Version 14.04, nicknamed Trusty Tahr, will be an important one because it culminates in a Long Term Support (LTS) version, the first in two years.

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News headlines screaming that yet another Microsoft Windows vulnerability has been discovered, is in the wild or has just been patched are two a penny. Such has it ever been. News headlines declaring that a 'major security problem' has been found with Linux are a different kettle of fish. So when reports of an attack that could circumvent verification of X.509 security certificates, and by so doing bypass both secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) website protection, people sat up and took notice. Warnings have appeared that recount how the vulnerability can impact upon Debian, Red Hat and Ubuntu distributions. Red Hat itself issued an advisory warning that "GnuTLS did not correctly handle certain errors that could occur during the verification of an X.509 certificate, causing it to incorrectly report a successful verification... An attacker could use this flaw to create a specially crafted certificate that could be accepted by GnuTLS as valid." In all, at least 200 operating systems actually use GnuTLS when it comes to implementing SSL and TLS and the knock-on effect could mean that web applications and email alike are vulnerable to attack. And it's all Linux's fault. Or is it?

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Diaspora really could be the answer. It’s open source, it’s decentralized and it has Aaron Swartz in its DNA. Its security people are answerable only to the community. Because it’s decentralized, there’s a node or “pod” element. Different servers offer users slightly different experiences, sort of like neighborhoods within a city. This is much different from Facebook where everything is the downtown business district.

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Sony recently submitted an enhancement which allows widget like functionality on Firefox OS. Dubbed gadget, it is supposed to allow easy interaction with applications from homescreen and lockscreen. Currently the implementation is being reviewed on bugzilla by the Mozilla team.

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Google’s Chromecast remains their hottest selling device. At $35 a piece and an ever increasing list of supported apps, the little dongle has put many set-top boxes and sources of digital media out of business. While many have expressed their love for the device, designer Sam Dirani of Raleigh, NC, feels like there could be a more modern look to the revolutionary device, and he has now revealed his take on it.

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For those curious about the performance of Intel's "Quark" x86 SoC for very low-power applications, including wearable devices, here's some benchmarks of Debian on their Galileo development board.

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Deb Cinkus is the CEO of Polished Geek, a Raleigh, NC-based Joomla CMS web development company. Opensource.com community manager Jason Hibbets interviewed Cinkus about project management tips and open source project management tools during the 2013 All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC.

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The House has passed the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act not long after the botched launch of the HealthCare.gov website, and attempting to better control how some $80 billion is spent on IT procurement each year. Sponsored by the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, R-Ca., and committee member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., the bill establishes guidance on fully considering open source software as a procurement option without bias regarding how technology is developed, licensed and distributed. The bill, HR-1232, also requires federal computer standards to include guidelines necessary to enable effective adoption of open source software, and directs OMB to issue guidance for the use and collaborative development of open source software within the federal government. The bill further calls on OMB to develop a plan for conducting a government-wide inventory of IT assets and getting agencies to eliminate or consolidate any duplicate or overlapping websites, and permits CIOs to establish cloud service working capital funds.

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Daniel Oliver, a Canonical designer, earlier this week blogged about loving the bottom edge of phones. "The bottom edge is the most pleasurable edge to use. Grab a phone, any phone, and slide your thumb up over the bottom edge, then back. Go on, do it a few times. Feel good? Yeah, our extensive research suggests this feels pretty amazing to pretty much everyone."

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Quite obviously, musicians and the people around them have a great need for video editing software — not only because YouTube is a popular place to listen to music, but because videos have so much promotional value. Tour diaries, talk-to-the-camera confessionals, live show videos, viral stunts, and other types of videos are all part of the gameplan for recording artists these days.

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Every two years a Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu is made available to the public. Every LTS is supported for 5 years by Canonical. This year is the year of LTS release and its just 1 month away. Canonical will be keen to keep up the stability of LTS release like it has done in the past. Lets have a quick look at what can we expect from this year’s LTS release.

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OnePlus, the upstart making a CyanogenMod-powered phone, has revealed a few details about the device that the company says will be cheaper and better than big brand phones and definitely won't include a heart-rate monitor.

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The new $189 "Privacy Phone" comes with VPN, 128-bit encryption, and other tricks aimed at keeping you safe and anonymous.

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Rich Miner strolls the halls of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, pausing every few minutes to check out the latest gadgets on display. As one of the co-founders of Android, he is walking through a world that has been all but conquered by the operating system he helped create. Now, as a general partner at Google Ventures, he’s tasked with finding and investing the search giant’s billions in the next big thing.

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Responding to student interest and a growing industry demand for workers with such skills, Rochester Institute of Technology is launching the nation’s first interdisciplinary minor in free and open source software and free culture.

Starting in Fall 2014, RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media will offer the minor in free and open source software (FOSS) and free culture for students who want to develop a deep understanding of the processes, practices, technologies, and financial, legal and societal impacts of the FOSS and free culture movements.

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Chromebooks are making a big statement in the laptop world: NPD Group Inc. reported that Chromebook sales accounted for 21 percent of all notebook sales last year. For devices that are functionally little different from tablets — designed for basic tasks like checking email and web browsing — they're growing fast. Even as the tablet market continues to grow, capturing 22 percent of the entire personal computing market just last year, Chromebooks are giving people an alternative to rectangular touch screens.

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Valve has recently released Portal 2 on Steam for Linux and opened a GitHub entry to gather all the bugs from the community. When one of the Valve developers closed a bug related to Portal 2 recommending that the users disable a security feature, the Linux community reacted.

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One of the long-standing proclaimed benefits of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics drivers for the Linux kernel was that it would be possible to have "Blue Screen of Death"-like error messages in cases of kernel issues. That feature is now closer to being realized while also advancing another goal of disabling VT support within the Linux kernel.

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