As interest in the open source Linux operating system has become more mainstream, companies such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard have joined the UK"s major Linux trade show, Linux Expo UK. At this year"s Expo the business giants and Linux geeks were joined for the first time by consumer-friendly Apple, which is pitching its Mac OS X operating system as the ultimate workstation environment for developers, researchers and system administrators.
Historically, the Macintosh was the focus of its own group of enthusiasts who reveled in its easy-to-use, graphical design philosophy. With the switch to OS X a couple of years ago, however, Apple began to tap into the community of developers who use Unix and its open-source clone, Linux, which became the poster child of the software world during the dot-com boom.
"For Mac OS versions 1 to 9 Apple had an operating system that was a bit quirky. Now we have OS X," said an Apple representative at the show, who declined to be named. The expo takes place between 9 and 10 October in London"s Olympia exhibition center.
Both Linux and Unix are widely used for servers, scientific research and high-performance computing, though they have made few inroads into the consumer desktop market. Mac OS X is based on BSD, a version of Unix, but with Apple"s own consumer-friendly technology bolted on.
The combination has proved appealing to many techies, with Apple laptops, in particular, beginning to make a significant showing at Linux conferences.