One of the great tech non-events of the last few years involves Linux on PCs. Every so often, another wave of hype washes in about how companies are finally going to ditch their Windows machines in favour of the open-source operating system and productivity apps like Sun’s StarOffice and (more recently) IBM’s Symphony.
I suppose you can’t blame IBM for trying to capitalise on the bad press of Windows Vista to try to give this story another spin. It has just agreed a deal with the three top Linux companies to distribute its own Notes and Symphony software alongside the operating system. The promise: a “turnkey” software package that, according to IBM, cuts 30 per cent or more from the cost of buying a new enterprise PC.
Companies are finally getting the message about desktop Linux, claims an IBM official, pointing to the evidence from a report by Forrester: this showed that last year the number of enterprise PCs running Linux rose from 0.1 per cent to 0.5 per cent.
No, that’s not a misprint: 0.5 per cent.
When I spoke to Simon Yates at Forrester, he was roundly dismissive of the idea that enterprise customers have got any more interested in running Linux on their PCs:
It’s going nowhere. It’s not made any headway in the last 4-5 years.
The research numbers quoted by IBM, according to Yates, didn’t show anything significant. Forrester tracks the operating systems of the computers that log onto its Website, and that’s a number that can go up and down.
Will the backing of the IBM brand help? It certainly helped Linux on the server, but the PC story is different. As Yates says, companies face enough upheaval upgrading from one version of Windows to the next without contemplating jettisoning Windows altogether. Still, at the margin it can’t hurt. And, from IBM’s point of view, if it at least gives customers more ammunition to argue for lower prices from Microsoft, so much the better.
