It is sometimes forgotten that GNU/Linux is more than just a desktop operating system. Linux, being a well-engineered kernel, is used extensively and also funded for its important role in several different areas of computing.

Desktop Linux has seen tremendous growth over the past few years and with this there has also been tremendous growth in number of applications relevant for desktop use available . Now most of the Linux distributions because of either space constraint or well because of licensing issue do not include many really cool applications .

IDC is reporting that Windows server growth hit 6.9 percent in Q4 2007, bringing it to 36.6 percent market share. Linux trounced Windows' growth at 11.6 percent to hit 12.7 percent market share. Microsoft owns the market, but Linux owns the future.

In the past State of Linux articles, I began to explore the areas where Linux use was growing rapidly. Most interesting were the many facets of Linux and overall OSS growth in Asia. In my article on Linux in India I reported that OSS would soon become the key factor in how 500 million children are educated.

Expanding Linux adoption beyond key vertical markets is an important driver for Red Hat Inc.'s growth, which remains steady even as one of its strongest customer sectors -- financial services -- is getting hit hard by the U.S. crisis, the company's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, said Tuesday.

An article that looks at the penetration of GNU/Linux one year ago - part 2

Year after year, industry pundits state, "This is the year of Linux," and year after year, those same pundits say, "The market is just not ready yet." So the big question here is, "Where are the Linux desktops?" For the most part, they're not anywhere.

The last few years have seen a tremendous growth in the number of BitTorrent users and the content that is available via BitTorrent. Nowadays it is no big deal if you can find a TV Show on BitTorrent before it has premiered on TV. The number of sites indexing and searching BitTorrent files have kept pace with this growth.

Linux servers posted the fifth consecutive quarter of accelerating revenue growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 19.0%, for a total of $1.8 billion in the quarter. Linux servers now represent 13.6% of all server revenue, up from 12.1% a year ago.