Desktops the final Linux frontier

[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]

“Here’s an article SCALE has submitted to about a dozen local PC
clubs to entice their membership to attend SCALE, and to advertise
the class:

“Linux Inside Where will you find Linux… Inside your phone? In
your car? In your living room? Open Source Software has long been
at home in the data center, providing the engine to drive
everything from web servers to high performance computing to Cloud.
Its versatility, combined with low cost and massive community are
pushing it out of the raised floor and into your pocket.Let’s take
a look inside a typical consumer router as an example. Chances are,
you’ll find Linux at the core.

“The venerable WRT-54G from Linksys was probably the first of
these devices to become popular because of Linux. OK to be fair,
Linux itself wasn’t the draw so much as was the openness of the
platform. Once they found a way in, enterprising coders were able
to write alternative firmware which ran on the router’s Linux
kernel. Features not available in the stock firmware were added or
unlocked providing additional value to the device, along with
reported stability improvements. That was in 2002. Today, there are
three popular (and other less popular) versions of alternative
firmware – OpenWRT, DD-WRT and Tomato – which will run
on a wide range of home routers. Even routers which are not ‘open’
to these third party choices are very likely running Linux. Network
storage has been popular in business for many years. Simple to set
up, easy to scale and very shareable, NAS devices like those from
Network Appliance made fortunes. In 2011, your local Best Buy,
Staples or Fry’s will offer a selection of affordable NAS devices
for consumers. Chances are excellent that Linux is powering the
storage along with the attendant networking, RAID, sharing
protocols and backup. Many NAS boxes include connection to Cloud
services such as Amazon’s S3 (also running Linux) for offsite
backup, bridging home and enterprise applications of Open
Source.”

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