“Wintel? How about Lintel. Count the ways Intel has embraced
Linux: First, follow the money. Intel Capital, the company’s
lucrative investment arm, has substantial positions in four leading
Linux companies. Two of the four companies have gone public, and
Intel’s combined stake in the pair added up to $870 million as of
Thursday’s close. And since Intel uses its venture capital not so
much to earn big returns as to pursue strategic goals, those Linux
investments are telling. Second, Intel is teaming up with Linux
developers in a number of projects. Analysts and investors say
Intel aims to use Linux as a Trojan horse to get its processors
into more machines in non-desktop markets, where Microsoft is
considerably less potent.
We’ll start with the last point. The best opportunities for
Linux come both at the high end of the market, in powerful servers
and workstations, and the low end, where many analysts believe a
new generation of low-cost, low-power computing devices are poised
to redefine how society-at-large connects to the Internet.
Already, Intel and Linux are teaming up in these areas. First,
the high end. Intel software developers have been collaborating
with a consortium of Linux companies on the Trillian Project, an
open-source programming endeavor aimed at creating Linux software
applications compatible with Intel’s next generation of
high-powered Itanium processors. … At the low end, Intel’s first
foray into branding its own computing device will be the Intel Web
Appliance, a stripped-down terminal that will be used for easy Web
surfing. … The operating system for the Web Appliance? Yup.
Linux.”