Prakash Advani's Blog

From this article.

The Linux Foundation survey found that the Linux desktop has become a mainstream desktop replacement. While many businesses use Linux as a development desktop (53.3 percent), almost two-thirds (66.1 percent) use it as a client desktop. Linux is no longer just an operating system for the technically inclined.

It also is an operating system that its users have near complete trust in. Seventy-six percent believe desktop Linux is absolutely ready to for mission-critical applications, while 17.3 percent believe that desktop Linux is probably ready for even the most important business jobs.

The desktop Linuxes being used in businesses are a familiar list to DesktopLinux readers. The Ubuntu family of Linuxes, with 55.2 percent, came in on top. No. 2 was the Red Hat family Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora/CentOS, with 51.3 percent. The Novell SUSE group SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and openSUSE took third place with 32.9 percent.

So if you still haven’t considered Linux on the Desktop, now is the time to give it a hard look. If you have already tried and hitting some road blocks, write to me. I would be happy be of help.

From CIO.com

A group of die-hard OS/2 users are petitioning IBM—again—to release the operating system’s source code as open-source. The question may not be whether IBM wants to do so… but if it can. Not, I expect, that IBM will actually say this out loud.

This is definitely a good thing and I sincerely hope,  IBM can really pull this off . But I see the following challenges that IBM has:

While in talk with a senior executive at IBM, he said that OS/2 was written along with Microsoft, and that could face some legal hurdles.

Also after SCO sued IBM for putting code in Linux, the elephant is wounded. Well not exactly wounded but bruised and they may not want to risk another litigation.

And how relevant will it be today? When Linux is gaining so much momentum on the Desktop.

If the most critical businesses can run Linux why all the other businesses can’t?

Read more on how the New York Stock Exchange is moving to Linux.