Oracle and SUN Archive

Whatever pleasantries once existed between Sun and Red Hat have vanished. This won't come as a shock to many of you. The companies have been jawing in the press for some time. The extent, however, of Sun's loathing for Red Hat is more profound than many imagine, with Sun's CEO Scott McNealy largely confirming a shared attack with Microsoft against the Linux vendor.

Sun's 3D desktop dubbed Project Looking Glass, was released under the GPL a few months ago. However, it now seems Sun is looking to patent the Project Looking Glass interface according to this report.

Xandros, today announced the release of the Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) PowerTerm Edition to provide secure access to mission critical applications running on legacy enterprise systems.

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president, says the company has mended its ways since the days when "we didn't listen" to customers. Can the Silicon Valley luminary brighten up its prospects?

LinuxTimes.net has published a review of Xandros 2.5 Deluxe Edition with screenshots.

Microsoft and Sun have a very suspect legal settlement going on possibly relating to openoffice.org customers. More info here, here, and here. Update: Looks like this isn't quite the controversy everyone thought. Newforge has an update.

If you "attend" Sun Microsystems' "Web Event" you will receive a Solaris Express Software DVD and other info. We're no sure what constitutes attendance, but it's free, and you can sign up now for an email reminder.

Sun Microsystems will begin compensating its sales staff for Solaris deals that involve hardware from other manufacturers, as part of the company's efforts to fend off competition from low-cost servers running Linux.

Xandros Desktop 2.5 represents the fourth release of the desktop GNU/Linux distribution formerly known as Corel Linux. Xandros prides itself on superior Windows compatibility, and to maintain that reputation it includes some hard-hitting tools for making Windows programs work well on GNU/Linux. It's a little on the expensive side as far as desktop distributions go, and it feels somewhat like a slightly watered-down version of Linspire, but Xandros 2.5 Business Edition definitely has its advantages.

Tired of seeing a prosaic, two-dimensional splashscreen every time you boot your system? Sun Microsystems recently released to developers early code for Project Looking Glass, a 3D desktop enhancement application Sun hopes will soon liven up a desktop near you.

Sun Microsystems is toying with the idea of buying Linux seller Novell, saying that springing for the $2.64 billion company would hurt rival IBM.

At next week's LinuxWorld show in San Francisco, Xandros will preview the Xandros Desktop Management Server (xDMS), the first in a new series of servers that will roll out by the end of next year. Xandros' future server line-up will include file, mail, and FTP servers, among others, said Xandros Chairman and CTO Dr. Frederick Berenstein, who remains bullish over the future of desktop Linux, too.

A solid alternative for SMBs, the new Xandros Desktop OS Business Edition 2.5 works and feels like Windows, but it's a lot more secure, says Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for eWEEK.

Xandros announced the release of version 2.5 of the Xandros Desktop OS with an updated CrossOver Office suite. Xandros Desktop 2.5 now offers an upgraded CrossOver Office 3.0.1., supporting Lotus Notes 6.5.1, Microsoft Project 2000/2002, and Microsoft Outlook XP. Current Xandros Desktop OS users can upgrade the software with a single click. All versions of the Xandros Desktop OS now include Linux kernel 2.4.24 and version 1.6 of the Mozilla communications suite.