"Linux only has a small percentage of the computing market, however Microsoft already considers it a major competition as the open source OS steals the hearts of many users. Following the hard numbers though, Microsoft also increases its market share on both server and desktop space with time. The only logical explanation is that Linux steals quite a market share from the traditional UNIX providers (SCO, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM). But only Sun seems to truly be in a real Linux trouble, as it is the one with a resistance to Linux integration to its full product range.
"Many consider Linux as the natural evolution over Unix. It is a re-implementation, largely compatible and while it doesn't have all the features found on high-end UNIX OSes, it contains others that can't be found in these propriety, commercial Unices. At the peak of Linux's hype in 1999 and 2000, the main Unix providers re-arranged their strategy to include Linux, as they found that it just... sells. Except the lower price and the OSS mind share involved, there is nothing that Solaris, IRIX or AIX can't do that Linux can. But the OSS-hype drive is strong enough to re-define the high-end server market.
"IBM is selling Linux most of the time running under runtime engines rather than running it as the baseline OS. Linux beefed up the sales for IBM and in fact the company is very pleased of the market performance it gets by the the momentum it generates. AIX is still there, running Linux under virtualization, but where that leaves AIX as an overall useful OS running without the need of Linux...?"
