I'm doing a research paper on the growth of Linux for one of my classes.

1. I'm looking at how Linux has grown in the server, database, security tools market in the last few years, especially in the corp. environment.

2. I'm also looking at why Linux hasn't taken over the desktop environment in the corp. environment.

Now, I am a long time Linux user (since 2000) and have seen it make incredible leaps and bounds (KDE and Gnome and some of the other desktops along with the new distros keep blowing my mind!!!). So you know I'm sold on Linux, but my teacher isn't.

So basically I'm looking for white papers, website, or whatever information that could help me out with this paper.

Yes, I have done some research, but there is so much information out there.

thanks

you might find some interesting parts in `The Art of Unix Programming` [ESR]; http://counter.li.org/ has some good statistics.

See http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ to hear what Microsoft has to say about Linux (especially, you should read I and II)--resume: they're really, really scared.

The Register has (from time to time) stories about how well GNU/Linux is doing--for example, something like "Munich city migrates to GNU/Linux" (I can't remember the exact words, but the plot is the same).

out of pure curiousity, I'd like to hear what other good source for that kind of information there is.

Hope I've been helpful,

Jonas Kölker

Here is a website that is dedicated to the growth of the desktop

Linux Desktop

But there is so much information out there, the hard part is sorting it all out so it is meaningful.

I asked my friend who used to be the former Data Center Director at a large pharmacutical and this is what I got:

"Well I can tell you for the large corporate enviroment the answer is easy. its takes time and money and training. And lost time for support and trainign equals more money lost. The cost of MS software to a massive corporation becomes insignificant when compared to other expenses. its easier to roll it out for a smaller company because there is less cost involved and it actually could pay off. However in the day and age of large companies consisting over 1000 employees and almost 1.5 computers an employee the roll out time and costs are massive. According to the latest reports a computer outage for the company for 8 hours would cost the company well over ten million dollars. That is a lot of money. Rolling out a new OS with the training that would be needed and the amount of time to port all software over and the costs of getting new custom software already designed around Wndows 2000 to a Linux OS is massive."

http://news.com.com/IDC+Linux+PC+sal...3-5492399.html

International Data Corporation is a pretty respectable source. Good luck on the paper.

I love to see this exact thread on 2 linux forums

Here are some of the things I've checked out so far and might use in the research


Linux growth with Oracle

Linux/IBM White Papers

Circut City Moving to Linux

City of Munich moving to Linux (This is pretty well known)

CIO Mag: Moving to Linux

LUGOD: Has many urls of companies moving to Linux

Looks like there isn't one website with this info on it, but this is a start, I'm sure I'll be checking back later to let you all know how it goes.


thanks to all...

Yes they do, but it looks like it costs some $$$ to get at their research.

I'm not sure if the University I go to subscribes to their services or not, but I am going to check.

thanks

Ya, you need $$$ to get at the source of the research unfortunately. I just used CNET as the source, because CNET is really just reporting the IDC's findings anyways.