LXer Weekly Roundup for 21-Sept-2014

LXer Feature: 21-Sept-2014 A few of the big stories to hit the newswire this week for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Mozilla Looking to Go Cross Platform for Development: Developers today more often then not require multiple tools to build for desktop and mobile web applications. It's a challenge that Mozilla is aiming to solve with a new cross-platform web development add-on. The new Firefox Tools Adaptor will now enable a developer to leverage the developer tools in Firefox for applications that will run on multiple platforms. The new plugin extends the reach of Firefox's developers tools beyond the Firefox browser for the desktop and Android, to apps that will run on Chrome as well as Safari in IOS.

Hello World: Videos That Teach Linux To Kids: Data.gov has taken open source to heart. Beyond just providing open data and open source code, the entire process involves open civic engagement. All team ideas, public interactions, and new ideas (from any interaction) are cross-posted and entered in Github. These are tracked openly and completed to milestones for full transparency. We also recently redesigned the website at Data.gov through usability testing and open engagement on Github.

Android One phones launch in India: Google launched the first Android One phones in India starting at $103 from Micromax, Karbonn, and Spice, and backed by direct Android updates from Google. Google announced its Android One initiative for selling budget Android phones in developing countries at June’s Google I/O conference.

Verizon, enemy of Open Internet rules, says it loves the “open Internet”: No company has gone to greater lengths than Verizon in trying to stop the government from enforcing network neutrality rules. Verizon is the company that sued to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order from 2010. Verizon won a federal appeals court ruling this year, overturning anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules and setting off a months-long scramble by the FCC to get enforceable rules into place.

Should Windows 9 steal more features from Linux?: In today's open source roundup: Can features found in Linux make Windows 9 better? Plus: Multiple desktops in Linux are still better than in Windows 9, and the future of Linux games might not be a bright one.

Understanding and Using Systemd: So the moral is things change, computers are inevitably getting more complex, and it all works out in the end. Or not, but absent the ability to shape events to our own liking we have to deal with it.

Small Console Menu Utilities: One of the great strengths of Linux is the whole raft of weird and wonderful open source utilities. That strength does not simply derive from the functionality they offer, but from the synergy generated by using them together, sometimes in conjunction with applications.This article looks at four tiny utilities that offer menu facilities. They get virtually zero coverage in the Linux press, so you may not have heard of them before, but they are well crafted and might just fit the bill.