TECHNOLOGY - Sun Acquires Linux Software Maker - Computers: Company plans to offer free downloads of Star Division’s StarOffice to compete with Microsoft.

Sun Microsystems Inc. has acquired a privately held German company called Star Division, which makes the most popular office software among Linux users, and plans to give away its products to drum up more support for Sun’s network computer systems.

Palo Alto-based Sun wouldn’t say how much it paid for Star, which was founded 14 years ago by Marco Boerries after a year as a high school exchange student in Silicon Valley.

Boerries, who owned 80% of the company, and Star’s 160 other employees will join Sun as part of the transaction. Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim owned the remaining 20%.

Linux is an increasingly popular free software alternative to Microsoft’s Windows system.

Sun plans to make StarOffice a more serious competitor to Microsoft’s Office software suite by offering downloads of the software for free, charging only for customer support. And Sun plans to retool the programs to work from hand-held devices or other stripped-down computer terminals.

The feel of Star’s software is similar to that of Microsoft products, and the two systems are compatible enough so that documents created in Microsoft Word can be pulled up and modified with Star programs.

Until now, StarOffice was distributed for free to consumers, while the company charged businesses for its software. Star has about 4 million users, Sun said, including 30% of those who use the Linux operating system instead of Windows.

“It’s used by the Linux lunatic fringe, by people who have the anyone-but-Microsoft mentality,” said analyst Matthew Nordan of Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based technology consulting firm.

Sun and other technology companies have faced a tough road in selling their vision of computing based on powerful servers, such as Sun’s, that work with “dumb” or “thin” computer terminals instead of full-fledged desktop PCs.

Except for some specialty industries, such as customer call centers, businesses have resisted that idea in part because PC prices are falling and because they want more applications than the thin computers can support.

“In order to provide a complete solution, [Sun] needs to have some products that compete with Microsoft. Sun bought StarOffice to overcome that objection,” Nordan said.

Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy will outline plans for the software in New York today and will begin pushing the new network computing model later this year, analysts said.

Sun makes many of the high-end servers that handle Internet traffic. It competes with No. 1 software maker Microsoft in server operating systems, among other areas.

Sun shares fell 63 cents to close at $75.56 on Nasdaq.