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Linux adoption grows

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By Audra Mahlong, senior journalist
Johannesburg, 2 Apr 2009

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Linux vs Windows

The current economic climate will lead to the increased adoption of Linux in 2009. This is according to a market survey by IDC, which states Linux is in a good position to emerge from this downturn as a stronger solution.

According to the study, more than 72% of companies are either actively evaluating or have decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server this year. Another 68% are making the same claim for the desktop.

The growing adoption of Linux is not a surprising trend, says the IDC. “Economic downturns have the tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions and punish solutions that are not cost competitive.”

According to the study, the growing interest in Linux adoption is closely linked to lowering ongoing support costs associated with the Windows solution. More than 40% of companies surveyed said they plan to deploy additional workloads on Linux over the next 12 to 24 months, with 49% indicating Linux will be their primary server platform within five years.

The retail industry showed the highest potential for Linux adoption, while the government sector lagged behind. Despite the adoption of an open standards policy, the government was slow to accelerate its adoption of Linux, the survey revealed. Things looked more promising in the retail sector, with 63% of those surveyed planning an increase on the desktop and 69% considering the same on the server.

“The feedback gleaned from this market survey confirms our belief that, as organisations fight to cut costs and find value in this tough economic climate, Linux adoption will accelerate,” the survey stated.

Linux vs Windows

With the emergence of netbooks and the shift of growth opportunities to emerging geographies, Linux has an opportunity to successfully capture traditional client deployments, the survey states.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) recently confirmed it is testing Google's Android operating system in some of its netbook computers. Seen as a possible alternative to Windows, the company hopes it would allow it to develop a low-cost netbook. As there are also no licence fees for Android, HP could offer a product more competitively priced than netbooks running on Windows. The company says that no decisions have been made on the use of the open source software based on Linux.

The company already offers PCs with a choice of Linux or Windows – but introducing open source options still remains risky. The study states there are still factors which hinder the adoption of the open source platform. A lack of application support, poor interoperability with Windows and other environments were listed as the primary concerns for companies.

According to the survey, while adoption rates might be promising, they could be higher in the future. Sixty-seven percent of respondents stated interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows remains one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system. But companies will continue to look at Linux as an alternative. The study reveals almost 50% of companies plan to accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop for basic office functions.

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Comments (11)

Flabbergasted said:

What? Are you for real?

	Mmmm. Instead of whining like a little school girl you should consider geting yourself trained or something in Linux. That way you do not have to pee in your pants of fear that your job is on the line. Doubtful??? How about ignorant or "head stuck in the sand" or "behind the times" or "I live in my own little world".
	report abuse vote down vote up April 08, 2009 Votes: +0

Kevin said:

Reality in facts

	Give it a rest! MS has a complete symbiotic relationship with the service industry. Fewer machines running MS means less income from the service department. The other loss is in lower software sales. When all is done and said, if the companies selling there junk offered more Linux they would have to lay off techs, and settle for less income.
	report abuse vote down vote up April 05, 2009 Votes: +0

Nkosi said:

Re: Where do you get your facts???

	I could ask you the same thing. Can you back up any of your wild assertions?
	report abuse vote down vote up April 03, 2009 Votes: +0

Dubious said:

Doubtful what are you saying?

Please do not say what you`ve just sad on this post in public. You will ambarrass yourself and the company you work for. Don`t take Microsoft propaganda and pon in of as consensus in the business community. My niece is using a laptop from Incredible connection that runs on Linux and we only folked R3000 where an equivalent laptop -same spec. , from the same store - that runs Vista is R4500 and you say Linux is expensive. That`s ludicrous. Have you seen or used UBuntu lately? Check your facts son.

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April 03, 2009 Votes: +0

Doubtful said:

Where do you get your facts???

This sounds like complete rubbish. They probably asked a bunch of CEOs who have heard the linux catch phrase.

Our company is looking at linux, but only to replace some of the unix servers.

It has widely been accepted in business community that linux is far more expensive to run than windows. Developers are usually around 3x more than windows developers and the lack of a decent IDE makes development take twice as long.

In the desktop support space, linux engineers cost 5x more than windows desktop support and you usually require more linux desktop support as the software tends to be less intuitive and with poor help.

Ubuntu is a complete joke and that's the real mainstream distro for desktop.

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April 02, 2009 Votes: +0

Joe Liddy said:

Doubtful full of it

	Your entire post is an unsubstantiated crock of shit. When you are old enough to work, then you may be exposed to "computers". Ask an adult.
	report abuse vote down vote up April 02, 2009 Votes: +0

mistermeister said:

Are you serious?

	I see that you`ve been reading Microsoft`s "Get the Facts" brochures again. You should tell this to the Gendarmerie Nationale who saved an estimated 50 million Euros by switching to OpenOffice and Ubuntu. Does Microsoft pay you by the word to write this drivel?
	report abuse vote down vote up April 02, 2009 Votes: +0

Withoutadoubt said:

Getting facts straight

Doubtful, you have read too much Microsoft documentation! I think that there is a lot of people that wished that what you said was true. None more so than Microsoft! You can just look at the salary surveys to see the difference in pay.
It sure is your loss if you have not yet seen the benefit and freedom that is part of the open source movement.
What is true is the hold that MS have on the wholesale market. You cannot buy a mid-range laptop in this country without having to pay Microsoft for the privilege. If you can convince them that you do not want a Microsoft operating system, the machine is MORE expensive without MS than with it. Maybe you are referering to this phenomena of open source being more expensive! Microsoft seem to have agreements with the wholesalers whereby they will not sell hardware without Microsoft on it. This anti-competitive strategy and loyal fans like yourself are what is still keeping MS in the market. What is heartening is that it seems that people are beginning to realize that maybe there IS an alternative.

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April 02, 2009 Votes: +0

Metelo said:

OP sounds uninformed

How do you come up with these?

Assuming users with little IT skills, my experience is that it is a lot easier to support a Linux desktop user than a Windows desktop user. Usually I get about 1/10 of the requests from linux users than Windows.

I don`t think the cost of supprot for Linux or Windows is that different. Salary in New York indicates less than 10K (anbout 7%) difference from a linux and a windows admin. And the Linux guy can hanlde about 10 times more users based on my experience.

Moreover, updates are much simpler to roolout on Linux than on Windows.

Not a developer, so I can`t comment on the development code. But Gambas. QT, Kdevelop and Eclipse seem pretty neat to me as a hobbyist. I tend to like it better than old Visual studio or Delphi versions (I haven`t bought anything new on those because of the cost).

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April 02, 2009 Votes: +0

Tweedle Dee said:

Linux more expensive than Windows?

	We have cut our computing expenses by 65% (millions) by moving from Windows. We spend zero on antiviruses and firewalls. That sounds like Linux is cheap.
	report abuse vote down vote up April 02, 2009 Votes: +0