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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[Zackbass]

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

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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[spisska]

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

What's a 'c:'?

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?

[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?

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

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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: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.

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

[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

[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.

it seems like only yesterday...

[notgm]

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

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:Good News

[HappySmileMan]

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

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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".

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.

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?

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: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.

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: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]

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

[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: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: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.