In 2017, Linux rules computing

 The Linux Foundation reports that Linux runs 90 percent of the public cloud workload, 82 percent of the world's smartphones, 62 percent of the embedded market, oh and a mere 99 percent of the supercomputer market. All that rests on the Linux kernel.

"The Linux kernel is one of the largest and most successful open-source projects that has ever come about. The huge rate of change and number of individual contributors show that it has a vibrant and active community, constantly causing the evolution of the kernel in response to number of different environments it is used in. This rate of change continues to increase, as does the number of developers and companies involved in the process; thus far, the development process has proved that it is able to scale up to higher speeds without trouble."

http://www.zdnet.com/article/whos-building-linux-in-2017/

 Good news :)

Over the past year, the kernel has been updated through merged changesets, new drivers, hardening and testing.

http://sdtimes.com/report-interest-linux-kernel-remains-strong/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-40-percent-of-all-vms-in-azure-now-are-running-linux/

--// Samsung Nexus S \\--

My next tech-upgrade, is the cutting edge smart-phone Samsung Nexus S.

As a collaboration between Samsung and Google, it's the next-step innovation in smart-phone technology.

My first Android-phone was the developer-phone HTC Magic ( non-Google branded B-revision ). It was a barebones Android-system without any major UI additions like HTCs newer Desire-models  (Sense UI).

From what I can gather, Nexus S is like the previous Nexus phone with updated components and firmware. Pretty much an updated developer-phone for Google's latest Android-platform: v2.3 "Gingerbread".

With an up-2-date CPU of 1GHz, codenamed "Hummingbird" ( ARM Cortex A8 ), the Nexus S is multitask-capable. Making it the most powerful Android-phone at the moment. The ARM Cortex A8 chip includes a co-processor: the PowerVR SGX 450 GPU for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 for enhanced 2D/3D mobile graphics and animation.

As a superuser, my previous phones have all lacked enough memory-capacity for my userload. The Magic had 192MB of userland-accessible memory, my current Desire-phone has 150MB userland-accessible memory.

Both Magic and Desire has expandable storage by using a microSD memory card slot. Magic can handle cards of up to 16GB capacity and Desire can handle up to 32GB capacity. The only problem with external memory storage is read/write-times while using externally stored applications, which at times would entail a lot of loading-time when using data-heavy applications. Instead of just boosting and mostly utilizing the userland-accessible memory that is incorporated into the chipset.

With the Nexus S they have eliminated these problems as the userland-accessible memory is a 15GB iNAND-partition :D It really doesn't bother me that the memory is iNAND and that it doesn't sport a microSD slot, in my experience, phones and memory cards don't always work all that well together ( mostly because microSD cards doesn't handle rapid mounting/unmounting good at all in my experience ).

I'm looking forward to getting my new smart-phone, and can't wait to play with new features and functions :p

Addition, april 23rd:

I have now been tinkering with the Samsung Nexus S for a few days, and I am one happy techie :)

It is excactly like I imagined it to be by reading the published specs online. Allthough the user-land accessible memory-partition wasn't 15GB, it was more like 14GB. And with one 1GB user-land accessible system-partition to support the restricted 1GB nternal Android-system.

512MB of dedicated Mobile DDR with the PowerVR gpu really boosted the animation speed and look. Even the startup-logo is pure eye-candy :p Google-logo fading into a Nexus "X" symbol animated with colored spiral-lines, niiice! :)

I can even store all the games I've bought from Android-market without worrying about slowing the device down like I had to with the Desire. All apps are installed, all my games, utilities, etc. And I haven't even used one gigabyte completely yet :D

Yay! Woohoo! Awesomesauce! ^_^

Go-go Andy, GO! ;D

"Andy" has definitely had an international impact on the mobile device market the past twelve months. Google cites statistics gathered worldwide, saying they're activating around 160.000 handsets each day - with a little 'math-magic' this equates to 58 million sold Android handset devices. To compare, 4 months ago these numbers were 20.000 handsets a day - 22 million a year.

All of this is only statistics, however, keep in mind that the Android mobile platform ranked on the top-5 smartphone sales list in only a couple of years - not a bad feat at all considering Microsoft and RIM has dominated this market for quite a few years already, not to mention the arrival of Apple's (dreaded?) iPhone.

Cudos to Google and the Google Teams for bringing us an open-source based solution that rubs shoulders with the biggest, baddest boys in the biz'.

I know I'm more than satisfied with my HTC Desire Android-phone :P