The United States Army revealed that their goal is to move entirely from Windows to Linux. While this will take considerable time, the Army is looking at ways of getting the two operating systems to work together. To accomplish this task, it's turning to Red Hat Enterprise 5. The Army is talking about taking the “battle command applications” they are building and combining those with the applications of the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Could this mean a big win for Linux? Could it mean billions of savings over the long haul for the American taxpayer?

"Red Hat 5 will link Linux with Microsoft and allow FCS forces to link with other brigade combat teams," an Army official said. "This will be an interim solution because over the long haul, eventually all of the Army's networks will be Linux-based.” Just how long will it take to move completely over to Linux? It's unclear at this point; it could be several years before the Army is ready to dump Windows for the Linux operating system.

It is interesting to note that the Army isn't going through Microsoft in order to buy up Linux patents, such as the Novell patents sold by Microsoft. The Army is looking to fully integrate Windows and Linux in the interim. This could be big news for Linux. The U.S. Government has looked to Linux before, with such organizations as the NSA, in order to provide more secure systems than Microsoft provides. Microsoft has consistently spoken over the last year or more about improving interoperability between Linux and Windows; it looks like the Army might actually get it done. Right now, the Army feels that Linux's ability to communicate with Windows is limited in nature; they set out to improve that communication so that 21^st Century Linux systems will still be able to communicate with 20^th Century Windows systems.

With the Army and other military forces eventually making the switch entirely over to Linux, will other institutions in the U.S. government be soon to follow? What about the U.S. Congress, the Senate, all of the aides, the White House? Will our politicians make the move to Linux, sparing the American tax payer the billions of dollars spent annually in giving these people over-priced proprietary software they don't need? What about our state assemblies? Our city councils? Just imagine all the money that is spent every year for new computers running the newest, most expensive software on the planet. Just imagine if that money was spent elsewhere: on education, health care, tax breaks for the needy, etc. Our government run institutions are not businesses; they shouldn't have the freedom to spend the American tax dollar on wasteful software and overpriced hardware; they should only use what they need so the rest of us can too have what we need.

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