It has been almost exactly a year since I reviewed Zorin OS 6 Core, which was based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin". The new version is based on Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail", so I'm reviewing that now. What is Zorin OS? It is based on Ubuntu, uses a heavily customized GNOME 3 environment with Compiz as the WM and AWN as a panel. It also aims to look as close to Microsoft Windows as possible. It's fast, stable, configures Compiz properly, and has the programs that I need. I can't find much not to like.

It's been another busy week for the Apache CloudStack project. This week we welcome another new committer, work continues on 4.1.1 and 4.2.0, and we have some interesting discussions on how we should release the CloudMonkey and Marvin tools used with CloudStack. We've also seen a few interesting marketing discussions, and the community is gearing up for the second CloudStack Collaboration Conference taking place 23 June through 25 June in Santa Clara, CA.

The Linux community has been divided in recent years over how desktop environments should be used and designed. The open source community, sometimes accused of merely imitating proprietary operating systems rather than innovating, released several new user interfaces that were geared towards touch screens years before the recent touch-oriented release of Windows 8. These interfaces have met with mixed reactions as they were geared towards hardware that, frankly, most users simply did not have access to. There are many Linux touch-oriented desktop environments, but where is the hardware?

The Rekonq web browser just took a major step forward, delivering all the missing features you may have wanted, and a great deal more. Instead of letting you waste your time hunting for these great features, I have listed them for convenience, with screenshots.

If you want a really fast computer, then Linux is your operating system and Intel may be your chip manufacturer. The June 2013 TOP500 supercomputer list is in and 476 of the top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world run Linux.

Go ahead and ask CSOs from the nation's largest banks about the myriad distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks they've experienced in recent months. They're not going to tell you anything. Security execs have never been comfortable talking about these attacks because they don't want to draw more attention to their companies. They worry that offering even the basic details of their defensive strategy will inspire attackers to find the holes.

The H's Hardware Hacks section collects stories about the wide range of uses of open source in the rapidly expanding area of open hardware. It's where you can find out about interesting projects, the re-purposing of devices and the creation of a new generation of deeply open systems. In this edition: turn a Raspberry Pi into a Tor anonymising proxy, RS Components introduces a site for open source hardware projects, two new boards to control Arduino projects from mobile devices, and an augmented reality backend for Drupal.

Canonical said the first members of the group are Deutsche Telekom, Everything Everywhere, Korea Telecom, Telecom Italia, LG UPlus, Portugal Telecom, SK Telecom, and "the leading Spanish international carrier." We've asked Canonical to identify the Spanish carrier, although based on the description it may be Telefónica (also known as O2). With the exception of Deutsche Telekom, the owner of T-Mobile, the list doesn't include any major US carriers. Canonical said that "any national or multinational carrier" may join.

we will see several command methods with which we can read 2 files alternatively line by line, which means line #1 from file #1 then line #1 from file 2, then line #2 from file #1 then line #2 from file 2 ... and so on. This way of reading will produce a combined file output in which lines are alternated between the files.

The French revolutionary Georges Danton famously said, "After bread, education is the people's first need." And while the French Revolution and the channel may not have much in common, there are few places in which this populist message resonates better than the open source ecosystem, where providing development and other skills to volunteer contributors is vital to long-term success—which is exactly what the Linux Foundation is doing starting this week with its 2013 Linux Training Scholarship Program.

Announcing Bridge Linux 2013.06. This update was mostly just a re-package, but there were a few changes still. Update overview: switched from Packer to Pacaur (don't worry, it's aliased in ~/.bashrc for a while); removed LXMed due to Java dependency; switched to official font packages, no more recompiling the AUR version.

Eight carriers have joined the Ubuntu phone Carrier Advisory Group (CAG). CAG members will influence the Ubuntu Phone roadmap and participate as launch partners. The carrier group includes: Deutsche Telekom, Everything Everywhere, Korea Telecom, Telecom Italia, LG UPlus, Portugal Telecom, SK Telecom and the leading Spanish international carrier.

(Sacramento, USA: June 18, 2013) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI: http://www.lpi.org), the world's premier Linux certification organization, announced it has completed an extensive review and update of the exam objectives for their LPIC-2 and LPIC-3 certification programs. The new exams for LPIC-2 will be available November 1, 2013 in English and LPIC-3 will be available October 1, 2013 in English. Other language for both certification programs TBA.

For those looking for the latest drama in the Ubuntu Linux land, the fighting over whether KDE and GNOME should support the Mir Display Server to complement the in-development Wayland support continues to be hotly discussed.

The Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), a confederation of German open source providers and users, and its French counterpart, the Conseil National du Logiciel Libre (CNLL) have agreed on a wide-ranging collaboration. The two organisations want to better coordinate their campaigning at the European level and to collaborate with other European open source organisations.

The latest in the Webconverger line of internet kiosk distros is out now, with all important upgrades to its Linux core and web software

With the volcanic rise of the Android OS, smartphones are becoming predominantly open devices. Millions of people are happily walking around with Linux in their pockets and they don’t even know it. Nor should they have to; your average consumer will not choose a smartphone based on its open operating system. If sales are any indication, it’s no longer an uphill battle for open source on smartphones.

No it's not just cloud, cloud, cloud (though it could be..)

On Friday June 7, the German Parliament decided upon a joint motion to limit software patents (see English translation by BIKT). The Parliament urges the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. Software should exclusively be covered by copyright, and the rights of the copyright holders should not be devalued by third parties' software patents. The only exception where patents should be allowed are computer programs which replace a mechanical or electromagnetic component. In addition the Parliament made clear that governmental actions related to patents must never interfere with the legality of distributing Free Software.

Researchers at EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob) announced a cat-like robot that is claimed to be the fastest quadruped robot under 30 kilograms. The Cheetah-cub Robot, which runs real-time Xenomai Linux on an x86-based RoBoard control board, mimics the biomechanics of a cat to increase the speed and stability of it quadroped legs, helping it achieve speeds of 1.42m/s.

Up to 300 various medical devices from 40 vendors have been identified as vulnerable to a hard-coded password issue and two government agencies are working to get the word out and protect against exploits. The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) at the Department of Homeland Security, and the Food and Drug Administration are warning that the vulnerability could allow attackers to change critical settings and modify firmware.

Logic Supply has signed a deal with RapidRollout to offer the latter’s custom Linux appliance platforms on embedded computers aimed at non-desktop applications such as interactive kiosks and digital signage. RapidRollout is a lightweight, customized version of Ubuntu enhanced with features like remote management tools and easy-to-use configuration and set-up utilities, says the company.

Intel's Daniel Vetter is attempting for the Intel DRM graphics driver to remove support for its FBDEV frame-buffer layer with a new patch-set entitled "fbdev no more!", but will this finally usher in the killing of the Linux kernel's FBDEV subsystem? Going back to last year there's been a call out to deprecate the Linux kernel's FBDEV layer. David Herrmann, among other Linux developers, have been working on projects like KMSCON to have a KMS/DRM-based terminal console from user-space, new KMS drivers, and other related initiatives in an attempt to kill FBDEV.

Today we’re proud to announce the start of the 2014 Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow application process. Knight-Mozilla OpenNews is looking for five developers and technologists to spend a year writing code in collaboration with reporters, designers, and developers in some of the best newsrooms in the world.

The Via Technologies recycled cardboard-housed Android mini-PC received a Design and Innovation award at Computex 2013 earlier this month. The hackable $99 “APC Paper” and its internal $79 “APC Rock” motherboard run a custom Android 4.0 OS on an 800MHz Via WonderMedia ARM Cortex-A9 SoC, and offer 512MB RAM and 4GB flash, along with HDMI, USB, and Ethernet connections.

Red Hat has made a name for itself as the only U.S.-based public company that is exclusively focused on open source, and it has proven that its Linux-focused strategy is very profitable. In fact, the company is the first open source-focused company to hit the $1 billion revenue mark. That said, though, Wall Street has been questioning where else the company might be able to generate revenues in the future.

Let's talk about a touchy subject: the Linux desktop. It's touchy because, by any reasonable measure, Linux on the desktop has yet to capture a significant market share of the desktop and portable PC platform. This has to be said, right up front. It does not make me particularly happy to point this out, given all the great work being done on the desktop by openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and all of the environment and application projects out there.

It is easy to take a screenshot in Ubuntu. You can use the “Print Screen” button on your keyboard (if it comes with one), the default screenshot tool or any other third-party software like Shutter. What if you want the system to take a screenshot automatically at a regular interval, say every 5 seconds? The above tools won’t be able to do the job. Here is a quick way you can take screenshots in Ubuntu at regular interval.

Sad that Game of Thrones has wrapped up its third season? Looking for some drama to fill the time? We've got just the thing for you. One of the Internet's longest-running and most-hated lawsuits is back: SCO v. IBM has been reopened by Utah district court judge David Nuffer.

The story sounded plausible. Red Hat was said to have announced that the next version of its flagship operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 would ship with the MariaDB database management system (DBMS) installed by default, instead of Oracle's MySQL. Too bad the story was wrong.