“While Linux evangelists’ ABM (anything but Microsoft)
philosophy has helped fuel its growth, one of the OS’s trump cards
is its ability to leverage an increasingly heterogeneous market,
said IDC vice president Dan Kusnetzky at Linux Business Expo in
Chicago. “I don’t think we’ll ever see a case where a single OS
runs everything,” he said. Despite Microsoft’s attempts to own the
enterprise market, from servers systems to client software,
companies no longer feel the pressure to run just one OS, according
to Kusnetzky.”
“Citing an upcoming Windows 2000 Professional report from
IDC, Kusnetzky pointed out that of 63 NT client users surveyed
about Windows 2000 adoption, 47 percent had Linux installed on
their systems. The percent of NT server users that had Linux
installed were not far behind, around 40 percent.”
“…Kusnetzky noted that Linux has already been implemented in
every major industry, particularly the high tech sectors such as
software development, education, and telecommunications. Second to
only the NT in server OS shipments, Linux has become not just the
OS to beat, but also one of the most difficult to battle, lacking
any single corporate front for Microsoft to attack. IDC in fact
counts up to 145 different Linux distributions in play.”