Slashdot Mirror


Is Apple Killing Linux on the Desktop?

Domains May Disappear writes "Chris Howard has an interesting commentary at Apple Matters on recent trends in OS market share that says that while OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 to 7.31% in December 2007 at the same time, Linux's percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%. The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,' says Howard. 'Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.'"

16 of 1,224 comments (clear)

  1. No it isn't. by evilRhino · · Score: 2, Funny

    I really enjoy the Ask Slashdot questions that are yes/no.

  2. Re:The Universal Platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I have recently upgraded from a Mac 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM to a new G5 dual 2GHz with AGP 8X and PCI-X to help me at my freelance gig where I needed to copy a 17 Meg file from my home network to a desktop folder. On the G5 it took about 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, my iPod will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is faster than this G5 dual 2GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

    Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

  3. Apple's resurgence helps Linux, not harms it by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Funny

    1. The enemy of my enemy is my friend
    2. Linux will get cool stores, too
    3. OOO is just as good as MS Office
    4. KDE 5 will look just like Aqua
    5. Gimp and Adobe work alike.

    No, it's not flamebait, just reality.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  4. Re:No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Until you a verb, neither is your post!

  5. Re:meh statistics by AJWM · · Score: 4, Funny

    At that rate, Linux will surpass the Mac's market share in 12 years, with 3161% of the market compared to Mac's 3132%. Oh, wait...

    --
    -- Alastair
  6. Re:Marketing strategy by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 3, Funny

    In the Mac vs. Windows Commercials that apple Runs....who do you think would be a good person to represent the Linux OS?

    RMS? : p

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  7. Re:Point of view by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Similarly, Linux market share has increased from 5 users to 11 users while Apple has gone up from 1,000,000 to 1,740,000.

  8. Re:Point of view by Neil+Watson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone promote this guy to VP of Marketing right now! :)

  9. Re:my rebuttal by u-bend · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not to be mean but Ubuntu, and Red hat have 1/4 of the pacakges of Debian apt suppositories. You know, I enjoy Linux as much as the next man, especially Debian-based versions, but that's either a brilliant typo, an inside joke I'm not 1337 enough to know, or some aspect of open source I'd rather not know about.
    --
    u-bend
  10. Re:~150 Linux desktops migrate to OS X by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Good for you, what do you want a fucking cookie or something?

  11. Re:Source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh come on, it comes from a 15 year old kid called "linuxrocks123", so it must be true.

  12. Re:my rebuttal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Espacially if it's a re-buttal! Ouch!

  13. Re:The Universal Platform by Teilo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, hear hear! I just upgraded from a Kaypro 16 to a Northgate 386SX. Man, let me tell you, this baby screams! And that Wolfenstein 3D thing is just sooooo cool in 256 color VGA.

    --
    Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
  14. Re:The Universal Platform by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Wolfenstein 3D ran too fast on my system, so I had to disengage the Turbo button.

  15. Re:Scientists are buying macs in droves by Divebus · · Score: 1, Funny

    The problem with linux boxes, though, was the amount of head-banging required to get things like wireless and 3D graphics working.

    It wasn't a coincidence that Linux came with developer tools... bought a printer? Write your own damned driver.

    --

    Most of the stuff on /. won't survive first contact with facts.
  16. Re:This is false. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    stop it already, fucking fanboy! you have answered to ALL posts pretending that macs are cheaper, they AREN'T so stop whining. fuck damn it!