What nations or region have the highest per capita Linux users . . .

[jenaniston]

Probably there are no real statistics about this . . .

but with the international representation on the forum . . .
which nation or regions have the highest percentage of linux users in your guess / estimate ?

Scandinavia, with Sweden - and of course Finland - maybe at or near the very top of the heap . . .

And then where might linux use be growing the fastest . . . ?
- Europe or North America or Asia ?

What do you think ?

[SoFl W]

That is a good question. Several years ago I remember reading that rather than paying Microsoft license fees some countries were switching to linux on government computers to save money.

[jenaniston]

. . . Several years ago I remember reading that rather than paying Microsoft license fees
some countries were switching to linux on government computers to save money.

Yes, you are right, it looks like that could be the case at least in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden . . .

Hmmm . . . governements - state or federal or municipal (school districts)- trying to save taxpayers money by switching to linux . . .
now I wonder where that could come in handy in the USA . . . California ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/06/04/german_gov_deal_offers_linux/
" the deal is potentially a massive leap for Linux into the government/commercial arena."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/19/danish_local_govt_rebels_against/
"The primary object of the evaluation is not to put pressure at Microsoft, we just
want freedom of choice in buying or leasing software. If Microsoft changed
its opinion towards pricing policy we'd appreciate it . . . we have a commitment
to find alternatives that will enable municipalities to save money."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/22/swedish_government_mulls_linux/
"Penguins go Nordic"

[Arthur_D]

Unfortunately, here in Norway government likes to use a lot of extra money on useless stuff. :(

[Ric_NYC]

This is very interesting:


Open Source Activity Map

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/6376/85969170.jpg




Source:
http://www.redhat.com/about/where-is-open-source/activity/

[jenaniston]

This is very interesting:

Open Source Activity Map

Source:
http://www.redhat.com/about/where-is-open-source/activity/

Thanks for digging that up . . .

Some rural western states of the U.S. - including Alaska - probably don't
really need to be colored in as lumped together with the USA . . .
. . . the EU of course distinguishs it's member state-nations better in everything, including this map.

[SoFl W]

Unfortunately, here in Norway government likes to use a lot of extra money on useless stuff. :(

That problem isn't limited to Norway. Government will ALWAYS waste money and do things poorly.

[xuCGC002]

Government will ALWAYS waste money and do things poorly.

Same could be said for humans.

[squilookle]

I would have thought America would be at the top, if not pretty close. There seems to be alot of distributions based there when you look at the country of origin on Distrowatch.

Other than that, I always imagine the likes of Germany, France, Belgium, and - I like to think - the UK are up there too.

Also, I'm sure I've read about distributions aimed at Chinese users, so I imagine there must be a few there as well.

[markinf]

I'm happy to say that I live in one of the countries that most support FOSS (Brasil). I personally think that Brazil right know is the country that most support FOSS.

+ Brazil pushed SUN with Javali (Java Livre (http://www.javali.org.br/)) to open Java as FOSS.
+ FISL (Forum Internacional de Software Livre - International Free Software Forum) - http://www.fisl.org.br
+ Brazil approved ODF as the standard, rather than OOXML.
+ Brazil has approved a law that all governament Software move to FOSS. And it's starting the "move".
+ Lots of Notebooks are shipped in Brasil with local distributions.
+ Linux-Libre*, removing all non-free blobs of the kernel, is done by FSF-LA (Latin America) and most done by the brazilian Alexandre Oliva.**

More reading:
Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/technology/29computer.html

* Linux-Libre is the kernel for the 100% pure FOSS distros (gNewSense, ...)
** I personally don't like the idea of Linux-Libre.