Wed Mar 12, 2008
Linux times 3 by 2012
Linux Market to Triple by 2012
Published: March 11, 2008
by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Analyst firm Research and Markets has just put out a project on Linux-based server and client hardware sales, and is projecting that the market will more than triple between 2007 and 2012.
A market for a platform is not the same as an ecosystem for it, which is much larger in that it includes the cost of people and third-party software and services for the code that runs atop the platform. So the R&M Linux market numbers might seem a little small. In any event, the consultancy pegged the Linux product and services market for Linux running on servers and clients (but not embedded systems) at $2.4 billion in 2007. (This obviously does not include the value of the PCs and servers that the Linux was running on, since Linux servers are selling at around $2 billion a quarter right now, according to IDC.) The analysts at R&M are predicting that the market for Linux-related software and services will grow by 38 percent to $3.3 billion in 2008, but that growth is slowing, and by 2012 the annual growth rate will be only 17 percent. That said, by 2012 global sales of Linux-related software and services on servers and PCs will reach $7.7 billion.
R&M says that the server market drives most Linux product and services sales, accounting for 83 percent of the revenue in 2007, and reckons that by 2012, servers will still comprise 81 percent of sales. That means that Linux will gain traction on the desktop, but not by any appreciable difference versus the traction of Linux on servers. Given the vastness of the PC market worldwide and the desire for inexpensive, open source software in the emerging markets, you might expect Linux to do better on the desktop. This is something that the Linux community has been hoping for--and working toward--for the better part of a decade. Given the improvements in Linux, and the expected ones in the coming years particularly for the desktop experience, I think that $1.5 billion in Linux-related software and services sales in 2012 is a bit low.
According to R&M, services continue to be the main way to make money in the Linux space, which is obviously necessary given the open source nature of Linux distributions. Services accounted for $1.85 billion of the $2.4 billion pie in 2007, or 77 percent of the pie, and services will grow to account for $6.24 billion in sales by 2012, or 81 percent of the pie.
Source...
http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb031108-story07.html
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Mon Dec 24, 2007
Ubuntu: OS of the Year?
By Scott Granneman
Today we have a technological cage match involving two operating systems, both UNIX- based, both mature, both with passionate detractors and even more passionate defenders, and both released just a week apart. I'm talking, of course, about Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), with its final release on October 18, and Apple' s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was available for purchase on October 26.
The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.
More...
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641
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Thu Oct 18, 2007
Ubuntu
I found this at Cnet...
I thought I would pass it along...
Source...
Source...
http://www.news.com/830...
October 18, 2007 3:04 AM PDT
Ubuntu and the future of the Linux desktop
Posted by Matt Asay
I will admit to being a Linux desktop nonbeliever. It feels a bit like yesterday's battle fought with the wrong weapons: geekiness rather than ease of use. There's a chance - still a slim one, but a chance nonetheless - that Ubuntu will change that.
In three separate places today I read reviews of Ubuntu's new desktop (7.10). Two were very complimentary, while the third suggested that Ubuntu give up.
Ubuntu upgrades the Linux desktop experience in two ways: user interface and form factor. While Novell continues to be the leader in traditional desktop replacements, Red Hat is reinventing the Linux desktop for new markets with its One Laptop Per Child involvement. Ubuntu is arguably doing the same, but is going one step further in disruption: changing the notion of the Linux "desktop" completely:
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is thinking more iPhone than UPS tablet [or traditional desktop], though. "What's really interesting is that a lot of consumer electronics products that are being designed now are essentially a little PC," he told the New York Times. By mid- to late-2009, he said, "your impulse buy will be running Linux."
Mark is fighting the battle on his own turf, not Microsoft's, and he's doing it with style, as Stephen O'Grady points out:
...[O]ver the past few weeks, I?ve taken to using the multiple desktop concept quite heavily. This capability has been present in the desktop for years now, but the Compiz-fusion enabled 3D functionality in Ubuntu made them really usable to me for the first time by - get this - turning my desktop into a cube....
My experience, of course, is but a single datapoint. More pertinently, average users can hardly be expected to see the benefit to adapting to such a radical change in the UI paradigm. But each time I use the 3D desktop, I become convinced that users will have to meet the technology half way: the latter can certainly be more polished and user friendly, but consumers of the technology may have to be willing to think outside the traditional desktop, as it were.
Stephen is right, but what if the new paradigm comes in a new form factor: a consumer electronics product that fits the 3D user interface perfectly, rather than the traditional desktop experience?
Let's be clear on one thing: there's a very good reason that it is Ubuntu and not Novell (or Sun) that is actively targeting this emerging market. It doesn't have a legacy in traditional enterprise IT, so it enters the market with no preconceived notions as to what functions a desktop should serve.
So, Novell will continue to help traditional enterprises with traditional desktop needs (just at a lower price), and Red Hat will continue to bring a low-cost but still somewhat traditional desktop model to the developing world.
But Ubuntu has a clean slate, and the Linux desktop nonbeliever in me actually likes it. I like Red Hat's strategy, too, as it opens up new markets, markets with no calcified user experience to hurdle over. But I like Ubuntu's possibly more, because it means I'll be seeing Linux on devices that I use.
Source...
http://www.news.com/830...
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