Microsoft, Dell Takes Linux Mainstream
Shortly after the announcement that Dell will ship computers with Ubuntu as the pre-installed OS comes the news that Dell will also now sell Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) on their server range.
Great victory for Linux once again, but here’s the interesting bit:
On Sunday, Microsoft and Novell said Dell has agreed to buy Suse Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and that the computer maker will set up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new Suse Linux offering.
Why oh why is Dell buying SLES licenses from Microsoft? It seems as if the “Micro-vell” pact reaches a lot further than just the initially mentioned 3 points, and it seems as if Microsoft actually found a way to make money from the one thing that actually stood a chance to diminish their monopoly – Linux.
Under the partnership announced in November, Microsoft said it would offer corporate customers a chance to license its Windows operating system as part of a package that includes maintenance and support for Novell’s Suse Linux platform
Now Microsoft keeps their big clients that were threatening to adopt Linux happy by giving them Linux and still keeping them as Microsoft customers, more money to Microsoft, who already distributed in excess of 52 000 of their annual 70 000 quota SLES licenses by March this year – clearly they arranged this bandwagon at a very critical point in their continued monopoly existence and used their existing customer base to fill all the seats to the brim with a few people still standing in the aisles.
I predict that this will drive a big wedge into the Linux community, and that this is the beginning of the 2 distinct camps forming among Linux users – the die-hard geeks that like Linux because you can recompile the entire kernel if you feel like it, and the new breed of “Microvell” users that will never have a clue as to what Linux actually means or where it comes from. This fact will however not negatively impact the Linux success story though.
Linux will now be seen in more data centers and more desktops thanks to Dell, Microsoft, Novell, and Ubuntu. The above arrangements have taken Linux out of garages and dark bedrooms and underground server rooms and vaulted it into the mainstream spotlight where it will continue to make a dramatic impact on the ever-changing computing world, as it deserves to. This is perhaps not Linux’s originally planned destination, but Linux is evolving with the times and adopting to the requirements and delivering more and more by the pound with each iteration, and hopefully we will continue to benefit from it’s mainstream exposure…
