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A few weeks ago, I read, but was not convinced by an article in MacOPINION called "Linux, Macintosh and the Global Future". Basically Del Miller's conjecture is that Linux will bloom in China and India because people there will want to save a few bucks on the PC purchase. Yeah yeah sure I thought....
http://www.macopinion.com/columns/engine/03/07/21
Today it all changed for me
"About 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, says Linux distributor Red Hat, up from nothing in January."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5062058.html
Up from N O T H I N G in january!
This is significant.
It gets better..
"analysts say the bigger worry for Microsoft is the growing use of Linux among India's pool of an estimated 400,000 software developers, many of whom churn out code for giants such as General Motors and American Express. "
So how does this "save Apple".
Short answer: X11.
Longer answer: OSX can ride on this wave. Applications written for Linux are so much easier to port to OSX. Often just a few tweeks and a recompile. And this is possible because of OSX's X11 support and the standard Unix libraries included in Darwin.
I am work with people who grind away at porting a big windows application to Solaris and Linux and it aint pretty.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why X11 is going to be included in Panther?
Anyone else see Linux as Apple's hope?
http://www.macopinion.com/columns/engine/03/07/21
Today it all changed for me
"About 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, says Linux distributor Red Hat, up from nothing in January."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5062058.html
Up from N O T H I N G in january!
This is significant.
It gets better..
"analysts say the bigger worry for Microsoft is the growing use of Linux among India's pool of an estimated 400,000 software developers, many of whom churn out code for giants such as General Motors and American Express. "
So how does this "save Apple".
Short answer: X11.
Longer answer: OSX can ride on this wave. Applications written for Linux are so much easier to port to OSX. Often just a few tweeks and a recompile. And this is possible because of OSX's X11 support and the standard Unix libraries included in Darwin.
I am work with people who grind away at porting a big windows application to Solaris and Linux and it aint pretty.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why X11 is going to be included in Panther?
Anyone else see Linux as Apple's hope?