Linux moves closer to Windows

Linux will become the second most popular operating system for servers in the next two years, writes Jo Pettitt of VNU Newswire.

Tony Picardie, IDC senior vice president of worldwide software, told delegates at the company's European IT Forum in Paris that Linux will become the principal rival to Microsoft's Windows 2000.

"Currently, Microsoft outships everything, but Linux will become second most popular in 2000 and 2001. And this is our prediction only from users we can track, not from independent downloads," he said.

IDC has previously predicted that Linux will eventually become a viable alternative to current operating systems in many user environments.

Even though it is not yet fully standardised and currently represents only a small proportion of server sales, its positioning as a free source code product heralds a whole new business model for the server market, says the researcher.

The prediction echoes a longer-term forecast by researcher Dataquest, which expects Linux servers to account for about 24 per cent of the worldwide server appliance revenue by 2003.

However, Dataquest analyst Kimball Brown said: "Much of the hype surrounding Linux will fade once Microsoft delivers a service pack for Windows 2000."