The H Roundup - Microsoft study, Firefox 18.0.1 and Mega security

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item.

Top News

This week, Mozilla has released an update to Firefox 18 that fixes stability issues and the developers of the unofficial Waterfox fork have delivered a version for Windows users who want a 64-bit version of the browser. In the meantime, a controversial and unpublished study from Microsoft and HP claimed that the City of Munich's migration to Linux had cost the taxpayer a lot more money than officially announced.

• Mozilla stabilises Firefox 18
• Waterfox 18 finally arrives for 64-bit Windows users
• Microsoft study: Linux migration cost Munich €60.7 million

Vert.x is now firmly headed for the Eclipse Foundation, while Wikipedia has moved servers to its new primary data centre in Ashburn, Virginia.

• Vert.x heading for Eclipse Foundation - Update
• Wikipedia is moving

Oracle released an emergency patch for Java that was then immediately broken by the security researcher who found the initial flaw. GitHub was banned in China and Kaspersky published more details of the Red October malware network.

• Oracle's Java patch leaves a loophole
• GitHub blocked in China - Update
• Red October closes as Kaspersky publishes more details

New Linux graphics drivers from AMD improve gaming performance with certain Valve games and version 1.0 of the driver for exFAT for Linux and Mac OS X was released.

• AMD's Linux drivers offer improved gaming performance
• GPLv3 driver for exFAT reaches version 1.0

Featured Articles

Thorsten Leemhuis took a look at the new filesystem and storage features in the upcoming version 3.8 of the Linux kernel and Jürgen Schmidt inspected the security of Kim Dotcom's new Mega cloud storage service.

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.8 (Part 1) - Filesystems and storage
• Mega facts

Open Source Releases

This week saw the release of a new version of the Amarok media player, the code repository software GitLab, and new versions of Apache Lucene and Solr, Everpad, VoltDB and Chrome, among others.

• Amarok 2.7 gets semantic with Nepomuk
• GitLab 4.1 adds sign-up pages and public repositories
• Apache Lucene and Solr update with new default codec
• JavaScript developers can experience dejavu
• Everpad 2.4 with redesigned icons and editable lists
• Trinity Linux system call fuzzer updated
• Eclipse Foundation announces Hudson 3.0
• Axon Framework 2.0 helps Java applications scale
• VoltDB 3.0 enhances performance, SQL and connection
• Chrome update closes holes and fixes mouse wheel issues
  

A development release of the upcoming KDE 4.10 was also made available.

• KDE 4.10's third and final release candidate arrives

Security Alerts

Backdoors were discovered in almost all devices made by Barracuda Networks. It turns out that the devices allow users to log in through SSH with preset user credentials if they come from particular IP ranges.

• Backdoors in many Barracuda appliances

For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news. To keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

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