The Evolving Windows Vs. Linux Battle, Oct 16, 2006

There's a popular notion swirling around the high-tech sector that Microsoft's dominant position in the industry and software bugs have customers scurrying for the cover of Linux.

With the popularity of Linux clusters booming, IBM has opened up the source code to its General Parallel File System (GPFS), so it can run on other vendors' hardware.

If Microsoft is the big cat prowling the Serengeti of software with its Windows operating system, companies that promote Linux are playing the part of elk, banding together in protective herds.

Internet visionary Marc Andreessen has taken an interest in PHP, an open source programming language some consider a threat to languages, such as Java and Microsoft's Active Server Pages and .NET.

Eben Moglen is convinced the software industry is returning to being about a free exchange of ideas and code.

Microsoft plans to take a hard-charge at the burgeoning market for computer virtualization, including offering greater Linux compatibility, its chief executive said today.

Sun Microsystems President and COO Jonathan Schwartz declared war on Red Hat Linux on Intel-based x86 machines in an attempt to woo financial services customers.

At the quarterly Network Computer event in New York City Tuesday, themed Take Back Wall Street," Schwartz unveiled new migration programs to woo and wean customers off of Linux and Xeon processors from Intel, currently offered by rivals such as IBM , HP and Dell. The COO instead said that running Solaris on AMD's Opteron servers is a more cost-effective, higher-performing choice.