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Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

This morning, Sun Microsystems announced plans to acquire MySQL AB. After all the industry speculation about MySQL being a “hot 2008 IPO”, this probably takes most of us by surprise — users, community members, customers, partners, and employees. And for all of these stakeholders, it may take some time to digest what this means. Depending on one’s relationship to MySQL, the immediate reaction upon hearing the news may be a mixture of various feelings, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety. Being part of the group planning this announcement for the last few weeks, I have had the fortune to contemplate the consequences during several partially sleepless nights (I usually sleep like a log). And over the coming days and weeks, I’ll provide a series of blogs with various viewpoints of the deal.

It was only a short time ago I wrote a piece detailing my initial thoughts on the little Everex boxes running a Google branded OS (Linux) that magically had no actual Google fingerprints anywhere on it at all. Today, I learned that their main distributor, Wal-Mart, has completely sold out of them. I have to admit, I'm speechless.

Free software projects have the irritating habit of choosing names that fail to reflect what the software does. A case in point is KBarcode. Although KBarcode does generate the barcodes you would expect from its name, for most people, it is probably far more useful as a label and business card editor. Anyone looking for these functions could easily overlook it because of the name -- and that would be unfortunate because, even with some awkward interface designs, KBarcode still compares favorably to similar programs.

A lot of us spend a lot of time talking about how we are preaching the value of Linux to our Linux using friends, but how hard are we collectively working to make sure others outside of our comfort zone understand that popular Linux distros are a viable OS alternative? If you are like me, you probably are not doing nearly enough.

[I vehemently disagree, it is because of our perseverance and personal advocacy that the use of FOSS continues to grow by leaps and bounds. - Scott]

Apple's new MacBook Air is in the same market as the Eee PC, but that does not mean the two will compete with each other. In fact, it appears the Air will help the Eee PC sell even more.

Several people, including Rob Weir (just yesterday in fact), said this was coming... The Burton Group also did some anti-Google Apps ’studies’, so they lost credibility a long time ago.

For years ASRock has been regarded as very much a budget motherboard manufacturer, while over time they've begun to introduce motherboards with more enthusiast-level features and even products that are more overclocker-friendly. It wasn't until recently that they finally started offering Gigabit ethernet and IEEE-1394a Firewire on their motherboards, but this month with their 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ they have made another step forward showing that they are able to offer an economically-priced motherboard with Intel's P35 Chipset and even integrated 802.11g WiFi. We have our hands on the ASRock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ for testing and we will be seeing how well this P35 creation performs on Linux.

Aria Systems provides applications that let companies perform automated billing services. Aria uses open source to deliver a product that costs its customers less than products built on proprietary software while providing them with secure, efficient, easy-to-use billing. CEO and founder Ed Sullivan says one factor that contributed to his idea for a better billing system came from his experience as a paying customer playing the popular Ultima Online game.

In this article, et acquainted with the major features of the CFS, see how it works, and look ahead to some of the expected changes for the 2.6.24 release.

As much as I know we need a project management system to build the Geek Ranch I will leave that discussion for another day. But, my current experience illustrates a case when project management software doesn't solve the problems. The first building we are going to construct is what I will call the Auxiliary Building. This is a 4 meter square building that will house a backup generator, batteries and inverter and act as storage for extra chairs and such when the main building is open. During construction, it will serve as a storage space for tools and equipment.

I knew that Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 had Gslapt -- the graphical front end to the get-slapt package manager for Slackware -- but for some reason I had no idea that it would be useful for updates. But commenter Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér gently told me that Wolvix's get-slapt/Gslapt indeed points to a Slackware 11 mirror, as well as Wolvix's own repository. So I opened up Gslapt, updated and upgraded. I didn't add anything, so I can't vouch for get-slapt/Gslapt's ability to satisfy dependencies, but the upgrade went perfectly, and now I've got a fully up-to-date Wolvix distribution.

Free software (eventually) works better than proprietary software; why?

We reviewed the RAW photo editor LightZone almost a year ago, when the Linux version of the product was a closed source -- but free -- download. After months of updates only for the Mac OS X and Windows versions of the application, Light Crafts has released a new beta for Linux. It is a substantial improvement -- but it also marks the end of the road for the free edition.

I haven't linked to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com in awhile, and he had a great opinion piece today about the $150 PCLinuxOS box and other cheap computer solutions called "How low can you go and still run Linux?" He does a good job of going through the distributions and recommending many low-spec software solutions for hardware of less than current vintage. He mentions many of my favorites, including Damn Small Linux, AntiX (which I haven't tried in awhile ...), Zenwalk, plus another I really should try: the PCLinuxOS "Mini-Me" spin.

If you're reading LinuxSecurity.com then it's a safe bet that you are already using SSH, but are you using it in the best way possible? Have you configured it to be as limited and secure as possible? The goal of this document is to kick in the new year with some best practices for SSH: why you should use them, how to set them up, and how to verify that they are in place.

DVD burners such as as K3b and GnomeBaker use standard commands for manipulating .ISO images, such as mkisofs. However, they give users only limited control over the resulting images beyond selecting their contents. Users cannot even save the image to an .ISO formatted file; instead the burners save in their own project formats. Fortunately, this functionality gap is bridged by ISO Master, a program that, despite a slightly awkward interface, is intuitive enough that most users can quickly learn its fundamentals without having to refer to online help. Only the adding of a boot record is likely to give average users any trouble.

This morning Christina Fullam states that it was decided just before Christmas to cancel the 2007.1 release and roll all the effort into Gentoo 2008.0 since there was little possibility of getting a well-tested 2007.1 release out before 2008.

Until recently, Linux PCs were about as easy to find in stores as a vinyl record. Now, personal computers with the Linux operating system pre-installed are becoming more readily available, thanks to new models from upstarts and established PC makers -- and disappointment with Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS. In just the past several weeks, a handful of new, low-cost systems have hit the market that are powered by Linux -- open source software first developed by Linus Torvalds and enhanced by enthusiast programmers around the world.

Lenovo has launched a range of laptops pre-installed with Novell's SuSE Linux operating system, which it announced in August last year. Originally marked for release in the fourth quarter of 2007, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is now available pre-installed on Lenovo's ThinkPad T61 and R61 models. The notebooks are aimed at typical business users, and are expected to be expanded as an option for some Intel Penryn-based ThinkPads in February.