Few firms are planning to move to Linux on the desktop, and will stick with Windows as their desktop PC operating system, according to research.

A report from Forrester Research, The State of the Corporate PC, said that Linux does not pose a serious threat to Microsoft's dominance of the desktop.

Half of the small firms interviewed for the report, and 47 per cent of enterprises, told the analyst that they will not replace any of their Windows-based corporate desktops with systems running Linux.

In contrast, Windows XP migrations are in full swing. Some 77 per cent of enterprise users are upgrading, 37 per cent on new PCs and existing hardware and 40 per cent on new PCs only.

Forrester also noted "aggressive plans" to deploy Longhorn, Microsoft's next-generation operating system, when it is released.

The analyst explained that firms are committed to the Microsoft platform and have built their application environments around Windows.

Survey respondents also expressed concern that the cost savings would not be significant enough to warrant a major shift in platform strategy.

"Linux adopters expect significant cost savings for hardware and software," the report said.

"For those firms that do plan to deploy Linux to some extent, the primary motivators are lower total cost of PC ownership, easier and cheaper licensing, and lower cost of applications."

To justify expanding Linux deployments, the IT managers surveyed for the research pointed to a need for greater availability of business applications on the Linux platform, followed by feature and function match between open source and Microsoft productivity applications, and a greater reduction in costs.

The study also found that Dell is the leading supplier of desktop and laptop hardware, but that the gap between IBM and Dell is narrowing in the enterprise segment.