LinuxRunsTheInternet™

Usually routers; in more ambitious cases, servers; backbone hardware not yet claimed in the wild.

The historical argument for running Linux proceeds along the following time-line.

It’s a fun homebrew system to test out your zany ideas. Go ahead, it’s free! This argument still makes reaonable sense. Tiny market, though.

Hey! We’ve got LAMP! Now anybody can set up their own server! And besides, anybody can program in PHP! This argument made economic sense in the days when the cost of an in-house server was in the tens of thousands, and even getting a server through an ISP was a dispiriting and expensive experience. (See Paul Graham, an unbiased source, on the motivation behind this.) The PHP bit is absolute garbage, and a harbinger of things to come.

Because the license is free, Linux scales beautifully on the server! This argument conveniently ignores the difference between scaling of service, and scaling of license fees. To take one fairly common example, MySQL clusters do not scale in any meaningful sense when compared to Oracle or SQL Server or Sybase. It does still hold for supercomputers, though. As you know, supercomputers are an everyday essential tool in the average household.

It now works at home! Dozens of desktops to choose from! This argument is silly and offensive and furthermore technically a lie. (Just try editing somebody else’s .doc file.)

After only eighteeen years, Linux advocates have realised that they’re preaching to the choir, and nobody is listening. What to do? What to do? It’s important to prove to your audience that (a) they are ignorant and (b) you are leet.

Obviously, you have to point out that, even though the experience is completely transparent to the user, Linux is an essential part of everyday life. Thus, LinuxRunsTheInternet™!

So what? Traffic lights run on Z80s (which don’t run Linux, so I’ll be sure to ignore the red light next time I drive past one). Athletes run on cinders, crack-heads run on fumes, drag-racers run on nitromethane (I’ll take five gallons, please), political campaigns run on barefaced lies, and amnesiacs run on … Whoops, I’ve forgotten what amnesiacs run on.

Are we supposed to be grateful for this? Does it have any relevance to what we use on our own computers?

I’m sorry. My life is the poorer for never having flown Concorde, and not having written the Great American Novel. If the Internet ran on FreeBSD and VxWorks (and there’s no compelling reason why it should not), I’d get along just fine.

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What the hell, why not?

Very definitely without endorsement. Under the usual pointless Loon License.