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November 01, 2011

Why is the Popularity of Linux Surging?

It's getting harder and harder to have anything to do with computers anymore, let alone web hosting, without knowing about the Linux operating system.  Naturally, this puts anyone who's still in the dark in the position of being afraid to ask for fear of looking uninformed.

Borrowing the philosophy of “no stupid questions,” if you are one of these people who is wondering why Linux continues to grow in popularity, the below is a quick primer.

It's all about the open-source

Linux is an operating system that was developed starting in the mid-80s and initially released in the early-90s, and which has exploded in popularity over about the last ten years.  The idea that fueled its creation was the concept of open source software.

To understand the popularity of Linux, then, you need to understand that.  Again, no stupid questions.  “Open source” means that the programming code that creates it is available to be read, modified, and redistributed by anyone free of permission.

For a long time in the IT community there was an intense debate over the superiority of this approach to that of the closed-source method.   To be fair, this debate has not yet ended today: proponents of the “closed-source” model still point out the negative financial incentive of free software combined with the ability of hackers to see how to get in.

How open source becomes high quality

In spite of these objections open source projects like Linux have thrived for reasons that are good to understand.  Let's say that your Mac Pro (let's not always pick on Microsoft, shall we?) has some serious security bug that you just noticed.  You will need to wait from the company for an “official” patch.  Well, the bug may be tied to a part of the R&D that is on vacation, or was fired last week and everyone else there is trying to decipher.  The point is, you have only a small group of people working on it, people who are vulnerable to being hampered by all of the roadblocks that come from working at a major corporation.

When the same happens on your Linux workstation, you can ask a community with so many people that there's always someone awake.  Then your problem can be worked on by anyone, with discussion of it open for all to see.  Anyone can also solve the problem (including you, if you are so motivated), meaning that oftentimes you will get multiple proposed patches to download.  The positive incentive here is that if you are having the problem, everyone else could potentially as well.

The overall result

This means that Linux eventually develops a number of clear advantages:

Lighter: No one wants a bloated operating system, but for-profit models don't have as much incentive to remove outdated and decayed features.

Secure: An army of programmers are ready to respond to any threat immediately.

Compatibility: Especially since many of the software packages that work on it are also open-source, software compatibility is high as individual programmers are able to compare coding notes on both of them.

Customization: Instead of 3 or 4 custom versions, there are as many versions of Linux as people want to program.  Literally hundreds of different distributions exist.

None of this is to indicate that Linux is perfect: like anything in life, it has its critics.  But it is clearly becoming more popular, and rapidly so.  It is an example of the success that the open source model is capable of.  If you are only familiarizing yourself with it now for the first time, it might be worth your time to look into it more.

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