Desktop Linux advocates to walk before they run, Nov 11, 2003

Not many corporations run Linux on their client hardware, but that situation will start to change if the Linux community can make a business case around the lower costs and greater manageability of enterprise Linux desktop environments, according to speakers at the Desktop Linux Conference here on Monday.

Linux advocates are trying to convince IT managers to abandon Microsoft Corp.'s licensing fees and security issues in favor of Linux software for the desktop. The strategy isn't to convert the masses all at once, but rather to explain the advantages of Linux over the Windows operating system for certain types of companies running certain types of applications.

The mind boggles at the amount of fear that Microsoft has that people who search the Internet for knowledge, answers and understanding. Microsoft's fear is so great that it is willing to subvert what is truly one of the great inventions of history, searching the Internet, to a mere tool with one purpose, namely, to trick us all into buying Microsoft's software.

Will the combination of an old-line proprietary software company with roots in Utah and an up-and-coming open-source distributor in Nuremberg, Germany, add to Linux's momentum? That's the thinking behind Novell's planned acquisition of SuSE Linux AG for $210 million, disclosed last week, which brings together Novell's large installed customer base with SuSE's business-ready Linux operating system. It may be the best of two worlds--if Novell can pull it off.

Linux is a rising star in the geeky back office of computing. Its gains have come as an operating system for the data-serving computers that run corporate networks and serve up Web pages. On the desktop, Microsoft's Windows still reigns supreme.

But I.B.M. and the Open Source Development Lab, whose membership includes Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Intel, are beginning a drive to promote Linux as an alternative to Windows on the desktop.

One indication of their more aggressive approach came yesterday when an I.B.M. executive, Samuel J. Docknevich, delivered a speech at a technology conference outside Boston titled "The Time Is Now for Linux on the Desktop."

Sharp has selected MontaVista Software's version of Linux for its HG-01S home entertainment server, the companies said on Monday.

The device can be used to record TV programs, to store digital images from a camera-equipped mobile phone, to house a web-based photo album and to handle other tasks.

Throughout the 5-year-old Microsoft antitrust case, one of the chief potential rivals to Windows' dominance cited in court arguments has been Linux. And that was true again this week, when opponents of the 2001 Bush administration settlement with Microsoft returned to appeal that ruling.

The sole holdout state, Massachusetts, asked the court to impose remedies that it contends are needed to help Windows rivals, which essentially means Linux. The state, which was the first to seek action against Microsoft, wants the settlement to require the Microsoft Office suite to be ported to Linux.

Linux may be a free operating system, but the days of free copying may be numbered for Red Hat Inc. customers who, as of this spring, will no longer be able to receive support from Red Hat without purchasing a support license for every version of Red Hat's server software that they run.

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