GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
by Graham Williams |
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Advocacy |
20190421 Open source software came of age when Microsoft, a long time critic of the open source community and defender of its own closed source way, changed it's views in about 2015 to finally embrace open source software and indeed to support GNU/Linux in many ways. Whilst Microsoft Windows retains the market share for desktop computing, the changed landscape for developers and particularly cloud computing has forced the hand of Microsoft and others to recognise the benefits and market demand for open source software. Indeed open source software today has significant and often unrecognised market share with GNU/Linux overtaking Windows on cloud platforms (including Microsoft's Azure). Linux also powers Android phones and Google Chrome OS making it the most widely used operating system on the planet.
The cost of GNU/Linux (it is freely available for no purchase fee to whoever wants it) is not the winning formula. In fact, the driving force has been the freedom to view, learn from, and to modify the source code, and to use the software without limitation, freely for whatever purpose we wish. We are free to do so with open source software, and through such freedom we often find that usability, reliability, security, and developerability are enhanced and become the most important issues for many users. Open source excels here.