#5 The New York Stock Exchange is powered by Linux

When it comes to the fast-moving business of trading stocks, bonds and derivatives, the world's financial exchanges are finding an ally in Linux, PC world reports. “As an alternative to traditional Unix, Linux has become a dominant player in finance, thanks to the operating-system kernel's ability to pass messages very quickly,” Linux kernel contributor Christoph Lameter, said in an interview with IDG.

The largest exchange, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Euronext, is run on a Linux system that can generate 1,500,000 quotes and process 250,000 orders every second, offering acknowledgments of each transaction within two milliseconds.

#4 Linux is helping power particle physics research

CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, relies upon Linux to control its huge particle accelerator. It uses Scientific Linux (SL), which is a Linux distribution produced by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is a free and open source operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and aims to be "as close to the commercial enterprise distribution as we can get it."

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