Mon Jun 28, 2004 1:07 pm by Indy11
One Small Step in Uphill Fight as Linux Adds a Media Player
By STEVE LOHR
Published: June 28, 2004
Annie Marie Musselman for The New York Times
Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, is a former Microsoft executive.
GNU Linux, the free computer operating system, has had far more success in winning converts in corporate data centers than on desktop personal computers. But as more user-friendly software makes its way onto the Linux desktop, the free operating system is starting to make progress in its David-vs.-Goliath competition against Microsoft, the dominant power in PC software.
Another step in the progress of Linux in personal computers will come today, when two large Linux distributors, Red Hat and Novell, are expected to announce that they will ship the media-playing software of RealNetworks in their Linux desktop products.
RealNetworks, founded by Rob Glaser, a former Microsoft executive, was the early leader in software for playing digital music and video files sent over the Internet. Its media-playing software competes with Microsoft's Windows Media Player.
That rivalry has become an antitrust issue, and the European Commission ruled in March that Microsoft was illegally using its Windows monopoly in PC operating systems to try to control the market for media-playing software. The commission ordered Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without a media player - a ruling Microsoft is appealing. Yesterday, the European Commission agreed not to enforce a deadline of today that would have forced Microsoft to sell the unbundled version in Europe, while a court in Luxembourg considers the matter.
RealNetworks had previously reached distribution agreements with TurboLinux, which is strong in Asian markets, and Sun Microsystems, whose Java desktop software runs on Linux.
"Linux is making rapid progress on the desktop, and this makes our technology the de facto standard for media-playing software on Linux," said Dan Sheeran, a senior vice president at RealNetworks.
The media software, RealPlayer 10 for Linux, represents an evolution of RealNetworks' embrace of open-source software. Under the open-source model of development, the source code is published and shared by programmers, who modify and improve a program. Two years ago, RealNetworks started an open-source project, called Helix, mainly to develop media-playing software for devices like cellphones and digital music players. RealPlayer for Linux builds on Helix, but also includes some proprietary software formats known as codecs, for compressing and decompressing digital music and video files.
Open-source advocates are trying to get the same kind of self-reinforcing cycle working for Linux that Microsoft has nurtured for years around Windows. The more popular the operating system becomes, the more applications are written to run on that operating system, which in turn makes the operating system still more popular.
Linux has a geeky heritage - an operating system developed by engineers for engineers - and it has been embraced first by technicians in corporate data centers rather than on the desktop, where acceptance depends on developing applications that ordinary PC users find appealing and easy to use.
But open-source supporters hope that the RealNetworks announcement will be followed by others. "We think this is a great example of the many mainstream products that you will see made available much sooner than most people had expected for Linux on the desktop," said Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs, a group established to promote the use of Linux and other open-source software, which is backed by several technology companies including I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard.
For the Linux desktop, a number of applications are already available and more are in development. These include word processing, spreadsheet, database presentation, e-mail and Web browsing software. "For 80 percent of the people in the world, Linux is now a perfectly fine desktop environment," a leading open-source advocate, Bruce Perens, said.
Linux distributors like Red Hat, whose chief executive is Matthew J. Szulik, make money charging for technical support and software beyond the basic operating system. The RealNetworks move is evidence that leading commercial software companies believe that Linux is poised for rapid growth on the desktop, said Mike Evans, vice president for partner development at Red Hat.
Though Linux on the desktop is making gains, it has a long, long way to go to challenge Microsoft, which has built its PC stronghold over more than two decades. By the end of the year, Linux will be running on 1 percent of the desktop PC's worldwide, compared with 2.8 percent for Apple's Macintosh, and 96 percent for Microsoft's Windows, according to Gartner Inc., a research firm. Linux does far better overseas than in the United States, and most analysts expect that Linux is on track to overtake Macintosh over the next several years.
"The Real announcement is important to improving the overall Linux desktop experience," said Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst. "But Linux on the desktop is still relatively small. There is a lot of interest in it, but it's not mainstream."
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