Japanese PC Manufacturers Preinstalling Linux

cshirky writes "There's an article in AsiaBizTech about Japanese PC manufacturers bundling Linux. The article concludes that 'Because Japan's main vendors are starting to offer Linux products and services, the Linux OS is likely to become a viable alternative for corporate customers.'" They're talking about big companies, too, like Compaq, IBM Japan, Hitachi, and Fujitsu. Sweet!

Comments

Not just a Japanese thing.

[mrsam]

There's definitely a growing dissatisfaction in the enterprise with MS software and services. Just yesterday I was sitting in the meeting, and people were talking about how to move some files from PeeCees to our big dumb UNIX boxes, where all the company jewels are.

Someone said something to the effect "let's use our Samba boxes". I asked him to repeat what he just said, to make sure that I heard him right.

I do consulting, and my current contract is with the traditional suit-n-tie multinational financial corp. This is the last place you'd expect to find a bunch of Samba boxes running somewhere. I was in a state of shock for the rest of the day. It turned out that they have Samba running on Solaris, but that's a start, I suppose.

So it doesn't surprise me what the Japanese are doing. It's probably going to happen here too, within the next couple of years. Unless W2K is a smashing success, you'll start to see many places begin to decomission their NT servers when they reach the end of their lifecycle, and recycling the boxes to run something else. Maybe Linux, maybe Solaris, maybe Monterey.
--

Software economy?

[proberts]

I wonder if this is the end of the US-based domination of the World's software? Korea seems to have decided that Microsoft is strategicly bad to deal with and that Linux is a better choice. I'm pretty sure I've read that Mexico's school system is going to Linux.

The big question is "Unless the Linux-on-the-desktop crowd are significantly successful soon, will it mean that the clue-per-person index will go up in 'developing countries' while it's declining in 'developed countries?'"

The US Government's policies and strategies seem to be tilted towards commercial entities, not the efforts of the population at large (e.g. crypto binaries ok, crypto source bad) - countries with less disposable income in their populations are taking national strategic advantage of free (as in beer), and that could have serious long-term impact on the global computing environment.

More clue is good. I'm just worried that a lot of US and European policy-makers are buying into the less-skilled workplace being good and long term it seems to be a less-than-ideal solution.

Paul