Is Ubuntu an Africanized Killer Bee? Inquiring minds want to know!

It seems as if C|net’s News.com thinks there is a great chance of Ubuntu becoming as mainstream in the enterprise market as Red Hat and Novell are. In a recent article, “Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu,” the plans for Ubuntu to not only become profitable, but very successful in a new market is something the entire community deserves. Mark Shuttleworth worked hard to go from a dream to reality, and with the community support that has been going on for two years now, there just might be another dream to reality story.

“If I were Red Hat or Novell, I would be watching Canonical’s moves very closely,” said The 451 Group analyst Raven Zachary. “It has the BUZZ in the open-source community that Red Hat had in the late 1990s.”

I think this is awesome. On a side note, I ran across a post that linked to this story, and became annoyed by a comment. I am going to chop this comment, but I think you get the idea behind it:

“I think one of the reasons “desktop linux” hasn’t taken off like predicted is because there is too much with it……see all the software you get for FREE that you’d have to pay for on Windows!”……..The problem comes when you have to SUPPORT all that junk. It is a nightmare because of the complexity………Good luck to Canonical. Personally, I think the players are going to be either Red Hat or Novell unless someone like IBM decides to get in the business.”

Linux has to much, and Microsoft has to little, and you refer to “FREE” in a monetary environment. Linux is “Free” as in the matter of liberty, not cost. All that “junk” as you put it, isn’t just supported by one company, it is supported by millions of developers and users. Plus in most cases, one person’s junk, is another person’s treasure. Also, I thought IBM was already in the business with Red Hat and Novell? And with the recent issues facing Novell, I would think this would create a greater chance of a higher success rate. Maybe you forgot about another major player in that market known as Sun Microsystems? I highly doubt that Sun will be the last to work along side Canonical and Ubuntu as well.

I say continue on Canonical and Ubuntu, do what you have to do to fix Bug #1 (I know this bug gets under you non-open source marketer’s skin).

EDIT: Sorry, but HERE IS A LINK that I forgot to add, showing Ubuntu as an IBM Partner.