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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."
Im glad to see more preinstalled linux systems out there.
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
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?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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:
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
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
I record my sleeptalking
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.
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.
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
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
it seems like only yesterday, penetration was only at 2.7%. my, how time flies.
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
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
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.
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.
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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.
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.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
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He has also ported his solution to Windows - assuming it did not begin as a native Windows app.
From teeny-weeny-tiny to teeny-tiny. Interesting definition of "big deal".
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.
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.
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.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Only wish I could buy shares in Canonical.
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.
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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?
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".
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
I wonder why I was modded down for saying so?
Priceless.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
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?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
For more of that great feeling of superiority...
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.
Ever to excel
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.
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.
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.
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.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
... 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.
Here be signatures
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.
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?
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.
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.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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.
Not true.
I run an old PC with Linux on it as a firewall/NAT router on my Virgin Media (ex NTL) connection.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Virgin Media for one
Another reason to avoid then.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
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.
morcego
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.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
He's saying the guy is neither a Jobsian nor a Gatesian nor a Torvaldsian.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
No! No! No! Nothing in the US could be better or easier than in the UK, I refuse to believe it!
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
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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.
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).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you think that this is a small minority, for comparison here are some other groups which are approximately 3% of the British population:
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
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.
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.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
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.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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)
Debian FTW
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.