Ubuntu / Kbuntu vs. Vista
Matthew Rand writes in Forbes about Really Free Software. This is the story of about multi-zillionaire Mark Shuttleworth and the Ubunto Linux distribution he has funded to the tune of $20 million.
[tease]
Ubuntu now has 4 million users, half of which are governments, universities and a smattering of businesses. It adds new ones at a rate of 8% per month. After its public release in October 2004, Ubuntu quickly deposed Red Hat’s Fedora as the most popular version of Linux on DistroWatch, a Web site that caters to Linux users. Ubuntu works in 22 languages, and Canonical, the company Shuttleworth set up to distribute his software, will send a free Ubuntu CD anywhere in the world. New users rave about the simple user interface, which has gained recent converts in a couple of well-known bloggers who switched from Apple Computer’s (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) OS X.
The Forbes article points out that if Ubunto catches on on with corporate customers, it threatens the fat margins Red Hat is enjoying.
For now Ubunto (and the KDS-based Kbuntu) are popular with individuals. This is a solid, supported and totally FREE operating system. It’s about as easy as Windows to install, and there are thousands of very capable application programs free for the downloading.
In the other corner we have Microsoft with the Vista replacement for Windows XP. You’d be smoking some strong dope to predict Vista will be a total flop. After all, it will start shipping on almost every new PC something in 2007.
But I wonder. This may be an inflection point for Linux in general, and Ubuntu/Kbuntu in particular. You’d be NUTS to attempt to upgrade almost any existing PC of any ilk to Vista which wants an exceptionally beefy PC platform, including modern graphics capability.
Compare that with Ubunto/Kubunto, which slides in on a fairly modest PC and runs just fine, thank you.
And did I mention cost? Vista is EXPENSIVE. Globally, several government entitles are already switching to FREE Linux of one brand or another. In some cases the government of a county is specifying Linux for all official computers.
Microsoft will continue to do a lot of operating system (and application software) business. But they face intense pressure on two fronts: There’s the Google, Yahoo! et. al. “web as computer” phenomena where the browser essentially become the operating system, and there’s Ubuntu/Kbunto (and other, less popular Linux flavors).
It’s no wonder Bill Gates is planning to retire.