The numbers, clearly, point to a major industry trend.

Take a look: Dice, the tech jobs site, reports that it had 9,631 Linux job listings in August. While this is a big number, what's truly eye-catching is the percentage growth since January: Linux job listing are up a robust 30 percent--three times the increase of overall tech job listings. (Since January, Dice job listings have grown by 10.2 percent, to a total of 96,548 tech jobs.)

To be sure, Linux jobs continue to trail the mighty Windows, which had 16,895 listings. Linux also falls behind Unix--still healthy after all these years--which boasted 14,954 listings. (The AIX flavor of Unix had 2,302 jobs, and Solaris posted 4,055.)

The other OSes are distant also-rans. Mac OS, a relative stranger in corporate computing, generated a mere 1,027 job ads. And MVS, the most commonly used OS for IBM System 370-390 mainframes, had only 489 postings. (But still, almost 500 job openings for mainframe operators--and they say the mainframe is dead. Who knew?)

This recent report showing dramatic Linux job growth reflects a multi-year trend, says Paul Melde, Dice's VP of technology. "I think what it really shows is continued strength in Linux job growth numbers," he tells Datamation.

"As you look back even further, what you see are maybe bigger jumps," he says, though some of this is because the total number of Linux jobs was fairly small. He gives the numbers: July '05 to July '07 saw 123 percent growth. July '04 to July '07 produced almost 330 percent growth in Linux job ads.

"It just has continued to build, year over year, [showing] strong growth. And real strong growth through the first half of this year."

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