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Microsoft has announced the availability of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro as a free download in the Windows Store. It can be installed on any Windows Insider build, said Microsoft Senior Program Manager Rich Turner. There are some distinct advantages to using the Windows Store version of the Ubunt...

Malware targeting Linux systems is growing, largely due to a proliferation of devices created to connect to the Internet of Things. That is one of the findings in a report WatchGuard Technologies released last week. The report, which analyzes data gathered from more than 26,000 appliances worldwide,...

Microsoft has decided to expand its support for Linux containers in the next release of Windows Server. Linux containers and workloads will work natively on Windows Server, said Erin Chapple, general manager for the server operating system. The company also will extend Window Server's Hyper-V isolat...

Gender bias affects contributions to the open source community, according to a paper published Monday. Female programmers' suggestions for code changes in open source projects -- called "pull requests" -- were accepted more often than those of their male counterparts when gender was unspecified. How...

There are more than three dozen previously unknown flaws that pose a potential threat to consumers using some Samsung TVs, watches and phones, a security researcher has reported. Hackers could exploit the vulnerabilities found in Samsung's Tizen OS to gain remote access and control of a variety of t...

Malware has been discovered preinstalled on 36 Android phones belonging to two companies, security software maker Check Point reported. "In all instances, the malware was not downloaded to the device as a result of the users' use -- it arrived with it," noted Oren Koriat, a member of Check Point's ...

Can a new smartwatch operating system based on Linux breathe some new life into the smart wearables market? Florent Revest hopes so. Revest, a French computer science student, on Wednesday announced the alpha release of AsteroidOS, an open source operating system that will run on several Android sma...

Two leaders in the field of artificial intelligence have announced that they're open-sourcing their AI platforms. After investing in building rich simulated environments to serve as laboratories for AI research, Google's DeepMind Lab on Saturday said it would open the platform for the broader resear...

Cyanogen, the maker of an alternative version of Android, on Tuesday announced that it was going modular. Future releases of its open source firmware product will not support a full stack of the Android OS. The new modular setup will bring a slew of benefits to phone makers and developers, according...

Project Noto, one of Google's most ambitious undertakings ever, has reached a milestone. Noto now supports 800 languages and 100 writing scripts, the companies announced last week. Google and Monotype launched the open source initiative to create a typeface family that supports all the languages in ...

Popularity is becoming a two-edged sword for Linux. The open source operating system has become a key component of the Internet's infrastructure, and it's also the foundation for the world's largest mobile OS, Google's Android. Widespread use of the OS, though, has attracted the attention of hackers...

Bitdefender on Monday released a free decryption tool designed to wrest data from the grip of a rare type of ransomware that's been plaguing Linux servers. Details for performing the decryption are available on the company's website. Essentially, the solution takes advantage of a flaw in the ransomw...

Eurecom researchers recently developed an Android app that can monitor the network traffic of other apps to alert users of suspicious or malicious activity. With more than 1.2 million applications in the Google Play store, there are multiple programs for performing a particular task. That can make c...

Open sourcing the code for Microsoft Windows is "definitely possible," Microsoft engineer Mark Russinovich reportedly said last week during a panel discussion at ChefConf. The company isn't acknowledging any movement in that direction as yet, but Russinovich's remarks are a strong indication that th...

Security questions recently have been raised about Docker, a promising technology for running applications in the cloud. Docker is an open source initiative that allows applications to be run in containers for flexibility and mobility only dreamt of in the past. "Since the 70s, programmers have been...

Half a dozen companies this week launched the Open Interconnect Consortium to define the connectivity requirements and improve the interoperability of some 200 billion devices expected to make up the Internet of Things by 2020. The consortium will focus on defining a common communications framework ...

Google has brought its Chrome Web browser to the Android Market. A beta edition of the browser is available from the app shop now for free, but since its operation is restricted to the latest version of the mobile operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, only about 1 percent of Android's millions of us...

The proliferation of smartphones has created headaches for security-minded IT departments everywhere, but a Motorola subsidiary aims to give system administrators more peace of mind with a solution for managing Android phones in business environments. Three Laws Mobility, purchased by Motorola eight...

You need spend only five minutes with Motorola's Devour smartphone to realize how appropriate its moniker is. It's an information gourmand's delight. What sets Devour apart from other Android phones is Motorola's MotoBlur software. The phone, which is offered by Verizon Wireless, allows you to funne...

One of the problems with smartphones up to now is that they behaved more like a computer than a cellphone. That's not the case with the Moment, Samsung's new smartphone based on Google's Android operating system. Android's use of a touchscreen for navigation and easy-to-use applications -- a la the ...