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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday April 16 2015, @03:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the does-homework-suck-less-with-Linux? dept.

According to StatCounter, in September 2014, Linux usage in Malta was 1 percent. By October, usage was over 4 percent. There was a peak after Christmas and current numbers are around 5 percent.

Blogger and Linux advocate Robert Pogson has charted the numbers. He says:

Malta is one of those places where the small size allows one to see significant migrations to GNU/Linux desktop in their full glory. Notice the ascendance of GNU/Linux in the same week that school started that year. The peak usage was on Thursday, 2015-Jan-8 at 6.83% a day or two after the Christmas break ended. Even use on weekends showed dramatic growth.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @04:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @04:06AM (#171378)

    100% of Maltese users using Linux would still be pretty much 0% globally.

    1000% of Maltese users using Linux would yet still be pretty much 0% globally.

    Even 10000% of Maltese users using Linux would once more be pretty much 0% globally.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:07AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday April 16 2015, @05:07AM (#171390)

    Yes and no. Not sure if Malta is quite big enough but if any notable political subdivision were to get anything like 100% penetration top to bottom it really would change everything. Suddenly every commercial entity doing business with it would have to take that fact into account. IE only webpages are already becoming rare outside narrow niches but such a development would instantly end it outside of internal WANs. Office documents would also suddenly offer alternatives assured to be readable. And so on. The network effect that has locked Microsoft and Office into a position where they are considered unassailable by 'all right thinking people' would quickly fall apart... even faster than the mobile revolution is already challenging many of the same assumptions; but only madmen are deploying Android and iOS in corporate productivity right now so Windows/Office is still almost entirely dominate. Being forced to interop with Linux would challenge it because once the calculus became 'everything must be interchanged in a cross platform format' the lock in vanishes. Many more would suddenly be free to shift platforms and many of them would, although many would still be locked to internal systems like Exchange.

    And some lock in is probably good. I wouldn't want a sudden bandwagon away from them to destroy Microsoft and leave Google and RedHat to dominate, meet the new boss(s) which would (are) quickly become the same as the old boss. I want to see Microsoft reduced, but still a double digit player, only more like 20-30% instead of 90%. I even want to see new players. Linux under RedHat's iron rulership is in need of a new scrappy competitor.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:15AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:15AM (#171412) Journal

    100% of Maltese users using Linux would still be pretty much 0% globally.

    100% of Texas students would still be pretty much 0% globally.
    However, when looking what the Texas School Board does with the "controversy" to the entire US education and how many education ministers exist in this world and stoopid enough to follow US as a model... (shudders).

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:05AM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:05AM (#171425)

    The population of the U.S. isn't even 5% of the world's.

    Guess we don't matter either, then.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:04AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:04AM (#171455) Journal

    But it is Malta. Do you know of what you speak? Malta, the base of the Knights Templar, and then the Knights of Malta (still extant). Home of a language unrelated to any on earth, almost. Possible site of Atlantis, or the Isle of Circe, or that other nymph Odysseus had after (Calypso?). So yes, your math is correct. But numbers are not all the world is made of. I recommend "V" by Thomas Pynchon. Mediterranean. Big time.