Not so long ago, IBM teamed up with Canonical to create an application which contains an office suite featuring word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications based on IBM Lotus Symphony, an e-mail client that is based on IBM Lotus Notes, the social networking and collaboration cloud-based tools provided by LotusLive.com and the underlying Ubuntu operating system.

At a time when most major server vendors are saying "no thanks" to Ubuntu, a major Canadian Web host says Ubuntu is ready for prime time on the server. Here are the quick details from Works With U, the independent guide to Ubuntu Linux.

IBM has officially launched the commercial version of its Lotus Symphony suite of productivity applications, and looks set amount a challenge to Microsoft Office in its enterprise heartland.

At the beginning of the year I wrote about IBM Lotus Symphony Beta 3, IBM’s closed source OpenOffice-based free office suite. Now the final release, Lotus Symphony 1 is out. I wasn’t impressed last time, but I installed the final release on Ubuntu 8.04 to test it out.

Now that I have had a chance to install Lotus Symphony Beta 3 on my Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (aka - version 7.10) installation and have run it for several days, I have decided that it is time for a review. For this review, I have decided to show how to get Symphony working on Ubuntu, as well as the major features found in the Beta 3 release.

Is Linux on the enterprise desktop finally ready for prime time? IBM apparently thinks so as it prepares to deliver its next versions of Lotus Notes enterprise collaboration software and Lotus Symphony office productivity applications for the first time with full support for Ubuntu Linux 7.10 sometime in the second half of this year.

Computer giant IBM yesterday released a free office suite for Windows and Linux machines called Lotus Symphony. Symphony is available from the Symphony website which requires users to register and be logged on to download the software.