First, there was Sun and MySQL AB.  Now, Sun wants to build stronger ties with another open source player, one that might be even more visible and politically advantageous: Ubuntu.

Here's the deal.  Sun's getting ready to provide support for the server flavor of Ubuntu on its small-to-midsize server hardware, in conjunction with Canonical.  Its existing Linux lineups include Red Hat Enterprise and SUSE, two well-established server players, with Ubuntu Server as the newest addition.  And with a new edition of Ubuntu on the way (and it looks quite good, from what I've seen on my end), the whole push is well-timed.

So what are the major attractions for Ubuntu as a server?  One of the big ones is an automatic, ready-to-roll LAMP stack, something that's been made available as a drop-in solution in various guises (BitNami comes to mind, as does XAMPP) -- but most people looking to deploy LAMP in a serious way will probably want to do it in the context of a whole server from the ground up.

What I'm curious to see is if Sun is planning on putting out hardware using Ubuntu's appliance-and-VM-friendly JeOS build.  Two of Sun's big and best-known territories are a) virtualization (hello, VirtualBox!) and b) its brand of hardware, so it would only make sense for it to use JeOS as part of an ongoing Ubuntu strategy, wouldn't it?