Big Blue’s Penguin Push

A few days ago IBM popped another announcement increasing the size of their already vast Linux support and backing. “IBM Turns To Linux In Desktop Campaign Against Microsoft” is an interesting little article referencing how Big Blue has added Lotus Notes  8 and Symphony…or as they dub it, Open Collaboration Client…to Ubuntu and Red Hat. Many folks already are aware of Lotus Notes being the personal information management suite of e-mail, calendar and contacts, but Symphony is IBM’s office productivity package including word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations. Think OpenOffice…free. I was happy to read about the additional distributions being added to IBM’s support checklist.

 I’m a huge Linux fan, and it is my OS of choice since 2000. I have used all of the major distros from Red Hat Linux 6.2, Slackware, SUSE, Mandriva (back in my day it was called Mandrake), Fedora and Debian. For the longest time SUSE was my personal favorite. Perhaps it came from living in Germany and admiring the Germans for their thoroughness and attention to detail. I often found SUSE would recognize more hardware and had a more refined look/feel when deploying and using it verses her competitors. Recently I made the switch to Ubuntu. Everyone has different experiences with Linux, especially those who are treading into the waters after solely using Windows., but the thing I flat out love about Ubuntu is it just works. It is easy to use from a “average joe” perspective, but still gives the power of Linux to the advanced engineer and tech. The folks from Canonical (commercial supporters) as well as the Ubuntu developers and huge friendly support community have made Ubuntu just flat out work. I’ll save further praise for Ubuntu for another blog post, however the reason I brought it up is this: it is wonderful to see a large powerhouse in the industry continue to recognize Linux for official support of their products. It lends greater credibility and opens more resources, as well as spans the corporate world’s recognition not just to Linux but to particularly refined distributions.

That brings me to why I posted this. IBM recognizes 3 major distributions as having the capability to begin to edge Microsoft out of their “We are Borg…resistance is futile” methods and dominance to actually give the consumer, as well as businesses, freedom of choice for their desktops! They are backing a play that says the Linux desktop is stable enough, refined enough for end-users to make a transition.  With Dell shipping Ubuntu and SUSE on their PCs now, there are open Windows for corporations and end-users to have options and experience and cut significant costs. The next step is to convince the skeptics that Linux is not a novelty. Having been in development for over 17 years with open source techniques and unfettered programming by folks with a passion for what they do, not just a bang-for-a-buck mentality, and now corporate backing that is gaining more steam, it can be simply stated that Linux has arrived.

For those of you who might like to give the ol’ bird a try -

Ubuntu:  http://www.ubuntu.com 

SUSE: http://www.opensuse.org 

Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org

~Kryptikos

Proverbs 16:23 “A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction.”