Novell acquired SuSe (another Linux distribution) and have made large volumes of sales with the German government to replace Windows desktop machines with SuSe based counterparts.

In the server market, Linux, BSD and Apple OS X (all variants of Linux, or the BSD / Darwin kernels), they win hands down in mission critical applications over Microsoft’s share in the market. In small offices, you will see Windows Server, but everywhere else, it is dominated by a *nix distribution, with maybe Windows servers on the side.

Cellular handset manufacturers are releasing more Linux based handsets, including HTC, Motorola, and even Sony have a handset in development to run Android (the Google Linux based phone OS).

And that brings the “big G” into the picture. Google Chrome OS is an operating system scheduled to be released in the second half of 2010 based on Linux designed for the increasingly popular netbook PCs.

To say Ubuntu is not currently making much of a dent in the Microsoft market is a very dubious statement. There are many markets, and they can be segmented. When coupled with the fact that Ubuntu is just one Linux distribution, it is hardly a fair comparison.

That being said, I have to agree that Canonical have done an awesome job since I tried out Hoary Hedgehog in 2005. It has matured enough that my mother (who is not technical) has been running Xubuntu for more than a year now without issues, and if someone is looking to try a new OS, or to buy a new computer without an OS, Kubuntu (the KDE variant of Ubuntu) is my first recommendation if there are no Windows based apps that must be run. And if they don’t like it, they can still buy Windows without having lost anything.

(Written on a pre-release Kubuntu: Karmic Koala beta using an alpha build of Google Chrome – am I a bleeding edge open source fanboi? Perhaps )