Has the time come to suit up with Linux 2.4, walk into your enterprise customers office, and tell them its time for Linux? In our opinion, the answer is a yes—if you know Linux well. This Linux is as scalable as any enterprise system and has a low admission price that many customers will find attractive.
Not a Linux pro? No problem. By the beginning of the second quarter, the major Linux distributors (Caldera, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux) will have their packaged Linuxes ready to go. Linux hardware vendors like Penguin Computing and VA Linux also will be shipping Linux 2.4 boxes, along with Compaq, Dell, HP and IBM. Linux also will look better come the spring because Linux software vendors are hard at work, sewing together enterprise database server suites with DB2 and Oracle as their DBMS fabric.
Last, but far from least, Linux 2.4 is just itching to run on Intels 64-bit Itanium—the chip Intel hopes will compete with Suns Sparc. That could be quite a match: the best-dressed OS on the hottest server chip of 2001—which means that if youre looking good in Linux this summer, youll look sharp heading to the bank in an Armani suit this fall.