Inertia the obstacle to Linux on the desktop

The progress of Linux on the desktop has been slower than many may have hoped. Microsoft Windows is deeply entrenched, and any competing system has to overcome obstacles of inertia, perception and distribution, but it would be a mistake to assume that nothing has happened, or that no progress is being made.

The migration of Linux into the server space was also slow, and began with a steady uptake on the smaller backroom tasks during the 1990s, (file and print servers, LAMP applications, web servers and firewalls), before its rapid adoption during the dotcom boom by IBM, HP and others. In more recent years, the majority of blue chip business applications have become available to Linux, and Linux has replaced Unix as the choice for many mission-critical server applications, an area where Microsoft has never been a serious contender. A similar effect is happening with the Linux desktop.

The ubiquitous PC that sits on every office desktop is an absurd extravagance for many users. Much like keeping a Ferrari to go to the shops, the PC has capabilities that are never exploited during its daily life. The full capacity of the processor, the operating system, software and disk space are seldom utilised.

On the desktops of many organisations the typical user does little more than edit and display data across the network. Much of the power of the PC is redundant, yet IT resources are increasingly devoted to the PC upgrade cycle. In such circumstances it makes sense to consider other options such as thin clients, virtualisation and PDAs. The money saved can be better used elsewhere. In these markets, where scalability and flexibility are at a premium, Linux is the fast moving alternative - and can be deployed just as easily as a lean thin client at the point of sale, or as a fully-featured desktop for the developer or the power user, without any sense of a disconnection between the two.

The complaints of home users about lack of support for games, drivers, and proprietary data formats either don't apply to business, or don't apply where the desktop has been pre-installed by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and there is no distinct advantage in going with Microsoft. Linux can be deployed across an organisation, or side by side with Windows in a truly heterogeneous environment, playing in the niches where it provides singular cost and performance advantages.

Special effects

The current market for the Linux desktop can be separated into three different niches. The first niche is that sector of the work station market that has previously been the preserve of Unix, where Linux on Intel offers considerable price/performance advantages. This has happened in many specialised industries. The classic example is the Hollywood animation industry, where Linux workstations running on Intel have replaced traditional Risc Unix systems. The digital special effects used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, were developed by Weta Digital Ltd in Wellington, New Zealand, using IBM Intellistation workstations, and the animators and graphic artists who work for Dreamworks use Red Hat Linux running on HP supplied commodity hardware.

"There are cost benefits in migrating to Linux", according to Adam Jollans, IBM's worldwide Linux strategy manager, "and it makes sense where the key applications, originally written for Unix, have been ported to Linux. The Unix workstation has tended to thrive in industries where performance factors are critical. The markets tend to be applications dependent, so migration tends to happen on an industry by industry basis."