When I was a reporter a few years ago, I began covering the fast rise of Linux to dominance on the Top500 Supercomputer list. Since the list comes out every six months, I would end up getting a response like, “Is it that time of year again already?” to which I would respond, yes.

A few weeks ago, the top500 Supercomputer list came out, as it does each November. As expected, Linux is still the most used OS for supercomputing, as it has been since taking the list by storm in the early 2000s.

The fact that GNU/Linux totally dominates the top 500 supercomputing list is hardly news, but the fact that it has managed to *increase* its market share yet further is.

The U.S. government has hired IBM to build a supercomputer [Sequoia] with more power than all the supercomputers on the Top500 supercomputer list combined. Sequoia will use approximately 1.6 million processing cores, all IBM Power chips, running Linux, which dominates high-performance computing at this scale.

The Windows' fan club likes to point out that Windows is far more popular than Linux. The reason for that has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with monopoly. Nothing shows that better than the semi-annual TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

Today’s release of the list of the top 500 supercomputers shows that well over 90% are running Linux. Also, IBM’s Roadrunner has finally been dethroned; in a big way

The latest TOP500 listing of Supercomputers has been released with some interesting highlights. Australia has just one entrant (ranked 468), whereas there are 6 in New Zealand - 4 of which are identical systems at Weta Studios.

Linux runs a massive 91% of supercomputers in June 2010. Windows on the contrary runs a sad 1%.

The TOP500 project was started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing. Twice a year, a list of the sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems is assembled and released.

One of my favourite sites for anyone benighted enough to believe that Windows is in any sense superior technology to free software is Top500. As its name hints, this is simply the top 500 supercomputers in the world, with an analysis by location, vendors, processor architecture – and, of course, operating systems.