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Linux Business

Linus's Baby Comes of Age 183

Posted by Zonk from the so-this-is-growing-up dept.
just_another_sean writes "Torvalds' Baby Comes of Age - BusinessWeek Online is running a story on how Linux has matured over the years. They have some positive things to say about it, and back up their statements with some examples and stats." From the article: "Hardware companies are selling more than $1 billion in servers to run Linux every quarter, while sales of servers running proprietary software continue to fall. And now, slowly but surely, Linux is making inroads on the desktop as well. According to IBM, 10 million desktops ran Linux in 2004 -- a 40% jump from a year ago. That progress has been an important foot in the door for all open-source companies. Marc Fleury, chief executive of open-source middleware company JBoss, describes the Linux operating system pioneered by Torvalds as the older brother who fought the tough battles and was able to get the curfew extended and the keys to the car, so that life was a lot easier for the rest of the open-source world. "
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Linus's Baby Comes of Age More

Linus's Baby Comes of Age

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @05:55PM (#13717641)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • even though it's GPL? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @05:56PM (#13717649)
    So is the GPL really such a handicap [slashdot.org]?

  • Linux maturity and business opportunities (Score:5, Insightful)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @05:57PM (#13717669) Homepage
    IBM's adoption of Linux and push of advertising has done wonders for overall acceptance of Linux by the business communities I work with. This is especially true of regulated industries, such as financial, medical, and educational. It is nice to see the very small project grow to become such an animal, while maintaining the ability to steer clear of bad commercialism. There have been many players that could have chosen to not further develop in Linux and it would have just remained a 'geek-only' system that people downloaded and wrangled with installing just to say they could do it.

    • It is really astounding to me how few free thinkers there are in the world.

      If you compare the behavior of businesses/investors to that of high school cliques, you'll find few differences. It's all about trends and fads and nothing about individual ambition or purpose. Indeed, even the language spoken at the highest echelons of these companies is decidedly more inane than the babbling of a bunch of valley girls.

      Kudos to IBM for setting a new and good trend for all the sheep to follow.
    • IBM practices what it preaches, too. Several of our support tools (like ServeRAID Manager) run on bootable Linux kernels, and we have versions of our flash and log-gathering utilities for Linux OSes. It's pretty cool.

      Our internal workstations are still Windows and Lotus, though, sadly. :)

  • so all its all thanks to the kernel? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gullevek ( 174152 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @05:58PM (#13717673) Homepage Journal
    I doubt that, a kernel allone doesn't make a server. I'd say its thanks to apache group (apache, tomcat, ...), php, samba and all the other services that you can provide and that can replace properitary services.
    Same for the desktop. It's thanks to KDE/Gnome that it gets more and more accepted on the desktop. The kernel is just one small part ...
    But well, manager & business journalist. Lets keep it simple and add a pie graphic!

  • But remember folks... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @05:58PM (#13717680) Homepage Journal
    As seen on Slashdot: the GPL hinders the development of Linux [slashdot.org].

    (Yes, this is funny. Laugh.)

    So, on one hand we have ZDNet telling us the GPL is bad, bad, bad. On the other hand, we have BusinessWeek telling us Linux is going places. Oh, and Steve Ballmer says the GPL is for communist bearded hippies. Go figure. I guess somebody did not get the memo or something.

  • Paul Murphy (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:01PM (#13717698) Journal
    this contradicts Paul Murphy's earlier article.

  • Still not where i want it.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:06PM (#13717746) Homepage Journal
    For web servers, even j2ee application servers and open source stuff linux is fine and dandy, where i can't stand it is enterprise applications.

    I can't stand the horrible certification matrix that is a joke on RedHat AS. I can't stand the fact that vendors lock into specific redhat releases and NONE of those locks carry forward. I can't stand the fact that Redhat doesn't seem to care. "contact your software vendor".

    Hence, i love solaris for enterprise applications - i'm talking about financial back end systems, i'm talking about heavy duty bpel, oracle sso, applicaitons 11i, oracle 10g grids and everything else. RedHat's TCO because of the lack of supported arch's is more than solaris or even HPUX which is downright scary.

    I love my redhat boxen, i wish i could standardize on that platform. Why the hell hasn't the market caught up? i mean for christs sake oracle preaches linux day in and day out yet i have to run AS 2.1 or AS 3.0 and i can't run 64bit database back ends in certain mixes nad i have to have oracle kernel versions for this and that and yet all of this is supposed ot come together in some "proposed" future date.

    They've only been saying that for 5 years now :(
  • Maybe a little off topic, but I've always wondered what Linus runs on his computer.
    • I heard he's a closet Win 3.11 user.
    • He runs on a PPC [slashdot.org] so that narrows it down a bit. Between Gentoo, Ubuntu, Yellowdog and Mandriva, I'd guess Gentoo.
    • Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org], of course!

    • Re:What distro does Linus run? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:45PM (#13718068)
      The guy who should be working already mentioned the PPC, but I remember reading here on /. a while back that he had a *really* nice SMP workstation (4 or 8 cpu, forget) and ran Mandrake simply because 'drake "just worked" at the time.

      I think that would be a cool slashdot interview type thingie - find out what hardware, OS, and apps the Big Names in computing use personally.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:What distro does Linus run? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @08:15PM (#13718711)
        If people are really going to choose 1 distro over the other, because Linus uses it, then they are pretty dumb users. You really have to choose your distro based on what you will be using it for. There is no distro that's right for everyone. That's where windows has it wrong. They try to create 1 windows that's right for everyone, and instead, don't really end up satisfying anyone. Never mind the Home,Pro,Server,Advanced Server, DC Server versions. They are all really the same OS, with a few features disabled. With linux, you can get any version, and enable all the features. You don't need to spend thousands of dollars just because you happen to have a 16 cpu machine.
        • i feel the same way when people trot out this tired old line:

          "*bsd is better because walnut creek cdrom / hotmail / yahoo / obscure tequila-producing community in mexico use it, linux users are obviously teh sux!!"

          the company i work for has migrated (spanning around 9 years) the core-business application from ultrix/mips to digunix/alpha to solaris/sparc to linux/x86. i think we'll be staying on linux for a good while, as worthy contenders don't appear very often. the only real constant has been the gnu t
        • If people are really going to choose 1 distro over the other, because Linus uses it, then they are pretty dumb users.

          I think that was the whole point. There are a lot of dumb users out there, in case you haven't noticed.
        • If people are really going to choose 1 distro over the other, because Linus uses it, then they are pretty dumb users.

          OTOH, it is a useful 'certification of fitness'; if SuSE or Red Hat or whatever are usable enough for Linus, or Alan, or whoever, they'll probably be good enough for the likes of you and I. Too many people think that the work they're doing is unique and boundary-extending when really most of it isn't.

  • Inroads on the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by br00tus ( 528477 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:32PM (#13717954)
    I began playing with Linux in 1994 or 1995, when I downloaded it to my PC and used LILO to stick Linux on one of the drives. Eventually I owned multiple PC's, but usually used Windows as my desktop, and had a Linux server. One of the reasons for this was that it was easy to handle Linux remotely, and Windows wasn't, so due to Windows bad features in that area, it was stuck being my desktop.

    Anyhow, last December I got a Linksys wireless ethernet adapter and put it in my main desktop, a Windows ME machine (I haven't bought a new machine since the market crashed in spring 2000). Except it didn't work - perhaps it only wanted to work on Windows XP or something. Anyhow, the drivers for the adapter fried all my networking. I kept working on it, and finally decided to reinstall my C drive. Except it's not like Windows 95 with its decent install disks, I have these crappy OEM Windows ME repair disks. OK, so I backup everything I need on C and go. Well, the crappy OEM CD not only blows away C (which I expected), but blows away the D drive as well to write just one file. So I stop everything, and ponder how I am going to get my stuff off D which I need. So I install Debian on drive C, and rescue the important stuff on D. I also pull my stuff off drives E and F. Then I blow everything away and reinstall Debian for my entire disk.

    I have to say, I have missed Windows a lot less than I thought I would. My main concern was being able to read and send Microsoft Word documents, but I haven't had to send a Word document in months, and I haven't had a problem reading the few I need anyhow. So I haven't even had to use the Linux programs that say they can help compensate for this. My roommate has a Windows box anyhow, so I can always use his if I'm desperate (or make other arrangements). I've been using UNIX for a long time and love being able to run Apache, MySQL, PERL, PHP etc. on my computer. I have Mediawiki and osCommerce running locally just for testing, and I have my own MySQL tables and PHP/Apache and PERL scripts as well.

    I haven't needed Microsoft like I thought I would. Also, I should point out, I switched because Microsoft has gotten worse (OEM repair CDs instead of the old, easy Microsoft vanilla install/reinstall CDs), and Linux has gotten better (which includes GNOME/KDE etc.) I switched due to necessity, not because I am a free software zealot, although I appreciate free software zealots and can be one myself sometimes. I should also add that my wireless adapter worked fine - Linux had the drivers for it. Windows had the drivers as well - but only for XP (ones that didn't blow away your machine). I would have had to shell out money to upgrade my OS to use my new device. You don't have this problem with Linux.

    As far as me being a tech, and this not effecting the population, I disagree. I write software, as do many of us, and this is really what effects things. If all the techs begin writing lots of software for Linux, this changes the dynamics of things. There's an old saying "if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow". Microsoft no longer has me by the balls, which means my mind no longer has to follow them.

  • Actually it's Stallman's baby (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hansreiser ( 6963 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:36PM (#13717991) Homepage
    Sorry, but Stallman of www.fsf.org was the one, and Linus made an important contribution (the kernel was only one of many pieces needed by the OS), but not as important as those made by the guy who failed to name anything after himself.

    First we needed an editor (emacs), then a compiler (gcc), a bunch of utilities (things like cp got written by the fsf), a license (the GPL), and only after all that Stallman originated stuff was in place were we ready for a kernel.

    Hans
    • didn't have to go that way.
      there is no reason I can't create an open source Kernel using a closed source editor.
      Or a open source compiler using a closed source editor.

      You history was correct, but there was no reason that it had to go in that order.
    • Sure, Linux would be nowhere without Gnu, but Gnu would be nowhere without Linux. Can't we just call it a happy symbiosis instead of trying to say it's one or the other's baby?
    • Can't it belong to both of them? Uughh. That brings horrible visions of Linus injecting his kernel, or seed as it were, into Stallmans fertile GNU userspace.

      Almost makes me want to stop using their bastard child.

    • Re:Actually it's Stallman's baby (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sorry, but Stallman of www.fsf.org was the one, and Linus made an important contribution (the kernel was only one of many pieces needed by the OS), but not as important as those made by the guy who failed to name anything after himself.

      The existence of the BSDs is proof that this argument is bunk. Without GNU tools, we'd still have had the BSD toolchain and utilities which predate it. Yes, we might initially have had to use a free-as-in-beer instead of free-as-in-speech compiler, but GNU itself had exactl
      • "Linux without GNU is like a fish without a bicycle."

        Not a very good analogy. A fish would never need nor be able to use a bicycle. I'd say more like a dog without a fire hydrant. The dog is still going to pee it just may not be in it's favorite place.

  • Flame on :) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Henk Postma ( 703916 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @06:53PM (#13718117) Homepage Journal
    At the risk of starting a "is it GNU/Linux" flamewar ...

    Opensource is hardly Linus' baby, more like RMS. Not discounting Linus: it was of course smart of him to use the opensource concept, and he can surely code me into a corner.

    Plus, don't forget: the kernel is not the (only) thing that makes linux great, it's all the tools Apache/Perl/gnome/kde etc that live on top of it.

  • older sibling ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Triumph The Insult C ( 586706 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @07:12PM (#13718265) Homepage Journal
    curfew extended and the keys to the car,

    that's the easy part. getting laid^H^H^H^Haccepted by PHBs as being suitable 'enterprise grade' computing is the hard part

  • All at the same time? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ClosedSource ( 238333 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @09:54PM (#13719216)
    IBM spokesperson: There were 10 million desktops running Linux in 2004.

    Business week: All at the same time?

    IBM spokesperson: Well, no. We were going to take 5 million PCs out of stock and load Linux on them before installing Windows, but then we decided to load Linux on a single PC and move it from desktop to desktop. It was much cheaper.

  • 10 Million .... 40 % ..... WOW! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2005 @11:08PM (#13719517)
    For those who say that Windows is destined to own the desktop, 10 Million at 40% is one hell of a demographic/trend. 20% with a base of a 2 million would be enough to make any astute business student pee in their pants. In fact, I can't find the data, but from my memory that kind of uptake is stronger then Microsoft was. At this point, there must be serious market forces behind the wheel. And they are happening in spite of an entrenched well financed competitor??? I would say all hell is going to break loose in the next few years or so.
    • That's a 40% increase over the prior period, which isn't bad... but one also has to consider where those numbers are coming from.

      IIRC, it's entirely possible the vast majority of that increase is coming from Linux installed on cheap Chineese desktops, as more and more people in that country get computers and get online. As such, even with the increase it could still be a smaller percentage of a larger pie.

      • ...it's entirely possible the vast majority of that increase is coming from Linux installed on cheap Chineese desktops...

        Actually, I wouldn't be supprised if it was, the 3rd world isn't the same as it used to be. Linux is very well positioned.

        There are over a billion people coming "on-line" to the global economy, with a potential limit of 6 billion. The latest business thinking is that it is better and easier to make $10 from a billion people, then it is to make $100 from an oversaturated US market segment

  • I'm sorry, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by msormune ( 808119 )
    ...isn't Linux just used here as a replacement for a Unix core kernel? That way companies don't have to pay for commercial Unix implementations. I admin a Linux server myself, and don't care one bit it runs Linux. It could be any Unixish system for all I care. I am also pretty sure Linux alone does not run much software. It takes a lot of other software component to achieve that.

  • Count the rest of the world (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @07:15AM (#13721025) Journal
    The figures for desktop Linux use are always a little vague. Are they just counting the States and Western Europe or the whole world? How do they account for Win/Linux dual boot systems which may well be the norm for a lot of early adopters?

    Linux has great attractions for the developing world where folks either can't afford the Wintel upgrade crack or are leery of it for political reasons. Yesterday, for example, it was announced that Sun Wah Linux will be rolled out on 150,000 PCs in Chinese schools, arguably a more solid achievement for open sauce than yesterday's Google/Sun lovefest. It's possible that an increase in desktop Linux in the West will be prompted by its widespread use everywhere else first.

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