Ubuntu (Linux operating system)

Ubuntu (operating system)

Official Website :http://www.ubuntu.com/

Company /developer	Canonical Ltd.

Initial release	20 October 2004
Latest stable release	11.04 (Natty Narwhal) / 28 April 2011

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu ("humanity towards others").

Ubuntu is designed primarily for desktop use, although netbook and server editions exist as well. Web statistics suggest that Ubuntu's share of Linux desktop usage is about 50%, and indicate upward-trending usage as a web server. Ubuntu holds an estimated global usage of more than 12 million users, and it is considered by DistroWatch to be the most popular distribution of Linux. (The second-most popular distribution, Linux Mint, is itself a derivative of Ubuntu.)

Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd., owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Canonical generates revenue by selling technical support and services tied to Ubuntu, while the operating system itself is entirely free of charge.

Features

Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, the vast majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The only exceptions are some proprietary hardware drivers. The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu. Ubuntu focuses on usability, security and stability. The Ubiquity installer allows Ubuntu to be installed to the hard disk from within the Live CD environment, without the need for restarting the computer prior to installation. Ubuntu also emphasizes accessibility and internationalization to reach as many people as possible. Beginning with 5.04, UTF-8 became the default character encoding, which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts. As a security feature, the sudo tool is used to assign temporary privileges for performing administrative tasks, allowing the root account to remain locked, and preventing inexperienced users from inadvertently making catastrophic system changes or opening security holes. PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further harden the system through the principle of least privilege.

Ubuntu comes installed with a wide range of software that includes LibreOffice (OpenOffice in versions prior to 11.04) , Firefox, Empathy (Pidgin in versions before 9.10), Transmission, GIMP (in versions prior to 10.04), and several lightweight games (such as Sudoku and chess). Additional software that is not installed by default can be downloaded and installed using the Ubuntu Software Center or the package manager Synaptic, which come pre-installed. Ubuntu allows networking ports to be closed using its firewall, with customized port selection available. End-users can install Gufw (GUI for Uncomplicated Firewall) and keep it enabled. GNOME (the former default desktop) offers support for more than 46 languages. Ubuntu can also run many programs designed for Microsoft Windows (such as Microsoft Office), through Wine or using a Virtual Machine (such as VMware Workstation or VirtualBox). For the current 11.04 release, Canonical dropped the GNOME Shell as the default desktop environment in favor of Unity, a graphical interface it first developed for the netbook edition of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, unlike Debian, compiles their packages using gcc features such as PIE and Buffer overflow protection to harden their software. These extra features greatly increase security at the performance expense of 1% in 32 bit and 0.01% in 64 bit.

Google Chrome OS [Gentoo Linux-based operating system]

Google Chrome OS

Official Webpage  : http://www.google.com/chromebook/

Company /developer	Google Inc.
Programmed in	C, C++
OS family	Unix-like
Latest stable release	0.12.433.38 (Beta) / May 16, 2011
Latest unstable release	0.12.433.38 (Dev) / May 12, 2011

Google Chrome OS is a Gentoo Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work exclusively with web applications. Google announced the operating system on July 7, 2009 and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, that November.

Unlike Chromium OS, which can be compiled from the downloaded source code, Chrome OS will only ship on specific hardware from Google's manufacturing partners. The user interface takes a minimalist approach, resembling that of the Chrome web browser. Since Google Chrome OS is aimed at users who spend most of their computer time on the Internet, the only application on the device will be a browser incorporating a media player.

The expected launch date for retail hardware featuring Chrome OS slipped since Google first announced the operating system: from late 2010 to June 15, 2011, when "Chromebooks" from Acer and Samsung are expected to ship.

User interface

Chrome \ Chromium OS Login Screen

Design goals for Google Chrome OS's user interface include using minimal screen space by combining applications and standard Web pages into a single tab strip, rather than separating the two. Designers are considering a reduced window management scheme that would operate only in full-screen mode. Secondary tasks would be handled with "panels": floating windows that dock to the bottom of the screen for tasks like chat and music players. Split screens are also under consideration for viewing two pieces of content side-by-side. Google Chrome OS will follow the Chrome browser's practice of leveraging HTML5's offline modes, background processing, and notifications. Designers propose using search and pinned tabs as a way to quickly locate and access applications.

Architecture

In preliminary design documents for the Chromium OS open source project, Google describes a three-tier architecture: firmware, browser and window manager, and system-level software and userland services.

• The firmware contributes to fast boot time by not probing for hardware, such as floppy disk drives, that are no longer common on computers, especially netbooks. The firmware also contributes to security by verifying each step in the boot process and incorporating system recovery.
• System-level software includes the Linux kernel that has been patched to improve boot performance. Userland software has been trimmed to essentials, with management by Upstart, which can launch services in parallel, re-spawn crashed jobs, and defer services in the interest of faster booting.
• The window manager handles user interaction with multiple client windows much like other X window managers.

Hardware support

Google Chrome OS is initially intended for secondary devices like netbooks, not as a user's primary PC, and will run on hardware incorporating an x86 or ARM-based processor. While Chrome OS will support hard disk drives, Google has requested that its hardware partners use solid-state drives "for performance and reliability reasons." as well as the lower capacity requirements inherent in an operating system that accesses applications and most user data on remote servers. Google Chrome OS consumes one-sixtieth as much drive space as Windows 7.

Google Chrome [Web Browser]

Google Chrome

Website : http://www.google.com/chrome

Developer(s)	Google Inc.
Initial release	September 2, 2008; 2 years ago
Stable release	11.0.696.68

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. As of April 2011, Chrome was the third most widely used browser with 12% worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Net Applications.

In September 2008, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code, including its V8 JavaScript engine, as an open source project entitled Chromium. This move enabled third-party developers to study the underlying source code and to help convert the browser to the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Google also expressed hope that other browsers would adopt V8 to improve web application performance. The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the permissive BSD license, which allows portions to be incorporated into both open source and closed source software programs. Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of open source licenses. Chromium implements the same feature set as Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates and Google branding, and most noticeably has a blue-colored logo in place of the multicolored Google logo.

Skype [Free Cummunication Software]

Skype

Developer(s)	Microsoft Skype Division

Initial release	August 2003

Stable release	5.3.0.111 (Windows) 5.1.0.935 (Mac OS X) 2.2.0.25 (Linux)

Skype (pronounced /ˈskaɪp/) is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chats over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features which include instant messaging, file transfer, and video conferencing. Skype has 663 million registered users as of 2010. The network is operated by Microsoft Skype Division, which has its headquarters in Luxembourg. Most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of Skype are situated in the offices of Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.

Unlike other VoIP services, Skype is a peer-to-peer system rather than a client–server system, and makes use of background processing on computers running Skype software; the original name proposed – Sky peer-to-peer – reflects this.

Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home, and education networks, citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and security concerns.

On 10 May 2011 Microsoft Corporation agreed to acquire Skype Communications, S.à r.l for US$8.5 billion. The company is to be incorporated as a division of Microsoft, and Microsoft will acquire all of the company's technologies, including Skype, with the purchase.

Mozilla Firefox [Open Source Internet Browser]

Mozilla Firefox

Website :  http://www.firefox.com/

Initial release	November 9, 2004

Stable release	4.0.1

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. As of March 2011, Firefox is the second most widely used browser with approximately 30% of worldwide usage share of web browsers. The browser has had particular success in Germany and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 60% usage and 47% respectively.

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features that are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

The latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.

Firefox runs on various operating systems including Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many other platforms. Its current stable release is version 4.0.1, released on April 28, 2011. Firefox's source code is tri-licensed under the GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, orMozilla Public License.

Features

• Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka "geolocation") based on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
• Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug.

Standards

Mozilla Firefox implements many web standards, including HTML, XML, XHTML, MathML, SVG 1.1 (partial), CSS (with extensions), ECMAScript (JavaScript), DOM, XSLT, XPath, and APNG(Animated PNG) images with alpha transparency. Firefox also implements standards proposals created by the WHATWG such as client-side storage, and canvas element.

The results of the Acid3 test on Firefox 4.0

Firefox passes the Acid2 standards-compliance test from version 3.0. Firefox versions 3.6.17 and 4.0.1 do not pass the Acid3 test; they score 94/100 and 97/100 respectively. Mozilla no longer intends for Firefox to pass the Acid3 test fully because it believes that the SVG fonts part of the test has become outdated and irrelevant due to WOFF being agreed upon as a standard by all major browser makers.

Firefox also implements a proprietary protocol from Google called "safebrowsing" (used to exchange data related with "phishing and malware protection"), which is not an open standard.

Security

Firefox uses a sandbox security model, and limits scripts from accessing data from other web sites based on the same origin policy. It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol. It also provides support for web applications to use smart-cards for authentication purposes.

The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.

Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla issued a patch to remedy the problem.

A 2006 Symantec study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September, these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in other browsers. Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by security researchers. As of February 11, 2011, Firefox 3.6 has no (known) unpatched security vulnerabilities according to Secunia. Internet Explorer 8 has five unpatched security vulnerabilities, the worst being rated "Less Critical" by Secunia.

In October 2009 Microsoft's security engineers acknowledged that Firefox was vulnerable since February of that year due to a .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Windows update that silently installed a buggy 'Windows Presentation Foundation' plug-in into Firefox. This vulnerability has since been patched by Microsoft.

All patched vulnerabilities of Mozilla products are publicly listed.

OpenOffice.org [Open Source Office suite]

OpenOffice.org

Website : http://www.openoffice.org/

Initial release	April 30, 2002

Stable release	3.3.0

Developer(s)	Oracle Corporation

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing,spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. It is an open-source version of the StarOffice office suite, with development sponsored primarily by Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation (after its acquisition of Sun in 2010) from its initial release in 2000. In April 2011, Oracle announced it would no longer be supporting commercial development of OpenOffice.org. Many of the former major contributors now work on the similar LibreOffice project.

OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software and is written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. As of November 2009, OpenOffice.org supports over 110 languages. As free software, users are free to download, modify, use and distribute OpenOffice.org.

OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free and open alternative; later versions of StarOffice are based upon OpenOffice.org with additional proprietary components.

The project and software are commonly known as OpenOffice, but this term is trademarked both in the Netherlands, by a company co-founded by Wouter Hanegraaff, and also, independently, in the UK by Orange UK. As a result, the project adopted OpenOffice.org as its formal name.

Platforms

Platforms supported by OO.o include Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX. The current primary development platforms are Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Support for Mac OS X exists for OS X's native Aqua user interface, as of version 3.0. Previous versions required installing the X Window System component. NeoOffice is an independent fork of OpenOffice, specially adapted for Mac OS X.

Operating system compatibility

• FreeBSD: v3.2.1
• Linux
• OpenBSD
• NetBSD
• Solaris: v3.2.1
• Mac OS X v10.2: up to v1.1.2
• Mac OS X v10.3: up to v2.1
• Mac OS X v10.4–v10.5 (Power PC): up to v3.2
• Mac OS X v10.4–v10.5 (Intel): v3.2
• Mac OS X v10.6: v3.2.1
• Windows 95: up to v1.1.5
• Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 – up to v2.1
• Windows 98 – Windows ME: up to v2.4.3
• Windows 2000 – Windows 7: v3.3 (Tablet PC input is not supported)
• OS/2 and eComStation: up to v3.1.1
• IRIX (mips4): up to v1.0.3

Winamp [ Freeware Media player]

Winamp

Website : http://www.winamp.com/

Blog : http://blog.winamp.com/

Initial release	April 21, 1997

Stable release	5.61 Build 3133

Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietaryfreeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features. Winamp was developed by American programmer Justin Frankel and Russian programmer Dmitry Boldyrev while both were students at theUniversity of Utah in 1997, and its popularity grew quickly, along with the developing trend of MP3 file-sharing.

Features

• Crippled CD burning (~8×)
• Crippled CD ripping (~8×)
• AAC, MP4, FLAC, WAV, WMA encoding
• Trans coding of the different audio formats
• Replay Gain support
• Replay Gain scanner to apply Album Gain or Track Gain to the tags
• Media library
• Full Unicode support

Playback formats

Winamp supports music playback using MP3, MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV and WMA. Winamp was one of the first common music players on Windows to support playback of Ogg Vorbis by default. It supports gapless playback for MP3 and AAC, and Replay Gain for volume leveling across tracks. CD support includes playing and import music from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, and burning music to CDs. The standard version limits maximum burn speed and datarate; the "Pro" version removes these limitations.

Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and Nullsoft Streaming Video. For MPEG Video, AVI and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsoft's DirectShow API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported by Windows Media Player. 5.1 Surround sound is supported where formats and decoders allow.

                                                                                                                          Source :   Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase

 Wikipedia,The free encyclopedia

foobar2000 [Freeware Media Player]

foobar2000

Website : http://www.foobar2000.org/

Initial release	20 December 2002

Stable release:

1.1.6

foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface. While supporting a large number of audio file formats, it has many features for metadata support and file organization, and it has a converter interface for use with command line encoders. To maximize the audio fidelity of consumer-grade equipment, it provides noise shaping and dithering. It features a number of official and third-party components which add many additional features. While the core is closed source, the SDK is licensed under the BSD license.

Since version 0.9.5, foobar2000 supports Windows XP and later releases only. This version features a revamped default interface, with embedded support for album list, album art, spectrum visualization, and some other features and improvements.

The name foobar is derived from a common placeholder name used in computer programming.

Features

• Powerful open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player, including the ability to fully replace the user interface.
• Full Unicode support: File names, user interface, tagging, etc.
• Replay Gain support: Both playback and writing ReplayGain information to file tags.
• Gapless playback.
• Advanced tagging capabilities - through built-in Properties dialog and various optional tagging-related components.
• Built-in Media Library functionality.
  • Intuitive query syntax for searching the Media Library.
  • Autoplaylist support: Generate dynamically updating playlists based on queries.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Support for trans coding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external command-line encoder executables for different output formats).
• Secure CD ripping.
• Streaming support.
• Efficient handling of large playlists.
• User interface with simple configuration to create even complex layouts quickly and easily.
• Highly customizable display of track information using title formatting scripts.