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Linus's Baby Comes of Age

Posted by Zonk on from the so-this-is-growing-up dept.

just_another_sean writes "Torvalds' Baby Comes of Age - BusinessWeek Online is running a story on how Linux has matured over the years. They have some positive things to say about it, and back up their statements with some examples and stats." From the article: "Hardware companies are selling more than $1 billion in servers to run Linux every quarter, while sales of servers running proprietary software continue to fall. And now, slowly but surely, Linux is making inroads on the desktop as well. According to IBM, 10 million desktops ran Linux in 2004 -- a 40% jump from a year ago. That progress has been an important foot in the door for all open-source companies. Marc Fleury, chief executive of open-source middleware company JBoss, describes the Linux operating system pioneered by Torvalds as the older brother who fought the tough battles and was able to get the curfew extended and the keys to the car, so that life was a lot easier for the rest of the open-source world. "

5 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. even though it's GPL? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So is the GPL really such a handicap?

  2. Linux maturity and business opportunities by totallygeek · · Score: 5, Insightful
    IBM's adoption of Linux and push of advertising has done wonders for overall acceptance of Linux by the business communities I work with. This is especially true of regulated industries, such as financial, medical, and educational. It is nice to see the very small project grow to become such an animal, while maintaining the ability to steer clear of bad commercialism. There have been many players that could have chosen to not further develop in Linux and it would have just remained a 'geek-only' system that people downloaded and wrangled with installing just to say they could do it.

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    Click here or here.
  3. so all its all thanks to the kernel? by gullevek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I doubt that, a kernel allone doesn't make a server. I'd say its thanks to apache group (apache, tomcat, ...), php, samba and all the other services that you can provide and that can replace properitary services.
    Same for the desktop. It's thanks to KDE/Gnome that it gets more and more accepted on the desktop. The kernel is just one small part ...
    But well, manager & business journalist. Lets keep it simple and add a pie graphic!

    --
    "Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
    1. Re:so all its all thanks to the kernel? by i_should_be_working · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd rather have to replace the kernel (by doing something like switch to BSD) than replace all the GNU software I use.

  4. Actually it's Stallman's baby by hansreiser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, but Stallman of www.fsf.org was the one, and Linus made an important contribution (the kernel was only one of many pieces needed by the OS), but not as important as those made by the guy who failed to name anything after himself.

    First we needed an editor (emacs), then a compiler (gcc), a bunch of utilities (things like cp got written by the fsf), a license (the GPL), and only after all that Stallman originated stuff was in place were we ready for a kernel.

    Hans