twitter's Journal: Dell Strategist Says Vista is Pushing Business to GNU/Linux

Dell IT stratagist, Cole Crawford gave a talk about desktop Linux trends at the annual LinuxWorld Conference. He thinks that Vista is a disappointment and Microsoft will lose market share to open-source desktops.

a number of companies have moved back to Windows XP after deploying Vista, Crawford said, before quoting Scott Granneman, an author, entrepreneur and adjunct professor at Washington University in St. Louis, as saying, "To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just have to work on it."

The number of developers targeting Windows decreased by 12 percent in the last year, while their targeting of Linux has increased by 34 percent over the same period, ... The driving forces behind the Linux desktop were innovation, freedom and the frustration with Windows, he said. Unlike with Windows, the community also has the ability to influence and drive the technology, which also works well on thin clients, Crawford said. ... the days of vendor lock-in are over

a corporate desktop needs to be focused on the business user, compliant with company standards, interoperable, secure, and able to be shipped with an enterprise kernel and managed remotely, and to have standard applications installed. "The Linux desktop can do all of that. It can be interoperable with earlier versions of the operating system, is generally interoperable with Windows, can ship with an enterprise kernel and can be remotely managed by existing management solutions," he said.