Memo Confirms IBM Move To Linux Desktop?

m5shiv writes "The Inquirer is reporting on an allegedly leaked internal memo from IBM CIO Bob Greenberg discussing IBM's move to a Linux desktop: 'Our chairman has challenged the IT organization, and indeed all of IBM, to move to a Linux based desktop before the end of 2005. This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents.' The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"

Comments

ITYM

[Anonymous Coward]

The enemy of my enemy is .. useful.

winder if a new DE will come out of this

[handmedowns]

you'd think with all those developers using KDE or GNOME or whatever.. there'll be someone who re-invents the wheel again =P

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[grub]

If somebody came along and made a lightweight, dynamic windowing system and desktop environment for Linux, with real usability and minimalism, I'd shit my pants!

May I suggest Windowmaker? Please post pictures of your feces-encrusted jeans by 12:00 GMT tommorrow.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[droleary]

there'll be someone who re-invents the wheel again

With any luck, a round one this time instead of suffering with the two (main) horribly clunky desktop choices offered to Linux users now. If you really think KDE or GNOME are usable, you just haven't been around. If IBM had a clue, they'd push for more GNUstep development, which would actually give us all a shot at running some quality apps (commercially coming over from the Mac camp, of course) on Linux. A lot of things on Linux are nice, but making usable apps is simply not an itch that developers have scratched in free software.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[caseih]

Sigh. No, replacing X11 with a framebuffer is not a good idea. OS X quartz is not a framebuffer interface and neither is the Win32 gdi. Go see www.freedesktop.org and see how X11 is coming kicking and screaming into the 21st century, doing things we never thought possible, all within the X11 framework, which is really showing remarkable durability. Within the year, X11 will have a compositing manager as powerful as quartz's compositing server and possibly even more flexible and powerful. And very fast too. The interesting thing about Keith Packards work with double-buffering windows is that the apparent speed of the screen drawing apears to be much faster than without the special effects.

And you can pry my network transparency from my cold dead hands.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[(H)elix1]

winder if a new DE will come out of this

It won't be KDE or Gnome - it will be WebSphere Portal applications w/Mozilla browser.

What desktop... (grin)

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Feztaa]

I agree that GNUStep is pretty cool, but it's main problem, much to my chagrin, is that it's ugly! GNUStep looks like they took OSX, ripped out all the cool quartz stuff, and then asked, "what can we do to make this interface the ghastliest, most horridly ugly thing the world has ever seen?"

Seriously, I'd rather eat dogshit than try to look at a GNUStep screenshot, it's just that terrible.

If IBM wants to take GNUStep and make it sexy, more power to them, but in the meantime, KDE will remain the coolest, most gorgeous linux desktop environment available.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

Not only that, but it may very well be the first technology to come out with fully OpenGL-accelerated 2D. OS X doesn't do it yet (Quartz "Extreme" uses GL only for compositing) and Longhorn won't do it until it comes out in 2006.

That'd really shut the anti-X11 folks up :)

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[be-fan]

Framebuffers are so passe! Modern hardware doesn't like you accessing its framebuffer. It prefers to work at a higher level. Consider the OpenGL rendering model:

Applications write drawing commands to a buffer.
When the buffer is full, the GL library makes a system call, and uses a special ioctl to DMA the command buffer into the graphics memory. The graphics card than carries out those commands.

That's very similar to how the X protocol works! You know why? Because both were designed to be abstract and network-transparent from the very beginning!

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[Feztaa]

Yeah, I know, I was trying to make a joke (hint: people aren't usually serious when they talk about eating dogshit).

Seriously though (I mean it this time :), at a technical level, gnustep seems like a pretty cool DE, but it is really ugly.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[droleary]

I agree that GNUStep is pretty cool, but it's main problem, much to my chagrin, is that it's ugly! GNUStep looks like they took OSX, ripped out all the cool quartz stuff, and then asked, "what can we do to make this interface the ghastliest, most horridly ugly thing the world has ever seen?"

It doesn't look like a cheap whore, if that's what you mean. The primary GUI is the classic NeXT look, which de-emphasized the system widgets in favor of the content; you know, the stuff that should actually matter. Making things pretty doesn't make them usable and, regardless, that is something the developer shouldn't have to care about. If an OS X developer uses an NSMenu, it "just worked" when it ran on Windows (using the Yellow Box) and it should "just work" when running with the current GNUstep look or any future theme that might get pushed forward.

That is, the big win with GNUstep is not what you see on the screen, but the OpenStep frameworks underneath. They're what Apple saw enough value in to buy NeXT for many millions and gave them a platform to build Mac OS X from. The free implementation provided by GNUstep could similarly be a basis for Linux getting a usable desktop, too. KDE won't do that and neither will GNOME, simply because there is no interest in developers making it usable beyond scratching their own itches. OpenStep was/is about developing for users, not other developers. Continue to ignore that and you continue to work without a real Linux desktop in the future.

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[dasunt]

Before advocating getting rid of X, ask yourself, what's so bad about it?

Is it because its ugly? That's the apps and the environment.

Is it because its slow? X runs just fine on low end hardware. Pentium era machines have no problem with it. Perhaps you are confusing X with the window manager/desktop environment.

Is it because its hard to configure? That's one implimentation of X. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Does network transparency scare you? Fine, don't use it. X will use unix sockets instead, which are pretty damn fast.

Are you scared by X's memory usage in `top' or similiar commands? Why not google to see what that number really includes before complaining about X.

** A happy X user. **

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[chthon]

The Presentation Manager was the API used to program OS/2 graphical applications.

What you got on screen was the Workplace Shell.

Jurgen

Re:winder if a new DE will come out of this

[scrytch]

> The primary GUI is the classic NeXT look, which de-emphasized the system widgets in favor of the content

Is that then why the, ah, content of checkboxes is hardly visible in *step? Or why every widget looks like it came out of a soviet submarine: thick, metallic, and harsh? I've never seen a widget set that tried to look so "bumpy" as *step.

Then there's the horizontal scrolled layout of buttons and vertical menus. There's a reason the rest of the world repudiated this design, and Apple's HCI folks will go into great painful detail telling you about it.

But?

[JoeShmoe950]

Does it run linu.... oh

Re:But?

[Frymaster]

Does it run linu.... oh

i think you meant to say "does it run os/2?"

Re:But?

[rifter]

" Does OS/2 play ogg ?"

Ask Google.

Nah, ask Hotbeef. :)

Access

[vpscolo]

Its nice to see that the chairman has made a stand but has also made sure that they will remain compatible to the rest of the business world. As much as we might all like Linux to survive in the business world we need to be able to speak what everyone else speaks. It might be good to have the moral high ground but its no good if you can't read your suppliers documents Rus

Re:Access

[airtim10]

I agree with this as much as we like to think that Linux will replace that other major operating system completely that probably won't happen anytime soon so we need to be able to do both becasue we may understand the great values of Linux but there are plenty of people out there who also understand the ease of learning and using that other operating system

Re:Access

[Dalcius]

I don't know about that. Not too many people will tell IBM to 'go take a hike' when IBM wants something in another format (that happens to be openly documented).

Documents that IBM exports are one thing, but for documents sent to IBM and internal stuff, what IBM says goes.

Re:Access

[Phillup]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

Even someone running Word can figure out how to open it...

Re:Access

[sentanta]

I used to work at company (a pretty big company with revenue of $1 bn +) that had IBM as its largest client, and we were compelled to use Lotus Notes, 123, Wordpro, and Freelance. Really very crappy programs, btw.

The point is that if a company of that size was compelled to use Lotus software, they are going to be forced to use Linux now.

We still did our spreadsheets in Excel, but there was a nifty VB macro floating around that converted to 123 without losing the formatting.

Re:Access

[homebru]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

It isn't hard for most people. But a large chunk of IBM is made up of project managers, salesmen, middle-management and other such who don't know what "RTF" means and they are really concerned about that "F" and they don't want to expose their ignorance by asking someone who might know.

After all, someone once told them what "RTFM" means and "RTF" must be something similar but they don't have time to work it out themselves. They just barely have time to download the latest version of the 15Mb MSProject plan for the Blue Dollar project they're on before the afternoon meeting to discuss the revisions to the timeline which were proposed at the end of this morning's teleconference call.

Re:Access

[farnsworth]

What is so hard about "Save As RTF"?

I've seen this argument and I've always thought that it makes sense. Until I tried to RTFify a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB. The resultant rtf was over 200 MB.

Lesson? A compressed, teplated, styled document format sometimes makes more sense than an inline marked up format. And if you are using Windows, what other format fits that bill besides .doc?

Re:Access

[bartwol]

"Not too many people will tell IBM to 'go take a hike' when IBM wants something in another format"

Ummm...you underestimate the supremecy of the customer, IBM's respect for that, and any good salesperson's inclination to bridge the gap to the next sale.

"You want to charge me $5 million for a mainframe by sending me a proposal that I can't read in Microsoft Office? Got take a hike!"

<bart

Re:Access

[FauxPasIII]

> And if you are using Windows, what other
> format fits that bill besides .doc?

I think you mean 'If you're using MS Office'. OO.o runs on Windows fine.

Re:Access

[__aatgod8309]

I wonder if Microsoft, the MPAA or the RIAA have heard of this 'supremacy of the customer' thing?

Re:Access

[autiger]

I used to work at company (a pretty big company with revenue of $1 bn +) that had IBM as its largest client, and we were compelled to use Lotus Notes, 123, Wordpro, and Freelance. Really very crappy programs, btw.

You're kidding right? This is just one of those 'it's different from Microsoft so it must be bad' kind of comments isn't it? The fact is that 123, WordPro, and Freelance have had features for years that are easier and better and are still unmatched by the Microsoft equivalent program.

Re:Access

[cyt0plas]

PDF? sxc? Sure people need openoffice to open it, but isn't that a good thing?

Re:Access

[whatteaux]

I'm not too sure that this has ever been that big an issue for IBM. Internally, their standard 'office' software is Lotus SmartSuite. An IBMer must get special permission from their general manager if they want MS Office installed (well, they did hwen I was there up to 18 months ago). SmartSuite can easily read & write MS office format documents (better than OpenOffice can) even if the reverse isn't true.

So perhaps they're going to port Lotus WordPro, Freelance, 1-2-3, etc, to Linux. In the past, when IBM's standard desktop was OS/2, they had native versions of those products (and Notes), so it shouldn't be too hard.

Re:Access

[swillden]

"You want to charge me $5 million for a mainframe by sending me a proposal that I can't read in Microsoft Office? Got take a hike!"

I am an IBMer, and I do send proposals to customers and they are *not* sent in Office format. Company policy is that proposals (since they're legal documents, even if they may or may not be "signable") are never sent to a customer in an editable format. The preferred format is printed paper, but PDF is often used.

That said, though your example is bad, your point is valid: We do exchange documents with clients, and Office formats are the ones most commonly used because Office is what everyone has. OpenOffice.org can work around most of these issues, but there are documents it doesn't handle. It will be interesting to see how that issue is addressed, assuming this is for real.

Re:Access

[forgotmypassword]

I tried to RTFify a medium-sized Word document that was less that 5 MB. The resultant rtf was over 200 MB.

Lesson? A compressed, teplated, styled document format sometimes makes more sense than an inline marked up format.

Dude, I'm pretty sure the lesson was supposed to be that Microsoft Word is a big pile of shit.

Chances are good that Word put tons of unseen garbage in the RTF file so that it could be reconverted to a DOC file and retain all of its original formating. I know Word does this with other formats because I've seen it.

It's probably the combination of that and , well , if you have ever seen the HTML it produces it will have tons of lines that look like this "foo <B></B> bar" for no apparent reason.

Re:Access

[Unipuma]

For a project at work, I've been involved with changing a module that generated Word-DOC documents into code that delivered RTF.
The first step was to have Word convert it's own documents to see what happens, and Word does the same here as what FrontPage was famous for as well: Loads of markup code that isn't used (putting font code around an image, for example).
The most anoying part is that any in-document image is stored twice in Word-RTF. Once in hex-code, and once more in WMF-format. The latter will usually be 8 to 10 times the size of the hex-code representation, and can safely be removed. Word will still show your image normally... but should you save the document, it'd generate the WMF file inline again.

The code I wrote generated styled resumees, and the average document size went down from 150kb to around 10kb by switching to RTF. Opening and saving the file again in RTF with Word would bloat the file up to 2MB.

So, yes, RTF can be used to make styled documents the same as Word, and the document will actually be smaller, but don't let Word generate those documents for you. It'll bloat then.

Hmm ...

[tcgwebs]

Interesting, but I wonder who it was that leaked the info? I'd sure hate to be that person :) Anyway, I'm glad that Linux is actually being recognized by large companies such as IBM as an option for this.

Re:Hmm ...

[KrispyKringle]

Considering that IBM is one of the strongest supporters of enterprise Linux (offering it on many servers and mainframes), it's not surprising that they've recognized Linux as an option. And unlike, say, Sun, IBM doesn't have any real desktop offerings of their own with which Linux on the desktop would be competing (I strongly doubt they were considering using OS/2 :P), so it makes sense that they would have gone this direction.

Probably the big reason they wouldn't be interesting in flaunting it so much is that their workstation offerings are far more limited than Sun's, who has made a big effort to show that they are ``with it'' when it comes to Linux on the desktop (even if they continue to adamantly support Solaris as a server OS).

But I don't know. Just seems to be like that.

Re:Hmm ...

[GAVollink]

I worked at a phone company called US-West about 5 years ago, and they had over 1600 desktops running Linux as primary ... way back then. They used Citrix servers to get to that "compatible stuff"... well, MS Office. It certainly wasn't all desktops but it was certainly a nice chunk. IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.

Re:Hmm ...

[LinuxHam]

IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.

True, but IBM has about 350,000 employees. And we are "the Linux company"... well, about as much as its possible to be one. The potential for cost savings are equal to the GDP of a small country. IBM, like most large companies, publishes standardized desktop images for various types of equipment and job roles. There have been standard Linux desktop images for years. I'm just glad to hear that IBM is getting behind Linux on the desktop and going after the cost savings.

Its better than cutting staff.

Only makes sense

[kjd]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design. They've got the ability to tailor-design an OS to the needs of their company and deploy it enterprise-wide, and with Linux and friends, do it without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

A similar switch might be tougher for other large organizations with widescale Windows deployments, where a few lightly-customized Win2k images might be the most they can currently support.

They'll come around eventually...

Re:Only makes sense

[memmel2]

At a business level IBM is like a lot of other companies. So once they do it for themselves they will be in a prime position to resale the experience to there own customers. Not only do they get Linux for free but they stand to make a lot of money off this.

Turn around.

[irokitt]

Yes, in about 20 years big blue has changed from the evil empire (with some saying it was beeing challenged by upstart Microsoft-although I never would have thought) to a worthy comrade in open-source armor. Way to go, IBM, for taking the final plunge.

Re:Turn around.

[mhesseltine]

Yes, in about 20 years big blue has changed from the evil empire (with some saying it was beeing challenged by upstart Microsoft-although I never would have thought) to a worthy comrade in open-source armor. Way to go, IBM, for taking the final plunge.

Yes, but realize that IBM has been around since about 1914, that they have been the "bad guy" before, and just because they are supporting open source now doesn't mean that they couldn't find a way to exploit it for their own selfish good later.

Again, glad they're supporting open-source software, but I wonder how much of their support is in recognition of the value of open-source, and how much is just to spite Microsoft?

Re:Turn around.

[jnana]

I'm sure they, like every other (for-profit) corporation out there are not doing it out of altruism, but that they are doing it is the important thing. They are probably doing it mostly because it makes sense to them business-wise -- both because of cost savings and because of the example it sets for other companies to follow (in which case the IBM consultants will be sitting there waiting to sell them services and extras) -- and perhaps to spite microsoft too, but that again is in their business interest.

Re:Turn around.

[dedazo]

It's so funny how everyone here cheers IBM like this because they're "sticking it to teh M$". Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

Re:Turn around.

[chill]

It's so funny how everyone here cheers IBM like this because they're "sticking it to teh M$". Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

Most major closed-source software projects contain large chunks of code licensed from other people. It is quite possible that good portions of DB2 and Notes are licensed from others.

The cost of a code audit on something like that can be enormous. Google for Bruce Perens' comments about when HP let OpenMail go -- and why he advised *against* open sourcing it.

Supporting open source and maximizing shareholder value aren't mutually exclusive. IBM is a very large services organization. They can and do make quite a bit of profit supporting other people's stuff.

-Charles Hill

Re:Turn around.

[jc42]

... glad they're supporting open-source software, but I wonder how much of their support is in recognition of the value of open-source, and how much is just to spite Microsoft?

Well, 20 years ago I worked for several employers that had a big IBM mainframe (and minis were just coming in). What did the mainframe run? It ran VM, of course, plus whatever subsystems the various departments liked.

And where did VM come from? Uh, it was developed in academia. It was an open-source project from the start, though the term hadn't been invented then. IBM tried to downplay it for a few years, and then embraced it as they realized it was a Good Thing for everyone.

VM came with full source (I saw a fair amount of it), and there wasn't any problem showing it to people. IBM supported it, and they also happily accepted bug fixes from anyone.

I was in the engineering department, and one day we brought in Amdahl's version of unix that ran on VM. We joked about installing it over the dead bodies of a lot of IBMers. But the IBM reps themselves didn't have a problem with it. They were curious, and several wished they could supply something so useful. The "dead IBMer bodies" were the local people who thought that IBM was a religion and we'd invited in a devil. The actual IBM employees thought these people were stupid. Their attitude was more like "If it help customers use our machines, we're all for it."

In fact, IBM has long supplied software like VM that they didn't develop. Having lots o useful apps has always been a good tool for selling the hardware. And they have long supported at least some non-IBM software, because much of their income comes from support contracts.

IBM has long been a mixed pack of very good guys and very bad guys, with a lot of people ethically in the middle. Like any other giant monopolistic corporation.

Re:Turn around.

[LauraW]

Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?

No, thank goodness. If the Notes source code is anything like the Notes UI, I'd have to gouge my eyes out after seeing it. That is, if it didn't make me go blind on its own.

Re:Turn around.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

and perhaps to spite microsoft too, but that again is in their business interest.

As it should be. Remember, Socialism and Communism are nice ideas on paper that have never worked in the Real World. It seems to be a problem with human nature.

Re:Turn around.

[swb]

IBM is a corporation whose main reason for existence is to make money and maximize shareholder value. Things like these have absolutely nothing to do with their "support" of free software.

A human's main reason for existence is reproduction and survival. Does that mean that all humans are alike, or is it OK to support some of them (eg, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, $altruistic_leader) and not support others (Hitler, Stalin, $murderous_dictators)?

I think its still OK to support IBM in this endeavor, even if in reality its about a group of powerful rich guys figuring out how to get more rich and powerful; the byproduct of that activity (a good, business-friendly linux desktop) is likely to be of some benefit to everyone given the structure and nature of Linux, particularly based on the way IBM has support Linux to this point.

It's not 100% get IBM shareholders rich and fuck everyone else, it's 100% get IBM shareholders rich and put some of the IBM code back to the community. It's a meaningful distinction.

A step in the right direction

[siege04]

A big company such as IBM switching to Linux is sure to bring good things to the community. Perhaps this is the first major step in bringing Linux to the desktop market.

IBM leak

[weeboo0104]

Geez, first the ISS and now IBM? What gives?

Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[benzapp]

Just think of how much better the 1990's could have been if the entire IBM organization pre-empted Windows 95 by 3.5 solid years.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[eyegone]

They did. It was a nightmare.

The hardware of the time was woefully underpowered for the job. A high-end desktop in the early '90s had maybe 8 MB of RAM. Try running OS/2 2.0, CM/2 (the SNA protocol stack), and Win-OS/2 (Windows 3.0 hacked to run in a DOS session). Win-OS/2 was a requirement, because the 16-bit Windows applications of the time were vastly better than their 32-bit OS/2 counterparts when the latter even existed.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[fatboy]

Just think of how much better the 1990's could have been if the entire IBM organization pre-empted Windows 95 by 3.5 solid years.

OS/2 was doomed to fail when directly competing against Windows. Not due to any technical reason, but because you can't beat Microsoft's Windows by attempting to market a better Windows, than Windows. By embracing Linux, you can't be gamed by Microsoft.

Re:Too bad they didn't do that with OS/2...

[benzapp]

Dude I ran OS/2 2.0 on a 386 DX/40 machine with 8 megs of ram and it ran perfectly. OS/2 2.1 raised the bar, but it wasn't that bad.

I ran a multi-node BBS on a 486 DX2/66 with 12 megs of ram for at least 2 years. I was able to run Wordperfect 6.0 in a seamless session and two dos sessions simultaneously all the time on that machine. It ran just fine.

Hmmm, an opening? ;)

[AlphaSector]

Another internal memo leaked from SCO to all employees: "First one to find a way to sue IBM for this is employee for the month"

Re:Hmmm, an opening? ;)

[eLoco]

Those 5 employees are too busy licking envelopes with threatening letters, selling their stock, surfing monster.com when Darl's not looking. No time for this.

Linux as a desktop?

[R33MSpec]

As i see it this can only serve to help encroach Linux on the user desktop OS market dominated by M$.

Think of it - if the whole of IBM starts using a well designed desktop system, i'm sure a lot of other companies will follow suit.

This really is what Linux needs - a HUGE and well known company using not only a Linux user dekstop system but also assocaited open source applications to get things done in everyday business, while managing NOT to use any M$ products whatsoever.

And if successful and I never thought I'd be saying this but it could be the beginning of the end of Microsoft's total dominance in the desktop OS market.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[Basehart]

How good, or bad, is this for Apple?

Wouldn't they rather be picking up all the disenfranchised Windows users?

Needless to say replacing all those PC's for Apple G4's and 5's is a massive roadblock for such a switch, but at least people get a taste for something other than Windows, which can't be a bad thing on any level.

Re:Linux as a desktop?

[dhovis]

I don't think this is a problem for Apple at all. Apple specializes in offering an integrated computing experience. Apple makes the hardware and the OS and some key pieces of software and makes sure they all work together. There is never going to be a computer company with that degree of control over Linux to compete in the comodity PC world.

Nevertheless, any Linux adoption is good for Apple, as virutally any software for Linux can be ported to MacOS X without too much difficulty. Just look at all the software that has been ported already.

Think IBM will be paying...

[cartzworth]

...the Linux licensing fee to SCO? hahahaha

here's hoping

[geekoid]

That they use this oportunity to learn from any issues, take data from the user base, and add to Linux.
With any large deploy of a new system, there will be issues, and if they can correct those and/or customize it for there need in house they will make a great selling point for other corporations.

Why not

[Christoff84]

Why shouldn't IBM move to linux? They are basically fighting for linux against SCO (yes I know, it's about AIX, but linux is there too), if they are dumping so much money into killing/beating SCO, why not use the software they are fighting for themselves. They have the resources to develop and support it themselves.

There is a business reason for this...

[Fortunato_NC]

(I guess that rates a big DUH!)

But the business reason probably has something to do with Longhorn shipping 2006ish, and avoiding paying an upgrade fee to MS for desktops for over 300,000 employees worldwide. Even if the upgrade costs them just $79 and they only have to upgrade 100,000 computers, they could still save a cool $7.9 million by switching to a Linux desktop.

You talk about an MS tax, an additional $7.9 million looks good on anyone's bottom line. I wish IBM good luck with this one!

Of course, if they got rid of PC's altogether and replaced them with 3270 terminals and daisy wheel printers, they would be able to save $$$ on desktop management costs. ;-)

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Fortunato_NC]

But it's not just $7.9 million once, it's a recurring expense every two to three years. Getting off the upgrade Merry-Go-Round pays dividends immediately AND going forward. Once they've endured the pain of the switchover, it will be easier the next time they want to roll out a new distro, upgrade X, whatever. In fact, this could lead to some cool tools like ZENworks, but for the Linux desktop. In fact, IBM *did* just invest $50 million in Novell! Wonder what those guys in Utah are up to, anyway?

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[Laser Lou]

You talk about an MS tax, an additional $7.9 million looks good on anyone's bottom line. I wish IBM good luck with this one!

Hmmm. It can't be the license fees. $7.9 million is peanuts for any business the size of IBM.

They must be doing this to increase Linux' credibility, show SCO the finger, gain control over the core desktop, and encourage customers to buy their Linux software, all at the same time.

Re:There is a business reason for this...

[afidel]

Developing a Linux desktop solution that scales to the size of IBM is going to cost at LEAST 8 million. Then you get into training the internal helpdesk folks, etc and soon it's not really a win just on internal use. The real win is the experience you get so that you can sell the solution to your customers.

*disclaimer*
I work for IBM in a rollout and customer service capacity.

Now is the time

[Ars-Fartsica]

People keep saying "next year"...but I think you need a larger target audience to get the impetus for change. Its great to see IBM eat their own dogfood, and of course there are no worries - GNOME or KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc are all well suited to provde the tasks the employees will actually need.

Of course IBM could also see a huge cost savings over time as well, and provide a true real-world case for negating the ridiculous "TCO" whipping horse MS continues to fabricate results against.

Re:Now is the time

[AndroidCat]

What happens when the 800 lb gorilla decides that it wants to use a particular configuration? Sure, people can still use other desktops, browsers, office software, etc. People had choices before Microsft ate the market.

The pull of developing and using a standard configuration can be huge.

Now .. the question is .. is this a bad thing?

Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[pointym5]

IBM's internal email, expense reporting, project planning, etc. is already (supposed to be) Notes-based.

Re:Lotus Notes already runs on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad news guys. As an IBMer, I can tell I'm still using Notes everyday by the blisters I get sitting on my butt waiting for it.

We don't use it for project management or expenses, though.

FWIW -- I never got the e-mail that started the whole thing and I'm in a position where it would show up in my inbox. There's no mention of it anywhere on the interal web either. This might be a hoax.

- Anonymous IBMer

Not always a good thing

[kjd]

Take WebSphere...

...please!

This is about dog food

[siskbc]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design. They've got the ability to tailor-design an OS to the needs of their company and deploy it enterprise-wide, and with Linux and friends, do it without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

I don't think this makes sense from a productivity standpoint. Most of us probably believe that linux wins a TCO fight with Windows, but that would not be the case if you had to develop all your basic tools from scratch, even for IBM.

No, this is about eating their own dog food. It's not a good message when you're pushing your product but you use other products. If IBM is to convince buyers to use Linux for typical desktop productivity work, they better use it themselves.

Re:This is about dog food

[SnowZero]

Does IBM offer a Linux desktop?

They don't offer one now, but I bet they will by 2005. One way to think of what IBM is doing is as an internal beta.

Re:This is about dog food

[GAVollink]

Tools aren't necessarily equivelent to an O.S. - how about helpdesk software, is that already running on Linux? What about customer service, customer relationship management - Email infrastructure. There are a lot of "tools" that companies have to use.

The good news here is that since IBM (along with the rest of the world) has been pushing J2EE solutions for so long, many of these tools may already be web based. That would make ALL the difference my friends. J2EE web based apps ARE the MS killer - simply because EVERYONE has dumped the 'it must be installed locally on a Win32 box' mentality.

Last part is a bit of an irony - but Microsoft has pushed .NET so hard, it's made a lot of companies take a serious look at J2EE - simply because Microsoft has said the letters SO MANY TIMES.

Re:This is about dog food

[deadgoon42]

This isn't about eating their own dog food, this is about investment in the future. IBM knows that the M$ monopoly won't last forever, so they are taking steps now to ensure they have a piece of the future.

Re:This is about dog food

[michaelhood]

You think that memo was leaked on accident? This is the best way IBM could publicize the fact that they're "eating their own dog food". No press conferences, no big statements here. Just letting it be known.

Gartner will say...

[msevior]

This is just a ploy to extract a more favourable deal from MicroSoft...

Still needs more 3rd party support

[Camel Pilot]

In my wife's small business the only obstacle to going to a linux desktop is vender tools such as UPS worldship and Stamps.com, etc.

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[MajorDick]

Well, Dosent Stamps, and UPS BOTH offer Web-Based versions ? Beyond that what about WINE ? I had a fair bit of problems migrating various people (for some it is simply NOT an option) But many of the others were resolved by the use of WINE and running Win32 apps under it ( some actually seemed to run faster :)

Re:Still needs more 3rd party support

[0x0d0a]

You know, it's really silly that WorldShip isn't Java-based. It's basically nothing more than a front end that does a bit of network work. You couldn't *ask* for something more appropriate for Java.

Lotus Notes Client?

[Joseph Lam]

Does that mean there will be Linux version of the Notes client? IBM's whole internal communication and intranet applications depends heavily on Notes/Domino.

Re:Lotus Notes Client?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are currently working on a Java client (based on the Eclipse framework) for their new Lotus Workplace products. This client will have the ability to interact with Notes/Domino.

I haven't heard if it will have full client functionality or just a subset (might be just mail). They are going to have a basic version for release mid-year and then release a full version with offline capability by early next year.

OS/2 developers?

[eLoco]

Anyone else wonder what happened to their OS/2 development team? Maybe they're long-since disbanded, but it seems a team like this could make a decent contribution to a Linux desktop system, at least from a usability perspective.

An IBMer's perspective

[diamondsw]

A couple facts from inside IBM. We've had a workstation build for Linux for quite some time, encompassing all basic business needs in IBM (Notes, corporate instant messaging, etc). Also, all of our HR and other internal applications are pretty much web and Java based, with a quiet directive that Mozilla will be our standard browser platform by 2005.

However, many groups use applications that cannot be replaced on Linux. My group, for instance, does nearly all of our work in Visio. I've looked at Kivio and others, and I can't begin to tell you how primitive they are. Also, at least my group does a lot of active development in Visual Basic to automate Visio and other programs.

Essentially what I'm saying is many basic users here may be able to move to Linux, but Windows will remain the primary client for the forseeable future, simply for the applications, integration, and relative ease of working with partners who use Windows.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[soft_guy]

No, you need to run Wine! If Wine doesn't run the program adequately, then either the program needs to be ported to Linux, or Wine needs to be improved.

Wine can be like the "Classic" compatibility environment for running MacOS 9 apps in MacOS X. You use it when you have to until the native app gets ported and and gets good enough.

As a former IBMer myself, I encourage you to try to migrate to Linux on some of your boxes. When you run into problems - report them and try to chase them down and get them solved!

IBM's move to Linux on the desktop could be the catalyzing event that kills Windows forever. Go for it!

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[Performer Guy]

You need to read the memo and get with the program :-)

Only kidding.

Re:An IBMer's perspective

[burns210]

understandable, but you are IBM. You have the resources to port what apps you control, or fund development of WINE so that you can run what apps you can't port. Plus, the porting of ALL your apps also helps when you go to move another company to Linux. Eating your own food is the cheapest way to find what needs to be fixed and rush it's development in the corporate world.

Loss

[Anonymous Coward]

This means replacing productivity, web access and viewing tools...

Now hold on there! I'm pretty sure Linux has web access. ;-P

IBM : Past, Present, Future?

[EngMedic]

I remember a time when IBM was regarded with as much animosity as Microsoft is now -- perhaps even more so, but for different reasons. More recently, the geek-public opinion of IBM has begun to shift towards neutrality and an uneasy understanding -- where do we see IBM's role and public opinion going in the future, especially with their (seemingly) wholehearted adoption of open-source technologies?

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[Malc]

What are you talking about? It's a two way street: IBM has also contributed a lot to he open source world.

If those well meaning volunteers had not wanted others to use and perhaps even profit from their work, they wouldn't have released it under the GPL, would they?

Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[curious.corn]

He shure looks like one!
Jokes apart, Gerstner put this guy on top and it's the one that managed the first sniffing ceremonies towards Linux. Do I see a pattern? Companies on the point of extinction like Apple and IBM (big companies... as far as mindshare and cultural relevance) literally resurrected the moment they embraced OSS and played by it's rules. Other companies like sun are fading away and nasty M$ (Yah, troll me... I'm spelling is M$... yes, I'm biased) is yapping in fear. Folks, it's our time. Old PHBs are retiring to Florida's golf resorts, the evangelized decision makers are making space for the new illuminati... I hate to say it, actually I'm not pleased by the "feast or fast" attitude of this industry, but the cosmological pendulum is swinging our way (I just hope I won't be put aside as these fools are today).

Re:Current CEO is the Linux geek...

[jc42]

Yah; and with IBM and Sun jumping onto the linux bandwagon, it's about time that we start seriously working on the system that, 10 or 20 years from now, will start pushing linux aside.

We wouldn't to be responsible for another monoculture, now would we?

Of course, there's always iTron ...

Howz bouts Lotus Office Suite?

[o517375]

I think IBM may want to port Lotus Office Suite to Linux, esp if their own execs will be using Linux. That is, IBM execs need Lotus Office Suite, right? I wonder why it hasn't been ported already? Call me a bit cynical, but Open Office, Koffice, et al have been around for a while and where has IBM been?

Signed,
Joe,
------
Use Linux as desktop and server both at home and at work, since 1997

Re:Howz bouts Lotus Office Suite?

[tsaler]

I think this is a really good idea. It puts a bit of competition in there against OpenOffice, a suite which I like but I find to be... a bit too slow for my tastes (is it the Java? I don't know), and I think it would be nice to see those two suites duel for control over, basically, the office/publishing market on Linux desktops.

I think this is a fantastic idea by IBM. I will be buying one of the IBM Linux desktops, I bet, if they're priced reasonably (that's a big if, especially for IBM). Then again, if it was priced reasonably, I'd buy an AIX desktop from them. :P

Sun

[ValourX]

Well, at Sun they run Solaris on everything except for cross-platform testing and development. I'm kind of surprised that IBM would use anything other than what they're selling to their customers... especially since it would be cheaper to do that than to buy licenses from Microsoft, Sun, or someone else.

-Jem

So silly.

[twitter]

IBM's a large, large company with abundant resources in the area of software design.

Pththth-fit, wrong-o. The whole point of real openly published standards is to avoid the need for software design. While IBM has made real contributions to free code, this is a cost saving move.

...without losing much cross-platform compatibility.

If by "cross-platform" you mean it will run all the old Microsoft crap they paid for, they have already done that. Running legacy windoze was part of the Munich deal. No one has to lose anything to move to enjoy the blessings of software liberty. If you mean talk to whatever Bill Gates pulls out of his ass for next year, the answer will always be no. The question is now why would anyone want to try. Non-standard is about to die the misserable death it deserves and all applications and data will enjoy the real cross platform deployment that is the promise of SOFTware.

other large organizations with widescale Windows deployments, where a few lightly-customized Win2k images might be the most they can currently support.

The reason we are here is because no one can afford the costs and pitfalls of the uncustomized versions.

Notes , organizer. Quicken

[WindBourne]

My father has tried moving to Linux several time (home use). In each time, it was like of Lotus organizer and Quicken that moved him back. Also, I have known a number of companies that will not move because IBM has not moved Notes.

If IBM is serious, they will help port (or offer incentives) to companies such as Quicken to move. Mostly, they will simply move their own stuff.

Re:Notes , organizer. Quicken

[bstadil]

If IBM is serious, they will help port (or offer incentives) to companies such as Quicken

Yes, I am sure most of IBM's bookkeeping stuff is done on Quicken. They are probably thinking about upgrading to Quickbook if their growth continues.

Will IBM make a desktop distro?

[failedlogic]

Sun has already invested money and resources for its own Java Desktop System.

IBM has invested resources to developing the Linux kernel. Will IBM also develop its own desktop system? If so, how will it be different from the competition? Will they contribute their code (some or all) to the Linux community under a GPL'd licence? Will it conform to some sort of formal standards? What of the system architecture? Will we see PPC IBM branded desktop computers and/or will it work on Wintel architectures?

As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

This can't be so unexpected. They have a nice Linux commercial on tv, featuring (among others) Muhammad Ali advising an attentive little boy: "Speak your mind, and don't back down." So, IBM switching to Linux desktops....not so unexpected. My Daughter loves the linux commercial, It seems to equate the use of linux with all the worlds best in their respective fields of expertice. As though God himself runs linux, (provided by IBM, of course.)
Really, the commercial is so good, it brings tears to your eyes, especially if you are a long-suffering linux advocate of sorts in a sea of micro-idiots.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

seems to equate the use of linux with all the worlds best in their respective fields of expertice.

See, now, that's funny, because, to me, that commercial seems to equate Linux with a dopey sci-fi movie or one-season TV show.

What it *doesn't* equate to is the fleeting suspicion that anybody in the commercial knows anything about computers, software, operating systems, or OSS. I mean, they *might*, but you'd never know it from the commercial

Erm, the commercial is ABOUT OSS. Think about it. They say "we have this kid, his name is Linux" Linux learns everyday from the foremost experts around the world. As Linux grows he becomes stronger, faster, better, smarter. Linux absorbs everything around him. That is the essence of OSS, and that is what happens in the commercial. The idea is to get people who do not understand software to understand this fundamental fact of OSS.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kevcol]

This can't be so unexpected. They have a nice Linux commercial on tv, featuring (among others) Muhammad Ali advising an attentive little boy

Until you see the same little boy running around like an ADD afflicted monkey in a Chuck E. Cheese commercial like I did.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Twin suicide bombings outside the SCO and Microsoft campuses rocked the United States today, killing 135 people.

Witnesses reported hearing cries of "Linus Akbar!" (Linus Is Great) before removing Comdex jackets revealing several hundred pounds of explosives covering gigantic flabby bellies.

Film at 11.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

Exactly. Islam is being equated to Linux. This is something I don't want Linux to be associated with.

You do realize that Muhammed Ali was a pacifist who went to jail rather than have to kill another human being, and that he credited Islam for this conviction? I think not all followers of Islam are the same....

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[rifter]

>>Ali was a pacifist

Ali physically beats other men into submission for millions of dollars.

If he is a pacifist, I'd hate to see the warmongers from his clan...

Well, actually he does not do a lot of boxing nowadays. Parkinsons will do that to you.

Boxing is a sport. The participants in a boxing ring are fighting based one defined rules and are there of their own free will. I have never seen evidence that Ali ever caused more damage to an opponent than was necessary to win the fight. Likewise, boxers are usually not fighting to settle a dispute, they are playing a game.

Ali did not as far as I know ever ever advocate violence to solve problems in his life or the world. Yes, boxing is a violent sport like football and rugby, etc. But it is a sport and a game, not a violent means of resolving conflict.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[flink]

Or the penguin could bust through a brick wall into an auditorium full of kids 1984 Kool-Aid style. The penguin holds up a server and shouts "Oh Yeah!"

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[kazem]

People like you make me really mad. But then I have to remember that you're only ignorant. The terrorists and Talebans of the world don't actually follow Islam. They say they do, sure, but none of their questionable practices are written anywhere in the Quran. In fact, I do not know of a single nation in the world today that follows Islam in its true form. Islam, unlike other reigions, has a secular component too, describing how business and law are to be conducted. This is to be done fairly and equally, men and women.

Then again, all religion sucks, but if you're going to put it down, know what you're putting down and atleast know what to call it.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[pirhana]

DISCLAIMER: I am living in a country next to saudi for more than 2 years.

I am sorry to tell you that your assumptions and understandings are WRONG in a big way. First all these gulf countries are EQUALLY tyrannical. In saudi, its more conspicuous because its the biggest. Bahrain is the smallest of all these countries and believe me for this, its EQUALLY tyrannical. In none of these countries you cannot utter a word against these regimes. You dont have any freedom to express your views openly. The rule is a classic blend of monarchy and feudelism. Members of the royal families just share the country themselves. Its the same in Saudi, Bahrain , Kuwait and all the gulf countries. There is NO difference in the magnitude in any country including Kuwait. You know what ? Iran, a country which is offen treated as a tyranny, has MANY of these rights granted to the people . Its not ruled by some royal families. Nobody is taking the wealth away from people because of his family status or any other status(religion or anything). You have access to the books and magazines which widely criticize the governments and even Islam(needless to say these are not possible in other gulf countries). There is protest going on against the government. I am not saying things are perfect in Iran. But the level of freedom, democracy and other values are far more and better in Iran than any other gulf countries. Its a fact which the western media conveniently forget and ignore. Look at Turkish government. Its the same. They are Islamic but they are in synchrony with freedom and other progressive values(ofcourse in the limited Turkish setup and military constraints). Islam is a religion followed by people of these countries. Its a fact. And they want it to be there in their life. Unlike people in the western countries, they think their reliogion as something comprehensive and applicable to every aspect of life. Just because people in the western countries are not like this, doesnt mean that everyone is like that. Its a myth that what is going to come in these brutal dictatorship regimes are worse than this. Because there is no fact to substantiate this claim and any country which has gone away from these dictatorship regimes (e.g Iran) has more freedom and more democracy. And the more people stick with Islam(or any othe religion) its better as all the religions are preaching good things only.

Re:As far as IBM is concerned...

[shreak]

Boxing is a game because boxing has rules, War has rules so war is a game: False analogy

A person can maintain free will by being imprisoned: Conflicting Conditions

If money exchanges hands in conjunction with game, then that game is a violent means of resolving conflict. Too Broad

friends.

[twitter]

m5shiv asks if The enemy of my enemy is my friend?" He's looking at it wrong. A friend of freedom is a friend of mine. Free software is my friend and openly published standards are good for everyone. Microsoft hates both of those things and is not your friend. While you might think that IBM is doing this to hurt Microsoft, it's far more likely that IBM is doing this to help IBM. I mean, how embarsing it must have been for IBM to have their desktops messed with by I LOVE YOU, Code Red, SirCAM, SoBig, Mellisa, Blaster and all that.

Go Big Blue! It's about time for you to take back the innovation crown those monkeys in Redmond pretended to wear.

Re:friends.

[TheAngryArmadillo]

I mean, how embarsing it must have been for IBM to have their desktops messed with by I LOVE YOU, Code Red, SirCAM, SoBig, Mellisa, Blaster and all that.

I work out at IBM in Austin. We did the math about our dealing with Windows updates and virii. If every employee of IBM spends just 30 minutes a year(I know, it's on the low side) dealing with Microsoft updates and problems IBM loses $3,000,000 in lost productivity. That's $3 million. We figured in a year the number was closer to 5 hours or $30,000,000 in lost productivity. That's a healthy chunk of change.

Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

And this is the one big problem with participants in the Open Source movement (note: not with Open Source, per se): There are many fine Open Source apps, but the majority of them are by developers for developers. We need to look more at what business needs out of Open Source. Hate PowerPoint? Well business wants it. Hate Access dB? Well, business loves it. And without any question, until OpenOffice addresses these issues full force, especially all the bells and whistle of Excel, "enterprise" businesses will not migrate the desktop. It really is going to be all about business applications if we want to win the desktop war.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[peragrin]

check out Star Office. I don't know the exact requirments that you need and if it will fill them all. Star Office(open office paid for cousin) comes with a database program, and Both include presentation. a PowerPoint style tool. Do they have all the features as MS stuff I don't know. ARe they working on it? more than likely

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Both StarOffice and it's more Open Source brother, OpenOffice, and a great start. It's a fine package. But there are things they need to do to improve it. I see OpenOffice as 2 to 4 years behind MS Office for the thing biz wants. Don't get me wrong, it's a full-featured package, but still... There are things, places, areas that it needs to improve.

I did mention PowerPoint. I hate it (I *love* the Getysburg Address reduce to a PowerPoint). It dumbs down everything. But we can not get away from the fact that business wants it, it speaks to the PHBs like the Bible. There are other business apps as well. For example CRM apps.

But the one area that Open Source is very wanting is easy Application Install packages. You know, click-throughs and what not, fewer compatibility issues, and being able to handle compatibility issues in a more intuitive way. Not everyone is a Linux guru, and in Big Biz, time is defiantly money, and money makes the "enterprise" world go round and round. And, about a spell-checker that is as good as Google? MS Office spell checker sucks.

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Apathetic1]

Ever tried to copy and paste a table from web browser into Excel? Try it some time. That's why I switched to OpenOffice...

Re:Business Apps are what it's all about!

[Feztaa]

I don't see this as a problem with open source at all.

Why should I have to develop a piece of software that I don't want to use, if I'm not being paid for it? Sure, if you want to pay me to develop some GPL software, I'll gladly make your PowerPoint viewer or Access DB client or whatever you want. But if I'm coding something on my time, I'll make something that's useful to me. And if it's useful to me, it might also be useful to other people like me (ie, developers).

If big companies like IBM want to join the fray and develop things that their customers want, then more power to them.

I don't really know how to phrase this, but all the John Q. Hacker's out there should *not* put down what they're doing and start developing boring apps for routine office work, unless it interests them to do so. IBM or whoever can pay people to do that, and so they will.

Eating their own dog food

[ca1v1n]

IBM stands to make a killing migrating companies to linux. This is a great chance for them to experience the migration for themselves in a way that sending a few engineers to remote sites never can, and it's probably a lot cheaper for the amount of knowledge they'll get out of it. Obviously this is more than just an experiment, but it clearly makes good sense for them to say to the world "We did it, and we'll help you do it too."

Re:Zero chance of this

[jc42]

I believe IBM is in the GNOME camp.

Yeah, I've heard that rumor, too. Probably here on /. ;-)

And it's the significant part. After all, linux is an OS kernel. It isn't a UI. The phrase "linux desktop" is utterly nonsensical. Any X-Windows "desktop" will run on linux.

The sensible thing for IBM or any other vendor to do is settle on a reasonably good window manager, and start building an integrated UI based on it. Gnome would work fine, as would KDE or Enlightenment or FVWM or CDE or ....

What wouldn't make sense if you're looking for a near-term market is starting your own window manager project. This would delay a lot of the integration work and put your "integrated desktop" package several years in the future.

This could be a deal with the devil for the Gnome folks, though. IBM has a long history of turning reasonable packages into bureaucratic monstrosities. If you think Gnome is bloated from featuritis now, just wait until you see IBM's extensions.

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

No, IBM, Don't Do That!

[dupper]

SCO will sue you!

Cisco is making the same move...

[Otto Eyebiter]

I work for a Cisco Gold partner. Word is, all Cisco products that run on Windows (CiscoWorks, CiscoSecure ACS, IP Telephony apps, etc...) will all be ported to Linux. A version of Call Manager has been running on Linux for over a year (it's just been kept secret).

Cool for a lot of companies already

[memmel2]

We currently use a lot of Dell computers. Dell has refused to support linux by providing open hardware specs for drivers. IBM has commited to supporting linux. So dude your not getting a Dell at my company. The IBM laptops are a lot better IMHO. This even means IBM for the Windows boxes since it's one support contract. Although we use a lot of Linux any company with a reasonable linux installed base is probably goining to swing ALL there boxes to a vendor that supports linux.

IBM Corp., 350,000 user testbed

[schmim]

I've seen IBM do things like this before. I'm sure we all remember the fairly recent story of their plans to convert to VoIP.
When you're a company the size of IBM (approx 350k employees worldwide) .. Aside from a workforce, you have another very useful tool. A large testbed for refining both technology as well as sales/deployment strategy.
Working out the kinks in systems you want to sell (IBM's shift toward services) as well as being able to say, "Hey. We did it company-wide, and it works for us" in a sales pitch to companies small and large.
Its all about strategy. Definitely an intelligent way to testmarket things such as a Business Linux Desktop ... prove it works .. and sell the idea to the skeptics.
It used to be that "Nobody got fired for buying IBM"
While that isn't necessarily true anymore, it just shows that while IBM has shown itself to be a progressive company, they still carry the weight they did when they were that evil empire of old.

Re:Zero chance of this

[handmedowns]

My thoughts/hopes weren't so much as a directive business move from IBM to make a new DE (which would be cool) but from one or more developers not finding a happy place with what DE's exist today..

You've got to remember, necessity is the mother of invention.. and just about all popular and widely accepted software projects exist out of the want for something better or more custom fit to your needs.

Think about how meticulous the true geek crowd is (not the wannabe's). You force a large group of technically inclined people to use something that just doesn't settle with them right and who knows what happens in the "off-hours". Before long you have a movement for a new DE and a strongly supported project =]

Well that's me day dreaming anyway ;)

Re:IBM in support of Linux Desktop

[willdenniss]

Well there already doing the native Java IDE for Linux (and Windows) and doing quite well too.

http://eclipse.org/

Re:how strange would it be?

[WindBourne]

Actually, I worked at IBM when Uncle lou took over. It came close to knifing os/2 and releaseing the source code back then. Might have been interesting to see what would have happened had IBM done that.

Even someone running Word can use RTF

[rs79]

Tell my boss that.

2000: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2001: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2002: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

2003: He sends me a doc files. Each time I say "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

Guess how 2004 is shaping up? Hint: he sent me a doc file this morning.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[MsGeek]

Four words. Open Office dot org. Unless there's really fancy crap in that .DOC file (which Open Office usually ignores gleefully) it will open the .DOC easily.

Re:Even someone running Word can use RTF

[Avada Kedavra]

rs97: "Don't send me doc files, I can't read them. RTF or PDF." I'm too stubborn to do whatever it takes to read doc files.

Boss: "Your stubborn ass is fired.

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

[dpilot]

Yes, barely. Yes, a fair amount.

I really didn't mind JCL. Once you got used to it, it gave you very good control and ability to nail things down. It gave much more of a 'ready, aim, shoot' mentality to batch jobs, and by comparison sometimes shell scripts seem more like 'ready, shoot, aim.'

Actually, the Linux types inside IBM (not the suits at the top making this noise) are very well in tune with the Linux community, and how things work. For a prime example, take a look at the turn EVMS took in the past year.

Awesome, but what about Notes?

[Halo-]

The biggest hurdle is gonna be migrating Lotus Notes. Pretty much the entire world runs off Notes within IBM. (Except the stuff on VM, which is being phased out...) R5 runs fairly well (but far from flawlessly) under Wine, but R6 doesn't work at all.

I work at IBM, and Linux is the only OS I use. It's a little rough in some spots, but ultimately workable. For me, the combo is:

SameTime (The Lotus Messenger) => Sanity (a Perl based clone)
Notes R5 => Notes R5 under CrossOver Office
MS Office => MS Office under CrossOver Office (when needed)

If Linux were the official desktop, that would be awesome.

Note: While I work at IBM, I'm not in any of the areas which decide these issues, and have no information is support or refutation of the rumors in the report. (But I can dream...)

This simply cannot be overstated

[rs79]

Anybody remember the mid 1980s?

The Mac was gonna set the world on fire. It did desktop publishing to beat all hell. But not Lotus 1-2-3 so one got put in the graphics department and everybody else got PCs. And Lotus.

The Amiga was one of the neatest computers ever made, it outperformed the PC in every respect... but it never ran Lotus 1-2-3. Two businesses bought them and they were gone within 5 years.

Whatever software your idiot boss needs to run dictates the platform the company and businesses in general, will use. There are simply no exceptions to this rule.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[jefftp]

Linux can run "SC" the only spreadsheet a real man needs. ;)

To be serious, I actually used SC on FreeBSD for all my budget, payroll, and productivity trending at an ISP I worked at. A curses based spreadsheet works fine over a 9600 bps modem.

Re:This simply cannot be overstated

[jbolden]

Mac had an even better version of Lotus 1-2-3 called "Lotus Jazz". It wasn't the lack of a spreadsheet that was a problem rather the issue was relative value.

Re:Zero chance of this

[AJWM]

Has anyone here seen PL/I? Or used JCL?

Yes to both, and I've also used PL/I. (As a matter of fact, I've done so on my Linux box right here, using the Hercules IBM/370 emulator -- but I've also done the real iron.)

And APL which originated at IBM.

That said, they've also come up with some pretty good stuff, just give me a minute to think of it... oh yeah, the Guidance and Control system for the Saturn V, for one ;-)

Seriously, that was the old IBM. Lately they've been much better at delivering what the customer wants rather than what IBM thinks the customer needs. IBM isn't going to create their own desktop -- especially not at this stage of the process, where this is deployment for internal use. And I imagine most of the custom client apps will be web and/or Java based.

Not that IBM doesn't know a thing or two about desktop design -- their CUA (Common User Access) object-oriented desktop architecture is/was great, one of the things that OS/2 fans still rave about (although IIRC the OS/2 desktop wasn't quite CUA).

Re:Zero chance of this

[ShaunDon]

That may be, dude. And I wouldn't be shocked if IBM's Linux desktop solution is widely liked by the Slashdot crowd. But you have to admit that it's still a major step simply because it will draw a huge audience away from Windows, spurring more development by other companies for Linux. The users that then become experienced enough will probably stop using IBM's version in time, and the rest will still be using an OS that furthers Linux's reach.

ShaunDon

IBM worried?

[countach]

Sounds like IBM are really worried that they will lose the SCO lawsuit.

N O T !!!!!

Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[OrangeTide]

I don't understand the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" bit. So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

IBM created the PC and then basically "open sourced" the architecture. Who knows why they did this, because lots of people made big money off it, and IBM didn't see very much of that. So IBM made PS/2 and MCA(microchannel) and tried to wrestle the market back. Then they gave up and focused on providing business machines (servers). They kept starting and discontining their home computer lines. I can never remeber if they still make desktops, harddrives or laptops. :)

I'm not sure why IBM would be the enemy. They are pretty active in the open source community. They don't really "interfere" with our choices of systems.

Also I'm actually surprised to see this in the news. I foolishly assumed IBM already moved to using Linux a few years back. They seem to promote Linux enough at tradeshows and TV and magazine ads. I guess it's hard to promote Linux if you aren't willing to use it in your own company, perhaps this is just putting their money where their mouth is.

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[phillymjs]

IBM created the PC and then basically "open sourced" the architecture. Who knows why they did this, because lots of people made big money off it, and IBM didn't see very much of that.

According to most of the books I've read concerning the history of the computer industry, it happened something like this:

The IBM PC was hurriedly slapped together with off-the-shelf parts because IBM wanted a piece of the burgeoning personal computer market, which was then practically owned by Apple. IBM knew that if they went through their normal development cycle and did everything in-house, the product would have been hopelessly late to market. So they assembled a team of people and told them to basically circumvent the normal IBM Way of Doing Things, and did so by buying almost every component they needed from outside vendors, including the OS, which came from a relatively small company called Microsoft (perhaps you've heard of them?). The only truly proprietary part of the PC was the BIOS.

Anyway, IBM went ahead with the PC because they thought that the proprietary BIOS would prevent anyone from duplicating the PC without getting trampled by IBM's lawyers. They also thought that the volume discount component prices they were getting could not be matched by any ragtag startup company. Compaq proved them wrong, first by reverse-engineering the BIOS and then producing an IBM PC clone profitably.

Phoenix also reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS, but instead of building their own PC clones with it, they began licensing their version to anyone who wanted to use it.

Then the hardware producers in Asia started stamping out shipping containers full of parts, component prices reached 'commodity' status, and IBM's perceived exclusive economies of scale were history.

Microsoft's non-exclusive terms with IBM let them license MS-DOS to anyone who wanted it, so the cloners were able to ship the same OS as IBM.

IBM still tried to compete, but their product cycle was twice as long as everyone else's. IIRC, Compaq was first to market with a 386-based system. IBM had defined the standards and then the cloners ran away with the market. Microchannel was IBM's attempt to regain the title of 'standard-bearer' for the computer industry, but the cloners took one look at the onerous licensing terms for MCA and said no thanks. They then formed their own coalition to develop standards for the hardware they were developing, and that was pretty much it for IBM as a force in the personal computing market.

So basically, IBM didn't "open source" their hardware purposely. They were victims of their own greed-- desperate to get a piece of the personal computer market as quickly as possible, they created an almost completely open system that was much more quickly and easily duplicated by third parties than they thought.

~Philly

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" bit. So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

I know I'm not suppose to feed the trolls, but here goes...

enemy of linux == microsoft

enemy of microsoft == ibm

my == linux

enemy of my enemy is my friend

Therefore, ibm == my friend

Re:Since when has IBM been the enemy?

[swillden]

So what, Apple made a big anti-IBM commecial back in 1984. Both Apple and NeXT embraced IBM by the late 80s and through-out the 90s.

You're not looking back far enough to understand the anti-IBM sentiment; by the mid 80s, IBM had been complying with the consent decree for five years, and had lost much of the IT stranglehold that had given it such a bad name. You need to look back to the early 70's, when PC's were hobbyist toys built from mail-order kits and IBM held the IT industry in an iron grip.

A couple of notes on the subject....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several posts in here talking about IBM being able to skip out on upgrade costs fro Longhorn in 2006 or whenever. To that point I think you need to realize how huge corporations (I have worked for a few) deal with Microsoft. They don't buy individual licenses for anything. These companies just pay a huge sum of money to get a site license which, depending on the contract, can cover all MS software. Now with what IBM looks to be doing, they could most likely stop renewing that site license, which I imagine is quite a sizable chunk of money.

On the subject of what is run internally... remember that there is a lot of engineering work that goes on at IBM and there are a lot of people working on servers. This means there are a significant number of people running AIX on their "desktop" (I actually had a small server.) So the transition to GNU/Linux is not much of a stretch for a lot of users and is probably most welcome due to all of the nice tools GNU/Linux has to offer. This of course is from my point of view working in an engineering area. This whole upgrade will be a much bigger challenge for the business side of the company.

Anyway, glad to see this happening. I hope it works out well for them.

Re:Zero chance of this

[Dan Farina]

I was under the impression that they meant desktop as in the hardware classification of computer (the things most of us use, not mainframes or supercomputers, etc), not a certain desktop _environment_, the software.

I wonder

[The Analog Kid]

What Microsoft is thinking about this, IBM is one of the largest players in the computing field and something like this is sure to catch Linux/IBM's competitor. Doing something like this shows that IBM stands behind the product they support 100%(Remember that commercial with Avery Brooks). IBM will probably be doing some tweaking to the desktop and will probably send the changes back to the respected projects, and that will be good for everyone.

IBMers, please do your homework ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the names and the offices listed in the document - the Open Desktop group it mentions doesn't exist organizationally, and the names listed aren't managers!

This is so obviously a hoax! But a good one and probably with some insider knowledge. That is not to say that IBM isn't going to push towards linux, but I doubt that Windows will be pushed out completely before the rest of the business world uses it.

Re:IBMers, please do your homework ;)

[Tennyson]

That's not entirely correct. One of the people mentioned is listed as "Program Manager - Workplace Framework" Another is shown as part of the "Open Client Project Office" and the author is "CIO, and VP on demand technology enablement". I HAVE done my homework, both on the content of the note and the people mentioned and I am surethis si not a hoax. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I heard about this initiative at least a month ago from somebody in the Linux Solution Speciality.

Re:I wouldn't bet on that

[shaitand]

I seriously doubt they would have to do all that nonsense. Openoffice is already 99% of the way there. If they fill in the Access hole they are done.

Maybe for the end user . . .

[Idou]

But I quietly wait for the day when stupid managers are replaced by smatter managers who realize that Excel, Access, and its ilk only create drones that copy and paste all day, tend to their macros that greatly complicate "simple" programming problems(therefore, must be tended to), and create "irreplaceable employees" that you can't fire because what they do is so poorly documented the business would stop running for an unexceptable time if you did (hmm, what does this cell do . . .).

I can't wait . . . until outsourcing to India and China makes programming so cheap that all those drones who think they are "knowledge workers" can finally be set free to get real careers because companies can now afford masters of Perl and the DBI module to actually bring back efficiency and dignitiy to the human race by expressing human thought in a burst of insightful code ONCE, instead of mindless clicks and grunts every month, an endless cycle of futility.

Mind you, these new knowledge workers will most likely be home grown, once unemployed programmers who went back to school to learn accounting and finance. They will believe in solving the same problem ONCE and will not be afraid to code to get the job done. They will also have seen how accountants have bettered their own profession by making it independent of corporate interests and hopefully will bring the same to the IT profession (which I will work hard to become a member of).

Until then, it is back to writing Perl to deal with the stupidity that apps like Excel and Access breed . . .

Seek the truth, and ye will find Open Source.

Last straw: Lotus notes

[DuctTape]

A friend of mine in IBM Austin said that one of the big reasons that they didn't switch to Linux on the desktop was because Lotus Notes doesn't run on Linux.

However, as you could read from another article linked at the bottom of the original article, IBM is dropping Lotus Notes. I wonder what's going to take its place.

DT

times have changed

[CAIMLAS]

Times have changed. IBM is no longer the monolithic giant that dominates and overtakes everything - they're at the size where either significant growth or significant growth loss is fairly difficult without catastrophic catalyst. They're no longer a significant threat to the 'little guy' either, as they used to be - and as MS is now.

Think about it. IBM has quite thoroughly embraced linux, and is moving in more of that direction every day. Linux's very core philosophy is that of openess and unrestriction - the very philosophies that monopolies fight against.

The only thing (at least from the business perspective) IBM gains by embracing linux is to move the power away from MS. From that point, where does the power go?

Well, obviously, it draws power from AMD and Intel and more towards IBM for PPC processors, since linux works just fine on PPC processors, but in terms of software, they gain nothing. You can't 'take' something that is given away, as linux is.

Instead of power migrating from MS to IBM in the rise of linux, power migrates to the people - the populace and citizens. That's democracy.

X11 is not the problem

[PotatoHead]

Performance is fine, features are fine. Everytime I read one of these, I grow a bit more frustrated.

The X Window system is possibly one of the best features in Linux right now, not to mention the number of applications (basically just about all of them) written to take advantage of it. The ability to remote the display is a powerful thing that allows for many compute options not easily done with single-user framebuffer based systems. (All of them are single user, unless you count some wierd dual head setup.)

We need to work harder at presenting Linux in a useable way, not stripping it to look like the other OSes out there right now.

X11 is what makes Linux a true multi-user operating system. It is a big part of where the power is. Why come all this way only to give up one of the core values?

Lets say we actually do this. All the new applications then get written for the frame buffer. Single users might gain some small benefit from a bit lower complexity (which can and will be solved in presentation), but everyone else loses. The money is in the corporate systems and that is where X11 plays hard. Application servers delivering applications to desktops over X11 are easy to administer and cost effective. Client-server just cannot compare really.

Rather than nuke one of our killer enterprise features to make Linux work for isolated single users, we need to continue to work hard at getting Linux in front of brand new users and schools. People that begin with Linux are not going to have any trouble with it. They will grow with Linux as it continues to mature, the result over time will be better for everyone.

Those running the current win32 systems are all going to want things the way they have them now. Giving that to them is not worth it because that is accepting their way at a lower cost, and that is just not what OSS is about. OSS is about powerful software with freedom built in from the beginning, not software designed around the competition.

We can continue to build Linux just the way it is now and slowly the others will either:

1.) See the light and join us,

or

2.) Continue doing what they are doing. (while paying a lot for the option of doing so)

Either way, OSS will continue as it has, which means tossing X11 (which making it an addon is doing) won't be worth it.

Linux is pretty easy now and we are only at the beginning! Lets keep it intact for a bit longer before taking such drastic measures.

bad move

[Myopic]

after the SCO lawsuit, IBM will owe them six hundred bucks per seat.

Hmm ... I work for IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

and I run linux on my company provided laptop 99% of the time. I boot windoze once a day so I can connect to the corporate network with my vpn client and download my lotus notes email.

*If* IBM can get Lotus Notes to run easily on linux and get the vpn client to run, then the problem is 99.9% solved.

A small cog in a very large wheel

Great quote from Groklaw:

[Anonymous Coward]

(Slightly reworded)

What delicious irony. Bill Gates' greatest accomplishment was taking the computing monopoly from IBM. Now IBM is working to destroy the computing monopoly.

My bet

[DaveAtFraud]

Novell bought Ximian. Novell bought SuSE. IBM invested $50M in Novell.

Any bets that IBM's corporate desktop looks a lot like Ximian running on SuSE?

Re:My bet

[OS24Ever]

Nope. It's Ximian running RedHat. 7.2 I believe, whichever one came with the 2.4.9 kernal, don't remember.

and then we have Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office setup in Wine enivornments.

It's available for installation right now, however not everyone can use it because of certain applications that require specific things they've not gotten either emulated in Wine or replaced by a non-MS Specific application.

All you need is a diskette and about an hour and you too can wipe out your Windows Thinkpad or Desktop and off you go. Most of the engineering places that don't need a lot of the more verticle type applications like the Watson Labs and other labs have fully flipped to linux.

It's us types in the marketing/sales/customer facing environments that need specific apps that are holding us a back a bit.

Plus there's been no mandate. We all joke about it at tech conferences (I'm on the xSeries side) and such because everyone had 'heard' of this type of memo and a lot of our guys closer to using Linux more (IE not in the midwest but east and west coasts) have already converted over.

Most run VMware workstation to fire up windows on the rare opportunity that they need them. And the last guy I talked to about it as far back as August said he rarely ever needed to fire up Windows any more.

More apps to come?

[Maltese Falcon]

According to this article, IBM currently has 320,000 employees. With these numbers (I'll assume 1 system per employee avg.) and their clout/connection with ISVs, this is bound to ensure more business apps ported to Linux. I'm sure as a result of this, M$'s competitors will now be chomping at the bit to port to Linux to sell to IBM plus get them to promote their wares.

RTF

[ThatsLoseNotLoose]

If you still have that document, just for grins, try opening the doc in openoffice and then save it as RTF. I've had word make some monster rtf's only to have OO reduce it to a third the size or less. To shave more fat off, go into the document properties and deselect APPLY USER DATA.

Although I suppose a 5 meg word file contains some tricky shit and OO won't open it properly anyways, it's always an interesting experiment.

Oh boy, here we go again

[A nonymous Coward]

Yet another idiotic complaint that X11 is holding Linux back.

The other replies to this handle the technical details fine. All I have to add is that I have been using X11 for years on funky 386s and up and never felt the GUI was any kind of bottleneck. If it worked fine on a 33Mhz 386, even if the screen wasn't as big, why the dickens won't it work on 3Ghz Pentiums and Opterons? Why is it that as processors and memory get faster and faster, more oddballs come out of the woodworks screaming about what a pig dog X11 is?

For public consumption

[bfree]

Excuse me for still having some scepticism in my brain, but if I was running IBM, I would have already set as much of this up as feasible by the back door and then announce publically that I was going to do it on a quite short timeframe. Then when I succeed I can go to other companies "look, it's predictable and safe". Companies hate change, employees hate change, it's risky or just plain annoying so if you really want to get the huge organisations to take this sort of a change seriously, you are going to have to be able to provide serious evidence.

Leaving scepticism (which was fueled by a comment refering to a base desktop build which already exists in IBM) aside, this is so logical it's simple! If IBM transfer their own business over to IBM's own software across the board, then they have a constantly provable business environment which they can sell and support on their own hardware. They can return to selling one stop shops, but by basing the underlying systems (as far as they commit to) on Free software, they completely disarm the feeling of being forced to choose between evils, you can choose a potential evil and feel free to walk away (well you might be replacing lots of hardware if you completely drop them) with your system. IBM could effectively start getting end customers to foot the bill for Free software development by IBM and the more of that work they are doing, the more of the work they are likely to get. The rules (well the licenses of most software they would be likely to use) prevent a monopoly, but IBM's power is huge and hence it could attract business to a monopolistic level, at least until a new tiger appears which can take it on in the newly expanded market. IBM don't need software licensing revenue, IBM can exist for the rest of time on it's name provided they can provide people with dependable solutions (i.e. they can charge a profit margin others would dream of, just because it's IBM).

What dissappoints me is that this all makes me recall many moments while I worked for Corel International Linux Support when I tried making people see the benefits of eating our own dogfood. I truly felt (though I mattered squat) they should have moved the next (or following if already too late) version of their Office and Draw suites to QT (or gtk, I only really say qt as they had already committed to KDE on the desktop and had peeople working on it) and start consolidating on their work. They were deciding what system to buy for the Linux Support desk, and I asked why they didn't just adopt a free one! Moving over all their hosting to Linux was another issue and one that was more important in their minds (and judging by netcraft it seems they achieved something there I wasn't expecting anymore). It was interesting however to watch the various reactions from managers to administrators, support staff to developers when they realised they had a bit of a Free software zealot in their midst! I even managed to get in my digs at visiting big-wigs (something makes me think that isn't why Corel left the country though). Corel had an opportunity, but they didn't even try (in fact I wonder why they even bothered starting with Linux if they weren't going to go down this route).

IBM would have to be insane not to try this. Really it is a case of when they feel they should make the jump to best effect, and if IBM feel that now is the time to do it, you can be sure it is very doable (for them) because egg on the face here could cost IBM massively and for a long time. I can't help feel that this has been in the works ever since they lost out on OS/2 and if the MS V Linux "Get The Facts" can be taken as evidence that MS is scared, this should be taken as evidence that MS should be petrified! If IBM do follow through with this, the impact in having all the IBM employees worldwide proficient with GNU/Linux/X/??/?? would be significant apart from the developments you would be sure would be seen in each piece o

Re: KDE people are going...

[PotatoHead]

to hate me.

Hope not, because I use KDE often. (Thanks guys!)

Well, I have written about them in the past regarding speed and bloat. They are getting through that nicely today.

I don't mind people making winalike desktops, as long as I can theme them. I do mind taking a nice multi-user OS and turning it into a single user one for no good reason.

Re:IBM Profiting from free labor

[ShinmaWa]

Does anyone else think it's a bit "wrong" for IBM to be profiting from the work of well meaning volunteers?

Do you feel it is a bit "wrong" for you to be able to benefit from all the work that IBM has put into open source projects?

IBM has made a LOT of contributions to the Linux kernel (In fact, I think I might have something about a lawsuit that had something to do with this...)

IBM also has made many contributions to the Apache Web Server, Apache Jakarta projects, Apache XML projects, PHP, Mozilla.org, etc, etc.

Let's not forget Jikes, Eclipse, SWT, etc, etc.

A list of 82 open source projects that IBM is actively involved in can be found here. This is only a SUBSET of the open source projects IBM is working on.

Thinkpads with Linux ?

[BESTouff]

Does that mean that we'll actually see thinkpads with linux preinstalled, and for less than their MS-taxed siblings ?

Re:Thinkpads with Linux ?

[digitalhermit]

Personally, I don't care if it's any cheaper than a Windows machine. I just want all the features on the laptop to work perfectly, including DVD playback, wireless ethernet, power management, video, sound and all the extra buttons.

Re:Yep.

[jbert]

I believe it does do what you want. I think this is exactly what VNC was designed for (over in the Olivetti^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HATT research labs in Cambridge (UK)). (Hi Tweest, if you're reading...hope RealVNC is going well.)

You're "planning ahead" becomes what you do by default.

*All* your apps are launched with their X 'DISPLAY' set to the VNC X server (a single server, not a per-app one). Then, whereever *you* are, you run a VNC client session to your VNC X Server and see your desktop.

Ta-da.

For bonus points, get some of their cool "active badge" technology so that "the system" knows where you are in the building and routes your desktop and phone extension to wherever you have happened to sit yourself down.

Re:Zero chance of this

[steveha]

If you think Gnome is bloated from featuritis now

Huh?

GNOME 2.0 had geeks on Slashdot shrieking in agony over all the features that were cut from GNOME 1.x. Did you know that GNOME 2.x, by default, only has one way to maximize a window? Shocking!

So no, I don't think GNOME is bloated with featuritis. I think the GNOME guys have done a great job of paring things down to where you can quickly find the features you actually want to use.

steveha

P.S. If you actually miss the "maximize horizontally only" or "maximize vertically only" commands, you can choose to run GNOME with Sawfish and get them back.

Link to the commercial...

[HansF]

You will find the commercial in realplayer, quicktime and mpeg for linux format here.

To take the city without fighting is the best

[roomisigloomis]

Actually, I think that this is more an illustration of Sun Tzu's principle that taking the city without fighting is the best case. In this instance, IBM, by embracing open source and Linux while agreeing to sell hardware and software from competitors like HP, has re-emerged as the leader in complete enterprise IT solutions while taking the enemy's ammunition as its own. How is HP supposed to compete with a company that says "if the situation is right, we recommend HP products" to its customers. HP spend more on research and development while IBM refocuses its research and development to other less competitive places (like the PowerPC chip). In addition, HP advertising becomes IBM advertising. Finally, by using open source and standards-based software, it can also claim infinite interoperability. Brilliant strategy, if you ask me.

Re:But Peace means War

[Troed]

... purge it from the barbarians? Sure it is - it is exactly the same view of others.

Christ was the prophet who talked about being friendly, God himself always ok'd killing everyone not agreeing with you (if you believed in It, this killing everyone not agreeing with It).

We're down to semantics now. Interesting, isn't it? There's absolutely no more "violence" in the Quran compared to the Torah/Old testament. People claiming "Islam does this and Islam does that" seldom know anything about Islam, and mistake ancient traditions that has nothing to do with the religion with Islam itself.

People in Europe are a bit more open-minded than in the US - which fits well when viewing Scientific American's map of modernity where the Nordic countries (with Sweden in the lead) tops the list. We see "God bless America" and "Allah Akhbar" being the same thing, and that the war between ignorant people in the US and ignorant followers of bin Laden being equally stupid. /me - Swedish

Re:But Peace means War

[renderhead]

"if you believe in any one of these religions you are biased and not qualified to compare"

Likewise, if you live in Europe, or America, or any country in the world, you are biased and not qualified to compare Sweden to America. ;)

Besided, this idealized "European" who is more open-minded than the Americans is on the same continent as the 3 or more influential countries that have or are in the process of passing laws forbidding the wearing of headscarves in public institutions. Open-minded, indeed.

Unlikely, because we need to use MS Word now

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at IBM so I need to post anonymously.

I seriously doubt this will affect more than half the organization. Up until about a year ago or so, the offical word processor was Lotus WordPro, because IBM owns Lotus. Well, everyone who uses WordPro hates it, and its file import/export filters are terrible.

So the new official word processor is MS Word. Of course, there are still entire divisions that are using WordPro, because they still have thousands of documents written in WordPro, and they can't afford to buy the MS Word licenses for all their employees.

There was always the possibility of port WordPro to Linux, because IBM owned it. There's no way that MS Word is going to be ported to Linux. So the only way for an IBM employee to conform to both guidelines is to run VMWare.

Now, I know what you're going to say - why doesn't IBM just standardize on Open Office? Well, I don't know why. But I do know that IBM is a huge organizationg that frequently competes with itself, and just because some high-level executive has made some pronouncement, it doesn't mean it will come true.

Re:Sluggish how?

[swv3752]

1) Sure pick the some of the slowest apps to load. Loading time is application dependant. Compare OOo on the same hardware running Linux and Windows. the time to load will approximately be the same, so that is not an X11 issue.

2) Works fine for me. And I'm not talking about my 2Ghz desktop but my 366mhz Celeron with 192mb RAM. Now both of tht be a driver issue. That does happen regardless of platform, just talk to any ATI card owner from a couple of years ago.
hese are running the OSS ATI drivers, and I have heard of some issues with some other drivers dependaing of the version fot he drivers. It mig
3) See two.

4) I have never seen that issue. I have been using Linux on a desktop for 6 years now. I hit ctrl-n in Mozilla and a new window spawns instantly. Same in Konqueror. I go File-> New in Abiword and get a new window instantly. Maybe this is also a driver issue, or maybe just the app you are using.

X worked on my 8mb RAM 66mhz Agenda VR3. It was just as snappy as a Clie (or Palm) running from a memory card. Basically a second delay or so because it loaded apps from flash memory. X itself is not slow. Your drivers may not be optimized, your installition may be fubared, or you are just using the slowest apps in the world. Maybe the Window Manager or Desktop may have problems. I remember E being kinda ugly resizing windows.

TCPA?

[Schreckgestalt]

Wow, with such a userbase, a business userbase, isn't that going to stop the whole TCPA movement?

I mean, if IBM, the largest manufacturer of PC systems is switching to Linux, are Intel and AMD going to tell them "Sorry, IBM, you are our best customer, but you are going to have to switch to MS OS again?"...

Rhetorical question

[lysium]

If IBM wants to take GNUStep and make it sexy, more power to them, but in the meantime, KDE will remain the coolest, most gorgeous linux desktop environment available.

Do you choose a President on the handsomeness of his haircut, or the whiteness of his teeth? An internal IBM desktop would be designed for getting work done, and not looking good. That is why there should never be One True Linux Desktop.

==========

Porting the Application Universe

[klic]

Many of those 300K IBM employees are sales and support staff at remote offices, working zillions of odd little apps that help them do their unique jobs. Many are manufacturing. Think about the amazing diversity of desktops a place like IBM must have.

The really awesome aspect of this move is it goes way beyond Mozilla and Open Office(?). This is a move to Linux support for Milling Machine Master and Band Practice Pro and Golf Buddy 2004, since there are probably people at IBM that use such things full time. Windows is not just an OS, it is a universe of associated third-party applications, and engulfing that whole universe will mean that everything gets ported, or that Wine gets a LOT more attention.

The announcement was made for its market and psychological impact, but if it is really serious it will imply enormous efforts devoted to Wine and to porting tools for third-party software vendors. That may be the only way to remain compatable with all those thousands of third-party applications, and still meet the 2005 goal.

This will get very interesting, because IBM probably has contractual access to a lot of source code for Windows. If the SCO stink is "interesting", imagine the legal ruckus that Microsoft is going to make when all the porting tools and Wine improvements start showing up!

Correction: X11 is a problem

[Jon_E]

Agreed X11 is a necessary component, but the dependence on X11 is a problem (in the same way that the dependence on sendmail was/is a problem) - the APIs and libraries are hideous to deal with and carry *way* too much legacy from the 70s and 80s.

There's many parts of *nix that need to be rewritten in a fresh way, and I applaud XFree86 for their effort in bridging the gap and carrying the torch to the masses, but at some point we need to let go and latch onto something better. Windows *has* a market (imho) because of the history of X11.

And to simply nitpick on another issue - (and yes i know Wittgenstein's view that language is use) - but "linux" is just the kernel, potatohead dude, and X11 is not part of that kernel. OSS is much broader and bigger than a kernel and is the basis for a number of varied and disorganized distributions. It's been a great science project and learning tool for a while with some incredibly valuable tools - but let's grow up a little and look to harden more things around here, before we go spouting on about how wonderful X11 is. There's some real issues with X11 that we need to address with alternative base windowing systems. Great - we've got a start with the kernel - lets move on to the next set of components that need some rework .. how about programming languages (java is a great start, quick scripting tools in perl and python .. great!), filesystems (ok some decent work continuing here xfs from SGI looks good to help things along), windowing systems (well - we've got a lot of things sitting on top of X, but nothing really to redo it ..) It's going to require dedicated jobs and money and hence there will be dedicated interests .. there's no 2 ways about it.