This is a list of companies, organizations and individuals who have moved from other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s to

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. On desktops, Linux has not displaced

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

to a large degree. However, it is the leading operating system on

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

s. See also : ''

List of BSD adopters This is a list of companies, organizations and individuals who have moved from other operating systems to a BSD system. In the open-source software, open-source operating systems field, it can be an alternative to Linux distributions. List * W ...

Government

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

s come under pressure from institutions such as the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...

and the

International Intellectual Property Alliance The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a coalition of five trade associations representing American companies that produce copyright-protected material, including computer software, films, television programs, music, books, and ...

, some have turned to Linux and other

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

as an affordable, legal alternative to both pirated software and expensive proprietary computer products from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and other commercial companies. The spread of Linux affords some leverage for these countries when companies from the developed world bid for government contracts (since a low-cost option exists), while furnishing an alternative path to development for countries like India and Pakistan that have many citizens skilled in computer applications but cannot afford technological investment at "First World" prices. Cost is not the only factor being considered, though — many governmental institutions (in public and military sectors) in North America and the European Union make the transition to Linux because of its superior stability and the openness of the source code, which strengthens

information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

Africa

* In 2007, First National Bank switched more than 12,000 desktop computers to Linux by 2007. * In 2009, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) deployed multi-station Linux desktops to address budget and infrastructure constraints in 50 rural sites.

Asia

East

* The

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

exclusively uses Linux as the operating system for its

Loongson Loongson () is the name of a family of general-purpose, MIPS architecture-compatible, later in-house LoongArch architecture central processing unit, microprocessors, as well as the name of the Chinese Fabless manufacturing, fabless company (Loo ...

processor family, with the aim of technology independence. * Since 2006, Kylin is used by

People's Liberation Army The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four Military branch, services—People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force, People's ...

in The People's Republic of China. The first version used

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

, but since release 3.0, it employs Linux. * As of 2005, State owned

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC; zh, 中国工商银行) is a Chinese partially state-owned multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, China. It is the largest of the " big four" banks ...

(ICBC) is installing Linux in all of its 20,000 retail branches as the basis for its web server and a new terminal platform. * Since 2008,

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

uses a Linux distribution developed by the

Korea Computer Center __NOTOC__ The Korea Computer Center (KCC) is the North Korean government information technology research center. It was founded on 24 October 1990. KCC, which administered the .kp country code top-level domain until 2011, employs more than 1,000 ...

, called

Red Star OS Red Star OS () is a North Korean Linux distribution, with development first starting in 1998 at the Korea Computer Center (KCC). History Prior to Red Star OS' release, computers in North Korea typically used modified versions of Microsoft ...

, on their computers. Prior to its release,

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

were used.

West

* In 2003, the Turkish government decided to create its own Linux distribution, Pardus, developed by UEKAE (National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology). The first version, Pardus 1.0, was officially announced on 27 December 2005.

South

* In 2002, the

Government of Pakistan The Government of Pakistan () (abbreviated as GoP), constitutionally known as the Federal Government, commonly known as the Centre, is the national authority of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a federal republic located in South Asia, con ...

established a Technology Resource Mobilization Unit to enable groups of professionals to exchange views and coordinate activities in their sectors and to educate users about free software alternatives. Linux is an option for poor countries which have little revenue for public investment; Pakistan is using open-source software in public schools and colleges, and hopes to run all government services on Linux eventually. * In 2007, Government of India's CDAC developed an Indian Linux distribution, BOSS GNU/Linux (Bharat Operating System Solutions). It is customized to suit Indian's digital environment and supports most of the Indian languages. * In March 2014, with the end of support for

, the

Government of Tamil Nadu The Government of Tamil Nadu () is the administrative body responsible for the governance of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Chennai is the capital of the state and houses the state executive, legislature and head of judiciary. Under the Const ...

, India has advised all its departments to install

BOSS Linux Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS GNU/Linux) is an Indian Linux distribution based on Debian. The latest stable release is 10.0 (''Pragya''), which was released in March 2024. Editions BOSS Linux was released in various editions for dif ...

(Bharat Operating System Solutions). * In 2021, the Government of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

, India, announced its official support for free/open-source software in its State IT Policy of 2001, which was formulated after the first-ever free software conference in India, "Freedom First!", held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, where Richard Stallman inaugurated the Free Software Foundation of India. Since then, Kerala's IT Policy has been significantly influenced by FOSS, with several major initiatives such as

KITE A kite is a tethered heavier than air flight, heavier-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create Lift (force), lift and Drag (physics), drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. Kites often have ...

possibly the largest single-purpose deployment of Linux in the world, and leading to the formation of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software ( ICFOSS) in 2009. * In 2023, India's Ministry of Defence will use Ubuntu based Linux distribution Maya OS on all Internet-connected computers.

South-East

* In 2010, the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

fielded an

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

-powered national voting system. * In July 2010,

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

had switched 703 of the state's 724 agencies to

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

software with a Linux-based operating system used. The

Chief Secretary to the Government The Chief Secretary to the Government (; Jawi: ) is the most senior officer in the Malaysian Civil Service, secretary to the Cabinet of Malaysia and secretary-general of the Prime Minister's Department. History The title of "Chief Secretary ...

cited, "(the) general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost".

Americas

North

=Cuba

= * In 2009, Students from the

University of Information Science The University of Informatic Sciences (; UCI, also known as the University of Information Sciences and University of Informatics Sciences) is a Cuban university research center based in the ward of Wajay, Boyeros municipal borough, Havana. Hist ...

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

launched its own distribution of Linux called

Nova A nova ( novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. All observed novae involve white ...

to promote the replacement of Microsoft Windows on civilian and government computers, a project that is now supported by the

Cuban Government Cuba is communist and has had a socialist political system since 1961 based on the "one state, one party" principle. Cuba is constitutionally defined as a single-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republic with semi-presidential powers. The pre ...

. In early 2011, the

Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas The University of Informatic Sciences (; UCI, also known as the University of Information Sciences and University of Informatics Sciences) is a Cuban university research center based in the ward of Wajay, Boyeros municipal borough, Havana. Hist ...

announced that they would migrate more than 8000 PCs to the new operating system.

=U.S.

= * In July 2001, the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

started switching

whitehouse.gov whitehouse.gov or wh.gov is the official website of the White House and is managed by the Office of Digital Strategy of the White House Office under the Executive Office of the President of the United States. It was launched in 1994 by the ...

to an operating system based on

and using the

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source cross-platform web server, released under the terms of Apache License, Apache License 2.0. It is developed and maintained by a community of developers under the ...

. The installation was completed in February 2009. In October 2009, the White House servers adopted

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

, an open-source

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

software distribution. * In April 2006, the US

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

announced that it had completed a migration to

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version for x86-64. Fedora Linux and ...

in one third of the scheduled time and about US$15 million under budget. The switch saved a further US$15 million in datacenter operating costs. * By 2007, the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...

uses Linux - "the U.S. Army is the single largest installed base for Red Hat Linux" and the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

nuclear submarine fleet runs on Linux, including their

sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

systems. * By 2008, the US

National Nuclear Security Administration The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and ef ...

operates the world's tenth fastest supercomputer, the

IBM Roadrunner Roadrunner was a supercomputer built by IBM for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. The US$100-million Roadrunner was designed for a peak performance of 1.7 petaflops. It achieved 1.026 petaflops on May 25, 2008, to become t ...

, which uses

along with

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

as its operating systems. * In June 2012, the

signed a US$27,883,883 contract with

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

to install Linux ground control software for its fleet of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL)

Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout The Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout is an unmanned autonomous helicopter developed by Northrop Grumman for use by the United States Armed Forces. The Fire Scout is designed to provide reconnaissance, situational awareness, aerial fire support ...

drones. The contract involves

Naval Air Station Patuxent River Naval Air Station Patuxent River , also known as NAS Pax River, is a United States naval air station in St. Mary’s County, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay near the mouth of the Patuxent River. It is home to Headquarters, Naval Air Systems Comm ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

, which has already spent US$5,175,075 in preparation for the Linux systems.

South

* The government of Argentine Misione's province workstations have GobMis GNU/Linux, a distribution with necessary tools for public administration. Also delivers a "generic" distribution without government branding known as "GobLin GNU/Linux". *

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

uses PC Conectado, a program utilizing Linux. * In 2004,

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

's government approved the 3390 decree, to give preference to using free software in public administration. One result of this policy is the development of Canaima, a

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

-based Linux distribution.

Europe

Austria

* In 2005,

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

's city of

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

has chosen to start migrating its desktop PCs to Debian-based Wienux. However, by 2011, the idea was largely abandoned, because the necessary software was incompatible with Linux.

Czech Republic

* In 2005,

Czech Post Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surname ...

migrated 4000 servers and 12,000 clients to

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

Linux.

France

* In 2007,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

's national police force (the

National Gendarmerie The National Gendarmerie ( ) is one of two national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National Police (France), National Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Minister ...

) started moving their 90,000 desktops from

to a

based OS, GendBuntu, over concerns about the additional training costs of moving to

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, and following the success of

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

roll-outs. The force saved about €50 million on software licensing between 2004 and 2008. The migration largely completed in 2014. * By 2007,

Ministry of Agriculture An agriculture ministry (also called an agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister f ...

uses

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a Public company, public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the deve ...

Linux. * In 2007, The

French Parliament The French Parliament (, ) is the Bicameralism, bicameral parliament of the French Fifth Republic, consisting of the Senate (France), Senate (), and the National Assembly (France), National Assembly (). Each assembly conducts legislative sessi ...

switched to using

on desktop PCs. However, in 2012, it was decided to let each Member of Parliament choose between Windows and Linux.

Germany

* In 2003, The city government of

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, choose to migrate its 14,000 desktops to

-based LiMux. Even though more than 80 percent of workstations used OpenOffice and 100 percent used Firefox/Thunderbird five years later (November 2008), an adoption rate of Linux itself of only 20 percent (June 2010) was achieved. The effort was later reorganized, focusing on smaller deployments and winning over staff to the value of the program. By the end of 2011 the program had exceeded its goal and changed over 9000 desktops to Linux. The city of Munich reported at the end of 2012 that the migration to Linux was highly successful and has already saved the city over €11 million (US$14 million). Recently the Deputy Mayor Josef Schmid said that the city is putting together an independent expert group to look at moving back to Microsoft due to issues in LiMux, the primary issues have been of compatibility; users in the rest of Germany that use other (Microsoft) software have had trouble with the files generated by Munich's open-source applications. The second is price, with Schmid saying that the city now has the impression that "Linux is very expensive" due to custom programming, The independent group will advise the best course of action, and if that group recommends using Microsoft software, Schmid says that a switch back isn't impossible. The city council said they already saved more than US$10 million, and there is no major issue with the switch to Linux. Some observers, such as Silviu Stahie of

Softpedia Softpedia is a software and tech news website based in Romania. It indexes, reviews and hosts downloadable software and reports news on technology and science topics. It is ranked as among of the top download portals on the internet. History So ...

have indicated that the attempted rejection of Linux has been influenced by

and its supporters, and that this is predominantly a political issue and not a technical one. Microsoft's German headquarters has committed to move to Munich as part of this issue. In 2017, the Munich city council voted to transition back to Microsoft

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

, citing compatibility issues with LiMux and the high cost of custom programming. By 2020, the city had begun the full migration of its workstations to Windows 10, with plans to complete the transition by 2023. Critics argued that the decision was influenced by political pressures and lobbying rather than purely technical issues. Nonetheless, the transition continued, marking the end of Munich's ambitious open-source LiMux project. The cost of the switch was estimated to be over €30 million, despite earlier savings from using Linux. A significant number of workstations in other government institutions, such as the Federal Employment Office of Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), continue to use Linux, with 13,000 public workstations running openSUSE. * By 2009, the Federal Employment Office of

(Bundesagentur für Arbeit) has migrated 13,000 public workstations from

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: ''Tumbleweed'', an upstream rolling release distribution, and ''Leap'', a stable r ...

. * In 2024, State of

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; ; ; ; ; occasionally in English ''Sleswick-Holsatia'') is the Northern Germany, northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of S ...

plans to replace Windows with

and

Libreoffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

Iceland

* In March 2012,

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

announced it wishes to migrate to open-source software in public institutions. Schools have already migrated from Windows to Ubuntu Linux.

North Macedonia

* In 2009,

Republic of North Macedonia North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...

's Ministry of Education and Science deployed more than 180,000

based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the Republic of North Macedonia to use Ubuntu computer workstations.

The Netherlands

* Since 2003, the

Dutch Police The National Police Corps (), colloquially in English as Dutch National Police or National Police Force, is the centralised, national law enforcement agency of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and its sole police force. Constituted under the prov ...

Internet Research and Investigation Network (iRN) has only used free and open-source software based on open standards, publicly developed with the source code available on the Internet for audit. They use 2200 Ubuntu workstations.

Russia

* In late 2010,

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

signed a plan to move the

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

government towards free software including Linux in the second quarter of 2012. * In 2014, Russia announced plans to move their Ministry of Health to Linux as a counter to sanctions over the

annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This took place in the relative power vacuum immediately following the Revolution of Dignity. It marked the beginning of the Russ ...

and a means of hurting US corporate interests, such as

. * In 2018, Russia began adopting

Astra Linux Astra Linux is a Russian Linux-based computer operating system (OS) that is being widely deployed in the Russian Federation to replace Microsoft Windows. Initially it was created and developed to meet the needs of the Russian army, other armed f ...

, an operating system which is certified to handle data classified as "special importance", on their military computer systems.

Spain

* In 2003,

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

was noted as the furthest along the road to Linux adoption, for example with

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

LinEx * In 2004, the regional

Andalusian Autonomous Government The Regional Government of Andalusia () is the government of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. It consists of the Parliament, the President of the Regional Government and the Government Council. The 2011 budget was 31.7 billion euros. It emp ...

Andalucía Andalusia ( , ; , ) is the southernmost autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomou ...

developed its own Linux distribution, called Guadalinex. * In 2008, The city government of

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

announced that it would migrate all desktop software from proprietary to free/open-source alternatives, and would gradually migrate from proprietary operating systems to Linux.

Switzerland

* In 2001,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

Canton of Solothurn The canton of Solothurn or canton of Soleure (; ; ; ) is a Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Switzerland. It is located in the northwest of Switzerland. The capital is Solothurn. History The village of ''Salodurum'' was founded in the time of t ...

decided to migrate its computers to Linux, but in 2010 the

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

authority has made a U-turn by deciding to use

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

for desktop clients.

United Kingdom

* In 2020, during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Hackney London Borough Council Hackney London Borough Council, also known as Hackney Council, is the local authority for the London Borough of Hackney, in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in London. The council has been under Labour majority c ...

used Linux laptops for its 4000 employees to allow working from home.

Education

Linux is often used in technical disciplines at universities and research centres. This is due to several factors, including that Linux is available free of charge and includes a large body of free/open-source software. To some extent, technical competence of computer science and software engineering academics is also a contributor, as is stability, maintainability, and upgradability.

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

ran an advertising campaign entitled "Linux is Education" featuring a young boy who was supposed to be "Linux". Examples of large scale adoption of Linux in education include the following: * The

OLPC XO-1 The OLPC XO (formerly known as $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, 2B1) is a low cost laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to " ...

(previously called the MIT $100 laptop and The Children's Machine), is an inexpensive laptop running Linux, which will be distributed to millions of children as part of the One Laptop Per Child project, especially in developing countries.

Europe

Germany

* In 2012, the

Leibniz-Rechenzentrum The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) () is a supercomputing centre on the Campus Garching near Munich, operated by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among other IT services, it provides supercomputer resources for research and ...

(Leibniz Supercomputing Centre) (LRZ) of the

Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities () is an independent public institution, located in Munich. It appoints scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of knowledge within their subject. The general goal of th ...

unveiled the SuperMUC, the world's fourth most powerful supercomputer. The computer is

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

-based and features 155,000 processor cores with a maximum speed of 3 petaflops of processing power and 324 terabytes of RAM. Its operating system is

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop computers. Its major ve ...

. * In 2015,

has announced that 560,000 students in 33 universities will migrate to Linux.

Italy

* In September 2005, Schools in

Bolzano Bolzano ( ; ; or ) is the capital city of South Tyrol (officially the province of Bolzano), Northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third largest in historical Tyrol. The ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, with a student population of 16,000, switched to a custom distribution of Linux, FUSS Soledad (GNU/Linux). * In spring 2016 the Italian City of

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; or , archaically ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, where it straddles the Bacchiglione, River Bacchiglione. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and e ...

switched to Zorin OS (which itself is based on

North Macedonia

* In December 2005,

deployed 5,000 Linux desktops running

across all 468 public schools and 182 computer labs. Later in 2007, another 180,000 Ubuntu

thin client In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...

computers were deployed.

U.K.

* In 2004, Orwell High School, a school with about 1,000 students in

Felixstowe Felixstowe ( ) is a port town and civil parish in the East Suffolk District, East Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. The estimated population in 2017 was 24,521. The Port of Felixstowe is the largest Containerization, containe ...

, England, has switched to Linux. The school has just received Specialist School for Technology status through a government initiative. * In 2013,

Westcliff High School for Girls Westcliff High School for Girls, also known by its initialism WHSG, is a selective grammar school and academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name tra ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

successfully moved from Windows to

Spain

* Linkat (Education sector in Catalunya) * Max (Education sector in Madid) * Vitalinux (Education sector Zaragoz) * LliureX (Education sector Valencia)

Switzerland

* In 2013, all primary and secondary public schools in the Swiss Canton of

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

, have switched to using Ubuntu for the PCs used by teachers and students. The switch has been completed by all of the 170 primary public schools and over 2,000 computers. The migration of the canton's 20 secondary schools is planned for the school year 2014-15

Americas

has 35 million students in over 50,000 schools using 523,400 computer stations all running Linux. * In 2006, 22,000 students in the US state of

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

had access to Linux Workstations at their high schools. * In 2009,

's Ministry of Education began a project called Canaima-educativo, to provide all students in public schools with "Canaimita" laptop computers with the Canaima Debian-based Linux distribution pre-installed, as well as with open-source educational content. * In 2021,

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

's government (Conectar Igualdad) laptops, issued to public education students uses Huayra GNU/Linux, a Linux distribution specialised for education.

Asia

China

* The

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

government is buying 1.5 million Linux

PCs as part of its plans to support its domestic industry. In addition the province of

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

will install as many as 150,000 Linux PCs, using Loongson processors, in rural schools starting in 2009.

Indonesia

* By December 2013, about 500 Indonesian schools were running

Georgia

* In 2004,

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

began running all its school computers and LTSP thin clients on Linux, mainly using

Kubuntu Kubuntu ( ) is an official flavor of the Ubuntu operating system that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment instead of the GNOME desktop environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems. Kubuntu shares th ...

and stripped

-based distros.

India

* In 2010, the Indian government's tablet computer initiative for student use employs Linux as the operating system as part of its drive to produce a tablet PC for under 1,500

rupees Rupee (, ) is the common name for the currencies of India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Afr ...

(US$35). * In 2015, Government officials of

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

announced they will use only free software, running on the Linux platform, for computer education, starting with the 2,650 government and government-aided high schools. * In 2015, the

n state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

has issued a directive to local government departments asking them to switch over to open-source software, in the wake of

's decision to end support for

in April 2014. * In 2020, the

n state of

plans to distribute 100,000 Linux laptops to its students.

Philippines

* In 2007, the

deployed 13,000 desktops running on

, the first 10,000 were delivered in December 2007 by Advanced Solutions Inc. Another 10,000 desktops of

Edubuntu Edubuntu is an official derivative of the Ubuntu (operating system), Ubuntu operating system designed for use in classrooms inside schools, homes and communities. Features Edubuntu is based largely on the standard GNOME-based Ubuntu distribution ...

and

are planned.

Russia

* In October 2007,

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

announced all its school computers will run on Linux. This is to avoid cost of licensing currently unlicensed software.

Home

* In 2006, Sony's

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

was released and came with a

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

(20 GB, 60 GB or 80 GB) and was specially designed to allow easy installation of Linux on the system. However, Linux was prevented from accessing certain functions of the PlayStation such as 3D graphics. Sony also released a Linux kit for its

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

console (see

Linux for PlayStation 2 Linux for PlayStation 2 (or PS2 Linux) is a kit released by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2002 that allows the PlayStation 2 console to be used as a personal computer. It included a Linux-based operating system, a USB keyboard and mouse, a VGA ...

). PlayStation hardware running Linux has been occasionally used in small scale distributed computing experiments, due to the ease of installation and the relatively low price of a PS3 compared to other hardware choices offering similar performance. As of April 1, 2010, Sony disabled the ability to install Linux "due to security concerns" starting with

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

version 3.21. * Android, created by Google in 2007, is the smartphone & tablet operating system which, as of late 2013, runs on 80% of smartphones and 60% of tablets, worldwide; it is pre-installed on devices by brand hardware manufacturers. * Through 2007 and 2008, Linux distributions with an emphasis on ease of use such as

became increasingly popular as home desktop operating systems, with some OEMs, such as

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

, offering models with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions on desktop systems. * In 2008, many

netbook A netbook is a small-sized laptop computer; they were primarily sold from 2007 until around 2013, designed mostly as a means of accessing the Internet and being significantly less expensive than regular-sized laptops. At their inception in l ...

models were shipped with Linux installed, usually with a lightweight distribution, such as

Xandros Xandros, Inc. was a software company which sold Xandros Desktop, a Linux distribution. The name Xandros was derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros. Xandros was founded in May 2001 by Linux Global Partners (Will Roseman an ...

or Linpus, to reduce resource consumption on their limited resources. * In 2011,

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

introduced its

Chromebooks Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

s based on Linux and supplying just a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

and

media player Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...

. They also have the ability to

remote desktop In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely from one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a sma ...

into other computers via the free Chrome Remote Desktop extension. In 2012 the first Chromebox, a desktop equivalent of the Chromebook, was introduced. By 2013 Chromebooks had captured 20-25% of the US market for sub-$300 laptops. * In 2013,

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...

publicly released ports of

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

and the

Source engine Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the releases of '' Half-Life: Source'', '' Counter-Strike: Source'', and ''Half-Life 2''. Valve used Source in many of their games in the followin ...

to Linux, allowing many popular titles by Valve such as ''

Team Fortress 2 ''Team Fortress 2'' (''TF2'') is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation in 2007. It is the sequel to the 1996 ''Team Fortress'' Mod (video gaming), mod for ''Quake (video g ...

'' and ''

Half-Life 2 ''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' is played ent ...

'' to be played on Linux. Later that same year, Valve announced their upcoming

Steam Machine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transf ...

consoles, which would by default run

SteamOS SteamOS is an Arch Linux-based Linux distribution developed by Valve. It incorporates Valve's video game storefront Steam; it is also the official operating system for the Steam Deck, Valve's portable gaming device, as well as Valve's earlier ...

, an operating system based on the Linux kernel. Valve has created a compatibility layer called Proton. Proton makes it possible to run many games on Linux.

Businesses and non-profits

Linux is used extensively on servers in businesses, and has been for a long time. Linux is also used in some corporate environments as the desktop platform for their employees, with commercially available solutions including

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE S.A., SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for server (computing), servers and mainframe computer, mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for wo ...

, and

. * Free I.T. Athens, founded in 2005 in Athens, Georgia, United States, is a non-profit organization dedicated to rescuing computers from landfills, recycling them or refurbishing them using Linux exclusively. *

Burlington Coat Factory Burlington, formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory, is an American national off-price department store retailer, and a division of Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation with more than 1,100 stores in 47 states and Puerto Rico, with it ...

has used Linux exclusively since 1999. *

Ernie Ball Ernie Ball (born Roland Sherwood Ball; August 30, 1930 – September 9, 2004) was an American entrepreneur and musician who developed guitar-related products. Ball began as a club and local television musician and entrepreneur, building an inter ...

, known for its famous ''Super Slinky'' guitar strings, has used Linux as its desktop operating system since 2000. *

is undergoing a migration from Windows to Linux. Of its 5500 employees, 50% were successfully migrated as of April 2006. This was expected to rise to 80% by November. *

Wotif Wotif is a website that provides a reservation service for hotels in Australia and international destinations across the globe. It was set up in March 2000 by Graeme Wood in Brisbane, Australia. It has since established offices in Canada, Malay ...

, the Australian

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

booking

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

, migrated from Windows to Linux servers to keep up with the growth of its business. *

Union Bank of California Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Union ...

announced in January 2007 that it would standardize its IT infrastructure on

in order to lower costs. *

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

is mostly known to run its infrastructure on

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

since its acquisition by

Meta Meta most commonly refers to: * Meta (prefix), a common affix and word in English ( in Greek) * Meta Platforms, an American multinational technology conglomerate (formerly ''Facebook, Inc.'') Meta or META may also refer to: Businesses * Meta (ac ...

initially ran on

. *

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

is known to have its infrastructure running on

. *

Peugeot Peugeot (, , ) is a French automobile brand owned by Stellantis. The family business that preceded the current Peugeot companies was established in 1810, making it the oldest car company in the world. On 20 November 1858, Émile Peugeot applie ...

, the European car maker, announced plans to deploy up to 20,000 copies of Novell's Linux desktop,

, and 2,500 copies of

, in 2007. * Mindbridge, a software company, announced in September 2007 that it had migrated a large number of Windows servers onto a smaller number of Linux servers and a few

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

servers. It claims to have saved "bunches of money." *

Virgin America Virgin America Inc. was a low-cost airline headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Burlingame, California. It primarily focused on operating low-fare, higher-quality service between cities on the West Coast of the United States a ...

, the low cost U.S. airline, uses Linux to power its in-flight entertainment system, RED. *

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

, the US based mail-order retailer, uses Linux "in nearly every corner of its business". *

uses a version of Ubuntu internally nicknamed Goobuntu. In August 2017, Google announced that it would be replacing Goobuntu with gLinux, an in-house distro based on the

Testing branch. *

does extensive development work for Linux and also uses it on desktops and servers internally. The company also created a TV advertising campaign: ''IBM supports Linux 100%''. *

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

moved to running its

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

servers on

in late 2008, after having previously used a combination of

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

and

. *

DreamWorks Animation DreamWorks Animation LLC (DWA, also known as DreamWorks Animation Studios or simply DreamWorks) is an American animation studio, owned by Comcast's NBCUniversal as part of Universal Pictures, a division of Universal Studios, Inc, Universal Stud ...

adopted the use of Linux since 2001, and uses more than 1,000 Linux desktops and more than 3,000 Linux servers. * The

Chicago Mercantile Exchange The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) (often called "the Chicago Merc", or "the Merc") is an American derivatives marketplace based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board ...

employs an all-Linux computing infrastructure and has used it to process over a

quadrillion Depending on context (e.g. language, culture, region), some large numbers have names that allow for describing large quantities in a textual form; not mathematical. For very large values, the text is generally shorter than a decimal numeric repres ...

dollars worth of financial transactions * The Chi-X pan-European equity exchange runs its MarketPrizm trading platform software on Linux. * The

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

uses the Linux-based MillenniumIT Millennium Exchange software for its trading platform and predicts that moving to Linux from Windows will give it an annual cost savings of at least £10 million ($14.7 million) from 2011 to 2012. * The

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

uses Linux to run its trading applications. * Mobexpert Group, the leading furniture manufacturer and retailer in

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

, extensively uses

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

and other

in its data communications and processing systems, including some desktops. * American

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

composer

Kim Cascone Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italian American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, drone, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records. Biography In 1989 Casc ...

migrated from Apple Mac to Ubuntu for his music studio, performance use and administration in 2009. * ''Laughing Boy Records'' under the direction of owner Geoff Beasley switched from doing audio recording on Windows to Linux in 2004 as a result of Windows

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...

problems. *

Nav Canada Nav Canada (styled as NAV CANADA) is a privately run, non-profit corporation that owns and operates Canada's civil air navigation system (ANS). It was established by statute in accordance with the ''Civil Air Navigation Services Commercializati ...

's new Internet Flight Planning System for roll-out in 2011, is written in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

and runs on

. *

Electrolux Electrolux AB () is a Swedish Multinational corporation, multinational home appliance manufacturer, headquartered in Stockholm. It is consistently ranked the world's second largest appliance maker by units sold, after Whirlpool Corporation, Whi ...

Frigidaire Frigidaire Appliance Company is the American consumer and Commercial area, commercial home appliances brand subsidiary of multinational company Electrolux, a Swedish multinational home appliance manufacturer, headquartered in Stockholm. History ...

Infinity i-kitchen is a "smart appliance" refrigerator that uses a Linux operating system, running on an embedded 400 MHz Freescale i.MX25 processor with 128 MB of RAM and a 480×800 touch panel. * DukeJets LLC (USA) and Duke Jets Ltd. (Canada), air charter brokerage companies, switched from Windows to Ubuntu Linux in 2012. *

Banco do Brasil Banco do Brasil S.A. (, ) is a Brazilian financial services company headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. The oldest bank in Brazil, and among the oldest banks in continuous operation in the world, it was founded by John VI, King of Portugal, on ...

, the biggest bank in

, has moved nearly all desktops to Linux, except some corporate ones and a few that are need to operate some specific hardware. They began migration of their servers to Linux in 2002. Branch servers and ATMs all run Linux. The distribution of choice is openSUSE 11.2. *

KLM KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, or simply KLM (an abbreviation for their official name Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. , ),

, the Royal Aviation Company of the Netherlands, uses Linux on the OSS-based version of its KLM WebFarm. *

Ocado Ocado Group plc ( ) is a British business based in Hatfield, England, which licenses grocery technology. It also owns a 50% share in the UK grocery retail business Ocado.com (the other 50% is owned by UK retailer Marks & Spencer). The company ...

, the online supermarket, uses Linux in its data centres. * Kazi Farms Group, a large poultry and food products company in Bangladesh, migrated 1000 computers to Linux. An associated TV channel,

Deepto TV Deepto TV (; ) is a Bangladeshi Bengali-language satellite and cable television channel, owned and operated by Kazi Media Limited, a subsidiary of Kazi Farms Group. It officially began broadcasts on 18 November 2015, and within two weeks became ...

, as well as an associated daily newspaper

Dhaka Tribune The ''Dhaka Tribune'' is a major Bangladeshi English-language daily newspaper based in Dhaka, the country's capital and largest city. It also operates an online portal ( Bengali version) known as the '' Bangla Tribune''. The newspaper has a stron ...

also migrated to Linux. * Zando Computer, an IT consulting company located in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

uses Linux for its business needs (server and desktop). The company recommends to its clients and actively deploys Linux,

(

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processor, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Presentation program, presentations and ...

format solutions) and other categories of

. *

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

, at the 2015

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

, company CEO

Jen-Hsun Huang Jen-Hsun "Jensen" Huang ( zh, t=黃仁勳, poj=N̂g Jîn-hun, hp=Huáng Rénxūn; born February 17, 1963) is a Taiwanese and American businessman, electrical engineer, and philanthropist who is the president, co-founder, and chief executive of ...

made his extensive presentations using

Linux. *

Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia The Statistical Office of Serbia ( sr-cyr, Републички завод за статистику Србије; sr-lat, Republički zavod za statistiku Srbije or RZS) is a specialized government agency of Serbia charged with collecting and di ...

ICT report for 2017, showed that 19.8% of the companies in

Serbia , image_flag = Flag of Serbia.svg , national_motto = , image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg , national_anthem = () , image_map = , map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...

use Linux as their main operating system (up from 14.5% in 2016). Linux is largely used in Serbian large enterprises (companies that fulfil two out of three conditions: 250+ employees, revenue of 35+ million euros, total assets of 17.5+ million euros), where Linux adoption has reached 40.9%.
Arab contractors employees pension fund (ACEPF)
Cairo, Egypt, Web site department use an ubuntu web application server to develop their application, since 2015.

Scientific institutions

* In 2013,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

decided to switch the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

laptops running

6. * Both

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

and

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...

at one time used

Scientific Linux Scientific Linux (SL) is a discontinued Linux distribution produced by Fermilab, CERN, DESY and by ETH Zurich. It is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This product is derive ...

in all their work; this included running the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

and the

Dark Energy Camera The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an astronomical survey designed to constrain the properties of dark energy. It uses images taken in the near-ultraviolet, Visible spectrum, visible, and near-infrared to measure the expansion of the universe using ...

as well as the 20,000 internal servers at CERN. With the discontinuation of

(announced in 2019, with support only for SL6 and SL7 until end of life), CERN now uses

(RHEL) and

AlmaLinux AlmaLinux is a free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, a 501(c) organization, to provide a community-supported, Deployment environment, production-grade enterprise operating system that is Binary-code co ...

, as well as

7 (until 30 June 2024); whereas Fermilab uses RHEL and AlmaLinux, as well as Scientific Linux (until end of life in June 2024). * WLCG is composed of 576 sites with more than 390,000 processors and 150 petabytes of storage and uses Linux on all its nodes. * ,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

's largest super computer, the IBM iDataPlex cluster computer at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

uses Linux as its operating system. * The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

uses hundreds of x86 servers to catalogue the Internet, all of them running Linux. * ASV Roboat autonomous robotic sailboat runs on Linux * ,

Tianhe-I Tianhe-I, Tianhe-1, or TH-1 (, ; '' Sky River Number One'') is a supercomputer capable of an Rmax (maximum range) of 2.5 peta FLOPS. Located at the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin, China, it was the fastest computer in the world ...

, the world's fastest super computer, located at the National Centre for Supercomputing in

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

, China runs Linux. * The University of Portsmouth in the

has deployed a "cost effective" high performance computer that will be used to analyse data from telescopes around the world, run simulations and test the current theories about the universe. Its operating system is

. Dr David Bacon of the University of Portsmouth said: "Our Institute of Cosmology is in a great position to use this high performance computer to make real breakthroughs in understanding the universe, both by analysing the very latest astronomical observations, and by calculating the consequences of mind-boggling new theories...By selecting Dell’s industry-standard hardware and open-source software we’re able to free up budget that would have normally been spent on costly licences and reinvest it." * In September 2011, ten autonomous unmanned air vehicles were flown in flocking flight by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s Laboratory of Intelligence Systems in Lausanne, Switzerland. The UAVs each sense each other and control their own flight in relation to each other, each has an independent processor running Linux to accomplish this.

Celebrities

* In August 2012, British actor Stephen Fry, stated that he uses Linux. "Do I use Linux on any of my devices? Yes – I use Ubuntu these-days; it seems the friendliest." * In 2008, Jamie Hyneman, co-host of the American television series ''MythBusters'', advocated Linux-based operating systems as a solution to software bloat. * Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow uses Ubuntu. * Actor Wil Wheaton sometimes uses Linux distributions, but not as his primary operating system.

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