Linux adoption

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Linux adoption is the use of the Linux operating system by homes, organizations, companies, and governments. Linux migration is the change from using other operating systems to using Linux.

[edit] History

1983 (September): GNU project was announced publicly
1991 (September): first version of the Linux kernel was released to the Internet
2001 (second quarter): Linux server unit shipments at 15% annual growth rate^[1]
2004: Linux shipped on approximately 50% of the worldwide server blade units, and 20% of all rack-optimized servers^[2]
2005: Microsoft representatives accuse Brazilian college using Famelix of pirating Microsoft Windows^[3]
2007: Dell announces it will ship select models with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed^[4]
2007: Lenovo announces it will ship select models with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 pre-installed^[5]
2007: HP announces that it will begin shipping computers preinstalled with Red Hat Linux in Australia^[6]
2007: ASUS launches the linux-based ASUS Eee PC^[7]
2008: Dell announces it will begin shipping Ubuntu based computers to Canada and Latin America^[8]
2008: Dell is shipping systems with Ubuntu pre-installed in China^[9]^[10]

[edit] Types of adopters

Although Linux status as mainstream operating system is relatively recent, it has already been adopted in several different scenarios throughout the home, business, and government.

[edit] Power users

Linux's roots in the Unix operating system mean that in addition to graphical configuration tools and control panels available for many system settings and services, it is often easier or necessary to use plain-text configuration files to configure the OS. While user access to these files and utilities is controlled by the system administrator, and in theory the user does not need to worry about them, in practice administrators and user are often the same person on a desktop system.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Government

As local governments come under pressure from institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Intellectual Property Alliance, some have turned to open source software as an affordable, legal alternative to both pirated material and expensive computer products from Microsoft, Apple and the like.^{[citation needed]}

The spread of free software affords some leverage for these countries when companies from the developed world bid for government contracts (since a low-cost option exists), while furnishing an alternative path to development for countries like India and Pakistan that have many citizens skilled in computer applications but cannot afford technological investment at "First World" prices.

Brazil's PC Conectado program
City of Munich has chosen to migrate its 14,000 desktops to Debian-based LiMux ^[11]
The United States Department of Defense uses and develops open source software^{[citation needed]}
The city of Vienna has chosen to start migrating its desktop PCs to Debian-based Wienux ^[12]
Spain has been noted as the furthest along the road to Linux adoption ^[13], for example with Linux distribution LinEx
State owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is installing Linux in all of its 20,000 retail branches as the basis for its web server and a new terminal platform. (2005) ^[14]
In 2005 the Government of Peru voted to adopt open source across all its bodies. The 2002 response to Microsoft's critique is available online.

In the preamble to the bill, the Peruvian government stressed that the choice was made to ensure that key pillars of democracy were safeguarded: "The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law."^[15]

In January 2006, law in Venezuela went into effect, mandating a two year transition to open source in all public agencies. ^[16]
In April 2006, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it had completed a migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one third of the scheduled time and saved 15 million dollars.^[17]
The Government of Pakistan established a Technology Resource Mobilization Unit in 2002 to enable groups of professionals to exchange views and coordinate activities in their sectors and to educate users about free software alternatives. Linux is an option for poor countries which have little revenue for public investment; Pakistan is using open source software in public schools and colleges, and hopes to run all government services on Linux eventually.
The Ministry of Defence in Singapore began migrating its computers from Microsoft to free software in 2004, while South Korea, China and Japan agreed to cooperate in creating new Linux-based programs.^{[citation needed]}
The French Parliament has switched to using Kubuntu on desktop PCs. ^[18]
The Government of India has set up a resource centre for Free and Open Source Software NRCFOSS managed jointly by C-DAC Chennai and Anna University, Chennai. It has one of its node in Mumbai at VJTI College
The Federal Employment Office of Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) has migrated 13,000 public workstations from Windows NT to OpenSuse.^[19]
Czech Post (state owned) migrated 4000 servers and 12000 clients to Novell Linux in 2005^[20]^[21]

[edit] Education

Linux is often used in technical disciplines at universities and research centres. This is due to several factors, including that Linux is available free of charge and includes a large body of free/open source software. To some extent, technical competence of computer science and software engineering academics is also a contributor, as is stability, maintainability, and upgradability. IBM ran an advertising campaign entitled "Linux is Education" featuring a young boy who was supposed to be "Linux".^[22]

Examples of large scale adoption of Linux in education include the following:

The OLPC XO-1 (previously called the MIT $100 laptop and The Children's Machine), is an inexpensive laptop running Linux, which will be distributed to millions of children as part of the One Laptop Per Child project, especially in developing countries.
Republic of Macedonia deployed 5,000 Linux desktops running Ubuntu across all 468 public schools and 182 computer labs (December 2005) ^[23]
Schools in Bolzano, Italy have switched to a custom distribution of Linux (FUSS Soledad GNU/Linux), which will be used by the 16,000 students in the area when they return on 12 September 2005. ^[24]
Brazil has around 20,000 Linux desktops running in elementary and secondary public schools.^{[citation needed]}
The Netherlands has an initiative called Open Source en standaarden in het onderwijs, "Open source and standards in education". ^[25]
Government officials of Kerala, India announced they will use only free software, running on the Linux platform, for computer education, starting with the 2,650 government and government-aided high schools. ^[26]
22,000 students in the US state of Indiana were using Linux as of 2006^[27]
Germany has announced that 560,000 students in 33 universities will migrate to Linux. ^[28]
The Philippines has deployed 13,000 desktops of Fedora, the first 10,000 where delivered in December 2007 by ASI. Another 10,000 desktops of Edubuntu and Kubuntu are planned.^[29]
Russia announced in October 2007 that all its school computers will run on Linux.^[30] This is to avoid cost of licensing current unlicensed software.
9,000 computers to be converted to Linux and OpenOffice.org in school district Geneva, Switzerland by September 2008^[31]

[edit] Home

Sony's PlayStation 3 comes with a hard disk (20GB, 60GB or 80GB) and is specially designed to allow easy installation of Linux on the system.^{[citation needed]} However, Linux is prevented from accessing certain functions of the PlayStation such as 3D graphics.^{[citation needed]} Sony also released a Linux kit for its PlayStation 2 console (see Linux for PlayStation 2).

[edit] Business

Linux is also used in some corporate environments as the desktop platform for its employees, with commercially available solutions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and Linspire.

Ernie Ball, a company manufacturing guitar strings, and known for its famous Super Slinky guitar strings, has used Linux as its desktop operating system since 2000. ^[32]
Novell is undergoing a migration from Windows to Linux. Of its 5500 employees, 50% were successfully migrated as of April, 2006. This was expected to rise to 80% by November.^[33]
Wotif, the Australian hotel booking website, migrated from Windows to Linux servers to keep up with the growth of its business.^[34]
Union Bank of California announced in January 2007 that it would standardize its IT infrastructure on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in order to lower costs. ^[35]
Peugeot, the European car maker, announced plans to deploy up to 20,000 copies of Novell's Linux desktop, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and 2,500 copies of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, in 2007. ^[36]
Mindbridge, a software company, announced in September, 2007 that it had migrated a large number of Windows servers onto a smaller number of Linux servers and a few BSD servers. It claims to have saved "bunches of money."^[37]
Virgin America, the low cost U.S. airline, uses Linux to power its in-flight entertainment system, RED.^[38]

[edit] Motivations

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There are many driving forces behind Linux adoption by various individuals and organizations, including security and stability, innovation and flexibility, empowerment of the skilled programmer and cost savings in development and deployment.

economic reasons such as:
- avoidance of anti-competitive practices like vertical tying and Refusal to deal
- free market advantages, such as competition in cost, feature set and flexibility. For example, a high-quality specialized platform in place of a one-size-fits-all mass produced product.
- avoiding costs of inefficient markets: for example, in the Microsoft line of software and operating systems, a lot of basic infrastructure and functionality is removed or disabled in the entry-level product and reserved for premium lines, future releases or for partnership products.
- lower cost of deployment and development - in linux, an expert programmer/administrator can quickly develop software using a wide variety of interlocking tools and automate its administration without worrying about whether several basic systems work together, have been purchased or have been relicensed. In contrast the Microsoft platform introduces several strategic obstacles precipitating the purchase of a variety of isolated, specialized tools/products, and generally favors the far more populous point and click non-expert with an attendant reduction in labor-productivity for experts. (e.g. even the c compiler is a multi-hundred dollar product optimized for ease-of-use to the non-expert at the expense of lesser productivity for the expert, and their are many costs and obstacles thereafter - all of which can be solved by money, but not by expertise)
- cost resulting from broken paradigms: for example, in *nix several programs written in several different languages can be effortlessly combined on the command line and in scripts facilitating rapid, low-cost development (the bulk can be developed in shell, and parts optimized in c). Likewise the *nix shell offers significant leverage of existing components (the shell is a capable programming environment in itself - unlike DOS). Microsoft broke that paradigm in DOS and even in Vista there is still no such built in, natural, easy to use facility - there are facsimiles such as VBS, but they are more cumbersome, and less capable - for example lacking redirection and access to GUI-only functionality (thereby, making automation impossible in many cases). Incompatible, proprietary file formats represent a similar set of obstacles and costs.
Knowing how programs work and what they do with the user's data
Freedom from vendor lock-in - data can usually be ported more easily because there is often less incentive to make this difficult than with proprietary software.
Long-term usability (reduction in duplication and built in obsolescence) - open source software packaged with Linux usually lasts longer because repeated rollouts and "must have" updates are not part of the marketing model.
Low cost - popular Linux distributions are available as a free download over the Internet, while Windows, depending on version and how it is purchased, costs from US$199 to US$299 per seat. Mac OS X costs US$129 per seat, or US$199 the family pack (5 licenses), and runs only on Apple hardware.
Core packages run across more platforms, and are often more standards compliant and interoperable. Major proprietary software tends to comply and interoperate only with its own manufacturer's software, and is often hard to port to other platforms or systems.
At a professional level, Linux is configurable and robust.
Many of its core services, including expandability, and functions such as clustering, stability, and supercomputer-creation, are easier with Linux than many alternative common systems.
Upgrades are issued and problems are fixed more quickly.
Other factors include the large number of languages Linux's interfaces are available in, the flexibility to customise it to local needs, and high quality remote management.
The use of Linux on desktop PCs in corporations is being driven by employees requesting it, and by corporations seeing competitors successfully deploying Linux.^[39]
In government, self-determination and vendor independence are valued, as well as the local software industry development that may surround the adoption of Linux.
In the developing world, recent World Trade Organization agreements have encouraged organizations to consider Linux as an alternative to using copyright-infringing software.

Companies adopt Linux and free and open source software:

Because it is the dominant trend in software production
To cause market disruption
Because customers demand it
To move the value-adding to different areas.

[edit] On desktop computers

See also: Desktop Linux

Linux accounts for only around 1% of desktop market share, while Microsoft Windows operating systems hold more than 90%. ^[40] ^[41] ^[42] ^[43] ^[44] ^[45] ^[46]

This may be because Linux is not seen as a direct replacement for Windows. ^[47] In an openSUSE survey conducted in 2007, 69.5% of respondents said they dual boot a Microsoft Windows operating system in addition to a Linux operating system. ^[48] Bill Whyman, an analyst at Precursor Advisors, notes that "there still isn't a compelling alternative to the Microsoft infrastructure on the desktop." ^[49]

Application support, the quality of peripheral support, and end user support are seen as the biggest obstacles for desktop Linux adoption. ^[50] ^[51] ^[52] ^[53] ^[54] ^[55] ^[56] ^[57] According to a 2006 survey by The Linux Foundation, these factors were a "major obstacle" for 56%, 49%, and 33% of respondents respectively. ^[58]

[edit] Application support

Users are accustomed to and want Windows applications which have not been ported to Linux, ^[59] such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCAD, and Intuit QuickBooks. ^[58] In a DesktopLinux.com survey conducted in 2007, 72% of respondents said they used ways to run Windows applications on Linux. ^[60]

51% of respondents to the 2006 Linux Foundation survey believed that cross-distribution Linux desktop standards should be the top priority for the Linux desktop community, highlighting the fact that the fragmented Linux market is preventing application vendors from developing, distributing and supporting the operating system. ^[58] ^[53] In 2008, Gartner reported that "version control and incompatibilities will continue to plague open-source OSs and associated middleware." ^[61]

[edit] Peripheral support

Availability and quality of open source device drivers have long been issues for Linux desktops. Particular areas which are seen as needing attention are drivers for printing, wireless support, and audio. ^[62] ^[58] For example, Dell will not sell certain hardware and software with Ubuntu computers, including all printers, projectors, Bluetooth keyboards and mice, TV tuners and remote controls, desktop modems and Blu-ray disc drives, due to incompatibilities and legal issues. ^[63]

[edit] End-user support

Compared to Windows, Linux is lacking in end-user support. Linux has traditionally been seen as requiring much more technical expertise. ^[64] ^[65] Dell's website describes open source software as requiring intermediate or advanced knowledge to use. ^[57] Founder of the Ubuntu project, Mark Shuttleworth, comments that "it would be reasonable to say that this is not ready for the mass market." ^[64] Chief Technical Officer of Adeptiva Linux, Stephan February, noted that Linux remains a very technical software product, and few people outside the technical community are able to support consumers. Windows users are able to rely on friends and family for help, but Linux users generally use discussion boards, which can be uncomfortable for consumers. ^[66] ^[67]

[edit] Other factors

Linux's credibility has also been under attack. ^[68] There is continuing debate about the total cost of ownership of Linux, ^[69] ^[70] with Gartner warning in 2005 that the costs of migration may exceed the cost benefits of Linux. ^[71] Gartner reiterated the warning in 2008, predicting that "by 2013, a majority of Linux deployments will have no real software total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage over other operating systems." ^[61] In the SCO-Linux controversies, the SCO Group alleged that source code donated by IBM was illegally incorporated into Linux, although this claim has been shown to be invalid in court. An operating system vendor, Green Hills, has also called the open source paradigm of Linux "fundamentally insecure". ^[72] ^[68]

[edit] Servers

Linux became popular in the Internet server market particularly due to the LAMP software bundle.

[edit] Devices

See also: Linux devices

Linux is often used in various single- or multi-purpose computer appliances and embedded systems.^[73]

[edit] Supercomputers

Linux is the most popular operating system among supercomputers.^[74]^[75]

[edit] Advocacy

The Linux Foundation - host and sponsor key kernel developers, manage the Linux trademark, manage the Open Source Developer Travel Fund, provide legal-aid to open source developers and companies through the Linux Legal Defense Fund, sponsor kernel.org and host the Patent Commons Project
iFOSSF International Free and Open Source Software Foundation, nonprofit organization based in Michigan, USA accelerating and promoting the adoption of FOSS worldwide through research and civil society partnership networks.
Open Invention Network, is intended to protect vendors and customers from patent royalty fees while using OSS
IBM's Linux Marketing Strategy
Linux User Groups
Asian Open Source Centre (AsiaOSC)
Brazil government, under Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.^[76]
Software Livre Brasil, a Brazilian organization promoting Linux adoption in schools, public department's, commerce, industry and personal desktops.
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan.