The contingent of Chinese companies at the conference was so strong that LinuxWorld held a special "Linux in Beijing" day, where different companies discussed how to boost the use of Linux on servers, desktops and mobile devices.

It's a sign of a changing landscape for open source in China. While the government has publicly voiced support for open source and has funded a number of initiatives, there have been few large-scale migrations to the software in the government sector. This is expected to change, however, now that the Chinese government has mandated the use of locally produced software in its departments. In addition, its agencies must replace unlicensed copies of Microsoft software, now that China has joined the World Trade Organization.

At the Boston show, ZDNet UK spoke to two Linux players in the region. Albert Chung, the chief marketing officer at Sun Wah Linux, one of the major desktop Linux vendors in China, shared his thoughts in an interview. He discussed why the software isn't ready for the consumer desktop market, told some customer success stories and outlined the challenges Sun Wah faced in creating its own Linux distribution. In a separate interview, Qinghua Hu, the general director of the government-sponsored Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center, spoke about the factors limiting the use of Linux on the desktop and predicted where the Linux desktop market will be in five years.

Q: What's the history of Sun Wah Linux?
Chung: We are part of the Sun Wah group, which has businesses in different areas, including private banking, infrastructure and technology. We were not targeting to do a Linux distribution at the beginning, as maintaining a distribution is a lot of work.

In 2000, we were working on a project on how to handle the Chinese language on the Linux desktop. Using Chinese on Linux is different to using English on Linux, as there are three Chinese character encodings, compared to the one English character-encoding system. In mainland China they use Guobiao; internationally we use Unicode; and in Taiwan, we use Big5. If you have a Chinese document that is going around the world, it can easily be scrambled because of the incompatibility of different Chinese encodings.

In Hong Kong (where Sun Wah is based), because it is an international city, we have to handle all three character encodings. We launched a project to sort out this problem. But even after we had created a Unihan system (one that maps different character sets into a single set of unified character encodings), we still had to integrate this with different desktop Linux distributions. This involved a tremendous amount of work.

As our business grew and we expanded into China, we learned more about mainland China. (We) realized there is a desperate need for Linux in China--not only on servers, but also on desktops. The former Prime Minister of China, Zhu Rongji, said it was vital that we develop our own software industry, and the operating system is a fundamental part of that goal.

What Linux distribution did you base your new distribution on?
Chung: At the time, we investigated what distribution we could base it on. We compared Red Hat, which is based around the RPM packaging system, and Debian. Eventually we decided to use Debian.

Firstly, because most of our developers loved Debian. At the time, we had three official Debian developers. Secondly, we believe in open source and think that Debian offers more freedom and is more community based. If we are working on a Debian distribution, we can contribute more back to the community. There was also a business reason for doing this: With an RPM system, Red Hat offers the best technology and will always be the first with the technology, while with Debian it is easier to innovate.

How easy did Sun Wah find developing and maintaining an independent Linux desktop distribution? How many developers have you had working on it over the years?
Chung: We originally developed the system in Hong Kong, but our team was not very big--we initially had six developers. To maintain such a distribution, you need at least 10 times that amount, as a desktop distribution is very difficult to maintain. You have to work with devices, and there are new devices coming out all the time.

We now have 80 developers working on our Linux desktop.

What is the biggest desktop Linux migration that you have worked on?
Chung: In the Jiangsu province, we have rolled out desktop Linux on 150,000 PCs in schools. Beforehand, they were using (Microsoft) Windows in the school. I think this project is one of the biggest Linux desktop rollouts in China, but compared with the population of China (about 1.3 billion), it is small.

As the desktop was for use by students, we didn't encounter many problems with the migration. But the project took a huge amount of energy: For example, we had to work with different hardware vendors to get support for different drivers. The effort was worthwhile, though, as the features we worked in are now in our new 1.5 release (launched last week).

Have you worked on any desktop migrations within enterprises?
Chung: One of our customers is a national cinema chain in China, where we are rolling out Linux-based point-of-sale systems. The group has about 30 cinemas across China and about 20 point-of-sale systems in each cinema.

We have tuned the system so it not only handles the basic functions that a point of sale system has to perform, but still has computing power left to do other things. For example, the system displays advertisements to customers on a separate screen.

Do you think Linux is ready for the desktop market?
Chung: It depends on what kind of market. In the consumer market, there is still some work that has to be done. When you use your PC at home, you want to play multimedia and games, and this is still a weak part of Linux.

But if you are talking about enterprise use--particularly for systems that only perform limited functions, such as point-of-sale systems--that is where Linux works well. Businesses are starting to use Linux, especially now that China is entering the World Trade Organization, and there is a licensing problem.

Are you making a profit from selling Linux desktops?
Chung: We are making a profit, but not from selling Linux desktops. We also do software outsourcing and consulting work that makes more money.

For a pure Linux desktop business it is quite difficult to earn much money. You need a mix of products and services.

Q: What does the Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center do?
Hu: The goal of the center is to promote the software industry in Beijing. We are helping Linux companies in Beijing develop Linux and office products, and are helping companies develop Linux solutions for vertical industries, such as e-government, education, agriculture and SMEs.

Is the Beijing government using Linux?
Hu: Quite a few government organizations are using Linux on their servers, especially to run their e-mail servers, Web servers and databases. Our statistics show that over 80 percent of government servers within Beijing are using Linux. Some of the public administration agencies in Beijing are running Linux on the desktop as a pilot project.

Are the companies in Beijing also using Linux?
Hu: Right now, a lot of enterprises are using Linux, but not on a big scale. Most are using it for e-mail, Web servers or databases. In terms of big migrations, there have not really been any.

Why do you think that few companies and government agencies have moved to Linux on the desktop?
Hu: Because Microsoft monopolized the desktop. Migration is still very difficult, because customers have got used to Microsoft. Companies still feel that the Linux environment is quite different.

Also there is a problem with the device support and application availability. What happens quite often is that a vendor provides a Linux solution to a company, but the printer the company is using is not supported on Linux. Also many companies have already developed Web sites that are not following W3C standards or are tailored to (Microsoft's) Internet Explorer. If companies use Firefox, they cannot read these Web sites properly.

The availability of developers is also a problem. There is a shortage of developers who understand Linux. The center is trying to address all these problems.

Why is there a shortage of Linux developers? What is being done about this shortage?
Hu: Unfortunately, the curricula in many Chinese universities teach developers about Windows only. From last year, the Ministry of Education has laid down a policy for universities to include Linux in their curricula.

Universities are working on solving this problem, but there is a shortage of teachers and materials, so they are now developing materials and training teachers. I believe Linux training in the main universities will be available by the end of 2006.

The Chinese government has dictated that government agencies must buy only China-produced software, so why are organizations still using Microsoft?
Hu: In general, the Chinese government supports Linux and open-source solutions. We're a developing country with a huge population, and the government thinks that open source is a good way to lead the population into IT literacy.

There is a government purchasing policy across China that says if local software is available, it should be top priority But there are so many people using Microsoft Windows that it is not feasible to say, "Tomorrow, everyone must use Linux." It would result in chaos. The migration must be step by step. During this process, I believe that Microsoft may also develop a counterpolicy--it may open up some of its products.

What is your perception of Microsoft? Do you want people to stop using Microsoft software?
Hu: I am not necessarily against Microsoft. It also provides a product, which has its own benefits, such as ease of use. Many people are still using Microsoft products, and it's their choice whether to use it. The only role of the government in this is to ensure they respect intellectual property.

The purchase of software within the government is different. If they have a choice of local and homemade software, it should be top priority to use (the latter).

How many Linux distributions are there in China? How important are standards within the Linux platform?
Hu: There are around 10 Linux distributions. Standards are very important. You need to have a development standard, a user-interface standard and a documentation standard. A standard must be international, but take into account local needs. Linux Standard Base (an international standard that has been adopted by vendors across the world) is a very important standard.

What are your predictions for the next five years? Do you think Linux on the desktop will take off?
Hu: In the coming five years, the Linux desktop market in China will grow substantially. To make this growth healthier, we will have to work with international organizations like the Open Source Development Labs, and the Chinese development community must work in a more extensive manner with the international community, such as the GNOME and KDE projects. The development of the Linux desktop will also grow to be more systematic--distributions will become more standardized.

When Lenovo, the Chinese personal computer maker, bought IBM's personal computing business for $1.75 billion in December 2004, the deal included the rights to use the IBM name for five years after the deal was completed.

Lenovo executives assumed rightly that the IBM brand would still resonate in the United States market and serve to assuage the worries of existing and prospective customers about the IBM ThinkPad line of laptops. Lenovo also realized there would be concern among American customers about buying from a China-based company they had never heard of.

Yet Lenovo has moved far more swiftly to remove the IBM name from its brand-building venture than analysts and marketing experts had expected, leaving many wondering if Lenovo has abandoned the IBM brand too quickly.

Since Lenovo took over the IBM personal computer business last May 1, the company's advertising and marketing efforts have excluded IBM almost entirely from the message.

The four television spots that Lenovo ran during the Winter Olympics, for example, never mentioned IBM. The only connection is the IBM logo that still adorns Lenovo's ThinkPad line of laptop computers.

For the most part, Lenovo has accelerated its efforts to build the Lenovo brand in the United States and sever connections to IBM. In February, the company introduced its first Lenovo-branded desktop and laptop computers to the United States market.

"I would have held onto the IBM brand longer and leveraged it more," said Doug Gladstone, chief executive of Brand Content Advertising, an advertising and communications firm based in Boston. "If you have an icon brand, you don't just let it disappear. What's the rush?"

David J. Reibstein, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said: "What Lenovo is trying to do is get itself established with credibility in this market, but it feels like a premature transition. Lenovo may be strong in China, but it is a non-name in the West."

Lenovo executives defend the brand-building strategy, claiming that with the IBM acquisition, Lenovo is now a global PC powerhouse, with $13 billion in revenue from more than 60 countries.

The transition over the last year from IBM ThinkPads by Lenovo to the current Lenovo ThinkPad marketing effort was designed to build both the Lenovo brand in the United States and to reinforce the ThinkPad brand within the corporate customer base, the executives said.

Deepak Advani, Lenovo's chief marketing officer, said the company recognized the value of the IBM brand and intended to keep the IBM name on the ThinkPad products for the foreseeable future, even if the advertising does not mention IBM. "While we get established, having the IBM name on the product gives customers comfort and assurance," Advani said.

"But in our industry, there is a tight association between the company and the product, so we have to make sure it is clear that it is really Lenovo selling it to you, and not IBM."

The campaign is being created by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, part of the WPP Group, which is also the creative agency for IBM; Lenovo decided last May to use Ogilvy as its agency as well.

Advani acknowledges the challenge of gaining market share in the United States, which is dominated by Dell and Hewlett-Packard. He said Lenovo had "deselected" the consumer market segment in the United States, preferring to concentrate on sales to small and midsize companies as well as large-enterprise accounts.

Advani argued that Lenovo had carefully tracked brand awareness in nine countries and noted that a survey showed that during the last six months, the association between ThinkPad and IBM. had dropped substantially while the association with Lenovo had risen. And, he adds, sentiment for the ThinkPad "remains just as strong."

Lenovo, he added, expects more than 50 percent of its growth overseas over the next five years. He said Lenovo is well positioned in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil and that the ThinkPad was a strong enough brand to succeed in mature markets, like the United States and Europe.

Penetrating the Dell and Hewlett-Packard stranglehold on the United States market will be tough, analysts say. "The U.S. is still the dominant PC market," said Reibstein. "It's important to have a big role here."

But for many corporate users, the transformation of IBM into Lenovo has created some uncertainty. Jeff Peterson, a field representative for Nielsen Media Research in Portland, Ore., uses a ThinkPad laptop provided by his company two years ago. Since then, he said, the company has switched brands to Dell and HP.

Peterson is a big fan of the ThinkPad and is disappointed that his company has switched vendors. But when asked about Lenovo, he admitted that he thought Lenovo was just a name for a new ThinkPad model, like the Inspiron and Dimension names used by Dell.

Elias Harik, the information technology manager for Houghton Mifflin's College Division in Boston, said his division had used IBM ThinkPads for 10 years and there was concern when he heard about the Lenovo buyout.

"We wondered: Who is Lenovo? They are based in China so how will our service be affected?" Harik said. In the end, Houghton Mifflin's corporate information technology unit decided to switch the entire company to Dell for cost reasons.

Not everyone says the decision to move quickly away from the IBM brand is a bad one. IBM, which once defined and dominated the PC business, made an ignominious exit from the retail market in 2000 as Dell and Hewlett became the dominant players.

Simon Yates, an analyst who covers the personal computer industry for Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said he believed that Lenovo is doing the right thing by distancing itself quickly from IBM.

"The IBM brand says third-place finisher, high-priced," Yates said. "Lenovo needs to get rid of the IBM brand quickly because it came with a lot of baggage. It's not appealing to the market they want to grab in the future: small business. The ThinkPad has a reputation for industrial strength and being IT-friendly, but as an IBM product, it was expensive. Now people can get it at close to Dell prices."