Linux On the Desktop: 0.24 Percent?

Canyon Rat writes: "According to this story, less than a quarter of a percent of desktop users have adopted Linux. The survey was based on web surfers so it may be accurate." Anne Onymus adds a link to an interesting reaction over at lowendmac.com.

Comments

How to craft a response.

[glowingspleen]

[Insert Pro-Linux Outcry]

[Insert Rambling Out-Of-My-Ass Reasons why Survey Can't Be Correct]

[Insert Attack on Microsoft]

[Insert Short Insult To Silly Un-learned Users Who Don't Know Better]

[Insert Reminder That Survey Can't Be True]

[Close with Name, Followed By Witty Anti-M$ Slogan, Being Sure To Substitute A Dollar Sign For The "S" Because Doing That Is Inventive And Hilarious]

Re:How to craft a response.

[release7]

I've had my Linux box running for over 9 1/2 years. Try that with you Windows 3.1 machine. I'll tell you it can't be done.

Anyway, I've seen surveys by this company before and they've actually had to retract some of the statistics they've published in the past because of some oversights. Notice how they don't provide a breakdown of the 125,000 sites in the survey---just a little suspicious, don't you think? I've talked to almost everyone in my lab and at least 20% are using Linux.

In the long run, about 15 years, I predict Microsoft will be toppled. Let's face it, their software just plain sucks! Once the gov't wakes up and realizes they are nothing but pure monopoly, their market share will get washed away like a brillo pad on soap scum.

However, I am sick of lusers who are too lazy to want to learn anything new. It's like, hello! God help us if they actually put in just 2 hours a day for a couple of months into learning a new user interface so they could duplicate what they can do with Windows, they'd have a kickass OS that never crashed and can simulate many of the same things you do in Microsoft Office. Stupid lusers. Keep buying Microsoft products but don't come whining to me when Bill Gates owns the mortgage on your house.

Anyway, I just wish /. would be a bit more responsible about the articles it posts. The stats are obviously skewed.

preZZure--->Friends don't let friends buy M$.

Re:How to craft a response.

[onion2k]

Of course MS is bloatware. Now, what did I do with my 7 cds of Debian..

Our Stats ...

[SirSlud]

.. as taken from our counter for the site www.pseudodictionary.com, a site that has NOTHING to do with computers.

Win 98 80178 (45%)
Win 2000 33183 (18%)
Unknown 17948 (10%)
Win NT 15051 (8%)
Mac 13085 (7%)
Win 95 11717 (6%)
Linux 2459 (1%)
Win 3.x 1055 (0%)
Unix 761 (0%)
WebTV 226 (0%)
OS/2 24 (0%)
Amiga 4 (0%)

The scariest thing is that win98 is still 45%. If not being part of that 45% is wrong, I don't wanna be right, baby!

Re:Representative data

[nEoN nOoDlE]

That only proves that Linux users don't search for stuff online cause they're so knowledgable while Windows users have to resort to search engines to get where they're going! Your statistics are LIES! Or maybe Windows users just search for more porn.

Installed, yeah - now how about using it?

[westfieldscientific]

Let me begin with the comment that the figure of 0.24% is statistically suspect, and that the Google statistic of 1% is also probably unrepresentatively low. The following is an attempt to illustrate why.

The majority of Linux installations are done in multiple boot configurations.Most mainstream distros, and even some of the more obscure ones presume that and are designed accordingly, and quite a lot of the online documentation and commentary seems to be slanted toward that assumption. I'm not saying that's a bad thing per se, nor am I suggesting that platform interoparability is trivial, but there's a downside.

When I first installed OS/2 here in 1994 I got rid of Windoze. If I wanted a m$ operating system I wouldn't have deleted the damn thing. Getting away from it was the whole point. I installed Linux for the first time at the end of 1999 onto a separate physical drive with much the same motivation. The whole idea was to learn the damn thing, and the only way to learn something is spend time with it. Incidentally - on compatible hardware, installing Linux with no multiple-boot issues to complicate the picture is a lot less effort than installing Windoze on a virgin HDD.

I spend a lot of time on IRC: In addition to discussing beer and girlies, a lot of those dialogs are taken up with details of software installation, includng many first-time Linux installations, and I can tell you of countless times where someone I've been helping comes online, reports the installation successful, collects his l337t haxxor certification and then boots straight back into windoze.

This posting got me thinking about "dormant penguin syndrome", and it's evidently a big-enough factor to be taken into thoughtful consideration for marketing and promotion purposes. (Or advocacy, for those of you reading this who are staunch anti-capitalists) M$ traps are all around - from preloaded bundles, to proprietary file formats, to ISPs like NetZero (and many others who charge steep fees) to websites that won't render right without IE, to games.......I don't want this to turn into an outright rant so I'll just make the comment that there's a lotta Windoze-centric aspects to the present computing infrastructure viewed in macro - and that's not an accident: M$ planned it that way.

Does that mean life without Windoze is impossible? Hell no, but the reason I know that for a fact is that I've been resisting and avoiding it long enough to know how to deal with the obstacles. It isn't usually even that difficult.

Take most of the "Linux isn't ready" postings on this thread and s/Linux/Windoze, or Apple or any other alternative. Ya kow what? The validity of the comments holds. Demand this morning a desktop operating system that's truly intuitive, fast, effortless and crafted to a standard of pure perfection? There aren't any - but why be impossible when you can be totally over the top? Insist on a flawless user installation onto multiple-boot systems m$ spent millions of dollars developing to engineer deliberate incompatibilities into.

Linux is ready - and the applications are ready, at least for those of us capable of writing a letter without an animated paperclip, but it's simplistic to think that a successful Linux installation == marketplace conuest.

Users with Linux installed need to spend more time using it at length, and the Linux community needs to spend more effort encouraging this. How well this all goes will determine the direction of computing in this decade. M$ is already upset enough about the trend to Linux to start whining and mouthing about it. Time will tell.