Home > Operating Systems

Computerworld - With IT spending down and the U.S. economy struggling, Linux vendors at next week's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco will be fervently pushing the operating system as a way for companies to save scarce IT dollars.
Even the preshow buzz has focused on cost savings and return on investment rather than on major product announcements from Linux industry leaders like Red Hat Inc. and SuSE Inc. The conference, which runs from Monday through Thursday, is being held at the Moscone Center.
Highlighting the show will be keynote speeches from Scott McNealy, the CEO and chairman of Sun Microsystems Inc., and Sergey Brin, co-founder of search engine company Google Inc. Brin is expected to talk about how Mountain View, Calif.-based Google runs its popular Web search engine using Linux on industry-standard hardware, cutting costs and complexity. Sun is stepping into the Linux marketplace in a bigger way and will announce a Linux enterprise edition of its Sun Grid Engine grid computing application at the show.
The show comes at a time of mixed signals for the Linux community. According to a new report by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, Linux sales declined by 5% in 2001 to $80 million, but they're expected to increase to $280 million in 2006 as vendors find new ways to market the operating system.
Even so, an analysis by The Yankee Group in Boston said dissatisfaction with market leader Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and the company's new software licensing policies is pushing businesses to at least consider alternatives such as Linux. About 40% of some 1,500 corporations surveyed by Yankee said they were "outraged" by Microsoft's new, more expensive licensing deals and are seeking other options.
Interestingly, for the first time ever Microsoft will have its own booth at LinuxWorld (see story), where it will show off its Services for Unix and its Windows Embedded and CE operating system products. Microsoft officials have attended past LinuxWorld shows to monitor the competition, but never before has the company rented booth space at the event.
Among the announcements expected from vendors next week are the following:

• UnitedLinux, a new standardized Linux distribution being created by partners Caldera International Inc., SuSE, Turbolinux Inc. and Conectiva SA (see story), will announce the availability of the first beta version of its operating system, which will combine the best features of all four existing distributions.


• IBM will unveil several Linux hardware and service products and announce new Linux customers, including the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, Air New Zealand and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


• Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to unveil its postmerger Linux strategy following its acquisition earlier this year of Compaq Computer Corp. HP will announce new partnerships with independent software vendors and the latest versions of several Linux products, including Secure Linux Version 2.


• Red Hat will feature many of its partner companies, which will show their own business applications running on Red Hat's latest Advanced Server operating system. Several new alliances will also be announced as Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat continues to expand its push into the U.S. Linux market.


• InHand Electronics Inc., a maker of development software and chassis platforms for tiny handheld devices for specialized industry, government and military uses, is expected to debut its first Linux-based handheld operating system. The Rockville, Md.-based company created a Linux component after a group of Linux developers began working with their products on their own to make them compatible.


• The Open Source Development Lab will hold a news conference Tuesday to give a progress report on its efforts to create a powerful standardized Linux version for data center and telecommunications carrier-grade uses. The initiative was announced at January's LinuxWorld conference in New York (see story).

LinuxWorld is produced by IDG World Expo, a business unit of International Data Group Inc., the parent company of Computerworld.

Read more about Linux and Unix in Computerworld's Linux and Unix Topic Center.