The open source software industry has an unlikely benefactor–it turns out that the global recession is one of the best friends that open source can have as businesses from large to small that are looking to save money have been opening their IT shop doors wide and giving it a try.

According to a new Worldwide Open Source Software 2009-2013 Forecast, conducted by Boston-based International Data Corp., open source software (OSS) revenues have heated up as the global economy and recession worsened last year, and it looks like the trend will continue. How much will it grow? The study reports that global OSS revenue for 2008 was $2.9 billion, which is expected to grow by 34% in 2009 to $3.9 billion. By 2013, that global revenue growth is expected to hit $8.1 billion.

“The OSS market has seen a strong boost from the current economic crisis,” said Michael Fauscette, the IDC Software Business Solutions division analyst who wrote the forecast. “OSS is increasingly a part of the enterprise software strategy of leading businesses and is seeing mainstream adoption at a strong pace.”

There is, however, a reality check here–those revenue numbers still pale compared to the global revenues earned by sales of proprietary software applications by a huge margin. According to IDC figures, proprietary software revenues in 2008 dwarfed the OSS revenues–$137.3 billion compared to $2.9 billion, while projected revenues in 2009 are $138.8 billion for proprietary vendors and $3.9 billion for OSS. By 2013, the revenue gap is still huge and favoring proprietary products–$169.5 billion compared to OSS’s $8.1 billion.

The good news for OSS, however, is that the recent revenue growth spurt for the industry comes at a good time and does show its promise, Fauscette said. “It’s a big percentage of small numbers,” he said. “It’s still early but there’s still a lot of room to grow.”

At the same time, though, OSS revenues won’t likely be catching up to the rest of the software market any time soon. “I don’t see any huge enormous threat or danger right now for the big software companies’ bottom lines but over time… it’s going to continue to grow,” Fauscette said. “I think the days of ignoring it are gone. This is mainstream stuff now. This is not like the Wild West and you’re [not] taking a risk doing this. Companies understand that.”

In addition to the global recession fueling OSS revenues, another key factor is that open source is seen as a far more acceptable and worthwhile alternative–especially one that can save money for cash-strapped corporations–than ever before in its brief history, Fauscette said. That new-found acceptance is critical to the fast recent growth of OSS, he said.

“[Open source] companies are gaining customers,” he said. “It’s not just operating systems anymore. It’s not just Linux, it’s still moving up the stack, to middleware and applications.”

But that hasn’t happened everywhere, he admitted. “On the desktop, open source hasn’t really made a dent,” he said. “Ubuntu has grown but is not huge. Last year we started to see huge growth in middleware.”

via Linux.com

If you have anything to do with IT or computers you know about the Google Chrome browser. No matter where you stand on your opinion of Google, you can not deny the Chrome browser is fast. In fact, Chrome is setting the standard for browser speed such that the competition is now playing a serious game of catch up. The Chrome browser is so fast (at both startup and page load) that the difference goes well beyond noticeable. Next to all of its competition Google Chrome looks as if it is running in a completely different gear all together.

Now if you are running the Windows operating system, installing Chrome is as simple as downloading the .exe file and having at it. With the Linux operating system a simple installation is lagging a bit behind. So in this article you will learn how to install Chrome on Ubuntu and Chromium on Fedora.

Two different versions? Why? Simple: Chromium is the open source project behind Chrome. But why can you install Chrome on Ubuntu and not on Fedora? The Chrome developers decided to support Debian-based first. From that support a group of developers for Fedora created the necessary RPM files to enable installation of Chrome on Fedora. Of course both versions are still in beta (as of this writing) and are not 100% fool proof. Even with that stated, you will be surprised at just how well the betas of Chrome and Chromium work. And whether you are looking for an alternative to Firefox, Konqueror, or Opera or if you need something faster, you need to get Chrome onto your system. Let’s take a look at how.

via Linux.com

Ubuntu developers have recently introduced a new service, Ubuntu One, in beta. It is comparable to DropBox (Linux, Mac, Windows), except that it is based on and offered by Ubuntu (Canonical). A folder (Ubuntu One) is created within the Home folder, and an icon appears in the system tray indicating what’s going on with the software. The data in the Ubuntu One folder is synced between any number of Ubuntu installations and the cloud. Users can access up to 2 GB for free, and pay accounts are available for those who want more.

One thing that stands out about this software is the easy-breezy installation process. Ubuntu strives to make software installation as user-friendly as possible, and Ubuntu One shines in this aspect. One click on one button runs a script which adds all of the repository info and keys automatically. One more click on one more button installs the actual software – very impressive.

This software is in beta, but it is being developed and updated quickly, so for anybody who uses Ubuntu I highly recommend Ubuntu One.