Mark Shuttleworth, the promoter for Ubuntu Linux"Created just over four years ago, Ubuntu (pronounced oo-BOON-too) has emerged as the fastest-growing and most celebrated version of the Linux operating system, which competes with Windows primarily through its low, low price: $0.
"More than 10 million people are estimated to run Ubuntu today, and they represent a threat to Microsoft’s hegemony in developed countries and perhaps even more so in those regions catching up to the technology revolution.....
"Companies like I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Dell place Linux on more than 10 percent of the computers they sell as servers, and businesses pay the hardware makers and others, like the software sellers Red Hat and Oracle, to fix any problems and keep their Linux-based systems up to date.
"But Canonical, Mr. Shuttleworth’s company that makes Ubuntu, has decided to focus its near-term aspirations on the PCs used by workers and people at home......
"Close to half of Google’s 20,000 employees use a slightly modified version of Ubuntu, playfully called Goobuntu.....
"Dell started to sell PCs and desktops with the software in 2007, and I.B.M. more recently began making Ubuntu the basis of a software package that competes against Windows......
"Canonical, based in London, has more than 200 full-time employees, but its total work force stretches well beyond that, through an army of volunteers. The company paid for close to 60 volunteers to attend its developer event, considering them important contributors to the operating system. An additional 1,000 work on the Debian project and make their software available to Canonical, while 5,000 spread information about Ubuntu on the Internet. And 38,000 have signed up to translate the software into different languages......
"The technology research firm IDC estimates that 11 percent of American businesses have systems based on Ubuntu. That said, many of the largest Ubuntu customers have cropped up in Europe, where Microsoft’s dominance has endured intense regulatory and political scrutiny.
"The Macedonian education department relies on Ubuntu, providing 180,000 copies of the operating system to children, while the Spanish school system has 195,000 Ubuntu desktops. In France, the National Assembly and the Gendarmerie Nationale, the military police force, rely on Ubuntu for a combined 80,000 PCs."
Comment: I first learned to program more than 50 years ago, and in that ancient time software was distributed by users groups. It was all open source, but we didn't have a term for collaboratively developed and freely distributed software, made available gratis. Clearly Linux is here to stay. One hopes that Ubuntu will bring open source operating systems to dominate new classes of applications especially in developing countries. Educational computers, machines in public health systems, and other governmental applications seem good candidates. JAD
No comments:
Post a Comment