Frugalware Linux 0.9

Miklós Vajna has announced the release of Frugalware Linux 0.9, code name "Solaria": "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 0.9, our ninth stable release. No new features have been added since 0.9rc2, but about 40 changes have been made to fix minor bugs. If you didn't follow the changes during the pre-releases, here are the most important changes since 0.8: up to date base system - Linux kernel 2.6.26, glibc 2.8 and GCC 4.3.1; updated desktop packages - GNOME 2.22, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 and Firefox 3.0.1; setup - improved support for machines with multiple network cards, the USB installer is now easier to start, fixed/documented installation in VirtualBox and VMware; improved graphical tools - FUN (update notifier) now supports news notifications." Here is the complete release announcement. Download: (SHA1): frugalware-0.9-i686-dvd1.iso (4,254MB, torrent), frugalware-0.9-x86_64-dvd1.iso (4,120MB, torrent).

Pardus Linux 2008.1 RC

Ekin Meroğlu has announced the availability of a release candidate for Pardus Linux 2008.1: "We're happy to announce Pardus 2008.1 RC, the last test release for the upcoming Pardus 2008.1. This release candidate includes a major difference form earlier versions of Pardus Linux - from now on, it will be released as two flavours of live and install CDs: one install CD in English and Turkish and one in all supported languages, one live CD with KDE 3, and finally one live CD with KDE 4." Read the full release announcement for a detailed description of all the different Pardus flavours. Quick download links to the English/Turkish installation CD and the two live CDs (Pardus "Calisan"): Pardus_2008.1-tr_RC.iso (697MB, MD5), Pardus_Calisan_2008.1-KDE3_RC.iso (697MB, MD5), Pardus_Calisan_2008.1-KDE4_RC.iso (695MB, MD5).

Linux Mint 5 "Xfce"

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 5 "Xfce" edition: "We are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 Xfce Community edition." Some of the new features found in this release include: miscellaneous improvements to Mint tools, such as a new layout and more options to customise desktop in mintDesktop; desktop improvements that allow checking the MD5 checksum of an ISO image or install TrueType fonts with a right click; performance improvements that have drastically reduced memory usage; upstream improvements from Ubuntu, including the new ufw firewall and better printing; better look and feel through subtle refinements of the existing GTK+ widgets and a variety of new themes; better localization thanks to ongoing translation effort by the Linux Mint community; more available software via CNR.com." There is a lot more so read the comprehensive release notes for details. Download: LinuxMint-5-XFCE.iso (681MB, MD5).

Nvidia to quit chipset business

Nvidia has decided to throw in the towel and quit the chipset business, sources close to the situation at one of Taiwan's top motherboard makers have revealed. As the story is told, Nvidia called a meeting earlier this week with its motherboard partners to gauge support for it continuing to develop chipsets in the future.

The motherboard makers' response? Silence.

It is still early days and not all the facts are known at the time of writing, but it is believed Nvidia will transfer the chipset team to working on GPU projects. On the motherboard makers' side, some makers have already canceled upcoming high-end motherboard projects based on the nForce 7-series chipset.

The loss of its chipset business is expected to have a significant impact on Nvidia's GPU business in the short-term. Reception to the nForce 200 chip (BR04) which will enable SLI technology on Intel X58 motherboards has been lukewarm at best, with many makers saying they will not bother adding the chip on their boards. This means Nvidia needs to find a way of licensing and enabling multi-GPU support on motherboards using Intel and/or AMD chipsets fast. Otherwise it will have to cede the top-end of the graphics card market to AMD, which now has the benefit of Crossfire.

The news would also debunk any recent speculation that Apple will be adopting Nvidia chipsets for its upcoming notebook products. It would be unfortunate if Apple really has poured water on the close relationship it has built with Intel over the past few years, only to have its new best friend exit the market before products are even announced

VectorLinux 6.0 Alpha 2

Robert Lange has announced the availability of the first public alpha release of VectorLinux 6.0. It's main new feature? A graphical system installer: "VectorLinux Standard 6.0-alpha2 is up and ready to be tested. There are many changes since the first alpha release. The testers were pretty unanimous in stating that GNOME was not the proper development environment for the Standard edition and Xfce 4 should remain, with LXDE as the secondary choice. So with this release there is no GNOME and Xfce 4 has been reinstated as the primary desktop. We have spent a tremendous amount of time on the new GUI installer and we really need you to test that part as 80% of our effort has been on improving the installer. The GUI installer is not complete yet, but we need your feedback as to the present state of development." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: VL6.0-STD-A0.12.iso (526MB).

EVEREST 4.60 Build 1500

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.

EVEREST Corporate Edition is an automated network audit, system change tracking and network monitoring solution for small and large corporate enterprises, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. EVEREST Corporate Edition is an indispensable application for all business network environments that uses the latest technologies including XML and MHTML reporting, full SQL database and Windows Server 2003 support. EVEREST Corporate Edition offers customers a flexible way to collect hardware and software assets information into CSV files or SQL database, and produce a complete network audit based on the collected information. By offering multiple instances of audit it enables customers to keep an archive of assets information, and also offers a unique way to accurately detect any software or hardware changes in the enterprise.

Hardware Information:
- Motherboard & CPU. Accurate low-level information about motherboard, CPU and BIOS, including chipset details, DMI enumeration, AGP configuration information, SPD memory modules list, DRAM timing information and CPU instruction set support.
- Video adapter & monitor. Detailed information about the video adapter, video drivers and monitor, including DDC information, monitor serial number and supported video modes detection, low-level GPU details, OpenGL and Direct3D features list.
- Storage devices. Information about all hard disk and optical disk drives, including IDE autodetection, S.M.A.R.T. disk health monitoring, ASPI SCSI devices list and partitions information.
- Network adapters, multimedia, input devices. Exhaustive information about network adapters, sound cards, keyboard, mouse and game controllers, including NIC MAC address detection, IP and DNS list, network traffic monitoring, DirectSound, DirectMusic and DirectInput information.
- Misc hardware. Information about PCI, PnP, PCMCIA and USB devices, communication ports, power management information, device resources list, printers information.

Software Information:
- Operating system. Detailed Windows information, including operating system installation date and product key, system services and system drivers list, process information, environment variables list, system folders list, system files and Event Logs content, AX and DLL files list, UpTime information.
- Server and display. Information about network shares, users and groups list, logged on users list, account security settings, opened files list, fonts list and Windows desktop configuration details.
- Networking. Large amount of information about networking status, remote access and mailing accounts, network resources and Internet settings. List of network routes, Internet Explorer cookies and history of visited web pages.
- Installed software. Detailed information about installed programs, scheduled tasks and startup programs.

Security:
- Windows Security. Operating system security information including DEP (Data Execution Prevention) status, list of installed security patches and system restore status.
- Security applications. Firewall, anti-spyware and anti-trojan software list. Anti-virus software information including virus database details.

Diagnostics:
- CPUID Panel. EVEREST CPUID panel to provide a compact overview on CPU, motherboard, RAM and chipset. Invaluable information on overclocked systems, dynamic refresh to support Enhanced Intel SpeedStep and AMD Cool'n'Quiet technologies.
- Hardware monitoring. Sensor information including system, CPU and GPU temperature, fan status, CPU, GPU, AGP and DRAM voltage monitoring, S.M.A.R.T. disk health status. Support for Corsair Xpert memory modules.
- Sensor icons. Sensor icons feature to display actual system temperature and voltage values on the System Tray.
- CPU and FPU benchmarks. State of the art multi-threaded benchmark methods to measure performance of both old and brand new processors. References list to compare actual performance with other systems.
- Memory benchmarking. Memory read and write speed, memory latency measurement to stress the memory and cache subsystem, including references list to compare actual performance with other systems.
- Disk Benchmark module. Disk Benchmark module to measure performance of hard disk drives, optical disk drives (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and USB flash drives. Graphical overview of disk performance measured on different areas of the disk surface.
- Tips & suggestions. Detection of possible hardware and software misconfiguration and compatibility issues.

Reporting:
- Report Wizard. Easy-to-use method to produce report files of the system, by either using pre-configured report profiles or custom selection of information.
- Report formats. Three different report file formats: plain text, customizable HTML and the unique MHTML format. MHTML reports including icons are ideal for printing purposes.
- Report e-mailing and printing. Built-in e-mail transfer client using SMTP, also support for MAPI and Outlook protocols. Instant report display and one-click printing capabilities using IE4+ technology.

New features in EVEREST version 4.60 :
- Preliminary support for Intel Core i7
- Support for the latest chipset and graphics technologies
- Enhanced hardware monitoring capabilities
- Enhanced support for the latest netbooks
- Support for the state-of-the-art energy-saving technologies

Homepage - http://www.lavalys.com

Size: 8.07 MB

Download Ultimate Edtion

Download Corporate Edtion

Download Corporate Edition NR1

All Synaptics DriverVer v11.1.21.0, updated 2008-09-06

v11.1.21.0 Vista x86/64 and WinXP x86/64 DriverVer=07/03/2008, 11.1.21.0

v11.1.4.0 WinXP x86 DriverVer=2008-04-25, 11.1.4.0

v11.1.1.2 r2 DriverVer=2008-04-17, 11.1.1.2 (for XP and VISTA and both x64 and x86 flavors)

v11.1.1.1 WinXP x86 and Vista x86 DriverVer=2008-04-10, 11.1.1.1

v10.2.3.0 Vista x86 DriverVer=2008-01-11, 10.2.3.0
v10.2.3.0 Vista x64 DriverVer=2008-01-11, 10.2.3.0

v10.2.1.0 WinXP x86/x64 and Vista x86/x64 DriverVer=2007-12-20, 10.2.1.0

v10.1.8 Official driver download site.

v10.0.19.0 Vista x86 DriverVer=2007-09-10, 10.0.19.0

v10.0.15.0 WinXP x86/x64 and Vista x86/x64 DriverVer=2007-09-07, 10.0.15.0

v10.0.13.2 WinXP x86 DriverVer=2007-09-14, 10.0.13.2
v10.0.13.2 WinXP x64 DriverVer=2007-09-14, 10.0.13.2

v10.0.13.2 Vista x86 DriverVer=2007-09-14, 10.0.13.2
v10.0.13.2 Vista x64 DriverVer=2007-09-14, 10.0.13.2

v10.0.11.1 WinXP x86 and Vista x86 DriverVer=2007-08-15, 10.0.11.1

v10.0.9.0 WinXP x86 and Vista x86 DriverVer=2007-07-27, 10.0.9.0 from Toshiba.

v10.0.2.0 WinXP x86 and Vista x86 DriverVer=2007-06-15, 10.0.2.0

Development Release: Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 5

Steve Langasek has announced the fifth alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10, code name "Intrepid Ibex": "Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha-5, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10. New features in Intrepid: the newest GNOME 2.23.91 desktop environment with tons of bug-fixes and new features; X.Org 7.4 brings much better support for hot-pluggable input devices such as tablets, keyboards, and mice; Linux kernel 2.6.27 with better hardware support and numerous bug-fixes; encrypted private directory with support for a secret encrypted folder; guest session, a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges; Network Manager 0.7 which comes with long-expected features, such as system wide settings, management of 3G connections (GSM/CDMA), management of multiple active devices at once, management of PPP and PPPoE connections...." Read the release announcement and take a look at the comprehensive release notes for more information. Download (MD5): intrepid-desktop-i386.iso (696MB, torrent), intrepid-desktop-amd64.iso (697MB, torrent). Also released were 8.10 Alpha 5 CD images for Kubuntu (download, release notes) and Xubuntu (download).

Mandriva Linux 2009 RC1

The first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2009 is out, ready for testing: "Mandriva Linux 2009 Release Candidate 1 is available on public mirrors now. The main new features of RC1 (compared to Beta2) are: automatic repository configuration and mirror selection in package management tools (powered by aria2); ath5k replaces MadWifi for Atheros wireless cards; new graphical theme (backgrounds, screensavers); based on kernel 2.6.27; KDE 4.1.1, GNOME 2.23.91; new design for installer; improved system-config-printer; improved Ia Ora theme for KDE4; others features and bug fixes." See the release announcement and release notes for further information. Quick download links to the installation DVDs (i586 and x86_64) and live CDs with KDE4 or GNOME (i586 only): mandriva-2009-dvd-i586.iso (4,017MB, MD5), mandriva-2009-dvd-x86_64.iso (4,015MB, MD5), mandriva-2009-rc1-KDE4-i586.iso (694MB, MD5), mandriva-2009-rc1-GNOME-i586.iso (600MB, MD5).

Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R2.03

The ALC882 series 7.1+2 Channel High Definition Audio codecs with UAA (Universal Audio Architecture), featuring five 24-bit stereo DACs and three 20-bit stereo ADCs, are designed for high performance multimedia PC systems.
The ALC882 series incorporates proprietary converter technology to achieve over 100dB Signal-to-Noise ratio playback quality; easily meeting PC2001 requirements and also bringing PC sound quality closer to consumer electronic devices.

The ALC882 series provide 10 channels of DAC that simultaneously support 7.1 sound playback, plus 2 channels of independent stereo sound output (multiple streaming) through the Front-Out-Left and Front-Out-Right channels. Flexible mixing, mute, and fine gain control functions provide a complete integrated audio solution for next generation multimedia PCs.

Download : Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R2.03
Download : For Vista

Mozilla Firefox "Shiretoko" 3.1 Alpha 2

Mozilla Firefox - faster, more secure, easier to use and sporting a new look, this latest Firefox release sets a new standard for web browser innovation. Mozilla Firefox project (formerly Firebird, which was formerly Phoenix) is a redesign of Mozilla's browser component, written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over other web browsers, such as the tabbed browsing and the ability to block pop-up windows.

Mozilla Firefox 3 is focused on improved memory handling, performance, and stability, improved XUL, and new core components such as application data stored in SQLite. Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 34 months. This new platform includes more than 15,000 changes to improve performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 is been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

Secure:
* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to. (Try it here!)
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easy to Use:
* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
* Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
* Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
* Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

Personal:
* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Smart Location Bar: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their a combination of frequency, and recency of visits to that page, ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
* Library: view, organize and search through your bookmarks, tags and browsing history using the new Library window. Create or restore full backups of this data whenever with a few clicks.
* Smart Bookmark Folders: quickly access your most visited bookmarks from the toolbar, or recently bookmarked and tagged pages from the bookmark menu. Create your own Smart Bookmark Folders by saving a search query in the Library.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Platform for Developers:
* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Performance:
* Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
* Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
* Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.

Firefox 3.1: Support for text attributes and spell checking
Marco Zehe writes, “Friday’s nightly build will include one big new feature in accessibility for Firefox 3.1: Text attributes and spell checking support.” This means that assistive technologies will now be able to get information about the font-family, font-weight, underline style, style, color, and background color of text, and also the language that the text is in, among other things. Additionally, when editing, if a word is misspelled, that word will now include an “invalid:misspelling” attribute. These new features will be fine-tuned over the next few weeks, but the team is looking for feedback if you’re able to help. For more details, please see Marco’s weblog post.

Homepage - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Download Firefox 3.1 Alpha for Windows - 7.02 MB

Download Firefox 3.1 Alpha for Linux - 8.61 MB

Download Firefox 3.1 Alpha for MacOS - 15.7 MB

Google Releases First Chrome Beta

Google has released the very first beta of their new web browser, Google Chrome. Chrome is a browser that, for now at least, is focused on offering a full browsing experience within a minimalistic user interface. To skip past the P.R. phrasing, Google Chrome is designed to be simple to use without sacrificing any of the features required for daily web browsing.

To get a little more in depth, Google Chrome uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari browser, named Webkit. In recent history, the developers of Webkit have made great strides in creating what is, as of today, the fastest browser engine in terms of rendering speed. Google Chrome, currently version 0.2.149.27, seems to use a slightly older build of Webkit (version 525.13, to be precise), however, so some of the recent Webkit development gains will not have made it into the first release of the browser.

Other features of Chrome include a dynamic tab system which allows you to drag and drop tabs inside and outside of the browser window, an "incognito mode" in which the sites you visit are not added to your browsing history, and a feature similar to Opera's Speed Dial, in which you are presented with your nine most visited websites, in thumbnail form, when opening a new tab.

If you wish to give Google Chrome a try, click the download link below. It's an early beta, though, so don't expect it to be perfect.

Link: Google Chrome
Download: Google Chrome 0.2.149.27
Screenshot: View