Red Herring magazine (yes, it still exists) has several articles in the August 21st issue commemorating the 15 year anniversary of Linux. Linus Torvalds first posted information about his open source operating system on usenet just 15 years ago, the same year that the world-wide web started. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Linux and the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python) have become the dominant platform for Web applications.
Linux has continued to be the fastest growing server operating system in recent years. According to Gartrer, it grew at 35% in 2005, to about $7 billion, outstripping the growth rate of Windows by a wide margin. While Linux has not established itself on the desktop in any signficant volume, there are signs that even that could change as Ubuntu continues to grow quickly and as the strength of online applications trumps the need for desktop compatibility. In other words, once all your applications are browser based, do you even care what operating system you're running?
The issue has a number of excellent stories on Linux, it's impact in asia and profiles on companies such as Red Hat, IBM and MySQL as well as the "open source 2.0" up-and-comers.
- Red Herring: Q&A with Linus Torvalds
- Red Herring: Database Hit, Caution for RedHat
- Red Herring: Big Blue Marble, Open Source 2.0
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