While Linux is a free, open source product there is still plenty of opportunity to be made in selling the service of making it easy to use for corporations and end users as it is still a Unix derivative made by programmers for techies. Therefore if you are a prototypical Windows or Mac user the GUI may bring you in, but actually trying to install and use some of the software can be a deal breaker. It is not that the stuff doesn’t work, but there isn’t a straightforward approach to using anything other than Firefox and Open Office.

So when we see an innovative commercial for Linux from the likes of IBM we’re a bit intrigued.

IBM is both selling something that is outside of what we have come to know of them, the archaic corporation that was a relic from the 19th century trying to push OS/2, the PC 2 and other failed, proprietary technologies is now selling an open source product, and they aren’t even making any mention of their consulting services? Actually the commercial I am showing you now goes into a lot more depth as to what Linux is about than the one I had originally watched. As I had suggested in response to that article, it isn’t the fact of them being indirect with what they are selling, because financial services providers sell ambiguity all the time, most notably my favorite discontinued Bank of America commercial, but the idea that Microsoft has gotten behind Linux through Novell is in itself a bit compelling, not the mention the irony of the whole SCO thing.

Linux is not going anywhere, and not just because Vista hasn’t delivered what it promised; this is a different age in computing, while advertising shows the rest of us that some people have “gotten it”, the fact that Linux has effectively brought Unix, an old relic from the 70s, into the computing mainstream is enough of a testament to the resiliency of the product to begin with. It is not just a matter of fine tuning the OS and cleaning it up for the consumer …