It’s that time of the year again, the spring release of the latest Ubuntu distro, 10.4, Lucid Lynx! It’s always very exciting to be one of the first users of the latest Ubuntu offering, and this time proves to be no exception. The latest features are fresh and exciting and we will outline some of the highlights below.

• Greater support for nVidia graphics drivers
• more seamless integration of social networking services like Twitter and Facebook
• removal of HAL from boot process to speed startup
• The latest GNOME environment for the default version of Ubuntu
• Kubuntu features KDE SC 4.4
• New themes and wallpapers are also added
• Ubuntu One file synching
• Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is updated
• Ubuntu One Music Store will be unveiled
• Linux kernel 2.6.32
• Mozilla Firefox browser default search engine changed to Yahoo!

It certainly looks like this update to the most popular Linux distro is more than just minor changes, and more profound improvements to this great package are arriving.

Get your copy of Ubuntu today!

Ext3 File System Journaling in Linux

By Allen Sood

Ext3 or Third Extended is a reliable and popular file system for Linux OS. It supports advanced concept of file system journaling to protect your system against unexpected shutdown, crash, and power outages like situations. It reduces the need of system repairs, and possibilities of data loss. Thus you do not need to use Linux recovery methods to overcome any sort of problem.

Levels of Journaling in the Ext3:

• Journal- Both file contents and metadata are written to journal before they are being committed to file system. It improves system performance as it is comparatively uninterrupted on the hard drive.

• Ordered- Only the metadata is journaled; the file contents aren’t journaled. However, it guarantees that the file information is written to hard drive before the associated metadata is labeled as committed in journal.

• Writeback- Only the metadata is journaled and contents may be written on the disk after or before the file system journal is updated. In this case the files, altered just before a system crash, may get damaged.

Although, journaling is a useful feature of Ext3, but it also has some disadvantages, such as:

• Functionality- Since the Ext3 directs to be backward compatible with Ext2, several on-disk data structures are similar to those of the Ext2. Thus, Ext3 lacks numerous features of latest designs, like dynamic inode allocation, extents, and block sub-allocation.

• Defragmentation- Ext3 does not include any online defragmentation tool, which can work on file system level. High fragmentation on Ext3 volume may affect the system performance.

• Recovery- Ext3 does not support recovery of deleted files in file system design. The Ext3 driver actively removes files by wiping the file inodes for system crash safety reasons.

• No Checksumming in the Journal- Ext3 doesn’t do checksumming while writing data to journal. If the ‘barrier=1? isn’t enabled as mount option, and hardware failure occurs, you run the risk of serious file system damage during crash.

File system corruption eventually leads to a data loss situation and you need Linux data recovery to get out of it. Linux data Recovery is best possible using third-party recovery applications.

The Ext3 Recovery software employs high-end scanning algorithms to extract all lost, missing, and inaccessible data from your Linux hard drive. The software enables safe, quick, easy, and perfect recovery in all cases of data loss.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery software successfully recovers lost files, directories, and hard drive volumes. The software supports recovery from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 volumes. It works well with all popular Linux distributions, such as Mandriva, SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Allen a student of Mass Communication doing research on Ext2 Recovery, Linux Data Recovery software And Ext3 Recovery. HE is also a freelancer for ext3-file-recovery.data-recovery-linux.com/