FREE FOR THE CODE

Way back in 2009, the Mozilla Phone concept began taking shape. The project — kickstarted by developer Billy May — eventually matured  into Seabird, a community-driven initiative to create an open web phone. A handful of Linux distributions like Webconverger and xPud have offered quick-boot Firefox access for years — and more recently, Sebastian wondered why we hadn’t yet seen an official Firefox OS to counter Google’s Chrome OS. Now, however, with the announcement of Boot to Gecko (B2G), Mozilla seems to be ready to get the ball rolling, with the noble aim of providing a truly open mobile operating system built upon standard web technologies. The hardware target will be handheld devices like tablets and smartphones, making Boot to Gecko more of a challenge to Android than Chrome OS (at least in their current incarnations). With internet use on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones exploding right now , the world will soon be ready for a full-on alternative OS for its future h

When it debuted this spring, Ubuntu 11.10 caused more than a few gasps from the Linux faithful. The introduction of the Unity as the new desktop interface marked a dramatic shift for the Ubuntu desktop experience, and it’s a change that many Canonical faithful weren’t too thrilled about. It’s always a balancing act for Canonical, of course. Ubuntu is far and away the most popular desktop Linux distribution, and its users are generally a savvy and opinionated bunch. Decisions like UI changes and switching default applications tend to draw plenty of debate from users — so they’re not taken lightly. Plenty of noise was made when Banshee became the default audio player in 11.04, but believe it or not a much bigger switch was also considered: the distribution’s default web browser. Canonical’s CEO Mark Shuttleworth, as it turns out, is a big fan of Google Chrome. In a discussion with Network World, Shuttleworth praises Google for the way Chrome performs on Linux. “You don’t often see tha