With its release today of its Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server Edition, Linux vendor Ubuntu is firmly aiming its long-awaited, enterprise-ready server operating system at the world of business computing.

I’m starting to see some big potential for symbiosis between two Linux and open source leaders: Red Hat and Ubuntu. Red Hat’s departure from the consumer desktop Linux market comes at the same time Ubuntu continues rolling in the same market with the release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron this week.

More than 90% of all commercial Linux server subscriptions are from Novell and Red Hat, with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), respectively. A Gartner report gives Red Hat more than 60% of the paid Linux market, and Novell more than 30%. Why is Red Hat the Linux market share leader?

Call it a rare triple play in the open source server market. Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data are partnering to give partners discounts on select Lenovo ThinkServers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced. Here are the details — and the implications for the smal business market.

If you look at the enterprise server operating system market, there's Microsoft's Windows server platform, there's the UNIX platform and there's Linux. What's needed is good strong competition between the platforms, resulting in robust systems with the features that enterprises want.

While HP was slow in supporting Linux on the desktop, HP has long supported Linux on the server. HP currently supports RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Novell's SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Oracle Enterprise Linux and even the community's own Linux, Debian on its server hardware. Now, HP is about to start supporting Ubuntu on its ProLiant server line.

Market research firm IDC has released its own quarterly server figures, and came to roughly the same conclusion as its counterpart Gartner did last week: The server market is still down but stabilizing, and the worst appears to be over.

Is Microsoft slowly winning the Web Server war? I say no!

Mandriva has released its first major point update to version 5 of its Mandriva Enterprise Server commercial Linux distribution. According to the company, in addition to all of the previous updates, the latest update focuses on virtualisation and improves integration of Kernel-based Virtual Machine technology