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Developers Turn to Linux, Stunt Microsoft Growth
Sun Jan 26, 4:27 PM ET Add Technology - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Siobhan Kennedy
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mike Petitjean has been a dedicated Microsoft user for more than a decade, but now the software developer says he's so fed up with the high prices and unreliable systems that he's switching to Linux (news - web sites).
Linux's popularity with programmers has already managed to make a huge dent on the market share of rival software Unix (news - web sites) and now it's gradually threatening to do the same with Microsoft's dominance of the business software market. And giants such as IBM (NYSE:IBM - news), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news), and Dell Computer Corp. (NasdaqNM:DELL - news) are lending a helping hand.
"Windows is a lousy platform," said Petitjean, who was attending the LinuxWorld show in New York last week. Platforms are technology jargon for the operating system software, like Microsoft Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Windows and Unix, which are used to run business computers and servers.
"It's just not reliable enough."
Petitjean runs a small company in Frankfort, Kentucky, that writes software programs for the state government and businesses. He's used Microsoft's Windows operating system since the early versions of the software but now he wants to swap to Linux because he says Microsoft is too expensive, too difficult to use and not reliable enough.
"We want to offer software that's simple to set up and help companies run their businesses without them having to become computer gurus," said Petitjean, who was wearing a "Linux Rocks" t-shirt.
Today, Linux has superseded Unix as one of the most popular operating systems used by scientific, government and academic institutions -- and increasingly financial services firms -- that need to crunch huge amounts of data and don't want to spend hundreds of millions on software systems like Unix or Windows that keep them locked in to one technology.
Linux has been slower to take hold in businesses running the critical day-to-day operations that keep business going.
But as companies like International Business Machines and Hewlett-Packard have entered the scene, that's started to change, analysts said.
"The rebels have been rabble rousing about Linux for five or six years, and until the end of 2001 for the most part nobody cared," said Tom Berquist, an analyst with Goldman Sachs. "But all of a sudden in 2002, there were a huge number of announcements from all the big companies that all agreed to support Linux. |
