Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth has been telling Reuters that Sun is in the process of certifying Ubuntu on some of its low-end and mid-size hardware. The code it's certifying is Hardy Heron, the Ubuntu 8.04 rev that's due out later this month. Sun told the wire service that it's making sure its Java programming language, tools and Java server are compatible with Heron.

Because AJAX moves so much application logic from the server to the client, it forces many developers to master a wider range of web technologies than ever before. To work effectively on AJAX projects, front-end developers have to concern themselves with database performance, business logic and other server-side concerns. Back-end and middleware developers, meanwhile, have to make friends with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and a wide range of browsers.

I installed Ubuntu on the Toshiba laptop. Ubuntu installed in 15 minutes - 49 for Windows XP and 125 for Windows Vista. Ubuntu's desktop came right up. I opened the pre-installed Firefox browser and found I could browse the Web immediately. Ubuntu installed a network adaptor for the Toshiba laptop. I shake my head at this Windows foolishness!

Zend has decided, and I think this is a great idea, to join in with the Eclipse community that was founded in large part by IBM a number of years ago. The values that can be added by joining with the Eclipse community are many and varied. Since Eclipse was primarily established as a Java development environment it has certainly grown in leaps and bounds by way of add-on libraries just to name one popular area.

With the arrival of Yahoo! and its Yahoo! Go Mobile 2.0 product, another A-list brand has entered the market. Yahoo!'s presence, like Apple's, expands the number of ODP (On-Device Portal) choices available to consumers, offering data services that are embedded directly onto the devices that people carry with them every day, similar to the desktop applications that people have downloaded on their PCs.

Whether you're a company of one or 100, managing knowledge is a core concern and implementing a knowledge base is a sensible way to capture your content. Dokuwiki is a practical open source Web application for creating a knowledge base that's easy for novice Webmasters to set up but flexible and full-featured.

I've always wondered where the word 'oxymoron' came from. What does 'oxy' have to do with 'moron'? What about the words 'commercial' and 'open source'; do these words form an oxymoron when combined in one phrase?

Regardless of how fast, stable, and geek-chic desktop GNU/Linux has become, we still live in a Windows world. Many vendors, either through lack of vision or funding, will produce only a Windows version of their software or drivers. If you're a gadget geek like me, you likely end up in the same old quandary of 'I want that gadget, but it only has Windows drivers.' If you're even more like me, you'll elect not to take the high road and search for ways to run that bad boy on your desktop GNU/Linux box.

One of the most touted benefits of Linux and open source programs is their flexibility. However, as the popularity of Linux has grown, some of the flexibility seems to have been sacrificed. As larger Linux vendors have become more standardized to support certified applications, the freedom to mold your Linux distribution to your needs has diminished a bit.

HP today announced that Rydex Investments and Wheaton Franciscan Services have deployed HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays (EVAs) in their IT environments.

On September 27, Sun released StarOffice 8, their cross-platform office suite, which they believe to be the best alternative to the business standard, Microsoft Office. This new product release along with the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, on October 20, was a watershed event for open source office suites. With a host of new features and increased functionality, both suites have never before offered such a robust and feasible alternative to the undisputed productivity suite leader, Microsoft Office. Sun Microsystems has been developing the product since their acquisition of Star Division, the previous maker of StarOffice, in August of 1999. For the first time in its history, StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org) has the best chance to convert millions of Microsoft Office users as a result of the latest crop of improvements.

Lost passwords, easily guessed passwords, accounts with no passwords - they are all huge security risks; however, there often isn't a better, more economical way for companies on a limited budget. Biometric authentication can be expensive to implement, and many organizations have to trust employees anyway, so static passwords are a no-brainer. Still, the majority of successful security attacks are achieved through password access. What are the options? CRYPTOCard's CRYPTOServer for Linux is a good one at $499.

I've been looking at a lot of console server and other out-of-band management solutions recently. These days, there's no shortage of console servers, appliances to manage console servers, and appliances to manage those applicances, each at enterprise cost availability.

Let's play word association. I say 'Web Hosting.' I bet 'fat margins' didn't jump into your head. More likely, you thought of some of the 'where are they nows' of the bubble, like Exodus and PSINet. Let's do another round - I say 'New York City,' and I'd wager that 'cheap rent' wasn't the first thing you thought of, either. So it may surprise you to learn that one hosting company that's been around since 1993 and that's actually making money, Logicworks (www.logicworks.net), just happens to be based in New York City.

You don't have to be around Linux for long before you hear about 'the dependency problem,' which is no problem at all for many users - until the day it bites them. In a nutshell, the problem is that most Linux applications depend on the operating system to provide various pieces of functionality that the applications need. These components most often take the form of shared libraries that are dynamically loaded and linked to the application at runtime. Problems occur when one or more of these libraries are replaced with a different (usually newer) version. Provided all the interfaces remain the same and the semantics of the functionality remain the same, there's no problem. However, due to security fixes, bug fixes, or new or improved functionality, the interfaces and semantics can and do change, and the changes can be enough to break the application.

MEPIS has released two versions of Linux. SimplyMEPIS is designed for non-technical end users. ProMEPIS is designed for more technical users, administrators, IT professionals and web developers. SimplyMEPIS has become the sixth most popular desktop Linux distribution on www.distrowatch.org and recently MEPIS was number three in the monthly rankings.

I love virtual machines. They enable me to stretch my limited hardware by letting me run more than one operating system on a single computer. But my needs pale in comparision to those of quality assurance and testing teams. They have to test tens if not hundreds of configurations and setting up individual machines is expensive in terms of both time and hardware.

If you're responsible for network security, then you know that yours is a job fraught with worry over spam, network intrusions, viruses, and internal hazards like rogue servers, internal malicious activity, and web surfing control. The good news is that Astaro makes it easy to protect yourself with a family of security gateway appliances. The ASG320, its model for mid-sized business and enterprise divisions, packs a high-value punch.

With their Sun Fire V40z Server, Sun is moving into new realms in three different ways. First, it's a move onto a new hardware platform - namely the AMD Opteron CPU. Second, it's a move into the 64-bit arena on a platform other than their familiar UltraSPARC environment. Third is the adoption of a mainstream Linux distribution as a primary operating system choice.

WatchIT, a rich media company that produces education on demand, recently released a six-part series of interactive programs titled 'Linux Education Series,' targeted at executives and others who would like to learn about the Linux platform and the world of open source. The series consists of six programs ranging from high-level overviews of Linux to some fairly specific steps for Linux security.

It's fascinating that so much has happened since the last Samba Update. To those of us close to the action it seems that development just continues at a steady pace. This edition of the Samba Update update reports on the roadmap for Samba-3, the decisions made at the SambaXP Conference, and the exciting new documentation for Samba-3.

EmergeCore's president and CEO, Dave Brown, learned that in the ISP business, reliability and value were keys to success for his customers. That's why he chose Linux as the operating system to power his IT in a Box IT-100. The IT-100 is a 'Swiss Army Knife' of Linux servers and services.

CommuniGate Pro 4.1 (CGP) is a comprehensive e-mail platform that includes a variety of messaging services. First and foremost, CGP provides standards-based e-mail services, including SMTP, POP, and IMAP. E-mail can be accessed and sent via most any e-mail client or via a Web interface. In addition to e-mail, CGP provides an integrated LDAP directory and calendaring (via Outlook, Web, iCAL, or vCAl) and list server.