Linux On Desktop Gains Mind Share

Linux owns less than 2 percent share of the desktop operating-system market, but mind share has spiked considerably in recent months since Sun and Novell have moved aggressively to grow the Linux desktop market.

At the LinuxWorld Expo, beginning Jan. 20 in New York, the advanced assault on Microsoft will be underscored by a number of developments in the desktop Linux space. These include more customer wins for Sun's month-old Enterprise Java Desktop, the launch of a desktop Linux initiative by Open Source Development Labs, enhanced plug-and-play and desktop support in the recently finalized Linux 2.6 kernel, new Linux-based thin clients from Sun and Wyse Technology, a new business desktop from Xandros and long-term product road maps from Sun and Novell.

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>>%A0 Are recent moves by Sun and Novell to grow Linux business finally rattling Microsoft's cage?
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Novell plans to ship an enterprise Linux desktop in 2004, and at LinuxWorld, will announce the beta release of the GroupWise client for Linux.

Also at the show, Sun will demonstrate technologies under development, including a Linux thin client for Sun Ray, enhanced desktop management features and early code of its 3-D desktop Looking Glass Project, said Peder Ulander, vice president of marketing for desktop solutions at Sun, Santa Clara, Calif.

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Following recent wins with the governments of Israel, United Kingdom and China, for instance, Sun will highlight at LinuxWorld Expo two more wins for its month-old Linux desktop,United India Insurance Company (UIIC) and SourceNext, a Japanese reseller. Sun said the UIIC deal, signed last quarter, is a 10,000-seat conversion from Microsoft Office to StarOffice. SourceNext, an ASP, will host StarOffice on a subscription basis through Japanese convenience stores, Sun said.

In the United States, the city of Austin, Texas, said it may replace its 5,200 Microsoft desktops with an open-source alternative. And the state of Massachusetts reiterated its long-term strategy to move all of its platforms to open source.

Still, while support for Linux on the desktop is undeniably growing in the government sector, some believe the impact on Microsoft's monopoly on the corporate desktop will be negligible.

One partner, who claims to have witnessed a Microsoft-developed version of Office running on Linux within the past two years, said Microsoft is preparing for the worst but he, like many others, suspects that corporations are more interested in leveraging price cuts out of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant than they are in migrating thousands of users to a new open-source desktop.

Indeed, it is difficult for Linux supporters to back up their expectations for significant corporate uptake. Vendors such as Sun and Ximian continue to point to highly secretive corporate pilots under way at Fortune 1000 companies, but neither Sun nor Ximian will disclose the name of a Microsoft account pledged to making the move.

Sun claims to have one large financial institution considering a 100,000-user switch from older versions of Windows to Linux, but when pressed, Sun executives acknowledge that among corporate users the vast amount of interest is for call centers and transaction-oriented workers.

Microsoft's key Linux strategist acknowledges the increasing momentum of Linux on the desktop but said he doesn't view the potential threat as any different from that posed in the past by the Macintosh, the Sun Ray or the Network Computer.

"They're all public-sector deals," said Martin Taylor, general manager for Platform Strategies at Microsoft, referring to the Linux desktop deals. "The issues are not related to technology and price, but based on political issues."

However, now faced with a three-horse race between Sun, Novell and Red Hat, observers say Microsoft is going to have to fight harder to prevent open-source vendors from trespassing into its coveted desktop territory.