Linux gaining on Windows among Eclipse developers

By Eric Brown
2010-06-11

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An annual survey released by the Eclipse Foundation, which oversees development of the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE), shows that 32.7 percent of respondents use Linux as their primary desktop development system, an increase of almost six points from 2009. Among other findings, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro among Eclipse developers (18.3 percent), says the Foundation.

The annual "Open Source Developer Report" survey was this year based on the results of 1,696 surveys from Eclipse developers around the world completed from April 15 to May 15, says the Eclipse Foundation.

The Eclipse Foundation sponsors over 200 open source projects, led by the Java-based Eclipse IDE, and has almost 1,000 "committers" and more than 160 member companies. In addition, thousands of companies are said to be embedding Eclipse into products and applications used by millions, says the Foundation.

The latest survey shows that Linux continues to gain market share on the developer desktop, with some 32.7 percent of respondents now using Linux as their primary development operating system (OS), up from 20 percent in 2007. Among Linux developers, Ubuntu was by far the most popular platform at 18.3 percent, followed by Fedora at 4.7 percent, says the Foundation.

Primary operating system for software development (2007-2010)
Source: Eclipse Foundation; 2010 Open Source Developer Report
(Click to enlarge)

In contrast to Linux's fast rise, Microsoft Windows has dropped from 74 percent in 2007 to 58.3 percent in 2010, says the Eclipse Foundation. Mac OS X is said to have grown from 6.9 percent to 7.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. Meanwhile, Linux continues to be the most popular deployment target OS, with 44 percent share, followed by Windows at 39 percent, says the survey.

Primary operating system for software deployment
(Source: Eclipse Foundation)
(Click to enlarge)

Other highlights of the 2010 Eclipse Open Source Developer Report are said to include:

Developers continue to use open source solutions in their software development environment, with JQuery and Spring listed as the most popular frameworks for building RIA and server-side applications.
Some 29.5 percent of respondents list cloud deployment as a current or planned option in their projects, with Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, and private clouds listed as the most popular cloud infrastructure choices.
A total of 75.5 percent use the latest Eclipse Galileo release, and 7.1 percent use a milestone build.
Rich media and web applications, as well as server-centric applications lead the way on developer projects, with 26.9 percent apiece, followed by desktop client applications (21 percent). Only 5.2 percent of Eclipse developers primarily target embedded devices (see pie chart below)

Primary type of software target
(Source: Eclipse Foundation)
(Click to enlarge)

Availability

The Eclipse Foundation's 2010 Open Source Developer Report may be found in PDF form, here.

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