linux adoption within IBM

I've got this article in my feed pool: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7386

It's about the linux adoption rate within IBM, which seems to be rather slow, according to the author. Also, one commenter said IBM should donate OS/2 to the open-source community.

While donating the OS/2 to the community seems like an interesting idea for me, guess what: I am considering migrating to linux as well, as the business desktop for me.

There are a couple of factors I need to consider before I do this:
1. Time. I need time to play with it and not disrupt my usual activities which relates to current projects I'm involved.
2. While I'm migrated to Fedora at home's desktop, since I've joined IBM, my Fedora desktop acts as gateway for Internet connectivity and I'm stuck on Win XP on my laptop :) So there's a factor of familiarity using the Linux OS inside-out.
3. The rate of probability for something not working on Linux is still higher than WinXP, and for me, fixing things on XP is easier than fixing on Linux. This is translated in tame wasted on collateral activities.

So, the strategy I might adopt for moving towards Linux could be to run things in parralel for at least 6 months.

But I'm getting there. Slowly ? yes. So what ? As long as I can get my job done, me and everyone not directly involved with Linux has other priorities than migrating to it just for fun.

The discussion of Linux adoption is useful for other contexts, where tax payer's money are wasted on MS licenses with no additional benefit. In such context, as my personal one, it's a matter of support and being able to manage/fix things quickly.

For the larger community of IBMers, those who are tech savvy enough with Linux, they've already migrated. The other part is using Win all other the place, you cannot enforce a policy of migrating towards Linux.

But hear me out, next year I will give it a try on the business laptop, I'll let you know the outcome.