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Linux Outpacing Macintosh On Desktops
An anonymous reader points out this article in the International Herald Tribune about corporate acceptance of computers running GNU/Linux, which includes this snippet: "Linux is already outpacing Macintosh on desktops: "Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent." The article does not specify from where Kuznetsky draws either figure, but can it be true that Linux systems currently outnumber Macintoshes?
anything is possible.
Almost every developer I know has at least one linux box. I can count Macintosh friends on one hand, even after OS X.
...just my 2 gil.
....Tux eating an Apple.
"Folks just call him Buckethead." -- Les Claypool
IMHO this is great news. More articles such as this might actually convince software company's to port their products to linux as well as Mac's
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
Servers, yes but desktops I'd say no
Too many zeros, not enough ones
I find it odd that mac hasn't had more acceptance in business as OS X is now well supported and apple seems to have shifted from it's 'colourful' looking green and pink computers to more conservative silver colors more appropriate for a corporate environment. Then again the cost of a good linux based system could easily be 1/3 of that of a good mac system that can run OS X.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
that is an incredebly small number, it just goes to show how much of a monopoly microsoft has
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
I used windows since back in the Win 3.1 days. I finally had had it when Windows deleted a TON of my files for no reason. I looked into getting a MAC but it was just too much money... and I had JUST built a new Athlon 1500+ system. So I switched to Linux and haven't had any problems since. Linux is great because you can run it on just about ANY THING.. and you have CHOICE.. something you don't have much of in Windows or Mac.
x86 hardware is still pretty cheap, so it's completely feasible that there's more people out there running Linux on an x86-based PC than there are Mac's. However, I think this would end at the Internet; there's tons of Mac's in labs, offices, other institutions like universities, so I don't think you could say for certain that they're "outnumbered."
Seems logical to me, x86 hardware is so much more common than the mac stuff. You can make your windows box into linux, but not mac.
About time someone had an aticle on Linux outpacing MacOS X.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
I'm running whatever Ellen Feiss tells me to.
specifically might be a better word.
Had to read it four times.
I'm fairly certain that pound-for-pound, there are more computers running Linux than MacOS (Servers & Desktops), but... the numbers seem a bit fishy if they are saying that Linux outnumbers MacOS on the desktop...
Of course, some computers can be both. My family has happily run Linux (LinuxPPC and Debian) on Macintosh computers. We had a beige G3, and now have an older iMac. My purple computer is usually an eye-catching display in a sea of beige at Linux Install-A-thons. For the most part, our iMac is interchangeable with my Athlon based system. The only problems are from vendors who provide non-open sourced apps, but only for Intel/Athlon systems (Adobe, RealPlayer - I am glad for the support, but wish you supported PPC as well!) The Mac lets my younger children be compatible with school, while my older son can use the software he wants. I run netatalk and samba on another Linux computer, and the Mac has a shared partition that can be used by both Linux and MacOS, so file access between OS's and systems is no problem.
If you are coming from Windows world, you probably figure that Windows is best and there must be a reason you are switching to Linux. Costs more to switch to Mac and why settle for second best? Linux is very cheap and not competing for best in the commercial market. So go with the freedom that the underdog, Linux, provides you.
http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html :
"Operating Systems Used to Access Google - July 2002"
Mac 4%
Linux 1%
Other 4%
the rest being windows.
Of course this data is rounded, google is probably the best place to get this sort of data anyways - as google is the best search engine around right now.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Let see, not only will a company be tied to Apple for the OS, but also for the hardware. At least when you sign you soul away to M$ you have a wide choice of affordable and/or high performance hardware from a number of competitors to run xp on. Or you can just take what Apple chooses to give you?
How dare you argue, using imperical data on Slashdot.
It's heritics like you that show what dorks these geeks reallly are.
You must suffer 5 BSOD to atone for your sins.
There is no way this is accounting for the recent OS X phenomonon. Once OS X numbers become known I think Apple is going to be trouncing Linux in a big way.
This isn't to say that Linux isn't great, but OS X is seriously turning some heads.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
In most of the companies I know about, Macs are relegated to marketing types for graphic intensive applications. Most of those users have Windows machines to run "corporate" type applications. The Macs are highly specialized.
Linux has developed a reputation (at least amongst the tech-saavy) of being a serious OS for real work, be it on the desktop or server. The Linux machines are specialized too, but in a more utilitarian, jack-of-all-trades way.
And Windows is for the unwashed masses.
Since if a program is available only for Windows, a Mac user would need to buy another computer to run it (costs around $1000-$2000 for a mid-range system), while a GNU/Linux user using a PC only can make his/her machine dual-boot (cost of Windows $329 (?), less if you're a pirate... arr, mateys! ). Since the GNU/Linux users have a feasible way to run the program, companies won't consider a port necessary.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
IDC only looks at corporate desktops, and I think that it is safe to say there are more of these running Linux than Mac. But look at the consumers. Most /.'ers will say "more Linux than Mac" but how many of these are atypical samples.
So I think that the IDC is right, and so are you, but they are different markets.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
OneStat says otherwise.
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1706
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Why do we insist upon parading Linux around as the "spokesmodel" for the open-source movement? Wouldn't the advancement of open-source efforts be better served and made more visible by combining the efforts of Linux, *BSD, Darwin/OS X, and other open-source O/Ses, and comparing their collective advance against the Evil Empire?
*BSD is dying after all
MacOS has allways been limited to the realm of Apple Hardware. What is allowing linux to grow is the fact that linux is not limited to any one platform. You can run linux on your old mac, your medium mac, your brand new quad supercomputer mac, your old piece of shit ibm pc, or your massivly parallel super computer. Linux dosen't care. In the economic state most areas and compnaies are in, companies do not have money to spend on the greatest new thing, so they try to save money. This is where linux smashes down the wall of microsoft and sets up camp. Linux can breath new life into your old sparcstaion 20 that you leave at work because you have no where to put it at home, and it runs, and is slightly more useful then before.
w erpc-64
Just my $.03
-LW
BTW, the various platforms you can put linux onto:
Alpha
Mips
Mips64
ia-32 (x86)
ia-64
?x86-64?
m68k
parisc
powerpc
po
sparc
sparc64
superh
s390 (power4 or powerpc? or other?)
I think linux is being ported to the following platforms:
power4?
vax
Turning their heads to vomit.
Mac users tend to cluster, I should know, I am one.
I find it Highly unlikely that these numbers are true. I suspect Microsoft of attempting to use Linux to it's advantage by piting Linux and Mac users against each other. FUD anyone?
Even if the numbers ARE ture it matters not us much as you thing for us mac-heads. As I see it the amount of x86 hardware is staying the same or even losing market share! Linux is just taking desktop spots away from Windows.
So in the end even if the figs are true, it's prolly still a GOOD thing for mac users, the less microsoft slaves in the world the better. And with Mac OS X marrying into the *nix family I'm sure The Penguins and The Produce can play nice.
Well...seein's how there is no "Linux" brand computer (Like Dell, Gateway, etc...) and Macintosh has a new OS that IS Linux...yeah. This is quite possibly the most accurate survey conducted with a blindfold on. I happen to know that the marketshare of Apple's has almost doubled in the last 4 years, and is growing quite rapidly. Last I knew it was at around 3.9%. Wanna know why Apple will still CONTIUE to grow?
I got nothin'.
One thing it seems that no one has mentioned is that linux can be ran on a mac and if its just now passing mac os in usage if apple ever made osx86 linux would seem to quickly loose that. Don't get me wrong I love linux but I would still like too see an OS X for x86. ANYTHING to diversify the end user desktop OS market.
considering linux runs on IBM clone machines, which are what most desktop systems are based off of, if you want to run mac OS you gotta have "special" hardware. (that happens to cost alot)
adventure-today.com
Macintosh users a much, much more likely to pay money for commercial software.
On one side, you have a group of people that are used to free and Free software, with a large percentage that demand the latter.
On the other, you have a group of people that paid a large amount of money for their hardware/software from one group, with a culture of paying for all of their software, be it cheap utilities to massive applications.
Even if these numbers are correct (and they will undoubtably be argued both ways), it won't change much - there is still more money in releasing desktop software for the Mac than for Linux. And when it comes down to it, money is why people make commercial software.
you run linux on a macintosh? Or if you dual boot between linux or MacOS, or even if you run Mac-on-linux? Is the author comparing PPC vs Linux on x86 or what?
It really doesn't matter who's winning the desktop market. They're both (hopefully) beginning to carve out a section out of Window's dominance. When the sum approaches 20%, then good stuff is going to start to happen... then again, I'm assuming linux and mac users numbers continue to grow (I guess no necessarially simultaniously).
Linux takin market share from windows is good; Macintosh taking marketshare from windows is good. Both situations leads to more competition, more developers, better software, etc.
I just wonder - how is the market share of Mac users now compared to a year or two ago. Same for linux. How many people have stayed, how many have switched from windows, how many have switched from mac/linux, how many have switched from *nix. That data would be pretty interesting.
Also (and I should have read the article), does the account for what's happening globally? I don't think Apple has much of a chance gaining marketshare in countries where price is of up most importance.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
The study's data is skewed because most Linux systems dual-boot with Windows, whereas MacOS systems typically ONLY boot MacOS (X or otherwise). I personaly will dual-boot Debian and MacOS X 10.2 when my new PowerBook arrives. (Woo hoo!)
You get what you pay for.
You didn't give the poor bastards The GIMP, did you? Your designers are real people, with real skills, that want to use real software.
I bet you weren't cheap with the hardware you you, so why with theirs?
Who said about Microsoft: "It's an amazing machine. I admire these people, who were far sighted enough and bold enough to do what they have done," "Microsoft is not afraid of change. It will cannibalise a weak product to launch a stronger product."
Who said about Windows 2000:"The general trend for client operating environments continues to be consolidation around 32-bit operating systems and applications," "Unfortunately for competitors of Microsoft, this consolidation also means a general movement to Windows platforms."
You mean that Dan Kusnetsky? The "world's most prominent Linux analyst"? Well, that's good enough for me.
I love Linux and all but, surely we can come up with something better than these obscure referrences?
International Herald Tribune? Quoting an Italian private investigator?
The rest of us running GNU/Linux systems must be counted in "Other".
Simplicity.
The MAC UI is automatic. With Linux, users choose between GNOME, KDE, Enlightenment etc. I agree that the options are great for those that know what to do with them but do those past puberty care or want to learn a new UI?
With Microsoft, things changed but the learning curve was short as the similarities picked up the slack. Apple's latest is in the same boat. They are intuitive.
Linux UI developers really need to concentrate on the "usable" UI versus the "more extendible/powerful" if they want the non-geek and "largest" user base. People like to know they are professionals with respect to interface and with Linux you cannot since there are too many options. The elite will scoff but the sorry fact is that it is the truth.
Until Linux UI folks learn to relate to the same crowds that Apple and MS are most popular with, it simply won't fly on the client end.
- Chuck D.
Lunux + Rondevous + Acqua = Your spell checker's worst nightmare.
Frankly, Linux as a desktop sucks and blows. The guys at Gnome, KDE and the app writers REALLY need to rip-off Apple's GUI Guidelines and get something consistent and usable into user's hands.
The desktop is no place for the ignorant and its no place to try to re-invent the wheel because users don't fuckin' want it, okay?
Apple spent sixty million bucks developping the GUI. If you think you are going to come up with some thing so overwhelmigly better that it will blow the old order away, then you are an arrogant ass-hole.
Be that as it may, I an NOT buying a windows box.
But lately, I'm thinking that I could run my server on an OS X box.But then again why throw away a perfectly good Athlon.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Just an interesting fact I've observed. Having worked for the past 5 months at a DOE national laboratory, I've noticed that (very generalized), the physicists use macs more, the engineers use sun/linux, and general work is done using windows (access to office without emulation.) Also, many also use windows on a separate desktop, though I haven't seen anyone using all three.
I wonder if this is due to the software, reliability issues, or other matters. I know of many people who use their old computers (mac, windows, linux, whatever), and will not upgrade to new versions or other OSs just because they are complacent with what their current machines can do, they don't want to lose their desktop settings, etc.) Others cannot switch, because they use applications which are critical to their work area, and only work on a specific OS.
On another tangent, a project is currently being undertaken at our lab to replace large, expensive sun workstations, with quieter, faster linux workstations.
"Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" -Juvenal
How are these percentages calculated for Linux? Just last month, I wiped NT off one of my machines and replaced it with Debian Linux. The thing is that nobody knows that I did it, so I can't be in that 3.9% I have done some browsing from that machine, so the numbers could be gleamed from web server logs I guess... At any rate, update those numbers to Linux: 3.9% + 1 Windows: 9x% - 1 :-)
Also about installing Linix; I had put if off for a long time fearing how difficult it would be to install. Boy was I surprised at how easy it was. The X server wouldn't start by default, but it was easily fixed. All drivers were handled correctly by default. Much easier than doing a clean NT install ever was.
Anyone else putting off the move. Just do it! You will not be disappointed.
Cheers,
Leif
These people, who expect a good 5 years of use out of their computer at least, are not likely to move to MacOS, indeed are probably not likely to spend much money at all if they can help it. It's not a big stretch for me to think of these sorts of places as a good part of the expanding Linux desktop sector.
Right now it's a bit difficult to asses which platform people prefer most because money is involved.
So what about china or korea where software piracy is at a 99% rate, or something in that vicinity. When Windows and Linux "cost" pretty much the same amount ($2 for Win vs. $0 for Linux), which does the population choose?
I'll admit right now, I'm just too friggin lazy to look it up myself.
...how many of those 'other windows machines' are actually Mac users using Opera, Mozilla, Chimera, iCab, or OmniWeb faking themselves as MSIE on Windows or, perhaps some other user agent morphing tool?
You know, faking what browser you're using isn't just a Linux thing.
This shows how out of touch Dan is. Google sez 4% and 1% for Mac and *linux. I trust Google's numbers over Dan.
I suspect that the quote is talking about desktops used in companies, not at home. After all the title of the article is 'IT managers cite security and competition when choosing a Linux system', so it implies their only considering the office environment.
I could very easily believe the Linux market share for office desktop computers is bigger than at home, while, as has been pointed out, the Google stats place overall usage at 1%.
Most businesses already own Intel boxes which are underweight for Windows but plenny okay for Linux.
Which is cheaper?
$50 for a Red Hat box or $1,200 for a new iMac?
Case closed.
As long as they're tossing M$ for anything better...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'd like to moderate this post down.
Oh, wrong website
Trolls, it must be cool to be that bored.
1) Outpace Mac as a desktop
2) ????
3) Profit!
Although the article doesn't say it in so many words, I'm sure they're talking about corporate desktops here, and are certainly not including home users.
Corporate use has never been a stronghold of the Mac, and probably never will be outside of media (print/graphics/audio/video) shops.
Let's see Linux outpace the Mac in these areas, as well as the education market, and then you'll have something to brag about.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I can go out and buy a new system which is capable of running a decent desktop system with Linux for about $400 to $500. The entry for a Mac system starts at $800. But typically its even cheaper for Linux, because your recycling a computer to run Linux, whereas with Windows or the latest MacOS, you have to go top of the line.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
* Ok, in fact it's sometimes difficult *not* to upgrade your Windows machine to Linux :-) In particular, it's often easier than upgrading to a newer version of Microsoft Office (I've found recent upgrades of the Windows operating system seem to work pretty well, if your hardware is fast enough, but the real reason for upgrading is usually driven by Office.)
Upgrading a Windows machine to Linux doesn't quite require negative capital expenditure - eliminating bloatware makes the machine a lot faster, but some of the recent window managers get amazingly doggy on less than 64MB RAM, and some of the installers do really stupid things with disk drives smaller than 4GB, and some of the distribution systems really don't netinstall well unless you've got a large spare disk to copy all their CDs into, but desktop machines that don't hav e CDROMs in them are usually too old to bother with. The Register recently reported that many businesses ppear to be moving to a 4-year upgrade cycle for PCs rather than 3-year cycles - Linux makes it easy to do this, and makes it easy to do low-cost bandaid upgrades like adding bigger disk drives and more RAM rather than replacing a whole machine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
3.1% for Apple is 20Mu+- and assume same life span corrected for no real unit growth over last 6 years, gives approx 4Mu / year or 1Mu/ Qtr. That is exactly what Apple is reporting.
Now using the knowledge that Linux as been in the "mainstream" for only 3 years or so. That means the 3.9% equates to 27Mu users or 9mu added each year. That sounds high to me. Remember we are talking people using Linux as Desktop not Servers of various kinds.
Help fight continental drift.
The Linux machines are specialized too, but in a more utilitarian, jack-of-all-trades way.
Jack of all trades, master of none.
If "corporate" means large corporations (which I suspect it does by IDC's definitions), then their numbers may not be too surprising when compared to Google. In my own observations, I have seen more Macs used in small companies (e.g., storefronts, small offices) than Linux, but I would not be surprised if the tables are turned in large corporations with dedicated IT support staffs. Most large companies already use Linux on servers, and when the PCs number in the thousands, the cost of Windows based solutions becomes very significant.
Google, on the other hand, collects data from every type of user, including home, small business, and student, as well as large corporations. It's not surprising that for this much broader cross-section, Macs have higher usage than Linux. I think we're dealing mainly with a sample space issue here. Both sets of numbers probably equally "real" within their respective sample spaces.
The article also said worldwide. I suspect there are many countries, particularly some European contries and China, where the percentage of Linux usage in large companies may be higher than here in the US, and certainly higher than Macs, which must be even more expensive relateve to PCs in those countries than here in the US.
Why the hell would you need a "brand new G4 with all the fixings" in an Office environment?
eMacs are cheap, and make great office computers, in both specs and design. Spend a little more, and iMacs are great deskspace savers.
If you'd ever worked in an office, you'd understand this.
Something that struck me as an 'obvious' reason why Linux would have a higher market share is the fact that it will run on an X86 platform, while MacOS require the Mac hardware to run it. Anyone with a/an (ex)Windows box can run Linux.
~.Evanrude
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My boss is what I would've called a "Mac Zealot", a year ago.
He just ordered a KVM so he could run a PC alongside his mac, in his office.
Why? Web browsing. We got a 10MBit line a few months ago. IE on mac blows. It's SLOW and buggy. Performance of the network in IE degrades from 800K/sec down to 35K/sec (reproducible).
This, of course, doesn't happen in OSX, but it's going to cost us a lot of cash to buy new versions of all the Adobe and Macromedia software we need all over again (we have OS9 stuff now). When those machines need upgrading, we'll prolly go PC. Why? Price.
Meanwhile we're gradually phasing out our Windows boxes (registry rot) and I've been taking every opportunity possible to make the switch to Linux (servers).
OSX is expensive to upgrade (classic mode is slow). Mac hardware is far from "cheap". That's the bottom line.
S
Especially if its on /.
No you are counted in the "I give RMS sweaty goat sex" category, or possibly the "I take it in the GNU/ass category" you little fuckshit.
Totally untrue.
Apple doesn't own all SCSI hard drives, and some macs are using IDE drives now. You certainly dont need to talk to apple to change your hard drive.
Same for ram; theres a handful of mac ram makers.
Kensington makes mac mice (and keyboard too iirc)
Macs can use any monitor (might need an adapter if you want to use dvi, but many have vga ports now)
there are numerous upgrade cards, mod cards, etc.
Not as limited as one might think.
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SUSE users: You will need to use the System Restore feature to restore your earlier version of Linux Media Player. Red Hat and Mandrake users: In Control Panel, click Add/Remove Programs, and then click Linux Media Player. The beta version of Linux Media Player 9 Series is removed.
apples and oranges.... Is Linux an orange?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This Dan guy didn't call me to ask me what I was running. So I'm officially saying that OS X is run on 3.10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of computers as my computer runs OS X. Next time, have Dan call me so he can get his stats right.
But really... duh. You can run Linux on pretty much anything now-a-days. Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, Intel, PPC, and probably a modded stuffed animal. You can run OS X on a PPC computer. *insert good analogy here*
With no required registration, Linux tends to be under counted. There are more Linux desktops than this study suggests.
Oh sure -- you are a Linux user so you know lots of Linux users. I'm a Mac user. Know what? I don't know a single individual that uses Linux on the desktop. As a server -- sure. But only the hardcre geeks bother with Linux as a dayto day desktop machine. And non-geeks out number geeks by a rather huge number. Anyone who takes this survey seriously has been sitting a little too close to his monitor -- those EFT ttransmissions can play havoc with brain cells!
FWIW, Apple shipped around 808,000 Macs last quarter. If you look at their recent quarterly numbers, they're shipping about the same number per quarter so that's 3.2 million units per year, give or take a few 10k.
And that's on top of an installed base of at least 25 million.
Anyone have similar, hard numbers on Linux installations? I realize it's substantially harder to extrapolate (multiple vendors, free to download, etc.) but physical media sales might be a decent indicator.
She's entirely stoned. Please see: this page. For Details
I'm sure this is redundant but I'm too stoned to read. With the large number of x86 PCs already employed by corporations world wide, I would say a shift in operating system platforms towards Linux would be the most inevitiable step vs. buying entirely new computers to run Mac OSX (which btw rocks).
I would love to get my hands on a new Imac or Powermac and show it some sweet loving but my home built Athlon running Redhat runs just fine and I uhhh just don't have the $$$. It's also cheap and readily upgradeable. I hope I'll be able to afford an Apple when I get out of the military and get a "real" sysadmin job paying a little more than the Marines.
that would be your next expected rollout of other software/desktops, too...
:-)
that means... the penguin is gonna win
ALPHA GEEKS!? ALPHA GEEKS?! Bloody apple trying to steel our name! No they are PPC Geeks. Do they really think PPC is good? Ha. Compare a measly little 1.25GHz G4 w/2MB DDR cache to a 1.25GHz 21264 Alpha w/16MB DDR cache. [THUMP}
(DEC) Alpha Linux Geek Signing off. :)
Oh, btw, welcome all Alpha EV6 bus users known as Athlon/Duron users.
Should have been just a re: above, but no, password manager decided the subject was part of the logon, the second time I previewed it.
They already know where everything on the Internet is!!
Steve said that "Apple is the number one supplier of Unix worldwide. Bigger than Sun, bigger than Linux..." If Steve said it, it must be true. Other than the fact that Linux is NOT Unix, but merely a clone. And since when was Linux a ,uhm, company supplying UNIX??
.NET, buying the U.S. government, BSA, incompatibilities, daily security "patches", Big Brother EULAs and shove them up your fat, money grubbing ass.
I own a Mac too, (G4, 640 Megs memory 2x 18G SCSI, Radeon 8500) but let's face it, Mac OS X is nothing more than FreeBSD 4.4 (pretty outdated by my standards) running Aqua as a window manager. Oh and by the way, it has a crap-load of Open Source goodies rebranded to sound like they came straight from Cupertino.
I'll give Apple one thing: If you think Apple hardware is fscking expensive, try buying a new Sun workstation! I could put a good down payment on a car for that much!
So, the question I have for Apple is: If you want the "average" Windows user to switch platforms, how are you going to convince them to pony up 3x more than a PC with less than a third of the available software? Keep in mind that the average computer user likes to swap out hardware quite a bit instead of buying a new machine every 9 months.
Steve said himself that there are "over 1500 Mac OS X apps". Most of these are haxies or simply Linux software such as GCC or Samba that have been ported over. Or maybe the iApps that are so amazing. Obviously Photoshop wasn't the "killer app" that makes everbody want OS X... So, how about something useful that doesn't cost a kidney to own (Office X, cough, cough)
With all this in mind, I'm not the least bit surprised that Linux is outdoing the Mac. I am surprised that the margin between the two is so close. For one, I can build a box that outperforms even the newest dual 1.2 Gig G4s (Uh, people use more than just Photoshop, Apple. You also haven't benchmarked the Athlons, which beat the shit out of all but the fastest P4s...) and has the latest and greatest hardware for well under $1K. Also keep in mind that the average PC user doesn't throw his entire box away after seeing new product announcements just to have the latest and greatest. If it's that hard to get Motorola to build faster G4s, then you should look elsewhere. Add to that the fact that your typical Linux distro (I also ripped into Macslash.org for calling Mac OS X a "distro")has many thousands of apps and goodies and no DRM, spyware, or product activation bullshit like Windows, and I just plain fail to see why anybody would want to bother with Mac or Windows.
Steve, it's time to break out of the Reality Distortion Field(TM) and offer cheaper hardware to get better penetration in the Windows camp.
Bill, you can take your "Trusted Computing", DRM, WMP9,
In the words of Chandler Bing: "Could I BE more sick of corporate bullshit?"
you Linux users are in for a shock when you try Apple's incredible OS X with its integrated QuickTime support and gasp your ever-loving jealous hearts out when you see the true power and beauty of it! I will be smiling with a great Cheshire grin when the whole Linux community fails like Microsoft technology at a Gates speech, and the you all buy Apple with its fantastic QuickTime Player that can play ANY codec because it's the best!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA@!!!!!!
Stop making alternative operating systems!!! Resistance is futile! Alternative OS news makes me sick because it detracts from the house of power that is Apple's amazing OS X. Please desist from publishing such nonsense.
In case you're wondering, spam does not bother me at all! I am immune to your pitiful cries of anguish because I have the all- powerful Spam-blocker from hotmail which was inspired by superior Apple innovations.
Long Live Apple!!!!!!! Down with Yellow Dog Linux and all other open source crapola!!! BOOOOOOOO to Linux! Your poor macrokernel cannot compare to the POWER of Darwin!
I will accept any and all VALID arguments to my Carefully Considered Views at my hotmail address, as long as the aforementioned views don't mention how wonderful *nix is. porsche_lover@hotmail.com
Sincerely,
James Warkentin, Troll
I love Linux. I ran it for 2 years as my desktop OS for development at work and at home. But I have worked at mega-corporations and tiny companies, and I have NEVER seen a non-geek running Linux. I, like many of you, like to be able to compile my own software from the source.
The fact is that no one's mom runs Linux unless someone set it up for them. My mom can't install a plug-n-play modem on Windows. My dad is an Mechanical Engineer, and he has trouble with his computer all the time. There's NO WAY regular people like this, who are very smart, will ever install Linux of their own volition.
Macs on the other hand are almost universally seen as "easier than Windows" by everyone, including Windows and Linux users. Regular people buy Macs for lots of reasons (creative people, geeks who like the UNIX OS and neat hardware, soccer moms who want to use AOL, computer phobic people who want to see what the fuss is about, college kids who like to edit video and rip MP3s).
It's just absurd to think that Linux could be overtaking MacOS at this stage of market share on the desktop. I like Linux a lot, but I run MacOS X on my laptop now, because as a desktop OS it's just better.
- Vincit qui patitur.
This is way off topic but Im going to mention it none the less becuase so many of the posts are talking about how expensive macs are so I thought I should at least broach the subject. Just about every major study which comes out points out that macs have about half the cost of ownership to a business than equivalant PCs (usualy compared to windows PCs) this is because 1 tech support costs are dramaticly lower, and 2 macs tend to be used longer opposed to most PCs which companies throw out after three years. This isnt my opinion or a personal anecdote, this is what these same profesionals are saying. so im sure there are many reasons why macs arent used in business (key apps like MS access being one) but if an IT department is looking at cost of ownership its not true that macs are more expensive.
--aiee
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.
Especially if it's the spell checker that is built into Microsoft Word.
Sorry I don't want to install your buggy, broken computer science project that works with about 0.00001% of the media I might actually want to click on or watch. I'll stick with QT and WMP.
The main significance of the article is that this is another major media source citing widespread corporate support for Linux. (Just the title of today's NYTimes article, "Balancing Linux and Microsoft" is another major indicator)This is great news for many of us (who's us?)! Personally, I think this is great because it means more job opportunities working with Linux (which I much prefer working with and supporting over MS products).
I think MS is probably too big and too slow to fight something this large and this widespread. Granted, they will fight dirty, and we should be aware of anywhere that they threaten our rights to choose, or abuse their power to influence political decisions, But, for the most part, I think the merits of Open Source and Linux will be obvious to enough business managers that it will continue to act as serious competition.
I didn't think so. :)
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=848&aid=- 1
...
OS X 10.*, 14%
OS 9, 1%
Linux, 32%
I think it's obvious where they got the data from.
c-hack.com |
This is all very interesting, the fact that linux may have a tad more market share in the desktop area that even macintosh, but the question still remains: with this new market share, where is the equivalent software and vendor support? Sure, there are thousands of great GPLed apps out there like the Gimp but since we *supposedly* have more market share, where's our copy of Photoshop? How about AOL for linux (not that I really care about such a thing)? Microsoft Office for linux? (Please don't mention wine as it is not a vendor supported piece of software)
I could be wrong however. I can speculate that since some GPL apps are of such high quality (OpenOffice, Gimp, for example), that perhaps some people have overlooked the need for comercial apps like Photoshop. If this is so, developers: keep up the good work. If I am wrong, then its high time that our commercial vendors start getting on the ball and writing apps that linux users can use since our "market share" says that we are worthy of such support.
IIRC, market share figures are all about sales, not installed base. Especially considering that everyone I know keeps their macs for quite some time, I doubt that the total number of Linux users outnumbers the Mac users, yet. That said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Linux were experiencing greater growth than Macs if for no other reason than the cost of switching. With Linux, the cost is potentially labor only (granted, potentially more labor than switching to Macs). With Macs, though, you have some labor, a change in hardware, whole new software investments (the inability to run Windows at decent speeds [VPC is too slow] alongside OSX [as either a dual boot or Lindows] really hurts). Perhaps the Mac switch costs less overall, especially if your time is valuable (I doubt it, but I've learned never to make assertions that may be wrong before I do some actual number crunching), but that bigger initial investment required is a real barrier.
I'm a Mac user, and I'm sticking with it, but this tidbit doesn't surprise me at all.
BlackGriffen
If you RTFA it says "CORPORATE USERS". ALl you Apple zealots stop pointing out that macs are used in art/sound/secretarian jobs. Face it, in the corporate world, you will always have IT guys who run their Linux, but you won't always have art guys running Macs. It's two entirely differrent cultures.
My main machine at home runs Linux, with KDE for the desktop.
I've also got a WinXP machine for when I do Windows programming for work at home, and, or course, for Everquest. I'm reasonably good at using all these from a user's point of view, although I've never done much RTFMing for the GUIs, just experimented.
I was an exclusive Mac user at home from 1985 to 1994, and a Unix user at work from 1981, so am reasonably familiar with them.
Here's what I've found. OS X is beautiful. However, it is full of little annoyances because Apple is stubborn, and won't admit that anyone else ever did anything better. E.g., little things like not allowing windows to resize from any side.
There's no doubt that KDE has a steeper learning curve, and is not as beautiful, but it is not that steeper, and once I've learned something, it generally works better on KDE. Basically, at the cost of being a little clunkier at some things, KDE gets in my way a lot less.
So, among technical users, I certainly have no trouble believing Linux is beating Mac on the desktop. However, among home users, I don't see it. It's just too hard for the average home user to acquire a Linux machine, compared to a Mac.
I'd love to hear from someone at a company other than the Burlington Coat Factory, from a department other than IT, who is using Linux.
I simply find it hard to believe that there are more Linux desktop users than Mac desktop users. For one thing, what are all those supposed Linux desktop users *doing* with their machines. I'm not saying this as flame bait, but while I love Linux for server and development work, most people simply equate Linux with "geek stuff".
It's hard enough to get most users to even entertain the notion of converting to the Mac, and that is an OS that runs plenty of Microsoft software, is oriented squarely at consumers, and has a reputation for being easy to use.
In any event, I don't buy the argument that Linux and Mac OS X are enemies. To me, they're part of an array of options to Microsoft, and in my book, options are good.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
eat that, Pudge.
I've been trying for the past two weeks to get linux to run on my Hitachi SuperH 3 44mhz powered HPC...
The sh-linux and the linuxce projects just stopped caring about us poor sh3 owners...
its sad really...
recompile.org
Lesse...
3.9 + 3.1 = 7 (or an approximation thereof - ya'll know how Pentiums are)
So,
100 - 7 = 93
and
3.9 - 3.1 = 0.8 (or an approximation thereof)
Therefore,
93 + 0.8 = 93.8
of course,
100 - 93.8 = 6.2
or,
100 - 6.2 = 93.8
There. We can therefore conclude that GNU/Linux is catching up with Microsoft Windows with definite alacrity. Extrapolating (we like that word, we do) these numbers, we can heretofore also conclude that within 309.2 years GNU/Linux will have total control (that's 100%) of all computer desktops in the planet!!!1!! w3 r001z!!!!
FUDMath brought to you by the FSF, RMS and PMS.
Please, people, don't buy this crap.
Marketing organizations like this one, Gartner, et al, are brain damaged. They use poor methodologies and frequently draw almost comical conclusions from their lazy research.
Don't be duped.
Example: Software Sales.
Go into the software section of a typical computer store and grab a software title: Zaboomafu, a kid's title, or maybe a game like You Don't Know Jack.
Both games come one a hybrid CD, meaning that the CD contains versions for Windows and the Mac OS -- on the same disk. But when your purchase is recorded, it is classified as a Windows software sale, not a Macintosh software purchase.
Bogus.
Another example... consider the figures that these shithead research companies quote on Linux deployment... They're based on sales.
Linux Sales != Linux Deployment
So, file this lazy-ass info into the shitcan where it belongs.
--Richard
If he means the primary operating system is linux 3.9% of the time and only 3.1% for mac, he's crazy. I know a fair number of people who use macs, I don't know anyone specifically who is using Linux as a primary OS (and I am a CS student and work for a semiconductor company, so I have plenty of exposure to technical people).
Lots of people play with Linux, most still stick with Windows.
IF you have competent employees that know linux well. They can setup many workstations easily at 1/3rd the price. However OS X does look more physically polished and has a better looking gui.
I personally can easily forgo the nice little graphics of OS X and settle with Linux. My biggest beef with OS X Server (the apple os i am most familiar with) is it's directory system. It stores many things in nonstandard places and it make it a pain to configure services(I guess not many people care about that).
It got so annoying along with the speed issues (OSX Server 10.0 and 10.1 has many speed issues related to server function) that i decided to just use yellow dog linux instead. I haven't yet tried 0S X 10.2 yet, it supposedly faster but I also heard that it messes with directories and moves things around again.
Hmmm... Pie...
It's interesting that people are bringing up the question of whether this has something to do with the fact that OS X only runs on apple hardware. Could this be a good argument for releasing marklar? :)
I'm not surprised either. KDE and Gnome are easily set up to behave almost indistinguishably from Windows--non-techies often can't tell the difference. And Linux comes with a complete suite of applications--OpenOffice and Mozilla really do satisfy the needs of most users.
The biggest problem with Linux, in my opinion, is the excruciatingly painful way in which drivers and other kernel extensions are installed--often involving recompiling the kernel. Even the most painless driver distributions (e.g., nVidia) require much more computer know-how to install than the average user can muster. In corporate settings, this doesn't matter that much--the IT department probably likes it that people can't just plug things in. But in the small business and home market, it matters big time.
really all I have to say is
;)
"How ya' like 'dem apples!'
But saying that X percent of desktop systems run Gnu/Linux is not a very valid statement. There are at least three major distributions of Gnu/Linux that are fairly incompatible with each other, given different directory layouts, package managment systems and the like.
Saying "Linux system" has become some sort of misnomer and masks the fact that there is no single "Linux System". There are probably more than 20 different operating systems using the Linux kernel, many of which are incompatible with each other on some level, or at least present the user/admin with significantly different interfaces and tools. And yes you get the source, and can "fix" it, but that's a lot of cost in time and skills that never seems to get added in to the TCO of the system.
Until THAT get solved (even within the same CPU family) no distro will ever challenge the major two desktop OSes. Both of which offer standard package management, user interface and administration to every user that installs them.
To look at the larger picture for a second:
The overall percentage of open-source (at least partially) based OSes seems to be growing, what with *BSD, Linux, GNU, and OS X (darwin). If more companies are seeing the light of non-Microsoft and open Unixy systems, then who benifits the most? Apple it seems.
With MacOS you can write an app for OSX in the text console with all the Unix features you like, or compile most exising stuff. You can also take your base code and evolve it in to a Carbon app that will run on OSX and OS9 with all the "bells and whistles" of a standardised GUI that you know will be the same across all installations. None of this "do I have the KDE library installed, oops, I've got to install the BZip developer libraries".
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
That should have been Linux is up to twice as common as Macintosh (by which I mean, accounts for twice as many hits). And, again, keep in mind that this is all Macintosh platforms, not just OSX.
Check for yourself: you can find statistics from various web sites through Google.
Even if it's just a lie or exaggeration, we could use some outright lies on our side for a change.
Am I the only person who noticed that the guy above me is an idiot?
Thats what counts. The total not Linux v OSX
but, heck, I'M using Linux, and I am a certifiable computer moron. I haven't ever seen a Mac running outside of Circuit City. I have Linux on a would-be useless old Presario 1210 laptop that I still manage to use because Linux lets me. OS-X is great news, but the constant pony-up you have to do to stay Mac-plausible is a bit much. My next door neighbor has an old box that I will probably put Drake on inside of a week. Try to do that with the Macs. One thing Microsoft has done for the Linux community: they've made it easy to target what hardware to run on (howl at me, yellowdog fans!). By the way, with the successful supermounting of my digicam, I now boot over to my XP partition only to, um, well, hmm.... I don't anymore! You're telling me this stuff is FREE? WOOOO!
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
It's like wheat. Wheat is a commodity. Of course you can go to a healthfood store and buy Mung Chew's Ionized Organic Malibu Whole Wheat Flour. The latter item has been uncommoditized. It will never be mainstream. But that doesn't mean there isn't a niche market for it.
I love my Alpha !!! :)
I've got it running Deb currently..wish I had a use for it
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
when I to to the hardware store and buy a hammer, I do so becaust I want to take it hame and use it right away, and then put it away until i need it again.
I'm not going to spend a ton of money on a hammer (Mac) when I know i can buy something similar for much less (Win xp). I am for sure not going to buy a tool (linux) that I need to work on (find drivers, compatable hardware, stiff learning curve, ect. ect. ect. ) to do a simple job. Even if the cheaper hammer requires that i use their nails in my building, I and not going to but a $50 hammer instald of the $20 hammer and surely will not but one or take a free one that requires assembly.
Just like Linus himself admits in person that he used to make up numbers on how many linux users there were, these guys are just making up numbers.
"eleemosynary"
of, relating to, or supported by, charity
Isn't this somewhat akin to saying, "I was the MVP center of the All-Midget Basketball Association"?
Dude, it's cuz Linux users don't need to use Google. All of 'em are such hardcore webheads an' shit, they already know how to instantly find stuff! You know, all that doubleyuh doubleyuh dot doubleyuh slash stuff, an' shit...
This is the market where linux will gain it's market share and it could quite easily surpass Macs in the near future. The home market will be niche for linux for quite a while but it'll still be there for geeks and family/friends of said.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
The penetration rates given by IDG and Gartner are, essentially, made up numbers.
I've been in a position to deal with these analysts, give them information, and observe how they work. They are no different from Wall Street Soothsayers who predict whether a stock is going to go up or down-- except that the Wall Street types are MORE scientific.
For instance, when counting mac hardware sales, they do not count mail orders sales, sales at the apple online store, sales at local apple retailers or sales at independent apple dealers. When they say "Apple has 3.1% of the market" they are really saying "Apple has %3.1 percent of the Retail x86 Market" which is pretty absurd since apple doesn't seel x86 machines. They only look at the distribution channels that x86 manufacturers use, they ignore the majority of Mac sales.
And that was the case in the one instance where they actually gave the source for their data... usually they never provide a backing research, or any explanation where they get their numbers.
As a reasonably scientific person, this data is bunk. It is unsupported, unreviewed (peer review? Ha!) And, of course, it comes from companies who are paid by Microsoft to create a marketing perception that supports Microsoft's' agendas.
I'm not going to say I know for sure what the market share is for Apple or Linux machines, but its worth pointing out that Apple machines have a service life of 2-4 times that of the average x86 PC-- the quality is better, and its shocking what the 2 year failure rate is for the average PC.
Furthermore, I suspect Linux boxes are kept around a lot longer as well -- though we have no way of knowing which ones are used on the desktop and which ones in the server room.
So, these fabricated "annual sales" numbers are irrelevant on the face of them-- the TAM (total addressable market) is going to be much different because people don't replace their computers every year.. but they do buy software every year. IF you're a mac software maker, you know that there are far more customers out there, as people tend to keep their macs for years. Annual sales figures aren't that relevant.
Anyway, I think all of us should make sure we don't take these numbers seriously. And we should not repeat them, and should write to every (idiot) journalist who quotes them pointing out that they are false. Just as %95 of the computers out there are NOT x86, these figures for linux adoption are wrong as well.
These numbers are not scientific, they aren't even "facts". They are, essentially, fabrications.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I've had both Linux and WinXX systems for development and experimentation for several years. About 2-3 months ago one of Microsoft's "updates" blew out a stable Win2K system to the point that I couldn't even boot in recovery mode.
That's when I made the permanent switch to Linux as my primary desktop instead of just for my servers (I play around with small-scale simulation of distributed architectures.)
I still have WinXP Pro boot drive sitting on a shelf, but I haven't bothered putting it in a system again. If a client needs WinXX development done, I'll put it in a box, but otherwise there is no _way_ I'll go back to WinXX. Even then, the source code will be duped to my Linux boxen where I know it's safe.
Yes, I have blown out Linux systems by making mistakes with kernel builds and such (rare), but I've always been able to just toss in a clean drive, reinstall the base, and just copy everything back over from the no-longer-bootable drive.
No registry junk lost. No functionality lost because of some file I forgot to restore that isn't in the app directory. No serious hassles at all. Never mind the need for add-on virus scanners, add-on firewall software, compilers, etc -- all taking away money I could have spent on something far more useful or entertaining.
I have absolutely no fear of having a business rely on any reasonably current *nix system, be it Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, or otherwise. But there is no way in hell I would ever risk corporate data on a WinXX based server. It's just plain suicidal, and for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone in their right mind would do so.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think I know where he got the numbers. Just go here and take a look at the poll. The numbers are obvious: there are far more penguins than mac users.
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
Why can't you change your system to autodetect certain offensive terms such as the vile epithet used above and automod the post to a new level of -10:subhuman slime (or minus infinity, for that matter). This should only take about 10 minutes of coding and would make Slashdot a more fit place for us human beings. Shit belongs in the sewers, not co-mingled with the thoughts of human beings.
*&&**#@!#!
I follow the link to the site, where Apple tells me that I need to download Quicktime 5 to watch the commercial. OK, so I download the installer. I agree to the license, tell it where to install Quicktime & which version I want and it starts to download - kind of. The first installer tells me that it isn't the right installer because there is another newer installer, which downloads. And then I agree to the license, tell it where to instal Quicktime & which version I want and it starts to download. Why didn't they just put a link to the second installer instead of the first?
A hypothetical "apt-get install quicktime" would be a lot less bothersome.
null sig
Free Linux? To whom? The byte-boyz lunatic fringe only ... thus nobody who counts that's who. Sorry, dweezle-breath, but yesterday, Debian was selling for $60.00 (Libranet), and RedFat for $80.00 --- suck it down.
I think that until we will continue with a kind of "fight club" Linux vs Mac there will be someone named Bill laughing more and more ...
By this metric, Windows is by far the most technical superior operating system. linux doesn't even compare, therefore, it must not be as good.
I think even without resorting to figures down to a tenth of a percent, yes, the monopoly of MS is absolutely huge.
I don't trust -any- figures when it comes to percentages like these, and as both a Mac (OSX and previous OSs) and Linux user I'd like to see every gain I can - but anyone who goes into more detail than "MS has by far the largest share" is just throwing numbers around. Gaining an accurate idea of the amount of macs both new and old that are in current desktop use is hard enough, given you can only guess at the life cycle of older machines while adding on very recent sales - attempting to gauge the number of linux desktop installs is even more futile.
MS has a huge hold on everything - every little effort towards evening things with other options is worth it
a grrl & her (mac AND linux) server
As great as Linux is, it seems likely that the data provided isn't really what people are interpreting it as. How many nerd-wannabes have downloaded Linux and followed an online FAQ to dual-boot, only to return to Windows for Quake 3 and forget about it? I'd like to see a number for people who use Linux 90% of the time on their computers, or even more than half. Furthermore, does "Linux" mean strictly that, or does it include BSD or other Unicies? The article doesn't say.
Basically, those numbers are meaningless. As is the vast majority of statistics in this industry.
Your post portrays the under-informed and short-sighted world view typical of a teenager who thinks he's lived and knows it all. Get a history book - around the time you were born, IBM was cocky, arrogant, thought untouchable, and was as firmly entrenched in software (hell, computers period) as you think MS/Apple are now. And IBM today is nothing more than a bit player. If MS stays their current course, they too will be an also-ran in 15 years. They are pissing people off with the same types of strangulation techniques for which IBM became so vilified.
Apple's fate is harder to forecast because they try to innovate and have a different market appeal.
Thank you sooo much for pointing that out.
heh. mabye he counted everyone himself. :)
I think it entirely depends on your business.
If you are an accounting company shifting numbers around all day, it's unlikely that anyone but your marketing manager would require a mac - and the only reason your marketing manager may want one, is because it looks cool !
It's also unlikely that you'll find many Linux users in the company - possibly the company mail and web servers run Linux.
If you are involved in a media content business, such as print, or digital media, the chances of finding a mac are pretty much guaranteed (at least, for now) - again, mail and web servers could be running Linux.
If you are involved in the tech sector in some way, then the chances of finding Linux boxes are guaranteed and maybe your marketing guy has a mac powerbook (Because it looks cool, not because he can use it)
It's all pretty logical -
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
If it was American data, it would have been generated by the supreme court. At least our leaders were elected, jackass.
Actually I have seen a lot of people struggle through the process of upgrading Windows. But the vast majority of Windows users don't have to install Windows because it's already installed on their machines.
How many PCs are sold for consumers with Linux pre-installed?
I think you're equating my discussion about the perceptions of normal computer users as some sort of attack on Linux, which I'm not. The public at large simply doesn't care about "better" computer solutions. They simply use what they're told to use.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Perhaps you missed the part in my original post where I noted that I was talking about the perceptions of normal, non-geek computer users.
We're not talking about the capabilities of Linux as a desktop system, we're talking about how normal consumers perceive Linux desktop possibilities.
While I completely understand that using KDE or Gnome, I can run desktop apps to my heart's content without ever having to go to the command line, I'm not representative of a normal, non-geek computer user. I'd hazard to guess that you don't represent that demographic either.
Are there any websites for "home users" of Linux? Are there any "Linux Home" magazines? Do most Linux user groups consist of a cross-section of people you might find at the local mall? If you sat on the post office steps in your local town and asked any ten random entrants whether they knew what Linux was, how many would give you an affirmative answer?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
RealPlayer for Linux/other including Linux for PPC.
Well count me in there...
I've recently moved my old G3 Powerbook from MacOS to Debian. I tried OS X and Mandrake 8.2 (and, a long time ago, LinuxPPC) to see how they would go but Debian wins hands down for me (OS X is nice but miles too slow on this machine).
This is like the dreaded "vote of confidence" in baseball. Any time an OS needs validation by numbers, it's a sign of decline and imminent death.
My window on this? In my job I have been approached many many times by these "number inventors" trying to sell their product to companies I have been working for. You know the names. Everytime they release a "report" you get that awkward phone call where the guy tries to convince you that your company will go bankrupt if it doesn't know what percentage of users use Visa as compared to Mastercard online, or something equally stupid.
Occasionally I have tried to ask how they collect their data, even told one guy I would buy his report if he would make available to me the survey method, but that stuff is hidden carefully because, as you point out, it is utter utter non-scientific shite.
I remain firmly convinved that these numbers would be more accurate if someone literally pulled them out of their arse. Don't feed these people - don't buy their reports.
You're not using a Mac are you?
I'm not sure if this is an Apple move to get people to switch, citing it's "easier on a Mac", of if it's really just because, hell, to port QuickTime to Windows, they're gonna need a team of Windows programmers...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Upenn just set up all first year Ph.D. with linux boxens...
I have been using Windows for a couple of years now and have never experienced any problems even though I have been using the computer for development and have a ton of applications running on it.
I use windows update frequently and it has never failed.
What did happen though is when I tried Mandrake last year my computer froze after booting KDE and I had to redo the installation to get it right.
...hell, to port QuickTime to Windows, they're gonna need a team of Windows programmers
Erm, you do know that QuickTime has been released on Windows for years now, right? Perhaps I'm confused, but it seems like that's what you're saying.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I am always sceptical of numbers from market research companies - whether they be from Minitel, Gartner Dataquest, IDC, Datamonitor, or whoever.
Why? Because I used to work for a market research company.
We were a bunch of 22 year old kids, a year out of university working to such tight deadlines that we just made up the numbers. And guess what? Management had no problems with us doing that.
My favourite story was when I was reseaching a certain market in South America. Because I don't speak Spanish, I decided the way to work out the size of the market was to use some (probably wrong) number for the US, divide by the number people in the US, multiply by the number of people in Venezuela, and apply - say - a 80% discount.
Unfortunately, some where in my Excel formula I had managed to multiply the market size by 10. So, Venezuela appeared to have the largest market in South America.
When I realised weeks later, did I bring this to my boss's attention and risk a telling off? No, I just forgot about it.
Anyway, four months later I had left this job and got myself a proper one, and was reading a magazine. *Another* market research company was touting that "Venezuela [x] market biggest in South America!..."
I was astonished. We hadn't done any real work, and another market research company had just copied our 'work' verbatim.
And here ends my tale as to why Slashdot readers should avoid paying to much attention to market research.
--- My dad's political betting
Most Linux users I know (including myself) have a
dual boot system, since you sometimes really need
to have a Windows laying around. As far as I know all OS-usage stats simply deny this fact. Therefore,
how should dual boots be counted? I personally use Linux 95% of the time, but have to switch to windows for internet banking and some IE specific websites. Do I count as a Linux user? or as both?
the moral of the story is: supply test information with the stats, or don't show the stats.
OS X remains "the most widely-distributed UNIX-based operating system"
Surely this cannot be right?
Im trying to see the scam in that sentence...
Ahhhh, 'distributed' not 'installed', now I get it. =)
Pixels keep you awake!
They don't have to change hardware, and you can get a Linux distribution free. It saves money in the short term so why wouldn't Linux be more of a choice than Mac. Not news.
Too bad the site doesn't work, it uses some obscure HTML referring to an imbedded object in a file format of which I refuse to acknowledge the very existance. In other words, anyone got a nice, small mpg which would work on my pretty little computer without installing quicktime/selling my soul to Satan?
I know lots of people using Macs for desktop and nobody using Linux in that way. I know a few people using Linux for servers and various networking tasks, but beyond that, nothing. I know this is anecdotal, but you'd think such statistics would bear themselves out in one's daily life to some degree. These numbers do not so I remain skeptical.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Is my computing time-line out, or does this just not make sense.
You were running Win3.1 (from, say, 1994) on an Athlon 1500+ (from, say, 2002). Hmmmm.
Troll?
--- My dad's political betting
I know lots of people are saying how low Linux is in the OS stats for webbrowser useragents, but remember:
1) The surveys are done on sites which Linux users are less likely to use
2) Admins and web-cafes are likely to spoof browser useragents strings to IE on Win9x so all sites will accept the browser.
I did a large experiment at work this afternoon. I put a Windows XP box, a Linux box and a Mac box on my desk.
By close of work none of them have moved. How long did they have to wait before they worked out who was outpacing who?
Not everyone is an American, you know. There are even some computer users in that place called TheRestOfTheWorld and believe it or not, they don't all speak English and use English language web searches. Shocking, innit?
Linux is such a success that it's like the guy who got laid with the prom queen on a prom night!
youre not.
I know two kinds of Apple users here. Most of my friends tend to install Linux on their old Apples and Linux on their PCs, although most of them use dualboot machines. Nearly everyone also owns a Linux Workhorse Machine of some kind (Printserver, Router, Sambabox, etc.)
But here in the office about 40% use Macs (its a publishing house so this number is pretty high, historically) and the rest of them uses Win2k. So, i dont see these numbers here. Not yet...
The purpose of Linux is clearly not a role as a desktop king.
It's just a toy created by smart nerds for communistic nerds without money. Which is cool.
Sure you can use it in some specific specialized niches.
That's the reason why it's so rare to see a Linux machine in a professional environment.
You're with me or against me.
must have been in a coma
I just noticed this conversation. I'm sorry that I'm late to the party. I guess we all have to work sometime.
The quote refers to IDC's research on _paid shipments of client operting environment software_ not to shipments of desktop systems. Furthermore, paid shipments do not include free downloads or replicas made of either free downloads or paid copies.
At the time, our initial findings showed that Linux held approximately 3.9% share of the worldwide paid shipments of client operating environment software. As we futher refined the data, we were forced to reduce that figure.
A press release is being prepared which will announce the release of the report.
Dan Kusnetzky
Well, I've helped a lot of friends and people I've come in touch with with their computer ('doze) problems over the years. Mostly these are either (mostly) gamers or desktop users, both groups only wanting their games/apps to run without much thought-cycles spent in the how/why apartment of computer interaction.
:/
Now, I sat down once with one of those friends that fall into the gaming cathegory, and I tracked the conversation onto the Linux subject.
Basically the dialogoue went on like this:
ME-"Have you ever tried linux?"
HIM-(after a lot of thought trying to place the word linux in his mind, says)
"What is linux again? Is that some security app?"
ME-"Well it's an OS, like BeOS, OS/2 and Windows.. I use it as my gateway and firewall on my home network.."
HIM-"Oh, firewall (quickly forgetting the OS bit).. I didn't like the one in WinXP, so I completely turned it off.. I have NO use for firewalls (he badly needed a decent firewall on his network, in fact..), and I think I've tried that linux when it came on a cover-disc with a gaming magazine once. I tried to open the linux-kernel-.x.x.x.tar.gz by clicking on it, but it just wouldn't run.."
GEEZ...
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
It may be IDG and Gartner are blowing smoke, but if so, they are going extraordinarily far out of their way to obfuscate. Macintosh sales are very easy to estimate, since only one company (Apple) makes them, and the number of each model they ship is in the quarterly report.
It is in estimating the number of PC clones sold that they have a challenge. Worse yet, estimating how many are actually used for Linux.
But annual sales are irrelevant, as I pointed out.
They tell you nothing about total market share-- only what was sold this year.
But that number is given as total market share, which is a bald faced lie on the face of it, when in actuality, the number of machines that are in use at a given point is the total market share.
Plus, there's no way to tell how many of those machines have a different operating system installed on them after they leave the factory.
Hell, windows is counted multiple times for the same machine in many cases-- every time a box is sold its counted as if it was a new install, as if you could even buy a machine without windows up until a few years ago.
Apple can't even tell you the number of machines running OS 9 or OS X or Linux because they don't control them.
And as the IDG guy just revealed- they do NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, to determine what OS is installed on the machine by the customer.
Apple has an opinion about how many are running OS X vs OS 9, but the numbers for microsoft are absurd-- a single computer can be counted a half dozen times in its lifetime, showing up as 5 seats of Windows when it really is only one.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
From hardcoregamers.com:
Date: 2002.08.18 3:19 | Author: Yorrike
Looks like Doom III is headed to Xbox. GameSpot has the news.
In his QuakeCon keynote, John Carmack stated that the Xbox (which, I might add, I loathe and despise), is the only game console that id is, quote "completely committed" to. They won't be getting an Xbox sale out of me, I'll be Dooming on my PC, and hopefully (if all goes to plan), I'll be doing it in Linux, just like Q3 ; )
Are you sure Linux is all you use? What if it doesn't all go to plan? You'll be using Win98 like you did for all the other PC games that *didn't* run under Linux.
> Compare a measly little 1.25GHz G4 w/2MB DDR cache to a 1.25GHz 21264 Alpha w/16MB DDR cache.
:)
Um, G4 is not the top of the notch PPC. What about the Power4? 2 1.3GHz processors on one chip, 1.5Mb L2 Cache, 32Mb L3 Cache (per chip, not processor)
> (DEC) Alpha Linux Geek Signing off.
Didn't you mean to say HP/Compaq Alpha?
I know, I'm rude
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Until they open their hardware (completely) and release their stranglehold on development, they SHOULD be a minority. Many have forgottent hat this company was the evil empire even before Microsoft.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My next door neighbor has an old box that I will probably put Drake on inside of a week. Try to do that with the Macs.
I actually have an old Mac (Power Mac 7600) running Mandrake PPC on it right now.
Oh, you were joking? My mistake.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They probably got the statistics from the latest poll.
On the other hand, GNU/Linux systems are 100%(usually) open source/free. Everything from the kernel to GUI's runs on super computers to PDA's.
There's a HUGE difference between OS X and Linux.
Personally, I like Apple more than MS, but mostly because Apple doesn't control 95% of the market and is less dangerous to the future of general computing for the masses. Plus OS X runs on top of a Unix... and is prettier... ;-)
So, what I'm saying is that everyone has different goals. Some just want to topple Microsoft, some want to push open/free computing. Of course, there's plenty of room in there for these two groups to work together, and I personally believe that Apple can co-exist with Linux a lot better than Microsoft can.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Both of these companies will say whatever
1) they are paid to say (Gartner in 1999 : Linux will not make much impact on sales. by 2004, linux will account for 95% of all web servers)
2) whatever they think will be of interest.
3) send out contradictory articles. In the future, one of these will be pointed to as being the correct one.
What is really frightening is the number of total morons that believe in them. Never trust an MISer that uses either of these.
Don't get me wrong. I would like to believe that Linux has more desktops (and that it is growing fast). I think they do. But the numbers are so close even by IDC's that it would be impossible to know what the truth is. Yet, they do not declare it as such.
I just read an article on OSNEWS.com that states that Windows owns 97% of the market right now. They also have MacOS above Linux.
e ssbox10.htm l
So which set of these stats (if any) is correct??
Link to the article in question:
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pr
Linux is supposed for geeks, not the average users. But even the geek community are adopting Mac OS X from left and right. Just look at how many Mac news on /. since the launch of OS X 18 months ago, and it appears that Apple has been discussed more frequently than any of the much bigger companies (IBM, MS, Oracle, Intel, HP/Compaq, Dell) and Mac coverage is not much less if not more than the total /. coverage of all those industry giants. I have also noticed so many Mac converts from Linux (and Windows) users here, but very very few cases the other way around. In fact, the whole Perl 6 core team and many top Java developers have also switched to OS X, and various models of Apple iBook have been simultaneously #1 and #2 best sellers on Amazon.com for many weeks, and frequently nearly half of the Amazon top 25 best sellers are Apple products, not to mention that OS X Jaguar has been Amazon #1 software best sellers for quite a while in both US and UK (and still UK #3 and US #6 at the moment). With xserve, Apple is finally in a position to invade the corporate market, and they sold 4000 machines before the product is on the market (in contrast, Intel only managed to sell 2700 Itanium servers in the first 12 months).
.NET? According MS (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/howtobuy/pricin g.asp), it's $1079 for Professional, $1799 for Enterprise and $2499 for Enterprise Architect; and of course there are other MS tax such as the annual MSDN fee which could be $10k or more for a year.
For developers, nothing is comparable to OS X, not by a long long shot. I have used MS Visual Studio, Sun Workshop / Forte, Metrowerks CodeWarrior and many other programming tools from HP, IBM, Symentac, Borland, etc, and I can tell you that nothing is better than Apple's Interface Builder and Project Builder in terms of power, flexibility and seamless integration, which allows you to use Java or GCC 3.1 for mixed C/C++ and Objective C/C++. You can build and debug with a command line interface or GUI, and have multi-targets and multi-styles in a single project and multi-phases in a target, attach scripts to a build-phase, and manage resources (icons, graphics, sounds, documents, help files, etc), Frameworks, as well as source and header files in the IDE. And before you cheap Linux people tell me that all those cool Apple tools are too expensive, let's just make it clear that they cost nothing at all, all don't tell me that you are not willing to pay $129 for an OS with the most elegant UI and a solid Mach/BSD Unix plus tons of best-of-bread software that will never be available on Linux or Windows. How much the poor Windows programmer have to pay MS for Visual Studio
Considering that Mac OS will only run on Apple hardware, and only *recent* Apple hardware at that? By contrast, Linux runs on just about anything you can think of.
People who want to ditch Windows can run Linux on the same machine they were running windows on. If they want to ditch Windows and switch to Mac, they have to buy a pricey new box, plus now they have a viable machine just sitting around that they don't have a use for anymore. Not too economical, unless your present machine is so old you can't really use it for much anyway.
The way I interpret this, its is all the more reason to port OS X to x86 architecture. It's a lot easier to switch if you don't have to buy all-new hardware to do so.
Someone wake up Steve Jobs and clue him in to the fact that offering customers *their* choice of what hardware platform to run on is a Good Thing.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Are you a bunch of wonder-kids, or do people really graduate that young in the US?
It is possible, but rare that anyone receive a master degree before 25 here.
newbie
This is being typed from a Mac. Linux is great and offers great flexibility, but does lack a good deal of commercial software. OSX is a fantastic desktop OS. Hell, if you grok a *BSD, you can make a decent server out of it too.
.x release can break their software, not cool.... Apple has produced a great system, but they have to be careful about relying too much on ambitious open source projects that don't care enough about ABI compatibility....
Of course, Mac prices and the inability of the hardware to run windows could contribute to any potential edge Linux systems may have.
*If* the results are viable, does this mean that commercial software will come more quickly to Linux? Probably not, at least not yet at this low a margin.
One, Mac customers obviously are not afraid to put out some cash, and software companies recognize this. While the potential userbase is small, the percentage of that userbase willing to dish out more cash for software is probably the highest of the platforms. A great deal of Intel architecture Windows machines out there just sit and run web browsers and check email, run by people who don't care about a lot of the software out there. Those who run linux come to expect to get a lot for free, and often criticize companies for trying to make money. Besides, distributing compiled binaries for linux is a huge pain in the ass compared to other systems, as part of what has made linux so good is a willingness to tear down things and start over as needed, royally screwing over ABIs (i.e. g++). Linux is a binary-hostile platform with users that are the least likely to put out more cash.
This, added to the ability of Windows versions of the software to run on their hardware, makes porting to linux less appealing. Whether by dual booting or wine, much Windows software runs on those systems and the need for a porting is too low to be profitable. Companies take one look at Loki's failure and transgaming's relative success and discount linux ports. Sad really. And now since OSX Mac is falling into some of those problems linux has, through the use of g++. First developers had to put up with OS 9 to OS X transition, and now every
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Anyway, I don't understand what your problem with Linux on the desktop is. The folks at Gnome and KDE have done some incredible work. They have copied things they like from Mac and Windows, and added things they thought should be added, and just basically improved upon everything that's been done in GUI development over the last 20 years.
You know what I have to say about Apple spending $60M on developing the OS X GUI? Waste of fucking money! I really like the OS X GUI, it's very very pretty. But to be perfectly honest, IT'S NOT THAT GOOD. It is MUCH less intuitive than I expected from Apple after developing a new OS. It is very un-customizable. While working on OS X, I thought of a million tweaks that would have made me much more productive, but the OS X GUI is very restrictive. And window cycling? WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?
So, is the OS X GUI good, or rather, excellent? Yes, HELL YES. Is it what should be expected after spending $60M? Fuck NO! Another poster had it right, Money != Success.
But it seems to me you are simply a troll. Have you tried the latest KDE beta? It's already fairly stable, and it has most of the nice features of OS X, plus about 100 million more. It's just as easy to use(and if I do say so myself, it's actually easier and more intuitive), and it didn't cost $60M!(well, the developers' time may have been worth that much, but money doesn't buy everything...)
And then there's Gnome. Gnome is still lagging behind KDE, but they have made some great acheivements of their own. Personally, I like Gnome better, because they tend to work on stabalising current features instead of adding new ones. Which makes development slower, but overall more polished(imvho, v=very). I really like both projects, and would feel perfectly comfortable switching between KDE and Gnome.
And finally, who the hell do you think you are to tell the Gnome/KDE guys what they should do? You, who apparently isn't even up to speed with the latest Gnome/KDE releases.
But hey, that's ok, you're entitled to your arrogant pig-headed opinions, as I am with mine ;-). At least your using a decent OS...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Most of your email addressed the difficulty in estimating market share, not percentage-of-instalations, which is of course a different number, and that is what I responded to. However, for people interested in Gartner statistics, market share may be much more interesting than installed base. I don't know what the current numbers are, but in past years new computer buyers had 5-10 times the add-on purchases (peripherals, software, furniture, etc) than existing users. So, for businesses, new purchasers are important.
Many people retort that Macs and Linux Boxen are like BMW's, so a small market share doesn't matter. This may be true, but to most add-on manufacturers, if something represents a tiny fraction of the market, even if you get a substantial premium, it is still a tiny fraction of the bottom line. A good example is auto parts (something I know about, professionally). Diesel passenger cars made by BMW, Mercedes, Volvo etc may command a premium but they are just an annoyance when it comes to after market replacement parts (at least to the big guys). They account for a fraction of one percent of their revenues. Any effort they spend in marketing and new product development will go towards the 99%+ of the market, and that is absolutely the correct business decision. The only reason they even support the desiels is to say they have 100% parts coverage, a tactically important claim (getting the first call from a mechanic shop is a crucial business win.)
Mac and Linux probably have more of a market percentage than the desiel vs. gasoline comparison. But Linux desktop users historically are not willing to pay a premium for software for Linux. Just look at the impact selling the best Word Processor for Linux/Unix had on Corel. Mac users will pay a premium, and they do require substantially less after sales support so a 4% market share may be viable, if they truly are at the 4% level.
The problem in this whole exercise is that both Linux and Macintosh are probably close to the error bar size no matter how you measure it.
I think most of you are missing the point.
Many companies are switching to Linux instead of OSX because of price.
As great as OSX is, buying a Mac is just way too expensive for many people. Converting an aging windows box is far more cost effective. In fact, buying a brand spankin' new Linux box is far cheaper than buying a Mac.
there are WAY more macs shipping out that 1MU/Qtr, despite what you think you know about Apple's reports. I've read 'em too, and while I'm not quoting a number (once you quote numbers, all hell breaks loose), Its more than 1MU/Qtr
"MacOS has allways been limited to the realm of Apple Hardware."
My PowerCenter Pro running Mac OS 8.6 says otherwise.
"What is allowing linux to grow is the fact that linux is not limited to any one platform."
BeOS was not "limited to any one platform," and it flopped.
"You can run linux on your..."[snip computers]
Do you think that non-x86 desktops make up a significant percentage of Linux machines? I don't.
show me a wintel laptop that outpaces the 800 mhz TiBook. Really; none do.
same for the dual 1Ghz quicksilver g4s, which are now dual 1.25ghz g4s. They're faster than soooo many dual-processor wintels that report speeds of "2.5ghz/chip"
How many of the Linux boxen are dual boot with either Windows or OS X? A more representative stat might be percentage of desktops with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS as their primary boot system, rather than just percentage of desktops owned.
That said, of course Linux would have more desktops: you can run Linux on nearly everything, while the Mac OSen need Mac hardware, and Mac hardware costs more. And let's face it - if you're competent enough to use Linux regularly, you're competent enough to get a copy of it for free.
Maybe you can count the number of developers you know (as someone in another thread above did) who have Macs on one hand, but what percentage of UNIX developers and cross-platform developers (including Web developers, e.g.) drool over Mac hardware they can't afford?
First off, the iApps are WORTH IT. in every way
iTunes3, iMovie2, iDVD, iPhoto, and soon iCal and iSync
Second, you dont need to go and buy a top-of-the-line grand-spanking-new Mac to run OS X.
OS X has been reliably run on every G3 platform (which can be oh-so-cheaply obtained nowadays)
Third, OS X, whether you like it or not, is HEAVILY based os BSD code, with about a third of it being Mach code. While not a distro, its certainly a *BSD.
Fourth, despite the Athlon's creaming the P4s, it takes more than the average "benchmark" to compare Athlons/P4s to G4s. Note: the Megahertz-myth page on apple's site.
Looking at my computer collection, I have four computers running Linux, one running Solaris, one running NeXTstep, and one running Mac OS X. Looks like Linux is winning in my case!
Although, that Mac sure is cool...
Posted from the wireless couch.
Here's the RH 7.3 images, free of charge.d istributi ons/redhat/redhat-7.3-en/iso/i386/
0 70010814 .html
0 070010836 .html
...
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/Linux/
Can't download? Here's the disk set from CheapBytes for $4.99:
http://cart.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart/0
Here's Debian for $18.00:
http://cart.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart/
Here's the great thing about Linux: you only have to buy/download ONE distro for all your machines. I'm not kidding you! I mean just get one copy of RH and you can legally use it on all your PCs!
Suck that down baby
First off, not everyone uses Google as their search engine. Only a certain type of desktop user. Next, many desktops aren't used to surf the web. Another thing that would throw off Google's stats is that many Linux users have their web browser claim that it is Internet Explorer running on MS Windows. This effectively lowers the Linux count and raises the MS count.
Normally I don't comment on sigs, but...
You mean Condorcet voting. IRV has serious problems once you look closely at it that make it unsuitable. With Condorcet, voting is the same, but the counting method is better.
Take a look at the links. If I ever run for office, changing the election method to something fair will be one of my planks.
Constitutionally Correct
You're spouting opinion has fact here. Bad idea.
In all honesty, I hope that if the follow Apples guidlines, it looks nothing like OS X's gui. I find it completely cumbersome and akward compared to KDE or Win2k.
You're right. The desktop is no place to re-invent the wheel. So why is it okay for Apple to try yet you bash KDE and Gnome for giving it a shot. For me, OS X is just the same gui as before but was attacked by jelly beans with a pretty CDE dock thrown in. Waste of space, basically useless for me. As is the damn bar at the top (I find the Win2k "Start" bar and both KDE and Gnome's bars far more useful). If I want jelly beans, I can easily install WinXP and get jelly beans without the CDE hack.
I don't think I'm going to come up with something better. I think I'm already using something better. This comes from me using OS X whenever I get the chance, trying to do the stuff I normall do (web browsing, news reading, a few video games, pron downloading...) and getting completely frustrated with the damn gui each and every time.
As for others, they think they can do a better job than Apple and I say go for it. Who's to say Apple is the best solution for everyone? They're one of the worst for me that I've tried lately.
I would love to try OS X, but I'm not prepared to buy new hardware to do it. Linux (and other Unix varients) can run on my existing PC hardware, and I can try it for free. To try OS X I've got to shell out £1000 for a new machine first. Most people don't use OS X in the workplace, so they will never have a good reason to go out and buy it.
Do you really think Windows is "easy" to setup, including drivers, applications, etc etc?
Yes, it tries to do more things automatically than maybe Linux does. But it also fails more often to do this, and then stuff like "DLL Hell" and "Do you want to remove shared files?" get in your way.
Honestly, I agree with IBM when they said "The only reason why most people are using Microsoft Windows is the same reason why most people don't convert their toaster to use 110V, or their car to use electricity instead of gas: It was in there when I got it, you've perhaps already seen it used by friends (so you know who to ask, very important), you don't want to tinker with it more than necessary (for fear of breaking things, and losing support), and it works, at least at first."
Put a complete newbie in front of a computer with a Windows install CD and watch him get lost, just like he probably would (or would not) with a SuSE or Redhat installation CD.
And with "complete newbie" I mean people who don't know how to hold a mouse, and who don't know how to use the cursor keys. People who have used computers as typewriters (typically Windows machines) are not "complete newbies" any more.
Home Page
This is good news but misleading. More than likely (as I know Apple's market share is more than 3%) Linux does not currently have more desktops than Apple but rather more new desktops in a given time frame. I love media math. Just ask them how they got to the term "average" in some stories. For some interesting perspective read "Innumeracy" by some guy I don't remember and "Beyond Innumeracy" by the same guy I don't remember.
I worked at a school with about 400 iMacs, and 400 Dell Optiplex workstations. The iMacs were 266 RevB's, and the Dell's were Optiplex 600Mhz PIII's. Our school moved away from Dell because 1) Their failure rate was so high, and 2) in the event of failure, support from Dell was constantly frustrating (the insisted on getting the machines back for routine part replacements, unlike, ANY OTHER REASONABLE company, who'd let you do the install yourself. This was despite the fact that we had two Dell certified tech's who's main priority was maintaining the dell's). They actually moved to Gateway, but I'm gone now, and I can't imagine what their current situation is like.
Sure, we had some optical drive failures in the iMacs (they are laptop parts, and thus have high failure rates.. but just look what PC mfr's are doing with their home systems), but our NT guy was in the lab 3 days a week fixing floppies and other schenanigans, and reinstalling NT. So, my number's are bigger, haha. Seriously, people's experiences vary widely with hardware failure, and it's mostly just the specific batches of goods people get from the vendors. Macs have in the past 6 or so years used drives from IBM, Quantum, Western Digital, and Seagate. Their optical drives are from Sony, Panasonic (matsushita), and LiteOn. These are generally all first-run, very reliable companies. The same stuff a good PC shop uses. Yet, some people's legitimate experience with macs is "we bought x00 iMacs, and 11 of them had to go back because of drive failure," and theirs no reason that wouldn't happen to a batch of PC's from any vendor.
--
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Actually, the reports include several tables. One shows shipments for three years. Another shows installed base. The installed base tables typically are only made available to subscribers not to journalists.
down to one linux box, 3 OSX(1 desktop, 2 notebook), 1 win2k desktop(expensive console mainly)
The Linux box ONLY acts as a server, and will be retired after next powermac purchase.
Gripping! The race for distant, distant, distant second on the desktop is really heating up!
BSD is OSX's core.
BSD runs on PC.
Take a week, Kill Microsoft, port OSX to PC.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Personally, I've only known a handful of people running Linux on the desktop, and I do IT work at a major University. From what I've seen, Mac desktops outnumber Linux desktops by at least 1000 to 1.
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
I'm frequently the guy people around me ask "What computer should I buy." For the past several years, I've been saying "Dell." Just this weekend, I've decided I can now safely say "If you're willing to spend a few extra bucks and you can put up with a community of elitist Mac hippies, you may be better off with a Mac." I do this in spite of the irritating, offensive ad campaigns, lies about performance (which they've actually started to give up on), and the proprietary, overpriced hardware.
With OS 10.2 Macs FINALLY have real support for two mouse buttons (IMO, the bonehead one-button-mouse thing was some sort of personal power trip of Steve Jobs). All Macs need to start coming with a good mouse (left and right button plus a scroll wheel). This was actually a major sticking point for me (along with general overdependance on the mouse).
OS X is just SOO much slicker than the other offerings, ESPESCIALLY for n00bs, and the BSDish core is so much more robust than what MS brings to the table. It's not for me (I prefer a Free operating system on commodity hardware), but for the uninitiated it's utopia.
Now, if only there were a FAST, open source, aqua-like GUI, that throws out X11, KDE, Gnome, Motif, QT and all that other CRAP and baggage, uses your 3d accelerator to do the GUI (like Aqua does), has a common set of widgets etc. for all applications, a common interface for things like drag-and-drop and I could compile it for my favorite Linux or BSD distro, I'd be in paradise.
Linux is getting close to the point where I can recommend it to those who aren't willing to spend the extra cash on a Mac. Perhaps with KDE 3.1 and the corresponding versions of Redhat or Suse, it'll be ready.
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
have a lower IQ than the fuzz in Larry Wall's navel.
While I know several people that love their Macs, not one of them has looked at an eMac.
I don't disagree that the eMac is the most economical of Apple's lineup, but I was describing a system that could compete with full desktops, not the low end. If you want low end minimal functionality (slower memory, Celeron/Duron/Athlon, limited expandability), you can shave another $150-200 off the price of the system.
I don't recommend trailing edge systems to anyone who asks (x86 hardware), and I wouldn't recommend Apple's bottom line hardware to anyone either.
Don't get me wrong -- the eMac looks like a fine home machine, and would be quite adequate for most desktops in the corporate world. But you take an Athlon-based box with the NVidia chipsets and you've got a comparable solution to the eMac that can be purchased pre-assembled for about $600-700 with a 17" monitor.
At that entry level pricing arena you're only looking at about a 20-30% saving over an Apple system.
OS X remains "the most widely-distributed UNIX-based operating system"
Surely this cannot be right?
it is. what he RESTATED was that since OS X has such a large marketshare, yet is only distributed by ONE company it can be the most widely-distributed. Linux is not because it is chopped up and farmed out by probably hundreds of companies. Apple doesn't have to beat Linux for the title, only RedHat.
--- What
And I assume those numbers are made up as well, aren't they?
We all know you don't have a CLUE what the installed base is.... there's no WAY you could know what any of the two hundred machines managed by my co-workers and I are running, for instance.
I don't deny you provide a lot of detail-- thats' what gets the suckers to buy the reports.
Lots of detail makes people think they are getting something, other than numbers pulled from the air.
But given your methodology (actually, complete lack of it) anyone with any horse sense knows you are fabricating your numbers.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
The problem in this whole exercise is that both Linux and Macintosh are probably close to the error bar size no matter how you measure it.
Actually, that's just speculation. For a long time, the Mac represented %32 of the total addressable consumer market for personal computers.
About three years ago (unfortunately, I don't have a reference and I really would like to find it again to re-read it) I read a study showing that the Mac market for application software was about twice as profitable than the PC market. This because even though you charge the same price for both versions, there is less competition in the Mac area, more sales, and a lower cost to develop your application for that platform.
Marketing dweebs are a lot like stock analysts (and IT reporters) they have a herd mentality-- if tall their golf buddies are putting their products on teh windows platform, they'll jump in too-- never mind that the increased competition means LESS sales, not more.
For instance, Disney's Lion King CD rom lost money on windows, but was profitable on the MAc. Mac sales covered the entirety of development costs and the whole profit margin-- the PC version lost money on a adjusted gross revenue basies (ie not even including development costs) because the tech support was more expensive PER AVERAGE SALE than the revenue generated by that sale, on the PC side.
Its not as simple as "more pcs out there, better market".
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
According to the OS poll currently running on this site, 13% uses OS X and 34% Linux, which means even in Linux own backyard, OS X usage is already 38% of Linux usage which is very impressive given their respective age difference (18 months compared to over 10 years). And according to Apple and other sources, only 10% Mac users are currently using OS X (Apple expect it will double to 20% by the year end, following the recently released Jaguar), which means the total Mac users are 380% of the Linux users; the actual figure may well be higher if we assume that the percentage of /. readers among Linux users is higher than that of /. readers among OS X users, which agrees very well with the Google 4 Mac to 1 Linux stats.
is that there are now more hackers than there are photographers and typesetters. The next career group we hope to overtake would be unemployed nurses. (in either sense of the word...)
is that osx plays nice with open source--standards. perhaps the real value of osx is that it can demonstrate the possibilities of open source. not everybody needs bloated applications, or local applications for that matter. while .mac is a fee service, isn't it the realization of bill's .net vision--minus the purchase of windows xp server enterprise, and various microsoft server applications? but, linux will wipe the decks clean when it has a great desktop and a consumer friendly network appliance like profile--a tablet or ps2 like console. and, linux or bsd will likely not be a single distribution, but a platform for modification/customization.
In my household linux boxes outnumber macs 4 to 0.
They outnumber windows boxes 4 to 1.
Linux is taking over, get used to the idea and stop being suprised by press running stories about it. What else is new? If I had a mac, I would probably use Linux PPC on it if it would work. Mac software is just too darned expensive.
Yes, I know.
The joke was, someone was complaining about QuickTIme being a pain in the ass to install. I meant it's either part of an "it's easier on Mac" scheme, or it's jsut because that's what happens to anyone's good software when you let a team of Windows programmers hack it up and make an installer.
Maybe I should stop posting at 4AM...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You specifically mention "window cycling"--what do you mean by that? You mean the way you switch between running applications in Mac OS X?
I ask because I'm considering buying a Mac, and I have used one before and rather liked the UI. I'd like to understand your beef on this point to see if it's something I've not noticed yet and if it's something that would affect whether I buy one or not.
If a tree fell on a florist, and nobody was around to hear it, would he make a noise?
Good debate.
LOL, gotcha. See my sig for implied agreement. :)
Now back to my iCal Library subscriptions...
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
remember; linux and mac are not mutually exclusive
but does it say whether it is counting OSX as linux?
When I bought my iBook, Apple and Compaq were the only major vendors offering a CD-RW/DVD combo drive on a laptop. For the exact same features, the Compaq was $2000 and the iBook was $2100.
5% more is not too much, in my book.
If you want to superglue a hard drive to a microprocessor and ethernet card--well, you can't do that with a Mac.But for the features offered, Apple is extremely price competitive with the other major vendors.
I just hope they re-introduce the Cube, to function as a low-end (monitorless) machine.
Linux is winning. Linux gains more and more marketshare. Governments world-wide now use Linux exclusively. Will Apple die? Maybe not. But Apple growth has peaked. Apple will now sit comfortably in its little nest and lay an egg. These are the Apple doldrums.
A 3.1% overall share out of a 5% possible overall share is, in some ways, more impressive than a 3.9% overall share out of a 100% possible overall share.
Nowhere in the article is OS X mentioned, only Macintosh. The 3.1% overall share is referring to ALL Macintosh systems, not just those running OS X. This would include those running OS 9 and earlier.
Your assumption of a 5% overall share is what this article is describing as 3.1% overall share.
From the article:
Yes death to the MAC now if we can just kick the shit out of MS
>Are there any "Linux Home" magazines?
:-)
In Germany there actually is. It's called "Linux User".
As you might not know, Germany has the highest amount of Linux Users per capita. The interessting thing about this is, that Linux usage - through thorough help of SuSE, the dominant distro here, and serious advocacy through popular and well know politicians, is on the brink of actually reaching critical mass. You even get german standard commercial software for Linux - such as tax packages or accountant software.
Most people who have some basic knowledge of computers have actually heard of Linux and more often than one may think have a slight grasp of the concept of "operating systems" and that "linux is something like Windows, but better if you know your way aroung PCs". Another funny thing is that SuSE is synonym for Linux. People actually say "Linux 8.0 is out now."
But still: Until people stop using pirated software and actually are grabbed by the purse, windows is still gonna be there for a while. Allthoug the first german Linux Laptops are showing up (www.gericom.de) and every german geek is posed to tell *anybody* *not* to switch to XP.
We'll just have to wait until M$ ceases to support 2K and the gouverment is finished migrating to Linux.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...I recently switched over to Linux (Mandrake 7.1) on both my PC's from Windows. I switched because I am planning on doing some programming projects on those PC's, and my research indicates that the Linux api's are much better documented that the Windows api's. It is just easier to programmatically control Linux than Windows.
However, the KDE gui and the apps that come with Mandrake are not as workable as in Windows, and they take a lot memory, too.
You've got a long ways to go, Linux--at least on the desktop.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Macs can be recycled too. 8 year old macs can run a decent desktop system (mac OS 7.6.1, 8.1, 8.6, or 9.1) without any problems. All 4 of these OS versions can be run fine on hardware available for under $150 on ebay. OSX can be run on this same upgraded hardware for under $400. There's no need to spend $800 on a new mac, unless you want something faster and more reliable than Intell or AMD could ever offer.
I've always enjoyed using SuSE, and I get the feeling that in Germany people are less interested in how computers are marketed, and more interested in getting things done with them.
I sincerely hope that Germany continues to forge ahead with Linux, and that the rest of Europe follows suit. It would be a helpful wake-up call for the US if Europe showed the US government and big corporations that they don't need to be beholden to the Beast of Redmond.
Thanks for sharing the info, Obertino.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Sounds like the pressure is on for Apple to go ahead and release an x86 compatible version of their OS. That would increase the possible market share to 100% Instead of the 5% as stated in the first post. Slashdot ran a story on this a week or so ago....
Let's see:
Linux is free, it can be installed on damn near every computer, and ppl are sick of Windows.
Mac requires that you purchase a whole new computer, which costs a little bit more than Linux.
So... using the same kind of math, I'll create another type of statstic: shoes are outselling cars.
I'm guessing that a large percentage of linux boxes are sitting in server farms in large, anonymous warehouses in the midwest. If I want to run a room full of servers, then linux is the perfect marriage of inexpensive hardware and software.
If you drilled down into the numbers a bit more, you would probably find that a larger number of Macs are operating as "personal computers", in the traditional sense, than linux machines. Likewise, you would probably find that a larger number of linux machines are operating as servers than Macs.
Is there any difference in price?
If I have, let's say $2K, what can I get for it on the market of PC, PPC and Alpha? And which one will fly and smoke?
Seriosly, are there any cross-platform comparison of models for the same price (systems for $1k, $2k and $3k) tests with GCC (linux kernel compilation), GNOME (theme changing), OpenGL (redrawing), PostgreSQL (reindexing), Java (servlet processing) and Lisp (bootstrap rebuilding)?
My intuition answers that the lower is the price the more advantage PC will have for the same price. The higher is the price the more advantage Alpha will have for the same price. Mac may have a chance to win a benchmark somewehere on the middle.
Unfortunately I cannot find any links for such fair testing. Vendors hate fair testing and show only results of unfair tests. And there is no such thing as independent benchmarks. Or is there?
Less is more !
My company (goverment owned), 2 years ago bought 500 PC's. The failure rate is around 35-45%. Out of the box was 20-25 %.
:-( )basically white boxes rebranded Olivetti, using the same cheap components that you will find in any cheap computer shop.
Yes, the company bought the cheapest offer (by law really we didn't have any other choice
Of course, now Olivetti has been sued and forced to pay a really, really BIG fine; replacing at least power supply EACH week.
The sad thing is that most companies are going to the same path of Olivetti, using the cheapest and crappy components they could find, thanks to the price wars, with the exception of Apple (and to some extent Sony); I suppose it is because people thend to think of Apple=expensive, then Apple sells stuff worth the money.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
I am from India & after my birth to still today I only saw a single MAC ,but lots of pentiums running linux so I think in my country Linux has more desktop share than MAC.
Anirban Biswas.
OK, if you are going to express it, express it this way:
DEC Alpha Geek Compaq/HP/Intel Hater.:)
Oh, sorry, this is a Mac, we don't sell shovelware as finished software. If you want buggy beta crap, try linus or microsux...
Think about it... linux on PC ... well you can get an old Pentium 2 system for well... a case :)
:P.
of beer now adays... and linux is free. Where
as Mac systems are still in the $1000's for
something 4 years old.... yeah... I think I can
see where the linux would take the lead... being
as I only have 10 cents to my name right now.
Just a thought for those of you that still have
that green stuff in your wallet
Its history. PCs out-sold Macs because they were believed to be open architecture. Now people realise the OS isn't open but its a bit late. There is no reason why people would swap to an even more proprietary system in large numbers. If the next generation is OS open architecture, Linux seems most likely to grow fastest.
Macs might be the best technology in the world but they will have to be so much much better to be adopted on the same scale as PCs its very unlikely to happen. If that sort of gap starts to open the PC and Linux workd will just steal the ideas.
How many of the 'Mac' users are actually transsexual serial killers who use Windows, but set their user agent to Mac just for the thrill of it?
Hermaphrodite psychosis isn't just a Mac thing.
n/m
That is absolutely correct. The sort of "regular person" who would never install Linux, would also never install Windows. They would rather pay the $1000 for a new computer than attempt any hardware or O/S surgery. The "rescue cd" might be employed from time to time; it is actually a very helpful tool for the completely clueless.
From time to time they might try a Windows upgrade. This usually has a tragic end.
That is the job of the integrator: to sell a system that works well. That means waiting until the drivers are good enough before a component is integrated into the system. You're correct that most folks will never upgrade drivers, but they shouldn't have to.
As to the performance problems: this is overstated. The user base for performance intensive applications like RTCW is small, for one thing. And for another thing, you can run RTCW on a four year old machine. It just runs slow. If it can't fit in main memory, perhaps very slow. But my point is that backwards hardware compatibility for new APIs is pretty darn good in the Windows world. You just need to add a stick of memory now and again.
wow, wat an achievement! I'm so impressed and I wonder why I don't give a fuck.. Ohh now I remember, I just don't friggen give a fuck! Please post interesting news, nobody cares for your OS races except for the Microsoft-haters or the anything-but-linux-haters. thank you
Users want with computers what they want with everything else. Something that will do the job for the least amount of money.
The Macintosh is a lovely peace of hardware as is the Sun Ultra Sparc.
If money were not an issue Windows and Linux wouldn't exist.
If user friendly was an issue the Macintosh would have crushed Ms Dos and Windows 286/386, Windows 2.X, Windows 3.X would have no chance. As is however Windows 2.x and 3.X the user hostile versions of Windows beat out the Macintosh. The UI sucked but it ran the software and for the users thats ALL that matters.
Oh I acually doupt more than 1% of the preinstalled 3.X users actually used Windows at first. Microsoft slammed that one on PC users. Before that the demand was for XTs running MsDos.
Now on to Linux. It runs on the cheapest hardware PCs plus it runs all the software titles you need (not all the populare ones mind you sorry but remember free to $150 vs $200 to $3,000... People pick low cost over populare most of the time)
And a bonus.. Your not locked into a single hardware. Linux runs on Macs, Atari STs, Amigas, Sun Sparcs. If something new comes out that dose the job better at a cheaper price Linux will be there Windows will not and MacOs won't unless Apple makes the newer better system. So your upgrade path is exploded wide open.
The Macintosh is great and I'd own one if it didn't cost so much. But it dose and I'm not going to throw money into the trash.
The avrage user only seems less thrifty than the avrage geek only becouse the avrage geek knows what (s)he is looking at. The avrage user has to error on the side of caution just so (s)he can get the job done. They already have Windows preinstalled and it get's the job done.
In the office environment it's the same story. They want to get the job done. They care about user friendly like they care about the pritty case.
Throw it in an ugly ivory box install the business software that get's the job done and don't think about it.
Linux wins converts for one reason... more and more Windows is NOT getting the job done. Downtine is becomming a major issue. Companys paying more and more overtime to catch up on lost productivity becouse a defective printer driver crashed the whole office network or someone openned an e-mail worm or any number of other unexpected strangenesses that could happen to ANY networked Windows environment.
I don't actually exist.
See that part of my post in parens? You did read that before you responded to my post, didn't you?
There was a /. story about Apple a couple months ago, and supposedly Apple has done a lot of development of darwin on x86 that they will not release, and which they only use/test internally.
I forget all the specifics, and it could just be /. rumors floating around... hence the "supposedly" in my original post...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden