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Ubuntu Closes Longstanding Bug #1
dargaud writes "Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame has closed the primal bug on Launchpad, standing since 2004 and titled 'Microsoft has a majority market share,' due to the 'changing realities' of tablets, smartphones, and wearable computing."
to say, damn you Mark Shuttleworth, now we have to worry about actual code related bugs.
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
I think Microsoft fixed this bug by creating a compatibility issue that prevents its OS from functioning on devices that people actually like to use.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
since the last moves of Ubuntu seem to indicate 'refile for Android' as a solution?
Ubuntu -> Microsoft
You'll be far from the first, you'll just be the first in this thread.
New bug posted.
Android has too much market share.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
That's not a bug, it's a complaint.
Microsoft is losing market share to tablets and smartphones, but these are shut tighter than the PC platform ever was. I'm not sure that's something to celebrate.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
For a second I was expecting the "bug" to be some actual major bug or security issue that has existed for years. But all it is... is Microsoft's marketing dominance? I mean, I agree that their monopoly is/was a bad thing, but I find it ironic and funny that it was classified as a bug.
Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.
from TFA : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
He obviously missed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
It's a self-righteous organization proclaiming that they're more ethical and free than evil corporate computing empires, while at the same time lead by a moronic billionaire who wants to be as cool and smart as Steve Jobs, but continuously throws tantrums when no one takes him seriously because he is not actually Steve Jobs.
Not in my house it doesn't. 1 Win 7 laptop 1 MacBook Pro 1 Chrome Book 3 Raspberry PIs running Raspbian 1 Android tablet 1 Android phone 1 blackberry playbook 1 Apple TV Looks like Linux wins, with Android a close second. The best part is that this is all for one person living alone. :)
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it seems that they're saying that in 2004, MS had a majority, but this is now changing and thus the bug can be closed. With your enumeration you simply give anecdotal evidence to this.
Here is a good link to it. And just because you've never heard of it, don't assume many people on a nerd related news site hasn't either. There is usually one or two posts a week about ubuntu here.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu
This
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And this is exactly why they felt it was time to close that 'bug'.
Microsoft's control has been falling in part to households like yours. But look back to 2004 when that 'bug' was put in place, your device count would be lower and Microsoft likely had a larger percentage of the total share.
There are more devices in the household now running a wider variety of operating systems, Microsoft is no longer dominate in the typical house and plays a smaller part overall.
Android is Linux, dufus
If by the core definition Linux = kernel, then yes, it is a customized variant. If you by Linux means the full OS, what the purist would call GNU/Linux, then, no, not really... You could just as well claim that Android is Java.
..Apple has majority market mindshare
If we look at "anything with an OS" did Microsoft ever have the majority of the marketshare?
Don't you mean GNU/Doofus?
Personally, I don't think this bug is fixed yet. Desktop Linux still lingers around 1% market share, and while Android, OEM involvement and new AAA software titles, I think we still have a long way to go. Oh, well. Debian fanboy's 2 cents.
If Android is Java and Android is Linux, then Linux must be Java.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dont+feed+the+trolls
I'm not against the closing of this bug; however, the closed status should be something like "Can't Fix" [0]. While, technically speaking, Microsoft doesn't have the majority of the marketshare anymore, the originally prescribed goal of this bug was:
A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software.
Note that *even if* we count Android/Linux, and also count every type of device like mobile phones and tables, nearly all of those devices -- even those running Android/Linux or Ubuntu -- include proprietary software (Many Android/Linux devices include *mostly* proprietary software, since
nearly all the applications are proprietary). Thus, it's just not accurate at this time to argue "Fix Released" for the key issue that this bug was supposed to be about: namely, "most devices in use today are running mostly proprietary software". It'll probably be generations before we close that bug, and that's why I'd
argue the problem probably can't be fixed as part of the lifecycle of Ubuntu itself. Thus "Can't Fix" is the right bug-close status.
[0] "Won't Fix" isn't right because that would presupose Ubuntu actually had the ability to fix the problem and chose not to. Sadly, I don't think it was ever really within the power of the Ubuntu project to fix the problem in the first place. Nevertheless, I thank Ubuntu for the early years (i.e., pre-UbuntuOne: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers/+bug/375272 ) when Ubuntu truly tried to close Bug 1. It's a tough job to give software freedom to the majority of users, but we should all keep trying to do it.
The ratio of 650 Windows 7 boxes plus 75 Windows 2008 R2 boxes at work to 3 Unix machines tends to swing the balance in favour of Windows where I am.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Cute entries like that wouldn't be tolerated in some workplaces. I prefer a professional attitude in the bug tracking system. They should purge anything else similar to this that isn't an actual bug.
Both of you are doofi.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I would care. But I'm a long-time Linux supporter, which means I only care about my distro of choice.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Swing and a miss...
Ubuntu and *nix in general has been getting better and better.... and then Windows put a shotgun in its mouth and pulled the trigger, becoming "Windows 8".
How is it that on slashdot, an admission of ignorance AND intellectual apathy is "insightful".
You might not be hip to ubuntu culture, thats fine. But don't celebrate it.
THL phish sticks
This bug affects: 1 person
is assigned to: Apple and Google
Labels Applied to this issue: wont fix, invalid
Status:Completed
Have been greatly exaggerated. Phones and tablets have largely been a distinct market. I don't think it has really had any particular effect on PC or laptop market.
I'm willing to beleve that *sales* of x86 systems to the consumer market have slowed. I think though that *usage* hasn't decreased appreciably. x86 ecosystem got 'good enough' for the vast majority of market and performance needs no longer drive demand. I think this would have been the reality with or without android/ios/etc.
It does reaffirm that Ubuntu just does not care about the desktop model at all. That was self-evident from the crap of Unity and Mir though. It further erodes what little respect I had for the distribution. They are chasing market opportunity more than trying to provide value to their users. It's sad on both ends. On one end, their once respectable desktop experience has languished. On the other end, their attempts to get into televisions and phones have been pretty pathetic.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Like this one:
#461000 General populace ignorance of Ubuntu
Easy fix; stop doing stupid things that are driving people to Mint etc. and get back to what a lot of people, (including me) were hoping for at the beginning - a decent distro that "just works" that we would could confidently install at friends, family, neighbours, SOHO whatever, without support nightmares at evenings and weekends. (Yes, I've been dicking around with BSD etc. for years, but I do need some time with my family...)
With MS busy pissing people off with Win8, they've missed a great opportunity.
I had some success 'converting' people with Linux skinned as XP; c'mon Mark; where's Ubuntu Win7 edition?
...and the ratio of the likely phones/tablets at (what I'm assuming) is a white-collar job would be similar to global market share... so add in:
400 Androids (seems high... might be less in the US, I was lazy)
130 iPhones running iOS
a handful of feature phones and a smattering of MS Phones
And you'll find your ratios balanace out *much* more than they used to.
Source:Hint: It didn't always look like this.
....trixs are for kids
I've been on Slashdot for a while now and I'll never understand the fanaticism that drives the UNIX culture that would spawn the
1. Creation of a bug report that is, essentially, a political statement
2. One that is left open for 9 years just because they are that childish
3. Reporting said bug/political statement has been closed as if some monumental success has been achieved.
a ratio of 242:1, in my experience that makes sense....since it takes about 242 Windows Systems to do the work of 1 *nix system ;)
The typical "bug fixing" strategy for open source seems to be
I believe it's spelled "doofie". :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Microsoft + IBM and then cheap Compaq clones were a natural reaction to the closed nature of the computer market pushed by the likes of Apple in the 80s. The closed software was a problem of the PC, with the expectation that it would be replaced with either Linux or some other laxly licensed, source and support available OS.
And now we're supposed to celebrate we're back in the 80, only that instead of Amstad, Amiga, Apple, IBM, Sinclair, Attari, ... etc. all we have now is Google and Apple.
And this is exactly why they felt it was time to close that 'bug'.
Microsoft's control has been falling in part to households like yours. But look back to 2004 when that 'bug' was put in place, your device count would be lower and Microsoft likely had a larger percentage of the total share.
There are more devices in the household now running a wider variety of operating systems, Microsoft is no longer dominate in the typical house and plays a smaller part overall.
Not at my house. Microsoft has never had a majority share at my house.
An apple is red and a rose is red, then an apple must be a rose.
To be fair, many people use a phone or tablet as their primary computing device in 2013, which wasn't the case in 2004. So if he's moving the goal posts, it's only to put them in a more relevant place. Also, I have seen very few tables running Linux, most tables are just solid wood or metal.
The best part is that this is all for one person living alone. :)
No, it's either sad or pathetic (depending on ones point of view) that one person should be so tethered to technology rather than reality.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I cannot disagree that Ubuntu (and Canonical) have done a good (no, great) job at bringing Linux more into peoples' hearts and minds. To say that Ubuntu is a poster-boy distro, however, would be a crime. Ubuntu stood on the shoulders of Debian to gain its traction, but past the initial push of getting better hardware/driver support, it seems like the roadmap of Ubuntu has been about as scattered as darts thrown by a drunken barfly. A bunch of ambitious "tries" at different angles, with very little attention to actually fixing bugs to maintain their stability/usability ("Won't fix" as new release is out, LTS: Long-term-suffering, ...). I really, really tried loving Ubuntu for the long term, even bet my biggest contract on them to bring LTSP to schools (one of their ambitious "tries" back in the day) but their coordination with outside OSS projects and communities were disappointing to me.
I'm not trying to bash Ubuntu, like I said they have done a lot of good. But I'm typing this on my Debian workstation, which I left to go to Ubuntu for a number of years, and now I'm back. And I couldn't be happier, because I haven't had such a stable system in years =) None the less, congrats on fixing the infamous bug #1 I guess. It is a very sentimental thing, I'm sure.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Not in my house it doesn't.
1 Win 7 laptop
1 MacBook Pro
1 Chrome Book
3 Raspberry PIs running Raspbian
1 Android tablet
1 Android phone
1 blackberry playbook
1 Apple TV
Looks like Linux wins, with Android a close second.
The best part is that this is all for one person living alone. :)
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but it seems that they're saying that in 2004, MS had a majority, but this is now changing and thus the bug can be closed. With your enumeration you simply give anecdotal evidence to this.
"living alone"
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but massive geek points aside, sounds like OP needs to get out of the basement more...
according to Wikimedia. I agree with the trend sentiment, but they still have a majority.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"enables malicious anti-features such as DRM, surveillance, and other monopolistic practices."
Apparently so does ubuntu's integrated search by default.
An apple is red and a rose is red, then an apple must be a rose.
roses have thorns blackberries have thorns :. apples are blackberries
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
When the hell was Jobs ever cool or smart?
And you are a judgmental asshole!
I have many interests outside technology. Technology is certainly high up on the list, but I am also a singer, outdoors man, woodworker, mechanic, pet owner, motorcycle rider, Jeep enthusiast, and too many other things to even mention. I even have a lovely girlfriend.
My interest in technology has provided me with quite a good living these past 30 years or so. As well as enough disposable income to afford plenty of toys.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
by microsoft of all people.....
called windows 8.
Not sure why this wasn't closed ages ago.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
I suspect he made way more money (demonstrating "smart") and had way more religious followers (demonstrating "cool") than you.
...
Closed; won't fix; can't reproduce.
The dictionary lists "doofuses" as the correct pluralization, but notes that "dufoeds" is correct, but pedantic.
Logic fail: saying X has the same property as Y, is different from saying an X is a Y.
Couldn't find "+1 Nerd" in moderation-options.
An apple is red and a rose is red, then an apple must be a rose.
roses have thorns blackberries have thorns :. apples are blackberries
No, because Apples are bought. Few people actually buy a Blackberry.
/troll
/flameshield
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Well, apples and roses are of the same family (Rosaceae).
6% to dip under 50%, but they'll still have the largest piece of the pie over all the other players individually (even if you group them into corporations instead of OS), and thus will continue to have market dominance for some time yet.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Doofum? Doofem? Doofuses? Doofen? Dooferati? Dooflings? Doofers?
Are there even proper rules in English to pluralize these kinds of things with made up words? It's not like you can just decide to apply the Latin rules and be done with it.
How can I be grammatically correct when referring to more than one doofus?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
More money follows 'more evil' more frequently than it follows "smarter". Adolph Hitler had plenty of followers as well if you're looking to get this thread appropriately Godwin'd. Mr. Jobs was a marketing genius and general douche-bag. I don't think Mr. Shuttleworth's greed is at nearly the same level if it exists at all. He may want to be famous, but what he wants to be famous for seems a little more altruistic. I've questioned that a bit lately, but I think it mostly still applies.
Maybe it's like cactus: Doofi.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Both of you are doofi.
You wouldn't BELIEVE size of the Beowulf cluster of Doofi Boxen I have in my parents basement!
Also, I have seen very few tables running Linux, most tables are just solid wood or metal.
Linux should be ported to tables as soon as possible, the installation base is huge. You will get the gamers interested too, as so many games are played on table platforms.
Mark Shuttleworth is a tool and I would put him on the same level as Balmer.
GP had already suggested that, and that's just back to the Latin rules, which, as I said, may or may not apply.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If some one chimes in with "there is no such thing as doofii" I'm going postal.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The ratio of 650 Windows 7 boxes plus 75 Windows 2008 R2 boxes at work to 3 Unix machines tends to swing the balance in favour of Windows where I am.
well.. only if people had the bright idea of redefining smartphones as pc's earlier!
Then shuttleworth could have just skipped the whole fucking ubuntu. because in 2004 if you counted java running phones as computers then ms wouldn't have had the majority share to begin with.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It looked about the same in 2004 when Ubuntu bug #1 was filed.
We just didn't think that Palm and un-upgradable proprietary cell phone OSes were competing against Windows, where now we think that iOS and Android (and maybe Ubuntu for tablets) are. It's a change of perception, not numbers.
0 1 - just my two bits
"there is no such thing as doofii" ;-)
Agreed, they should update the bug title to say 'plurality'. :)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have three reasons for reading/posting this. The first is that eog is broken since I recently upgraded Ubuntu; I should be wading through thousands of pictures right now, but can't. The other is that I cannot switch virtual desktops anymore since the upgrade so I'm stuck on this one.
I've been using Ubuntu for years on multiple boxes and I've never experienced an upgrade that did not totally kill my tediously constructed desktop configuration and a handful of applications I Just Need.
Which brings me to the third and final reason for being here: I'm too lazy to get up and fetch the Debian netinstall disk. I'd rather see Ubuntu disappear entirely so I won't be tempted to make the mistake of installing it ever again.
0x or or snor perron?!
It's not like you can just decide to apply the Latin rules and be done with it.
So, what you're saying is "Grammatik macht frei"?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
That's a great point. There were always other options, just we never considered them competitors so they weren't counted. Frankly, I would still define a computer as something that sits on or under my desk because that's what I grew up with so I would never consider my Galaxy's Android OS among my most used OSes.
What I would really like to see is a OS usage on a per hour basis. I bet we would see Windows (due to being used for business and on most home pcs) pull even farther ahead, simply because there's no way I'm on my phone or my iPad as much as my work laptop.
doofii, nuke'em forever
rewriting history since 2109
Ubuntu is the stuff you discover under your shoe when someone in the room says "It smells strange in here".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Ubuntu? Could the editors at least provide a link or a short explanation in the summary about what exactly "Ubuntu" is? I've never heard of it, and I think many others here haven't either.
Also, what's a Microsoft?
Sorry. Just got hired by Microsoft. They pay well. Please disregard all my previous writings.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
so what you're saying then is that you're an idiot and buy technology products out of wanting to own them rather than actually having a need for them, and money means nothing to you?
Freetards are neckbeard losers that are butthurt because Linux is still years behind Microsoft and Apple.
Because the technology available in Palm OS devices and cell phones actually *wasn't* capable of competing with desktop and laptop computers in any but a *very* narrow set of use cases where "able to be held in one hand" was a primary operating factor. These days, smartphones & tables are an order of magnitude more powerful than the desktop PCs of 2004 were, and are available with storage that is significantly larger than those same PCs had.
Smartphones grew into a position where, if you wanted to, you could actually do most of your work on them. (In some cases it may require plugging it into a larger, external display, and using an external keyboard for optimal use, but it's still possible in a way that it wasn't back in 2004.)
Personally, I await the day, not so far into the future, when we'll see a standardized 'dock' that we plug our phones into and use them for *all* the same tasks we use desktops and laptops for today.
No, no, no. Your grammar is all wrong! It should be, "There are no such things as doofii," or "There is no such thing as a doofus."
As it happens, apples are roses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Pastafarianism?
Dooferati for President, Yay (maybe too much brandy again?)
I think you're confusing Canonical with their product...
not fixed...Ubuntu still exists!!!
Troll? Troll?!
[robot voice] "I am a moderator. I am hypersentitive and humorless...." [/robot voice]
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
That's not exactly a scientific measurement of what this bug was talking about. It only gauges the OSes of people who visit their websites.
Scenario:
If I need an answer to something and I'm playing a game at my Windows 7 PC, am I going to pick-up one of the 5 android devices in my house to figure it out, or am I going to Alt+Tab to Wiki it? Let's say I Alt+Tab it... I registered as a Windows OS on their crawler, and chocked one tick up for Microsoft. What about the 5 ticks for Android that I also own?
You see why this data is fairly irrelevant?
It simply says how people access their website, not what OSes are in every home, let alone what OSes are for sale on the devices when you walk into an electronics store.
There are very few examples of anyone making money merely be being evil. Hitler mostly spent his nation's money to buy political support in the early years.
Smart and evil may outdo Smart and good (though not in the long run, IMO), but stupid very rarely prospers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
and only 4,6789,050 bugs left to go.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
> No, it's either sad or pathetic (depending on ones point of view) that one person should be so tethered to technology rather than reality.
Sure but it's quite myopic that you look at that one person and forget the masses so tethered to far more fascist things like mainstream TV, cinema, magazines and books, music... Media and arts have always been versatile vehicles of propaganda and I have no evidence of the huge paradigm shift in society that made that documented trend disappear.
I don't defend the buying choices of the multiplatform guy, I have issues with your dualism technology/reality.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Well looks like all that remains is for Katherine Noyes to hold a megaphone up to hairyfeet's mouth while she jumps him.
There are very few examples of anyone making money merely be being evil.
Oracle?
Well yes.... but we're talking about number of machines, not workload :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Sure. I wasn't counting appliances to make the numbers look good though. iPhones, Androids, Winmobile, etc are appliances like your refrigerator. It's not *really* relevant to the end user what they run, so long as they work. They're also all mostly closed/locked devices (yes, you can root them - you can root a PS3 too, doesn't make it an open platform either).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hmm... jury out on that one. I think you'd be surprised at the amount of time people spend on their phones and tablets - in transit on the bus/train, while driving their car (#^@@*&*!!), in the movie theatre, at the bar, at home on the couch, in bed before going to sleep, first thing in the morning when they wake up, whilst eating breakfast getting ready for work, etc, etc.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Your mom's house, then.
Yes, the bug was marked "Closed->DFU Error, works as expected"
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
well.. only if people had the bright idea of redefining smartphones as pc's earlier!
Then shuttleworth could have just skipped the whole fucking ubuntu. because in 2004 if you counted java running phones as computers then ms wouldn't have had the majority share to begin with.
JavaME hardly counts. It's difficult to develop and distribute JavaME applications, and it's limiting to build a phone with JavaME.
Are you really this dumb?
If you live in an Islamic country in the middle east, it's "cool" to be a Muslim. Anyone who isn't is not "cool", they're considered a freak.
If you live in someplace like Nebraska, USA, it's "cool" to be a fundamentalist Christian, since almost everyone else there is too. Anyone who isn't some kind of Christian is not considered "cool", they're a freak.
Maybe in your little social circle, religious followers are considered morons, but in many parts of the world, this is obviously not the case, as seen by the high numbers of adherents.
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but massive geek points aside, sounds like OP needs to get out of the basement more...
That sounds a little like me, Win 7 laptop that will have Linux when I can clear enough space on its hard drive, a tower running kubuntu and an XP box I only use for storage. I have no idea what OS that old Motorola phone is running.
But I get out of the house. I have to work every day and I usually work on Nobots at the bar (if you haven't read the online draft, don't. It will only be a spoiler).
But the OP was probably right, there are probably a lot more phones and tablets than PCs these days, and almost all of them are Apple or Android.
Free Martian Whores!
I disagree. He has more devices, so he can do more things (watch Apple TV instead of cable or OTA TV, for instance), but all the devices running Free software are doing different tasks than the tasks he uses the laptops (Win7 and Mac, both proprietary) for. In 2004, he likely had one or two laptops (WinXP and maybe Mac), now he has two laptops, again both with proprietary OSes. Nothing's changed, except he has some extra toys/gadgets running Linux.
For all devices running Windows or anything else...
If we're going to count them, I need to see how to get to a command prompt. If I can't, it doesn't matter if it's Windows, Linux, or the fictional OS on hacker and government computers in TV and movies.
If that definition doesn't work for you, here's a better one - if I can't *change* which OS the device runs, never mind choose from any, we shouldn't be counting it. Java may be in your ATMs, gas pumps, toaster, and battery operated vibrators, but it doesn't matter if someone outside of the device has to tell you this, and the same goes for the OS.
Bug 1.1- Apple has a majority market share
Nah, I think evil is just a side-effect there. CA used evil as their explicit business strategy, but as it turned out they were mildly successful at best and the CEO ended up in prison. Enron was at worst amoral, and was more successful at their peak, but again eventually prison or suicide for several senior folks. Really, a strategy that leads to prison or suicide can't be considered all that good.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I worked for a company, that is no more, whose CEO spent lots of time bashing Microsoft. Had he spent more time giving this company the focus it needed, it might still be with us. The same could be true of Canonical, whose mishandling of the Unity/Gnome 3, and even the possibility that they might not support xOrg in the future; has hurt Linux. They should pay attention to focus, and the benefit to the Linux community.
Fat egos are the source of this problem, not giving users a choice. We could do more about Microsoft if the government and legal system worked and said that the OEM arrangement that lets Microsoft bundle its OS with most of the desktops sold in the world, is a unfair advantage that should not be allowed.
If you could buy a PC with a choice of OS or no OS, the market share problem would be solved. Linux, and Free BSD are mature enough to take a much larger share than they have now. Or we can hope that Microsoft has already lost the battle as it stumbles getting on the tablet and mobile platforms which are displacing desktops. On servers *NIX has a much more competitive share.
I would change Linux. I would make it filesystem agnostic, including installing in NTFS, without needing to partition the drive. I would allow for distros to be run out of any image or directory structure, including swapon files, and remove the whole partitioning issue. This is already done. Either there is no reason to partition, or to partition so any Liniux can install on single large filesystem of a type supported by all releases. This is also done, as it is the basis for virtualization. Why even virtualize? Why not run another Linux from the same device?
400 Androids (seems high... might be less in the US, I was lazy)
130 iPhones running iOS
So the Android version on those phones and iOS are free software? :)