Canonical, Microsoft, and Apple want the same thing from their operating systems, but they go about it in different ways. It's only possible to estimate for Canonical how long it will take them to achieve their goal because their product is open source, but it's much harder to do this for the other companies.

It's going to be a close race and it's difficult to anticipate who is going to win it.

The NUCs run Ubuntu server and are storage hosts and the primary interface to the external world. The system has 8x Parallella boards and a shared gigabit Ethernet switch, giving a peak performance of around 208 GFLOPs.

The next Ubuntu Linux release, Ubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" will likely be powered by the 3.16 kernel.

Given that Linux 3.15 is being released this week and Linux 3.16 should be christened around the end of July or early August, it makes sense that Canonical developers are focused on shipping the 3.16 kernel for Ubuntu 14.10. Ubuntu 14.10 has a feature freeze on 21 August, the final kernel freeze on 9 October, and the official release on 23 October.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, is strengthening its ties to system-on-a-chip (SoC) manufacturer Cavium through expanded support for the ThunderX family, which could open new doors for Ubuntu and open source on ARM64 devices, OpenStack cloud servers and other enterprise hardware.

OpenStack has been in the news a lot... well, we have just had the OpenStack summit in Atlanta after all.

Many say that the "problem" with OpenStack is that it is still regarded as a "moving target" and work in progress, augmenting and updating as it does twice a year.

When most people think of Ubuntu derivatives, they usually categorize them into an "Ubuntu with a different desktop environment than Unity" category. However, according to Ubuntu, they refer to Ubuntu-based distros with different desktop environments as a derivative as well as distros using their own tools/apps/goals as customizations.

In this article, I'll be exploring the upside and downside to Ubuntu-based customized distros.

The Linux ecosystem is full of Ubuntu-based distributions, but building such a Linux OS is not as hard as you might think, especially if you have the proper tools – in this case Ubuntu Mini Remix. Users don't need to be programmers (although it's useful) in order to build a custom Ubuntu OS.

“You want to build your own Ubuntu based livecd, having the complete control over the installed software but you don't know where to start? Minibuntu is here to help you! Ubuntu Mini Remix is a fully working Ubuntu livecd containing only the minimal set of software to make the system work."

The Ubuntu Software Center has been around for quite some time and it changed a lot since its launch. The project hasn't been improved in a while and it looks like things are stagnating a little. This is where the App Grid comes into play, an application that is fully capable of replacing Ubuntu Software Center right now.

There is no doubt that some of Ubuntu’s success as an operating system can be attributed to the Software Center.

The Linux-based Ubuntu OS is finding its way into tablets with Dell’s latest Inspiron hybrids, which can function as tablets and laptops.

The PC maker is offering Ubuntu as an OS option alongside Windows 8 on its new hybrids, the Inspiron 11 3000, which has an 11.6-inch screen, and Inspiron 13 7000, which has a 13-inch screen.

The hybrids turn from laptops into tablets when the screen is rotated 360 degrees, much like Lenovo’s Yoga, which pioneered the design. Dell announced the 19.4-millimeter thick hybrids at the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday.

Also: Dell’s new Inspiron hybrids bring Ubuntu to tablets

Ubuntu developers are trying to shake some of its GNOME dependencies and they have been working towards this goal for quite some time. Ubuntu distributions have been using GNOME packages since the beginning, even before the adoption of Unity as the default desktop environment.

Back when Ubuntu was still using GNOME 2.x to power its desktop, people were complaining about various problems, which in fact were not the fault of the Ubuntu developers. Some of the patches submitted by Ubuntu upstream, to the GNOME project were accepted either with delay or not at all. So, Canonical has decided to make Unity, a project it can control from one end to another.

If there's one area of Linux that gets more scrutiny than any other, it's the desktop. From every corner, the haters and detractors abound. Nearly every publication that offers any focus on the Linux desktop at some point posts a piece about getting rid of the default Ubuntu desktop. Cinnamon is one of the primary replacement contenders.

The Deepin desktop design is snazzy yet simple to use. It is one of the first Linux distros to take advantage of HTML 5 technology.

Add its home-grown applications such as the Deepin Software Center, Deepin Music Player and Deepin Media Player, and you get an operating system that is tailored to the average user.

The Deepin Linux development team is based in China. The distro so far is available only in English and traditional or simplified Chinese. It is a very young distro that debuted a few years ago and cycled through just one or two full releases per year as it crawled through its alpha and beta stages.

Deepin 2014 Beta is the latest version, released earlier this month to replace a version released last fall. This current release, based on screen shots displayed on the website for the previous version, substitutes the more traditional bottom panel bar with a docking bar that resembles the Mac OS X look.

An "emergency cleanup interface" has been added to the Mir server for trying to better recover the system in case of problems.

Alexandros Frantzis and Alan Griffiths of Canonical added the EmergencyCleanup interface on Wednesday. What this new Mir display server interface does is allow handlers to be defined that will be called in case of Mir hitting fatal errors. The hope is that if these handlers are called if Mir is going to crash or run into other serious problems, they'll be able to return the system to a usable state in order to provide a clean user experience.

Elementary OS "Isis," the next iteration of the famous operating system that managed to capture everyone's attention in just a couple of years, now has a development version available for download.

Google Chrome 37 Dev, a browser built on the Blink layout engine that aims to be minimalistic and versatile at the same time, has been released and is now available for testing.

The Google developers have launched a new version of their Chrome browser, but this time it is just the development version, which is not usually suited for everyday use. The Chrome developers work on three distinct branches – Stable, Beta, and Development...

Canonical wants to make it as easy to manage Ubuntu-powered clouds from your smartphone as from a traditional PC. That's the goal behind a new mobile-friendly interface for browsing open source Juju charms that Canonical's design team outlined recently.

Juju is an open source cloud orchestration platform created by Canonical, which means it allows users to deploy apps or services within public or private clouds in a few simple clicks. Pre-configured recipes for launching those services, which Canonical calls charms, are an important component of Juju.

"We are pleased to offer the first ARM 64-bit Server-on-a-Chip production silicon with full certification for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, including all the relevant server workloads and tools to allow commercial hyperscale deployments on X-Gene," Applied Micro's vice-president Gaurav Singh said in a statement. "The X-Gene plus Ubuntu offering means enterprises can now capture substantial TCO savings for their scale-out datacenters."

For those looking for an easy way to play with Wayland/Weston 1.5 along with various Wayland-enabled open-source desktop applications, RebeccaBlackOS has been updated.

Rebecca Black OS has been updated against Wayland/Weston 1.5, has Wayland-enabled GTK / SDL / EFL / Qt / KDE Frameworks 5 support, and shell support for Weston, Orbital, Hawaii, GNOME Shell Wayland, Enlightenment, and SWC. FreeRDP support is now enabled for Weston with this new ISO release. Systemd 212 has also been added to the operating system's Ubuntu 14.04 LTS base for better handling of Mutter-Wayland not running as root.

So far, most of the talk about Ubuntu convergence—Canonical's effort to make Ubuntu Linux run on smartphones and tablets as well as traditional PCs—is about hardware compatibility. But what about building the applications that Ubuntu mobile users will need? That's a problem Ubuntu developers are now beginning to solve, too.

The good news is that it seems like there are only a few small things in between a Linux user and a decent Surface Pro 3 experience, and with any luck by the time these devices hit shelves there will be people eager to help implement fixes for most, if not all of these issues.