Linux is everywhere. it"s in your Web server. It"s in your data center. It"s in your desktop, your laptop and your handheld. It may soon be in your car and home appliances. It"s being used by NASA to operate the Mars rover. There may yet be enterprise IT executives still wondering when to jump in, but chances are, Linux is already being used somewhere in their organization. They need not look any further for a proof of concept than e-commerce company Amazon.com Inc., which, as an early adopter of Linux, began deploying it in 2000. Now, Linux runs its entire infrastructure.
"Linux is pervasive," said Ross Mauri, general manager of e-business on demand at IBM in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "Everyone was always pointing to the future. But we"ve stopped pointing. The future is here." But now that Linux has arrived, where do we go from here? Executives contacted by eWEEK editors at LinuxWorld here last month were not as sure. Linux will no doubt extend deeper into markets already running Linux, but will Linux ever reach the holy grail of challenging Microsoft Corp. on the desktop? Leading Linux luminaries such as Linus Torvalds and his right-hand man, Andrew Morton, believe 2004 will be the year of the Linux desktop.