Analysts have varying views on the announcement.

Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata Inc. in Nashua, N.H., said that despite the promise of a one-size-fits-all approach to the Eclipse-based applications from IBM, the products won't likely bring about any big corporate migration to Linux on the desktop. "Will there be a customer here or there?" he asked. "Sure, but the more likely solution I see is a switch to a thin client, whether the back end is Linux or Windows."

The main problem with lingering ideas about Linux on the desktop, Haff said, is that "at the end of the day, there tend to end up being 'gotchas' when you leave Windows. The problem is a combination of a lack of business applications and drivers, he said. "Yes, there's a lot available but as soon as you run into an issue, the IT dollar costs can start going up pretty quickly.

"This may fit here and there," Haff said, "but it's really looking at the desktop through the lens of the past."

Dana Gardner, an analyst with Interarbor Solutions LLC of Gilford, N.H., disagreed, saying the IBM offering could have promise for businesses that want more choice of user operating systems. "I don't think this is tilting at windmills," he said. "I think there are more reasons for considering a rich-client platform rather than a particular platform" like Windows, Linux or Macintosh."If you focus on the applications rather than the operating system, that's a choice that's still there. The pain of switching has been relieved" because the applications can run on any of the operating systems.