June 8th, 2009
Invisible Linux
To Jim Zemlin you need no longer care about your operating system.
You don’t buy an operating system. You buy a gadget that runs a program. The gadget and its software are one unit.
I call this Invisible Linux.
Once again, the channel has been lost to Windows. Efforts to use Taiwanese OEMS and their tiny netbooks to create real competition for Windows at retail have been lost.
But Jim Zemlin is not deterred. Nor should Linux advocates. Because what he is suggesting has a certain logic to it.
This is the pitch he gave at CompuTex. Use Linux in your gadget, show only the application, and capture the extra margin.
I have seen people on this trip sporting the new HTC Mobile phone, a Google Android phone made in Taiwan, so the message is getting through. You don’t need to know if your GPS system is running Linux, or your phone, or any other embedded device performing a set of defined tasks.
At the same time you don’t need to know that Google runs Linux, that most top Web sites run Apache servers under Linux, or that your office may be running Linux right now, while what looks like your Windows desktop is actually a virtualizer.
Bill Gates’ heirs have done a masterful job pushing Windows up and down the channel. But tomorrow’s products may not use that channel. They may not need it.
Who cares whether Linux is visible or invisible, so long as it’s there? Do you?
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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