National

Is Linux finally 'open for business'?

By Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore Dec. 14. `Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it!' If American humourist, Mark Twain, were alive today his quip would be about the `free and open' software Linux, rather than about the weather.

But suddenly it seems in the first half of December, the weather in the World Wide Web has changed — and after a decade of hype Linux is finally `out in the open' and ready to enter the mass consumer desktop. An unrelated series of global events in recent days may end up providing the final push for the operating system software that was touted as the only challenger to big brand name players who were perceived as triple P's: pricey, proprietary and predatory.

Consider these straws blowing in the `hava':

December 3-5: India's largest gathering of Open Source faithfuls, ``Bangalore Linux 2002'' saw heavy participation by global industry giants, Hewlett Packard, Intel and IBM. And in a move that some younger, Cinema-savvy delegates characterised as ``Sleeping With The Enemy'', Microsoft executive, Tarun Anand, made a key presentation on how Windows and Linux could co-exist on the desktop — by suggesting implementation of Microsoft's ``.Net'' tools in Linux.

December 1-10: Korea-based LG Electronics launched what was probably India's first consumer desktop with Linux under the hood: the Rs. 34,000 ``MyPC''. The weekly magazines in that week also featured pullouts displaying HP's product range — including a new Linux-based Compaq ``Evo'' desktop machine priced at Rs. 40,000, a clear Rs. 9,000 cheaper than an identical configuration running Windows XP.

December 11: The U.S.-based research agency, Meta Group, published a report that was read with incredulity by the IT community. It predicted that by 2004-end, Microsoft would offer versions of its proprietary .Net extensions to work under Linux. Why? Because, foresaw the group, Linux would have captured 45 per cent of the server market within five years. Microsoft denied these moves.

December 12: The ``Mono'' Open source project, sponsored by Ximian, a desktop software group, released software that will let programmers write Microsoft's .Net applications for Linux-based PCs and servers. Also this week, the U.S. discount supermarket chain, WalMart, announced a Christmas offering: a rockbottom priced, PC that featured neither Intel chip nor Microsoft software: the $ 199 machine used a ``Via-Tech'' chip and ran Linux. Another sign of changing times: there was a CD drive but no floppy drive.

So, will 2003 be the Year of the Linux PC? That's how the scene seems to be shaping up; but there are a couple of glitches. A December 4 report by the International Data Corporation (IDC) suggested that if total cost of ownership (TCO) is reckoned over a five-year period, running Linux-based servers might turn out to be costlier than running Windows 2000. But software specialists countered that this would change rapidly as the community of Linux-trained engineers grows.

New DSP chip lowers price barrier

The Digital Signal Processor (DSP) — the chip that performs the complex number-crunching required to drive a host of applications from weapon systems to washing machines; from medical scanners to MP3 music players — just became a bit more ubiquitous this week.

Texas Instruments (TI), the market leader in this segment of the integrated circuits business, has globally unveiled a new DSP family that has the computing power of a 600 million instructions per second (MIPS) machine, yet costs the equivalent of $ 5 (Rs. 240) in larger quantities.

The two devices in the TMS 320C55x series — the C 5501 and the C 5502 — will become available worldwide, including India, early in 2003. While being `pin compatible' with earlier models in the C55x series — that means users can plug in the new chips without having to redo the circuit boards or rewrite the software — the attraction is the low power consumption: less than 200 milliwatts.

Briefing The Hindu, at their Bangalore Development Centre, M. Harish, TI's Business Development Manager in India and Sendhil Kumar, the Application Engineer for DSPs, explained that with the reduced power requirement, developers in India would be able to come out with portable versions of equipment that were hitherto tethered to a power cord. They mentioned medical ultrasonics and mammography scanners; hi-fi audio and video amplifiers as typical applications where Indian companies would immediately benefit from the new chips.

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