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The acid test was not how much we liked it but on whether our Reglue Kids liked it. Working with a small sampling of 14 installations and different partition boot options, we gauged how well our KDE version did when compared against GNOME 3/GNOME Shell and Cinnamon. Each one of the 14 kids were asked to use all three environments and give us some feedback.

Since the Snowden leaks revealed that Microsoft has allegedly built back doors into Windows for the NSA, we’ve been saying that the spy agency’s actions are going to hurt the U.S. tech industry’s business abroad. Well, it’s started to happen. On Thursday, Reuters reported that India has decided to drop out of a planned partnership with Google designed to help voters access information.

Firefox OS has a couple of things going for it that the competition lacks. For one, it’s completely open, much more open than iOS and even more open than Android and Chrome. For two, it’s completely based on HTML5.

I wanted to be able to tell you that despite rollApp being in beta it’s pretty much ready to go. Unfortunately, I can’t, because it isn’t. There are some limitations that make using the site a deal breaker for most users. When the developers get those worked out, however, rollApp will be ready to be a major player in the world of online apps.

It’s been my experience that Redmond is loath to give away anything. But since the Android phone and tablet rampage, Microsoft is desperately looking for ways to catch up in the mobile sector. So what do they intend on doing? Well, they decided it might be a good idea to give away Windows Phone and Windows RT systems for free. They see this as a sure-fire way to combat Google’s hold on the mobile market.

Now that companies are closing-out their books on the old year, it’s becoming evident that Linux devices were a big hit in 2013.

On Friday, CNET’s Brooke Crothers reported that Chromebooks, those nifty laptops running Google’s Chrome OS that let the cloud do the heavy lifting, accounted for 21% of all laptop sales last year. As impressive as that may be, the numbers get even better when Android tablets are added to the mix. According to market research company NPD Group, January to November saw 1.76 million Chromebooks and Android tablets sold, up from only 400,000 during all of 2012.

This wasn’t the first time he had problems with his dad and his dad’s computer. It’s been a running gun battle between the two for quite a while. Nick is a Linux guy, but even with his dual degrees and six figure job, he can’t talk his dad into switching from Windows. He has put every safeguard on the computer he could and his dad still finds a way to mess it up. Mostly it’s from “games of chance” sites that he seems to enjoy visiting.

The biggest story to come down the wire this year ubdoubtedly had to do with Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s bag of dirty tricks. Even those of us who have long understood that the Internet isn’t necessarily a place to expect privacy were suprised at how deeply the NSA has managed to reach into the Internet. Odds are, if you’ve been using social networks, everything you’ve posted is now on file with the NSA. What’s worse, every email you’ve sent probably has a copy resting on a NSA server somewhere.

The last time I looked into my crystal ball, it told me to proceed with extreme caution if I invested in Google. Their business model was shaky at best. Needless to say, said crystal ball and I have parted company.

There’s plenty about Rockstar vs Everybody Android to remind me of the SCO fiasco. Enough so to make me wish we still had PJ and Groklaw to take care of the play-by-play. Last week, Google returned fire. Wouldn’t it be nice to have PJ’s take on this?

First the good news. According to security company Websense, the amount of phishing attempts we’re finding in our email dropped remarkably this year, from 1.12% of all email volume down to 0.5%. Now, the bad news. The folks doing the phishing are getting better at targeting their attempts, so they don’t need to send as many emails to hook their prey.

What were the ten best stories we published on FOSS Force this year? Well, that would depend on a lot of things, wouldn't it, such as who's asking? We could tell you what we think our ten best stories were this year, but we'll hold that until next week. Today we're going to look at the ten stories that got the most reads on our site this year.

Since 2005, with the exception of last year, I have “worked” every Christmas day. I accentuate “worked” because I am lucky enough to have a job that feels more like a hobby than it does labor. I give computers to kids who cannot afford them. What’s not to like? I plan to work some of Christmas morning this year too.

In October, 2000, when Microsoft was presumably working on what would become XP, they were hacked. Somebody broke into their systems and managed to at least look at source code for Windows and Office. The folks in Redmond dutifully called in the FBI, examined their code and found it hadn’t been compromised. Or so they said.

Target has announced that over 40 million customer credit card transactions have been hijacked since Black Friday. The data was stolen from transactions at the retailer’s brick and mortar stores. Online transactions are evidently not affected. All information contained in a credit card’s magnetic stripe has been compromised, enough information to make counterfeit cards.

Last week, we talked about just how important even your smallest contribution to FOSS might be. It doesn’t matter whether you occasionally spend time in forums helping others or if you submit code for review into the kernel. Everything you do goes into the sand pail. Eventually, everything you do filters down to the place it’s needed most: the everyday computer user.

Just three months ago, back in September, WordPress issued version 3.6.1 of their content management and blogging platform. Last week they issued 3.8. In between there was 3.7 and 3.7.1, the later release raising eyebrows when it included an automatic “minor point” upgrade feature that can’t be easily disabled.

This would seem to be a very important cautionary tale for anyone considering hiring Oracle for a major project. They’ve already taken at least $43 million from Oregon, with some sources putting the figure at closer to $90 million, yet they don’t bother to send their best people to design and build the project. Is that any way to treat a $40 million dollar client, even a government one?

If you think that Nokia is only concentrating on Windows handsets, think again. For a while now, the folks from Finland have been working on re-positioning Android to be used on their entry level line of phones called Asha. The project, with the code names Normandy and AoL (Asha on Linux), seeks to bring new life to the line by replacing the current operating system, Series 40, which is getting a little long of tooth.

For the record, when we first started out we did contact Microsoft and told them what we wanted to accomplish. On our third attempt to contact them, we did receive a response. They offered us Windows XP SP1 at 50 dollars a license.