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Windows XP Market Share Finally Falls Below 50%
An anonymous reader writes "At the end of July 2011, Microsoft can say that Windows XP finally fell below the 50 percent mark. In other words, Redmond's decade-old operating system is now used by less than half of all Internet users."
It'd mean a whole lot more if they had installed Gentoo instead of 'upgrading' to Vista or Seven.
Still running it on a Dell P4 with 2gb ram. Yet to see a reason to upgrade. I don't game, I don't code. What do I need to upgrade for?
...And, of course, Linux took all the difference :)
Now seriously though, old computers die. New computers come in, they either have no XP drivers or come with preinstalled/bundled Windows 7, or Linux flavors, or whatever, not to mention the vast array of Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet and have no room for Win XP. Windows XP use falling is expected, just like any old OS or OS version. I suspect much of the change comes simply because time passes.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
A true Windows XP user's mindset, because you came in second. but have no fear! It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE :)
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Yes, WinXP has dropped below 50% of the total market. But according to TFA, WinXP still has a 57% share of Windows installations.
Windows 7 is the new XP
Remember XP ends support in April 2014. Guess what XP's marketshare will be by them?
Computers age, and brand computers (i.e. everything that wasn't hand-assembled by a small shop or a user) stopped coming with XP preinstalled since ___?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Didn't realize Vista has a bigger market share than Mac. For all the hype Jobs & Co. get for Mac it still isn't anything. Linux is doing better considering there is no marketing for Linux and there aren't any "cool" Linux devices, except servers, but who cares about servers when you can have a Mac Book.
First of all I have to say that I think its commendable for a company to support a product for so long. Its also one of the reasons why there will always be a place for Windows servers (I wouldn't want them for Internet usage, but IMO they make very good office servers); you can be sure up front when you may have to replace said server with another OS.
There is however one issue here... Sure; Windows 7 is bound to get a larger market share; but did the researchers also keep in mind that with Windows 7 professional and up you can easily run a native Windows XP environment within Windows 7 ? I'm referring to the Windows XP mode which you can download here.
Its build on Microsoft Virtual PC (which is freely available) yet when you're running Win7 Professional or higher you can also download a Windows XP ISO (this is basically what it is) which is then used to quickly setup a full Windows XP environment. It gets even better: you can "propagate" applications from inside the virtual PC so that you can easily start these from the regular Win7 start menu as if they were regular Win7 applications (but because its running in a full virtual XP environment the application itself will also use the native XP look and feel).
To be honest I'm quite impressed and happy with this. I even use it to "put aside" applications which I want to try or use without having it "polluting" my main Win7 environment. And when I'm done with it I simply revert my virtual PC back to the original snapshot and all is clean again (of course I will need to re-install certain updates).
So... When they did this research I wonder if they kept this into mind as well? Just because someone is running Windows 7 doesn't necessarily mean he or she gave up on XP entirely.
btw... What I also really like is that MS' Virtual PC has no issues with installing BSD or Linux either. Sometimes MS can get things right IMO, not often but it does happen every now and then.
I never get any support from MS anyway. I used win2k for years after MS dropped support.
The problem here is that computers became "good enough" for homework and Facebook a long time ago, and even a 2 GHz P4 is fast enough for anything that's not a recent 3D game. This realization, along with the introduction of Intel's power-sipping Atom CPU whose performance is in the same ballpark as an old P4 clock for clock, led to the netbook fad and to the continued use of paid-for PCs.
Is this for desktop market? Then what's that 5.77% non Windows/OSX/Linux. BSD?
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Given that XP is no longer sold, it has 0% of the market share. I think they meant to say "installed base".
I re-installed windows on my gaming rig and tried out windows 7, I'll switch back, please don't ban me from the net!
Serious though, I just installed 7 on my gaming rig(was XP) a few days and even earlier today as I surfed the net to download 64bit drivers/apps was realizing this would show up on peoples pages (and the fact I'm using FF 5.x rather than 3.x)
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista (bleck!), and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. However, it seems that Microsoft decided to do away with charity licenses. That means that we'd be stuck spending over $400 for a 3-pack of licenses for machines that totaled $750 in hardware. That's not even remotely going to happen. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Apple/NeXT took BSD and turned it into a polished Unix powerhouse embraced by both consumers and developers by using it as what it always was meant to be, at tool, not a religion.
Google took the Linux kernel and showed what grown ups can do with an open source operating system by absolutely dominating the cellphone OS market.
Meanwhile, Linux continues the oh so productive KDE vs Gnome wars over system settings in 2011.
High five Linux desktop developers!
All Hail Choice!
And there was much rejoicing.
So does this include "all" internet access, b/c honestly I thought smartphones were used more by now. And the 3DS and PSP. And the Wii and PS3. And Google tv. Guess this means for all the Apple vs. Android stuff Microsoft still controls the internet? Can't believe I was starting to buy into the hype.
Using their logic
more {virus, malware, wachamacallit} = have lots of people using it
and the recent news on /. that XP has a very huge number of infected PCs, then it is safe to assume that XP has still a very large user base. The only indication that XP's userbase has shrunk is when Win7 has more virus, malware and other threaths!
Long live XP!!!
As Wikipedians might say, citation needed. In TFA, where are the links to the original source, its data, assumptions, research methodology? I could spend 2 minutes doodling with some crayon and come up with something just as solid as that pie chart. Geez.
I'm surprised those numbers aren't lower.
Over the past couple of years Windows has pretty much disappeared. Every single person I know over the past couple of years has bought a Mac. However, overall computer use seems to have dropped quite a bit with cellphones and tablets becoming the primary computing device friends and family use to day to day.
Of course the cellphones and tablet are all Android and Apple with one or two Blackberry people. I know this just anecdotal evidence but I have to imagine this isn't just some random fluke.
I think we are see just how high the stakes were when Mozilla and Chrome took away 40-50 percent of the browser market from IE. I don't think anything we are seeing now with Android and Apple cellphones and tablets would be possible if IE still completely dominated the web.
Actually I'll switch it up. I carefully waited for the specs to "mature" then I got an iPhone 3GS as a direct upgrade from an old Windows Mobile 6 phone. Clear improvement. But NOW I see no reason to upgrade "just to an iPhone 4".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I use Win XP to run Quicken 2008 in a VMware virtual machine on OS X. I paid $100 for an OEM version of XP a few years ago for this very purpose. I won't upgrade until there's no other alternative.
No need to launch into Defend teh Hive mode.
So would that mean less than half the brain is used, or it generally used with just one hand that's missing a finger?
We have new hardware to install in my church's office. The old computers run XP, purchased as charity licenses. The new hardware came with Vista and I was hoping we could install Windows 7 instead. As a result, we're going to be shoe-horning XP back onto the *new* machines, and I'll be installing an Ubuntu dual-boot on them to see if there's any way to get the staff to consider moving to it. Go-go-gadget greed, Microsoft!
Tech for non-profits:
TechSoup Global, founded in 1987 as The CompuMentor Project, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides technology assistance to other nonprofit organizations in the United States and in 35 countries.
TechSoup.Org Product Donations, originally known as DiscounTech and later as TechSoup Stock, is a technology product philanthropy service for nonprofits which was launched in January 2002. It is the exclusive U.S. distributor of Microsoft product donations, and helps to connect nonprofits and libraries to over 430 different product donations from 45 donating partners (including Cisco, Symantec, Sun and Adobe).
TechSoup TechSoup
Microsoft software donations are still mainstays of the TechSoup program. And it's a good thing! Since they started the program in 1998, Microsoft has donated more than $3.9 billion worth of software to nonprofit organizations in more than 100 countries worldwide, now reaching over 40,000 nonprofits each year.
Organizations can now request Microsoft products as needed, not just once per year. Also, there is no longer a five-seat minimum requirement, so an organization can request just one license if that is all it needs.
Now you can request from up to 10 different Microsoft title groups in each two-year cycle
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Good News! Updates to the Microsoft Software Donation Program [July 27]
Bullshit, my Northwood ran Windows 7, Chrome and MS Office just fine.
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Yes, yes, security concerns and all... but since when does Joe Randomuser care?
WinXP is the first Windows OS that has everything the user wants, even when the next system (actually, the two next systems) is out. When 98 came out, it was a definite upgrade to 95, not to mention that quite a few games soon required 98SE. 2k was a big leap ahead from 98 and NT, combining the versatility of the 9x line with the stability of the NT line, adding out of the box USB support to both. XP again brought new bells and whistles and WiFi support, more stability and more user friendliness.
No, I didn't forget ME. I decided to ignore regressions in development.
But Vista/7? What's the big benefit compared to XP?
DirectX10? So what? Few games really require it, you can do without. Aero? Please, let's talk about something useful, shall we? Now, I am probably not an expert on Windows, but that's pretty much all where I can see Vista/7 sing "everything you do I can do better".
There is simply no reason for people to jump onto Vista/7. I do assume that the "drop" in XP is simply due to people getting new computers with a new system, which is pretty much by default not XP but probably Win7 if they decide for a Windows OS.
tl;dr version: Nothing to see here, move along.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hater's going to hate, but I've still got xp on my two computers, where i work is all 7 though.
But no one really expects me to upgrade a 1gb pentium D desktop to 7, just not worth it, xp is plenty stable for what I and most people use it for; the web, light gaming, movie's streamed to the TV. i'll wait till 8 then something new.
current machines work fine. When we get new machines, then we will get the current software. My main one is used for graphics work and no problem. Until then, why spend money for new hardware and software to surf the web and do simple tasks?
.
When an OS -- even from a company you don't like -- does the job it's supposed to do, what's the problem? Of course I like my various *nix installs as long as they do what I need them to do, but if you have to use Windows for anything, XP is the last in a (supported) line which will still more or less do what you tell it to do. You may recall that XP (like everything before it) installs with a basic version of Win3.1.
Not really a problem for me as I am running Linux on the Cloud\Laptop\Smartphone. The only reason it isn't on my Desktop is because that is mandated by my place of employ. Now hand me back my razor. I like to be clean shaven.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Spot on with this particular write-up, I truly think this website needs extra consideration. I’ll probably be again to read extra, thanks for that details.Computers still upgrading every day...haizzzzzzzzzt... http://investment.altlanticinternationalpartnership.net/
Alexa shows Wikipedia to be the 7th most popular site on the web. Wikipedia is unique in that it is one of the few top sites not run for profit. Consequently, they allow open traffic analysis of their web traffic to some extent, which I have found very useful. Here is what operating systems hit Wikipedia web sites in June 2011. They have that data for May, April and so forth. I made a chart from the data a few months ago on my blog.
For June in Wikipedia, XP was 36-37% of traffic. Vista was about 13% of traffic. Windows 7 was 29-30% of traffic. Mac plus iPhone plus iPad was 12% of traffic. Android was 1.4% of traffic, and Ubuntu was 0.5% of traffic.
The saddest thing I've read on the Internet this week is not anything about the debt ceiling; it's the fact that Vista has twice as many users as OS X.
After a few years of fixing bugs and declining memory prices, Vista is now a nice Desktop User Environment.
My Northwood runs Win98SE fine too. Best Windows FTW
We keep hearing that Mac share is increasing, but I've yet to see any study that shows Mac usage over a few percent. They don't need to control the market to make $Zillions.
I'm not even Joe Randomuser; I work at a software development company and work my Windows XP PC hard every day. Then I go home and play games on my Windows XP system at home. When I'm out and about, my Windows XP laptop does the trick.
I've never had a virus, trojan, or anything. I've followed basic rules - run Windows update, run a virus scanner, don't install foreign objects.
My PCs are rock solid. I don't want the downtime of upgrading and the hassle of moving to a new environment. They're tools that do exactly what I want and need.
I'm not clinging to it because out of some sense of nostalgia or anything - it all Just Works and I won't get any benefits from upgrading.
The only thing that I wish I had that I would get from upgrading to Windows 7 is the ability to do some GPU-accelerated stuff that is not natively supported in Windows XP.
a 1.6ghz atom is roughly equivalent to a pentium3 800Mhz. a 2Ghz P4 should have no problem. none of them will be speed demons.. the only issue is ram. if you have less than 1GB, it will swap. turn off the bling and you're fine..
To the average user, it has eye candy and flashy cool stuff. And it's not bloated and slow like Vista. It's what they should have released 2 years after XP, to compete with Apple. And what they should have put on phones within the next 2 years.
I have HDMI out to a 42 inch HDTV, and use 7 with WMP for DVDs and MP3s and such. It's refreshing, although annoying since I'm used to XP, and have to use Vista for work. If I could stay on 7 only, I'd be happy enough.
Keep in mind, I curse Vista daily, and I'm saying 7 is pleasant. It's better, it does what I want, and does it well.
XP was a kludge, SP1 and 2 were major stability fixes. SP3 was essentially a new OS, with anit-piracy features that freeloaders don't want, as well as better security that was a kludge on top of a kludge. They put it in a blender and shat out Vista, and put everything they learned together to make Windows 7. I say this despite the *years* of productivity I've lost due to reboots, crashes, hangs, corrupt files, and so on since Windows 3.1 / NT 4. It's better.
someone out there is still exploiting buffer over runs etc for win xp machines. Since Microsoft is no longer releasing anything for these machines a very crafty hacker could still exploit this kluge of an operating system. Seriously though 50%??? I figure Microsoft could cut the price of the basic edition of windows 7 in half and upgrade all those xp users. The hardware is the problem of course. But still it's a nice idea. It would get all of those jackass end users off my line at work. They're always talking about " my computer is slow". Me; what os are you running? Them: Windows XP. Me:Ummm 2001 called and it want's it's virus/spyware infested piece of $hit computer back.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
So I have this bluetooth USB dongle. In XP its partly supported; in order to really get the most out of it I'd either have to find other software or buy stuff like BlueSoleil for example (it did come with a trimmed down version of BlueSoleil though).
Win7? Plug it in, wait for the drivers to finish up and use it out of the box.
And there are much more examples where these came from. In many cases Win7 is nicer on your hardware.
I mean if you look at the article the break down is as follows XP 49.94%, Win7 27.87%, Vista 9.24%, Other 5.77%, Mac 5.59%, and Linux 0.98%
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Scientists specifically choose fanatic and scan his brain; find that brain behaves like fanatic. News at 11.
Whether it's ready by then or not!
Please consider this:
Do you will choose a netbook like this one where I write this (Asus EeePc) with Windows XP Home or one with Windows 7 STARTER? Yes no Home even, all *new* netbooks comes with starter version so I can say I prefer any XP version over that hideous thing that even can't change the wallpaper unless you cough 100 USD. Maybe the netbook cannot survive until 2014 but the license does and chance to movoe to windows 7 then.
And no, no linux for me unless you have a good replacement for Adobe Flash. (I'm trying Gimp instead of backup Photoshop)
I'm a fan of AMD's Fusion cores. I've got a dual core Zacate processor clocked at 1.6ghz and it's got more than enough power for things that one typically does. I haven't had a chance to check out the Llano based computers, but I'd guess that they're even better.
In all honesty, It blows my mother's Atom based computer out of the water, and was significantly cheaper as well.
What is the source of these numbers? Did someone just make them up?
I am still trying to get the bosses at my company to get rid of our Windows NT4 Computers...
No seriously, I want those computers to die a horrible horrible death... along with that OS/2 Warp machine I have to support.
Yup, fusion is pretty cool, i have a e350 based mitx board in the garage, hasnt seen much use lately though.
i'm also considering a fusion based ultraportable (i refuse to call a 11,6" machine a netbook, partly because i dont want to use it as a netbook), the only niggle is that i'm not sure the e350 is up to replacing my dual core Turion for stuff like eclipse and the android emulator, that last one is slow as shit as it is on my turion x2.
Plus sides would be, better graphics (so some mild on the go gaming), much lower power use, lighter weight etc..
People, what a bunch of bastards
According to gStat. Most of the XP machines are in China and other other 3rd world countries where the cost of Windows is a good 2 months salary. That doesn't make any sense so people use pirated XP Sp 2 with IE 6.
Most users are upgrading and I bet you the 26% are mostly corporate users and those who are poor or unemployed in this recession and can't afford a new system.
http://saveie6.com/
Partially for monopoly reasons the computer has not seen any major ui revision since Win95. XP brought the stability to that ui. Maybe because of competition from OO.org (I dunno), the Office division of MS was able to push through a minor overhaul. The ribbon interface for Office 2007. Which finally made a change from Office 95. Now it's 2011 and we are still waiting to see anything on the ui front.
Though I do believe Microsoft will do something minor in Windows 8, because they want to make it tablet friendly.
Note that I didn't comment wether or not the ribbon interface is better. Personally I certainly think so, but I didn't want to get into that discussion.
In china most people choose windows 2007 now.
You're underestimating those little Atoms. A Z530 at 1.6GHz is a single core CPU from 2008 and it's about on-par with a Pentium 4 2.5GHz. That's a pretty "old" Atom. Take for example a Atom D510 at 1.6GHz, which is dual core, it is about as fast as a Pentium 4 3.80GHz (which is single-core, granted). Heck it matches about the performance of a Core 2 Duo L7100 at 1.2GHz.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Is this for real? I wonder what nice inventions they'll come up with next.. http://shawcapitalmanagementonline.com/index/
for xp counting the machines on the internet is an underestimation. neither my vm nor the oscilloscopes in the lab nor the network analyser nor the cnc control panel will be ever on the internet.
... is the only reason Windows XP is receding.
People that choose what OS to install either install Linux or Windows XP.
I'm considering one for a NAS. For ZFS, a 64-bit processor makes a big difference, but a decent amount of RAM makes even more. The Atom boards all have low RAM limits or few SATA ports. For the same price, you seem to be able to get a Fusion board with a similar power consumption. As an added bonus, the Fusion chips have AMD's virtualisation extensions, while Atom doesn't have Intel's, which makes AMD more attractive if I might want to run some VMs on the NAS.
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WinXP runs every modern browser.
WinXP runs every modern piece of software.
WinXP is (now) damn stable.
WinXP runs not only on my quad-core desktop, but also on the ancient 1.2 GHz Intel box I have sitting over there. Same interface, same management, no new learning curve.
Joe User: Sure, I keep hearing that "MS stopped supporting XP" but I keep seeing updates, and in any case my system runs fine.
Windows 7 Home Premium (full) is $200.
I just bought a great new laptop for $500 - 17" screen, 500g HD, 6 gigs RAM....INCLUDING Win7 home premium.
So....Really? Is it that *shocking* that people aren't interested in dropping $200 for no increase in function, and for an OS that will immediately render most of their legacy systems obsolete?
I'll migrate to Win7 as my old systems die, not sooner.
-Styopa
Would switch if it weren't stupid-expensive... You are barking up the wring tree if you want charity licenses. Have you not figured out by now you are getting software from the devil him self. Thats why God sent us Ubuntu/Gnu/Linux. Open office should do everything you need for a Church's office.
All most all the ideas in Windows 7 where done in free software first. So if you are looking a good looking / good working user interface, Look for free software.
PS. I am not religious my self. Just trying to put this into his perspective.
Beyond the Subject's title.. Its redundant.
I am sure i believe it, but maybe 50% legit copies, not including non legit ones.....but when you consider the amount of piracy in china, and their overall population, and that they all use windowsxp there....i have a hard time even thinking that xp is below 70% of the market
A path can consist of a single edge, and both endpoints of an edge can be the same vertex.
As a PC retailer who has tried Ubuntu/Mint, Mepis, and PCLOS on the stacks of off lease office PCs that go through the shop I'll be happy to tell you why Linux is stuck at 1%...your driver model sucks! I'd love to be able to offer Linux on my PCs, as most of what my customers do can easily be done on any Web accessing OS, but until you fix the driver model so that the 6 month upgrades don't make the drivers shit themselves? Well I just can't carry your product.
More than that, on a practical level, the reason Linux won't succeed on a wide scale is the same reason it took off in the first place: an abundance of choice.
The lifeblood of operating system success is in two parts. You need OEM's to install your system, but more important in the long run is that you need third parties writing apps and drivers for you. So the driver aspect is a part of a larger problem. OEM's and third parties want one standard to support. One desktop, one driver model, one update method, on a slow and steady schedule. Red Hat once had a chance to become the de facto Linux desktop standard, but they abandoned the market just as they were beginning to dominate it.
Google is doing what other Linux vendors couldn't do, by customizing Linux to their liking and establishing a single standard for drivers, updates, and writing apps. And now we have Android. We may well have a desktop version of this OS soon.
Just as Apple made BSD a widespread desktop success by imposing its own standards and giving it a completely different branding, so might Linux one day be widespread on the desktop, but under the direction of Google, not Linus Torvalds.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"good enough" for homework and Facebook a long time ago
My quadcore Athlon II system with 4gb of ram gets pulled to its knees by facebook at times (and some of the games are even worse - flash ones the worst offenders). Cafe World by Zynga uses up 100% of a core (it isn't multithreaded thankfully) and currently seems to have a bad memory leak leading it to use up more and more ram as its left running. At one stage it was using up 1.6gb of private working memory after about 30 minutes...
Some GNU Freaks are doing electrolysis/laser to get rid of facial hair.
Beyond the shiny and Microsoft phasing out support for it, what is new in Windows 7 that XP doesn't have. I mean, OS/2 was supported until a couple of years ago and still did what we wanted it to do.
Microsoft had promised us WinFS and a host of other things that originally would've made it into XP but now with 8 on the way still has not even a beta implementation. In the mean time much better, faster and smarter file systems have come (ZFS) and gone (Reiser).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There are millions of installations that use XP as the operating system for POS and other functions. It will take decades before these are gone or converted to a better solution.
I completely agree w/ this. In the past, I'd try installing just about every version of Linux there was - Corel, Mandrake, Caldera, TurboLinux, and quite a number that I don't even remember anymore. Each one of them had to be uninstalled after I tried. Reason? I could never get any of them to recognize my NIC card.
After a while, I did try Ubuntu on my laptop, and did manage to get online connectivity, but my next problem - getting rid of Windows and installing Ubuntu on a clean hard drive didn't work. I also installed GNUSTEP OS, but there, they did something wierd so that root was not the first user I created (I wanted to have a root, and then separate user accounts for different family members & activities.) But more importantly, that debian based distribution too did not recognize my NIC.
Ultimately, I ended up using MaximumLinux, which is a clone of RHEL. The NIC worked here, which was fine, but one fine day, some files got corrupted so that system-config-network no longer works, and neither does any KDE or GNOME utility that fixes it. So as long as I was on my old network, I was okay, but the moment I had to move that laptop to another place, I'm stuck, until I get an external HDD to back up my stuff before doing a reformat.
However, none of the systems I tried recognized my Broadcom WiFi chipset. If 10 years ago I had problems w/ NICs, now I have it w/ WiFis. I need to be able to have that sort of connectivity, but since it's not there, I'm currently not using my Linux laptop, even though I like the KDE apps that came in it. I've not even started on printers and other stuff - the minimum one needs for any laptop is internet connectivity, which is not there in mine, unless I were to re-install Windows on it. I have Vista, but am not buying Windows 7.
I know that for FOSS, there is the issue of the driver open sources being released. Well, in that case, as the parent said, have a driver model that is 'install once, use for all upgrades'. With Windows, when one moves from XP to Vista to 7, unless a hardware was really old, it wasn't often that it couldn't be supported. But w/ Linux, the moment you update the kernel, you risk breaking your drivers. I found that out the hard way w/ the sound - I had to use one version of ALSA w/ a particular version, but when I upgraded, I had to downgrade the ALSA version I was using for the sound to even work. One suggestion might be to have the drivers written to access the hardware only via the kernel, which might make publishing its sources more palatable to the device companies, and also, assuming that none of the calls made will be obsoleted in subsequent versions of Linux, they would make the drivers survive several generations of upgrades.
I'd be glad to install Linux, but for that, I do need the drivers and the softwares to be easily installable, and not exile me to dependency city! Also, once installed, I shouldn't risk having to re-install them if I do an OS upgrade - some sort of a driver back-up and update should be an automatic part of a kernel upgrade. I'd even be happy to try out FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, once I've understood the differences b/w them. Some day, even Minix 3 or 4!
hmm.. well I was basing my assumptions on available cpu benchmarks. I was wrong though.. it wasn't a pentium 3 800.. it was a tualtin 1.2Ghz.