Linux has won!

[Ariel Biener]

  On 04/03/2011 02:33 PM, Nadav Har'El wrote:

Sorry for top posting. I think however that you're wrong.

As a desktop platform, Linux has not won, and that was what
your colleague was referring to. The fact Linux is embedded
into many devices, and that some of them even present a UI
to you is not irrelevant, Linux is indeed a platform that is uniquely
adept for these devices (both in terms of stability, development and most
probably in terms of licensing), however, he meant his "desktop
OS", and we're not there yet.

--Ariel
> 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 :-)
>
>


-- 
  --
  Ariel Biener
  e-mail: ariel at post.tau.ac.il
  PGP: http://www.tau.ac.il/~ariel/pgp.html