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A look at Arch Linux based Antergos

So, I’ve mentioned a few times for my love of Arch Linux and Manjaro, but there is another player in the mix that deserves due diligence, and has actually won over my personal use vote as well; Antergos.

The main difference between Antergos and Manjaro is updates and repositories. Manjaro holds updates for further testing, Antergos does not, and Antergos uses the Arch repos directly.

Firefox Classic Add-ons Archive

Classic Add-Ons Archive is a new add-on for the Firefox web browser that can be best described as a local catalog of classic Firefox add-ons.

The current version of the catalog lists 16706 Firefox add-ons that developers created over the past 14 yours based on Firefox's XUL/XPCOM technology.

The add-on can be installed in development versions of Firefox, and probably also in other browsers based on Firefox code.It is quite large, with more than 30 Megabytes, but that is justified considering that it is a local archive of Mozilla AMO.

Less CloudFlare captchas with Privacy Pass

Privacy Pass is a new browser extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to reduce the number of captchas that legitimate users get when they access CloudFlare protected properties on the Web.

CloudFlare protects a large part of the Internet, and that is why the company's captcha solutions designed to determine whether a visitor is a human or a bot are found on many different sites.

The current system throws a captcha at users regularly when they visit different sites. It is not a "prove once that you are human and you are done" kind of system.

Block “You need to format the disk” message in Windows

When you click on a drive letter of a drive with a RAW partition that has an assigned drive letter, you get the prompt "you need to format the disk in drive [letter] before you can use it. Do you want to format it?".

While that is a good thing if the drive is new and you want to start using it, it is not such a good thing if you have encrypted the drive.

Unmounted encrypted drives, using software such as TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt or other encryption programs, look to Windows just like new drives that need to be formatted so that they can be put to use by the user of the device.

The future of programs that share code with Firefox

Firefox 57 is probably the most important release of the browser for Mozilla ever since the browser was released in its initial version.

The browser comes with the first bits of Quantum, a new technology that improve rendering and other areas, the deprecation of the legacy add-on system and the overboard throwing of legacy components, theme improvements, and more.

We talked about how this affects users of the Firefox web browser, but not so much about other programs and products that share code with Firefox.

Pale Moon 27.6.0 is out

The developers of the Pale Moon web browser have released version 27.6.0 to the public. The new version of Pale Moon is a major development update according to the release notes.

You can run a manual check for updates in the browser with a click on Pale Moon > Help > About Pale Moon > Check for Updates. You can then download and install the update using the internal update mechanism.

Windows 10 Preview Build 17035 launches with interesting changes

Microsoft published a new Insider Preview build today to the Fast Ring channel that brings the build number of Windows 10 to 17035.

Work on the next feature update of Windows 10 began some time ago, and new features and changes are slowly being introduced by Microsoft.

Windows 10 Build 17035 features a couple of interesting changes that highlight some of the things that will likely land in the next feature update version of Windows 10, out March 2018.

How to migrate from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin

If you want to migrate from the content blocker Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin, you may be able to do so in mere seconds depending on whether you have added custom rules to Adblock Plus or not.

I don't want to get into reasons for migration away from Adblock Plus. Some users prefer the extension over others, but it is undeniable that uBlock Origin is a very popular extension as well.

There are two main use cases when it comes to migrating from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin:

Opera 49 Stable launches with screenshot editing, VR player

Opera Software released Opera 49 a moment ago to the browser's stable channel. The new version of the Opera browser introduces new functionality like a player for VR content or VK messaging support.

Existing users of Opera may run a check for updates from within the browser by loading opera://about in the browser's address bar. Opera should pick up the new version and start the download immediately.

Microsoft Office November 2017 Patch Day

Microsoft released non-security updates for all supported versions of the company's Microsoft Office software product yesterday to the public.

The company publishes non-security Office updates on the first Tuesday of each month, and then a week later security updates for Windows and Office.

This month saw the release of updates for Office 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016.