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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."
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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
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
I own a Dell 1420n which came with Ubuntu pre-installed. There are a number of systems that Dell sells like this.
it seems like only yesterday, penetration was only at 2.7%. my, how time flies.
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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...
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. :)
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).
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!
My blog
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.