And it's not T-shirted, pony-tailed, propeller-headed geeks who are preaching the Desktop gospel this time around: it's sleek corporate types, complete with coveys of well-coifed publicists - Sun, Novell, SuSe, Red Hat et al. (yes, the 'look and feel' at RH and SuSe is definitely corporate these days, and I may be the last person to notice).

No one is doubting Linux' ascendance as a server OS: all the Big Booths are heavily featuring Linux as a file server, app server, Web server, email, calendar, directory and special-purpose server. The special purpose list is getting long: medical imaging, rendering, document management, financial services, CAD-CAM, multimedia management, forms handling, content management and pretty much you-name-it.

But Xandros had a line wrapping around the South Hall when they offered their desktop environment for free. Xandros was formerly Corel Linux, and was situated in 'The Rookerie', LinuxWorld's version of those back-aisle, 10 x 10 booths favored by startups. I spend most of my time in the back aisles, at least when I'm not jockeying for cool swag at the Bigs.

A German firm recently did a study of desktop productivity: users performed very nearly as well on Linux and Windows. To be sure, there was no requirement to configure either environment or download and install software, but that's not a requirement in a lot of enterprise settings.

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz made a lot of pronouncements in a keynote speech that, I think, many observers would not take as 'given': one that rung true, however, was that companies who were moving functions to Bangalore to save money were unlikely to put several thousand dollars worth of Microsoft OSes and apps on the workstations for their offshore, highly technically-literate workers. He also made the point that the same might hold true in China: I think Sun's on to something there, and not just the usual McNealy-inspired MS-bashing.

Cost-sensitive organizations in the US might be interested as well: the small and medium business crowd buy MS mainly because it's what comes on the cheap computers they order. If Dell and CDW partnered with the provider of a reasonably good, integrated Linux desktop that opens and writes MS files, at some drastic discount to MS' offerings, the worm might, just, begin to turn.

Anyway, this will be a fun shooting match to observe: MS dissed Linux servers, and now Linux has something like 30% share... can the Desktop possibly be next?
Comments 9:28:13 PM    

I agree with the woman quoted in the NY Times this morning: I can't believe there is so much hatred among my fellow Episcopalians. I hope David Lewis, Gene Robinson's accuser, is deep in prayer about his accusation...
Comments 7:58:55 AM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures