The Open Source Census rolls forward, but I'm not sure how far it has gone as yet. In the summary, it shows just 789 machines scanned (as of the time that I read it). That's not a bad start, but it is just a start. As such, it's hard to read much into the data.
To be more representative, it will need to get more responses from those employed by larger companies. With just 22 percent of respondents employed by a company with more than 1,000 people, it's clear that the Census skews toward SMBs (small and midsize businesses, with an emphasis on the "S").
It will also need a more representative geographic spread. For example, France, which always shows up as second or third, in terms of open-source adoption in every open-source survey I've seen, apparently doesn't even scrape 2 percent of participants. The United Kingdom, by contrast, is third, behind Canada, despite its dismal commercial open-source penetration.
So the data appears to be highly imperfect, but it will get better as more participate.
The data on Ubuntu's amazing adoption, however, is nigh impossible to dispute, looking at the data.
... Read moreChildren in rural areas of Brazil are about to get their geek on with a slew of new Debian-based Linux machines, as Softpedia notes:
Schools from Brazil will receive about 3000 Debian GNU/Linux based computers, with four multimedia terminals, as the Ministry of Education is willing to buy them for 3000 rural schools. The computers will have compatible printers and 36 months contractual support. This is not the first time when the Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying Linux-based computers, as about a month ago they acquired 90,000 Debian GNU/Linux PCs, with compatible wireless cards, wireless routers and laser printers. These were installed in 9000 brazilian schools!
It's interesting that the RFP called for Debian-based machines. Not generic Linux. And certainly not generic desktops. Clearly the government has had a good experience with Debian.
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