H-P Will Need to Fight for Its Linux Lead

Still, with Linux bound to force down profit margins in servers, hardware jockeys will likely grow even more competitive in the existing market. As it becomes tougher to convincingly compete on technology -- given that no one owns Linux -- they'll have to compete on price and sales volume.

"I think in a couple of years you will see competition among H-P, IBM, Dell and Sun(SUNW) that is going to be so incredible, so much more than RISC Unix ever was," says Claybrook. "Everybody's going to be trying to make money with Linux and it will be that much harder to do because you're not locked into a hardware or operating system."

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