“Today, IBM is announcing that its popular laptop, the Thinkpad
will be available with Linux. It is expecting for there to be a
demand for a laptop Linux among scientist and some computer
professionals.”
“Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who was previously the head of IBM’s
e-commerce initiative, but is now head of IBM’s Linux group
believes Linux to be “the operating system of choice in a networked
world”. He believes that it is folly for other vendors to ignore
Linux, or support it without enthusiasm. He said “once the Internet
was there you could either embrace the Internet community or fight
it. We see Linux as very similar to that.”
“On this we agree with IBM’s direction, although we think it is
easier for the Armonk giant, with its large Global Services
consultancy arm to support Linux directly than it is for Sun,
Hewlett Packard and Compaq… it is worth noting that IBM was
responsible in exactly the same way for the proliferation of
Windows NT, claiming for many years to be harvesting more revenue
from Windows NT than Microsoft itself was able to do. It will be no
surprise if in a year or so’s time IBM is making more revenues from
Linux than the rest of the Linux market put together.”