La Republica has reported that the City of Rome will in May begin to replace Microsoft Corp Windows desktops with Linux, testing out the email and calendaring capabilities of the open source desktop operating system.
The Italian newspaper reports that Rome expects to make some savings in terms of software licensing from the adoption of Linux but is aware that this will be balanced in training costs as Linux is rolled out to its 9,500 employees.
Rome is just the latest in a long line of government organization to look at Linux on the desktop, following the Brazilian, French and Israeli national governments, local governments in Munich, Germany and Austin, Texas, and the UK’s Office of Government Commerce and National Health Service.
These projects and deployments would appear to indicate that the future is bright for Linux on the desktop, prompting some in the Linux community to declare that 2004 will be the year of enterprise Linux. The Open Source Development Lab last month launched a Desktop Linux Working Group to identify a broad set of Linux desktop models and to develop specifications to deliver reference implementations.
The OSDL’s CEO, Stuart Cohen, is more pragmatic about the potential for desktop Linux. For users that primarily want browsing and email, that’s a third of the market that’s an excellent opportunity for Linux today, he said. Then you have enterprise applications, and heavy Excel users. We think they could get to Linux in the next year or two. Then there’s mobile and power users, they’re probably going to be the last, if ever, to move to Linux.
Cohen’s comments echo the view recently voiced by IBM Corp’s worldwide Linux marketing strategy manager, Adam Jollans, who played down the opportunities for Linux on the desktop despite naming it as one of the four technology triggers currently pushing the adoption of the open source operating system.
Being a technology trigger doesn’t mean adoption, but it enables adoption, Jollans told ComputerWire. This is still a niche market. We’re seeing increasing interest and we expect it to grow but it’s not where our primary interest is.
IDC is shortly expected to announce that Linux has overtaken Apple’s share of the PC operating systems market for the first time, but that still means just over 3% of the global market for PC operating systems, with Microsoft holding more than 95%. While projects such as the Rome deployment are another step in the right direction for desktop Linux supporters they still represent a small victory.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
