Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007

00_NOP writes "According to a report on Softpedia, citing Net Applications, Linux usage on the desktop doubled in 2006 — 07: though from a miserable 0.37% to a still not brilliant 0.81%. Given that Linux is free, is based on peer reviewed source (and so inherently more secure in the longer term) and that hardware support is now pretty good, how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?" Of course the focus of the article is that Vista is kicking butt over Mac/Linux, which is not particularly surprising.

Comments

OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't Linux be more like OS X? If the open-source development model is so great, why did it take Apple a couple of years to do what Linux has failed to do for almost 15 years?

Maybe the open-source development model isn't the panacea that some would like us to think it is.

(please don't bother pointing out that OS X is based on BSD)

Re:OS X

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Troll? Hardly...pretty insightful I'd say.

There are good reasons Apple has more market share (momentum from an existing customer base) but no good reason why the UI and "user experience" shouldn't be better than that offered by OS X or Vista (yes, Vista...we have Vista 32 on a laptop and Vista 64 on a custom-built machine and the OS plays fine on our network with XP machines).

call me a troll, but,,

[phrostie]

i know more people that LIKE linux than LIKE vista

Re:This is the year of Linux on the desktop ..

[GPL Apostate]

If by Native Apps you mean OpenOffice, yes, OpenOffice is as robust and powerful as Microsoft Works. Part of what turned me off, awhile back, to Linux-desktop evangelism was when I found myself excited to be running a vector-based drawing package. I got to thinking "wow, this is pretty good." But then I reflected on it a bit, kicked the tires some, and had to acknowledge it was about as good as Micrografx In*A*Vision was on Windows 2.1.