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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

For context:

"In twenty years everything has become Linux. I have a music system that is entirely Linux-based. I have a video streaming and TV watching system that is entirely Linux-based. I wouldn't be surprised if every flat screen television I have is also Linux-based. The laptop and the desktop my wife uses to do her online banking and email is Linux. My phone is Linux, and my son's tablet PC is Linux..."

So his family uses Linux and they've apparently won. That's like Steve Ballmer saying his kid use Zune so they won the MP3 wars.

With that said Linux has become the most popular Unix variant by a large margin -- but who hasn't noticed? It's been years in the making, well telegraphed, with thousands of articles written about it.

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I believe his point is that Linux has deeply pervaded practically everything except end-user PCs, and that we should recognize that this is really a big success even if it's not the holy grail of the "Linux desktop".

Not quite like Steve Ballmer saying Windows won because his kid uses a Zune. Linux will be in almost every advanced home appliance and/or consumer electronic you buy, whether you know it or not; Windows is on a very small handful of embedded devices manufactured by Microsoft (with the exception of Windows mobile OSes and of course, PCs).

You're forgetting most of the enterprise software market and a significant portion (15%) of all web servers in the world. Why do we always have to be so adversarial when it comes to choice of software? The Microsoft stack works great in the areas where is is popular, and the .NET library and the related development tools are excellent.

I'm not forgetting those, they just aren't relevant to the discussion. "deeply pervade" != "exclusive option"

But I think you would be surprised by the amount of consumer electronic devices that run linux. My Toshiba TV runs linux, and it doesn't have a DVR or anything like that. None of those fancy widgets and internet connectivity. Just a plain up TV running linux.

Can you get at the Linux on devices like this? Could you, say, install a MythTV front end, or run Doom on it?

Just curious.

[It's not that I don't believe you, just curious] .. how do you know it runs Linux?

Well, I can't speak for the parent, but my Panasonic Viera TV had a little note in the on-screen menu about software licenses with a URL (and also the complete text of the GPL). I downloaded it and it included a Linux kernel. I have no idea which part runs Linux (the whole thing, or just the part that reads jpegs off of the SD cards) or if there is any good way to get a shell...

As for me, a nmap scan of my Sony TV shows that it runs a Linux kernel in the 2.6.9 - 2.6.28 range. It's likely just used for the Internet functionality and perhaps for the on-screen UI. Port 12345 is open and responds to telnet, but it's password protected and I've never been able to determine what the password would be.

He's one of the guys who was around when linux was still someones graduate studies project.

He sees Linux as the underdog.

For the underdog, merely becoming part of the mass market plurality is a Victory.

For a billion dollar company like Microsoft getting a new product pushed out by major manufacturers is simply par for course.

We won because said Steve Ballmer has/would have to go out of his way just to avoid having a Linux kernel somewhere in his house. Now with that hyperbole pushed there it'd be interesting to see how true this is. Furnishing a full rich house with common appliances how likely are you to have one or more Linux kernel? FOSS in general?

Panasonic's TVs have FreeBSD in them because some high-up execs are afraid of the GPL after some other device maker was sued over some GPL violation. Just a bit of trivia.

My Panasonic TV runs Linux and has the GPL available from an on screen menu.

I don't remember when they switched. Perhaps a year ago, maybe more. The development models we're working with all have FreeBSD.

With that said Linux has become the most popular Unix variant by a large margin

Nah, OSX is Unix remember.

Macs don't outnumber embedded devices though.

No, but iOS is a derivation of OS X, so you have to take all the iDevices into account too. Probably Linux still has the numbers.

Android devices alone are enough to more than offset all iOS devices.

http://mashable.com/2011/01/31/android-most-popular-platform...

Even were that not the case, the consumer handheld market is dwarfed by the rest of the embedded market.

You're linking to a chart that only talks about handsets when it comes to iOS, and ignores the iPod touch and the iPad. It was written in January and a good chunk of the iOS devices sold have been sold since.

According to Apple, at the time of WWDC, iOS was the largest mobile operating system, across all devices (using that standard since you said "all iOS devices") with approximately %44 market share to androids %35 market share.

Of course it is difficult to know for sure, because so many sources of stats only count phones (ignoring the iPad and iPod touch) and the stats for android are not very clear either with many manufacturers shipping large quantities of android tablets that have not, apparently, been selling thru to customers.

Ah, well in that case: "Even were that not the case, the consumer handheld market is dwarfed by the rest of the embedded market."

My guess is that even if 44% is 'all iOS' and android matches only to 35% of that, the remaining '9%' of iOS devices plus all OSX installs are dwarfed by the remainder of all (non-android) linux installs, which I think was the original point.

Out of curiosity, I wonder what OS Apple's embedded devices use, such as the wifi access points?

I'd be very surprised if there are more OS X installations than Linux installations (or even close for that matter).

Linux runs more servers, more phones, and more embedded devices (set top boxes, routers, GPS's, etc). OS X is limited to Apple products, which, while popular, are not nearly as pervasive.

> Linux has become the most popular Unix variant by a large margin

Really? I thought that was OS X / iOS.

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