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[goldigger]

IDC's server numbers show that Windows has finally overtaken Unix in the server market, but what's even more interesting is that Linux is continuing to accelerate at double-digit growth rates.

Well, it finally happened.

After years of "Unix is sick," "Unix is dying," and "Unix is dead" headlines, Windows, according to IDC, has finally overtaken Unix as the No. 1 pre-installed server operating system.

This may come as a surprise to some people, who've assumed that Windows has been No. 1 for quite some time. Nope. Windows has been No. 2 on servers for ages.

At long, long last, however, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, "for the first time the Windows server segment modestly exceeded spending for Unix servers as customers deployed more fully configured Windows servers in support of scalable enterprise workloads and server virtualization projects."

They shouldn't break out the champagne bottles in Redmond quite yet, though.

That same report also said: "Linux servers generated $1.6 billion in quarterly revenue, the fourteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 20.8 percent. For the full year, Linux server revenues were $5.7 billion, placing it in third place for the first time from an operating system perspective as customers continued to expand the role of Linux servers into an increasingly wider array of commercial and technical workloads."

Heh, heh.

Yes, Windows is still far ahead at this point in terms of sales dollars. But if I were an investor, I'd take Linux's year-to-year growth of 20.8 percent over Windows's 4.7 percent any day.

Besides, since Linux is far cheaper to deploy than Windows, I strongly suspect that Linux's growth in terms of number of installations, instead of dollars, beats Windows soundly.

If you look closer at the numbers, you'll also see that the top dogs in terms of hardware factory revenue are IBM and HP. What do they have in common? Both of them are distancing themselves from their proprietary versions of Unix, AIX, and HP-UX respectively, in favor of Linux on the server.

Which hardware company fell the hardest? It's a tie between Fujitsu and Sun. Fujitsu runs a mix of its own systems, such as BS2000/OSD-BC, Solaris, and Windows. Sun, although it flirts with Linux, still gets most of its declining dollars from Solaris.

Now, none of these companies is going to be going out of business anytime soon. But, it doesn't take a Wall Street financial analyst to see that Linux, and the companies that support it, are on a remarkably fast growth rate.

Enjoy your stay at the top, Microsoft. You won't be there for long.

[Billy41684]

Originally Posted by goldigger

Enjoy your stay at the top, Microsoft. You won't be there for long.

Well said! I for one can't wait for that day to come.

[John]

Those server stats probably include office servers as well, where active directory and domain controllers are used in many office environments, even quite small offices. If you take out office use and count only web servers, I would guess that Linux is still top dog.

I could see MS not being on top very long in the server world, but overall counting all computer installs (workstation + servers), I think it will be a long time, if ever, before another company takes down MS.

I'm still "stuck" on MS on my workstation and have been saying forever that I plan to try out something like ubuntu to see if I can switch to that... but just never seem to have the time on it.

[Billy41684]

Originally Posted by John

...I think it will be a long time, if ever, before another company takes down MS...

I have to disagree. MicroSoft's licensing fee's are killing them slowly. More and more people are realizing that OOS (Open Source Software) exists and are converting over little by little. Hell, look at FireFox! It takes up 33% of the internet browsers today. Last year it was just under 10%. FireFox is just the beginning of this revolution. People get curious and start exploring other OOS applications, and some even make over to the OSS operating systems like Linux. Everyone I know I have converted over to Linux (except for 3 people, which 1 of them converted to Mac OS X which is now based on *nix).

It also doesn't help MicroSoft that such OSes as Ubuntu & PCLinuxOS are becoming more and more popular among the "everyday person". To be honest, the only thing lacking in the *nix world is gaming support. I can no longer say *nix lacks hardware support because, frankly more and more hardware are working out-of-the-box, and those hardwares which do not are only a few steps away from working. Getting help online is fast and simple now as the Linux community is growing at an alarming rate too!

To be totally honest, I would not be surprised if Windows is 2nd place by the year 2020. Will Linux overtake MicroSoft? I sure hope so, but OS X is doing some surprising things as well. so who knows. All I know is MS is going down, and I'm going to love it when they do!

[John]

I would probably be just as anti MS if they were still developing the Win95 product line. I'm glad that ended with Microsoft ME.

I suppose Linux is doing to MS what MS did to Netscape back in the day.

Microsoft still has a lot of options going into the future, though, and the enormous amount of cash to back them up with whatever they do.

MS could release a free version of their software. They could acquire a linux distributor and build some sort of hybrid system with the linux kernel and compatibility with MS applications. It will be very interesting to see what they do.

MS still needs to worry about Google as well. If Google was to acquire something like Ubuntu, that could spell major trouble for MS on a much shorter timescale...