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A task of any operating system is to provide software that strongly increases its security. A lot of programs of this type have been created; some are better than others.

Back around July 2012, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) predicted big things from a new round of products — Windows 8, tablets, Phone 8, Office 365, Office 2013. In fact, Microsoft compared its current product refresh cycle to 1995, when Windows 95 and Office 95 triggered a sales boom. Soon after Windows NT 4.0 took enterprise servers and workstations by storm. But Microsoft's logic was flawed. Here's why.

The difference in reasons why people who create, manage, and develop open-source and free software, and why end users consume it is a major philosophical disconnect.

Chances are good that you've been to a library and used its resources. Kids check out colorful, educational books; adults seek out entertainment and information; and academics of all ages use libraries as a place to work, meet, and discover resources. Today, there is a national discussion around the role of libraries in public and academic sectors.

This is part of the "Case for KDE" series of blog entries in which I explore various non-technical aspects of KDE. What follows are my personal thoughts and observations rather than an officially sanctioned position statement by the KDE community. I figured I would start with the topic of branding as it is a fairly simple topic .. a nice way to ease into this little adventure. It's also a topic that has been getting increasing amounts of attention in the Free software communities in the last few years as products become more successful, projects progress and more companies appear on the scene. So where does KDE stand on branding?

The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization headquarters in Paris recently hosted the launch of IMAGINARY, a new platform for collaborative mathematics and maths art, or open mathematics. The launch was part of the Mathematics of Planet Earth Day and the opening of the first international crowdsourced science, open source exhibition hosted by the platform: Mathematics of Planet Earth.

Legend of Dungeon A 4 Player Co-op Rogue-Like-like Beat'em'up with Dynamic Lighting on AWESOME Pixel Art. The author has stated the "nearly beta" version will hit on the 15th!

How are we going to teach the next generation about open source and Linux? More importantly, how can we get the right technology into classrooms to empower our educators to teach our children the open source way?

Fragmentation is this month's word of the day, whether it be related to Canonical's plan to develop and launch its own Mir display server fragmenting a consensus around Wayland or to Miguel de Icaza's tale of his journey away from a fragmented desktop Linux world. But if we step back and look at the bigger picture, fragmentation isn't just a part of the Linux story, it is in many ways core to its power to bring free software to the world.

First it was developer tools, then Kinect for the PC, now Microsoft's given hackers a shot at the Kinect code under an open-source license. Specifically, Redmond has now released samples of the Kinect code under an Apache license to serve as a template for hackers building apps for the hands-free motion controller that's been proving so alluring to techies across many sectors. Samples cover audio, colour, depth, face tracking, infrared, shapes, skeletal viewers, gestures and speech basics and are available in a variety of C#, C++, Visual Basic and DirectX.

Based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the latest release of Trisquel comes with GNOME Fallback Mode (from GNOME 3.4) as its default desktop environment. Trisquel 6.0 LTS, code-named "Toutatis", uses the 3.2 Linux-libre kernel that removes all non-free elements from the upstream kernel.

Unity 7 is in the fast-lane to land in Ubuntu 13.04, though not entirely planned.

In a shocking move, Andy Rubin, Android's founder, leaves Android behind but will stay on at Google. Sundar Pichai takes Android now as well as Chrome and Apps.

One of the most interesting sessions at last month's Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco was a keynote presentation about the technologies, capabilities, and challenges associated with Google's self-driving cars, which have now traversed some 400,000 miles on public roadways. Think of it as “Prius meets The Matrix. In the 25 minute video below, Andrew [...]

With Kali, the distribution’s developers made the switch from an Ubuntu base to a Debian base. So, Kali is a Debian-based distribution for security gurus or those aspiring to be.

An updated Adobe Flash Player package that fixes multiple security issues is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 Supplementary. The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having critical.

Wind River has added support for Intel’s 3rd generation Core processors to its embedded Linux distribution and tools suite. The added Core processor support comes in the form of an integrated hardware/software Embedded Development Kit (EDK) bundle. Wind River describes Wind River Linux 5 as a hardened embedded Linux distribution, with advanced tools and a [...]

It's all change at the Chocolate Factory as Andy Rubin, the man who shepherded Android into becoming the world's biggest mobile operating system, is stepping down in favor of Chrome OS boss Sundar Pichai. "Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android – and with a really strong leadership team in place – Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!" said Larry Page in a blog post.

The Overlay File-System has been in development for several years and is used by some notable Linux distributions, but has yet to be merged into the mainline Linux kernel after having to be pulled a few times in the past. The new plan is to merge OverlayFS for the Linux 3.10 kernel...

We already know that KDE developers aren't fond of Mir, Canonical's display server for the Unity desktop not derived from X.Org and Wayland. KDE developers aren't happy about it, some Xfce developers have also expressed dissatisfaction with the recent Canonical changes, and now there's a GNOME response. What's GNOME doing about Mir? They're laying out plans right now to move hard and fast with Wayland support!..