I just read an article HERE by Preston Gralla that states in conclusion, “Linux will never become a mainstream operating system on desktops, and so for client machines, it will remain largely confined to netbooks. Market surveys have shown that Linux sales on netbooks have plunged to only 10% of netbooks.

Given that, how will Linux ever reach 10% to 20% of the market? The answer: It never will. It will remain a niche operating system, and a very good one at that.”

I do not agree with Preston Gralla in his overall assessment.  First Linux is not just one specific operating system but a fully configurable core OS that has many variants in the marketplace. If you go HERE you can see that there are 220 different distributions of Linux currently supported worldwide. Much of the linux OS versions used are not directly visible to us since these are embedded into various hardware products we use everyday like a Wi-Fi Router as one example. With this recession, many hardware manufacturers of laptops and desktop PC makers are looking at Android as one example of a Linux operating system that might be suitable for their products.

Manufacturers are now looking for a FREE operating system that will replace the  royalty or licensing fee based operating system like Microsoft Windows. Down the road, I can see a Linux distribution like the Ubuntu becoming more popular in the desktop, server and mobile device category once Android from Google starts to take off. Some may argue that Android will never take off but I feel that given time, the Google operating system will certainly be a contender in the mobile marketplace. The mobile phone is only one of many hardware categories that will have Android embedded in them down the road.