Linux: Who got it right, who got it very wrong?
An in-depth article that looks at the uptake of Linux powered operating systems and servers.
While Linux has enjoyed a moderate rate of adoption it hasn’t quite been at the levels predicted several years ago.
In 2004, IDC predicted that growing Linux adoption would push the operating system from three percent market share to seven percent by 2008, with sales of PCs running Linux to hit US$10 billion. Even those figures paled compared to the predictions of Siemens Business Systems, which in 2003 predicted that Linux would have captured 20 percent of the enterprise desktop market by 2008. It is now 2008, and Windows is still the dominant operating system; if anything, Mac OS X has supplanted Linux as the alternative desktop of choice.
Seven percent desktop share was an ambitious target. I use Ubunutu for browsing and word processing, no problem.
Windows has so many more software options though for advanced tasks.
And Linux remains fragmented with many variants.