Thank you, Mr. McNealy, Apr 26, 2006

McNealy, still energetic, still striving for the top, now ruled over a company that, in its frantic efforts to capture its glory days, kept trying one approach after another -- network computers, Linux-powered appliances, and Java.

The first release of Ubuntu, whose name comes from an African word meaning "humanity to others," arrived in October 2004. Since then, the always-free Linux distribution has won over between two million and three million users worldwide, most of them individual desktop users, according to Canonical, the privately held firm behind the Ubuntu distribution.

TechNewsWorld published an opinion piece authored by Rob Enderle where he opines, “Why Linux May Never Be a True Desktop OS”. This is a rebuttal to that article.

Here's something nauseating. Linspire has announced at the 4th Annual Desktop Linux Summit their latest "We'd like to make money from the community's free stuff without honoring community values" strategy.

The Bank of Canada is slowly moving off of Unix into an environment that will see its economic analysts using Windows PCs to create models running on a Linux-based cluster.

Sun’s problem is huge and it is simple: Linux. The free operating system, yoked to low-cost processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, has decimated the Unix market by offering customers a cheap alternative to pricey Unix boxes like the ones Sun makes.

Many feel it’s been Schwartz, not McNealy, who has been steering the ship through some of Sun’s boldest moves in recent years. In addition to personnel cuts, they include product maneuvers such as open sourcing Solaris as the proprietary OS bowed to competitive heat from Linux, and creating a new per-user pricing structure for its Java Enterprise System software suite when competitors such as IBM and BEA Systems trumped Sun in the Java software market.

Xandros Inc., a leading Linux desktop distributor, took its time but after almost two years, the company finally launched its server operating system, Xandros Server, on April 25 at the LinuxWorld Toronto.

I think it can now be safely said, in hindsight, that Microsoft's entry into the browser business and its subsequent linking of the browser into the Windows operating system looks to be the worst decision—and perhaps the biggest, most costly gaffe—the company ever made. I call it the Great Microsoft Blunder.

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