>>http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-to-spend-another-1-billion-on-linux-2013-9
>
>I spent about 6 hours last weekend getting Ubuntu 13.04 desktop installed and running as a dual boot with my Win8. I had been hoping to use it more than Win8 considering Linux has had a long time to mature and Win8 sucks eggs.
>
>What a pain in the a$$. Most of the time was spent finding workarounds to installation issues (like partitioning that hangs - no errors - just never finishes). Oh! I guess that's normal from what I read - just restart the machine while it is hung and install onto the partition that never apparently finished. Quality is job 306112.
>
>Finally got the damn thing running. Amazing bunch of cobbled together, unrelated, unreliable programs.
>
>I did manage to get Evolution Email to connect to my Exchange server (it's easy - only took a little over an hour searching for what else needed to be installed and what twerking maneuvers needed to be done). Too bad Evolution crashes all by itself if left running for several hours.
>
>That's as far as my patience allowed me to go. The OS boots and runs (unintelligible crash messages occasionally), and I can get Email until that crashes. 6 hours.
>
>It's all going back to Win7.
>
>Good Luck IBM. Maybe you can call it OS2.BOB.

IBM has a vested interest. They bundle it with their servers and it's integral to their server strategy, so their motives for the contribution are far from eleemosynary.

I've been working with some open source products of late and yes, I spend a lot of time googling errors before things actually get rolling.

The business model is compelling though.
With proprietary software, we quote $40K for the software and $20K for our customization and installation and the client yells about our exorbitant rates. Meanwhile we give the software vendor the lion's share of the $40K and take all the flack.
Great for the vendor, OK for the client, punk for us.


With open source we quote $50K for everything and keep it all while the client spends less.
Great for the client, great for us. The vendor can go to blazes.

I can handle a lot of extra googles to make that happen.