Is Linux Finally Beating Windows?
You have all used a personal computer that runs the Windows operating system, but how many of you have actually used Linux?
If you look at the market share of operating systems for PCs over the last few years you will see that Windows totally dominates the market. It's been that way pretty much since Windows came on the scene in 1985.
The word Microsoft became a household name and synonymous with both home computers and operating systems. In January 2019, Windows had just over an 88 percent market share. Apple's Mac operating system is next, with just over 9 percent of the share.
After that comes Linux, with just a tiny share. What might surprise you, though, is perhaps this shouldn't really be the case. We are not going to bother explaining to you what the Windows OS is, that would be almost condescending. You have all used it, and many of you probably loved the XP version, hated Vista and Windows ME and probably were not too fond of Windows 8. When Microsoft released Windows 10 it said this was the last in the line of totally new versions, it would be updated forevermore.
The point is, we have likely all gotten used to Windows. Using Windows is as familiar to most people as opening a window in your home. It's that familiarity, and of course, the fact that it comes pre-installed on many PCs you buy, that prevents some people from crossing over the scary waters of OS change towards the little-known island of Linux.
For those of you who don't know what Linux is, you can actually just go to the Linux official website and the company answers that question for you. We have done the reading, so we will paraphrase what the company said.
First of all, Linux tells us you probably do use Linux but just don't know about it. This is just one sentence from its grand opening paragraph.
It's in your phones, in your cars, in your refrigerators, your Roku devices. It runs most of the Internet, the supercomputers making scientific breakthroughs, and the world's stock exchanges.it's also just a regular operating system for your PC.
The operating system, which most people just initialize to OS, is like the brain of the machine. Without it, the machine is pretty much useless. We don't need to tell you that these systems can be very complex and we imagine most of you wouldn't be confident enough to say you know exactly everything you can do with your Windows OS. That's one reason people stick with what they know because moving to a different OS is like finding yourself in a totally new environment. you can install Linux on your computer for nothing. It is absolutely free.
Installing a Linux server is also free. This is what you need when you have a network of people that need serving. It isn't free if you need Windows server OS though. Linux makes a big deal about this, and rightly so. Who doesn't like it?Linux also says its server is so easy to run that anyone could do it.
You can read tech websites where the real computer nerds talk about this, and you will see people saying that Linux really should be ascending faster than it is. But actually, one developer said what we have just said, in that Linux is just too fragmented. He also just said the obvious in that it just hasn't gained momentum. Microsoft has a virtually unstoppable PR machine.
This is not to say, however, that Windows is bad. Not at all, and Windows 10 has been for the most part very well received. And as we said at the beginning, Windows has been part of people's lives for many years. People know what they are working with, and even though Linux offers similar alternatives a lot of people don't want to make the effort to change. There is also the case that for a long time people haven't gone over to Linux because they thought it was only for people who know a lot about computers. That using it might take some amount of computer savvy.
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