Linux Pre-Installs In the UK Hit 2.8%

schliz alerts us to a story out of the UK PC distribution channel. It seems that the percentage of systems pre-installed with Linux has gone up 28 times since Vista shipped, from 0.1% in January 2007 to 2.8% last June. Still not huge numbers, but Apple did OK for years with similar market share figures. Linux's headway comes in the face of the marketing money that manufacturers pass out to distributors, money that has historically been important to their profits: "In the late 1990s competition was so keen that distributors were said to sell at or below cost and take their profit direct from the marketing funds they received from vendors. Vendors nowadays keep watch to see their marketing funds are actually spent on marketing, but distribution runs on single figure profits and vendor marketing funds are a crucial aid."

Comments

Good News

[dark whole]

Im glad to see more preinstalled linux systems out there.

Re:Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

What really kicks ass is that in 5 more years, the preinstalls will be at 5%.

Re:Good News

[HappySmileMan]

At that rate we'll see the year of the Linux desktop in well under 200 years

Re:Good News

[Vectronic]

Well, if it continued at this rate, wouldnt that make it about 11.5% 5 years from now? Or about 6500% if it was actually "28 times" every 1.5 years...

Re:Good News

[BPPG]

Linux distros are a huge pissing contest...

This is the reason why I consider your argument misinformed.

Re:Good News

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as we don't forget to move the clock forward before 2038.

Re:Good News

[shutdown -p now]

Surely by that time we'll all be running GNU/Hurd on our personal Beowulf clusters built entirely of Free hardware?

Re:Good News

[vilgefortz]

Misinformation does not equal Troll or Flamebait, contrary to popular opinion.

Re:Good News

[Hurricane78]

Haha. You forgot to post anonymously. Gotcha!

Re:Good News

[koolfy]

assholes like apple and google who take other peoples hard work and commercialize it.

And where do you think microsoft's products come from ?

their employees ?

come on ! be serious..

Plus, if FOSS has a license to allow companies to use and commercialize their code, it's just a benefit for the overall software level. While this example is not OS, remember the mouse ? The fact that several companies could use that device to enhance user interface (even if it's by copying and stealing) leads the user interface to what we know right now.

I don't think using other people's code (who permits it.) to enhance one's products is being an asshole (while I disagree with M$ using this strategy to build 80% of their products, or just buy and let patents sleep, and die.). I mean, you know that sharing code is the goal of FOSS, right ?

Linux distros are a huge pissing contest between egoistical morons who instead of contributing to one distribution fork and rob distros of the already scarce resource - the free developer.

I don't see why you criticize that.

OK, they are a much distro's, they are forks, but at the end, how much distro's are powerful enough, user-friendly enough, to get the attention of people ?

gentoo ? no way normal people choose this by default.

slackware, debian, and other geek-obscure-freeky systems that lambda users wouldn't even get to boot ?

In fact, the true is that even with forks, with plenty of distro's and soever users have choice, but no confusion : there is Mandriva (uurk), fedora, and others (like ubuntu, the most known) and if they don't understand the difference between those, they'll choose Ubuntu.

so what is the problem with distro's ? actually there isn't, the only problem is that the potential power of developers is quite not concentrated in few tasks but in much (having no future-)distro's.

Nobody is going to ship proprietary commercial bits using apt or whatever crappy management software is out there

well, if it's commercial, it won't be given free to ubuntu servers, so your statement is pointless. They will ship their softwares in DVDs (or by Steam) with a Linux client (see ID Software, but in a more user-friendly way) and just to let you know, every lambda user I know and saw apt-get working told me several times that it was the greatest way to manage installed softwares they ever saw. IMO it's a Very Good package manager (for a binary distro I mean)

for sure, I use Gentoo for two years now, have used ubuntu for 2-3 years, Mandrake/mandriva for 2 years, Slackware for one year and suffered windows all before that. I think I have basis knowledge of problems with forks, with package managers and with FOSS realities.

The services model sucks. The only OSS projects that do well are those that have commercial backing and those that actually pay developers to write quality code.

sure having full-time paid developers enhances quality and fast development while it's not the only criteria (remember many people doing little stuff being well coordinated can be most efficient than a single well paid developer.). However, if you see a good project and want it to grow, if you REALLY don't want to contribute to the code's development, nor the languages translations, please, don't wait a commercial company to buy and pay the project, just donate money (not much). You see, companies are not the only ones having the possibility to pay developers. People too. And much people giving little money can do the difference.

Re:Good News

[HappySmileMan]

Well it wasn't him that modded it Troll or Flamebait, if it was then he couldn't post here without undoing the mod

Re:Good News

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I don't thin the problem is your argument per se, wich may have some valid points, but rather the:

pissing contest...egoistical morons ...for fucks sake... end the pissing ...assholes...

part.

Re:Good News

[Risen888]

The "YOLOTD" already happened. It was 2006, with the releases of Vista and Ubuntu 6.10, and the announcement of the Eee PC. That's when real, measurable, exponential growth in free software on the desktop began. That's when you started to occasionally see the word "Linux" in the newspaper (brief aside: my local daily had an article on the front page of the Variety section last Sunday about how to install Firefox addons). It's the year I started seeing penguin stickers on Hondas. TFA is just one more step on that road of exponential growth, but the numbers bear it out, that is indeed what's happening here.

Maybe you're waiting on the day when free software captures the majority of the market, and that'll come, but it takes a hell of a long time to bleed out a cow. The "YOLOTD" isn't the day it ends. It was the day it really began.

Re:Good News

[sveinungkv]

Linux distros are a huge pissing contest between egoistical morons who instead of contributing to one distribution fork and rob distros of the already scarce resource - the free developer.

How can they rob the distros of something they don't own? If they can I think you right now are robbing me of the $10 000 you could have given me.

Nobody is going to ship proprietary commercial bits using apt or whatever crappy management software is out there.

That is not a problem unless you want "proprietary commercial bits". If you want it please don't believe you have a right to force those that don't to make it easier to get it. (But feel free to do it yourself or motivate in a positive way others to do it)

there is a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

apple makes money at 2.8%. do you really think that all these vendors pay X/each copy distributed?

Re:there is a difference

[Kjella]

apple makes money at 2.8%. do you really think that all these vendors pay X/each copy distributed?

On the other hand, Linux has been constantly improving on a shoestring budget so anything they make on this is more than that. I'm pretty sure there's money in there, not great money but enough to push Linux forward. If you invest in the stock market thinking Canonical will be the next Microsoft you're almost certainly wrong, but hopefully this means that in a few years Linux is a market share you can not ignore.

Re:there is a difference

[tristian_was_here]

I doubt we will see kernel.org on the stock exchange but its good to see GNU/Linux is moving forward. Living in the UK I see GNU/Linux sees hurdles especially with ISP's because they require custom software to enable internet connections on first use.

Re:there is a difference

[JohnBailey]

I doubt we will see kernel.org on the stock exchange but its good to see GNU/Linux is moving forward. Living in the UK I see GNU/Linux sees hurdles especially with ISP's because they require custom software to enable internet connections on first use.

Really? which ISPs need custom connection software(so I can avoid them). I don't have that much to do with very many ISPs, but the ones I have used and set up for friends were always user name and password, and nothing more. Even on ISP supplied routers. Setting up a manual email account can be a bit fiddly, but a fair few seem to be moving to webmail these days.

Re:there is a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Virgin Media for one

Re:there is a difference

[solferino]

If you invest in the stock market thinking Canonical will be the next Microsoft you're almost certainly wrong, but hopefully this means that in a few years Linux is a market share you can not ignore.

Only wish I could buy shares in Canonical.

Re:there is a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

One totally agnostic guy at my job, was encouraged to use Apple products by the System Engineer because it just works by clicking a button. Surely that was a bunch of oversold hype.

After my experience of transitioning from Slackware to Ubuntu, I felt that it was ready for my non intuitive friends. I told him to try it and guess what? His wife doesn't have a Mac mini, she has Ubuntu. He also runs Ubuntu on the Powerbook the System Engineer lobbied for him.

Conclusion? Linux is already on the right path, the worse that could be done to Linux, which I see popping up everyday, is to make it feel like a Mac.

No! Wrong. The Apple way encourages ignorance, and obfuscation so that it could lock in the 1 button click and conquer generation. Those like our sys admin who is lost without Apples GUI.

Nothing is wrong with a 1 button click. But a user's biggest frustration is when the 1 button click doesn't work; they're feel helpless and clueless.

Think windows and registry. Apple and its gui, with a non-standard POSIX(?) filesystem layout.

Re:there is a difference

[Darkness404]

Here in the US, even with all the evils of Comcast and Time Warner, for every ISP other than dial-up ones, you just plug in a cheap Linksys router into the cable box and you are good to go.

Re:there is a difference

[geordie_loz]

Virgin media is an ethernet based cable connection. I have *never* ran windows (or mac) behind a Virgin media/Telewest connection. All ISPs *need* to support routers, thus not specific os.

Even without a router, this is DHCP-- plug straight into a linux box (or any other box for that matter) and it will obtain an IP and be on the net.

They may well provide a helpful install CD, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a requirement, its just something to help old people feel comfortable about the process.

Re:there is a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sat here right now on a Virgin Media cable modem. I've been using Telewest/Blueyonder/Virgin since the first day they offered cable in my area, and I've been using it with Linux that entire time. They do not require any software setup at all. You connect the (ethernet) modem to your computer, turn the modem on and start DHCP. If anything, it's even easier than ADSL because you don't need to futz about configuring PPPoE.

I'm currently running a whole bunch of machines NATed to the cable modem via. a machine running Fedora.

Re:there is a difference

[JohnFluxx]

I installed broadband with O2 and I did seem to need to run the windows setup tool the first time. I think it initialises the wireless broadband router that they send. Without doing the windows setup I couldn't get the broadband router to give me an IP address from linux.

It _might_ have just been coincidental timing though - it takes a while for them to connect you.

Re:there is a difference

[Fred_A]

apple makes money at 2.8%. do you really think that all these vendors pay X/each copy distributed?

Sadly they might, in increased fees for that "other" system they install on the 97.2% other machines they ship. This practice is nowadays supposedly "bad" but it might well still happen behind the scenes. Plus you don't get to ship the usual crud to offset costs (antivirus, misc inutilities, etc.).

However it's probable that the 2.8% aren't branded PCs but just generic assembled systems so it shouldn't have much of an impact on said vendors.

Re:there is a difference

[Fred_A]

Conclusion? Linux is already on the right path, the worse that could be done to Linux, which I see popping up everyday, is to make it feel like a Mac.

I've been running Linux for ages, starting with the very first Slack and bought an iBook G4 (just before the transition to intel, I didn't mind much). I got it because it was a fairly good and inexpensive laptop for the amount of hardware. And I wanted to see what the fuss was about regarding the new Mac OS.
So I used it as my mobile platform for about a year an a half. Then I gladly bought a Samsung, stuck Ubuntu and KDE on it and now have a much more comfortable environment. I honestly couldn't see what all the excitement was about Mac OS. Apart from the gloss it felt just like Windows. The interface is designed to run a single application, in Tiger the network integration was abysmal and there certainly wasn't anything intuitive about it. It just was relatively pretty.

From what I've seen the majority (with a few exceptions) of the Unix users I've met in various get togethers appear to feel that way.

Re:there is a difference

[ChameleonDave]

One totally agnostic guy at my job

What have his beliefs on religion got to do with anything?

Re:there is a difference

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

You are aware that Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) is POSIX compliant and conforms to the Single UNIX Specification, right? The difference in file system layout that you're complaining about most likely has to do with user directories being in /Users instead of /home, and mounted volumes in /Volumes instead of /media, assuming that you're comparing it to Ubuntu. If you're really concerned about having exactly the same paths between OSes, you can use 'ln -s' exactly the same on Mac OS X as you can on Ubuntu. Although for a home directory, it's pretty pointless, since ~ and $HOME work exactly the same way on Mac OS X as any other *nix distro that I've ever used (including Ubuntu).

Just because your sysadmin is lost without Apple's GUI does not mean that Mac OS X encourages ignorance and obfuscation. Sure, most Mac users use GUI applications instead of terminal-based applications, but it doesn't mean that you can't. (I should know; I run both Mac OS X and Linux boxes, and probably my most-used application is Terminal.) You don't have to use the GUI. 90% of the time, I control my desktop via SSH. (If you want to do this on Ubuntu, you'd need to install the 'ssh' package. In Mac OS X, sshd is included by default, but is not running as a service until you enable it.) I watch video in my self-compiled SVN of mplayer, controlling it over SSH while doing other things on my laptop (in fact, I'm doing that as I post this). It's silly to base your assumptions of what can be done with Mac OS X based on your observations of one person. I know people who run Ubuntu who only know how to do things the GUI way, but that doesn't mean that Ubuntu encourages ignorance and obfuscation.

I've helped quite a few people migrate to Ubuntu/Kubuntu because they're sick of Windows and don't want to have to buy new hardware. I really like what Canonical is doing. But you really can't say that Canonical can't learn anything from Apple (or Apple from Canonical). Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted talking about emulating and surpassing Apple. While I currently think that Apple's Aqua is a more polished interface than Gnome and KDE, there are definitely things that Apple didn't come up with first (e.g. multiple desktops were not built into Mac OS X prior to Leopard [Spaces], although there were third-party add-ons that would enable this). And the KDE developers aren't standing still, they're continuing to innovate with KDE4. Canonical is working on an interface lift for Ubuntu 8.10. The Gnome developers continue to incrementally improve Gnome.

I don't think anyone seriously believes that Linux is suddenly trying to be a cheap knockoff of Mac OS X.

Having competition and choices is good for everyone but Microsoft.

Re:there is a difference

[jeremyp]

Not true.

I run an old PC with Linux on it as a firewall/NAT router on my Virgin Media (ex NTL) connection.

Re:there is a difference

[JohnBailey]

Virgin Media for one

Another reason to avoid then.

Re:there is a difference

[JohnBailey]

What have his beliefs on religion got to do with anything?

Not a follower of Saint Steve, Brother Ballmer or the holy penguin I would assume.

Re:there is a difference

[GameboyRMH]

He's saying the guy is neither a Jobsian nor a Gatesian nor a Torvaldsian.

Re:there is a difference

[digitig]

The issue is with ISPs refusing to publish the connection settings. Tiscali did that to me a few years ago, they told me that the connection settings were about to change and that I had to run their (MS Windows only) installation disc to configure my computer. I'd heard rumours of the disk messing with rival products, so I told them I couldn't run the disk because I was running Linux. They responded that they didn't support Apples (!). Yes, if I had been able to find the SMTP server address, the new dial-up number (this was quite a few years ago!) and so on I would no doubt have been able get a connection, but I reckon that they'd made it clear enough that they didn't want customers with Clue so I left.

Re:there is a difference

[The Great Pretender]

No! No! No! Nothing in the US could be better or easier than in the UK, I refuse to believe it!

Re:there is a difference

[lightversusdark]

The Virgin Media installer (previously known as NTL, pka Cable & Wireless) registers your MAC address.

Run the installer from a Windows box once, and then clone the MAC address of the machine into your router.
I did this a couple of years ago, and when upgrading my routers firmware, I have to spoof the MAC to get back online (tech support will tell you to run the installer again).

Of course, if you run the installer from behind your router, it will pick up your routers MAC address and associate that with your account, but:
In light of UK data retention policies, and the likes of Phorm, I am glad that the NIC it corresponds to is at the bottom of a landfill somewhere.

Re:there is a difference

[sir fer]

Just because your sysadmin is lost without Apple's GUI does not mean that Mac OS X encourages ignorance and obfuscation.

True but nothing in your post directly refutes that and in fact MacOS DOES encourage ignorance. Even the slogan "Just works" is reflective of that mentality because you don't want your precious customers learning anything about the internals of *their* machine, right?

Apart from that, Apple makes great hardware....for running Linux ;o)

Re:there is a difference

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

Considering that the argument was that because of one person's skills, Apple encouraged ignorance, I'd say I refuted the post directly. If Apple truly wanted to prevent their precious customers from learning about the internals of their machines, they'd develop a cumbersome and obfuscated system for storing settings, rather than using XML property lists that the OS provides tools to edit by hand.

Unlike Microsoft's OSes, Mac OS X ships with Xcode and GUI tools to compare and merge files or directories, index the help files, create and edit icons, explore the I/O registry, edit system and application property lists, probe USB hardware, log Bluetooth packets, profile OpenGL settings, monitor the OpenGL driver, etc. As with any other *nix, there are additional command line tools to explore the system, and Terminal.app is hardly hidden; it's easily found in /Applications/Utilities.

Basically anything you might want to know about your hardware, software, network, etc. can be found by going to "About This Mac" in the Apple menu, and selecting "More Info..."

The Hardware section details the following sections: ATA, Audio (Built In), Bluetooth, Diagnostics, Disc Burning, Fibre Channel, FireWire, Graphics/Displays, Hardware RAID, Memory, PC Cards, PCI Cards, Parallel SCSI, Power, Printers, SAS, Serial-ATA, and USB. Network lists information for AirPort Card, Firewall, Locations, Modems, and Volumes. Software provides Applications, Extensions, Fonts, Frameworks, Logs, Managed Client, Preference Panes, Startup Items, and Universal Access.

The hardware information covers everything you'd expect to see out of say "lspci -v" and then some, and the other sections are equally thorough.

There's nothing to prevent you from poking around the system. Files are in logical places, and since Mac OS X applications follow this structure, you can easily explore the files that make up an application:

App Name.app
.
`-- Contents
|-- CodeResources
|-- Info.plist
|-- MacOS
| `-- App Name # This is the application binary.
|-- PkgInfo
|-- Resources
| |-- Example.png
| `-- Language.lproj # "Language" would be replaced with the language name, e.g. English.
| |-- InfoPlist.strings
| |-- Localizable.strings
| |-- MainMenu.nib
| | |-- classes.nib
| | |-- info.nib
| | `-- objects.nib
| `-- NSPrefPaneGroups.strings
`-- version.plist

(The formatting could be better; Slashdot denies me <pre>.)

I've simplified it a good bit (for example, there would be more languages, and might be other files than the "Example.png" under Resources), but hopefully you get the idea. Apart from objects.nib, all of the files in my example under Language.lproj are text except objects.nib.

Plus, if they were trying to be as secretive as you seem to believe, would you be able to go here and read (both in HTML and PDF) the extensive information they have about Mac OS X internals without even having to log in?

Personally, I think this is extensive enough in response to your post, but if you'd like to debate the matter further, I can cover additional files you can explore in some of the other logically named and easily browsed directories (e.g. ~/Library/Logs, ~/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Keychains, etc.), or the extensive array of command-line tools that you're probably already familiar with on Linux, for exploring the file system and OS. ;)

While Apple is hardly as open as open source (and they couldn't be, most of their apps are closed source), they're hardly encouraging ignorance in the way that has been argued here.

EeePC, anybody?

[meringuoid]

I bet 99%+ of these are Eees. I've never seen any Linux preinstalled other than those.

On which note, Amazon, get a bloody move on sending me my Linux 901. It was supposed to be out last month, now you say August 11th?

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[ickleberry]

I did see some oddball manufacturer's "netbook" (a type of laptop formerly known as a subnotebook or UMPC before the Web 2.0 craze) in the Car phone warehouse lately. So its probably more like 97 or 96%.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Dice]

I own a Dell 1420n which came with Ubuntu pre-installed. There are a number of systems that Dell sells like this.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Foofoobar]

Dell is selling preinstalled Ubuntu desktops. HP I believe just started selling Ubuntu as well on the desktop.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[binarylarry]

I'm also a Dell 1420n owner. It's a fantastic machine, I couldn't be happier with mine.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Dice]

Yeah, I was surprised by the quality of the system. I had expected that Dell would do something brain-dead thus requiring me to re-install Ubuntu, but it was effectively a vanilla install with a couple extra restricted drivers for the video and wifi. I've had mine for almost a year now, going from 7.10 to 8.04 via the update utility and everything is still running great.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[spisska]

On which note, Amazon, get a bloody move on sending me my Linux 901. It was supposed to be out last month, now you say August 11th?

For what it's worth (if you're in the US), I started looking around for a 901 two weeks ago. From what I could tell from the user forum the Linux 901s were held up at customs in San Francisco until early last week.

You should be getting yours soon. I'll be ordering mine as soon as I can convince my company to pay for it.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet 99%+ of these are Eees.

Wow. That's a lot of Eees.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, I was surprised by the quality of the system. I had expected that Dell would do something brain-dead thus requiring me to re-install Ubuntu, but it was effectively a vanilla install with a couple extra restricted drivers for the video and wifi.

You mean wifi on Linux is ready for Aunt Tillie? Oh, no. It can't be. Then all the trolls will have nothing to complain about!

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Kjella]

You mean wifi on Linux is ready for Aunt Tillie? Oh, no. It can't be. Then all the trolls will have nothing to complain about!

Welcome to the Internet. I see you have a lot to learn about online discussions.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Darkness404]

Right now, an EEE is just about the only thing you can buy at like Best Buy and have it have Linux. But Dell has a lot, but honestly, EEEs aren't that popular, so far I'm the only one I know in real life that has one, though a friend of mine broke her laptop so she is getting one.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[dotgain]

I always was a lot of E's IMO.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Zackbass]

Don't worry, we've always got ALSA to fall back on!

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had expected that Dell would do something brain-dead thus requiring me to re-install Ubuntu, but it was effectively a vanilla install with a couple extra restricted drivers for the video and wifi. I've had mine for almost a year now, going from 7.10 to 8.04 via the update utility and everything is still running great.

Except that I don't like Ubuntu (and I especially dislike Gnome, for that matter). Therefore, I put my desktop of choice, Sidux, on it and everything works like a charm.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[awrowe]

I've seen that, it is basically an Elonex One, which the Car Phone Warehouse people tried to tell me has been respecified for them. So really what that means is that its an Elonex One with a new, better performing sticker on it.

Still, I'm not sure where you are going to get a subnotebook with a ten inch screen for £220.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[jimicus]

You mean wifi on Linux is ready for Aunt Tillie?

Oh, no. It can't be. Then all the trolls will have nothing to complain about!

No, but only because Tillie isn't a very common name in the UK.

It may, however, be ready for Aunt Doris.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[SEE]

Nah, they'll complain about, for example, printer installation.

I recently got a Dell 530n (Hardy Heron), and I decided to try to hook it up to the printer on the Windows machine. I was able to work out how to do it relatively easy, but not nearly as easily as adding a network printer on a Windows box is. Further, the only way I learned it was impossible to set up this particular printer on Linux was to note the lack of a suggested PPD on the list, then search the web fruitlessly for a PPD for the printer.

(This went on longer than discovering there was no Linux driver because of the Curse of a Little Knowledge. I knew I didn't need a "real" driver that would run the hardware, because the printer was going to be operated by the Windows machine. So "all" I needed was the text file PPD, right? And there's a Mac driver, and Macs use CUPS, so the PPD would have to be in the Mac driver .dmg, and I had a Mac handy, and . . . turns out that the Mac driver doesn't use a CUPS-PPD.)

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[LaurensVH]

I had the inverse problem. For some strange reason, if you want to install a REMOTE LPR queue on WinXP, you need to add a LOCAL port. Makes perfect sense!

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Aunt Tillie knows how to use a dildo she will be overqualified for using wicd (http://wicd.sourceforge.net/).

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alsa? What about the up and comming Pulseaudio. While it's great, it's a configuration nightmare waiting to happen. Especially with ESD and ARTS in the mix (no pun intended). I can see it now:

1. ALSA Pulse ESD app OSS emul.+app
        | | ARTS app
        | | JACK app OSS plugin+app
        | | OSS app
        |
        | OSS Emulation OSS app

2. ???

3. Profit!

4. A big "fuck you" to all underpants gnome pusrists

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Nurgled]

I'm far from an expert on Windows, but my understanding is that in the Windows model it is the client rather than the "server" that does the brunt of the work in printing to a network printer. The client needs a driver installed to format the output into an appropriate raw data stream that can be fed to the printer. If you've got a postscript printer then this is relatively easy under Linux, but for anything else you need to have a bunch of random filters on the client to translate postscript to PCL or whatever other random language the printer supports.

This does make setting up the opposite -- a Windows machine printing to a printer plugged into a Linux box -- quite easy, though. You can just tell CUPS to accept raw data from clients and let the Windows machines run the proprietary driver.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Knuckles]

Still, I'm not sure where you are going to get a subnotebook with a ten inch screen for £220.

Maybe the MSI Wind. Not sure about the prize, but the screen size fits.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Knuckles]

Alsa? What about the up and comming Pulseaudio. While it's great, it's a configuration nightmare waiting to happen. Especially with ESD and ARTS in the mix (no pun intended).

Pulse has esd compatibility, so just get rid of esd: http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/pulseaudio-esound-compat

Not for arts, though: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/FAQ#WhataboutcompatibilitywithaRts

4. A big "fuck you" to all underpants gnome pusrists

http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/FAQ#IsPulseAudioaGNOMEprogram

Thanks for playing.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[wanderingknight]

Arts is deprecated anyways. They're dropping it in KDE 4.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[scarper]

In an area where teenage pregnancy is rife, Auntie Kylie is more likely.

Re:EeePC, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the Acer Aspire One retails for £220, but it only has a 8.9" screen. I got one last week and have to say it is a nice machine and good value for money. But if that extra inch is really important to you, I guess you'll have to wait a bit longer for something to come out at that price point.

For How Long?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I'm a big Linux user, I have been since the mid-ish / later-ish '90s sometime. I do have to ask, though:

How long do these machines stay running Linux?

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

Re:For How Long?

[meringuoid]

How long do these machines stay running Linux?

If, as I speculated above, these machines are Eee PCs, then they probably stay running Linux for all their operational life. The target market for such machines wouldn't know how to reinstall an OS. Wiping a disk and installing Windows, then locating drivers for all the hardware, then setting up firewalls and antivirus... well, that's fine for the hobbyist, but the average user is just going to stick with what's on the system as it arrived. Windows needs to become a lot easier for the end user to configure and install if it's going to become a viable competitor on the mainstream ultraportable.

Re:For How Long?

[garett_spencley]

This is a very valid point, but that doesn't mean everything goes down the tube. It's great marketing. Even if the users never boot into Linux the word still got to them. And I suspect that many who do format and install Windows will at least boot into Linux once or twice and give it a shot. A few may even stick with it when they see it does everything they wanted the cheap PC for anyway.

Re:For How Long?

[magunning]

How long do these machines stay running Linux? If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

If they try "format c:" then they'll stay running linux for a long time

Re:For How Long?

[Nursie]

Actually, with the eee 901s it's probably better than that.

I know of a fair few folks here that couldn't get the linux 901 (distribution problems apparently) and so eventually caved, bought an XP model and linux'd it.

Re:For How Long?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

If they try "format c:" then they'll stay running linux for a long time

Why? You realize that to install windows, you have to "format c:", right?

Re:For How Long?

[petermgreen]

From what I heared at least initially asus supplied instructions for installing windows and a CD full of windows drivers with the linux based EEE.

I dunno if this has changed since they started selling them with windows.

Re:For How Long?

[g0dsp33d]

Makes up for all the "Vista" machines that are running Linux now. This laptop for example :).

I would also guess that most of the people who know how to switch operating systems tend to head in the opposite direction of what you suggest.

Re:For How Long?

[samtihen]

Nah.

If you haven't noticed, most computers with Linux installed by default aren't easy to come by. The vast majority of the time you have to go out of your way to get one, and they are rarely any cheaper. In fact, Dell XPS m1330's are routinely more expensive with Ubuntu installed. The exceptions here are the netbooks, of course.

I'd wager that WAY more XP/Vista boxes get reinstalled with Linux than the other way around.

Re:For How Long?

[adona1]

Well, that wouldn't be as cheap as it seemed...an off the shelf copy of Windows runs for more than an OEM copy, IIRC

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

good luck with that, lol

Re:For How Long?

[Foofoobar]

Honestly, I have a couple that had OLD Windows installs on them that I have since installed Linux on. I even bought an Ubuntu installed Dell for my mom and she hasn't been happier.

Re:For How Long?

[ksd1337]

I hope I'm not falling into a sarcasm trap, but most GNU/Linux distros don't use the same partition system as Windows. It's much more convenient actually.

Re:For How Long?

[charlie763]

The percentage of these machines that stay running Linux is probably greater than the percentage of machines that stay running Windows.

Re:For How Long?

[HappySmileMan]

The joke was that "format" isn't a Linux command, and a partition can't be called "c:"... So "format c:" does absolutely nothing in Linux

Re:For How Long?

[multisync]

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

Don't you mean mkfs?

That's actually kind of funny, it's traditionally been the other way around - buy a cheap windows machine and extend it with Linux.

What are you going to put on that machine? Is the money you save buying it with Linux on it enough to pay for a retail version of Windows?

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you call the average user (which I would call the completely clueless user) will never buy a computer with Linux pre-installed, including an Eee PC. In the case he makes a mistake and buy it anyway, he will return the machine to the store immediately after realizing it's not what he is used to.

It's difficult to know what part of those 2.8% are geeks and what part are pirates (I suspect pirates are the majority), but I highly doubt any of them are what you call "average user".

Re:For How Long?

[burnin1965]

How long do these machines stay running Linux?

If the customers are anything like the Windows customers they'll be running linux until the box is dead.

If they are an out of the ordinary customer who does their own OS installs then it wouldn't make much sense to buy a box with linux pre-installed when you can buy boxes with no OS, or to save even more purchase the parts themselves and build the box.

I'm sure some of them will end up running Windows but its more likely that it will be due to a want or need to go back to Windows apps rather than going through the trouble to get a cheaper box.

From what I've seen of vendors that sell Windows and linux boxes there isn't much of a cost benefit to buy the linux box over a Windows box, in fact its not uncommon for the Windows box to often times cost less than a similarly equipped linux box. Its never been fully explained why by the vendors selling the boxes, but its been speculated that they are subsidized by the proprietary software vendors.

If it does turn out they are being purchased on the cheap and a pirated copy of Windows is installed, oh well, I guess its pay back for me and everyone else who has purchased multiple laptops over the years and being forced to pay a Microsoft tax even though the laptops would be used to run linux.

Re:For How Long?

[kesuki]

but the first joker who replies 'oh you need to "sudo rm -rf" then enter your password...' when they complain that format c: didn't work, will probably wind up with the machine in the trash, if they can't afford to send it to a computer shop, which will charge them $400 to put windows on it, cuz it didn't ship with windows, and thus the user can only reinstall linux, which they probably don't know how to find software for (with sourceforge, or a package manager like adept or synaptics.)

newbies even say linux is worthless because you can't buy software for it, they just don't understand that there would be a utility to find 'new' software based on keyword searches.

Re:For How Long?

[spisska]

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

What's a 'c:'?

Re:For How Long?

[kesuki]

whoops. forgot the obligatory " /" at the end of the command... it would still do damage in the home directory, but without the " /" it won't render linux completely useless

Re:For How Long?

[burnin1965]

What you call the average user (which I would call the completely clueless user) will never buy a computer with Linux pre-installed, including an Eee PC.

You may not want to read the ZD Net article which mentions the demographics of the linux eeePC users in Taiwan, your AC head may just explode.

"Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP."

And these non-average users who you suspect are pirates buying the linux boxes to I assume install a pirated copy of Windows, that is a stretch. The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.

After years of people having to pay a Microsoft tax when they are going to buy a computer on which they will run linux its hilarious seeing people post about how the linux boxes will end up running Windows. What a hoot. :)

Re:For How Long?

[harlows_monkeys]

If, as I speculated above, these machines are Eee PCs, then they probably stay running Linux for all their operational life. The target market for such machines wouldn't know how to reinstall an OS.

The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).

Re:For How Long?

[morgan_greywolf]

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

But not all the PCs are like that. For example, the Dell machines that come preloaded with Linux like the 1420n have an excellent Linux (Ubuntu) implementation, well-configured and everything. And not only that, but the last I checked, the 1420n wasn't any cheaper than the Windows machines it is like.

The Asus Eeeiiieeeeiiiioooo is machine that you probably wouldn't want to load a different OS on when you consider that the thing is actually configured to be a sort of information appliance. Most people aren't buying Eees to get a full-featured laptop, because they're just not capable of being one.

Re:For How Long?

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

you mean format /dev/hda1 right?

Re:For How Long?

[nawcom]

If they try "format c:" then they'll stay running linux for a long time

Why? You realize that to install windows, you have to "format c:", right?

Heheh.

Noting that your username is Actually, I do RTFA, please take my suggestion - don't anymore.

Re:For How Long?

[actionbastard]

"I'm a big Linux user..."

Yeah, like most geeks, you're thirty pounds or more overweight from all the Jolt and chips, your complexion is pasty, you sweat a lot when you talk to girls and you still live in your parent's basement.

Re:For How Long?

[hoopshank]

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

Actually it's been perfectly possible to buy a PC without any operating system in the UK for some time now, if not always. I first did it in 2001. Perhaps not from a big chain store but certainly from the shops and internet sites that actually know something about computers, which is also about the only way to even know what motherboard you're getting, for example....

Re:For How Long?

[Darkness404]

Sure, for the people who can actually install an OS that would be great, but for the rest of the population who don't even know how to install Ubuntu, let alone XP, I think that they would pay $50 something to have it installed.

My guess is most stay Linux, however, I bet a lot of the ones pre-installed with Windows change to Linux.

Re:For How Long?

[Darkness404]

That is partially because A) EEEs come with Linux by default and B) XP is a whole lot harder to install then Ubuntu. First, the average person who spent extra $$$ for XP usually needs XP for something, someone who bought an EEE with Linux could have just bought it for the price, and are shocked that there is an OS other than Windows.

Re:For How Long?

[baileydau]

How long do these machines stay running Linux?

Probably not as many that start out running Windows and have been converted to Linux.

Re:For How Long?

[Darkness404]

And a pirated version costs nothing ;) And neither does the disk that you got with your old computer that the motherboard fried.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a big Linux user, I have been since the mid-ish / later-ish '90s sometime. I do have to ask, though:

How long do these machines stay running Linux?

If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:

ORLY?

"format c:"?

(1) not a big linux user at all, are you really. "$ format c:" ===> command not found.
(2) common complaint against Linux is that it is hard for newbies to install. Guess what ... Windows is harder.
(3) how does a typical PC user get a Linux PC other than asking for one? It certainly won't be offered just casually to anyone.
(4) if a person knows enough to be able to ask for a Linux PC ... then they would know that they are better off keeping that PC as a Linux PC. Installing Windows is paying extra money to go a long way backwards. After buying a Windows install disk and finally locatingset of CDROMs with Windows drivers that match your hardware (remember, this was a Linux PC, it didn't come with Windows driver CDs) ... you get to run powerful desktop application such as Paint, Calc and Notepad! Whoopeee.
(5) did you not read the article? Someone is paying "marketing money" to dealers for selling Windows PCs (I wonder who?). Ergo, a Linux PC won't necessarily be any cheaper than a Windows PC.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? You realize that to install windows, you have to "format c:", right?

Wrong. This is a Linux PC.

The Linux command you are thinking of would (from memory) be something like "mkfs.ntfs /dev/hda1".

In any event, what you would do is boot an install CDROM, delete any existing partitions, and start all over again as if it were a blank, unpartitioned, unformatted disk. The install CDROM will partition and re-format the disk for you. This applies for installing either Windows or Linux.

Re:For How Long?

[SnEptUne]

Because the Linux version is not available just like the poster has mentioned? Surely, you can read, no?

Re:For How Long?

[Tubal-Cain]

Dell XPS m1330's are routinely more expensive with Ubuntu installed.

Meh, Dell can't subsidize the install with third-party software.

Re:For How Long?

[Hymer]

"How long do these machines stay running Linux?"
It doesn't matter if we compare this to the way Microsoft is counting their sales (ie. every unit leaving MS is a sold unit, OEM-licenses included).

Re:For How Long?

[Maelwryth]

Wow, Slashdot. Where else can you get modded +4 insightful for understanding a joke!

Re:For How Long?

[sc0ob5]

I bet your mum hasn't been happier. Neither has mine since I installed Ubuntu on her PC which was originally XP. She doesn't have any problems with it at all and she even recommends it to her friends. Not that she knows it's pretty much impossible to buy a machine with it pre-installed here in Australia (FUCK YOU DELL\HP\GENERIC PC VENDOR). At any rate, I couldn't be happier either as it means I don't have to fix her machine any more.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question.
For one, the windows license is extra and the installation is not for every user (you must admit many users are really inexperience with these things).

For two, I would just like to add; How many windows computers get linux slapped on them? It's still very hard to find linux preinstalled in stores so most users end up getting windows whether they like it or not.

Re:For How Long?

[Clopnixus]

Yup. I'm proud to belong to the 0.000000001% of ordinary users who buy PCs without an OS. We are growing in number to! Last year it was at 0.0000000001%

Re:For How Long?

[geordie_loz]

Erm.. If its a linux box, you can't format c:.. There is no c:, perhaps you mean /dev/sda1?

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was kind of clear from the comment that they would put pirated copies of windows on it...

Re:For How Long?

[BrentH]

Why not? Ubuntu supports Click-n-Run, no? I bet they could get a few deals with some commercial softwaremakers if they wanted too.

Re:For How Long?

[julesh]

The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).

Presumably because only an idiot would pay £30 extra to get the Windows version then put Linux on it, and they don't want idiots bricking their laptops so that they have to go back to the shop for a reinstall...?

Re:For How Long?

[julesh]

The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.

I can get an entry level Eee for under £200 from a local high street retailer. There's no way I could build a machine for less than that (at least not without reusing old parts).

Sure, I'd get better hardware at the end of it, but if the Eee does what I want, why would I bother?

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot really needs a '-1, Whooooosh' mod.

Re:For How Long?

[gronofer]

Its never been fully explained why by the vendors selling the boxes, but its been speculated that they are subsidized by the proprietary software vendors.

Proprietary software vendors need to pay for each installation? This doesn't sound like much of a business model. Worse than Linux in fact.

Re:For How Long?

[mgblst]

Bit if an actual Linux expert are we?

Maybe you should start RTFM!

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and format c:

you mean sda1 or hda1... right?

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

$ format c:

bash: format: command not found

Re:For How Long?

[Fred_A]

That is partially because A) EEEs come with Linux by default

A) EEEs used to come with Linux by default

Here, fixed that for you.

Re:For How Long?

[cyanidecircuitry]

For the record, in the UK at least, Dell's Ubuntu systems are significantly cheaper than the Windows equivalents. Even going for all the upgrades to get a far more powerful system works out cheaper.

Re:For How Long?

[Fred_A]

I even bought an Ubuntu installed Dell for my mom and she hasn't been happier.

Then maybe you should give her her old computer back ?

Shouldn't a child strive to make its mom happy after all ?

Re:For How Long?

[rtb61]

The of course beggars the question as to why a well informed Linux user would buy a PC with Linux pre-installed erase it and then install windows. The truth is woth windows install most users are incapable of doing them which is why manufacturers had to supply discs with a copy the installed sate of the PC at delivery rather than just a disk ie. Linux (depending o the distribution) is easier to install than windows.

Beside with no access to report and the basis upon which statics were gathered it is hard to make sence of anything. I know the M$ only likes to count PCs with OSs pre-installed and a PC with out an OS just disappears off their statistics, all those non-existent Linux servers (especially low cost web servers).

Re:For How Long?

[Teun]

Here in The Netherlands there are a lot of companies offering the eee PC 901 but all are with the smaller 12 Gb SSD and XP.

The only 901' s with Linux I' ve seen on offer were on Ebay and from the UK with a UK keyboard.

On one hand a cheap way of getting an XP licence, on the other really annoying for not getting the larger SSD and worse, MS chalking up up 1 more sale while you really are going to run Linux.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think win98 would run really well on those eee-thingies; the drivers don't support anything that old.

Re:For How Long?

[Ash-Fox]

The manual for the Linux EEE includes very detailed instructions on how to wipe Linux and install XP. (The manual for the Windows EEE does not contain instructions on wiping XP an installing Linux).

Actually it does. There is a section on restoring the factory Linux install which can be done via a USB pen drive or SDcard using the included CDROM.

Re:For How Long?

[Teun]

Nah.

In fact, Dell XPS m1330's are routinely more expensive with Ubuntu installed.

Dell m1330's are routinely more valuable with Ubuntu installed.

There, fixed it for you!

Re:For How Long?

[Foofoobar]

Heh. I grabbed it and am using it as a spare Ubuntu box. :)

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it wouldn't. rm -rf without a target will not do anything. if you left off -f (which ignores non-existent files and makes sure the command never prompts for anything) you'd get an error message about a missing operand.

Re:For How Long?

[mikechant]

For the record, in the UK at least, Dell's Ubuntu systems are significantly cheaper than the Windows equivalents.

Maybe. Maybe not. I think it varies from week to week. When I bought my Dell 530 desktop a few months ago, I got a better spec machine with Vista Home Premium than I could get for the same price with Ubuntu; I guess I should have got the Ubuntu machine on principle but there you go; I installed it myself instead and saved some money.

Re:For How Long?

[cyanidecircuitry]

I admit that I haven't checked recently, but it was certainly the case when my partner bought one earlier this year - we were only looking at laptops though.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

The of course beggars the question as to why a well informed Linux user would buy a PC with Linux pre-installed erase it and then install windows.

I didn't realise that the language centre of my brain could vomit just from reading something. Kudos.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how long do machines stay running windows vista after someone buys one? Hey, Linux has a 3-4% market share, this is no surprise.. But your trolling nonsense doesn't hold: "If someone wanted a new and cheap PC, get a Linux one and format c:" Where, on Dell computers that are sold at the same price as those with windows? Or on the asus eee pc or on the OLPC that haven't been designed to run that crap? Come back to reality..

Re:For How Long?

[robthebloke]

I know a fair few people who've gone for the windows version (because linux one was unavailable), then replaced the hard drive (which they were going to do anyway), then installed linux.

Re:For How Long?

[robthebloke]

A well informed linux user wouldn't, but a well informed windows user who has access to XP (probably cracked) would. Both the linux and windows cost the same amount, but you get a larger hard drive with the linux version to compensate for cost of windows....

Re:For How Long?

[robthebloke]

easy then, windows ME..... /ducks

Re:For How Long?

[Icarium]

The non-average user is going to buy the parts and build the box themselves as its cheaper and you end up with better hardware.

Seriously? Would you like to point me to the vendor(s) that sell the requisite parts to put together a laptop/notebook/subnotebook? Without having to resort to second hand goods?

What you say may hold true for desktop or server boxes, but your options when it comes to the smaller portable form factors are somewhat limited to say the least.

Re:For How Long?

[linux_0x740x750x78]

Hang on I wanna try. n00b@iaman00b.net:~$format c: n00b@iaman00b.net:~$bash: format: command not found n00b@iaman00b.net:~$format /? n00b@iaman00b.net:~$bash: format: command not found n00b@iaman00b.net:~$cd c: n00b@iaman00b.net:~$bash: cd: c:: No such file or directory Wow!! My PC is running without even having a c: drive. Linux really is cool! too funny! I think someone needs to turn in their geek card.

Re:For How Long?

[Enoxice]

You have to be root. format is kept in /sbin, and not in your user's PATH.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where in TFA did it say these were only laptops?

Obviously building servers and desktops provides many more opportunities than building laptops but if you really are serious about putting together a laptop there are barebones laptops available.

i.e. eTech4Sale has a section specifically for barebones laptops.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone needs to turn in their geek card.

You fail.

Re:For How Long?

[tehcyder]

The joke was that "format" isn't a Linux command, and a partition can't be called "c:"... So "format c:" does absolutely nothing in Linux

I knew I'd been doing something wrong all these years...

Re:For How Long?

[Tubal-Cain]

But those software makers don't make thier software for Linux (which I am thankful for)

Also, Linux users are the most likely to know how to remove thier 'product'. Those that don't will be able to get a script from ubuntuforums.org. Those that don't know how to do either but still managed to find and buy a PC with Linux on it will be a very small minority.

Re:For How Long?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The joke was that "format" isn't a Linux command, and a partition can't be called "c:"... So "format c:" does absolutely nothing in Linux

I understood that. What you apparently are misisng is that the "format c:" concept is not done by Linux (why would you format the drive that the OS is on? Can you even do that or are their locked files?) but by Windows as the first step of the install process.

Obviously Linux uses a different filesystem. But just like you don't bother to "format c:" when going from Windows to Linux, you do have to when going from Linux to Windows.

Re:For How Long?

[Icarium]

Maybe you should read the post I was quoting from?

Providing anecdotal proof of how average users are buying, specifically, the eeePC701, and then making a blanket statement about how non average users would build the box themselves is inconsistent.

The eeePC is a subnotebook. Good luck building that yourself at all, never mind cheaper.

And note that I specified that your options with smaller form factors were limited, not non existant.

Re:For How Long?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Wrong. This is a Linux PC.

Wrong, it was a Linux PC.

The Linux command you are thinking of would (from memory) be something like "mkfs.ntfs /dev/hda1".

No, the Linux command I am thinking of is a null string.

In any event, what you would do is boot an install CDROM, delete any existing partitions, and start all over again as if it were a blank, unpartitioned, unformatted disk.

Which will say "format c:" That was my point.

Re:For How Long?

[zmollusc]

Are you saying that you could install windows as a replacement for the linux operating system by using the linux tools on the disk you want to repartition? That is what you would be attempting if you typed 'format c:' into bash.

I would be booting from a good old fashioned dos image and fdisking and formatting away. While eating marathon bars.

Re:For How Long?

[Risen888]

I'd bet damn near all of them. Now, how many machines that come with Windows stay running Windows? Most of them, sure, but probably a noticeably smaller percentage.

Re:For How Long?

[von_rick]

$bash head here &

Re:For How Long?

[harlows_monkeys]

What factory Linux install? The Windows EEE models come with Windows installed from the factory.

Re:For How Long?

[Foofoobar]

Actually she is. Her camera, scanner and printer all work great and she doesn't worry about viruses anymore. I ssh into her mchine when I need to install something and have NX Machine installed so I can see her desktop and how everything is looking from her viewpoint if she starts experiencing any issues.

So far, all my calls with her are no just social calls and fewer calls on fixing her computer.

Re:For How Long?

[Ash-Fox]

What factory Linux install? The Windows EEE models come with Windows installed from the factory.

Don't know about them.

Re:For How Long?

[petermgreen]

I'm also in the uk.

If you are buying a desktop from a whitebox vendor it is certainly possible to get a machine with no OS. Hell until recently some would sell you machines with pirate windows preinstalled (and some probablly still will)

However there are a couple of problems with using whitebox vendors in my experiance.

Firstly cheap whiteboxes are made cheap by buliding them out of whatever happens to be cheapest that week and a thrown together. This means that at least in my experiance cheap whiteboxes are far less reliable than cheap machines from big brands like dell.

Secondly laptops don't tend to be made by the local whitebox vendors. There are some importers who will import them without an OS but they are the exception not the rule and afaict they tend to be at the lower end of the market.

Re:For How Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Japan, you can only get the XP model. Thought I could hold out until I got back home, but I had to give in and get it.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

That is great for us, finally reaching a lot of linux installs.

Steps to surprising article everybody reads

[sleeponthemic]

1. Find Marketing research company willing to give arbritrary statistic that surprises and enchants.

2. Write article citing (blaming) the marketing firm several times without really covering credentials.

3. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPP*cough*rofit

Re:Steps to surprising article everybody reads

[ksd1337]

Due to trademark issues, the ??? can't be displayed on Slashdot anymore. Microsoft trademarked the ???, because they saw that most users of Windows wrote that in their support emails.

Re:Steps to surprising article everybody reads

[Artuir]

You make step 3 sound like something out of Killer Instinct.

Re:Steps to surprising article everybody reads

[Phu5ion]

"article everybody reads"?

Who do you think you are talking about? Slashdot is kind of like Playboy. We aren't here to read the articles.

Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[BitterOldGUy]

them before they existed? If something is pre-installed as apposed to installed, does that mean it was installed before the installation?

If I have to report a pre-existing condition to the insurance company, I wouldn't have to report anything because all I have is existing conditions, if any.

But, if I do have any pre-existing conditions, that means I had them before they existed, which means I had them before I was born, and therefore...I've gone cross eyed.

Re:Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[Anonymous Coward]

before the purchase

Re:Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[jeiler]

(A la "Goodbye, Blue Sky") Look, mummie, there's a joke flying up in the sky!

Re:Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[Darkness404]

Yes, the microcode is running Linux, and your BIOS is also running Linux

Re:Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just watch the George Carlin skit?

Re:Does that mean, these machines had Linux on

[syousef]

If I have to report a pre-existing condition to the insurance company, I wouldn't have to report anything because all I have is existing conditions, if any.

But, if I do have any pre-existing conditions, that means I had them before they existed, which means I had them before I was born, and therefore...I've gone cross eyed.

My wife and I had different health funds. We were going to go with her's but ended up going with mine. The reason was that hers considered any genetic condition or condition diagnosed at birth (but not resulting from it) a pre-existing condition, and as such wasn't covered for the first year. In other words her fund said if our first child came out with a whole in his heart, tough titties for the first year you're on your own. We checked and rechecked and asked about mine and they had no such BS. She was pregnant (hence we were joining health funds). Guess which fund will never get another cent from us.

Cherry-picked numbers

[bjorniac]

Looking at the data, they just picked the lowest and highest points to get the factor. This is not indicative of an overall trend - I could pick March to March and say it had gone from 0.3% to 0.6% a factor of 2, not 28 - indeed from March to June of 07, things went DOWN by a factor of three...

Anyone not trying to fool themselves should really do some kind of best fit line and see that it's going at about 0.1% per month (number guessed). Yes, we're linux is making progress, and it's good, but let's be honest at least with ourselves about how much progress is actually being made.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[Kjella]

No no no. Linux market share is booming! If your product isn't Linux-capable, you're going to get ditched on the sidelines. If your hardware doesn't work on Linux you're going broke any day now. Everybody, it's time to invest in Linux companies, this is the new dotcom era. Buy buy buy!

(Hey, while many made and lost a lot of money on the dotcom thing it sure got everything and everybody online. I'd be happy to see the same happening to Linux...)

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[s4ltyd0g]

I haven't looked at the data but you can now buy from a number of different vendors, laptops and PCs with GNU/Linux pre-installed on them. Compare this situation with the one 3 years ago. Even if what you say is true and we are making little progress, it is nonetheless highly visible.

Microsoft's error in not predicting the potential market size for small, low cost systems running a full featured OS, is to everyone else's advantage and we will all progress because of it.

regards
p.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[HappySmileMan]

They picked the launch date of Vista to the public, January 2007, and the most recent month they have numbers for. Does seem like they carefully chose numbers from anywhere, that's exactly the way I'd expect this study to be done, and their claim is exactly true to the word.

Of course the way you chose those number is obviously suspect, namely that is raises the question "Why isn't he including the data back to Vista's launch data?"

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[nomadic]

Microsoft's error in not predicting the potential market size for small, low cost systems running a full featured OS, is to everyone else's advantage and we will all progress because of it.

MS is terrible at predicting computing trends; hell, they failed to predict the INTERNET. However, they usually manage to come up from behind and eventually dominate the market. Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[HappySmileMan]

Does seem like they carefully chose numbers from anywhere, that's exactly the way I'd expect this study to be done

Damn, meant to be doesn't

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[ColdWetDog]

MS is terrible at predicting computing trends; hell, they failed to predict the INTERNET. However, they usually manage to come up from behind and eventually dominate the market. Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm

Bah, CE didn't kill Palm - Palm killed themselves. Don't ascribe to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Unfortunately, as a general concept your correct (even if you meant Windows Mobile or whatever else they're calling it this week).

But Palm has no one to blame but themselves ... (cuddles the T|X so it doesn't get too upset).

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[G Wonder]

Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.

I think Palm beat Palm. All Windows CE had to do was exist to beat Palm's abysmal mismanagement of their PDA business. Palms are a dying platform and whatever plans Access or Palm or whoever is in charge of things these days is talking about will only be successful if it is the only viable platform to run Duke Nukem Forever on.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[jimicus]

Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.

Then use Windows CE and wonder how it ever beat anything.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[Candid88]

"hell, they failed to predict the INTERNET."

I don't think they failed to predict the internet, rather they were set on trying to create their own version of it. One which they would have been solely in charge of.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[willmorton]

Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.

That's not a very good example, seeing as both WinCE and Palm are being annihilated by RIM and Apple...

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[PReDiToR]

And a whole bunch of people are trying to get Linux to run on those devices instead of those semi-operating systems.

It won't be long til most phones and PDAs run Linux, either replacing the OS or pre-installed.

Re:Cherry-picked numbers

[Just Some Guy]

Look at how Windows CE eventually beat Palm.

...just in time for no one to care anymore. There are a few people who specifically want WinCE so they can sync with Outlook, but everyone else seems to fall into "it's a phone - I make phone calls (and maybe text)" or "IPHONE MUST HAVE".

If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably more like 18% everywhere else in Europe. England is the most conservative and Windows-fixated backarse of Europe.

FFS, this is the same country that made Bill a Knight. Same goes for Firefox market share

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[ksd1337]

It's probably like that in Scandinavian countries, where Linux originated (Finland, to be specific).

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[lysse]

Hey, why break with the national habit?

(I hate my country.)

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Mr. Marabou Man]

England is the most conservative and Windows-fixated backarse of Europe.

No, that would be Denmark. (Yeah, we suck over here. Almost as much as the Dutch ;)
See Firefox usage, march '07
Interestingly I can honestly say that I only know about one person who hasn't embraced the Fox. Who the hell are all those people ?

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[laddiebuck]

Yes, probably why the two lead kernel hackers apart from Linus are English and Welsh. Don't do the stereotype thing. I've travelled almost all of Europe, and in a day-to-day way found the Central Europeans to be the most conservative, the Eastern Europeans the most progressive, with Western Europe stuck in between, with say Spain the most conservative and the Scandinavians the most progressive.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the rest of Europe is backwards in terms of innovation and creating companies.
The UK has quite a few Linux options with new PCs now and that doesn't include Eee.
Look at efficientpc.com and others.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden is the most conservative and Windows-fixated backarse of Europe.

Fixed that

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[julesh]

FFS, this is the same country that made Bill a Knight

That's an Honorary Knight, please. You don't get to be a _real_ knight if you aren't British.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[emj]

with say Spain the most conservative and the Scandinavians the most progressive.

Spain does some pretty cool things, e.g. read the very good interview with a dev of the Extremadura Linux dist. and a Debian announce about Linux in Extremadura. Not sure about Scandinavia, Norway does good things but Denmark and Sweden seems very backward in my personal opinion.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[the_one(2)]

all scandinavian countries beat Sweden in firefox 3 downloads on the world record attempt (if I remember correctly) =(

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[trifish]

Are all mods crazy now? What is Informative +5 about the parent post? Speculations (see the use of the word "probably") without citing any sources? What exactly is informative? I don't see any piece of information in that.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Informative!? This is just someone's rage fit! Those are not facts, they're not backed up, it's just foamy-mouthed ranting -- not to mention the fact that it stupidly equates England with the UK. I know this is Slashdot, but Jesus Effing Christ.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

I've met a few people who won't budge from IE6 because they 'don't like' Opera, IE7, Firefox or Safari.
They never have a good reason when pressed - so I can only assume that it's because they are resistant to change and/or the idea of tabbed browsing confuses and frightens them.

Common excuses:
"I don't like the way other browsers look."
"I don't like the way the other browsers work." (WTF?)
"I don't see why *I* should need to change."
"It's too much hassle."
"Ever since virus xyz, I only trust MS software." (Again, WTF?).

The only way to get these people to stop using IE6 is to stop making sites that support IE6. Hopefully, they'll eventually become so marginalised that they will have to get a better browser; even if it is just IE7.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Opera is located in Norway I would bet most of them use Opera. I could go on and on about how it is better, but of course that would be a matter of personal preference.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[jez9999]

Also killing a dragon. You have to kill a dragon.

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[ricky-road-flats]

FFS, this is the same country that made Bill a Knight. Same goes for Firefox market share

Er, which other country ever made anyone a knight, exactly?

Re:If it's 2.8% in the UK

[MagdJTK]

UK != England. If you're going to insult a country, at least get its name right.

Linux will grow

[kipman725]

Once people see you running linux they get curious, my crappy laptop running debian gets more looks than all the shiny apples. Slowly converting those around me aswell, also I increasingly find that lots of software is linux only or works better in linux. Also programing is much easier in linux at least for my hobbyist C programs.

Re:Linux will grow

[meringuoid]

I increasingly find that lots of software is linux only or works better in linux.

I think it's a cultural thing.

Whenever I have something reasonably complex in mind to do in Windows (let us say... some kind of manipulation of PDF files), and I think 'Somebody must surely have programmed this already - I'll check online!' - I find pages upon pages of applications promising to do just as I wish, but they're all crippleware, non-functional unless I pay somebody money for them. Or they're riddled with advertising, or worse. Because every Windows programmer who has faced this problem has found a solution and immediately had fantasies of making a million selling software on the internet.

Whereas when the same notion strikes in Linux, the results are all free software, and far more functional than the Windows shareware shite, because some hacker in the past has faced the same problem as me, and has published his solution to the community.

Windows programmers hoard their creations and try to make money from them, and no one programmer can really benefit much from the work of any other. Linux hackers release their creations freely, and every hacker can improve and build upon the work of any other. Small wonder then that in order to get any decent software on Windows, one must either pay a licence fee to a corporation and sell one's soul to an EULA, or hope to hell that some software from the Unix world has been ported across.

Re:Linux will grow

[DogDude]

non-functional unless I pay somebody money for them.

Yeah, so? I don't begrudge paying people for their work. It's kinda' how the world works. Obviously, based on Linux's mind blowing, astounding, progress all the way to a high of 2.8% market share for one short period, in one medium-sized market, after more than a decade, that a few other people agree with me as well.

Regardless of what other people are doing, you're still whining about having to compensate other people for their work. Cry me a fuckin' river.

Re:Linux will grow

[lee1026]

You know, of course, that most OSS software makes it to the windows world, right? So in the windows world, you just hunt down that same piece of software and use it.

Re:Linux will grow

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about you, Mr or Mrs poster ? Do you make money from what you do ? IF so, why are u different from a windows person- you surely are not going to give away whatever it is that lets you charge others are you ?

Re:Linux will grow

[Kjella]

Yeah, so? I don't begrudge paying people for their work. It's kinda' how the world works. (...) Regardless of what other people are doing, you're still whining about having to compensate other people for their work. Cry me a fuckin' river.

And trying to avoid paying is also kinda how the world works. Saying "this is payware" and offering that is a fair deal, the problem is when you're trying to find a gratis solution in the Windows world. Some are very upfront about that there's a gratis version and a payware version and what the differences are. Others are plain old deceptive, probably not to the point of being criminally fraudulent but where it turns out the gratis version is so crippled it's practically useless and only a ruse to make you pay. Or that it comes bundled with ad/spy/malware that they hid way down in the EULA or otherwise downplayed until you try to install/use it.

Open source software has a refreshing air of honesty. It tends to do as advertised, even if it only claims to do half of what the Windows solution claims. Often the shortcomings are in fact pointed out in a TODO or as potential future improvements. Just knowing the license type is generally enough, there's no reason to read to see if it requires your firstborn or anything like that. All of this cuts down on the transaction costs.

It's often been said that open source software is only free if your time is worthless. Well, in my experience trying to chase down a gratis/cheap Windows solution is even more costly than a free Linux solution. Natural selection doesn't happen much in shareware, you find oodles of crap hanging around waiting for some sucker to buy it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule but they are typically larger, more well established projects and not the kind of half-hobbyist shareware software.

Re:Linux will grow

[Anonymous Coward]

You're trolling or you've just been looking in the wrong places. The latter is something easy to do in the world of windows where you have > 90% of the world's applications to choose from. Snapfiles freeware section is a good example of free software that is not "cripleware", though there are also shareware selections available.

For Linux, you can also find free software, but MANY times the programs themselves aren't fully functional or contain serious bugs. If you have the time and know how to fix it yourself, that is an option, but not a viable one for most people.

What you fail to understand, is that within the Windows world there are different types of programmers. Those who, like you say, horde their creations. Yet, there are also those that release free software for absolutely no charge. Both types exist, but you only present one side. No decent free software on windows? Liar.

Re:Linux will grow

[TechForensics]

Commercial software distributors are more like Hollywood producers or studio heads, producing (they hope) popular stuff for profit. F/OSS software authors (who act as their own distributors) are more like academicians publishing scholarly findings, new and elegant math proofs, and the like.

Whose stuff do you want to depend on, the producer's? Or the professor's? Who is more likely to produce quality, intelligent work and a benefit for humanity?

Re:Linux will grow

[corychristison]

Despite what others have written in reply, I completely agree with you.

Sure, people need to make money. That's fine. I found my niche, and I make a good living.

That being said, I also contribute to a few open source projects and am in the process of preparing my projects (including my money-maker) for release under the GNU GPL. Essentially it's a web CMS platform... I run some private servers and build sites/e-stores/etc for local businesses. There's a few projects where I cannot release specific parts of the code (built as modules for easy separation) as I've promised exclusivity for those specific projects (nothing signed as I live in a relatively small demographic -- trust is more important here than a fancy contract).

I feel that if I release my code for free, everybody that uses it will get something out of it. Wether it be a functional website, a chance to make a bit of cash off it or a chance to learn some new tricks I've used in the code... I attract a following that helps with testing and bug fixing... everybody benefits. I'll still make money doing what I'm doing. I don't see how I could lose money by releasing it as my market is businesses that don't have the time or patience to deal with it... As well, who better to hire to use the code to make something for you than the original developer?

Worst comes to worst, people don't use my code. Best case scenario, everybody uses and benefits from it.

Re:Linux will grow

[Anonymous Coward]

Once people see you running linux they get curious, my crappy laptop running debian gets more looks than all the shiny apples.

How true. My home PC runs Ubuntu and a friend asked "Is this Vista?"

Re:Linux will grow

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

there's a helluva lot of 'nix software that doesn't reach it to Windows... and "hunting" for it on google is such a time waster when all I need do is "apt-get install $app"

Re:Linux will grow

[NickFortune]

Windows programmers hoard their creations and try to make money from them, and no one programmer can really benefit much from the work of any other. Linux hackers release their creations freely, and every hacker can improve and build upon the work of any other

And it's not just the software. Do a bit of googling to find out how to apply an emerging technology or methodology. If your target platform is Windows, chances are you'll find a couple of dozen teaser blogs by MS MVPs all pimping their latest book.

Do the same thing for a linux deployment, and you'll get a handful of Howtos.

Re:Linux will grow

[Bert64]

I have many such utilities installed on several linux machines, and make quite heavy use of them...
I do wonder how much it would cost to find commercially available replacements for everything i use, and if those replacements would be as good.

Re:Linux will grow

[trifish]

Windows programmers hoard their creations and try to make money from them

Nice blanket statement and wrong. There is plenty of FOSS for Windows (the fact that some people make money selling software for Windows doesn't mean that there is no FOSS for Windows).

Re:Linux will grow

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, so? I don't begrudge paying people for their work.

Yeah, except for when you can't pay. Either because you really do not have money (or don't consider it worth money), or you work for a company where paying means about a week of work, or you are not an American - well, more precisely you do not have a credit card. And if either you actually read the things you agree to or are younger than 16, paypal etc. all fall flat, too. So, no, it's not all excuses, there are _loads_ of people who just _can't_ pay.

Re:Linux will grow

[Anonymous Coward]

why are u different

You will want to avoid such spelling on this site.

Re:Linux will grow

[Ash-Fox]

Nice blanket statement and wrong. There is plenty of FOSS for Windows (the fact that some people make money selling software for Windows doesn't mean that there is no FOSS for Windows).

Okay, so, let's take some well known 'obscure' type of software.. Let's say.. IRC

Recommend me a good free, FOSS IRC client on Windows.

And before you mention,

IRSSI has stability issues, xchat is not free on Windows, kvIRC is crash prone.

Re:Linux will grow

[Ash-Fox]

For Linux, you can also find free software, but MANY times the programs themselves aren't fully functional or contain serious bugs.

To be honest... I can't think of any. I'm sure some do exist, could you give examples in such vast quantities that you suggest is the case?

Re:Linux will grow

[trifish]

I've never used IRC, so I can't recommend any. IRC as far as I know is used only by geeks and hackers. Not really an ideal target audience for Windows developers.

Anyway, specific arguments such as yours are irrelevant here. I criticized the blanket statement that "Windows programmers [all of them] create software only to make money from it." That is a false blanket statement.

Re:Linux will grow

[pandrijeczko]

Please stop with the posing.

Mac users are the ones out to impress everyone else & Windows users run it because they have to.

So let's just run Linux because we WANT to, without giving a toss who is looking over our shoulders, okay?

Re:Linux will grow

[Ash-Fox]

I've never used IRC, so I can't recommend any. IRC as far as I know is used only by geeks and hackers.

Perhaps back in 1994, but this certainly has not been the case since 1995. Even 'regular joe' user manages to find themselves on there, despite absurd the difficulty of selecting a server and entering a nickname.

Not really an ideal target audience for Windows developers.

I disagree. There is plenty of for-pay/closed source IRC software for Windows.

Re:Linux will grow

[hmar]

Doesn't have everything, but osalt.com is a great starting place.

Re:Linux will grow

[petermgreen]

Whenever I have something reasonably complex in mind to do in Windows (let us say... some kind of manipulation of PDF files),
Do you know any good free tools for removing the owner password from PDF files and allowing you to use them in any way you want?

I am aware you can sometimes do it by converting to other formats and back but in my experiance that at best gives you a low quality copy and at worst a completely fucked document.

Re:Linux will grow

[kipman725]

I think that says alot about vista adoption in your area as well. When I see someone running vista my opinion of them instantly lowers as someone who is abit of a push over as they haven't formated yet.

it seems like only yesterday...

[notgm]

it seems like only yesterday, penetration was only at 2.7%. my, how time flies.

Re:it seems like only yesterday...

[Anonymous Coward]

all this talk of penetration has got me thinking about penguins...

Re:it seems like only yesterday...

[Anonymous Coward]

and necrotic dog penises

Ugghhh

[Karem Lore]

When I got my work laptop back in january I struggled for about a month with Windows XP (let alone Vista) SP3 before installing Suse Linux. My productivity has gone up, my boot-up time is not longer than my morning shower, and I just find it so easy to use.

I of course have a couple of niggles but that is due to hardware and their drivers not 4 Linux kind of situation (my printer)...

Having said that, I wouldn't have enough space here to list my issues with Windows.

I do use Vista (and like it) on my family home PC. Good for games, browsing (no better than Linux) and using my printer...

I use a Windows VPC in my Windows Vista for doing specific test cases for my work (I have still to figure out vmware with Suse 11) but other than that I am Linux all there way...

So, I as a consumer for my business laptop will, from now, be asking for linux pre-installed. It is by far the most convenient O/S to date for my business needs...no doubt in my mind. Karem

Re:Ugghhh

[baileydau]

I use a Windows VPC in my Windows Vista for doing specific test cases for my work (I have still to figure out vmware with Suse 11) but other than that I am Linux all there way...

There (normally) isn't much to figure out with VMWare.
Just run the installer and follow your nose.

You do need to have the kernel source and development tools installed to compile the kernel module (but that's pretty trivial using YaST)

Once you have VMWare installed, I believe you can convert your VPC machines over.

Re:Ugghhh

[edisrafeht]

This is OT, but I've been running VMware Server 2 Beta/RC at work for many months now on Ubuntu 8.04 hosting WinXP and Win2003. It wasn't too bad once you get used to the web interface. The updated hardware support is nice. And oh, rdesktop works better than VMware's own console app.

Re:Ugghhh

[cerberusss]

I of course have a couple of niggles but that is due to hardware and their drivers not 4 Linux kind of situation (my printer)...

The printer situation is easily remedied. Any HP printer is perfectly supported. A second-hand deskjet will set you back a staggering $20.

Re:Ugghhh

[Karem Lore]

Unfortunately the kernel module build bombs when compiling. Something to do with the header file and the installed kernel not being the exact same version...This is Suse specific and when I get time I will trawl the forums for people who got this working.

Karem

Re:Ugghhh

[jez9999]

It is by far the most convenient O/S to date for my business needs...no doubt in my mind

You might wanna try dating one of your (female) superiors. It tends to work a lot better for your business needs.

Hit me!

[fm6]

"Linux Pre-Installs Hit 2.8%". That doesn't qualify as a "hit". More like a soft nudge.

What is it with OSS enthusiasts and their lame statistics that don't even sound impressive? Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased that desktop Linux is finally getting some mindshare. But gaining an itsy-bitsy percentage of the market in one particular country is not significant milestone.

Re:Hit me!

[muszek]

Before Dell started pre-installing Ubuntu last year (announced ~Feb, selling since ~May, don't quote me), the pre-installed market share was probably less than 0.1%.

I haven't RTFA, but if it's really true, it is a big deal.

Re:Hit me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Mark Ballard took the percentages and then screwed up the factor by assuming that the percentages were exact. 0.1% normally implies it could be anywhere between 0.05% and 0.15%. Similarly for the 2.8% figure. So it could have gone up anywhere between 18 and 57 times.

Re:Hit me!

[Paradigm_Complex]

The hope is that it snowballs. The more people that see a box running Linux (especially if owned by a not-so-techy person), the more will inquire about it and possibly consider purchasing one. While 2.8% is not huge, it's enough that people will start to come across them. It'll move from "yeah I've heard of that somewhere" to "yeah I've seen that somewhere." The expected/hoped_for effect will be impressive, even if the current numbers aren't. Everything starts small.

Re:Hit me!

[fm6]

From teeny-weeny-tiny to teeny-tiny. Interesting definition of "big deal".

Re:Hit me!

[fm6]

Yes, I know that's the hope. And when it does snowball (I think there's a good chance, people are sick of bloatware) it will be news.

Re:Hit me!

[Repossessed]

Dell isn't Selling Linux desktop/notebooks outside of the US and China as far as I can tell, so they don't really affect these numbers.

Dell also has a smaller effect in general. About 1% of Dell's desktop/notebook sales are Linux now. The number is fairly low for a variety of reasons, one being that Dell won't sell it outside of consumer, when 85% of its purchases are through corporate (which don't all go to businesses by a long shot), and more still in small medium business, and partly because you have to specifically request it, versus the EEEpc where its the default.

Re:Hit me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you Dell definitely sell Ubuntu machines in the UK, I can't remember when they started, but I think it was roughly last Autumn.

Profit

[MrKaos]

If a linux distro was charged at the same price (or half) as a windows machine maybe the sales guys could derive profit from not paying license fees on installed.

It would be one hell of an incentive for salespeople to start pushing linux installed on machines.

Re:Profit

[Darkness404]

That was how it was with Dell and most of the other major computer makers. Vista is and was a failure, because no one wanted Vista, they weren't selling many computers, so it became worthwhile to investigate Linux, because they started selling Linux, Dell is probably one of the top computer makers someone using Linux will look at, because of that other computer makers did and will continue to. Salespeople usually don't have a clue what they are talking about. I asked one what the clock speed was on one CPU, he replied, "Eastern standard time".

Re:Profit

[MrKaos]

That was how it was with Dell and most of the other major computer makers.

I wonder why I was modded down for saying so?

Salespeople usually don't have a clue what they are talking about. I asked one what the clock speed was on one CPU, he replied, "Eastern standard time".

Priceless.

Re:Profit

[Tubal-Cain]

For more of that great feeling of superiority...

Re:Profit

[petermgreen]

What I don't get is why dell wont sell you XP on most of thier consumer machines and on those where they will they force you to downgrade from ultimate rather than buisness pushing the price through the roof.

and the numbers for Vista are?

[westlake]

It seems that the percentage of systems pre-installed with Linux has gone up 28 times since Vista shipped, from 0.1% in January 2007 to 2.8% last June
.

So what are the numbers for Vista?

The picture isn't quite as cheering for the geek if pre-installs are 97% Vista and 3% Linux

- - - that 3% gain is mostly at the expense of XP at End-of-Life and visible only at the very bottom of the OEM market.

To put it another way - the numbers look less impressive if pre-installs of Vista Premium are growing at the rate of 1% month and Linux BASIC 3% every 18 months.

Re:and the numbers for Vista are?

[clang_jangle]

That's just silly. The numbers (if accurate) are very good news for Linux, considering the bazillions of dollars MS has put into pushing Vista. Of course their numbers are higher! Besides, every customer who goes home with a Vista box is an excellent candidate for using Linux in the future.

Re:and the numbers for Vista are?

[jeremyp]

No, actually the numbers don't mean anything. Of course there's going to be a steep rise of any new product just after its introduced as it goes from 0% to anything%. The important thing is that the growth must be sustained.

What if most of the 2.8% are people who would previously have bought a Windows PC and wiped it to put Linux on? It would mean Linux's installed base is not going up. Once they've all recycled their old PCs, the market share would them stay static. If it stays static at 3%, companies like Dell are going to look very hard at whether they continue to offer Linux as an option because the cost of supporting two operating systems instead of one is not zero.

No, I think you have got a story if it's at 4 or 5% this time next year and the trend is consistent. But bear in mind, the iPhone achieved a peak of 27% of the smartphone market in under a year and it's that sort of magnitude that counts as "good news".

Re:and the numbers for Vista are?

[Locklin]

Vista sales have to make money -different ball game. Linux "penetration" means hardware manufacturers and software producers are forced to pay attention. Apple had MS Office at 3%, I wonder what Linux will have to hit before Microsoft ports?

Re:and the numbers for Vista are?

[westlake]

Vista sales have to make money -different ball game. Linux "penetration" means hardware manufacturers and software producers are forced to pay attention. Apple had MS Office at 3%, I wonder what Linux will have to hit before Microsoft ports?
.

OEM Linux also has to make money.

The retailer has to market the product, manage his inventory, provide service and support, and so on. There isn't much to be expected from after-market sales.

Microsoft software development for Apple began with the Apple II. The Z-80 card was its first significant hardware product.

These companies have a long term symbiotic relationship:

iTunes for Windows. Boot Camp for the MacIntel.

Back in the real world

[westlake]

Whereas when the same notion strikes in Linux, the results are all free software, and far more functional than the Windows shareware shite, because some hacker in the past has faced the same problem as me, and has published his solution to the community.
.

He has also ported his solution to Windows - assuming it did not begin as a native Windows app.

Alternative Explanation

[awitod]

I bought a Lenovo with Suse on it because I have an MSDN subscription and didn't want to pay for a license I already have. I imagine that more than a few of the Linux installs are just to avoid duplicate Windows licenses.

Re:Alternative Explanation

[Ash-Fox]

I know quite a few more purchases of systems where Windows pre-installed on systems is just to get the computer, even though the person intends to run Linux on it.

Re:Alternative Explanation

[petermgreen]

I bought a Lenovo with Suse on it because I have an MSDN subscription and didn't want to pay for a license I already have.
You might want to read that MSDN license sometime, For most of the software (including windows) it only covers for development and testing purposes.

Re:Alternative Explanation

[awitod]

It's a good thing I'm a software developer then, isn't it!

Wine bug?

[tepples]

The joke was that "format" isn't a Linux command, and a partition can't be called "c:"... So "format c:" does absolutely nothing in Linux

Then Wine is missing a feature, no?

Re:Wine bug?

[Tubal-Cain]

Wine's C: is located at ~/.wine/drive_c/
'Formatting' that isn't gonna help you install XP.

Wine

[tepples]

get a Linux one and format c:

What's a 'c:'?

The Windows file system has up to twenty-six predefined mount points, named A: through Z:. The LSB file system used by GNU/Linux, on the other hand, has mount points named like folders in a single root: /mnt/cdrom. On a PC running GNU/Linux, the Wine subsystem translates between Windows and LSB mount points.

Re:Wine

[PReDiToR]

"Folders"?

Someone has been using Microsoft products for too long.
We used to call them directories before Windows 95 came out.

Now get off my damn lawn.

Re:Wine

[tepples]

"Folders"?

Someone has been using Microsoft products for too long.

The Mac has called directories "folders" since 1986, when System 3 on the Macintosh Plus came with Hierarchical File System.

Re:Wine

[dwye]

"Folders"?

Someone has been using Microsoft products for too long.

The Mac has called directories "folders" since 1986, when System 3 on the Macintosh Plus came with Hierarchical File System.

I remember them being called "folders" on Macs even BEFORE the HFS, when they were just an illusion of the desktop, and every file on a disk was actually in the same filename-space ("directory" in Unix-speak). That would take it back to 1984, or even earlier. Any ex-LISA users care to comment?

Re:Wine

[DanielJosphXhan]

On a PC running GNU/Linux,

What's a 'GNU/Linux'?

Re:Wine

[bucky0]

It's an abbreviation of the TRUE name of that operating system:

GNU/Apache/PERL/PHP/Vim/OpenSSH/Mysql/Linux

Each of those are important components to a standard linux install. Only heretics leave out its full name.

Trialware subsidy

[tepples]

Is the money you save buying it with Linux on it enough to pay for a retail version of Windows?

No. It is thought that the unregistered shareware installed on a typical national-brand Windows PC subsidizes the price of a Windows OEM license, at least Home Basic if not Home Premium. I can dig up evidence if you want: start by searching for sony fresh start.

Re:Trialware subsidy

[multisync]

That's not really what I asked. A person who bought a cheap Linux PC with the intention of putting Windows on it could not legally purchase and use an OEM version, unless they also purchased a MB (or a hard drive, I believe, but that may not be accurate).

Sure all that shareware crap subsidizes the cost of the OEM license. It really pisses me off that Dell includes shit like Google Toolbar and trial versions of Office One Note on business machines. In fact, machines with copies of One Note that have not been "activated" will cause the machine to fail the WGA check when you try to update your legitimate copy of Office. And google actually pops up a survey page when you uninstall their tool bar asking you why.

All that is beside the point - if a person is looking for a cheap Windows PC, buying a machine with Linux on it then formatting the hard drive and installing Windows isn't going to save you any money, unless you have an unused retail Windows license hanging around and just need to replace the hardware. I doubt very much that using an OEM license on a new machine would be legal, but could be wrong.

Payola for sure.

[eddy]

If by customs you mean "Microsoft payola to Asus to give the XP version a head start" then sure... held up in customs. What's the excuse for the UK again, I forget?

I have linux preinstalled on my laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to pugetsystems.com. They are mostly a Ubuntu shop inhouse. I got Fedora 9 preinstalled.

It's great in that you actually save money by not having to pay the Windows tax.

Plus they are a great company. Usually a 9.9 on resellerratings.com, and I can attest to how well they've earned that.

day by day...

[darkheart22]

Day by day linux is gaining ground. Vista are awful but they have one very important strength. Games and directx 10. If only linux had some support from the game companies the rates will grow for linux.

Linux market share over 20%

[Fri13]

So the market machine got now first numbers, what are still very low rated against the real amount of the Linux usage.

In Finland, I see mostly Windows machines with XP version on them, but the second OS what is used, is Linux. Apple has it own market share but there is no much those machines than Linux.
By just viewing the market share, I would say that Windows has 70-75% market share (if not even under 60%!) when Linux has 15-20% and Apple has rest.

The problem is that Linux OS market is shared even for smaller pieces by every distribution what is used, Ubuntu might has almost 20-30% market share of Linux OS but Mandriva and OpenSuse is behind very tightly, if not even over Ubuntu.
This does not reflect the hard evidence data (and other areas than southern Finland), but just what _I_ see on schools, companies and privat users, age range 15-85 (I have 52 privat customers from what only 13 has Windows XP and 7 has Vista, rest has Mandriva or OpenSuse).
Almost every University what teach IT, will teach at least Linux basics.
In my University, every new IT student on that year got Laptop (112 students) (Acer Travelmate 5720) what had first Vista Business installed on it. They leaved 20Gb un-partioned space to end for Linux installation, and gave permission to install owner wanted distribution if they wanted, but Mandriva was installed after few weeks when the new version came out. And the Windows is used on the Win32 coding lessons but when are on network/java/C++ etc lessons, almost all use just Linux on those because it is easier, those few who dont use, has deleted the Linux partitions for ganining more space for Windows side.
Now new students who starts this year, they get same thing too.

I just dont believe at all those Linux 0.1-3% market shares studies because what I see, is totally different. I hope next year when I go to Brazil, I see even bigger adoption of Linux there than on Finland.

Re:Linux market share over 20%

[Anonymous Coward]

until you can bring in a good scientific study of the numbers, my guess is that you're pulling them out of your ass. an unknown windows number that could swing at least 16% by using your figures? wtf? both your linux and windows numbers could be off by as much as 25% of the intial guess? how the hell did this get modded up?

pre-installed, not used -- wipe, install XP

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is going to use it. They're going to put XP on it, legit or pirated. A simple way to avoid the M$ tax.

Re:pre-installed, not used -- wipe, install XP

[cl0s]

Not sure about the ones that people are buying in the UK but as far as Dell, its cheaper to buy a Windows PC. To my surprised some people actually buy the Windows version and replace that with Linux. Like this PC I'm on at work running Ubuntu (no doul boot) with a Windows XP license sticker on the case. If anything I would say they balance each other out, but windows to Linux is probably more the case as theres still significantly more pre-installed windows machines.

Re:pre-installed, not used -- wipe, install XP

[cl0s]

Actually if you read the article, that is the same case in the UK. For the most part, people buying linux PCs are specifically looking for a linux pre-installed PC.

Yet Linux has nevertheless made an impressive gain. The UK's distribution business was built around the arteries of marketing money flowing from vendors - money they earned from selling their software. You might say that the distribution business is dependent on the marketing funds it gets from vendors.

Not sure, but I doubt linux is putting up some marketing bucks.

Re:pre-installed, not used -- wipe, install XP

[proselyte_heretic]

Most people won't be able/willing to install an operating system on their computer. Especially since it is often more difficult to set a windows system than a Linux one (Linux almost certainly will already have many of your drivers, you have to download much more for Windows). So, the only way your argument to be complete is if each and every person who buys a linux computer does it exclusively for the purpose of putting XP on it.

That anomoly is because of the high education

[Anonymous Coward]

and, for these people, the big boom in Spectrum/BBC/Commodore/etc making "hacking" a boyhood passtime for these people.

But the corporation and sales pitches are all heavily Windows-centric. VERY heavily.

Well let's hope Linux kicks butt...

[V!NCENT]

... because I made a bet with a friend of mine in a café that in five years Windows marketshare on the desktop would be equal to- or below twenty percent when I was kinda drunk.

Oh and I've bet for 300 euro's (about 500 dollars)

Take into account: Apple growth rate (specificaly laptops), Linux growth rate (Eee pc, Acer dumping Windows (yes read that again), Ubuntu acceptance) and the next version of Windows with more bloat, DRM and zero backwards compatibility.

Re:Well let's hope Linux kicks butt...

[Anonymous Coward]

are you still drunk now or something?

zero backwards compatibility? since when? i can still run tons of dos stuff without dosbox. i can run the vast majority of all windows 9x software with no dickering with the system. you're crazy to say this and come off like a fool.

as for vienna bloat. it's 2 years off. how can you know what bloat it will have?

and it's taken a decade for linux to hit 2.8% market share. if they're your saving grace i'd love to get in on this bet. if anything i would say that apple's marketshare is the most threatened right now. if their eula falls on it's face people are going to rip it apart and that's going to cause apple serious issues in the future that, at first, will make their market share spike but in the long term it's going to pull it back down by the nose again.

Re:Well let's hope Linux kicks butt...

[V!NCENT]

Vienna two years of? Where did I heared that before?

There is going to be backwards compatibility? I must have misheared Microsoft saying that they were going to dump their old OS and start a new one. It must have been the wind when I heared that they were not going to make it backwards compatible.

Apple's marketshare is threatened? That's funny... Since when does the avarage joe knows the Windows EULA? And how many people do you still see without an iPod?

Linux marketshare equales 2,8%? I hope you mean on the desktop...

I can't bet with an Anonymous Coward...

You can never get complete compatibilty

[emj]

Drivers are also a problem if you use anything other than the latest Windows. Which makes the the Vista screw up very interesting, I wonder if they are going to get everyone migrating to Vista fast enough?

bricking == fubar hardware

[emj]

Don't over use bricking. It has recently been down graded to not being able to bo without doing some "invasive" surgery on your motherboard. (Ranging from JTAG to soldering).

I guess the going from that to having a screwed up boot block isn't that far.

Re:bricking == fubar hardware

[julesh]

Don't over use bricking. It has recently been down graded to not being able to bo without doing some "invasive" surgery on your motherboard. (Ranging from JTAG to soldering).

Actually, I was under the impression that this would be the case for an Eee with a misinstalled OS: they don't support any of the common forms of bootable external media (cdrom, floppy disk), so I would assume that the approach would be to reprogram their onboard flash via JTAG as with most other failed firmware updates.

Re:bricking == fubar hardware

[teh_winch]

Eee does support booting from cdrom and floppy disk plus many other USB drives. It also boots fine from the inbuilt sd card slot.

It's a consumer PC so obviously JTAG isn't the only way to fix a broken OS that won't boot.

Re:pre-installed, not used -- wipe, install XP (?)

[morcego]

I agree with you that it will happen frequently. For "no one is going to use it" is far from the true.

We have a lot of computers pre-installed with Linux here (Brazil). And although several gets (pirated) copies of Windows installed, I know several others that continue to be used with nothing but Linux.

You can rest assured that, even if we don't have 2.8% of the new computers being used with Linux, the number is much larger than 0.1%. So we do have a real growth here, even if we can't trust the exact number (28 times).

Based on my personal experience (and that could be blatantly wrong), I would say that somewhere between 20% and 35% of those computers will continue running Linux.

Virgin Media

[FoamingToad]

have been getting further and further from their simple roots. These days the Windows installer (not required - bear with me a bit) loads a number of naffware apps onto the client pc.

They also have been obfuscating the link to the online registration page. It used to be a plain-text file, then a url, now it's buried in the guts of the flash installer package they add.

Fair enough, you can get the link from Robin D H Walker's page but if you're there stuck behind a machine that's only capable of communicating with the registration server and can't remember the link it's damn frustrating.

Disclaimer - I've been asked to set up NTL / Virgin accounts a few times, and with every release of their software it's been more difficult to get to the registration page, with the point and drool mentality being kicked up every time. I even believe they started asking you for an engineer number when setting up an account at one stage, though I may be wrong.

Re:Virgin Media

[tristian_was_here]

I had to phone a call centre in India!

Re:Virgin Media

[FoamingToad]

Ouch, nasty. Having dealt with the UK frontline support a couple of times (and having found them less than clueful), I feel your pain.

Here is the link to the relevant page of Robin D H Walker's website, where may be found the post-install process, including the serial number.

If you have a removable drive / recovery cd that you take for antivirus / diagnostic tools, it's worth dropping the url link to the post-installation site in a directory so it remains with you.

Additional disclaimer - I am neither Robin Walker nor affiliated with NTL/Virgin - I just happen to live in a Virgin cabled area and have set up a number of machines on behalf of end-users.

F_T

Whistling in the dark

[westlake]

That's just silly. The numbers are very good news for Linux, considering the bazillions of dollars MS has put into pushing Vista. Of course their numbers are higher! Besides, every customer who goes home with a Vista box is an excellent candidate for using Linux in the future.
.

Looking at the world through a Penguin tinted lens?

In the states, OEM consumer Vista is 32 bit Vista Premium SP1. Dual core is a given. 2 GB RAM or better is a given. [You will find the single core Athlon LE at entry level]

The $1500 HP Elite at Walmart.com:

64 bit Vista Premium
2.66 GHz Intel Quad CPU, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB of storage
512 MB NVIDIA 8600 GT graphics, Combo Blu-Ray Drive and Lightscribe DVD Burner,
HDTV Tuner, Wireless multimedia keyboard and mouse, Remote Control...

Etc., etc. You get the idea - buy from Tiger and you might even save a few bucks.

The versatility and raw horsepower of a system like this does not strike me as a compelling reason to migrate to Linux. But you can go - far - down the food chain and the specs and performance will still look good.

That's right!

[GameboyRMH]

And now there's even an apt-get style package installation tool to make it extra easy!

http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/

This site will help you find open source replacements for your proprietary software (which is also handy for anyone switching to Linux):

http://www.osalt.com/

If you see something you want that's only available for Linux, no problem, install this and run them right alongside the Windows apps:

http://www.andlinux.org/

On my Windows gaming machines I use all FOSS (except some of the games, drivers and hardware config utilities, and Windows itself of course).

To put this in context...

[seanellis]

If you think that this is a small minority, for comparison here are some other groups which are approximately 3% of the British population:

• Inhabitants of Northern Ireland
• Muslims
• People who will go on a cruise this year
• Homeowners who may be facing negative equity
• Morbidly obese people
• Functionally illiterate adults
• People who bought duty-free cigarettes home from their holiday

The cheap bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

;)

When is Linux not GNU/Linux?

[tepples]

What's a 'GNU/Linux'?

The most common configuration of Linux for workstations and servers.

A GNU/Linux system is the GNU operating environment running on the Linux kernel. Most Linux distributions that run on x86 PCs, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, and openSUSE, are GNU/Linux. A lot of embedded Linux systems use uClibc instead of glibc, BusyBox instead of Coreutils, and BusyBox's built-in ash instead of Bash; these are not GNU/Linux.