Sure, also this is the year of Linux? isn't it?

The year of the Linux on desktop/laptop is a fabulous myth - nothing more. Read the attached blog before posting sarcastic comments like this one.

On the other hand, Linux is pretty much everywhere other than desktop/laptop, which are becoming increasingly less relevant.

Perhaps demise is too strong a word, but decline from its status as the apex predator of the industry is more appropriate. MS is still powerful, but it is no longer the King.

Linux is irrelevant on mobiles.

Apple devices obviously don't run it, Android and ChromeOS might have Linux underneath but only expose Java, JavaScript, ANSI C/C++ lib and Android specific native APIs.

Android P could be released with a complete different kernel and only OEMs would notice, all user space apps would be kept running.

> Linux is irrelevant on mobiles

So is Windows. And on servers, Linux is the king.

The comment was in response to the sarcastic comment about The Year of Linux Desktop. I am not really debating Linux vs others here.

Actually Linux is the king on servers because it is major quality is not having to pay for licenses.

Our Java, .NET and C++ servers don't care 1 second on which OSes they are actually running.

And that is where you are horribly mistaken. Typical Java/.Net coders may not care about the underlying platform while coding, but people working with large scale real world applications do. Java/.Net may abstract away the APIs, they still have to use the underlying stack. Their performance is still dependent on the performance of the underlying stack.

I have seen the same application with drastically different performance characteristics on different platforms.

Linux is the king on the server because it has been heavily fine tuned for the server over the ages. The cost, while a factor, is not as relevant. Any company deploying large scale applications on Linux has to hire enough engineers to keep it running that the cost of Windows is largely offset. If it were just a matter of cost, we’d see more deployments of FreeBSD and the likes.

It is the same reason people stick to Java despite all its shortcomings.

We don't see BSD deployments thanks MIT licenses, which allow for companies to keep their forks and the old AT&T suit.

The only reason UNIX shops migrated to Linux was to avoid paying for workstations and migrate to Linux.

Companies like SGI dropped their UNIX and are having Linux forks, as a means to outsource development costs.

Likewise with Oracle dumping Solaris and migrating whatever is relevant to Oracle Linux.

In 100% of projects I have been involved, Linux was always chosen as means to reduce license costs, as developers do 100% of their work on Windows workstations.