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."

Comments

Re:Google & Apple Humiliated The Linux World

[hairyfeet]

I just don't understand why guys that are supposed to be good at math just can't seem to grasp that yes Linux only has 1% and this is even giving Linux the benefit of the doubt by using heavily nerdish sites like /. in the counting!

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.

I have 8+ year old XP boxes in the field where the only thing I've had to do was the occasional hardware upgrade but out of all the office boxes I tried not a single one survived the 6 month deathmarch unscathed with all having at least 1 driver shit itself, usually more than 1, and it didn't matter if I used FOSS or non FOSS drivers it was the same. But what can you expect when the head of Linux, old Linus Torvalds himself says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans, it'll go like a virus LOL! yeah Linus its called the clap. That kind of attitude was fine when it was just him and his buds trading builds on IRC, but it ain't 1993 anymore and that kind of bullshit won't cut it in retail.

As a wise Linux user told me when I complained about the constant driver breaks "Yeah, it does that, you just have to get used to it" which is fine if your time is worthless and you think spending an evening in front of Bash while trawlling the forums for "fixes" is nice? Then I'm happy for you. But as a retailer I can tell you that kind of shit just won't fly if you want more than the 1% you currently have. if you want the public to embrace you then you have to give them what THEY want, not tell them they have to do things YOUR way. They will NOT "Open up Bash and type" and in fact see the term for what it is, a 70s throwback that doesn't belong on a modern OS, they will NOT trawl forums for "fixes", nor will they spend days looking up obsolete hardware lists in the hopes of finding something that they can buy that will actually work in Linux.

Fix this, make it so there is a stable ABI or hell sacrifice Linus to Cthulu if that is what it takes so drivers are "write once, use for years" and retailers like me will be happy to carry your product. think we like shelling out for Windows licenses? Hell no! But I can't sell a product where every 6 months something can be broken for a week or more because Linus got an itch and Goatse'd the kernel. It is simple math folks, you have X number of guys qualified to maintain drivers, you have Y times tens of thousands of drivers. Even if the driver devs never slept and spent 24/7 doing nothing but rewriting borked drivers you would ALWAYS be behind!