Last week's LinuxWorld Expo & Conference in New York showed the upstart
operating system (OS) quickly moving into the third stage of development as a
broad range of powerful business application programs written to run on various
Linux OS, including the much anticipated WordPerfect Office 2000 suite from
Corel were introduced at the event, where more than 20,000 visitors reviewed
products from over 200 exhibiting firms.
Until 1997, Linux was popular mostly among techno-hobbyists, hackers and
college students. Last year, Linux became a major force in the server market as
half a dozen companies, including Red Hat, TurboLinux, SuSE, and Caldera,
brought professional OS packages to the market that could reliably host Web
sites and perform functions such as e-mail server, and file server.
During 1999 all of the major computer companies, from IBM to HP, Dell, and
Compaq, began supporting Linux and offer serves and workstations pre-loaded with
the OS. Now the software application community is responding by releasing Linux
versions of popular business programs, most costing a fraction of competing
Windows software Corel, for example, said it its releasing the WordPerfect
Office 2000 for Linux in Standard and Deluxe version ($109 and $159
respectively). The suite includes Corel Linux (based on the Debian 2.2 Kernel),
WordPerfect 9, the Quattro Pro 9 spreadsheet applications, Corel Presentations 9
and the CorelCentral 9 communications toolset. An entertainment pack is also
provided.
"We are very excited to unveil our full office suite for Linux to the
world," said Corel Corp. president and chief executive officer Dr. Michael
Copland. "The availability of applications like WordPerfect Office 2000 on
the Linux platform will provide users with an end-to-end desktop solution and
will accelerate the deployment of Linux for mainstream use."
The Corel suite will compete with a similar Applixware offering from Applix,
and the StarOffice suite, which is available free from Sun Microsystems. Dozens
of other vendors at the LinuxWorld Expo demonstrated a broad variety of other
applications from Web design, 3-D Modeling and business fax and accounting
software. In a key development that will let Windows application developers port
their software tot he Linux platform, Mainsoft of San Jose announced MainWin 3.4
for Linux. Analysts said it is clear the Linux community is moving into position
to pose a serious competitive threat to the Windows world. The combination of a
low-cost OS that runs on industry standard hardware, the high up-time
reliability of Linux vs Windows, and availability of powerful business
applications will make Linux a highly viable alternative.
Still, even Linux founder Linus Torvalds readily conceded that much work
remains to be done on the Linux source code to make the software more robust in
order to handle larger tasks at mid-to-large diversified enterprises. In his
keynote address, Torvalds also poked some fun at Microsoft's crash-prone Windows
OS "The thing about Linux is that it actually tries to move software from
being witchcraft to being a science. A lot of the programs you see today are
actually put together by shamans, and you just take it and if the computer
crashes you walk around it three times...and maybe it's OK. That's how it works.
It's not how it should work. Actually changing the way you work without having
to beg for it from some, uh, unnamed company, is important."
Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said Microsoft will not stray from its strategy
of keeping the source code to itself and develop the platform on which business
applications can be developed. "I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat
with Linus. He's looking for headlines and he's more than welcome to do
so."