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The economic situation is eating into your profits, and the MS Office licenses look more expensive than before. OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation, drawing program, and database. It’s compatible with practically all operating systems and runs well on old and new computers alike.

Ubuntu 9.04 - officially launched today and due to be ready for download on Thursday - is a worthwhile upgrade for Ubuntu fans. Ubuntu steward Canonical has been working hard to improve the look and feel of Ubuntu and the Jaunty Jackalope edition brings quite a few refreshing touches to the old exterior. The default theme is still the familiar brown, but numerous small improvements to dialog boxes, splash screens, and a flashy new login screen give Ubuntu a slicker, more professional feel. There's also a new theme named New Wave that's a nice mashup between the DarkRoom and the default Human theme.

Did Larry Ellison do something right this time? Oh, say it ain't so.

You've probably heard the phrase "Write once, run anywhere." But if you want to write for an application that runs in a cloud, you really have to know what you're doing. Here in Part 2 of this "Realities of open source cloud computing" series, learn how to write an application using PHP to run on the Aptana cloud computing platform. Explore some of the critical design differences between a cloud application and a traditional N-tier application. The concepts are illustrated with a seemingly simple application, using familiar open source technologies, that taps into the strengths of cloud computing.

Following weeks of speculation over whether and on what terms IBM would purchase Sun, it's now database giant Oracle which is to take over the ailing business, with the result that OpenSolaris, Java, MySQL and OpenOffice are now under new management.

I'd thought about Oracle buying Sun. But, then I thought, "Larry Ellison isn't that dumb." Well, I was wrong. Ellison is that dumb. Oracle is buying Sun in what may be the most moronic technology acquisition of the 21st century. I've looked at the Oracle/Sun deal. I've read Ellison's explanation as to why the buyout makes sense. I don't see it. I don't see any upside to this deal. And, on top of that, Oracle, which spent $7.4 billion for Sun, vastly overpaid for the company. This deal will make money for Sun's executives and stockholders, but it will prove to be a disaster for Sun's users, developers, and employees.

More layoffs are expected at Sun Microsystems Inc. as a result of Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion acquisition, with one Wall Street analyst predicting today that as many as 10,000 people could lose their jobs at the Silicon Valley icon. Oracle expects that Sun's operations will contribute $1.5 billion in operating profits during the software vendor's next fiscal year and $2 billion the following year. That would make the Sun deal "more profitable in per-share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined," Oracle President Safra Catz said as part of the buyout announcement, referring to the three other large acquisitions made by Oracle in recent years.

Database giant Oracle has agreed to purchase Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion, according to a story in eWEEK. Oracle wants Sun more for its hardware than its software, and may choose to jettison Sun's open source offerings, including MySQL, says eWEEK. The $7.4 billion deal, or about $9.50 a share, is considerably more than the $6.5 billion that IBM had offered the struggling technology firm before talks broke down earlier this month, notes today's story by Nicholas Kolakowski in our sister publication eWEEK. Sun’s board of directors is said to have unanimously approved the transaction, which should close sometime this summer.

Feel like your /etc/passwd file isn't giving 100%? This script may be for you ;)

Canonical this afternoon debuted its Ubuntu 9.04 release of Linux, the tenth release since the company founded the Ubuntu project in October 2004. This iteration of Ubuntu, code-named "Jaunty Jackalope," comes with mixes designed specifically for three platforms: netbooks, desktops, and servers.

Martin Kool, a developer from Web applications specialist Q42, has released his open source multi-player game engine. Sarien.net is a "portal for reliving the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games" and is completely browser based. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome are all supported.

During out last meeting there was a question about what we will be doing with people that carry their kids along with them to the location. That's where you come into scene. Would you be kind enough to provide us at FLISoL Bogotá with say, 15 or 20 of those installation CDs/DVDs? We won't be using them to install Windows on the computers, don't have to worry about it. I will personally hand them out to the kids so that they use them to play around (as frisbies or just to scratch on their surface) while we are on our stuff. I know that your OS is a toy OS and so we should install them on the kids computers, but I refuse to.

When Oracle Corp. agreed to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. today, it took a leap into the hardware realm. And so the obvious question is: Can the software-centric database and applications vendor succeed with Sun's hardware business? "I'll hand it to Larry Ellison: That man can shop," said Laura DiDio, an analyst at Information Technology Intelligence Corp., a research and consulting firm in Boston. "This deal is very, very complementary for Oracle. It gives them instant credibility with hardware, virtualization, open source, storage and cloud computing."

Qt Software and the KDE e.V. are happy to report that they are sponsoring a developer sprint for all North American students accepted into Google Summer of Code 2009 to work on KDE. The event will be completely free for all accepted students, with round-trip flights, lodging, and some meals fully reimbursed; all students that applied for GSoC 2009 are welcome to attend, although those not accepted into the program will not be reimbursed for travel and lodging expenses.

There are many things which could be said to be a part of the Unix philosophy. One of those, certainly, is that the operating system should stay out of the user's way to the greatest extent possible, even if said user is intent on doing something harmful. There is a classic quote attributed to Eric Allman:

"Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just to be sure."

What happens when a conservative Republican gets sued for using two of Don Henley's hit songs without permission? He gets a quick taste of the DMCA when his videos are removed from YouTube, but fires right back in an interesting test of copyright in the Internet age.

If you want to keep the spambots out of Gmail then you might want to try a bit of upside down thinking.

Oracle Corp. may end up merging the best features of OpenSolaris with Linux once it takes control of Sun Microsystems Inc., but it is unlikely to kill off Sun's widely used Solaris operating system, analysts said today. During a conference call today after the $7.4 billion acquisition deal was announced, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said one of the primary reasons Oracle is interested in Sun is Solaris, a version of Unix that has a large installed base and has long been the leading platform for Oracle's flagship database.

During a phone briefing with media that continues right now, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04 has been tested to run on 45 different server configurations from IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo and smaller providers. Shuttleworth also hinted that Canonical’s server relationship with HP is growing stronger. Here are the details.

In its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Oracle sees a technology company that is a software gem, skillful in computer design and ripe for cost-cutting. The big database software company’s agreement Monday to buy Sun for $7.4 billion, analysts say, also promises to make Oracle a more formidable competitor in the lucrative market for corporate computing, especially against I.B.M., Sun’s previous suitor. The Oracle-Sun deal came little more than two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun. The Sun board balked after I.B.M. lowered its offer to $9.40 a share from $10. The Oracle bid, at $9.50 a share, will have a net cost to Oracle of $5.6 billion, after accounting for the value of Sun’s cash and debt.