In the recent ‘State of PHP and Zend Framework Development’ survey by Zend Technologies 85% of PHP developers surveyed named Linux as their primary operating system while 11% named Windows and 2% named Mac OS X. However when asked to name their primary operating system for development, 42% named Windows versus 38.5% who chose Linux and 19.1% who chose Mac OS X.

Novell has released SUSE Appliance Toolkit, a suite of tools that claim to significantly reduces the time and cost for independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises to develop, deploy and manage software appliances. The Toolkit features an onsite version of Novell’s appliance-building solution SUSE Studio and new management tools that enable ISVs and enterprises to reduce software development time, installation cycles and maintenance costs.

Google Chrome web browser was released for Windows in Sep 08. Google today has released beta versions of Chrome browser for Linux & Macintosh.

Oracle WebLogic Server together with Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle Database 11g running on a Dell PowerEdge server, set a world record dual-node result with the SPECjAppServer2004 industry standard benchmark. With this result, Oracle WebLogic Server holds the world record in multiple SPECjAppServer2004 categories: single-node, dual-node and multi-node.

A new research by IDC suggests that despite the current economic downturn, Linux will see 21% growth in customer spending in 2009, while the overall software market will increase by 2%

Canonical has announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.10 Server Edition for free download on 30 October. Ubuntu 8.10 Server Edition will be maintained for 18 months and adds significant enhancements in virtualisation, Java development and system management.