Nine years after Sun Microsystems bought StarOffice, the resulting OpenOffice.org project is ready to roll out its 3.0 release. Enhanced format compatibility and features put it on par with Microsoft Office.

Ubuntu 8.10 still outshines the Linux desktop offerings from Red Hat and Novell, and is the best open-source alternative to Microsoft and Apple operating systems. However, both Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and Novell's SUSE distributions are ahead in the server space.

The latest version of Fedora, the Linux-based operating system, gives users a peek at what they can expect to see in future Linux distributions from Red Hat and other vendors.