Kaplowitz, one of several Debian developers who works for Google, wrote, "Today, we're adding Debian images for Google Compute Engine. Debian, in collaboration with us, is providing images for both Debian 7.0 'wheezy' and the previous stable release, Debian 6.0 'squeeze'. This support will make it easy for anyone using Debian today to migrate their workloads onto Compute Engine."

This comes on the heels of Debian releasing its next major version, 7.0. On the GCE, this version, and its predecessor, 6.0, "Google is hosting a Debian package mirror for use by Google Compute Engine Debian instances". Google has also updated its operating system image documentation, and will support Debian via its usual GCE support packages.

In addition, GCE will continue to support the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone CentOS. Ubuntu, which had been supported, is no longer a primary GCE distribution. Advanced users can also set up and use their own Linux images. You cannot, however, run any non-Linux operating system on GCE.

The Google Compute Engine itself is based on Linux. It uses the KVM hypervisor to run its Linux instances. While meant as competition for Amazon Web Services (AWS), GCE is still in beta. It's currently available only to users with a Google $400-per-month Gold cloud support package.

Related stories

• The new Debian Linux 7.0 is now available

• Debian 7.0 Wheezy: Hands on with a pre-release build

• Google lowers prices, further opens doors to Compute Engine

• Google goes after Amazon with cloud upgrades

• Google intros Compute Engine infrastructure service

This anonymous, supposed Windows kernel programmer first made his comments on a Hacker News conversation thread. He then followed up with further comments on Marc Bevand's Zorinaq blog. Bevand is a senior software engineer for Adconion, who specializes in high-performance computing (HPC).

The alleged Microsoft developer opened by saying, "Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening. The cause of the problem is social. There's almost none of the improvement for its own sake, for the sake of glory, that you see in the Linux world."

It's not that Windows developers don't want to improve their operating system's performance; the problem is that Microsoft's software development culture discourages improvements. The alleged programmer wrote:

Granted, occasionally one sees naive people try to make things better. These people almost always fail. We can and do improve performance for specific scenarios that people with the ability to allocate resources believe impact business goals, but this work is Sisyphean. There's no formal or informal program of systemic performance improvement. We started caring about security because pre-SP3 Windows XP was an existential threat to the business. Our low performance is not an existential threat to the business.

See, component owners are generally openly hostile to outside patches: If you're a dev, accepting an outside patch makes your lead angry (due to the need to maintain this patch and to justify in shiproom the unplanned design change), makes test angry (because test is on the hook for making sure the change doesn't break anything, and you just made work for them), and PM [project manager] is angry (due to the schedule implications of code churn). There's just no incentive to accept changes from outside your own team. You can always find a reason to say "no", and you have very little incentive to say "yes".

There's also little incentive to create changes in the first place. On linux-kernel, if you improve the performance of directory traversal by a consistent 5 percent, you're praised and thanked. Here, if you do that and you're not on the object manager team, then even if you do get your code past the Ob owners and into the tree, your own management doesn't care. Yes, making a massive improvement will get you noticed by senior people and could be a boon for your career, but the improvement has to be very large to attract that kind of attention. Incremental improvements just annoy people and are, at best, neutral for your career. If you're unlucky and you tell your lead about how you improved performance of some other component on the system, he'll just ask you whether you can accelerate your bug glide.

From where he sits, Microsoft is also losing its top talent to the competition. He wrote, "Another reason for the quality gap is that that we've been having trouble keeping talented people. Google and other large Seattle-area companies keep poaching our best, most experienced developers, and we hire youths straight from college to replace them. You find SDEs [Microsoft Software Development Engineer] and SDE IIs maintaining hugely import systems. These developers mean well, and are usually adequately intelligent, but they don't understand why certain decisions were made, don't have a thorough understanding of the intricate details of how their systems work, and most importantly, don't want to change anything that already works."

On top of that, he claimed, Microsoft "junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones. Look at recent Microsoft releases: we don't fix old features, but accrete new ones. New features help much more at review time than improvements to old ones. (That's literally the explanation for PowerShell. Many of us wanted to improve cmd.exe, but couldn't.)"

For sheer snark, it's hard to beat his thoughts on the NT File System (NTFS): "Oh god, the NTFS code is a purple opium-fueled Victorian horror novel that uses global recursive locks and SEH [Structured Exception Handling] for flow control. Let's write ReFs [ Resilient File System] instead. (And, hey, let's start by copying and pasting the NTFS source code and removing half the features! Then let's add checksums, because checksums are cool, right, and now with checksums we're just as good as ZFS [Z File System] ? Right? And who needs quotas anyway?)"

None of these "revelations" are really that new. Anyone who'd followed Mini-Microsoft, an anonymous insider's view of life in Microsoft's development cubicle farms, or has read comments from disgruntled ex-Microsoft developers such as Hamilton Verissmo, knows about Microsoft's development bureaucracy getting in the way of innovation. As Brian Cody, a former Microsoft engineer, told Forbes Magazine in 2012, being a successful Microsoft software developer "was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers".

In short, Microsoft has become an "old" company. It's no surprise that today, Microsoft focuses more on playing catch-up with tablets and smartphones with misfires such as Windows 8 Metro than actually improving its fundamental software performance.

People are reacting to this new look inside Microsoft as it if were shocking. It's not. As the developer himself added, as the story began to spread through the blogosphere, it "has gotten out of control. I was much too harsh, and I didn't intend this as some kind of massive expos. This is just grumbling".

In a particular, he semi-apologized for his NTFS comments: "NTFS does use SEH internally, but the filesystem is very solid and well tested. The people who maintain it are some of the most talented and experienced I know. (Granted, I think they maintain ugly code, but ugly code can back good, reliable components, and ugliness is inherently subjective.)"

In an attempt to spin the sum of complaints in a more positive way, he added, "Windows and Microsoft still have plenty of technical talent. We do not ship code that someone doesn't maintain and understand, even if it takes a little while for new people to ramp up sometimes. While I have read and write access to the Windows source and commit to it once in a while, so do tens and tens of thousands of other people all over the world. I am nobody special ... We almost never make decisions individually, and while I maintain that social dynamics discourage risk taking and spontaneous individual collaboration, I want to stress that we are not insane, and we are not dysfunctional. The social forces I mentioned act as a drag on innovation, and I think we should do something about the aspects of our culture that I highlighted, but we're far from crippled. The negative effects are more like those incurred by mounting an unnecessary spoiler on a car than tearing out the engine block. What's indisputable fact is that our engineering division regularly runs and releases dependable, useful software that runs all over the world. No matter what you think of the Windows 8 UI, the system underneath is rock solid, as was Windows 7, and I'm proud of having been a small part of this entire process."

Rock solid? The monthly Microsoft patch Tuesdays and the constant out of schedule zero-day fixes, such as May's IE 8 fix, leaves me doubting, as always, Windows' security and stability, but what else can a Microsoft employee say? In any case, when it comes to speed, Linux, not Windows, as he himself still admitted, remains the clear champ.

Related stories

• Linux 3.9 kernel release offers SSD caching and server performance improvements

• Microsoft's new high-performance-computing pack provides clustering in the cloud

• Fast, Faster, Fastest: Linux rules supercomputing

• Cycle Computing rolls out DataManager for cloud supercomputers

• Who is Julie Larson-Green? Meet the new head of Windows

The short version is there's a lot of Linux software application packing and installation systems out there already but Ubuntu will soon be adding another one.

Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, is doing this because, as Ubuntu moves into attempting to become popular consumer operating system on smartphones and tablets, it needs a faster, easier way for independent software vendors (ISV)s to get their programs to customers. The Ubuntu developer site describes the software installation problem in these terms: 

Today we face a significant challenge in Ubuntu. If an application author wants to get the latest version of their software in Ubuntu they have two options:

1. An Ubuntu developer packages the software and delivers it in the development release.

2. The app developer can submit their apps via MyApps in the stable release for review.

Neither are ideal. So it is that:

The goal here is to provide a safe, reliable means in which app developers can upload their stable releases directly into Ubuntu.

With this goal in mind we want to resolve the common bottlenecks that we have experienced with the current process for app developers:

We should not rely on manual reviews of software before inclusion. Manual reviews have been found to cause a significant bottleneck in the MyApps queue and they won’t scale effectively as we grow and open up Ubuntu to thousands of apps.

Requiring app installation into the /opt directory is significantly challenging to app developers and not well supported in Ubuntu; this should be made transparent to the developer.

We also want to enhance the platform experience for both users and developers who are building applications for Ubuntu:

Provide a standard, stable and useful platform for developers, and a rapid path to delivering their apps to Ubuntu users

Give users a safer access to the growing ecosystem of independent applications being developed for Ubuntu.

Keep the user informed and in control over who is providing the software they install, and what access to their system it will have.

Colin Watson, a long-time Canonical software engineer who's worked on both

This does not mean that Ubuntu is going to dump the DEB method it currently uses. Watson wrote, "This is not aimed at changing packages that are already part of the Ubuntu archive; for the most part our existing system works well for those, and they tend to have non-trivial dependency structures. We'll continue to use dpkg and apt for building the Ubuntu operating system, syncing with Debian, and so on."

This is still very much a work in progress. As for the obvious objection of why not use one of the existing Linux package systems, or even borrow Android's Android application package file (APK), Watson replied, "Many of the existing app packaging systems are more of a reflection of the system they were built for than anything else. If you look at, say, Android's APK format, it's essentially a zip file with a manifest and some conventions about Dalvik class installation and the like. Most of the other mobile app formats are similar. Things like Listaller might be a reasonable fit, but I'm worried about importing things like a full dependency solver into this: much though I love dependency-based packaging systems, they necessarily involve scanning the system packaging database at some point and I would much prefer app packages to be as independent of that as possible, mainly for performance but also to be as bulletproof as possible."

That's not to say that Ubuntu is re-inventing the wheel. Watson wrote, "The proof of concept I wrote also isn't entirely new code. It's tiny due to using .deb as a container format (minus maintainer scripts, full dependencies, etc.), so I get to save effort by using dpkg to unpack things, which leaves us room to selectively use more of its features in future if we want to." As Watson added in another message, "To be clear - hi Slashdot - I'm very fond of the dpkg/apt system and have put a great deal of effort into it over the last decade or so, both on my own time and for pay; I think it's excellent and have no desire to kill it.

So, while Ubuntu will be adding yet another Linux program packaging method, it's building on what's gone before to give ISVs a quick and simple way to get their applications to Ubuntu touch device users. While it's very much a work in progress, the end result should help Ubuntu have a rich set of applications when Ubuntu smartphones and tablets start shipping later this year.

Related Stories:

• Ubuntu 13.04 Review: Linux for the average Joe or Jane
• Ubuntu 13.04 release: Laying the groundwork for OS' phone and tablet future
• Ubuntu Touch betas are ready for testing
• Ubuntu smartphones coming to two regions in October
• Ubuntu Touch prepped for 20+ smartphones and tablets

There's nothing new about this. Microsoft has been making hundreds of millions a year from Android since 2011. Where do these profits come from? Patent licenses. And if vendors don't want to pay, Microsoft will threaten patent lawsuits. Sometimes, Microsoft even follows up with an actual lawsuit.

The object, however, isn't to win in court. In recent months, Microsoft has convinced Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics OEM, Nikon, ZTE, and numerous other Android OEMs that it's cheaper to pay off Microsoft by acquiring a patent license than it is to fight them in a lawsuit.

Today, only Motorola Mobility, a division of Google and Huawei, remains free of the Microsoft-Android intellectual-property (IP) tax. In a statement to Dow Jones Business News, Google spokesman Matt Kallman said: "This is the same tactic we've seen time and again from Microsoft. Instead of building great new products, Microsoft attacks the competition, and tries to drive up the prices of Android devices for consumers."

No case has ever been successfully made for any of Microsoft's undisclosed patents that are being used to profit from Android, but that's not what is important for businesses. The bottom line is that it's usually cheaper to pay off patent trolls than it is to fight them in court. Whether Microsoft's publicly undisclosed patents are valid or have any relevance to Android is beside the point.  

That's why Motorola Mobility's patent lawsuit against Microsoft is anything but done. In today's legal climate, the biggest companies use patents to battle over market share and patent licensing. Nokia, Microsoft, and Oracle's attempt to knock Android out of the European Union market as "a below-cost Trojan horse", is simply another tactic in their legal attempts to win profits from a market where Microsoft is unable to compete with its products.

Eventually, if Google is successful, then the Microsoft's Android patent tax will be contracted away in sealed settlement documents. Until that day, Microsoft will continue to profit from mobile operating systems — it just won't be from its own failed mobile operating systems.

Related stories

• Microsoft profits from Linux patent FUD

• Windows Phone doesn't excite many after two years; BlackBerry should clinch 3rd place

• Microsoft vs. Android

Say hello to the new Nook HD

With just one software update including the Google Play app store, the Barnes & Noble Nook HD and its 10-inch big-brother Nook HD+ tablet have become very interesting low-end Android tablets. 

Related stories

• Review: New software upgrade turns Nook HD into a good Android tablet

(Image: Screenshot by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols)

Google Play on Nook HD 

If the Nook HD's hardware can support it, the Nook HD can run it. The newly revised Nook now supports most Android applications, ebooks, videos, and music from most Android-compatible media providers. 

(Image: Screenshot by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols)

Barnes & Noble and Google Play apps

The Nook's interface appears to be the same, but if you look closely, you can tell "native" Nook apps by the small "n" on the upper right of their icons. You can replace the Nook versions with a Google Play edition if you like, but the functionality isn't likely to improve. 

(Image: Screenshot by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols)

Kindle ebooks on the Nook? 

When I said that the new Nook supported most Android apps, I wasn't kidding. It now will let you read your Kindle ebooks, as well as your Nook books, with the Android Kindle e-reader. The newly revised Nook also supports other e-readers, such as Alkido, Google Books, and Kobo. 

(Image: Screenshot by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols)

Still a great e-reader

At day's end, the newly revised Nook HD is still a great e-reader in its own right. 

The B&N Nook HD started life in late 2012 as B&N's answer to Amazon's Kindle Fire. It was, and is, a 7-inch tablet.

It comes in two colors: Smoke and snow. The Nook HD has a soft, rubberized back, with a volume control rocker switch on the top-right edge and a power/sleep button on the other side. On the HD Nook's top, you'll find a standard headphone jack and microphone. On the bottom, you'll find a custom 30-pin charging/USB 2.0 connector. The device also comes with dual speakers on the lower back.

At 0.68 pounds, it's as light as an iPad mini, and lighter than a Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD. For all of its lightness, I found it to be the most comfortable tablet-like device for long periods of reading I've found to date, which is why I bought one late last year.

Under the case, you'll find a dual-core, 1.3Ghz, ARM Cortex-A9 processor. This is backed by a PowerVR SGX544 chip for graphics and video. For storage, the low-end model comes with 8GB. Of that, 5GB is available. That's not much, but unlike the Nexus 7, iPad mini, or Kindle Fire, the HD, and its 10.1-inch tablet big brother the HD+, it comes with a microSD/microSDHC slot that can hold up to 32GB of storage on an inexpensive card.

For networking, the HD supports up to 802.11n and Bluetooth. It does not have a camera, 3G/4G,  or GPS. But, if you can live without those three items — and I can a lot of the time — the newly renovated HD has a lot to offer.

While the B&N Nook interface looks the same as ever, I've found that simply adding Google Play had made it much more useful. As you add new apps, they're added to the Nook carousel at the top of the main Home screen. You can also add apps from Google Play to your choice of home screens.

It's those apps that move the Nook HD from being an ordinary e-reader with some tablet-like features to being a real tablet. However, you can't download apps that the hardware doesn't support — there's no point in Instagram without a camera after all. Other than that, you can download any program you want from Google Play. From popular games, such as Candy Crush Saga, to the handy Swype keyboard and Amazon Kindle ebook e-reader app, they're all available and work well on the Nook.

What's that you say in a tone of disbelief? The Amazon Kindle ereader is also available on the arch-enemy B&N's Nook now? Yes, yes it is, and it works fine. For that matter, you can also buy, download, and play/view Google' ebooks, movies and music on the Nook.

You can, of course, still read B&N ebooks, and view and listen to other B&N content on the Nook. Unlike the Kindle, which is locked into the Amazon eco-system, the Nook HD really is a full-powered Android now.

Are there better tablets? Sure, but for the price, the refurbished Nook HD deserves a second look if you want an affordable low-end tablet. I'm certainly glad that I picked up mine.

Related stories

• Gallery: Barnes & Noble updated Nook HD Android tablets

• Best Android tablets (April 2013 edition)

• Acer launches 7.9-inch Iconia A1 Android tablet starting at $169

• The Android HP Slate 7 might signal good news for Microsoft

• How to decide: should you buy an iPad mini, a Kindle Fire HD, or a Nexus 7?

Keith Chuvala, a United Space Alliance contractor, manager of the Space Operations Computing (SpOC) for NASA, and leader of the ISS's Laptops and Network Integration Teams, recently explained that NASA had decided to move to Linux for the ISS's PCs. "We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable — one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could."

Specifically, the ISS astronauts will be using computers running Debian 6. Earlier, some of the on-board computers had been using Scientific Linux, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone. While not the newest version of Debian, Debian 7 has just been released, Debian is nothing if not well-tested and reliable. 

While Linux has been used on the ISS ever since its launch (PDF link) and for NASA ground operations almost since the day Linus Torvalds created it, it hasn't seen that much use on PCs in space. "Things really clicked," said Chuvala in an interview, "after we came to understand how Linux views the world, the interconnectedness of how one thing affects another. You need that worldview. I have quite a bit of Linux experience, but to see others who were really getting it, that was exciting."

In addition to appearing on in-flight laptops, Linux is also running Robonaut (R2), the first humanoid robot in space. Currently on the station and experimental mode, R2 is meant to carry out tasks too dangerous or tedious for astronauts.

To help astronauts and IT specialists get up to speed, NASA is relying on The Linux Foundation for training. As Chuvala explained, "NASA is as heterogeneous as it gets".

"They had a heavy Debian Linux deployment, but also various versions of RHEL/Centos. Because our training is flexible to a variety of distributions, we're able to address all those different environments in a single training session. No other training organization can provide that."

And, I might add, no other operating system is as flexible as Linux. From supercomputers to robots to desktops, NASA is finding that Linux is the answer.

Related stories

• NASA to bag asteroid; send astronauts to visit

• NASA fixes bug that put Curiosity Mars rover on standby

• Ubuntu 13.04 Review: Linux for the average Joe or Jane

• The new Debian Linux 7.0 is now available

The Debian Linux distribution isn't a ground-breaking Linux. If you want a cutting-edge distribution, Fedora Linux is the one for you. After all, Debian 7 uses the over-a-year-old Linux 3.2 kernel as its basis, while Linux 3.9 is the newest release. On the other hand, if what you want is a stable, well-tested distribution, then Debian will fit your needs.

That said, Debian 7.0 boasts many new features, while including many older ones. For example, besides having additional CPU support for the IBM System z mainframe and ARMv7, Debian still supports obsolete architectures as MIPS and PowerPC. If you want to keep an old system running Linux, you should still look at Debian first.

With this update, Debian also supports multiple architectures (multiarch) on the same machine. Typically, you'd use this to support 32-bit and 64-bit programs on the same computer.

That's not to say that Debian doesn't come with up-to-date features. For instance, Debian is cloud friendly. It includes built-in support for OpenStack suite and the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP), allowing you to deploy your own private cloud infrastructure. Debian images are also provided on the major public cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, and Google Compute Engine.

In most ways, though, while Debian includes newer software, it usually doesn't support the newest versions. So, while like most Linux distributions, Debian has switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffce for its office suite, Debian is supporting LibreOffice 3.5 instead of the recently released LibreOffice 4.0.

That said, Debian does support the "newish" GNOME 3.4 instead of GNOME 2.x as its primary desktop. It also supports KDE 4.8.4, Xfce 4.8, and LXDE as optional interfaces. Well aware of how controversial the GNOME 3.x shell is, Debian also enables you to get a GNOME 2.30-style interface by selecting the "GNOME Classic" session at the login prompt. You can also then customize it to look and work more like GNOME 2.x by using the hidden alt + right-click combination.

Want to see it for yourself? Debian 7 is now available for download and installation. However, there are currently no live images that will let you try Debian on your PC without installing it. These should be available in the next few days.

In addition, while Debian now supports installation and booting on 64-bit PCs using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), it does not support any installation workaround for Windows 8 PC's Secure Boot. Thus, to install Debian on a PC that came with Windows 8 pre-installed, you must disable Secure Boot before booting the system from your PC's UEFI settings menu.

Related stories

• Debian 7.0 Wheezy: Hands on with a pre-release build

• Linux 3.9 kernel release offers SSD caching and server performance improvements

• Torvalds clarifies Linux's Windows 8 Secure Boot position

• A look at Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 201303

• 2013: Installing Linux on Windows 8 PC is still a pain

This is, of course, work that only the most advanced homebrew inventors will want to try. As the failures of Armand Hammer, Ivan Vanko, and Microsoft with Armor 8 have shown, it's not easy to build your own armor (BYOA). 

Still, with promising work with the integration of Google Glass, the Parallela supercomputer board, and Raspberry Pi, the first steps to Linux-powered fighting armor suits are being taken. It's rumored that Linus Torvalds, Linux's creator, is working on a Iron Penguin, a powered diving suit, to go with his Subsuface diving log program.

Of course, not everyone likes the idea of open-sourced armor. ZDNet writer Jason Perlow worried that such suits could be hacked for evil. As he said of Google Glass: "'Evil Glass' may include all the software necessary to turn a 14-year-old into a walking stealth surveillance device that would have been the envy of the Mossad or China's Ministry of State Security." Now imagine what that same 14-year old could do with repulser rays and rockets.

It may be a while yet before armored penguin-suited developers are patrolling the skies of Silicon Valley. Two major technology problems remain to be solved.

First, power sufficient to enable such suits for more than a few seconds still require Stark Industry proprietary arc reactor technology. While some have suggested that the Tesseract, aka the Cosmic Cube, could be reverse-engineered for a power source, it's known that the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (SHIELD) discourages any such research. 

In addition, no current publicly available artificial intelligence (AI) technology can match with Stark's Just A Rather Very Intelligent System (JARVIS), which is required for wear and run such suits. Still, open-source developers have shown that they're up to any challenge, and we soon hope to see the first Linux-enabled Iron Penguin kits. 

With a tip of the hat to Jillian Scharr, whose story on how real-world media would cover Tony Stark/Iron Man inspired this piece. 

Until now, the Nook had only a comparatively small application store. With this 2.1 software update, Nook HD+ users will have access to the full Google Play Store software library of 700,000 apps. In addition, they'll be able to buy and play music from Google Music, videos, and even ebooks. Yes, that means you'll be able to buy apps, books, and movies from either the Nook Store or the Google Play Store.

B&N is making this radical move for a very simple reason: It needs to reclaim its vanishing market share. According to IDC's first-quarter tablet market numbers, the Nook has fallen out of the top five tablets, with Amazon now claiming the third spot.

CEO William Lynch explained that consumers want all-purpose tablets, not simple e-readers. "We saw coming off holiday, the market moved to multifunction tablets. Consumer research showed us the breadth of applications available is really critical." Of course, some people saw the death of all but the cheapest dedicated e-reader years ago.

Another reason why Barnes & Noble is making this move, as Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu speculated in February, is because in the highly competitive tablet market, where "extras like the depth of apps are very important", B&N didn't have the funding and expertise needed to compete "against companies like Apple and Google, which literally have unlimited resources".

The bottom line is that Barnes & Noble was losing money on the Nook. Lynch also said, during the February earnings call, "Partnerships are one of the key strategies for growth for our Nook digital content business, and we are encouraged by the status and breadth of discussions we're in the midst of. Even with the decline in Nook unit sales in Q3, we grew digital content sales 7 percent, so we've demonstrated we can grow our content business without having to grow hardware sales." This software update clearly shows that going forward, B&N is partnering with Google.

At one time, it appeared that Barnes & Noble was going to partner with Microsoft and create a Windows 8-powered Nook. This move appears to have come to nothing except for a much-needed $300-million investment in B&N by Microsoft. What Microsoft is getting out of this deal is difficult to see.

As for Nook users, you can either wait for the update, which will be automatically downloaded to devices that are registered and connected to wi-fi, beginning on May 3, or download it manually. If you elect to do it yourself, you have two options.

The more difficult way is to download the update to your Windows PC or Mac and then flash your 7-inch Nook HD or 10-inch Nook HD+ over a USB connection. It's easier to simply connect your Nook to a wi-fi hotspot, tap the Settings icon in the Status bar at the top of your screen, tap on All Settings, then tap on Device Information, and check to see that your software version matches the number at the top of this page. If it doesn't, tap on Software version and then tap on the Check for updates button. Be sure to follow the on-screen instructions, and do not turn-off your Nook while it's downloading or installing the update. This update is not available for the Nook Tablet or other earlier models.

Will this update work for Barnes & Noble? It's too early to say. It will, however, clearly work for Nook HD and HD+ users who want to get the most from their e-readers/tablets.

Related stories

• A $99 Kindle Fire would annihilate the Android tablet competition

• Microsoft's $300 million Nook investment already looks like a clunker

• Barnes & Noble's flawed approach to the Nook

• Apple top dog in tablet satisfaction, Amazon No. 2

• Nexus 7 tablet successor to arrive in July

Gluster, for those of you who haven't used it, is primarily about the Gluster file system (GlusterFS). Acquired by Red Hat in 2011, GlusterFS is an open-source network-attached storage (NAS) system that can be used both for virtual and cloud systems (PDF link). As such, it's positioned to be used to address big data problems.

As John Mark Walker, Red Hat's Gluster Community leader, explained at the Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco in mid-May 2013:

Storage is morphing and merging with a host of other technologies. If you look at the industry trends that make up the open hybrid cloud, elastic, automated storage is quickly being recognized as an intrinsic part of any cloud architecture. The problem is, as with many technologies, those responsible for deploying these open hybrid clouds are discovering that the traditional, proprietary approaches don't scale. That in order to have an open hybrid cloud, they need an open hybrid storage platform that's agile enough to support their data center's rapid growth.

Historically, compute was the sexy part of cloud computing, while storage was the backwater that nobody really cared about. And then storage requirements started to exceed the ability of operators to keep pace, and suddenly storage was recognized as something that needed to be just as elastic as everything else. The problem was, storage means data, and nobody can afford to lose data. If you lose compute resources, spinning those up is easy, and you can continue wherever you left off when the old compute node died. But that implies that there's a storage layer underneath allowing you to preserve the state of all of your virtualized machines and apps. If that goes away, you better have some mechanisms in place that allow you to quickly recover. So, in our brave, new, open hybrid cloud world, you must have an open storage counterpart that's baked into your data center architecture.

Now Red Hat wants to expand Gluster "from a tightly-controlled open core project to an open-source ecosystem with a rapidly growing number of projects and contributors." To make that happen, the Gluster Community now includes the Gluster Community Forge. This is a Gitorious-based collaborative development environment where "like-minded developers and organizations can incubate, develop and collaborate on new open software-defined storage projects. The Gluster Community Forge aims to accelerate the growth of community-driven innovation around GlusterFS and greatly enhance developer and user collaboration."

New projects in the Gluster Community Forge include an HDFS Plugin, pmux, file-based mapReduce (which is a core part of Hadoop), SAMBA integration, and Dispersed Volume.

In a statement, Walker said, “The Gluster Community Forge and project expansion marks a significant milestone for the Gluster Community. We continue to build momentum globally, growing from a single, open core project to a global open-source community with contributions by individual engineers, educational and research communities, and organizations. Similar to way the Fedora Community shaped software-defined compute, the goal of the Gluster Community is to transform software-defined storage.”

Want to give this community development site a try? You can create your own software-defined storage project at the site.

Related Stories:

• Red Hat embraces Hadoop and big data
• Red Hat's details storage platforms for cloud, big data era
• Red Hat throws its hat into the Big Data ring
• Red Hat moves into Big Data with Storage Software Appliance

The Google Glass release candidate code is available within a Linux tarball, an archived, compressed file format. Like any Linux-based operating system, the Google Glass Android kernel is licensed under the GPLv2.

The software, which is based on Android 4.04, still doesn't have a permanent public home. Google promises that eventually, the code will be kept to "git next to all other android kernel source releases".

Before this, Google had released some technical details on the Google Glass hardware that the new kernel is supporting. The first Google Glass devices come with 16GB-flash onboard storage. There are 4GBs of this reserved for the operating system and drivers, while 12GBs of it can be used by users. This personal storage is, in turn, synced with its users' Google Drive cloud storage. By default, Glass will automatically upload location data, along with video and photos to Google+.

The built-in camera can take photos at 5 megapixels, and video at 720p. The audio uses a bone conduction transducer system instead of earphones. Glass also supports 802.11b/g wi-fi and Bluetooth for networking and detached device support. To save battery, which Google claims can last for up to 24 hours, 802.11n isn't supported yet.

Hackers have also discovered that Glass uses an OMAP 4430 CPU. This is a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor running at either 1 to 1.2GHz. This, in turn, supports 1GB RAM. Approximately 340MBs of this is reserved for the operating system and drivers.

All this, combined with the release of the Google Glass "Mirror" application programming interface (API) developer kit, gives software developers and hackers alike everything they need to start writing programs for Glass, and for that matter, even start working on Google Glass clones. Google Glass is moving at an amazing rapid clip from engineering prototype to soon-to-be common device.

Related stories

• The Google Glass genie can't be shoved back in the bottle

• Beyond Google Glass: 2034

Need to find a file? A program? Photos? Anything at all? Then, Ubuntu's easy-to-use Dash search mechanism is for you. 

Ubuntu has, for a long time, offered its own app store: The Ubuntu Software Center. This is a very handy feature and lets you find and install new programs without any real work. 

Many Linux users don't want to use proprietary software. But, if you're not a purist and you want to see Adobe Flash videos or listen to MP3s, then Ubuntu makes it easy to add that functionality with one click in the Ubuntu Software Center. 

Do you ever get tired of having to install all your same old applications on every new desktop? I know I do. Ubuntu has an answer for that. You can set Ubuntu up so that all your apps automatically sync on all of your Ubuntu desktops. This can be quite handy. 

Ubuntu comes with a host of ready to go applications for most day-to-day work and fun. If you have your favorite apps with Ubuntu, you're in luck. You can easily find and install your choice of programs. 

Unlike some operating systems I could name, Ubuntu still makes it easy to work with both local and networked file systems using an interface that pretty much anyone who's ever touched a computer will know how to use. 

By default, Ubuntu uses Firefox for its browser. Of course, if you want to use something else, Ubuntu also makes it simple to switch to another one of your preference. Ubuntu is all about freedom of choice. 

True, many hard-core Linux users have turned against Ubuntu in recent years. Or, to be more precise, they turned against it when Ubuntu's parent company, Canonical, switched from the GNOME 2.x desktop to its Unity desktop interface. They have a point. Unity doesn't give Linux experts the kind of control over the operating system that they get from desktops such as KDE, MATE, and, my own personal favorite, Cinnamon.

However, Unity is not a user-experience failure like Windows 8's Metro. Instead, it's very good at what it sets out to do: Provide a user-interface (UI) that's easy enough for an 80-year old to use and provide an interface that's designed to work equally well for desktops, tablets, and smartphones. In short, Ubuntu is not for Linux power users, it's for all users.

Ubuntu 13.04: The Linux desktop for everyone (Gallery)

That's very clear in Ubuntu 13.04. While this new version doesn't offer a lot of new features, it has done a nice job of cleaning and speeding up the ones it had. In particular, I noticed how this works on a review system, a 2008-vintage Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, has 6GBs of RAM, and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. Unity itself was much faster than before on the same box.

That's because Ubuntu spent a lot time making performance improvements to Unity. These include: "reduced memory consumption and a great number of small UI fixes to bring a better overall shell experience. Those are like being typo-tolerant in the dashboard when searching for an application, using the mouse scroll wheel on a launcher icon to switch between applications, or better available third-party device handling."

Of course, if you really want Ubuntu, and you really can't stand Unity, there are a wide variety of Ubuntu 13.04 variants with different desktops. These include: Kubuntu, with KDE; Xubuntu, with Xfce; and Lubuntu, with LXDE.  

One change I didn't care for is that Ubuntu versions now only have one workspace available by default. If, like me, you want to more than one workspace, you can add more with the Behavior tab in the Appearance panel of System Settings.

Under the hood, you'll find the Ubuntu Linux kernel 3.8.0-19.29. This, in turn, is based on the 3.8.8 Linux kernel.

For applications, Ubuntu 13.04 supports LibreOffice 4.0 for its office suite. It also includes Firefox 20 for the Web browser and Thunderbird 17 for email. Rather use something else, I'll take Chrome and Evolution for my Web browser and e-mail thank you very much, you can easily get more applications using the Ubuntu Software Center. This is Ubuntu's native app store. I should add that there's a known problem with installing Chrome on Ringtail. This is expected to be fixed with the release of Chrome 28.

One eternal complaint about Linux is that "There aren't any games!" Actually, there always were lots of them. Now that Steam is producing games for Linux in general, and Ubuntu in specific, that canard contains less truth than ever. Heck, Dell will even sell you an Alienware Ubuntu-powered gaming PC these days.

How to install the Steam gaming client on Ubuntu (Gallery)

I've been using Ubuntu 13.04 in its beta forms for several weeks now. I'm a Linux power users' power user so for my own use I still prefer other distributions. In particular, I use Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, with its Cinnamon interface. But, if you just want an excellent desktop that anyone can use without a lot of blood, sweat, and toil, then Ubuntu 13.04 is for you.

It's easy. It's secure. It will run on systems as slow as 1GHz with a single GB of RAM. True, it won't run Windows applications, but for 90 percent of people it will run all the applications they'll ever need. In short, Ubuntu is the operating system I recommend most to most people.

Ready to give it a try? You can download Ubuntu now. What you can't do, alas, is try it from within Windows. Wubi, which would let you run Ubuntu as if were a Windows application, is no longer supported.

In addition, if you are stuck with a Windows 8 PC, you will also have trouble running Ubuntu, or any other operating system, because of Secure Boot. This, Windows "security measure" locks out alternative operating systems.

While there are ways of hacking Secure Boot to allow you to install and run Ubuntu and other Linux systems, they're not easy to use. If you have a Windows 8 system, your easiest move is to deactivate Secure Boot using your motherboard's UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) settings. Unfortunately, every motherboard vendor uses a different way to turn Secure Boot off so I can' give you a universal fix for this problem.

Related Stories:

• Ubuntu 13.04 goes beta
• Ubuntu 13.04 release: Laying the groundwork for OS' phone and tablet future
• Ubuntu Touch betas are ready for testing
• Dell now offering Ubuntu Linux OS as option for Alienware X51 gaming PC
• Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) review

On April 23, SkySQL announced that it had signed a merger agreement with Monty Program Ab, MariaDB's parent company. The aim of this new company, which will go under the name SkySQL, is to develop MariaDB into a truly interoperable "NewSQL" open-source database in collaboration with its customers, partners, and the community. The community side will continue as the MariaDB Foundation.

According to the newly merged company:

MariaDB is truly open source and is compatible with the MySQL database while providing new extensions and features. Customers and users move to MariaDB for its performance. It is uniquely capable of interfacing with NoSQL database systems like Cassandra and LevelDB, as well as to access data in other formats thanks to pluggable storage engines. This allows customers to leverage the capabilities of the latest database technologies as well as access data in legacy systems without expensive and risky database migrations. This merger brings cloud and big data capabilities together, which will enable the new company to become an interface for fellow open-source technology providers.

MariaDB will continue to be open source, according to Simon Phipps, the new CEO of the MariaDB Foundation. SkySQL is also joining the Foundation. Phipps said, "It is a pleasure to have a company representing the reunited core team of our code base joining the Foundation at its inception. The MariaDB Foundation welcomes SkySQL as a member. Throughout this time of change for MariaDB, they have been a great source of encouragement, and the commitment today's news shows to the MariaDB Project is especially welcome."

Michael 'Monty' Widenius, author of MySQL and MariaDB, said in a statement:

I'm ensuring that the MariaDB project will remain 'open source forever', while knowing that enterprise and community users of both the MySQL and MariaDB databases will benefit from best-in-breed products, services, and support provided by SkySQL. And who doesn't want the best for their kids?

Patrik Sallner, SkySQL's CEO, added in the same statement: "By bringing on board the talented MariaDB developer team, SkySQL proposes a comprehensive partnership to leading open source database users. We are committed to develop MariaDB into the most versatile open source database. We look forward to working with the MariaDB Foundation as they engage with developers and users of MariaDB, as well as with their important mission of ensuring the independence of the MariaDB project itself."

Now, you might think, "That's all very well and good, but Oracle is a multi-billion Goliath of a company. How can SkySQL hope to compete?" Actually, MariaDB, its primary DBMS is already doing extremely well.

Major Linux distributions, such as Fedora and openSUSE, are moving to MariaDB. It's not just fellow open-source bodies, though, that are supporting MariaDB. WikiMedia announced on April 22 that they have completed the migration of the English and German Wikipedias to MariaDB. Why? Because, MariaDB is faster.

Wikipedia site architect, Asher Feldman, wrote:

For our most common query type, 95th percentile times over an 8-hour period dropped from 56ms to 43ms, and the average from 15.4ms to 12.7ms. 50th percentile times remained a bit better with the 5.1-Facebook build over the sample period, 0.185ms vs. 0.194ms. Many query types were 4-15 percent faster with MariaDB 5.5.30 under production load, a few were 5 percent slower, and nothing appeared aberrant beyond those bounds.

With those kind of performance gains, Oracle, after its poor last quarter, may be the company that really needs to worry.

Sallner will lead the merged company as CEO, while Widenius will be the MariaDB Foundation's CTO. The merger is expected to close in about four months. Commercial terms were not disclosed.

Related Stories:

• Oracle who? Fedora & openSUSE will replace MySQL with MariaDB

• Oracle rebuffs MySQL security update criticisms

• Is it time for Oracle to donate MySQL to Apache?

• Wikipedia moving from MySQL to MariaDB

• Open-source MariaDB, a MySQL fork, challenges Oracle

Nicholas Skaggs, a Canonical software engineer and quality assurance community coordinator, wrote, "I'm happy to announce the Ubuntu touch images are now available for testing on the isotracker. And further, the images are now Raring based! [That is to say, they're based on the soon to be released Ubuntu 13.04 codebase.] As such, the Ubuntu Touch team is asking for folks to try out the new images on their devices and ensure there are no regressions or other issues."

Specifically, there are four officially supported devices and images for each of them: Nexus 7, grouper; Galaxy Nexus, maguro; Nexus 4, mako; and Nexus 10, manta. These are all early releases and I recommend that only power Ubuntu and smartphone/tablet users try them at this point.

To install them, you'll need an Ubuntu-based computer and to follow the installation instructions closely. If, as is almost certain at this point in development, you find a bug, Skaggs said, "use the instructions to report them and add it to your result. Never used the tracker before? Take a look at this handy guide or watch the YouTube version".

"Once all the kinks and potential issues are worked out (your feedback requested!), the Raring based images will become the default, and, moving forward, the team will continue to provide daily images and participate in testing milestones," concluded Skaggs.

Don't have a Nexus device? In a note, Skaggs added that while there are "No official images, people have been busy porting! Have a look here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices". These devices range from the Dell Streak 7 to the Kindle Fire to Motorola Droid 4 to a wide variety of Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets.

More supported devices will be coming. On Google Plus, Jono Bacon, Canonical's community manager, wrote:

As part of our Ubuntu Touch community growth and outreach, the codebase has been ported by our community to and working on 40 handsets, with 25 handsets in progress, and across 19 different brands. There are 4,800+ posts in the XDA Ubuntu Touch forum, and our app developer community has already grown to 1,650 members here on Google+ with a huge variety of apps in development, and we have only just got started.

The revolution is getting its wheels rolling, come and join us and be part of building a world class convergent platform. Together, we can do this.

Starting today, independent developers and fearless early adopters can judge for themselves if Ubuntu will indeed be able to succeed on smartphones and tablets.

Related stories

• Ubuntu 13.04 goes beta

• If Ubuntu wants to succeed on tablets and smartphones, the waiting game must stop

• Canonical reveals Ubuntu tablet plans

• Ubuntu smartphone developer preview arrives next week

• The 5 things you need to know now about Ubuntu on phones

For example, at the Summit, the simple fact that The Linux Foundation was successful in getting such mortal business enemies as Big Switch, Cisco, and Juniper on the same page in the OpenDaylight Project to open-source software defined networking (SDN) is amazing. It's not just lip-service to finding a common way to implement SDN's core OpenFlow protocol, the members are putting in tens of millions of dollars in resources for code that will be openly shared with everyone — including non-members.

Why are they doing this? As executive director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin said, OpenDaylight members can share on a "level playing field where no single actor can dominate the process. They understand that they can gain more by working together in an open-source way with open-source governance, while still competing in the marketplace".

The same is true in the automobile industry. As Matt Jones, a senior technical specialist for Jaguar Land Rover infotainment systems said at the Summit, competitors, such as Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota, are working together on common operating system and application programming interfaces (APIs) because they can focus on delivering applications and not worry about operating system infrastructure. "When was the last time you bought a car based on its operating system?" Jones asked.

Away from the conference, the recently released survey of more than 800 open-source-savvy business professionals revealed that they see the most important open-source trend in the next two to three years to be... on the desktop? In the cloud? At Microsoft!? No, no, and, oh my, no! Growth of open-source knowledge and culture in academia ranked highest overall.

Why? That's easy. Linux and open source needs people. As the recent Linux Jobs Survey found, managers from corporations, small and medium businesses (SMBs), government, and staffing agencies want Linux professionals — and they needed them yesterday. As Jon Corbet said in his Linux weather report at the Summit, only about 10 percent of Linux kernel developers are now working on their own, and the only reason they're not working for a company that supports their Linux programming is because they don't want to. "If you can get code in the Linux kernel, you can have a job anytime you want."

Another result of this trend is that companies are also becoming more supportive of actively working with the OSS community. Their first reason for doing this is to reduce their IT costs, but the second reason now is to attract good developers and IT staff. If a company actively supports OSS, the logic is that it will be easier to attract and keep top technology talent.

Other important trends were: The adoption of open-source software (OSS) into non-technical segments, 86.3 percent; OSS Development methods adopted inside businesses; increased awareness of OSS by consumers, 71.9 percent; and growth of industry specific communities, 63.3 percent.

As for which industry will be most impacted by OSS over the next 2-3 years, government was ranked No. 1 with 35 percent of respondents, followed by health/medical/life sciences in a distant No. 2 with 15 percent, Media in No. 3 with 13 percent, Financial No. 4 with 9 percent, and Automotive at No. 5 with 8 percent.

One interesting change from the last survey was how important people ranked the factors that matter to open source adoption in business:

1. Better Quality

2. Freedom from vendor lock-in

3. Flexibility, access to libraries of software, extensions, add-ons

4. Elasticity, ability to scale at little cost or penalty

5. Superior security

6. Pace of innovation

7. Lower costs

8. Access to source code

The 2012 survey results had Freedom at number one, Flexibility at number two, and Quality in third place. One surprising result here is how low "access to source code" ranked — it ranked lowest of all the factors, with 14 percent ranking it unimportant. Historically, code access has always ranked as the most important to free software supporters.

Another interesting result was how this group perceived the relative importance of open source vs. proprietary alternatives. Many people believe that low total cost of ownership (TCO) is the single most important reason companies turn to OSS. It's important, but it's not number one.

Instead, the top three are: Competitive features/technical capabilities, security concerns, and then TCO. Oddly enough, "Formal Commercial Vendor Support", which traditionally has been seen as a vital requirement for enterprises, ranked dead last. It would seem that businesses that use OSS are finding that they don't need external technical support the way they historically have with proprietary software.

Specifically when it came to OSS vs. proprietary in terms of which were better, the survey found that while, as always, operating systems and development tools were the top two, the number three spot varied according to what role a company played in the economy. Vendors saw cloud taking third, but non-vendors saw mobile in the three spot, while larger companies (1,000 and up employees) saw OSS taking the third spot in big data. The end conclusion is that there's great interest in OSS solutions in cloud, mobile, and big data in coming years.

What does it all mean? In a statement, Tim Yeaton, president and CEO of Black Duck Software said: "The 2013 Future of Open Source Survey results point to a cultural shift in business, where companies are employing a new level of sophistication as they work within OSS communities to attract talented developers and influence projects while maintaining good citizenship in the community. The technology, as well as the tenets of open source, are being adopted, the surest indicator of the positive changes that can come with OSS."

Related stories

• Red Hat pushes open source cloud with OpenStack distro

• Five out of six developers now using or deploying open source

• Sears eschews IBM/Oracle for open source and self build

• Winners and Losers in Business Open-Source Software

That was the message Matt Jones brought to the Linux Foundation's Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, California. Jones is a senior technical specialist for Jaguar Land Rover infotainment systems and VP of a non-profit automotive industry group driving adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open-source development platform, GenIVI Alliance.

Jones said that Jaguar Land Rover had asked their customers what they wanted, and they didn't want much — just a full-featured home entertainment network in their cars. Of course, while you can put a HDTV-quality display on the front-dashboard, providing the high-speed networking in city traffic is a problem well outside the automobile industry's purview.

What the automotive businesses can do, and are working toward in the Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a Linux Foundation sub group, is providing a common operating system and application programming interfaces (APIs). With this, car manufacturers can focus on delivering applications and not worry about operating system infrastructure. After all, as Jones said, "When was the last time you bought a car based on its operating system?"

During his keynote, Jones announced that AGL had released a prototype IVI & remote vehicle interaction operating system and application development package. This is a Linux-based open-source image for creating an IVI system along with a controller area network (CAN), a vehicle bus standard, API; a HTML5 application framework; and sample user interface.

Jones said, "We [Jaguar Land Rover] are involved with AGL to enable open source and Linux within automotive as a whole, and focus on making it easier for developers with reference hardware and software platforms. Such technology has long been available in lots of vehicles, but nobody has given it away before". So if you're ready to "hack" a car, the AGL has the tools you'll need.

AGL and Jaguar Land Rover are also giving developers reason to start car hacking. The pair have announced a developer contest: 2013 AGL User Experience Contest. The winner will get the chance to work with the AGL and Jaguar Land Rover.

There are three categories: Best user experience, best visual appearance, and best new concept or additional feature. The contest runs April 15 — May 17, and winners will be announced at the Automotive Linux Summit in Tokyo at the end of May. If you want to work with Linux and cars, this seems like an ideal chance to get in on the ground floor.

Related stories

• Tizen Linux heads for vehicles as car makers and tech firms form workgroup

• The Open-Source Car

Linux has long been the number one supercomputer operating system. But while you could build your own Linux supercomputer using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, it wouldn't be terribly fast. You needed hardware that could support massively parallel computing — the cornerstone of modern supercomputing. 

What Adapteva has done is create a credit-card sized parallel-processing board. This comes with a dual-core ARM A9 processor and a 64-core Epiphany Multicore Accelerator chip, along with 1GB of RAM, a microSD card, two USB 2.0 ports, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, and an HDMI connection. If all goes well, by itself, this board should deliver about 90 GFLOPS of performance, or — in terms PC users understand — about the same horse-power as a 45GHz CPU.

This board will use Ubuntu Linux 12.04 for its operating system. To put all this to work, the platform reference design and drivers are now available.

Why would you want a $99 supercomputer?

Well, besides the fact that it would be really cool, Adapteva CEO Andreas Olofsson explained:

Historically, serial processing [conventional computing] improved so quickly that in most applications, there was no need for massively parallel processing. Unfortunately, serial processing performance has now hit a brick wall, and the only practical path to scaling performance in the future is through parallel processing. To make parallel software applications ubiquitous, we will need to make parallel hardware accessible to all programmers, create much more productive parallel programming methods, and convert all serial programmers to parallel programmers.

And of course, Olofsson added, to "make parallel computing accessible to everyone so we can speed up the adoption of parallel processing in the industry", the Parallella had to be created. Olofsson admitted that his company couldn't have done it by itself. The project required, and got, the support of other hardware OEMs, including Xilinx, Analog Devices, Intersil, Micron, Microchip, and Samtec. The companies have enabled Adapteva to bring its first per-production boards to San Francisco, and soon, to its eager programmer customers.

Related stories

• Chipmaker takes to Kickstarter to become the Raspberry Pi of parallel computing

• Fast, Faster, Fastest: Linux rules supercomputing

Xen, which is now 10-years old, is an open source virtualization platform licensed under the GPLv2 with a similar governance structure to the Linux kernel. Citrix has been Xen's commercial backer since 2007. However, as the project experiences contributions from an increasingly diverse group of companies, Xen is looking to The Linux Foundation to be a neutral forum for providing guidance and facilitating a collaborative network. This new project is going by the old name: Xen Project. 

While many users may not know Xen, many use it every day. Xen is the basis of not only many virtualization programs, but it's also the foundation of many cloud services, including the biggest cloud provider of all, Amazon Web Services.

According to the Foundation, "Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. By spreading the collaborative DNA of the largest collaborative software development project in history, The Linux Foundation provides the essential collaborative and organizational framework so project hosts can focus on innovation and results. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects span the enterprise, mobile and embedded markets and are backed by many of the largest names in computing."

The following companies will be contributing to and guiding the Xen Project as founding members are: Amazon Web Services, AMD, Bromium, Calxeda, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, Google, Intel, Oracle, Samsung and Verizon.

Critix will continue to play an important role. “The Linux Foundation will provide the necessary forum and guidance for the Xen Project to be adapted by the diverse group of contributors who are taking advantage of the project’s many benefits,” said Peder Ulander, VP of Open Source Solutions at Citrix. “We’re committed to the Xen Project and look forward to continuing our active participation and collaborating with companies across industries to advance Xen Project for multiple applications.”

Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation, said, “The Xen Project is an important open-source community project that provides valuable technology to the entire Linux and open source ecosystem. It’s a natural move for us to help nurture collaboration to advance this technology.”

In addition to providing the necessary framework to support the Xen Project community’s growth, The Linux Foundation also supports the KVM community by hosting KVM Forum and other activities that support the project. Zemlin said that advances in virtualization technologies are key to the ongoing growth of Linux in the enterprise and cloud computing. The open source model thrives when users can exercise freedom of choice, so supporting a range of open source virtualization platforms and facilitating collaboration across open source communities is a priority for The Linux Foundation.