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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
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
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...
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
The number of people looking at Windows 7 USB3 support as a hypervisor host is only slightly more people than "just you".
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.
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.
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.
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."
Err.....you forget that windows needs drivers as well, while it does cover a lot there are many people having issues with installing windows 10. More often than not linux will just work, rarely do i experience issues with drivers.
Another thing, normal people do not install windows themselves anyway, most of the time they get a friend, same as you would with a linux install (only the bar has been moved to a more accessible point since license costs do not impede experimentation).
Except Macs are also designed for people with real computer knowledge as well. It's (real) Unix under the hood, the command line is there by default, emacs is there by default, etc. Granted they dumbed down the compiler and tools (hoping you get sucked into xcode), and they did dumb stuff to root, but it's more developer friendly than Windows by default (Windows assumes you're computer illiterate). There's a consistency on the Mac that you'll never see on Windows.
Rinse , Recycle, Repeat. This is a tired argument and while once it may have been a legitimate one its really no longer the case. I am constantly amazed that with windows you usually have to install bloatware and over engineered apps when installing drivers for a new hardware peripheral. On Linux it is about as plug and play as it gets , often requiring no additional installations at all.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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.
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