Why does Intel support Linux?

Why does Intel supporting Linux = Intel losing Windows market share?
Intel is in a very powerful position. They have lots of cash ($11.8
billion, $22.3 billion in current assets as of September 27th), great
brand recognition, dominance in their markets and all around a very
stable, healthy company.

By supporting Linux in a big way, it gives them even more exposure and
distinction from the "Wintel" association. This helps them move their
chips into more lucrative segments of the industry (servers) by
increasing sales of 64bit chips, Xeon chips, etc. A good thing for Intel.

In addition to this, it gives Intel some additional leverage against
Microsoft. What is Microsoft going to do? Rewrite all of their software
for a completely different chip? Microsoft made a choice to be exclusive
to the x86 platform (remember, they use to support MIPs, Alpha, etc with
NT3/NT4..) which for all intents and purposes means they are locked into
using Intel chips. Microsoft is having a hard enough time convincing
people to upgrade from Windows 98 to an NT based system to the point
where they ended up extending support for Windows 98 for another 2.5
years -- much less trying to convince people to port to a completely
different hardware platform.

I honestly don't see how supporting Linux will be a bad thing for Intel.
It will provide a vehicle for Intel to gain market share for servers.
The long term, with companies such as IBM (and most likely Novell)
porting their entire company infrastructure over to Linux could easily
provide the case studies necessary for other companies and individuals
to use Linux as their primary desktops (not to mention the catalyst to
get commercial software ported to Linux). Given the fact Linux CAN run
on different processors, I think Intel would be crazy not to ensure that
Linux runs BEST on their own processors (or at least very competitive
with other processors).


Chris Gehlker wrote:
> From everything I read, Intel is a big Linux supporter. Now they are
> joining IBM and others in setting up the legal defense fund for Linux
> users. I think that's great but I don't understand the business logic.
> In a Windows world people are pretty much stuck on Intel iron except for
> AMD which is a much smaller company. With Linux, they can migrate away
> from Intel any time. So why is Intel pursuing a strategy that can cost
> them market share.