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In a surprising move, Red Hat will enable users to run .NET applications and SQL Server on its OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service cloud.

In today's open source roundup: Is Ubuntu 14.04 the best Linux distro to replace Windows XP? Plus: Is XFCE better than GNOME or KDE? And a review of Mageia 4.

As we noted last year, Intellectual Ventures started out insisting that it was a licensing company, not a patent troll. But it soon spoiled that story by filing more and more lawsuits, probably because it was running out of cash. A couple of weeks ago it laid off workers, too. But however rough things have been for Intellectual Ventures recently, they are likely to get a lot worse. That's because Congress looks like it might finally try to reform the patent system in a meaningful way that makes life harder for patent trolls. That's doubtless why Intellectual Ventures opened up a Washington DC office last year; and it also probably explains the following move, as reported in The Hill:

Ubuntu 14.04 beta 1 brings some changes to GNOME, but the big focus is on maintaining the status quo for this long-term support release.

We need to protect the freedoms in which Linux was born and grew up.

If you're a government worker and have been wanting to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux securely on your Amazon cloud, it's your lucky day. The popular open-source operating system is finally available on Amazon Web Services.

Graham Morrison, editor of Linux Voice, the new Linux magazine, discusses his love of Arch, KDE, and all things MIDI.

The life of Twitter clients can be rather brief. Unfortunately some of our favourite clients have bitten the dust. Tweetdeck was an excellent Linux desktop client. Support for Linux regrettably ceased, although it remains available on Chrome. Twhirl was another solid desktop Abode AIR powered client that is no more. We were also downhearted to learn that the developer of Hotot has ceased development of his cracking client last month.

The good news is that in lieu of POSSCON, IT-oLogy is throwing what promises to be a big shindig of an enterprise level open source conference in Atlanta. Called Great Wide Open, the conference is less than a month away, scheduled to get cranked-up on April 2nd and 3rd at the 200 Peachtree Special Events & Conference Center in downtown Atlanta.

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) estimates the US market for pre-K to 12th grade educational software and digital content to be over $7.96 billion USD. Testing and assessment comprise the largest category and a 35% growth rate from last year.

Due to notorious Linux graphics drivers, Google developers working on Chrome/Chromium aren't looking to enable hardware video acceleration by default anytime soon. The problem ultimately comes down to poor Linux graphics drivers...

Keurig is setting itself up to attempt a type of coffee "DRM" on the pods used in its coffee-making machines, according to a report from Techdirt. Keurig's next-gen machines would be unable to interact with third-party coffee pods, thus locking customers into buying only the Keurig-branded K-cups or those of approved partners.

Down what appears to be an alley just large enough to drive a delivery truck, Mapbox's Washington, DC office is tucked into its surroundings much like their contributions to the open source cartography world: integrated without shouting. Only their trademark hexagon globe sign will let you know that you've arrived at the proper location. Once inside the unassuming office, you'll find yourself standing in the middle of their work zone. Making their home in an old garage, the first floor is full of computers and people working diligently to churn out tools and data to be used by the world's masses, all in what can only be described as a silence found only in a library. What's being produced here affects many of the mainstream and up-and-coming mobile applications found on many a smartphone.

This latest release is also built from packages found in Slackware Linux 14.1, but several of them were deemed important enough to warrant an upgrade. The Linux kernel is at version 3.13, patched for better wireless auditing as well as the "Channel -1" bug fix. Many of the included security applications were also upgraded and several new ones were added. The two available desktops, KDE 4.10.5 and Xfce 4.10, come from the original Slackware 14.1 repository. Much work has gone into making the operating system stable for everyday use. As always, the Wifislax developers provide a number of extra modules (using the xzm extension) which make it easy to install extra software and to extend the system.

Over the last 25 years of my career—from serving as a partner at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), to my time at Delta Air Lines, to my current role as president and CEO of Red Hat—I've been exposed to my fair share of leaders. I've learned that leaders and leadership styles can vary greatly depending on the company culture, industry and size, but there's one commonality I've noticed among all of them: to be effective, leaders must be respected.

Red Hat on Tuesday unveiled Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6, an open source business process management suite that combines business process management, business rules management and complex event processing technologies in a single product offering. JBoss BPM Suite 6 includes all the capabilities of the next version of Red Hat's business rules platform, JBoss BRMS 6.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols think Microsoft going to Android, via its Nokia phone proxy, is a genius move. My ZDNet compadre Matthew Miller disagrees! Let the fight begin!

The second Beta release of the upcoming GNOME Music 3.12 application, which will be part of the forthcoming GNOME 3.12 desktop environment, has been made available for download and testing.

The free embedded Linux Buildroot project released a quarterly update, featuring enhanced internal and external toolchains, 67 new packages, and bug fixes.

The open source Internet of Everything, container virtualization and KVM and OpenStack integration top the list of events at the upcoming Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit.