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.

Newly stable Debian 7 “wheezy” is receiving its first update, 7.1, which mainly includes bug fixes and corrections to security issues

The Gnome Encfs Manager (or short GEncfsM) is an easy to use manager and mounter for encfs stashes featuring per-stash configuration, Gnome Keyring support, a tray menu inspired by Cryptkeeper but using the AppIndicator API and lots of unique features. Whether you want to let it do things as simple as mounting a stash at startup, which is often used in conjunction with cloud-synced folders on services like Dropbox and Ubuntu one, or whether you want to let it automatically mount and unmount your stashes on removeable drives like USB-sticks, SD cards or even network-resources, GEncfsM is designed to do all the work for you.

Eric Wirttman, CEO of POTI (Pioneers of the Inevitable), which produces the open source media player Songbird, has announced on the Songbird blog that, for financial reasons, Songbird development will cease and POTI will shut down its business activities as of 28 June.

Dot Categories: Community and EventsAre you attending Akademy 2013 in Bilbao? Do you want to get something special out of your Akademy experience? Be a volunteer. The Akademy Team needs motivated people who are passionate about Free and Open Software, especially KDE, one of the foremost communities of any kind in the world. There is a variety of tasks to fit with diverse interests and skills.

Celeum makes ARM based devices that exclusively run open source software.

The US District of Utah has re-opened the SCO v IBM court case, as Groklaw reports. The never-ending legal story originally started in 2003 when SCO filed its lawsuit against IBM, alleging the company had violated some of its intellectual property in its Linux products. It temporarily came to an end when SCO filed for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in 2007.

Josh Klint of Leadwerks emailed me to ask me to shout out his new Kickstarter aimed at bringing Leadwerks over to Linux, unlike Unity3D the editor itself from Leadwerks will be on Linux as well enabled you to make games on Linux for Linux!

Already published on Phoronix have been Intel HD Graphics 4600 benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux from the Intel Core i7 4770K "Haswell" processor and compared against previous generations of Intel HD Graphics. Being benchmarked today is the Intel HD Graphics 4600 on Linux compared against various AMD Radeon graphics cards using both the open and closed-source graphics drivers.

The Hon. David Nuffer granted SCO's motion for reconsideration and reopening its case against IBM. Who can believe this is still going on?

OpenVZ implements containers rather than the true virtual machines of solutions such as Xen. This makes it an extremely efficient platform for hosting multiple servers