Linux has won!

[Nadav Har'El]

Today over lunch, a few of us were talking about Linux vs. Windows.

Somebody said, among other things, that he prefers Windows because it is more
popular. Then it dawned on me: We're so used to thinking that Linux is a
niche OS that only 1% of the people use at home, that we (or at least I)
missed the fact that this changed! Over the last few years, suddenly that is
no longer true: Today there are probably more copies of Linux than Windows
running in people's homes!

Why am I saying this? Because while most "traditional" PCs are still running
Windows, new kinds of consumer home have appeared to replace or accompany
the home computer, and many of them are running Linux:

  * Smartphones and Tablets with Android, WebOS or MeeGo.
  * Media streamers (e.g., Xtreamer, Popcorn, etc).
  * Residential gateways (a.k.a. home "routers").
  * DVRs (e.g., Tivo)
  * Televisions (e.g., from Samsung and Sony)
  * GPS (e.g., from Garmin)
  * Networked hard disks (e.g., WD My Book Live)
  * Personal video screens on airplains

So probably the number of home installations of Linux, in one of these home
devices, is already greater than the number of home installations of Windows!

And of course, add to this the fact that Linux is also more popular on
servers, e.g., Google's and Facebook's servers - over a million (!) of
them, all use Linux - so even if your PC is running Windows, the Web sites
you use are actually based on Linux.

Some might argue that the fact that these devices use Linux is irrelevant,
because their Linux is not exposed to the users. I argue that this is not
accurate: Some of them do expose an operating system (e.g., Android), in some
of them you need to be aware of Linux to add extensions or understand their
on-disk formats. But more importantly - The fact that these devices are *not*
based on Windows is what matters. It is starting to educate the users that
Windows isn't the only "allowed" user interface: People used to hate Linux's
UI (e.g., Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice) because they are different from Windows'.
But now everything is different from Windows: Android is different from
Windows, Apple iOS is different from Windows, Xtreamer's menu system is
different from Windows, Gmail's UI is different from Windows - suddenly Linux
doesn't look that "alien" any more.

And finally, as Linux-based devices outnumbers Windows-based PCs, and perhaps
even out-costs them, the amount of investment into Linux development will
increase, to the benefit of all Linux users.

So,

We won!!!

Vive la revolution :-)


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Sunday, Apr  3 2011, 28 Adar II 5771
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |I have a watch cat! If someone breaks in,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |she'll watch.