The coronation of Linux

It's been a good week for vendors, developers and supporters of the Linux operating system. You could say LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco marked its coronation as a bone fide business OS.

On Wednesday Oracle chief Larry Ellison billed it as "cheaper, faster and more reliable than any other environment around". So convinced is he that Linux has earned its corporate stripes that he's told the hackers, scientists and students who make the annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to get ready for the suits (http://www.silicon.com/a55124).

Ellison may be a founder member of the Anything But Microsoft brigade but he's still in business to make money. And he believes Linux can make him some money.

Sales are sluggish right now - IBM and Oracle recorded just $2m in database-on-Linux sales last year - but Gartner predicts the market will grow to $200m by 2006.

Other parts of the market are growing too. According to figures from IDC and NPD Intelect, client OS shipments are up 50 per cent and Linux server hardware revenues have hit £236m, a rise of 79 per cent.

Challenges still remain. As Quocirca's Clive Longbottom discusses elsewhere (http://www.silicon.com/a55136), the formation of UnitedLinux by four of the OS's biggest vendors is a tacit admission that the proliferation that hit Unix hard is in danger of doing the same to Linux.

Sure the Linux kernel has always been off limits but that didn't stop vendors adding code. Caldera, Connectiva, SuSe and TurboLinux have now made a commitment to freeze changes. Red Hat continues to blaze a lone trail.

If these two parties can become synonymous with the operating system and as a result avoid the Unix syndrome, Linux really will emerge as a direct competitor to Windows and other OSes. And not just on the desktop.