RALEIGH, N.C. -- Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced an agreement with Sun Microsystems to advance open source Java™ software. Red Hat has signed Sun's broad contributor agreement that covers participation in all Sun-led open source projects by all Red Hat engineers.

In addition, Red Hat has signed Sun's OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement. This agreement gives the company access to the test suite that determines whether an implementation of the Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) platform that is derived from the OpenJDK project complies with the Java SE 6 specification.

Jeremy Andrews of KernelTrap has today announced the availability of the new Linux Kernel Job Board service on his site. Here's the original announcement:

I am pleased to announce that KernelTrap has partnered with Specialty Job Markets to offer a unique Linux kernel job board for our readers. It is completely free to submit your resume, which will then be personally reviewed and matched with current and future employment opportunities. If you're an employer, it's also free to post jobs. Jobs and resumes that are posted to our boards are individually reviewed and matched by a professional recruiter, not a computer program, offering quality results with a personal touch. The contact information you provide is kept confidential and is only visible to our dedicated recruiter.

Myah OS 3.0 alpha 1 is now available to kick off the 3.0 release cycle. This first alpha release has been very carefully put together. The only thing really missing so far is the graphical installer, which is under construction. This release is a live CD that includes package utilities and all development tools.

Myah OS is an original linux distro created by Jeremiah Cheatham. Myah OS is built for the i686 intel/amd PCs but will also work very well with the newer 64bit intel/amd PCs. Myah OS uses it's package management suite designed to be simple and fast. Myah is designed to be a full featured distro, with at least 1 or 2 applications for every need. XFCE 4.4.1 desktop makes Myah run very fast without taking a lot of resources. Myah will also handle all of your multimedia needs.

The first release of Flex Builder Linux, a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux is now available on the appropriate labs page.

This alpha version is based on several features from Flex Builder 3 (codenamed "Moxie"). It includes project creation, code coloring, code hints, compilation, the Ajax Bridge, Find All References, and debugging. Not all Flex Builder 3 features are supported, so be sure to check out the release notes for a list of unsupported features.

Adobe wanted to get an early release out with the base Flex Builder features so they could get valuable feedback from early adopters and thus better prioritize development of additional features.

The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename Etch). This update adds security updates to the stable release, together with a few corrections to serious problems. As always, the first point release also corrects a few issues that have been noticed too late in the release process to stop the release, but still should be fixed.

This point release for Etch also includes an updated release of the installer, which includes the following changes:

DesktopLinux.com launched its 2007 Desktop Linux Survey on August 13, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.), web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions.

Participants are asked to refrain from promoting or advertising the survey to mailing lists, or encouraging friends or co-workers to vote for specific software, in order to ensure that the survey represents a broad sample of Linux desktop users rather than being used to advance a particular open-source software cause.

As usual, DesktopLinux.com will publish the results of the survey following its conclusion.

The nonprofit Linux Foundation has unveiled the Linux Weather Forecast, a Web site aimed at giving people a better sense of the status of specific Linux kernel projects. The Foundation created the forecast site by teaming up with Jonathan Corbet, a Linux kernel developer and writer, who's also executive editor of the LWN.net Linux and free software news site.

The forecast is already live and tracks work in the Linux developer community likely to be included in the operating system's kernel and in major distributions of the open-source software, or both. The forecast provides summaries on work in areas such as core Linux kernel development, virtualization and containers, file systems, security, networking, and support for hardware.

Today Guardian Digital announces the launch of the next generation of EnGarde Secure Linux, the first secure pure open source platform for managing the threats of the Internet in enterprise-class environments.

This secure platform, the bleeding-edge version of Guardian Digital's commercial portfolio, has been a staple for security enthusiasts, administrators and organizations for almost a decade.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - June 4, 2007 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), today announced compiler and tools technologies for both Solaris™ and GNU/Linux platforms, allowing developers to take full advantage of the recent advances in multi-core and multithreading applications.

"Sun Studio 12 software combined with the Solaris OS allows developers to maximize their application performance, with the guarantee of source and binary compatibility provided by the Solaris Application Guarantee Program," said Jeet Kaul, vice president, Developer Products and Programs, Sun. "For the first time Sun Studio 12 software offers a complete development environment and record-setting compilers for the Linux platform."

Yeah, this is quite an old picture, but I just couldn't resist republishing it. It's fun, and it's still true. :)

Original comment from Illiad, the writer of the hilarious User Friendly Comic Strip:

You have express permission to sell the Mike posters for Debian! My share of the profit should be entirely donated to the Debian project. All I ask for is a small mention somewhere that says this. Best of luck with it, and keep up the great work with a fine distribution!

ALLENDALE, NJ - MAY 8th - 2007 - Guardian Digital, Inc., the world's pioneer in open source security solutions, today announced the latest innovation of its product portfolio with the launch of EnGarde Secure Linux: Community Edition, a freely-available version of its award-winning platform solution for unprecedented enterprise security. EnGarde is the only enterprise-class, Linux-based secure platform for managing a complete Internet presence featuring Web-based management flexibility and SELinux functionality.

The other day I was playing with fun Google Trends tool and got an idea to check Ubuntu versus Debian popularity. You can see the result on the picture below and I don't know about you, but it simply amazes me how popular Ubuntu is these days. And not only that, but its popularity is growing day by day, while it can be easily seen that Debian is either stagnating or slowly fading out.