I have just updated my Fedora 19 installation to the 3.11 kernel. I installed this and removed the fglrx ATI drivers leaving me only with open source Linux drivers and my Linux desktop is just as fast. Having only open-source code on my system makes updating the system easier. I now prefer Fedora as it is very secure with the NSA Selinux system keeping me safe from malicious software. The Fedora distribution is the natural evolution of the old Red Hat Linux distro. This is now an enterprise Linux distribution that is geared more towards the business environment rather than the common home user. Much like the Oracle Linux distro. Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses a more dated kernel than the Fedora distribution; but it is still very capable when installed on server hardware. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases are available here: https://access.redhat.com/site/downloads. I have used this Linux distribution and it is very good; the older Gnome 2 desktop it comes with is very easy to navigate; the familiar Red Hat menus have everything laid out in a familiar way.
Linux is moving even more into the mainstream with the new Steam boxes in development. These are set to run a Linux OS and this will necessitate better driver support for ATI and Nvidia hardware. If we had good reliable open source drivers for graphics hardware, then these Steam boxes could be a viable gaming option; essentially a gaming console with PC hardware. The specifications for the devices have been announced, and they will be capable of running just about any modern game. As I said, the driver support needs to improve to allow Linux to take over the desktop from Windows. But the early impressions using open source drivers is good. Hopefully in the future; we will see better support for all graphics hardware and better performance and reliability with open source drivers and more transparency in regards to the design of the hardware to make it easier for programmers of alternative operating systems to support these graphics cards. I wonder how the programmers of the ReactOS Windows clone are managing. Reverse engineering a closed source OS must not be a very easy task at all. As shown by the cracking of the VBulletin software used by the Ubuntu forums, closed source solutions are less secure than the alternatives.
Possibly they could have used PHPBB instead, but I am not the administrator of the Ubuntu forums, so I am not taking the role of a backseat admin and telling them what they should do. I found a blog post here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/blogs/zachery/3993888-fixing-your-site-after-you-have-been-hacked this explains what to do if your VBulletin installation has been compromised. This is a very good guide for recovering your website; it would be best to keep backups of your website to recover from. These allow an untouched copy to be restored to the web space. With the support for the Windows XP operating system to be ended next year, it is time that the millions of users all around the world to upgrade to something that will provide far more security. There are still so many users that have that malware infested OS installed. This was released in anno domini 2001 and it is still being used. Why not use Ubuntu or Fedora instead? With the retirement of Steve Ballmer and the release of Windows 8, is this the end of the line for Microsoft? The products they have released so far are a mixed bag. I have a Windows 8 phone and it is actually pretty good indeed, but the interface as presented on a large desktop form factor is another thing altogether. This is something that should not have been released but was anyway. What was Microsoft thinking? Even the Windows Server product has a touch screen interface in part. Why?
With Linux users comprising a small portion of the user base on the Steam network and growing; it seems that the future will be open source. I certainly hope so.