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March 26, 2009
The Linux operating system is generally viewed as a very stable product and has been reliably powering corporate
and Web servers for many years. When a company selects Linux as the OS, there are no software licensing fees
to pay, which explains a good part of the success Linux has had.
But now for the past 3 to 5 years, some in the Linux community have been trying to push Linux on the desktop,
with a varying degree of success. Now the question: "Is Linux on the desktop relevant for most organizations?"
On March 24, panelists at a technical conference debated the question, with a Red Hat official wondering
whether the issue counts anymore.
So representatives from organizations such as Red Hat, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Fidelity
Information Services offered their various views on Linux and open source on the desktop during a session at
the InfoWorld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
The workshop was entitled "End users and Linux: do we have a participation problem?".
Red Hat's CEO Jim Whitehurst underscored some problems with running Linux on the desktop, including
some concerns the company has as a Linux vendor, one of which has to do with financials.
Whitehurst said "first of all, we don't know how to make money on Linux as the desktop... In my view, very
few people are running a desktop that is what we would term as mission-critical, so they don't want to pay
Red Hat or one of our partners for Linux desktop support."
He added "there is some money in the Linux desktop, but not much. We do have a desktop version of Linux,
but we typically sell it to big server customers who want some desktops."
Red Hat does offer its Red Hat Enterprise Desktop product, but Whitehurst added he was uncertain how
relevant the desktop itself will be in 2013 or 2014, with the advent of concepts such as "cloud-based services",
SaaS (Software as a Service), smartphone computing and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).
Additionally, interoperability issues are also a problem, according to Whitehurst. "There's a reason Microsoft
doesn't want to certify Evolution, a Linux mail client, and then hooking it into Microsoft's mail server Exchange.
Microsoft has key control points locked up on THEIR desktop and I can certainly understand that too," said
Whitehurst.
Another panelist, Timothy Golden, senior v.p. of security for Unix engineering and provisioning at Bank of
America, agreed with Whitehurst. "I have to concur with Jim on this one," he said. How people view the desktop
is going to change, said Golden.
"The concept of a desktop on a PC or workstation is kind of ridiculous in this day and age," said Whitehurst.
"I'd rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now," he said, using a hockey
analogy.
However, another panelist, K.S. Bhaskar, senior v.p. of Fidelity Information Services, gave a thumbs-up
to Linux on the desktop, adding that his family even uses it at home.
"There's a desire to use Linux on the desktop but it practicality sets in," said panelist Vinod Kutty,
associate director of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "There are significant barriers to switching."
Even Linux developers he has known prefer a Macintosh to a Linux desktop, Kutty said.
"I abandoned the Windows habit about ten years ago," Bhaskar said. "In the group that I have at work,
Linux is our primary desktop that we've been using since the year 2000," he said.
An industry analyst in the audience agreed with the panel's skepticism toward desktop Linux. "I think they're
right, there are some real barriers to strong adoption," said analyst Tim Clark, partner at The FactPoint Group.
Earlier in the session, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian was optimistic about Linux on the desktop, particularly
on netbooks and laptops.
Panelists also discussed concerns such as whether the economic downturn was good for Linux and the open source
community. The downturn has certainly benefitted Linux because it gets people to try new things, Whitehurst
said.
Many new projects are getting done on Linux, Whitehurst said.
Source: Red Hat.
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