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Daylight savings just began, which means it’s the time of year to start looking forward to the spring release of Ubuntu. But could this year’s version, 13.04, be the last one in the biannual release cycle that Canonical has stalwartly maintained for almost a decade? For the moment, that remains uncertain, but the issue, which has produced a stunning amount of debate, could have ramifications well beyond the Ubuntu ecosystem.

Canonical, and the open source Ubuntu operating system it sponsors, seem to be in the midst of a major watershed moment. In the past the Ubuntu world was a disparate one, but it is now finally converging around all types of devices. Whether that convergence succeeds will have a lot to do with the channel. But community opinion also plays a big role, and that may be Canonical’s biggest challenge going forward.

OpenStack Summit 2013 is set to start April 15 in Portland, Ore. The open source platform seems to be gaining momentum with cloud services providers (CSPs). IBM (NYSE: IBM) has just placed a huge bet on OpenStack. Plus, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) have each built their public clouds on the emerging software platform. Some folks think today's OpenStack is a lot like Linux from a decade ago -- destined to emerge as a de facto standard for the next generation of computing. But in reality, OpenStack faces plenty of challenges. As Talkin' Cloud looks ahead to the conference, I hope the OpenStack community addresses these five issues head-on.

Digium's new Switchvox Cloud platform offers Asterisk (the open source IP PBX) in an on-demand format. Backed by its unified communications capabilities, Switchvox Cloud could also be an alternative to Microsoft Office 365 and Lync Online. But is it?

Digium – which promotes Asterisk (the open source IP PBX) — has finally launched a cloud-based PBX service, aptly called SwitchVox Cloud. No doubt, there’s demand for hosted voice services. But what exactly is Digium's strategy here? Bryan Johns, a product manager at Digium, offered some insights to The VAR Guy.

IBM’s OpenStack cloud push, announced today, sounds a lot like Big Blue’s Linux initiative from more than a decade ago. You may recall that IBM bet $1 billion on Linux in 2001. But in reality the worlds of OpenStack in 2013 vs. Linux in 2001 are quite different. Here’s why.

This year hasn’t been a particularly good one so far for Java, which has suffered several widely publicized security vulnerabilities. But for Java developers, at least, some good news has come in the form of new opportunities for seamlessly deploying Web and mobile apps into cloud-based testing environments via CloudBees‘s recent integration with VMware‘s (NYSE: VMW) CloudFoundry platform-as-a-service (Paas). Here’s how these various pieces of the cloud, open source and development ecosystem come together.

Ceph, the open source distributed file system, has only recently become ready for prime-time production deployment. Thanks to a “Ceph Census” conducted a couple weeks ago, however, the channel now has a concrete view of just how many organizations are using Ceph, and how they’re doing so. And the results suggest that, while Ceph may not be a monopolizer just yet, it is becoming an increasingly important part of the distributed-computing world.

The open source ecosystem is mostly about code. After all, sharing code is at the core of the open source ethos. But for many Free Software projects, there’s more at stake than code itself, as the development team behind the open source game 0 A.D. made clear recently when it highlighted the contributions of musical composer Omri Lahav–whose work is an important reminder that software success, in many cases, is about more than ones and zeroes.

Sure, Red Hat strives to compete with VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. But the Linux company realizes it must also show VMware and Hyper-V a little love. A prime example: The new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 release offers an “improved virtual guest experience on VMware and Hyper-V,” Red Hat claims. So why should customers care? Here are a few answers.

As rumored 10 days ago, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) is climbing back into the tablet business with an Android-based, consumer-targeted, mobile device the vendor will showcase today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

A year ago, I was about ready to write off Ubuntu as a Linux distribution for end-users — and I did for a while, when I switched to Linux Mint. (I’ve since learned to love Ubuntu again.) Today, though, Canonical appears committed to pursuing the consumer market with renewed vigor, targeting not just desktops but also tablets, smartphones and TVs as part of what some representatives are framing as a the “Ubuntu convergence story.” Will it succeed?

Using Linux may make you a geek–stereotypically speaking, at least–but it could also mean you have a great shot at landing a job (or getting a better one). That’s according to a survey out this week that has produced some startling findings concerning demand for Linux IT talent–such as that salary for Linux admins is growing nearly twice as fast as compensation pan-industry. For rewards like that, I’d happily embrace geekiness in all its glory.

OpenStack, the open source cloud computing platform, won praise today from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Seagate Technologies (NASDAQ: STX). Call it a hunch but I bet Seagate's cloud backup business (EVault) makes some OpenStack moves, too. The applause comes as cloud services providers (CSPs) and the open source community prepare for a major OpenStack Conference in April 2013.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) launched new HP Public Cloud partner program initiatives today and also offered updates on OpenStack performance and HP CloudSystem sales. Those pieces of news surfaced at HP Global Partner Conference 2013 in Las Vegas.

As the CeBIT upcoming convention in Germany nears, Canonical has announced what it will be showcasing at the event–which, in turn, provides some clues about where the company behind one of the world’s most popular open source operating systems might be concentrating its efforts in coming months. Alas, Ubuntu tablets are not on the list. But if you’re interested in Ubuntu on servers in and the cloud, there’s going to be a lot to see in Hanover between March 5 and 9.

Linux fans in Europe have reason to celebrate this week with Dell’s announcement that its “Sputnik” XPS 13 laptop powered by Ubuntu, which the company released in the United States in December 2012, is now available on the other side of the ocean as well. As a bonus, Dell has added some hardware upgrades to the laptop for all markets.

Acer Inc. is expected to announce quarterly results sometime today, according to Yahoo Finance. If the PC maker’s latest quarterly earnings do surface, they could provide new clues about Windows 8 tablet and ultrabook sales as well as Google Chromebook sales. Acer President Jim Wong in January suggested that Chromebook sales were heating up but Windows 8 wasn’t doing much to give Acer a lift. Has that trend continued? Hmmm…

In theory, the public cloud is the ideal answer for leveraging extra computing resources when local and private cloud infrastructure aren’t enough. But deploying internal software in the public cloud is much easier said than done. Ravello Systems, however, thinks it has a solution in the form of a hypervisor for your hypervisor. The concept may sound loopy, but it actually represents what could become a crucial new way of taking advantage of virtualization and the cloud.

Microsoft’s new Surface Pro tablet (128GB edition) running Windows 8 Pro apparently is sold out at Microsoft Store, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS) locations across the United States. But what were inventory levels before sales started?