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The company's business model put up too many barriers, and it's hard to compete without flexibility for all It's possible you've already forgotten App.net. It was the crowdfunded startup that was going to teach Twitter a lesson and start a new machine-to-machine messaging platform at the same time. Now they plan to shut down development, shift to a best-efforts maintenance-only approach, and give up their attempt to share revenue with their developer community. They also say they will try to use open source as part of their triage.

China has one of the biggest Windows XP user bases in the world, and shaking this addiction seems to be more difficult than people could have imagined. Now, even the government is getting involved and is asking Windows XP users to switch to a Linux solution, preferably something made in China.

In today's open source roundup: A review of AV Linux. Plus: Customize your Bash prompt, and Lenovo releases Chromebooks.

Firejail is a SUID sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table.

Sometimes it's best to go with what you know. For countless developers, database managers, analysts, and others who need to store data in a traditional relational database system, PostGreSQL is that system. But as the demands on databases grow, so too must the software which underlie them.

4MLinux 8.1 is available. 4MLinux is a new miniature Linux distribution focusing on four capabilities: maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and mystery (providing several small Linux games).

Alan Solomon, creator of Dr Soloman's Antivirus, has admitted to using Linux to avoid viruses rather than try to combat them on Windows. His comments come after Symantec's Brian Dye estimated that antivirus systems do not even catch half of cyber attacks. Writing of his decision on his blog, Solomon said: "There doesn't seem to be much malware for Linux. I don't know why. Some say it's because Linux's security is better, some say it's because fewer people use it. I'm not really bothered."

Setting up Web servers is fairly simple. In fact, it's so simple that once the server is set up, we often don't think about it anymore. It wasn't until I had a very large Web site rollout fail miserably that I started to research a method for load-testing servers before releasing a Web site to production.

Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr is an official flavour of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS that aims to bring the GNOME desktop environment in Ubuntu without introducing a lot of customization. As other ubuntu flavors (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu) Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 also come with long term support version, which means it’s supported for 3 years.

Mirantis is aiming to make it easier for enterprises to deploy OpenStack, the open source infrastructure for cloud computing. This week, the company launched a Web-based database listing vendors who offer OpenStack-compatible solutions.

Maintainers of the Linux kernel have patched one of the more serious security bugs to be disclosed in the open source operating system in recent months. The five-year-old code-execution hole leaves computers used in shared Web hosting services particularly vulnerable, so users and administrators should make sure systems are running updated versions that contain a fix.

The memory-corruption vulnerability, which was introduced in version 2.6.31-rc3, released no later than 2009, allows unprivileged users to crash or execute malicious code on vulnerable systems, according to the notes accompanying proof-of-concept code available here. The flaw resides in the n_tty_write function controlling the Linux pseudo tty device.

When it ships in the fourth quarter, the Bebop Drone will take the place of Parrot’s popular AR.Drone 2.0 quadrocopter. Like the AR.Drone 2.0, the Bebop Drone is designed primarily for hobbyist use. The device is similar in size (32 x 28 x 3.6cm) and weight (350 grams), without the “hull” safety bumpers for indoor use. It is also similarly designed to be controlled via WiFi from Android and iOS apps.

WattOS, the lightweight energy saving Linux distro, has just released an eighth version with a switch to Debian from an Ubuntu base. We like wattOS here at Linux User. The green Linux distro is lightweight, fast and ultimately an excellent distro to use day to day. Its optimisations for energy efficiency make it a great choice for laptops, generally energy-conscious users and older or slower hardware. Its been based on Ubuntu for a number of years but that’s changing with the latest release of the distro.

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in OpenSSH, the worst of which may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code.

Firefox would not be Firefox anymore if it would not allow you to customize the browser to your liking. With Australis, you have to rely on add-on authors to bring back functionality to it. Good news is that you can modify the browser to your liking or restore the interface so that it looks similar to the one you used to work with. Bad news is that you have to rely on third-party authors to do so.

HP has become the most recent platinum member of OpenDaylight, the open source software-defined networking (SDN) project sponsored by the Linux Foundation.

Rikomagic is prepping an Android 4.4 ready “MK902II” mini-PC claimed to be three times faster than earlier models thanks to its Cortex-A17 Rockchip RK3288.

Tesseract is a first-person shooter game focused on instagib deathmatch and capture-the-flag gameplay as well as cooperative in-game map editing.

This is the continuation of part four of a series based on talks at February at DevConf in the Czech Republic. Last week, I was going to cover all of the reports from each of the Working Group liaisons but that turned out to be quite a wall of text, so I’m going to do them one by one, with Marcela Mašlá?ová from the Environments and Stacks Working Group this week.

The only reason that Williamson County as a whole shows a high per capita income is because Round Rock is home to thousands of “dellionaires.” Round Rock is the international headquarters for Dell. Dellionaires are Dell employees who owned Dell stock before it took off and made them some money. A lot of money. At one time there were everyday employees at Dell worth a million dollars or more — thus the term “dellionaires.” Without them, Williamson county population would have a much lower income average.