The Economist makes three technology predictions for 2008, two of which concern web surfing and the third of which concerns everyone, whether they surf the web or not. The Economist’s third prediction is that the technology world will open up:
The embrace of “openness†by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we’ll see more of in 2008….
Pundits agree: neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs. With open-source software maturing fast, Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL, Evolution, Pidgin and some 23,000 other Linux applications available for free seem more than ready to fill that gap. By some reckonings, Linux fans will soon outnumber Macintosh addicts. Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud.
Well, I agree that Linux is making impact on OS industry, especially desktops, year by year and day by day. But the Economist says that it is Ubuntu that is driving this impact !!! I understand that now that Dell comes with Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is really a very big player and contributor, again in desktops segment, it is not only Ubuntu that is making this happen, as stated in the article. Other major players are out there, too, such as Red Hat and Novell SUSE, which are present in both desktop and server segments.