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The beauty of open-source software is that anyone is allowed to offer something to the community catering to specific group of users with similar needs. To testify this, there are currently 600+ Linux distributions available now in a wide variety of shape, size and forms ranging from fully featured environments catering to specific needs for desktop, server, laptop, netbook, mobile phone, and tablet computing as well as numerous embedded environments. Amazingly all this started and is built on top of the Linux kernel, click the interesting graphic below to see full-scale version of "The Evolution of Linux Distribution Timeline".

Shell's and terminal emulators are dull and boring, but this is going to change with the new age terminal emulation utility Final Term. This beautiful and powerful emulator lets you take full control of the command terminal in Linux with it's super-utilitarian hardware-accelerated user interface and easy to use "never seen before" features like "Semantic text menus" which are smart enough to know which pieces of terminal output represent like filenames, PIDs, web URL, IP's etc. providing context-relevant commands for each of them with text file-based plug-in system for extension and personalization, "Smart command completion" with algorithmic sorting so you get the most appropriate command at the top in drop-down list and "ASCII art scrollbars" which automatically show GUI scrollbars for progress from commands like Wget, allowing you to monitor progress while the output is scrolled away to name a few. Do watch the video and grab it for your flavor of linux from the links shared after the "Read more" jump below.

Java Runtime Environment is a must-have plugin for various web-applications, this powerful cross-platform web-application architecture is also one of the most exploited ones and can pose serious security risks if not updated regularly. The problem is, even if you have the latest updated Java version with new features, vulnerability fixes and performance improvements older version may still be there on your computer which can get compromised. We shared the JavaRa utility earlier, which takes care of this security risk allowing users to remove older Java versions from their computers. Oracle has now made available an online Java applet which allows users to check for older Java versions on their computers and uninstall them.

Apple iOS uses a small list of "random" words to generate default passwords for the "personal hotspot" Wifi sharing option, and researches have now exploited this security oversight to crack these passwords in less then 50 seconds for majority of them. This not only allows the hacker to use your internet connection but once connected on the same network the hacker can also launch man-in-the-middle attacks for gaining access to your Apple device and the data traveling through the connection. The team also released the source-code for "iOS Hotspot Cracker" app written in Apple's Xcode programming environment for everyone to download.