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March 8, 1999

TechView:
Ready For Linux World Domination?

inus Torvalds isn't used to delivering keynotes in front of 10,000 people---yet. But he got a chance to start getting accustomed to it at last week's LinuxWorld conference in San Jose, Calif. Attendees lined up and dashed for seats like the keynote was a rock concert.

Torvalds isn't big on being a visionary. In his speech, he said "I don't think we really need that many visionaries--people standing in the middle of the road look like roadkill to me." He thinks of himself as pragmatic when it comes to technology and downplays his individual importance to the Linux and Open Source movements--one of his slides asked, as one of several "canned" Q&A points, "What happens if Linus gets hit by a bus?" with the answer, "I won't care, will I?" But it's clear that Torvalds has just the right personality and technical skills to be the center of the anarcho-syndicalist community that is the Linux developer community--and that his personal involvement has been key to Linux getting this far.

The conference and trade show has given the Linux faithful a forum of their own. The level of vendor support at this event and the number of attendees are evidence that Linux is no longer just an operating system--it's a major market force.

IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard all have thrown their collective weight behind the Linux operating system. Sun, SCO, and others see Linux as an opportunity to open new markets to their own products. Software vendors are making this the year that the Linux platform becomes an enterprise application platform. All of this commercial attention is creating even greater technical support for the operating system, and is spurring even further Linux development.

In his keynote, Torvalds thanked the companies riding the Linux wave for profit. "Yes, they're making money, but they're doing Linux a big favor--they're doing work that many Linux developers didn't want to," he said. That support was clear at the conference---IBM, for example, is making a commercial investment in attracting Linux developers to provide greater support in Linux for the specific features of its Netfinity servers, and is working to help port Linux to the RS/6000 and PowerPC. HP is working with Red Hat to help port Linux to Intel's Merced 64-bit architecture, and with the Puffin Group to port Linux to the PA-RISC architecture.

With that kind of backing, it's clear that the explosive growth of Linux will probably continue. Analyst numbers indicate that 17% of servers sold last year were loaded with Linux, up from an almost unmeasurable number in 1997. Torvalds pulled out an old slide for his presentation, showing a projected annual growth of a factor of 10 over the last four years. The slide originally was intended as a joke, but no one's laughing now. World domination may be just around the corner.