IBM claims SCO conspiring with Microsoft over Linux, Jul 30, 2003

IBM eServer iSeries general manager sales Al Zollar, yesterday told delegates attending of the company’s Asia Pacific Strategic Planning Conference in Queensland that was a “set of forces” that were attempting to stymie adoption of the open source operating system.

Red Hat released the test version, called Taroon, last week, and the Linux company plans to release the final product this fall, spokeswoman Leigh Day said. The current product, version 2.1, supports servers and workstations with Intel Xeon and Pentium processors, but 3.0 will expand to include systems based on Intel's Itanium and AMD's Opteron and to all four of IBM's server lines.

With all this in mind, a couple of weeks ago, ZDNet UK decided to examine whether a distribution of Linux -- in this case, SuSE Linux Desktop -- could really be a sensible Windows replacement for enterprises. After a couple of days' testing, we concluded that the latest generation of desktop Linux tools -- including improved Windows emulation, better fonts and non-technical wizards for setting up networks and printers -- have made the software surprisingly usable, as well as capable of integrating into a Windows-centric desktop environment.

Gnome grew up for use with Linux, but Sun and others embraced the technology in 2000 for use with Unix. It competes with another interface called KDE. CDE still is the default for Solaris, but users may elect to use Gnome, a Sun representative said.

technobeast: Comparatively do you see the Linux OS becoming more mainstream in the future. to perhaps rival Windows even on the personal PC's? What is your vision over the OS competition?

KK: Most people and companies that I know are already using GNU/Linux on the personal PCs. There are very few cases where people still rely, for backwards compatibility, on some proprietary software that they had committed themselves to, long ago. It may be just my environment, but I do see GNU/Linux as THE mainstream operating system. It's just a pity that hardware vendors are still forced to deliver their PCs with proprietary software installed. But that will change sooner or later, some markets already offer PCs and Notebooks with GNU/Linux preinstalled. Which is important, because most users nowadays don't want to install and configure anything by themselves, neither Linux nor Windows, they want to buy a PC and start working right away. Most don't even care what software is installed, they just want to write documents and have all hardware working as needed. You can do this with any operating system, so why spend money and a "usage license" FOR proprietary software if you can have an open system, preinstalled and preconfigured, for less? Every operating system and application is dedicated for a specific purpose. For some people, Windows/Word/Excel/... may be the appropriate solution, for others it is the GNU/Linux suite with its office applications. If you have to make a decision, you should decide by what you want to do with the computer, and just do a cost/benefit analysis. I don't think that speaking of a "competition" is useful. Every OS and application has its advantages and disadvantages. Some may find KDE more easy to use than the Windows environment, others may disagree. People should have a choice, and the possibility to decide on their own, that's my opinion.

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