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

Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[CRCulver]

Given that Linux is free, is based on peer reviewed source

I used to develop a GPL app, the GNUstep-based character map Charmap. It had a few dozen users, and I'm pretty sure none of them ever took a single look at the source. Only the very biggest applications get attention, and very often quite uncritical examination at that.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[webmaster404]

But usually the most common aspects of a system (Firefox, Linux kernel, X, Core Utilities) all have many people looking at the source. And there is very rarely an attack on any system Linux or Windows that doesn't take advantage of the things that most everyone has (Think of all the Outlook and Internet Explorer spyware/viruses/Trojans) rather then some obscure program that say 100 people use. And the author was saying that it made it more secure, not that it helped development (which it does also) And for the uncritical examination it is mostly because the Free/Open Source community is in dire need for that application, think of Linux, even though the Hurd kernel was going to come out sometime soon Linux was used because it was there, not necessarily because it was the best (Even though now it totally demolishes the Hurd in capability)

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[stoolpigeon]

So you've extrapolated that because no users looked over your code that no one looks at linux? I'm not sure how anyone could think that follows. I made a video and put it on youtube. Nobody watched it but my family. That's why I don't know what the big deal about youtube is. Nobody looks at video on the site but family of people who submit stuff.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Next you'll claim science isn't peer-reviewed because no one reviewed an obscure sociology paper on the spitting habits of an insignificant african tribe?

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[Rakshasa Taisab]

The OP didn't pay to be published in a peer-reviewed paper.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[GreatBunzinni]

That's funny, as my experience is the exact opposite. I've developed a very small GPL library and posted the project in sourceforge. Although I'm the only developer and I regularly submit packages of the code, the section which is mostly visited is the project's subversion repository. Moreover, I do get patches from random people who browse the code.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[mcrbids]

I used to develop a GPL app, the GNUstep-based character map Charmap. It had a few dozen users, and I'm pretty sure none of them ever took a single look at the source. Only the very biggest applications get attention, and very often quite uncritical examination at that.

In a sort of backhanded way, the fact that nobody bothered to look is a complement!

Programmers typically look at sources when they need it to do something it doesn't already do. There's an itch they're looking to scratch, and your stuff doesn't do it. Years ago, when I was still pretty green at coding, I threw out some code that allowed you to send email through a remote server.

It was about as basic as you could get. And, the many revisions that happened thereafter over the years are a clear example of how source review is done.

What I originally threw out was pretty weak, and was extended by other programmers who wanted to scratch an itch that my original code did not fulfill. This is code review at work...

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[msuarezalvarez]

Anything that depends on competent programmers being in the audience is doomed to fall.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[udippel]

That's funny, as my experience is the exact opposite.

Maybe not that funny ?
But rather the result of a difference ?
You developed something useful, and attracted the vistors.
The other whiner duplicated an existing software, and did it badly. Now he is crying aloud about the lack of interest. The World Is Flat, and just putting up GPL-ed software doesn't entitle anyone to plenty of visitors automatically.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[smilindog2000]

I was similarly disappointed. Open-source work is fairly lonely most of the time. To justify doing open-source projects, you valid reasons beyond hoping others will pitch in and help, since that rarely happens (contrary to popular belief). Even with bigger more popular programs, there's still often a single programmer doing practically everything. Users generally don't help out, but post a lot of "Help me, please!" requests, soaking up even more of your time.

I have some projects I'd like to do if I had other interested programmers to make the projects more social and fun. For example, I'd like to implement a P2P file system that downloads data only when accessed the first time, caching it on your disk. The idea there is a really tiny Linux installation could be created that has the whole freaking Ubuntu or Debian distro already fully installed, but the files wouldn't really be there - they'd be out on the P2P network, waiting to download when needed, rather than filling up my disk with crap I never use.

Even though such a project sounds super-cool to me personally, getting even one other human being interested takes a miracle. In reality, you just have to write it, and hope the user base grows.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[cindysthongs]

in reality, peer reviewing code does work - whether it is memory leaks, security holes, or even performance problems. Code is complex enough that nobody can be the be-all-end-all expert in every aspect. However, there is a good chance that a specialized expert in security that contributes to open source will see the problem and either fix it or tell you how to fix it. Same for memory leaks and everything else.

Re:Peer-reviewed source? Come on

[Merusdraconis]

"Ha! Vista is a buggy bloated piece of poo which it took them *7 years* to come up with.

I got booted from a MS friendly site for saying so."

I can kind of guess why, if that's the way you presented it.

This is the year of Linux on the desktop ..

[JackMeyhoff]

... now we have 2 installations :)

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

[JackMeyhoff]

Soon Linux will be passing AmigaOS installations at this rate!

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

[speaker of the truth]

Actually that would be a 100% increase. 0.81% is not a 100% increase of 0.37%

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

[ozmanjusri]

That's right it's not exactly a 100% increase, it's slightly more.

It's fortunate some of us can do the maths.

In the past month, the open source operating system only increased its footprint on the market by 0.4%, from 0.77% to 0.81%. Maybe you can teach the "Technology News Editor" a thing or two...

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

[DuncanE]

I'm just gonna post the following each time someone says its the year of desktop Linux:

GAMES GAMES GAMES
Most of the top 25 requested apps for wine are games - http://appdb.winehq.org/votestats.php
(Also note these are games that seem to benefit the most from a mouse)

I know I can do everything else under a Linux based OS (e.g. Ubuntu), but the only reason I have windows OS on my PC is because I enjoy playing games.

And buying an MS or Sony console seems a bit "Meet the old boss same as the new boss".

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

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want games, get a console.

Except that nobody wants unspecified "games". They want to play particular games. If they are complaining that the said games do not run on Linux, the implication is that they want to play particular games that are not console games.

If you want a computer, get a computer.

Which I have done. And given that I have a very powerful computer, why the hell shouldn't I use it to do serious number-crunching, such as by playing games?

If you DESPERATELY NEED GAMES, VMWARE and CEDEGA are still very useful. I play City og Heroes and WOW and Halflife on Linux in Cedega just fine.

Yeah, those are about the three games that they do run well. And even there, you are losing out on many modern graphical effects -- Cedega is the most advanced, having finally implemented Shader Model 2.0, which was state of the art five years ago. Want HDR? Heck, want FSAA without hacks? Fuhgeddabout it.

And if you hate that, VMWARE is always another solution fo you.

Yeah, because there's nothing like playing games in a virtualised environment that doesn't even support hardware-accelerated graphics!

Sorry, but the simple truth is that Linux is, generally speaking, not a good platform for playing games on. There are a handful of native games (mostly either old titles or FPSes), there are a few games that are quite playable using emulation if you don't mind losing most of the modern graphical effects, but in general if you want to play a given specific game, and it's not Doom 3 or World of Warcraft, you're unlikely to have a satisfactory experience.

That said, for me this has nonetheless been the Year Of Linux On The Desktop With Windows Dual-Booting For Games, which isn't such a bad solution really.

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

[Risen888]

That's completely backwards logic. No one is screaming for that because we've already got native applications that do the job. Therefore, Linux on the desktop is relevant now.

Awesome statistics work

[The New Andy]

...the two rival platforms have almost flatlined in terms of uptake in 2007. According to statistics provided by Market Share by Net Applications, starting in December 2006 and through September 2007, Linux doubled its market share....

That's quite a flatline if you tilt your head on the side.

Re:Awesome statistics work

[burnin1965]

That's quite a flatline if you tilt your head on the side.

The person who wrote that article either doesn't have a clue what they are doing with the statistics or they have learned to generate proper statistical lies.

When you look at the chart included with the article it does appear to be a flat line. Funny thing is they all appear to be pretty much flat lines. Since the scale on the chart is 100% so the growth in OS/X and linux are masked by the market share of WindowsXP. I have to deal with these lies occassionally and all you can do is thump them over the head with a statistical clue bat. I'm no statatician but when people start drawing statistical conclusions from pretty pictures instead of the raw numbers with a good analysis (anova, t-test, chi-squared, something) their conclusions are suspect.

If anything the numbers suggest that with support by PC vendors who are willing to sell and support PCs with linux preinstalled, there is a market. With no marketing and only recent support from a large PC vendor (Dell Ubuntu preinstalled) linux gets a nice up tick in market share. With more data points a true analysis can be completed to determine if there is a trend.

Anyone who suggests that market gains by the latest monopoly product in any way suggest an acceptance of the product are simply ignorant. What else would anyone expect for the monopoly product from the company that manipulates the market and coerces vendors.

Wow, these people are idiots.

[ChangeOnInstall]

According to statistics provided by Market Share by Net Applications, starting in December 2006 and through September 2007, Linux doubled its market share. This detail would sound nothing short of promising, except for the fact that the doubling in market share is equivalent to a jump from 0.37% to 0.81%. In the past month, the open source operating system only increased its footprint on the market by 0.4%, from 0.77% to 0.81%. Only increased by 0.4%?

Try again, that's a 5.2% increase in a month...after more than doubling in the previous year. That is huge. If adoption doubled every year as a percentage of the marketplace, Linux would have 100% of the market within 7 years.

Hey Softpedia...I'll give you $100 a day for a month, if you give me 1 cent on the first day of the month, 2 cents on the second day, and so on, doubling the amount each day for the 30 days.

Re:Wow, these people are idiots.

[afabbro]

Its also why Japan is having its densely populated cities (along with other areas) laid down with fibre optic while we're stuck with inferior methods of internet access. Japanese businesses are willing to look at the long-term while American businesses only look to the next quarter.

Yeah...that must be it. It couldn't be because the entire country of Japan is smaller than California, and when you subtract the inhabitable mountains, volcanos, etc. it's more like Nevada. Or that it has some of the densest metro regions in the world, including the world's largest, Tokyo.

Nope, couldn't be that running fiber everywhere is a much smaller and easier task. Must be that the Japanese are so clever and the Americans so dumb.

RE: Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007

[__aajwxe560]

Background: I am a sysadmin for a 300+ node Linux shop, and have fairly lengthy experience in Solaris, Windows, and AIX as well.

I still run Windows XP as my desktop of choice. I only run it because it came with the laptop that was provided to me by IT, or I would probably still be running Windows 2000. Very simply, I use the OS as a tool to get my job done, and Windows 2000 was doing the trick. Windows XP is now doing the trick. When there is something I want to do that Windows XP can no longer do, I will look beyond. If Linux starts to pioneer in new features and areas that Windows and the Mac OS cannot answer, then I will certainly consider it for my desktop OS. Meanwhile, I deal enough headaches from users at the server level that I don't feel like battling with my Linux wifi drivers, sound card strangeness, or having to jump through other hurdles to just stay productive. Of course there are patches and ways around most/all of the issues I have seen, but that doesn't mean its acceptable to me.

Now, cue over to the server arena, and Linux is certainly replacing Windows boxes for all standard day-to-day servers. It does what I need, it does it well, and even offers features and ease of use that the Windows boxes simply cannot match. That was a compelling reason, with cost also being a close secondary, that we now run so many nodes.

Meanwhile, who really cares. If _XXXX_ does what you want, use it.

who cares about market share?

[poptones]

"Market share" only counts MONEY, not "free" installs. If I download ubuntu and install it on my laptop, how do they know? They don't - and they don't care, because there are no beans for the bean counters to count.

Likewise, bootleg installs. I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista. Many people have, however, brought in spanking new machines to be retrograded - either XP or linux. Many more come in with Vista licenses on the box and unregistered XP installs on the hd.

emachines, gateway and all are now shipping with vista and yet the users are still screaming abou tit and doing everything they can to undo the damage. These folks can spin numbers all they like, real world surveys provide ample proof of the suckitude of vista.

Re:who cares about market share?

[Loke the Dog]

They don't count sales, the count visitors to a selection of websites. I'd say their system is as good as you can get when it comes to counting linux penetration percentage. Besides, come on, do you really think there's more than 1% of PC using linux? Their numbers seem a lot more likely than the 3% w3schools claim. The thing is of course their selection is not representative of all internet users or that they count servers too.

Web site we've never heard of says

[Ice Station Zebra]

that Linux is practically non-existent on the desktop. I say who are you softpedia? An encyclopedia of free software downloads you say? For linux too? Really, well we have apt-get, emerge, etc. No wonder your statistics suck.

Softpedia - Shitty website, shitty article

[jonathan3003]

Shitty website, low quality news. Just as an example, the same site has a different article that doesn't favor Vista: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-Is-Nothing-Compared-to-XP-Move-to-Mac-OS-X-and-Ubuntu-Linux-65786.shtml

Nothing New.

[jellomizer]

Not to surpassing, the fact that people upgrade their computers, they will get the latest version of the OS.
Being that the average turn around for computers a new computer every 5 years. About now we would expect Vista
to be double what TFA said Vista is. Vista Right now should have close to 14%, not approaching 8%. Anyone who think
Vista will not be a leading OS is hopeless lost in the realm of Fanboyism. But what the data does show that Visa is not
growing at a rate that would statically be at. But looking at the Data... Somewhat distorted by the fact the graph has
Power PC OS X and Intel OS X as different OS (Keeping the Market share artificially lowered where combined it would be just
under Vista). Seriously the path to least resistance would be buy a new computer, with the latest OS, and use that OS that
comes with the computer no matter if you like it or not. Macs are only one platform while Windows and Linux allows you to
choose your hardware. If you switch to Linux it is the path of most resistance, Still unpolished compared to XP/Vista OS X.
Requiring you to install the OS separately, for only a couple of Major advantages (Security mostly), at the cost of loosing support for most of
your products and services, less software availability, Websites that don't work, and joining a user community who is notoriously unhelpful
towards people who just started, tricking them to deleting their drives and other things. So yes people will stick with XP/Vista if they are that
annoyed they may switch to a Mac, if their budget allows them too (with Macs having no Low End equivalent), otherwise they will just stick
to what they know. Most people really don't care about the politics they just want to get the stuff done.

Re:Nothing New.

[speaker of the truth]

Anyone who think Vista will not be a leading OS is hopeless lost in the realm of Fanboyism Anyone who thinks ME will not be a leading OS is hopeless lost in the realm of Fanboyism. Windows will remain the leading OS in the foreseeable future, however Vista is by no means guaranteed that slot.

Still unpolished compared to XP/Vista Really? Less polished then Vista? Then why am I hearing about all this trouble with installing drivers and hardware support while Linux keeps touting how it supports most hardware now?

for only a couple of Major advantages (Security mostly) And:
* Free OS (for those of you who aren't suckered/forced into buying from stores that bundle the OS price with the hardware price making the two inseparable)
* Free upgrades. Forever.
* Lots of software bundled with the OS. Cutting down on the need to buy all of these other apps at premium prices.

Just those two minor advantages.

Websites that don't work I can't remember the last time I went to an IE only website. Besides all Windows users should be using Firefox due to its superiority to IE. Most places I see now have both installed.

joining a user community who is notoriously unhelpful towards people who just started, tricking them to deleting their drives and other things. Funny I've had nothing but help from Linux users in selecting a distro and installing that distro, even many years ago when I eventually gave up on installing Linux the people were still helpful and invited me to go to them if ever I wished to try again.

Most people really don't care about the politics they just want to get the stuff done. Sounds like a good reason to avoid Vista.

Sell it

[NekoXP]

Here is the problem: you can't convince people that "Peer reviewed source, therefore more security, and oh it's free" is a good reason to switch to Linux.

Most people don't understand what peer reviewed source means, have no idea of the security of their PC (and not a care in the world anyway if they can just drop a virus checker on it and "solve" it) and, Windows and MacOS came with their system anyway, so are ostensibly free.

Linux has to actually expose a feature people want and do it so that it increases productivity and feels better than Windows or MacOS X. There was a podcast on The Register the other week with Mark Shuttleworth - the basic premise of part of it was that Compiz is cool, but useless, and it's the hope that enabling it by default means developers will turn it from a cool whizzy 3D smooth suave thing into something that improves user's experience, and their lives.

And that's why MacOS X and Windows win, because MacOS has Genie Effects (this is the carrot) but it also has Spotlight, and iTunes, and iPhoto, and Quicktime, and all the other stuff people want and need every day (this is the stick). Where MacOS has a soft, warm and inviting stick, brandished by a really hot chick in leather and a penchant for candle wax, Linux's stick has a poo on the end, and is brandished by a 300lb atheist liberal.

Re:Sell it

[garett_spencley]

Linux's stick has a poo on the end, and is brandished by a 300lb atheist liberal.

That would be a 300lb atheist libertarian. Get your facts straight. Sheesh.

Re: Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007

[speaker of the truth]

I still run Windows XP as my desktop of choice. I only run it because it came with the laptop that was provided to me by IT, or I would probably still be running Windows 2000. Very simply, I use the OS as a tool to get my job done, and Windows 2000 was doing the trick. I used Windows back when using Windows wasn't cool. When Works was what people used and I was being different by using Word. I migrated from Windows 98 to Windows XP quite happily because of one very important feature: the damn thing stopped crashing. It was in fact the only feature I migrated for. Now with the release of Windows Vista I've realized that it has no new features I want. I'll be migrating to openSUSE today or tomorrow and already I'm seeing some benefits just by a little research (Something that's been annoying me is the limitation in columns that Windows spreadsheet programs have. I use Excel/OOo Calc as a flatfile database because it has a nice and easy to use interface. KSpread I've discovered has a lot more then Excel 2003/OOo Calc so I'm glad to finally be rid of that annoyance) already, I anticipate more and more advantages making themselves known.

If Linux starts to pioneer in new features and areas that Windows and the Mac OS cannot answer, then I will certainly consider it for my desktop OS. Don't you mean have to pioneer new features that Windows XP doesn't have? Otherwise Windows and Mac OS have to compete with these new features AS WELL AS Linux's price ($0.00).

Meanwhile, I deal enough headaches from users at the server level that I don't feel like battling with my Linux wifi drivers, sound card strangeness, or having to jump through other hurdles to just stay productive. In the past I've tried to migrate and had these difficulties you mention which has stopped me. I'll admit that this time I'm not going to accept failure and I will migrate, but given the many postings on the web these problems are past for most of the popular Linux distros (at the very least for openSUSE 10.3) and so installing it should be as painless, if not less so, then Windows (which many of those I know simply pay the store clerks to install for them because its so difficult). Regardless I'll see later today for myself if the rumors of Linux's installation ease have been greatly exaggerated.

Yeah, thanks to ME.

[Donniedarkness]

I'm proud to say that I'm one of those new Linux users (Ubuntu). I'm honestly very impressed with it; I expected to like it, but not find anything mind-blowing.

I love the application manager, I love the ability to switch desktop workspaces, I love how I can update everything from one spot.

However, one thing has kept XP on my system (dual-boot)-- drivers. I can't find drivers for my printer (Lexmark x7350), or newer ones for my webcam (Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX). I can't use my printer at all, and my webcam is using some way old drivers and is very blurry-- looks much better with the newer ones on XP. I've looked around, but not found anything to help me out... and I'm not even close to being talented enough to write my own.

Re:Yeah, thanks to ME.

[Trax]

Have you looked at the linux-uvc drivers found over at http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/ ?

To quickly install and test the driver, do the following:

1. Install subversion
2. Execute 'svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk' (without the ')
3. Execute 'make' in the source directory
4. Execute 'sudo su' to become root
5. Execute 'make install'
6. Plugin the camera and use either lucview or ekiga to test it out

According to Moore's law

[Kjella]

With doubling every 12 month, Linux should take the market in 7 years with 103.68% desktop share (you can have more than one desktop per person, right?). Hey, what do you mean it's not a valid application of Moore's law, which is no law?!

It's from their fucking access_log statistics

[SignupRequired]

Their article, and to a greater extent the inflammatory Slashdot article, incorrectly portray these statistics as some universal truth handed down from the gods. In fact, if you look at the article, you'll see that they're merely talking about their own browser user-agent statistics. In other words, they pulled them out of their ass last time they stuck their head up there (perpetually about one minute ago according to the site).

Ubuntu is king of the Linux desktop, and Ubuntu users get the vast majority of their software through Synaptic, a genius piece of software which if introduced in Windows would put "Softpedia" out of business within a year. In fact, I can't think of any reason for a user of any major Linux distribution to need anything from "Softpedia's" website. We have our own more community-centric sources in every case.

Fuck Softpedia.

Breakthrough == applications

[Ralph Spoilsport]

TFA asks:

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?"

What is holding Linux back from massive adoption is software. Very simply, it's just not as good as the proprietary stuff found on Mac/Win. This is NOT to say that the stuf on Linux is BAD, but it's just not equivalent. OpenOffice is very very good. But not as good as MSOffice. GIMP is very good. But not as good as Photoshop. And so on down the line.

The strength of Linux and FOS is also its weakness - having a volunteer developer army. Herding cats isn't as effective if you don't have a big sack of kitty kibble for incentive, or the ability to cut off the kitty kibble as a goad.

Perhaps this will change a bit now that China's getting more involved with Linux - perhaps they can come up with dead-solid apps that are absolutely equal to, or even exceed the abilities of the following applications that are (for me) essential:

1. Photoshop
2. Ilustrator
3. InDesign
4. MSOffice suite
5. FinalCutPro
6. Ableton Live
7. Propellorheads Reason
8. Soundtrack
9. iDVD
10. Flash
11. Dreamweaver
12. Contribute

That's what I use, and I use all of the above, all the time. Some are Windows, some are Mac. I am not a programmer, and I don't have the time to do that. So, it's A: Not My Problem and B: Someone else's job to come up with these apps.

Until the above are developed, I will have little use for Linux.

RS

Re:Breakthrough == applications

[Skiron]

If you are happy to run licenced software that you never own, and have a computer that you do not control (the software controls what you can do), sobeit - but there is no way you can use that argument to support MS products vs GNU/Linux - not in a million years. Trying to herd cats is one thing, being a sheep is another.

Re:Breakthrough == applications

[kmhofmann]

But as long as the software is doing exactly what I *need*, and it's keeping me productive, I don't need to control it... I understand and respect the philosophy behind free software, but in the end, if non-free software helps me to get a certain job done quicker and/or better, the choice will be obvious.

Re:meh

[stoolpigeon]

My problems with closed source:

No guarantee the software will always be available. This could be because the development is stopped or because the price is raised to the point I cant afford it. With open source this never need be the case.

The people who develop open software are not inherently motivated to try and force users to 'upgrade' to new versions. They are not inherently motivated to break compatibility with previous versions or other software.

Closed source software tends to become tiered with highly desirable features costing more. Open Source has no such issues.

I work with closed source software every day. I have for years. And I'm always annoyed with the crap I have to deal with. I hear comments like yours all the time. It implies that the only advantage to open source is that each individual can themselves modify the code. This couldn't be further from the truth. There are many, many advantages that extend out from the openeness of the code.

An advantage open source has over closed source is that advances made in one project have the potential to aid and further any and every other open source project. Rather than hiding new ideas and technology, it is proliferated to the benefit of users.

I could go on for a while, and a lot of smarter people than I am have done so. It's not hard stuff to find. But I think this is sufficient for now.

Lies, lies and statistics

[gilesjuk]

Where do these people get their statistics from?

If I buy a branded PC I buy windows, if I then download and replace windows this doesn't get recorded. All that is recorded is the sale of Windows.

Market share is hard to analyse, I would imagine the Windows share is less than people think, purely because there's so many extraneous Windows licences sold.

Re:meh

[Bert64]

Closed source is negative because it stifles progress...
Each vendor has to reinvent the wheel, and can't legally learn from the others. With open source you can reuse other people's code and build upon it. Closed source ensures that only vendors with enough cash to develop a complete application can enter the market, with open source it's easy to build upon an existing project.

Smaller companies or individuals who want particular features have very little chance of getting them in a closed source world, they would have to pay whatever fees a given vendor demanded *if* that vendor was even willing. With open source sufficiently capable people can implement those features, while other people can hire coders to do it for them.

New hardware architectures are far less likely to succeed, just look at IA64 as an example, failing miserably even with the backing of Intel and HP, because people can't run their closed-source apps on it. And vendors won't port those apps until there's a market, thus you have a catch-22. Therefore processor makers are constrained by choices Intel made 30 years ago, as they try to develop new chips while maintaining compatibility. As another example, Apple had to spend considerable time and effort on Rosetta to allow legacy PPC apps to run on their Intel based Macs. In an open source world many of those apps could be easily recompiled, and doing so for a large number of them would probably have taken Apple less time and effort than writing rosetta.

There's also the matter of trust, some large companies and governments are paranoid and want to see the source code and actually build it (so they can be 100% sure the binaries they have came from the source they've seen). A lot of people are equally paranoid, and some of them do have the capability to audit and compile the source.

Long term support - closed source software is at the mercy of it's vendor, so there is a chance of the product being discontinued, or the source code being lost. Users of closed source software have no fallback in situations like these.

Multi vendor support - with the source open, any vendor can begin providing support services around an open source application, customers are free to choose the vendor and support package that suits them, instead of being stuck with a single source of support. As a consequence, vendors are forced to compete. If you want a commercially supported linux you have plenty of choices, for commercially supported windows you have only one source.

Less lock-in, with open source you are far less likely to find your data locked away in a secret format known only to one company.

There are many negatives associated with closed source, and virtually no positives as far as the customers are concerned. If you have evidence to the contrary i'd like to hear it.

Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[hattig]

My installation of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn a few months back went flawlessly and was very simple. Linux has the install sorted, no need to keep on working on that part okay? It was good 5 years ago. People are obsessed with the install process for some reason.

However Flash doesn't work in my browser because I'm running a 4 year old architecture - AMD64, and the creators of Flash haven't deigned to recompile the Linux version for 64-bits. Maybe if Linux had Mac OS X-like Fat Binaries people would be encouraged to create cross-platform binaries, rather than just create a simple IA32 version.

Installing the graphics card drivers was hell. For 4 months the graphics card was not supported in Linux anyway, so I had to run in VESA mode. However nVidia finally decided to release 8600GT drivers for Linux, and I thought "Hooray!". The install was hell. Due to idealogical beliefs that border on religious extremism you can't just install the drivers. Oh no, you have to recompile the kernel headers and then do wizardry. Not a problem for me, although it took some time because for some reason I don't like spending my free personal time doing sysadmin stuff, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. I tried many forms of instructions online, but they were either for a previous version of Ubuntu, or incorrect. After hours of searching, I finally found a tool called Envy. It worked. Many thanks to the author of Envy. I now have desktop effects - some pointless, some useful.

However the system update mechanism now tells me that I have updates available for the kernel headers and other things, and I'm petrified that by installing them all that hard work would be undone. So I'm now ignoring the updates.

Let's not talk about how many configuration options Ubuntu removes from applications like gaim and so on. Want to have a listing with small buddy icons? Well fuck off, we've removed that possibility. Oh, but there's a plugin for editing the .gtk-rc file - yeah, that's user friendly. NOT. This is a stupid retarded and backward attitute. I approve of not installing 25 text editors by default, but don't remove options from the one you do provide.

Until there is a Linux distribution that is simple, yet has the power available for those that want it, Linux will not gain a lot on the desktop. There needs to be a mechanism to install essential third-party drivers that is as painless as Mac OS X and Windows.

And just to be sure, it isn't about catching up to Windows any more, it is about catching up to Mac OS X. It just works, it's simple yet powerful, it's a full Unix, it looks nice, the desktop effects are very useful and accessible, and drivers install easily.

Re:Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[wanderingknight]

And just to be sure, it isn't about catching up to Windows any more, it is about catching up to Mac OS X. It just works, it's simple yet powerful, it's a full Unix, it looks nice, the desktop effects are very useful and accessible, and drivers install easily. Ah! But you're ignoring the fact that Apple sells its OS preinstalled in its own hardware. Do you have any idea how much advantage does that provide in terms of drivers?

Re:Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[OmegaBlac]

However Flash doesn't work in my browser because I'm running a 4 year old architecture - AMD64, and the creators of Flash haven't deigned to recompile the Linux version for 64-bits. Maybe if Linux had Mac OS X-like Fat Binaries people would be encouraged to create cross-platform binaries, rather than just create a simple IA32 version.

Adobe has not released a 64-bit version of the Flash plugin for any platform, yet. Nor have I heard of any beta ones either. So how is this a PITA with Linux? As for the rest of your post, you seem to be obsessed with OSX (you may want to seek help) so why don't you just continue to use it as a [Ff]ree OS that works just fine for millions of users obviously is not up your alley.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/systemreqs/

Re:Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[Draek]

Let's not talk about how many configuration options Ubuntu removes from applications like gaim and so on. Want to have a listing with small buddy icons? Well fuck off, we've removed that possibility. Oh, but there's a plugin for editing the .gtk-rc file - yeah, that's user friendly. NOT. This is a stupid retarded and backward attitute. I approve of not installing 25 text editors by default, but don't remove options from the one you do provide.

And just to be sure, it isn't about catching up to Windows any more, it is about catching up to Mac OS X. It just works, it's simple yet powerful, it's a full Unix, it looks nice, the desktop effects are very useful and accessible, and drivers install easily.

please remind me, how do you change the applications' appearance on MacOSX? on both Windows and (K|X)Ubuntu it just takes a couple of seconds navigating menus, and arguably changing the entire system's theme is much more important than changing just the look of the IM application, isn't it? ohh, and btw, I couldn't find the option you wanted on ArchLinux and the newest Pidgin either so you should probably blame the GAIM/Pidgin developers instead.

Re:Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[bcrowell]

Adobe has not released a 64-bit version of the Flash plugin for any platform, yet.

I'm running flash just fine on my amd64 ubuntu box. Adobe hasn't released a 64-bit native flash. So what? The 32-bit version works fine on 64-bit machines.

Re:Linux on the desktop is still a PITA

[swillden]

Linux is easily available in 64-bit versions. People are therefore much more likely to use it if they try out Linux on their computer - and most computers within the past year have included 64-bit functionality. One of the first things they'll see is the lack of 64-bit flash, which isn't Linux's fault, but they'll blame it on Linux.

In other words, the problem with Linux is that it comes in 64-bit versions, rather than hobbling your 64-bit processor with 32-bit software.

What insight.

BTW, it's very simple to install a 32-bit browser on your 64-bit Feisty install, and then you can use the 32-bit Flash plugin. There was some discussion of automating this in Gutsy -- I'm not sure if it made it in or not.

The Debian folks are working on a general solution to this issue, by the way. It's called "multiarch" and the idea is to extend dpkg to understand related architectures, and be able to resolve cross-architecture dependencies. When that's in place, apt will be able to automatically recognize that the 32-bit Flash plugin you want to install is incompatible with your 64-bit browser and replace it with a 32-bit browser. It will also make it simpler to provide architecture-optimized versions of binaries for the cases that matter (e.g. ffmpeg). You'll just say you want to install package X and apt will be able to pick the best match to your platform. It will also accommodate software that can only run in emulation, automatically installing and configuring the emulator.

As to the video card issue, two points: First, if you had to manually compile something, you did it the wrong way. There are lots of scripts out there that automate the whole process. Second, the solution to the problem is for NVidia to follow the lead of Intel and now ATI and provide open source drivers.

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[speaker of the truth]

People who think Linux costs $0.00 IMHO think their time is worth $0.00 Aaah, I love that meme. Regardless I'll be able to test its veracity soon enough. People who think that the cover price is how much Windows costs also think their time is worth nothing. And yet funnily enough I've yet to hear people say how expensive Windows is when it comes to time. Perhaps its because the time used to set-up a computer is worth the time saved by using the computer. Regardless of OS.

I have yet to encounter an install that worked 100% perfect out of the "box". Sounds like my Windows experience.

Random thoughts on the topic...

[Balinares]

...how long are we going to have to wait...?

Well, it's something I've been thinking a lot over the last years, and I'd like to share my thinking with you lot:

At this point, I don't think we're going to have a major breakthrough until Linux becomes third-party friendly.

Let me explain.

At the moment, the whole experience of using a Linux distribution is balanced between two parties: the user, and the developers of the distro. Linux distributions in general have come a LONG way in minding the user's convenience, but I am still not sure this will suffice.

Because the success of other platforms (well, Windows, alright) doesn't boil down to user friendliness, I think that much is clear by now. No, what made its success is that it fosters a rich environment of third parties -- entities that are neither the OS maker nor the user, yet benefits both.

Something that is still a long way from penetrating the Linux culture, I think.

At this point, let's imagine you're a third party (and as such, not particularly involved in the Linux world as such -- to you it's just a platform among others) and you wish to ship your software for Linux. What are your options? Well, and that's assuming you're even going to bother trying to figure out the whole mess, you can: try to ship various packages (.rpm and .deb, really) in the hope of covering a sufficient user base, while hoping it won't completely break next time some distro upgrades to libwhatever.so.52; or you can try to get your software into the package repositories of all the major distributions (and thus become entirely dependant on the goodwill of each distro for access to your software); or you can try to package the software your own way and hope for the best (that's what Loki did for their games, for instance), which is still vastly suboptimal because it's a lot of additional work for you and you still have no guarantee it'll work well, due to countless issues, the least of which not being that ELF has real, real issues where it comes to binary compatibility. Oh, and yeah, you can also just ship the sources in a tarball, hereby reducing your user base to the demographic of Linux geeks.

Compare with Windows: just put the binaries in a ZIP file or an installer. Done.

And let us not mention the issue of drivers. At this point, shipping a driver for Linux, when you're a neutral hardware maker third party, involves either sending the kernel maintainers your code and hope they'll consent to include it in the main kernel tree at some unknown point in the future, or ship some manner of hack that will try to compile your driver against the installed kernel, which will simply not work if the compiler, or even the right kernel headers, aren't already installed. (To be fair, the initiative that was recently spoken of on Slashdot, about some company developing Linux drivers for third parties for free, is interesting and might improve the situation lots.)

In short: when you're a third party, supporting Linux is generally not worth the pain.

This is a very bad situation for us, because we need hardware makers to support our platform, so there isn't an ongoing gap of weeks or months between the release of bleeding edge hardware and its support on Linux, and there is just plain not enough of us to reproduce the functionality of all the software third parties are making for other platforms

Admittedly, projects like Klik and Autopackage are a step in the right direction, but isn't it too little and perhaps even too late? I don't know.

Because the main, the core issue here is not technical.

The core issue is that when you discuss something like Autopackage, the response typically amounts to "Why don't you use .debs | use .rpms | fork your own distro?"

And this, my friends, is why I've lost hopes of seeing the Linux desktop go mainstream.

Hopefully the future will prove me wrong, though.

Re: Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007

[bigstrat2003]

Now with the release of Windows Vista I've realized that it has no new features I want. I'll be migrating to openSUSE today or tomorrow... You are of course welcome to use whatever OS you want, but your logic absolutely befuddles me. "The new version of Windows doesn't offer any real improvement over the version I have and am happy with, so I'm going to drop Windows altogether!!"

Re:hypocrites

[G Morgan]

But I'm switching to FreeBSD or Solaris in the next few months, mainly because of idiots like you. It used to be, when somebody ran Linux, you knew they weren't completely useless. Lately, you can't really say that.

It's not that I don't like Linux, I just don't want to be associated with its users anymore. So your making a technical decision on the basis of people you don't know? That seems mildly retarded.

Half the people running Linux anymore don't know what the fuck their doing, they just want to be "geeks". Or they jsut want to bash Microsoft. Of course, they should choose their platform on the sole metric of trying to avoid idiots. If they did that then the world would be a brilliant place where the sun always shines and there are 3B copies of Jessica Alba so we can all be happy.

Think its a coincidence that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro, and it just happens to be the most dumbed down? Most people have better things to be doing than configuring things that can and should be automated. Computers are there to save effort, i.e. they are a tool. Ubuntu has everything I need to support a decent development environment, it just saves me a few hours of set up. Also don't try and tell me Debian has got to its level yet because I just installed Lenny on my laptop 2 days ago.

Honestly distros are not a right of passage. They are tools that should either do what you want or should go away (Ubuntu had some regressions with IDE polling and I didn't want to deal with their proprietary modules when installing my own kernel, so I replaced it. Might go back when 7.10 comes out but I doubt it). It certainly isn't about who can be the most elite though, frankly irrelevant and the only people who care about it are usually those who aren't quite as elite as they think.

You got it backwards

[HangingChad]

Linux will always be a niche player on the desktop.

I believe Linux will become the definitive commodity desktop and Windows will gradually be regulated to a niche player and compete with Apple for a limited pool of users with specific software needs. And that commodity desktop will be, largely, the Linux we know today.

Perhaps from the perspective of a gamer your perspective would be true, but when you look across the corporate enterprise it's a different picture. The level of effort to keep a Windows enterprise running in any sort of decent shape is staggering. Running it securely requires a level of effort that borders on the insane and limits user production so severely it sometimes seems the users are serving the machine, ala Metropolis. I have a customer doing...trying to do...that very thing. It's an ongoing disaster that challenges users to find ever more creative ways to skirt the restrictions.

The byzantine license requirements and ever escalating costs merely increase the market pressure to a shift away from pure Microsoft environments.

Never underestimate market pressure. 5 to 7 years ago the economic pressure in the film industry started to shift toward video over film. I remember discussions on video forums there would be a lot of "not in our lifetime" comments about the demise of film. But the film empire in entertainment production has been crumbling ever since at an ever increasing pace. A shift in projection delivery coupled with a push to retrofit film projectors with digital projectors, and you'll see film processing equipment in the museum next to punch card readers.

I think you'll be surprised how fast the sea change can take place. Strangely, I don't think they'll be surprised in Redmond. They see it coming.

Re:What Breakthrough?

[ozmanjusri]

Linux still won't install on my Intel DG9965WH Motherboard

That's 'cause Intel has never made a DG9965WH Motherboard.

Why would you expect Linux to install on imaginary hardware?

Re:Look to the past...

[nomadic]

These days, linux is playing a catch-up game with the UI and its going to be a slow game, but i really dont think its a game MS can win in the long run given their lack on innovation.

But they have won it in the long term. Linux is 15 years old. 15. In computer development time that's an eon. Linux has been around for half the lifetime of personal computers in general, and it still hasn't taken off. Now I've been using linux off and on for about 11 of those years, and while I really do like it, it's lost a lot of the huge lead it had over MS in stability, and performance. It still beats out Windows of course on those fronts, and like you said it even fell behind on UI, but even the advantages it has aren't that huge nowadays.

And honestly, about the innovation part, has linux really been that innovative? It's a clone of a 1970s-era operating system, and most of the "cool" aspects of modern linux were first done somewhere else.

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[Ami Ganguli]

I can't speak for the grandparent and his problems with Windows, but for me it's much easier and faster to be productive using Linux.

• Ubuntu installs painlessly on all the hardware I care about (although I did have to take a live CD with me when buying my laptop to make sure everything worked, but that was pretty painless).
• When I update my OS, all my other software is updated as well, so I'm always up-to-date with security patches for everything, with almost zero effort on my part.
• I could probably find Windows equivalents of all the software I use, but it would take a lot of time, and probably I'd have to buy a lot of commercial packages. Even if the money weren't a factor, the hassle of ordering software, waiting for it to arrive, and then installing it on Windows is much more than just searching for what I want in Synaptic and clicking on 'install'.

I suppose if Microsoft someday comes with with a truly brilliant version of Windows I might try it out if I've got extra time on my hands, but until then Windows just isn't worth the hassle.

Breakthrough == knowledge

[wanderingknight]

People don't know what a fucking OS is. How the hell do you expect them to choose?

Re:hypocrites

[bigstrat2003]

To be fair, he has a point. Far too many Linux people (especially here...) are also Microsoft-haters. They don't give a flying fuck if Windows does what they want, they'll say it doesn't, and use a tiny, almost unnoticeable snag as their excuse (eg: this app won't let me configure {minor behavior x}, thus it sucks, and is unusable!!). This isn't all of them, of course, just like not all Mac users are Jobs cultists... but in both cases, there are enough to give the group as a whole a horrible image. Bad apples, and all that.

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[krunk7]

Sorry to hear that you have had to edit "strange text files" to get your GUI running properly under windows.

I find text files to be clear, concise, well commented/documented, and human readable. Contrast that with the registry, which I have had to dig into on more then one occasion.

Re: Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007

[speaker of the truth]

Well as I said I'm not completely happy with it, I accept it. However continuing to wait for the next Windows OS to be released has been a fruitless wait so with the latest release, while Linux continues to improve (with only a cursory search already revealing one advantage). So that's why I'm switching.

Breakthrough? Not until Linux get these right...

[durianwool]

I've been trying yet again for the 4th time in 5 years to give Linux a go to see if it has matured enough for it to go mainstream desktop, and though I can say that it has improved tremendously over the years, it is sadly still not ready for primetime ordinary folks desktop. It is most certainly good enough for the fanboys and geeks here, but coming also from a geek but not really a fanboy, it is just not ready yet. Let me qualify:

Stability(!): Yes, I know there's a big gasp amongst some of you, but my trial installation of OpenSuse 10.2 on my Gigabyte 965P-DS3, C2D E6600, nVidia 8600GT was actually not stable. Although things run solid on XP, I kept getting hangups after just a few minutes of use. So in my book, (due probably to drivers as usual) ... this is a stability issue.

Drivers: What more can I say - try getting your peripherals, cards etc. to work without being a hacker.

Control Panel: In Mac or XP, everything is easy and self-explanatory. Try navigating (if you're not a geek) through the 'control panel' in Gnome or KDE (KDE is better but still...). "Should I use YAST or should I go to 'Internet'?!" "How the hell do you connect do a PPPoE?" ... these things should be idiot proof - but in Linux - they still are not. You just still have to drop down to a terminal to do many things, despite the nice glossy UI these days.

Fonts!: Sorry dudes, fonts in Linux just look horrible when compared to Windows or the Mac. And this is one of the biggest reasons that keep would keep me away from using Linux Desktop. Linux is fine for backend stuff and does a great job at it - but on the frontend, despite the nice eye-candy in current Gnome and KDE - the font engine still sucks! As I type this in Windows, everything appears smooth due to ClearType. On Linux sometimes I get non-aliased fonts and most times, the fonts just appear bad.

Names: Yes, it is a great tradition in the hacker culture to come up with cool sounding names for apps - but that's not something that will draw ordinary folks to use Linux. I mean, how would any ordinary folk guess what 'YaST2' is at the menu? Getting the ordinary folk not intimidated by all these weird names was and still is the whole point of Apple. Windows followed and though may not have the style of Apple, it sure is a helluva more usable than Linux.

OK - some may argue that I didn't set things up properly or I am not competent enough to set things up the right way - but that's the point! I shouldn't need to be more competent than being able to press a few mouse-clicks to be able to get what should be a minimum base in a modern computing environment:

* Beautiful fonts rendered as if it was printed.
* All programs appear in a menu (and not hidden deep inside some mysterious command).
* Cohesive presentation of applications (Look at YaST appearing all over the place in KDE).
* Plug and Play (no this is not the 90's but Linux implementation of this is not usable - I buy any peripheral and I still have fear on if there's a driver for it.

I guess what you pay for ..., and for what its worth - for something that's free, Linux is pretty usable and a good bang for your buck. But if you ask if I'll pay US$300+ for something that's a lot more cohesive, has a lot more apps (and not free rip-offs), 'stable' and most importantly user-friendly ... yes I would.

Now if only ol' Steve will finally let OS-X run on any x86 hardware ... //

fibre everywhere, for certain values of everywhere

[Gary W. Longsine]

Well, the densely populated U.S. cities could have been done. Still could be done. Still are not being done. I suspect the size of Japan isn't the only factor. There might be plenty of blame left over to assign to shortsightedness.

Re:What Breakthrough?

[foobsr]

DG9965WH Motherboard

This must be so new even intel does not now about it.

If you instead meant 'Intel® Desktop Board DG965WH" intel thinks it supports Linux.

Maybe the offered BIOS upgrade will do, just a wild guess.

CC.

Even basic components still need work

[rmcd]

People always point to sophisticated software being unavailable on Linux. But the majority of users don't use photoshop. I think the problem is that even basic system services are still flaky, so that even if all you want is to use a browser and basic office applications (which work, in my opinion), linux is still too much of a hassle.

My latest example: I can't get VPN to work as documented on Ubuntu 7.04. When I asked about this on the Ubuntu forums, I got the response that "yeah that's broken, but you can do the following on the command line..." Suspend/hibernate doesn't work reliably. There are too many of these rough edges in the basic plumbing, forget the advanced applications.

The good news is that Linux edges closer every year. Things like sound, TV tuner card, and remote support that were a hassle two years ago now work out of the box because of improved support in the kernel, alsa, and lirc. So it's getting there, but IMO it isn't there yet.

Once the interface to the plumbing is working cleanly and correctly, I think we'll see a big uptick in adoption.

Re:Even basic components still need work

[GPL Apostate]

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't 'VPN' in and of itself a broken concept based on the Microsoft view of networking? Why wouldn't it be better to run a SSH pipe to and from your Ubuntu box? And if it's interoperability with 'Doze boxes you're concerned with, why blame it on Ubuntu?

The numbers are demonstrably bogus

[btarval]

There are currently about 1 Billion PCs worldwide. If Linux had a 0.81% "marketshare", that would equate to a grand total of 8.1 Million systems. Fedora alone provided a fairly accurate measure of installed systems last year (for FC6 IIRC), and the last I heard it was 7 Million and counting.

But that's just Fedora alone. Ubuntu has a significantly bigger "marketshare" than Fedora. SuSE is also a significant player. Altogether, the Linux marketshare is probably somewhere between 3-5 times what Fedora is reporting, which would put Linux at about a 3-4% marketshare, worldwide.

But the point remains that the numbers in the article don't jibe with what most other people are reporting. In fact, these numbers are downright silly.

Re:The numbers are demonstrably bogus

[00_NOP]

Really? I'd say the numbers were pretty accurate in my experience, at least in the sense that Linux on the desktop is about 1% of installs. Three - four per cent just doesn't ring true.

I think the key point here is that the growth rate is high.

Re:hypocrites

[shaitand]

'Think its a coincidence that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro, and it just happens to be the most dumbed down?'

I think you are giving Ubuntu an unfair shake here. Yes Ubuntu simplifies most common tasks and has very sane defaults for most applications out of the box but it manages to do that without sacrificing flexibility and utility anywhere. It's crazy to me that people are still using plain old debian when Ubuntu does everything Debian does as well or better, it is basically a debian superset.

I have used many distributions, Linux from scratch, gentoo, redhatian, debianish, and of course slack. I am comfortable performing any administration task in any of them. Using Ubuntu leaves me the flexibility to change or customize anything on the system but allows me to get from fresh install to fully configured system in dramatically less time than other distributions. People are using Ubuntu mostly for desktops but I use it for servers as well.

I have no interest in systems that are difficult or hard just for the sake of being so. In a system like Ubuntu you keep all the strengths of Linux as a platform and gain the advantages being able to quickly and easily configure most aspects of the system (or in most cases, not having to configure because the system uses sane defaults that more or less match what you would have set anyway).

Windows and MacOS are systems that have been dumbed down at the expense of flexibility and configurability, Ubuntu is not.

counting weblogs doesn't count

[poptones]

Especially when using ubuntu. Because any newbie using ubuntu (and especially any of my customers) is initially, or soon after the upgrade, going to visit the forums where they will likely find information about privoxy. Anyone running ubuntu I installed doesn't even need to go to the forums to have privoxy installed because I do it for them.

Privoxy allows you to replace the browser information string. I do this as a matter of course and there are instructions on the forums on how to do this. As a result, sites by default think I am using Windows XP with MSIE6. Why? Because there are fewer problems when I hit a site that uses embedded media. Opera allows this same sort of functionality and I recall doing the same thing ages ago when I used that with windows.

Now, how many of those linux installs are actually saying MSIE?

Also, no.

[btarval]

Please read the fine article. They are explicitly talking about the grow of the Operating Systems, and they don't make any distinction in terms of Desktop or Server. In fact, the word "desktop" is nowhere to be found in the article at all.

Now, one might infer that it's intended for desktops. But that inference is left up to the user. It is explicitly not what the article is claiming. TFA is only talking about their measurements of the total growth of OS's.

Had they stated that it was for Desktops only, and that they weren't talking about servers, this article might have more credibility. But they didn't. They are, instead, trying to misrepresent things.

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[Risen888]

You should be modded down, for you are dumb.

Last week, I fixed two malware-ridden XP boxes. One I fixed by installing Ubuntu. Took me an hour. One I fixed by installing four different malware detectors, waiting five fucking hours to scan through a 20GB drive, and then cleaning out the registry by hand, and then booting to a Linux live CD to deal with a few nasty self-reproducing files, then running all four of the antivirus scans again while I slept. Would you like to talk to me further about what my time's worth?

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[Risen888]

If you want to run Linux, you run it on compatible hardware. If you want to run Windows, you run it on compatible hardware. If you want to run OS X, you buy a Mac. This is not shocking news.

Re:Linux's price is $0.00 if your time is worth $0

[epine]

Here's where we finally get to the nub of the matter. What it really depends upon is your definition of "get it working 100%". By several of my criteria, gettings Windows working 100% is an unachievable task. There are some things I don't much like about Linux, either, but even the worst of these could be fixed on the order of a few tens of man years. I happen to rate a few dozen man years as less than infinity, the expected cost of addressing my worst grievances with Windows.

My choice to view several dozen as being less than infinity might seem obvious, but in fact, it is not the popular perspective. If you read thinkers such as Danny Kanheman you will recognize that for the most part people don't think the way they claim to think. By the reflex of learned helplessness, people tend to discount the impossible, exactly as my parent poster has done. Subtracting the impossible, one can get Windows working 100% in a fairly short time period, with respect to a learned helplessness definition of 100%.

Learned helplessness wouldn't be so deeply embedded into the human psyche if it wasn't pragmatic.

It's a fairly substantial investment of time, energy, and talent to buck a mainstream trend. For any professional, I think you can only open so many fronts. My LH relative to IT is quad-CT to zero (that's an APL joke, to thoroughly date myself). On the income tax front, my LH would be closer to 7/10. I'm not motivated to win every possible battle. The last thing any nation wants is legions of empowered individuals, so the barriers are substantial.

The general public tends to constitute 100% largely in terms of instant gratifications: can I watch the newest YouTube video straight out of the box? Terms such as "will I still be able to access my personal data ten years from now after all my current software is obsolete?" rarely carries as much weight.

Nor do people stop to think much about why it is that media formats are directly tied to running specific operating systems, as if OS capabilities has much to do with it.

The other point to note is that engaging in LH has a tendency to also invoke the psyche's PR department, which isn't keen to admit any such thing, so people who have the deepest investment in the pragmatism of LH have the strongest rhetorical reflex to promote their choices as "the one true way".

Apple has historically been very good at exploiting this reflex. They do a great job of enhancing the pragmatic value of LH, and correspondingly their infinities are more infinite than most. With the brutal cooperative multitasking and virtual memory subsystem, no Apple OS prior to OS/X was within orbital radius of "100%" by any criteria I've ever accepted. The LH retort: well, you don't need that. But this PR philosophy leads Apple to more truly embarrassing reversals than most, such as their recent concession that the technical advantages of RISC over CISC in the era of 100 million transistor CPUs are commercially negligible.

One of the main terms that holds Linux back is the instant gratification bondage. Full technical disclosure of video card internals would constitute one large step toward playing iNextSonyGoobTube videos right out of the box. If the college age demographic would simply refute their instant gratification ways, and refuse to view any video encoded in proprietary media encodings, this battle could be won in less time than a Peter Jackson post-production cycle. But it will never happen. Public empowerment? Who needs that? Maybe 5% of college age people include public empowerment in their personal definition of "100%".

BTW, I'm quite conscious that posting on slashdot values my time at $0. It's less of a detriment than it might appear.

Re:ARGUE WITH FACTS... apk

[spuzzzzzzz]

Take a closer look at the advisories instead of just counting them. Windows 2003 had 135 advisories: 61% were vulnerabilities from a remote attacker and 24% were vulnerabilities from the local network. The most common vulnerability type was system access (54%) and 74% of the vulnerabilities were of moderate or higher criticality (and 41% were highly or extremely critical).

In the same period, the linux kernel had 132 advisories. Only 19% involved a remote attack and 13% involved attacks from the local network. Of the 132 advisories, only 15% were rated moderately critical and none were of higher criticality. The most common type of attack was denial of service (46%) followed by privilege escalation and the exposure of sensitive information. System access (remember, this was a factor in 54% of Windows 2003 vulnerabilities) made up 2% of linux kernel vulnerabilities.

Ok, so this was only the linux kernel; I'm not necessarily asserting that the whole *NIX software stack is secure. Nevertheless, your approach of looking only at the number of vulnerabilities is highly flawed. Lies, damn lies and statistics indeed.

Thank you.

[The Monster]

But the point remains that the numbers in the article don't jibe with what most other people are reporting.

I just want to thank you for spelling "jibe" correctly on Slashdot. I'm so used to seeing it misspelled "jive" (a word with rather the opposite meaning from what is intended in this context) that I actually notice it when someone gets it right.

"an insignificant african tribe"

[PaulGaskin]

The phrase "insignificant african tribe" rubs me the wrong way. Indigenous culture is getting trampled by ignorant mono-culture all over the world, so I don't think of any indigenous tribes as "insignificant". I think you meant "unfamiliar from my subjective point of view" rather than "insigificant".

Re:OS X

[Almahtar]

Ugh. And I even had mod points. I couldn't resist:

but no good reason why the UI and "user experience" shouldn't be better than that offered by OS X or Vista It is. I have *never* used a system that had the seamless interface that (Gnome or KDE) + Beryl has. Expose? Check. Zoom(useful for graphics design)? Check. Invert (useful for web app creation)? check. Taskbar previews? Check. Drag and drop from an SFTP or FTP site to your (graphics, text, etc) editor, and save within the editor? Check and ONLY check in KDE and Gnome. Windows and OSX still can't do that. Show hidden files? Simple hotkey (control+h (for "hidden")) in Nautilus (Gnome's file manager). In OSX? Edit a config file, kill finder (from terminal). In Windows? Tools->Folder Options->view->show hidden files. Virtual desktops are still not supported in Windows (unless there are 3rd party apps I don't know about... the ones that existed last year were cumbersome hacks, well intentioned as they were), and in Leopard they are a new addition. Linux has had for ages.

I've used OSX, I've used Windows a TON, and the interfaces that really seem to increase my efficiency just tend to be Gnome and KDE. The only advantage Windows or OSX give me are 3rd party apps. That is NOT an inherent quality of the OS, just a simple circumstance. Circumstances can change.

I cannot find an interface I like better than (Gnome or KDE) + Beryl. Maybe you like OSX better, but it just frustrated me. It's all a matter of opinion. Before saying that Linux (by which you only actually mean Gnome and KDE) hasn't caught up with OSX (by which you mean ONLY the interface since the kernel and many drivers already existed) in 15 years, maybe you should think about that.

Re:ARGUE WITH FACTS - not done yet

[empaler]

All I got was evasions, & spinmastering... no photo results, ever. Not once... in essence? Lots of talk, no proof via superior scoring.

APK Could it be - and this is just a casual observation after getting a headache after three of your posts - that people ignore your posts? You post AC, plus your written language is not very reader-friendly. Tou might think that it is "neat" using & instead of 'and' and @ instead of 'at', but in reality, it's really annoying.

Given the rest of the content of your posts, I don't think that you are uncapable of writing properly, it more or less seems like you have decided to not do so. Also, stop typing so much in caps.
Good luck.

Re:hypocrites

[chubs730]

You shouldn't. The parent is simply saying that not everyone gives Ubuntu the respect it really deserves, I agree that we should call it simpler, but certainly not dumbed down. I used slackware for 3 years before switching to ubuntu, when I put together a "high end" (read: faster than a 1ghz pentium3) pc about 6 months ago. I still love slackware for allowing me to squeeze the most performance out of my system, but now that a tiny overhead doesn't matter as much to me, ubuntu is perfect for its ease of use, fast auto-configuration, and a wonderful package management system.

If I had to go back to a 333mhz cpu and 64mb of ram, I most certainly would go back to slackware or maybe debian, but I really just want to USE my computer effectively, which is all the general public wants to really do, and is exactly what ubuntu is made for. It is in no way an inferior linux distribution, however.

If We Presume The Numbers are Right....

[Black Copter Control]

We can extrapolate as to what would happen if we keep on at this rate.....

.81/.31 = 2.612 ... So we're actually almost tripling.

2.62^5=123

123*0.81= 99.63

so if we keep up at this rate, Linux will own 99.6% of the desktop market in 5 years.

No Wonder why Bill Gates is soiling his pants worrying about Linux.

.... And in six years, we'll have ... uhm ...

• Oh, nevermind.