One of our customers just asked for licenses to run X-Windows on all their Windows machines. It is a company that administers public subsidized housing. The decision was made because of the "I love you" bug - they want all internet related software to run Linux instead of Windows.
Most computers are only used for MS Office and an integrated administration system. The percentage of users, that use this from a terminal server has risen from 0% to 35% in 2 months, simply because this was the cheapest solution.
Currently, we are investigating how to make the Terminal Server client run on a Linux in order to provide new desktop PCs with Linux installed instead, because that will improve X-Windows performance significantly while delivering the same performance on Terminal Server.
My guess is, that in a couple of years, only special-purpose desktop PCs will run Windows in that company, and the servers will be Linux except the MS SQL Server and two big Terminal Servers.
In comparison with other companies, that are still Windows only, we continue buying Microsoft licenses...
By the way: It is interesting, that most software upgrades that the users are aware of, from Microsoft, are free: Microsoft Internet Explorer software, MS Outlook upgrades, Microsoft Netmeeting, bugfixes... Windows 95 still runs and runs and doesn't need upgrades, and I still don't know any company with more than 5 employees, that use Microsoft Office 2000. |
