Since its release 26 years ago, Linux has not only persisted–it has come to dominate every market it enters. So it came as no surprise when Top500.org revealed that Linux powers every one of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers.
Linux is the right match for the needs of the supercomputing industry because it’s immensely scalable, proven and free for anyone to use. The real strength of Linux, however, lies in the community behind it.
More than 15,000 developers have contributed to the Linux kernel over time and they are not letting up. This year we’ve seen 10,000 lines of code added each day, 2,000 modified and 2,500 removed. Linux changes 8.5 times every hour, allowing it to meet a continuously evolving array of developer needs.
While we’re elated by the community’s achievement in supercomputers, we also note heavy use of Linux in other demanding environments. Of IBM’s top mainframe customers, 90 percent run Linux. Similarly, Linux powers 90 percent of the public cloud workload. We estimate Linux has 62 percent of the embedded systems market, and earlier this year, Linux-based Android became the Internet’s most widely used operating system.
The growth of Linux shows no signs of slowing. Its success is the result of the dedication of the open source community that is committed to sharing best practices and promoting the use of Linux in areas like mainframe, HPC, and more. This has been an amazing year for Linux and open source, and we look forward to even more growth in 2018.
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- New Open Source Contributor Report from Linux Foundation and Harvard Identifies Motivations and Opportunities for Improving Software Security - 2020-12-08
