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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.
Turn it around: why should they be interested in Linux? Because it is not mainstream.
Mainstream is for the unwashed masses (or maybe the washed masses, depending on the accuracy of the Linux geek stereotype). Mainstream is for people who want to surf the web and forward letters to everyone on their email list. If they never see how their computer works, so much the better; and mainstream continually works toward that goal.
Linux, on the other hand, is developed by people who have a similar mindset to scientists. It's a system that allows and encourages experimentation, and reinforces the truth that there is never only one way to do something. There are no artificial limits set to prevent you from getting uncomfortable because you're not sure what you're looking at.
It's also the closest thing to an objective OS you can get. If results are called into question, you're out of luck with Windows: "Oh, it must have been a glitch. Let me reboot this...." With Linux you can figure out what's going on behind the scenes.
I can't imagine scientists who willingly reject going a different direction from mainstream. Science is not mainstream.
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Scientists should be interested in linux because linux is developed in much the same way that scientific theories are developed.
That is, nobody will ever respect a theory untill it has undergone peer review. Other scientists scrutinize the theory, and try to disprove it. If they fail to disprove it, then it becomes accepted as the best theory.
In Linux, it's much the same. Somebody writes a program, and in doing so, claims that their program is the best way to solve that given problem. Other programmers will scrutinize the code, and try to find better ways of solving the problem. They can develop entirely new ways that replace the old ways, or they can incrementally improve the current ways. Either way, the end result is a higher quality of code, in a general sense.
I mean, Linux Just Makes Sense (TM) for the scientific community. They both heavily rely on peer review to ensure that things are reliable and trustworthy.
Would anybody trust a scientific theory that was developed by secretive scientists who won't publish what experiments they did to come up with their ideas? If we can't verify that what they did was the right way to do things, how can we trust their results? Of course you don't, which is the same reason that proprietary software is so crappy. You can't see their methods, only their results, and the results are often sub-par.
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?
Any such sources are inherently biased against linux.
The standard way for measuring the market share of a given operating system is to look at the vendor's sales. This has tons of problems.
First, linux ISOs can be freely downloaded without any sale taking place, so lots of people can (and do) install linux without showing up on any company's sales figures.
Second, even if you buy a boxed set of RedHat 9, you can install that on as many computers as you want. So if RedHat says they sold x copies of their OS, that could easily represent 2x or 3x installations of the OS.
Third, all new PCs come with Windows preloaded, and count towards Microsoft's market share. Even if the first thing you do with your new PC is install linux on it, it's still a Windows box, as far as Microsoft's sales figures will show.
So, sales figures are totally unreliable in gauging anybody's market share. You could turn to Netcraft, which is amazingly accurate... except that it only cares about servers. Desktops don't even show up at all.
If you want numbers, you're totally SOL. Even if you found the numbers, they don't mean anything. Ok, I'll tell you the numbers right now: Linux has 50% of the market. I pulled that number out of my ass, but it's about as reliable as you'll find anywhere else.
http://counter.li.org/
"linux usage" is hard to gauge. there's no central licensing authority (despite a certain moronic company's attempt). of course that argument is rather silly as closed software companies have to guess at their user base. for instance i count as 2 solaris users and around 10 windows users if you go by licenses purchased but i don't use either of those os's.
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Someone in the BSD section keeps on quoting it all the time!
If your current platform works, there shouldn't be a reason to change.
Anyone who says something like this is just looking to argue (oops, I have been trolled). Computing platforms have been rapidly changing since the invention of the computer. I would peg full upgrade cycles at around five years on average (and interestingly this is how long it takes to fully depreciate the value of a computer purchase according to the IRS). This means that about every five years you are fully reinvesting in new hardware and software. Some software packages allow for (still expensive) upgrades, but that's small comfort against all the other expenses involved. And in a larger environment, you are likely to constantly be retiring old machines and replacing with new. So it's not likely you even have a single "platform" that "works". The problem here is how to explain a migration to Linux as a way to reduce future expenses, increase productivity, or whatever-- de facto migration to the next upgrade cycle of the current platform should require just as much justification.
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The best numbers you can get are probably from your own university's IT department. In fact I will bet that the computer science department is at least 50/50 Linux/Windows if not more.
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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?".
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That's business (and not even very serious business). This is science.
We regularly use software that's 20 years old. It's essential that any software we use produce the correct results every time we use it. Bogus results for any reason invalidates your work and reduces your credibility as a scientist. It regularly takes software 5-7 years just to get to the point where we're confident in it. The idea that we'd be replacing all of our software every 5 years is laughable.
Ask anyone in the financial industry or using payroll software how old that code is. It was probably written before some of the employees were born.
Moreover, any software we use has to have a lifespan of more than just 5 years. If someone picks a paper up 20 years from now but can't duplicate the work because the software doesn't exist anymore, then your work has no value.
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.
There were comments about Windows on ATM's, and how insecure ATM's already are, not very long ago on slashdot.
Question -- If running naked through the street with my hair on fire has always worked for me, why would I want to change?
Or how about this: Using 30-year-old encryption for everything my bank does works. Why would I want to try something new?
Doh! Because new things can be better!
Why would I want a new job? Maybe I get payed more! Why would I want a new OS? Maybe it will run faster / not crash / not hand off large sums of money to no one in particular!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
>Because new things can be better!
But they are not ALWAYS better. In all the cases you specify there is a better way of doing things, but sometimes the new way is not a better way.
Thats what his point is. Is adopting something new better and is it worth all the trouble?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Hmmm. So are you making the case for not migrating to Linux as soon as possible or what? What you describe are even more compelling reasons to switch to Linux ASAP. The system code is available, thus making it much more likely that someone down the road (either geographically or sequentially) will be able to duplicate your results. Ditto for the peer review aspects of the work, open code is, well, open-- meaning that software flaws can at least be analyzed.
As for the rest of what you said, the types of systems you're talking about are large mainframes-- not something any sane person would be migrating to Linux any time soon. And I think you're wrong about payroll. PeopleSoft's most recent versions are hardly seven years old (although there may be seven-year-old code in their code base). In fact, given their whole company was founded in 1987 and is therefore only sixteen years old in the first place... I'd have to say your information is woefully out of date. And don't even get me started on the financial services where the ONLY systems that last more than five years are the big COBOL transaction systems that handle the basic account activities. But then, again, those are not likely systems for Linux migration. The thousands of desktops, clients, analysis databases, etc, are.
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