Linux on the Desktop? Novell says why not.

With prices for PC’s and Desktops continuously dropping, how long will it make sense to pay $200-400 each for simply an Operating System (XP, Vista, etc...) and a basic Office Application (Word, Excel, etc...)? Novell, with their enterprise-class Linux platform, both for the Desktop and Server - is hoping the answer is “not much longer”. I was impressed with their demonstration of the Linux-based Desktop Operating system, wich comes bundled with OpenOffice 2.0 - all for $50! $50 vs. $500+, that’s quite the value proposition.

They have made major strides to make inter-operability with Windows-based networks, and Server Systems (even Exchange) as well as the current standard - Microsoft Office, both seemless and intuitive. Their OS even comes with features like an integrated desktop search engine, a rich software set, and a very fluid visual interface. This was the most striking demonstration from this morning. Seems like Novell is finally comfortable in their acquisition of SUSE Linux, and adoption of the Linux platform into their base network operating system, as well as now - the desktop space.

Sure, there is a subset of customers that will HAVE to have Windows on the Desktop - but with entire countries embracing “open source” (Brazil, Austria, etc...), how long will this dominance last? And their answer to the “what if I have one or two Windows Apps that will *never* run on Linux? What to do then? They have a good solution for that - supports our ZEROi vision - just deliver it Via Citrix! ZEROi makes any Windows App deliverable to end-users no matter what OS platform the are running (Mac, Linux, Windows, Palm, etc...) I like that.

Also, the Linux desktop platform just seems very ‘light’ to run - the system requirements are very low - RAM, CPU, etc..., which is also good in terms of giving longevity to hardware investments.