[LUAU] IBM Linux Workstations

Hawaii Linux Institute wp at HawaiiLinux.us
Thu Apr 1 01:34:14 PST 2004


Thomas Ryan Gordon Sr wrote:

> who do you know in Hawaii that would buy this (a $10,000+ Linux desktop)?

So, do you think people paid close to $500 a month for Outrigger or 
Pacific Club membership just for the food, which may not be that great 
anyway?

But seriously, how many times have we given out a Linux computer to a 
friend or relative, who, after only a few days (if we are lucky), 
sneaked behind our backs and asked another "computer expert" to delete 
the Linux partitions that we have so earnestly put together, and then 
install Windows on "our" PCs?

What I was saying is, perhaps there is the other end of the usership 
spectrum that we should explore.  I know there is such a market here on 
the island.  But before you are able to reach that market, as I 
mentioned in my original post (but was conveniently ignored), you need 
to be very good at Linux desktops.  At the very minimum, you must be 
well versed in GRUB, OO.o/MYSQL/Python, various backup options, etc.  
You should also be good enough to put together your own customized Linux 
distro.  Of course, no one is interested in this hard part.

Now about Sun's Linux.  I don't know how many people know this, but 
until recently Sun has been holding their annual employee conferences in 
Waikiki, and, as a result, some of us have become quite well acquaited 
with several Sun execs.  A couple of years ago, Scott (McNealy) was 
adamant that his employees begin switching to StarOffice (from Microsoft 
Office).  Last year, Sun began company-wide migration to Linux 
desktops.  I believe Sun's Linux was based on SuSE 9 (but w/o KDE).

IBM will also begin converting all of its 300,000 or so employees 
worldwide to Linux desktops.  Does that mean that we may soon see an IBM 
Linux?  Things are getting interesting.  wayne




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