2003 Review of the Year: Linux

An IDC survey predicted a 58 per cent growth for Linux by 2006 alongside a four per cent Windows decline, and big names such as Unilever, Morgan
Stanley, BP and Fiat made big Linux investments.

2003 saw the server operating systems market change forever, with Linux picking up customers from all the Unix flavors and, to the surprise of many,
from Microsoft Windows.

In the longer term, the advent of Linux desktops from major players such as Sun and Novell may result in an even more important shift for
infrastructure software.

It may seem surprising now, but it was only back in February that analyst AMR Research was saying that the open source operating system remained
unsuitable for mission-critical applications and Microsoft was busy rubbishing reports of any threat from the Penguin.