Desktop Linux Share Overtaking Macintosh

prostoalex writes "Business Week magazine is optimistic about desktop Linux's future, telling a story of Capital Cardiology Associates, whose 160 employees migrated to Linux desktops. Furthermore, Business Week expects IDC to announce desktop Linux installations to reach 3.2%, for the first time overtaking Macintosh market share. By 2007, IDC forecasts, Linux will be installed on 6% of the desktops. It's also worth mentioning that desktop Linux market share for 2002 was 2.8% and that year it was behind Apple's operating system."

Comments

WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Woo! Six per cent! Six per cent!

So it'll pass BSD again!

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when the BSD guys said that with Apple=BSD, BSD would have > mkt share than Linux.

Fine while it lasted.

If the BSD guys wanted to win, they really should start using a better license like the GPL. :-)

Where do I fit in?

[ImTwoSlick]

I'm a long time Linux user who now has a nice Dual G5 AND Linux boxes. Who's market share am I taking away from or contributing to now?

Re:If this is true, why wont game companies port?

[starm_]

Hey I notice that the trend in open source GPL software lately is to have to pay for it and not get the source. Red Hat enterprise for example, or mandrake Powerpack. Or even worst: the Nvidia video drivers.

It seems free software is becoming proprietary little by little because the companies stretch the meaning of the GPL Licence.

The GPL says:

"This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. [...] These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. "

So I can see that Red Hat can argue that the things it adds to fedora to make it RH Enterprise Linux could be reasonably considered independent and thus it is not subjected to the GPL.

I personnaly don't see how it can be considered independent. I mean would it be usefull to port on another platform to get the benefits of these componants. I have difficulty beleiving that these components add "independent" features to Linux, they rather try to enhance Linux itself which would then make them GPL. I mean Red Hat doesn't say we sell "Linux + these programs" They say they sell "RH enterprise Linux" has a whole. If it is considered a work as a hole it should be all GPL.

It is even worst with the NVidia drivers where its actually compiled into the Linux kernel. This is proprietary code compiled into the kernel people!!. Now Nvidia Justifies it by saying that its their code made for windows, and they just wrote a GPL wrapper around it. The code was seperate and not designe for Linux. Now if that is true its not so bad, but I have difficulty believing they didn't had to addapt their code to Linux.

Now this is not so bad because Nvidia is being nice, its giving away the driver for free. Red Had plays nice with the community in general.

I hate to put these restrictions on good companies that play fair with the community. The fact that people seem to be ignoring these issues worries me noneotheless because it weakens the GPL. IANAL but I'm pretty sure you are not allowed to apply contracts selectivelly, that is if you let go of some rights in your contracts for some group you let it go for everyone. That is if some compagnie with bad intentions try to release a lot of proprietary modifications to Linux thus making there product useless without their proprietary code basicely making a proprietary Linux, we will have no legal recourses. Maybe they will have put all their modifications to the kernel in wrappers. And they will be able to say "You guys let Nvidia do it for many years hence you set a precedent which say that this practice is perfectly acceptable." And I'm pretty sure that is accepted in court.

Re:As A Mac User

[jeffgeno]

My vote? Mac users are smarter. It's probably a localized thing and not widespread but almost every single person I know in I.T. goes home to a Mac at the end of the day (or granted a PC running Linux or FreeBSD) just like I do. I make money working with Windows because it's a mess. When I get home I want something that works.

So you make money working with Windows but you can't make your own XP installation work? It sounds like you're not very smart, or not very good at your job.

Re:if only apple was x86

[Czernobog]

So let me get this straight.
You had enough of tinkering with your OS (your statement remember) and what did you do? You bought yourself a BSD derivative....
Amen was not the right word to use. "The power of Christ compels you" was, as if there is one thing you need, that is an exorcism.