Open source operating system vendor Red Hat is preparing a version
of Linux for use on corporate workstations, Michael Tiemann, chief
technology officer of Red Hat, said at the Linuxworld expo in San
Francisco.
Traditionally, Linux has failed to make any impact on the desktop
operating system market, which is dominated by Microsoft's Windows
operating system. However as major vendors including Sun
Microsystems, IBM and Hewlett-Packard throw their weight behind the
open source operating system, Linux's chances on the desktop seem
to have improved.
"There is a light at the end of the desktop tunnel," Tiemann
said.
The company has released a beta version of its general purpose Red
Hat Linux operating system, code-named Limbo, which will be the
first version from the company designed for the desktop, Tiemann
said. The company has previously concentrated on an enterprise
server version of the operating system called Red Hat Advanced
Server.
Meanwhile Sun Microsystems has alluded to work it is doing to
propel Linux onto the desktop. Chairman, president and chief
executive Scott McNealy, said that Sun plans to detail work it is
doing on a desktop version of Linux in September.
While Linux has made inroads into the enterprise with increasing
deployment on servers, it has not been widely adopted on the
desktop. The most high-profile failure in this space was Eazel, a
company in which Dell Computer invested, which went bankrupt in
2001 after failing to gain additional funding or an audience for
its desktop Linux product.
In addition, Dell, a close partner of Red Hat, stopped selling
individual PCs with Red Hat Linux preloaded, citing lack of demand
for the machines. Customers can still purchase Linux machines from
Dell if they order in bulk.
"We have clearly seen a limited amount [of demand for desktop
Linux] to date in the US," Randy Groves, vice-president at Dell
said. However he did note that some markets around the world have
shown signs of life. "The interest in the desktop arena is probably
growing," he said. "Workstations continue to be the area with most
of the focus."
Red Hat said it will target those corporate workstations with a
distribution that it said will be easier to use than the current
version of Red Hat Linux. The call for a version of Linux that can
be easily deployed and managed on desktop computers has come mainly
from the financial services industry, where Red Hat has been
gaining ground with customers that use its Advanced Server
operating system to run various parts of their computer systems,
Tiemann said.
"They all used to say to me, don't waste your time even thinking
about the desktop," Tiemann said. "But over the past three months
we've been getting enquiries."
Driving the need for Linux on the desktop, Tiemann argued, is a
growing dissatisfaction with desktop operating system leader
Microsoft, whose Windows operating systems are used on nearly 95%
of the world's desktops, according to research company IDC.
Security problems and a new enterprise licensing plan for Windows
have led IT organisations to seek ways to drop Windows, Tiemann
said.
Technical contributions to the Linux community from Sun, Intel and
other major IT vendors also are adding new credibility to the once
enigmatic operating system.
"This has resulted in advances in Linux desktop technologies that
could not have been predicted one year ago," Tiemann said. "Linux
now has a technology base that can compete."