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More Linux developers are coming from Windows backgrounds than from Unix, according to a recent study.
Evans Data Corp., of Santa Cruz, Calif., said the results of a recent survey the company conducted show that more than half of the new Linux developers surveyed said they used to be primarily Windows developers—to the tune of 52 percent, while only 30 percent said they came from a Unix background.
According to Evans Data, the 400 developers surveyed said Linux had three main characteristics that drew them to the platform: stability, its open-source nature and low cost compared to proprietary offerings.
However, according to the survey, the developers also said that Linux development tools need work. More than 60 percent said they viewed compilers as having “critical” importance, but many said the available compliers were only satisfactory or barely so. According to the survey, 25 percent of the respondents labeled the current crop of compilers as either “adequate” or “needs work.”
Meanwhile, 36 percent of the developers surveyed said they plan to migrate to the 2.6 Linux Kernel within six months to a year of its release, and 56 percent said they see 64-bit architectures as a strategic target to develop to, but that with a broad segment of developers writing to the Intel 32-bit architecture many said they are content to wait and migrate when the market migrates en masse.
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