THE NSA must be worried that Google is gaining ground in operating systems, unless Google is already part of the backdoors conspiracy (which is very much real). Now that Chromebooks are beating MacBooks or "Chromebooks' success punches Microsoft in the gut" [1] (Microsoft Nick too acknowledges this [2]) the NSA is going to have to start working hard on compromising Android, ChromeOS, and GNU/Linux distributions from the inside (they all have Linux in common and the NSA has already tried to compromise Linux [1, 2, 3, 4] and perhaps succeeded). Well, Apple is compromised by the NSA and so is Microsoft (complicity). Most phones and tablets already use Linux (through Android) and according to yesterday's talk by Jacon Appelbaum, there is more spying in Android than just through carriers (Appelbaum shows that even Solaris is being targeted by the NSA).
How desperate are OEMs to make lemonade out of the Windows 8.1 RT lemon? They’re going to be pushing something called a “PC Plus” initiative at CES this year, which in a nutshell is simply the ability for Windows tablets and laptops to run Android apps or dual-boot Windows and Android.
It’s not as if */Linux dominated everything in every way. */Linux did dominate everything but the desktop in every way. The big thing that happened in 2013 is that */Linux took huge share of retail shelf-space at last and has begun to eat up the web stats.
Linux, open source software, and the open source method quietly grew stronger over all areas of computing during 2013.