The H Roundup - Ubuntu 13.04, Debian 7 dated & first Firefox phones

Welcome to The H Roundup, your rapid review of the week with the most read news on The H, the security alerts and open source releases, and the essential feature articles – all in one quick-to-scan news item. This week: what's new in Ubuntu 13.04, Debian 7 coming soon, another Java security hole, the first Firefox OS devices, an alpha of Fedora 19, and holes in Cisco's routers.

Features

Fabian Scherschel has a look at what open source software projects can do to successfully raise money on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and also gives an overview of the new features in Ubuntu 13.04, "Raring Ringtail". Users looking to meet with like-minded people can find a list of open source and developer related events in May in The H's Community Calendar.

• Free's a crowd-funding
• What's new in Ubuntu 13.04
• The H Community Calendar - May 2013

Top News

Shortly after the latest Ubuntu version was released, Mark Shuttleworth also announced the code name for the next release in October. A new development version of the Ubuntu Touch images for phones and tablets also arrived and the Debian Project officially pinned down the release date for Debian Wheezy to next weekend.

• Ubuntu 13.04 arrives, Ubuntu 13.10 named
• 13.04 based Ubuntu Touch arrives with few changes
• Debian 7 to be released on the first weekend in May

A study released by Secunia shows how many different update systems users have to wrangle with on a daily basis, while a researcher from Emaze Networks further cemented the already bleak outlook on consumer router security. Java is once again affected by a security vulnerability and VirusTotal has gained the ability to scan network traffic in addition to performing virus scans on files.

• The update jungle: PC owners have to watch 24 sources for fixes
• Groundhog day for routers
• New Java security hole affects desktops and servers
• VirusTotal now analyses network traffic

Geeksphone has started selling the first Firefox OS phones, the BeagleBone Black board aims to take on the Raspberry Pi in the mini-computer market, and the KDE developers gathered in Germany to discuss the future of their desktop environment.

• Geeksphone Firefox OS phones now available
• BeagleBone Black aims to compete with Raspberry Pi
• The future of KDE: Wayland, Qt 5, uniform Plasma shell

Open Source Releases

Open source releases this week saw the ack tool expanded with new features, TokuDB open sourced their storage engine for MySQL, a new version of the Nightingale media player arrived with SoundCloud support, Joomla introduced tags, the NGINX web server got a number of new features, and GParted fixed a critical bug, but exposed a new one in the process.

• Ack 2.0 enhances the "grep for source code"
• MySQL storage engine TokuDB goes open source
• Nightingale 1.12 comes with SoundCloud add-on
• Joomla 3.1 plays tag with content
• NGINX serves up SPDY and more in 1.4.0
• PageSpeed arrives on NGINX to boost web speeds
• GParted 0.16 fixes critical bug, exposes new bug

The Fedora developers have released the first development version of the upcoming Fedora 19, code-named "Schrödinger's Cat".

• Box opens on first Fedora 19 alpha

Security Alerts

A remote PHP execution vulnerability in the popular WordPress plugins WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache has been fixed and Cisco has issued a security advisory that documents a number of vulnerabilities in its routers.

• WordPress cache plugins enabled remote PHP execution
• Critical bugs in Cisco's data centre hardware

For everything The H has published in the last week, check out the last seven days of news. To keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.

(fab)