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As we say happy birthday to Linus Torvalds today, he should be a happy chap because Linux is now the dominating OS on consumer computing devices. According to IDC and Goldman Sachs, as reported by the Seattle Times, Android (which is based on Linux) runs on 42% of all consumer computing devices.
How can that be?
Visopsys (VISual OPerating SYStem) is an alternative operating system for PC-compatible computers, developed almost exclusively by one person, Andy McLaughlin, since its inception in 1997.
Andy is a 30-something programmer from Canada, who, via Boston and San Jose ended up in London, UK, where he spends much of his spare time developing Visopsys,
We had the great fortune to catch up with Andy via email and ask him questions about Visopsys, why he started the project in the first place, and where is it going in the future.
Apple has been dominating the tablet market ever since the company released the iPad, so calling the current situation a tablet war might be a bit overly dramatic. But things are heating up. The number of Android-based tablets is growing, and now even Google itself has joined the fray with the Nexus 7.
What is the current standing in this “tablet war,” and how does it differ across the world? Luckily, we can get an idea by using data from StatCounter. Their data is based on web usage (visitor stats from 3+ million websites), so it will represent the tablets actively used to surf the web.
Today it’s 31 years since Microsoft finalized the purchase of 86-DOS, also known as QDOS, or Quick and Dirty Operating System. This was the operating system that would be installed on the first IBM PC, introduced in August 1981.
The rest is history, as they say. If you would want to relive the good – ahem – old days of DOS before it was even called MS-DOS, here’s how you can.
In Finland, almost 8% of mobile web browsing is done on Windows Phone devices.
That makes Finland the number one country for Windows Phone. In contrast, Microsoft’s smartphone OS only has 0.53% of the worldwide mobile web traffic.
But which country is number two and how far behind Finland is it?
Do you live in a country that loves Apple’s iPad? Most of us probably think we do, but we wanted to be able to tell you for sure. So even though we have written about the iPad many times before, it’s now time for us to tackle this hotly contested topic again.
Read on to find out, which countries are the most iPad-friendly.
Perhaps you live in one of them.
Developers who want a portable computer to code on, which is thin, light, sleek and yet powerful, may now be getting another option in an ultrabook from Dell. What makes the “Sputnik” ultrabook different is that it runs Ubuntu 12.04 Linux and it’s tailor-made for developers.
Every Friday we bring you a collection of links to places on the web that we find particularly newsworthy, interesting, entertaining, and topical. We try to focus on some particular area or topic each week, but in general we will cover Internet, web development, networking, performance, security, and other geeky topics.
This week we thought you would be interested in reading about what’s been happening with Google’s Chrome OS.
Google has added functionality, like support for Google Drive, as well as a new UI, but the OS has still not gained mainstream adoption. We picked out a few articles that may help you make up your mind about where Chrome OS is headed.
In the report “Linux kernel development,” the Linux Foundation details the development of the Linux kernel by presenting fascinating statistics.
The report contains lots of amazing numbers, which together offer an insight into the tremendous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to develop the kernel, the core of the Linux OS.
We jumped head first into the report and extracted as much information as we could. Read on to get a real up-close look at the Linux kernel.
Even the most hardcore Linux fan would admit that their favorite OS has not captured more than a very small market share on personal computers. And that would include us here at Pingdom: all of our engineers and 50% of or our developers are, in fact, running Linux.
Ubuntu has enjoyed great success, and more recently Mint, as well. But Linux desktop OS doesn’t seem to be able to break free and climb above the low single digits in market share.
But that may be changing if the latest numbers are anything to go by.
