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2-Year Study Shows Mac Users Downloading More Open Source Software
AmyVernon writes "We combed through about two years' worth of data on SourceForge, looking at the platforms of the users who downloaded projects, and millions more Mac users are downloading open source projects now than were in February 2010. In the same time, Windows downloads have increased by a much smaller percentage and Linux downloads have actually declined." I wonder how much of this last part can be chalked up to the ever-better download infrastructure that the various Linux distros have. (Note: SourceForge and Slashdot are both part of Geeknet.)
I also wonder how much of the Mac users downloading more open source software can be chalked up to the better download infrastructures that Linux distros have!
After buying our Macs we don't have any money left to buy software.
I'll tell you why downloads for Linux have declined - better and more complete package manager systems give users less incentive to go to places like SourceForge for programs, because they can use built-in tools like Ubuntu's Software Center.
If it's because more *iux developers have moved to Mac, especially on laptops. 10 years ago I knew more "switchers" who switched from Linux to MacOSX for development including myself. Mainly because all the hardware worked and I had the same software stack for the projects I was working on even if the final deployment would be to linux servers.
Every year since I've watched the number of developers using macs increase at conferences so much so that in the past couple years non-mac laptop users really stood out at the three conferences I attend every year.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Macs (or Windows, for that matter) don't have any sort of repository, do they?
Also a long time Linux user, I jumped onto the Mac bandwagon as my full time platform in 2005. Best personal computing decision I ever made. On the one hand, Apples default applications are remarkable (Garageband\iMovie anybody?) I also use textedit like crazy. For me the single most important piece of default software has been X windows. If you are running it on Linux I can almost certainly run it on my Mac. I use GIMP frequently. OS X comes with GCC, apache, etc... I also like that I don't really ever have to minimize anything since tiling a bazzion windows on a Mac really is very effective. Then there is built in system wide spell check. Did I mention spotlight? I could go on and on.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It's not a popular idea around here, but among my hard-core geek tech industry friends, there are several who used to use Linux as their primary OS who then got a Mac. Many still run both Linux and Windows virtualized, but still tend to boot into OSX.
A lot of geeks just hated Microsoft and were not necessarily huge fans of Linux on the desktop. Once Apple went to Unix, and to Intel, and started making nice laptops, it was an appealing option. Other geeks like open source but also still find Linux frustrating with dependency hell or config file editing or lack of some piece of software functionality, and just want an out-of-the-box OS that they feel they can spend less time messing around with so they can spend more time messing around with their code. [Obviously a contentious topic around here, but in my limited experience I have spent relatively less time troubleshooting configuration on OSX than Linux. Yes, yes, OSX supports a limited set of hardware and Linux tries to support everything, but that doesn't change the time commitment to making your stuff work.]
There are also developer geeks who, until Lion (which allows virtualization), practically had to buy a Mac because they wanted to test their software under Windows, Linux, and OSX, on one machine. So it had to be a Mac virtualizing the other two.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
The number of Mac users is growing. Therefore the number of Mac users doing X is growing, whatever X is. For example, the number of Mac users downloading open source software can be expected to grow since there are more Mac users. Now the _percentage_ of Mac users downloading open source software, that would be interesting to know.
I hit up Sourceforge if i'm looking for what is out there,
to download, i use apt-get.
I only download from Sourceforge if there isn't a native package already
I want to be clear that the comments below refer to Desktop Linux, not Linux on the server or elsewhere.
After 12 years of being a Linux hacker, and running Linux on all my boxen, I switched to a macbook pro (running OSX) a little over a year ago. Oh, how I wish I had switched sooner. I wish I could reclaim all of the hours spent trying to get things to work on Linux. What a waste of time. My productivity as a software developer took a nice Jump now that the platform works, and is actually a pleasure to sit in front of. I'm sure other developers have arrived at the same conclusion: Life is too short to waste in front of a Linux Desktop.
OSX isn't perfect. I believe the Linux kernel, and other systems level components to be superior on Linux. The overall experience, however, is much better on a Mac. Now that the Linux Desktop is marginalized (due to various reasons), the desktop becomes a means, not an end. People just want things to work so they can get things done.
My guess is that there are two main reasons for the decline from linux users -- one is that the old projects are already in distrib's repositories, while new projects don't really go to sourceforge, because of its insfrastructure. For the project admins code.google.com, github and etc. are way easier to manage comparing to sourceforge (I'm speaking as owner of a few projects on sf.net, code.google and github).
While Linux offers a lot more [out of the box], the average Apple user doesn't need a repository. They can however easily add one! The App Store helped a lot in my opinion. Using Fink and Macports is not mainstream, but it sure works me!
The article is basically worthless. "A few short years ago ... you would not have shown your face at, say, ApacheCon, with a MacBook"? Please. Powerbooks are older than MacBooks, and back in the day I recall when those started to show up - a lot - at Linux-heavy events.
It's worth noting the author is a writer, not a developer - so she probably hasn't actually hung out with the rank-and-file attendees at these conferences much this past decade.
Actually my lead-in was a bit harsh. It is worth noting the large number of Mac-centric projects that exist on SourceForge nowadays as opposed to 2003 (when my desktop switched from Linux to Mac). Back then, it seemed most all projects I was interested in had to be grabbed as a .tar.gz file, built using config/make/make install, and used X11. Now there are a goodly number of Mac-only projects (although I suspect more of those live on code.google than on sourceforge), and a non-insigificant number of "Linux" projects offer a .dmg download as well. But beyond just noting the numbers, the article offers absolutely no justification for any of the speculation it proffers as to "why".
#DeleteChrome
I've been saying this for a while... Mac gets access to open source products shortly after Linux gets them and much before the project is ported to Windows.With the ability to run Windows by Boot Camp, VMWare Fusion or Paralells Desktop a Mac user gets access to all the Windows-only stuff and you can't forget the number of applications dedicated to Mac use. In total, it all just works.
I take it you've never heard of MacPorts? It's a package manager for OS X.
It's the easiest way to install MySQL and other necessities for web programming.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A lot of mac-fanboys (maybe girls, too?) here. I'm using Linux because a) I can put it on every computer/laptop and b) it is a lot easy to use as alternatives (is there KDE for Mac?)
Just now I updated my Fedora 15 to 16, and I don't have to pay a dime. In a year I update to 17 and get the new awesomeness of KDE and other Linux apps, all for free.
But I know in our society if you can't pay for it, it is worthless. So you can't impress your friends with the newest useless expensive gadget. "I have Fedora 16 with KDE4.7" --- "Bahh I have it, too, it's free so you can't impress me"
I was only on sourceforge to download some java or c libraries, because I'm a developer. I wouldn't know what else to download from that site. Everything I need I can download and install with a few mouse clicks. To go to some obscure site (like sourceforge or download.com or some other crap website), it's like back when I still had Windows XP (with all the crap what the setup.exe are installing).
As Linux gets more attraction (like with Ubuntu), there is no wonder that less Linux users will go to Sourceforge to download apps. To get real popularity for a project there is nothing better as get into the main repositories of Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Suse (and the other distributions).
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
I find many of these posts very interesting... especially the number of developers getting Macs. I was one of them myself at one point. But I find what intrigues me most is wondering about their histories and past experiences with the os's.
:) ), while I contemplated my situation. Replace the $300 screen on this 'aging' laptop (wow technology moves fast), replace it with a new one (I find just about every laptop I
I am currently 99.999% linux, only using Windows or Mac when testing sites or software. But that's not how things began...
I am currently 32. I like many my age, but not all, had grown up with the Apple II's in my elementary school. My earliest memory of such events was being the 'printer expert' in 2nd grade. When anything went wrong with it, I was asked to fix it. I was an Apple fan, amazed at what I could do with this yellowing grey box on the desk. At one point my father came home with an Apple IIgs which just expanded on my experiences, buying my first modem and connecting to the world via the BBS's around at the time. My first email address was through one of these boards. We later got a Macintosh, I forget the model, but it had all sorts of multimedia capabilities. In high school, I bought my first PC from a friend. He gave me MS DOS 6.22 to use, and later Windows 3.11. I found it all very interesting, and learned quite a bit about the OS after formatting and reinstalling it so many times. Maybe a year later, I found out about Linux from another friend at school. He was very passionate about it which made me so curious about this relatively unknown OS. My first time installing Linux was very painful, but I was determined. Through Windows, downloading a handful of disk images, and then rebooting and loading what I downloaded onto a second partition. After a few times going back and forth, I had enough of the system installed, that I could get myself online through Linux and continue installing the packages there. Compiling the kernel I don't know how many times to get this or that working. Finally the full installation setup with X a week after I had began. From that point on, I had strived to use Linux as my main system. Only problem was I liked using laptops. It took a very long time for Linux to become viable in this arena. I switched from various versions of windows to linux and back again for many, many years. I could never switch fully over for one reason or another. Quite often it was due to lack of software for some task. I keep trying, though I often had a second system setup as a Linux server for various network related tasks. Fast forward to about 4 years ago, I got my first Macintosh since way back. A Macbook Pro with the intel processor. I got Parallels and was able to still do my Windows stuff and play with Linux when I wanted to. 2 years later, I had my motherboard replaced because of the NVIDIA issue. It was at that point that I felt incredibly vulnerable if my system had actually gone down. Was I going to drop another $2,000 on a new Mac replacement if something went wrong? All my software was Mac-only! I had backed myself up against a wall. I began looking for multi-platform open-source free software to replace all of the OSX-only programs I was using. 6 months later I did a full backup of my system in-case anything went wrong during the transition, and leapt back into the Linux community wiping my Mac and installing a recent edition of a Linux distribution. Only a few stumbling blocks since the Macs were just starting to get support, but I had made the switch. One year later, the screen on my MacBook went bad, an internal crack that would cost about $300 for me to replace it myself, more if I had someone else do it. Typing blind, since the screen was completely unreadable, I got myself to another tty console and installed ssh using apt-get. I can't believe it wasn't on there, but now it's one of the first things I do. I was able to access everything on my computer now from my fiancée's laptop, which I had recently switched to Linux (she loves it!
I would have guessed it was it only VLC that mac users download from sourceforge... I have many friends with mac's, and they all use VLC.
Technically you're still downloading. ;-)