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Monday August 9, 8:50 pm Eastern Time
Linux show to focus on commercial prospects
By Therese Poletti
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Now, they mean business.
Developers of systems and software for the Linux operating system -- which made its name as free alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s software -- are now focused on its commercial prospects.
The first LinuxWorld trade show a few months ago was seen as a major coming out party for the upstart operating system, but this week's show is boasting a number of product launches and nearly twice as many people.
About 20,000 people are expected to attend, up from the 12,000 who came to the San Jose, Calif. show in March. But so much has happened in the past five months that it is causing some confusion over how long it has been since the last show.
''Everyone looks at me and says, 'gee last year's LinuxWorld was so exciting, what's this year's going to be,''' said Larry Augustin, chief executive of VA Linux Systems Inc., which develops computer systems running Linux. ''It's been less than a year since Linux really started up this steep ramp.''
This week, many companies will announce products this week aimed at making Linux more friendly for electronic commerce, seeking to prove that Linux is a valid alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Windows NT software for some applications.
''Since LinuxWorld in March, Microsoft is a much more vulnerable company right now,'' said Stacey Quandt, an analyst at Giga Information Group in Santa Clara, Calif. ''Linux has moved into this vacuum that Microsoft has created due to dissatisfaction (of) customers and the delay of Windows 2000.''
The free operating system, a version of UNIX developed by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds and maintained by a far-flung group of programmers, is already popular among Internet service providers to run e-mail, print, or Web site servers.
But due to performance issues, Linux-based systems have not yet made many inroads in the higher-end computing environments to run super high-traffic electronic commerce Web sites.
TurboLinux, a distributor of Linux formerly known as Pacific HiTech, will announce on Tuesday the first commercial software package for so-called clustering, which links two or more systems together to handle big workloads or users.
''This is a natural fit for most ISPs (Internet service providers), for their customer demands and the higher availability requirements,'' said Lonn Johnston, vice president of North American operations at TurboLinux. But he added, ''We are not proposing to replace your Tandem box.''
Scientists and academics in national laboratories have been working for a few years to make Linux run better in high performance computing. In the Beowulf project, started at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1994, computer scientists ganged together off-the shelf computers and parts, running Linux.
Last April, the Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center in New Mexico turned on a workstation supercluster system it named the Roadrunner, designed specifically for clustering, running Intel Corp.'s (Nasdaq:INTC - news) Pentium II processors and Linux.
But these systems were developed for scientific and academic research, where the labs are testing problems such as simulating a nuclear stockpile reaction to certain conditions.
TurboLinux said that its software is the first commercial clustering package for Linux, aimed at preventing down time in critical applications such as Web site hosting.
Red Hat Software Inc., which is expected to go public on Wednesday on the Nasdaq, will announce a packaged version of Linux that is also aimed at electronic commerce, analysts said. Analysts said Red Hat's package will bundle RSA Data Security's encryption software for conducting secure transactions over the Internet. RSA is a unit of Security Dynamics Inc. (Nasdaq:SDTI - news)
A spokesman for Red Hat in Durham, N.C., declined to comment, citing the company's IPO quiet period.
VA Linux systems, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., plans to announce a clustering system for computational and Web serving applications and some hefty Internet servers, running Linux and dual versions of Intel's Pentium III processors, as well as deals with Internet service providers.
''(The) ISP area ... is particularly interesting to us because it is very fast growing and has considerable technical challenges -- total reliability and instant response,'' said Sean Maloney, senior vice president of sales and marketing, at Intel in Santa Clara, Calif., who will give the keynote address on Tuesday morning. ''Both of those are huge challenges.''
and News: Intel Corp (Nasdaq:INTC - news)
Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news)
Security Dynamics Technologies Inc (Nasdaq:SDTI - news)
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