CIOs committing more budget to Red Hat, open source, Apr 09, 2009

Like begets like, and in the software world, open-source purchasing begets even more open-source purchases.

Ask any Linux aficionado why the desktop hasn't seen more converts, and you'll probably get a blank stare. The answer depends on your perspective.

Why is Open Source becoming so pervasive? The reason is that we are now entering an era of Collaborative Innovation. Open Source Software (OSS) is the leading example of this trend, but the Open Source development model based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge is rapidly expanding to other areas.

Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin says that Linux adoption is advancing two to three times faster than that of other platforms and that it will be boosted as companies consolidate their technical infrastructure during this economic downturn. Similar views were expressed by an IDC analyst who has recently authored a report which suggests that Linux will withstand the recession better than its competitors.

Here is an interesting fact - when customers are offered choice on equally well-engineered computers around a third will select Ubuntu over XP.

Virtualization, cloud computing, and adoption by startups will make Linux the fastest-growing operating system, post economic downturn.

Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution

If we agree to accept the premise that Linux is not yet perfect, then does it need more outside critics to guide its development path? Or are there already too many? Or, as Goldilocks might say, is the number just right?

The Linux Mint developers have announced the release of Linux Mint 6 KDE Community Edition (aka Felicia).

Commercial Linux distributor Novell today announced that the openSUSE Project, which drives the development variant of its Linux, will support the creation and packaging of various Linuxes for ARM processors using the openSUSE Build Service version 1.6.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, Ian Murdock, vice president of developer and community marketing at Sun Microsystems, and Sam Ramji, director of platform strategy at Microsoft, all made cases for their respective platforms in front of delegates at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit.

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