<< Lets see, what was the name of the last OS that IBM promoted? >>
You don't suppose there just might be a couple little minor differences between OS2 and Linux?
If I haven't made myself clear yet, let me try again. I have never said, nor do I expect, Linux (or any other flavor of OS) to REPLACE Win95/98/NT/2000/?????? as the gorilla choice personal computer operating system. What I do believe is going to happen is that products like Citrix are going to allow corporate America to shift to a thin client based IT architecture. Its going to happen because it allows the corporations to achieve significant cost savings without significantly changing the basic computing experience of the average worker.
The question then becomes how does this shift affect Microsoft. The current generation of Microsoft desktop operating systems are overkill for a thin client desktop. Citrix ICA requires a client with resources approximately equivalent to an Intel 286 with 640 KB of RAM. Tried to run NT on a 286 lately? You can't even really run it on a 486, and my company had to increase the memory in our standardized desktops from 32M to 64M when we converted over to NT. One of the big savings that is generated from the conversion to a Citrix environment is that the useful lifetime of a typical PC is extended. Machines that are now being given away, turned into print servers, or used as doorstops can continue to be used for several years. You can dismiss Linux if you want, but if all a machine has to do is run a web browser and an ICA client, how sophisticated does the OS have to be?
Microsoft probably will continue to dominate the server market, but remember that in the typical corporation there will be many more clients than servers. If they lose a significant share of the client PC market, it might not eliminate them as a gorilla, but its got to have an impact on their bottom line. I also don't see the home PC market being affected by this change, so they'll probably hold on to most of that market as well.
Bottom line? Don't get hung up on the strengths or weaknesses of a particular OS in today's computing environment. Focus on the shift in corporate IT architectures, and then try to figure out how the GG plays out in the new environment. |
