LinuxWorld Expo: Desktop Dreams

N E W  Y O R K, Feb. 1, 2001 -- Nestled amongst the servers and embedded systems at this year’s LinuxWorld Expo, a massive trade show in New York, a desktop operating system is struggling to be born.

Big companies like Dell and Sun, and smaller ones such as Eazel, CodeWeavers and Ximian, are putting their muscle behind this year’s edition of the free, open-source operating system’s attempt to unseat Microsoft Windows’ rule over office and home end-user systems.

“Basically, anywhere you see a Windows-challenged PC, that’s a place you might see Linux,” said Herb Hinstroff, Linux program manager at Sun.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s president, said in a January speech that Windows and Microsoft Office are under seige from the Linux forces.

“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat number one,” he said.

Dream on, Linux partisans, say analysts.

“Linux on the desktop from a business standpoint in the US, we see as a complete nonstarter,” said Chris Le Tocq, an analyst for the Gartner Group.

Forrester’s research director Carl Howe was more kind.

“Basically, it’s our view that this is the wave of the future [but] it may take 10 years. Think of today’s Linux world show as PC world circa 1982 or ’83,” he said.

Pieces in Place?

Linux currently has less than five percent of the desktop market in the U.S., according to research firm International Data Corp. Various companies at the expo showed off four missing pieces of the Linux-at-your-desk equation.

Linux comes in various flavors such as Red Hat, Caldera and Corel, but none comes close to Microsoft’s Windows or Mac’s OS in ease of use. Two companies, Boston-based Ximian and Eazel, based in Mountain View, Calif., hope to change that with slick user interfaces. Both are based on GNOME, an open-source interface project. Ximian provides a “time travel” feature which can restore your system to a past state if you screw something up. Eazel’s Nautilus product, designed by a team that includes original designers of the Apple Mac interface, has slick icons that actually let you see the contents of your files. Both have automatic software download-and-install tools to help users dodge complicated Linux install processes.

Of the two, Eazel had the big announcements this week: Dell’s Linux machines will ship with Nautilus, and major Linux manufacturer Red Hat will make Nautilus their desktop of choice. Ximian said today that they’ve aligned with Hewlett-Packard to ship their desktop with HP-UX, HP’s high-end, non-Linux Unix system.

Corel and Sun showed office suites to replace Microsoft Office, which is ubiquitous on other systems but missing on Linux. Sun’s StarOffice is free because the company makes money selling computers to run StarOffice.

“We want to sell iron,” said Gina Centoni, head of Sun's Webtop applications division.

Borland, Corel and a smaller company, CodeWeavers, announced moves to help port Windows software over to Linux. Borland’s new Kylix allows users of their popular Delphi application development system to move to Linux. CodeWeavers and Corel are both working on the WINE project, which is a set of software tools that let Windows programs move to Linux with very little re-writing necessary.

Finally, Dell, Compaq, Sun and IBM showed off a range of Linux-powered desktop machines.

But all of these companies are hedging their bets, Le Tocq said. Sun’s StarOffice is a staging platform for their server-side applications suite, which sells profitable servers. Corel is moving to focus on graphics software, including applications for the Windows platform. And even Eazel, a pure Linux play, is looking into providing interfaces for Web-pads and other non-PC devices, the analyst said.

Fight Amongst Yourselves

Linux’s main challenge is the basic catch-22 of getting a new operating system into mass acceptance.

“There’s not a big demand for Linux on the desktop because there’s not the application software over there yet, and there’s not the application software over there yet because it’s not on the desktop,” said Jim Graham’ CodeWeaver’s chief technology officer.

But Dell’s situation shows another major problem. With more than 90 percent of the desktop market occupied by Windows, you’d think Linux-leaning companies would approach offices who wanted to convert from Windows to Linux. But like most of the big players, Dell has profitable business deals with Microsoft.

So Dell is fighting another Linux partisan by focusing on the tiny percentage of the desktop market belonging to Sun’s Solaris operating system, which is very similar to Linux (but not free).

“We are not backing away from our [Windows] NT and Microsoft commitment ... We’re going after Sun,” said Rick Hoffman, Director of DWS Software Solution Development at Dell.

Howe said Dell probably won’t find a very large market fighting Sun, but that they’re in a tough spot.

“You have to realize their political issue which is they’re good friends with [Microsoft’s] Bill [Gates] ... you look around for an enemy, and Sun seems to be the obvious one,” he said.

The Future of Linux

Dell’s wary attitude shows how Linux is going to have a lot of trouble unseating the mighty Microsoft monolith, analysts said. Howe suggested Linux would have 5 percent of the desktop market by 2004. Le Tocq charted Linux’s future market share as in the “low teens.”

Linux has its most immediate future in developing countries and other places where low cost is a priority, Le Tocq said. Desktop moves like Eazel’s and Corel’s might find fruit soonest there, he said.

“I had a call from a bank in Brazil who had 3000 desktops all running Microsoft Office and zero licenses [and considered switching to Linux rather than paying]? When you start looking at the cost of Microsoft on the desktop, that’s a significant item,” he said.

But U.S. Linux partisans shouldn’t despair, Howe said. Open source software is gaining momentum — slowly. It may just be a while before it overcomes the advantage of Microsoft’s huge installed base.

“If the Windows desktop starts to topple, it’s like a redwood tree,” Howe said. “It takes a long time for it to fall, but it’s really hard to stop once it starts.”