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Timeline Chart or Graph of GNU/Linux Adoption?
DNAman asks: "I'm preparing a presentation for the use of GNU/Linux in the biological sciences. One recurring comment that comes up is 'Linux is not mainstream, why should we be interested in it?' While we could debate the definition of mainstream, I think it would be more productive to illustrate the trend in use / adoption of GNU/Linux as a platform. Do any of you have decent data sources for this type of trend?"
Linux is not the most popular operating system in the world, why should we be interested.
Science is not the most popular way of looking at the world, why should we be interested.
I'm not sure that numbers are what you need.
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All you have to do if you want to show the scientific community's interest in Linux, is to show the scientific community's use of Linux: The 500 most powerful computer installations in the world... many of which run Linux, including the the 2nd fastest system in the world (and all of which are used by members of the scientific community).
You could also use these simple searches on slashdot (here is another) and google to collect some very interesting data.
For example, here's a nice tidbit that may be the exact community you're looking to impress.
Granted, these do not give you a timeline, but it should be enough data for you to be able to ask them "Why are we not using Linux?".
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
It's not 'hard numbers', but then, a lot of people have already pointed out that hard numbers may not REALLY be what you want. (After all, since when is "Everybody's doin' it" a persuasive argument for a good scientist?)
On the other hand, I see there are still lots of applications listed at the Scientific Applications on Linux site and the NCBI Toolbox of Bioinformatics code compiles and runs just fine on my linux box, and BioPerl, BioJava, and BioPython all run just fine on Linux (there are even a couple of fledgling BioPHP projects out just getting started out there, which will obviously also work.
Disclaimer - both of the semi-active "BioPHP" type projects that I know of - Here and here - were started independently by individual amateurs...and one of them is me. Both projects are still in the early stages (Genephp has more code available at the moment) and have different development approaches, but are slowly working on trying to combine development towards a 'formal' set of "BioPHP" modules. Blatant plug - if you are interested in helping with friendly advice or actual development or testing, please join the mailing list which both projects use)
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I'm not implying that they are dumb or anything but just that these are not COMPUTER Scientists.
When a video technican goes home to tape a tv show, does he want something which can do it in a few buttons or does he want to use something like he has at work and manually control the audio/balance etc?
>With Linux you can figure out what's going on behind the scenes.
Comptuers are a tool for research in this case, they don't want to play around with it.
A good example in the chemical research area is http://ariadne.mse.uiuc.edu/Info/Chime/chime_linu
Do you want to play around with things or do you just want it to work and be fully supported by the company who developed it?
And the old argument "Not there? Well program it!" is a negative here because these people want to research in their area, not research/code in computer science.
In reality, having their standard tools mainstream is good.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.