August 2008 — News
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IBM To Team with Linux Vendors on 'Microsoft-Free' PCs
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IBM and name-brand Linux operating system distributors Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical/Ubuntu have disclosed their intentions to join forces with their hardware partners to create what they are calling "Microsoft-free personal computing choices."
IBM and its partners plan to bundle their Linux distros with Big Blue's Open Collaboration Client Solution, which includes Lotus Notes, Lotus Symphony, and Lotus Sametime. Under the agreement, PC makers will be able to sell the bundled software with their desktop products. The group expects to have these software bundles ready sometime next year.
IBM has had 10 years of experience supporting Linux on servers, and now the company sees the right conditions to work toward a desktop Linux push. Those conditions include shifting market forces, slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista desktop operating system and increasing demands for alternatives to "costly" Windows and Office licensing.
"Linux has always been about choice," said Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM. She spoke to reporters gathered in San Francisco on Tuesday at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Referring pointedly to Microsoft's longtime desktop dominance, she added, "I can hardly name an area where choice is needed more."
Jeff S. Smith, Vice President of open source and Linux middleware for IBM's Software Group, called Linux's notoriously slow march to the desktop an "interesting evolution."
"It's no big secret that the client side of the IT environment is one of the last bastions of proprietary technology, disproportionately dominated by one vendor," Smith said. "We have long believed that helping to bring openness and choice to the client desktop is one of the next things to explode in this whole march for Linux."
Neither Smith nor Kuznetsova would provide the names of any hardware vendors who have signed on to this initiative. Kuznetsova said that the vendor deals were still in the works.
However, IBM's position is that desktop Linux is ultimately more profitable for a PC vendor. Moreover, it's better equipped to work with lower cost hardware than Microsoft's operating system. IBM plans to work with local business partners globally to build and distribute PCs preloaded with the Linux operating system of each distributor.
