An article appearing on the Middle East finance and economy web site "AMEInfo" discusses the reasons why many organizations and individuals are switching to Linux from other proprietary operating systems. I found it an interesting read, and suggest that you may want to look at it before you continue reading this article.
The article says that there are five reasons people switch to Linux:
- Flexibility: Linux handles a variety of hardware configurations with ease, scales up and down well, can be modified and adjusted as needed since source code is available, and offers a lot of options for porting applications to it from other platforms.
- Security: Linux has included security features from the start, and has a history of improving its security continually. Although hackers have access to the source code, making it easier to find vulnerabilities, the defenders also have the source code, making it easier and faster to fix those vulnerabilities.
- Reliability: Because anyone can examine the source code and suggest improvements, weaknesses in the design and implementation can be found and fixed, perhaps before they are really encountered by a user. The design of Linux is based on UNIX, which is itself a very stable and reliable operating system.
- Total Value: While Linux may (arguably) have a steeper administration learning curve than an operating system like Microsoft Windows, at least some of those costs are offset by the ability to use cheaper hardware, reduced support costs due to better reliability and security, and the wealth of available open source software. Even when a "supported" license is acquired, the costs typically are much lower than for other operating systems.
- Future Value: Research by industry think-tanks indicates that more and more organizations are moving servers to Linux from Windows. Overall Linux marketplace numbers are expected to reach $35.7 billion by 2008. Packaged Linux software is the fastest growing market segment within the Linux marketplace, with revenue growth of 44% annually.
The article focuses primarily on why Linux succeeds in the server side of the marketplace. This is, and has been, its traditional area of greatest success. What About the Desktop? Linux still lags behind Windows on the desktop, but leads the Macintosh slightly. According to stats from the w3schools web site, Windows holds about 90% of the market, Linux about 3.3%, and the Mac around 3.2%. The rest, presumably, is comprised of other operating systems. If this is a true representation of market share, Linux has gained quite a bit of ground since a 2002 IDC study in which it represented only 2.8% of the desktop. Granted, that's not exactly explosive growth, but it IS growth. Mac OS X has shown a larger rate of growth, but still lags behind Linux in total market share. Given the statistic provided earlier that revenue growth for packaged Linux software is growing at about a 44% rate annually, we can expect more and more software makers to produce products for the Linux marketplace. With Apple moving Mac OS X to x86 hardware, it seems very likely that software vendors like Adobe and Macromedia will begin porting their products first to the new OS X on x86, and from there to Linux (since it would appear to be a relatively trivial effort compared to moving from OS X on PowerPC to Linux on x86). Linux is already learning some valuable lessons from OS X about how to make a UNIX-like operating system friendlier to end users. While it seems unlikely that Linux will ever be as user-friendly and eye-catching as OS X, it seems very likely that the Linux desktop will approach a level of eye-catchiness and ease of use that is "good enough" for the majority of desktop users to get by. Combine that with the availability of packaged software from Adobe and Macromedia. Combine that with Linux's ability to squeeze more performance out of the same hardware than OS X. What you would have is an easy-to-use desktop operating system that runs faster on less expensive hardware than Apple offers, with access to the majority of the most popular Mac OS X applications. This could very well swallow up a number of Mac OS X installations. It might also gobble up a number of Windows desktops, in that those who are frustrated with Microsoft but unwilling to switch to OS X because of Apple's pricing habits might find a user-friendly Linux to be their salvation... especially since it would likely run on the hardware they've already purchased.
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