Microsoft Acknowledges Linux Threat To Windows

angry tapir sends along coverage from Good Gear Guide of a recent Microsoft !0-K SEC filing: "Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move is an acknowledgment of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft's Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks. ... 'Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market,' Microsoft said in the filing. 'Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat.'"

Comments

Linux failed on netbooks.

[bcrowell]

I hate to say it, because I'm a linux fanboy, but Linux on netbooks has more or less failed. Manufacturers like Asus dropped the ball by shipping too many Linux machines with screwed up configurations (and also with the crappiest Linux distros available). MS also recognized the threat and entered the ring fighting. The result is that most retailers are pushing netbooks with Windows, and most people buying netbooks are buying them with Windows. Maybe this will change if ARM-based netbooks really take off, but I suspect it will be the same story all over again.

Re:Antitrust avoidance

[superslacker87]

Would you be happier if they were using the term oligopoly? Then you could chuck Apple in with MS and it would be blazingly accurate.

Note the absence of Novell/SUSE in the release

[filesiteguy]

I am not surprised to see this kind of release. After all, they need to hold on to that monopoly position on the desktop to keep their server business afloat.

What was interesting was the complete lack of any mention of Novell's SLED product. Remember, that MS and Novell are in cahoots to put servers out there running both Windows Workstation 2008 and SLES. In fact, I distinctly remember Ballmer last year mentioning "suzie" in one of his speeches at the Visual Studio 2008 launch event.

Oddly enough, also, there's no mention of a distribution running KDE. Both Ubuntu (which I use now on my laptop) and Red Hat are GNOME-based distros by default. SLED (and openSUSE) are also becoming more GNOME-centric. (I know you can put KDE on any of these, and I run KTorrent as well as KRDC in my desktop.)

Re:This Is News??!!!

[ozmanjusri]

Are you guys really this desperate to drum up the anti-Microsoft pagehits?

Is open discussion really anti-Microsoft?

This recurrent claim of anti-Microsoft bias early in Slashdot discussions involving MS is so frequent that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a deliberate tactic by their reputation management team.

Android?

[cybereal]

I know everyone's really excited that their imaginary enemy has finally validated their existence as a threat but let's be more realistic here. If there's anything remotely interesting about this filing, it's that android and the upcoming Chrome OS is not mentioned at all.

To me it seems more like a message of disrespect to google, a more realistic competitor, than anything...