Linux Saves Lives (Linux in the news)

[Calum]

 

quote: from the BBC:
Emotional support charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems.

Linux is an alternative operating system to Microsoft's Windows and has been adopted widely in public sector projects around the world largely because of its reliability and low cost.

.......


Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the world.

It is gradually eating into Microsoft, Novell and other's market share and now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide.

edit - i thought this linux article on the BBC was quite good as well...

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[pkd_lives]

quote: Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the world.

It is gradually eating into Microsoft, Novell and other's market share and now accounts for one quarter of operating systems sold worldwide.

Can this be true? 1/4, one quarter, 1 in four, 25%. Would love to know where they got that figure from. And just for the slow. That number is a claim about SALES not downloads.

[Calum]

yes, i noticed that too. the BBC is not known for making wild generalisations and gross estimates either. notice they also say that linux is gaining a huge userbase in the public sector for security and financial reasons.

this is borne out by a lot of smaller news items i have noticed here and there recently.

slowly but surely...

[voidmain]

I believe they failed to mention that 1/4 stat was for Server operating systems. It certainly is not up to 1/4 of the desktop operating systems sold, but you can be sure that it will reach that level at some point in the not too distant future.

[pkd_lives]

I figured it was servers for the most part. But no matter how you look at it that is still a large figure. I am more trustworthy of anything on the BBC than any other news service - it's a requirement of their license that they offer unbiased views - so I would love to see the back-up.

But it's a guess that most desktops utilising Linux for home are downloads, so if it accounts for a quarter already in sales alone on the server side - how many desktops truly run Linux - and how many dual boot? We'll probably never get a good answer on this.

And good on the Samaritans, I have a lot of respect for that organization, they always seem to make good decisions based on the requirements of the charity over getting donations.