Linux Going Mainstream

[EzInKy]

Found this article linked to from slashdot.

excerpt:

Linux and open source are at the heart of today's computing technology. Deal with it.

Sometimes people don't know when a revolution has happened until afterwards. Then, the historians tell us that 2004 was the year that open source started to become computing's mainstream.

Sounds hard to believe? Well, IDC analyst Al Gillen recently said that "Linux is no longer a fringe player. Linux is now mainstream." He made that observation because IDC's research predicts that Linux's overall revenue for desktops, servers and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008.

That's a lot of money, even by Bill Gates' piggybank standards.

This is encouraging news for those who have been trying to encourage people to move away from being locked into a monopolistic operating system and can herald in new era of healthy competition for the software marketplace. Since Linux is distributed under the GPL, anyone can package the system with other Open Source software and profit by providing service, support, convenient packaging, and custom programming to suit the needs of customers.

 

[DaEezT]

In my opinion Linux is mainstream, and thus really desktop ready, as soon as the majority of the hardware vendors start making decent drivers for it.