Linus's Baby Comes of Age

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. "

Comments

Re:Ohhhhhh!

[delirium of disorder]

He does.
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/pat.gif

Re:so all its all thanks to the kernel?

[LennyDotCom]

The kernel is just one small part

I may be a small part but just try and run those other apps with out it

Still not where i want it..

[cybrthng]

For web servers, even j2ee application servers and open source stuff linux is fine and dandy, where i can't stand it is enterprise applications.

I can't stand the horrible certification matrix that is a joke on RedHat AS. I can't stand the fact that vendors lock into specific redhat releases and NONE of those locks carry forward. I can't stand the fact that Redhat doesn't seem to care. "contact your software vendor".

Hence, i love solaris for enterprise applications - i'm talking about financial back end systems, i'm talking about heavy duty bpel, oracle sso, applicaitons 11i, oracle 10g grids and everything else. RedHat's TCO because of the lack of supported arch's is more than solaris or even HPUX which is downright scary.

I love my redhat boxen, i wish i could standardize on that platform. Why the hell hasn't the market caught up? i mean for christs sake oracle preaches linux day in and day out yet i have to run AS 2.1 or AS 3.0 and i can't run 64bit database back ends in certain mixes nad i have to have oracle kernel versions for this and that and yet all of this is supposed ot come together in some "proposed" future date.

They've only been saying that for 5 years now :(

Inroads on the desktop

[br00tus]

I began playing with Linux in 1994 or 1995, when I downloaded it to my PC and used LILO to stick Linux on one of the drives. Eventually I owned multiple PC's, but usually used Windows as my desktop, and had a Linux server. One of the reasons for this was that it was easy to handle Linux remotely, and Windows wasn't, so due to Windows bad features in that area, it was stuck being my desktop.

Anyhow, last December I got a Linksys wireless ethernet adapter and put it in my main desktop, a Windows ME machine (I haven't bought a new machine since the market crashed in spring 2000). Except it didn't work - perhaps it only wanted to work on Windows XP or something. Anyhow, the drivers for the adapter fried all my networking. I kept working on it, and finally decided to reinstall my C drive. Except it's not like Windows 95 with its decent install disks, I have these crappy OEM Windows ME repair disks. OK, so I backup everything I need on C and go. Well, the crappy OEM CD not only blows away C (which I expected), but blows away the D drive as well to write just one file. So I stop everything, and ponder how I am going to get my stuff off D which I need. So I install Debian on drive C, and rescue the important stuff on D. I also pull my stuff off drives E and F. Then I blow everything away and reinstall Debian for my entire disk.

I have to say, I have missed Windows a lot less than I thought I would. My main concern was being able to read and send Microsoft Word documents, but I haven't had to send a Word document in months, and I haven't had a problem reading the few I need anyhow. So I haven't even had to use the Linux programs that say they can help compensate for this. My roommate has a Windows box anyhow, so I can always use his if I'm desperate (or make other arrangements). I've been using UNIX for a long time and love being able to run Apache, MySQL, PERL, PHP etc. on my computer. I have Mediawiki and osCommerce running locally just for testing, and I have my own MySQL tables and PHP/Apache and PERL scripts as well.

I haven't needed Microsoft like I thought I would. Also, I should point out, I switched because Microsoft has gotten worse (OEM repair CDs instead of the old, easy Microsoft vanilla install/reinstall CDs), and Linux has gotten better (which includes GNOME/KDE etc.) I switched due to necessity, not because I am a free software zealot, although I appreciate free software zealots and can be one myself sometimes. I should also add that my wireless adapter worked fine - Linux had the drivers for it. Windows had the drivers as well - but only for XP (ones that didn't blow away your machine). I would have had to shell out money to upgrade my OS to use my new device. You don't have this problem with Linux.

As far as me being a tech, and this not effecting the population, I disagree. I write software, as do many of us, and this is really what effects things. If all the techs begin writing lots of software for Linux, this changes the dynamics of things. There's an old saying "if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow". Microsoft no longer has me by the balls, which means my mind no longer has to follow them.

Re:What distro does Linus run?

[i.r.id10t]

The guy who should be working already mentioned the PPC, but I remember reading here on /. a while back that he had a *really* nice SMP workstation (4 or 8 cpu, forget) and ran Mandrake simply because 'drake "just worked" at the time.

I think that would be a cool slashdot interview type thingie - find out what hardware, OS, and apps the Big Names in computing use personally.

Re:so all its all thanks to the kernel?

[ozmanjusri]

On Windows, open source would be okay until MS decides it's time to get into that market.

Yeah, you have to wonder whether Microsoft has shot itself in the foot there. By refusing to port their tools, they've forced the FOSS community to develop the whole software stack for Linux. Now instead of having to compete with just a free OS, and leveraging their Office software income to do so, they're having to compete with an entire platform. Worse for them is that Linux is providing a haven for developers who don't have to immediately compete with closed-source products - at least until they're on their second or third generation and ready to port to Windows.

When someone buys a Mac (for example), there's a fair chance they'll be giving Microsoft some cash for Office, but every successful deployment of Linux on the desktop means Microsoft loses revenue from both of it's main income streams.