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Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90% (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes VentureBeat's new article about desktop operating systems: Windows 7 is still the king, but it no longer holds the majority. Nine months after Windows 10's release, Windows 7 has finally fallen below 50 percent market share and Windows XP has dropped into single digits. While this is good news for Microsoft, April was actually a poor month for Windows overall, which for the first time owned less than 90 percent of the market, according to the latest figures from Net Applications.
linux on the desktop is imminent
And why is Windows 3.11 seeing such an uptick in use?
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Windows is dead!
Linux is hard to configure ..[blah, blah, blah]... Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop?
Oh God, here we go again with the flamebait shills.
If you really want an answer to your question, why not use the search function here? Perhaps we should make this a FAQ.
I know I just dropped Windows in favor of Linux because of the aggressive (read -- "installed in the middle of the night without asking") push towards Windows 10. During the 8 days it was on my computer, the router caught it trying to upload my entire Documents directory to OneDrive, again, without asking.
If I wanted an O/S that was going to steal all my work, I'd install one. No thanks Microsoft, you burned your bridges here. Linux is not as smooth and not as easy to use, but I'll take that any day over having data such as my corporate records, source code, and even my tax returns getting uploaded to some uncontrolled cloud owned by Microsoft.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop? I doubt it.
It's free.
As far as your other points go, they're entirely anecdotal and situational.
All it would take is for Win7 to have a native usb3 driver supported at the same level as Win8.1 and Win10 usb3 drivers and Win7 would be the operating system of choice for the next 15 years. Both Win8.1 and Win10 work too hard to break the boundary between PC as a personal computer and PC as a cloud terminal. Win7 still has more functionality, as a desktop operating system, than Win8.1 and Win10.
The flat-out refusal to have kernel level generic usb3 driver means that all hypervisors running on Win7 must either have their own full USB3 implementation or be limited to USB2. This is just an attempt to get people to upgrade from Win7 to force them to open up to all the cloud integration features. Right now you are faced with the choice: fully supported USB3 and less autonomous desktop, or the best autonomous desktop (Win7), but no generic USB3 support.
The actual windows managers in Win8.1 and Win10 are all far inferior (less functional) to Win7. Although the administrative features do improve in 8.1 compared to 7 and in 10 compared to 8.1 So your ideal opearating system for a desktop would be Win7 with generic kernel usb3 driver and 8.1 task manager.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
`Most sheeple acquired through auto udate (corruption), left there like a pile of dog shit by a night owl dog walker. The market share boasting is more like drive by virus hacking.
Its been well over a decade since those were real problems. That said, I would give you more credibility if you hadn't posted as AC. And FWIW, I've been using Linux as an everyday desktop since 1997. Yes, it actually was a bit harder back then, you had to do some reading and understanding. Nowdays, stick the disc in and reboot.
C|N>K
is when microsoft really shot themselves in the foot, people are generally low info and naive but with windows 10 microsoft really let the joe & jane sixpack what blatant spies and abusers of personal info microsoft is, i can see microsoft's user base continuing to erode until they are down below 30% of the internet population
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I just got my stepfather's old PC up and running to get some pictures and copies of some of the books he wrote. It is running XP. When I am done I will put Linux on it and use it as my garage computer.
So I guess I am running an XP machine right now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have been enjoying features for 10+ years in Linux that it took Microsoft until the last couple of years to "invent" for themselves.
The stats on hardware sales for the last couple years kept indicating slumps in most Windows PC maker's sales, with Apple the only hardware manufacturer still reporting good sales figures.
At some point, if more people keep buying new Macs instead of new Windows machines, we should see the OS usage stats changing for Windows too.
I don't doubt a number of people also went to Linux when they got frustrated with things about Windows 10. But statistically, I doubt it made the dent that OS X did. (One of my friends just dumped Win 10 in favor of the latest Ubuntu, but he's already angry with some issues he ran into with it. So not sure he'll keep it....)
Unfortunately, Apple seem to be its own worst enemy right now, since it's more interested in converting people to iOS on iPads than convincing them to get new Mac desktops or laptops. I guess anything's possible, but I truly think the idea that tablets will replace PCs for people is a big mistake. Think of corporate America, where people spend most of the day using a computer from a desk. Why compromise with some sort of tablet in that scenario? People want multiple, large monitors for better productivity and less eye-strain. That, in turn, requires more powerful graphics cards to push all of the pixels needed to run at those screen resolutions at a good speed. That winds up the weak spot for a tablet form-factor machine. Fast graphics cards require lots of power and give off lots of heat. They don't cram well into flat tablets.
Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop? I doubt it.
I can tell you why. For me Linux Mint has been a perfect alternative to Windows.
It's free, it installed easily, everything just works, and I like not having to reboot after updating the system. All of the applications I need are available and Wine runs the few niche Windows apps I still use. I'm sure I'll find replacements for those when I get around to it but so far there's been no need.
I'm still searching for some good malware but so far I've had no luck in that department.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
as the tech support guy?
It is pretty simple to vet hardware with a livecd before installation and set their expectations accordingly.
Personally I am amazed you could find a printer nowadays that DOESN'T work with linux. I've run them from every major brand and if they don't work with the out of the box drivers in CUPS, the worst you usually have to do is rip the driver definition file out of a windows installer somewhere.
Shame on you!
I notice that that statistics don't seem to track Windows Server, just the "desktop" OS'--it'd be interesting to see if their share of the windows install base has changed. Due to MS' license restrictions, running Windows virtualized means you will strongly prefer to use Windows Server, which is why some VDI set-ups use Windows Server 2008 configured to use "Windows 7 Experience" mode. There is some migration of users from Windows-on-physical PCs to desktops-in-the-cloud (e.g. AWS Workspaces), but I've no idea if it contributes significantly in the drop of Windows 7's share of the Windows installations.
Whenever someone points out real problems with Linux, there are Linux shills calling it flamebait
The post was flamebait because it is not put in the manner of a genuine question asked in good faith, which I would be happy to answer.
However this poster makes it clear that he already has an opinion on the subject, based on the implication that he already has significant experience of both Windows and Linux. He therefore has no real need to ask the question which he does then ask as to "why Linux is a good choice". He clearly asks this just to launch an argument, which is what a flamebait is.
My experience is different. I've needed to fill out some PDF forms. Evince can't open them. There aren't any recent versions of Adobe Reader for Linux. And I couldn't get Adobe Reader to install under wine. It just doesn't seem like wine works very well.
supports all of them. And outside of x86_64, has since the 0.11 release if not earlier (kqemu+qemu 0.10(or .11 I forget when support was dropped) was fast emulation even without VT extensions. I understand there were potential security exploits with it, but they would have been non-trivial to exploit and require intimate knowledge of the system to work off.
I actually still have a system installed with it somewhere.
Because it installs flawlessly in a short period of time. All the hardware I have encountered in the last 5 years just works without even finding a driver disk, or letting it connect to the internet. Because the user interface is sane, things work and the software is powerful. Because if you want you can run it off a USB stick and you can just take your whole OS instance and move from one computer to another.
It was flamebait. It was a useless troll. It made a bunch of unsupported and subjective claims, and assumed that the position was right from the start.
The real question is - what makes _Windows_ suitable for the desktop?
But they didn't jack off while wearing the iWatch, so its not a valid review. Just owning all the Abble products isn't enough to make one completely ghey; you have to actually use them as intended. Even if tyhey DID jackoff wearing the iWatch, it wouldn't give them their pulse correctly since Abble has such a closed ecosystem, its not like GNU is gonna help them. HOWEVER Abble users switching to teh lunis is *proof* that homosexuality is a *choice* and IT CAN BE CURED The one time I went to the Abble store at the mall, the resident ghey Socialst came up to me in his Speedos and offered me a tiny cup of Froot Loops; he explained that sadly, they had to cut back on the portion size because they were running out of money. I politely turned them down because I wasn't sure what they were glazed with. And his iWatch had the wrong time.
Its been well over a decade since those were real problems. That said, I would give you more credibility if you hadn't posted as AC. And FWIW, I've been using Linux as an everyday desktop since 1997. Yes, it actually was a bit harder back then, you had to do some reading and understanding. Nowdays, stick the disc in and reboot.
The OP was about the start menu, so here's a real goddamned problem with linux.
I'm using Linux Mint, which comes with cinnamon.
You can configure the start menu, but it's clunky. To move things around you have to laboriously click on an application, click "copy", go to the destination, and click "paste". One at a time, because doesn't support multiple selections.
Then you have to go *back* to the original location, where you now have *two* copies of the application icon, and make one of them invisible. Not delete it - that will also delete the one you just put in the new location.
About 90 minutes later (*) I had the start menu categories organized in a good way, and made the things I didn't need invisible. Some things you can't make invisible ("universal access"), but I can live with the extra clutter.
The menu system editor lets you make sub-menus. I like to have a small number of choices in each menu (so that I don't have to scan long lists to find the thing I want), so I thought I would group the wine applications (there are 3 of them) into a sub-menu named wine, so that it would only take up 1 line in the menu.
A quick google shows that this feature, of not having sub-menus, is by design, it's not going to be fixed, and the system was designed in such a way that the underlying structure format has to be rewritten to support it.
So there's this feature of the menu editor for putting things in sub-menus, but it has no effect?
Gah!
This is reminiscent of the Firefox changes, where people keep saying "Oh, this is much better! DO IT OUR WAY!"
Compare to the WinXP version of menu organizing: the start menu is a directory (on the disk), and sub-menus are sub-directories. Applications are files (links to the executable), which can be moved around trivially en-masse using cut and paste.
I keep hearing linux evangelists saying "everything is a file", but not in this case. Everything is hidden, broken, designed to be used one-and-only way, and obscure.
(I'm aware of the "alacarte" application, which makes it *slightly* easier to manipulate menus, but the end result is the same. It also borked the menu system, so I had to purge and reinstall cinnamon.)
(*) After finding this out, I originally thought I'd edit the config files manually and move things around using the editor. Editing is easy, but finding out which files to edit is highly non-trivial. I found three (yes, three) separate places that *seemed* to list the top-level categories of my start menu, but test edits (change "graphics" to "grophics" and check for changes) had no effect. Also, there are a bewildering number of possible files to edit, in several locations. Some are in $HOME/.config, some are $HOME/.local, and some are in /etc/xdg.
This is even worse in the BSD community, but I also experienced it -- and participated in it -- when I was an Apple user. It is pure defensiveness. It arises from doubt.
And yes, I wish I'd sold my //gs and scored an Amiga instead. The company was crap, and the OS was dodgy, but that machine had room to rage...
It's bourgeois: computers for people who want to know nothing about computers, but still feel superior to the rest of us. Send them to Brazil, I say. ;)
I looked into aur from arch and adobes has a PDF Reader for Linux called "acroread". Google acroread and your distro name and you'll find some ways to installatie it
"I don't like it" isn't a "real" problem in Linux. A list of the standard complaints, that have been answered thousands of times, isn't a valid complaint either.
Learn to love Alaska
It's windows 311 not 3.11 ... haven't you been keeping up with their exponential release cycle?
The last version of Adobe Reader for Linux is 9.5.5. It's almost certainly vulnerable.
This comment would have more credibility of you hadn't posted AC.
I can imagine strange hardware or software reasons for using 16 bit windows, but what reason would there be to use Windows NT?
Oh the irony...
The bar chart clarifies things. Windows down a tick. OSX up a tick. Linux flat-lined as always. Desktop Top Operating System Share Trend
More revealing, perhaps, are the numbers from Statcounter, which show OSX doing very well in the North American market, at 17.5%. Top 7 Desktop OSs in North America from Apr 2015 to Mar 2016
Statcounter doesn't break out stats for Linux, which is perhaps just as well.
Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%
OMG... But wait, that's not what the stats actually say. In fact, several older versions are dropping as Win10 takes over. But the simple facts are, Windows is still king.
And, until software producers start building top-tier CONSUMER software for Linux, it will remail that way.
Not just GAMES, though games is a big part, but also things like native (non-Wine) PhotoShop and other common commercial tools.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Linux, where you have to work to find malware!!! Only slightly better than BSD, which had one virus back in 2003 that was eliminated with a patch a couple years ago when somebody actually got infected with it for the first time.
This is a big problem with Linux. Whenever someone points out real problems with Linux, there are Linux shills calling it flamebait and attacking them. It's telling that you can't answer the question and instead dismiss it as flamebait.
This is what you said in your first post:
"Linux is hard to configure."
I don't agree. I don't have any particular problems. At least I don't have to deal with the registry. Most distros provide a control center similar to the one on Windows.
"It has terrible user interfaces."
Arguably some options aren't great (like Unity, though some people like it). But there are many choices and my Mint Mate desktop, as one example, is very easy to use and work with.
"Software like Libreoffice is far inferior to Microsoft Office and has bugs that haven't been fixed in years, like randomly making content read only."
What makes LibreOffice inferior in your view? Especially in the latest release, it seems really good. I am not familiar with the read-only bug you mention.
"Video drivers are awful and have far inferior performance."
There's even a decent driver for Nvidia stuff these days. So I'd hardly say the drivers are awful.
"Games are sorely lacking."
Have to agree here, although I'm not a gamer and the few things that interest me (chess, checkers, Skat) work on Linux with Wine.
"Why would anyone use Linux on the desktop?"
Because (for me and many others) it helps me get things done.
Windows isn't a major segment of Microsoft's revenue anymore. Because of that, they have gotten complacent, and don't really care much anymore. Remember how things went with IE when that happened? Expect roughly the same for Windows.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yep, they bought an iPad or an Android tablet to do all the simple stuff they used to do with a PC. Where are those numbers?
Developers need a boot in the ass. Windows is not the only game in town. The last time I checked Apple IOS had 800 million users to buy apps and there were 1.5 billion Android users that wanted to buy apps as well. The desktop has been dead for some time. Nobody needs it at home anymore. Did Linux ever hit the desktop? Nope it skipped right to tablets and phones. Where does Microsoft and Intel WANT to be, on the Phones and Tablets.
The game is over. The PC is a legacy platform.
This probably more accurately reflects the defection of users from the PC paradigm altogether. It actually makes perfect sense when you consider that the only reason many ever had one in the first place was because being online required it, which is no longer the case. The 'average user' doesn't do much that mobile devices aren't now pretty good at. Many younger people these days don't even know what an operating system is.
I've used "Document Viewer" on the Trinity Desktop (KDE3.5 fork) for the last year, works great so far. Only issues have been with a few DMV forms that had some kind of "encryption" that kept me from saving the completed document as another PDF file, could still print the completed form or print to pdf without problems. Just couldn't "save as .."
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evince
http://blog.chron.com//techblo...
Apple has been moving to end their Macintosh line of computers.
Evidence:
Dropped "Computers" from their original name.
No longer use the name "Macintosh", only the shortened "Mac".
Severely limited the Mac Pro line by eliminating any ability to add peripheries, i.e. requires PCIe SSD.
Apple makes decent products, while overpriced, still Mac OS X is a pleasure to work with. The documentation is a little cumbersome to begin understanding, but what documentation isn't? It was a shame that Apple relegated the Mac Pro to another unconfigurable machine. The iMac, Mac Mini are nice equipment for general use, but they don't allow for exotic hardware like oscilloscope input boards. USB isn't great for things that require precise timing information, like oscilloscopes, and I am not sure if Thunderbolt supports isochronous signals like Firewire does.
What really is devastating about Apple is that they abandoned hardware that they themselves invested to develop (PowerPC). Apple didn't use Intel until the switch in the mid aughts. It was always Motorola, and the PowerPC line buoyed Motorola until they sold their investment. Now with IBM licensing it out to companies like Freescale (oh snap, Freescale got sold to some Nederlander?), anyone can see what will happen to Apple.
Apple needs to move from a consumer company into an R&D provider and technology licensor. They've already invested in new technologies like USB, Firewire, OpenCL and more that have gained massive acceptance and use. It's not like they don't have the funds, but they don't have much time to 'work' things out. The 90's saw the near-end of Apple, and it can happen again. (Of course, if Apple did this then they would be in direct competition with IBM...man.)
As you say Apple is "more interested in converting people to iOS...than convincing them to get new Mac...laptops." The MacBook is a competitor against the iPad. Which OS has more control over consumers, iOS or OS X? Apple wants to get rid of Macintosh, it has been a poor performer since the beginning, so they see the iPhone and iPad as the future of their "computer" line while venturing into already held market territory, the Apple Car - what?.
Apple really needs a new marketing approach to their Macintosh line. They haven't advertised any Mac since their "Think Different" and anti-Intel bunnymen campaigns. In fact, I can't remember any Macintosh advertisement since the iTunes jargon began. (Forgot...After the switch, that's when all the "Mac v. PC" ads started, but of course those ads stopped all the Pentium vs. PPC argument.)
From the first consumer available supercomputer to the same configuration available from any after-market PC supplier. Apple has gone from "Think Different" to "Same Thing".
Okular has always worked for me for filling out PDF tax forms. I don't doubt that there are some complex PDFs it fails at though.
This space intentionally left blank
Who would have thought that forcing an upgrade would cause people to look elsewhere. Idiots.
I used to like okular but it tends to choke on image-laden PDFs such as 40 page brochures. e.g. viewing a film festival in portrait mode as a presentation.
So unless there's something requiring specific compatibility I use Atril (the mate fork of evince), which has no problem scrolling between images.
I use Foxit Reader as there's probably a reason why Google chose to use it in Chrome for PDFs rather than any of the open source PDF viewers. http://googlesystem.blogspot.c...
In the best case, installing Linux is straightforward. But I've tried installing Linux on more than one laptop not doing anything strange with partitioning (just ext4 and swap partitions on the disk), only to get bounced out to a grub2 prompt when it tries to boot for the first time. I solved both problems, but they weren't particularly simple. There's no good reason I need to edit a file to disable Ubuntu's guest session.
Regarding the bug in Libreoffice, here's a link to what I encountered: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/37966/read-only-content-cannot-be-changed-no-modifications-will-be-accepted/. If it's indeed due to non-ODF content, that makes it hard to collaborate with Windows users, which is a big negative.
In my experience, the proprietary Nvidia drivers provide better performance. They're also a pain in the ass to set up sometimes. That's not Linux's fault, but it is the reality of the situation.
For what it's worth, I despise Unity and Gnome 3. Gnome 2 wasn't particularly nice to look at, but it got the job done. I used to like KDE, but recent versions aren't that great. The KDE apps aren't as good as the Gnome apps.
Just a couple of days ago, I needed to view ago PDF form. Evince couldn't open it. There are no recent versions of Adobe Reader for Linux. I couldn't get Adobe Reader to work in wine. While it's not the fault of Linux that Adobe dropped support for Reader on Linux, it doesn't mean it isn't an issue for users.
Linux frustrates me. I actually try to use it as a desktop OS. I've been running Ubuntu 14.04. I encountered that Libreoffice bug a couple of days ago. It's frustrating trying to finish writing something for work before a strict deadline, only to encounter a bug like that. That's why I have that attitude, questioning why people would want Linux as a desktop OS. My experience isn't flamebait. It's my experience. Windows 7 was good, but Windows 10 sucks. I just don't see Linux as a viable alternative.
Let's see...
Start menu won't pop up from time to time, no or bug infested drivers available for older hardware, slow startup and it spies on me EVEN when I asked it to not do so. Oh, and did I mention that it has the tendency to start up in safe mode for no reason at all?
If you keep the windows 7 or 8 drivers around, you're going to run into problems. If you update, you're going to run into problems. Same as previous versions of windows.
So, windows 10 has been terrible for me. And as I cannot afford to buy myself a mac, I'm looking into putting Linux on my laptop. Knoppix worked good enough for me on my laptop.
Apple has been moving to end their Macintosh line of computers.
I sure hope Apple doesn't replace Mac OS X with iOS. I hate the limitations in my iPad re. importing files, managing folders, etc. Ex: I wrote a tool that created html files and supporting sound files. These files were created by AppleScript and Perl, so they had to be created on a Mac, not on an iPad. I showed the tool to an Apple employee, who taught iPad workshops in an Apple retail store. I asked him how to copy those files and folders from my Mac to the iPad, preserving the file and folder structure. He said there was no way to do that. Ugh.
One big reason I switched from Windows to a Mac was because I found out about AppleScript. The more I learned about AppleScript, the more I felt that I had to get a Mac, in order to get Applescript. These days, most of my personal programming projects use AppleScript in some way. Ex: One tool clicks on menu buttons for you, so that you don't have to drill down thru menus and click the menu items. Mac OS X runs AppleScript but iOS doesn't run it. If Apple replaced Mac OS X with iOS, then besides the awkwardness of managing files and folders, I would lose AppleScript.
So what OS is detected as Windows NT suddenly? NT was at 0.07% in March, and suddenly 2.54% in April. Windows 3.1 has also gone up from 0% to 0.40%.
Not that I don't care about this statistic, it is interesting. But most people don't care about which desktop. For a huge number of people they need a browser, and well that's it, a browser. Then they occasionally need to print what they browse. The other big feature they need is the ability to back up photos from their phone until their hard drive fails and they lose all their photos.
Occasionally some people need to run Microsoft Office specifically. Or they need to run some software that only runs on windows. This is becoming rarer and rarer. One large group that I have found are hard core windows users are accountants. Most of them have mastered Excel, not are good at it and could use something else, but have pretty much mystical abilities with it. Beyond that there the PC gamers. But for the vast majority, the OS isn't even the big question but budget.
Most people are happy with a 10 year old laptop with a 4 minute battery that they keep in a drawer only to be pulled out on the occasion that their phone or tablet can't fill out some form, or they need to so a sudden excess of typing.
There isn't much difference at work. Most people don't need any machine better than an average machine circa 2008.
This means that for many people they will keep using any given machine until it utterly fails. Then they will replace it with the cheapest machine that allows them to continue with little regard as to what OS it uses as long as it functions as the old one did.
Few people that I know outside of programmers will ask any questions about hard drives, memory, etc, because they know that pretty much any machine in 2016 will be far beyond their needs.
So for most people, if you were to ask them what OS they would like they would say, "Don't care"
Another way to view this information is more people use Windows 95, 98 and 2000 than people use Linux, on the desktop. :-P
Yep, bad PDF XFA forms support.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Linux is hard to configure, well sometime yes, other no. Sharing a drive is a click away. LibreOffice has become good enough; seriously, you should try it on Windows. NVidia proprietary video driver is pretty much on par with Windows. Games, well it depends if you play them or not. Many do not care; thus the reason why they departed from Windows to tablets.
If you want solid reason for disliking Linux, read my take on it at My disastrous experience with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar.
Despite, I still love Linux and am a hard core fan. The reasons can be found here.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
A punishment.
Next question?
For PDF viewing use firefox. The "there are no games for linux" reason is straight up bullshit. There are exactly 4310 games on Steam alone... if you can't entertain yourself with that many games then go fuck yourself or go pick up a whore lol...
Phlatfish... is that you still posting your crap?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yes, we all know Vista was pretty awful, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that NT has more installations. Or that NT AND 3.1 are more installed than 2000 (NT 5)! What the hell?
See, people who use Linux automatically know you are trolling =p
It begins.
If you think 90% is still a lot, go check IE stats. And how it ended.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp
Which is why they're focusing on the UWP and Cortana metaplatform. Cortana runs on all your third party devices and lets a UWP device control them. UWP will run on more than just x86 and more platforms, but will share the MS store. MS is moving away from windows but building UWP on top of current Windows and MS devices, and deprecating all other Windows API sets. MS is building their walled garden from the inside.
Twinstiq, game news
MS has already stated that Windows 10 is their last version and they intend to move to UWP across multiple devices and architectures
Twinstiq, game news
Linux is hard to configure. It has terrible user interfaces. Software like Libreoffice is far inferior to Microsoft Office and has bugs that haven't been fixed in years, like randomly making content read only. Video drivers are awful and have far inferior performance. Games are sorely lacking. Why would anyone use Linux on the desktop?
Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop? I doubt it.
Your objections were true until around 2009.
1. Nowadays Ubuntu and Mint just work out of the box, no configuration required. When you DO have to configure it, you have all those nice unix tools to help... have fun in the Windows registry!
2. That's funny, every time I open Microsoft Word, by default it's in "Read-only mode". Nowadays LibreOffice is better than MSOffice.
3. Yes, currently Windows has better drivers for gaming than Linux. That's true. But that's changing quickly.
4. There's plenty of awesome games on Linux! More and more AAA games come with Linux support on release, plus lots of retro games are being re-released with Linux support, thanks to Valve and GOG.
5. I primarily use Linux on the desktop because it's free as in speech, doesn't molest my privacy with constant surveillance, and it "just works". I recently bought a new HTPC and a 4K monitor, and setting it up on Ubuntu was incredibly easy; Windows 7 doesn't even have 4K support, and I'd rather have nothing at all than a Win10 spy machine.
Yeah it just works... When you're lucky.
I'm a die-hard Linux user but even I gets saddened when I see the multitude of users with low-end Intel BayTrail-based devices that have been suffering for many month because of the infamous bug 109051
The big question will be whether or not it takes the desktop while there is still a desktop to take...
Not an issue from my point of view. I abandoned Windows somewhere back there around the 3.2 to whatever transition. At this point Steam is gradually making even the thorny games issue moot, although it is still not the case that all games run on linux too (sadly) and there are still lots of games that don't run on steam (and which then require superpowers to get to run on linux).
The two things that still ensure a MS lock are:
* Their stranglehold on the pre-installed OS market. Either one preinstalls Windows on "all" the new systems you sell, or the price per copy for the users that do want it ensures that you cannot compete, and as long as the vast majority of systems sold are Windows by the "requirements" of the purchaser, this will not change. That's what is so interesting -- users are pissed enough about Win8+ that this percentage is actually dropping. Somewhere in there is a critical point where major resellers will actually see marginal gains in selling systems preinstalled with linux (or no OS at all) compared to having to pay the premium for Windows and pass it on as a "tax" to their clients. We're still not there, though, and honestly I doubt that we are particularly close. Call me when we get Windows down to maybe 67% and falling...
* The sad truth that there are still plenty of business desktop applications that are only available for Windows. Often mission critical ones. An auxiliary truth is that even if a linux version DOES exist, if you use it you are on your own, because the "MCSE"'s who (on a good day with a tail wind) "support" the application are actually revealed as the idiots they often are the first time you ask a question you don't already know the answer to better than they do...
Things that threaten it? IF linux ever successfully makes a truly transparent layering of the OS to the point where one can install Win apps fully automagically and have them "just run" with all library support available, current, and functional, then it would truly be a war. Games would stop being an issue at all. And so would those mission critical apps. Their windows versions might well suck, but they'd suck on linux the same way that they suck on Windows and a Windows support team "might" be able to provide at least some support without having to actually understand things like networking and library support. Containerization might actually make this a reality before I die of old age -- or not. This is the kind of thing that could easily be the tipping point. If one can install e.g. MS Office on linux by just doing it and have it work perfectly, then one doesn't have to deal with training office staff to use OOffice instead after they went and took an actual class in MSO and are terrified of having to learn something different. Or use an EHR written for Windows. Or use an office DB-driven app for inventory and POS that simply doesn't exist for linux transparently on Linux, install it and it works.
Only a little bit of this could convince DEVELOPERS that Windows is a bigger PITA to support than it is worth, especially if they can use a really good toolkit to do the containerizing so a single build just does it.
Probably a fantasy for years yet, but it is hard to say. I suspect this is the plan of Red Hat and hence a major factor driving the future development of linux, but we'll see...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Classic Shell. Personally I have no idea why anyone wouldn't use Classic Shell (or any of the many similar solutions).
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Apple wants to get rid of Macintosh
I'll believe that when Xcode runs on an iPad.
developers can't rely on there being a small number of canonical user interfaces they can write for.
I thought Unity was the canonical user interface. At least it's the one that Canonical pushed down GNOME 2 users' throats in Ubuntu 11.10.
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Most business users run Windows on Mac, usually in a VM. My company doesn't have a single Mac out there that isn't also running windows. In fact, many of the employees spend their entire day working in the Windows VM. They only got a Mac because it was "trendy."
So if you take this into account, then maybe Microsoft shouldn't be so worried.
Also, we have some developers who run Linux. Mostly developers. Different than business users running a Mac, most our Linux users stay in Linux most of the time, but they still have a Windows VM and a Windows license for those occasions when they must run Windows.
Windows is a trinket, other news is much more significant:
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Dear Americans,
Your president lied about the killing of Osama bin laden. Seymour Hersh explains his essay.
Poor Jeffrey Sterling sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.
Fuck you guys.
And it's not a secret. Linux isn't spyware. And it's free. As a home user who didn't absolutely need a Windows only application, why would I bother with this thing whose "telemetry" is constantly watching me. Why don't I just install a camera hooked directly to Microsoft in my bedroom.
Oh, wait, there's a camera on my laptop...
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
AppleScript is cool like Fonzie, but Apple wants their products as walled gardens.
Look at LaunchPad and signed binaries. Those were the iOS (old-school At Ease) interface and application model. If the Mac App Store is where people download their new apps, and those apps are vetted by Apple employees before being accepted, then why have signed binaries? It's for security all right, the security of Apple to prevent customers from using hardware in abnormal yet desirable ways.
Is that like one of the blade servers we run Linux on? Or do you mean an iPad? Or maybe a notebook or laptop?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Need a good malware client? Install Windows in a VM. Problem solved.
Now I'll use whatever tool that makes sense in terms of cost benefit. Windows 10 works for me, clean install, no strings attached. Turn off all possible "Call Redmond" features, have a decent anti virus, malware, whatever, keep backups and that's it.
The insistence that all complaints have been answered reasonably just because they have been answered before is yet another complaint against Linux. My experience with Linux is fairly limited and culminated with the discovery that LXDE was a sufficiently viable DE for my purposes at the time.
It also included such wonderful discoveries as the fact that if Linux does not detect an attached monitor during boot, it will not ever load the relevant software to be able to present a GUI remotely (which led to the further discovery that this is such a common nuisance that people make it a business to sell DVI passthroughs that identify as a monitor when polled by Linux during boot).
Look at the source of the article (the usage numbers at netmarketshare.com).
Mac OS (all versions) is at 9.21% according to their latest numbers. In the last year it was hovering at 7-8%. So even if you don't trust that latest uptick (and I would agree that NMS numbers sometimes look weird), Mac appears sort of silently popular.
Not bad for a system that hardly gets promotion. What I see in terms of advertisement is usually for iPhones and iPads, not for Mac OS.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I need AppleScript. I use it mainly to move data between files that were created by different applications. Ex: I wrote an AppleScript that reads a Numbers spreadsheet, and writes the spreadsheet data to a JavaScript .js file. A web page can then read that .js file, and display the spreadsheet contents.
So yes AppleScript is cool like Fonzie, but I really need it. :-)
Blame the manufacturer.This is a very common issue that few people realise.
/sys/firmware/acpit/tables/DSDT | grep -C 2 -i windows
/etc/default/grub:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg
...") will include the parameter similar to this:
.... acpi_osi=! acpi_osi="Windows 2013"
The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) contains the Differentiated Services Description Table (DSDT). The DSDT is byte-code that the active operating system executes within its ACPI pseudo-virtual machine interpreter.
This code provides executable Methods (functions) that perform configuration of hardware components; especially related to power control, enabling/disabling devices (think WiFi radio kill-switch), acting on special platform hot-keys (such as Fn+brightness-{up/down} and much more).
It also contains initial feature configuration methods which enable features based on the operating system identity (OSI). In most DSDTs I've analysed over the last 10 years (and I made a special study of Sony models) the OSI code will only enable the full range of features when the host operating system is Windows.
Generally, when the Windows operating system calls the the OSI methods it passes a text string of the form "Windows XXXX" where XXXX is a year number representing the Windows version. Based on XXXX the OSI method then sets the value of a 'feature' variable, with newer versions of Windows enabling more features.
The default value of the 'feature' variable is usually the lowest possible value. This value is adopted when the host operating system is Linux since the OSI method doesn't recognised the OSI "Linux" string.
To work around this problem Linux kernel provides a command-line configuration parameter that enables it to report itself as another operating system. Using this to 'pretend' to be the latest Windows version recognised by the ACPI DSDT will almost always enable all features optimally.
The kernel parameter is "acpi_osi".
I've used this very recently on a new Asus T300 CHI that failed to enabled power to the USB-connected Synaptics touchscreen digitizer if the the device wasbooted whilst charging from mains.
I also fixed an Ubuntu user's problem last night on a Dell Inspiron where the touchpad would be jumpy and the battery drained very quickly.
In both cases there are 2 steps:
1. Identify the OSI strings the ACPI DSDT supports
2. Add what seems to be the latest Windows version string to the Linux kernel command-line
To find the OSI support strings the easy way (although this may not identify all strings) just extract the strings from the binary table. You could use 'iasl' to decompile the DSDT to source-doe but usually it is not necessary:
$ sudo strings
The strings of interest will usually begin with "Microsoft" or "Windows". On the Asus T300 CHI they are:
Windows 2009
Windows 2012
Windows 2013
The latest is "Windows 2013".
On an older Dell XPS M5130 they are:
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows NT
Microsoft WindowsME: Millennium Edition
Windows 2001
Windows 2006
The latest for the M1530 is "Windows 2006"
Edit the boot-loader's configuration to add the kernel command-line option to any existing settings. For GRUB2 that'll be editing
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=! acpi_osi=\"Windows 2013\" "
Notice that we need to escape (\") the embedded double-quotation marks inside the variable definition in order for the quote marks to be written to the kernel command-line itself. After saving the file do:
$ sudo update-grub
which writes the changes to the GRUB2 boot-time configuration script:
Each linux kernel boot entry (lines beginning "linux
linux vmlinuz
acpi_osi=! first deletes all recognised OSI strings.
acpi_osi="Windows 2013" sets the only recognised OSI
You can also test the option before adding it permanently by editing the boot-time
My experience isn't flamebait. It's my experience. Windows 7 was good, but Windows 10 sucks. I just don't see Linux as a viable alternative.
I don't see your viewpoint or your posting as flamebait. That said, it seems you've had more issues than I have had, and from what I can tell, more issues than the typical Linux user. That doesn't invalidate your experience or negate your difficulties, but I don't know how much they can be generalized to other Linux desktop users.
The LibreOffice bug, for instance, seems to be related to some Word fillable forms. Of course it's a problem, but is it one that a substantial number of people have to deal with?
However, if Linux doesn't work for you, it doesn't, and you'll have to stay with Windows or go to Mac.
I managed to make a typo in the most important line. The command for extracting the ACPI DSDT OSI strings had a mis-spelled path. It should be:
/sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT | grep -C 2 -i windows
$ sudo strings
Need a good malware client? Install Windows in a VM. Problem solved.
Thank you! I did that and immediately experienced the slowdowns and weird crashes I've come to depend on. Thanks again, you're a lifesaver!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
if i could find an mp3 player that would import my WMP playlists and a decent video editor (WLMM).
alive to the universe, dead to the world
Can anyone tell me why Linux is a good choice on the desktop?
I can tell you why
No, you can't. You can tell him why a particular distro, with your choice of a UI, based on your favorite Gnome/KDE/Whatever version. You can't tell him why Linux is a good thing on the desktop since there is no such thing as "Linux on the desktop" (unless you are running it without a GUI.
Here is what Linux advocates do not get. Choice is a bad thing. Not a good thing. It's terrible. People do not want choice and it has long since been documented that more options makes for more frustration, more desperation and it even makes you depressed. The fact that Linux never gave a shit about GUIs has forever doomed Linux to the server space for the vast majority of users. Linux on the desktop is shite, and it will remain so forever due to the fragmentation it is plagued by.
Some problems:
"Linux" for the desktop has come, and it is very, very good. It's called OSX, and sticking with Linux when you can actually have a real Unix operating system with a real GUI and real applications means you're a moron :-) Sorry, not really, but still.
No, it hasn't been a decade. It's not even been ten minutes.
Linux apps are inferior to their Windows equivalents.
The best "Linux" for the desktop is OSX, and if you are a user that uses real software and would like to run a variation of Unix behind it, your options are limited to one, namely OSX. Well, almost. Now that Windows can run (some) Linux binaries natively, you should probably just install Windows, then you don't have to deal with the closed environment of Apple.
What I don't understand is that now everyone can see that the only non-Windows platform that is making headway is MacOS, why the Linux folks don't make a MacOS clone their aim. Linux was always great when it had something to copy: The UNIX kernel. The UNIX kernel is great, it's a wonderful template. There's now a great desktop template, MacOS. No matter how good or bad KDE or Gnome is, it will never have the mindshare of MacOS, we know that now. If we had a MacOS clone the developers could port to it very easily, or maybe even run native apps. WINE was always a bit awful, partly because Windows itself is awful, partly because windows itself is obsolete, partly because Windows is so full of bugs that must be duplicated. MacOS is cleaner, nicer, it's already UNIX. Copy it, make a free MacOS.
First you say: ...there is no such thing as "Linux on the desktop"
and then you say: Linux on the desktop is shite,
How can it be "shite" if there is "no such thing"?
Could I get some of whatever medication you're on, but in a smaller dose?
Now you may not like the idea of Linux on the desktop but Linux on the desktop is a real thing and many people use Linux on the desktop, just as I use Linux on the desktop and I will not agree that there is no such thing as Linux on the desktop, and furthermore I will keep saying "Linux on the desktop" until your head explodes from the cognitive dissonance of Linux being on the desktop.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"I don't like it" isn't a "real" problem in Linux.
This is indeed true, but here's the rub. It's not an "I don't like it" problem. It's a "Nobody in the entire world likes it, they prefer Windows 3.1 over it" problem. Sadly the only response from the Linux community to the fact that more than 98% of the worlds population saying "this is crap" is "you are all idiots". Here's a clue, if 98% of the worlds population disagrees with you chances are that you are the one who's wrong. Particularly when it is about something as banal as the user experience in front of a computer.
Simple: The GUI situation on Linux is abysmal. It's not getting any better. The abysmal situation means that nobody is developing applications for the platform, and nobody wants to use it because the GUI situation is abysmal in addition to there being no applications for it. Here's a kicker. Libre Office for Windows is a significantly better user experience than is Libre Office on Linux. As long as that is the case, Linux GUI is shit piled on crap dumped on manure. Therefore there are no photography applications on Linux (no, not GiMP, GiMP continues to be crap), there are no NLEs (think video editing) on Linux, the price Office app on Linux works better on Windows etc and so forth.
The fact that this isn't blatantly obvious to Linux developers (of which I am one) is surprising to say the least. developing in Java at the moment, I use Eclipse as my IDE, and I use it on Windows only. Build and test runs on Linux, but using Eclipse on Linux has so many little, annoying, perpetual irritants that if I had to use it my monitor would suffer my pounding fists regularly. It may not be big stuff making things useless, just minor stuff. Such as the fact that when you select something in X it is automatically copied to the clipboard. It's annoying as shit. I know it can be fixed but it is still annoying as shit. Here's what the entire world does when using copy/cut and paste:
Does this work on Linux? The answer to that is actually "maybe, it depends". That alone is ridiculous. The auto-copy-when-select "feature" of X was designed and implemented by someone with an 1980's plastic calculator watch where his brain was supposed to be.
How can it be "shite" if there is "no such thing"?
If you'd read my post rather than being facetious, you'd have seen that I actually answered that in my post. There is no a "Linux on the desktop" since "Linux on the desktop" is a huge variety of things of varying degrees of mediocrity. Not that I could do better, the guys doing this stuff are doing very cool things, and if stuff is not good in one place. It's just too much variety, and in this case variety is a bad thing.
Linux on the desktop is a real thing and many people use Linux on the desktop
Linux on the desktop is many, many, many things and they are "all" different. The statement that "many people use Linux on the desktop" is only true for an extremely limited definition of the word "many". Statistically, it is far closer to "zero" than to "a few".
There is no a "Linux on the desktop" since "Linux on the desktop" is a huge variety of things of varying degrees of mediocrity.
That's like saying that there is no "pistachio ice cream" since "pistachio ice cream" is a "huge variety of ice cream of varying degrees of tastiness".
There is indeed such a thing as "Linux on the desktop" and lots of people use it. I use Linux on the desktop fairly often. The sheer number of desktop-oriented distros out there show that there is Linux on the desktop and that people are using Linux on the desktop. I know that saying "Linux on the desktop" bothers you but Linux on the desktop Linux on the desktop Linux on the desktop.
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The statement that "many people use Linux on the desktop" is only true for an extremely limited definition of the word "many". Statistically, it is far closer to "zero" than to "a few".
So what's your point? Has jacking off to the Steve Jobs poster above your bed really gotten so tiresome that now you're trying to redefine the word "many"? There are literally MILLIONS of people using Linux on the desktop. I think "millions" qualifies as "many".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
IF linux ever successfully makes a truly transparent layering of the OS to the point where one can install Win apps fully automagically and have them "just run" with all library support available, current, and functional, then it would truly be a war. Games would stop being an issue at all.
Under Wine 1.6 on Xubuntu 14.04 LTS, it is my experience that many Windows applications "just run", but not all. And "all" won't happen for two reasons. First, a lot of applications (such as iTunes and Fitbit Connect) rely on proprietary device drivers because they are intended for managing specific peripherals, and drivers are outside the scope of Wine (but inside that of ReactOS). Second, many online games' anti-cheat mechanisms check for specific hash values corresponding to copyrighted Windows system files.
So, nothing but facetiousness. Cool. You are debating at a level where one would expect.
Has jacking off to the Steve Jobs poster
My main desktop is a Windows box. I have my build system on a Linux VM since Linux has been my primary build, test and deployment platform for server stuff since about 1998. I was then part of a five person company that was one of the first companies to release a successful system built on Java, deployed mostly on Linux. We had to do our own application server for load balancing and stuff back then. I installed my first version of Linux, version 0.97 I think it was, when I wanted to port my Minix-based BBS software to my new 386-based PC I acquired my first Apple box a while back when I was asked to put some software on iOS. That's when I discovered that OSX was a great Unix with a great UI on top, but a terrible ecosystem behind it. The fact that it is BSD is wonderful too, I hated the day Sun changed from SunOS to Solaris and thereby from BSD to that monstrosity that is AT&T Unix (we called it back then).
I think "millions" qualifies as "many
Less than two percent has never qualified as "many" in any circumstance. It qualifies as "close to nobody". If I said "nobody uses Windows 3.1 anymore",most people would agree. More people use Windows 3.1 on the desktop than does Linux on the desktop.
Here's your problem. Your penis is so fucking small that any critique of something you feel attached to feels like a personal affront to you. This comes from a massive insecurity complex. Where does that come from? When your father was raping you when you were a child, did his penis bang so hard against to top of your mouth that it caused brain damage? (Just to keep the debate at your intellectual level). Oh, and getting emotionally attached to something as mundane as a poorly designed operating system (Linux is a terrible OS design born in the 1970s, BSD is a little better) shows a staggering black hole in your personal life. You really need to go out and get some sex done, even if you have to pay for it.
Less than two percent has never qualified as "many" in any circumstance. It qualifies as "close to nobody". If I said "nobody uses Windows 3.1 anymore",most people would agree. More people use Windows 3.1 on the desktop than does Linux on the desktop.
Then it would seem that "many" people are using Windows 3.1. Hint: It doesn't matter if 95 BILLION people are using something else, but a million people doing anything counts as "many" by any stretch of the imagination.
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Your penis is so fucking small
Yes, yes, that is undoubtedly the issue here. Yes, my small penis is definitely the reason why I think many people are using Linux on the desktop. It's so obvious! lololol
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You really need to go out and get some sex done, even if you have to pay for it.
Lol, I'll ask my wife if I can "go out and get some sex done". She's pretty open-minded but I'm not sure she'll go along with your idea.
You, on the other hand, seem to be very comfortable about paying for sex, so perhaps you could take your own advice. :)
(If you ever get a wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or goat or whatever and actually have some sex, you might not come off as being so tightly wound. Like I said, that Steve Jobs poster is going to be of limited usefulness in the long run.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Just die already
After all these years of Mac sales, the latest OSX number is still less than 4% !?! Wow. I wonder how many users (such as myself) run Windows 10 under OSX 10.11 using Parallels or other virtualization... must be miniscule - but is by far the best thing to do.
The point I'm making is that the problem is not Linux, it is the actions of a convicted monopolist - Microsoft - that has so distorted the PC industry that manufacturers are rewarded for only ensuring their products work with Windows.
This starts with hardware components directly implementing Windows protocols, firmware (as in this case) only enabling functionality for Windows, and drivers only released for Windows and no technical documentation released for open-source implementers to work from.