Canonical on Tuesday posted its Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition to its website.

This is a developers’ release based on the desktop edition of the Linux fan-favorite Ubuntu operating system. The release should help developers tailor apps to smaller screens

Ubuntu MID will start to follow the usual Ubuntu six-month release cycle starting with the Ubuntu 8.10 release.

MySQL execs took to the road this week, talking up the database’s increasing relevance to big businesses.

The message at a Boston event Tuesday night, was that Sun Microsystems’ buyout of the open source database company gives MySQL easier entry into very large accounts.

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PR-magdeddon! is a new feature here on Channel Marker, where we call out vendors for press releases that aren’t exactly the most clear and concise things in the world. Check out last week’s debut if you missed it and then read this week’s worst offenders. If you’re brave enough to try and decipher what these press releases mean, leave a comment.

Red Hat
CSC Standardizes Nordic Linux Hosting Services on Red Hat Solutions, Feb. 20: “CSC has also implemented the Red Hat Network Satellite Server systems management platform for a unified and centralized management, administration and provisioning  model for its Linux systems.”

Oracle
Oracle Unveils New Release of Oracle Identity Manager, Feb. 20: “A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Identity Manager is a user provisioning and administration solution that enables organizations to automate the process of adding, updating and deleting user accounts from applications and directories; and helps improve regulatory compliance by providing granular reports that attest to who has access to specific data, resources and information.”

SAP
Hobby Lobby Turns to SAP to Help Build Its Future, Feb. 20: “Demonstrating ongoing leadership in providing innovative solutions to retailers worldwide, SAP America, Inc., a subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), today announced that Hobby Lobby has selected SAP to provide a stable, predictable solution platform and a clear solution road map to help the company manage operations and continue to grow successfully.”

Symantec
Symantec Backup Exec 12 Delivers Certified Data Protection for New, Existing Windows Systems, Feb. 19: “Backup Exec 12 rapidly restores data from a single pass backup with patent-pending Granular Recovery Technology, which obviates the need to run mailbox backups to recover individual Exchange emails, and makes it easy to restore SharePoint, SharePoint Services, and Active Directory data-from documents to user attributes and properties-in seconds.”

Prove it.

The European Commission has heard it all before when it comes to Microsoft’s vows to be more interoperable and generally better behaved than in the past. Basically, Microsoft has never won good marks in the “works well with others” category, at least in the eyes of European regulators.

Microsoft’s latest interoperability  efforts — were outlined today by Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia and Brad Smith on a conference call. And the moves appear to be pretty aggressive.

But the EC appears unmoved.

In a statement posted to its Web site, the EC says it’s heard all this before.

Money quote:

“The European Commission takes note of today’s announcement by Microsoft of its intention to commit to a number of principles in order to promote interoperability with some of its high market share software products. This announcement does not relate to the question of whether or not Microsoft has been complying with EU antitrust rules in this area in the past. The Commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability. Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today’s announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.”

So there.

Microsoft — or at least part of Microsoft — continues its quest to persuade open-source developers that Windows should be on their short-list of platforms. You know, right up there with Linux.

Sam Ramji, the Microsoft guy whose job it is to mend fences and foster collaboration with open-source ISVs and other partners points to progress.  

Exhibit A: Ramji — his formal title is director of platform technology strategy — will keynote at this spring’s EclipseCon conference. Not traditionally a big venue for Microsoft execs.

Exhibit B: Nearly a third (30 percent) of SugarCRM’s business is now on Windows, he says. SugarCRM is the open-source CRM pioneer. Two years ago Microsoft and SugarCRM inked a technical collaboration pact.

Exhibit C: Of the 140,000-some-odd applications on the Sourceforge repository some 77,000 now run on Windows, Ramji says. Admittedly, a large number of that 140,000 are probably dead apps, but why quibble?

Ramji also points to the fact that IIS now supports PHP development. And the final release of a SQL Server driver that will let PHP talk to SQL Server 2005 and 2008 should be available for download alter this year.

Microsoft has made some good moves to soothe open sourcers’ qualms about the company and its occasional legal saber rattling. It hired Tom Hanrahan, former director of engineering at the Linux Foundation to direct Microsoft’s Linux Interoperability Labs.

Still there are gaping holes. Microsoft is pushing to get every app possible to run on Windows becuase that’s good for Microsoft. What it’s not saying is when Office will run on Linux. Ideas? Anyone? Is it really so outrageous to even ask the question?

Ramji and team may have their hearts in the right place about peaceful and fruitful coexistence of open source and Microsoft stacks. But the question is Microsoft overall and whether  its defense of intellectual property rights (aka patents)  is antithetical to open source.

In the real world people run both open-source and Microsoft stacks — and partners supporting them must know how to ensure the dual-stack works. So they have to watch what, Ramji’s team — as well as Microsoft writ large — are doing.

For more on open source and channel opportunities see  this story.

What’s your take? Send your thoughts to bdarrow@techtarget.com.

When Microsoft announced availability of its Silverlight 1.0 multimedia building block earlier today, the big news was that Novell  would provide a Linux version of the tool.

In his blog Novell (and former Ximian) whiz kid Miguel De Icaza called this “an historical collaboration between an open source project and Microsoft. They have collaborated with other folks on the server space (Xen and PHP) but this is their first direct contribution to the open source desktop.”  

The result of the collaboration will be “a 100% compatible Silverlight runtime implementation called “Moonlight” [which] will run on all Linux distributions, and support FireFox, Konqueror, and Opera browsers,” wrotes Scott Guthrie, GM of Microsoft’s Developer  Division  in <i>his</i> blog. 

You might also wonder whether this work—which smacks contract development—is part and parcel of the earlier Microsoft-Novell era of good feeling announced last year.

Apparently not.  According to a Microsoft spokeswoman:

“The good working relationship between Microsoft and Novell  announced back on November 2nd of 2006, which was a set of agreements to collaborate on IP, business, and technical matters and based on customer desire to address the challenges of operating mixed source environments.  This paved the way for the companies to work together on multiple opportunities, including bringing Silverlight to Linux. It’s not technically part of the agreement.” 

Microsoft is not commenting on financial aspects—if any—behind Novell’s Linux work.

So here’s a rather sobering question: Has Novell, once the “A”-number-one-kingpin-of- network-operating-systems,  become little more than a contract programming house for Microsoft?

Just asking.

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area journalist, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net. 

Red Hat is offering new Linux virtualization training for its partners and customers.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Virtualization course is aimed at getting value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators (SIs) and customers familiar with virtualization and teaching them how it can make them money, spokesman Peter Hnath said. Red Hat has included XenSource virtualization technology in the latest version of its operating system, Enterprise Linux 5.

“Xen is a substantial body of new technology,” Hnath said.

The offering marks a departure for Red Hat, whose past non-certification-based courses have been on “very high-level” topics, Hnath said. Red Hat made the Enterprise Linux Virtualization course at a more intermediate level so it would be more accessible to partners and customers, he added. The intended audience for the course is “Red Hat certified professionals” and “experienced Linux system administrators,” according to a press release.

Red Hat has so far scheduled the two-day, $1,500 course in 13 U.S. locations and plans to announce more within the next two weeks. Attendees must have a Red Hat Certified Technician certification or the equivalent knowledge and skills to participate in the course.

If you work with Red Hat, check out the desktop Linux and Linux server resources at SearchSystemsChannel.com. You can also learn more about desktop virtualization and server virtualization while you’re there.

Citrix Systems, Inc. today announced that it will acquire XenSource, Inc., for $500 million – a move that will catapult the company into the server and desktop virtualization market.

The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., company said the purchase will be a combination of cash and stock, which includes the assumption of $107 million in unvested stock options. The deal should be finalized in the fourth quarter of 2007.

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It was only a matter of time.

With the recent news that a worm has infected the popular Microsoft Office alternative known as OpenOffice (across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms), some security industry watchers have begun to wring their collective hands. Because OpenOffice is the most popular office suite for Linux, some are fearful that a malware plague is about to descend upon the open source OS. Give these pundits a second, and they’ll opine that Linux’s era of “security through obscurity” is coming to an end.

Commercial Linux desktop adoption is becoming more prevalent each year, in part because of the widespread belief that Linux is a more secure and powerful platform than that competing product out of Redmond. Therefore it’s important for resellers in the networking and security space to communicate the malware facts to clients using Linux.

As I write this blog post on Linux using KWord, the KDE desktop’s native word processor, I’m not worried about a plague of Linux malware. “Proof of concept” Linux worms have been around since 1996, but all known Linux worms and viruses haven’t done much damage because they need root access to continue their life-cycle. And in the commercial Linux environment, most users have their root access shut off entirely.

But back to OpenOffice. Last August, Malte Zimmerman from Sun (chief sponsor of OpenOffice) blogged about the security issues involving OpenOffice. He noted the three ways to stop OpenOffice malware in its tracks:

• Don’t work with admin/root rights, use them only when needed for performing certain tasks
• Don’t run binaries that you can’t trust for some reasons.
• Don’t execute macros in documents you receive, unless you can be sure it’s safe

Does this mean Linux and OpenOffice are impervious to malware threats? Not by a long shot — though patches are issued almost immediately by the Linux community when any exploited (or exploitable) flaw is found. And it is true that clever hackers could use the normal user account in Linux to send out spam, encrypt files with PGP or execute phishing attacks, but all this requires users to run binaries or macros from unknown sources.

The truth of the matter is that Linux is still a very secure platform. It’s the job of the resellers and systems integrators to show their clients how to keep it that way.

Ok, so maybe cars aren’t the core business of most IT VARs. But still, when the Linux car at the Indy 500 is the first to crash, that can’t be a great sign, right? Driver Roberto Moreno hit the outside wall on turn 1 of lap 38 and eventually came in last in the race.

Roberto’s car #77 featured Linux’s mascot, Tux the penguin — the culmination of the Tux 500 project, which raised $18,308.90 to put the logo front-and-center on the car.

Oh, well. Good drivers were never Linux’s strong point.