We like to use the analogy that open source is like a recipe. It's a great way to explain what open source is to non-technical folks. Last year, this pumpkin spice latte recipe was popular with our community. So, we thought it would be fun to share more recipes with you this year. We collected some great ones from a few of our open source friends: Chris Aniszczyk, Erica Brescia, Simon Phipps, and Jim Whitehurst. Share yours with us in the comments!

Today, December 10, Softpedia is happy to report that the final packages of the Mozilla Firefox 26.0 web browser are now available for download for all supported platforms, including Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, ahead of the official announcement.

Although the cloud can be used for general computing purposes, a general-purpose operating system is not necessarily the best fit for the cloud. To that end, the Linux Foundation's Xen Collaborative project today announced the Mirage OS 1.0 cloud operating system.

Opensource.com's Jason Hibbets recently had a chance to sit down with Google's Open Source Director Chris DiBona during the All Things Open Conference in Raleigh, NC.

Like practically every other open source project, the openSUSE community Linux project is low on female participation. But that hasn't deterred Stella Rouzi from joining and making her contribution.

Linux Mint 16 RC (Xfce) was quietly released. The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 16 'Petra'. Linux Mint 16 is the result of 6 months of incremental development on top of stable and reliable technologies. This new release comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use. Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components.

YaST didn't work quite right, but it wasn't a total turnoff; overall it was pretty good. Plus, GNOME has improved a lot with version 3.10, though it is rather resource-heavy.

Open source software (OSS), unlike proprietary software, is software that keeps the code open so IT professionals can alter, improve, and distribute it. Although it has been around since relatively early in the history of computers, in the past several years OSS has truly taken off, in what some might see as a surprising example of a successful communal collaboration.

VIDEO: Brian Stevens, CTO of Red Hat, talks about the next major release of Red Hat's flagship Linux operating system.

Shiden is a arcade style SHMUP (Shoot em up). Shiden takes influence from games like DoDonPachi, Cho Ren Sha 68k and Mars Matrix. In these styles of game the player is a single ship that must face thousands of enemies and dodge all of their bullets whilst causing as much carnage as possible.

Open WhisperSystems' TextSecure tech now the default Users of the CyanogenMod alternative Android firmware gained additional security on Monday, thanks to the integration of Open WhisperSystems' TextSecure protocol.…

A patent loss in a German court may lead to trouble for Microsoft's Android strategy.

As part of the work to bring OpenACC 2.0 and NVIDIA GPU support to GCC, a large set of patches were published this morning for adding NVIDIA's PTX back-end to the Free Software Foundation's compiler.

The U.S. Department of Defense may have found a new way to scan millions of lines of software code for vulnerabilities, by turning the practice into a set of video games and puzzles and having volunteers do the work.

Today in Open Source: PCLinuxOS 2013.12 released. Plus: PCLinuxOS 2013.12 MATE screenshot tour, and Linux Mint 16 KDE RC released.

KTAP version 0.4 is now available as the script-based dynamic tracing tool for Linux.

Particulars is a game with a unique combination of arcade-action and puzzle gameplay, set in the mysterious world of subatomic particles.

Terminology, the terminal emulator for the Enlightenment desktop built atop their EFL libraries, is up to version 0.4 and it's landed heavy with new features.

Add the Tor Browser Bundle to your Linux Mint 16 computer.

Pogoplug announced a $49, Linux-based security device called the Safeplug that taps into the Tor network to hide your IP information when using the web. The Safeplug is a router security peripheral that addresses growing fears about cyber-snooping by anonymizing your web browsing sessions and hiding your identity and physical location.

GParted 0.17.0 was released today and its key feature is support for online resizing of file-systems along with other bug fixes and updates.

Add the Tor Browser Bundle to your Ubuntu 13.10 system.

GNOME desktop memory comparison across several Fedora releases: 13, 15, 17, 19 and 20.

Commell unveiled a Linux-friendly Mini-ITX board equipped with 4th Gen Intel Core (Haswell) CPUs, PCIe and SIM slots, and a generous supply of coastline I/O ports. According to Commell, also known as Taiwan Commate Computer Inc., the LV-67M mini-ITX SBC is best suited for gaming, surveillance, medical, defense, transportation, and industrial automation applications.

Linux Mint 16 RC (KDE) was quietly released. The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 16 'Petra'. Linux Mint 16 is the result of 6 months of incremental development on top of stable and reliable technologies. This new release comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

If, like me, you've jumped onto the Plex bandwagon with both feet, you've probably discovered how difficult it is to make a standalone Plex player. Sure, you can install an entire OS, then auto-start the Plex program in full screen, but it's not as simple as installing the XBMC distro, or even OpenELEC. If you own a Raspberry Pi, that has all changed.

A car with do-it-yourself (DIY) interior parts that can be made using 3D printers will be a bestseller for the obvious reasons. And it could be coming to a car dealership near you in the not-so distant future.

Want to carry around a multi-booting hard drive you can connect to any computer? Then this quick tutorial may just be for you

Cross-platform development has several cons; poor platform integration, inflexible design, etc. On the other hand, we can reach a wider market with more consumers, and can offer uniform look and feel for our app across various platforms. Today, almost all modern mobile platforms provide object-oriented APIs. Thus there is no reason not to build multi-platform apps. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the basics of cross-platform development.

On Monday the companies, led by Google and Microsoft, presented a plan to regulate online spying and urged the United States to lead a worldwide effort to restrict it. They accompanied it with an open letter, in the form of full-page ads in national newspapers, including The New York Times, and a website detailing their concerns.