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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.
Unfortunately Linux is burdened with the overhead of X Windows. This slows everything down. People that compare Linux desktops side by side wit regular windows know the difference.
------------------------------------------------ let me tell you a story about a man named jed.
Linux is the greatest, and microsoft suck! ;-) )
(Sorry, this makes half the other \. comments redundant
Backslashdot
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:)
May we live long and die out
P.S. "Mr. Baggins, I find your lack of cowardice disturbing.."
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
What's with that spacing?
324006
ok. you post at -1 karma. I post at +1 karma (even though I waste a shitload arguing with fuckards like yourself). Therefore, generally, people think more of my posts than yours.
I'd love to disprove that theory, but...
I use windows, and here is a link to a 20Mb mpg of kylie minogue riding a mechanical horse in see-through underwear.
www.ben.sales.clara.net/movies/kylie.mpg
I submitted this one YESTERDAY!!!
WTF?
I thought it was the Browser and not the OS that mattered to web sites.
Considering everything that stops people from using Linux on the desktop and the huge lead that MS has in established customer base and marketing, 0.24% isn't at all bad. It is a lot higher than I thought it was.
Truth is that there are huge barriers to using Linux that can only be blamed on Linux. A simple example. I recently installed NVidia graphics cards on both my Win98 and Red Hat 7.2 desktop machines. The hardware installation was the same of both machines. The software was another story...
Even though NVidia included binary RPMs for linux drivers on the disk those drivers were useless because they were for a different version of the kernel. So, I had to down load the drivers from the NVidia site and install those. Of course, even though they claimed to be compiled for the same RH kernal as the one I was using they didn't work either. So, I downloaded the source tar.gz files and compiled them and the installation went just fine. Then I had to edit the XF86Config-4 file and then figure out that for some reason AGP just wasn't going to work... and most of an afternoon and an evening later I had a working high performance OpenGL monster of a Linux box.
The install of the Windows drivers took about 5 minutes, but since I was at NVidia's site anyway I down loaded the newest drivers, installed them, and started playing games. Total time, counting the down load, about half an hour.
Did I mention that I spent 5 years as an X server developer in another life? So, I have an above average knowledge of the server. Did I also mention that I have several computers all networked so that after I lost my desktop and web browser (no graphical interface == no browser for most people) I was still able to access the NVidia web site and down load drivers and help files? And when they lose their desktop they are completely helpless.
All in all, just the hassle involved in loading an accelerated graphics card made by the most pro-linux graphics card manufacturer in the world (MHO) is enough to keep anyone who is not a hard core geek from even considering using Linux.
Lets face it folks, right now Linux is still actively hostile to the average human being. The fact that drivers have to be recompiled to match the kernel makes Linux actively hostile to all device manufacturers. And, that makes Linux hostile to all software developers that depend on specialty devices.
I'm about as pro-linux as anyone I know, but that doesn't change the fact that a company like NVidia needs to provide a 68 page installation manual with the Linux drivers for a card and doesn't need to provide any instructions for the Windows drivers for the same card.
Like I said, 0.24% isn't bad. On my web site I see closer to 1.3% Linux, 1.9% Mac, and 91% Windows.
Stonewolf