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.'"

Comments

Point of view

[reynaert]

Linux market share has increased by 117%, while Apple's increase is only 74%.

Yes, for me at least.

[MBCook]

I liked Linux and was slowly switching until I got to see how nice OS X was and became (as it was released/updated). There is a very good chance I spent most of my time on Linux at this point if it wasn't for OS X. My brother is probably the same was, as are many others in small IT department I work at. OS X provides us the unixy goodness we love (command line and such), with a great GUI that's easy to use and commercial software and things "just working". I've been on a Mac for a few years now, yet I still discover nice little things (like my Mac keeps separate mute statuses for when I have headphones plugged in and not plugged in, so it adjusts automatically as soon as I plug my headphones in.)

If you are not a hardcore FOSS person who wants the source to everything they run... OS X provides a fantastic environment for a great many people.

Who uses support?

[magister159]

Honestly, I have never thought of calling my operating system manufacturer for support.

Perhaps it's because I work in IT, and I'm smarter than your average Tier 1 support monkey... But I can't imagine a normal person saying "I can't connect to the Internet, let me call Microsoft".

Then again, I could be completely off base.

Re:hmmm

[Yaztromo]

But isn't OS-X...under the Aqua interface basically a *nix platform? So in a way, can't we possibly...if we wanted to be REALLY anal about it and help shove it down the throat of M$.... claim that with the migration of the Apple OS to the OS X platform from the classic OS (os 9 and prior), that we have actually dramatically INCREASED the adoption of *nix on the Desktop??

I think this is an important detail. While OS X may compete in some peoples minds in the desktop realm, in actual fact they are complimentary. While some OSS advocates may decry OS X as "proprietary", the fact is that Apple releases a lot of the core of their OS as OSS, uses a lot of OSS software in OS X, and they embrace standards (as opposed to trying to co-opt them).

What this means in practical terms is that OS X and Linux integrate together quite easily. For example, stick netatalk and Avahi on a Linux system, and you have a really easy and Mac-friendly file-server.

I won't claim that Apple is always perfect, but at least it's fairly easy to use OS X with other OSs, especially when it comes to Linux.

(I've had the thought int he back of my mind for some time that if I had the time and resources, I'd love to fork a Linux distro to create a Mac-friendly-Linux distro. All the parts are there -- it just takes someone to put them all together).

Yaz.

Re:Not Quite Universal

[TheRaven64]

There is a Adobe Photoshop codebase that works on Unix based platforms. When you ask for a copy for your Linux desktop, the reason the answer is no is because even though we've invested the effort and could give you what you want, for business reasons we choose not to do so at this time. If Photoshop used POSIX and Cocoa APIs on OS X then you might have a point since the POSIX APIs exist on every *NIX platform and the GNUstep implements a large portion of Cocoa and someone like Adobe could relatively cheaply implement the others.

This is not the case, however. Photoshop on OS X is a port of the old MacOS Classic one. This originally used the Mac Toolbox. It was then ported to Carbon, which is very similar to the old toolbox APIs but tidied up a bit. When OS X was introduced, the few MacOS 9 dependencies were removed and it was recompiled for OS X. No implementations of these exist for any *NIX platform other than OS X. It would be easier to port the Windows version of Photoshop to Linux/BSD/Solaris using Winelib than the Carbon version.

Of course, now Apple have effectively deprecated the Carbon APIs (no 64-bit version) and added a lot of things to make it easier to move apps from Carbon to Cocoa, this may change.

Re:my rebuttal

[Teilo]

Yes, thank you! For every barrier in Linux desktop adoption there are ten thousand Linux ideologues insisting that the barrier is a good thing, and you are just stupid if you can't deflibberate your cronoodleblitz.

I ran exclusively Linux on desktop and laptop for 3 years. I ran Gentoo. I deflibberated many many cronoodleblitzen. I loved it. Still love it. Still manage 6 Gentoo servers.

I currently run Leopard an a Macbook Pro.

Sorry, but TFA's right. I run CS3; I develop in Eclipse; I have Terminal open almost all the time; I run Parallels w/convergence and effortlessly run Access databases with no library/3rd party control weirdness such as WINE/Crossover gave me.

My business needs are broad. I live in a mixed Mac/Windows/Linux office environment. I commonly am required to mix graphics design, database, and server work all together into one project (image personalization, data scrubbing, variable data printing, bulk snail-mail processing). I need all the above tools. I could do almost all of the above in Linux, and spend hours being unproductive while I was just trying to make things work. Or I can just use a Mac.

Someday, when life is simple for me again, I may go back to Linux on the laptop. (As it is, I occasionally fire up an Kubuntu VM in Parallels for certain things). But until then, I am very content with OS X.