Zeichick's Take: LinuxWorld: It's about the phones, data centers and penguins
Stories Columns Opinions Resources
Preflight builds spread wings for smoother projects
Developers are increasingly turning to preflight builds, allowing them to experiment with ...
|
Coverity creates program to enforce code adherence
The Architecture Analyzer uses mapping technology from the company's Software DNA static a...
|
QCon 2008 features domain-driven development
This year's QCon invites speakers like Eric Evans and Dan North to talk about domain-drive...
|
.NET similarities prove golden for Silverlight
Microsoft has focused on making Silverlight 2 symmetric with the .NET platform, and that h...
|
SOA Watch: New economic realities
In the current economic downturn, agile programming and SOA are attractive options that bu...
|
Integration Watch: A new twist on threads
The key to raising the efficiency of multiprocessors is to shrink the overall workload by ...
|
Integration Watch: The Return of NetRexx?
Java scripting languages are seeing a surge in popularity, with NetRexx looking particular...
|
Windows & .NET Watch: Transaction crowd gets a boost
With multicore chips becoming the standard for processors, the need for a flexible, usable...
|
From the Editors: Election should shake up JCP
Rod Johnson has the right ideas for opening up the Java Community Process, and he may be a...
|
Letters to the Editor: Sun gives REST, SOAP choice
A reader takes issue with a headline on our story about Sun working with REST along with S...
|
Guest View: Be smart and lazy
The optimal solution for problems is the simplest one, so always aim to streamline your ap...
|
Zeichick's Take: From EXEC to EXEC 2 to REXX to NetRexx
Andrew Binstock's column last week, "The Return of NetRexx," brought back some fond memori...
|
Advanced Corda CenterView™ Data Visualization for the BusinessObjects™ Intelligence Platform
Corda Technologies presents a white paper on pervasive BI. The BusinessObjects business in...
|
From Mobile to SOA: A Guide for Optimized Application Deployment
Customer need has driven the emergence of multiple computing tiers. Today’s application d...
|
e-Kit: Web Application Security
Is your network secure? What about your web applications.
If IT security is your top p...
|
Practical tips for saving money on code maintenance
If software design is expensive, well, code maintenance is even more so. When you look...
|
By Alan Zeichick
August 7, 2008 —
While some call it the March of the Penguins, this week’s LinuxWorld conference is a sign of how far Linux has come. It’s mainstream, at least in the data center. Nobody need ever apologize for installing rack after rack of Linux servers.
For the desktop, well, despite the well-publicized travails of Windows Vista, there’s no sign that Linux has made any serious inroads. While some folks have doubtlessly migrated to Ubuntu or one of the other user-friendly Linux distros, the big winners on the desktop have been the Mac and Windows XP.
The mobile phone, however, remains a rich opportunity for Linux, for two reasons. First, it’s a wide-open battleground, and nobody—not Microsoft, not Symbian, not Apple—has succeeded in world domination of the software stack. (Google is going to try to do that with Android, but it’s premature to make predictions.) The other reason is because, frankly, a mobile phone’s operating system isn’t very important. Consumers don’t buy phones based on their software stack; instead, looks and functionality are the deciding factors.
That leaves the data center as the real home of Linux. LinuxWorld, which has a section called NGDC, or Next Generation Data Center, showed off plenty of hardware, from blade servers to power distribution centers, from appliances to keyboard-video-mouse switches. Big server applications, like Oracle and WebSphere, are in vogue. Systems management applications continue to penetrate the Linux market, along with backup utilities, database recovery systems and security solutions.
What struck me at LinuxWorld is that everyone was very serious. Not much laughter, not many smiles. A rare bright spot came from GroundWork Open Source, which sells systems management software. They were having a contest to determine the “Next Open Source Idol.” After the first day of voting, there were 43 votes cast. The results shouldn’t be surprising:
» |
Tux the Linux Penguin |
37.2% |
» |
The Mozilla Firefox |
25.6% |
» |
Beastie the BSD Demon |
18.6% |
» |
The GNU Gnu |
18.6% |
Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.
Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/32679