IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops

walterbyrd and other readers are sending along the news that IBM is partnering worldwide with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell, and Red Hat to offer Windows-free desktop PCs pre-loaded with Lotus software and ready for customizing by local ISVs for particular markets. The head of IBM's Lotus division is quoted: "The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux." One example of the cooperation: "Canonical, which sells subscription support for Ubuntu, a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor,' will re-distribute Lotus Symphony via their repositories. Symphony 1.1 will be available through the Ubuntu repositories by the end of August."

Comments

Perfect example

[Darkness404]

This is a perfect example on why IBM stays ahead. They adapt. They went from proprietary to open, from DOS to Linux. From punch cards to computers. Despite how "old" IBM seems, they always seem to adapt, something that some tech companies refuse to do.

Re:Perfect example

[evilviper]

Eh, they seem to be doing better than Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and I would even say Ma Bell.

Standard Oil was renamed to "Exxon", and recently posted the largest annual profits of ANY company, EVER.

Carnegie Steel became US Steel; now USX. It remains the single largest steel producer in the country. It certainly has slipped a long way from it's historic highs of world domination, but it took almost a century, nowhere nearly as quickly as IBM.

Much like the terminator, Ma Bell's shattered pieces have slowly been coming back together for the past few decades. What's worse, she's a badder bitch now than she ever was before... Much like with any disease, as the host got weaker, the viruses took over, and prospered.

Re:Good thing?

[Tubal-Cain]

Even my family is just now accepting OpenOffice, ~9 months after switching. They want(ed) MS, but I wouldn't help/let them pirate it.

My brother's laptop's internet dies every 10 minutes, requiring a reboot (some, uh, 'blunt force trama' inflicted with a wall after an he had an argument with my sister), and it drives him nuts (Ethernet and wifi are both aflicted, and an external USB wifi adaptor doesn't help, either). Kubuntu's LiveCD booted and stayed connected to the internet for hours, so it's not a hardware problem, but he won't let me install it. He doesn't want to give up XP (a reinstall of that may help, but again, I won't help him pirate).

So yes, people are brainwashed.
And yes, I probably am, too. But a fanboi has a diffrent mindset from someone who resists anything diffrent for no other reason than it is different.

Linux wins when...

[symbolset]

Most people don't want to know what an OS is. Like a PVR - switch it on - and it works. Linux will succeed when the big boys start marketing it, just like the 'swill beers' that now dominate the world markets.

The advertisers of the eee pc or the new Atom netbooks don't make a big deal of the fact that there's no Windows in the box. "Like a PVR - switch it on - and it works." You are right that most people don't care to know and that is perhaps more insightful than I would have expected from your post. I would say you're very perceptive. I would expect that the lack of spyware and viruses on the PCs after six months will only be considered a pleasant bonus.

I used Linux at IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Linux as my primary OS for the majority of the 7 years I worked at IBM. The internal distribution is of course, based on Red Hat, though I used SUSE, Debian (and Ubuntu) as well. It sucked in the early days of the project because Notes ran under wine, rather than a native client. Now with the Eclipse platform, Notes is a "native" client and works much better. Disparaging remarks about Notes aside, the latest release was quite nice to use. I'm sure development has improved even more in the last year since I left, and it was a complete Windows replacement then.

Re:Great...

[kabocox]

One day, both the developers quit at the same time due to the manager being the biggest unlikeable bastard that any of us had ever met. This left the "database" completely unmaintained.

The manager ended up contracting a Lotus Notes expert from IBM themselves to do some emergency bug fixing. The following Monday morning, the expert turned up at 9 AM sharp, in an equally sharp suit, and carrying a trademark Thinkpad.

He sat down at a computer, looked at the code, and cried with laughter for a good, solid ten minutes, then got up and left.

See a really good contractor would have found either or both of those developers and have them work for 10x of their normal price and just be the front man. Today it's even easier. Your contractor can say, I'll need today to gather notes and talk to people "so I can give our folks in India the specs" where the folks in India are instead your former now happily highly paid employees.