Reasons for popularity of Linux in Europe
 

Hi,

I'm researching the reasons for Linux's popularity in Europe. I'd like to know why it does so well there (especially in France, Germany and Spain) and not in the United States, or in my country for that matter, Australia. What is the European attitude to Open Source? And what drives uptake of Linux there, particularly in Government departments?

Thanks for your help.

Cost I would think is the main factor. Linux can run on old as well as new hardware. It can be simple, or it can be very bleeding edge. In short, Linux is only limited by one's imagination. Support is readily available for free in a lot of cases. Paid support for Enterprise Class installs is readily available as well.

The really biggie - the ability to modify to whatever you need or just want. And if you break it, its easily put back together.

Why do you say it doesn't do well in the US and Australia ?

I should clarify. I meant that Linux doesn't seem to do as well in the USA and Australia as in Europe. I might be wrong, but that is my impression from my initial research.

In France, Germany and Spain Linux seems to have caught on, particularly in the public sector. And I'd like to find out why. A friend sells computers with Linux pre-installed and he commissioned this research.

Microsoft controls the market in the USA. It comes preinstalled on computers. Most games are made for Windows, which is another big reason why Windows does better.

I really think cloud computing is going to change things though. Google and Canonical are going to be big players in it.

Five years from now should be interesting, as long as the ISP's don't win with bandwidth caps and kill net neutrality in the USA.

Edit: Of course there is Apple to. The BSD based version of Microsoft.

None of the corporates that I've worked in Aus have had no linux hosts. I generally find RHEL and SuSE are the dominant flavours, a lot of gov have SuSE due to previous eDirectory installations. I think linux on x86 is becoming more prevalent because it's used as a cheap replacement for proprietary unix systems.

You'll find that there won't be much in the way of advertising budget for linux so it quite often doesn't appear on Joh Blogs' radar.

my2c

This is also in Europe.


Kind regards