Linux has been and is still strong at server computing, powering the computers of Google, NASA and more than 80% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world (as of June 2009). While there is also a proliferation of Linux desktops, Linux is still not a mainstream brand for desktop computers. Give the due credit to Microsoft’s mastery of crafting a user-friendly OS and sheer marketing of Windows. The vast ecosystem of Windows applications that has been developed since Windows 3.0 trumps the slick design of Apple Mac OS and panoply of Linux distros.

The open source Windows emulator, Wine, says it best:

The dependency is not so much on Microsoft Windows as it is on Windows applications. Boxed off-the-shelf applications, games, in-house applications, vertical market applications, are what prevents users, companies and governments from switching to another operating system. Even if 90% of the needs of most users are taken care of if you can provide them with an office suite, an email client, a browser, and a media player, then there will still be a remaining 10% of their needs, potentially critical needs, that are not met. Unfortunately these remaining 10% are spread across a wide spectrum of applications: thousands of applications running the gamut from games to specialized accounting software for French farms, via Italian encyclopedias, German tax software, child education software, banking software, in-house software representing years of development, etc. It is the availability of all this software that makes Windows so compelling and its monopoly so strong. No platform will become mainstream unless it runs a significant portion of that software and lets individuals, companies and governments preserve their investments in that software.

Well, that explains Windows monopoly.

Meanwhile, Mozilla’s thrust trumpeting the web browser as the new frontier for desktop domination is seen as a threat to Windows. With all the hype around software-as-a-service and cloud computing, it looks like Windows will be here with us for a long, long while.