Timeline Chart or Graph of GNU/Linux Adoption? 49
DNAman asks: "I'm preparing a presentation for the use of GNU/Linux in the biological sciences. One recurring comment that comes up is 'Linux is not mainstream, why should we be interested in it?' While we could debate the definition of mainstream, I think it would be more productive to illustrate the trend in use / adoption of GNU/Linux as a platform. Do any of you have decent data sources for this type of trend?"
Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:1)
Probably because some of the apps I want use have problems with Cygwin. Have you got libsndfile to complete make check successfully with Cygwin? If so, the maintainer wants to hear about what you did.
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:2)
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:1)
Which movie companies are in favor of short copyrights?
Non-profit film restoration organizations. They often cannot license old, decaying films from MPAA member studios.
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who says something like this is just looking to argue (oops, I have been trolled). Computing platforms have been rapidly changing since the invention of the computer. I would peg full upgrade cycles at around five years on average (and interestingly this is how long it takes to fully depreciate the value of a computer purchase according to the IRS). This means that about every five years you are fully reinvesting in new hardware
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:2, Interesting)
We regularly use software that's 20 years old. It's essential that any software we use produce the correct results every time we use it. Bogus results for any reason invalidates your work and reduces your credibility as a scientist. It regularly takes software 5-7 years just to get to the point where we're confident in it. The idea that we'd be replacing all of our software every 5 years is laughable.
Ask anyone in the financial ind
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the rest of what you said, the types of s
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:2, Interesting)
There were comments about Windows on ATM's, and how insecure ATM's already are, not very long ago on slashdot.
Question -- If running naked through the street with my hair on fire has always worked for me, why would I want to change?
Or how about this: Using 30-year-old encryption for everything my bank does works. Why would I want to try something new?
Doh! Because new things can be better!
Why would I want a new job? Maybe I get payed more! Why would I want a new OS? Maybe it will run faster / n
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:3, Interesting)
But they are not ALWAYS better. In all the cases you specify there is a better way of doing things, but sometimes the new way is not a better way.
Thats what his point is. Is adopting something new better and is it worth all the trouble?
Re:Youi need to ask yourself... (Score:1)
Be open-minded -- both to the fact that there may be something new and better, and there may not.
*sniff* (Score:2)
Linux is not mainstream. (Score:5, Interesting)
Science is not the most popular way of looking at the world, why should we be interested.
I'm not sure that numbers are what you need.
Re:Linux is not mainstream. (Score:2)
Re:Linux is not mainstream. (Score:1)
You can't just say "Because it's different". That's retarted.
You can, though, say "Because Athlon XP consistantly benchmarks faster than Pentium IV for the same speeds -- and they're cheaper."
Numbers do matter.
Unbelievable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainstream is for the unwashed masses (or maybe the washed masses, depending on the accuracy of the Linux geek stereotype). Mainstream is for people who want to surf the web and forward letters to everyone on their email list. If they never see how their computer works, so much the better; and mainstream continually works toward that goal.
Linux, on the other hand, is developed by people who have a similar mindset to scientists. It's a system that allows and encourages experimentation, and reinforces the truth that there is never only one way to do something. There are no artificial limits set to prevent you from getting uncomfortable because you're not sure what you're looking at.
It's also the closest thing to an objective OS you can get. If results are called into question, you're out of luck with Windows: "Oh, it must have been a glitch. Let me reboot this...." With Linux you can figure out what's going on behind the scenes.
I can't imagine scientists who willingly reject going a different direction from mainstream. Science is not mainstream.
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2)
The idea that something is better because it is not mainstream is simple elitism and it is as thoughtless a bias as any other. "Men are better than women because they are men." "Ford cars are better than GM cars because they are from Ford."
It's also the closest thing to an objective OS you can get. If results are called into question, you're out of luck with Windows: "Oh, it must have been a glitch. Let me reboot this...." With Linux you can figure out what's going on behind the scenes.
I'm sorry, that
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2, Insightful)
the code will give the same result no matter what operating system it is running under.
Unless the code is being timed. A scientific program has little use if an inefficient scheduler and an antivirus program eat all the CPU cycles.
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2)
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2)
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2)
What world do you live in where all scientists are not pure-truth fanatics.
And how is Linux in tune with the "truth"? Linux has a philosophy of community and sharing, but I don't see how that is the "truth".
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, no. That is not FUD. Nor is looking at TCO or ROI. The area that the oringal poster should be looking at is the systems that need 24x7 uptime while doing huge computations. That would be hollywood and biological sciences.
Hollywood does a large amount of rendering on movie frames and these need to come as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Titantic was one fo the first to switch (google is your friend). In addtion, Dreamworks and all the major stud
Re:Unbelievable. (Score:2)
GCC is for example a fairly mainstream compiler.
These are *BIOLOGOICAL* Scientists (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not implying that they are dumb or anything but just that these are not COMPUTER Scientists.
When a video technican goes home to tape a tv show, does he want something which can do it in a few buttons or does he want to use something like he has at work and manually control the audio/balance etc?
>With Linux you can figure out what's going on behind the scenes.
Comptuers are a tool for research in this case, they don't want to play around with it.
A good example in the chemical research area is http://ariadne.mse.uiuc.edu/Info/Chime/chime_linu
Do you want to play around with things or do you just want it to work and be fully supported by the company who developed it?
And the old argument "Not there? Well program it!" is a negative here because these people want to research in their area, not research/code in computer science.
In reality, having their standard tools mainstream is good.
Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is, nobody will ever respect a theory untill it has undergone peer review. Other scientists scrutinize the theory, and try to disprove it. If they fail to disprove it, then it becomes accepted as the best theory.
In Linux, it's much the same. Somebody writes a program, and in doing so, claims that their program is the best way to solve that given problem. Other programmers will scrutinize the code, and try to find better ways of solving the problem. They can develop entirely new ways that replace the old ways, or they can incrementally improve the current ways. Either way, the end result is a higher quality of code, in a general sense.
I mean, Linux Just Makes Sense (TM) for the scientific community. They both heavily rely on peer review to ensure that things are reliable and trustworthy.
Would anybody trust a scientific theory that was developed by secretive scientists who won't publish what experiments they did to come up with their ideas? If we can't verify that what they did was the right way to do things, how can we trust their results? Of course you don't, which is the same reason that proprietary software is so crappy. You can't see their methods, only their results, and the results are often sub-par.
Re:Easy. (Score:1)
And, honestly, depending on who'd be using it, Linux may well not be the best solution. It's much easier to FUBAR a Linux machine, and often harder to use, especially if the user is both computer inexperienced, and has only used Windows or a Mac.
Linux may make an emotional sense... and its
hmmm (Score:2)
In fact both free and non-free software follow this model with whole new applications competing.
So I'm not really disagreeing that competitive processes are at work, just that they are not the sole preserve of free software
--
Numbers won't help you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any such sources are inherently biased against linux.
The standard way for measuring the market share of a given operating system is to look at the vendor's sales. This has tons of problems.
First, linux ISOs can be freely downloaded without any sale taking place, so lots of people can (and do) install linux without showing up on any company's sales figures.
Second, even if you buy a boxed set of RedHat 9, you can install that on as many computers as you want. So if RedHat says they sold x copies of their OS, that could easily represent 2x or 3x installations of the OS.
Third, all new PCs come with Windows preloaded, and count towards Microsoft's market share. Even if the first thing you do with your new PC is install linux on it, it's still a Windows box, as far as Microsoft's sales figures will show.
So, sales figures are totally unreliable in gauging anybody's market share. You could turn to Netcraft, which is amazingly accurate... except that it only cares about servers. Desktops don't even show up at all.
If you want numbers, you're totally SOL. Even if you found the numbers, they don't mean anything. Ok, I'll tell you the numbers right now: Linux has 50% of the market. I pulled that number out of my ass, but it's about as reliable as you'll find anywhere else.
an answer... (Score:5, Informative)
http://counter.li.org/ [li.org]
"linux usage" is hard to gauge. there's no central licensing authority (despite a certain moronic company's attempt). of course that argument is rather silly as closed software companies have to guess at their user base. for instance i count as 2 solaris users and around 10 windows users if you go by licenses purchased but i don't use either of those os's.
I hear that Netcraft is pretty good as a source (Score:2, Informative)
Find out about usage at your institution! (Score:3, Insightful)
This one's easy... (Score:5, Interesting)
All you have to do if you want to show the scientific community's interest in Linux, is to show the scientific community's use of Linux: The 500 most powerful computer installations in the world... [top500.org] many of which run Linux, including the the 2nd fastest system in the world [slashdot.org] (and all of which are used by members of the scientific community).
You could also use these simple searches on slashdot [slashdot.org] (here is another [slashdot.org]) and google [google.com] to collect some very interesting data.
For example, here's a nice tidbit [slashdot.org] that may be the exact community you're looking to impress.
Granted, these do not give you a timeline, but it should be enough data for you to be able to ask them "Why are we not using Linux?".
Re:This one's easy... (Score:2, Interesting)
yields (with a little hand-scrubbing):
3 Linux Networx 7634.00 Lawrence Livermore National
57 Linux Networx 1007.00 Argonne National Laboratory
78 Linux Networx 840.50 Los Alamos National Laboratory
107 Linux Labs 680.30 American Museum of Natural
296 Linux Networx 390.20 Fraunhofer ITWM
356 Linux Networx 347.00 Boeing Shared Services
407 Linux Networx 295.90 Boein
Re:This one's easy... (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:2)
IMO, the great thing about free software is that it doesn't exist to win popularity contest but to serve the interests of the public good. It is also a testament to the generosity of developers. (And to
Sales Figures (Score:2)
I would personally be interested in that figure though, and I am sure that commercial software developers would be interested too. If someone payed $50-100 for a boxed version of Linux, then there is a strong possibility that they would also pay for commercial software on that distribution. You could probably only count about 6 months to a years worth of purchaces as a valid population, since of upgrading. Does anybody know how man
"Scientific Applications on Linux" page... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not 'hard numbers', but then, a lot of people have already pointed out that hard numbers may not REALLY be what you want. (After all, since when is "Everybody's doin' it" a persuasive argument for a good scientist?)
On the other hand, I see there are still lots of applications listed at the Scientific Applications on Linux [kachinatech.com] site and the NCBI Toolbox of Bioinformatics code [nih.gov] compiles and runs just fine on my linux box, and BioPerl [bioperl.org], BioJava [biojava.org], and BioPython [biopython.org] all run just fine on Linux (there are even a couple of fledgling BioPHP projects out just getting started out there, which will obviously also work.
Disclaimer - both of the semi-active "BioPHP" type projects that I know of - Here [bioinformatics.org] and here [sourceforge.net] - were started independently by individual amateurs...and one of them is me. Both projects are still in the early stages (Genephp has more code available at the moment) and have different development approaches, but are slowly working on trying to combine development towards a 'formal' set of "BioPHP" modules. Blatant plug - if you are interested in helping with friendly advice or actual development or testing, please join the mailing list which both projects use [bioinformatics.org])
Sources of Data (Score:1)