LegRoom.net Kick back and relax

Most readers should hopefully be aware of the severe RPC vulnerability announced a couple weeks ago that affects all versions of Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security just released a second advisory about the flaw, urging users to install the appropriate patch ASAP. More details can be found here, and the patch itself (along with technical details) can be found here.

A new vulnerability in IE has also been reported. According to this article, "Notepad popup windows can be displayed from an HTML email message or Web page regardless of browser security settings. In addition, Notepad popups can access files on a hard disk, possibilly causing stability problems in a Windows saystem." A followup post on Bugtraq points out that this IE flaw also affects many other mimetypes and protocols. For now, the only fix is to switch to another browser.

Yeah, baby! After over 1 year in the making, Gentoo Linux 1.4 has finally been released. Features include:

• Support for x86, PowerPC, UltraSparc and Alpha processors
• Latest stable KDE and GNOME
• Various optimized Linux kernels (2.4.20, 2.4.21_pre)
• Very modern GNU development environment (glibc 2.3, gcc 3.2.2)
• Excellent filesystem support: ReiserFS, XFS, ext3, EVMS, LVM
• Excellent hardware support: NVIDIA, Creative Labs Live! and Audigy
• New "hardened" Gentoo security initiative
• 4000+ packages of the latest and greatest software

This release also marks the first official release of the Gentoo Reference Platform. Unlike the traditional Gentoo installation method (compile everything you want from source), the GRP is a full, compiled distribution, optimized for various hardware architectures. As of this posting, it's currently available via tw disc sets for i686, Pentium 3, Pentium 4, and Athlon XP.



Please see the list of official mirrors to download. Additional, you'll want to refer to the Gentoo Installation Guide, and also perhaps my own unofficial installation and configuration guide. Enjoy!