Hey all..


As I seem to be the general Linux guy around College...I've been asked to do a presentation about it, in front of a large group of students.

Yes, I'm scared, and yes, I've just had to change my underwear (joke)

But I need help; I'll be doing a general overview of Linux, the distros, the repos and the two prime DE's, who uses it, etc.

If ANYONE could get me more data about how many people use Linux (for instance, there is apparently somewhere around the 250,000 working on the kernel alone, is this true?)

Try the timeline for the history http://www.linux.org/info/linux_timeline.html though it's not up-to-date.

Google Greg Kroah-Hartman for anything about the Linux Kernel - he does the stats on who contributes.

Try http://distrowatch.com/ for information on distros.

Most people use linux without realizing it, such as every time they do a google search or every time they use a tivo or a kindle, or even every time they trade a stock (pretty much all major stock exchanges use Linux now, after the London stock exchange's windows system crashed, bringing the whole stock exchange down for almost a day, they switched to Linux). Unfortunately there are no good numbers for desktop Linux usage, all the counts I am aware of supposedly under-represent Linux for various reasons.

Here are some lists, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News ... bedded-OS/
http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html
http://www.linux.org/info/linux_industry.html
http://www.linux.org/info/linux_arts.html

Also, this might be useful: operating system use by top 500 supercomputers in the world.
http://www.top500.org/stats/list/34/osfam

But isn't Linux just the kernel? I imagine it won't be hard the talk for hours. Start with a history etc... Enthusiasm will see you thru. not much help there