the Ubuntu Software Center. Using the new Software Center, you can browse by general category or search by name or task. Choosing the right application is easy screenshots and  reviews and ratings from other users.

gThumb Picture Viewer

The new software center provides reviews, ratings, and screenshots from other Ubuntu users. Unfortunately, the Software Center seems to still be rather buggy as it crashed several times as I attempted to install packages. This felt very similar to problems I noticed in Ubuntu 11.10 beta, using the Unity interface.

Kubuntu includes gThumb, a simple picture viewer, but also GIMP for more advanced image editing.

Thunar File Manager

gMusicbrowser is the default music player. It is a simple, easy to use player with many of the features found in heavier programs.

Plugging in an Android phone, Xubuntu recognized it as a USB storage device and launched the Thunar File Manager. I was able to move files easily between phone and computer. It did not recognize the file types or offer to open a picture viewer or music player.

Abiword and Gnumeric are included for Office applications. Both are lightweight but surprisingly full featured programs. Save files in open or proprietary formats, including pdf and MS .doc and .xls file types.

Thunderbird Email Reader

Thunderbird is the the default mail reader and it imported my mail and contacts without a hitch. Mozilla Thunderbird is a full-featured mail program with advanced search and filter capibilities. Tabbed email allows easy movement between multiple messages. Add-ons are quickly installed with the new Add-ons Manager, which provides descriptions, recommendations and pictures.

Onboard on-screen keyboard

Xubuntu now includes 'Onboard', an on-screen keyboard with a full qwerty keyboard, including function and other common keys. Click the orange area to the right to access the number pad and create 'snippets', macros which can be executed with a click.

Firefox 7.0 is included but repeatedly crashed, especially when accessing webpages using Flash. After several restarts, I was able to get Flash installed, despite the Software Center saying it was not available.

Gnome users may find this Desktop Environment slightly familiar, albeit less feature rich. I found it plagued by many of the same bugs I encountered in my review of the Ubuntu/Unity version of Oneiric. I experienced numerous crashes when using the Software Center, Firefox and even the Thunar file manager.

Xubuntu is the minimalist member of the Ubuntu family. It is a full featured distro, designed for those who prefer a fast, lightweight desktop environment, but be prepared for some frustration and bug reports if you decide to test this release.

Find more info at XFCE and Xubuntu Oneiric Ocelot beta1web sites.

*Hardware specs:
Asus eeepc 900
16 + 4 GB SSD
2 GB RAM
900 MHz Celeron Processor
Atheros AR5001 wireless adapter
Intel 915GM Graphics Controller

This article originally appeared at UbuntuManual.org on Sept 23, 2011.