In today's open source roundup: Barbie enters the systemd fray. Plus: A Linux desktop based on Google's Material Design, and what's in Linux Mint 17.1? Barbie becomes a Debian developer A recent Barbie book caused a row over its portrayal of women in technology. The book has since been withdrawn by Mattel, though you can still buy the Barbie The Computer Engineer doll on Amazon. The blog Liberal Murmurs decided to do its own spin on the Barbie and technology story, and in its story Barbie becomes a Debian developer and creates systemd. Liberal Murmurs on why it made its own Barbie story: Some people may have seen recently that the Barbie series has a rather sexist book out about Barbie the Computer Engineer. Fortunately, there’s a way to improve this by making your own version. Thus, I made a short version about Barbie the Debian Developer and init system packager. More at Liberal Murmurs Liberal Murmurs Redditors shared their thoughts on Barbie taking on the systemd controversy: “Navigating the open source political landscape is hard… let’s go to the mall instead!” “This isn’t even satirical, it’s more like a fair summary of Debian in 2014. At least Barbie and Skipper are agents of change, not just victims of their own technical ineptitude like the original though. :D” More at Reddit A Linux desktop based on Google’s Material Design Google has made some big changes in Android 5.0 with Material Design. And now one developer is working on creating a Linux desktop based on the Material Design guidelines by Google. Michael Spencer on Google+ about his plan for a Material Design desktop for Linux: Something I’ve been experimenting with and researching is building a desktop environment based off of Google’s Material Design guidelines. I’ve been experimenting with several different layouts, and plan to come up with a design using ideas from Unity, GNOME, elementary, and KDE. I plan to build it using the QtCompositor APIs, which allow building a Wayland compositor using almost pure QML. Right now this is just a normal QML app, but I plan to turn it into an actual compositor soon. More at Google+ Michael Spencer A Redditor wondered why the developer wanted to build his own compositor: I love the mocked up looks, but why are you building your own compositor? Why not use KWin like KDE/LXQT? Surely the development of your own plasma shell that provides your design would make far more sense? Then it can be fed into the wider KDE ecosystem so others can benefit. More at Reddit What’s in Linux Mint 17.1? Linux Mint 17.1 is nearly out, and many have wondered what new goodies might be in it. PC World looks at Compiz in Linux Mint 17.1. The article also covers updates in Cinnamon 2.4, and a number of changes that cut across both desktops. Chris Hoffman reports on Linux Mint 17.1: Back in the day, Compiz provided fancy graphical effects for GNOME 2 desktops. It can still do so for MATE, although many people had difficulties setting this up on Linux Mint. That’s why Linux Mint 17.1 includes easy Compiz setup. The Windows pane in the Desktop Settings window provides a box allowing you to choose between the stable-but-potentially-boring “Marco” window manager and the fancy-but-potentially-unstable Compiz window manager. Desktop cubes, wobbly windows, and more—it’s all back. More at PC World What’s your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. Open Source