HP: Linux ready for most applications

Linux is ready to take on a more serious role in enterprises, a senior Hewlett-Packard executive has said.

Randy Hergett, HP's director of engineering for open-source and Linux organization, said at the Gelato Itanium Conference & Expo in Singapore on Monday that Linux is ready to be used in some mission-critical applications, despite a perception that there are gaps in areas such as manageability.

Linux is "ready for most applications," he said, noting that there are telecommunications companies running mission-critical databases on Linux, and overall adoption levels are ramping up.

Citing an HP-commissioned global study conducted by market-research company GCR earlier this year, Hergett said that three out of five decision makers were ready to deploy Linux for mission-critical applications within the next two years, while one in five saw that happening in five years' time.

According to the study, which surveyed more than 600 decision makers who were using some flavor of Unix, security and reliability were the top two concerns in a mission-critical environment.

On whether Linux can satisfy these two requirements of security and reliability, Hergett said: "It does...From a security standpoint, we think Linux is actually very secure."

"With reliability, I think it's not as robust yet (as HP's own iteration) or some of the other proprietary Unix systems, but it's making great progress," Hergett added.

On whether the availability of different flavors of Linux will affect its adoption for mission-critical applications, Hergett said he did not think so.

"In some ways it actually gives those decision makers more flexibility and more choices to choose from," Hergett explained, adding that Unix has several iterations too, and decision makers are "used to having that choice."

Lynn Tan of ZDNet Asia reported from Singapore.

[Charleston Charge]

Linux has been ready

What it really needs is for more developers to start developing or porting their apps to Linux. Generally people don't care what platform they're using as long as it's able to run the apps they want. I think a lot of commercial software has shied away from Linux because a lot of the users tend to be from the free/open source camp who don't purchase software.

This doesn't have to be the case. There is plenty of room for commercial/proprietary software on Linux. If developers begin writing more for Linux you will see more and more users willing to migrate.

[anshu1234]

HP laptop already working nice on Fedora8

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://linuxtruthiness.blogspot.com/2007/09/beta-testing-fedora-8-test2-live-on-hp.html" target="_newWindow">http://linuxtruthiness.blogspot.com/2007/09/beta-testing-fedora-8-test2-live-on-hp.html</a>

I even manage to get Webcam working. its just perfect already :)

Dear HP, Please keep in touch with Redhat Fedora team.

Happy User,
Anshuman Gholap

[ColdMast]

Linux is the Dark Horse

with the strides of all the individual projects Linux is slowly but surely entering the world of mainstream.

I think the slow pace of consumer knowledge is a great advantage.

From a home consumer view the greatest problems for adoption is the lack of game developers and proper first party graphics-card drivers.
For a budget home user Linux is more then capable of being a Internet machine, the advantages of Free {as in beer} productivity software for the budget user is essential, though other platforms have "free" software as well.

From a business point it's commercial software.

[paulghenderson]

not ready for primetime yet, IMHO

Linux still has to work on:

1) reducing memory leaks
2) surviveability... it is still easy to crash a linux system with a user level program that consumes all memory and swap... the unix's solved this years ago
3) binary compatibility... moving from the 2.4 to the 2.6 kernel (for example, redhat 3 to 4) results in library changes, directory changes, and recompiles.
4) better hardware support/drivers, for example, for support of Nvidia network ports.

[random753]

Linux is ready but who else is?

Linux has been a good OS base for years. The problem is that Windows is simply more popular. Most people use windows so there are more potential customers for windows products. Some day Linux could become popular enough to make it worthwhile for software vendors to target the Linux customer base.
Microsoft is on top for now but all the lawyers in the world will not keep them there if it becomes fashionable to use Ubuntu or some other free version of Linux.

The free "Live CD" versions of distributions like Ubuntu allow people to try Linux without having to install it. It just runs on a CD drive without making any changes to the computer so you can decide if you want to install it. If you then decide to install Linux you can still choose between Linux or Windows at any time when starting the computer (dual boot option)

You no longer have to be a computer geek to use Linux so why put up with being pushed around by Microsoft.