The Economist has an interesting article predicting that open-source adoption will rise in 2008. They are crediting a lot of this to Ubuntu and rightfully so. While there are many other great distributions of Linux out there (Slackware, SUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, etc.), Ubuntu's relative ease of setup and install has helped many become more aware of Linux and the perks of open-source software. I can state from experience that I was monkeying around with Linux using such distributions as Fedora and Slackware, it wasn't until I tried Ubuntu that I really became hooked on Linux and open-source. To me starting out, Ubuntu was great. Ease of use, easy to install, and gave me a good feel for how Linux works, now allowing me to move on to other distributions should I choose, but at this point, I'll still be sticking with Ubuntu. While Windows and OS X are here to stay as many tend to be just too used to them to consider otherwise, it'd be nice to see more people make the switch to Linux.

The Economist: Ubuntu is the source of Linux's rise [blogs.cnet.com]

Technology in 2008 [economist.com]

Tags: linux, opensource, links, ubuntu