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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.'"
Obviously Apple Matters is going to have a bias towards OS X and that should be taken into account. However, that said we've been reducing both our Windows and Linux systems in favor of OS X for some time now for many of the reasons outlined in the referenced article.
I'd like to add in another reason why Linux is not growing as fast as OS X use: fragmented distros. Supporting multiple flavors of Linux is simply a pain in the ass and the typical end user of Linux is likely to have their own preference (Red Hat, Yellow Dog, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc...etc...etc... In fact, last time I looked there were over 1000 different flavors of Linux and BSD and with the exception of OS X (a descendent of BSD) every single flavor that I've tried out of that 1000 all required significant effort just to get the OS up and running with wireless networks, not to mention all the various voodoo required for the printer support.
No, for me it is all about getting work done and I don't want the OS getting in my way or becoming an impediment to accomplishing things and I don't want to have to spend time with all of our students on various flavors of Linux. In retrospect, the last project that we worked on with a contractor got developed for Red Hat and in terms of system support, backup, management and more I really wish we had developed it for OS X now. That is not to say that we will not develop our algorithms cross platform, as that is our goal to release them totally open source, but for anything that is going to be developed for intensive use or for further development it is going on OS X and taking advantage of all the platform specific pleasantries such as Cocoa, Core Image, Core Animation, Quartz and more.
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MacPorts is sometimes a bit flaky, but it does the job when you're looking to install unix-like utilities on OS X.
I do wish I could use it to install regular Mac software, though, and it would be nice if their X implementation didn't make X apps second-class citizens.
OS X sales can be counted, Linux downloads more or less can't.
Also, those must be US-only figures, surely? OSX 7%!?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I expect we'll be migrating ~150 or so Linux desktops to OS X over the next several years. Linux is nice and will remain in production for our back-end servers and for computational clustering, but it's more expensive to support than OS X and supports commercial software the user community wants. This is at a technical university on the east coast.
From 4.21% to 7.31% is an increase of ~73% of market share for the mac.
From 0.29% to 0.63% is an increase of ~117% of market share for linux.
Isn't that a bigger victory for linux?
The relative market share increase of linux being about 1.5 times that of the mac...
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When the trend is UPWARDS, I.E. when Linux is being used MORE than before, then why does it make sense to use the word 'killing'? Surely if the trend was downwards this would be sensible, but not the other way around?
And also.. it's very easy to blame others for your problems. What problems are those? Well, they are the plusses of Apple's and Microsoft's solutions. They are those software or productivity suites that those respective companies have which Linux does not have. It is not Apple or Microsoft's fault they have those things as much as it is Linux's fault for NOT having them, or for what they do have simply not being as good. You can only blame yourself for what you lack in comparison to what is the widely accepted and used norm.
It's all a geek dream anyway, that people doing work for free is going to somehow outperform people who do their jobs to get paid and rely on that payment to sustain the quality of living they are used to. Not to mention that during this time that the people are writing free software they have to be working for a living; working on other projects and with other distractions. It just doesn't add up that Linux could be better than Apple, or even Microsoft, despite how completely fucked Vista seems to be so far.
Now, I know there are many ways you can tear up the logic in this post, and I freely encourage you to do so. But ultimately what you need to do is explain why, if my logic is flawed, the situation is as it remains today.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Believe it or not, I just bought a MacBook and one of my considerations was price. Comparably equipped PC notebooks were more expensive. I don't think that price is really a consideration anymore.
Apple's increase from 4.21% to 7.31% is (7.31-4.21)/(4.21) = 73.6 % relative growth in market share
Linux's increase from 0.29% to 0.63% is (.063 - .029)/(0.29) = 117.2% relative growth
So actually, Linux grew faster over the period in question. Though I am deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to calculate market share to three significant figures.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Fink is a package manger based on debian aptget. there's thousands of free packages there. and because the mac environment is so homogeneous they build seamlessly without surprises, many downloadable in binary form. works great from the command line or from the gui. Easy to keep up-to-date
then there's darwin ports and a gnu-darwin if you want other package managers.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The one thing I hate about my OSX laptop is trying to get a lot of CPAN and perl related libs installed on it. If you just want to dump a pre-set LAMP (er.. OSXAMP? Whatever) on it, that's fine. But I was trying to replicate my development environment for a personal project onto my powerbook so I could carry it all with me and no longer have to telnet to my system to work on such things.
I found a lot of seemingly trivial things to be absolutely tedious and borderline impossible on OSX. Something I could have just installed with cpan or apt-get on debian required that I install this lib. Then that lib. Then FINK. Then tweak a bunch of stuff. Then, finally, if I'd sacrificed enough chickens, I could install the actual think I had wanted to in the first place.
I know that OSX is a huge platform among web developers, but I also know most of them are into dreamweaver crap and php, ruby, etc. But I know that it's big enough among them that it can't always be that difficult. For me, however, I simply wasn't willing to invest the absurd amount of energy and time to get my development environment going on it that would have taken me an hour from start to finish on any given linux system. And without that, there is absolutely no reason for me to own a mac (the unix underpinning being the reason I enjoy it so I can do my solaris/linux-ish stuff with it). The only exception being that I do love my powerbook, for ease of networkability in multiple environments and the rather rugged, durable, always-works consistency of it.
I know that I have had to pull myself away from apple.com on more than a few occasions where I was playing with the configurator and so ready to hand out my cash like an idiot, before I came to my senses and said "but you're just doing this so you can have a new shiny toy -- there's nothing you can do on this box that you can't already do on your powerhouse linux box at home... save your $3,000+ and get a hooker, some blow and a couple midgets".
desktop market. Since then the number of folks using Linux on the desktop has certainly increased:
http://www.itfacts.biz/linux-desktop-market-share-to-reach-6-in-2007/723
It was predicted to be 6% in 2007 and I'd wager that is pretty close.
Of course, that doesn't count Linux users like myself who purchase through the retail channel only once out of every 4 downloads, and the much larger number who only download free copies of Linux. This "0.6%" also never takes into account the fact that a single download of a Linux distro is often installed on more than one computer.
So, all this report is comparing is the retail channel sales of Mac, the only way one can get it, with the retail channel sales of Linux, which is usually the choice of last resort among Linux users.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
There's PLENTY of high quality freeware for the Mac.
...
http://www.trailrunnerx.com/ If you're into running and like keeping logs.
http://handbrake.fr/ Does DVD->iPod almost seamless. I'm still pounding my head against debian and ffmpeg (What do you MEAN mp4 is an unrecognized format).
http://www.transmissionbt.com/ Is an excellent torrent client, free.
(The later two have since been ported to Linux)
Some of the 'shareware' is pretty cheap also. Graphic converter (http://www.lemkesoft.com/) is nothing short of amazing. $35 too. I'd copy and paste the number of image formats it supports but it might not make it past the filter.
I haven't run across many Linux programs that come close to being that 'pretty' nor as integrated into the OS. I mean Trailrunner will import your GPS info, map it in google earth with one click. It'll track your running times, etc. Sync with your iPod+Nike, heart rate monitors. And it's FREE.
What is available for Ubuntu that won't run on the Mac? Right now my Mac laptop is running Apache2, PHP and MySQL. I have nmap installed and a ton of other 'unix' programs. I always search sourceforge for programs to see if someone's already written something command line.
If you don't like gcc and compiling stuff your self there's always fink which is built around apt-get. fink install
There's even a GUI for it so that it's no different than Synaptic.
Businesses use support, that's who. Why do you think they actually have to weigh the costs between using Windows or Linux on their servers? To us, it'd be obvious: go Linux, it's free. But support is definitely not free and has to be carefully considered when making decisions that affect small to large businesses.
Microsoft could really care less about the average home user. They don't really care if your experience sucks, they don't really care if you pirate it, and they don't really care if you can't figure something out. They do care about the average business though. They do care if their experience sucks, they do care if they pirate it, and they do care if they can't figure something out. Support is where the real money is.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The network browsing in 10.5 *is* much better, with it showing my network computers in the finder automatically.
Ubuntu, OTOH, while I can browse to the network shares, I can't open files unless I copy them locally. I try to open a movie I have on the network file server, and it can't figure out the file name.
Leopard, OTOH, opens it up just fine.
I prefer MacPorts to Fink -- you might want to check that out, too. Both have much of the same software, but MacPorts installation locations are "more standard" from a unix perspective.
Having worked on Unix systems for 30 years, I spend a lot of my time on OS X in emacs and terminal, just as I do on my Linux machine. Took me awhile to move from Solaris to MacOS X, but at this point I'm more comfortable on OS X than Linux -- but then I've never spent a lot of time on Linux.
joe
Wouldn't the inability to open such a file depend upon the application? I know KMPlayer can easily stream files via FTP, and that's how I watch most of my stuff (I have a Gigabit connection to the server, so I can watch pretty high-res stuff).
Why should you need something "shiny and new"?
There are decades old boat anchors with less computing power
than a Nintendo DS that could handle multiple concurrent
users and processes. If someone is having troubles of this
kind with any OSX Mac, then all Apple cheerleaders
everywhere should be embarrased.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Disclaimer: I have been using OS X and Ubuntu on *daily support basis*, so I know what I am talking about.
In short, they are different beasts. OS X is nice, but it is black box, and in the end you will loath it. As any other OS, it has lot of bugs, including VERY annoying ones which you can't fix even with having support contract with Apple and Adobe. It will bite many people and I bet lot of people will regret their jumping on OS X ship. Apple will also experience bigger problems with dealing of bugs when user and app base will grow, as it does already now. However, Apple and OS X strenght is integration. I wish Apple the best, I just wish they would not be so annoyingly similar to Microsoft as they were in last year - all standard stuff, supporting OOXML, closing DAAP, etc.
For Linux, problems are two - user base and apps. Linux is capable of working for lot of people, however, vendors still doesn't see too much financial initiative to hook off from Microsoft, just because if they will sell Linux OEM, they will have problems with OEM price for Windows. If there will be OEM base - which I think will come, thanks to Ubuntu and Dell, there will be ports of Adobe CS and other, very specialised stuff.
So, for now, Apple is sold better than Linux desktop solutions. It could be true. However, I think it is not the end of desktop of Linux. For me, it's only now getting in shape that I have no shame to show to others.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Yes, Apple has been notified, yes the systems were sent to Apple and Apple sent them back - I'm not going to get into the Applecare mess though.
No, I think Apple does things the way they are doing because that is how they feel they are the most profitable.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Office XP/2003 runs rather flawlessly on my Ubuntu 7.10, with native Wine.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I think OS X is not a very 'native UNIX environment'
I think you're wrong. :) OS X is, in fact, an officially certified UNIX[tm]. http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3555.htm It conforms to the Single UNIX Specification Version 3. It's not just "UNIX-like," it is UNIX. Linux is not. :) (Granted, only because (presumably) no one cares enough to cough up the $$ to certify a Linux distribution, and/or put in the effort it would (again, presumably) take to tweak Linux to pass the certification process.)
geek. lawyer.
The potato it is uninformed.
It is "couldn't care less". The point of this expression is "I do not care at all, so I cannot care less, because there is no such thing as negative care"
You essentially said "Microsoft cares about average home user and is threatening to care less." Which, I believe, is not what you tried to say.
Faithfully yours, semantics Nazi
How do they compare?
CPU:
Mac: 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Extreme
Pc: 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600)
Memory:
2GB each (Tie)
Hard Disk:
500GB each (Tie)
Graphics:
Mac: ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
Pc: 512MB 2X Nvidia Geforce 8600 GS Graphics
Monitor:
Mac: 24 Inch glossy widescreen
Pc: 22 Inch LG Widescreen Monitor
Price (inc vat):
Mac: £1459
Pc: £999
So, for 400 pounds less, you get a much more powerful machine if you buy a Pc over a Mac! Granted, the monitor is smaller, but after all you have 450 Pounds left over in your budget, so why not treat yourself to something like the 24" Hyundai W240D for £351.33 (had to choose Aria because Pc World doesn't have 24 inch monitors over £300, but obviously with 400 quid you can find yourself many other shiny monitors). You now have a machine which significantly outperforms the Mac, a spare 22inch TFT monitor and 100 quid left in the wallet. Now go away and stop telling me that the Macs are similarly priced to equivalent PCs.
So, what was wrong with emacs and LaTeX? :)
I suggest you take a look at http://www.xdarwin.org/ - Ben Byer (an Apple employee) has been working to migrate Apple's X server to the x.org codeabase, and now has a re-port of the quartz system to that codebase.
Looks as though your doubts are unfounded.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Bonjour for services hasn't taken off in a big way on Linux (or Windows outside of Adobe Products/iTunes for that matter). However, most Linux distros now ship with Avahi which is fairly mature but there are comparatively few programs that can use it (its main use currently seems to be for autoip configuration). Some distros also firewall it off by default (but Kubuntu isn't in that list).
I've noticed music programs (Rhythmbox, Amarok) often support it but they are trying to interoperate with iTunes which is another issue again.
By the way I think someone said they might work on a Kopete bonjour plugin a few weeks ago.
I'm also a little sad that OSX has dropped default support for printers annouced over CUPS broadcast but thems the breaks. If you know what you're doing it's possible to renable it (and set your Macs to broadcast too but that's another story).
You have just fallen for a very old Mac troll - first saw this one back in 1998 or so.
C|N>K
From Piratebay you can find a patched version of Leopard as a VMWare virtual machine. Guess what? The sound works. Also does the networking.
i call shenanigans. writing software under os x is vastly less complicated than writing software under windows or any linux deployment i've tried (fedora, ubuntu, and yellow dog, among others). leopard was an especially noticeable upgrade in this regard: "instruments" (like "dtrace", but it doesn't suck), xcode (which is basically just a nice frontend for gcc), and interface builder have all seen *huge* improvements. they're all free (as in beer), too: they actually come with the OS. apple's the only company i've seen making an honest attempt to make developing software easier and more approachable for everyone- from the hardcore code monkeys to people who are curious and just want to get their feet wet. visual studio's okay, but it's way too expensive and the learning curve is ridiculous; software is supposed to make your life *easier*, and apple's dev. software is a great example of a good way to layer an interface so it's not intimidating, yet it still permits advanced users to do exactly what they want.
and, of course, if all this fancy GUI stuff makes your blood boil- well, there's always a terminal, and good ol' gcc...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Someone did. Nautilus had this for a while now. Can't remember for how long, but given that even the latest Gnome (2.20) is older than OSX 10.5... .
Sound like your installation in b0rked.
Normally both of the 2 bigs desktop environment GNOME and KDE have a system of plugins that gives them support for other way to access data than the standard system :
KIO slaves in KDE and VFS plugins Gnome.
It's those modules that let you type "ftp://" "sftp;//" "smb://" "webdav://" or "nfs://" addresses or that let you freely browse a ZIP file as if it was a simple directory.
These modules are not only used by the file browser, but by all other application from the desktop environment :
For exemple under KDE (openSUSE running here), not only can I browse my files while away from home using SFTP, I can even remotely edit them because KATE (KDE's nice text editor) use them too.
And probably after a couple of versions, this modules will be available for any other software by using project like FUSE : currently FUSE can mount anything that can be accessed by a KIO slave. It's only a matter of time until someone write a nice plug and play automatic wrapper that dynamically mounts network KIO objects as needed to access them in non-KDE and non-GNOME application (for example OpenOffice.org's own webdav module isn't on par with the desktop's one).
But for now if you must copy locally your files before using them with application that are part of your desktop, you should check if those modules are correctly setup to be usable from within those software.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Offtopic? The mod must be new here.
Most of the stuff on
It shouldn't.
On Windows, simply opening the appropriate path opens the file - I can write a ten-line C++ program that's capable of opening "//anothercomputer/sharename/myfile.txt", without using any Windows-specific code, and many people have done exactly that without even realizing that they have. The OS takes the filename, parses it, and provides a standard file layer that just happens to work over the network. I make use of this regularly - I've actually mounted disk images across networks, for example. Works just fine. (It's even surprisingly fast.)
On Linux, all of that stuff is an absolute pain - you can't just open files off shares, you have to copy them locally, because the Linux kernel doesn't (as far as I know) yet support easy and convenient plugins of that type.
I assume OSX has taken the Windows route, which is the right solution. Linux has some catching up to do here IMHO.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.