IBM Desktop Linux Plan Faces Steep Challenges
This week at the LinuxWorld show in San Francisco IBM unveiled a deal with the major Linux distributors: Canonical, Novell and Red Hat, to work with PC manufacturers to develop and sell what was described as "Microsoft-free" PCs.
But no PC makers were present at the announcement. And when IBM executives were asked about whether any were on board with the plan, the answer was essentially "stay tuned."
Dell reportedly has met with some success in its year-old effort to sell desktop and notebook PCs running Canonical's Ubuntu Linux. And Lenovo already offers Novell's SUSE Linux with its products. But specific sales numbers from any vendors are hard to come by.
On the Linux distributor side, Red Hat sells its Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop software. But its plans to sell the Red Hat Global Desktop product through small resellers into emerging markets has run into snags, according to the company, including hardware and market changes, startup delays with resellers, problems designing services and multimedia licensing issues. And the company has unequivocally said it has no plans to develop a desktop Linux product for the consumer market.
IBM need look no further than its own Lotus products to understand how hard it will be to counter the desktop dominance of Microsoft Windows and Office. Its Notes and other Lotus products have struggled in the market against Microsoft's ubiquitous Exchange and Outlook and, more recently, against Microsoft's hot SharePoint collaboration software.
Under the plan announced this week, the Linux-based PCs will be loaded with the Lotus Open Collaboration Client Solution, which includes Notes, Symphony and Sametime.
Microsoft's problems getting the world to accept its Windows Vista desktop OS shows that businesses won't blindly buy every Microsoft desktop product the software giant produces. Indeed, Vista's problems could provide IBM and its Linux allies with an opportunity while buyers are at least a little bit open to the idea of desktop alternatives.
IBM and its allies might also have more luck in winning acceptance for Linux on mobile devices where Linux seems to have more of a foothold and Windows is far from dominant.
But right now it seems like it's Apple's Macintosh that's benefiting the most from those doubts, and IBM and company have their work cut out for them.